Political Newswire
Recent political and social news, analysis and commentary from around the internet
Romney parks millions in Cayman Islands. Matthew Mosk, ABC News.
But tax experts tell ABC News there are other reasons Romney may not want the public viewing his returns. As one of the wealthiest candidates to run for president in recent times, Romney has used a variety of techniques to help minimize the taxes on his estimated $250 million fortune. In addition to paying the lower tax rate on his investment income, Romney has as much as $8 million invested in at least 12 funds listed on a Cayman Islands registry. Another investment, which Romney reports as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, shows up on securities records as having been domiciled in the Caymans.
Official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, has set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Caymans.
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Why Islamism is winning. John Owen, NY Times.
Today, rural and urban Arabs with widely varying cultures and histories are showing that they share more than a deep frustration with despots and a demand for dignity. Most, whether moderate or radical, or living in a monarchy or a republic, share a common inherited language of dissent: Islamism.
Political Islam, especially the strict version practiced by Salafists in Egypt, is thriving largely because it is tapping into ideological roots that were laid down long before the revolts began. Invented in the 1920s by the Muslim Brotherhood, kept alive by their many affiliates and offshoots, boosted by the failures of Nasserism and Baathism, allegedly bankrolled by Saudi and Qatari money, and inspired by the defiant example of revolutionary Iran, Islamism has for years provided a coherent narrative about what ails Muslim societies and where the cure lies. Far from rendering Islamism unnecessary, as some experts forecast, the Arab Spring has increased its credibility; Islamists, after all, have long condemned these corrupt regimes as destined to fail.
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Bain, Barack and jobs. Paul Krugman, NY Times.
So Mr. Romney’s claims about the Obama job record aren’t literally false, but they are deeply misleading. Still, the real fun comes when we look at what Mr. Romney says about himself. Where does that claim of creating 100,000 jobs come from?
Well, Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post got an answer from the Romney campaign. It’s the sum of job gains at three companies that Mr. Romney “helped to start or grow”: Staples, The Sports Authority and Domino’s.
Mr. Kessler immediately pointed out two problems with this tally. It’s “based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain,” and it “does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved.” Either problem, by itself, makes nonsense of the whole claim.
On the point about using current employment, consider Staples, which has more than twice as many stores now as it did back in 1999, when Mr. Romney left Bain. Can he claim credit for everything good that has happened to the company in the past 12 years? In particular, can he claim credit for the company’s successful shift from focusing on price to focusing on customer service (“That was easy”), which took place long after he had left the business world?
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Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites clash over regional power. Jack Healy, New York Times.
BAQUBA, Iraq — The governor has fled this uneasy city. Half the members of the provincial council are camped out in northern Iraq, afraid to return to their offices. Peaceful protesters fill the dusty streets, though just days ago angrier crowds blockaded the highways with burning tires and shattered glass. All of this because the local government here in northeastern Diyala Province recently dared to raise a simple but explosive question, one that is central to the unrest now surging through Iraq’s shaky democracy: Should a post-American Iraq exist as one unified nation, or will it split into a loose confederation of islands unto themselves?
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The provinces are not seeking a total divorce from the rest of Iraq, just a wider separation in the mold of Kurdistan, the relatively prosperous and safe area in northern Iraq. The Kurds, who have lived for decades as a people apart from the rest of Iraq, have their own Parliament and president, command their own security forces and have signed lucrative oil deals with foreign companies without Baghdad’s approval.
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North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il dies. Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times.
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Russia’s stunning protests end with hint of change. Jim Heintz, AP.
Tens of thousands of people held the largest anti-government protests that post-Soviet Russia has ever seen on Saturday to criticize electoral fraud and demand an end to Vladimir Putin’s rule. Police showed surprising restraint and state-controlled TV gave the nationwide demonstrations unexpected airtime, but there is no indication the opposition is strong enough to push for real change from the prime minister or his ruling party.
Nonetheless, the prime minister seems to be in a weaker position than he was a week ago, before Russians voted in parliamentary elections. His United Party lost a substantial share of its seats, although it retains a majority.
The independent Russian election-observer group Golos said Saturday that “it achieved the majority mandate by falsification,” international observers reported widespread irregularities, and the outpouring of Russians publicly denouncing him throughout the country undermines Putin’s carefully nurtured image of a strong and beloved leader.
