Minority Report

Stay the F*** Out of New York, Wal-Mart

Looks like grassroots pressure has torpedoed the Wal-Mart in Queens:

Facing intense opposition, a large real estate developer has dropped its plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a Queens shopping complex, thwarting Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City, city officials and real estate executives said yesterday.

The decision by the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, is a blow to Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, and comes after company officials said that New York City was an important new frontier in which Wal-Mart was eager to expand.

Here's the ignorant New Yorker quote:

"It would've been good if we had a Wal-Mart near by because then we wouldn't have to travel outside the area," said Rolando Sands, 21, a soft drink deliverer. "We'd be able to keep the money in the Queens community instead of Long Island."

I'm sorry but almost none of that money would have been in Queens except for the meager wages that Wal-mart would have paid its child laborers and undocumented immigrants. The rest would have gone to Arkansas...

Says the Man Supporting the Saudi Monarchy

"The policy in the past used to be, let's just accept tyranny, for the sake of -- well, you know, cheap oil, or whatever it may be, and just hope everything would be okay. Well, that changed on September the 11th for our nation. Everything wasn't okay. Beneath what appeared to be a placid surface lurked an ideology based upon hatred. And the way to defeat that ideology is to spread freedom and democracy. That's what NATO understands, see. . . .

Last I checked, Saudi Arabia was low on the list of democratic and free countries. They do, however, provide us with a lot of cheap oil...

Ooh, That'll Win 'Em Over

Because I'm sure the French are mostly concerned with semantics:

Bush yesterday also rendered inoperative one of the most blatant -- and catchy -- symbolic attacks on France during the first term.

At the dinner for Chirac, hosted by the Americans, there was a side dish of potatoes and Bush reportedly went out of his way to call them "French fries."

During the height of the administration's francophobia, they had been renamed "freedom fries" when they appeared on the Air Force One menu.

Compassionate Conservatism

With little fanfare, the Bush administration is proposing to stop financing the construction of new housing for the mentally ill and physically handicapped as part of a 50 percent cut in its housing budget for people with disabilities.

The proposal, which has been overshadowed by the administration's plans to shrink its community development programs, affects what is known as the Section 811 program. Since 1998, Section 811 has helped nonprofit developers produce more than 11,000 units of housing for low-income people with disabilities, including more than 700 in New York State.

Until now, Section 811 has provided equal amounts each year, roughly, for financing for new construction, and rent subsidies for disabled tenants. But under the 2006 budget proposal, the capital allocation would be eliminated and the overall budget would shrink by half, to $120 million from $238 million.

Leaving disabled people out on the streets? Hey, everyone has to make a sacrifice in order to enrich Bush's base - the have's and the have-more's.

School Will Still Be Open on Jeff Gannon's Birthday

Jeff Gannon aka James Gukert has an interesting perspective on the impact of the controversy over his press credentials on his career:

Jeff Gannon is considering suing liberal interest groups, bloggers and others for a "political assassination" that drove him from his job as a reporter for a conservative news outfit called Talon News, he told NEWSWEEK. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, singled out Media Matters -- a "well-funded" liberal group headed by longtime "attack dog" David Brock. ("Everything we wrote about him came from the public record," Brock replied.)

It remains unclear how Gannon got routine White House press access for nearly two years; he acknowledged he first began getting clearance to White House press briefings in early 2003 as a representative of GOPUSA, a group headed by Texas GOP activist Bobby Eberle-months before Eberle even created Talon News. Gannon said he had no access to White House aides outside the press room, nor did he try to interview any. When President Bush called on him at a press conference last month-during which he asked a question with false info about Sen. Harry Reid-"nobody was more surprised than myself," said Gannon.

To paraphrase the ever-eloquent Chris Rock, "Martin Luther King WAS assassinated. Malcolm X WAS assassinated. JFK WAS assassinated. That other n***** was shot."(or caught, as it were).

Equal Opportunity Abductions and Torture

Maybe they should call it 'Leave No Muslim Untortured':

A man is walking alone along a mountain path in the darkness. He is carrying a suitcase. He seems frightened, tired and confused. He has long hair and a long beard, but they are untidy, as if he did not grow them voluntarily. He turns a bend and meets three men carrying Kalashnikovs.

The man shows them his passport. It indicates that he is a German citizen, born in Lebanon, called Khaled el-Masri. Using poor English, he tells them that he does not know where he is. They tell him that he is on the Albanian border, close to Serbia and Macedonia, and that he is there illegally since he doesn't have an Albanian stamp in his passport.

The story that el-Masri tells them by way of explanation, on this evening in late May 2004, is extraordinary: a story of how an unemployed German car salesman from the town of Ulm went on a New Year's holiday to Macedonia, was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled and blindfolded and flown to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but controlled by Americans. Five months after first being seized, he says, still with no explanation or charge, he was flown back to Europe and dumped in an unknown country which turned out to be Albania.

We do something like this and then have the gall to defend ourselves as the champions of freedom and democracy. You can call me an America-hater but really it's the people responsible for the abduction and torture who hate America. By failing to abide by the principles of our democracy, such as the Bill of Rights, they spit on this country and what it stands for.

Leave It to the Middle Class to Pick Up the Tab

As usual:

The valuable federal tax deductions that people receive for paying local and state taxes have quietly started to vanish for many households, raising the cost of living in places like New York, Massachusetts and California, already among the nation's most expensive.

The culprit is a once-obscure federal tax provision known as the alternative minimum tax, which was created in 1969 to ensure that a relatively small number of wealthy people did not use loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

But it is increasingly being applied to families with incomes of $75,000 to $250,000 a year who claim relatively high deductions - like the ones for property taxes, state and local income taxes - and the exemption for children. When it does apply, it cancels some of those deductions.

The impact is about to mushroom. Barring a change in the law, almost 19 million taxpayers will be subject next year to the alternative minimum tax, or A.M.T., up from roughly 3.4 million this year and 1.3 million in 2000, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group whose calculations on this issue are widely accepted.

This is an example of a smart policy idea gone bad through the neglect of politicians. The alternative minimum tax was created in 1969 to prevent very rich people from avoiding paying their taxes by slapping them with a bare minimum that they had to pay. The catch is that they never adjusted the taxable income numbers to inflation - as a result, each year more and more people are subject to the tax.

The thing of it is that it's a real revenue generator, especially since the individuals are subject to a higher level of taxation than they would be otherwise. That's bearable for the really really rich but when you start getting into the middle class, it's starting to look regressive. Of course, almost no politician wants to really deal with it because the deficit looks really big when you take out the money generated by the AMT. If the Dems were looking for a good issue that would resonate with the middle class, this would be it.

The Moral Values Network

Interesting show happening on the "moral values" network:

In an episode titled "There's Something About Marrying," a longtime character on Fox's 15-year hit - it was Marge Simpson's sister Patty Bouvier, a closely held secret until the 8 p.m. broadcast - came out of the closet while Homer Simpson conducted dozens of same-sex weddings after small-town Springfield legalized the unions in a bid to increase tourism. As television's longest-running situation comedy, "The Simpsons" is no stranger to hot-button social, religious and political issues, mocking wardrobe malfunctions, Hollywood liberals and born-again Christians, among other targets.

Of course, I expected that the right wing would go ballistic over this mainstream, network television portrayal of gay marriage much as they had over the appearance of gay characters on a PBS show. After all, the Simpsons have an enormous audience built over 15 years whereas the PBS show hadn't even gone on air, right? Cue the outrage:

L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, criticized "The Simpsons" for addressing the issue of gay marriage, though he cautioned that he had not seen the episode. A parental advisory preceded the broadcast.

"At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood," he said.

"I'd rather them not do it at all," he added. "You've got a show watched by millions of children. Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces as an issue? Why can't we just entertain them?"

No quite the fire-and-brimstone reaction that I'd expected, Brent, especially since this is an issue which supposedly threatens the very institution of heterosexual marriage. Now it's being glorified by an extremely popular prime time television show. I wonder why such a lukewarm response?

The show, now in its 16th season, still garners strong ratings, while reruns of episodes from past years are broadcast continually on Fox. It has become a billion-dollar franchise for the network, spawning lucrative DVD packages, books and consumer merchandise.

Now it's starting to make sense. Moral values... except when it interferes with Uncle Murdoch's ability to make a buck. At least they're principled... or maybe not:

So perhaps there is something emotionally uplifting and morally invigorating about the new unscripted Fox show, "Who's Your Daddy?", scheduled to debut on Jan. 3. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what it could be.

The premiere episode pits a woman who was adopted as an infant against eight men, each of whom tries to persuade her that he is the biological father she has never met. If she correctly picks her biological father from among the imposters, she wins $100,000. If she guesses incorrectly, the man who was able to deceive her gets the $100,000. It's a new low in the exploitation of sensitive and emotionally charged private matters for prurient viewing.

But then Fox pioneered the fine art of matching the basest human emotions (greed, thirst for celebrity, the insatiable desire to view public humiliation) with the most super-charged of human desires (the longing for romance, the desire for beauty, the need for familial acceptance) in so-called reality shows. Fox, after all, gave American culture the appalling "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?," a miasma of greed and deception that made a mockery of marriage.

Fox has also been socked with a record-setting federal government fine -- $1.2 million -- for violating decency standards on a show called "Married by America." Last season, Fox introduced an unscripted show about wife-swapping.

Those shows, like so many others of their ilk, were lapped up by the red-state voters who claim to despise such cultural degradation. Indeed, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- which owns both Fox News and Fox Broadcasting Co. -- has created a stable of morally repugnant programming because viewers flock to it. (Murdoch, an ultraconservative who contributes heavily to GOP causes, worships money above all else.)

I guess the motto is: "Hate the gay man, love the wife-swapper?"

Conservatives are Bigger Lying Scumbags Than You Thought

I read this in today's Times:

Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.

The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.

"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them."

Though it is not clear how much money USA Next has in hand for the campaign - Mr. Jarvis will not say, and the group, which claims 1.5 million members, does not have to disclose its donors - officials say that the group's annual budget was more than $28 million last year. The group, a membership organization with no age requirements for joining, has also spent millions in recent years vigorously supporting Bush proposals on tax cuts, energy and the Medicare prescription drug plan.

I had planned to suggest wryly that USA Next was going to run ads saying that the AARP doesn't actually represented older retired people but instead are representing the interests of young workers. They've apparently done one better than me - this is not a joke - this is their actual ad running on the American Spectator website (courtesy of Josh Marshall):

You can't even make this shit up - they really are lying scumbags. This is the thanks the AARP gets for supporting that fraudulent Medicare prescription drug bill. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Our Pro-Family Policy

Speaking of hypocrisy, here is how our pro-family administration treats immigrant families:

Ten-year-old Adnan Thakur was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens, in the kind of immigrant family that transformed New York's neighborhoods in the 1990's. His father, a legal permanent resident from Bangladesh, drove a cab. His mother, who had entered the country illegally, worked as a cashier in a hardware store. Adnan, a fifth grader at Public School 95, excelled at math and Dragon Ball Z video games.

But one morning last fall, while Adnan and his 2-year-old sister, Rifha, were asleep, the bottom fell out of their life in America.

In a predawn raid, immigration agents from the little-known National Fugitive Operations Program, part of the Department of Homeland Security, took their mother away in handcuffs on an old deportation order, to hold her in detention until she could be sent to Bangladesh. Their father, unable to manage alone while he worked to support the family, asked deportation officers to help him send the children on the plane to Bangladesh along with their mother.

At Kennedy International Airport, the children waited on the plane for their mother, Shilpi Thakur. Immigration agents drove her to the airport, but Kuwaiti Airlines refused to let her board because the agents had not secured her a transit visa for the flight's layover in London. As the agents drove her back to detention in distress, the plane took off with her children, who were accompanied only by a Bangladesh-bound colleague of their father who had expected to put them in their mother's care.

By the time Mrs. Thakur was allowed to join them, the children had been stranded with strangers in Bangladesh for 10 days.

The Absconder Initiative was meant to track down criminal fugitives who were in violation of immigration law. They're now using it to suggest that immigrants who violate immigration law are criminals - make no mistake, immigration law is NOT criminal law. If it were the same, then immigrants would have the same rights as criminals, namely the right to legal representation and to be considered innocent until proven guilty. That's not what's at work here.

There is no morally justifiable reason to use the Absconder Initiative to break up families. Moreover, they aren't going after all undocumented immigrants. They're only going after families that are from Muslim families. This is how anti-terrorism works in this country. They break up and deport a bunch of Muslims and then crow about how they've made us safer. In fact, all they've done is broken up a bunch of innocent families and given more reason to believe that this Administration is anti-Muslim.

In the meanwhile, the actual criminals go free because they are harder to find.