Think Progress

Last month, CQ reported that Republican strategists are advising their candidates “to target Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)” as a midterm election strategy. Indeed, Republican candidates across the country are heeding that advice. Alabama GOP House candidate Martha Roby said, “With Nancy Pelosi in charge, we can expect Cap and Trade and more to come down [the] pike.” Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) PAC said she “is committed to helping retire Nancy Pelosi as Speaker and there is no better place to start than in Minnesota.”

The Wisconsin GOP state party, however, is taking the Pelosi-bashing strategy a little too far. It sent out a false press release yesterday stating that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett hosted a “Super-Secret Fundraiser” with Pelosi. “Since cameras weren’t allowed at the event, the Republican Party of Wisconsin has provided an artist’s rendition of the event,” stated the release, which featured the amateur photoshopped picture to the top right.

But, as the AP reports, “Problem is, there was no fundraiser”:

The Wisconsin Republican Party is blasting Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett for a fundraiser with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that never happened.

The state GOP sent out a press release Wednesday saying Barrett hosted a “super secret” fundraiser with Pelosi on Tuesday night but didn’t want to admit it. Their release showed drawings of Pelosi handing Barrett a bag of money. […]

Spokesman for both Barrett and Pelosi confirmed to The Associated Press that it didn’t occur.

Republican Party spokesman Andrew Welhouse says he thought the fundraiser happened because he heard about it on Milwaukee talk radio.

The Wisconsin GOP apparently took this anonymous letter from a radio station listener as credible enough evidence to issue the press release.

About an hour after the Republican Party of Wisconsin sent out its initial press release, it sent a follow-up from spokesman Andrew Welhouse stating: “[T]he two did not meet for the purpose of a fundraiser, the RPW is retracting its statement on Pelosi’s visit.”

Last month, ThinkProgress noted that a local Arizona TV news station discovered that Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), who is running for re-election, may have a conflict of interest in her support of Arizona’s immigration law. CBS5’s KPHO TV found that “two of Brewer’s top advisers have connections” to private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA): Paul Senseman, Brewer’s deputy chief of staff and Chuck Coughlin, who manages her campaign, chaired her transition into the governorship, and is one of the governor’s policy advisors. KPHO reported that Senseman is a former lobbyist for CCA and his wife continues to lobby for the company. Coughlin is president of HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, which lobbies for CCA.

Last night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow provided a troubling update to the story. Apparently, Brewer’s campaign pulled all of its advertisements from CBS 5. In response to Maddow’s inquiries, Coughlin himself confirmed that the campaign’s decision to cease advertising on one of Phoenix’s most widely-viewed channels is a direct result of the aggressive reporting on Brewer’s burgeoning scandal. Highground Public Affairs Consultants, which also runs Brewer’s campaign, directed Maddow to a blog post on KPHO’s reporting featured on its website entitled “Telling It Like It Isn’t“:

We think it’s time that CBS 5 retire its goofy, focus-group driven moniker of “Telling It Like It Is.” No matter how many times the very capable anchor team of Sean McLaughlin and Catherine Anaya say it, it’s just not believable anymore. [...] Chief exhibit is the maniacal Morgan Loew, 5i Team Reporter. It seems Morgan is itching to get out of his native Arizona and head to the network big-time. Why hang around dusty ‘ole Phoenix when the glamour and fame the glitzy 24-hour news grind awaits?

Maddow interviewed Loew last night who explained “we’ve been pretty consistent throughout in asking him and letting him know exactly what we want to know.” That is, “did he [Coughlin] tell the governor about what his client, CCA, may gain from the signing of SB-1070?” “We’re just asking questions and the questions we’ve been asking haven’t been answered,” said Loew. Watch Maddow’s segment on Brewer and KPHO:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Speaking in Baghdad yesterday about the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that even if the Iraq war ends okay, “it will always be clouded by how it began.” “The problem with this war for, I think, many Americans is that the premise on which we justified going to war proved not to be valid, that is Saddam having weapons of mass destruction.”

As oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, BP spent $94 million — triple what it usually spends — on advertising, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Most of the money went to newspaper, magazine, and television advertising, with a smaller amount spend on targeted internet ads.

Glenn Beck said yesterday that he’ll be traveling to Alaska next week to meet with Sarah Palin. They are expected to attend an event together on 9/11 and deliver speeches.

Undocumented “immigration to the U.S. has slowed sharply since 2007,” according to data released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center. Pew’s data finds that the number of undocumented immigrants coming into the country “plunged to an estimated 300,000 annually between March 2007 and 2009, from 850,000 a year between March 2000 and March 2005.”

“The U.S. military’s Central Command has proposed pumping as much as $1.2 billion over five years into building up Yemen’s security force,” seeking to bolster the country’s government against rebel elements. Some U.S. officials warn that favoring military aid over civilian aid will “encourage a negative perspective in Yemen that all we care about is U.S. security.”

