Jim DeMint’s coming out party as head of the Heritage Foundation is not going very well. The conservative think tank’s immigration report – which labels the cost of immigration reform at $6.3 trillion and was co-authored by a white supremacist – has caused a backlash against the group from prominent Republican lawmakers and party donors. There are now even discussions of hiring a crisis management firm to deal with the negative reaction to the report.

What is the State Policy Network, aka SPN?

It’s fun to play with numbers, and it’s easier if you ignore those that don’t fit what your employers want you to say. Just ask the wankers at the Heritage Foundation.

You know things are bad when Paul Craig Roberts, one of the founders of Reaganomics, says about deregulation and the current state of the economy:

It’s gone too far.

With Heist: Who Stole the American Dream, directors Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher trace the roots of today’s current economic crisis back to a 1971 memorandum written by Lewis F. Powell Jr.– a Virginia lawyer and representative of the tobacco industry who later became an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. The Powell Memo, written for the Chamber of Commerce, lays out a very solid, point by point plan for corporations to loosen regulations and gain greater and greater control of the economy for their own benefit at the expense of of the American people.

ABC’s Jake Tapper pats himself on the back for debunking another Andrew Breitbart-originated race-baiting effort. But in doing so, Tapper implies he accepts the race-baiting premise, reminding blacks once again that if you say or do something honest you get called “controversial” and become unacceptable in polite company.

What’s left of the Breitbart blog contrived with Fox News to publicize as somehow new and damning what were in fact already public videos of Harvard Law student Barack Obama defending a black professor, Derrick Bell, for taking a stand in favor of greater racial diversity at America’s most elite university. That event, which happened in early 1990s, is neither news nor controversial, let alone somehow damning.

Gosh — preachers who have no problem railing about marriage equality and racial issues suddenly fall mute when they ponder preaching about the current economic mess. Can you say “Veal Pen Preacher”? Sure you can . . .

Add in a duplicitous visiting scholar from the Heritage Foundation who thinks Jesus preached predatory capitalism as the way of salvation, and you’ve got a nasty combination.

Whatever your thoughts on religion, that combination is truly toxic.

I know I’ve talked about Creepy Clarence and Mrs. Ginni T a lot. I asked why Mrs. Ginni T made mean phone calls to Professor Hill. Then I asked why Creepy Clarence is allowed to lie. After that, I asked why Bow Tie Boy hired Mrs. Ginni T. Tonight I want to get back to Creepy Clarence’s lies, because now Common Bob and his friends have found out that Creepy Clarence’s lies are even bigger than we first thought.

These days you can get an original Xbox — with a few games thrown in — for about $40 bucks. The poor have it so damn easy in this country.

A blog post published last week on Naked Capitalism raises an interesting question – what exactly is the Roosevelt legacy? For us at the Roosevelt Institute, we believe it is based in engaging in dialogue and promoting progressive people and ideas. It is also about encouraging young people to get involved in public service and public policy debates.

It is nice to see both Paul Krugman and Matt Yglesias openly admitting that the Affordable Care Act is about as right-wing any insurance coverage expansion “reform” could be. From Yglesias’s The Sensible Conservative Alternative To The Affordable Care Act Is The Affordable Care Act: If you simply do what Ponnuru and Levin propose, every [...]