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VIDEO: Elizabeth Warren Grills Treasury Secretary On Too Big To Fail

Erika Eichelberger — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:03:11 +0000

At a Senate banking committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on too-big-to-fail banks—financial institutions that are so large that their failure would endanger the entire financial system.

"How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up?” she asked.

Too big to fail is far from over. The largest financial institutions are still ballooning in size. In the past few years, banks have been beset by one scandal after another—from money laundering, to rate-fixing, to foreclosure fraud, and have mostly received wrist-slaps as punishment—probably because, as Attorney General Eric Holder recently warned, prosecuting too-big-to-fail banks for bad behavior might spook the entire financial system.

Too big to fail almost died three years ago. Warren noted that as the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law was being crafted, an amendment was proposed that would have broken up the banks, but it didn't pass—in large part, she reminded Lew, because the Treasury Department (then under Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) was against it.

"Have you changed your position," Warren demanded, referring to the Treasury department. "Or are you still opposed to capping the size of banks?"

Lew responded that "ending to big to fail is our policy and we're aiming to do it." But Warren wouldn't let him weasel out of the question with generalities. "I want to focus you in here," she pushed. "My question is about capping the size of largest financial institutions."

Lew refused to commit. "Our job right now is to implement … Dodd-Frank," he said. "I think this is not the time to be enacting big changes."

"Let me try the question a different way," Warren persisted. "How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up?" she asked, adding that the largest American banks are 30 percent larger than they were five years ago. "Do they have to double in size? Triple in size? Quadruple in size? Before we talk about breaking up the biggest financial institutions?"

Lew said that too big to fail "is an unacceptable policy", but urged Warren to have some patience.

She'd have none of Lew's excuses: "What we've seen… is one scandal after another in these largest financial institutions," she said. "It's clear they have not changed their risk bearing practices nor have they decided that they're suddenly going to start following the law."

Judges Strike Down Arizona's 20-Week Abortion Ban

Kate Sheppard — Tue, 21 May 2013 22:48:36 +0000

On Tuesday, judges on the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Arizona law that would have banned abortions at 20 weeks. The judges called the law "unconstitutional under an unbroken stream of Supreme Court authority." This is the first 20-week ban to be struck down in court.

The judges wrote that Arizona "may not deprive a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy at any point prior to viability," echoing the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade 40 years ago that abortion should be legal up to the point that a fetus is can survive outside of the womb, which is usually construed as 24 weeks.

Anti-abortion state legislatures have passed a number of laws in recent years shortening the period in which abortion is legal. Arizona's 20-week ban was not the first in the US, but it was the first one that national reproductive rights groups challenged in court. It was, at the time, the strictest in the country, as it dated the 20 weeks from a woman's most recent menstruation rather than from the date of conception. (Taking basic biology and math into account, the bill actually banned abortion 18 weeks after the woman became pregnant). But after the Arizona law was passed in April 2012, other states passed even stricter rules; Arkansas banned abortions at 12 weeks in March 2013, and North Dakota banned them at 6 weeks a few weeks later.

Meanwhile, an anti-abortion lawmaker from Arizona has been trying to export the law. Republican Congressman Trent Franks introduced a bill last week that would impose a 20-week ban in Washington, DC as well.

Reproductive rights groups hope that Tuesday's ruling sends a warning to other states that might consider similar restrictions. "Today's decision is a huge victory in the fight to protect women's fundamental reproductive rights, and it should send a clear message to anti-choice politicians that their attempts to deprive pregnant women of critical health care are clearly unconstitutional and will not hold up in court," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which joined with the ACLU to challenge the Arizona law.

The Center for Reproductive Rights also filed suit against another anti-abortion law in North Dakota earlier this month, and is expected to challenge the state's 6-week ban as well. CRR and the ACLU also won a preliminary injunction last week blocking Arkansas' 12-week ban from taking effect.

Former IRS Chief: "I Certainly Am Not Personally Responsible" for Tea Party Scandal

Andy Kroll — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:00:49 +0000

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who ran the tax agency when low-level employees wrongly singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny, testified on Tuesday before Congress for the first time since the scandal erupted on May 10. Senators hoping for new revelations or a mea culpa from Shulman, however, were left wanting. He said little about why IRS staffers targeted tea party groups and others for some 18 months, and he repeatedly downplayed his own role.

But one thing was clear from the hearing: The fallout from the IRS' tea party debacle isn't over, and its implications may spill over into campaign finance rules. J. Russell George, the Treasury Department inspector general who investigated the IRS' actions, said his office will be auditing how the IRS oversees politically active nonprofit groups and presumably how the agency determines which nonprofits are too political. That's potentially big news for the money-in-politics world: Nonprofits spent hundreds of millions of dollars during the 2012 campaign, and as the IRS scandal has further revealed, the agency's process for determining how much politicking by a group runs afoul of regulations is vague and confusing.

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Conviction of Genocidal Dictator Efrain Rios Montt Overturned by Guatemala's Highest Court

Asawin Suebsaeng — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:43:53 +0000

On Monday, Guatemala's Constitutional Court overturned the conviction of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, an army general who ruled as de facto president from 1982 to 1983. On May 10, Ríos Montt, 86, was found guilty by a three-panel tribunal on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to 80 years in the slammer; he is the first former head of state in the Americas to stand trial for genocide. But less than two weeks later, Guatemala's highest court threw out all proceedings in the case dating back to April 19, in part thanks to an aggressive lobbying effort by the nation's most influential business federation. Due to the court's 3-2 decision, the way forward—for Ríos Montt's opponents, for his supporters—has been thrown into question. After Monday's ruling, Ríos Montt was sent back to house arrest, where he had been since the case started in January 2012.

Here's a quick reminder of who Efraín Ríos Montt is, and what he did.