In a “bitter debate filled with personal attacks,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and challenger Carly Fiorina (R) faced off for the first time during the California Senate election. The debate focused mainly on economic issues, with sharp exchanges also coming over the issue of climate change.

According to a USA Today analysis of government data, “[h]ealth care spending this year has grown at its slowest rate in a half-century, a sign that people are forgoing medical care during the recession.” Medical care spending rose at a 2.7 percent annual rate per person in the first half of 2010, “ rt.htm">the smallest increase since the Bureau of Economic Analysis began tracking medical care in 1959.”

Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow told students this week that Elizabeth Warren is no longer teaching a class she was slated to teach, fueling speculation that she may be nominated to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. “Professor Warren regrets that she will not be able to teach you this fall and we regret the last minute change,” Minow’s email read.

In his new memoirs, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair calls former President Bush someone who was “very smart” while having “immense simplicity in how he saw the world.” Bush was a “true idealist” who displayed “genuine integrity and political courage,” Blair wrote.

And finally: While her appearance on the show has attracted a lot of attention, Bristol Palin has the worst odds of winning Dancing With The Stars, according to Las Vegas bookies. The Wynn hotel’s director of race & sports book operations gave the younger Palin steep odds of 35 to 1, easily below those of the Jersey Shore’s Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, who has an 11 to 1 chance of winning, according the odds.

ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.

One of the more interesting moments of the 2008 presidential campaign came when Politico revealed that the Republican National Committee had spent over $150,000 on clothes and accessories from luxury stores for Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her family. The high-end shopping spree conflicted with Palin’s image of a modest hockey mom. When confronted with the news, a campaign spokesperson replied, “It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.”

But in an online-only companion piece to his big new profile of the former Alaska governor, Vanity Fair’s Michael Gross reports that internal emails and other records reveal that this claim and others about the fate of the clothes were false:

The records of those purchases also reveal that Palin’s later claims—that “we had three days of using clothes that the R.N.C. purchased” (at the Republican National Convention) and that she understood the clothes to have been “loaned to us during the convention”—were completely false. So was the spin of Palin’s campaign spokesperson, who stated on October 22 that “it was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.” On October 23, in a previously unpublished e-mail (quoted below), Palin wrote that she had no idea the clothes would eventually need to be returned, and suggested that she believed the items were being given to her and her family as gifts.

There was at least one other incident in which the campaign misrepresented purchases for Palin. The day before daughter Bristol’s birthday, Palin aides exchanged emails about buying her a birthday present, with one saying they had “picked up a few dress options at saks during the event today.” That staffer charged $1,312.94 at Saks 5th Avenue in Cincinnati the same day. However, that charge was later mislabeled “as if it were made not for Bristol but for the candidate’s appearance on Saturday Night Live. (The memo line reads ‘Clothes-SNL.’).”

Yet, the spending continued. Throughout October, Palin staffers bought more than $9,000 worth of items for Palin and her family that “would seem to stretch the boundaries of what constitutes a legitimate campaign expense,” including a jersey for Palin’s daughter Piper, a $316.94 pair of Bose headphones, “Intimates” and “Workout Clothes,” and a “Jewelry case.”

At first, Palin was wary of accepting the new clothes, writing of a $3,500 jacket, “I don’t spend that much money on my clothes in a year.” However, Palin “grew accustomed to the privilege of a designer wardrobe—not only for herself but also for her family,” and tired to hold onto some of the items when the campaign eventually made good on its promise to donate them. When an aide came to Alaska to collect the wardrobe, she said, “all of a sudden, [Palin] couldn’t find stuff.” Indeed, as ThinkProgress has noted, Palin seems to appreciate the finer things, requiring that for speaking engagements, she be treated with chaffered SUVs, first class airfare or private jets, and “deluxe” hotel suites.

One of the driving forces behind the Tea Party movement is its opposition to the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which Congress passed at the height of the financial crisis and President Bush signed into law in October 2008. In fact, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which heads the Tea Party Express, lists one of its overarching principles as “opposition to bailouts.” They deride bailouts as “dangerous,” “quasi-socialism,” and “immoral.”

Bank of America has received $45 billion from the federal government, making it one of the largest recipients of TARP money. It is no surprise that the Tea Party Express has derided companies that took bailout money, even singling out Bank of America by name at a Pennsylvania rally last year. What is surprising is that for all its anti-TARP vitriol, the Tea Party Express holds all its funding in the bailed-out bank.

According to FEC records, the Tea Party Express’s parent organization, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, keeps its funds exclusively in a Bank of America branch in Corona, CA. Lest you think Bank of America was their only option in the area, a rudimentary Google Map search found over a half-dozen other banks in Corona alone that have not received TARP money. If the Tea Party Express truly believes that bailouts are dangerous and immoral, why is the group putting millions of dollars into a bailed-out bank?

