Tag: Opinion

The accusation that the President has failed to deliver Change is, in certain key respects, unfair

Earlier this week, The New Yorker‘s Steve Coll wrote an excellent column on President Obama’s kill list and assassination powers. Regarding the lawsuit brought by the ACLU and CCR on behalf of three American victims of Obama’s assassinations – a legal challenge which CBS News‘ Andrew Cohen called “the most important lawsuit filed so far this year” and “the most important lawsuit filed in the war on terror since President Barack Obama took office” – Coll argued that it “is to the due-process clause what the proposed march of neo-Nazis through a community that included many Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois, was to the First Amendment”: “an instance where the most onerous facts imaginable should lead to the durable affirmation of constitutional principle, as Skokie did.”

Coll also pointed to “evidence ] suggesting that the Obama Administration leans toward killing terrorism suspects because it does not believe it has a politically attractive way to put them on trial,” which tracks [Noam Chomsky’s pithy observation earlier this year: “If the Bush administration didn’t like somebody, they’d kidnap them and send them to torture chambers. If the Obama administration decides they don’t like somebody, they murder them.” Coll also dissects the standard excuses offered by Obama defenders for the seizure of this power, including the moral and factual defects of the excuse that it’s acceptable to kill an accused Terrorist suspect if it’s difficult to apprehend and try him (in the Awlaki case, the Obama administration never even charged or indicted him before executing him).

Robert Kuttner: Don’t Blame Bernanke

Let’s not expect central bankers to bail out the continuing economic mess. That’s not who they are, and cheap money can only do so much to levitate a deflated economy.[..]

If you watched any of the PBS encore broadcast of the Ken Burns documentary, The War, this past week, you have some sense of what kind of a production machine can be energized by government contracts in the face of a depressed economy. There is so much that we could spend that money on — energy self sufficiency, infrastructure, a smart electrical grid, public transportation, better education at all levels — all of which would not only create economic activity and jobs, but would make for a more productive economy. But nothing like this is part of the mainstream conversation. If you propose this sort of thing, you are packed off to the Museum of Un-reconstructed Keynesians. White House economists quietly admit that you are right, but you are politically radioactive (even with a Nobel Prize.)

Eric Margolis: Drone Attacks Only Create More Enemies for the US

I was visiting Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States when the phone on his desk rang.

“The hot line,” he said. “Sorry I have to take this call.”

As he listened, his face grew darker and darker. Finally, he banged down the phone and exploded: “Another US drone attack that killed a score of our people. We were never warned the attack was coming. We are supposed to be US allies!”

This strongly pro-American ambassador was wrong. While the US hails Pakistan as a key non-NATO ally, the US treats it like a militarily occupied country. The government in Islamabad is left to observe increasing drone attacks and CIA ground operation with deepening embarrassment and helplessness.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Happy 151st Birthday, Federal Income Tax!

Yesterday I got an email for the President’s birthday inviting me to sign an e-card (and no doubt asking for contributions, too.) The subject line, “Big Birthday,” could have been about another landmark: Today, August 5, the Federal income tax turned 151 years old.

Now that’s a big birthday. Bring out the balloons and party hats.

I can hear people saying, “Is this guy crazy? Doesn’t he pay taxes? Who likes giving up a big chunk of money?”

Yes, I pay my taxes, and there are lots of other bills on the family table. Among other things I’m a small business owner, and our ongoing “invisible recession” has taken a toll on my income. Under the circumstances I can’t say I like paying taxes. Or, more precisely, I don’t enjoy the process. But then I think about what it would cost us, financially and otherwise, not to have the Federal income tax.

It could cost seniors $30,000, $40,000 or more to buy health insurance, for example – that is, if they could afford it at all. And what would it cost to use the public highways if they’d been built for profit – $500 per year? $5,000? Then there are those things the private sector wouldn’t bother with at all, like disease prevention. I’d guess we’d just get sick more often.

