Archive for March, 2009
This Ain’t Your Average Nightclub
This Ain’t Your Average Nightclub
Brooklyn-based Secret Science Club Makes Nerds Cool
A long queue has formed inside Union Hall, a popular club in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, as it does on the first Wednesday of every month. The line snakes through the main room, past the indoor bocce court, and down the narrow stairs to a basement space with a low, stamped-tin ceiling.
The crowd is young and hip, mostly in their 20s and 30s, eager to gain entry to tonight’s hot-ticket entertainment event. Once the doors open, about 50 lucky people secure chairs, while another 50 stand four-deep around the room, and another 50 are gently turned away at the door.
“This is the third time I haven’t made it in,” a disappointed young woman sighs.
A mixtape of music plays through the speakers and the audience sips drinks from plastic cups while waiting for the featured act to begin. It won’t be the latest indie band, or an up-and-coming comedian. This is not the typical New York club scene. This is the monthly meeting of the Secret Science Club.
via ABC News: This Ain’t Your Average Nightclub.
People’s creditworthiness, it seems, can be seen in their looks
People’s creditworthiness, it seems, can be seen in their looks
SCIENCE proceeds by trial and error. The successes are trumpeted. The errors are often regarded with embarrassment by subsequent generations, and locked away in attic rooms of the subject’s mansion like mad relatives in a Victorian novel. Usually, they stay there. Craniology, phrenology and eugenics, once-respectable fields of endeavour that are now regarded with a shudder, may shriek from time to time, but few sane people pay attention to them. One, however, has escaped recently, and is trying to rehabilitate itself. For years physiognomy—the idea that a person’s face is a reflection of his character—was sneered at. Now, it is making a come back.
Appearances certainly count. Women, for instance, judge men by their faces. Testosterone levels are reflected in the face, and who is seen as a one-night stand and who as a potential husband depends in part on this physical feature. Similarly, a male face betrays the owner’s underlying aggressiveness and even his business acumen. Facial beauty in either sex is also associated with higher incomes. The latest research, though, cuts to the moral quick. For Jefferson Duarte of Rice University in Houston, Texas, and his colleagues are suggesting that one of a person’s most telling moral features, his creditworthiness, can also be seen in his face.
via Physiognomy and moneylending | About face | The Economist.
Wishful betting can contaminate financial markets, study shows
OPS: Gee, you mean the All Mighty Market can’t really regulate itself? I guess, like a football game, you need rules, regulations referees and penalties
Wishful betting can contaminate financial markets, study shows
Wishful bettors, those who make overly optimistic investments, will ultimately harm themselves financially, but they can harm entire markets as well, new research shows. In the paper, “Contagion of Wishful Thinking in Markets,” researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Cornell University demonstrate how wishful betting can contaminate beliefs throughout markets, as other market participants infer wishful bettors possess more favorable information than they do. As a consequence, investors who initially held accurate beliefs become overly optimistic about stock values. The research will be published in a forthcoming issue of Management Science.
“The findings of our studies contradict what many people assume about markets, that wishful thinkers will be identified and disciplined by more sophisticated investors,” said Nicholas Seybert, an assistant professor of finance at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. “Instead, investors fail to recognize the existence of wishful betting even though most of them do it. As a result, wishful thinking can be contagious in financial markets.”
via Wishful betting can contaminate financial markets, study shows | Eureka! Science News.
Musicians’ brains keep time–With one another
Musicians’ brains keep time–With one another – By Jordan Lite
Ever wonder how musicians manage to play in unison? Credit their brain waves: they synchronize before and while musicians play a composition, according to new research.
German scientists report in BMC Neuroscience that they measured the brain waves of eight pairs of guitarists using electroencephalography (EEG) while they played a modern jazz piece called “Fusion #1″ (by Alexander Buck). The researchers found that the guitarists’ brain waves were aligned most during three pivotal times: when they were syncing up with a metronome, when they began playing the piece and at points during the composition that demanded the most synchrony.
The synchrony was most prominent in the frontal and central parts of the brain that regulate motor function. “Whenever synchrony of behavior was high, synchrony of brain waves were also high,” Ulman Lindenberger, a director the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, tells ScientificAmerican.com. But, “we can’t assign a causal role to that synchronizing.”
While brain synchrony during a duet seems like a given, it’s a mystery how it happens, says Lindenberger, a psychologist. “One could speculate that this may be related to mirror neurons, the capacity of primates and humans to imagine the action of the other person while performing actions yourself,” he says. “The mirror neuron system could be active during synchronized guitar playing.”
Lindenberger says that inter-brain synchrony may also help explain humans’ ability to engage in a host of other activities and behaviors that involve couples or teams, such as dancing, boxing, tennis and mother–child bonding. “People have an extraordinary capacity to synchronize their actions,” he says. “When two people concentrate on the same thing, gestures and head movements are highly coordinated and supported by brain synchronicity. We think what we are getting through music has wider implications and social bonding behaviors are part of those wider implications.”
via Musicians’ brains keep time–With one another: Scientific American Blog.
Connections do count
Connections do count – By Faye Flam
Conventional wisdom holds that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. But now scientists studying networking are starting to realize that when it comes to much in life, it’s also who the people you know know, and perhaps also who those people know.
Drawing from computer science, math, sociology, and other disciplines, researchers are starting to figure out how those branching thickets of human social networks are shaping our tastes, our purchases, how we vote, and even our health and happiness.
At the University of Pennsylvania, Michael Kearns is using controlled voting experiments to show how a small minority view can win over an overwhelming majority.
Kearns, a computer scientist and expert on machine learning and game theory, examines the connections between networks and human behavior in settings as diverse as voting and the vulnerability of the Internet to terrorism.
His human experiments and others like it could overturn our notion of the way trends and influence spread through society, said Duncan Watts, a physicist and networking expert at Yahoo.
via Connections do count | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/16/2009.
Study: Cancer patients of faith more likely to get intensive treatments
Study: Cancer patients of faith more likely to get intensive treatments
But faith can be a “double-edged sword,” says nurse Carol Taylor, director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University. Some terminally ill patients latch on to stories of biblical miracles, hoping against hope to be cured, instead of using their little remaining time to make peace with God and loved ones.
Yet even Taylor, who has counseled many dying patients, says she was surprised by the findings of a study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association, which examined the choices of dying cancer patients who rely strongly on their religious faith to cope with their illness.
These patients were three times more likely than others to receive intensive, invasive medical procedures — such as being hooked up to a ventilator or getting cardiopulmonary resuscitation when their hearts stop
via Study: Cancer patients of faith more likely to get intensive treatments – USATODAY.com.
Nanotechnology may offer alternative to radiation for cancer patients
Nanotechnology may offer alternative to radiation for cancer patients
Nanotechnology, the science of the really small, is already applied in hundreds of consumer products to enhance colour and durability of paints or make socks less smelly, but it’s real promise may lie in medicine.
Scientists can use nanoparticles created in a laboratory that are tens of thousands of times smaller than the width of a strand of hair to deliver drugs deep into the body, penetrating membranes in ways no pill has been able to do.
A nanoparticle can be attached to antibodies or chemicals that recognize tumour cells and can target and kill cancer cells but spare surrounding tissue.
Jie Chen, a nanotechnology engineer at the University of Alberta, is using nanotechnology to develop new cancer treatments that could one day replace radiation and chemotherapy. He is doing experiments with injected nanoparticles that contain a bamboo compound that is sensitive to ultrasound.
via Nanotechnology may offer alternative to radiation for cancer patients.
And We Didn’t Even Have to Move!
And We Didn’t Even Have to Move!
via And We Didn’t Even Have to Move!.
CFAP: Economic Snapshot for March 2009
Center For American Progress
Economic Snapshot for March 2009 – By Christian E. Weller
It’s hard to find any good news in the economy these days. The only thing that can turn the economy around now, writes Christian Weller, is the federal government.