1. During his 17-month stint as military dictator, he oversaw the genocide by his armed forces of at least 1,771 members of the indigenous Maya Ixil population. Roughly 100 survivors testified during the course of his trial.

This Guatemala City newspaper reads, "Ríos Montt charged with 11 massacres." Via Granito: How to Nail a Dictator/Facebook

2. Along with the mass murder, his military regime carried out a policy of forced displacement, forced assimilation, torture, systematic rape and sexual assault, starvation, and arbitrary execution against those labeled as political opponents.

3. Due to his staunchly anti-communist attitudes during the Guatemalan Civil War, the general received plenty of financial, military, and political support from President Ronald Reagan's administration and friends in the United States. (Ríos Montt is an alumnus of the School of the Americas, a Department of Defense-owned institute and notorious tyrant-mill at Fort Benning, Georgia that taught torture, blackmail, death-squad tactics, and counter-insurgency to numerous Latin American strongmen and human rights abusers.)

Here's Reagan speaking to reporters following his meeting with Ríos Montt in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on December 4, 1982:

Well, ladies and gentlemen, President Ríos Montt and I have just had a useful exchange of ideas on the problems of the region and on our bilateral relations...I know that President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. His country is confronting a brutal challenge from guerrillas armed and supported by others outside Guatemala. I have assured the president that the United States is committed to support his efforts to restore democracy and to address the root causes of this violent insurgency. I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice. My administration will do all it can to support his progressive efforts.

For all the accusations of obscene human rights violations, Reagan maintained that Ríos Montt was simply getting a "bum rap" from naïve activists.

White House Learned of IRS Tea Party Probe Early—But Didn't Tell Obama

Andy Kroll — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:23:51 +0000

President Obama's chief of staff and the White House's top lawyer got wind of an inspector general's investigation into the IRS' singling out of tea partiers and conservative groups several weeks before the report went public. But those officials, according to press secretary Jay Carney, did not tell Obama. The president says he learned about the IRS' screw-up only after an agency director apologized on Friday, May 10, for employees having targeted conservative groups—an apology that went viral.

Carney told reporters Monday it was "appropriate" that Obama wasn't told of the damning IG report beforehand. And the president, he said, wasn't angry to not have been given early notice. "He believes it's entirely appropriate that, you know, some matters are not appropriate to convey to him and this is one of them," Carney said.

As we've reported, a Treasury Department inspector general, at the behest of angry members of Congress, spent nine months probing whether IRS staffers targeted tea party groups and other right-leaning conservative outfits who had applied for tax-exempt status under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax code. Although staffers did in fact zero in on conservative groups, the IG's report concluded that political bias did not play a role. Instead, staffers used "inappropriate criteria"—catchwords such as "tea party," "patriot," or "9/12 Project" (the latter a creation of conservative talk show host Glenn Beck)—to look for groups that might've been too involved in politics. (Groups that file their taxes under 501(c)(4) can dabble in politics, but it can't be their "primary activity.") IRS employees got away with this due to "insufficient oversight" by the higher-ups in Washington, the report found.

Testifying before Congress last week, Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who will soon resign as a result of the agency's tea party debacle, echoed the IG's findings. He said IRS employees made "foolish mistakes" and that the agency's behavior was "obnoxious." But those employees did not have a grudge against conservative groups. Their errors, Miller said, "were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection."

"What did they know" and "when did they know it" are two big questions looming over the IRS scandal. Here's what we know right now: Almost a month before IG's report came out last Tuesday, a staffer in the office of White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler learned of the report. Ruemmler herself was briefed on April 24. Soon after, she informed Denis McDonough, Obama's chief of staff. Carney said the president was not told of the investigation because there was nothing to be done about it. Also the White House did not want to appear to be interfering with an inspector general's report on such a sensitive issue. There is no evidence yet that Obama or his top aides knew about the investigation before this year.

Here is the IG's report:

Why the Government Surveillance of Fox's James Rosen Is Troubling

Julian Sanchez — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:05:10 +0000

On Friday, I wrote a piece for Mother Jones speculating that government spying on press communications may not be "unprecedented," as Associated Press head Gary Pruitt put it, but simply rarely disclosed. The rules requiring disclosure of such surveillance, after all, only appear to apply to "subpoenas" for "telephone toll records"; they do not cover other secret tools deployed by federal law enforcement, such as National Security Letters. Even outside the shadowy world of intelligence, as federal magistrate judge Stephen Smith has observed, court orders granting government access to electronic communication records routinely remain secret indefinitely. I suggested that there could be quite a few other cases like the AP story that we've never learned about, even if the Justice Department has been scrupulously following its own rules, because such cases might not involve grand jury subpoenas for phone logs.

It is rare for someone who writes about the intelligence community to have speculation of this sort confirmed almost instantly, but a report in the Washington Post Monday has shined a spotlight on another hitherto unreported leak investigation in which the Justice Department obtained a warrant to read the email of Fox News reporter James Rosen. The warrant in that case was sealed for over a year; it appears to have remained publicly unnoticed until today—nearly three years after the search of Rosen's email was authorized. Should anyone believe this is the only such instance of the government snooping into a reporter's email that hasn't yet come to light?

The Rosen case is especially unsettling because the warrant affidavit suggests that Rosen himself could be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act, on the grounds that his alleged encouragement to a source to provide classified information amounted to "conspiracy." The attempt to redefine a routine and necessary part of national security reporting as crime is unprecedented.

Whether Rosen is prosecuted or not, the Justice Department targeting a reporter as a possible "co-conspirator" is troubling. The case against National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake—who revealed massive waste in the agency's deals with intelligence contractors—ultimately collapsed. The information he'd revealed was embarrassing to the government, not dangerous to national security. But Drake's life was shattered, and a clear message sent to others who might seek to embarrass the government. A similar dynamic is at play in this case. Reporters are already feeling the chilling effects of the AP leak investigation. The government may or may not succeed in jailing leakers (or, perhaps at some point, reporters), but the point is to ensure that government sources are too scared to talk to press without approval.