Earlier this week, when the Daily Caller asked neoconservative war hawk John Bolton if he wanted to run for president in 2012, the former (recess-appointed) U.N. ambassador wouldn’t rule out the possibility. “You know, as somebody who writes op-eds and appears on the television, I appreciate as well as anybody that…there is a limit to what that accomplishes,” he said. But today on Fox News, Bolton indicated that he’s getting more interested in making a run for the White House, saying, “I’m not saying ‘no’”:

HOST: Are you running for president in 2012?

BOLTON: Well it’s a great honor when people ask me that question and I have been asked that question. I don’t think anybody involved in politics should worry about that until after the elections this fall because I think they’re so important. So that’s to the extent I get involved, that’s where I’m going to put my focus for now.

HOST: So you’re not saying no?

BOLTON: I’m not saying no, that’s right.

Watch it:

“What concerns me,” Bolton told the Daily Caller, “is the lack of focus generally in the national debate about national security issues.” ThinkProgress would be eager to witness Bolton campaign on his ideas:

– Bomb Iran, (or at least allow Israel to do it) and change the regime.

– Endless wars (because “we’re not going to eliminate violent conflict until homo sapiens ceases to exist as a separate species”).

– Invade Somalia? Nuke Chicago?

One thing is clear. If Bolton does decide to run for president, he probably won’t have the support of his former boss.

James Jay Lee

Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

Lee’s immigration screed bears a troubling resemblance to views and policies espoused by anti-immigrant groups such as NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Progressives for Immigration Reform, and others. Just this past month, FAIR released “The Environmentalist’s Guide to a Sensible Immigration Policy.” The report connects immigration to “pollution, sprawl, congestion, and ecological degradation,” complaining that “so-called environmentalists pretend as if this connection does not exist.” As usual, FAIR prescribes an overall reduction in immigration as the solution to the country’s environmental woes (in slightly more diplomatic terms).

It’s not a coincidence that many of these are amongst the same groups that have always supported changing the 14th amendment to deny “anchor babies,” or the American-born children of undocumented immigrants, citizenship — long before the debate entered the political mainstream this summer. Read more about Lee and the anti-immigrant environmental movement at the Wonk Room.

Our guest blogger is Joshua Dorner, Communications Director for Progressive Media.

As ThinkProgress and others have reported, Koch Industries and its billionaire owners, Charles and David Koch, have played a leading role in the apparently successful effort by polluters to stymie Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

Not content to simply stop progress, however, the Koch brothers and various Koch-funded organizations have also been actively trying to roll back existing clean air and clean energy laws — both at the state and national levels. David Koch, who lives in New York City and whose company is based in Kansas, is secretly bankrolling the Proposition 23 effort to roll back California’s landmark clean energy law. Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity helped make opposition to “cap-and-trade” a Tea Party talking point and then launched its so-called “Regulation Reality” tour to attack Supreme Court-mandated Clean Air Act regulations being finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Today, a new Koch-backed national effort to protect the energy industry, dubbed “Rally for Jobs,” begins with rallies in Texas and will continue next week with events in New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio. While the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s Washington lobbying arm, is the “presenting sponsor” of the Rally for Jobs tour, several Koch-backed groups are also involved:

• FreedomWorks, whose Koch-founded precursor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, received some $5.7 million from Koch foundations.
• Americans for Prosperity, which received at least $5.1 million from Koch Foundations from 2005-2008 and is an offshoot of the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, which itself received more than $6 million from Koch foundations.
• The American Highway Users Alliance, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• Americans for Tax Reform, which received $60,000 from Koch Foundations from 1997-2008.
• The Institute for Policy Innovation, which received $35,000 from Koch foundations.
• The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• The National Taxpayers Union, which has received $20,000 from Koch foundations.
• The Natural Gas Supply Association, of which Koch Industries appears to be a member.
• The Texas Prosperity Project, on whose board of directors sits Bill Oswald, Government & Regulatory Affairs Director at Koch Industries.
• The Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, which recently held an event sponsored by Flint Hills Resources, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.

The Rally for Jobs tour is the latest astroturf attempt by Koch and the rest of Big Oil to use the economic anxiety gripping the nation to stave off any new attempts to crack down on the industry’s emissions and to block new accountability measures in the wake of the BP oil disaster. The front group’s website uses standard energy industry boilerplate repeating the false claim that increased energy use and economic prosperity are inexorably linked:

More energy equals more jobs, higher incomes and greater economic growth. We must come together to tell Washington that our livelihoods depend on the oil and natural gas industry and consumers who rely on access to affordable energy will not be overlooked.

Just yesterday, the Center for American Progress released a report showing that a concerted national energy efficiency program (i.e using less energy, not more) could create 625,000 sustained jobs over ten years, spark $500 billion in investment, and save ratepayers $64 billion that they could then use more productively.

The Rally for Jobs website also implies that the federal government is blocking energy production and somehow threatening jobs, presumably referring to the Obama administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil industry and some elected officials have been fearmongering over the moratorium for months, but a front page New York Times article from last week noted that job losses as a result of the drilling ban have simply “failed to materialize.” Further underscoring how unreliable the claims of the oil industry often turn out to be, just two of the 33 deepwater rigs idled by the moratorium have actually left the Gulf.