The U.S. economy is in the thick of its worst recession in decades. Job and wealth losses are accelerating, contributing to sharp increases in families’ economic distress. All private sectors of the economy—consumers, investment, and exports—are shrinking.
The only sector that can help the economy change course is the federal government. But it will be hard to achieve optimal results from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act because of large looming deficits created by irresponsible management in the past.
1) GDP growth turns negative. In the fourth quarter of 2008, GDP declined at an annual rate of 6.2 percent, the largest decline since the first quarter of 1982. The drop in growth reflected a 4.3% decline in consumer spending, a fall of 22.2% of spending on homes, a decrease of 21.1% in business investment spending, and a drop of 23.6% in exports.
via Economic Snapshot for March 2009.
Federal Reserve
Federal reserve
The Federal Reserve System (also the Federal Reserve; informally The Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. Created in 1913 by the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, it is a quasi-public (government entity with private components) banking system[1] that comprises (1) the presidentially appointed Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C.; (2) the Federal Open Market Committee; (3) twelve regional privately-owned Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation acting as fiscal agents for the U.S. Treasury, each with its own nine-member board of directors; (4) numerous other private U.S. member banks, which subscribe to required amounts of non-transferable stock in their regional Federal Reserve Banks; and (5) various advisory councils. Since February 2006, Ben Bernanke serves as the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Donald Kohn is the current Vice Chairman (Term: June 2006 – June 2010).
via Federal Reserve.
Half of US auto suppliers face bankruptcy-study
OPS: The ripple effect
Half of US auto suppliers face bankruptcy-study
* More than 50 pct of top suppliers may go bankrupt in ’09
* At least 1 million jobs could be lost – study
* 35 pct of supply base bankrupt in ‘soft-landing’ – study
* 70 pct plus in bankruptcy under ‘pessimistic scenario’ (Adds details on study, quotes, background)
By David Bailey
DETROIT, March 19 (Reuters) – More than half of the top U.S. auto parts suppliers could file for bankruptcy protection in 2009 with at least one million job losses, according to a study by global consultants A.T. Kearney.
Those suppliers, which ship parts directly to automakers, are pressured from above by production cuts by the automakers and from below by increasingly fragile companies that supply them with components, the study found.
The survey encompassed 60 top North American auto parts suppliers, but did not name any of the suppliers. It was compiled through interviews with senior executives at suppliers in the United States.
Naked Short Sales Hint Fraud in Bringing Down Lehman
OPS: De-Regulation, again
Naked Short Sales Hint Fraud in Bringing Down Lehman – By Gary Matsumoto
(Bloomberg) — The biggest bankruptcy in history might have been avoided if Wall Street had been prevented from practicing one of its darkest arts.
As Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. struggled to survive last year, as many as 32.8 million shares in the company were sold and not delivered to buyers on time as of Sept. 11, according to data compiled by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bloomberg. That was a more than 57-fold increase over the prior year’s peak of 567,518 failed trades on July 30.
The SEC has linked such so-called fails-to-deliver to naked short selling, a strategy that can be used to manipulate markets. A fail-to-deliver is a trade that doesn’t settle within three days.
“We had another word for this in Brooklyn,” said Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. “The word was ‘fraud.’”
While the commission’s Enforcement Complaint Center received about 5,000 complaints about naked short-selling from January 2007 to June 2008, none led to enforcement actions, according to a report filed yesterday by David Kotz, the agency’s inspector general.
via Naked Short Sales Hint Fraud in Bringing Down Lehman (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
$2.5 Billion in Merrill Bonuses Would Elude Tax
OPS: You got this?! $2 BILLION in bonuses FROM OUR TAX DOLLARS – to pay the criminals that killed our economy!
$2.5 Billion in Merrill Bonuses Would Elude Tax
Merrill Lynch’s $3.6 billion bonus pool has been among the most controversial payouts on Wall Street. But most of those bonuses, which included some 700 awards of over $1 million, would not be affected by a new bonus tax being considered in Congress.
The tax, which passed in the House on Thursday, would affect only bonuses paid during 2009. Typically, Merrill’s bonuses are paid in January, along with the rest of Wall Street’s. But the investment bank pushed $2.5 billion of the bonuses out the door in December in advance of its merger with Bank of America.
It is unclear whether the bonus tax will pass in the Senate, where the tax rate being proposed on the bonuses is 33 percent. That is far lower than the 90 percent tax that passed in the House. It is also unclear how many banks the tax would affect. Both bills apply to companies that received bailout money, but the House bill covers only the largest companies while the Senate bill includes midsize banks.
via $2.5 Billion in Merrill Bonuses Would Elude Tax – NYTimes.com.
States Reluctantly Move to Raise Tax on Cigarettes
States Look at Tobacco to Balance the Budget
ATLANTA — Mississippi’s tax on cigarettes, at 18 cents a pack the nation’s third-lowest, has not been raised since 1985. Gov. Haley Barbour, a former tobacco lobbyist, has long opposed an increase.
But this year, state lawmakers have gone from giving little thought to a tobacco tax increase to arguing over how much the tax should go up and where the money should go.
And they are not alone. Budget shortfalls are pushing more than 20 states to look to tobacco for revenue, even those that have long been loath to touch cigarette taxes.
via States Reluctantly Move to Raise Tax on Cigarettes – NYTimes.com.
The Virtues of Public Anger and the Need for More
The Virtues of Public Anger and the Need for More - by Glenn Greenwald
With lightning speed and lockstep unanimity, opinion-making elites jointly embraced and are now delivering the same message about the public rage triggered this week by the AIG bonus scandal: This scandal is insignificant. It’s just a distraction. And, most important of all, public anger is unhelpful and must be contained or, failing that, ignored.
This anti-anger consensus among our political elites is exactly wrong. The public rage we’re finally seeing is long, long overdue, and appears to be the only force with both the ability and will to impose meaningful checks on continued kleptocratic pillaging and deep-seated corruption in virtually every branch of our establishment institutions. The worst possible thing that could happen now is for this collective rage to subside and for the public to return to its long-standing state of blissful ignorance over what the establishment is actually doing.
It makes perfect sense that those who are satisfied with the prevailing order — because it rewards them in numerous ways — are desperate to pacify public fury. Thus we find unanimous decrees that public calm (i.e., quiet) be restored. It’s a universal dynamic that elites want to keep the masses in a state of silent, disengaged submission, all the better if the masses stay convinced that the elites have their best interests at heart and their welfare is therefore advanced by allowing elites — the Experts — to work in peace on our pressing problems, undisrupted and “undistracted” by the need to placate primitive public sentiments.
While that framework is arguably reasonable where the establishment class is competent, honest, and restrained, what we have had — and have — is exactly the opposite: a political class and financial elite that is rotted to the core and running amok. We’ve had far too little public rage given the magnitude of this rot, not an excess of rage. What has been missing more than anything else is this: fear on the part of the political and financial class of the public which they have been systematically defrauding and destroying.
* * * * *
via The Virtues of Public Anger and the Need for More | CommonDreams.org.
Alaska And Florida Consider Bans On Bestiality
OPS: Now wait a minute. The problem is so bad in the Red States that they have to pass special laws?!!
Alaska And Florida Consider Bans On Bestiality
FUNEAU, Alaska — It’s a subject that can cause nervous snickering, a little uneasiness and even a few bad jokes.
But many in the southeast Alaska community of Klawock, population 800, weren’t laughing last April after a 26-year-old registered sex offender was accused of molesting a local family’s pet dog.
The man was spotted by a local woman coaxing the Labrador retriever into the woods near a ball field. There he allegedly tied it to a tree, taped its muzzle shut with duct tape and had sex with it, witnesses told police at the time.