That might sound like a fine idea if at risk were only vital national security secrets whose publication would endanger the United States. But as even top intelligence officials have acknowledged, overclassification is rampant in government. Much basic information, without which effective national security reporting would be impossible, is reflexively classified, whether or not it poses any realistic security risks, and reporters routinely discuss such information with sources. In practice, that means the government can pick and choose which leakers to go after—and which ones to wink at, because they're serving the administration's interests. No doubt, the government does have an interest in—and an obligation—to protect legitimate secrets, but an aggressive campaign that targets reporters and subjects them to broad and secret intrusions (and maybe prosecutions as well) will undermine a necessary check on government power and prevent the public from learning crucial information about what is done in its name.

A version of this post was first published on Cato at Liberty.

4 Ways Apple CEO Tim Cook Spins Tax Avoidance

Josh Harkinson — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:56:49 +0000

"I've never seen anything like this and we don't know anybody who has ever seen anything like this," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said yesterday of Apple's baroque tax avoidance strategies. But Apple CEO Tim Cook, who will testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations today, is aggressively spinning what Levin called "gimmickry" as patriotic, commonsensical, and no big deal. Here are the most remarkable talking points from his pre-released Senate testimony:

1. Apple's taxes are straightforward.
Spin: "Apple does not use tax gimmicks."
Reality: Yet somehow, according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, Apple has paid almost no income taxes to any country on its $102 billion in offshore holdings. Between 2009 and 2012, Apple avoided paying US taxes on some $74 billion in income, an amount equal to the entire budget of Florida.

2. Paying American salaries through a subsidiary based in Ireland saves American jobs.
Spin: Apple and its Irish subsidiaries are engaged in a "cost sharing agreement" whereby the subsidiaries "partially fund R&D costs incurred by Apple Inc." The agreements "play an important role in encouraging companies like Apple to keep R&D efforts in the US."
Reality: This is how Apple brings back money from overseas without having to pay federal taxes on it.

3. Apple is awesome because it runs huge data centers right here in the United States.
Spin: "In 2010, Apple built one of the country's largest data centers in North Carolina, and it is in the process of constructing two additional data centers in Oregon and Nevada."
Reality: Apple only agreed to build the North Carolina data center after getting a $46 million state tax break, its local property taxes halved, and local taxes on its assets slashed by 85 percent—all for creating 50 jobs. To build its data center in deficit-plagued Nevada, it extracted an $88 million state tax break, the largest in state history. And Apple chose to build a data center in Prineville, Oregon, because Oregon has no sales tax and Prineville is in a "rural enterprise zone" that offers a 15-year property tax exemption.

4. "Apple supports comprehensive corporate tax reform."
Spin: "Apple recognizes that these and other improvements in the US corporate tax system may increase the company's taxes."
Reality: Cook wants to reduce the tax that corporations pay when they repatriate profits, which could save Apple a lot of money considering that 61 percent of its profits are earned overseas. But lowering the repatriation tax probably wouldn't benefit most Americans. After Congress enacted a one-time repatriation holiday in 2004, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 92 percent of the repatriated cash was used to pay for dividends, share buybacks, or executive bonuses.

"Mark Is Not Going To Die In Vain": New Yorkers Rally After Murder of Gay Man

James West — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:00:09 +0000

The site where Mark Carson was shot on West 8th Street, New York. Police say the killing was a hate crime. James West

Blinding afternoon sun lit the biggest gay rights demonstration in years in New York's West Village Monday. The LGBT community and its supporters, including a couple of mayoral candidates, marched in the wake of a murder that has capped a month-long spate of homophobic violence.

Demonstrators—police say 1,500, organizers say many hundreds more—marched through the leafy streets that gave birth to the gay rights movement to the corner where Mark Carson, 32, was shot in the face and killed Friday night as he walked with a friend. Police have charged Elliot Morales, 33, with second-degree murder and a hate crime, accusing him of hurling homophobic slurs at Carson.

Flourine Bompars, Carson's aunt, addressed the crowd, calling Carson "a loving and caring person" who will not be forgotten.

The audience applauded and cheered loudly after Bishop Zachary Jones of Unity Fellowship Church of Christ, East New York, shouted, "There is room for everyone at the table of love... and we will march and we will come closer together to make sure everyone has the right to be who they are."

Protestors march through New York's west village. Police and community groups say there has been an upwing in "bias" crimes. James West

The randomness of Carson's death has sent a jolt through the gay community. "It's clear that the victim here was killed only because and just because he was thought to be gay," the police commissioner, Ray Kelly, said on Sunday.

Community leaders say Carson's death is part of a worrying citywide trend: an uptick in violence against gay people, with five incidents this month alone. Police say "bias crimes" have risen this year compared to the same period last year, from 13 to 22, and advocates say that was on top of rising reports of violence from the previous year.

"The most pain is emotional," said Nick Porto, a 27-year-old fashion designer from Brooklyn, who was assaulted this month with his boyfriend Kevin Atkins, 22, as they walked near Madison Square after a Knicks game. (Police have released a video of the suspects).

"Mark is not going to die in vain. We are not going to get beat up in vain," Porto said after the rally. "Gay rights, we're still fighting for them, and the fight is not over. We need to protect each other."

Nick Porto (L) and Kevin Atkins, a couple, were assaulted after a Knicks game on May 5th. James West

But the source of the increase in violence is hard to pin down, say community leaders. Some who spoke at the rally blamed the increased visibility of gay rights: With a greater presence comes greater pushback, the reasoning goes. Sharon Stapel, executive director of the New York Anti-Violence Project, says victims are also feeling more comfortable reporting such crimes.

"But I also think we're still living in a country where it's lawful to discriminate against LGBT people, and that sends a message that it's OK to be hateful towards LGBT people," she said.