Putin “has stopped being the national leader — in the eyes of his team, the ruling political class and society,” analyst Alexei Malachenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center wrote on his blog.
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El Baradei: liberals “decimated” in vote. Marjorie Olster, AP.
“The youth feel let down. They don’t feel that any of the revolution’s goals have been achieved,” ElBaradei told The Associated Press in an interview on the same day electoral authorities announced that Islamist parties captured an overwhelming majority of votes in the first round of elections last week. “They got decimated,” he said, adding the youth failed to unify and form “one essential critical mass.”
The High Election Commission announced that the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party garnered 36.6 percent of the 9.7 million valid ballots cast last week for party lists. The Nour Party, representing the more hard-line Salafi Islamists, captured 24.4 percent.
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Raise taxes on rich to reward true job creators. Nick Hanauer, Bloomberg.
Since 1980, the share of the nation’s income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1 percent has increased a shocking 400 percent, while the share for the bottom 50 percent of Americans has declined 33 percent. At the same time, effective tax rates on the superwealthy fell to 16.6 percent in 2007, from 42 percent at the peak of U.S. productivity in the early 1960s, and about 30 percent during the expansion of the 1990s. In my case, that means that this year, I paid an 11 percent rate on an eight-figure income.
One reason this policy is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, I go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.
It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.
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Technocrats and democracy: Have PhD, will govern. The Economist.
Exhaustion with the normal process of party politics explains why technocrats are being brought in. Usually, democracies are better at dealing with financial crises than autocracies because they are seen as fair. Elected politicians can distribute the pain of austerity without losing legitimacy because people (it is hoped) will accept tough reforms that are seen as legitimate. But if all the main parties are complicit in causing a crisis, the public may not accept solutions from any of them. Then, the system needs to find alternatives unblemished by the disastrous decisions of the past-and technocrats fit the bill.
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Supreme Court to hear case challenging health law. Adam Liptak, NY Times.
Appeals from three courts had been vying for the justices’ attention, presenting an array of issues beyond the central one of whether Congress has the constitutional power to require people to purchase health insurance or face a penalty through the so-called individual mandate.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals from just one decision, from the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, the only one so far striking down the mandate. The decision, from a divided three-judge panel, said the mandate overstepped Congressional authority and could not be justified by the constitutional power “to regulate commerce” or “to lay and collect taxes.”
The appeals court went no further, though, severing the mandate from the rest of the law.
On Monday, the justices agreed to decide not only whether the mandate is constitutional but also, if it is not, how much of the balance of the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, must fall along with it.
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AD 2041–End of white America? Pat Buchanan.
Second, the economic crisis of California, brought on by an outflow of taxpayers and a huge influx of tax consumers — i.e., millions of immigrants, legal and illegal — will be mirrored nationally.
For though the majority of immigrants and illegals comes to work, and work hard, most now come from Third World countries and do not bring the academic or professional skills of European-Americans.
Third, the decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic. For though we have spent trillions over four decades, we have failed to close the racial gap in education. White and Asian children continue to outscore black and Hispanic children.
Can the test-score gap be closed? With the Hispanic illegitimacy rate at 51 percent and the black rate having risen to 71 percent, how can their children conceivably arrive at school ready to compete?
Should this continue for three decades, what will it mean for America if Asians and whites occupy the knowledge-industry jobs, while scores of millions of black and Hispanic workers are relegated to low-paying service-sector jobs? Will that make for social tranquility?
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Is Christie ready to be president? Dan Balz, Washington Post.
Christie’s blunt style has captured the imaginations of many Republicans, as Obama’s hope-and-change message stirred Democrats then. He is a fresh face in a party that is in transition and looking for something more than it sees on the horizon. He is being encouraged to run by ordinary citizens, wealthy fundraisers and party leaders who see an opportunity for victory in 2012 and don’t want to let it slip away.
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Why fewer young American Jews share their parents’ view of Israel. Dana Goldstein, Time.
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Poll suggests 2012 change in power in Washington. Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo News.
Only 24 percent of all adults surveyed in the USA Today/Gallup poll said most members of Congress deserve re-election “the lowest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 1991″ the newspaper reports. USA Today notes this is similar to the level of support polled prior to the 1994, 2006 and 2010 elections. In 1994, Republicans won control of both the House and Senate. In 2006, Democrats won control of both the House and Senate. And last fall, Republicans won control of the House.