The man had been twice convicted of raping a young boy and more recently had served probation for assault after lunging at a child. While the incident with the dog was reported to the police, Klawock Mayor Don Marvin said nothing happened for two days while fearful parents escorted their children home from school.
via Alaska And Florida Consider Bans On Bestiality.
Washington Mutual sues FDIC for over $13 billion
Washington Mutual sues FDIC for over $13 billion
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Washington Mutual Inc, the failed U.S. savings and loan, has sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp for well over $13 billion in connection with the loss of its banking operations, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the thrift’s former parent accused the FDIC of having on January 23 made a “cryptic disallowance” of its claims, prompting the lawsuit.
It also accused the FDIC of agreeing to an unreasonably low price in arranging the a $1.9 billion sale of the banking business to JPMorgan on September 25, when regulators seized Washington Mutual and appointed the FDIC as receiver.
JPMorgan did not buy the parent holding company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection the following day.
In its complaint, Washington Mutual seeks to recover as much as $6.5 billion of capital contributions it said it made to its banking unit from December 2007 through the seizure.
via Washington Mutual sues FDIC for over $13 billion | U.S. | Reuters.
This is the way the Internet ends: not with a bang, but DPI – Ars Technica
OPS: Without an open internet the Reich will finaly have total control
This is the way the Internet ends: not with a bang, but DPI
Free Press claims that deep packet inspection could bring about the end of the Internet “as we know it.” But the rest of the world knows it all too well already.
Does deep packet inspection mean the end of the Internet?
Deep packet inspection (DPI) gear has always been marketed to ISPs as a way to earn more money by scanning Internet traffic and charging more for various services. Want to game online? Better upgrade to the “Gaming Xtreme!” plan. Want to use VoIP? Prepare to open your wallet. Watch much streaming video? Well, it would be a whole lot smoother if you just paid another $2.99 a month.
DPI vendors haven’t tried to hide this; one company’s marketing literature suggests that it can help “reduce the performance of applications with negative influence on revenues” (e.g. competitive VoIP services).
ISPs want to avoid becoming a low-margin “bit pipe”—a dumb communications network that just enables companies like Google to make bazillions of dollars. And one good way to do that is to sell expensive services, using DPI to identity and categorize Internet traffic, then degrade or prioritize protocols and applications to fit the service profile.
It doesn’t happen much in the US, where consumers are accustomed to one monthly payment covering access to every service on the ‘Net without degradation. ISPs therefore deploy DPI gear at their peril, as Comcast found out when it begin forging TCP reset packets to slow BitTorrent uploads. Consumer reaction came quickly, and FCC oversight soon followed.
via This is the way the Internet ends: not with a bang, but DPI – Ars Technica.
Dollar Declines Most Since 1985 Plaza Accord on Fed Bond Buying
Dollar Declines Most Since 1985 Plaza Accord on Fed Bond Buying
March 21 (Bloomberg) — The dollar dropped the most against the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners since the Plaza Accord almost a quarter-century ago as the Federal Reserve’s plan to purchase Treasuries spurred speculation that it’s debasing the greenback.
“What it introduces is the problem of the currency to the extent that the Fed is buying what isn’t desired by foreign holders,” said Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., in an interview on Bloomberg Television on March 19. “The Fed can keep interest rates where they want to keep them, at least for a 6- to 12- to 18-month period of time, but it will have consequences down the road.”
The U.S. currency weakened beyond $1.37 per euro this week for the first time since January as the central bank’s decision to increase its balance sheet by $1.15 trillion lowered yields, making American assets less attractive. The Norwegian krone and the New Zealand dollar rallied as the Fed’s move spurred advances in commodities.
via Dollar Declines Most Since 1985 Plaza Accord on Fed Bond Buying – Bloomberg.com.
Palin buried in debt, may launch a legal fund.
Palin buried in debt, may launch a legal fund.
The Anchorage Daily News reports that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) owes more than half a million dollars “to an Anchorage law firm that has defended her against ethics complaints, and she may create a legal fund to pay the bill.” In her written response to the ADN, Palin described the charges that have cost her so much money as “baseless” and “ridiculous”:
via Think Progress » Palin buried in debt, may launch a legal fund..
WMO: George Will’s climate change denial column was a ‘misinterpretation’ of the facts.
WMO: George Will’s climate change denial column was a ‘misinterpretation’ of the facts.
In February, the Washington Post published a factually-challenged column by George Will that attacked the reality of climate change. One of Will’s claims was that “according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.” In a letter to the editor today, Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the WMO, explains how Will’s column was a “misinterpretation” of the organization’s data:
As Starbucks, others seek Employee Free Choice compromise, anti-union lobby stands in the way.
As Starbucks, others seek Employee Free Choice compromise, anti-union lobby stands in the way.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Costco Wholesale Corp., Starbucks Corp. and Whole Foods Market Inc. are seeking to compromise with union groups to support a modified version of the Employee Free Choice Act. The compromise would allow a union to be formed if 70 percent — instead of the current bill’s 50 percent proposal — sign a card favoring unionization. However, the anti-union lobby refuses to back the deal:
“These huge companies are apparently willing to sell out hundreds of thousands of small ones under the guise of making some phony and misguided compromise with Big Labor,” Mix said in a statement. “We believe we have this draconian bill defeated outright, so these actions may well lead to the bill’s passage.”
NRC decision on depleted uranium draws rebuke on Hill
NRC decision on depleted uranium draws rebuke on Hill
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision classifying depleted uranium as the least hazardous type of radioactive material is “unsupportable,” the chairman of the House Environment and Energy Subcommittee said yesterday.
Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and subcommittee member Jim Matheson (D-Utah) told the NRC in a letter (pdf): “The arbitrary and capricious mischaracterization of depleted uranium as Class A waste will undermine public confidence in the waste classification system, may increase risks to public health and safety and raises the possibility that additional, uncharacterized and possibly even more dangerous materials could be similarly treated in the future.”
via NRC decision on depleted uranium draws rebuke on Hill – NYTimes.com.
Obamas Prepare to Plant White House Vegetable Garden
OPS: The price of vegetables is probablygoing through the roof by late summer. Time for another
Victory Garden
Obamas to Plant Vegetable Garden at White House
WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of the South Lawn on Friday to plant a vegetable garden, the first at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets — the president does not like them — but arugula will make the cut.
While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become a national concern.
“My hope,” the first lady said in an interview in her East Wing office, “is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”
via Obamas Prepare to Plant White House Vegetable Garden – NYTimes.com.
Going Abroad to Find Affordable Health Care – NYTimes.com
Going Abroad to Find Affordable Health Care
WHEN Ben Schreiner, a 62-year-old retired Bank of America executive, found out last year he would need surgery for a double hernia, he started evaluating possible doctors and hospitals. But he didn’t look into the medical center in his hometown, Camden, S.C., or the bigger hospitals in nearby Columbia. Instead, his search led him to consider surgery in such far-flung places as Ireland, Thailand and Turkey.
Ultimately he decided on San José, Costa Rica, where just a week or so after the outpatient procedure and initial recovery, he and his wife were sightseeing throughout the country, then relaxing at a lush resort. He was home four weeks later, with no complications.
via Going Abroad to Find Affordable Health Care – NYTimes.com.
Iran Says It Will Change if The U.S. Changes
Iran Says It Will Change if The U.S. Changes
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday U.S. President Barack Obama’s offer of better ties was just a “slogan,” but pledged Tehran would respond to any real policy shift by Washington.
Speaking a day after Obama’s videotaped overture, Iran’s most powerful figure criticised U.S. actions towards Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution and said he did not see any change in practice from the new U.S. administration so far.
But Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, added: “You change, our behaviour will change.”
Indicating areas where Iran wants a different U.S. approach, he said the United States was “hated in the world” and should stop interfering in other countries’ internal affairs.
