Democrat Blasts Social Security Story: Washington Post Ignores 1983 Solvency Deal

A longtime Democratic strategist is blasting a story which appeared Sunday in the Washington Post, which portrayed Social Security as helping to drive the federal government's mounting federal budget deficit.

The story, "Social Security Adding Billions to Budget Woes... Cash Negative Milestone Came Early," unnecessarily frightens seniors, distorts the national debate on the debt and is simply wrong, according to Robert Weiner, a former House Aging Committee chief of staff, and later a White House spokesman during the Clinton administration.

"It's part of a damaging national trend of sloppy journalism that buys into an often-repeated untruth about Social Security and must stop," says Weiner, who was the top Aging panel staffer under the late Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.), who helped engineer a Social Security solvency deal during the Reagan administration. "The Post piece is endemic of a recent media trend ignoring the 1983 federal deal –- a grand compromise between President Reagan and the then Democrat-controlled Congress, that saved Social Security by protecting its funds and solvency through 2037 and is routinely ignored by the media and advocates of 'reform' (ie cuts) today."

Social Security is like a bank that can lend its surplus to the federal government for other purposes, but doing so does not negate the its obligation to make up the difference and repay its customers -- Social Security recipients -- under the 1983 deal, Weiner says.

"To cut a national deficit by cutting Social Security, which does not have a deficit, is theft from seniors who have paid in," Weiner says. "If a bank told a customer, 'Sorry. We've spent your money on other items,' would anyone accept that or say: 'Fine, you made money on my money but you still owe me mine. Pay up.'"

Weiner points what he calls the "fallacy of the Post's assertion of a cash-negative milestone."

"There have actually been 11 years since 1963—-according to the Social Security Trustees' own website and information—-where the Trust Fund surplus has easily absorbed a temporary debt, as there is this year under the national economic crisis. Social Security has nearly three TRILLION dollars in surplus based on what seniors have paid in," he says. "This year's $46 billion shortfall is a blip and it's covered -– sorry if other programs might have to pay what they owe."

"Do we say we won't pay defense contractors or the FBI because we have a deficit?" Weiner says, rhetorically. "Seniors are every bit as much a part of America's values, and it's their money that laid the Social Security funding base that the feds now want to use for other things."

President Obama was exactly right when he said he would take Social Security off the table and treat it on a "separate track" for long term solvency, Weiner says.

"It has NOTHING to do with any deficit calculation for the ten-year deal the Supercommittee is supposed to come up with," Weiner says, referring to the bipartisan deficit-reduction panel. "In fact, because the baby boomers are part of a record HIGH 2.7 -per family birth rate BUT they themselves have a record LOW 2.1-per family baby rate, the 23 percent shortfall beginning in 2037 will be followed by a SURPLUS some 15 years later when FEWER benefits need to be paid out. The media never cites that point."

Moreover, Social Security has reduced poverty among seniors by approximately 50 percent and Medicare by another 25 percent for a total of poverty reduction among seniors of approximately 75 percent, Weiner notes.

"Seniors were the only group this year that did not increase the percent in poverty – their total remains 7 percent in poverty, a real achievement. ANY cuts to the program will mean a high proportion of people going BACK into poverty, welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and emergency health coverage," he says. "In other words, cutting Social Security or Medicare will COST the nation money."

Weiner notes that Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), led a group of Progressive, Black, and Hispanic Caucus members in a news conference, telling the so-called supercommittee, "NO cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid."

"He is right," Weiner says. "There is a real question as to why Democrats or the White House would give up such a strong base issue of No Medicare or Social Security cuts that counters some of the other economic bad news and actually turned around a 30-year Republican New York district to a Democratic win earlier this year. It is perhaps the best issue the Democrats have.

"Why cede the ground to the Republicans and why give them cover to say there is any validity to Republican Budget Chair Paul Ryan's proposed slashing of Medicare by half as voted by all House Republicans, and his earlier call for cutting Social Security?" Weiner adds. "The new Health Care Act guarantees an additional nine years of solvency for Medicare, according to [the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office], also effectively reducing it from the Supercommittee's ten-year budget deficit needs except for perhaps the final year."


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New Polls Buoy Senate Democrats

New opinion polls give Democrats reason to smile as they head into an uphill battle to hold their small majority in the Senate.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) on Sunday released a trio of poll results, which show Democrats competitive in two 2012 matchups--and a third comfortably ahead in the swing state of Ohio.

Senate Democrats will go into elections next year defending 23 seats, while Republicans only have to defend 10. If Democrats lose just four seats, Republicans would retake the majority in the chamber, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) likely would be in charge of the Senate.

All of Congress would then by under GOP control, if Republicans continue to hang on to the House of Representatives.

The polls released by the DSCC, the arm of the Democratic Party in charge of electing Democrats to the Senate, show competitive races in Nevada and Wisconsin. The third shows freshman Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) well ahead of Republican state Treasurer Josh Mandel, a potentially strong 2012 opponent.

The polls in Nevada and Wisconsin show Democratic Reps. Shelley Berkley and Tammy Baldwin in dead heats for their respective campaigns. Berkley is facing Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who was appointed to his seat earlier this year. Baldwin polled even with potential rival Tommy Thompson, the former longtime Wisconsin governor and Bush-era Cabinet secretary. Baldwin would become the first openly gay senator.

The DSCC touts the new good news as reason for supporters to donate ahead of an end-of-the-month fundraising deadline, in which it is seeking to raise $32,000 by the end of the day on Monday.

"We have come from behind to statistical ties in NV and WI, and we are maintaining a lead in OH," says DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil. "This positive momentum means our plan is working. We are proving we can beat them. But the plan is only working because we’ve been able to fund it, month by month. If we make our October goal, this momentum will continue."


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Think Again: Why Are ‘Liberals’ Such Meanies?

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Eric Alterman

Washington Post pundit Charles Lane is the former editor of The New Republic. So you might suspect him of being a liberal (though given the magazine’s well-known embrace of neoconservative foreign policy tenets, and the constant stream of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim invective it publishes, this is a more complicated story than it initially appears to be). So when Lane wrote a column in the Post recently attacking “liberals” for their alleged lack of civility, one must figure that he had quite a case.

“Liberals,” Lane insisted, “are in deep, deep denial about their own incivility issues.” His primary example? Recently installed New York Times pundit Joe Nocera’s column, which employed terrorism and jihad metaphors to discuss how Tea Party Republicans held Congress and the Obama administration hostage during the debt negotiations.

Moreover, Lane was offended that Nocera used adjectives like “intransigent” regarding Republicans and said they were indifferent to “inflicting more pain on their countrymen” via “the terrible toll $2.4 trillion in cuts will take on the poor and the middle class.”

To most liberals—indeed, to many if not most Americans—the above is simply an accurate description of Tea Party goals and tactics. (Indeed, it’s probably accurate in the minds of many Tea Party partisans.) What’s more, Nocera’s bosses on the Times editorial board only recently condemned “many on the right” for “exploit[ing] the arguments of division” and “demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.”