However, the poll shows that 56 percent of adults believe their own representative deserves re-election.
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A failed presidency–the American problem. John Mariotti, Forbes.
To chronicle Obama’s failures and his shortcomings is impossible within the length of a simple blog post. A few of them are most notable. Obama aided and abetted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid rammed the new health care legislation down the throat of America—and Obamacare was created. Parts of it are well-intentioned, but much of it is feared by Americans and especially small businesses. Arguably some of Obama’s greatest damage to the economy has been done by his appointees in the EPA, NLRB, CPSC, et. al., and the Justice Department. American business is oppressed by regulation. Sadly, Obama barely realizes this.
Next came the $840 billion “stimulus” package, (mostly pork and patronage), which worked poorly or not at all—unless you consider creating jobs at $275,000 each to be a good solution. Not enough “shovel-ready” projects were really “shovel-ready” Obama admitted recently, chuckling awkwardly at his naiveté. Obama and his experts (now mostly gone back to finance or academia) predicted a drop of unemployment to under 8% when the number of jobless went the other way—upward. Now, more Americans have been out of work, for longer, than any time in the past half-century.
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Is US credit rating a victim of GOP sabotage? Daniel Gross, Yahoo Finance.
But Congressional Republicans deserve much more of the blame. For this calamity was entirely man-made — even intentional. The contemporary Republican Party is fixated on taxes. It possesses an iron-clad belief that the existing tax rates should never go up, that loopholes shouldn’t be closed unless they’re offset by other tax reductions, that the fact that hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than school teachers makes complete sense, that a reversion to the tax rates of the prosperous 1990′s or 1980′s would be unacceptable.
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Rick Perry asked why more kids are getting pregnant in Texas. Shawn Lawrence Otto, Huffington Post.
Texas lawmakers cut sex ed from two six-month courses to a single unit of “abstinence only” education. But early indications showed that the program wasn’t working. In fact, teens in almost all high school grades were having more sex after undergoing the abstinence only program. By 2007, Texas had the highest teen birth rate in the nation.
Nevertheless, the program continued. By 2009, 94 percent of Texas schools, which at the time were educating more than 3.7 million students, were giving no sex ed whatsoever beyond “abstinence only,” a curriculum that includes emphasizing that birth control doesn’t work.
Instead of providing fact-based information, the programs use fear and Jesus — over-emphasizing the risks of sexually transmitted diseases leading to cervical cancer, radical hysterectomy and death, together with Christian morality.
One Texas public school district’s sex ed handout is entitled “Things to Look for in a Mate:”
I. How they relate to God
A. Is Jesus their first love?
B. Trying to impress people or serve God?
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Boehner: House will compromise on debt limit. Andrew Taylor, AP.
House Speaker John Boehner predicted Thursday that a majority of House Republicans will end up supporting some kind of compromise as the Senate began debating a House-passed effort to tie an increase in the debt ceiling to conservative demands for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
Majority Leader Harry Reid,D-Nev., called up the measure to placate Republicans demanding a vote. But he said it “doesn’t have one chance in a million of passing the Senate.”
At a news conference, Boehner told reporters, “Frankly, I think it would be irresponsible on behalf of the Congress and the president not to be looking at back-up strategies for how to solve this problem.”
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Who will suffer if there’s no debt-ceiling deal. Rick Newman, US News and World Report.
There’s a lot of talk about the government defaulting on its debt, but that’s not likely to happen. The government collects about $200 billion per month in taxes and other revenue, and that cash would keep coming in. It borrows another $130 billion or so each month–the money it would have to live without. Interest payments on the nation’s debt–which Washington must pay on time to avoid being in default–amount to about $30 billion per month. If forced to choose, the government would almost certainly prioritize debt payments above other obligations, because welching on bonds considered the world’s safest would sink financial markets everywhere and make American the world’s biggest deadbeat. And the Treasury Dept. would still have adequate cash flow to cover debt payments and remain in good standing with borrowers.
Almost everything else the government pays for, however, would be vulnerable to sudden cutbacks. Here’s who would feel the pain most abruptly
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Minnesota shutdown longest in recent history, no new talks. David Bailey, Reuters.
The Minnesota state government shutdown, now the longest in recent memory in the United States, reached its eleventh day on Monday with no new talks planned between the political leaders.
