Three Victories against the NRA in 24 hours! 19JAN12

VICTORIES in the courts against the nra and their extremist agenda. From the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.....

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Your support makes this possible! Dear Craig, Last week the gun lobby lost big, and supporters of common sense gun laws won big. With help from Brady's Legal Action Project (LAP), courts ruled against gun lobby challenges to gun laws in three important cases: In Washington, D.C. a federal judge dismissed a gun lobby challenge to an Obama Administration rule requiring that gun dealers in the Southwest border states notify law enforcement of bulk sales of semi-automatic rifles, a key indicator of gun trafficking. The court agreed with an amicus brief filed by LAP contending that ATF had authority to enforce the rule. A federal judge upheld Los Angeles County’s strong concealed carry restrictions, agreeing with an amicus brief filed by LAP. This victory follows victories at the district court level in similar cases in Yolo County and San Diego County, in which LAP also filed amicus briefs. A federal judge upheld New Jersey’s strong laws limiting the public carry of handguns, throwing out the Second Amendment Foundation’s challenge. Echoing LAP’s amicus brief, the judge stated that "the Second Amendment does not include a general right to carry handguns outside the home." But the gun lobby wants to strike down these laws and will do everything in its power to fight back. We need your help to stop them. The gun lobby has already stated that it will appeal these defeats and our LAP lawyers are preparing to fight again. You know that we cannot match the gun lobby’s vast financial resources — but with your help we can continue to beat them in the courts. With your help we won these three cases. Please help us continue to defeat the gun lobby with a special gift today. It will make a huge difference to our efforts. Sincerely, Jonathan Lowy Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SOPA AND PIPA CONTINUES from the PCCC 19JAN12

THE internet blackout protesting SOPA and PIPA was Wed 18JAN12 but the battle against these bills is ongoing. Click the link to go to the PCCC campaign against this legislation and make your calls to your Representative and Senators (I did and found out Rep Frank Wolf R VA and Sen Mark Warner D VA are against these bills, Sen Jim Webb D VA hasn't made up his mind).

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BIG NEWS: 18 senators just announced their opposition to the bill that would censor the Internet and stifle online innovation -- in response to yesterday's huge public pressure.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow featured the success of the petition you signed (along with our partners at Craigslist) on last night's show.
Click here to watch the Maddow clip -- and then call your members of Congress and tell them you oppose this bill! (Even if you've called before, call again. We'll give you the number and an updated script.)

(Then, click here share the video on Facebook to show people that grassroots activism makes a difference.)
Our fight isn't over yet. The Senate still may vote on this bill as early as next week, and supporters in the House are threatening to move forward as well.
The momentum's on our side, but calls are still important. We need to get others in Congress off the fence, bolster those on our side, and push supporters of this bad bill to change their minds. Your members of Congress, Representative Frank Wolf and Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner, need to hear from you.
We delivered over 100,000 petition signatures to Congress last week -- and presented them to over 200 congressional staffers who attended a briefing we held on this issue. Now that our petition has grown to over 200,000, we're planning another round of deliveries.
Can you call your members of Congress today and keep up the pressure? Click here for the number and a script -- and then send this email to others.
Together, we can save the Internet.
-- Jason Rosenbaum, Stephanie Taylor, Adam Green, and the PCCC team

Rick Santorum Finishes Ahead Of Mitt Romney: Iowa Caucus Results 19JAN12

From the party that is pushing for more restrictive voter ID laws around the country claiming voter fraud is rampant among students, the poor, the elderly and minorities comes election results that sound like election results from Russia or the prc or some Third World authoritarian regime. Miscounts, missing ballots, delayed, revised and downplayed winner announcements, mysteriously disqualified precinct tallies show the gop and tea-baggers can be trusted to conduct a fair election as much as newt gingrich(k) can be trusted to remain faithful to his wife. From HuffPost.....
More than two weeks after the 2012 Iowa caucus, a final certified tally showed former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum finishing with 29,839 votes and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 29,805.
After the initial results came in following the Jan. 3 Iowa event, Romney was believed to have won the caucus by a mere 8 votes.
Republican officials indicated Santorum finished ahead of Romney by 34 votes on Thursday. The Des Moines Register reports that votes from eight precincts will never be counted, however, and therefore the ultimate tally remains inconclusive.
HuffPost's Elise Foley reports:

Officials found inaccurate counts in 131 precincts, including one that had an error by 50 votes, the Des Moines Register reported on Thursday. Chad Olsen, the party’s executive director, told the Register that the results showed "a split decision." The final tallies, exempting the eight precincts that will not be tallied, were 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney, according to the Register.
The Santorum campaign said the change in results could change the narrative of Romney as a frontrunner.
"The narrative for a long time has been that Mitt Romney was 2-0," Spokesman Hogan Gidley told CNN on Thursday. "And if these results are true and Rick is ahead by 34 votes, then that's not the narrative anymore. There have been two states, two different victors."

Romney didn't appear to agree.
"The results from Iowa caucus night revealed a virtual tie," Romney said in a statement after the certification of the results. "I would like to thank the Iowa Republican Party for their careful attention to the caucus process, and we once again recognize Rick Santorum for his strong performance in the state."
Santorum's campaign shot back after these comments, suggesting that Romney was being immature in his response.
"He sounds like a kid who didn’t get what he wanted for his birthday so he smashed the cake,” Santorum strategist and adviser John Brabender told ABC News. "In New Hampshire, Sen. Santorum called Mitt Romney and congratulated him. Romney should have the dignity, honor, and character to call and congratulate us on our win in Iowa."