The protest also formed the backdrop to the race for New York City mayor. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, herself a lesbian, marched alongside relatives of Mark Carson at the head of the rally, but did not speak to the crowd. John Liu, the hyperactive city comptroller who is also a candidate, was at the rally shaking hands and introducing himself.

Nick Porto, the assault victim, admitted he was moved when he looked out across the crowd that filled 8th Street, "My knees got weak, I almost fell, I was just a mess," he said. "It's proof, it's absolute hope in our community, that we will survive this."

"Gay rights isn't just about gay marriage," he told the cheering crowd. "We need to live long enough to share in that opportunity."

John Liu (L), and Christine Quinn with members of the Carson family. Both are running for New York City mayor. James West

Virginia Republicans Have a Vagina Problem

Kate Sheppard — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:53:43 +0000

On Saturday, Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain clinched his party's nomination for attorney general in the November election. And much like the rest of the GOP ticket, he's got some baggage. ThinkProgress swiftly unearthed a bill he authored in 2009 that would subject women to legal penalties if they fail to report a miscarriage to the police.

Here's the relevant portion of his bill:

When a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf shall, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff's department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred. No one shall remove, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any remains without the express authorization of law-enforcement officials or the medical examiner. Any person violating the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The penalty for a class 1 misdemeanor is up to 12 months in jail and $2,500 in fines. Obenshain's deputy campaign manager, Jared Walczak, told the Huffington Post that the bill (which never passed) was in response to a 2008 case in which a Virginia college student disposed of her reportedly stillborn baby in a dumpster:

"As sometimes happens, the legislation that emerged was far too broad, and would have had ramifications that neither he nor the Commonwealth's attorney's office ever intended," Walczak said. "Sen. Obenshain is strongly against imposing any added burden for women who suffer a miscarriage, and that was never the intent of the legislation."

Thinking through the legal ramifications of a proposed law seems like it should be standard procedure for someone who wants to be attorney general, but maybe I'm too optimistic.

Obenshain's nomination is only the latest outgrowth of Virginia's vagina obsession, though. In 2012, the state passed an invasive ultrasound law and set ultra-strict new building codes for abortion providers. Rev. E.W. Jackson, the party's nominee for lieutenant governor, has compared Planned Parenthood to the KKK. And then, not to be outdone, there's attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, who thinks abortion is just like slavery.

After Girl Expelled From High School and Charged Over Lesbian Relationship, Anonymous Goes on the Offensive

Josh Harkinson — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:14:00 +0000

When Florida high school student Kaitlyn Hunt was 17, she began dating a 15-year-old teammate on her school's girls' basketball team. Kaitlyn's parents say the parents of the 15-year-old never complained to them about the (consensual) relationship. But a few months after Kaitlyn turned 18, the younger girl's parents had her arrested. She was charged with a felony—"lewd and lascivious battery of a child 12-16 years old." The girl's parents also succeeded in getting her expelled from school by appealing to the school board after the school and a judge refused to grant their request, according to Kaitlyn's mother, Kelly Hunt Smith.

"That is absolutely ludicrous," Smith wrote on Facebook last Friday in a widely shared plea for help. "We need justice in this situation, not to feed into these parents' hates and insanity."

Enter Anonymous, the global hacker collective, which recently has raised eyebrows by pursuing justice for rape victims. In this case, some of the same Anonymous members are rallying behind a girl they feel has been wrongly accused of sexual misconduct. On Saturday, they launched the twitter hashtag #OPJustice4Kaitlyn, and a press release that begins: "Greetings, Bigots."

"The truth is, Kaitlyn Hunt is a bright young girl who was involved in a consensual, same-sex relationship while both she and her partner were minors," reads the release. "She has a big future ahead of her and there are people, thousands of people in fact, that have no intention of allowing you to ruin it with your rotten selective enforcement."

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Poverty Flees to the Suburbs

Josh Harkinson — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:38:59 +0000

Poor residents in cities and suburbs, 1970 - 2010 (millions)

Brookings Institution analysis and ACS data

Suburbs such as Highland Park (Detroit), Carol Stream (Chicago), and Forest Park (Atlanta) once stood for escape from the hard times of the inner city. Now their deceptively bucolic names conceal a national epidemic of suburban poverty. According to a report released today by the Brookings Institution, the suburban poor now far outnumber the rural and urban poor: Their ranks grew by 64 percent during the aughts to 16.4 million—a rate of increase more than twice that seen in America's cities.

What's going on here? Well, for one, Ward and June Cleaver's house wasn't exactly built to last. And as retiring baby boomers downsize and young millennials flock to hip inner cities, not that many people want to live in a half-century-old suburban tract home—except people with no other options.

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Obamacare Doesn't Make Employers Cover Spouses. Does That Matter?

Erika Eichelberger — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:00:07 +0000

Despite the 37 bills to repeal it and the scores of lawsuits filed against it, Obamacare, a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act, is going to be in full swing soon. But the historic health insurance reform law is going to face many more bumps in the road as it is rolled out. One corner of Obamacare that hasn't gotten much attention is the fact that it will not require employers to cover spouses, which experts say could lead some employers to drop coverage for Americans' significant others.

The Affordable Care Act mandates that employers offer health insurance to workers and their dependents. But the law defines dependents as children, not spouses. And although some health care law experts say this is not going to result in any big changes in the way that employers provide insurance for husbands and wives, others contend that implementation of the law could end up leaving some spouses out of family plans, forcing them to buy insurance elsewhere.

"Right now there are virtually no employers that just offer coverage for the employee and their children," says Tim Jost, a health care law scholar at the Washington and Lee University School of Law who regularly consults with Obama administration officials on implementation of the Affordable Care Act. "Whether that will change or not, who knows. We will probably see at least some employers who will offer individual and child coverage, but not coverage for spouses."

