Daily Kos

Lynn Stuart Parramore writes The British class system looks frighteningly rigid in "56 Up." But is America any better?

The American Dream is woven with promises of mobility: if you roll up your sleeves and work hard, you can succeed against any odds. A 2009 poll found that even after the body blow of the Great Recession, nearly two-thirds of Americans continued to believe that you can start out poor and still achieve wealth through individual effort. As Americans, we look at figures like Oprah Winfrey, a child of poverty in the rural South, as evidence that anyone can reach the top of the class pyramid with enough hard work and persistence. If she had children, Winfrey could send them to most any posh boarding school in the country. We look at the hierarchies and snobberies that still exist in the UK and consider our system superior. We feel this way partly because of our history. Our founders made much of having left behind the rigid hierarchies of Europe. Property is certainly a decisive factor in determining class, and in America, a land-based aristocracy only really existed in the South -- and that was pretty well smashed during and after the Civil War. But money is also a form of property, and having access to cash is what determines the hierarchical structure in capitalist systems like the one we find ourselves in today. If you can collect enough money, you can belong to the upper class in America. But who has a chance to get the cash? Americans are aware of class, but they overestimate mobility, which, according to numerous studies, is going the way of the wooly mammoth. In fact, mobility in America is among the lowest in developed countries – just about on par with the UK. In the "land of opportunity," children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution. Children born in France, Germany, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries have a better chance of moving upward. America’s children are facing a system that’s hardening with every budget cut and tax exemption for the rich. Forty-two percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the economic distribution are stuck there as adults, while 39 percent of children born at the top remain there. The U.S. Census Bureau found in 2010 that 22 percent of American children were living in poverty, a number that has been steadily rising since the 1980s. The growth of the financial sector and the destruction of New Deal programs pushed by conservatives and now embraced even by many liberals has increased economic equality dramatically. More poor children means more poor adults. Americans have long believed that economic inequality is OK as long as everybody has a chance to move from one rung of the ladder to the next. But the accelerating rise in inequality hasn’t meant more mobility, but less. What Americans are just beginning to grok is that we are pioneering a system that may be just as inflexible as the old system of landed classes. Our new system is based on access to mobile money, and it is spawning dynasties, creating closed social circles and birthing more devices for social exclusions that separate the well to do from the rest.

---

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—FBI Still Stuck in the Tron Age:

Three years after the attacks of September 11th, I was pretty disturbed to read this story in today's NYT: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is on the verge of scrapping a $170 million computer overhaul that is considered critical to the campaign against terrorism but has been riddled with technical and planning problems, F.B.I. officials said on Thursday. ... The development is a major setback for the F.B.I. in a decade-long struggle to escape a paper-driven culture and replace antiquated computer systems that have hobbled counterterrorism and criminal investigations. Robert S. Mueller III, the bureau's director, along with members of the Sept. 11 commission and other national security experts, have said the success of that effort is critical to domestic security. (Emphasis added.) Are they KIDDING me? Why can't they get this right, especially since these are long-standing problems, problems which the FBI was made aware of well before 9/11 - hell, a really, really long time before 9/11

---

Tweet of the Day:

---

On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin returns! The reality story of guns continues, with more of the most regularly predictable "unexpected" flukes, mishaps, and unimaginable coincidences ending in accidental shootings. We also broke our all-time record for mentions of the word "penis," but you knew that'd happen eventually. Plus, two other multi-layered gun-related stories: the lack of data about guns and the political machinations behind it, and; what it means that you can't have an "educational" discussion with a gun ultra.

---

High Impact Posts. Top Comments. Overnight News Digest.

Good news, gays! While your gayness is sinful enough to cause hurricanes, the destruction of the family, drunken boating accidents, and other natural disasters, it is not, according to Focus on the Family President Jim Daly, a "super sin":

Well, first of all. I don’t mean this controversially but it may sound controversial. The one big thing is: homosexuality is not a super sin. It’s one of many, including adultery — other things — lying, cheating, gossiping; it’s right there in the list. So often I think in the Christian community, because of the political nature of it today, that we tend to raise it up as something worse than all the others.

