Crap You Should Read

Last fall, Alex Gibney, a documentary filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2008 for an exposé of torture at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, completed a film called “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream.” It was scheduled to air on PBS on November 12th. The movie had been produced independently, in part with support from the Gates Foundation. “Park Avenue” is a pointed exploration of the growing economic inequality in America and a meditation on the often self-justifying mind-set of “the one per cent.” As a narrative device, Gibney focusses on one of the most expensive apartment buildings in Manhattan—740 Park Avenue—portraying it as an emblem of concentrated wealth and contrasting the lives of its inhabitants with those of poor people living at the other end of Park Avenue, in the Bronx.

Among the wealthiest residents of 740 Park is David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, who, with his brother Charles, owns Koch Industries, a huge energy-and-chemical conglomerate. The Koch brothers are known for their strongly conservative politics and for their efforts to finance a network of advocacy groups whose goal is to move the country to the right. David Koch is a major philanthropist, contributing to cultural and medical institutions that include Lincoln Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. In the nineteen-eighties, he began expanding his charitable contributions to the media, donating twenty-three million dollars to public television over the years. In 1997, he began serving as a trustee of Boston’s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York’s public-television outlet, WNET. Recent news reports have suggested that the Koch brothers are considering buying eight daily newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, one of the country’s largest media empires, raising concerns that its publications—which include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times—might slant news coverage to serve the interests of their new owners, either through executive mandates or through self-censorship. Clarence Page, a liberal Tribune columnist, recently said that the Kochs appeared intent on using a media company “as a vehicle for their political voice.”

“Park Avenue” includes a multifaceted portrait of the Koch brothers, telling the history of their family company and chronicling their many donations to universities and think tanks. It features comments from allies like Tim Phillips, the president of the Kochs’ main advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, and from activists in the Tea Party, including Representative Michele Bachmann, of Minnesota, who share the Kochs’ opposition to high taxes and regulation. (It also contains a few quotes from me; in 2010, I wrote an article about the Kochs for this magazine, noting that they were funding much of the opposition to President Barack Obama by quietly subsidizing an array of advocacy groups.)

 

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Just a week ago, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe suggested that President Obama might be impeached over the Benghazi non-scandal. Now, Inhofe must watch as Obama declares Inhofe’s state a disaster area and promises Oklahomans “all the resources they need at their disposal.”

Inhofe, of course, believes his state deserves those resources, even though he voted down aid to Hurricane Sandy victims. On MSNBC, Chris Jansing confronted Inhofe about his calling the Sandy aid bill a “slush fund,” and the brazen right-winger insisted the two issues shouldn’t be linked.

“Let’s look at that, that was totally different,” Inhofe told Jansing. “They were getting things — for instance that was supposed to be in New Jersey, they had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C.; everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy taking place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

Inhofe’s answer is too dishonest to fully parse. First of all, there was Sandy damage way beyond New Jersey, including in the Caribbean and in Washington, D.C., too. And Inhofe had different objections to the Sandy bill at the time. In a rambling, hard-to-follow Senate floor speech blocking Sandy aid last December, the Oklahoma conservative objected to the bill’s timing — “There’s always a lot of theater right before Christmas time … We shouldn’t be talking about it right before Christmas” — even though it was already going on two months since the storm ravaged the East Coast.

Inhofe was also exercised by the fact that the Sandy bill included what he said was $28 billion for future disasters. But the climate-change denier was particularly outraged that the bill included $3.5 billion to deal with what he called “global warming,” which led to a long rant against cap-and-trade legislation, and then his floor speech unraveled. (Interestingly, Inhofe’s own press operation put the incoherent speech up on YouTube, as though it was a proud moment for the senator.)

Oklahoma’s other GOP senator, Tom Coburn, brags that he’s going to seek tornado relief — but insist that the funding is “offset” by other cuts to the federal budget. Coburn is proud that he’s being consistent by placing the same conditions on disaster aid to his own state as he’s demanded elsewhere. Consistent, maybe — but also fundamentally cruel.

 

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As the NFL continues to try to make the Pro Bowl worth watching, the league is considering some ideas inspired by TV game shows.

Albert Breer of NFL Network reported that the league is considering elements that would make the game more like a game show, such as
having incentives paid out during the game. Breer said the league would like to “make it so every single minute of the game has some sort of thing that’s going to keep fans interested and engaged.”

Breer added that the NFL doesn’t “feel the need to keep the integrity of what a normal football game is.”

Personally, I think a good football game is more fun to watch than any game show, and I don’t think adding game show gimmicks to a football game makes the game more fun to watch. The problem I see with the Pro Bowl is that the players don’t take it seriously, and adding “game show” elements seems likely to compound that problem. I don’t have a problem with the NFL’s idea of naming two team captains and letting them pick the teams, but I don’t think we need to have Monty Hall telling Peyton Manning to pick a receiver behind one of two doors, only to find out that Calvin Johnson is behind Door No. 1 and Titus Young is behind Door No. 2.