It seems that politics and the fall election may also have played a role in selecting the tour’s stops. Canton, Ohio and Mokena, Illinois, the sites of two stops next week, are not generally known for their role in oil production, but they do happen to be home to vulnerable freshman House Democrats–both of whom voted for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation last year. Indeed, Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, noted that “we have always encouraged our employees to engage in political activities.”

If this all sounds strangely familiar, it’s because many of the same Koch-backed groups participated in a nearly identical effort last summer. The so-called “Energy Citizens” campaign was widely mocked as the height of energy industry astroturfing, especially after documents were uncovered showing that 15 of the 21 Energy Citizens events were actually planned by oil industry lobbyists.

It seems that when it comes to astroturf groups protecting polluters, almost all roads eventually lead back to the “Kochtopus.”

A new Vanity Fair profile reveals some interesting new information about former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Like this:

Early in the 2008 campaign, when John McCain’s aides discovered that Alaska-size gaps existed in Palin’s general knowledge (among those previously unreported: she had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was), they from time to time would give her some books to read in hopes of improving the candidate’s learning curve.

This is interesting, as Palin wrote on her Facebook page in June 2010:

I have received an invitation for a visit to London, and part of that invitation included the offer of arranging a meeting between myself and one of my political heroines, the “Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher. I would love to meet her and hope I’ll be able to arrange the trip in the future.

As I wrote last year when I offered her birthday wishes, Baroness Thatcher’s life and career serve as a blueprint for overcoming the odds and challenging the ’status quo.’ She started life as a grocer’s daughter from Grantham and rose to become Prime Minister — all by her own merit and hard work. I cherish her example and will always count her as one of my role models. Her friendship with my other political hero, Ronald Reagan, exemplified the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Perhaps Palin subsequently learned who Thatcher was from one of the books the McCain campaign gave her to read. Or perhaps the latest post was a bit of artistic license by Rebecca Mansour, the 36-year-old former screenwriter who Vanity fair reports was hired in 2009 to ghostwrite Palin’s Facebook page.

A new Vanity Fair profile reveals some new information about former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Like this:

Early in the 2008 campaign, when John McCain’s aides discovered that Alaska-size gaps existed in Palin’s general knowledge (among those previously unreported: she had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was), they from time to time would give her some books to read in hopes of improving the candidate’s learning curve.

This is interesting, as Palin wrote on her Facebook page in June 2010:

I have received an invitation for a visit to London, and part of that invitation included the offer of arranging a meeting between myself and one of my political heroines, the “Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher. I would love to meet her and hope I’ll be able to arrange the trip in the future.

As I wrote last year when I offered her birthday wishes, Baroness Thatcher’s life and career serve as a blueprint for overcoming the odds and challenging the ’status quo.’ She started life as a grocer’s daughter from Grantham and rose to become Prime Minister — all by her own merit and hard work. I cherish her example and will always count her as one of my role models. Her friendship with my other political hero, Ronald Reagan, exemplified the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Perhaps Palin subsequently learned who Thatcher was from one of the books the McCain campaign gave her to read. Or perhaps the latest post was a bit of artistic license by Rebecca Mansour, the 36-year-old former screenwriter who Vanity Fair reports was hired in 2009 to ghostwrite Palin’s Facebook page.

As he issued an executive order preventing the state from applying for any of the grants available in the new health care law, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signaled that he would accept $263 million in federal dollars to bolster the state’s Medicaid program — funds he previously described as a “bailout” of the states. “The federal government should not deficit spend to bail out states and special interest groups,” Pawlenty said earlier this month after the House reconvened for an emergency vote and passed a $26.1 billion bill providing aid to state governments. “Minnesota balanced its budget without raising taxes and without relying on more federal money. The federal government’s reckless spending spree must come to an end.”

Putting aside the fact that the $26.1 billion measure was fully paid for (and even reduced the deficit by $1.4 billion), Pawlenty searched for another explanation as to why he’s willing to accept a transfer of federal funds into the state Medicaid program but would not apply for grant dollars authorized by the health care law. The enhanced Medicaid payments are “not Obamacare” and won’t “further some stupid policy agenda,” he concluded:

“We’ll likely take that money,” Pawlenty said in an interview at the State Fair Tuesday. “It’s not Obamacare, it is something that we were going to be doing anyhow…”We’re going to take the money for those things that we were going to do anyhow and for the Medicaid (money), we were going to do that anyhow,” Pawlenty said. [...]

Further, the governor said, Minnesota is a net donor to the federal government — sending in more money than it gets back — so “where it’s appropriate and where it’s wise and doesn’t further some stupid policy agenda or otherwise concerns us or sign us up for something that is unsustainable or otherwise cause us a problem, we’re going to apply for those other pots of money.”

Earlier this year, Pawlenty rejected federal funds from the health care law to expand the state’s Medicaid program, a point he highlighted in yesterday’s executive order.