He also spoke of “oppressive sanctions” imposed on the Islamic Republic, Iranian assets frozen in the United States and Washington’s backing of Israel, which Tehran does not recognise.
via Iran Says It Will Change if The U.S. Changes – NYTimes.com.
Connecticut says AIG bonuses were even higher
Connecticut says AIG bonuses were even higher
The Hill
As Congress races to pass tax measures to recoup the bonus payments at insurance firm AIG, 21 state attorneys general are zeroing in on the firm and are breaking news faster than Congress.
On Saturday, according to the AP, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said AIG paid out $218 million in bonus payments. That is $53 million more than the previously reported $165 million sum that first provoked a public outcry last weekend. Blumenthal had issued a subpoeana to AIG for the information.
via TheHill.com – Connecticut says AIG bonuses were even higher.
Church plans protest of Richardson funeral
OPS: Sick, Degenerate, Phucking Kristians.
Church plans protest of Richardson funeral
Police prep for traffic in Town of Washington
MILLBROOK — Members of the Topeka, Kan.-based baptist church said they are coming to Millbrook Sunday to protest Natasha Richardson’s funeral.
On it’s Web site, Westboro Baptist Church said it plans to protest the funeral because Richardson supported research for a cure for AIDS. The small Kansas church has protested schools, colleges, churches, funerals and other venues
On Friday, local police said they are preparing for traffic and crowds Sunday, based on reports Richardson will be buried in a private ceremony near the family’s Town of Washington home.
via Church plans protest of Richardson funeral | PoughkeepsieJournal.com | Poughkeepsie Journal.
Despair over financial policy – The Zombie Ideas Have Won.
Despair over financial policy- – Paul Krugman
The Zombie Ideas Have Won.
The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.
The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.
To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding.
But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.
via Despair over financial policy – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
U.S. eyes closer military ties with Mexico
U.S. eyes closer military ties with Mexico
The U.S. is trying to achieve closer ties with the Mexican military, but that may be difficult.
WASHINGTON — As the Pentagon eyes a bigger role in Mexico’s drug war, the military’s efforts to open the door to a new relationship with its southern neighbor risks alienating the Mexican military, which has long had a strained relationship with its counterpart, experts said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called for improved relations with the Mexican military in response to escalating drug violence along the border and in Mexico. On Meet the Press earlier this month, the secretary said: “We are beginning to be in a position to help the Mexicans more than we have in the past. Some of the old biases against cooperation between our militaries and so on I think are being set aside.”
Most experts, however, say any military role should be limited to sharing intelligence or training Mexican troops.
”It’s a mistake to say that the United States is going to address this problem of security in Mexico by increasing the Pentagon’s role,” said Armand B. Peschard-Sverdrup, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It only would perpetuate the dysfunctional relationship between the two countries.”
via U.S. eyes closer military ties with Mexico – Americas – MiamiHerald.com.
Medical marijuana becomes legal in Michigan in April
Legal pot debuts in Midwest
As Michigan’s medical marijuana law takes full effect next month, sufferers of chronic pain and other ailments cheer while police predict problems
PAW PAW, Mich.—At first glance they look like old pals, maybe a bunch from the Rotary Club leisurely gabbing away over the hamburger special, making the waitress work overtime for her tip.
But these guys are different. Their eyes, their fidgeting and their restlessness betray a shared bond of chronic pain, sleepless nights, depression and a reliance on heavy-duty prescription drugs. Around this lunchtime table, they talk about the only thing that gives them a measure of peace, the only thing that, for perhaps a few hours, sets them free: marijuana.
via Medical marijuana becomes legal in Michigan in April — chicagotribune.com.
Top Geithner Aide Fought CEO Pay Reform
NOW we are getting to the heart of the matter: Goldman Sachs lobbyist is Geithner’s Chief of Staff
Top Geithner Aide Fought CEO Pay Reform
As a Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson once worked against a bill to curb executive compensation. The legislation’s sponsor: Barack Obama.
—By David Corn and Jonathan Stein
On Wednesday afternoon, as President Barack Obama was leaving the White House for a town hall meeting in California, he spoke for 15 minutes to reporters about the AIG controversy. Responding to the rising rage over the $165 million or so in bonuses paid to executives at the bailed-out insurance firm, Obama noted that he was quickly developing policies to prevent future AIG-like catastrophes. And he slammed Wall Street’s culture of “excess greed, excess compensation, excess risk taking.” To demonstrate that he’s committed to battling such greed, the president cited his work in the Senate to rein in executive compensation. Noting that he and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) had each introduced legislation on this front in 2007, Obama declared that “there were some people who attacked us, saying government has no business doing that.”
One of Obama’s opponents at that time was Mark Patterson, a lobbyist then for Goldman Sachs, the investment banking firm, which opposed the Frank-Obama initiative. Yet Patterson is now chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the embattled point man in the Obama administration’s endeavor to undo the notorious AIG bonuses. That is, a Washington influence-peddler who worked against Obama’s effort to limit excessive corporate pay is now a key member of the Obama administration team that is supposed to contain excessive compensation in the AIG case and in general.
via Top Geithner Aide Fought CEO Pay Reform | Mother Jones.
Homeless Americans Gathering in Tent Cities
Homeless Americans Gathering in Tent Cities
Once proud, hardworking, patriotic, middle-class Americans are forced to set up camp in modern day “Hoovervilles
As the recession continues to deepen, everyday Americans are finding it harder and harder just to get by. With unemployment mounting, millions of Americans are one or two paychecks away from losing their homes and finding themselves homeless. This problem is starting to manifest itself in the form of tent cities popping up all across America.
Once proud, hardworking, patriotic, middle-class Americans are forced to set up camp in modern day “Hoovervilles.”
Reports have found these shanty towns in Seattle, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Atlanta, Reno, Nevada, Nashville and Camden, New Jersey among others.
Perhaps the most famous of these striking symbols of America’s economic woes is located in Sacramento, California.
Media outlets from NBC Nightly News to Al Jazeera to Oprah Winfrey have swept into the encampment to document growing epidemic of homelessness in these bleak economic times.
The Los Angeles Times, reporting on the tent city of more than 200 men and women that has been inhabited for more than a year, found that many of the residents were just recently successful car salesmen, truck drivers and construction workers. Just months ago, they owned homes, had good jobs and had no trouble eating.
Now their world’s are upside down.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Stimulating the American Auto Industry
Stimulating the American Auto Industry
It’s fair to all major automakers, and gives incentives for the domestic production of vehicles that ensures jobs will be created in this country.
A measure intended to boost domestic auto sales gained a huge amount of traction after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw her support behind the bill on Wednesday.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH), would provide instant vouchers ranging from $3,000 to $7,500 to consumers who trade in their older vehicles to purchase newer, more fuel efficient vehicles.
Introduced in the House on Tuesday, the bill, dubbed the cash-for-clunkers program, has widespread support among American automakers, dealers and the United Auto Workers union. The backing of the top Democrat in the House may signal the bill’s inevitable passage.
“The speaker is supportive of this concept and looks forward to reviewing the details of Rep. Sutton’s legislation,” Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, D- Calif., told CNNMoney.com.
However, the bill is facing fierce opposition from foreign automakers and “free trade” advocates because of a provision excluding the purchase of any vehicle built outside of North America which they claim violates American obligations under “free trade“ agreements.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Japanese Miracle
The Japanese Miracle
The tiny island nation of Japan provides many fine examples of what a country can do if it is not bogged down in futile wars and is intelligently governed.
Editor’s note: Written in 2004. We tried to inform the country then – our direction and priorities were not right. This has continued unchanged causing our present plight.
The tiny island nation of Japan provides many fine examples of what a country can do if it is not bogged down in futile wars and is intelligently governed. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and China have copied Japan’s model and have become extremely successful.
The U.S. is a great country with enormous potential. However, mismanagement and poor economic decisions, have squandered the power and wealth that previous generations worked so hard to create. To put this in perspective, this is how the U.S. compares with a country as small as Japan:
• Japan only has 4 percent of our land mass (smaller than California) and is 90 percent mountainous and infertile.
