SEC Chairman William Donaldson’s aggressive crackdown on corporate wrongdoing has provoked a backlash from the right-wing, who have started a whisper campaign that Donaldson is engaged in “Stalinist planning.”

The response to Donaldson has also exposed the right-wing’s disastrous economic approach. In a CQ article [sub. req'd.] American Enterprise Institute scholar Peter Wallison had to say about Donaldson’s actions:

The idea of regulating in areas where there has been no market failure is quite stunning.

Of course. Who would ever want to prevent a problem before it starts? Better to wait for a complete meltdown, like Enron or WorldCom, and then think about doing something.

The Washington Post yesterday reported on the dark underbelly lurking below the seemingly bright promise of home ownership in America. Home ownership in America may be up today, but in a nasty flip side to that coin, foreclosures are also on the rise, forcing Americans into financial disaster.

Here are the facts: Foreclosure rates this past March rose in all but 3 states. In places like Florida, Colorado and Texas, foreclosure rates are double the national average. Hurt most are black and Latino families.

What’s the problem?

First, skyrocketing costs across the board — health care, education, retirement – combined with lower wages are leaving many Americans in financially precarious positions. A study done by Harvard University earlier this year, for example, found that half of all respondents facing bankruptcy “said that illness or medical bills drove them to bankruptcy.” To see the effect of this on home owners, just look at Philadelphia, where more than 1,000 foreclosed properties are auctioned off each month (up from 300 to 400 a month in 200). Forty percent said they lost their homes because crushing medical bills pushed them over the financial brink.

Second, blame predatory lenders. Just like credit card companies, which make their big bucks by aggressively marketing their products to high-risk consumers– such as college students, low wage workers and the newly bankrupt, mortgage brokers and banks have been marketing riskier ways for Americans to buy homes. These mortgage companies target buyers with bad credit, then jack up interest rates to 8 — 12 percent (instead of the market rate of 6 percent.) Thus, people with plenty of money are able to buy homes which become a valuable addition to their net assets. Working-class Americans are unable to keep up with outrageously high mortgages end up losing their homes and drowning in debt.

David Horowitz, Then:

The Podesta site gives the following absurd examples of my alleged intellectual defamations and historical inaccuracies:

1. “He has freely compared American liberals to Islamic terrorists”

The statement is a lie. I have never compared actual liberals to Islamic terrorists. The reference link is to the Amazon site where my book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left is sold. Even the title gives the game away. It’s about Radical Islam and the American left. Is Podesta suggesting that American liberals are actually leftists?

VERSUS

David Horowitz, Now:

Last fall I published a book called Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, which argued that the progressive left in the West was in a de facto alliance with the Islamic jihadists… I put up a website at www.discoverthenetworks.org demonstrating the links between radical Islam and American progressives organizationally and also their shared agendas (e.g., opposition to the Patriot Act, bleeding heart concern for the terrorists mercifully locked up in Guatanamo etc.) Just as sophisticated liberals (The New Republic comes to mind) ignored my book, so others ridiculed the website.

USA Today’s story about states raising their minimum wages begs a question: why aren’t more following? It is terrific that 11 have done so since 2004 — but where are the rest of the states?

Surely they aren’t expecting the feds to raise the minimum wage anytime soon. The Bush administration has refused to consider serious minimum wage legislation, while Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) has tried to eliminate the minimum wage for 7 million people. This, even though economic data shows that corporate profits are rising, while wages are stagnating.

California is a good example of a state that needs to explain why it hasn’t raised its minimum wage recently. The Los Angeles Times reports today that while CEOs at California’s largest 100 public companies saw their compensation rise by almost 20 percent from 2003, the average California worker saw his or her pay rise by less than 3 percent — barely keeping up with inflation. That has at least something to do with the fact that, in 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed minimum wage legislation.

George Bush has underfunded his own No Child Left Behind Act by tens of billions of dollars and offered massive tax cuts to millionaires instead. Few Americans share those warped priorities. And yet in polling at the end of the 2004 election, Bush actually edged John Kerry on the education issue. Why is that?

This new article [reg. req'd] in the New Republic tries to answer that question. My argument is that Democrats have backtracked from their commitment to reforming our education system–not just to offer more money, but to ask more from bureaucracies, schools, and teachers. That’s bad politics, because most voters strongly believe in accountability. And it’s also bad policy, because high standards–and yes, even No Child Left Behind–are good for our schools, and especially for poor and minority children.

So this article lays out an agenda for Democrats to retake the initiative on education. First, instead of trashing No Child Left Behind, Democrats should commit to making it work–not by watering down high standards, as many have proposed, but by implementing high standards at the national level, through national standards and testing. And second, Democrats should seek to strengthen the quality of teaching–the single most important element of good schools–by paying teachers better for performing better, by paying them better for teaching in troubled schools, and by reforming tenure laws that protect those who just aren’t doing their jobs. Some of this stuff isn’t popular, but it’s still important. If Democrats take steps like these, they can do right by children and do right by their own ideals.

That’s the short version. I hope you’ll read the whole thing, and I’d love to talk about some of these ideas.

– Robert Gordon

Wonder why Bush is having a press conference at 10:45? Check out some recent headlines:

BUSH FINDS SPENDING ‘POLITICAL CAPITAL’ NO EASY TASK; As poll numbers drop and setbacks rise, the president is struggling to get his agenda passed
Houston Chronicle, 5/26/05

CONGRESSIONAL SETBACKS, LOW RATINGS COULD LIMIT BUSH’S EFFECTIVENESS
Knight Ridder, 5/25/05

SETBACKS PIN ‘LAME DUCK’ LABEL ON BUSH
Independent on Sunday (London), 5/29/05

BUSH ISN’T HAVING GRAND OLD TIME IN HIS 2ND TERM
Dallas Morning News, 5/30/05

BUSH’S POLITICAL CAPITAL SPENT, VOICES IN BOTH PARTIES SUGGEST; Poll Numbers Sag as Setbacks Mount at Home and Abroad
Washington Post, 5/31/05

BUSH FACES STINGY CONGRESS
AFP, 5/29/05

BUSH FINDS CONGRESS IS NO PUSHOVER
Chicago Tribune, 5/30/05

Tonight, Vice President Cheney will appear on CNN’s Larry King Live and reportedly condemn a recent Amnesty International report that faults the U.S. for its treatment of detainees in the war on terror. Cheney has said:

For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don’t take them seriously.

Other Administration officials have similarly been quick to lash out against the Amnesty report. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the allegations were “ridiculous and unsupported by the facts.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Richard Myers called the Amnesty International report “absolutely irresponsible.”

But in the past, when it was convenient to the Administration, they did not hesitate to cite Amnesty to make its case. And nowhere did the Administration need more help than in selling the Iraq war. Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly turned to Amnesty to highlight the repressive nature of Saddam’s regime. On March 27, 2003, Rumsfeld said:

We know that it’s a repressive regime…Anyone who has read Amnesty International or any of the human rights organizations about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people…

The next day, Rumsfeld even cited his “careful reading” of Amnesty:

…[I]t seems to me a careful reading of Amnesty International or the record of Saddam Hussein, having used chemical weapons on his own people as well as his neighbors, and the viciousness of that regime, which is well known and documented by human rights organizations, ought not to be surprised.

And on April 1, 2003, Rumsfeld said once again:

[I]f you read the various human rights groups and Amnesty International’s description of what they know has gone on, it’s not a happy picture.

So the rule here appears to be: Amnesty is a legitimate source for human rights violations of other countries, but is an unreliable and irresponsible source for reporting on the U.S.