Yeah, quite a shame how the Christian community focuses so much of its attention on hating gay people when there are so many other kinds of sinners out there who need to be hated too. Come on, Christian community, multitask!

So often people come at me about the issue of homosexuality, and what I say is, the argument is not with me. I'm simply a human being trying to live by the tenets of my faith, and I'm not the editor of the Bible. I haven't been given that capability. I can't go in and scratch out the things I don't like.

Funny, because these people sure seem to think they have the ability to pick and choose which parts of the Bible they like. Unless they've all decided to stop eating bacon and wearing poly blends and will no longer insist Jesus hates birth control and taxing the rich? No? Okay, then, let's continue.

What I have to do as a Christian is try to live my life in such a way to adhere to those principles, and yet the Lord allows us to understand that we all fail. That's the beauty of it. God's grace is there for us when we fail. So when it comes to this issue of homosexuality, and how do you engage people in that lifestyle, make sure they know that you care, that they know you love them, you disagree with them, but you're there for them. And then do it. Make sure practically speaking, you're there.

 

Yes, we all fail. Some of us, however—like, say, the "good Christians" who want sinners to know they're loved and we're there for them, until they go straight to eternal hell, that is—fail more than others.

(Via)

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Once upon a time, unions were not the most immigrant- or immigration-friendly organizations. Today, it's a different story. Most unions want to see comprehensive immigration reform that doesn't demonize immigrants and doesn't create a pool of low-wage guest workers with few legal rights, subject to the whims of a single employer. And they don't just want it. They're fighting for it.

In a broad look at the history of unions and immigration, from Cesar Chavez's "hardline position against illegal immigration, which he viewed as an endless source of scab labor" on, TPM's Benjy Sarlin reports on how unions have come together around immigration as a key priority during President Barack Obama's second term:

With victory in sight, SEIU is committing the full force of its 2.1 million members to pushing comprehensive reform in 2013, with plans for rallies around the country, education campaigns for members, and an inside game aimed at lobbying lawmakers in Washington towards a final vote. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of unions, is on board as well; and the two sometimes rival groups are united around a common set of policy principles after splitting on President George W. Bush’s failed immigration effort. Both organizations identify passing a bill that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented population as one of their absolute top priorities for the 113th Congress.

Business groups are still going to be fighting for that pool of guest workers with few rights, and unions will be fighting against it. But the momentum is on the side of immigration reform happening, and unions are committed now, as they have been for a decade or more, to supporting it and winning the best reforms possible. That's not without potential benefits for unions:

[A]ccording to Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at CUNY who researches labor and immigration, the emphasis on passing a bill does point toward an emerging focus on low wage workers that’s increasingly defining the movement. It’s not just because immigrant-heavy jobs like janitors and nurses assistants are growing the fastest. By stressing their struggles working in typically low wage jobs, the SEIU and AFL-CIO may have a better shot at winning hearts and minds outside the movement than they would by highlighting workers in industries with more generous wages and benefits.

Additionally, most of these low-wage service sector jobs can't be sent overseas, so organizing them is a key to strengthening the role of workers in the economy overall. One way you stop the race to the bottom is by raising the bottom up. The closer we get to immigration reform, the more important the fight between unions trying to raise the bottom up and business groups trying to push the bottom down will become.

In Virginia, an attempt supported by Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell to automatically restore voting rights to felons ran into trouble last week:

On Monday, a Republican-controlled House panel killed House bills aimed at restoring voter rights to non-violent felons. But the issue is not dead because similar measures are pending in the Senate. Del. Robert B. Bell (R-Charlottesville) is among those who thinks felons should still have to apply to the governor to get their voting rights restored.

“I think you have some felons who have turned their lives around and should be eligible to vote, and others who are not sorry at all and have every intention to commit crimes again and that’s not someone I think should be voting,” Bell said.

In Maine and Vermont, convicted felons may vote absentee while they are incarcerated. In Florida and Virginia, on the other hand, felons can lose their voting rights forever and must appeal for a clemency ruling from the governor to get back their franchise. The governors can ignore them.

