Prometheus 6

I had tagged this as humor too, but I changed my mind. Half a million folks is probably an acceptable sample size.

The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’
September 8th, 2010 by Christian Rudder

What is it that makes a culture unique? How are whites, blacks, Asians, or whoever different from everybody else? What tastes, interests, and concepts define an ethnic group? And is there any way to make fun of other races in public and get away with it?

These are big questions, and here's how we answered them.

We selected 526,000 OkCupid users at random and divided them into groups by their (self-stated) race. We then took all these people's profile essays (280 million words in total!) and isolated the words and phrases that made each racial group's essays statistically distinct from the others'.

For instance, it turns out that all kinds of people list sushi as one of their favorite foods. But Asians are the only group who also list sashimi; it's a racial outlier. Similarly, as we shall see, black people are 20 times more likely than everyone else to mention soul food, whereas no foods are distinct for white people, unless you count diet coke.

Okay, Serendipitous Links of the Day.

Federal Intervention Sought to Curb Newark Police Abuses
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Excessive force, false arrests and other abuses by the Newark police are so rampant that the federal government should investigate and appoint a monitor to oversee the department, a civil liberties group charges in a petition it plans to file on Thursday.

Citing hundreds of claims of police misconduct, and the millions of dollars paid to settle some of them, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey called on the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to step in, as it has in overseeing the conduct of several other police agencies across the country. The complaint documents abuses by officers against not only civilians but also their fellow officers, and a culture of impunity, with few of the officers ever being punished.

The misconduct “has left citizens dead, permanently injured and otherwise damaged,” the petition contends, and has harmed the careers and mental health of good officers. “And,” the petition adds, “it has left innocent Newark residents distrustful of the police, unsure whether an encounter with them will lead to them being protected and served or beaten and arrested.”

A pattern of complaints about the Newark police stretches back decades, and when Cory A. Booker took office as mayor in 2006, ending the scandal-scarred, 20-year tenure of Sharpe James, he pledged to reform the Police Department. But the civil liberties group’s complaint to the Justice Department deals with the Booker era, a challenge to the image of a mayor who is often mentioned as a potential candidate for higher office.

The 96-page petition covers records from the courts, the police, the City Council and news reports, and offers a level of analysis that the civil liberties union had not done before, said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the group. For that reason, it is impossible to say whether abuses have become more or less frequent under Mr. Booker, Ms. Jacobs said. But, she added, “it’s clear that the same kinds of things that were going on before are still going on.”

The civil liberties union said it provided copies of the petition to the offices of Mr. Booker and Police Director Garry F. McCarthy last week. Neither office returned calls seeking comment on Wednesday, nor did the Fraternal Order of Police, the union representing most officers.

You know what the Feds are doing when they enforce the civil rights of minority Americans?

It's protecting our freedoms, you asshole!

Exactly what you say it should be doing.

The Slump Goes On: Why?
September 30, 2010
Paul Krugman and Robin Wells

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
by Raghuram G. Rajan
Princeton University Press, 260 pp., $26.95

Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance
by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm
Penguin, 353 pp., $27.95

The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession
by Richard C. Koo
Wiley, 296 pp., $45.00

In the winter of 2008–2009, the world economy was on the brink. Stock markets plunged, credit markets froze, and banks failed in a mass contagion that spread from the US to Europe and threatened to engulf the rest of the world. During the darkest days of crisis, the United States was losing 700,000 jobs a month, and world trade was shrinking faster than it did during the first year of the Great Depression.

By the summer of 2009, however, as the world economy stabilized, it became clear that there would not be a full replay of the Great Depression. Since around June 2009 many indicators have been pointing up: GDP has been rising in all major economies, world industrial production has been rising, and US corporate profits have recovered to pre-crisis levels.

Yet unemployment has hardly fallen in either the United States or Europe—which means that the plight of the unemployed, especially in America with its minimal safety net, has grown steadily worse as benefits run out and savings are exhausted. And little relief is in sight: unemployment is still rising in the hardest-hit European economies, US economic growth is clearly slowing, and many economic forecasters expect America’s unemployment rate to remain high or even to rise over the course of the next year.

