AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

Crisis in US women's leadership

2009-11-20T16:04:00.000-05:00

John met someone promoting equality for the new EU cabinet but as I mentioned earlier, we need to do much better with promoting women. The current numbers are rightly called a crisis, whether you are looking at business or government. Shouldn't we expect more?

The majority of Americans are comfortable with women leading in all sectors, but the reality is women hold only 18% of leadership positions across the 10 sectors we examined, including politics, business, law, sports, academia, journalism, religion, film/TV, nonprofit, and military.

In politics, for example, women have lost ground in the last decade as elected statewide executive officials and have made only incremental gains in Congress, where they currently comprise 17% of leadership. On a global scale, the U.S. ranks a dismal 71st out of 189 countries, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in terms of women in legislatures, trailing behind nations such as Pakistan, Cuba, and United Arab Emirates.

At Fortune 500 companies, women hold only 15% of board seats, 16% of corporate officer positions, and a mere 3% of CEO positions, while women of color make up only 3% of board officers and 1.7% of corporate officer positions.

Dallas Fed President: stop 'coddling' and break up 'too big to fail'

2009-11-20T15:19:00.000-05:00

Hallelujah.

Fisher suggested the only way of ensuring that such financial giants do not pose recurrent problems is by making them smaller.

"This means finding ways not to live with 'em and getting on with developing the least disruptive way to have them divest those parts of the 'franchise,' such as proprietary trading, that place the deposit and lending function at risk and otherwise present conflicts of interest," Fisher said in prepared remarks to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Friday Afternoon Open Thread

2009-11-20T13:29:00.000-05:00

It's a crazy day and John is having some internet connection challenges so pitch in and let everyone know what's happening.

South Carolina discussing impeachment for Sanford

2009-11-20T12:44:00.000-05:00

Couldn't happen to a nicer person. AP:

South Carolina lawmakers plan to formally consider impeaching Gov. Mark Sanford for the first time next week, the chairman of the committee beginning that work said Friday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Harrison told The Associated Press he is appointing an ad-hoc committee of four Republicans and three Democrats who will begin meeting Tuesday. He said he expects to have a resolution to impeach ready before Christmas for the full Judiciary Committee to consider.

Teabagger infighting leading to chaos

2009-11-20T10:35:00.000-05:00

Splintered and infighting? Who could have imagined? Even more surprising is the claim that there is little management experience within the fractured group. It all sounded so dreamy a few short months ago.

Disagreements over those issues have spawned personal and institutional rivalries, at least one highly contentious lawsuit and — perhaps most significantly — resulted in the splintering of local, regional and national groups into a patchwork of hundreds of smaller groups that occasionally seem to be working at cross-purposes.

“These groups don’t play as well together as they should,” said Kevin Jackson, a St. Louis-based conservative author and activist who has spoken at dozens of tea party-type rallies and is traveling across the South with a convoy sponsored by the national Tea Party Patriots group.

“They’re fractured at the organization level, I think mainly because there are a lot of people who have not had managerial experience who all of a sudden are thrust into the limelight and become intoxicated with it. And when a potential rift comes up, instead of handling it and maybe agreeing to disagree, they splinter and go off on their own.”

Democrats call for review of Federal Reserve

2009-11-20T09:31:00.000-05:00

Absolutely. Clearly there is a danger in politicizing Federal Reserve decisions but looking at how the Fed handled the bailout of AIG and Wall Street, it's difficult to see how much worse it could have been. To date, Congress or the White House (either the current or the former) have hardly been impressive with taking control of the issue though the Federal Reserve does look like a black hole, accountable to no one. When billions are handed out with no strings, it's fair to ask questions and demand answers.

The group, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., wants a congressional review of the Federal Reserve system. They want to allow congressional audits of the Fed as part of financial rules being debated by the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees, according to a letter Wednesday to the committees' chairmen.

"Real financial regulatory reform cannot occur without an examination into the structure" of the Federal Reserve system, the letter says.

Details on which banks benefited from AIG's bailout never would have become known without demands from Congress, and a recent report shows flaws in the Fed's structure as a regulator, the lawmakers wrote.

Friday Morning Open Thread

2009-11-20T07:32:00.001-05:00

John is in BCN and Joe has probably reached beautiful South Africa by now where they are heading into summer. Joelle and I arrived in Jo'burg around this time of the year back in 2002. After six months in and out of the country we hated to leave and only did so because our tickets were expiring. The blue skies in southern Africa are amazing and star gazing at night is spectacular. From small villages to big cities, we found the people there to be very warm and kind. And then there's the wild life that is so enjoyable and so present throughout the country. One of the toughest parts of visiting for us was to see the impact of HIV/AIDS. Statistics don't tell the full story and were highly questioned by many. It was impossible to travel the countryside without seeing fresh graves in every cemetery. The contrasts there are everywhere.