The state’s new fiscal year began on July 1 without a budget in place to close a projected $5 billion two-year deficit or a temporary spending plan, leading to the second Minnesota state government shutdown in six years.
The issues driving the impasse in Minnesota are similar to differences raised in Washington during negotiations over the debt ceiling and over budgets in other states. Still, Minnesota is the only state where the government has shut down.
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US suspends $800 million in Pakistan military aid. Ted Goldman, AFP.
The United States is withholding some $800 million in aid toPakistan, almost a third of the $2.7 billion in security assistance it provides each year to Islamabad, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff has confirmed.
Relations between the key allies, always tricky, have drastically deteriorated since US commandos shot and killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2 in a Pakistani garrison town, sowing distrust on both sides.
Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Washington would slow down US military aid to Pakistan unless it took unspecified steps to help the United States.
Now, it appears, it has, as William Daley, Obama’s chief of staff, confirmed a New York Times report that the administration was suspending and, in certain cases, canceling some $800 million of military aid.
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Connecticut becomes first state to mandate paid sick time. Lauren Keiper, Reuters.
Connecticut became the first state in the nation this month to mandate paid sick days for workers, a move advocates say could be a catalyst for similar campaigns in 20 other cities and states considering such a benefit.
Bartenders, librarians, dental hygienists and other service workers in Connecticut are poised to earn paid sick time at the start of 2012.
While San Francisco and Washington, D.C. currently guarantee paid sick days for workers, with some minor variations in the laws, Connecticut is the first state to follow their lead.
The move is being watched closely by Massachusetts and California and the cities of Philadelphia, Seattle and Denver, all of which are considering similar legislation or have active campaigns underway, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
Advocates say paid sick days reduce public health risks and provide job security for workers who need time off to care for themselves or a sick family member at relatively minimal cost to employers. Opponents say the costs are unaffordable.
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South Sudan becomes world’s newest nation. AP.
South and north Sudan battled two civil wars over more than five decades, culminating in a 2005 peace deal that led to Saturday’s independence declaration.
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Rio state has 60,000 unsolved murders in 10 years. AP.
Rio de Janeiro’s public defenders’ department says the Brazilian state has accumulated more than 60,000 unsolved murders in the last 10 years.
The department investigated the matter for the federal Ministry of Justice as part of a national plan to improve public safety.
The survey shows that 24,000 of the victims haven’t even been identified.
Creation of a special homicide division in the city of Rio de Janeiro did little to improved the solution rate. It went from 11 percent to 14 percent.
Across Brazil, police solve about 8 percent of murders. In the United States and in European countries the rates are reportedly around 70 percent to 80 percent.
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US warning of airline plot to implant bombs in people. Jim Watson, AFP.
US officials have warned airlines terror groups may be mulling implanting bombs under the skins of passengers, reports said Wednesday, but stressed the alert was not linked to any specific threat.
The Los Angeles Times said the US administration had warned airlines that extremist groups were considering surgically implanting explosives into people to try to beat enhanced airport security measures.
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Ohio governor signs law allowing guns in bars. David Bailey, Reuters.
Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich on Thursday signed into law a bill that allows gun owners in the state to carry concealed weapons into bars and other places where alcohol is served.
The measure, which was forwarded to Kasich on June 22 by the Ohio General Assembly, was signed on Thursday afternoon. Kasich is scheduled to sign the Ohio budget later Thursday.
Businesses can ban concealed weapons on their premises for safety reasons if the want to and some, like the Cincinnati Bengals football team, have indicated they will continue to bar gun owners from bringing firearms into the stadium.
The law also prohibits gun owners from consuming alcohol or being under the influence of alcohol or drugs when they carry their weapons into bars.
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South Dakota’s strict new abortion law blocked. AP.
South Dakota officials must decide their next step after a federal judge said the state’s newest abortion law is likely unconstitutional while preventing it from taking effect Friday.
The act would require women seeking abortions to face a three-day waiting period — the nation’s longest — and undergo counseling at pregnancy help centers that discourage abortion.
U.S. District Chief Judge Karen Schreier on Thursday granted Planned Parenthood’s preliminary injunction, making the law invalid while it’s being challenged in court.
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Rhode Island lawmakers approve civil unions. Abby Goodnough, New York Times.
