On Monday, May 20th, hundreds of homeowners facing foreclosure and housing rights activists from across the country will rally outside of the United States Department of Justice to demand Attorney General Holder hold the Wall Street Banks that ravaged America’s economy accountable. Dozens of struggling homeowners are prepared to risk arrest in non-violent civil disobedience or set up an ongoing occupation outside the Department of Justice until demands for Wall Street accountability and relief for their communities are addressed.

Demonstrators today are using their bodies to send a message to Eric Holder that it is time to stop shielding the big Wall Street banks from prosecution. Hundreds of homeowners who have been playing by the rules while the big banks have cheated them are risking arrest at the Department of Justice to make an unmistakable statement: it is about time for the government to side with poor and middle class folks who the bankers have screwed rather than those banks who have been cheating them.

The Campaign for a Fair Settlement and the Alliance for a Just Society put together devastating reports in April and May, the first of which points out that the administration has yet to prosecute a single major bank or top level executive for the widespread fraud leading to the system's collapse, while the most recent report discusses how much better the economy would be if the administration was forcing the big banks to actually help homeowners who had been hurt by the banks. From the report:

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There is a new report out this morning once again reminding us of the greatest disappointment progressives have in the Obama administration: the lack of toughness in regards to Wall Street. The report, issued by the Campaign for a Fair Settlement (full disclosure: this is a coalition I have helped in various ways since their founding), is probably the most harshly critical analysis yet by a coalition aligned with traditional progressive Democratic groups. The report opens with this damning list of hard-to-dispute facts, and then just goes on from there:

• The Administration has yet to prosecute a single major bank or top level executive for the widespread fraud leading to the system’s collapse.
• Civil penalties have similarly failed to be imposed on top executives, and fines levied against the banks have been so small as to amount to a minor cost of doing business.
• Settlements have left the banks themselves in control of providing relief and restitution to homeowners, giving them credit for cleaning up their balance sheets more than preventing foreclosures.
• Far from showing any signs of having been chastened, the biggest banks are now even bigger, and have successfully slowed down or weakened key elements of the financial reform bills passed in the wake of the collapse.

And signs even early on in the second Obama administration are not encouraging:

• With no mention of Wall Street and the banks anywhere in either his second inaugural speech or his 2013 State of the Union address, the President appears to be wishing the crisis behind him more than addressing its still festering wounds.
• Statements by new appointees like Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew have suggested that they view the “too big to fail” problem as having been largely solved, even as new studies confirm how much the systematically risky banks still benefit from market assumptions that they retain that status.
• Despite having faced withering rebukes for their handling of key cases and settlements, agencies like the Office of the Comptroller of the currency have reignited that criticism in their attempts to amend the disastrous Independent Foreclosure Review settlement, yet again constructing terms far more favorable to the banks than to homeowners and borrowers.

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Fox News continued its war on poor people today when it hyped Herman Cain’s highly dubious claim that people are using food stamps to pay for "fitness training," which he “learned” via a caller to his radio show.

It was not very surprising that Cain would repeat a thing like this without bothering to verify it. He isn’t exactly known for having a thirst for knowledge. But what’s Fox's excuse? Apparently, the “fair and balanced” network was so eager to re-air Cain’s characterization of food stamp recipients as moochers being exploited by a government that wants to make them dependent that nobody cared enough to verify whether Cain was telling the truth.

As banners on the screen screamed ON THE DOLE and then FOOD STAMP NATION, Steve Doocy announced that on Friday, “a document dump” from the federal government revealed a rise in Americans’ use of food stamps, the “biggest number in history,” he said. “47,791,996 Americans had to get these SNAP cards to put food on their table – they say," he said with a sneer.

Gretchen Carlson added, “So some people are concerned at the fact that this number has continued to escalate dramatically over the last couple of years.”

The concern was not that people are hungry or are not earning enough money to feed their families adequately. For example, as the Working Poor Families Project reported, "the number of low-income working families is increasing and nearly one third of all working families—32 percent—may not have enough money to meet basic needs." Also not mentioned: 55% of all food stamp recipients are children under 18 or the elderly, over 65.

And speaking of the working poor, let’s not forget that Cain bears a hefty chunk of responsibility for their plight:

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I suppose it all depends on what you mean by wealthy. Still, sounds like Obama is semi-solid on ending those upper-class tax cuts, which is better than nothing but not enough:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama promised liberal groups on Tuesday that the Bush tax cuts will end for the nation's wealthiest, according to a statement from the progressive group MoveOn.