John's post below about gender equality will hopefully be a hot issue over this way. Northern Europe is so progressive on the issue and Zapatero's Spanish government has been quite good but elsewhere in Europe it's embarrassing. Then again, look at the numbers in the US either for Congress or the work world. We all need to do a lot better.

So what's happening out there? Start threading...

Online campaign takes on gender inequities in EU government

2009-11-20T05:51:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in the hotel lobby in Barcelona talking to an interesting English guy, Jon Worth, who, along with a small group of friends, just launched a campaign to push for more women on the European Commission. As Jon tells it, the European Commission is kind of like the Cabinet for the European Union (it's all a bit confusing).

Here's Jon's explanation on the Web site, it pretty much tells the story:

The idea of this website is simple. Every 5 years a new team of European Commissioners is chosen, normally as a result of a messy behind the scenes deal between the Member States. Last time this happened in 2004 we were lucky to end up with 8 female Commissioners. This time around it looks like the gender balance will be even worse.

We believe in gender balance. Neither men nor women should be under-represented in political bodies. Especially not in one of the most important political bodies of the European Union, the European Commission, representing half a billion European citizens. To challenge this we are proposing a Commission of 26 competent women!

This is one of the reasons I travel - you can really meet some fascinating people who are very much like yourself, in terms of working on the same issues and via the same vehicles (in this case, getting a small group of friends together to do online advocacy on an issue they care about). But it's not simply about meeting like minds. Hopefully we can share best practices, what works, what doesn't, and serve as a resource in the future for progressives around the world. It really is incredibly cool (to me). It's why I react so strongly against people who treat foreign travel as something snobby. It's a gift, being able to travel abroad, for sure. But it shouldn't be looked down on, ever.

We limit ourselves as a country, sometimes, with our small-mindedness. But that discussion is for another day.

EU chooses Belgian as president

2009-11-20T03:52:00.001-05:00

Maybe invading a country and partnering with George Bush wasn't such a great idea for Tony Blair after all. If he bring peace to the Middle East, maybe he deserves a second look but for now he's going to have to work a little harder at solving problems instead of creating them. The new EU president will be Herman Van Rompuy who is not exactly a household name.

Originally an economist, he has been a career politician though without any great claim to fame and a one year stint as Belgian PM. Previous comments about Christianity being an important principle in Europe is sure to worry many. The Guardian:

Europe's eight-year quest to establish a simpler and more democratic regime came to a dramatic climax tonight when the Belgian prime minister, Herman Van Rompuy, and Britain's Cathy Ashton, were appointed as the two top officials embodying the new system.

In a surprise move that saw Gordon Brown abandon his campaign to have Tony Blair made first president of the European Council, Lady Ashton, the current European commissioner for trade, became Europe's foreign minister or high representative for foreign and security policy.

Rompuy, a Flemish Christian Democrat, who had been Belgium's prime minister for less than a year, became president of the European Council, the first permanent leader who will chair EU summits and represent the EU abroad.

More Franken-food on the way

2009-11-19T23:49:00.000-05:00

Sorry, but no thanks. If the question is really about feeding more people, vegetarian is a much better option. Somehow this sounds like something the meat industry is more interested in than anyone else. I don't care how much marketing you throw at it, there's little to like about this.

Winston Churchill once predicted that it would be possible to grow chicken breasts and wings more efficiently without having to keep an actual chicken. And in fact scientists have since figured out how to grow tiny nuggets of lab meat and say it will one day be possible to produce steaks in vats, sans any livestock.

Pork chops or burgers cultivated in labs could eliminate contamination problems that regularly generate headlines these days, as well as address environmental concerns that come with industrial livestock farms.

Democrats pushing for food safety overhaul in 2010

2009-11-19T22:25:00.000-05:00

Amazingly enough, everyone is on board with the biggest change in decades. The Republicans pushed the country to its limit with problem after problem and so now, even industry is calling for more regulation. If only Wall Street learned as quickly. Reuters:

A U.S. Senate committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to increase government oversight of food safety but the first significant overhaul in 50 years may not happen until 2010.

Pressure to overhaul the food safety system has grown following several high-profile outbreaks involving lettuce, peppers, peanuts and spinach since 2006 that have sickened thousands and killed several.

The Postal service is, or isn't, shutting down its Santa letter program

2009-11-19T20:37:00.000-05:00

One of the worst stories ever written by AP. Depending what paragraph of the story you read, the US Postal Service either is, or isn't, shutting down the "write a letter to Santa" program, and letters to Santa either will, or won't, be shredded. I've just re-read this article ten times. It makes absolutely no sense. But the program is important, to me at least, and if it's being shut down, people have the right to know (apparently, they found a - read that again, "a" - sex offender volunteering to answer letters, so they panicked). It's an important enough story - it'd be nice if an editor at AP could re-read and re-write it in proper English.