The Huffington Post notes that Pawlenty is requesting federal grants for abstinence-only education that are funded by the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) said yesterday that “members of the Pawlenty administration thank me” for voting in favor of health care reform.

As he issued an executive order preventing the state from applying for any of the grants available in the new health care law, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signaled that he would accept $263 million in federal dollars to bolster the state’s Medicaid program — funds he previously described as a “bailout” of the states. “The federal government should not deficit spend to bail out states and special interest groups,” Pawlenty said earlier this month after the House reconvened for an emergency vote and passed a $26.1 billion bill providing aid to state governments. “Minnesota balanced its budget without raising taxes and without relying on more federal money. The federal government’s reckless spending spree must come to an end.”

Putting aside the fact that the $26.1 billion measure was fully paid for (and even reduced the deficit by $1.4 billion), Pawlenty searched for another explanation as to why he’s willing to accept a transfer of federal funds into the state Medicaid program but would not apply for grant dollars authorized by the health care law. The enhanced Medicaid payments are “not Obamacare” and won’t “further some stupid policy agenda,” he concluded:

“We’ll likely take that money,” Pawlenty said in an interview at the State Fair Tuesday. “It’s not Obamacare, it is something that we were going to be doing anyhow…”We’re going to take the money for those things that we were going to do anyhow and for the Medicaid (money), we were going to do that anyhow,” Pawlenty said. [...]

Further, the governor said, Minnesota is a net donor to the federal government — sending in more money than it gets back — so “where it’s appropriate and where it’s wise and doesn’t further some stupid policy agenda or otherwise concerns us or sign us up for something that is unsustainable or otherwise cause us a problem, we’re going to apply for those other pots of money.”

Earlier this year, Pawlenty rejected federal funds from the health care law to expand the state’s Medicaid program, a point he highlighted in yesterday’s executive order.

The Huffington Post notes that Pawlenty is requesting federal grants for abstinence-only education that are funded by the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) said yesterday that “members of the Pawlenty administration thank me” for voting in favor of health care reform.

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released its annual report on executive compensation today — “CEO Pay and the Great Recession.” “I’m afraid that this year’s report will raise just about everybody’s blood pressure,” lead author Sarah Anderson said. Indeed, the report found that “CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home nearly $12 million on average in 2009.” Those CEOs’ combined compensation totaled $598 million, while at the same time, their companies eliminated 531,363 jobs despite reporting a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009.

More staggering is the level of executive pay, according to IPS:

[A]fter adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s.

The Kansas City Star took a closer look at some of the CEOs and companies in IPS’s report:

Fred Hassan, former CEO of Schering-Plough, presided over announced layoffs affecting 16,000 workers after a 2009 merger with Merck. He resigned after the merger, receiving “golden parachute” compensation in 2009 of more than $49.6 million to rank as the highest-paid layoff leader.

The top five companies announcing the most layoffs for the study period were General Motors (75,733); Citigroup (52,175); Bank of America (35,000); Caterpillar (27,499) and Verizon (21,308). Among those top five, the biggest compensation package — nearly $17.5 million — went to Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon.

According to IPS, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. For comparison, the average compensation of a Japanese CEO is less than one-sixth that of their American counterpart and 16 times more than the average Japanese worker.

But on top of the lavish CEO pay at the expense of the American worker, many of these top-layoff firms received money from the taxpayer bailouts in 2008. Of these, IPS notes, “American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault took home the highest 2009 pay, $16.8 million, a sum that included a $5 million cash bonus. American Express has laid off 4,000 employees since receiving $3.39 billion in TARP funding.”

“These numbers all reflect a broader trend in Great Recession-era Corporate America,” the IPS report says, “the relentless squeezing of worker jobs, pay and benefits to boost corporate earnings and maintain corporate executive paychecks at their recent bloated levels.”

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released its annual report on executive compensation today — “CEO Pay and the Great Recession.” “I’m afraid that this year’s report will raise just about everybody’s blood pressure,” lead author Sarah Anderson said. Indeed, the report found that “CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home nearly $12 million on average in 2009.” Those CEOs’ combined compensation totaled $598 million, while at the same time, their companies eliminated 531,363 jobs despite reporting a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009.

More staggering is the level of executive pay, according to IPS:

[A]fter adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s.

The Kansas City Star took a closer look at some of the CEOs and companies in IPS’s report:

Fred Hassan, former CEO of Schering-Plough, presided over announced layoffs affecting 16,000 workers after a 2009 merger with Merck. He resigned after the merger, receiving “golden parachute” compensation in 2009 of more than $49.6 million to rank as the highest-paid layoff leader.

The top five companies announcing the most layoffs for the study period were General Motors (75,733); Citigroup (52,175); Bank of America (35,000); Caterpillar (27,499) and Verizon (21,308). Among those top five, the biggest compensation package — nearly $17.5 million — went to Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon.

According to IPS, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. For comparison, the average compensation of a Japanese CEO is less than one-sixth that of their American counterpart and 16 times more than the average Japanese worker.