Given this bleak prospect, shouldn’t we expect urgency on the part of policymakers and economists, a scramble to put forward plans for promoting growth and restoring jobs? Apparently not: a casual survey of recent books and articles shows nothing of the kind. Books on the Great Recession are still pouring off the presses—but for the most part they are backward-looking, asking how we got into this mess rather than telling us how to get out. To be fair, many recent books do offer prescriptions about how to avoid the next bubble; but they don’t offer much guidance on the most pressing problem at hand, which is how to deal with the continuing consequences of the last one.

Nor can this odd neglect be entirely explained by the mechanics of the book trade. It’s true that economics books appearing now for the most part went to press before the disappointing nature of our so-called recovery was fully apparent. Even a survey of recent articles, however, shows a notable unwillingness on the part of the dismal science to offer solutions to the problem of persistently high unemployment and a sluggish economy. There has been a furious debate about the effectiveness of the monetary and fiscal measures undertaken at the depths of the crisis; there have also been loud declarations about what we must not do—warnings about the alleged danger of budget deficits or expansionary monetary policy are legion. But proposals for positive action to dig us out of the hole we’re in are few and far between.

In what follows, we’ll provide a relatively brief discussion of a much-belabored but still controversial subject: the origins of the 2008 crisis. We’ll then turn to the ongoing policy debates about the response to the crisis and its aftermath. Not to keep readers in suspense: we believe that the relative absence of proposals to deal with mass unemployment is a case of “self-induced paralysis”—a phrase that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used a decade ago, when he was a researcher criticizing policymakers from the outside. There is room for action, both monetary and fiscal. But politicians, government officials, and economists alike have suffered a failure of nerve—a failure for which millions of workers will pay a heavy price.

And don't none of you spammers get any ideas. EYE get real value out of this annual freebie, and so do some associates of mine.

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Review: The Scottsboro Boys @ The Guthrie Theater
By Tad Simons

Is The Scottsboro Boys—the final musical from the legendary writing team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Ebb died in 2004), who gave us Chicago, Cabaret, and Kiss of the Spider Woman—Broadway’s next big hit?

Or, is it a shamelessly racist piece of claptrap that traffics in every imaginable negative stereotype for the sole purpose of entertaining rooms full of wealthy white people?

Or, is it the most outrageously subversive play ever to hit a Guthrie stage: a shocking, viciously satirical, brutally honest flaying of American culture that—in the long tradition of jesters who use humor to tell “the truth” to the king—lambastes, lampoons, and blasphemes in order to reveal deeper, more disgraceful truths that Americans might otherwise ignore?

Or is it all of these things? And then some?

These are the sorts of questions likely to be spinning around in your head after sitting through The Scottsboro Boys, an unlikely musical built around the tragic true story of nine black men from Alabama in 1931who were wrongly accused of rape and spent years in jail waiting for the legal system to exonerate them.

Why not netbooks?

California testing iPads as algebra textbooks
By Gautham Nagesh - 09/08/10 10:33 AM ET

A pilot project in four California school districts will replace 400 students' eighth-grade algebra textbooks with Apple iPads in an attempt to prove the advantages of interactive digital technologies over traditional teaching methods.

Education firm Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has teamed up with California Secretary of Education Bonnie Reiss for the pilot, which will take place at Long Beach Unified School District, Riverside Unified School District, Fresno Unified School District and San Francisco Unified School District.

"This is a seminal moment. It marks the fundamental shift from print delivery of curriculum to digital," said John Sipe, vice president of K-12 sales at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Students randomly selected for the program will receive iPads loaded with digital versions of their textbooks for the coming school year. Their progress will be tracked and compared against that of their classmates using traditional textbooks to determine the potential benefit of a switch to digital technology.

Barclays Elevates Diamond to C.E.O.

If this Republican operative was sincere, he'd have recruited them for the Republican Party ticket.

This is a serious seditionist move. This is the action of a person and party that doesn't even want politics to work at all.

Republican Runs Street People on Green Ticket
By MARC LACEY

TEMPE, Ariz. — Benjamin Pearcy, a candidate for statewide office in Arizona, lists his campaign office as a Starbucks. The small business he refers to in his campaign statement is him strumming his guitar on the street. The internal debate he is having in advance of his coming televised debate is whether he ought to gel his hair into his trademark faux Mohawk.