George Bush: Terrorists should be tried in U.S. Courts.

2009-11-19T19:09:00.000-05:00

Via Greg Sargent:

With Republicans hammering the Obama administration for trying suspected 9/11 terrorists in a New York court, a Democrat points out that in 2006, George W. Bush seemed to say outright that terrorists should be “tried in courts here in the United States.”

There was no outcry at the time.

Bush's line was: "I believe they ought to be tried in courts here in the United States." Huh. Now, as Markos noted in his recent column in The Hill (titled appropriately, "Conservative Cowards"), Republicans are fretting, trembling and wailing.

A typical genius in line to buy Sarah Palin's book

2009-11-19T17:45:00.000-05:00

Rudy isn't running for Governor of New York

2009-11-19T15:46:00.000-05:00

After that stellar presidential run, Rudy Giuliani has apparently decided not to run for Governor of New York:

It was not clear what prompted the decision, but the prospect of potentially facing Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who is quietly planning his own run for governor, may not have appealed to Mr. Giuliani, who suffered a bruising defeat in the 2008 Republican presidential primary. While many political analysts believe Mr. Giuliani would have comfortably beaten Gov. David A. Paterson, he would likely have faced an uphill battle against Mr. Cuomo, one of the most popular politicians in the state.

It remains unclear if the former mayor is considering any other political race in 2010. Some have urged him to take on the newly-installed Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, who has never run statewide and is still introducing herself to voters in parts of the state.

Rudy was going to be the great GOP hope in New York.

Isn't just about everyone really over Rudy?

Rep. Conyers criticizes Obama, Rahm on health care

2009-11-19T14:22:00.000-05:00

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in Huffington Post:

"I'm getting tired of saving Obama's can in the White House," said Conyers. "I mean, he only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn't anything to write home about. The public option is only available, which is the only way you manage cost and get some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies, the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for it anyway."

Asked if the president had shown enough leadership in the health care debate, Conyers facetiously wondered why Press would ask the question.

"Of course not, of course not," he said. "You know, holding hands out and beer on Friday nights in the White House and bowing down to every nutty right-wing proposal about health care, and saying on occasion that public options aren't all that important is doing a disservice to the Barack Obama that I first met who was an ardent single-payer enthusiast himself."

...."That is essentially what Rahm Emanuel has said: Just give us anything and we will declare victory," said Conyers.

Amen.

Calls from Congress to fire Timmy and Summers

2009-11-19T13:03:00.000-05:00

The news never gets better when it comes to Larry Summers or Timmy Geithner. It's always about another TARP fiasco or whatever Wall Street wants. We're well past the point where Wall Street deserves one more cent. The call for change was missed with this duo as they continue the same old policies that we've witnessed for well over a decade. Yes, the policies that got us into this crisis in the first place. Outside of Wall Street and the White House economic team, few Americans can stomach one more story about how poorly their money was handed over to the pure greed crowd.

Summers and Geithner both have to go. Click through for the interview with Representative DeFazio who has had enough. HuffingtonPost:

DeFazio said that there is a growing consensus among the Congressional Progressive Caucus that Geithner needs to be removed. He added that some lawmakers were "considering questions regarding him and other economic advisers" -- though a petition calling for the Treasury Secretary's removal had not been drafted, he said.

"[Obama] is being failed by his economic team," DeFazio concluded. "We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans."

Fox News displays old campaign footage to claim Palin is getting ‘huge crowds’ at her book signings

2009-11-19T11:42:00.000-05:00

Oops. Something the propaganda organ of the Soviet Union might have done. I'm sure it was a simple oversight. Just like when Hannity did the same thing last week. ThinkProgress has the whole delicious story. John Amato is filing an FCC complaint. Media Matters offers us two photos to compare:

I'm attending an Internet politics conference in Barcelona, and you're invited

2009-11-19T09:50:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Barcelona yesterday for the Personal Democracy Forum's (PDF) first-ever conference in Europe (they've held annual conferences in New York). The conference is about the Internet and politics, but also governance. It should be quite interesting, as its focus is very Europe-centric. It's a great chance to meet a number of the Internet-politics leaders from around Europe, and a number of the bloggers I recently met in France are going to be attending. (As is conservative US blogger David All, who I just ran in to in our hotel lobby, and Ilyse Hogue of MoveOn, Joe Rospars who worked for Obama, and others.) PDF is offering 20% off the registration fee for anyone who wants to attend (it starts tomorrow and goes through Saturday), provided you use this link and the following discount code (discount code: americablog09 )

Orrin Hatch on health care debate: "It's going to be a holy war"

2009-11-19T08:55:00.000-05:00

Holy war? That's how Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is characterizing the upcoming debate on the health insurance reform bill:

Republicans, who have criticized the Democrats' initiative as a step toward government control of the healthcare system, are already planning a series of delaying tactics, including forcing the entire bill to be read aloud on the Senate floor.