Right-wingers, the Times notes, “seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.” Once again, these terms do not appear terribly harsh or inaccurate, given the statements one frequently hears both in Congress and on the presidential trail. But Lane’s tender sensibilities find them to be overly harsh.

There are two ironies here. First, since when is the business writer Joe Nocera such a famous liberal? The last time I had reason to notice him in print, he was cheering Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan. “Even if Ryan’s solution is wrongheaded,” he writes, “he’s right that Medicare is headed for trouble.”

Lane apparently accorded Nocera the honor of the “liberal” label merely for the purposes of attacking “liberals” in general. This is consistent with the way many in the media treat the term—a “liberal” is anyone who does not reject science out of hand and does not want to murder immigrants with electric fences—but only for the purposes of attacking them.

The second, equally painful irony is that the attack—and one supposes others like them—apparently worked. Nocera took it all back. In a mea culpa column, he wrote that he had learned that “Businessmen were not the embodiment of evil, as liberals sometimes seemed to think.” (I don’t actually know a single liberal who thinks this, and of course neither does Nocera, which is why he uses the weasel word “seemed to.”) He added that he “came to see [him]self as a pragmatist who favored common-sense solutions over ideology.” Not so liberal after all.

But merely attacking himself was not enough. Nocera had to attack liberals as well. And what better liberal to attack than the grandest of them all for the past generation: Ted Kennedy.

In a recent column entitled “The Ugliness Started With Bork,” Nocera insisted that Robert Bork—Ronald Reagan’s nominee to the Supreme Court in 1987 whom Kennedy fiercely attacked on the Senate floor for being radically conservative—could not “be fairly characterized as extreme.” In doing so, however, he was forced to ignore the fact that among his many odd legal views, Bork did not believe the Constitution contained a protection for privacy. He added, in reviewing the experience, “Democrats can be—and have been—every bit as obstructionist, mean-spirited and unfair” and were responsible for “the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics.”

To prove this point, he quotes the far-right legal activist Clint Bolick, who coined the angry verb “to bork,” which meant to destroy a nominee by whatever means necessary. The line, he says, “from Bork to today’s ugly politics is a straight one.”

Nocera particularly objected to Ted Kennedy’s fiery speech describing “Robert Bork’s America” as a place “in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions [and] blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters” was a primary cause of our current conundrum. He calls it “despicable” but he does not claim it was untrue. And in fact, there were a number of cases before the Court in which it would have been possible for Bork to rule in exactly these directions. It wasn’t possible, however, given Bork’s belief that no right to privacy existed and that Roe v. Wade had been wrongly decided.

Again, quoting Bolick, Nocera says he thinks “Bork’s beliefs would have made him a restraining force.” He quotes with yet another attack on liberals: “Mostly, though, the point remains this: The next time a liberal asks why Republicans are so intransigent, you might suggest that the answer lies in the mirror.”

A few points in response. First, as I noted in Why We’re Liberals, this wonderfully moderate, judicious fellow Mr. Bork wrote in his 2003 book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, “There are aspects of almost every branch of our culture that are worse than ever before and the rot is spreading.” That rot derives from the nation’s “enfeebled, hedonistic culture,” its “uninhibited display of sexuality,” its “popularization of violence in … entertainment,” and “its angry activists of feminism, homosexuality, environmentalism, animal rights—the list could be extended almost indefinitely.”

Bork closes out his account by insisting that the country is “now well along the road to the moral chaos that is the end of radical individualism and the tyranny that is the goal of radical egalitarianism. Modern liberalism has corrupted our culture across the board.”

As Bork would have it, things have gotten so bad that he was willing to participate in a November 1996 symposium entitled “The End of Democracy?,” sponsored by the theoconservative journal First Things, in which the contributors addressed themselves to the proposition that “we [America] have reached or are reaching the point where conscientious citizens can no longer give moral assent to the existing regime.”

Bork wrote that he found himself agreeing with his wife when she dismissed the Supreme Court justices as a “band of outlaws.” “An outlaw is a person who coerces others without warrant in law,” he wrote. “That is precisely what a majority of the present Supreme Court does.” How sad that we have been denied that moderate, civil, and sensible voice on our Supreme Court.

Second, as Rutgers professor David Greenberg points out in Slate, as a historical matter, Nocera could hardly be more wrong. “[T]he Bork battle was nothing new. Fighting over Supreme Court nominees is practically built into the Constitution. And an actively involved and sometimes obstreperous Senate has been the norm, not the exception, in our past.”

And as for nasty comments about one’s political opponents, well, it is simply impossible to take Nocera seriously if he thinks they did not predate the Bork battle, and I will do him the courtesy of refusing to do so.

The upshot? A former New Republic “liberal” now employed by The Washington Post attacks a New York Times “liberal” (who isn’t really a liberal at all) for incivility. And just to prove it, the latter goes on to attack genuine liberals for incivility by rewriting and ignoring history to make phony accusations to pretend that the first fellow was right in the first place.

It’s true that many liberals won’t take their own side in a fight. But it’s harder when there aren’t any actual liberals present in the first place.

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a columnist for The Nation, The Forward, and The Daily Beast. His newest book is Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama. This column won the 2011 Mirror Award for Best Digital Commentary.

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It Could Get Crowded Out There: New Protests Planned 'In Solidarity With' OWS

In just a few short weeks, Occupy Wall Street has done more than merely spawn hundreds of other Occupy protests across the country and around the world. It's given birth to an entire movement which has rejuvenated the whole of the American left, almost literally overnight.

Labor unions, progressive advocacy organizations, and others have all rushed to associate themselves with Occupy, and that association has clearly become a two-way street. The unions and others have been supporting Occupy with financial, media, and other forms of support.

But these organizations also very much seem to want to tap into all of this new energy on the left.

Democracy For America, an organization associated with former Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, has begun offering yard signs and bumper stickers "co-branded" with its own imprimatur, and that of Occupy.

Famously leaderless and non-hierarchical, there's no one with the Occupy movement empowered to fight off this potential "infringement" of the Occupy brand.

More recently, though, another Washington progressive heavyweight, MoveOn.org, has taken its association with Occupy Wall Street a step further.

MoveOn.org has begun to plan its own phalanx of anti-Wall Street protests separate from those of the Occupy movement. MoveOn's calling its brand of protests "Make Wall Street Pay."

"How is this connected to Occupy Wall Street? Our goal is to launch targeted local campaigns to complement the amazing work being done by brave Occupy Wall Street protesters—-something MoveOn members around the country have been asking for," Lenore Palladino of MoveOn.org says in an email. "And we'll continue to do everything we can to support and stand in solidarity with #Occupy.

"There are plenty of ways to take action to Make Wall Street Pay—from helping homeowners facing illegal foreclosures to a campaign encouraging municipalities, schools, and organizations to move their money to local banks to protesting at branches of Wall Street banks," she says.