When I think about that I become downright grateful. So Happy 151st Birthday, Federal income tax! May you have many more to come.

There has been plenty to criticize about President Obama’s handling of the economy. Yet the overriding story of the past few years is not Mr. Obama’s mistakes but the scorched-earth opposition of Republicans, who have done everything they can to get in his way – and who now, having blocked the president’s policies, hope to win the White House by claiming that his policies have failed.

And this week’s shocking refusal to implement debt relief by the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency – a Bush-era holdover the president hasn’t been able to replace – illustrates perfectly what’s going on.

Some background: many economists believe that the overhang of excess household debt, a legacy of the bubble years, is the biggest factor holding back economic recovery. Loosely speaking, excess debt has created a situation in which everyone is trying to spend less than their income. Since this is collectively impossible – my spending is your income, and your spending is my income – the result is a persistently depressed economy.

Amy Goodman: The Obama Administration Torpedoes the Arms Trade Treaty

Quick: What is more heavily regulated, global trade of bananas or battleships? In late June, activists gathered in New York’s Times Square to make the absurd point, that, unbelievably, “there are more rules governing your ability to trade a banana from one country to the next than governing your ability to trade an AK-47 or a military helicopter.” So said Amnesty International USA’s Suzanne Nossel at the protest, just before the start of the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which ran from July 2 to July 27. Thanks to a last-minute declaration by the United States that it “needed more time” to review the short, 11-page treaty text, the conference ended last week in failure.

There isn’t much that could be considered controversial in the treaty. Signatory governments agree not to export weapons to countries that are under an arms embargo, or to export weapons that would facilitate “the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes” or other violations of international humanitarian law. Exports of arms are banned if they will facilitate “gender-based violence or violence against children” or be used for “transnational organized crime.” Why does the United States need more time than the more than 90 other countries that had sufficient time to read and approve the text? The answer lies in the power of the gun lobby, the arms industry and the apparent inability of President Barack Obama to do the right thing, especially if it contradicts a cold, political calculation.

John Nichols: A Presidential Candidate Willing to Get Arrested to Fight Foreclosure Abuse

It is not quite true that a third-party presidential candidate has to get arrested to get attention from the media. Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for the presidency this year, has gotten her share of attention-in part because she is a genuinely impressive contender, in part because her campaign has been strikingly focused and professional in its approach.

But Stein got a good deal of attention Wednesday for a good reason. She was busted with fellow Greens and activists from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign outside the Philadelphia office of Fannie Mae, the government-backed mortgage lender that is foreclosing on precisely the people it is supposed to help.

Most politicians avoid saying-let alone doing-anything of consequence regarding the foreclosure crisis. But Stein, her vice presidential running-mate (Cheri Honkala, who last year mounted a campaign for sheriff in Philadelphia as part of an anti-foreclosure fight), labor lawyer James Moran and Sister Margaret McKenna of the Medical Mission Sisters were arrested after attempting to gain access to the Fannie Mae office through an adjacent financial institution on Philadelphia’s “Bankers Row.”

The charge was one that any activist would be proud of: “defiant trespassing.”

Jodi Jacobson: Ninth Circuit Court Blocks Arizona’s Extreme Abortion Ban

As women across the country celebrate the first day of coverage without co-pays of a wide range of preventive care services, including contraception without a co-pay, health and rights groups are fighting in the courts to maintain access to safe abortion care at the state level.

And yesterday afternoon, they won a battle in that fight.

On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked enforcement of Arizona’s 20-week abortion ban, signed into law earlier this year by Governor Jan Brewer. On Monday night, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court seeking an injunction blocking the law from going into effect tomorrow, after a district court judge refused to do so.

The bill is considered by many to be the most restrictive ban in the nation, and may present a direct challenge to Roe. Based on false claims that a fetus at 20-weeks’ gestation can feel pain, it criminalizes virtually all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and contains only narrow exceptions for medical emergencies, forcing a physician caring for a woman with a high-risk pregnancy to wait until her condition poses an immediate threat of death or major medical damage before offering her the care she needs.