If the NFL really wants to make the players play hard, the best “game show” element to incorporate would be large cash prizes for the winners. Currently, players on the winning Pro Bowl team make $50,000 and players on the losing team make $25,000. The difference between getting paid $25,000 and $50,000 is a lot to most of us, but it’s peanuts to most Pro Bowlers. Until that changes, don’t expect the players’ effort to change.

Everything has been going LeBron James’ way for the past year, from personal accolades to championships.

Now the Miami Heat superstar has vaulted from fifth to second in Sports Illustrated’s 10thFortunate 50 rankings of the 50 highest earning professional athletes in the United States.

James’ total take of $56.5 million includes $39 million in endorsements, the most of any U.S. athlete in 2013. He is the first team-sport player in the top two on the SI list since Shaquille O’Neal in 2004.

Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the highest paid for the second consecutive year at a projected $90 million for 2013. That is largely due to a Showtime deal that guarantees him at least $32 million per fight.

The other members of the Heat’s Big Three also cracked the Fortunate 50. Dwyane Wade is 11th at $26.68 million on a salary of $17.182 million and $11.5 million in endorsements. Chris Bosh is 47th at $18.545 million, including $1 million in endorsements.

The Justice Department’s snooping on journalists working for the Associated Press is an abuse of power in the broadest sense. But one reason the whole episode is controversial at all is because the Obama administration technically broke no rules.

By law, companies that cooperate with government investigations—such as the telecom operators the AP concludes gave up its phone logs—are protected from lawsuits. The immunity is built into a 2008 revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—which President Obama, then a senator, opposed before backtracking and endorsing it.

“I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program,” Obama said shortly after the legislative update passed the House.

The flip-flop enraged civil libertarians at the time, but Monday's revelation from DOJ reveals how far the government has come since the days when going after journalists meant subpoenaing them head-on and causing a public spectacle in the process.

As recently as 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder was still plugging leaks the hard way, ordering New York Times reporter James Risen to show up in court to burn his own source. (Risen refused, and is still resisting the court.) It was all part of an aggressive Obama policy to pursue leakages that continues today. But now it seems as though the Justice Department is trying a different strategy. Rather than haul a resistant reporter before the court, it’s instead circumventing that circus altogether by going straight to the phone companies....

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Second in media balloting for the NBA 's Defensive Player of the Year award, Miami Heat forward LeBron James on Monday was named to the NBA's first-team All-Defensive team in voting by the league's 30 coaches.

The Minnesota Senate is expected to give final approval on Monday to a bill that would make the state the 12th in the United States to allow same-sex couples to marry and only the second in the Midwest.

Leaders in the Senate, where Democrats hold a 39-28 majority, have said they believe they have the support to approve a bill legalizing gay marriage. They set a vote for Monday on the measure that members of the state House approved last week.

Democratic Governor Mark Dayton has said he would sign the bill, which would make Minnesota the third state this month to legalize gay marriage after Rhode Island and Delaware. The law would take effect August 1.

Minnesota would join Iowa as the only other Midwestern state to permit gay marriage and the first to do so through legislation. Iowa has permitted same-sex marriage since 2009 under a state Supreme Court order...

 

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On April 4, 2013, both houses of Congress did the impossible: they unanimously passed a bill. The bill was the repeal of the STOCK Act, which was designed to stop politicians from getting involved in insider trading.

The name of the act is an acronym, with S.T.O.C.K standing for “Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge.”

The Stock Act initially provided transparency regarding the finances of members of Congress and senior officials so investigators could see whether or not they were using their power as lawmakers to influence the stock market and reap massive financial benefits.

Yes, you read right. Congress had this act, which catches corrupt congressman when they commit a crime that would get anyone else arrested or indicted, repealed.

Insider trading is apparently illegal for everyone except U.S. congressman and senior officials. Why? Because it would put a startling amount of high-ranking officials out of a job and make the United States Congress look like the gosh darn Mafia.

 

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Who's still going to Marlins games?

The shooting of a two-year-old by her brother was one of many recent gun incidents to claim a young child's life.

In the last five months there have been at least 71 of them. None older than 12, several as young as five or six months, all of their lives ended by a bullet....

Among the 71 shooting deaths we analyzed from the past five months:

40 killings were unintentional and 31 were alleged homicides.The most common scenario was kid-on-kid: At least 29 of the accidental deaths occurred when a kid under 17 pulled the trigger.The average age of the victims was just under six years old.20 victims were girls and 51 were boys.The problem was worst in the South: Florida had the most kids killed (four accidents, five alleged homicides), followed by Ohio and Tennessee (four accidents and two alleged homicides in each state), followed by Alabama (two accidents, two alleged homicides) and South Carolina (four accidents).And the number of kids who get shot each year is significantly larger when you include those who survive: According to a report by NPR, emergency rooms treat more than 3,000 children for accidental shootings annually. That number now includes a seven-year-old boy in Houston, who was shot by his five-year-old brother less than 48 hours ago.