In truth, these MoveOn.org demonstrations won't be the first non-Occupy protests out there, of course. Although Occupy Wall Street clearly has become the most well-known of the protests, it's never held a monopoly. Others have been demonstrating alongside Occupy.

The New Bottom Line, for instance, is a coalition of community organizations, congregations, labor unions, and others which has been staging demonstrations across the country, to challenge established big bank interests on behalf of struggling and middle-class communities in much the same way as Occupy. However, while the New Bottom Line shares the spirit of Occupy, it's its own distinct entity.

Occupy, itself, also has accommodated independent groups within its own movement, such as Stop The Machine, which helped establish Occupy DC.

MoveOn.org's own Wall Street protests could be different in at least one important way, however.

Occupy Wall Street and the other protest groups so far have not only resisted establishing internal leadership hierarchies, they've also not not wanted to put forward any specific demands or engage in any significant way with the political process.

It's not clear that MoveOn.org's protest apparatus would operate under such constraint. MoveOn.org, after all, was itself established more than a dozen years ago as an effort to try to head off the Republican-led impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, MoveOn.org today runs its own political action committee (PAC) right in the nation's capital.

None of this is to say that there is necessarily anything nefarious, or even wrong, in what MoveOn.org is doing.

Any efforts to turn the anti-Wall Street protests toward a more explicitly political agenda -- and doing so from within the established Washington progressive establishment -- could wind up changing the complexion of the entire movement very quickly.


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Capitol Idea: No Joke: Rick Perry Proves Himself Unfit For The Presidency

By Scott Nance

I understand that Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign was flailing and floundering. I understand that he was trying to do or say something, anything, that would lift him back to the frontrunner status that he'd so quickly fallen from.

But to rehash the so-thoroughly-debunked "birther" theories about President Obama, and then to couch it as a joke, is not only mean-spirited, unfounded and wrong. To do so was so fundamentally irresponsible as to call into question the candidate's basic judgement so profoundly as to render him essentially unfit for the high office which he seeks.

Perry not once, but twice, tried in recent days to raise fresh questions about whether the president was indeed born in the United States and therefore legally entitled to hold the office. He should have picked up the phone and called Donald Trump on that one. It may seem an age away, but just six months ago Trump was building what appeared to be a surging White House bid precisely and entirely on the birther issue.

The president responded by releasing his "long-form birth certificate" — the exact document which birther conspiracy theorists had been demanding for years. Doing so popped immediately Trump's presidential aspirations like the trial balloon that it was, and we fortunately have heard nary a presidential squeak from The Donald ever since.

Releasing the long-form certificate also presumably would put the whole stupid issue to rest permanently. Except that Perry resurrected the controversy for naked political gain, and then tried to spin it as just a little harmless fun: “It’s a good issue to keep alive. . . It’s fun to poke [Obama] a little bit and say, ‘Hey, let’s see your grades and your birth certificate.’ I don’t have a clue about where the president — and what this birth certificate says.”

Governor Perry, you aren't auditioning for some open-mic comedy show, you are campaigning to become the leader of the Free World. For a serious presidential candidate to call into question the legitimacy of the current occupant of that office is not a matter of simple tomfoolery. It's a most serious charge, and in this case, to try to reiterate such a serious charge, one that's already proven to be baseless on its face, isn't only unpresidential, it's so ridiculous as to clearly demonstrate that Perry just is not serious.

It's so ridiculous that not one, not two, of but at least three,of Perry's fellow Republicans had to call him out. “You associate yourself with a nutty view like that and you damage yourself,” Bush White House aide Karl Rove says. “. . . It starts to marginalize you in the minds of some of the people whom you need in order to get the election.” Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and a former chairman of the Republican Party, also took Perry to the woodshed. The birther issue, Barbour says, is “not good for the Republicans.” “Republican candidates should categorically reject the notion that President Obama was not born in the United States,” says former Florida governor Jeb Bush. “It is a complete distraction from the failed economic policies of the President.”

Congratulations, Governor Perry. In trying to somehow prove Barack Obama isn't a legitimate president, you proved you aren't much of a legitimate candidate.

Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington. This article originally was published as "No Joke: Rick Perry Proves Himself Unfit For The Presidency," on Blogcritics.

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Pelosi: The Supercommittee's Work Should Be 'Public Domain'

Even as lawmakers wrangle over the details of the work of the so-called supercommittee, the top House Democrat is calling for more openness in the decision-making of the bipartisan deficit-reduction panel.

Created by last summer's federal debt deal, the members of the supercommittee have just until Thanksgiving to find $1.2 trillion over 10 years in deficit-reduction.

Members of the panel, known officially as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, have been conducting all of their important negotiating entirely behind closed doors.

Predictable partisan jostling began this week as details of those talks began coming public.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi warned that the final package put forward by the 12-member supercommittee "cannot be a product of secrecy."

"You know, they may want to narrow issues that will be made that judgments have to be made over, but that has to be done in a public way. And I think you are you absolutely right; in order for our Members to embrace this, they have to know more about it and know why it has come to the place that it has," she told a reporter Thursday. "And we hope that it will be, as I said, big, bold, and balanced, but, at some point, the discussion has to be more public."

Pelosi is only the highest ranking lawmaker to complain about the super-secrecy of the supercommittee. Others also have already done so. However, the Deficit Committee Transparency Act, which would require final committee recommendations to be made publicly available online for at least 72 hours before a committee vote, has just five cosponsors in the House and has not even been introduced in the Senate.

Supercommittee members might want to remain private as they narrow their issues down to what the "real decisions will be," but hammering out those final recommendations "should be in the public domain."

Pelosi named three Democrats to the supercommittee, Reps. Xavier Becerra of California, James Clyburn of South Carolina, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

She says she continues to have "great confidence" in those three members.

"They have knowledge, they have judgment. They share the values of our Caucus, and they know that we want to have an agreement, a big agreement," Pelosi says.


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Creating Unemployment: How Congressional Budget Decisions Are Putting Americans out of Work and Increasing the Risk of a Second Recession

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Scott Lilly

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Most of the nearly 14 million people across our country who are currently unemployed can blame their situation on the inability of Congress and the White House to sufficiently cushion the economy from the financial crisis that began in 2007. But a growing number of unemployed Americans today are the victims of actions taken by the current Congress aimed deliberately at eliminating jobs.

Even worse, many of these jobs are ones that will have to be performed at some point in the next several years and taxpayers will eventually pay the bill. Delaying the work not only sucks jobs out of the weak economy but also in many instances costs the government more money and over time, and serves to increase rather than decrease the public debt. This report examines some of the job-elimination efforts by the current Congress and the growing impact this is having on individuals, families, and communities around the country.

