Coincidence? Another paper links Obama and violence

The “mistakes” are adding up: On May 15 of last year, the Roswell Beacon in Georgia ran a cover photo showing President Barack Obama in a gun’s crosshairs. Early this month, Fox ran a photo of a rifle situated as if taking aim at Obama, followed two weeks ago by an odd item at the Washington Times Web site: the conservative publication used a photo of Obama’s daughters to illustrate a story about Chicago schoolchildren who’ve been murdered.
Minnesota Independent

Government Taps Bailout Contractors With Conflicts of Interest

As the Wall Street bailout nears its first anniversary, the controversy over giving public money to private banks has become public knowledge. But an equally risky aspect of the financial rescue has flown largely under the radar: the government’s reliance on private contractors – many with potentially significant conflicts of interest – to help revive the stalled economy.

The Treasury Department knows that the law firms and investment managers hired to aid its salvage effort could be influenced by their ties to bailed-out banks; in fact, the department released a rule in January aiming to mitigate the problem.
Washington Independent

Hong Kong protest over Tiananmen

Thousands have marched in Hong Kong to mark the forthcoming 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen killings, in one of the few such events on Chinese soil.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed in China’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

There has been no official inquiry so the exact death toll remains unclear.
BBC

Pakistan city centre ‘destroyed’

The scale of the war damage to the main city in the Swat valley has become clear, as fears are expressed about the humanitarian situation in the region.

Taliban rebels were driven out of Mingora on Saturday by Pakistan government troops.

The defence secretary says operations in the whole Swat valley region should end in the next few days, though military chiefs are more cautious.
BBC

Sexualized Violence in a Lady Gaga Video

In the documentary Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Video, Sut Jhally investigates how images of sex and violence, and sexualized violence against women, are used in music videos, and how music videos help shape ideas of what is sexy.
Sociological Images

Documentary on Intensive Pig Farming Faces Legal Threat

A documentary about intensive pig farming due to be screened at the Guardian Hay festival on Sunday is facing a legal threat from one of the companies it investigates. Pig Business criticises the practices of the world’s largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, claiming it is responsible for environmental pollution and health problems among residents near its factories.

The film was due to be broadcast on Channel 4 in February but was cancelled because of legal fears. A planned screening at the Frontline Club in London earlier this year was also called off.
Common Dreams

Moyers Journal: Madoff Was A Piker — America’s Big Banks Are a Far Larger Fraudulent Ponzi Scheme

For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.” In fact, the man you’re about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s.

AlterNet

Hands-Off Attitude Towards Financial Regulation – Cause & Effect?

The real-world effects of corruption can feel distant and hard to understand. But this week via White House aide Larry Summers, we got a very concrete, easy-to-understand example of how our pay-to-play political system really works.

Open Left

GM Pensions May Be ‘Garbage’ With $16 Billion at Risk

As the biggest U.S. automaker teeters near bankruptcy, workers and retirees like Black are bracing for what may be $16 billion in pension losses if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has to take over the plans, according to the agency. As many as half of GM’s 670,000 pension-plan participants might see their benefits trimmed if that happened, an actuary familiar with the company’s retirement programs estimates.

Bloomberg

Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline

Two French photographers immortalize the remains of the motor city on film.

Time

As Crisis Loomed, Geithner Pressed But Fell Short

In September 2005, Timothy Geithner made one of his most visible moves as a supervisor of the U.S. banking system. He summoned the nation’s top financial firms and their regulators to streamline an antiquated system that threatened Wall Street’s boom.

Billions of dollars worth of financial instruments known as credit derivatives were being traded daily, as banks and investors worldwide tried to protect against losses on increasingly complex and risky financial bets. But the buying and selling of these exotic instruments was stuck in a pencil-and-paper era. Geithner, then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, pressed 14 major financial firms to build an electronic network that would cut backlogs and make the market easier to monitor.

ProPublica

Cost Of Living Now Outweighs Benefits

A report released Monday by the Federal Consumer Quality-Of-Life Control Board indicates that the cost of living now outstrips life’s benefits for many Americans.

“This is sobering news,” said study director Jack Farness. “For the first time, we have statistical evidence of what we’ve suspected for the past 40 years: Life really isn’t worth living.”

The Onion

Offshore Tax Havens: A State-By-State Breakdown Of The Cost To Taxpayers

A Senate report estimated in 2008 that the United States loses up to $100 billion a year in tax revenue to offshore tax havens (PDF). In a report released Wednesday, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group offers a state-by-state breakdown of the cost to taxpayers of tax revenue lost to “shell companies and sham headquarters” in places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

Huffington Post

Bailed-out banks face probe over fee hikes

Since the Troubled Asset Relief Program was launched in October, banks bolstered by capital infusions have boosted charges on a wide range of routine transactions, hiked rates on credit cards and continued making loans criticised as predatory by consumer advocates.

The Australian

Congress Pushing Covert Bailout to Save Big Finance and Screw Homeowners

U.S. policymakers just dealt struggling homeowners another devastating financial blow by helping Wall Street banks cook the books on their mortgages.

The real outrage, however, is that federal policymakers know the strategy they’re adopting screws borrowers: they did the same thing in the 1980s to save banks from overwhelming losses on loans they’d made to developing nations, with horrific consequences for the global economy.

AlterNet

Pelosi calls for panel to probe Wall Street

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying that the American people are demanding “discipline and accountability” after the multibillion-dollar federal bailouts, promised Wednesday to create a legislative commission with broad oversight to investigate the causes of Wall Street irregularities and their full costs to taxpayers.

SFGate

Union Intensifies Efforts to Organize Workers at Wal-Mart

The Bentonville, Ark., retailer, a leading opponent of the legislation, said managers have seen increased union activity at a number of stores, prompting mandatory meetings to discuss unionization. “We have noticed that the UFCW has been working harder lately in its attempts to get Wal-Mart associates to sign union cards, but we don’t think our associates have any reason to be more interested than before,” said Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar.

Wall Street Journal

Jump in Foreclosures Reaches Historic High in March

A record jump in foreclosure activity in March that occurred just as a voluntary ban on foreclosures ended is raising troubling questions about whether lenders and servicers are genuinely willing and able to do loan modifications on a large scale. And it poses an even more worrisome possibility: That many borrowers can’t be helped at all.

The Washington Independent

Social Class and the Tax Burden

I recently came across two really fascinating figures. The United States has a system of “progressive taxation.” This means that the richer you are, the more you pay in taxes. This first figure, found at The American Prospect, shows the percentage of total income earned by Americans (split up into quintiles) and the tax rates for each group.

Sociological Images

How Immigration Policy Creates Dependent Spouses

The documentary, Hearts Suspended, points to one way that immigration policy disadvantages women. When a non-U.S. citizen is granted the permission to live and work in the U.S., their spouses are often given permission to accompany their spouse, but not to work. These spouses, wives more often than husbands, find themselves completely dependent on their husbands. The trailer gives us a pretty good idea of how this sometimes plays out:

Sociological Images

Fed data shows big losses on Bear Stearns deal

The U.S. Federal Reserve lifted the lid on its efforts to shore up the financial system on Thursday, and in the process, showed a $3 billion loss on the books from its deal to rescue investment bank Bear Stearns.

Reuters