Nationwide, according to The Sentencing Project, 5.85 million Americans are barred from voting because of felony convictions. Because of disparities in the criminal-justice system about who gets arrested, tried and convicted, one in 13 African Americans is thus disenfranchised. Most states have some form of automatic restoration after felons serve their sentence or their plus parole time. But, depending on circumstances, 12 states, mostly in the West and South, can disenfranchise felons forever if they choose to do so.

Because minorities are incarcerated and disenfranchised in proportions far beyond the ratio of their numbers compared with the overall population, it is often argued that the laws taking away felons' voting rights are racially discriminatory. That has an impact not only on the individuals convicted but also on political power.

In an article last year in the University of Richmond Law Review about felony disenfranchisement in Virginia, Dori Elizabeth Martin writes:

Felony disenfranchisement profoundly impacts the political opportunity available to minority communities. Using a procedure called the “usual residence rule,” the Census Bureau counts prisoners as residents of the district in which they are incarcerated.
The result is often artificially inflated population totals in rural, majority white communities at the expense of the (largely minority) communities the inmates  ordinarily  would call home.

Of course, government funding and political representation are both functions of population, as determined by the Census, so the inmates quite literally increase the value of prison communities without reaping any of the benefits, while leaving their families and neighbors underrepresented. Critics of this system have compared its practical effects to the “Three-Fifths” Compromise in the original United States Constitution, which gave slaveowning states more political influence by including slaves in the population tallies for determining congressional representation.

The effects of this type of vote dilution could be particularly prominent in a state like Virginia, where criminal voting bans are not rescinded automatically. As mored (disproportionately minority) voters become disenfranchised, and comparatively few rejoin
the political process, the distribution of political power becomes increasingly disparate.

In Virginia currently, felons must wait for at least two years and as long as seven, before even applying to get their voting rights restored. As noted, the governor is under no obligation to approve an application. To his credit, Gov. McDonnell thinks that's a bad approach.

Virginia Assembly Del. Rosalyn R. Dance, a Democrat, says the current process for applying for restoration of voting rights is complicated. Consequently, few felons actually make the effort. Dance and Democratic Sen. A. Donald McEachin want McDonnell to name his voting-rights restoration bill for former senator Yvonne B. Miller. She died last year after championing the restoration cause for two decades.

This ought to be a matter of simple justice. Being convicted of felony shoplifting—$200 or more worth of merchandise—in Virginia may not result in prison time. But it costs the felon his or her voting rights for at least two years and far longer if the governor decides not to restore those rights. The subjectiveness of such a system covering thousands of people is an affront to justice.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson New York City school bus drivers are likely to go on strike on Wednesday, as negotiations between their union and city officials have failed to reach an agreement ensuring worker protections as the city puts some school busing contracts up for bid:

The dispute erupted last month when the Education Department announced that it would accept competitive bids for transporting 22,500 special-needs children, who require special services. The contracts would cover 1,100 bus routes, about a sixth of the city’s total.

Most galling for drivers and the union, the new contracts, among other things, would omit longstanding job security provisions requiring new companies to hire veteran bus drivers by order of seniority and at the same pay rate. The protections were put into effect in 1979 after a 13-week walkout. There have been no strikes since.

Officials, including Mr. Walcott and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, have argued that a 2011 ruling by the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, prohibited the city from including the protective provisions in new contracts. The union has said the ruling applied only to contracts for busing prekindergarten students.

City officials, led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are using rhetoric familiar to those who followed the Chicago teachers' strike; school bus drivers are selfish and don't care about children, as evidenced by the fact that they're fighting for job protections. Bloomberg points to the fact that New York pays more per student for busing than does Los Angeles, but doesn't talk as much about the fact that gas prices, rent and homeownership, and other basic expenses are higher in New York than Los Angeles. New York's school busing costs may or may not be too high, but Bloomberg is hardly a reasonable source of information.

New York City after-school drama teacher Molly Knefel writes that the prospect of replacing longtime drivers for special needs students in particular matters:

... because how we treat those who care for certain children reflects how we value those children. It creates a system in which workers entrusted to be responsible for a child's safety are utterly replaceable in the name of protecting the bottom line. Bus drivers and matrons greet children in the morning and return them home in the afternoon and students with disabilities require specific knowledge, care and attention. Routine and stability are important to all children, but especially so to certain populations of special-needs children, including those with autism or emotional/behavioral disorders.