This is probably the least important Presidential election since the 1950s. As an experienced political hand told me, the two candidates are speaking not to the voters, but to the big money. They hold the same views, pursue the same policies, and are backed by similar interests. Mitt Romney implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts, or Obama implemented Romneycare nationally. Both are pro-choice or anti-choice as political needs change, both tend to be hawkish on foreign policy, both favor tax cuts for businesses, and both believe deeply in a corrupt technocratic establishment.

So while the election lumbers on like the death rattles of the wounded animal known American democracy, no one on either side is asking what the plan is for the next term. For Obama, his team is going into rooms of donors and shouting “Supreme Court”, while mumbling something about bipartisanship and $4 trillion, or Simpson-Bowles. What this means is that term two of the Obama White House will be organized around cutting entitlements.

Glen Ford: Romney and the “Culture” of White Supremacy

“For the Mormon American multimillionaire, human destiny and divine will are revealed in macroeconomic data.” But Mitt Romney’s assertion that Palestinian underdevelopment is proof of Israeli cultural superiority is no more racist than the usual celebrations of western wealth, power and so-called “civilization.” In the U.S., most whites view economic disparities between races “as more a natural phenomenon than evidence of cumulative injustice.”

White supremacy is Mitt Romney’s religion, although I’d be willing to bet he has not uttered the epithet “nigger” since reaching adulthood. For Romney and his ilk, it is axiomatic that God’s blessings are manifest in the world through the distribution of wealth. Had God not favored Europeans, He would never have allowed them to expropriate the vast bulk of the Earth’s bounty. They have prospered because their ways are righteous – or, in more modern, secular terms, they possess a superior “culture.”

Jim Hightower: A Wall Street Devil Gets Religion … and an Apt Epitaph

Hallelujah and Holy Smokes! Wall Street has had a “come to Jesus” moment – the biggest sinner on the Street has repented!

He is Sandy Weill, the once-lionized dealmaker who turned our banks into financial “supermarkets” that tie us everyday depositors and Main Street borrowers to the profiteering schemes of unbridled Wall Street traders and the whims of global speculators. Thanks, Sandy – for nothing.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Weill went on a decade-long merger binge, taking over Travelers Insurance, Smith Barney, Aetna, Solomon Brothers and other powerhouses of high finance, culminating in 1998 with his grabbing of Citibank. The whole empire was named Citigroup, Weill was paid a king’s ransom, and his conglomerated entity was widely hailed as a work of genius. Only one problem: It was illegal.

George Zornick: It’s Time for Obama to Fire DeMarco-Will He?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won’t reduce the principal of underwater homeowners-FHFA head Edward DeMarco made that official yesterday. Despite the fact that FHFA analysts concluded this week that forgiving certain mortgage debts could save public money, DeMarco said yesterday he would not allow it because of the “costs and risks”-he is particularly concerned that people might strategically default to qualify for help. [..]

Progressives have been pushing hard on the White House to replace DeMarco-and now that DeMarco has dug himself in, why not do that, especially now that he has gone through the motions of considering and then denying write-downs.

Many progressive critics of the administration correctly note that for years, the administration opposed principal reduction too, and has only recently come around to it. So was that a true policy evolution, or political theatre in an election year? Forcing in an FHFA chief who will do principal reduction-or failing to install that person-would go a long way to answering that question.

With all the commotion surrounding the Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it would be easy to overlook an important birthday: Today is the 47th anniversary of Medicare, the public health insurance program that covers our nation’s seniors and people with severe disabilities.

It’s a birthday that deserves to be celebrated, including here in the Lone Star State. Medicare provides 48 million Americans – about 3 million of them in Texas – with reasonably good access to health care, thereby easing their suffering, prolonging their lives, and reducing financial pressures on them and their families. Before Medicare was enacted in 1965, most retired older people were at risk of financial ruin when they got sick. Medicare changed that picture, and our state and nation are much better for it.

