Browsing PBH By Articles

Don’t Be Surprised At Obama’s Civil Liberties Failures

The Article: Obama is Bad on Civil Liberties, But That Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone by Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.

The Text: I turned on Fox for a few minutes and heard Megyn Kelly talking to someone who claimed that Democrats would all abandon President Obama en masse over the latest leaks about NSA spying. Maybe so. But I’m curious about something: Is anyone really surprised by the recent revelations of NSA surveillance programs? Actually, let me rephrase that. You might be surprised to learn about details of the programs themselves, but are you surprised to hear that Obama approved them?

I can’t figure out why anyone would be. Obama voted for the 2008 FISA amendments, a position that outraged liberals at the time. He continued the Bush-era surveillance of communications networks. He ramped up the war in Afghanistan. He vastly increased drone use overseas. He’s declared a war on leakers. He participated in the assault on Libya. He’s approved the assassination of American citizens abroad. His DOJ has aggressively made use of the state secrets privilege. He’s fought relentlessly to block lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

Continue Reading

‘Rich States, Poor States,’ Red States, Blue States

The Article: Rich States, Poor States, Red States, Blue States by Laura Macomber in Bill Moyers Online.

The Text: Last month, The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a corporate lobbying group that Common Cause says is masquerading as a nonprofit charity — published its sixth annual “Rich States, Poor States” report. The publication is coauthored by Dr. Arthur Laffer, often called the father of supply-side economics, and it ranks U.S. states according to their “economic outlook” — a measure based on 15 different ALEC-selected criteria. Basically, the lower a state’s taxes, the fewer public services it offers and the less hospitable it is to labor unions, the higher it will be ranked. It also helps to have a really low minimum wage. Utah took this year’s top slot, with Vermont landing at number 50.

Many local news outlets are touting the report as a concrete source for assessing their state’s economic performance. But it appears that ideology is what gets a state to the top — or the bottom — of the rankings.

Before we get to why that is, some background: ALEC — a self-proclaimed “nonpartisan” organization with an overwhelmingly Republican political membership — is where corporations and politicians can meet each other away from the prying eyes of taxpayers and voters. Together, ALEC’s members draft model laws that promote a corporate, profit-driven agenda that simultaneously seeks to dismantle a state’s public services and workers’ rights. With this in mind, any “reports” that ALEC issues must be scrutinized with a magnifying glass, lest the conclusions drawn from its hand-picked data be taken as objective reporting.

Continue Reading

Documenting A Christian Conservative’s Meltdown

The Article: Inside The Meltdown At America’s Most Conservative, Most Christian Political Consulting Firm by McKay Coppins in Buzzfeed.

The Text: About 30 miles north of Columbus, down the road from a Walmart and across the street from a Walmart-sized Baptist church, a brick-faced Victorian estate stands alone in a meadow of persimmons. The building blends nicely into the landscape, except for two features: the fleet of black Bentleys parked outside, and the entirely unnecessary all-caps red sign over the parking spot closest to the front door:

“RESERVED PARKING FOR REX ELSASS. UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES TOWED AWAY.”

This is the headquarters of the largest, most combative, and perhaps most controversial band of messaging warriors in Republican politics. Their blandly named company, Strategy Group for Media, has spent more than a decade developing a slashing formula for turning the party’s right-wing rejects into members of Congress. Now there are at least 40 Republicans in Congress who have worked with the Strategy Group, which serves as a campaign and strategy clearing house for the uncompromisingly conservative wing of the congressional caucus that has been at the center of American politics since 2010.

Continue Reading

Six Ways The US Tax Code Is Made For The Rich

The Article: Six Charts That Prove The Tax Code Was Written For The Rich by Walter Hickey in Business Insider.

The Text: There’s an outstanding new report from the Congressional Budget Office analyzing which income sectors receive the most benefits from tax expenditures.
One thing is completely obvious after the report: The U.S. tax code is designed to turn the screws on the middle class, while granting huge tax breaks to the rich and and tax credits to the lowest income quintile.

The CBO calls these “tax expenditures” because “they resemble federal spending by providing financial assistance to specific activities, entities, or groups of people. Tax expenditures, like traditional forms of federal spending, contribute to the federal budget deficit.”

The report looked at four kinds of tax expenditures:

Exclusions from taxable income – Roughly evenly distributed among the quintiles.

Continue Reading

Ole Miss Shows Its Southern Backwardness Courtesy Of Sexist Governor

The Article: Mississippi governor: Educational troubles began when ‘mom is in the workplace’ by Valerie Strauss in The Washington Post.

The Text: Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that America’s educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers.
Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became “so mediocre” in regard to educational outcomes, he said:

I think both parents started working. And the mom is in the work place.

Bryant immediately recognized how controversial his remark would be and said he knew he would start to get e-mails. He then expanded on his answer, saying that “both parents are so pressured” in families today. He also noted that America seemed to be losing ground internationally in regards to educational outcomes because other nations began to invest more in their own school systems and make progress.

Continue Reading