The Middle Ground

by PATRICK GAVIN (Politico)

You have your Jon Stewarts and Bill Mahers on the left, but what about the world of conservative comedy?

Eric Golub, 41, is on the road 300 days a year performing anyplace that will have him, whether tea party rallies or Republican women’s groups, and he boasts on his website that he is “the country’s preeminent politically conservative comedian.”

He says conservative comedians are “in the closet, so they’re starting to come out.” And he wants to reject the idea that conservatives aren’t funny.

“Conservatives are often seen as stuffed shirts, and that’s unfair,” Golub said. “I tell those people, go to a College Republicans Saturday night bash. You will not see stuffed shirts.”

But, even if liberal comedians occupy most of the air in the room, Golub is hardly bitter.

“To blame Hollywood liberalism — which does exist — is an excuse,” Golub told POLITICO. “Maybe some of the conservatives that are trying are just not that talented.” Golub also says he’s never been blacklisted for his views.

by LOUISE HARTMANN (Thom Hartmann)

Yesterday, in response to recent IRS admissions, President Obama called the enhanced investigation of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status “intolerable and inexcusable.”  And, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a criminal investigation into the allegations against the IRS.  But both of them are missing the point.  

The scandal here is not that political groups were targeted by the IRS, it's the fact that political groups are being subsidized by John Q. Taxpayer.  Groups that are politically motivated, and not really “social welfare” organizations, shouldn't receive preferential tax treatment in the first place – regardless of their political affiliation. MORE

(Reuters) - Retail sales unexpectedly rose in April as households bought automobiles, building materials and a range of other goods, pointing to underlying strength in the economy.

The Commerce Department said on Monday retail sales edged up 0.1 percent after a revised 0.5 percent decline in March.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected retail sales, which account for about 30 percent of consumer spending, to drop 0.3 percent last month after a previously reported 0.4 percent decline in March.

So-called core sales, which strip out automobiles, gasoline and building materials and correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of gross domestic product, increased 0.5 percent after nudging up 0.1 percent in March.

The increase in core sales, coming on the heel of relatively strong job growth over the last three months, should help to ally fears of an abrupt slowdown in the economy early in the second quarter even as government austerity is starting to put a strain on manufacturing.

The tone of the retail sales report was mostly firm. Receipts at auto dealerships rose 1.0 percent after falling 0.6 percent in March. Excluding autos, sales dipped 0.1 percent after falling 0.4 percent in March.

Though falling gasoline prices pushed down receipts at gasoline stations, sales excluding gasoline recorded their largest increase since December.

Stripping out gasoline and autos, sales rose 0.6 percent.

Sales at building materials and garden equipment suppliers increased 1.5 percent, the largest gain since September. That reflects gains in homebuilding as the housing market recovery gains momentum.

Receipts at clothing stores rose 1.2 percent, the biggest increase since February last year.

Sales at sporting goods, hobby, book and music stores gained 0.5 percent. Receipts at electronics and appliances stores increased 0.8 percent, while sales at furniture stores were flat.

by John Light

There are many ways corporations and financial interests can exercise influence in Washington. Some donate money to political campaigns while others hire lobbyists to be their megaphones to legislator ears. But information flows the other way, too. And since the financial crisis, details about the laws and regulations being hashed out behind closed doors is more valuable than ever.

A story from the Washington Post this week looks at the growing popularity of “political intelligence” firms that sell analysis of federal actions, and the likely policy ramifications of those actions, to interested parties. Oftentimes, the clients are investors in a company that will be affected by a policy decision or a proposed regulation. Some firms even coordinate meetings and conference calls with congressional staff members in which they share what they know about relevant legislation.

The Post illustrates this with an example: Capitol Street, a political intelligence firm specializing in health policy, recently set up a private conference call between a member of Sen. Orrin Hatch’s staff (R-Utah) and investors in Humana, a major healthcare company. The staffer told the investors that the odds were improving that Congress would make a decision related to Medicare that would help insurance companies. That same morning, the level of speculative trading on Humana’s stock was nearly 10 times more than it had been on any day in the previous two weeks. Lawmakers and federal regulators have noted that this sort of politically informed investing can look suspicious, and investigators recently issued subpoenas in connection with a different spike in trading after a D.C.-based investment-research firm correctly predicted a change in policy.

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(Reuters) - An investigation of the Internal Revenue Service was launched on Friday after a senior IRS official publicly apologized for subjecting conservative political groups to "inappropriate" scrutiny.

In a practice that drew complaints during the 2012 election campaign, groups with the words "Tea Party" or "patriots" in their names were flagged for closer IRS review when they applied to the agency for tax-exempt status.

"We would like to apologize for that," said Lois Lerner, director of the IRS tax-exempt office at an American Bar Association conference. She said the practice "was absolutely incorrect and it was inappropriate."

Lerner said screening of the conservative groups was "absolutely not" influenced by the Obama administration.

In what could be a major embarrassment for the IRS and a potential distraction for President Barack Obama, the matter is under investigation by the IRS inspector general.

"What we know of this is of concern and we certainly find the actions taken, as reported, to be inappropriate," White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a briefing.

Initial jobless claims climbed by 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 360,000 in the week ended May 11, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected claims to rise to 330,000 from a revised 328,000 in the prior week....