"MoveOn’s 7 million members will be pleased to know that President Obama today strongly reiterated his steadfast commitment to ensuring that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent finally end December 31—and to protecting the middle class in the process," said the group's political action executive director Justin Ruben after meeting with Obama at the White House.

In his daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney rejected the GOP's approach to raise revenues by cutting loopholes and deductions from the tax code, saying raising taxes on the rich was non-negotiable for Obama.

But Carney did not say whether Obama would stand by his "wealthy" cutoff line at $200,000 for individuals or $250,000 for families — a response to disagreement among Democrats over where to raise taxes and where to keep the rates the same or lower. Sen. Chuck Schumer has proposed raising the threshold to $500,000 or even $1 million.

The president "is not wedded to every detail of that plan," Carney said, when asked about the income levels. "I'm not going to negotiate hypothetical details."

No one's really saying much about Medicare and Social Security, but I got emails late yesterday afternoon from several of the organizations whose representatives attended the meeting, asking people to get ready for a fight:

Labor and progressive leaders who met with President Obama Tuesday drew a line in the sand on taxes, unemployment insurance, and entitlements—all of which are subject to change under the looming fiscal cliff deadline.

The meeting was the first of three the president will hold on the topic this week. He will meet with business leaders Wednesday and Congressional leaders Friday.

Richard Trumka, president of AFL-CIO said the meeting was "very positive," and that the president reiterated his position on preserving tax breaks for the middle class and seeing that the wealthy pay more.

One point of conflict between labor leaders and the White House may arise if the president offers to raise the eligibility age for Medicare as leverage to reach a deal. Trumka made no indication that the two sides made any progress on negotiating the issue during their one-hour meeting.

Matt Bai says it's too late:

Liberal activists will tell the president that things are very different now. He’s won a mandate, they will say, and that means he doesn’t need to compromise.

But while Mr. Obama can probably claim some vindication on the need to make the tax code more equitable, it would be a stretch to say that the voters demanded that he hold the line against entitlement cuts as part of a broader deal. The possible terms of a grand bargain hardly ever came up during the campaign, because neither side wanted to talk about it.

Mr. Obama may have more leverage now than he did in 2011 to put a hard limit on the scale of entitlement cuts, but it’s unthinkable that he could reach a comprehensive deal — something he still badly wants to do — without at least accepting the terms he found acceptable the first time around. That’s how negotiations work.

So while it may be good strategy for progressive groups to pressure the White House on entitlement spending, no one should harbor the illusion that the president won’t sign off on reductions. The simple fact is, he already has.

1. There is no media "silence" on Benghazi.

2. On the contrary, the media has extensively covered and aired analysis of Benghazi, along with every right-wing attack about the Obama administration's actions. But this hasn't swung the election for Romney, which is driving wingnuts like Jonah crazy.

3. The idea that the media shouldn't have covered George W. Bush's DUI in 2000 is pretty nutty.

Have a nice day, Pantload.

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While Fox News seems ready to dispense with any further investigation into the Benghazi attacks and go right to impeachment, apparently Michael Hayden, former CIA Director under George W. Bush, didn’t get the memo. When he appeared on Fox & Friends this morning, host Brian Kilmeade – a former sports reporter who, unlike Hayden, never served in either the military or in intelligence – made it very clear to the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers that they should pay no attention to the benefit of the doubt Hayden was giving the Obama administration.

Kilmeade prompted asked Hayden, “Do you believe that we’re seeing a cover up to the actual terror attack that killed four Americans?”

Hayden said, “Brian, I wouldn’t use the word cover up. There’s certainly been inconsistency. Let’s assume that those first intelligence reports – we now know them to be wrong – said this was spontaneous and video-related… (But) I think that intelligence begins to change rather quickly. So the real question is, why does the public position of the administration continue with the original story even though you’ve got these other strains of information coming in challenging the original premise?”

Citing “significant tradecraft improvements” in intelligence evaluation that were implemented in the wake of the Iraq debacle, Hayden said he wondered “what it was that was presented to the administration even in those early hours. What were the confidence levels that it was spontaneous and video related and did we indeed include those early conflicting views that an attack of this nature – complex, synchronized, sequential – could have been from a jihadist flash mob?”

That was hardly a pro-Obama stance but it was too supportive for Kilmeade. He said, with blatant incredulity, “You don’t honestly believe that from what we knew that it could have been a spontaneous attack? When you were getting reports, play by play, out of Benghazi showing that this was a coordinated attack that lasted for hours?”