Reports: Gingrich's Ex-Wife Says He Wanted An 'Open Marriage' 19JAN12

newt gingrich(k) had an affair with this woman, the former marianne ginther, while married to his first wife. Seems she didn't mind him cheating when it was with her. These interviews only show the the hypocrisy of newt gingrich(k) and his 2nd and 3rd wives and the low class of people they are. How can the religious community in this country consider him for president, especially after the way they turned on Bill Clinton after his affair with monica lewinsky? One can only speculate their racist hatred of Pres Obama trumps their concern about family values. What a sad comment on the "evangelical" wing of the republican party in this country. From WikiLeaks, followed by the reports from NPR.......
Marriages and children
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich  

Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, he married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old and she was 26.^[131][132] Gingrich and Battley have two daughters from their marriage: Kathy Gingrich Lubbers is president of Gingrich Communications,^[133] and Jackie Gingrich Cushman is an author, conservative columnist, and political commentator^[134] whose books include 5 Principles for a Successful Life, co-authored with Newt Gingrich.^[135]
In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after beginning an affair with Marianne Ginther.^[136][137] In 1984, Battley told The Washington Post that the divorce was a "complete surprise" to her. According to Battley, in September 1980, Gingrich and their children visited her while she was in the hospital, recovering from surgery, and Gingrich wanted to discuss the terms of their divorce.^[138] Gingrich has disputed that account.^[139] In 2011 their daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, said that it was her mother who requested the divorce, that it happened prior to the hospital stay, and that Gingrich's visit was for the purpose of bringing the couple's children to see their mother, not to discuss the divorce.^[140] Although Gingrich's presidential campaign staff continued to insist in 2011 that his wife requested the divorce, court documents obtained by CNN from Carroll County, Georgia, indicated that Jackie had asked a judge to block the process stating that although "she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce... she does not desire one at this time [and] does not admit that this marriage is irretrievably broken.^[141]
According to L. H. Carter, Gingrich's campaign treasurer, Gingrich said of Battley: "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer."^[142][143] Gingrich has denied saying it. His supporters dismiss Carter as a disgruntled former aide who was miffed at not being asked to accompany Gingrich to Washington.^[144]
In 1981, six months after the divorce from Battley was final, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther.^{[145][146][147][148]} In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the Lewinsky scandal, when Gingrich became a leader of the investigation of President Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with Clinton's alleged affairs.^[149] According to Ginther, his second wife, she declined to accept Gingrich's suggestion of an open marriage.^[150]
In 2000, Gingrich married Bisek shortly after his divorce from second wife Ginther was finalized. He and Callista currently live in McLean, Virginia.^[151]

Reports: Gingrich's Ex-Wife Says He Wanted An 'Open Marriage'

by Debra Rosenberg

Enlarge MARK WILSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his then-wife, Marianne, leave their home on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1997. At the time, Gingrich was in the midst of an investigation over congressional ethics violations.

If Newt Gingrich got a boost for his prospects in South Carolina on Thursday with rising poll numbers and an endorsement from rival Rick Perry, his second ex-wife, Marianne, seemed to be doing her best to dampen his prospects with an ill-timed interview on ABC's Nightline Thursday night.
In an excerpt released by ABC Thursday morning, Marianne tells Brian Ross that her ex lacks the moral character to be president. In what ABC says is her first television interview since the 1999 divorce, Marianne did not seem to hold back. As Brian Ross reports:

"In her most provocative comments, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich said Newt sought an 'open marriage' arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife.
She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.
'And I just stared at him and he said, 'Callista doesn't care what I do," Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. 'He wanted an open marriage and I refused.'
Marianne described her 'shock' at Gingrich's behavior, including how she says she learned he conducted his affair with Callista 'in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington.'
 

The Washington Post reported similar details about an open marriage in its own interview with Marianne. She also told the newspaper about a family values speech Gingrich gave shortly after asking her for a divorce:

"'How could he ask me for a divorce on Monday and within 48 hours give a speech on family values and talk about how people treat people?' she said."

These sorts of disclosure seem unlikely to play well with socially conservative voters in South Carolina.
The second ex-Mrs. Gingrich has spoken out before. In August of 2010, she gave a long interview to Esquire.

"Back in the 1990s, she told a reporter she could end her husband's career with a single interview. She held her tongue all through the affair and the divorce and even through the annulment Gingrich requested from the Catholic Church two years later, trying to erase their shared past," Esquire reported then.

In that interview Marianne also seemed eager to point out the discrepancies between Gingrich's public and private lives:

"He could have been president. But when you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don't like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new ... you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way," she told Esquire. "He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don't have to be connected," she says. "If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president."

Over at Slate's XX factor, Jessica Grose questions whether the 11th-hour disclosures could actually generate sympathy for Gingrich:

"Marianne's interview may even have a positive effect on South Carolina voters. They may see her as a bitter woman who's just attempting revenge-by-network news, and this may galvanize their wavering support for Newt. They may not even believe whatever Marianne has to say."

That could be. In any case, the ABC excerpts surfaced in plenty of time to make their way into Thursday night's GOP debate at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.

Cheap Chinese Panels Spark Solar Power Trade War 19JAN12

THE chinese are guilty of dumping solar panels on the American market as well as the rest of the world. They do so with their subsidies to the solar panel industry in the prc and with their control of their labor force, keeping wages low, benefits nonexistent, and lax enforcement of environmental and safety regulations. Tariffs should be levied on solar panels from the prc and that money used to fund tax credits for consumers of American made solar panels. From NPR....

by Christopher Joyce

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

[4 min 16 sec]

 

Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images Contractors with SunEdison install more than 1,000 Chinese-made solar panels on top of a Kohl's Department Store in Hamilton Township, N.J., in 2010. Energy generated by the solar system will cut the store's usage, on average, by 25 to 30 percent.