Knefel also points out that Bloomberg's policies closing many neighborhood schools and promoting a "choice" system in which students travel far from their homes to attend school has heightened the city's reliance on the bus drivers who are now under attack by the Bloomberg administration.

If the drivers do go on strike, the city has a plan to provide students with MetroCards for public transit access or to reimburse transportation costs for students who don't have access to public transit.

Impeach!

Congressman Steve Stockman (R-Texas 36th) released the following statement Monday afternoon.

The White House’s recent announcement they will use executive orders and executive actions to infringe on our constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms is an unconstitutional and unconscionable attack on the very founding principles of this republic.

Aside from the fact that not even this right-wing Supreme Court has stated that there is an absolute right to keep any arms, the reality is that President Barack Obama hasn't actually released any specific plan yet. Hysterics for the sake of hysterics aren't becoming of a United States representative. That is, unless he's auditioning for the part of Allen West.

(Big impeachment talk continued below the fold.)

A policy brief on gun violence was released today by The Center for American Progress, the Washington, D.C.-based progressive research and advocacy group headed by Neera Tanden. The brief, "Preventing Gun Violence in Our Nation," includes detailed recommendations written by Tanden, Winnie Stachelberg, Arkadi Gerney and Danielle Baussan. They cover both legislative proposals and executive orders. The gun-violence task force presided over by Vice President Joe Biden will release its recommendations Tuesday.

The recommendations fall into three major categories: better background checks; taking "military-grade weapons" off the streets; and "better data, better coordination and better enforcement" of existing laws. Some of them have become well known in the debate over new restrictions that began after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded and others murdered or injured in Tucson in January 2011 and intensified after the Aurora, Colorado, theater murders last summer and the slaughter of first-graders and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, last month. Others are new or take a fresh approach to old proposals.

How many of these could gain presidential or congressional approval is anybody's guess at the moment. A ban on "military-grade" weapons, for instance, would clearly meet stiff resistance in the House and, quite possibly, the Senate even though several polls, including the latest by the Washington Post and ABC News, show a majority of Americans favor such a ban. Improved background checks have a better chance, not least because these have broad popular support among the majority of gun-owners as well as other Americans.

In the condensed version of the recommendations below, I have added a • to mark proposals for legislative action and a ° for proposed executive orders:

• A background check for every gun sale [...]

• Input all necessary records into the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System
Requiring that all gun sales be predicated on a criminal background check is an effective means of keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals—but only if the
background check system itself functions properly. Since the Brady Handgun Violence
Prevention Act was passed in 1993 to mandate all licensed gun dealers perform background checks, the FBI has conducted more than 150 million background checks in
connection with gun sales, blocking gun transfers in more than 1.7 million instances. But for the system to work better, states must provide the federal government with the
names of all the individuals who are prohibited from owning firearms for inclusion in
the nationwide database.

Though this seems like a common-sense action, states have been slow to provide these
records, particularly regarding individuals barred from owning guns due to mental illness. Ten states have failed to provide any mental health records to the National Instant
Criminal Background Check System, and 18 others have submitted fewer than 100
records since the creation of the system in 1999. [...]

• Prevent convicted stalkers from acquiring guns [...]

• Close the “terror gap”
Nothing in the current law prevents known or suspected terrorists from clearing a background check and purchasing guns. And some of them are doing just that [...]

° Penalize states that fail to provide records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System [...]

° Ensure that federal agencies provide required records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System [...]

° Perform background checks on employees of federally licensed dealers during the course of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives audit inspections [...]

• Reregulate assault weapons
These military-style assault weapons should be banned from sale in the United States in the manner proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who plans to introduce a bill to stop the sale, transfer, importation, and manufacturing of militarystyle assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices. Alternatively, the administration might consider legislation to require licensing and transfer restrictions on new and existing assault rifles, similar to the scheme currently in place for machine guns and other Class III firearms.This action would reduce access to such militarygrade weapons by felons, the Mexican drug cartels, and mentally deranged individuals.

• Ban high-capacity gun magazines [...]

° Require broader reporting of multiple sales of assault rifles [...]