But on top of the lavish CEO pay at the expense of the American worker, many of these top-layoff firms received money from the taxpayer bailouts in 2008. Of these, IPS notes, “American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault took home the highest 2009 pay, $16.8 million, a sum that included a $5 million cash bonus. American Express has laid off 4,000 employees since receiving $3.39 billion in TARP funding.”

“These numbers all reflect a broader trend in Great Recession-era Corporate America,” the IPS report says, “the relentless squeezing of worker jobs, pay and benefits to boost corporate earnings and maintain corporate executive paychecks at their recent bloated levels.”

In April 2006, ThinkProgress produced a report titled “The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?” We wrote at the time, “a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded — not blamed — for their incompetence.” Referencing our report in July 2007, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “To read that summary is to be awed by the comprehensiveness and generosity of the neocon welfare system.”

Flash forward to today, and the answer to our original question of the Iraq war architects — “where are they now?” — can be answered quite simply: They’re on your TV screens, in your radio, and in your newspapers — shamelessly demanding credit for the work they’ve done.

For example, consider former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith. According to the Pentagon Inspector General’s office, Feith delivered a briefing to the White House in 2002 that “undercut the Intelligence Community” and “did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.” What is he doing now? In an interview with NPR yesterday, he blasted Obama for not properly crediting the “success” of Iraq:

He didn’t say America is more secure. And that’s the kind of statement that could help explain to the American people why we need to persevere and do all the things that he’s pledging to do in the future. … And then he also, in January of 2007, just when the surge was getting underway, proposed legislation that would have ended the war in March of 2008. And had that legislation succeeded, it would have prevented the success that he celebrated in his speech tonight.

Another example: former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who took blame for allowing President Bush to make the false claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa to build a nuclear weapon. What is he doing now? In an interview with the New York Times, Hadley demanded Bush be given “credit” for Iraq:

“I thought I owed it to the former president that somewhere out there somebody gives him some credit and points out that he’s the one actually that started withdrawing U.S. troops and he’s the one that set up the framework for both a long term relationship with Iraq and a December, 30 2011 end date,” Mr. Hadley said in an interview.

And there’s also former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who conceded the case for invading Iraq was determined based on what could be easily sold to the public. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” he said. In an op-ed in the New York Times this Monday, Wolfowitz was more magnanimous about sharing “credit” with U.S. soldiers, Iraqi forces, and the Iraqi people. Wolfowitz, who incorrectly predicted Iraq’s reconstruction would be paid for with Iraq’s oil, urged Obama to maintain “a long-term commitment, albeit at greatly reduced cost and risk.”

And on your TV sets, you’ll frequently see Ari Fleischer — the prominent pre-war mouthpiece who said Iraq would “shoulder much of the burden” for reconstruction, who said the Iraqis would “rejoice,” and who claimed that there was no chance “of losing the peace.” On both CNN and MSNBC over the last 24 hours, Fleischer has bemoaned that Bush isn’t being given enough credit for ending the war in Iraq. Watch it:

In April 2006, ThinkProgress produced a report titled “The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?” We wrote at the time, “a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded — not blamed — for their incompetence.” Referencing our report in July 2007, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “To read that summary is to be awed by the comprehensiveness and generosity of the neocon welfare system.”

Flash forward to today, and the answer to our original question of the Iraq war architects — “where are they now?” — can be answered quite simply: They’re on your TV screens, in your radio, and in your newspapers — shamelessly demanding credit for the work they’ve done.

For example, consider former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith. According to the Pentagon Inspector General’s office, Feith delivered a briefing to the White House in 2002 that “undercut the Intelligence Community” and “did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.” What is he doing now? In an interview with NPR yesterday, he blasted Obama for not properly crediting the “success” of Iraq:

He didn’t say America is more secure. And that’s the kind of statement that could help explain to the American people why we need to persevere and do all the things that he’s pledging to do in the future. … And then he also, in January of 2007, just when the surge was getting underway, proposed legislation that would have ended the war in March of 2008. And had that legislation succeeded, it would have prevented the success that he celebrated in his speech tonight.

Another example: former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who took blame for allowing President Bush to make the false claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa to build a nuclear weapon. What is he doing now? In an interview with the New York Times, Hadley demanded Bush be given “credit” for Iraq:

“I thought I owed it to the former president that somewhere out there somebody gives him some credit and points out that he’s the one actually that started withdrawing U.S. troops and he’s the one that set up the framework for both a long term relationship with Iraq and a December, 30 2011 end date,” Mr. Hadley said in an interview.

And there’s also former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who conceded the case for invading Iraq was determined based on what could be easily sold to the public. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” he said. In an op-ed in the New York Times this Monday, Wolfowitz was more magnanimous about sharing “credit” with U.S. soldiers, Iraqi forces, and the Iraqi people. Wolfowitz, who incorrectly predicted Iraq’s reconstruction would be paid for with Iraq’s oil, urged Obama to maintain “a long-term commitment, albeit at greatly reduced cost and risk.”