Mr. Pearcy, 20, is running for a seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission, which oversees public utilities, railroad safety and securities regulation. Although Mr. Pearcy says he is taking his first run for public office seriously, the political establishment here views him as nothing more than a political dirty trick.

Mr. Pearcy and other drifters and homeless people were recruited onto the Green Party ballot by a Republican political operative who freely admits that their candidacies may siphon some support from the Democrats. Arizona’s Democratic Party has filed a formal complaint with local, state and federal prosecutors in an effort to have the candidates removed from the ballot, and the Green Party has urged its supporters to steer clear of the rogue candidates.

“These are people who are not serious and who were recruited as part of a cynical manipulation of the process,” said Paul Eckstein, a lawyer representing the Democrats. “They don’t know Green from red.”

But Steve May, the Republican operative who signed up some of the candidates along Mill Avenue, a bohemian commercial strip next to Arizona State University, insists that a real political movement has been stirred up that has nothing to do with subterfuge.

“Did I recruit candidates? Yes,” said Mr. May, who is himself a candidate for the State Legislature, on the Republican ticket. “Are they fake candidates? No way.”

The Big Lie at the Core of the GOP's Economic Argument
Submitted by Simon Rosenberg on 9/3/10

The foundation of the Republicans' "return to power" argument is a promise to reduce the federal budget deficit and rein in government spending. But in a major speech last week, the Republican House leader John Boehner made clear that this promise is at best a false one, and perhaps even qualifies as the "big lie" of campaign 2010.

In an updated new analysis, first reported by Sam Stein in the Huffington Post last week, NDN has shown that the plan Rep. Boehner outlined in his speech would increase the deficit by more than $4 trillion over ten years. Not only does his plan explode the deficit, but it only identifies $67 billion in cost savings over ten years, an amount less than the new interest on the debt his budget would generate. Billed as a major address by the man who would be Speaker, Rep. Boehner's speech, taken at face value, shows that the entire argument the Republicans are making this year is built upon a huge set of lies....

Friends, the Boehner plan is a call to action. But what can an average American do? I have a simple idea. In September, work with allied groups and other friends to get every Republican candidate running for federal office to answer a simple question:

"If the federal budget deficit is such a threat to our economy and our future, can you produce an economic plan which reduces the federal budget deficit at all, even by a penny, over the next ten years?"

The answer, remarkably, is no. Despite their very public commitment to fiscal prudence, not a single GOP candidate running for federal office in 2010 can produce such a plan....

Housing Woes Bring a New Cry: Let the Market Fall
By DAVID STREITFELD

The unexpectedly deep plunge in home sales this summer is likely to force the Obama administration to choose between future homeowners and current ones, a predicament officials had been eager to avoid.

Over the last 18 months, the administration has rolled out just about every program it could think of to prop up the ailing housing market, using tax credits, mortgage modification programs, low interest rates, government-backed loans and other assistance intended to keep values up and delinquent borrowers out of foreclosure. The goal was to stabilize the market until a resurgent economy created new households that demanded places to live.

As the economy again sputters and potential buyers flee — July housing sales sank 26 percent from July 2009 — there is a growing sense of exhaustion with government intervention. Some economists and analysts are now urging a dose of shock therapy that would greatly shift the benefits to future homeowners: Let the housing market crash.

When prices are lower, these experts argue, buyers will pour in, creating the elusive stability the government has spent billions upon billions trying to achieve.

“Housing needs to go back to reasonable levels,” said Anthony B. Sanders, a professor of real estate finance at George Mason University. “If we keep trying to stimulate the market, that’s the definition of insanity.”

The further the market descends, however, the more miserable one group — important both politically and economically — will be: the tens of millions of homeowners who have already seen their home values drop an average of 30 percent.

The poorer these owners feel, the less likely they will indulge in the sort of consumer spending the economy needs to recover. If they see an identical house down the street going for half what they owe, the temptation to default might be irresistible. That could make the market’s current malaise seem minor.

Quaker in a Basement pointed this one out.

I was thinking of a snarky headline as I read this article...something along the lines of this reflecting the true value of this fishwrap to America. When I found the text I ultimately used in the copy, I realized I could never surpass it.