• Strip riders from the administration’s fiscal year 2014 budget and all future budgets that restrict gun data collection and sharing
[This would repeal the so-called Tiahrt Amendments that restrict the collection and use of gun-related data] [...]

• Treat gun trafficking as a serious crime [...]

° Begin the process of the FBI absorbing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
In recent years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has become a
beleaguered agency that is unable to adequately fulfill its mission to oversee and enforce
federal firearms laws. For reasons such as lack of funding, limitations on its activities
included in appropriations riders, and a leadership vacuum, the bureau is simply incapable
of functioning properly as a standalone agency in its current state. These problems undermine the bureau’s ability to combat gun crime and illegal trafficking. Also undermined is the morale of roughly 2,500 bureau agents who risk their lives daily to make the United States safer. These agents deserve to work in an agency that matches their own tenacity [...]

Despite the continuing claims of the National Rifle Association, other gun lobbies, hate-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and whack jobs like James Yeager, there's not one word in CAP's recommendations about registering guns, licensing owners or any mass confiscation of firearms, including those for which future sales would be banned.

That doesn't, however, mean that these proposals, if they happen to match what the vice president announces Tuesday, won't be fought fang and claw by NRA and congressional Republicans.

Ha ha ha!

The South Florida Tea Party — the group that helped Marco Rubio launch his Senate bid and that hosted Donald Trump during his last flirtation with a presidential run — is shedding the words “tea party” as it undergoes a name change.

“We felt for branding reasons that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from certain organizations that have the name ‘tea party’ and we can’t control,” said Everett Wilkinson, leader of the organization that will now be called the National Liberty Federation.

Given what they've done to the "Tea Party" brand, it won't be long before only eight percent want to be associated with the word "liberty."

Maryland state legislator Don Dwyer is a religious conservative who has called himself "the face of the opposition" to gay marriage, chastising fellow legislators to reject it because Jeebus and stuff. Most Americans, however, know this self-proclaimed defender of the Constitution and freedoms and whatnot mostly from his alcohol-fueled boating crash last year (and yes, there were injuries, and yes, he's still facing charges).

In this new, miserably depressing story on Dwyer, he cites two things as the reasons for the "increased" drinking that culminated in his crash with another boat, causing him multiple injuries and fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl. The first is his 2011 separation from his wife. The second is the pressure of being in the legislature, but more specifically, that time other legislators "betrayed" him by not being sufficiently anti-gay-marriage themselves:

Dwyer says he felt sold out when Dels. Tiffany Alston, Wade Kach and Bob Costa voted for same-sex marriage, an issue he spent years crusading against. Dwyer told reporters one day before the vote that he had enough support to block the bill.

Kach, a Republican from Baltimore County, and Alston, a former Democrat from Prince George’s County, voted against the bill in committee. But Kach changed his vote after hearing testimony from gay couples. Alston shifted her vote after her amendment was adopted.

Kach and Costa, of Deale, were the only two House Republicans to vote for the bill. It passed the House by two votes in  February.

“I had no time to do anything,” Dwyer said. “Had I known earlier, I could have taken some action.”

It was petitioned to the November ballot and passed by 52 percent of voters state wide. Voters in Dwyer’s district, however, rejected it.

“That betrayal really affected me,” he said. “I was physically ill. You pour your heart into an issue like that and it’s devastating.”

He said his drinking culminated in the crash.

So an intense hatred of gay marriage—and not having that hatred reciprocated by his fellow legislators and voters—is what drove this poor defender of proper marriage and proper faith to booze up and crash his damn boat into another boat. That's some powerful hatred, right there.

In the wake of the crash, Dwyer did not resign as any decent person might, instead gaudily announcing he needs to stay put to "defend individual liberty against unconstitutional laws," but he does admit he needs to rebuild "trust" with voters. I don't know that voters should be keen on reelecting someone whose past reaction to other people being insufficiently anti-gay was to booze up and nearly get some people killed, but I am not from Maryland, I am not a Republican voter, and Dwyer seems confident that all will be forgiven, allowing him to get back to expressing his obsessively anti-gay frustrations in some hopefully less child-skull-fracturing ways.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it means to be an American religious conservative.