"It's going to be a holy war," Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said Wednesday evening.

This means that, in Hatch's world, insurance companies are deities. Republicans sure do worship at their altar.

Actually, the Catholic Bishops did turn the House debate into a holy war via the Stupak amendment.

Thursday Morning Open Thread

2009-11-19T08:03:00.001-05:00

Good morning.

The President returns from Asia today. Soon, but not before Thanksgiving, he's going to let us know his plans for Afghanistan. I'm really hoping he includes an exit strategy.

And, we have a health insurance bill in the Senate. Debate should begin on Saturday, if all sixty Democrats vote on the motion to proceed -- in other words, overcome the initial GOP filibuster. The three Democratic Senators to keep an eye on, for now, are: Nelson (NE), Landrieu (LA) and Lincoln (AR). But, once this debate starts, who knows where it will lead or how long it will take.

Later today, I'm leaving on vacation to South Africa -- a much anticipated trip, which I've been planning to take for years. So, I won't be blogging til I get back. Petey is spending his vacation in Maine with my parents and their dog, Riley. By all indications, he is having a ball.

Let's get threading...

Let's agree to agree to delay

2009-11-19T05:47:00.000-05:00

To some degree this is to be expected. The left let this issue completely slip away into the hands of the deniers. Even in the comments of David Horsey's latest, you can see the countdown and then the nutcases who start their usual denier rants.

Science returning to US contraception efforts

2009-11-19T03:37:00.001-05:00

The Bush administration policies towards contraception, abstinence and abortion in Africa set everyone back decades. The policies sounded good in the right wing Southern Baptist churches but made little sense in the real world. Getting back to focusing on contraception is a very welcome change. After years of destructive policies, it's going to take a while and will require much more money than this, but it's a start. The sooner the US shuts down the abstinence only programs in Africa, the better.

A new 12 million dollar family planning drive launched here Wednesday highlights how Obama administration funding has revamped a contraception drive in Africa and developing states, UN officials said, noting a sharp turnaround from the Bush era.

The change in US policy was praised at a three-day conference on family planning in Kampala which launched the project to improve access to contraceptives for women in six African nations as well as Indonesia and Pakistan.

Citigroup increases executive salaries

2009-11-19T01:07:00.000-05:00

The great American swindle continues. Under no circumstances should the Obama administration accept this. The Citi management may have issues today with "motivating" personnel but let's not forget about the massive amounts they all made during the peak years of the credit bubble. The last time I checked, nobody paid that back yet. If they want to hand it all over now and restart, fine. Otherwise, let Citi and the rest pound salt and go away. If they don't like it, nobody is stopping them from creating their own business without any government handouts. Let's see what kind of capitalists they really are.

The disclosures attach names to some of the 25 pay packages that Kenneth Feinberg, special master for Troubled Asset Relief Program executive compensation, approved last month. Feinberg disclosed the packages, but did not indicate the names of the recipients.

CFO John Gerspach's annual base salary will increase to $500,000 effective Nov. 1 from $400,000 prior to November, while James Forese is receiving $475,000, compared with $225,000.

Gerspach is also receiving $2.92 million of stock salary for 2009, while Forese will get $5.4 million.

Wall Street on target to beat 2007 bonus numbers

2009-11-18T23:35:00.002-05:00

That year would be the last year of the credit bubble before it burst. Is there anyone in Washington who cares to step up and side with the American public here? This is a sham and everyone knows it. If Congress or the White House had any sense of fairness or decency they would shut this down immediately.

Fueling the gains were extraordinary profits from the firms’ own securities trading accounts as they borrowed at near-zero interest rates and put the money to work in the securities markets. Member firms on the New York Stock Exchange earned a record $35.7 billion for their broker-dealer operations in the first six months, $8.9 billion more that the previous high in 2000, the state comptroller said.

In turn, the profits are contributing to a resurgence of bonuses on Wall Street. Six of the top American bank holding companies set aside $112 billion for salaries and bonuses, including deferred payments, in the first nine months, Mr. DiNapoli reported. The six banks are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.

If the profits continue, bonuses at the six banks could exceed the $162 billion paid 2007 — the year before the financial crisis hit stock markets. Though compensation has rebounded at the four largest banks, Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley reported a decline in overall compensation.