• Japan has minimal natural resources – no oil, no coal, no iron ore, not even timber, just fish!
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Watchdog fears market ‘Ponzimonium’
Watchdog fears market ‘Ponzimonium’
Hundreds of probes investigate possible scams
US federal regulators have warned of a “rampant Ponzimonium” as they disclosed they are investigating “hundreds” of possible scams in the aftermath of the $50bn fraud allegedly perpetrated by Bernard Madoff.
Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the US regulator, said the watchdog was “seeing more of these scams than ever before” in commodities and other futures markets.
via FT.com / Companies – Watchdog fears market ‘Ponzimonium’.
Postal Service closing offices, cutting jobs
Postal Service closing offices, cutting jobs
The U.S. Postal Service said Friday it will cut jobs, offer early retirement to tens of thousands of employees and close administrative offices, the latest round of cutbacks in the last year.
The Postal Service plans to close six of its 80 district offices this year, and reduce administrative staff positions at the district level by 15 percent, including 1,400 mail processing supervisor and management positions at nearly 400 facilities around the country.
It will also offer early retirement packages to 150,000 employees nationwide.
In the past year, the Postal Service has frozen executive salaries, implemented a hiring freeze, sold under used post office locations and cut back hours at others.
The latest cuts will save the Postal Service an estimated $100 million a year, according to the service.
via Postal Service closing offices, cutting jobs – Dayton Business Journal:.
Italy: Pot okay for lonesome shepherd
While a shepherd watched his flock by night…
Medicinal purposes are one thing, but marijuana received an unexpected recreational endorsement when Italy’s highest court ruled that an Italian shepherd’s smoking habit could be justified because he only had sheep for company.
The 45-year-old shepherd was caught with marijuana in his car as he was setting off for an extended period with his flock in the mountains of Alto Adige, in the far north of the country. Police found 38 grams (about 1.3 ounces) in the car, and the shepherd, identified only as Giorgio D., was convicted of possession. But upholding an appeal against the verdict, the Court of Cassation ruled that the shepherd was justified in possessing this small quantity of the drug on account of “the long and solitary period” he was about to spend “in the countryside and the mountains, due to the migration of his flock of sheep”.
It is not the first time that Italy’s most senior judges have chosen to smile indulgently at the smoking of marijuana in unusual contexts. Last July, the court overturned the conviction of a Rastafarian, Giuseppe G., as it concluded that the drug “was a possible conveyor to a psychophysical state connected to contemplative prayer ? in the belief that the sacred herb grew on the tomb of Solomon, acquiring its potency from that wise king”.
via While a shepherd watched his flock by night… – Health News, Health & Wellbeing – The Independent.
Busload of Crazies to Tour Homes of AIG Executives This Weekend
Busload of Crazies to Tour Homes of AIG Executives This Weekend
Less than a year ago, the most repellent area bus tour we knew of was the one that induced Sex and the City–crazed tourists to put $40 on their Citi cards for a cupcake and a glimpse at Carrie Bradshaw’s brownstone. How times have changed! Now, everyone’s clamoring aboard the Populist Rage Bus.
The Connecticut Working Families Party this weekend has organized a bus store that will make stops at Wilton, Connecticut, AIG office as well as the security-patrolled homes of AIG execs who are fearing for their lives.
“We’re going to be peaceful and lawful in everything we do,” said Jon Green, the director of Connecticut Working Families. “I know there’s a lot of anger and a lot of rage about what’s happened. We’re not looking to foment that unnecessarily, but what we want to do is give folks in Bridgeport and Hartford and other parts of Connecticut who are struggling and losing their homes and their jobs and their health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy.”
China in threat to shatter hopes of G20 summit deal
China in threat to shatter hopes of G20 summit deal
China may scupper hopes of a landmark deal at the G20 summit in London by opposing new rules for the world’s financial system designed to prevent a repeat of the current crisis.
As the Prime Minister played down differences between the United States and Europe over whether EU nations should spend more to combat the recession, China emerged as a possible stumbling block to an agreement at the 2 April meeting.
One proposal – backed at yesterday’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels – is for tougher global financial regulation including a crackdown on tax havens, hedge funds and private equity firms and an end to pay and bonuses which encourage excessive risk-taking. But Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said: “The main problem will come from other countries, like China for example, that don’t have the culture of a common setting of rules.”
Mr Brown insisted China was playing a constructive part in the G20 negotiations. “Any suggestion that China does not want a positive outcome for the G20 discussions is wrong,” he said. But he admitted he would need further “private discussions” with Premier Wen Jiabao before the meeting. British officials were puzzled by Mr Barroso’s intervention, pointing out that China had showed it could abide by international rules by joining the World Trade Organisation.
The Prime Minister said the EU talks had “laid the foundations” for a successful London summit after its 27 leaders closed ranks to avoid sending a negative signal to the financial markets. He said: “We have also agreed on the importance of doing what is necessary to restore jobs and growth by the fiscal actions we take.
via China in threat to shatter hopes of G20 summit deal – Asia, World – The Independent.
Toxic asset plan expected to be unveiled soon
Toxic asset plan expected to be unveiled soon
WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is putting the finishing touches on a plan to get toxic assets off the books of the country’s struggling banks, according to administration and industry officials. The plan could be announced as soon as Monday, they said.
Geithner’s proposal will employ the resources of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to make the government’s $700 billion financial rescue fund go further, these officials said Friday.
The Fed and the FDIC are being tapped for support because the prospects for getting additional money from Congress for the bailout effort have dimmed significantly with this week’s uproar over millions of dollars in bonuses provided to troubled insurance giant American International Group Inc.
via Toxic asset plan expected to be unveiled soon.
Newt Gingrich woos religious right for his anti-tax cause
Newt Gingrich woos religious right for his anti-tax cause
When Newt Gingrich served as Speaker of the House in the 1990′s, he never appeared to be particularly close to the religious right. His Contract with America was all about deregulation, balanced budgets, tort reform, and getting tough on crime and welfare.
Even when Gingrich re-emerged last summer as a would-be Republican leader, it was with a “drill here, drill” now campaign aligned with the oil industry. However, in the wake of the Republicans’ crushing defeat in last fall’s election, he has apparantly decided that the only hope for the GOP lies in an alliance between his own anti-tax adherents and religious conservatives.
A story which appeared Friday in US News and World Report explores Gingrich’s growing alliance with the religious right.
via The Raw Story | Newt Gingrich woos religious right for his anti-tax cause.
Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It
Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It
By Robert Glennon,
Our water crisis should occasion grave concern but not panic. We have solutions available; now we need a national commitment to pursue them.
The following is an excerpt from “Unquenchable: American’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It” by Robert Glennon. Copyright 2009 Robert Glennon. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington DC.
Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from the introduction of Glennon’s new book and follows a narrative about the water profligacy of Las Vegas. The timing of this excerpt is perfect for World Water Day, but the timing of the book in terms of the water issues facing American and the rest of the world is also incredibly important.
“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water,” observed Benjamin Franklin in 1774. But he was wrong. In the United States, we utterly fail to appreciate the value of water, even as we are running out. We Americans are spoiled. When we turn on the tap, out comes a limitless quantity of high-quality water for less money than we pay for our cell phone service or cable television. But as we’ll see, what is happening in Vegas is not staying in Vegas. It’s becoming a national epidemic.
via Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It | Water | AlterNet.
Why Do Conservatives Hate Your Children?
Why Do Conservatives Hate Your Children? – By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress.
A look at conservatives’ willful effort to destroy the health and well-being of your children and grandchildren and the next 50 generations.
Fundamentally, anti-science conservatives are now the cement shoes on the American people, pulling us down into the hot, acidic dead zone. If that wasn’t clear before (see “Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh“), House Republicans codified their opposition to climate action this week.