And on your TV sets, you’ll frequently see Ari Fleischer — the prominent pre-war mouthpiece who said Iraq would “shoulder much of the burden” for reconstruction, who said the Iraqis would “rejoice,” and who claimed that there was no chance “of losing the peace.” On both CNN and MSNBC over the last 24 hours, Fleischer has bemoaned that Bush isn’t being given enough credit for ending the war in Iraq. Watch it:

The Republican co-chair of President Obama’s Deficit Commission, former Sen. Alan Simpson, has been the subject of controversy recently following comments he made comparing the Social Security system to a “milk cow with 310 million tits.” Critics of Simpson’s comments took offense not only at his vulgar language but at his apparent belief that the Social Security system is in dire straits and may require cuts in benefits to stay solvent.

Now, Simpson has turned his focus to a different topic: veterans receiving disability benefits as a result of being exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Speaking to the press, Simpson complained that these benefits run “contrary to efforts to control federal spending,” and even went as far as to say that “the irony” is that “the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess”:

The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission said Tuesday.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson’s comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.

“The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess,” said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“It’s the kind of thing that’s just driving us to this $1 trillion, $400 billion deficit this year,” said Simpson of the benefits. “It’s not that I’m an uncaring person, but common sense is the most uncommon thing in Washington.”

Given that the VA estimates that providing care for veterans exposed to Agent Orange would cost only $67 billion over the next decade, it is difficult to imagine why Simpson would see the program as prime for cost-cutting. If the deficit co-chair is really serious about cutting waste out of the government and tackling the deficit, there are far more attractive targets. Earlier this year, Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) Sustainable Defense Task Force identified nearly $1 trillion in waste that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years simply by eliminating outdated Cold War-era programs.

Meanwhile, as the Center for Economic and Policy Research demonstrates with its Health Care Budget Calculator, if the United States were to move to a more efficient health care system — which could be done partly by offering an efficient Medicare-style insurance plan to all Americans, which commission member Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) advocates for — like those of our Canadian and European neighbors, our debt would virtually disappear over time.

The Republican co-chair of President Obama’s Deficit Commission, former Sen. Alan Simpson, has been the subject of controversy recently following comments he made comparing the Social Security system to a “milk cow with 310 million tits.” Critics of Simpson’s comments took offense not only at his vulgar language but at his apparent belief that the Social Security system is in dire straits and may require cuts in benefits to stay solvent.

Now, Simpson has turned his focus to a different topic: veterans receiving disability benefits as a result of being exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Speaking to the press, Simpson complained that these benefits run “contrary to efforts to control federal spending,” and even went as far as to say that “the irony” is that “the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess”:

The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission said Tuesday.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson’s comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.

“The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess,” said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“It’s the kind of thing that’s just driving us to this $1 trillion, $400 billion deficit this year,” said Simpson of the benefits. “It’s not that I’m an uncaring person, but common sense is the most uncommon thing in Washington.”

Given that the VA estimates that providing care for veterans exposed to Agent Orange would cost only $67 billion over the next decade, it is difficult to imagine why Simpson would see the program as prime for cost-cutting. If the deficit co-chair is really serious about cutting waste out of the government and tackling the deficit, there are far more attractive targets. Earlier this year, Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) Sustainable Defense Task Force identified nearly $1 trillion in waste that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years simply by eliminating outdated Cold War-era programs.

Meanwhile, as the Center for Economic and Policy Research demonstrates with its Health Care Budget Calculator, if the United States were to move to a more efficient health care system — which could be done partly by offering an efficient Medicare-style insurance plan to all Americans, which commission member Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) advocates for — like those of our Canadian and European neighbors, our debt would virtually disappear over time.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) conceded defeat in her primary race against tea party-backed Joe Miller last night, after a count of absentee ballots made it clear she would fall short. “It’s been a long week,” Murkowski told reporters. “I don’t see a scenario where we could win.” Miller moves on to face Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams in the general election.

In an address from the Oval Office last night, President Obama claimed no victory but said it was “time to turn the page” on the war in Iraq. The president also emphasized the dire state of the U.S. economy, and linked it in part to the war. “We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas,” Obama said. For a trip down memory lane, visit our Iraq War Timeline here.

“The 10 banks that received the most bailout aid during the financial crisis spent over $16 million on lobbying efforts in the first half of 2010,” as Congress was focused on debating its financial reform bill. The spending was 26 percent higher than over the same period in time in 2009.

Deploring the suspected arson at the site of the future Murfreesboro, TN mosque, Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) said, “I would ask everybody to remember this is a country whose deepest origins are in religious freedom.” The governor asked his state’s residents “to please have great respect for anyone’s religious preferences and their rights to practice those in the United States.”

Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus said yesterday that the Taliban is expanding its presence across the country even as U.S. and coalition forces close in on insurgent strongholds. “Levels of attacks have gone up and that’s a manifestation of us increasing our resources substantially and taking away safe havens,” he said, “And when the enemy’s safe havens are threatened they fight back.”