Saving these jobs does not require us to ignore our country’s long-term deficit problems. While nearly all economists believe we should decisively reduce the amount we are scheduled to borrow over the next decade, a large majority of those same economists believe that the spending cuts and revenue increases necessary to reduce the deficits should be agreed to now but not executed until there is substantial steam in the economic recovery. As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently warned the Joint Economic Committee, it is important to “avoid fiscal actions that could impede the ongoing economic recovery, putting in place a credible plan for reducing future deficits over the longer term does not preclude attending to the implications of fiscal choices for the recovery in the near term.” That is advice that the new majority party in the House of Representatives has been unwilling to take.

To get a clear picture of the efforts by the current Congress to eliminate jobs requires only a visit to the House Appropriations Committee official web site and an examination of a table entitled “FY 2011 CONTINUING RESOLUTION REDUCTIONS.” The table lists a little more than 250 programs that the committee claims to have cut by a total of $45 billion in fiscal year 2011, which ended in October. Not all of the claimed cuts actually reduced either spending or jobs; they claim, for example, to have cut $6 billion from the Decennial Census despite the fact that virtually no one expected a Decennial Census in 2011. But there are significant job losses associated with most of the document. While many discussions of potential job losses from reductions in government spending seem abstract and theoretical, these cuts are clearly resulting in real pink slips being delivered to real people.

Indeed, the magnitude of the job cuts in the budget legislation adopted last spring—as demonstrated by the committee’s listing of 250 spending cuts—is so great that it is difficult to keep track of the human dimension. For that reason, I have focused on three program areas which were singled out by this Congress for particularly deep reductions:

• Federal support for local law enforcement
• Environmental cleanup of nuclear weapons production facilities
• The Federal Buildings Fund of the General Services Administration

Estimates of the number of jobs directly lost by these cuts run upwards to 60,000. The jobs losses that are a direct result of those actions will have a secondary impact on a wide array of businesses ranging from automobile producers to local restaurants and dry cleaning establishments, causing the disappearance of a significant number of additional jobs.

Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses—but that would require many more pages and exhaust the patience of most readers. All of the various 250 program reductions in the FY 2011 continuing resolution probably eliminated more 370,000 jobs. The three areas selected for discussion in this paper are in my judgment neither the worst cuts made by the committee from a policy standpoint nor the best. But without a doubt they demonstrate the consequences of slashing government spending in a weak economy.

Scott Lilly is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress who writes and researches in a wide range of areas including governance, federal budgeting, national security, and the economy.

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How Much Will $31.50 Buy?: Administration Officials, Lawmakers To Experience Food Stamps

What if you had just $31.50 to spend for a week's worth of groceries?

That's the average allotment to those who receive federal assistance through Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), the program formerly known as Food Stamps.

Top Obama administration officials, including senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, several members of Congress, and others plan to find out on Thursday during a shopping trip to a Capitol Hill grocery store as part of the National Food Stamp Challenge.

With Congress considering cutting the budget for SNAP, the religious community is leading an effort to focus the country's attention on the realities of hunger and poverty.

Poverty is at an all-time high in the United States, and more than 45 million Americans rely on SNAP funds to buy food.

The national challenge event marks the beginning of the fourth annual Fighting Poverty with Faith mobilization. Fighting Poverty with Faith, cosponsored by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Catholic Charities USA, and the National Council of Churches includes more than 50 national faith organizations brought together to act on behalf of those living in poverty in America.

Aside from Jarrett, others taking part include Democratic Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

Other members of Congress taking the Fighting Poverty with Faith Food Stamp Challenge include Reps. Jim Moran (D-Va.), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), and Del. Donna Christensen (D-V.I.).

"The goal of the Food Stamp Challenge is to engage Americans of every faith and bring the realities of hunger to those across the country unaware of its pervasiveness and challenges; especially here, at Congress's doorstep," says Rabbi Steve Gutow. "If we are to get serious about ending hunger, which we have the tools to do, it cannot be an abstract idea for us. Understanding the challenges of feeding yourself -- let alone providing healthy meals for kids, who make up over half of SNAP recipients –- on just $31.50 for one week will help others know just how valuable SNAP is. America is an abundant nation, but that abundance is not seen in the carts of the tens of millions who live on SNAP. Before Congress decides that this program can be cut, we urge them to look at how little we're able to put in our carts with this budget and see how millions are getting by."

The 45 million Americans who require SNAP to survive aren't strangers, says Rev. Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches.

"They are our neighbors, co-workers, family members, and they are us. I have been on food stamps," she says. "I am in better times now. But I remember how much we tried to hide it from those around me. We stand together in grocery check-out lines, yet so many of us have no idea what it is like to struggle to feed families on $4.50 a day. I challenge all of us to share in that struggle for a week, not merely to attract attention to the growing needs of persons in poverty, but as a reminder that God does not expect any of us to turn our backs on others in need."

Anyone can sign up to take the National Food Stamp Challenge by going online here.


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Cheat Sheet: What’s Happened to the Big Players in the Financial Crisis

by Braden Goyette, ProPublica

Widespread demonstrations in support of Occupy Wall Street have put the financial crisis back into the national spotlight lately.

So here’s a quick refresher on what’s happened to some of the main players, whose behavior, whether merely reckless or downright deliberate, helped cause or worsen the meltdown. This list isn’t exhaustive -- feel welcome to add to it.

Mortgage originators

Mortgage lenders contributed to the financial crisis by issuing or underwriting loans to people who would have a difficult time paying them back, inflating a housing bubble that was bound to pop. Lax regulation allowed banks to stretch their mortgage lending standards and use aggressive tactics to rope borrowers into complex mortgages that were more expensive than they first appeared. Evidence has also surfaced that lenders were filing fraudulent documents to push some of these mortgages through, and, in some cases, had been doing so as early as the 1990s. A 2005 Los Angeles Times investigation of Ameriquest – then the nation’s largest subprime lender – found that “they forged documents, hyped customers' creditworthiness and ‘juiced’ mortgages with hidden rates and fees.” This behavior was reportedly typical for the subprime mortgage industry. A similar culture existed at Washington Mutual, which went under in 2008 in the biggest bank collapse in U.S. history.

Countrywide, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, also pushed customers to sign on for complex and costly mortgages that boosted the company’s profits. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo was accused of misleading investors about the company’s mortgage lending practices, a charge he denies. Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank both purchased subprime mortgage lending outfits in 2006 to get in on the lucrative business. Deutsche Bank has also been accused of failing to adequately check on borrowers’ financial status before issuing loans backed by government insurance. A lawsuit filed by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara claimed that, when employees at Deutsche Bank’s mortgage received audits on the quality of their mortgages from an outside firm, they stuffed them in a closet without reading them. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman said the claims being made against the company are “unreasonable and unfair,” and that most of the problems occurred before the mortgage unit was bought by Deutsche Bank.

Where they are now: Few prosecutions have been brought against subprime mortgage lenders. Ameriquest went out of business in 2007, and Citigroup bought its mortgage lending unit. Washington Mutual was bought by JP Morgan in 2008. A Department of Justice investigation into alleged fraud at WaMu closed with no charges this summer. WaMu also recently settled a class action lawsuit brought by shareholders for $208.5 million. In an ongoing lawsuit, the FDIC is accusing former Washington Mutual executives Kerry Killinger, Stephen Rotella and David Schneider of going on a "lending spree, knowing that the real-estate market was in a 'bubble.'" They deny the allegations.