Less than a week after same-sex marriagewas legalized in New York, the Rhode Island State Senate on Wednesday evening approved a bill allowing not marriage, but civil unions for gay couples, despite fierce opposition from gay-rights advocates who called the legislation discriminatory.
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A supreme double standard: if violent video games are free speech, why aren’t sexual images? Adam Cohen, Time.
Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the two dissenters in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, pointed out the court’s double standard. “What sense does it make,” he asked, “to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?”
What sense, indeed. Breyer went further: “What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman — bound, gagged, tortured, and killed — is also topless?”
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It’s perverse, but also pretend. Cheryl Olson, New York Times.
But despite parents’ worst fears, violence in video games may be less harmful than violence in movies or on the evening news. It does seem reasonable that virtually acting out a murder is worse than watching one. But there is no research supporting this, and one could just as easily argue that interactivity makes games less harmful: the player controls the action, and can stop playing if he feels overwhelmed or upset. And there is much better evidence to support psychological harm from exposure to violence on TV news.
In fact, such games (in moderation) may actually have some positive effects on developing minds.
As the court opinion notes, traditional fairy tales are chock-full of violence; a child experiences and learns to manage fears from the safety of Mom or Dad’s lap. Similarly, a teen can try out different identities — how it feels to be a hero, a trickster, a feared or scorned killer, or someone of a different age or sex — in the safe fantasy world of a video game.
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Teacher grades: pass or be fired. Sam Dillon, New York Times.
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Seized phone offers clues to bin Laden’s Pakistani links. Carlotta Gal, New York Times.
The cellphone of Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men in Pakistan last month, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say.
The discovery indicates that Bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside the country, the officials and others said. But it also raised tantalizing questions about whether the group and others like it helped shelter and support Bin Laden on behalf of Pakistan’s spy agency, given that it had mentored Harakat and allowed it to operate in Pakistan for at least 20 years, the officials and analysts said.
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NJ legislature moves to cut benefits for public workers. Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times.
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Obama opts for faster Afghan pullout. Helene Cooper, New York Times.
President Obama plans to announce Wednesday evening that he will order the withdrawal of 10,000 American troops from Afghanistan this year, and another 20,000 troops, the remainder of the 2009 “surge,” by the end of next summer, according to administration officials and diplomats briefed on the decision.
These troop reductions are both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they reflect mounting political and economic pressures at home, as the president faces relentless budget pressures and an increasingly restive Congress and American public.
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Cost of wars is a rising issue as Obama weighs troop levels. Helene Cooper, New York Times.
On Monday, the United States Conference of Mayors made that connection explicitly, saying that American taxes should be paying for bridges in Baltimore and Kansas City, not in Baghdad and Kandahar.
The mayors’ group approved a resolution calling for an early end to the American military role in Afghanistan and Iraq, asking Congress to redirect the billions now being spent on war and reconstruction costs toward urgent domestic needs. The resolution, which noted that local governments cut 28,000 jobs in May alone, was the group’s first venture into foreign policy since it passed a resolution four decades ago calling for an end to the Vietnam War.
And in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said: “We can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or — and this is very important — lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.”
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Same-sex marriage goes down to legislative wire in New York. Chris Michaud, Reuters.
The measure that would make gay marriage legal, introduced by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat and strong advocate, is currently one vote shy of passage in the state Senate.
The state Assembly approved the bill by a wide margin last week, and Monday is the last day of the legislative session before summer recess.
New York’s Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, reiterated his and the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage on Sunday, vowing to oppose “any radical bill to redefine the very essence of marriage.”
“One has to wonder why the proponents of this radical redefinition, who claim overwhelming popular support, would not consider” a referendum “on such a drastic departure from traditional values?” he wrote on his blog.
Recent polls show statewide support for gay marriage.
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Western governments are blamed for Asia’s shortage of women. Ujala Sehgal, Atlantic Wire.
In her new book “Unnatural Selection,” Science writer Mara Hvistendahl examines how the trend toward choosing boys over girls through sex-selective abortions has spread through the developing world, particularly in Asia. Coining the term “Generation XY,” Hvistendahl provides the grim results of sex selection: while the natural sex ratio at birth is 105 boys born for every 100 girls, in India the figure has risen to 112 boys and in China, 121. The Chinese city of Lianyungang actually recorded 163 boys per 100 girls in 2007.