Washington Times struggles amid divisions of family, ideology, finances
By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 6, 2010; C01

In summer 2009, the Times' future turned rocky. In July, church donations from Japan, long a key source of subsidies, stopped flowing to the paper, according to a memo by Victor Walters, treasurer of the Times' parent company. Walters did not return phone messages left at his office.

Times executives scrambled to figure out why the spigot had been turned off. Cooperrider e-mailed a senior church official: "We are really on the edge here. This is payroll week and we didn't get all of last week's funds yet and this week's funds are not at all clear. Should we start closing the doors?"

In e-mails obtained by The Post, Cooperrider provided a laundry list of problems, including the fact that the Times' Internet provider and health insurance bills hadn't been paid.

Instructed to contact Justin Moon, the second-oldest son, Cooperrider wrote asking, "Should TWT close their doors? Has the Founder instructed that should happen?" He signed his e-mail, "For the sake of America and the world . . . Keith Cooperrider."

What Are Words Worth?
Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Like many, I prefer to live in a world that is tolerant in its attitudes and moderate in its discourse. As a writer and speechmaker, I believe in the power of words and ideas. But I worry that we have developed a laser focus on speech as the conduit of both racial liberation and racial oppression. In reality these moments, extraordinary or infuriating as they may be, are not the engines that drive racial change. The power or impotence of these words derives from the social forces and political structures that undergird them. Lincoln did not win the war with the Gettysburg Address; the Union soldiers who fought on that Pennsylvania battlefield won it. The N-word is not a litmus test for our country's racism; the stunning gaps in health, education, wealth and criminal justice are far better measures. A man is not the leader of a social movement just because many thousands heed his call, arrive at the Washington Mall and listen to a rambling, self-righteous, utterly forgettable speech. Just ask Minister Farrakhan.

Yes, King's words continue to inspire a nation. But the Civil Rights Act did not spill forth from the mouth of King; it was the culmination of decades of community struggles, Congressional lobbying and judicial strategy. No speech, no matter how awe-inspiring, could have led a Southern Democrat in 1964, six weeks before his party's nominating convention, in the summer of a presidential election year, to sign the most important piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. That unthinkable political act was made possible by a confluence of factors, including important shifts occurring within the Democratic Party. For example, in the 1958 midterm elections eleven racially liberal Republican senators were replaced by eleven racially liberal Democrats. The election did not alter total Congressional support for civil rights legislation, but it did shift the balance of power on race issues between the parties. For the first time, the party of Lincoln did not have exclusive claim on racial liberalism, and for the first time the Democratic Party's powerful Southern segregationist base was balanced against a progressive Northern force. This shift was just enough, when combined with the visible struggle of disciplined, nonviolent Southern resisters, to give Johnson the courage to act on civil rights.

Taylor Branch, author of a heralded three part history of the King era, lauds Glenn Beck's attempt to overwrite history, and I am disgusted by the attempt. The man has either never seen Beck...

...nevermind. Beck's behavior has been so widely reported, only pure bias can explain his willingness to align Beck with King. Can't say what that bias is, but I am seriously concerned and want folks who speak on it to hew as closely to physical fact as possible.

One would hope (appparently in vain) a Pulitzer-winning historian would get that.

Thought that was just another snarky headline, didn't you?

Mr. Feldman received a bill for $200. The Chicago Heights Fire Department told him the fire truck had responded in case there was a fire at the scene.

But Mr. Feldman, 71, had another question: “Why are you charging me? I didn’t do anything wrong. Charge the other guy.”

Neither Mr. Feldman’s insurance company, nor that of the man who struck him, would pay. Mr. Feldman finally paid the bill with some of the money he received from the insurance company of the person who hit him.

“This is my personal opinion: it is a rip-off and a scam,” he said.

A Crash. A Call for Help. Then, a Bill.
By CHRISTOPHER JENSEN

ABOUT a year ago Cary Feldman was surprised to find himself sprawled on the pavement in an intersection in Chicago Heights, Ill., having been knocked off his motor scooter by the car behind him. Five months later he got another surprise: a bill from the fire department for responding to the scene of the accident.

“I had no idea what the fire truck was there for,” said Mr. Feldman, of nearby Matteson. “It came, it looked and it left. I was not hurt badly. I had scratches and bruises. I did not go to the hospital.”