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With Kiefer Sutherland and Fox plotting the return of Jack Bauer, we’re hearing some additional details about the plan.

You already figured this out, but now we can say with certainty: Touch isn’t coming back for a third season. The mystical drama was shifted to Friday nights this season where it struggled in the ratings. Even without a 24 revival, it was considered pretty much dead in the water.

For 24 miniseries/limited series, we’re hearing Fox is actually currently looking at a 13-episode order for the show. For a cable series, that’s actually a full season (heck, for HBO’sGame of Thrones, it’s more than a full season). So that would be a pretty significant potential order to bring back Bauer.

Fox had no comment. Hopefully there will be clarity at the network’s upfront presentation Monday.

Of course, a 13-episode order does raise the question: Will 24 continue in its real-time format, but just follow Bauer over the course of 13 hours? That would sort of botch the title, though, right? Or will Bauer face another 24-hour adventure, but the narrative will skip time? It would be great to see Bauer get on L.A.’s 405 freeway at the end of one episode and arrive at his destination two hours later at the start of the next episode — now that would be realistic action!

Colorado is steps away from being the first state legislature to pass laws regulating recreational marijuana. Voters passed the recreational marijuana law (Amendment 64) in November of 2012, but it directed lawmakers to set blood-level limits for driving as well as regulate and tax the sale of recreational marijuana. By passing laws that regulate recreational pot, Colorado is implementing Amendment 64.

Lawmakers gave their final approval for the tax bill on Wednesday, having passed the final approval for the the blood-level limits bill Tuesday. They are currently working on a bill to regulate the sales of recreational pot, which passed the Senate and is currently in the House.

Taking a giant step toward regulating recreational pot, state lawmakers passed House Bill 1318 today, which will impose taxes on recreational marijuana. The Denver Post reports that the taxes will be set at a “15 percent excise tax and a sales tax initially set at 10 percent on recreational marijuana sales.”

The tax law has been passed, it awaits the voters’ approval this November. Given the passage of Amendment 64, approval seems likely.

A separate bill to set blood-level limits for driving was passed on Tuesday, aka the ‘Driving While Stoned Bill’. According to Yahoo, it sets a 5-nanogram-per-milliliter threshold for tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana. By setting a legal limit for blood levels, lawmakers took a crucial step toward implementing recreational marijuana laws. However, they did ban roaming weed trucks:

 

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A top Federal Reserve policymaker has raised the possibility that rising inequality may restrain economic growth for several years in a sign the central bank may be worried about the increasing gap between the rich and poor.

“In my view, the large and increasing amount of inequality in income and wealth, which has been an ongoing development for decades, may have exacerbated the crisis,” Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin said Thursday in a speech delivered in Washington. “More research is required to determine whether it may also pose a significant headwind to the recovery from the crisis for years to come.”

Home values rising at their pre-recession pace may help alleviate some of the wealth gap, Raskin said, but “some of the restraints on the recovery may be quite long-lasting.”

Raskin’s comments are among the most forceful to date from any current member of the Fed’s seven-person Board of Governors regarding wealth, income inequality, and how dynamics in household wealth may be impeding growth and prolonging the realization of a full-fledged recovery for millions of struggling U.S. families.

“Overall wage growth has been anemic, and many households have not seen their circumstances improve materially,” Raskin said of the current economic recovery, which began in 2009 after the so-called “Great Recession” officially ended.

The Fed thus far has focused on stimulating overall growth by keeping borrowing costs near record-lows and incentivizing investors, businesses and households to take risks, in hopes it will lead to increased purchases and investment. Fed policy tools such as lowering interest rates and purchasing U.S. Treasuries and mortgage securities, however, may be ineffective in alleviating inequality.

 

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The number of Americans who view the Republican Party unfavorably has hit a record high, according to a new poll released by CNN on Monday, despite scandals that have plagued the White House over the past few weeks. 

 

The poll found that 59 percent of respondents view the GOP unfavorably, a record that has only shown up one other time in the poll's results since tracking began in 1992.

The Republican Party's net favorability ratings are down 8 points in the past two months. The amount of respondents viewing the GOP favorably fell from 38 percent to 35 percent, while the number of people who view the party unfavorably climbed five points, up from 54 percent in March. 

The only other time the party's favorability ratings have been this low came in the aftermath of the summer 2011 fight over raising the nation's debt ceiling.