The shortage of women is already giving rise to deep societal problems. New markets have been created for women in Asia, including wedding agencies that arrange marriages between South Korean men and women often from poorer nearby countries like Vietnam, that now account for 11% of all marriages in South Korea. There is also a growing practice of child marriage in China, where wealthier families buy young girls to secure wives for their sons early. And with so many surplus men (e.g., up to a fifth of men will be single in northwestern India by 2020), she suggests that the excess testosterone could lead to raised levels of crime and violence.
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College-educated immigrants outnumber unskilled immigrants. Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News.
A new Brookings report finds that college-educated immigrants now outnumber those who enter the United States with just a high school degree. The disparity is especially striking in urban areas, with college-educated immigrants outnumbering their high-school-educated counterparts by 25 percent in 44 major U.S. cities. Overall, 30 percent of working-age immigrants have a college degree now, compared to just 19 percent in 1980. Only 28 percent of immigrants in the United States lack a high school diploma.
And the trend appears to have escalated. More college-educated immigrants came to the United States in the past 10 years than immigrants lacking a high school education, in part due to increased demand from U.S. employers. Half of all skilled immigrants are overqualified for their current jobs, the report finds. The Washington Post summarized the Brookings findings in a front-page report today, and found that some regional employers are increasingly favoring a foreign-born workforce.
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Rick Perry believes he could fill a “void” in the 2012 GOP field. Holly Bailey, Yahoo News.
Rick Perry appears to be getting more serious about a potential 2012 presidential run.
Just weeks after the Texas governorconfirmed he’s thinking about a bid for the GOP nomination, Perry is apparently laying the groundwork for a campaign privately, telling supporters he believes the no one in the current 2012 field is effectively mobilizing the party to defeat President Obama.
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11 dead as Israeli troops fire along Syrian border. Daniella Cheslow, AP.
Israeli troops opened fire Sunday at a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to break into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from neighboring Syria, killing as many as 11 people and wounding scores in a burst of violence marking the Arab defeat in the 1967 Mideast war.
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GOP contender Herman Cain on the rise. Chris Cillizza, Yahoo News.
Cain, a businessman who served as the CEO of Godfather’s pizza chain, has been winning over converts with his fiery rhetorical flourishes and non-political background.
He was widely judged to have emerged as the winner from last month’s presidential debate, which included, among others, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. And a new Gallup poll showed Cain receiving a surprisingly strong eight percent support, putting him ahead of nationally-known candidates like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann.
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Chaos in Yemen drives economy to edge of ruin. Robert Worth, New York Times.
Even as Yemen’s political crisis deepens, the country is on the brink of an economic collapse so dire it could take years to recover, and hobble efforts to rebuild its fragmented society. After four months of mass protests and political deadlock, Yemen — already the poorest Arab country, a place where many people have become accustomed to mere subsistence — has had its domestic oilsupplies and electricity network largely cut off by hostile tribes. Gas lines now extend for miles in the capital, Sana, provoking fights and new protests; electricity is available for only a few hours a day. Cooking gas and diesel for generators have also grown scarce, and with food pricesrising fast, people have begun hoarding basic supplies, including water.
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For first time, majority of Americans favor legal gay marriage. Frank Newport, Gallup.
For the first time in Gallup’s tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans (53%) believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages. The increase since last year came exclusively among political independents and Democrats. Republicans’ views did not change.
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US adults estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. Lymari Morales, Gallup.
U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52%) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35% who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15%.
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After 4 years, Egypt reopens its border with Gaza. Ibrahim Barzak, AP.
Egypt lifted a 4-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, greatly easing travel restrictions on the 1.5 million residents of the Palestinian territory in a move that bolstered the Hamas government while dealing a setback to Israel’s attempts to isolate the militant group.
The sense of relief was palpable as buses piled high with luggage crossed the Rafah border terminal and hundreds of people traveled abroad for overdue medical appointments, business dealings and family affairs. In Israel, fears were heightened that militants and weapons will soon pour into the territory.
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High court sustains Arizona employer sanctions law. Bob Christie, AP.
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that penalizes businesses for hiring workers in the country illegally, buoying the hopes of supporters of state crackdowns on illegal immigration.
They predicted the ruling would lead to many other states passing laws that require employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check that workers aren’t illegal immigrants. And some said the ruling bodes well for the prospects of a much broader and more controversial immigration law in Arizona, known as SB1070, to be found constitutional.