There's a solar trade war going on inside the U.S., sparked by an invasion of inexpensive imports from China.
The U.S. solar industry is divided over these imports: Panel-makers say their business is suffering and want a tariff slapped on the imports. But other parts of the industry say these cheap panels are driving a solar boom in the U.S.
On the manufacturers' side, there's Gordon Brinser. He's an Oregon native who says the company he runs there, SolarWorld, is not only green, it's red, white and blue. "The mission that we have is to build products here in America, for America's community, for America's energy independence, and really leave the world a better place," he says.
Brinser claims China is threatening that vision by flooding the U.S. with cheap solar panels. He claims China subsidizes its solar panel industry to the tune of $30 billion a year, yet uses only a small percentage of the panels it makes. "So obviously," he says, "these subsidies have gone into the industry, and their full intention is to export and control markets in other countries."
Brinser claims the imports contributed to the collapse of some U.S. manufacturers. Three did go out of business in 2010, though the exact cause may or may not be cheap imports. But Brinser has petitioned the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission to slap tariffs on imported Chinese panels.
So far the feds say, yes, American panel-makers have been harmed by Chinese imports. Yet to be determined is whether China is doing anything illegal: for instance, subsidizing panel-makers so they can sell below cost, a practice called "dumping."
Brinser acknowledges that if he wins and tariffs are added, Americans will have to pay more for panels. "The prices will have to increase, you know, a little. They will find their new, natural balance in a competitive and legal environment," he says.
Higher Prices Could Hurt Installers
But CASE, the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy, says higher prices are bad for companies that install solar power. These companies far outnumber panel manufacturers.
Kevin Lapidus works for CASE and is vice president of SunEdison, which builds and operates solar power systems.

More About Solar Power In The U.S.

Solar Panels Compete With Cheap Natural Gas

Cheap natural gas due to fracking makes more expensive forms of renewable energy less attractive.

Big Solar Project Moves Forward Without Uncle Sam

Large-scale plan to install solar panels on military homes doesn't rely on federal loan guarantees.

"Fully 52 percent of the U.S. jobs are in the installation business," he says. "These are U.S. workers who wake up in the morning, put on a tool belt, and they go and build something." He says manufacturers of solar panels in the U.S. are only about a quarter of the domestic business.
Lapidus says solar power is just now shaking off its reputation as too pricey for regular people. "We're finally reducing the price of solar," he says. "We're driving down the cost to grow the solar base — installations, jobs, etc. And the SolarWorld trade case will increase the cost of electricity; it will set the industry back by years."
He says it could also start an international trade war with China. American solar industries export well over a billion dollars of products to China per year.
Most Customers Just Want The Best Price
At Solar Energy Services in Millersville, Md., a single stack of solar panels sits on the floor of a warehouse. Engineer Rick Peters says he got them cheap because the manufacturer folded — they couldn't compete. He's run out of Chinese panels for the moment. "Probably about 70 percent of what we install is Chinese panels," he says.
Peters points out that some homeowners like to buy American, but most, about 90 percent of his customers, just want the best price. And Chinese panels are about 10 percent cheaper.
A tariff could double their price, and Peters says that could push everyone's prices up.
"I'm very concerned about that," he says. "I think that it could significantly increase the price, because of the limited number of manufacturers in the U.S. Potentially, they could take advantage of the marketplace."
By raising their prices as well? "Absolutely," says Peters.
He fears that could have ripple effects for other U.S. manufacturers. He illustrates by cutting open a big cardboard box on the floor of the warehouse. Inside is an inverter, a device that every solar installation needs to convert direct current to the alternating current in your home. It costs about $4,500.
"This one is made by PV Powered," he says, "which is a U.S. manufacturer. A lot of the inverters are manufactured in the U.S." Fewer installations would mean fewer inverters sold.
Over the next several months, the federal government will decide whether China is playing fair or not.

Related NPR Stories

After Scandal, Solar Industry Looks On Bright Side Oct. 29, 2011

A Lease On Solar Panels? Some States Pitch In Feb. 22, 2011

Perry, Gingrich lose lawsuit to get on Virginia primary ballot 13JAN12

OH this is rich, especially the part about newt gingrich(k)'s campaign submitting 1500 signatures written by the same person!!!! This from the group getting America all worked up about voter fraud!!!! From the Washington Post.......

By Anita Kumar

RICHMOND — A federal judge denied a request Friday by four presidential candidates to add their names to Virginia’s Republican primary ballot.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. failed to qualify for the ballot and sued the State Board of Elections and the state GOP.
U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr. said the candidates should have challenged the qualification rules months ago when they realized that Virginia forbids out-of-state residents to collect signatures.
“Had the plaintiffs filed a timely suit, the court would likely have granted preliminary relief,” Gibney wrote in his ruling. “In essence, they played the game, lost, and then complained that the rules were unfair.’’
Gibney said he thought a provision requiring the candidates to use only state residents was unconstitutional, but none of the candidates had managed to collect the required 10,000 signatures. Only former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) qualified for the Virginia ballot.
Virginia, an increasingly important swing state, will hold its primary on Super Tuesday, March 6.
Virginia’s ballot-access rules, in place for four decades, are considered the toughest in the nation. Candidates must collect 10,000 signatures, with at least 400 from each of the congressional districts, while some other states only require candidates to pay fees or sign forms.
State officials said Friday that they would not have time to reprint and mail absentee ballots by Jan. 21 in order to get them out 45 days before the primary as required by state and federal law. Changes would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We remain disappointed that more Republican candidates are not on our primary ballot,’’ said Pat Mullins, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.
Perry’s campaign told state election officials that it had submitted 11,911 signatures, but the lawsuit says 6,000 were submitted. Officials testified that an employee of the Utah firm hired to collect signatures went into a diabetic coma and was unable to either collect all the signatures or turn them in.
Gingrich’s campaign said it submitted 11,050 signatures. But the Virginia firm hired to collect signatures included 1,500 signatures that appeared to be signed by one person.
A poll released last month showed Gingrich with a slight lead over Romney among Virginia Republicans in the race for president. The Quinnipiac University poll showed Gingrich at 30 percent and Romney at 25 percent among Republican voters.
Santorum and Huntsman did not submit signatures and failed to qualify for the ballot. Officials testified Friday that Santorum’s campaign collected 8,000 but did not turn them in because campaign officials knew they fell short. Huntsman’s campaign officials said they did not want to pay $100,000 to a firm to collect the signatures.
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and legislative leaders said they would be open to looking at changing the ballot rules for future elections during this year’s General Assembly session.
“There are a lot more important issues,’’ said House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford).
“If someone is running for president of the United States, the leader of the free world, you would think they would understand the requirements,’’ said Sen. Ryan T. McDougle (R-Hanover), chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus.
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) had initially said he would push a bill to ensure that more Republican presidential candidates would appear on the state’s ballot this year, but he later backed off.
The Democratic Party of Virginia certified President Obama’s signatures. He was the only Democrat to qualify for the ballot, so the state will cancel the party’s primary.

