Entries by emptywheel

Links, 8/17/11

I guess it takes a lot of smart kids from other countries to show us what assholes Hershey is–and to teach us about solidarity. I assume you’ve already read the Matt Taibbi piece revealing that the SEC has been destroying records of its preliminary investigations, effectively giving serial problem corporations an apparent clean bill of […]

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Consensus that America Should Be Like Sweden

A number of people are circulating this video, graphically showing that Americans don’t know how unequal our society has become. But I wanted to point to a few details about the underlying study, which not only shows that most Americans have no clue how unequal it has become, but asks them to describe what an […]

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The New Ag Bubble and Climate Change

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is worried enough about rising farm land values in the MidWest it is holding a conference to discuss it. Here in the MidWest, prices have gone up 17% in the last year. And Bloomberg has a piece describing bankster types scouring farmland the world over for farms. “I have […]

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Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel: “If you or I committed this kind of fraud, we’d go to jail.”

In Lansing today, Ingham County (Lansing Area) Register of Deeds, Curtis Hertel and State Rep Jim Ananich presented a bill to introduce judicial foreclosure in MI. As part of the press conference, homeowner Bill Donahue described how he almost lost the home he has lived in for 25 years because Fannie Mae, which had not […]

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Why Oh Why Can’t We Have Better Political Journalism, University of Miami Edition

Free prostitutes … luxury yachts … big cash payments … free Cadillacs. All to influence a bunch of powerful men. It reads just like the Jack Abramoff scandal, or the Duke Cunningham scandal. Or the tales of similar influence peddling that takes place on Wall Street but that get ignored unless they involve someone like […]

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Links, 8/16/11

The Steelworkers made this cool video for their Convention. I think the voiceover guy is the same one as did the Chrysler 200 Super Bowl ad. Banana Republic of America Public Citizen has a calculator you can use to find out how many jobs from your congressional district may be lost in the Korean Trade […]

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“A Public Service,” My Fannie

I wanted to juxtapose two stories about Fannie Mae. The first, from this WaPo story reporting that the Administration has decided to keep some kind of federal entity guaranteeing mortgages. The story itself is interesting–as are Dean Baker’s post criticizing the underlying decision. What I found particularly interesting, though, were the comments from the usual […]

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Stimulus in Action, MI Edition

I’ve said a couple of times here that Jennifer Granholm’s record as governor was better than I gave her credit for, particularly economically. The press is beginning to do some of the same reassessment. They’re discovering that, in spite of the Governor Engler tax cuts that made it harder to respond to MI’s downturn, Granholm […]

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Nothing Like a Third Forever War to Boost the Confidence of the Military-Industrial Complex

Digby points to Gallup polling numbers showing that Washington DC is the only place in the country that has improving confidence. See, David Plouffe was right. People are feeling better about their economic prospects. At least, the people within his little bubble are. But he might want to think about why people in his bubble […]

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David Plouffe and Bill Daley Double Down on Rhetoric over Action

Greg Sargent has a followup to this weekend’s NYT article on the Administration’s debate over how or whether to make the “pivot to jobs” Obama promised throughout the debt limit fight. It appears that Plouffe and Daley are doubling down on running on rhetoric over real action on jobs. In Sargent’s piece, an SAO describing […]

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