Prison Economics Help Drive Arizona Immigration Law

by LAURA SULLIVAN

October 28, 2010

Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.

Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.

“The gentleman that’s the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger,” Nichols said. “He’s a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman.”

What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.

Scary New Wage Data

David Cay Johnston | Oct. 25, 2010 04:35 AM EDT

Now for some really scary breaking news, from the latest payroll tax data.

Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold.

Not a single news organization reported this data when it was released October 15, searches of Google and the Nexis databases show. Nor did any blog, so the citizen journalists and professional economists did no better than the newsroom pros in reporting this basic information about our economy. 

Austerity: A Virtue That Could Have Us Paying Twice

European governments, including France, Germany and Great Britain, are all looking at austerity measures to help battle the current financial crisis. It might seem like common sense to tighten a country’s belt in hard economic times, but one expert warns that the U.S. shouldn’t follow suit.

Brown University political economist Mark Blyth believes that Britain’s use of austerity is a dangerous idea that will ultimately lead to reducing the economy overall. If the United States government tries it, he tells NPR’s Guy Raz, the same people who paid for the bailouts are going to pay for austerity as well.

Pro-Republican Groups Prepare Big Push at End of Races

By JIM RUTENBERG

OVIEDO, Fla. — The anonymously financed conservative groups that have played such a crucial role this campaign year are starting a carefully coordinated final push to deliver control of Congress to Republicans, shifting money among some 80 House races they are monitoring day by day.

Officials involved in the effort over the midterm elections’ final week say it is being spearheaded by a core subset of the largest outside conservative groups, which have millions of dollars left to spend on television advertisements, mailings and phone calls for five potentially decisive Senate races, as well as the scores of House races.

Two Takes at NPR and Fox on Juan Williams

By BRIAN STELTER

NPR’s decision on Wednesday to fire Juan Williams and Fox News Channel’s decision on Thursday to give him a new contract put into sharp relief the two forms of journalism that compete every day for Americans’ attention.

Mr. Williams’s NPR contract was terminated two days after he said on an opinionated segment on Fox News that he worried when he saw people in “Muslim garb” on an airplane. He later said that he was reflecting his fears after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks nine years ago.

Big Gifts to G.O.P. Groups Push Donor to New Level

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON — When Bob Perry, a wealthy home builder from Texas, emerged six years ago as a prime financer of the Swift Boat Veterans attack ads against Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, the political strategist Karl Rove was there to vouch for Mr. Perry.

“I’ve known him for 25 years,” Mr. Rove said on Fox News. Back when Republicans were not so popular in Texas, Mr. Perry was one of the few wealthy Texans “willing to write checks to Republican candidates,” Mr. Rove added.

Now Mr. Rove and his party are benefiting from his old friend’s largess once again, as new federal disclosure reports this week showed that Mr. Perry has given $7 million since September to American Crossroads, the conservative group Mr. Rove helped start. Mr. Perry was the group’s biggest donor.

N.A.A.C.P. EXAMINES RACE IN THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

By KATE ZERNIKE

The nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization declared in a report released Wednesday that the Tea Party was “permeated with concerns about race,” an assessment that is likely to reignite a feud between the two groups.

The report by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People argues that Tea Party groups “have given platform to anti-Semites, racists and bigots,” and have attracted white nationalists looking for recruits.

As G.O.P. Seeks Spending Cuts, Details Are Scarce

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — In Indiana, Representative Mike Pence, the No. 3 House Republican, complains about “runaway federal spending on steroids.”

In Alaska, the Republican candidate for the Senate, Joe Miller, talks about “out of control spending.” And in Arizona, Jesse Kelly, a Republican hoping to oust Representative Gabrielle Giffords, says, “We’re spending our way into bankruptcy.”

If there is a single message unifying Republican candidates this year, it is a call to grab hold of the federal checkbook, slam it closed and begin to slash spending. To bolster their case that action is needed, Republicans are citing major legislation over the four years that Democrats have controlled Congress, notably the financial system bailout, the economic stimulus and the new health care law.

In Climate Denial, Again

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has to be smiling. With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate — including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning — accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming.

The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.

In Fierce Opposition to a Muslim Center, Echoes of an Old Fight

By PAUL VITELLO

Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.

Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter.

But cooler heads eventually prevailed; the project proceeded to completion. And this week, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan — the locus of all that controversy two centuries ago and now the oldest Catholic church in New York State — is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone.

The Rev. Kevin V. Madigan, who is the pastor of St. Peter’s, said that when he began reading about the history of his church early this year in preparation for the anniversary on Tuesday, he was not initially struck by the parallels between the opposition it had faced and what present-day Muslims have encountered in proposing a community center and mosque near ground zero.