VATICAN STATEMENT ON ECONOMICS from PAX CHRISTI USA DEZ 2011 & Santorum charity for the poor spent most of its money on management, political friends from WASHINGTON POST 13JAN12

rick santorum is nothing but another greedy, selfish, hypocritical political prostitute in a field of the same running for president on the gop / teabagger ticket. He has never been interested in the plight of the poor, the working class and the middle class when supporting their interest have been opposition to the interest of the rich and the corporations who control him. As a Catholic his positions are in direct opposition to recent pronouncements on social justice and regulation of capitalism from the Vatican. From the 'Peace Current' DEZ 2011 (the Pax Christi newsletter) followed by a WAPO expose on santorum's charity for the poor......
Vatican Statement on Economics
This quotation from Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio
prefaced the recent release of an extraordinary document in
Rome. Authored by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice
and Peace it’s a breath-taking analysis of the moral failing
behind the current economic crisis. Even more—signed by
the Council’s head, Cardinal Peter Turkson, and by its secretary,
Bishop Mario Toso—the document charts what might
be called a “Catholic way forward” from the present morass.
 
The analysis of the intrinsic moral failing of modern economic
life is particularly compelling. For while the authors
detail how the economic crisis of our day “has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and the hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it is not the greedy sinfulness of individuals that is emphasized. Instead, analysis here focuses on
certain structural aspects of contemporary civilization that have
abetted and facilitated such greed. Greed no doubt is an endemic temptation for our fallen nature, as it were, but special failings of current institutions, practices, and ideology
corrupt the process of human formation in a fundamental way.
 
What practices and ideologies are to blame? “First and foremost,” we’re told is “an economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls,” an “approach unsympathetic towards public intervention in the market.” The European terminology might confuse American readers (who’d likely call such ideology “conservative,” not “liberal”). But, this is what Blessed John Paul II once called the idolatry of the market, which is described in Monday’s release as a “system of thought, a form of ‘economic apriorism’ that purports to derive laws for how markets function from theory, these being laws of capitalistic development.”

Such thinking is neither radical nor new. Radical as it might
seem to Americans, this analysis from the Pontifical Council
fits comfortably within magisterial traditions. From the 19th
century onward encyclicals and other Church teachings—including the writings of Blessed John Paul II and Benedict XVI have preached that unregulated market forces endanger the
common good. Valuable as they are for economic development,
without moral safeguards markets are perceived to foment attitudes toward others and toward the community that not only oppose Christian values but also are unsustainable for an enduring and just social and political order. Market operations incline us to valorize the self and self-interests and to do so in opposition to and competition with others. In individual moral terms, the worry is selfishness, greed, and pride. We’re nudged by market forces, as the document puts it, to live like a wolf among our fellow men and women. Understood more broadly, the Church’s long-standing argument is that the unregulated
market’s “invisible hands” erode caritas and concern for others (especially concern for those Jesus called “the least of these”) and militate against the primary purpose of our public life as citizens which is the common good of the whole community in light of salvation.

The statement from Rome draws from the writings of Benedict XVI pointedly in making this case, noting that “In his social encyclical [Caritas in Veritate], Benedict XVI precisely identified the roots of a crisis that is not only economic and financial but above all moral in nature. In fact, as the Pontiff notes, to function correctly the economy needs ethics; and not just any kind but one that is people-centered. Being should have primacy
over having. Ethics should precede economics. Persons are
irreducible: they are not merely commodities, consumers, or
producers. Thus, a moral appreciation of the utter dignity of
the person, the solidarity of the human community, and concern
for others must be empowered in public life to guide
and regulate the dynamism of economic markets to support
the fullness of the Christian vision for the common good.
The economic miseries of our time trace to our generation’s
failure in this regard.

The Pontifical Council’s analysis is powerful, and it resonates poignantly within our world’s current atmosphere of frustration and despair over out-of-control economic forces that seem to be shredding the fabric of our lives and livelihoods. The remedies that the Council proposes are similarly appealing. Needed, we are told, are morally inspired laws, regulations, and institutions to guide market forces
toward the common good and to assure that markets serve
humankind rather than the reverse. Specifically, the Council advocates for a supra-national network of laws and an international authority to regulate globalized markets. No fantasizing about black IMF or United Nations helicopters hovering over Wall Street, however. In keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, the Council would empower such authority to intervene only where local and national efforts to regulate for the common good proved ineffective.

American Catholic conservatives are in a tizzy, naturally. “Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish,” George Weigel writes, shouting for all who’ll listen that the Pontifical Council does not speak with papal authority and not only can its teachings be ignored, but they should be. Samuel Greg of the Acton Institute (echoing the American Tea Party’s shrilling that wrongheaded intervention by the “authority” of the Federal Reserve
and the national government actually precipitated the crisis) complains that the Pontifical Council offers only “an uncritical assimilation of the views of many of the very same individuals and institutions that helped generate the world’s most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.” As if anticipating such dismissals, Bishop Toso at the release
of the document in Rome reminded the assembled journalists that the Council took its inspiration from Benedict XVI himself who, in Caritas in Veritate, proposed that some form of world authority was needed in the present age to bring order to emerging global economic forces.