If you live in a household that is in the upper-income range—one that takes in more than $94,000 a year (above 78 percent of households)—and you get dropped from your spouse's coverage, you won't be able to get a government subsidy to purchase insurance on the government-run insurance exchanges being set up by the health law. So, say there's a family in which each parent makes $47,000 a year, but only one has coverage. The spouse that is not covered would have to buy private insurance, which costs hundreds of dollars a month.

If you're middle income or poor, and your spouse's employer drops you from her health coverage, you'll be able to shop on the exchange with a subsidy. Even though your coverage would not be free, the idea is that at least it would be kind of affordable. Unless it's not. When people buy coverage on the exchange, their subsidy will be based on household income. As Jost points out, the problem is that household income for people using the exchanges will be measured before the household pays for the employer-provided health insurance. So the employee could be paying up to 9.5 percent of her income on health insurance for herself (the most that Obamacare will allow insurers to charge for employer-sponsored plans), or an even greater share of her income for individual and child coverage, and still her spouse's subsidy on the exchange would be based on that much higher pre-health-care-costs income level.

"It's a potential problem," says Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, a group that backs Obamacare. "There could be some folks that get lost in the shuffle. And that is not insignificant…If you're one of few people adversely affected by something, it doesn't matter that everyone else on the planet is getting the benefit." (The Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment for the story.)

But Rome adds that the situation "has to be put in context." He points out that this potential glitch doesn't change the fact that some 30 million people currently without insurance will get coverage under Obamacare. And Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who helped craft Obama's health care law, notes that "we're still a hell of a lot better off than we are today."

Judy Solomon, vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, adds that it's unlikely that too many employers will drop spouses anyway. "Family coverage is valued employee benefit," she says. "I don't see that this provision is going to change what employers do." Rome agrees: "If you are an employer and you provide good quality health care for your employees, including dependent coverage, it's because you understand that a good benefits package is the best way to recruit and retain top-notch employees."

Still, Rome says that Obamacare advocates would like to be able to address technical issues in the law, such as this potential spousal coverage problem, but that the Republican-controlled House makes that impossible. "It is an imperfection in the law and there are some things many of us want to fix," Rome says. "And we could if we did not have a GOP House of Representatives obsessed with repealing the law."

Elizabeth Warren Slams Wall Street Again

Erika Eichelberger — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:29:03 +0000

On Thursday, bank-basher Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slammed several bills headed for the House floor that would severely weaken Wall Street reform.

The Dodd-Frank Act, the 2010 law aimed at preventing another financial crisis, "put in place a variety of measures that work together as a system to protect consumers, hold big banks accountable, and reduce the risk of future crises," Warren said in a statement. "It is dangerous for Congress to amend the derivatives provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act." (Derivatives are financial products that have values based on underlying numbers, like crop prices or interest rates; some economists believe these products helped cause the 2007 financial collapse.)

Warren's condemnation of the bills, which just passed out of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC), echoes a May 6th letter from Treasury secretary Jack Lew to House Financial Services Chair Jeb Hensarling attacking the bills. "The derivatives provisions in the Wall Street Reform Act constitute an important part of the reforms being put into place to strengthen our financial system by improving transparency and reducing risk for market participants," Lew wrote in the letter. "These reforms should not be weakened or repealed." Last year, former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner denounced a series of nearly identical bills.

One of the bills now headed to the House floor would expand the types of trading risks that banks can take on. Another would allow certain derivatives that are traded within a corporation to be exempt from almost all new Dodd-Frank regulations. Financial reform advocates say these kinds of trades can still pose a risk to the wider financial system. A third bill would allow big, multinational US-based banks to escape US regulations by operating through international arms.

"Wall Street's aggressive determination paid off last week" when the bills passed out of committee, Warren said. The bills also have bipartisan support, and have a good chance of being taken up in the Senate. If they do, Warren says she'll go to battle: "Now is no time to go backwards," she said. "I will do what I can in the United States Senate to stand up to those who would chip away at reform."

Ad Slams Arizona Sen. Flake for Flaking on Background Checks

Gavin Aronsen — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:40:05 +0000

Last month, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake broke with his Arizona colleague John McCain to vote against the background check compromise brokered by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Soon after, Caren Teves, the mother of Aurora mass shooting victim Alex Teves, went public with a note she had received from Flake the week before he, well, flaked. In the note, the junior senator wrote that "strengthening background checks is something we agree on."

On Friday, Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) released an ad featuring Caren Teves that will air in Phoenix and Tucson through the end of the month. In the ad, Teves shows the handwritten letter Flake sent her. "The issue isn't just background checks," she says. "It's keeping your promise. And Senator Flake didn't."

Flake has disputed the ad's claim in a Facebook post. "If you are anywhere close to a television set in Arizona in the coming days, you’ll likely see an ad about gun control financed by NYC Mayor Bloomberg," he wrote. "Contrary to the ad, I did vote to strengthen background checks," referring to his vote for the alternate gun amendment introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that included weaker measures to strengthen background checks (and was also voted down).

MAIG and other gun reform groups have vowed to hit Manchin-Toomey opponents hard. Opponents of the compromise have seen their poll numbers drop, and polling by MAIG and other organizations has consistently shown overwhelming support for expanded background checks.

There have been quiet discussions on the Hill about reintroducing an amendment with further concessions to Republicans. But in a meeting with reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that although he'd been in daily talks with senators about bringing background checks back for a vote, the Democrats still didn't have the 60 votes needed to get it passed. Asked if there were any new supporters, Reid replied, "Maybe."

IRS Speaks Out: We Messed Up, But We Would've Scrutinized Tea Partiers Anyway

Andy Kroll — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:35:55 +0000

Finally, the IRS is giving a full accounting of how and why its staffers singled out tea partiers and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The quick version: We had the right idea but went about it all wrong.

