BMBS

Rightwing Republicans, the American Legion, and members of the U.S. military have killed a bipartisan measure to present flags at the funerals of federal workers killed in the line of duty.  (Note: Not killed by disease; not killed in accidents; not killed by themselves.)  According to the Washington Post, Rep. Richard L. Hanna (R-N.Y.), a sponsor of the bill, said:  “The American flag embodies the values of our nation that these individuals worked to uphold. This legislation would provide a modest, but significant, benefit in honor of these dedicated individuals who sacrificed on our behalf.”

His party — a wing of which calls the bill “The Flags for Bureaucrats Act” — obviously doesn’t agree.  The blog site “Redstate.com” says that providing the flag to civilians means “it becomes just another trapping of power from the federal government available to all those people in the ever expanding federal bureaucracy.”

The Legion’s “national commander,” Fang Wong, claimed: “Civil service workers do not sign a pledge to defend America with their lives.”  The Legion further claimed that “the bill is a misguided attempt to equate civil service with military service.”

The oath civilians swear says they will “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  Who gave one party and one branch of government exclusive rights over the flag?

Experts have done numerous analyses demonstrating how certain tax policies break the balance between encouraging growth (and “creating jobs”) and contributing to broader community and social objectives.  Steve Mufson of the Washington Post reports: “As a result of a pair of rate cuts, first under President Bill Clinton and then under Bush, most of the richest Americans pay lower overall tax rates than middle-class Americans do.”

He says:  “While it’s true that many middle-class Americans own stocks or bonds, they tend to stash them in tax-sheltered retirement accounts, where the capital gains rate does not apply. By contrast, the richest Americans reap huge benefits. Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.”

Marty Sullivan, an economist and a contributing editor to Tax Analysts, says:  “The way you get rich in this world is not by working hard.  It’s by owning large amounts of assets and having those things appreciate in value.”

The British government has released a 1,400-page, $20 million investigation report that found a pattern of “violent and cowardly assaults” by “a large number of soldiers” from a unit of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in Iraq.

Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking to to reporters, condemned the “truly shocking and appalling abuse” uncovered by the inquiry and pledged it “should never be allowed to happen again.” Defense Minister Liam Fox said the military’s behavior was “deplorable, shocking and shameful.”

Could an American president or secretary of defense do that?

Rupert Murdoch – whose News Corp repeatedly violated the law in Britain and whose publications in the U.S. have redefined journalism – and his son are rewarded well for their activities.  Rupert’s cash bonus this year was $12.5 million (for total of $33 million in compensation).  His son James thought his proposed bonus – $6 million — wouldn’t look right, so he settled for $12 million in pay and stock options.

According to the World News board, the Murdochs deserved such largess because of their leadership “through the recent economic downturn, positioning the company for long-term growth and ongoing strategic development.”

Press reports indicate that:

– The economy added no jobs in August.  None.
– The numbers of June and July have been revised downward.
– The unemployment rate looks stuck at 9.1 percent.

The Washington Post calculates that “unemployment would be 16.2 percent if it included the swelling ranks of those who find only part-time work and the millions who have given up looking for jobs that simply do not exist.”

The “job creators” have their record-breaking profits, their record-breaking tax cuts, and their record-breaking subsidies, but they still aren’t hiring.

Some fascinating research reported on NPR explains why the ride TO destination often feels longer than the ride back.  It’s called the “return trip effect.”

Niels van de Ven, a psychologist at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, says the conventional wisdom that the trip back seems shorter because it’s more familiar is false.  According to NPR reporter Joe Palca, here’s what van de Ven thinks is going on: “Often we see that people are too optimistic when they start to travel,” he says. So when they finish the outbound trip, they feel like it took longer than they expected. That feeling of pessimism carries over to when they’re ready to return home. “So you start the return journey, and you think, ‘Wow, this is going to take a long time.'”  And then, it doesn’t.

Is that why so many people prefer nostalgia over reality?

The government’s “Federal Housing Finance Authority” is going to sue the big banks that sold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac junk securities that contributed to the collapse of the mortgage industry during the Bush Administration.

Fannie and Freddie – and the US taxpayer – lost more than $30 billion from bad deals like these.

Other suits are ongoing or contemplated.  The 50 state attorneys general are seeking $20 billion from the banks, and even AIG – whose own performance has been scandalous – has filed a $10 billion suit against Bank of America, accusing the bank and its Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch units of misrepresenting the quality of mortgages that backed the securities A.I.G. bought.

It’s fair to wonder if the Administration will blink when the banks and their shills in Washington push back.

A non-governmental panel has found (as if we didn’t know) that the U.S. government has lost billions of dollars to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That is, of course, that the U.S. taxpayer has lost billions of dollars to U.S. contractors.

The bipartisan commission, created by Congress in 2008, estimated that at least $31 billion and as much as $60 billion has been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade due to lax oversight of contractors, poor planning, inadequate competition and corruption.

The lobbyists for these private-sector contractors usually run circles around their government prey.

Some people claim that windmills shouldn’t be built because they sometimes kill birds.  Here’s the lineup of the key threats to birds:

The Washington Post has documented what we see every day:  Minorities, taken together, are the new majority. Here in the Washington area, “whites” represented 64 percent of the population in 1990; 55 percent in 2000; and slightly less than 50 percent in 2010.

Here’s a brilliant chart in today’s Post.