Good thing Democrats control the White House, House and Senate, huh? Because we know they're working hard to correct these horrible income discrepancies!

Bueller? Anybody?

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it's been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest -- not only in amount but also as a percentage of income -- which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.

The average household in the top 1 percent earned $1.3 million after taxes in 2007, up $88,800 just from the prior year, while the income of the average middle-income household hovered around $55,300. While the nation's total income has grown sharply since 1979, according to the CBPP report, the wealthiest households have claimed an increasingly large share of the pie.

Arloc Sherman, a researcher for CBPP, said the income gap is expanding not because the middle class is losing income, but because the wealthiest incomes are skyrocketing.

Mike Finnegan is touring in Europe this summer.  Lambert Strether from CorrenteWire is filling in this week.  

Greed and fear? I don't do the greed part; if I were any good at making money, I would already have made some. Fear, I can do; but in common with most of the blogosphere, I do political fear of the criminal Bush regime, not economic fear. Of course, in the future, these two fears may merge, perhaps even quicker than we expect.

But even I noticed that the Dow dropped some large number of points yesterday. Mostly, though, the blogosphere didn't (and the wankosphere was too busy ferreting out lefties who drop the F-bomb instead of killing people, lke the Godly do).

So, when the Dow drops three million points and nobody blogs about it -- well, almost nobody (click on the man; he needs the hits!) -- did it really drop? Herewith the results of my random walk through the blogosphere.

Actually, I had a few false starts: My best hits on Technorati came from "Stocks AND Plunge," and they weren't very good. Sneaky Business at least rated the headlines. Then I checked out Brad DeLong. He's an economist! And for some strange reason, he's writing about Grover Cleveland:

The agitation seemed to [Cleveland]... a threat to law and order.... Coxey's Army was met with a barrage of injunctions and... the Capitol police.... The Pullman strike was smashed by federal troops who kept the mails moving, the union leaders imprisoned, and the union crushed. And the financial panic was dealt with through the highly orthodox and [highly] compensated assistance of Mr. Morgan.

The underlying causes... were neither understood nor dealt with... an opportunity was missed.... If, to take one of them, the problems arising out of the concentration of industrial ownership had been tackled when they were still malleable and subject to effective treatment, we might have been spared some aches and pains that are still with us.

Yes, well. But then Holden asks: Have you seen my Bush boom? Good question, and I have the answer:

Yes! It went thataway!

Continue reading »

Associated Press via Houston Chronicle:

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says. [..]

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report "indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public," according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped _ end of discussion," he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC's Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said. Read on...

So Former Chairman Michael Powell commissions a study to prove that allowing corporations to own multiple stations in regions doesn't actually hurt the public's interest in quality or quantity of local news information and the study shows the exact opposite: local media ownership DOES give the consumer greater and more relevant local news.

What's a Bush appointee to do?

Bury the report in a drawer and order all the work product to be destroyed--destroyed, not shoved in a vault, not filed in some "mislabeled" folder to be shuffled in some bureaucratic hell. Then go ahead and approve more corporation ownership of local stations, thereby working against the public interest of which they are charged. Current Chairman Kevin Martin claims he was unaware of the report in his letter to Barbara Boxer.

FAIR has more and an action item to call for an investigation.

You knew it was only a matter of time before this "God's Own Circus" Hall of Fame lock made this analogy.

"In World War II, the Nazis experimented on human beings in horrible ways in the concentration camps, and I imagine, if you wanted to take the time to read about it, there would have been some discoveries there that benefited mankind."

In honor of "Just Us Sunday II"

On H&C last week, Dobson came on the show so that he could clarify his remarks, or rather say he was misquoted again. Oh and "I didn't say that."

Original quote

Dobson: You know, the thing that means so much to me here on this issue [embryonic stem cell research] is that people talk about the potential for good that can come from destroying these little embryos and how we might be able to solve the problem of juvenile diabetes. There's no indication yet that they're gonna do that, but people say that, or spinal cord injuries or such things. But I have to ask this question: In World War II, the Nazis experimented on human beings in horrible ways in the concentration camps, and I imagine, if you wanted to take the time to read about it, there would have been some discoveries there that benefited mankind....

Download | play -WMP

Hannity does his best in the beginning of his questions to coach him but that's always an indication that Dobson didn't do so well.

Hannity: I'm pro-life , you're pro-life...

Novak compares filibusters to Nazi death camps

I found this comment on Kos, by Box 13. (I hadn't had a chance to view the show yet)

"On The Captital Gang Saturday Bob Novak made the following statement:

HUNT: Bob, why would Senator Frist refuse an offer to break the deadlock?

I wonder how the Anti-Defamation League will feel about this."

After Mark Shields smacked him down with truth , Novak took the Lords name in vain, an obvious sin in Novak's passioned Catholicism.

SHIELDS: ...We are changing that now and forever, and don't you ever forget it, because it'll be 51, and they'll be ideological and it's going to be a change in the American judiciary permanently.

NOVAK: Oh, Christ!

Just another example of a religious zealot spewing lies to justify their means. I wonder how many times he goes to confession a week? I like the way he substitutes the "nuclear option" with the words"constitutional option."