On Friday morning, Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner set to resign due to the scandal, appeared before the House ways and means committee and testified that several IRS employees made "foolish mistakes" by using catchwords like "tea party" and "patriots" as they picked through hundreds of nonprofit applications from groups that might be involved in politics. Miller described his agency's behavior as "obnoxious." Yet he denied that the IRS vetters who handled all those applications for groups wanting 501(c)(4) nonprofit status—who were working out of a field office in Cincinnati—acted out of political bias. Instead, he said the agency's errors "were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection."

Prior to Miller's testimony, the IRS itself took the unusual step of posting on its website 14 questions related to the tea party debacle and the agency's official response to each one. It's an interesting and useful document.

The IRS insists that its staffers, as Miller emphasized, were wrong to target groups with "tea party" or "patriots" in their name. However, the agency says that it would've zeroed in on tea partiers and other conservative groups anyway, as it looked for applicants that might be getting too involved in politics. They sought out politically-inclined groups because 501(c)(4) nonprofits are allowed to dabble in politics but cannot make it their "primary activity." But as they looked for groups that might be too political, they used inappropriate shortcuts.

"IRS employees had seen cases of organizations with the name Tea Party in which political activity was an issue that needed to be reviewed for compliance with legal requirements," the agency says. "Because of the increased inventory of applications, this inappropriate criterion was used as a shortcut to centralize similar cases." In other words, as a booming number of tea party outfits across the country were filing for tax-exempt status, the folks in charge of reviewing such applications—and making sure applicants were not engaged in so much political action that they would not qualify for this tax status—found it convenient to flag groups with "tea party," "patriot," and "9/12 Project" in their name.

The agency also says on its website that it found "no indication of political bias"—echoing the Treasury Department inspector general who investigated the tea party mess. The IRS staffers in Cincinnati didn't have a grudge for the tea party; they felt, it seems, that tea partiers were simply more prone to get involved in politics.

The agency also offered a few basics on how it handles nonprofit applications. All applications go through Cincinnati, where there are less than 200 people who directly handle those files. Because the agency saw an increase in 501(c)(4) applications from potentially politically active groups, staffers there pooled all those applications together and gave a few selected employees the job of scrutinizing those applications.

Some more interesting nuggets in the Q-and-A:

Not only has the IRS seen an uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications, it says the number of groups applying that could become involved in politics has risen as well.
The IRS admits it mistakenly caused "inappropriate delays" for groups applying for tax-exempt status, and made "over-expansive information requests" of the groups it singled out for extra scrutiny. The IRS blamed this on "ineffective processes."
In 2010 and 2011, as we've reported, IRS staffers specifically looked for groups with "tea party" or "patriots" in their name. However, of the nearly 300 groups with applications flagged by IRS staffers, the vast majority did not have either of those words in their name.

The IRS Q-and-A links to a list of almost 170 nonprofit groups given special scrutiny by IRS staffers but later approved for 501(c)(4) status. The entities on that list run the political gamut and include local tea party groups, statewide progressive organizations such as Progress Texas and Progress Missouri Inc., former Sen. Russ Feingold's Progressives United outfit, and issue-based organizations such as Californians Against Higher Health Costs and Homeless But Not Powerless.

Here is the full list from the IRS' website:

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 17, 2013

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:38:06 +0000

Lance Cpl. Brandon King, a driver with Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion, performs maintenance on an M1 Abrams Tank at Forward Operating Base Shir Ghazay, Afghanistan, April 5, 2013. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Tammy K. Hineline.

Corn on Hardball: What's Obama's Next Move On the IRS Scandal?

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:01:42 +0000

Did President Obama make the right move when he ousted IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller yesterday? DC bureau chief David Corn joins the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman to discuss Miller's resignation on MSNBC's Hardball:

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter.

What Obama Meant When He Said He Fantasizes About "Going Bulworth"

Asawin Suebsaeng — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:12:49 +0000

"I would love to see Barack Obama be Bulworth." — actor Sean Penn, on Piers Morgan Tonight in Oct. 2011.

On Tuesday night, the New York Times ran a story examining the contrast between President Barack Obama's vision for his second term and the apparent deluge of scandal (and non-scandal) that has swamped the White House for the past weeks. The piece quotes Obama insiders and runs down bullet points for a second-term agenda, but the bit that's gotten the most attention (at least on Twitter and among the Washington news media) is the president's reference to a Warren Beatty political satire:

In private, he has talked longingly of "going Bulworth," a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty's character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama's desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.

[...]

At the White House Correspondents Association dinner last month, he bristled at the idea that he should be pattern himself after Michael Douglas's assertive character in "The American President." Turning to Mr. Douglas, who was in the audience, he jokingly asked what his secret was. "Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy?" Mr. Obama asked.

(The irony here is that both films bear the mark of writer Aaron Sorkin. The American President—which Sorkin wrote while high on crack cocaine—is a hilariously optimistic look at liberal politics in America that inspired much of Sorkin's successful NBC series The West Wing. And although Bulworth had three other credited writers—including Beatty—Sorkin served as an uncredited script doctor, and it shows.)

For those unfamiliar with the film, Bulworth is a middle-aged, cynical, and suicidal Democratic lawmaker who is in the pocket of health insurance companies. Shortly after hiring an assassin and putting a hit out on himself, he drunkenly embarks on his reelection campaign with a newfound, smirking nihilism that manifests itself in the form of politically incorrect straight talk about the US health care system, poverty, Newt Gingrich, American intervention in the Middle East, and so on. His political ballsiness quickly earns him a sharp spike in popularity and the privilege to make out with Halle Berry in front of the campaign press corps.