The Medicare program is not perfect, of course. It has burdensome co-pays and deductibles, and its benefits could be better. But it remains immensely popular, and it’s not hard to figure out why. A new study in the journal Health Affairs found that “Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older are more satisfied with their health insurance, have better access to care, and are less likely to have problems paying medical bills than working-age adults who get insurance through employers or purchase coverage on their own.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Like a caveman frozen in a glacier, Mitt Romney is a man trapped in time – from his archaic stance on women’s rights to his belief in Herbert Hoover economics.

And now it appears his foreign policy is stuck in the past, as well. [..]

Romney’s world is one of special relationships, particularly with Britain, Israel and Poland – the three nations he’s visiting. It’s also a world of special enmities – against Iran – and unending suspicions – about China and Russia. For Romney, there are three types of countries: countries that are with us; countries that are against us; and countries that will be against us, sooner or later.

If this seems like foreign policy out of a 20th-century history book – or the George W. Bush neocon playbook – that’s because it is. A President Romney wouldn’t bring about “another American century.” Rather, he would return us to some of the worst policies of the last century.

Jennifer Granholm: Fiscal cliff dive only way out

“Going over a cliff” sounds deadly. Free fall. Air below. The landing could spell disaster.

Or it could bring a cool blast of sweet relief.

The Congress is staring over a fiscal cliff. One that we’re warned will pull down our nation on Dec. 31 if there’s no agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts or avert automatic spending cuts that Congress agreed to in the debt ceiling debate in the summer of 2011 – cuts weirdly named, like the title monster in a B horror film, “The Sequester.” The Sequester will kidnap a helpless victim, with the initials D.C., and threaten to push her over the cliff. Bwaahahahaha!

The fiscal cliff is exciting to both actuaries and Democrats. The Congressional Budget Office and many progressives, including Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), see the cliff as an opportunity: If Grover Norquist-induced pledge intransigence prevents House Speaker John Boehner’s tea party caucus from compromising, the rational solution is to allow the tax cuts to expire and the sequester cuts to take place – then resolve the problem immediately after the new Congress begins on Jan. 3, 2013.

Bryce Covert: Will Women Get Pushed Off the Fiscal Cliff?

Remember that time when Congress almost defaulted on our debt? It may seem like a distant nightmare, but we’re still living with repercussions from the debt ceiling showdown. In order to get Congress to lift the ceiling a year ago, President Obama struck a deal that will cut $2.4 trillion in spending over ten years and formed a Congressional committee that was supposed to recommend ways to cut another $1.5 trillion from the deficit. If the committee failed to come up with the cuts, sequestration would kick into gear, with $1 trillion in cuts evenly split between defense and non-defense spending come January 2. The latter never came to fruition, so we’re now on a collision course with the former.

These automatic cuts, known as sequestration, have (unsurprisingly) become a political hot potato. They’ve even trickled into the campaign trail. But if the cuts move forward, the pain won’t just be political. They’ll hurt everyday Americans-but not across the board. Women are going to shoulder a disproportionate amount of the burden. While the defense lobby has been loudly pushing back on the $500 million to be slashed from its budgets, the $500 million cuts from domestic programs could be devastating, especially for women.

Maureen Dowd: Gadding of a Gawky Gowk

When Barack Obama went abroad in July 2008, searching for some foreign policy cred, European leaders smothered him with love and respect.

More than 200,000 Germans thronged to the Victory Column in Berlin, hailing him as “Redeemer” and “Savior.” In a joint press conference in Paris, a smitten Nicolas Sarkozy was so touchy-feely that even Obama looked a little embarrassed.

“You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased Obama on the plane to London later.

Poor Mitt Romney had no such magic carpet ride. He insulted the British and infuriated the Palestinians while pandering to the Israelis and American Jewish voters, including donors like the Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson who tagged along.

The defense fatcats and their Republican kittens in Congress are up in arms – metaphorically speaking,of course – over the possibility that an agreement which the GOP signed might actually take effect as agreed.