This is from last week, but well worth a replay:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional leaders:

Dear Mr. Speaker:

I am writing to provide additional information regarding the extraordinary measures Treasury has undertaken in order to avoid default on the nation’s obligations.

Treasury currently expects to exhaust these extraordinary measures between mid-February and early March of this year.  We will provide a more narrow range with a more targeted estimate at a later date.  Any estimate, however, will be subject to a significant amount of uncertainty because we are entering the tax filing season, when the amounts and timing of tax payments and refunds are unpredictable.  For this reason, Congress should act as early as possible to extend normal borrowing authority in order to avoid the risk of default and any interruption in payments.

If the extraordinary measures were allowed to expire without an increase in borrowing authority, Treasury would be left to fund the government solely with the cash we have on hand on any given day.  As you know, cash would not be adequate to meet existing obligations for any meaningful length of time because the government is currently operating at a deficit.

The letter goes on to discuss the ramifications of default and to explain why America's full faith and credit should never be taken hostage, but the key news here is that Congress now has a more concrete deadline—a deadline not for when we're going to hit the debt limit (we've already hit it) but for when the administration says it will no longer be able to easily bail Congress out from its failure to act. And now, as President Obama said today, it's Congress's turn to act.

Reposted from Daily Kos Economics by Roosevelt Institute By Tim Price, originally published on Next New Deal

Click here to receive the Daily Digest via email.

The Tim Geithner Era (Slate)

Matthew Yglesias looks back on the mixed record of Tim Geithner, the influential treasury secretary who seemingly only managed to convince one person that he had all the answers, but lucked out with that person being the president of the United States.

The Mortgage Mess and Jack Lew (Prospect)

Robert Kuttner argues that progressives should press hard on Jack Lew to find out whether he would have let the latest mortgage settlement happen on his watch—once they're finished rolling their eyes at the president's praise for his budget-balancing skills.

Treasury: We won't mint a platinum coin to sidestep the debt ceiling (WaPo)

Ezra Klein reports that life has killed the dream we dreamed, as the Treasury Department says it won't mint a trillion-dollar coin and the Federal Reserve wouldn't accept it if it did. The only option on the table is for Congress to do the right thing. God help us all.

The Platinum Coin Wouldn't Have Been Goofy to FDR (Bloomberg)

Jonathan Alter notes that despite the absurdity of ideas like the platinum coin, FDR used tactics, like moving off the gold standard, that were no less gimmicky. But he wasn't worried about his critics' jokes given how often the punch line was "and it worked."

Japan Steps Out (NYT)

Paul Krugman writes that Japan, not really a hotbed of radical economic thought, is breaking with the orthodoxy under prime minister Shinzo Abe, whose push for stimulus and inflation is upsetting austerity advocates by failing to upset anyone else.

Obama's Job One: Middle-Class Employment Problems Loom Over Second Term (HuffPo)

Dave Jamieson and Arthur Delaney note that after campaigning on a promise to restore the middle class, President Obama must now figure out how to do that when immigration reform and gun control look like safer bets than getting Congress to care about jobs.

Why the Unemployment Rate Is So High (NYT)

Laura D'Andrea Tyson argues that the evidence shows the U.S. doesn't have a structural unemployment problem, but by letting the unemployed languish for months and years with no new support or opportunities in sight, we're doing our best to create one.

Ouch! No, you're not imagining it. Your paycheck just shrank. (WaPo)

Neil Irwin notes that the expiration of the payroll tax cut became evident with the arrival of the first paychecks of 2013 last week. The question is how many Americans will make cutting back on spending their retroactive New Year's resolution.

This Week in Poverty: Smiley Calls for White House Conference on US Poverty (The Nation)

Greg Kaufmann offers a sneak peek at an upcoming forum that calls for a national plan to end poverty within the next 25 years, and how it could serve as a useful reminder to the White House that a good way to start helping people is by asking what they need.

Paying the Price, but Often Deducting It (NYT)

Question: When is a settlement not a settlement? Answer: When it's also a tax break. Gretchen Morgenson notes that banks may write their payments from recent foreclosure settlements off as business expenses, because there's no budget for shame.