The level of weekly claims has been particularly volatile over the past two months, ranging from a high of 388,000 to a low of 327,000. That’s why economists pay closer attention to the more stable four-week average, which rose a by a much smaller 1,250 to 339,250 and remained near a five-year low.

In other words, the labor market is not getting much better but it’s not getting any worse. Claims are viewed as a good barometer of how many layoffs are occurring in the economy. Yet the link between claims and new hiring is far less precise. Although companies are eliminating fewer jobs, they are not hiring as many people as they were at the start of the year.

In April, the cost of fuel fell 2.5%, led by a 6.0% drop in gasoline prices. Electricity and home-heating-fuel costs also eased, though natural-gas prices posted the biggest increase since mid-2008.

The price of food, meanwhile, fell 0.8% in April after jumping by the same amount in March. Vegetable prices plunged 10.6%, with the cost of squash, lettuce, celery and cucumbers all taking a dive. Meat prices also fell.  MORE

As speculation continues about the so-called terminal snooping saga,  Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler weighed in on Monday with an editorial first apologizing, then explaining what reporters do and don’t have access to:

“First, they could see a user’s login history and when a login was created. Second, they could see high-level types of user functions on an aggregated basis, with no ability to look into specific security information. This is akin to being able to see how many times someone used Microsoft Word vs. Excel. And, finally, they could see information about help desk inquiries,” said Winkler.

Winkler says the practice is as old as the news and data provider itself, “as our reporters used to go in the early days of the company and ask them what topics they wanted to see covered … We still do that today, which is why we have feedback tabs on our news-related terminal functions.”

The saga began for Bloomberg after Goldman Sachs last month complained about journalist access to terminal subscribers,  prompting the company to restrict that access.  Its disclosure about the curb triggered an inquiry from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, which both have Bloomberg terminals, The Wall Street Journal said. Chief Executive Daniel Doctoroff told The WSJ in an interview on Sunday said that the newsroom access to that information should have been “eliminated” earlier.

The New York Times on Monday cited more than half-a-dozen former employees who said they were trained to use a function on those terminals that let them monitor login activity in order to advance news coverage. But Winkler said Bloomberg has “never compromised the integrity” of its customer data in its reporting:

At no time did reporters have access to trading, portfolio, monitor, blotter or other related systems. Nor did they have access to clients’ messages to one another. They couldn’t see the stories that clients were reading or the securities clients might be looking at.

The topic certainly got lots of tongues wagging on Twitter Monday.

by JACOB LIPPINCOTT (The Week)

Christians and Muslims generally live side by side peacefully. But there has been a troubling rise in religious violence....

Coptic Easter has come and gone. For arcane reasons, Copts, the Christian sect indigenous to Egypt, celebrate the holiday on a different date than western Christians, and last Sunday they did so in the typical Egyptian fashion. Coptic youth set off fusillades of fireworks around churches and Coptic and Muslim families shopped and ate late into the night.

Despite the revelry, this is a particularly uncertain time for Copts and other religious minorities living in Egypt.

The country has recently seen numerous deadly sectarian clashes between Copts and Muslims, including a particularly galling incident in April in which police and Muslim youth attempted to storm the main Coptic Cathedral in Cairo with guns and tear gas, eventually killing at least two Copts.

Amidst this growing violence, the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, which unofficially controls the ruling Freedom and Justice Party, issued a religious edict banning Muslims from wishing their Egyptian neighbors a happy Easter. MORE

The road to recovery is in sight, and it has a bike lane. 

The typical city street is a busy place. People riding bikes, walking, driving cars, and operating buses all have somewhere to to go and want to get there safely — and quickly. 

But while we normally think of streets as pipelines for people and goods, public streets are about more than just moving from point A to point B. They're also corridors for public life. Streets are places where locals discover new hole-in-the-wall stores and restaurants, where window shoppers duck into shops to peruse, and where children convince their parents to stop — just for ONE second — to buy a cup of hot chocolate.

In other words, streets can also grow local economies.

A new study from the New York Department of Transportation shows that streets that safely accommodate bicycle and pedestrian travel are especially good at boosting small businesses, even in a recession. 

NYC DOT found that protected bikeways had a significant positive impact on local business strength. After the construction of a protected bicycle lane on 9th Avenue, local businesses saw a 49% increase in retail sales. In comparison, local businesses throughout Manhattan only saw a 3% increase in retail sales.

(Reuters) - A landmark bill backed by U.S. President Barack Obama to overhaul the nation's immigration system survived unscathed on Thursday during the first day of consideration by a divided Senate Judiciary Committee.

On bipartisan votes, the panel rejected conservatives' attempts to thwart implementation of a centerpiece of the bill - a pathway to U.S. citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

By day's end leading Democratic and Republican senators said the committee had improved the bill.

The panel, composed of 10 Democrats and eight Republicans, accepted 21 relatively modest amendments that focus largely on border security and increased congressional oversight. All but one amendment were agreed to on bipartisan votes.

Eleven other amendments were rejected or withdrawn, many of them Republican bids to bolster border security in ways that went far beyond the steps spelled out in the bill, while also delaying or even killing proposals to legalize undocumented immigrants.

"It is a better bill now than it was this morning," said Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a member of the committee and the Gang of Eight senators who wrote the measure.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, another committee and Gang of Eight member agreed, hailing the amendments as "good-faith improvements...that make our proposal stronger."

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