They hate when then happens. So they’re cooking something up that could create big problems for your wallet … not to mention your digestive tract.

Republicans routinely express contempt at the thought of using government funds to save jobs. But when it comes to defense spending, they want us to know that government funds should be used to save jobs. For their part, defense contractors just want our money. So, in what appears to be a coordinated plan, Lockheed Martin is threatening to send out fraudulent “layoff notices” to over one hundred thousand employees, while its minions in Congress simultaneously demand that the Pentagon do the same.

David Shuster: Yes, Protecting the Social Safety Net Is a Political Winner

As Republicans target America’s social safety net, a top Democrat is now urging colleagues to join the fight, describing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as “winners.”

Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Co-Chair of the House Task Force on Seniors, spoke with reporters today to mark the 47th anniversary of Medicare. She said, “If everybody took a deep breath and looked at the reality of how this is going to help them and their families, this is a great issue for us to campaign on.” [..]

Congresswoman Schakowsky was a member of the Simpson-Bowles Commission and voted against the co-chairs’ plan. She knows that it would be bad policy to cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, and even worse politics. Democrats should follow her lead: Instead of running away from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, they should run toward the programs and vow to protect them. It’s an approach that will win in November and strengthen our society.

Colin A. Carter and Henry I. Miller: Corn for Food, Not Fuel

IT is not often that a stroke of a pen can quickly undo the ravages of nature, but federal regulators now have an opportunity to do just that. Americans’ food budgets will be hit hard by the ongoing Midwestern drought, the worst since 1956. Food bills will rise and many farmers will go bust.

An act of God, right? Well, the drought itself may be, but a human remedy for some of the fallout is at hand – if only the federal authorities would act. By suspending renewable-fuel standards that were unwise from the start, the Environmental Protection Agency could divert vast amounts of corn from inefficient ethanol production back into the food chain, where market forces and common sense dictate it should go.

Robert Fisk: Syrian War of Lies and Hypocrisy

The West’s real target here is not Assad’s brutal regime but his ally, Iran, and its nuclear weapons

Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy? A war of such cowardice and such mean morality, of such false rhetoric and such public humiliation? I’m not talking about the physical victims of the Syrian tragedy. I’m referring to the utter lies and mendacity of our masters and our own public opinion – eastern as well as western – in response to the slaughter, a vicious pantomime more worthy of Swiftian satire than Tolstoy or Shakespeare. [..]

And all the while, we forget the “big” truth. That this is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for Syrians or our hatred of our former friend Bashar al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrads across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans – if they exist – and has nothing to do with human rights or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies. Quelle horreur!

Even with a persistent gender gap in a presidential election year, House Republicans have not given up on their campaign to narrow access to birth control, abortion care and lifesaving cancer screenings. Far from it.

A new Republican spending proposal (pdf)  revives some of the more extreme attacks on women’s health and freedom that were blocked by the Senate earlier in this Congress. The resurrection is part of an alarming national crusade that goes beyond abortion rights and strikes broadly at women’s health in general.

These setbacks are recycled from the Congressional trash bin in the fiscal 2013 spending bill for federal health, labor and education programs approved by a House appropriations subcommittee on July 18 over loud objections from Democratic members to these and other provisions.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Romney and the Go-for-Broke Election

Here are the two great campaign mysteries at midsummer: Why does Mitt Romney appear to be getting so much traction from ripping a few of President Obama’s words out of context? And why aren’t Romney and other Republicans moving to the political center as the election approaches?

Both mysteries point to an important fact about the 2012 campaign: For conservatives, this is a go-for-broke election. They and a Republican Party now under their control hope to eke out a narrow victory in November on the basis of a quite radical program that includes more tax cuts for the rich, deep reductions in domestic spending, big increases in military spending, and a sharp rollback in government regulation.

Peter Edelman: Poverty in America: Why Can’t We End It?