Bank of America purchased Countrywide in January of 2008, as delinquencies on the company’s mortgages soared and investors began pulling out. Mozilo left the company after the sale. Mozilo settled an SEC lawsuit for $67.5 million with no admission of wrongdoing, though he is now banned from serving as a top executive at a public company. A criminal investigation into his activities fizzled out earlier this year. Bank of America invited several senior Countrywide executives to stay on and run its mortgage unit. Bank of America Home Loans does not make subprime mortgage loans. Deutsche Bank is still under investigation by the Justice Department.

Mortgage securitizers

In the years before the crash, banks took subprime mortgages, bundled them together with prime mortgages and turned them into collateral for bonds or securities, helping to seed the bad mortgages throughout the financial system. Washington Mutual, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and others were securitizing mortgages as well as originating them. Other companies, such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs, bought mortgages straight from subprime lenders, bundled them into securities and sold them to investors including pension funds and insurance companies.

Where they are now: This spring, New York’s Attorney General launched a probe into mortgage securitization at Bank of America, JP Morgan, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley during the housing boom. Morgan Stanley settled with Nevada’s Attorney General last month following an investigation into problems with the securitization process.

As part of a proposed settlement with the 50 state attorneys general over foreclosure abuses, several big banks were offered immunity from charges related to improper mortgage origination and securitization. California and New York have withdrawn from those talks.

The people who created and dealt CDOs

Once mortgages had been bundled into mortgage-backed securities, other bankers took groups of them and bundled them together into new financial products called Collateralized Debt Obligations. CDOs are composed of tiers with different levels of risk. As we’ve reported, a hedge fund named Magnetar worked with banks to fill CDOs with the riskiest possible materials, then used credit default swaps to bet that they would fail. Magnetar says that the majority of its short positions were against CDOs it didn’t own. Magnetar also says it didn’t choose what went its own CDOs, though people involved in the deals who spoke to ProPublica contradict this account.

American International Group’s London-based financial products unit was among the entities that provided credit default swaps on CDOs. Though the business of insuring the risky securities made AIG large short-term profits, it eventually brought the company to the brink of collapse, prompting an $85 billion government bailout.

Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan all made CDO deals with Magnetar. The hedge fund invested in 30 CDOs from the spring of 2006 to the summer of 2007. The bankers who worked on these deals almost always reaped hefty bonuses. From our story:

Even today, bankers and managers speak with awe at the elegance of the Magnetar Trade. Others have become famous for betting big against the housing market. But they had taken enormous risks. Meanwhile, Magnetar had created a largely self-funding bet against the market.

When banks found CDOs hard to sell, some of them, notably Merrill Lynch and Citibank, bought each other’s CDOs, creating the illusion of true investors when there were almost none. That was one way they kept the market for CDOs going longer than it otherwise would have. Eventually CDOs began purchasing risky parts of other CDOs created by the same bank. Take a look at our comic strip explaining self-dealing, and our chart detailing which banks bought their own CDOs.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley also made similar deals in which they created, then bet against, risky CDOs. The hedge fund Paulson & Co helped decide which assets to put inside Goldman’s CDOs.

Where they are now: Overall, the banks and individuals involved in CDO deals haven’t been convicted on criminal charges. The civil suits against them have produced fines that aren’t very big compared to the profits they made in the leadup to the financial crisis. JP Morgan paid $153.6 million to settle an SEC suit alleging they hadn’t disclosed to investors that Magnetar was betting against Morgan’s CDO. Citigroup just agreed to pay a $285 million fine to the SEC for betting against one of its mortgage-related CDOs. The lawsuit doesn’t mention dozens of similar deals made by Citi.

Magnetar is still thriving (the deals they made weren’t illegal according to the rules at the time). In 2007, Magnetar’s founder took home $280 million, and the fund had $7.6 billion under management. The SEC is considering banning hedge funds and banks from betting against securities of their own creation. As of May 2010, federal prosecutors were investigating Morgan Stanley over their CDO deals, and Goldman Sachs paid $550 million [38] last year to settle a lawsuit related to one of theirs. Only one Goldman employee, Fabrice Tourre, has been charged criminally in connection to the deals.

Though recorded phone calls suggest that former AIG CEO Joseph Cassano misled investors about the credit default swaps that contributed to his company’s troubles, the evidence wasn’t airtight, and federal probes against him fell apart in 2010. Cassano’s lawyers deny any wrongdoing.

The ratings agencies

Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch gave their highest rating to investments based on risky mortgages in the years leading up to the financial crisis. A Senate investigations panel found that S&P and Moody’s continued doing so even as the housing market was collapsing. An SEC report also found failures at 10 credit rating agencies.

Where they are now: The SEC is considering suing Standard and Poor’s over one particular CDO deal linked to the hedge fund Magnetar. The agency had previously considered suing Moody’s, but instead issued a report criticizing all of the rating agencies generally. Dodd-Frank created a regulatory body to oversee the credit rating agencies, but its development has been stalled by budgetary constraints.

The regulators

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission [PDF] concluded that the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to crack down on risky lending practices at banks and make them keep more substantial capital reserves as a buffer against losses. They also found that the Federal Reserve failed to stop the housing bubble by setting prudent mortgage lending standards, though it was the one regulator that had the power to do so.

An internal SEC audit faulted the agency for missing warning signs about the poor financial health of some of the banks it monitored, particularly Bear Stearns. [PDF] Overall, SEC enforcement actions went down under the leadership of Christopher Cox, and a 2009 GAO report found that he increased barriers to launching probes and levying fines.

Cox wasn’t the only regulator who resisted using his power to rein in the financial industry. The former head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, reportedly refused to heighten scrutiny of the subprime mortgage market. Greenspan later said before Congress that it was a mistake to presume that financial firms’ own rational self-interest would serve as an adequate regulator. He has also said he doubts the financial crisis could have been prevented.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, which was tasked with overseeing savings and loan banks, also helped to scale back their own regulatory powers in the years before the financial crisis. In 2003 James Gilleran and John Reich, then heads of the OTS and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation respectively, brought a chainsaw to a press conference as an indication of how they planned to cut back on regulation. The OTS was known for being so friendly with the banks -- which it referred to as its “clients” -- that Countrywide reorganized its operations so it could be regulated by OTS. As we’ve reported, the regulator failed to recognize serious signs of trouble at AIG, and didn’t disclose key information about IndyMac’s finances in the years before the crisis. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversaw the biggest commercial banks, also went easy on the banks.

Where they are now: Christopher Cox stepped down in 2009 under public pressure. The OTS was dissolved this summer and its duties assumed by the OCC. As we’ve noted, the head of the OCC has been advocating to weaken rules set out by the Dodd Frank financial reform law. The Dodd Frank law gives the SEC new regulatory powers, including the ability to bring lawsuits in administrative courts, where the rules are more favorable to them.