Also, the straight talk often involves Warren Beatty performing original and topical rap music in public, including this "Big Money" song in which he trolls the right by slamming the oil industry and promoting "socialism." Here's an excerpt from the scene:

It's safe to assume that the president did not mean to say that, in the face of recent outrages and pervasive Republican obstructionism, he regularly fantasizes about drunkenly spitting pro-socialist rhymes at high-profile fundraisers. It's merely an expression of the perfectly understandable desire of any American president to (on occasion angrily) tell it like it is, rather than be bound by the decorum of the office. "Probably every president says that from time to time," David Axelrod, a longtime Obama adviser, told the Times. "It's probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you're saying."

The pop-cultural reference provoked some snark and mockery from reporters and commentators on the internet. But with the lousy few weeks the White House has been experiencing, it's mildly surprising the president didn't express a private fantasy about "going James Marshall":

GOP Bill To Hogtie Wall Street Watchdog Heads for Vote

Erika Eichelberger — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:20:52 +0000

A bill designed to tie the hands of a key Wall Street regulator is headed for a vote in the House this week.

The SEC Regulatory Accountability Act, introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) and co-sponsored by 23 other Republicans, sounds innocuously administrative. The bill would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "to conduct cost-benefit analyses to ensure that the benefits of any rulemaking outweigh the costs," according to a statement by the House Financial Services Committee. Plus, says Garrett, the bill is good for jobs, job-creators, and people who want jobs. "The American people are hungry for common sense reform that will help unleash the economy," he said in a statement. "I regularly hear from constituents, especially job creators, about how Washington red tape needs to be cut."

But financial reform advocates say the bill could kill tons of new regulations designed to rein in the industry that crashed the economy a few years ago. "Cost-benefit has become a favorite club used by industry to try and kill legislation," Dennis Kelleher of the financial reform group Better Markets told me earlier this year. The SEC is in the process of finalizing scores of new rules required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and reformers say Garrett's bill would force the agency to study the impacts of regulations before they are known, and require analysis that would delay final rules. Not only that, says Kelleher, but the cost-benefit analysis the bill calls for includes only "industry costs," not potential longer term costs to the broader economy that could result from killing these rules. For example, the SEC would have to consider the cost of to industry of making foreign banks adhere to US regulations, but not the cost to the global economy of allowing those banks to be regulated by potentially weaker foreign rules. (Many federal agencies are required to consider cost-benefit analyses when developing major rules, but the SEC and other independent agencies—those outside federal executive departments that are headed by a Cabinet secretary—are exempt.)

The White House slammed Garrett's bill when it was approved by the House rules committee Wednesday, arguing that it would keep the SEC from doing its job. "The Administration believes in the value of cost-benefit analysis," the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. "However, [the bill] would add onerous procedures that would threaten the implementation of key reforms related to financial stability and investor protection." Still, the president stopped short of saying he'd veto the bill.

As my colleague Tim Murphy reported Wednesday, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House rules committee, attempted to stymie the deregulatory bill by attaching an amendment that would have required political intelligence operatives to register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act and disclose their clients. It was voted down.

Now the GOP bill is headed to the House floor for a vote by Friday. Kelleher has his fingers crossed that the bill doesn't make it into law. "Financial reform does not exist to minimize cost on the industry that almost caused a second great depression," he says.

Tennessee Congressman Slams Holder on Pot Prosecution

Tim Murphy — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:17:45 +0000

Attorney General Eric Holder's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee went exactly like you'd expect. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) grilled him on the excessive redaction of emails he'd requested relating to Secretary of Labor-nominee Tom Perez. Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) grilled him on the investigation into leaked intelligence on the Benghazi attack. Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) grilled him on his failure to recuse himself in writing from said leak investigation. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said some crazy things about asparagus.

But not everyone was as focused on the scandals du jour (or asparagus). In a rare moment of actual congressional outrage over federal sentencing guidelines and drug policy, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) used his allotted five minutes to question the administration's near-total refusal to make use of its pardon power—and its continued prosecution of marijuana offenses. The money quote:

One of the greatest threats to liberty has been the government taking people's liberty for things that people are in favor of. The Pew Research Group shows that 52 percent of Americans think that marijuana should not be illegal. And yet there are people in jail, and your Justice Department continues to put people in jail for sale and use, on occasion, of marijuana. That's something the American public has finally caught up with. It was a cultural lag, and it's been an injustice for 40 years in this country, to take people's liberty for something that was similar to alcohol. You have continued what is allowing the Mexican cartels power, and the power to make money, ruin Mexico, hurt our country, by having a prohibition in the late 20th- and 21st-century. We saw it didn't work in this country in the '20s, we remedied it. This is the time to remedy this prohibition, and I would hope you would do so.

Watch:

Why Won't the Feds Rein In the Firms That Tanked America's Economy?

Erika Eichelberger — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:36:31 +0000

It looks like one of the primary causes of the 2007 financial crash may be here to stay.

Before the crisis, the credit-rating agencies (such as Fitch, Moody's, and Standard & Poor's) that evaluate the relative risk of investment products offered by Wall Street banks, routinely assigned their highest ratings to bonds built out of junky, high-risk mortgages. Because of those ratings, the bad bonds sold like hotcakes, which in turn encouraged lenders to make more high-risk loans to sell to the banks to package into more risky bonds—and so on until the house of cards came down. (For a great read on all of this, see Michael Lewis' "The Big Short.")

Part of the reason the ratings agencies behaved so recklessly is that they were (and still are) paid by the banks whose products they rate. Yet even now, years after the financial crisis, the Securities and Exchange Commission isn't sure what it wants to do, if anything, about this loaded situation. So it held a roundtable discussion on Tuesday to think about it some more.

Credit-rating agencies "effectively took huge bribes from banks to misinform people about risk," says Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform. "This is a critical issue and [the SEC] has taken a complete pass on it" so far.

Continue Reading »

IRS Head Forced Out After Tea Party Scandal

Gavin Aronsen — Thu, 16 May 2013 00:55:07 +0000

President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has requested and accepted the resignation of acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner Steven Miller in response to news that the agency singled out some conservative organizations for extra scrutiny.