RONALD REAGAN famously said, “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won.” With 46 million Americans – 15 percent of the population – now counted as poor, it’s tempting to think he may have been right.

Look a little deeper and the temptation grows. The lowest percentage in poverty since we started counting was 11.1 percent in 1973. The rate climbed as high as 15.2 percent in 1983. In 2000, after a spurt of prosperity, it went back down to 11.3 percent, and yet 15 million more people are poor today.

At the same time, we have done a lot that works. From Social Security to food stamps to the earned-income tax credit and on and on, we have enacted programs that now keep 40 million people out of poverty. Poverty would be nearly double what it is now without these measures, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. To say that “poverty won” is like saying the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts failed because there is still pollution.

Barbara R. Bergmann: Social Security is Not Headed for Disaster

The gloomy annual report of the trustees of Social Security has provoked the usual ominous predictions of big trouble ahead. Media accounts spoke of significant deterioration in the financial outlook of the system, and declared it unsustainable unless structural changes were made. The scare words might seem to justify the often-heard prediction that Social Security may last long enough to sustain our current oldsters, but that it is headed for bankruptcy and “won’t be there” for our younger citizens.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Into the future, Social Security can and will provide wage replacement at about the same level it does now. It does not depend for its resources on an entity that might run out of money, that has no way to raise more, and could go into bankruptcy. The U.S. government has the ability to raise enough revenue to pay out whatever level of Social Security benefits the public wants. In that, Social Security resembles all the other things the government pays for, including the national parks, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Defense.

President Obama is currently confronting mostly Republican opponents over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers.   Between 1979 and 2007, the richest 1 percent received three-fifths of all the income gains in the country.  Most of this went to the richest 10th of that 1 percent, people with an average income of $5.6 million (including capital gains).

So this is a no-brainer in terms of fairness: Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the richest 1 percent of Americans would reverse some of the vast upward redistribution of income that has taken place since the late 1970s. However a couple of caveats are in order.  First, restoring these taxes for the rich and the super-rich would not by itself do anything for the weak economy, nor for the 23 million people who are unemployed, involuntarily working part time, or have given up looking for work.  In fact, by itself it would have a negative impact on the economy and employment in the immediate future if the federal government didn’t use the extra revenue to increase spending.

However, in the current political climate there is much political pressure to reduce the budget deficit, especially over the next few years. So taking back these tax cuts could help us avoid other budget cuts that will hurt people.  Or, alternatively, it could open more space for the federal government to engage in stimulus spending – which is what we need to move closer to full employment.

Joe Nocera: Addressing Poverty in Schools

About two years ago, Dr. Pamela Cantor gave a speech at a Congressional retreat put together by the Aspen Institute. Her talk was entitled “Innovative Designs for Persistently Low-Performing Schools.”

Cantor is a psychiatrist who specializes in childhood trauma. After 9/11, her organization, the Children’s Mental Health Alliance, was asked by New York City’s Department of Education to assess the impact of the attack on the city’s public school children. What she found were plenty of traumatized children – but less because of the terrorist attack than because of the simple fact that so many of them were growing up in poverty.

Steve Horn: Exposed: Pennsylvania Act 13 Overturned by Supreme Court, Originally an ALEC Model Bill

On July 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled PA Act 13 unconstitutional. The bill would have stripped away local zoning laws, eliminated the legal concept of a Home Rule Charter, limited private property rights, and in the process, completely disempowered town, city, municipal and county governments, particularly when it comes to shale gas development.

The Court ruled that Act 13 “…violates substantive due process because it does not protect the interests of neighboring property owners from harm, alters the character of neighborhoods and makes irrational classifications – irrational because it requires municipalities to allow all zones, drilling operations and impoundments, gas compressor stations, storage and use of explosives in all zoning districts, and applies industrial criteria to restrictions on height of structures, screening and fencing, lighting and noise.”

Act 13 – pejoratively referred to as “the Nation’s Worst Corporate Giveaway” by AlterNet reporter Steven Rosenfeld – would have ended local democracy as we know it in Pennsylvania.