CQ Politics reports that the House GOP “offered six principles Wednesday that they say will guide them as they formulate an alternative to the president’s ambitious plans”:
The principles reflect the minority’s long-held views. GOP leaders said they will oppose any tax increases, either on income or energy, and will fight a cap-and-trade program to curb carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat global warming. Instead, the Republicans reiterated their “all of the above” energy proposals that stress new domestic oil and gas production and development of alternative energy sources.
via Why Do Conservatives Hate Your Children? | | AlterNet.
We Have a Golden Opportunity to End the War on Drugs: Can You Help?
We Have a Golden Opportunity to End the War on Drugs: Can You Help?
We can’t end the despicable “war on drugs” without an effective media that can mobilize our citizenry and spread the word.
Day in and day out, AlterNet reaches more people with powerful and convincing drug reform messages than any other media in America. That’s right. We produce, gather and distribute the most articles to the biggest audiences, and we reach people far beyond the established drug reform crowd.
And on top of it, we support all the key advocates in the drug reform movement and bring people to their campaigns. We help the Marijuana Policy Project, Drug Policy Alliance, NORML, and DRC Net among others, to get their messages out.
And we do all this as a slim and trim, non-profit organization that depends on you, our readers for our success.
via We Have a Golden Opportunity to End the War on Drugs: Can You Help? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
The Scavenger’s Manifesto: Why Dumpster Diving Can Save You from Going Off the Deep End
The Scavenger’s Manifesto: Why Dumpster Diving Can Save You from Going Off the Deep End
While consumer culture drowns us in debt, you can count every cent you save while liberating would-be trash.
The following is an adapted excerpt from The Scavenger’s Manifesto (Tarcher Press, 2009) by Anneli Rufus and Kristan Lawson.
My eyes are lighthouse beacons. Enroute to a family gathering, I spot a box marked FREE on a curb. This, right here, is the meaning of life. Swim goggles: Yes. Pink T-shirt: Yes. Blender: I already have one, so no. “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” apron: No. Six bars of hotel soap, sealed in their wrappers: Yoink. Into the backpack pops the salad fork, the crocheted scarf. Assess each in a nanosecond. Do I want this? Do I need it? Does my friend?
When they ask at the family gathering why I am late and I say I was garnering a stranger’s discards, they laugh. When they realize I am serious, they flinch, their faces masks of pity, fear, disgust. They ask: But why? Weren’t those discards dirty? What if someone bled on that T-shirt? Can’t you afford a salad fork?
Oh, that. Scavengers hear it all the time.
And more:
What if it doesn’t fit?
What if it’s dented/scratched/stained/faded/ripped?
Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West
Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West
Energy Firms Buying River Rights Add to Competition for Scarce Resource
DENVER — Oil companies have gained control over billions of gallons of water from Western rivers in preparation for future efforts to extract oil from shale deposits under the Rocky Mountains, according to a new report by an environmental group that opposes such projects.
The group, Western Resource Advocates, used public records to conclude that energy companies are collectively entitled to divert more than 6.5 billion gallons of water a day during peak river flows. The companies also hold rights to store, in dozens of reservoirs, 1.7 million acre feet of water, enough to supply metro Denver for six years.
via Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West – WSJ.com.
Support For Health Care Overhaul, But It’s Not 1993
Support For Health Care Overhaul, But It’s Not 1993
Stable Views of Stem Cell Research
Pew Research
Most Americans believe that the nation’s health care system is in need of substantial changes. But there is less support for completely rebuilding the health care system than there was in April 1993, during the early stage of the Clinton administration’s unsuccessful effort to revamp health care.
Still, the public continues to favor the government guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if it means raising taxes. About six-in-ten (61%) favor a government guarantee of health insurance, which is little changed from last August (63%).
via Overview: Support For Health Care Overhaul, But It’s Not 1993.
Why Jewish Peace Movement Got It Wrong on Freeman
Why Jewish Peace Movement Got It Wrong on Freeman - by Richard Silverstein
I think it’s useful to do a little debriefing in the aftermath of the Chas. Freeman affair in terms of who got it right and who didn’t. So first of all kudos to Phil Weiss, Spencer Ackerman, Glenn Greenwald, Greg Sargent, M.J. Rosenberg, Ben Smith, Chris Nelson, Jim Lobe, Laura Rosen, Steven Walt, and others who reported the hell out of this story. Jewish Voice for Peace was also one of the few groups which spoke out for Freeman. We were right, but for reasons beyond our control we didn’t prevail.
But my real concern is examining the mistakes made by our side. First, I really want to take to task the Jewish peace groups like Brit Tzedek, Americans for Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum, and especially J Street for turning tail and running from this fight as fast as their little feet would carry them. One of my readers, Walter Ballin, has done me the favor of posting J Street’s timorous response to his question on the matter and it’s unfortunately very instructive:
The Great Shame
The Great Shame – BOB HERBERT
I had a conversation several weeks ago with a former Army officer, a woman, who had been attacked in her bed a few years ago by a superior officer, a man, who was intent on raping her.
The woman fought the man off with a fury. When she tried to press charges against him, she was told that she should let the matter drop because she hadn’t been hurt. When she persisted, battalion officials threatened to bring charges against her.
“They were talking about charging me with assault,” she said, her voice still tinged with anger and a sense of disbelief. “I’m no longer in the Army,” she added dryly.
Tia Christopher, a 27-year-old woman who lives in California and works with victims of sexual assault in the military, told me about the time that she was raped when she was in the Navy. She was attacked by another sailor who had come into her room in the barracks.
“He was very rough,” she said. “The girls next door heard my head hitting the wall, and he made quite a mess. When he left, he told me that he’d pray for me and that he still thought I was pretty.”
via Op-Ed Columnist – The Great Shame – NYTimes.com.
Maddow: Deregulation
Video – Deregulation
Rachel Maddow: “Deregulation benefits the people at the top. They get really, really, really rich doing stuff that might otherwise be illegal if there were regulations in place to stop them. We get all the national risk associated with what they were doing, and they get all the cash.”
I still find it a surreal experience to hear a real live prime time television host who reads like any one of dozens of all our favourite liberal bloggers. I know this is kind of a silly fan-boy post, but I don’t want to let this window slide by.
It it a rare event in US media history that there is a prominent liberal voice, able to calmly lay out the ideological case not just for specific liberal policies, but for broad meta-policy approaches. This isn’t just a case for some specific regulation like Glass/Steagal or food manufacturing inspection, but for the broad rubric of regulation generally.
For those on the right that have actually believed the media was liberal, Maddow shows what an actual liberal media would look like. It’s not just the content of her show, but the unhurried style, the politeness, substantive questions and the pauses between guests to add context with relevant facts and statistics. If liberals ran the media, it wouldn’t look like the clusterfuck out there today.
via Open Left:: Maddow! Maddow! Maddow!.
U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar
OPS: This is it – We are Screwed! If it happens, the “American Century” will have officially ended.
U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar -By Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent
LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar.
Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket.
Persaud, chairman of consultants Intelligence Capital and a former currency chief at JPMorgan, said the recommendation would be one of a number delivered to the United Nations on March 25 by the U.N. Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform.
“It is a good moment to move to a shared reserve currency,” he said.
Central banks hold their reserves in a variety of currencies and gold, but the dollar has dominated as the most convincing store of value — though its rate has wavered in recent years as the United States ran up huge twin budget and external deficits.
via U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar | U.S. | Reuters.
Conservative Left Brain, Liberal Right Brain? (Neuropolitics.org)
YouTube – Conservative Left Brain, Liberal Right Brain? (Neuropolitics.org).
Here’s you can check to see which one you are! If you see her going counter-clockwise you’re left.
THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test … do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?
If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.
Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking
Jerusalem Countdown: Christian Zionists and the New Israeli Government
Jerusalem Countdown: Christian Zionists and the New Israeli Government – By Bill Berkowitz
Three of the top Apocalypse-watchers of the Christian Right have big love for Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.
In early April of last year, at a conference in Jerusalem of American evangelicals organized by Pastor John Hagee, Benjamin Netanyahu told the audience that Israel had no better friends than America’s Christian Zionists. “This is a friendship of the heart, a friendship of common roots, and a friendship of common civilization,” Netanyahu said.
Now, nearly a year later, with Netanyahu cobbling together a ruling coalition in Israel, three men of the US Christian Right, Pastor John Hagee, Michael D. Evans, and Joel C. Rosenberg–all of whom have had long-term associations with the prime minister-to-be–may feel like they’re about to be handed the keys to the Promised Land.
All three have had bestselling books related to the Middle East and apocalyptic theology, have raised significant amounts of money for Israeli charities (although how much of that money reaches the poor and needy has been questioned), lobbied heavily in support of policies advanced by Israel’s right wing, and opposed The Road Map to Peace. To one degree or another, they are all leaders in the broad movement known as Christian Zionism, now estimated to be about 40 million strong.
via Talk To Action | Jerusalem Countdown: Christian Zionists and the New Israeli Government.
CNBC’s Haines Fights Dem Rep. Sherman On AIG Bonuses (VIDEO)
CNBC’s Haines Fights Dem Rep. Sherman On AIG Bonuses (VIDEO)
Owning these CNBC hacks: it’s not just for cable TV comedians anymore! Via the folks at TPM, here’s video of CNBC’s Mark Haines, who just cannot imagine a universe in which Wall Street Titans aren’t fabulously well-compensated for their Great Works, discussing restrictions on corporate bonuses and salaries. Haines ain’t having it! How will Wall Street retain the best and the brightest if they aren’t given fat paychecks? This is the same argument I’ve heard my wife make, time and again. Except she’s talking about schools! Anyway, Sherman is more than a little incredulous, given the actual policy being advanced by the White House.
via CNBC’s Haines Fights Dem Rep. Sherman On AIG Bonuses (VIDEO).
“Ecstasy” may help PTSD victims get better
“Ecstasy” may help PTSD victims get better
NEW YORK, Mar. 20, 2009 (Reuters Health) — The drug MDMA — better known as the illegal recreational drug “Ecstasy” — may help people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recover, a Norwegian research team suggests.
They say the effect of MDMA should allow PTSD patients bond more easily with their therapists, take control of their emotions, and re-learn how to respond to past trauma.
People with PTSD “are usually running away from what they experienced as very scary, and then they never have this inhibition learning, this fear-learning,” Pal-Orjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim commented to Reuters Health. “When the clients are getting MDMA we believe it is easier for them. It becomes more bearable, it becomes easier to regulate, to be in the situation and not run away.”
via NewsDaily: “Ecstasy” may help PTSD victims get better.
Plant Biologists Discover Gene That Switches On ‘Essence Of Male’
Plant Biologists Discover Gene That Switches On ‘Essence Of Male
Biologists at the University of Leicester have published results of a new study into plant sex – and discovered that a particular gene switches on ‘the essence of male’. The study takes to a new level understanding of the genes needed for successful plant reproduction and seed production.
Professor David Twell and colleagues in the Department of Biology at the University of Leicester reported the discovery of a gene that has a critical role in allowing precursor reproductive cells to divide to form twin sperm cells.
Their study is reported in the journal Public Library of Science Genetics (PLoS Genetics) and was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
Professor Twell said: “Flowering plants, unlike animals require not one, but two sperm cells for successful fertilisation. One sperm cell to join with the egg cell to produce the embryo and the other to join with the central cell to produce the nutrient-rich endosperm tissue inside the seed. A mystery in this ‘double fertilisation’ process was how each single pollen grain could produce the pair of sperm cells needed for fertility and seed production.
via Plant Biologists Discover Gene That Switches On ‘Essence Of Male’.
CIA reveals it has 3,000 pages of documents relating to destroyed interrogation tapes
CIA reveals it has 3,000 pages of documents relating to destroyed interrogation tapes
The Central Intelligence Agency disclosed Friday that it has 3,000 summaries, transcripts, reconstructions and memoranda relating to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed Friday evening.
The agency, however, says they won’t make them public or provide them to the civil rights group. The disclosure came as part of a lawsuit.
The CIA says they incinerated the tapes to protect the identities of agents involved in the interrogations. Their destruction came at the same time a federal judge was seeking information from Bush administration lawyers about the interrogation of alleged al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.
The CIA also refused to publicly disclose any witnesses who may have viewed the destroyed tapes or had custody of them prior to their destruction.
Fox News’s Brit Hume Warns That Because Of Blogs, Future News Will Be ‘More Partisan’
OPS: Gee, Brit the nitwit is afraid of competition
Fox News’s Brit Hume Warns That Because Of Blogs, Future News Will Be ‘More Partisan’
humeweb.jpgLast night, the conservative Media Research Center, which houses the ever on point NewsBusters blog, hosted its annual “DisHonors” media awards gala in Washington, D.C. Aside from the cornier “Media Messiah” and “Obamagasm” media honors the group bestowed to alleged “liberal” members of the press, MRC presented Fox News’s Brit Hume with its “William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence.” In his acceptance speech, Hume warned of the dangers of the rise of blogs and news being “presented from one political viewpoint”:
HUME: What are we getting?…We’re getting bloggers and websites and all sorts of individual entrepreneurs, and we have a vaster menu of choices today than we’ve ever had. But I think that we also have the danger that everything will be presented from one political viewpoint or the other, and that the media that confront us are going to be more partisan than ever — which means that the Media Research Center will have a mission for many years to come, and a good thing that is.
ISS – Court allows lawsuit against alleged Va. torture contractor
A federal court in Virginia ruled this week that four former Abu Ghraib detainees who were tortured and later released without charge can sue a military contractor that carried out interrogations for the United States.
CACI International of Alexandria, Va. was sued last July by a legal team including attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which also filed suit against private contractor Blackwater — the North Carolina-based company now known as Xe — over the mass shooting of Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square.
The lawsuit against CACI alleges that company employees participated in physical and mental abuse of detainees including electric shocks, repeated brutal beatings, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, forced nudity, stress positions, sexual assault, mock executions, humiliation, hooding, isolated detention and prolonged hanging from the limbs.
The lawsuit also charges that the company destroyed documents, videos and photographs; prevented the reporting of the torture and abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross; hid detainees and other prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross; and misled non-conspiring military and government officials about conditions at the Iraq prison.
via ISS – Court allows lawsuit against alleged Va. torture contractor.
Newspaper cuts open door to more political trickery
Newspaper cuts open door to more political trickery -By JAMES RAINEY
Political consultants aren’t exactly rubbing their hands together and snickering. But as the hired guns look over a landscape of closing newspapers and laid-off investigative reporters, they sense an opening that leaves them both excited and queasy.
One operative told me this week about planting attacks on opponents in partisan blogs, knowing the stories could bleed into mainstream news outlets, without leaving any incriminating fingerprints. Another described how he got green reporters to write stories (no campaign cash wasted!) on ads that the candidate had no intention of ever paying to put on TV.
“They don’t know any better,” the consultant chuckled. “So we can get away with that one again.”
The political pros I interviewed talked about stories missed and questions not asked. But they were not entirely gleeful. These are consultants who care about more than just winning. (Hard to believe, but it’s true.)
They know better than anyone what happens when the gatekeepers go missing.
via Newspaper cuts open door to more political trickery – Los Angeles Times.
Senate Republicans brake rush to tax AIG bonuses
Senate Republicans brake rush to tax AIG bonuses
WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans are drawing out a flap that has made the Obama administration squirm, applying the brakes to Democratic attempts to quickly tax away most of the bonuses at troubled insurance giant AIG and other bailed-out companies.
