Link dump: latest outrages edition

• Ohio Town Sees Public Job as Only Route to Middle Class -- too bad that their legislators are trying to gut that option too
  
  
• House Agriculture committee: Cut food assistance, but keep farm subsidies Sigh.
  
  
• Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes -- unreal.
  
  
• Republicans want 'In God We Trust' emblazoned on 9,000 federal buildings, cost could top $100m -- of course, see the two previous...
  
  
• Retired General: Republicans Making Nuclear Terrorism More Likely by cutting our programs to help countries like Russia get rid of heaps of nuclear materials
  
  
• Cuts Weren't Enough -- GOP plans to phase out Medicare, so they can stop being annoyed at how successful and popular it is
  
  
• The Death and Life of the Democratic Party -- the withering of unions has pushed the party into the arms of big business, leaving it torn about its principles; see also this cartoon. Sigh.
  
  
• Boehner’s Tough Spot Hides Democratic Ideological Giveaway -- more evidence that the Democrats no longer even see themselves as standing for something
  
  
• Epic irony: Mideast moves forward while America moves backward -- a grim compilation of the war on women's rights, in particular. Related: No justice on earth until there is justice for women -- seems an obvious point
  
  
• Obama administration curtails rights for terror suspects -- same as the old boss?? See also US military's "gratuitously harsh treatment" of Manning condemned by NYT, WaPo, LAT, ACLU and Clinton To Congress: Obama Would Ignore Your War Resolutions -- it all makes me want to cry.
  
  
• TOM THE DANCING BUG: U.S. Bombs U.S. Schools -- kind of sums up my frustrations with our involvement in Libya
  
  
• How a lie enters the political bloodstream -- important piece about how journalists set the terms of acceptable versus fringe debate

  What's key to understand about this model is that what ends up in the various spheres has very little to do with empirical or logical merit. These are not truth categories, they are categories of practice, shaped by social forces. In other words, they are deeply, intrinsically political, though "objective" reporters seem almost incapable of recognizing that they are engaging in political choices.

• Weak Job Market Forces Maine Legislator to Leave the State -- their legislature is part-time, so reps really "feel the pain" just like their constituents!
  
  
• Speaking of Maine, Maine Governor Orders Mural Depicting Labor History Removed From Labor Department -- these guys really take Orwell to heart!
  
  
• Who Screwed the Middle Class?

  A lot has happened over the past 30 years, but if you're looking for a single political sea change that's had the biggest impact on middle class wages—more important than union decline, more important than NAFTA, more important than the end of Glass-Steagall—it's the political consensus that underlies the Fed's reluctance to allow labor markets to stay tight enough to generate wage increases in the real economy. And it's something we're seeing all over again right now, as the DC chattering classes have almost unanimously decided that inflation is our real enemy right now, even though core inflation is running around 1% and unemployment is still near 9%.

• Beware the Vultures -- our policing of parents is making their lives almost unworkable.
  
  
• TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation -- some have shown 10 times more radiation release than we've been promised so often is harmless. But you can trust the TSA!!