Hayden admitted that his “instincts” that were “not fact based” told him “this was truly a terrorist attack.” But, he said, “There may have been some suggestions in the early streams that it was somehow connected to Cairo. But again, I would not have gone out with that estimate with any level of confidence.”

Still too sympathetic for Kilmeade. So he tried to get an indictment against Hillary Clinton. He asked, in a voice dripping with condemnation, “In the hierarchy, the Secretary of State, whose office rejected requests to keep security personnel in the country. Is she culpable? Does she have to answer questions in your mind?”

Unlike Kilmeade, Hayden has been in the partisan hot seat and he was not about to just blast everybody for the sake of political gain. He said, “I’m not in a position to judge the Secretary of State who, frankly, Brian, I think has been more candid than some with regard to the nature of the attack. And look, I’ve been in those hearings. I’ve had those kinds of questions pushed on me. It’s difficult to answer. I know what seems obvious now but I had a bit of sympathy with Deputy Assistant Secretary Lamb and my good friend, Pat Kennedy, trying to answer those questions yesterday.”

Once again, Kilmeade thought he knew better. He interrupted to say, “They didn’t seem like they were being candid, General.”

Don't worry, they're going to come up with a connection even if they have to completely fabricate it! Oh, that's right - that's how this whole thing started:

Despite insistence from GOP leadership that the White House was behind the so-called “Fast and Furious” gunwalking program, a report from House Republicans released Tuesday names five officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms as culprits in the misguided effort.

All five were reassigned before the release of the report — the first of three. The indictments in the report contradict House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) insistence that the President invoked executive privilege over the Justice Department’s information on ongoing investigations to protect his personal interests.

The indication, however, is that the upcoming reports will try to tie the President to the program. It will “address the unprecedented obstruction of the investigation by the highest levels of the Justice Department, including the attorney general himself,” according to the Republicans who wrote the report.

Imagine that. The President of the United States notices that the welfare regulations are preventing a lot of impoverished people from getting help during this prolonged recession and, using the discretion at his command, approves some administrative changes that would allow a lot more people to be eligible. This is upsetting a lot of asshats, like Orin Hatch and Mickey Kaus.

Now, there's a reason you don't read about Mickey Kaus on this blog: No one in the progressive world takes him seriously, not even a little bit. In fact, you can tell that a policy change is the right one in inverse proportion to Mickey Kaus's hissy fit. And the fact that he thinks it's political suicide to help desperate people survive is classic Third Way thinking. I would not wish on Mr. Kaus the same fate he so fervently desires for so many others. From Alex Pareene in Salon:

So, lifetime caps and strict work requirements and desperately cash-starved states and a prolonged unemployment crisis have basically all added up to TANF not actually providing any benefits to millions of people who need them. (This, again, is sort of by design!)

And apparently the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has responded to this by expressing a willingness to grant states waivers for some work requirements, under certain conditions. Which led, of course, to the Heritage Foundation accusing Obama of “gutting welfare reform.” According to their reading of the HHS memo: “The new Obama dictate asserts that because the work requirements, established in section 407, are mentioned as an item that state governments must report about in section 402, all the work requirements can be waived.” But the work requirements were one of the most important parts of the reform law, and they are, supposedly, not supposed to be subject to waivers. Tyranny!

In the past, state bureaucrats have attempted to define activities such as hula dancing, attending Weight Watchers, and bed rest as “work.” These dodges were blocked by the federal work standards. Now that the Obama Administration has abolished those standards, we can expect “work” in the TANF program to mean anything but work.The new welfare dictate issued by the Obama Administration clearly guts the law. The Administration tramples on the actual legislation passed by Congress and seeks to impose its own policy choices — a pattern that has become all too common in this Administration.The result is the end of welfare reform.

(There are obviously no links or citations substantiating any of the claims in the first quoted paragraph.)

So I dunno, I guess the Obama administration is circumventing the law to … make it slightly easier for poor people to receive assistance, which on the whole I think I approve of.

Someone who doesn’t approve of this is Mickey Kaus, the famous Democratic warblogger currently at Tucker Carlson’s “The Daily Caller.” Kaus is one of those Democrats who, from the first paragraph, is on a never-ending crusade for border fences and the elimination of labor unions and so on. He loves welfare reform because it made dumb, lazy, poor people get off their lazy asses and go to work instead of collecting government checks to buy Cadillacs. Obama’s gutting of welfare reform makes him so mad!