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Mayor Bloomberg states case, emphatically and personally, for same-sex marriage. Michael Barbaro, New York Times.
The mayor also rejected one of the concerns raised by opponents of same-sex marriage: that it would infringe on religious freedom. He said that the measure envisioned by the governor and gay marriage advocates would not require any religious institution to perform or sanction a same-sex wedding. While emphasizing his “enormous respect for religious leaders on both sides of this issue,” the mayor framed same-sex marriage as a question of civil law, not faith.
“As private individuals, we may be part of a faith community that forbids divorce or birth control or alcohol. But as public citizens, we do not impose those prohibitions on society.”
He added: “We may place our personal faith in the Torah, or the New Testament, or the Koran, or anything else. But as a civil society, we place our public faith in the U.S. Constitution: the principles and protections that define it, and the values that have guided its evolution.”
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Is Georgia on the brink of a “day of rage”? Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor.
After three days of sometimes violent street demonstrations, Georgian opposition leaders on Monday promised a “day of rage” on May 25 that will sweep away President Mikhael Saakashvili – who has withstood similar protest waves against his controversial seven-year rule in the past.
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Focus is on Obama as tensions soar across Mideast. Helene Cooper, New York Times.
Against the backdrop of Middle East uprisings that have intensified animus toward Israel and growing momentum for global recognition of a Palestinian state, American and Israeli officials are struggling to balance national security interests against the need to adapt to a transformative movement in the Arab world.
The White House unveiled a $2 billion multiyear economic aid package for Egypt, which officials say would largely shift existing funds. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuof Israel prepared to arrive in Washington with a familiar package that he hoped would shift the burden of restarting the peace process from Israel to the Palestinians.
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Gay rights protestor dumps glitter on Newt Gingrich. Holly Bailey, Yahoo News.
Could Newt Gingrich’s week get any worse?
Just days into his 2012 presidential bid, the former House speaker has beenunder fire this week from fellow Republicans for trashing Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal on Medicare during his appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday–criticism that forced Gingrichto apologize.
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Trump announces he will not run for president. Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo News.
The real estate mogul noted in a statement that he has been unofficially campaigning for the past several months, but has determined politics is not his first priority. “Business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector,” Trump said.
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“Arab Spring” is a fraud. Ben Stein, CBS News.
Now, I am going to tell you the truth about the so-called “Arab Spring,” and about the Middle East generally right now. First, the “Arab Spring” as a force for democracy, human rights and peace in Egypt seems to me to be a fraud.
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Israeli border clashes kill 15 on Palestinian protest day. Edmund Sanders, LA Times.
Israeli soldiers open fire on throngs of Palestinian refugees and protesters as they attempt to cross Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in bitter remembrance of the Palestinians’ displacement with the founding of Israel.
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Predicting a Gingrich administration. Stephanie Gallman, CNN.
Gingrich, who is often criticized for having big ideas and not enough focus to be a serious contender for the nomination, said the most important welfare program is employment. He listed four specific changes he would make to taxes that he thinks would stimulate the economy: eliminating capital gains tax, moving the corporate tax rate back to 12.5 percent and eliminating the estate tax.
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Mitch the moderate? Daniels backers tout his conservative record. Peter Hambly, CNN.
In 2001, a Washington Monthly magazine profile described Mitch Daniels, then White House budget director under President George W. Bush, as “deeply conservative with a moderate demeanor.”
Ten years on, Daniels, now teetering on the brink of a presidential bid, is the repeated target of tongue-lashings from Rush Limbaugh, who this week blasted the “boring and moderate” Indiana governor as the favorite son of Washington elites who are out of step with today’s conservative movement.
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Eurozone expands, at two speeds. Brian Blackstone, Wall Street Journal.
The euro-zone economy expanded at a rate of more than 3% in the first quarter, outpacing the U.S. and adding to the distance between the bloc’s strengthening northern tier and its debt-ridden periphery. The figure underscores several dominant themes in Europe: A wide gap persists between wealthy, globally competitive countries in the north, and moribund economies such as Greece and Portugal that are unable to find new sources of private growth to replace a shrinking public sector. The so-called core of Germany and its neighbors is increasingly decoupling from the debt crisis in Southern Europe and Ireland.
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Inflation hits 2.5 year high, seen peaking. Lucia Mutikani, Reuters.