The politicians

Two bills supported by Phil Gramm and signed into law by Bill Clinton created many of the conditions for the financial crisis to take place. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 repealed all the remaining parts of Glass-Steagall, allowing firms to participate in traditional banking, investment banking, and insurance at the same time. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act, passed the year after, deregulated over-the-counter derivatives – securities like CDOs and credit default swaps, that derive their value from underlying assets and are traded directly between two parties rather than through a stock exchange. Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary from 1995 to 1999, had both opposed regulating derivatives. Lawrence Summers, who went on to succeed Rubin as Treasury Secretary, also testified before the Senate that derivatives shouldn’t be regulated.

It’s worth noting the substantial lobbying efforts that accompanied the deregulation process. According to the FCIC [PDF], between 1999 and 2008 the financial industry spent $2.7 billion lobbying the federal government, and donated more than $1 billion to political campaigns. While deregulation took place mainly under Clinton’s watch, George W. Bush is faulted for not doing more to catch the out-of-control housing market.

As president of the New York Fed from 2003 to 2009, Timothy Geithner also missed opportunities to prevent major financial firms from self-destructing. As we reported in 2009:

Although Geithner repeatedly raised concerns about the failure of banks to understand their risks, including those taken through derivatives, he and the Federal Reserve system did not act with enough force to blunt the troubles that ensued. That was largely because he and other regulators relied too much on assurances from senior banking executives that their firms were safe and sound.

Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary from 2006 to 2009, has been criticized for being slow to respond to the crisis, and introducing greater uncertainty into the financial markets by letting Lehman Brothers fail. In a 2008 New York Times interview, Paulson said he had no choice.

Where they are now: Gramm has been a vice chairman at UBS since he left Congress in 2002. Greenspan is retired. Summers served as a top economic advisor to Barack Obama until November 2010; since then, he’s been teaching at Harvard. Geithner is currently serving as Treasury Secretary under the Obama administration.

Executives of big investment banks

Executives at the big banks also took actions that contributed to the destruction of their own firms. According to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report [PDF], the executives of the country’s five major investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley – kept such small cushions of capital at the banks that they were extremely vulnerable to losses. A report compiled by an outside examiner for Lehman Brothers found that the company was hiding its bad investments off the books, and Lehman’s former CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr. signed off on the false balance sheets. Fuld had testified before Congress two years before that the actions he took prior to Lehman Brothers’ collapse “were both prudent and appropriate” based on what he knew at the time. Other banks also kept billions in potential liabilities off their balance sheets, including Citigroup, headed by Vikram Pandit.

In 2010, we detailed how a group of Merrill Lynch executives helped blow up their own company by retaining supposedly safe – but actually extremely risky – portions of the CDOs they created, paying a unit within the firm to buy them when almost no one else would.

The New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson described how the administrative decisions of some top Merrill executives helped put the company in a precarious position, based on interviews with former employees.

Where they are now: In 2009, two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers were cleared of fraud charges over allegedly lying to investors. A probe of Lehman Brothers stalled this spring. Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America in the fall of 2008. As for the executives who helped crash the firm, as we reported in 2010, “they walked away with millions. Some still hold senior positions at prominent financial firms.” Dick Fuld is still working on Wall Street, at an investment banking firm. Vikram Pandit remains the CEO of Citigroup.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

The government-sponsored mortgage financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought risky mortgages and guaranteed them. In 2007, 28 percent of Fannie Mae’s loans were bought from Countrywide. The FCIC found [PDF] that Fannie and Freddie entered the subprime game too late and on too limited a scale to have caused the financial crisis. Non-agency-securitized loans had an increased share of the market in the years immediately preceding the crisis.

Many believe that The Community Reinvestment Act, a government policy promoting homeownership for low-income people, was responsible for the growth of the subprime mortgage industry. This idea has largely been discredited, since most subprime loans were made by companies that weren’t subject to the act.

Still, Fannie and Freddie engaged in reckless behavior and sustained heavy losses as a result. The SEC slammed Fannie Mae for improper accounting under the leadership of Frank Raines in the years preceding the financial crisis. A report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight found that Fannie and Freddie didn’t accurately disclose the risks they were taking and “deliberately and intentionally manipulat[ed] accounting to hit earnings targets.” [PDF]

Richard Syron and Daniel Mudd were at the helm of Freddie and Fannie, respectively, when they began to buy large numbers of subprime loans. Current and former Freddie Mac employees have accused Syron of ignoring warnings about the health of the loans the company was buying. Syron and Mudd maintain they could not have foreseen the rapid decline in the housing market.

Where they are now: As borrowers defaulted on mortgages they’d insured, Fannie and Freddie received a nearly $200 billion federal government bailout, and the government took over their operations. They are close to a settlement in an SEC lawsuit [90], and will neither admit nor deny that they failed to inform investors about risks of exposure to subprime mortgages. The Dodd Frank financial reform law stated that serious reforms of Fannie and Freddie are needed, but didn’t address how they should be carried out. A report from Treasury Secretary Geithner called for the government to “ultimately wind down” the two mortgage giants. [PDF] In the meantime, taxpayers have been shouldering their legal fees. Former Freddie and Fannie executives Richard Syron and Daniel Mudd received Wells notices this spring, a sign that the SEC is considering legal action against them.


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Report: Food Chemical Regulations Rely Heavily on Industry Self-Policing, Lack Transparency

Safety decisions concerning one-third of the more than 10,000 substances added to human food were made by food manufacturers and a trade association without review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to an analysis spearheaded by the Pew Health Group.

The report, published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, illustrates potential problems with the U.S. food additive regulatory program.

"Congress established our food additive regulatory program more than 50 years ago, and it does not stand up well to scrutiny based on today's standards of science and public transparency," says Tom Neltner, Food Additives Project director in the Pew Health Group.

The Pew Health Group is the health and consumer-product safety arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit organization that applies an analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life.

The research also found that the FDA developed an expedited process in the mid-1990's that essentially eliminated the opportunity for public involvement in decision making prior to FDA's safety determination. This shift doubled the rate of industry requests for FDA review. In contrast, standard operating procedure for other federal regulatory decisions regarding drug, workplace, and environmental safety requires public notice and an opportunity to comment.

"While the shift to a new regulatory process–one in which companies make safety decisions and ask FDA to confirm them–has sped up agency review, it has also bypassed the public," Neltner says. "Subjecting safety decisions to comment from competitors, academic scientists, public interest groups, and the general public can result in stronger protections for consumers. In an age of growing demand for government transparency, there is virtually no meaningful opportunity for participation in decisions about large classes of substances added to the food supply."

When Congress passed the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, it created a structure that has limited the FDA's ability to effectively regulate substances added to food because the law:

1. Allows manufacturers to determine that the use of an additive is "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS), and then use that substance without notifying the FDA. As a result, the agency is unaware of many substances that may be added to food and lacks the ability to ensure that safety decisions were properly made.