Cardinal Turkson came to Washington earlier this year where he delivered a powerful defense of Catholic Social Teaching at an event commemorating the 120th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the seminal papal encyclical to confront issues of economic justice. He is hardly a radical. It is a measure of how distorted the American political landscape has become that his analysis sounds so fresh and so different from the norm in contemporary debates about the economy. In this new document, he invites all Catholics to look at the financial crisis as Catholics first and political partisans second. It is an invitation we should all accept.

Steve Schneck is the Director of the Institute for Policy Research
& Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America.
He is a board member of Catholics in Alliance for the
Common Good. This article originally appeared in the Common
Good Forum at www.catholicsinalliance.org.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE VATICAN ECONOMIC STATEMENT
By Taylor Reese
PCUSA Program Associate
On October 24th, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released a formidable economic analysis and proposal. Broadly speaking, this “note” draws on past Papal judgments upon the “idolatry of the market” (Bl. John Paul II), and an amoral “technocracy” (Benedict XVI), and builds on the idea of a “true world political authority” (John XXIII) via social principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, to foster full and global development, which is “the new name of peace” (Paul VI).

On inequality in development: “While some of the more industrialized and developed countries and economic zones…have seen their income grow considerably, other countries have in fact been excluded from the overall improvement of theeconomy and their situation has even worsened.”

On technocratic hegemony: “An economic system of thought that sets down a priori the laws of market functioning and economic development, without measuring them against reality, runs the risk of becoming an instrument subordinated to the interests of the countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage.”

On the dark outcome of unequal development: “No one can in conscience accept the development of some countries to the detriment of others. If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid.”

On the proposed economic authority: “Its decisions should not be the result of the more developed countries’ excessive power over the weaker countries. Instead, they should be made in the interest of all, not only to the advantage of some groups, whether they are formed by private lobbies or national governments.”

Full text of the statement can be found online at:
http://www.news.va/en/news/full-text-note-on-financial-reform-from-the-pontif

Santorum charity for the poor spent most of its money on management, political friends

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dan Eggen

As Republicans gathered for their national convention in Philadelphia a decade ago, Rick Santorum, who was then an up-and-coming senator from Pennsylvania, launched a charity he said would improve the lives of low-income residents in his home state.
“Wouldn’t it be a great thing to leave something positive behind other than a bunch of parties and a bunch of garbage?” Santorum told a local reporter.
But homeless families and troubled children were not the biggest beneficiaries of “Operation Good Neighbor.” Instead, the foundation spent most of its money to run itself, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for fundraising, administration and office rental paid to Santorum’s political allies.
The charity also had significant overlap with the senator’s campaigns and his work on Capitol Hill. Among the leading donors to the foundation were Pennsylvania development and finance firms that had donated to his election efforts and had interests that Santorum had supported in the Senate.
Santorum, whose last-minute surge in the Iowa caucuses has brought new attention to his presidential bid, portrays himself as a common man concerned about the gap between the nation’s rich and poor. But in the case of his charity, his efforts ended up mostly helping his cadre of political friends.
Before it folded in 2007, the foundation raised $2.58 million, with 39 percent of that donated directly to groups helping the needy. By industry standards, such philanthropic groups should be donating nearly twice that, from 75 to 85 percent of their funds.
“That’s exceptionally poor,” Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a national organization that rates charitable groups, said of the group’s giving. “We would tell donors to run with fear from this organization.”
Santorum campaign adviser John Brabender said the former senator remains proud of the cause he championed.
“Senator Santorum was very committed to helping raise funds for Operation Good Neighbor and did so with the understanding that those funds would be used to help many organizations and families located in urban areas of Pennsylvania,” Brabender said.
Robert Pratter, who had served on the charity’s board, defended its management, saying its fundraising costs and payments to staff and consultants were reasonable.
“We were raising money for these very small mom and pop groups — the most effective way to raise money was the way we raised it,” said Pratter, who was formerly with Philadelphia risk management firm PMA Capital, a donor to the charity and to Santorum campaigns. “If you have a golf outing , it costs money to have a golf outing.”
Recipients, including an AIDS group, a local YMCA and others, received checks of roughly $6,000 to $15,000. Pratter said they were much-needed resources for tiny nonprofits struggling raise money on their own.
Robert Bickhart, a Republican political strategist who was Santorum’s campaign finance director, became the charity’s executive director.
He served without pay in 2001, and received payments for renting the charity office space in his Conshohocken consulting firm, Capitol Resource Group. Tax records do not specify the amount paid for rent.
Beginning in 2002, he was paid for his part-time job as director, and from 2002 to 2006 he received a total of $97,000 in compensation, plus unspecified amounts in office rent.
Bickhart, who became finance chair of the Republican National Committee in 2009, had resigned three years earlier from the Santorum charity. The group had been the subject of a piece in the magazine American Prospect that reported some of his early fees and noted the charity’s low level of giving to nonprofits.
When Bickhart left, Santorum’s former spokesperson, Laura Lebaudy, took over briefly as the charity’s director, records show.
In its six years, the charity also paid $347,088 for the fundraising services of Maria Diesel, a Chester County events coordinator who has also helped raise money for Santorum’s political efforts.
Diesel did not return messages left at her home. And Bickhart, who later became mired in controversy over his stewardship of the finances at the Republican National Committee under former chairman Michael Steele, referred questions to the Santorum campaign.
Pratter said Bickhart and others were properly compensated, and their political ties to Santorum were irrelevant.
“I don’t believe they got a tremendous amount of money, and I know whatever they got was for services provided,” Pratter said. “It wasn’t as if this was some kind of front. They did their work.”
Bickhart also benefitted from another Santorum organization, a political action committee known as America’s Foundation PAC, which the senator formed while he was in office. Lawmakers often use such committees, known as “leadership PACs,” to dole out money to political allies.
Santorum kept the committee going, even after losing his seat in 2006, and has raised $5.5 million over the past five years.
When he was in office and running for re-election, he gave 20 percent of the funds to other GOP candidates in federal races. But after Santorum left the Senate, that figure dropped to about 3 percent, although he also gave a small amount to local Republicans in key primary states.
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, found in a 2011 study that leadership PACs run by lawmakers commonly give away from 80 to 90 percent of their money to other candidates or political committees.
After he left the Senate, Santorum spent most of his PAC money — more than $3 million — on campaign-style expenses criticizing Democrats, including direct mail, polling and political consultants, disclosure records show. Another $1.4 million went for travel, salaries and other administrative costs.
As with the charity, hundreds of thousands of dollars of the PAC money went to loyal aides with close ties to Santorum. Bickhart and his firm, for example, have received nearly $780,000 from America’s Foundation since 2001, records show.
In a January 2010 letter seeking donations, Santorum said he needed money to “reinforce our conservative allies” in Congress and retake control of the House. Though Santorum had not then registered as a presidential candidate, he also wrote he was “actively considering” a presidential run and hoped to “kick the Obama administration to the curb,” according to the Philadelphia Daily News.
Santorum centered much of his fundraising and political organizing in recent years on opposition to the policies of President Obama and other Democrats. In one “thank you” mailing sent to supporters in 2010, Santorum said he was “fighting to preserve the very soul of America” and “to stop President Obama and his radical agenda.” The document is preserved on a vendor’s Web site as an example of award-winning fundraising work.
By 2011, much of the spending by America’s Foundation was centered on key primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as Santorum laid preparations for a presidential run.
Brabender said the expenses in primary states were proper.
“The senator spent a great deal of time on party building activities and helping other candidates, and he was entitled to have these expenses paid for,” he said.
Federal campaign-finance laws provide few limits on how a politician can spend money from a leadership PAC, and candidates are not required to form a presidential campaign committee until they explicitly declare an interest in running for the White House.
Santorum formally announced his bid in June 2011, after spending about $585,000 in the first six months of 2011 through America’s Foundation .
“Leadership PACs have become a very common vehicle to be treated as a kind of slush fund for former officeholders,” said Paul S. Ryan, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center. “It’s perfectly legal for a senator to amass millions of dollars in a leadership PAC, and then once they leave office or are kicked out office, they can do whatever they want with that money.”
Staff writer T.W. Farnum and Research Editors Alice Crites and Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