Mr. Feldman had become enmeshed in what appears to be a nascent budget-balancing trend in municipal government: police and fire departments have begun to charge accident victims as a way to offset budget cuts.

Ambulance charges have long been common and are usually paid by health insurance, but fees for other responders are relatively new. The charge is variously called a “crash tax” or “resource recovery,” depending on one’s point of view. In either case, motorists are billed for services they may have thought were covered by taxpayers.

Sometimes the victim’s insurer pays. But if it declines, motorists may face threats from a collection agency if they don’t pay.

The AAA opposes such fees, said Jill Ingrassia, managing director for government relations and traffic safety advocacy. “Generally, we see that public safety services are a core government function that should be properly budgeted for with general taxes and not addressed by fees after the fact,” she said.

Ms. Ingrassia says such charges can place an “undue burden on motorists who can’t choose the size or duration of an emergency response,” which means they cannot control the size of the bill they may get. “We also really don’t want to discourage any motorist involved in a crash from calling for police or rescue services if they fear they are going to be billed for it,” she said.

Haley Barbour Is A Lying Fat Redneck!
by playthell

It is instructive to know that Barbour’s role in politics began with Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, when Haley took a leave from Old Miss to work for Nixon.  Professor Dan T. Carter, a Bancroft Prize winning southern historian, provides the background information we need to properly assess the significance of this fact in his seminal study of how the Republicans conquered the South: The Politics of Rage.

In a revelatory chapter titled “Richard Nixon, George Wallace, and the Southernization Of American Politics,” Dr. Carter  explains how the previous Republican Presidential candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona – John McCain’s Mentor – had openly embraced the white racist in the south and was creamed in a landslide victory by Lyndon Johnson, a progressive southern Democrat, so Nixon rejected that strategy.

An astute politician who had been Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon understood the appeal to southerners of traditional Republican conservatism on economic issues – like their anti-unionism – and he figured out that if he substituted the word “commie” for “Nigger” he could get the ear of many southerners.  He even rejected the idea that Goldwater had invented the “Southern Strategy” that would eventually convert the South from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican.  “The idea that Goldwater started the Southern strategy is bullshit,” he said, and pointed to Eisenhower’s presidential campaigns of 1952-56.

Concluding that old style southern racism was a loser – and bearing the burden of having supported the major Civil Rights legislation, Nixon devised a strategy where he could hunt with the hounds and run with the hares.  He decided that although Goldwater’s campaign had resulted in the election of large numbers of Republicans in the south for the first time since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, the naked racism of his appeal to the crackers of the deep south turned off the moderates in the border states.

Nixon would mask his support of southern racial concerns by attacking the lawlessness of black rioters protesting racism in the north – whose desperate plight had been largely unaffected by the Civil Rights acts. This legislation had been designed to nullify the legal racial discrimination of the south, de-jure, not the customary racial discrimination – de-facto – of the north.  And he constantly attacked the liberal welfare state programs personified in Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”

He finally decided to aim for the emerging white middle class in the South, people like Haley Barbour.  He revealed the essence of his “Southern Strategy” to a group of southern delegates at the 1968 Republican National Convention, who controlled the votes to make him the Republican nominee.  Fending off challenges from the old eastern liberal wing of the Republican Party led by Nelson Rockefeller, and the new star of the far right Ronald Reagan, Nixon met with a group of southern delegates rounded up by the longtime Dixiecrat Strom Thurman, who had converted to the Republican Party during the Goldwater campaign.

We Don't Need Another Civil Rights Movement
By: Lester K. Spence
Posted: September 2, 2010 at 9:03 PM

We have become so distrustful of the political process that we think marches and cultural transformations will solve our problems.

Recently the Schott Foundation released a bleak report on the state of black male education. Only eight states graduate more than 70 percent of black non-Hispanic males from their high schools. Four states have a graduation rate between 60 percent and 69 percent. Twenty states (plus Washington D.C.) have graduation rates below 50 percent. Nationwide, the non-Hispanic black male graduation rate is 47 percent. Combined with the double-digit unemployment rates in our communities and the epidemic of foreclosures, we know that we are living a crisis of epic proportions.