2. Does not require that manufacturers inform the FDA when health reports suggest new hazards associated with additives already used in food. Therefore, the agency has no access to unpublished reports and must expend limited resources sifting through published information to identify potential problems and set priorities.

In addition to the article examining the state of the food additive regulation, a piece in the same publication summarizes a workshop, co-sponsored by the Institute of Food Technologists and the journal Nature, examined how FDA evaluates the potential hazards posed by substances added to food. The two-day session, held in April, brought together science and food policy experts from government, industry, academia, and public interest organizations.

Issues discussed at the workshop and presented in the journal article include:

• The need for clear procedures to develop validated toxicological tests and regularly revise guidance documents to reflect advances in science;
• Opportunities to improve academic research to make it more usable for regulatory decision making and enhance coordination between federal agencies; and
• Challenges to reassessing a chemical's safety after it is on the market.


Both journal articles appear in the November issue of Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety. They are the first in a series of the Pew Health Group's assessments of the scientific evidence and FDA's regulatory system, evaluating whether the agency ensures chemicals added to food are safe as required by law.

Future articles will consider other aspects of the scientific analysis and the law, and will provide case studies of issues raised about the FDA's food additives program. The Pew Health Group says it will develop policy recommendations to reduce unnecessary and hidden risks that are informed by their evaluation.


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'Do As I Say, Not As I Sue': Lawyers Take On U.S. Chamber

U.S. corporations are more than willing to resort in big-dollar lawsuits, but rely on their ties to the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce to prevent consumers from holding them to account, according to a scathing new report released by an association of the nation's trial attorneys.

As the stridently pro-business U.S. Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) holds its annual summit -– a strategy session on eliminating Americans' access to the civil justice system -– a new report exposes ILR's corporate board members that hypocritically use the courts for their own gain against competitors, customers and even each other. (The key lineup for the ILR summit is a who's-who of prominent Republicans, such as House Speaker John Boehner and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.)

In its report, Do As I Say, Not As I Sue, the American Association for Justice (AAJ) exposes what it calls the hypocrisy of 10 ILR board members that regularly use the legal system to advance their own agendas, while at the same time advocating legislation that would close the courthouse doors to anyone who would hold them accountable for their own wrongdoing.

"These corporations, like all Americans, have a right to seek justice through the legal system," says AAJ President Gary Paul. "What makes their actions shameful and hypocritical is that these companies are members of ILR's board for the sole purpose of denying American workers and consumers this same right."

One ILR board member highlighted in the report is Honeywell International, which has regularly taken competitors to court, but would prefer not to be held accountable for distributing defective body armor to law enforcement personnel across the country, or downplaying the dangers of asbestos exposure, according to the report.

In return for its financial contributions to ILR, Honeywell has received policy and public relations help when its negligence has been uncovered, AAJ says. Four days after an Illinois jury delivered a multi-million dollar verdict against Honeywell for conspiring to hide the dangers of asbestos, ILR issued a press release stating that the decision "confirms a troubling trend in the State of Illinois where there is a hostile ligation environment."

Additionally, the Madison County Record, an Illinois-based publication owned by ILR, featured an article headlined, "McLean County Continues Inching Closer to Becoming a 'Judicial Hellhole,'" AAJ says.

The irony does not stop with Honeywell -– AAJ says that its report also highlights the litigation hypocrisy of ILR board members FedEx, Dow Chemical Company, General Motors Corporation, Caterpillar, State Farm, Koch Industries, Abbott Laboratories, Prudential and Johnson & Johnson.

The lawyers' organization says that online ads will run this week on major news sites and blogs to promote the report, Do As I Say, Not As I Sue: Exposing the Lawsuit-Happy Hypocrites of U.S. Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform.


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Star Power: Warren Picks Up Franken Endorsement In Mass. Senate Race

Elizabeth Warren picked up a key endorsement, and potentially a significant new fundraising source, in her campaign to take on Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

Warren, who is quickly solidifying her position as the frontrunner for the 2012 Democratic Massachusetts Senate nomination, won public support Tuesday from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), the former late-night TV comedian and progressive talk radio host.

A former top adviser to the Obama administration, Warren entered a crowded field vying for the chance to take on Brown, the first Republican in a generation elected to the Senate from the Bay State. She has seen her standing soar in recent weeks, in large measure due to a popular online video in which she pushed back against conservative anti-tax and pro-corporate positions.

"We’ve all seen what Elizabeth can do with her smarts -- and her guts. I've been impressed with her tenacity for years. She took on Wall Street before anyone else would and pushed consumer protection to the top of the financial reform agenda," Franken says in an email to his national base of supporters. "We know she’s tough and fiery and even funny. We know she’s got a great life story and a full career of achievements fighting for middle-class families. That's why progressives like you and me have been fans for a long time, and why we hoped she'd be able to lead the consumer protection board she created. And now, when we imagine her voice in the Senate, well, it’s even more exciting."

After taking his Senate seat last year in a special election to fill the unexpired term of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Brown in 2012 will be running for his first full, six-year term.

Warren's field of competitors for the nomination to oppose Brown has begun narrowing in recent weeks, and a recent poll indicates that she not only erased Brown's lead, but has pulled slightly ahead. The Massachusetts Democratic primary to select the nominee to face off against the incumbent will take place next September, just weeks ahead of the November general election.

Recapturing the seat which Kennedy held for decades as a prominent Democrat is a top priority for national Democrats who will face a tough year in the Senate overall. Senate Democrats will be defending more than twice as many seats as their Republican counterparts in 2012. A net loss of just four seats would allow the GOP to capture a Senate majority.

In his email, Franken acknowledges Warren will not have an easy time of it against Brown. He also appears willing to use his star power to solicit donations nationally for her campaign.

"Remember that just as excited as we are about having Elizabeth in the Senate, that’s how panicked the special interests are about the idea. They are going to spend millions trying to stop her -- that was the headline in Politico. 'Wall Street Readies Assault on Elizabeth Warren,'" Franken says. "We’ve seen far too many great Democrats get buried under attack ads, but we also know that big grassroots support can beat big money. That’s how we won in Minnesota -- and that’s how Elizabeth can win in Massachusetts."


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Faith Groups Lend Diverse Voices to the Occupy Movement

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Catherine Woodiwiss, Jake Paysour

A clear achievement of the Occupy movement is an inclusive religious and spiritual push for economic justice.

Now in its second month, the movement is gathering steam in more than 900 cities in the United States and around the world. There are already a few notable successes.

First, protesters widened the tent poles of our national economic debate from “cutting the deficit” to “economic inequality” and from “debt” to “jobs.” Their impact can be seen in recent interviews with GOP leaders such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who in a week’s time went from calling the protesters “mobs” to reassuring the public that he “cares about economic inequality.”