He is worried that weakening, or being seen as weakening, the work requirements sends the “wrong signal,” and that the hordes of leeches and parasites that make up the American underclass will hear this signal and flock back on the gravy train. But most important, he can’t figure out why Obama would do this. Welfare reform works super well — the proof is that much fewer people receive welfare now! Why change a program that has worked so perfectly?Especially when there are much better options for helping people, like … doing some different thing.

[...] Finally, in point thirteen, Kaus says, “If this is a political move, I don’t understand it, because as we all know welfare is horribly unpopular, and promising to destroy welfare got both Reagan and Clinton elected.” But maybe — and I’m really just spitballing, here — it’s not a “political move” and it is actually a move designed to address the fact that welfare reform left the program uniquely unsuited to help people in the event of a massive, prolonged unemployment crisis. Or, hell, maybe HHS is correct when it says it’s just trying to let states come up with more effective job prep and placement programs! (Tyranny again!!) Or maybe Obama just did this to piss off the Heritage Foundation and steal the money of hard-working Real Americans to give to shiftless Welfare Queens. Anything is possible! Anything besides poverty-alleviating government programs operating without being vindictively stingy and punitive in the United States, anyway.

Earlier this week the most corrupt federal appeals court on the planet also known as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals angrily threw a gauntlet, also known as a hissy fit, at the feet of the Obama administration.

Their demands?

Judge Jerry Smith, a Republican appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, was part of a three-judge panel hearing arguments in a lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act when he issued his unusual demand, saying the Justice Department must submit the three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday, according to a lawyer who was in the courtroom. The demand was first reported by CBS News.

The Department of Justice, ever deferential to court orders, delivered the requested three-page, single spaced letter in a timely fashion. As much as I'd love to report to you that it said "I <3 Obamacare." over and over again to fill up the space, the DOJ treated the order with far more deference than it deserved.

Here is part of their response:

2. In considering such challenges, Acts of Congress are “presumptively constitutional,” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 507 U.S. 1301, 1301 (1993), and the Supreme Court stressed that the presumption of constitutionality accorded to Acts of Congress is “strong.” United States v. Five Gambling Devices Labeled in Part .. Mills,” and Bearing Serial Nos. 593-221,346 U.S. 441 , 449 (1953); see, e.g., Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 28 (2005) (noting that the “congressional judgment” at issue was “entitled to a strong presumption of validity”). The Supreme Court has explained: “This is not a mere polite gesture. It is a deference due to deliberate judgment by constitutional majorities of the two Houses of Congress that an Act is within their delegated power or is necessary and proper to execution of that power.”

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This is the first time ever that the feds are regulating new power plants, which of course is a much bigger carrot to get owners to comply with strict standards. This is very good news for the environment, assuming the lobbyists don't neuter it before implementation:

In one of the most significant reversals of Bush-era policy, the Obama administration plans [this week] to issue greenhouse pollution limits for new power plants, a major step in the fight against global warming. The new rule — which will go into effect in 2013 — confirms the end of the era of dirty coal-fired power plants:

The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits between 800 and 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

Since the late 1990s, “natural gas has been the fuel of choice for the majority of new generating units,” and in the 2000s, wind power generation also grew significantly. With the high cost of its toxic pollution from mine to plant, coal has been losing out to cleaner sources of fuel in the electric utility sector. Although few new coal plants have been built in the last twenty years, aging plants — some built in the 1930s — still produce about 40 percent of U.S. electricity, and about 80 percent of carbon pollution from the power sector.

It's bad news for the coal industry -- and the communities which are economically dependent on coal:

The rule announced Tuesday could either derail or jump-start plans for 15 new coal-fired power plants in 10 states, depending on when they start construction. Those that break ground in the next year would be exempt from the new limit. Those that start construction later will have to eventually comply with the rule.

Existing power plants, even if they make changes that increase emissions, would not be covered at all. And new ones would have years to meet the standard and could average their emissions over three decades in order to meet the threshold.

But eventually, all coal-fired power plants would need to install equipment to capture half of their carbon pollution. While not commercially available now, the EPA projects that by 2030, no new coal-fired power plant will be built without carbon capture and storage.

The coal industry has been publicly supportive of carbon capture and sequestration (CSS), but it's likely that now that a requirement that will diminish or even destroy them is actually pending, they will not go quietly into that good night. Be prepared to fight if you want to stop climate change.