I'm familiar with the research on educational outcomes. The data indicate that our income levels influence how stable our homes are and how well our children perform in school. Income also influences how likely our kids are to spend time in jail. In addition, the data show that there are a variety of structural dynamics that also influence outcomes. Universal preschool works wonders, for example, as does the type of comprehensive needs-based program exemplified by the Harlem Children's Zone.

On the other hand, there is no relationship between black cultural traits and educational outcomes. Having a child out of wedlock, for example, has little bearing on educational outcomes if the parent has a high income. I'm not saying that culture is unimportant, but we focus on it far more than the data suggest we should. [P6: emphasis added]

Similarly, there is no relationship between civil rights-style marches and educational outcomes. Participating in a march to transform one's school, or to transform education in general, does nothing more than perhaps help you lose weight.

Now, why do I mention these two issues? Because even though both the research and the Schott Foundation report clearly focus on structural solutions, and clearly state that the problem is not with black boys but rather with the structural conditions they find themselves facing, some of us are still focusing on some combination of civil rights activism and cultural reconditioning. The report says that "systemic disparities evident by race, social class, or zip code are influenced more by the social policies and practices that we put in place to distribute educational opportunities and resources and less by the abilities of black males."

LATER: I changed the order of the videos, because though I found The Empathic Civilization first (and so posted it first), I think Smile or Die is more relevant to the level we operate on daily.

The C.I.A.’s continuing relationship with the company, which recently was awarded a $100 million contract to provide security at agency bases in Afghanistan, has drawn harsh criticism from some members of Congress, who argue that the company’s tarnished record should preclude it from such work. At least two of the Blackwater-affiliated companies, XPG and Greystone, obtained secret contracts from the agency, according to interviews with a half dozen former Blackwater officials.

It would certainly explain a lot.

30 False Fronts Won Contracts for Blackwater
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Blackwater Worldwide created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, according to Congressional investigators and former Blackwater officials.

While it is not clear how many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency, according to former government and company officials. Since 2001, the intelligence agency has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates, according to a United States government official.

The Senate Armed Services Committee this week released a chart that identified 31 affiliates of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services. The network was disclosed as part of a committee’s investigation into government contracting. The investigation revealed the lengths to which Blackwater went to continue winning contracts after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. That episode and other reports of abuses led to criminal and Congressional investigations, and cost the company its lucrative security contract with the State Department in Iraq.

The network of companies — which includes several businesses located in offshore tax havens — allowed Blackwater to obscure its involvement in government work from contracting officials or the public, and to assure a low profile for any of its classified activities, said former Blackwater officials, who, like the government officials, spoke only on condition of anonymity.

On Economy, Democrats Face a Lack of Unity and Time
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — Democrats are entering the fall sprint to the midterm elections lacking a unifying message to address the lackluster economy, scrambling to come up with further job-creating remedies and out of time to show substantial results before voters go to the polls.

The monthly jobs report on Friday, while better than economists had expected, did nothing to improve the deteriorating political climate for Democrats a little more than eight weeks before Election Day.

President Obama, after a week consumed by foreign policy issues, will begin focusing publicly on the economy next week and on Wednesday plans to propose modest additional tax breaks, temporary and aimed at small business to promote hiring. But it is not clear that he has the votes or the time in Congress to pass them, with Republicans eager to deny Democrats any victories and endangered Democrats eager to get home within three to four weeks to campaign.

Democrats’ sense of vulnerability has increased since Congress broke for August, after a month of reports tracking weakness in both the economy and their polls. One result is that they now split more deeply than ever on the issue that in recent elections had been a rallying cry: ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers. Democratic leaders are imploring Mr. Obama to come off the sidelines and lead the fight.

On the campaign trail, many Democrats are going their own ways as they face the prospect that persistently high unemployment could cost them control of the House and perhaps the Senate. Many are embracing the stimulus package enacted soon after Mr. Obama took office; others run away from it. Some distance themselves from Mr. Obama and his economic team; most blame Republicans.

Democrats’ campaign message mostly is a Babel of individual voices. With the national winds blowing ever stronger against the party in power, threatened Democrats are tailoring their message to their particular district or state — with party leaders’ encouragement.

The most ominous recent sign for Democrats was a Gallup poll released this week showing a wide gap in voter enthusiasm, favoring Republicans. Those Democrats who prevail in November will likely return to the Capitol in a more fiscally conservative mood.