S&P Downgrades The Credit Of Nine European Countries, Including France 13JAN12

THIS is not good news for the American economy. A stronger dollar makes exports more expensive, a weaker euro means less sold in Europe, downgrading European countries threatens the financial stability of American financial institutions and banks. Is this the beginning of the double dip? See my post on this blog from 29DEZ11

HARRY DENT OF HS DENT ON NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, BEARISH ON THE ECONOMY 29DEZ11 

This from NPR.....

by Marilyn Geewax and Eyder Peralta

Enlarge Remy de la Mauviniere/AP A trader watches a figure showing the fall of the euro in Paris on Friday. The euro fell to a 17-month low against the dollar on news reports that France's credit rating was downgraded by Standard & Poor's.

Of course the news would come on Friday the 13th.
After a day of leaks and rumors, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services made it official late this afternoon. The credit-rating agency is stripping unlucky France of its AAA credit rating, knocking it down by one notch to AA+.
Also getting knocked down one notch each were Austria, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia.
S&P gave even worse news to Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal, marking down their debt ratings by two notches each. That downgrade kicked Cyprus and Portugal all the way to "junk" status, where Greece already resides. Ouch.

Those that escaped a downgrade included Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Estonia.
S&P issued a statement saying it lowered the credit ratings because it had determined that "the policy initiatives that have been taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone."
Earlier in the day, French Finance Minister François Baroin admitted the downgrade was coming, but S&P itself waited until after the markets closed at 4 pm ET in this country to make the formal announcement.
Baroin said France's debt problem is now pointed in the right direction, and added that his country would not allow a ratings agency to dictate fiscal policies.
Le Monde, a major French newspaper, reported that Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right National Front (FN) party, predicted the loss of France's AAA rating would be "the first step in the breakup of the euro area".
In recent weeks, European leaders have been scrambling to find ways to cope with the problem of too much debt in too many countries. They have managed to hold off any major banking crises, but have not taken any steps bold enough to convince credit raters that all defaults can be avoided.
Friday's downgrade news suggested European political leaders still have a long way to go to clean up massive debt troubles and get the European Union's economy growing again. For France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, the downgrade was an embarrassment that could diminish his chances for re-election this year.
Typically, a credit downgrade — even by just one rating agency — would hurt a country's ability to borrow money cheaply. Investors demand higher interest payments when risks are greater, so no country wants to have anything but the highest rating.
But gauging exactly how much this downgrade will hurt European countries is not exactly clear. Last August, S&P cut the United States' AAA rating for long-term debt by one notch — but interest rates did not shoot up on U.S. debt.
Whether investors go as easy on the European countries remains to be seen as they issue new bonds in coming weeks and months.

Baroin, speaking on French television, said the S&P action was "not good news." But he added that given how many other countries are having debt troubles, the downgrade was "not a catastrophe."
Although the official S&P announcement came after U.S. markets closed, Baroin's statements had been made while trading was still in progress in this country . The reaction was muted. In the end, the Dow Jones industrial average fell only 48.96 to 12,422.06. The value of the euro tumbled Friday to a new 16-month low against the dollar.
We live blogged the news as it happened. Read below for a blow-by-blow look. Note that we re-wrote the top of this post to reflect the news.
 
Update at 5:15 p.m. ET. What Happens Now?:
As we said when the United States' credit rating was cut in August, it's unclear how this cut will affect the Eurozone. But one thing to watch, reports the Wall Street Journal, is a Treasury bill auction the eurozone bailout organization known as the European Financial Stability Facility plans to hold on Tuesday.
Update at 5:13 p.m. ET. Good News For Five Countries:
The S&P also announced it affirmed the ratings of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland and Luxembourg.
Update at 5:06 p.m. ET. Austerity Not Enough:
Reading deeper into the S&P announcement, it's clear the ratings agency is unhappy with the steps taken by European countries to curb the sovereign debt crisis. In short, it says austerity measures are not enough.
"We believe that a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating, as domestic demand falls in line with consumers' rising concerns about job security and disposable incomes, eroding national tax revenues," the S&P said.
Update at 4:55 p.m. ET. Lowering Ratings On Nine Sovereigns:
The S&P has made their cuts to France official and has added eight other European countries to the list. From their press release:

"We have lowered the long-term ratings on Cyprus, Italy, Portugal, and Spain by two notches; lowered the long-term ratings on Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia, by one notch; and affirmed the long-term ratings on Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands."

Update at 4:23 p.m. ET. Downgrade 'Long Overdue':
Our Newscast unit just spoke to Peter Morici, an economist and professor of business at the University of Maryland. Morici said this downgrade "was long overdue."
Essentially he said, France has a "systemic risk." With the Euro, the northern countries have flourished, said Morici. In fact, he said if France was valued using its own currency it wouldn't be worth as much. So, now, as the southern European countries face defaulting and the risk of a eurozone split becomes real, any advantage the Euro gives France is gone.
"[The downgrade] is not the end of the world," said Morici. "But it is an indication that the stability and opportunity for growth promised by the creation of the Euro have not come to fruition."
Update at 4:03 p.m. ET. France's National Politics:
French President Nikolas Sarkozy is facing an election. This downgrade will no doubt have an effect on its politics. The Wall Street Journal's Angelique Chrisafis reports from Paris:

"With less than 100 days until the first round of the French presidential race, the credit-rating downgrade in Paris will seriously complicate Nicolas Sarkozy's already difficult bid for re-election.
"'If France loses its AAA, I'm dead,' Sarkozy told aides in October, according to Le Canard Enchaîné. The president has staked his re-election on convincing France that he is the only person with the guts, strength and character to save it from economic doom. The rating cut will seriously dent his image as the Caped Crusader of the financial world."

Update at 3:11 p.m. ET. Shouldn't 'Overrate The Assessments':
Quoting an interview on German television, The Wall Street Journal reports Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble tried to minimize the significance of a downgrade saying, "In recent months, we have grown to agree world-wide that we shouldn't overrate the assessments of rating agencies. It's not new that there is a great uncertainty in financial markets regarding the euro zone."
Update at 3:09 p.m. ET. Rating The Same As The U.S.:
It's worth noting that a AA+ rating is the same S&P has assigned to the United States.
Update at 3:05 p.m. ET. 'Like Most Of The Eurozone':
In his interview with France 2, Baroin also said France's rating had been lowered one notch "like most of the eurozone."
The AP points out that there is no confirmation from S&P that any other European country has been downgraded. The Guardian runs through what that may mean:

"Of the 17 members of the eurozone, 15 were warned by S&P last month that they could be downgraded. We've heard strong denials from Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and - in the last few minutes - Ireland.
"That leaves ten on the table — Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg,Estonia, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain."

Update at 2:56 p.m. ET. The Markets:
As we've said, this announcement was widely expected, so the markets don't seem to be reacting dramatically. The Dow, Nasdaq and the S&P were down less than 0.75 percent.
The AFP reports on the European markets:

"European markets had expected the downgrade, which was widely reported during the day even if Standard and Poor's were not expected to confirm it until later in the evening, and stocks only slid back slightly.
"But the single currency itself was rocked by the news, which coincided with a breakdown in talks to agree a Greek debt writedown, and the euro slipped to 16-month lows against the dollar."

Update at 2:50 p.m. ET. AA Or AA+?
The AP is reporting that S&P cut the rating to AA, but several other news sources, including the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and France 24, are reporting it's been cut to AA+. We're going with AA+ for now. But we'll revise if we need to.
Update at 2:35 p.m. ET. Rating Cut 'Isn't A Catastrophe':
The Wall Street Journal, which is running a live blog on the news, reports that François Baroin, France's finance minister, sought to minimize the effect the downgrade may have on the country and the eurozone.
In an interview with television station France 2, he said ratings "don't dictate French politics."
"Of course we would have preferred to keep our Triple A credit rating," Baroin said.
Update at 2:25 p.m. ET. No Confirmation From S&P:
NPR's Marilyn Geewax reports S&P has not yet confirmed the downgrade, but it is widely expected they will make an announcement at 4 p.m. ET., after the markets close.
This news was not unexpected. In December, Fitch, another of the major credit rating agencies, assigned France's sovereign debt a negative outlook.

The real battle for the soul of America from the WASHINGTON POST 12JAN12

I want to know one thing from mitt romney and the rest of the gop / tea-bagger candidates. Where is their Christianity in their attitudes and opinions concerning the poor and the federal social safety net? I don't see it in mitt romney's latest comments concerning heating assistance, food stamps, Medicaid and housing vouchers. Nothing in his comments reflecting the teachings of Jesus Christ in Matthew 25, the Beatitudes, Christ's parables about the rich and the poor. Shouldn't this make Christian America pause and reconsider just what kind of people they are supporting for president?

By Ruth Marcus, Published: January 12

Mitt Romney likes to say that this election is a battle for “the soul of America.” He’s right — just not in the way that he thinks.
Romney asserts that President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform America,” turning the country “into a European-style entitlement society.” In fact, Romney and his Republican presidential rivals have a far more radical transformation in mind. They envision a dramatically shrunken federal government and a dangerously unraveled social safety net.
Theirs is not the self-styled compassionate conservatism of a George W. Bush. “It is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need,” Bush said in 2002. “It is conservative to insist on responsibility and results.”
A decade and a Tea Party later, active help — at least active help from the federal government — is out of Republican fashion. Of course Republicans have traditionally favored state over federal involvement, but the degree of proposed retrenchment during the current campaign is remarkable — and troubling.
Consider Romney’s answer to a question at the last debate about the safety net in an age of austerity:
“Well, what we don’t need is to have a federal government saying we’re going to solve all the problems of poverty across the entire country, because what it means to be poor in Massachusetts is different than Montana and Mississippi and other places in the country,” Romney said.
“And that’s why these programs, all these federal programs that are bundled to help people and make sure we have a safety net, need to be brought together and sent back to the states. And let states that are closest to the needs of their own people craft the programs that are able to deal with the needs of those folks.”
Romney went on to tick off specific programs: food stamps, housing vouchers, Medicaid, emergency heating assistance.
“What unfortunately happens is, with all the multiplicity of federal programs, you have massive overhead with government bureaucrats in Washington administering all these programs. Very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them,” Romney added.
Nice talking point, if it were true. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has demonstrated, the major programs for the poor are extraordinarily efficient, even taking into account state as well as federal administrative costs. In 2010, 96.2 percent of Medicaid spending went for care; 94.6 percent of food stamp spending went for food; and 90.9 percent of housing program dollars went to rental assistance for low-income tenants.
Even for the man who ran Bain Capital, that shouldn’t seem like massive overhead.
The more important point is the degree to which Romney & Co.’s back-to-the-states approach would shred protections for the most vulnerable Americans. Romney’s observation about the differences between being poor in Massachusetts and Mississippi underscores the importance of a national safety net. Mississippi has more needs, and less money, than does Massachusetts.
Indeed, it was Richard Nixon who, reacting to reports about pockets of deep poverty and hunger in a wealthy nation, instituted a guaranteed federal minimum income for the elderly and disabled (Supplemental Security Income, or SSI) and set national eligibility levels for food stamps.
Imagine what would have happened during the recession if, say, food stamps — now known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) — were a fixed block grant to states, as Romney envisions. Needs rose dramatically, but states, already strapped for cash, would not have been able to meet them.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, understands the importance of the federal role — or once did. His observations about the need to return control to states came in the context of a discussion about the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
Yet Gov. Romney, in 2003, called on Congress to “support the highest possible funding,” adding, “We need to get the funds to those who need help the most to stay safe and warm this winter.”
Indeed, one of Romney’s leading supporters in New Hampshire, Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, is lobbying for more LIHEAP money — funding, by the way, that the president proposed cutting, and that already comes in the form of a block grant to states that decide how to use it.
“It’s an important safety net,” Ayotte told Newsweek. “I’m not against having a safety net for those who are most in need.”
Is Romney? Are his rivals? Because the impact of their plans would be to shred the safety net. Making sure that doesn’t happen is the real battle for America’s soul.
ruthmarcus@washpost.com

2 Army brigades to leave Europe in cost-cutting move from the WASHINGTON POST 12JAN12

A smart move by Pres Obama, will save us money and make Europe more responsible for their own security. Now if we could only get Europe, Japan, the prc and S Korea to accept the responsibility for protecting their oil supplies from the Persian Gulf....

By Greg Jaffe

FORT BLISS, Tex. — The Obama administration has decided to remove two of the four U.S. Army brigades remaining in Europe as part of a broader effort to cut $487 billion from the Pentagon’s budget over the next decade, said senior U.S. officials.
The reductions in Army forces, which have not been formally announced, are likely to concern European officials, who worry that the smaller American presence reflects a waning of interest in the decades-long U.S.-NATO partnership in Europe.
Top Pentagon officials have sought to allay the concerns by telling their NATO allies in private meetings that the United States will continue to rotate Army units through Europe on training missions to augment the presence of the remaining two brigades.
“In the briefing we’ve been giving the Europeans, we have made clear that there is going to be this rotational presence there that will be conducting exercises,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in an interview.
“As a matter of fact, they will probably see more of the Americans under the new strategy because the brigades that were there were actually fighting in Afghanistan and weren’t even there. . . . What you are going to have is two [brigades] plus this large rotational presence that is going to be there.”
The reductions are part of a Pentagon plan to shrink the Army from its current 560,000 soldiers to about 490,000, defense officials said. The cuts are being driven by a new defense strategy that calls for smaller, faster and more agile forces and a shift in focus toward the Asia-Pacific region, where China has been investing in submarines, fighter jets and precision-guided missiles.
Senior Obama administration officials have targeted Europe for cuts because they recognize that reductions in U.S. forces abroad will generate less congressional outcry than cuts in the United States, where the soldiers pump money into local economies.
The U.S. military maintains about 80,000 troops in Europe from all of the services. Cutting two Army brigades and the noncombat units that support them will result in a reduction of about 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers.
Panetta’s idea of augmenting American presence around the world by rotating combat brigades or smaller Army units through areas on training exercises is a relatively new concept for the regular Army, which has historically maintained a more static, garrison-based force in Europe.
During the past decade, the Army’s combat brigades have rotated with little rest to Iraq and Afghanistan on 12- to 15-month tours.
“If we can develop these innovative rotational presences elsewhere, we will be in a position to basically cover not only the areas where we are keeping a key focus — the Pacific and the Middle East — but we will be covering the world,” Panetta said.
He said the Pentagon envisions sending Army units to areas such as Latin America and Africa on training exercises as the Obama administration continues to cut the size of the U.S. force in Afghanistan. Such missions have typically been conducted by Army Special Forces units and the Marine Corps.