The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is out with a report showing the growing disparity between the richest 1% of the US population and the rest of us.

The Center used data from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research organiazation that advises Congress on budget matters.

The gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007 (the period for which these data are available), according to data the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued last week. Taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top of the income scale than at any time since 1928.

The gap in income between the wealthiest Americans and all others has grown strikingly in recent decades, the CBO data show.

In 1979, when the data begin, the average after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of households were 7.9 times higher than those of the middle fifth of households. By 2007, top incomes were 23.9 times higher than those of the middle fifth — a more than tripling of the income gap.

Additionally, the tax cuts implemented under the George W. Bush administration exacerbated the income inequality even further.

Legislation enacted under the Bush Administration provided taxpayers with about $1.7 trillion in tax cuts through 2008. Because high-income households received by far the largest tax cuts — not only in dollar terms but also as a percentage of income — the tax cuts have increased the concentration of after-tax income at the top of the spectrum.

Currently, the debate involved whether to renew the Bush tax cuts that benefit those making over $250,000 a year.

Source: Income Gaps Between Very Rich and Everyone Else More Than Tripled In Last Three Decades, New Data Show , Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 25 June 2010.

Report (Acrobat): Income Gaps Between Very Rich and Everyone Else More Than Tripled In Last Three Decades, New Data Show

The New York Times has a front-page story concerning the rightward tilt of the United States Supreme Court since John Roberts became Chief Justice five years ago.

Not surprisingly, the Court is the most conservative one in decades, surpassing even the Burger and Rehnquist courts ideologically.

This time, however, there is political science data to back the assertion up:

Almost all judicial decisions, (scholars) say, can be assigned an ideological value. Those favoring, say, prosecutors and employers are said to be conservative, while those favoring criminal defendants and people claiming discrimination are said to be liberal.

Analyses of databases coding Supreme Court decisions and justices’ votes along these lines, one going back to 1953 and another to 1937, show that the Roberts court has staked out territory to the right of the two conservative courts that immediately preceded it.

And while Chief Justice Roberts gets the credit — or malign — for turning the Court Right, it may actually be the ascension of Samuel Alito to the Court that will has had the most dramatic impact:

But only one change — Justice Alito’s replacement of Justice O’Connor — really mattered. That move defines the Roberts court. The point is not that Justice Alito has turned out to be exceptionally conservative, though he has: he is the third-most conservative justice to serve on the court since 1937, behind only Justice Thomas and Chief Justice Rehnquist. It is that he replaced the more liberal justice who was at the ideological center of the court.

And even the justice Alito replaced – Sandra Day O’Conner — expressed misgivings:

“If you think you’ve been helpful, and then it’s dismantled, you think, ‘Oh, dear,’ ” she said at William & Mary Law School in October in her usual crisp and no-nonsense fashion. “But life goes on. It’s not always positive.”

The Times piece has some interesting charts and also includes a pretty limited and misleading “How Your Views Compare” quiz.

Source:  Adam Liptak, “Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative In Decades,” New York Times, 25 July 2010.

Source: “Pentagon Faces Growing Pressures to Trim Budget,” New York Times, 23 July 2010.

One in five American families suffered a 25 percent or greater decline in available household income this year, according to the new “Economic Security Index.” An analysis by The Rockefeller Foundation and Yale University looked at past and current data to conclude that “economic insecurity for American families in 2009 and 2010 was greater than at any time” in the last 25 years.

According to the Rockefeller foundation:

The Economic Security Index (ESI) measures the share of Americans who experience at least a 25% drop in their available family income whether due to a decline in income or a spike in medical spending or a combination of the two, and who lack an adequate financial safety net to catch them when they fall. A higher ESI therefore indicates greater insecurity, much as a rising unemployment rate signals a faltering economy.

Here are direct links to the studies in Acrobat format:

Economic Security at Risk: Findings from the Economic Security Index

The Economic Security Index: A new measure of the economic security of American works and their families

The Census Bureau has released the 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States for all you dataheads.

The Statistical Abstract, aka “Uncle Sam’s Almanac,” perennially the federal government’s best-selling reference book, has been published since 1878 — before automobiles, airplanes and motion pictures had even been invented. Contained in the 129th edition are more than 1,400 tables of social, political and economic facts which collectively describe the state of our nation and the world. Included are 53 new tables, covering topics such as worldwide space launch events this decade, the use of complementary and alternative medicine, the type of work flexibility provided to employees, employment status of veterans and road fatalities by country.

Source: Census Bureau Releases 2010 Statistical Abstract Depicting the State of Our Nation — US Census Bureau

The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation’s growth.

It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers. The decade began in a moment of triumphalism — there was a current of thought among economists in 1999 that recessions were a thing of the past. By the end, there were two, bookends to a debt-driven expansion that was neither robust nor sustainable.

There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Source: Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers – washingtonpost.com.

While Rush is in Hawaii maybe he can check out President Obama’s birth certificate for himself…when he gets out of the hospital Obama was born in!!

Rumors about gun confiscations.  Angry protests about the government’s tax policies, replete with Nazi comparisons.  A resurgent militia movement.  Rage at the election of a president deemed to be illegitimate and threatening.  Distrust and anger toward the government fueled by paranoia and conspiracy theories.

They are among the crosscurrents of anger and hostility that have swept certain sectors of the country since President Barack Obama took office nearly a year ago.  And they are contributing to “a toxic atmosphere of rage in America,” according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which today issued a report looking at the various sources that have given rise to a climate of anti-government fervor in the United States.

Sources: Report: Rage Grows In America Conspiracy Theories Fuel Anti-Government Fervor, Anti-Defamation League, November 16, 2009

A new $60 million prison funded by the Department of Defense has opened to replace the controversial Bagram prison, but the controversy over detention practices appears to continue even while the military heralds a “new era” of openness.

The Detention Facility at Parwan (right next to the Bagram Air Base) was opened to the press recently, and judging by the media coverage this act alone was enough tio warrant positive coverage.

The New York Times gushed that it was “an unprecedented level of access since they were not allowed to enter the old prison, which has been in use since shortly after the American invasion in 2001.”  The Washington Post stated it was “an attempt to provide better living conditions and separate committed fighters from those who are ready to re-enter Afghan society.”

However, Al Jazeera’s correspondent James Bays, who was among those who inspected the facilities on Sunday, disputed the rosy talk:

Bagram, unlike its Guantanamo counterpart, was clearly not going to be shut down soon…But we were not shown the detainees. Human-rights lawyers say that, while the environment for the prisoners may be changing, their legal situation is not … not having been charged. Nor has any civilian lawyer ever been allowed inside.

And while a nice, shiny new facility is presented to the outside world, with some happy talk about improving rights for detainees, the detainees’ ability to adequately defend themselves remains elusive as the policy of military tribunals will be utilized even though Afghanistan has a fully functioning criminal justice system.  Under that system, the military assigns a “personal representative” for the detainee; civilian  lawyers are not allowed.

A trio of human rights organizations — Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First — weren’t too happy about that, stating:

The Obama administration should revise its detention policies in Afghanistan to make them consistent with international law… US domestic law, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, is currently being used as the basis for the detentions on Afghan soil.

It is inadequate because it fails to recognize that all persons held in Afghanistan are entitled to the legal protection of Afghan domestic law and international human rights law, regardless of whether they are in the physical control of the Afghan government or a foreign government.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video: Access Restricted on Bagram ‘Tour” — Al Jazeera, November 16, 2009