Wednesday, November 14, 2007
National (Anti-)Labor Relations Board (12:39 am)
Via the always interesting Brad Plumer, Greg Tarpinian examines some of the 61 (mostly horrific) decisions handed down in the last fiscal month by the Bush NLRB. Some of the lowlights include making it harder for workers to organize through card check, making it hard for illegaly fired workers to collect back pay and making it easier to intimidate and fire union supporters. The goal, according to Greg, is to leave “the law completely eviscerated before Bush leaves office to make it even more difficult for a new President and Congress to address the problems of the denial of worker rights in America.”
As David Moberg notes in the most recent issue, that has bad consequences for all of us.
posted by Brian Cook | 1 comment
Monday, November 12, 2007
The Carried Interest Loophole (4:39 pm)
Charlie Cray and Chris Hayes have a great piece on the Nation’s website today that examines the recent fraught history between Democrats and the multi-billion carried interest tax loophole. Cray and Hayes (Crayes?) write:
Last summer, the Democrats proposed closing the multibillion-dollar tax loophole for managers of hedge funds and private equity firms. Under the current tax code, they now pay a mere 15 percent capital gains rate on the fees and bonuses (i.e., “carried interest” income) they get paid to manage investment funds they do not own, rather than the 35 percent rate they’d pay under normal income tax schedules. Estimates are this loophole—actually, it’s more the size of a levy breach—will sap the Treasury of $26 billion over the next ten years.
But in October, Senate majority leader Harry Reid seemed to backtrack, saying that the Senate schedule was a little too tight to fit in a vote on the measure. Then, on Friday, the House revived hope for the provision when it passed Charlie Rangel’s tax reform bill (HR 3996), which would, among other things, close the loophole. But the revival may be short-lived, since the bill now has to make it through the Senate Finance Committee, where one key Democrat, Charles Schumer, has indicated outright opposition and another key member, John Kerry, shied away from endorsing it back in May, suggesting the hedge funds be given a ten-year grace period before the loophole is closed.
(For some pretty disheartening info as to why Reid may have... read more
posted by Brian Cook | start the discussion
Pakistan detains lawyers, allegations of torture surface (4:29 pm)
A new report from Human Rights Watch finds “credible evidence” that Pakistan’s military is torturing many lawyers who were peacefully protesting against the country’s military leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
From Human Rights Watch:
Most of those detained are being held without charge. Hundreds of lawyers are being held under terrorism charges without any factual basis. Treason charges also have been instituted against some. Almost two-thirds of Pakistan’s senior judges remain under house arrest.
Is it any coincidence that the Pakistani government imposed martial law after the country’s Supreme Court heard legal challenges to Musharraf’s controversial Oct. 6 re-election?
HRW’s Asia Director Brad Adams says:
“Musharraf has defied domestic opinion and the international community by rounding up many of Pakistan’s finest lawyers and subjecting them to solitary confinement and, very possibly, torture because they protested his ugly power grab. The past conduct of the security services leaves the world with no choice but to assume the worst about the fate of those being held incommunicado.”
In recent developments, Musharraf’s government ordered the detention of opposition leader (and former prime minister) Benazir Bhutto.
posted by Sanhita Sinharoy | start the discussion
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Norman Mailer Dead At 84 (1:36 pm)
Norman Mailer, the literary pugilist, is dead at the age of 84.
I’ll never forget how startling, how gripping, how goddam beautiful a book The Executioner’s Song is. Maybe I’ll pick it up today as a send off to him.
Gore Vidal:
“Mailer is forever shouting at us that he is about to tell us something we must know or has just told us something revelatory and we failed to hear him or that he will, God grant his poor abused brain and body just one more chance, get through to us so that we will know. Each time he speaks he must become more bold, more loud, put on brighter motley and shake more foolish bells. Yet of all my contemporaries I retain the greatest affection for Norman as a force and as an artist. He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements.”
Keep your eyes on the ITT List in the coming week for a wrap-up of the best elegies, obits, and memoirs about him.
For now read the pieces in the Times, The New Yorker, and the Guardian.
Also, Salon.
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Review of Break Through (4:00 pm)
Editor’s Note: The following review of Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus’ new book Break Through is by In These Times’ National Political Web Reporter Megan Tady.
Strutting My Stuff
By Megan Tady
So I may want a job working with the “bad boys of environmentalism”— Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger— the duo who has single-handedly given the mainstream environmental movement chronic heartburn for the last five years. Lucky for me, they’re hiring.
But in order to even be considered for the post, I need to strut my stuff. The pair has asked applicants to write a “funny and smart” review of their new book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility and post it on a blog. As a journalist committed to transparency the way Cheney clings to secrecy, I’ll give this warning to my dear readers:
“What you are about to read was written at the behest of my future employers, who I am trying to impress. Fortunately, the following would be true even if I wasn’t trying to score a job. Children and the faint of heart should cover their mouths—I just want them to be quiet.”
This fall, Nordhaus and Shellenberger riled the environmental community for the umpteenth time when they broke out Break Through. The basic premise of the book is that the only way to truly reverse or stop climate change is a massive public investment in clean-energy technologies. They argue that America should be pushing for more economic development,... read more
posted by Brian Cook | 1 comment
Musharraf’s Democracy (11:17 am)
On Saturday November 3, 2007, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency for the country. He suspended the constitution, which he revised after his bloodless coup in 1999, fired Supreme Court justices (“a judiciary at ‘cross purposes’ with the rest of the government,” Musharraf said), and blocked all cable and independent news media Government Threatens to Seal Jang Press” by The International News, an English language newspaper of the Jang Group). Now, the only news channel being televised in the country is the state-run Pakistani Television Corporation channel, PTV .
Musharraf defended his actions in a nationally televised address Saturday night on PTV. He said that the Pakistani government “faced with terrorist threats and on the verge of destabilization, could no longer function.”
As a Pakistani American, I would back Musharraf if he were only trying to protect the Pakistani government and its people. Pakistan does need strong leadership, especially now, as the country faces increasing threats of violence from the previously peaceful northwest regions of Pakistan that border Afghanistan , but why block the media?
According to CNN, “Musharraf complained in his speech that the media–which he made independent–have not been supportive, but have reported ‘negative’ news.”
Wow! He boasts that he made the media independent yet when the media criticize him, he silences them. What kind of an independent media is this? Media should be able to report the facts and if there are a lot of so-called negative events in Pakistan–-like the incident with Lal Masjid (the Red Mosque)–-media can and should write about it.
Independent media is the backbone of democracy because restricting the availability of information only creates ignorance among the population, resulting in a lack of civil engagement and nothing more. Or maybe that was your goal, Musharraf?
To read more about the restrictions placed on Independent media in Pakistan, check here for Dawn’s coverage.
By Mahreen Mehdi
posted by Intern | start the discussion
NCLB? No sir. (8:40 am)
According to the Post yesterday and the Times today, time’s up for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act this year, and Congress has nothing to bring to class.
Despite dozens of hearings, months of public debate and hundreds of hours of Congressional negotiation, neither the House nor the Senate has produced a bill that would formally start the reauthorization process.
To some, this really comes as no surprise. The political alliances of the bill were really tricky to begin with and nobody wants to attach their name to anything that Bush supports (I wrote about the decomposing alliances earlier this year). But it is a shame that K-12 ed policy is going to fall off the radar once again. Hopefully, local educators will take this impasse as a sign to implement more innovative and engaging classroom strategies on their own.
posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion
Monday, November 5, 2007
You know what grinds my gears? (9:25 pm)
Sometimes, I just get so damn sick of the Department of Education, abortion rights, and the income tax. And birthright citizenship. And small pox vaccinations. And the ban on carrying a firearm in the National Park System. Man, those things suck.
Oh! You say there’s a candidate I might like? Maybe I’ll donate. What? I’m not alone?!?!?
People in this country can be so crazy.
posted by Adam Doster | 4 comments
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