The press, too, is taking note. Think Progress reports that MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN mentioned the word “debt” more than 7,000 times during the last week of July, while “unemployed” was mentioned only 75 times. But by the week of October 10, things drastically shifted. These same networks mentioned “debt” only 398 times, while mentioning “jobs” 2,738 times, “Occupy” 1,278 times, and “Wall Street” 2,378 times.

A less-reported but equally significant success lies in faith groups’ increasingly enthusiastic embrace of the movement. Progressive Christian groups such as Sojourners—an early supporter of the protests—are being joined by growing numbers of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Protestant, and Catholic congregations, as well as interfaith groups that are lending their voices, bodies, buildings, and pulpits.

For instance, Rev. Brian Merritt of the Palisades Community Church in Washington, D.C., is a vocal supporter of Occupy DC. He gives supporters spiritual guidance and peanut butter sandwiches, and often serves as a spokesman for the group.

Just blocks from where the protests began in New York, Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church opened its doors to protesters who need a place to rest. A Yom Kippur prayer service was held in Zuccotti Park, complete with a sermon given in call-and-response to compensate for the lack of sound equipment. And in South Carolina, a rabbi joined an African Methodist Episcopal pastor, among others, to help organize protests in Florence.

What unifies these diverse groups is a shared spiritual conviction that protesting injustice and inequality, defending the weak, and caring for the poor are key religious tenets. And they are sorely needed at this time in our history.

In addition, Occupy Wall Street seeks compelling symbols to express the movement’s essence, and a number of faith-related sights and signs are resonating with protesters and gaining visibility in the news.

The “Protest Chaplains” from Boston made headlines for their calls and hymns for economic justice while clad in white robes and carrying homemade crosses. Meanwhile, Jewish activists and founders of Occupy Sukkot built sukkah tents in Zuccotti Park; McPherson Square in Washington, D.C.; and seven other cities around the United States. The tents are built each year during the Sukkot celebration of the harvest and call us to remember those affected by injustice. And a creative interfaith group, including Judson Memorial Church in New York City, carried a golden calf to Wall Street in a striking protest against the “idol” of corporate greed.

One of the most illustrative images of interfaith partnerships, however, is the “faith and spirituality tent” built by faith leaders in Occupy Boston. Designed to give space to all beliefs, including nonreligious traditions such as atheism and humanism, the tent has hosted Zen Buddhist meditations, Muslim prayer services, and Jewish celebrations for Yom Kippur, as well as providing food, shelter, and a welcome for anyone who comes by.

Such inclusive spirituality is echoed in the work of national faith-based groups such as Faith in Public Life and Interfaith Worker Justice. FPL organized religious leaders and promoted their role in the movement, while IWJ created congregational discussion guides and resources for interfaith prayer services. To date, 235 religious leaders signed a statement supporting “the spirit” of Occupy Wall Street and committing themselves to the struggle against injustice.

All this activity raises the question: Did Occupy Wall Street trigger faith groups’ involvement, or did the original occupiers “get religion”? There is a sense of both happening. Commentators remark on the movement’s moral clarity and articulation that the “soul” of America is lost to corporate tricks and greed.

At the same time, faith groups prove remarkably willing to work within the movement’s language and framework, supporting—not co-opting—the energy on the streets. Some groups, such as the Protest Chaplains, have strict codes against proselytizing, and despite the visibility of congregations such as the Judson Memorial, no single leader or denomination dominates a gathering.

The Occupy movement’s expansion of the national debate allows many faith voices to join the conversation. The result is a multifaith collaboration and integration radically different from the narrowly judgmental and exclusive brand of religion that too often claims to represent all religion in America. This is a true success of the movement—99 percent of Americans who believe in diverse spiritual collaborations for economic justice and a better America.

Catherine Woodiwiss is a Special Assistant to the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative and Progressive Studies. Jake Paysour is an intern with the Faith Initiative and a student at Wesley Theological Seminary.

For more on the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative visit its project page.

For more on faith groups' involvement in the movement, please see:

• Video: Odyssey Network, "Faith on the Street"

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At 'Angry And Ugly' Moment, Poll Finds GOP Lawmakers Suffer Most

The latest national survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps reveals an intensely anti-establishment, anti-Washington, anti-Wall Street moment. Three-quarters of all voters say the country is on the wrong track; just 15 percent believe the nation is heading in the right direction-—the lowest optimism since the 2008 financial crash and down 13 points since June. Negative ratings of the economy are up 5 points since last month and now equal what they were during the height of the economic crisis.

"It is angry and ugly out there, reflected in dramatic pull-back from the political and economic establishment: Washington, Wall Street, and politicians of both parties receive negative ratings across the board, hitting bottom with the Republican Congress," a memo detailing the poll results says. "Nearly 60 percent of voters give Wall Street a negative rating. The President’s approval rating has dropped to 40 percent—the lowest in our tracking. But voters have pulled back more sharply from the Republicans; two thirds now disapprove of the Republican Congress, almost half (48 percent) disapprove strongly."

Report of this poll comes amid Occupy Wall Street and the countless other national protests against corporate influence and greed.

Key findings of the poll are:

• Voters are intensely frustrated with an intractably stagnant economy. The state of the economy rates coolest of all, with nearly 80 percent of all voters giving the economy a cool rating.
• Voters are frustrated with the economy but unreservedly angry with the political and economic establishment that cannot fix it. On our thermometer scale, voters have pulled back sharply from the president and both parties in Congress. They reserve much anger for Republicans in Congress but save the bulk of their anger for Wall Street and its banks and financial institutions. Fewer than 20 percent of voters give them a positive rating and almost 60 percent give them a negative rating.
• The presidential ballot is even. While President Obama has improved his standing among independent voters, the biggest pull-back from Barack Obama has come from his base—mostly young people and minorities.
• Republicans in Congress are being held accountable for the mess in Washington. Less than a year after they made big election gains, voters have pulled back sharply.

Although poll should ring alarm bells for Obama's 2012 campaign staff, it paints a truly dire picture for congressional Republicans, who took the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.

"Everyone has dropped substantially, but support for the Republican Congress has completely disintegrated," the poll memo says. "More than half of all voters give these Republicans a negative rating, with a mean rating under 40 degrees. With House Republicans getting a remarkable 65 percent disapproval, the race for Congress is now dead even, after Republicans won by 8 points in 2010.

"To be sure, Democrats do not fare much better—mean thermometer ratings for both Democrats in Congress and the Democratic Party have dropped 2 points since August. But perhaps it is a luxury to be a party out of power," the memo adds. "Across the board, Republicans are taking a much bigger hit from voters—with the both the Republican Party and its major figures rating lower than the Democratic Party and its leaders. Importantly, voters in Democratic districts do not find their incumbents as culpable for the mess as voters in Republican-held districts. As a result, the mean thermometer rating for Democratic incumbents has increased slightly, while Republican incumbents have dropped an average of 5 points."

The poll results are based on a national survey of 1,000 likely 2012 voters (1,000 weighted) from October 15-18, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Democracy Corps. The margin of error=+/- 3.1 percentage points at 95% confidence.



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