David Sirota: Gold Medalists in Fake Outrage

Fake outrage is a little like pornography-hard to narrowly define, but you know it when you see it. It is the television pundit railing on the supposed “War on Christmas” or the radio host calling a woman a “slut” for the alleged crime of discussing contraception. It is the Democratic partisan pretending to be offended by John McCain’s expensive shoes, or the Republican partisan taking umbrage at President Obama for daring to repeat the truism that “if you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.” And when it comes to the 2012 Olympics, it is the typical congressional leader criticizing American athletes’ uniforms for being made in China.

This has been the big story in the lead-up to the games, as top lawmakers from both parties are pretending to be upset that Team USA’s clothing was manufactured far away from home. The operative word, though, is “pretending.”

The United States recently announced that Canada and Mexico will join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)-a secretive U.S.-led multinational trade and investment agreement currently being negotiated with eight other countries in the Pacific Rim region.

On the other side of the Pacific, Japanese legislators are defecting in droves to try to stop the country’s entry into the negotiations. But the situation is much different in Canada and Mexico, which were admitted to the table with much fanfare during the G20 summit in June. The Japanese response is justifiable, and a recent statement of solidarity against the TPP by North American unions offers a good building block for resisting an agreement that for Mexicans and Canadians amounts to a neoliberal expansion of NAFTA on U.S. President Barack Obama’s terms.

Jessica Mason Pieklo: Why Dark Money in Politics Is Bad for Women

With a voting public largely disgusted by the new freedom of corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections, supporting a modest version of reform like the version of the DISCLOSE Act working its way through Congress would, in normal times, be an easy political win for Republicans.

But these are not normal times. For the second time this year Senate Democrats tried to advance a bill that would have forced disclosure of unlimited secret campaign spending and the second time Republican leaders blocked a vote on the DISCLOSE Act.

Republican lawmakers have a host of weapons at their disposal in the battle over women’s reproductive rights, but no weapon may have as much impact as unlimited campaign spending. How do we know that dark money is a key to a Republican anti-woman, anti-family agenda? Just look how hard they are fighting to protect it.

Mark Hertsgaard: Feel the Burn: Making the 2012 Heat Wave Matter

There have been two, maybe three, landmark heat waves in the history of man-made global warming. The first was in 1988. Then as now, the eastern two-thirds of the United States was broiling while relentless drought parched soil and withered crops across the Midwest. But in Washington, the underlying problem was being named for the first time. On June 23, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the Senate that man-made global warming had begun. The New York Times reported his remarks on Page 1, and the rest of the media at home and abroad followed suit. By year’s end, “global warming” had become a common phrase in news bureaus, government ministries and living rooms around the world.

The second landmark heat wave occurred in 2003. It escaped many Americans’ notice because it took place in Europe, which suffered the hottest summer on record. By August, corpses were piling up outside morgues in Paris. Initial estimates suggested a death toll of 15,000. But a comprehensive study by the European Union later concluded that, in fact, there had been 71,449 excess deaths.

Bill Boyarsky: The Poverty Epidemic Hits the Suburbs

Why is this presidential campaign so centered on the middle class? What about the poor people? Their numbers are growing, but their fate hasn’t made it into the debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Of course, the Democratic candidate and his Republican opponent don’t have the same vision of where America should go. The president favors an activist government. He bet his political future on an Affordable Care Act that makes a big start toward assuring the availability of health care. Romney favors the crimped vision of the Republican economic leader Rep. Paul Ryan, and his plan to reduce taxes for the rich, eventually privatize Medicare and dismantle Medicaid for the poor.

But little, if anything, is said about the disastrous phenomenon of rising poverty, which, as Hope Yen of The Associated Press reported this week, is “on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century. … Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor.” Census figures that will be released in the fall, she wrote, are expected to show that poverty has exceeded the level it was at in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson’s launched his War on Poverty.