You know why Democrats lack enthusiasm. If there had been a real pursuit of progressive issues, if the stimulus had been properly sized, if evey effort didn't start with a 50-50 power split with obstructionist losers, Democrats would have more enthusiasm than Republicans.

And electing a bag of Republican-Lites is just as much a repetition of error as re-instituting Bush's political, economic and military imperatives is.

Democrats add fiscal austerity as a campaign issue
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 3, 2010; 9:03 PM

The candidate was outraged - just outraged - at the country's sorry fiscal state.

"We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet," he fumed to a roomful of voters. "In my view, we have nothing to show for it."

And that was a Democrat, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who voted "yes" on the stimulus, the health-care overhaul, increased education funding and other costly bills Congress approved under his party's control.

Faced with a potential wipeout in November's midterm elections, candidates such as Bennet are embracing budget cuts with the enthusiasm of Reagan Republicans.

Paul Hodes, the Democratic Senate candidate in New Hampshire, recently proposed $3 billion in spending cuts that would slice airport, railroad and housing funds. Elected to the House four years ago as an anti-war progressive, Hodes lamented that "for too long, both parties have willfully spent with no regard for our nation's debt."

The new push for austerity could prove too little, too late for Democrats, who fear losing their majorities in both chambers of Congress. In dozens of House and Senate races, incumbent Democrats are struggling in polls, leading political analysts to raise the serious prospect of Republican takeovers in the House and even the Senate.

Companies may be at a point where they are no longer willing or able to protect their workers’ health benefits, said Helen Darling, the president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization representing employers that provide coverage.

Employers Push Costs for Health on Workers
By REED ABELSON

As health care costs continue their relentless climb, companies are increasingly passing on higher premium costs to workers.

The shift is occurring, policy analysts and others say, as employers feel more pressure from the weak economy and the threat of even more expensive coverage under the new health care law.

In contrast to past practices of absorbing higher prices, some companies chose this year to keep their costs the same by passing the entire increase in premiums for family coverage onto their workers, according to a new survey released on Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group.

Workers’ share of the cost of a family policy jumped an average of 14 percent, an increase of about $500 a year. The cost of a policy rose just 3 percent, to an average of $13,770.

Workers are now paying nearly $4,000 for family coverage, according to the survey, and their costs have increased much faster than those of employers.

Since 2005, while wages have increased just 18 percent, workers’ contributions to premiums have jumped 47 percent, almost twice as fast as the rise in the policy’s overall cost.

Workers also increasingly face higher deductibles, forcing them to pay a larger share of their overall medical bills. “The long-term trend is pretty clear,” said Drew E. Altman, the chief executive of the Kaiser foundation, which conducted the survey this year with the Health Research and Educational Trust, a research organization affiliated with the American Hospital Association. “Insurance is getting stingier and less comprehensive.”

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Isn't it shocking? An appeal to physical facts while considering political positioning. And here's some more of it, so you know how cycnical it is to have Barbour as the Republican front man for this effort to edit history.

The highlighted quote comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center

Haley Barbour (center), later elected governor of Mississippi, appeared at a 2003 Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) fund-raising event with CCC supporters and officials, including CCC Field Director Bill Lord (far right).

Even though it has largely left "respectability" behind, the Council still wields a big political stick in Mississippi, where it claims some 5,000 members. The Council helped organize opposition to a 2001 referendum to change Mississippi's state flag to a less Dixie-fied design (the flag included a miniature representation of the Confederate battle flag). The referendum's thumping defeat in a racially polarized vote — 64% to 36% — was a major victory for the CCC.

The Council also flexed some muscle in last year's gubernatorial election, which pitted incumbent Democrat Ronnie Musgrove — who led the fight to change the Mississippi state flag — against Republican Haley Barbour. During the campaign, the CCC Web site ran a photograph of Barbour posing with Council luminaries at the Black Hawk Barbecue, a CCC fundraising event for "private academy" school buses.

When the photo caused a stir, Barbour was quick to call the CCC's segregationist views "indefensible." But he refused to ask that his picture be taken down from the Web site. It was a matter of principle, Barbour explained. "Once you start down the slippery slope of saying, 'That person can't be for me,' then where do you stop?" he asked. "Old segregationists? Former Ku Klux Klan?"