Beginning in March 2010, the IRS targeted groups with words like "tea party" and "patriot" in their names when applying tax laws relating to political activity. There's no evidence other groups got the same level of scrutiny, although according to a investigation by the Treasury Department's inspector general, that was due more to murky campaign finance laws than ideological discrimination.

More MoJo coverage of the IRS tea party scandal

Actually, Tea Party Groups Gave the IRS Lots of Good Reasons to Be Interested

The IRS Tea Party Scandal, Explained

How Congress Helped Create the IRS-Tea Party Mess

5 Things You Need to Know in the Inspector General's IRS Tea Party Scandal Report

IRS Speaks Out: We Messed Up, But We Would've Scrutinized Tea Partiers Anyway

"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has in all of our lives," said Obama, who took heat this week over the IRS affair as well as his administration's handling of the Benghazi attack and the Justice Department's seizure of journalists' phone records.

Miller wasn't at the IRS when the Tea Party targeting happened—Bush appointee Doug Shulman was in charge then. But according to the IRS, Miller failed to alert the Obama administration to the problem when he learn it in May 2012. Miller is scheduled to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.

Obama also announced that he had told Treasury Secretary Lew to implement recommendations in the inspector general's report, which doesn't mention Miller's name, and said he will work with Congress "as it performs its oversight role."

Harry Reid: Obama's Pick for Labor Secretary Will Get a Vote Soon

Gavin Aronsen — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:10:18 +0000

Much news has been made of the dozens of judicial slots left vacant due to the constant roadblocks set by Senate Republicans. But Republicans have also blocked or delayed an unprecedented number of cabinet-level presidential nominees during the Obama administration, including most recently labor secretary nominee Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department, a progressive whose confirmation vote Republicans have repeatedly derailed.

"Now they're double-teaming him," Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid complained during a Wednesday morning meeting with reporters at the Capitol. "They're holding hearings in the House as to how he's doing in his present job."

House Republicans have scrutinized Perez's alleged role in preventing a St. Paul housing discrimination case from reaching the Supreme Court, and his use of a personal email address to conduct official business. That, Reid said, was done "just to deflect attention from the fact that he's being held up [in the Senate]."

To push back, Senate Democrats plan to force committee votes on three cabinet-level nominees, including Perez. Reid's office expects Perez to be voted out of committee on Thursday, after which Reid plans to schedule a confirmation vote in the near future. Senate Democrats, including Harry Reid, have also floated the possibility of using the nuclear option, which would change Senate rules through a simple majority vote to prevent filibusters on nominees.

The only cabinet-level nominee who has arguably faced harsher resistance from Republicans was former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican himself who was confirmed as secretary of defense in February after facing a filibuster unprecedented for his cabinet position.

Republicans have also been using procedural maneuvers in the Senate to block two other cabinet-level nominees: Obama fundraiser Penny Pritzker as commerce secretary, and Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Reid also said he planned to schedule a vote soon for Richard Cordray, an uncontroversial lower-level nominee picked to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If Republicans block his nomination, Talking Points Memo reports, it could strengthen the case for filibuster reform.

"I'm going to make sure he's going to have a vote next week, and we'll see what happens after that," Reid said of Cordray. "But my point is, this [obstruction] can't go on. This is not good for the country."

Earlier this year, Reid disappointed allies craving real filibuster reform when he declined to pursue major Senate rules changes. He said he has no current plans to take on filibuster reforms, such as one that would weaken Senators' ability to block nominees, but is considering doing so "very closely" as Republicans continue to threaten filibusters against Obama nominees.

"Whether it’s Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton that’s the next president, I don’t think they should have to go through what we’ve gone through here," Reid said.

Top Dem Trying to Resurrect Political Intel Disclosure Requirement

Tim Murphy — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:40:04 +0000

Rep. Louise Slaughter, the top Democrat on the powerful House rules committee, has a response to Republican efforts to water-down financial reform legislation: Tie it to political intelligence. On Tuesday, with the rules committee set to consider the SEC Regulatory Accountability Act, a GOP bill designed to stunt the Security and Exchange Commission's implementation of the Dodd–Frank financial reform law, Slaughter introduced an amendment that would prevent the law from going into effect unless Congress also passes a law requiring so-called political intelligence operatives to register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act and disclose their clients. Slaughter would also extend revolving-door statutes to government employees who join the private sector, mandating a cooling-off period of varying length before they can begin working as a political intelligence operative.

Political intelligence is a roughly $400-million-a-year industry which collects information on Congressional and regulatory wheeling and dealing, and passes it on to clients on Wall Street. Political intel operatives insist they come in peace, and that their work at its most basic level is a lot like that done by journalists—albeit for much smaller audiences. The counterpoint from disclosure advocates is this story from the Wall Street Journal, which describes how a hedge fund gained early access to a decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and triggered a spike in the stock prices of health insurers. The SEC launched an investigation into the case in April.

Slaughter first floated regulation of political intelligence in 2006, and nearly pushed it through last year before a fierce push-back from hedge fund lobbyists slammed the door. Her amendment isn't expected to pass, but it's a preview of what Slaughter and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are hoping to unveil in a few months, after the SEC finishes its probe.

Here's the amendment:

Update: Slaughter's amendment was blocked. Here's the relevant exchange:

Corn on MSNBC: It's Insulting To Watergate to Compare Anything to Watergate

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:32:09 +0000

The spate of investigations in Washington this week is great fodder for GOP members, who have repeatedly compared the scandals to Watergate. DC Bureau Chief David Corn doesn't think it's a fair comparison: "It's insulting to Watergate to compare anything to Watergate!" he says. Watch him discuss the Watergate analogy with Salon's Joan Walsh and host Al Sharpton on MSNBC's PoliticsNation:

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter.