Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is Mother Jones' Dark Money reporter. He is based in the DC bureau. His work has also appeared at the Wall Street Journal, the Detroit News, Salon, and TomDispatch.com, where he's an associate editor. He can be reached at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. He tweets at @AndrewKroll.

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Mitt Romney's New Economic Plan: Same As His Old One

—By Andy Kroll

| Tue Sep. 6, 2011 3:25 PM PDT

Mitt Romney.

As he unveiled his plan to jumpstart the American economy at a North Las Vegas trucking company Tuesday afternoon, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney kept brandishing his iPhone 4. The smartphone symbolized America's global, 21st-century economy, while President Obama's economic policies, Romney explained, were backward, ineffective, stuck in the past. "President Obama's strategy is a pay phone strategy," he said, "and this a smartphone world."

But unlike Apple's innovative and regularly revamped iPhone, Romney's new economic plan, "Believe In America," is pretty stale. The 160-page proposal consists largely of stripping away federal regulations, slashing taxes, amping up domestic oil drilling, and embracing free-market principles. In other words, pretty much the same stuff he advocated during his last presidential campaign. Of the ten actions Romney says he would take on day one of his would-be presidency, six appeared in near-identical form in his old plan. (The list includes repealing Obama's health care reform bill, which obviously wasn't possible in 2007. So really call it six out of nine.)

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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Ron Paul Blasts Rick Perry as "Al Gore's Texas Cheerleader"

—By Andy Kroll

| Tue Sep. 6, 2011 8:04 AM PDT

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Is there a harder slam in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination than accusing a fellow GOPer of being a "cheerleader" for climate change guru Al Gore?

That's the charge leveled at Texas governor and GOP frontrunner Rick Perry in a new ad from the campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the libertarian favorite and long-shot GOP candidate. Paul's ad, "Trust," revisits Perry's stint working for Gore's 1988 presidential campaign in Texas. At the time, Gore was an up-and-coming US senator from Tennessee, campaigning on the issues of global warming and AIDS prevention; Perry was a centrist Democrat in the Texas legislature. (He switched parties in 1990.)

Paul's ad slams Perry for serving as Gore's Texas chairman, labeling him "Al Gore's Texas cheerleader." "Rick Perry helped lead Al Gore's campaign to undo the Reagan revolution," the ad's narrator says, "fighting to elect Al Gore president of the United States."

Here's the ad:

Perry, it's worth noting, wasn't the only unlikely supporter of Gore's '88 campaign. Fred Phelps, the patriarch of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., housed campaign workers for Gore's presidential bid in 1988. And in 1989 Phelps' son, Fred Jr., threw a fundraiser for Gore's Senate run at his home.

10 Eye-Popping Labor Day Stats

—By Andy Kroll

| Sun Sep. 4, 2011 7:30 AM PDT

Labor Day was created more than 100 years ago to celebrate the might, ingenuity, and achievements of American workers. But for many, this year's holiday is a painful reminder of how few good jobs are out there. To mark this Labor Day weekend, here's a roundup of 10 eye-popping statistics on the American jobs crisis. It's a sobering snapshot of the issue that worries Americans more than any other—and which hangs over President Obama as he gears up for his big jobs speech on Thursday (not to mention his reelection campaign).

25.3 million Americans: The true size of the unemployment crisis. This figure includes people who are out of work, forced to work part-time, or unable to find a full-time job, as well as those who want to work but have given up searching for a job in the past month, most likely out of frustration.

6.9 million jobs: How many fewer jobs there are today than in December 2007.

0.22 jobs: The number of job openings per one unemployed worker.

Twenty-eight out of 32 months: The number of months since January 2009 that job growth failed to keep up with basic population growth (roughly 150,000 jobs a month). All those headlines saying job growth has stalled are wrong; it's not even doing that.

43%: The percentage of jobless workers who haven't pulled a steady paycheck in more than six months. That's 6 million workers.

16.7%: The jobless rate for African-Americans. Black unemployment is now at its highest in 27 years.

11.3%: The Hispanic unemployment rate. This figure has held steady since February 2009.

17.7%: The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds of all races, ethnicities, and educational backgrounds. Often overlooked, youth unemployment has a long-term toll; young people who enter a weak job market are almost guaranteed to earn less over their lifetimes than those who find jobs during boom times.

280,000: The number of jobs the American economy needs to add each month to fill its 11.3 million-job deficit by the middle of 2016.

35,000: The average number of jobs the economy actually added in the past three months.

The Fall-Out Is Far From Over in Mortgageland

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Sep. 2, 2011 9:28 AM PDT

When it comes to the mortgage fraud fiasco, the federal government has a message for the nation's biggest banks: You're not out of the woods yet.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is prepping lawsuits against more than a dozen large banks for allegedly deceiving the government on the quality of mortgage securities that the banks peddled during the housing bubbble, the New York Times reports. Those banks include JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America, the nation's largest banking institution.

At the crux of the suits is this: The banks, which put together the securities using piles of home loans and later sold huge amounts of these securities to Fannie and Freddie, failed to properly vet the quality of the loans and missed evidence of falsified borrower income figures. In short, the feds say, the banks didn't do their homework as required by securities law.

Fannie and Freddie—that is to say, the taxpayers—lost $30 billion partly because of these disastrous securities deals, according to the Times.

Here's more:

The impending litigation underscores how almost exactly three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of a financial crisis caused in large part by subprime lending, the legal fallout is mounting.

Besides the angry investors, 50 state attorneys general are in the final stages of negotiating a settlement to address abuses by the largest mortgage servicers, including Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Citigroup. The attorneys general, as well as federal officials, are pressing the banks to pay at least $20 billion in that case, with much of the money earmarked to reduce mortgages of homeowners facing foreclosure.

And last month, the insurance giant American International Group filed a $10 billion suit against Bank of America, accusing the bank and its Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch units of misrepresenting the quality of mortgages that backed the securities AIG bought.

Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan all declined to comment. Frank Kelly, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, said, "We can't comment on a suit that we haven’t seen and hasn’t been filed yet."

As Yves Smith points out, the suits aren't a surprise; FHFA chief Ed DeMarico has been eyeing such litigation for more than a year. But they come at a difficult time for the banks and the housing industry.

There's the massive state attorneys general settlement on the way. Then there's New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a favorite of consumer advocates who was kicked off the committee spearheading the mortgage settlement, who has said he'll seek to press on with fraud investigations of his own regardless of how the settlement comes out. And there are those pesky reporters who continue to dig up instances of foreclosure fraud, reporting that suggests that while banks had promised to correct fraudulent practices, in some cases they've continued fabricating crucial foreclosure documents.

Smith, one of the best chroniclers of the mortgage fiasco, sums up the state of affairs this way: "The more rocks you turn over in mortgage land, the more creepy-crawlies emerge."

Mitt Romney's Latest Endorser Called Catholic Bishop "Pedophile Pimp"

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Sep. 2, 2011 6:55 AM PDT

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's latest endorsement comes from New Hampshire State Rep. DJ Bettencourt, the number two Republican in the state's House of Representatives. "I think Gov. Romney's experience in Massachusetts best suits him to take on the challenges of the country," Bettencourt told Politico.

Bettencourt would be just another relatively obscure state legislator—especially in New Hampshire, where the state House includes a whopping 400 members—except for a particularly inflammatory remark he made in April. On his Facebook page, Bettencourt called Bishop John McCormack a "pedophile pimp" after the bishop spoke out against the state House leadership's proposed budget plan at a statehouse rally. That budget called for deep, painful cuts to health-care spending, services for the disabled, and education funding. Here's what Bettencourt wrote on his Facebook page:

"Would the Bishop like to discuss his history of protecting the 'vulnerable'? This man is a pedophile pimp who should have been led away from the state House in handcuffs with a rain coat over his head in disgrace. He has absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone."

Bettencourt's criticism referred to a 2002 settlement with New Hampshire prosecutors in which the diocese that included McCormack admitted to shielding abusive priests. It agreed to audits of its handling of complaints that minors had been sexually abused. Bettencourt later said he'd been "undiplomatic" in his attack on McCormack.

In New Hampshire's rough-and-tumble legislature, of course, Bettencourt was not alone in unleashing nasty rhetoric on budget protesters. The speaker of the state House, William O'Brien, called those protesting the GOP-backed budget "thugs"; the House finance committee chairman, Ken Weyler, told protesters to "shut up"; and a freshman state legislator, Martin Harty, said he supported eugenics and also a world without "defective people." (Harty later said his comments were a joke.)

Catholics United, a non-partisan advocacy group, has called on Romney to reject Bettencourt's endorsement based on his attack on Bishop McCormack. "[Bettencourt] attacked the character of a religious leader for choosing to stand with the poor and working class," James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, said in a statement. "By accepting this endorsement, Mitt Romney raises concerns amongst Catholic voters that he approves of Bettencourt's corrosive and disrespectful campaign tactics."