A late night roundup for you.
• The Gang of Six still wants to mess around with Social Security. And as we’ve seen, they’re quickly becoming the default bipartisan alternative on a deficit reduction plan.
• They’re really sending Hosni Mubarak with his sons to prison, they’re dissolving his political party, and the resort town where he’s been holed up wants him to leave. The responsiveness of Egypt’s current rulers to the protest movement is really astounding.
• In news of fake responsiveness, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad will lift the 48 year-old state of emergency law next week. This is progress, but I think the protesters will hold out for something more tangible, like the end of the regime.
• The thing about the Medicare trims in Obama’s deficit reduction plan, namely that Independent Payment Advisory Board, is that Democrats never really liked them to begin with. They tolerated them as the price for expanding coverage, but when asked to strengthen IPAB alone, without coverage enhancements, they’re not likely to be friendly toward such a proposal.
• Harry Reid expressed doubts about Afghanistan on Friday. Not that you’d hear about it, but US soldiers keep dying over there.
• The referendum for Ohio’s SB 5 has been cleared to gather signatures. Backers have 90 days to get 231,147 signatures to get the referendum on the ballot in November. It’s pretty doable, and the only polling in the campaign has been quite positive.
• The first municipal government in Michigan has been dissolved under the new “emergency financial manager” law. And yes, I’ve heard about the rumor that Scott Walker’s proposing a similar law for Wisconsin. I need a bit more info before I believe that one.
• Greece is almost certainly going to need to restructure its debt. Yves Smith takes us through it.
• Security forces in Yemen shot at protesters in what seems like a daily occurrence. Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh must think he can follow the example of successful repressions in Bahrain and elsewhere.
• Some weak early fundraising from a series of vulnerable House candidates on both sides of the aisle.
• The evidence is clear: this is a very low-tax country. And the super-rich barely pay anything these days. Tell your friends.
• President Obama met with a group of young climate activists who were attending the Power Shift conference, the largest gathering of committed activists you never heard a thing about because they don’t wear tricorne hats.
• If the Justice Department only took the energy they put into shutting down online gambling and put it into shutting down top executives who sunk the economy through pure fraud…
• Revolving door watch: Bank of America just hired the former head of enforcement for the SEC.
• Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez would be a pretty good recruit to run for US Senate in Texas for Democrats. If a candidate like Sanchez can’t move the needle in Texas, or at least increase Latino turnout, nobody really can for the next decade.
• I will try to obtain more info on this ringfencing idea the FDIC is proposing for the biggest investment banks.
• Worst justification for a thousand dead children ever.
• The US will share virus samples so countries can manufacture vaccines for any potential global flu pandemic, under a new deal reached by the World Health Organization.
• Another government dissolves, this time in Burkina Faso after a rampage led by the Presidential guard. How many governments have we seen dissolve since the first of the year?
• If we can’t trust Greg Mortensen of Three Cups of Tea fame, who can we trust? The 60 Minutes piece is pretty damning, especially the part where the camera crew shows up Michael Moore-style at a book signing and Mortensen calls security on them.
• USUncut pays a visit to a Bank of America branch in San Francisco.
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