The poll's findings — combined with President Barack Obama's continued popularity — suggest that Republicans remain susceptible to overreach on the issues of Benghazi and the IRS' targeting of conservative-sounding groups applying for tax exempt status.

The same poll found that 54 percent of respondents said the GOP was "reacting appropriately" to the IRS' targeting, compared with just 42 percent who said they were "overreacting." Majorities also believe, however, that what Obama has said about the scandal has been at least "mostly true," and that the IRS acted on its own in carrying out the targeting.

Though Karl Rove receives a salary from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for his work as a Fox News Channel “political contributor,” his compensation doesn’t end there. The network frequently airs ads by his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPSpolitical committees, as “news,” free of charge.

A ThinkProgress review of Fox News Channel broadcasts over the past twelve months revealed that Fox News programs ran all or a significant part of Crossroads ads at least 34 times — an estimated value of more than $3.6 million in free air time. Frequently, the network’s hosts run the ads during Rove’s segments and then allow him to explain and repeat their charges.

On Monday, for example, Fox News aired a significant chunk of a new American Crossroads ad attacking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her handling of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

 

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To play or not to play? For Dwyane Wade , that is the question. The situation surrounding Wade's thrice-bruised right knee isn't quite tragic enough to render him the NBA 's answer ...

Texting while driving has become a greater hazard than drinking and driving among teenagers who openly acknowledge sending and reading text messages while behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.

The number of teens who are dying or being injured as a result of texting while driving has skyrocketed as mobile device technology has advanced. Researchers at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park estimate more than 3,000 annual teen deaths nationwide from texting and 300,000 injuries.

The habit now surpasses the number of teens who drink and drive -- a hazard that has been on a dramatic decline in recent years, researchers say.

An estimated 2,700 young people die each year as a result of driving under the influence of alcohol and 282,000 are treated in emergency rooms for injuries suffered in motor-vehicle crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Andrew Adesman and a team of Cohen investigators found that while driving between September 2010 and December 2011, among 8,947 teenagers aged 15-18 nationwide, an estimated 49 percent of boys admitted to texting while driving compared with 45 percent of girls.

 

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You might think the job market is awful, but that's only because you're hung up on trivialities like "money." If you can just learn to do without a living wage, the job market suddenly looks much better.

Roughly half of the jobs created in the United States in the past three years have been low-paying jobs, according to economists at the Royal Bank of Scotland, in aresearch note sent to clients on Monday, titled "A Closer Look At The Labor Market Recovery."

Nearly all of the 6.2 million jobs created since the job market first started its historically lousy recovery in the spring of 2010 (nearly a full year after the recession ended) have been in the private services sector, according to RBS. And of the roughly 160,000 jobs per month created in that sector, about 80,000 of them have been "low-paying," according to RBS. "High-paying" and "average-paying" jobs account for about 40,000 jobs each, according to RBS.

 

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 Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau has been fined $35,000 for his postgame comments regarding the officiating in Game 3 of the team’s Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Miami Heat. “From my angle, I saw a guy basically flop,” Thibodeau said of James. “I don’t think it warranted an ejection. I understand a flagrant foul, I understand that, but ejection, no, nope.” On Sunday, James responded to the flop allegations. “It’s kind of the same as when people said I was overrated, I have the same response,” James said. “I don’t need to flop. I play an aggressive game but I don’t flop. I’ve never been one of those guys. I don’t need to flop. I don’t even know how to do it. So it doesn’t mean much to me.”

If you paid any attention to free agency this year, you know that the Dolphins made their receiving corps a priority.

They re-signed wide receiver Brian Hartlinebefore anyone else could snatch him away and then landed Mike Wallace and Brandon Gibson to go with him on the depth chart. It’s a big change from what the team had on hand last season and Hartline was asked whether the Dolphins have the best receiving corps in the AFC East during an appearance on the NFL Network.

“Absolutely, I think we are,” Hartline said. “Add Dustin Keller in there, Lamar Miller’s a great back and Daniel Thomas is a great back out of the backfield. The whole passing game is an advantage of ours.”

It’s not an outlandish statement. There’s not much competition from the Jets or Bills when it comes to receivers. The Patriots are still figuring things out at wide receiver, but their tight ends help make for a more difficult decision between the two teams.

 

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A GOP senator floats impeaching Obama on Benghazi. Here are 14 other crazy times they've made the same plea

For years, congressional staffers have been cashing in their government experience for more lucrative positions lobbying in the private sector. But as Lee Fang reports, another dynamic is increasingly playing out in DC: Lobbyists from the defense, medical and financial industries are now taking up top government positions—but not without receiving large bonus payments from their former firms to see them on their way. Here are five lobbyists-turned-congressional staffers who have made use of this reverse revolving door:

 

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The Marlins have had to call up top prospects early because of injuries – a move that could cause roster upheaval when players return.