Monday Morning News Update

Los Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel, has claimed that Bank of America has helped launder money through a Texas based racehorse business with BofA accounts. While the bank has admitted in errors of laundering in the past, the question remains whether or not Bank of America has any sort of participation in such money laundering and if they have any efforts in preventing this in the future.

At 11:50 AM this morning, President Obama proposed the extension of tax cuts for citizens earning less than $250,000 a year. This will cost the government $150 billion in revenue in 2013. While Romney's campaign efforts supports tax cuts for individuals on all income levels, will Obama's venture of building a stronger middle class win him the presidential election?

Our poor, earthquake-damaged Washington Monument has now postponed is open date to past 2014. The 5.8 earthquake that shook it last year has caused renovations to reach up to $15 million.

A seemingly death sentence to a cancer patient has turned out to become a potential cancer killing life saver. While unfortunately the patient who received the new drug therapy passed away, the new-found realization of what this drug could do has paved a new path for cancer research. 

Congratulations to Roger Federer's seventh Wimbledon title over Andy Murray this weekend. It's been more than two years since Federer has won a major title. Congrats Federer, you still got it!

Guest Post: Frederick Douglass on the 4th of July and the American Dream, 1852

I hate to be "that guy" on a day of national celebration, pointing out the gross inequities and hypocrisies of an otherwise free and prosperous country. Frederick Douglass had no such qualms, however, in his scathing "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" delivered in Washington D.C. on July 5th, 1852, excerpted here:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Is this sentiment only limited to historical American hypocrisy regarding the slave trade, which President Abraham Lincoln abolished after a bloody civil war? Nay - Susan B. Anthony was not to be outdone, with the National Woman Suffrage Association's "Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States" just 24 years later.

http://news.yahoo.com/y--big-story--lesser-known-truths-about-fourth-of-july.html

As I continue my series on Incarceration in America, here are a couple articles more, food for thought, on this day of liberty. Freedom isn't free - literally and figuratively:


Probation Fees Rise, Firms Profit and the Poor Go to Jail - NYT

Teen on American justice: 'I'm dead' - Sentenced to 162 years in Jail

Debunking Liberal Economics Volume 1 "A College Degree is Key to the Middle Class" Issue 1: Government Inflated a Bubble

Before I begin I also would like to welcome our new writers and thank them for their time to helping Matt and I out on this crazy project we envisioned. To our readers, I hope I am turning you. 

(Matt, I would love to put up a poll to find out the ideological skew of our readers, my guess is at least 70-30 against me. Maybe even 95-5…) 

Now, I will dive into the issue at hand: liberal policies of just throwing money at the problem have created an issue and the only way to solve it is by completely re-envisioning the model.

I didn’t mean to make this post a response to Matt, but I later decided to just focus this post on something Matt wrote in his last post in what has shaped up to be “Education Week at CR”. Matt wrote, “Whenever anything goes wrong, you can always expect conservatives to blame the government.” Matt, there’s probably a cause-effect problem here. You see if A constantly causes B, one would be correct to say that A caused B. However, what you are asserting in that statement is that A did not actually cause B. So let’s take a look at whether A did cause B, shall we?

Thursday Links: The Cult of Personality

As election season starts getting underway, we are now getting the good stuff on the Obama-Romney match-up. It makes me laugh when the Obama folks talk about how much Obama is in touch with the country, then scratch their heads at why he is so opposed. Maybe, he isn't really in touch with much of the country, and you aren't either?

State of the Economy: Part II

Over the past several weeks, the writers of Conflict Revolution have been exchanging a series of emails on the state of the US economy.  This is Part II of an ongoing debate that seems to have some serious legs - see where it takes us, and share your own thoughts, below:

Also see: State of the Economy: Part I

Matt: Stephen, you've conceded that the stimulus created some jobs.  Are you accepting it as an Obama accomplishment?

Stephen: I’m not going to argue that spending does nothing, that’s a bit absurd. But let’s look at your math. The average of 3.6M, 1.97M, 2.1M and 1.5M is definitely not 3.9M… my numbers say its 2.29M – which I’ll still give you is significant. But, like I said above, all of these studies are done on economic models which basically assume that the inputs always work (which is how we get the saved number – the group is saying it should give us this, so if they didn’t really exist then they must just be saved jobs). So at best, we can say that these numbers are fuzzy; econometric models, which also have problems, think it was either entirely useless or helped about 2M jobs.  If your point was that the recession could have been worse, I’ll concede you the point. However, what I see as the real issue is effectiveness of the stimulus and if it’s actually helping to “stimulate” the economy. It seems to me like it was more of a Temprapetic bed than a Viagra.