Gasoline and food prices hoisted U.S. inflation to a 2-1/2-year high in April, but there was little sign of a broader pick-up in consumer prices that would trouble the Federal Reserve. The pace of food and fuel price rises slowed considerably from March, suggesting inflation pressures may be peaking.
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Syrian forces kill 6 protestors. Khaled Oweis, Reuters.
Security forces killed six people in demonstrations across Syria on Friday calling for an end to autocratic rule, rights campaigners said, after the government promised to hold a “national dialogue” in the coming days.
The Syrian leadership has drawn increasing international criticism and modest sanctions over its military crackdown on two months of pro-democracy unrest in which rights groups say about 700 people have been killed by security forces.
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Libyan TV carries audio of Gaddafi taunting NATO. Joseph Logan, Reuters.
Libyan state television carried brief audio tape remarks it said were by Muammar Gaddafi in which he taunted NATO as a cowardly crusader whose bombs could not kill him.
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High schooler challenges Michelle Bachmann to Constitution showdown. Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News.
“I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted,” writes Cherry Hill, N.J., high schooler Amy Myers. She concludes: “I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.”
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Employment rate for black men at record low. Zachary Roth, Yahoo News.
If the election of America’s first African-American president was expected to give blacks an economic boost, it hasn’t emerged yet. Indeed, the percentage of African-American men with a job has dropped to its lowest level since records began in 1972, according to the government’s monthly jobs report released last week.
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Trump’s 2012 polling plummets. Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo News.
So what’s changed for Trump? For one, Trump’s quest to pressure President Obama to his long-form birth certificate came to an end last month when the White House released the document. Quickly afterward, “birther” speculation in the GOP field, and in the media generally, died down.
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Jerry Brown’s last stand. Adam Nagourney, New York Times.
Government has new rules, new problems, new politics and new players. It has grown, particularly in California, more ossified and divided. Term limits, the new governor suggested to me a few weeks after taking office in January, have turned out to be a force for bad, feeding the paralysis in Sacramento. Over late-night glasses of pinot grigio and plates of brussels sprouts at a restaurant near the State Capitol, he talked about lawmakers who now spend so much time worrying about getting elected to another, higher office that they have little time to consider the staggeringly complicated legislation that lands on their desks or to build working relationships with other lawmakers.
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Brazilian top court recognizes same-sex civil unions. Bradley Brooks, AP.
Brazil’s high court ruled that same-sex civil unions must be recognized, a decision welcomed as a watershed by gay activists who also hope it will cool rising violence against homosexuals in Latin America’s most populous nation. The ruling, however, stopped short of legalizing gay marriage in Brazil, which has more Roman Catholics than any other country. The Catholic Church fought the measure.
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“Slutwalks” put provocative message in the streets. Russell Contreras, AP.
“The event is in protest of a culture that we think is too permissive when it comes to rape and sexual assault,” said Siobhan Connors, 20, of Lynn, Mass., another Boston organizer. “It’s to bring awareness to the shame and degradation women still face for expressing their sexuality … essentially for behaving in a healthy and sexual way.”
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The secret team that killed bin Laden. Marc Ambinder, National Journal.
From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers. After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap — boom, boom — to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.
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Trump’s donation history shows Democratic favoritism. Dan Eggen, Washington Post.
Billionaire Donald J. Trump, an early presidential favorite among tea party activists, has a highly unusual history of political contributions for a prospective Republican candidate: He has given most of his money to the other side. The real estate mogul and “Celebrity Apprentice” host has made more than $1.3 million in donations over the years to candidates nationwide, with 54 percent of the money going to Democrats, according to a Washington Post analysis of state and federal disclosure records.
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Birtherist response highlights racial undertones of “debate.” Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo News.
So what’s fueling the dogged questioning of Obama’s origins? Many critics of the birther movement say its core tenets–and its stubborn resistance to evidence disproving those beliefs–can be traced to racial hostilities. The fundamental birtherist conviction, these critics say, is that an African-American can’t have legitimately won the presidency–and that his elevation to power therefore has to be the result of an elaborate subterfuge.
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In a first, women surpass men in advanced degrees. Hope Yen, AP.
For the first time, American women have passed men in gaining advanced college degrees as well as bachelor’s degrees, part of a trend that is helping redefine who goes off to work and who stays home with the kids.
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