Bomb attacks in Afghanistan killed 21 U.S. servicemembers within a 48-hour period, in what may be the deadliest year yet for American forces. Petraeus warned that the fighting will “get harder before it gets easier.”

The first face-to-face talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since 2008 will begin today, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with President Obama in the White House. Expectations are low, but U.S. officials are hopeful they can at least get the two sides to agree to a second round of talks next month.

The Obama administration yesterday “formally challenged a court order barring the federal government from funding human embryonic stem cell research.” The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth “to suspend a temporary injunction he issued last week blocking the funding and filed a notice of plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals.”

And finally: Former House Speaker and current FreedomWorks chief Dick Armey told the Texas Tribune that he’s not interested in being the leader of the tea party movement because he’s too busy caring for his goats. When asked if he would step up to lead the movement, Armey replied, “Oh, no, no, no, no. I’ve got 34 goats that depend on me daily. I couldn’t be away that long.”

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Yesterday, after soliciting input from the GOP base, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced that “the long-awaited Republican manifesto” will be released after lawmakers return to Washington in September. One part of that base that has been particularly vocal and influential is the Tea Party. But while some Republicans view the Tea Party as toxic to the GOP, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has fully embraced the Tea Party’s input, stating that members “represent the same values, concerns” of “tens of millions of other Americans” and that “we should listen to them, we should work with them and we should walk amongst them.”

If Boehner “walked among” Tea Party members in Erie County, OH, they may provide interesting insight for his new “manifesto.” As the Guardian’s Leo Hickman reports, a local Ohio newspaper the Sandusky Register obtained an email sent out last week by a local Tea party group called The Freedom Institute of Erie County. According to the email, the Tea Party group is creating a “Conservative voter guide” on the positions of candidates seeking office in upcoming elections in order to “rate, recommend, and endorse candidates” based on how they answer 15 questions. While such surveys may be fairly “mundane,” it’s the questions outlining the group’s priorities that provide, as Hickman puts it, “a hearty serving of insight with a side order of jaw drop”:

Now let’s hear those 15 questions. (The document states that the respondents should give one of the following answers: A = Agree; D = Disagree; U = Undecided; A* = Pro-life with exceptions of Rape or Incest, * = Added comments; NR = No Response; CR = Incumbents Conservative Rating.)

1. The Right to Life is a Constitutional right, therefore innocent human beings should have legal protection from conception until natural death. If you hold any exceptions please state them.
2. The regulation of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere should be left to God and not government and I oppose all measures of Cap and Trade as well as the teaching of global warming theory in our schools.
3. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, any other type of Union is not marriage.
4. Children should not be placed into foster homes where the parents are homosexual, bisexual, or transgender.
5. Parental consent should be required for sex education that teaches more than direct abstinence.
6. The second Amendment to the Constitution [the right to keep and bear arms] should not be weakened in any way.
7. Only US citizens should be allowed to vote and a photo ID should always be required to vote. (The Mexican government requires a photo ID and fingerprint).
8. I oppose Ohio’s State Income Tax.
9. I oppose the Obama Health Care Reform and would like to see more affordable healthcare through a competitive, open, and transparent system.
10. I oppose the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of the military and believe that all same sex partners should be banned from combat duty in the military because of the propensity to transmit blood-borne diseases in the theatre of battle.
11. I support a law that will allow the people to place on a ballot all collective bargaining agreements of all government associations, unions, and guilds, for their expressed approval. Defeat of such an agreement would mean government workers would not be immune from the free market system.
12. I oppose card check for voting to implement a Union as this could give unions an unfair intimidation tactic to implement unionisation.
13. I am not an economic pacifist. I believe that we need to protect our economic borders in order to ensure free and fair trade. Tariffs should be used to stop the wealth and jobs of Americans from leaving her borders.
14. The Federal Reserve as it is currently conceived needs to be abolished or at the very least audited.
15. I advocated moving our currency to a debt-free supply-side labour-based currency.

The email’s author, the Freedom Institute Steering Committee member Jon P. Morrow, tells candidates to “please keep it short sweet and simple” as their answers will “reach 1,000+ Republicans and at least 4.000+ Independents that have a history of voting conservatively.”

According to its website, the Freedom Institute’s purpose is to act as the government’s watchdog and to “raise funds to advocate, advertise, educate, and inform the public on constitutionally conservative positions and conservative candidates we endorse.” Membership only requires taking “the Patriots Oath” constructed by Iran Contra operative Oliver North and right-wing Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson. But ab endorsement, it seems, requires a rejection of LGBT rights and that environmental regulation be “left to God.”

While Boehner has not outright endorsed the group’s principles listed in the survey, significant bastions of the conservative establishment, including the Heritage Foundation and the Koch-funded Cato Institute, are listed as “partners” of the group. President Obama, however, gets his own separate tab and title: “the enemy.”