Matt: On those numbers, you took the low baselines for all the analyses and I took the median, which seems fairer, and yields 3.9 million jobs created between 2009 and 2011.  Even if it was your number, I thought any job created was a good thing?  Either way, I'm not arguing that stimulus should fuel our economy forever.  In fact, if you were actually going to make an honest argument, you would acknowledge that the stimulus was only through 2010.  But the fact is, where else do you expect demand to come from in an economy where everyone is losing their job?  Give me a better answer than government stepping in to help out and maybe I'll consider it.

Email Debate: State of the Economy, Part I

It's election season, and one guy is running for re-election, which means this isn't the first, and will likely be far from the last time you read the words, "are you better off than you were four years ago?"  Still, as amateur members of the American punditocracy, Stephen and I could not suppress the urge to fire the first shots.  Here's Conflict Revolution on the State of the Economy (Part I):

Stephen: Hey Matt, do you think the economy is better today than it was 4 years ago?

Matt: Well, considering that in late April 2008 the global financial system was about four months away from near collapse, the auto industry was about to die, and American households were as debt-saddled and overleveraged as ever... yes, yes I do.  State your claim to the contrary. 

Stephen: Let's start with GDP, since that's the only thing that has really gone up. GDP has risen by an unimpressive $235.6B, which is a total of 1.8% or 0.4% annually. Let's ignore the fact that people have been expecting the US economy to take off now for 3 years (I won't say it has no chance this year, just that its a heavy underdog). Now, I'm sure you are familiar with how GDP is calculated, GDP = C+I+G+(X-M). That G piece (government) has increased by 681.2B. So we can see where the new growth is coming from right? And after three years, it's still unimpressive. At what point do we say this is the problem and not the solution? (But let's try to stay off that for now, that's an entirely different debate)

Unemployment - the unemployment rate is at 8.1%, up from 5%. But that probably doesn't tell the whole story since labor force participation is constantly declining... look at the U-6 rate (unemployed/underemployed/"marginally attached workers" aka people who dropped out of the labor force but want a job) and that's up to 14.5% from 9.2%.  Total payrolls are down 5.9% as well.

Should we get into household income or housing? They are both down, housing by as much as 50%. Or how about the S&P 500, which is generally used a gauge of American business performance? Its down about 10% still from its 2007 highs and just about equal with its 2008 high. Oh and did I mention that QE1, 2 and Operation Twist have managed to push the money supply into stupid levels? Or that inflation has increased by 7% since Obama took office (I understand these is totally normally inflation rates, but it puts into perspective how bad things are since NOTHING else is increasing so rapidly).

Morning Links: May Day (International Workers’ Day): the Socialist’s Christmas

For those of you were were not history majors or somehow got here and know nothing about socialism (if you got here knowing Matt, this seems highly unlikely) here's some info on May Day (International Workers’ Day). 

Since today is May Day, let’s do a socialist themed morning update.
 

The Loan You Save May Be Your Own...

President Obama is already somewhat well-known for his singing voice and late night TV exploits - which once included a joke for which he realized he probably should apologize.  While perusing the blogosphere on our lunch hour, Conflict Revolution caught wind of a pretty funny segment on Jimmy Fallon last night to add to the president's late night cache:

I was a little disappointed he didn't sing this time, and I was a bit curious why the president apparently thought his dance moves were good enough for Ellen DeGeneres but not Jimmy Fallon.  In general, I thought the headline "President Obama Slow Jams the News" carried a lot of potential that was not necessarily realized here.  Kind of like the Obama Admin itself?  ZING!  I kid...

Still, an all-around good laugh.  And if Jimmy Fallon is actually capable of being funny, surely the president can find a way to get re-elected, and bring down those college loan interest rates, right?  I mean, right?  To borrow a phrase from Kevin Garnett...

(you're going to have to check this one out for yourself)

Over and out.

Upon Further Review (4:34 pm) -->

I a) didn't realize this is a regular segment on Jimmy Fallon - kudos to Mr. Fallon and b) didn't realize that Obama dropped the mic at the very end.  Ballsy.  I still would have liked to hear more singing out of the Prez himself, but the dropped mic was clutch.  Oh and the fact that he's trying to keep the interest rate on my loans from doubling.

Thank you, Barack-ness Monster. 

For more on Obama's late night appearance, check out Grantland's Amos Barshad: http://tinyurl.com/c8c3o56