Sen. Jon Kyl, the Republicans’ vote counter, blocked Democratic efforts Thursday evening to bring up the Senate version of the tax bill to recoup most of the $165 million paid out by AIG last weekend and other bonuses in 2009. The House had swiftly approved its version of the bill earlier in the day.
By rushing, Kyl said, Democrats were letting populist outrage trump informed decision making in the Senate, which is supposed to be insulated from the pressures of public passion.
via Senate Republicans brake rush to tax AIG bonuses.
Coleman lawyer predicts Franken win at trial, promises appeal – The CNN Wire – CNN.com Blogs
Coleman lawyer predicts Franken win at trial, promises appeal
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) — Joe Friedberg, the heavyweight Minnesota criminal defense lawyer who’s been at the helm of former Sen. Norm Coleman’s trial to overturn Democrat Al Franken’s Senate win in the recount, said Friday he thinks Franken will win.
And, in a radio interview he added Coleman will be taking the case to the state’s high court.
“I think that we’ve been trying this case with the appeal record in mind, and that’s where we’re going,” Friedberg said in a Wednesday interview with KFAN, a Twin Cities-area sports station.
“It’s going to be a very quick appeal,” he added.
via Coleman lawyer predicts Franken win at trial, promises appeal – The CNN Wire – CNN.com Blogs.
George Galloway banned from Canada
George Galloway banned from Canada
• Anti-war MP banned on grounds of national security
• ‘This idiotic ban shames Canada,’ says Galloway
Anti-war MP George Galloway has been banned from Canada, it emerged today.
A Canadian spokesman confirmed that the Respect MP had been deemed inadmissible on national security grounds and would not be allowed into the country.
Galloway today branded the ban “idiotic” and vowed to fight the ruling with “all means” at his disposal. He is due to give a speech in Toronto on 30 March.
Earlier today the Sun said border security officials had declared Galloway, 54, “inadmissible” because of his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there and would be turned away if he attempted to enter the country.
via George Galloway banned from Canada | Politics | guardian.co.uk.
Michael Steele Doesn’t Know What The First Amendment Says
Michael Steele Doesn’t Know What The First Amendment Says
This morning, RNC Chairman Michael Steele came out of isolation and guest-hosted Bill Bennett’s Morning in America. During the program, a caller asked Steele about the constitutionality of the 90 percent bonus tax passed by the House yesterday. The caller said that he believed that the tax was unconstitutional because “the first amendment…specifically states that a law cannot be passed to specifically target a person or a group of people.”
The caller was apparently trying to reference the ban on bills of attainder in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, not the first amendment. Apparently unfamiliar with the purpose of the first amendment, Steele responded, “That’s right!”:
via Think Progress » Michael Steele Doesn’t Know What The First Amendment Says.
Report: MSNBC ‘in discussions’ with Ed Schultz for ‘full-time’ job.
Report: MSNBC ‘in discussions’ with Ed Schultz for ‘full-time’ job.
The New York Observer reports that “MSNBC president Phil Griffin is in discussions with syndicated talk radio host Ed Schultz about possibly joining the network on a full-time basis.” The Observer says it is “unclear what exactly the job would entail” if they reach an agreement, but notes that it has been speculated that Schultz is being considered as a possible host of his own show:
When reached by phone on Friday morning, Mr. Schultz also denied that Mr. Griffin had made him an offer. He said that he had received some kind words from MSNBC management on the heels of his guest-hosting gigs. But, according to Mr. Schultz, MSNBC brass has given him no definite word yet about his future—if he has one—at the cable news network.
Speculation about Mr. Schultz’s future role at MSNBC has focused on two time slots: the 6 p.m. hour (currently anchored by David Shuster) and the 10 p.m. hour (which currently features a repeat of Countdown with Keith Olbermann).
Schultz recently guest-hosted Shuster’s show, which set off chatter that MSNBC was potentially “grooming” him for a hosting gig.
via Think Progress » Report: MSNBC ‘in discussions’ with Ed Schultz for ‘full-time’ job..
Howard Fineman’s “Thirteen American Arguments”: A Key Briefing on the Core Political Clashes That Matter Now, and Historically Have Mattered, to Americans
Howard Fineman’s “Thirteen American Arguments”: A Key Briefing on the Core Political Clashes That Matter Now, and Historically Have Mattered, to Americans
By JOHN W. DEAN
Howard Fineman, Newsweek’s senior Washington Correspondent and an NBC news analyst, understands the ways of the nation’s capital and its politics. His new book, The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Inspire and Define Our Country, has been on my reading list for months, so it struck me as a good potential read to give my new Kindle (the Kindle 2) a first test. In light of my overloaded book shelves, not to mention an expensive book-reading addiction, the idea of building an electronic library has long appealed to me. However, the inability to highlight passages, search that library easily, and cut and paste from the books made the early electronic readers hardly worth the savings in cost and shelf space, notwithstanding my equal interest in saving trees. In sharp contrast, the Kindle 2 reading experience was superb overall, with the notetaking and highlighting functions solid and satisfactory, though they could also be improved upon.
Drought in America: Yes It’s That Bad
Drought in America: Yes It’s That Bad
If like me you have a yard, and if like mine it crunches underfoot, then this site can help you decide whether it’s your imagination or you really should be sniffing the wind for wildfires.
Drought.gov offers a fascinating array of maps that tell you more than you want to know about the status and outlook for your area, at least more than you want to know if your area is like mine. And judging by most of the maps, it is.
For example, there’s a “Seasonal Drought Outlook” map that shows drought conditions forecast to persist or intensify in most of Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, and California between now and June. There are a handful of areas that will improve, including Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, which only demonstrates that the word, “improve” is relative. That area that has been so dry for so long the people wouldn’t remember what to do if lawn watering and burn bans were lifted.
via Pensito Review » Drought in America: Yes It’s That Bad.
Want to Prevent Another AIG? Let the Sunshine In
Want to Prevent Another AIG? Let the Sunshine In
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS – by Meg White
The fact that Americans are mad as hell has not escaped the media or government. Indeed, it seems that everyone is racing to be first to tell the American people where to direct their rage.
Blame AIG! Those greedy bastards are already sucking us dry and giving our money to foreign banks, and then they take millions in bonuses for the very employees that precipitated this crisis in the first place.
Blame Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)! He wrote in a change to the stimulus bill that allowed the AIG bonuses to be paid.
Oh wait, no. Looks like we got that one backwards, so…
via Want to Prevent Another AIG? Let the Sunshine In | BuzzFlash.org.
Horny Goat Weed
Horny Goat Weed: More Than Just a Name
Behind the funny name of horny goat weed stands a time-tested aphrodisiac that increases libido in men and women, and improves erectile function in men. Known also as Epimedium or Yin Yang Huo, horny goat weed was first described in ancient classical Chinese medicinal texts. Today, horny goat weed holds an important place in Traditional Chinese Medicine and is gaining popularity around the world.
Used by practitioners for over 2,000 years, horny goat weed is several species of epimedium, a leafy plant which grows in the wild, most abundantly at higher altitudes. The leaves of the plant contain a variety of flavonoids, polysaccharides, sterols and an alkaloid called magnaflorine. And while the exact way that horny goat weed works remains unknown, the plant has long been employed to restore sexual fire, boost erectile function, allay fatigue and alleviate menopausal discomfort.
via Discovery Health :: Horny Goat Weed.
Krugman On Administration: ‘Bad Analysis, Bad Policy, And Terrible Politics’
Krugman On Administration: ‘Bad Analysis, Bad Policy, And Terrible Politics’
Paul Krugman is back from Europe, and he comes out swinging in a blog post Friday. Of the bill that passed the House yesterday that would tax bonuses given to executives of bailed-out companies, Krugman said, “It’s not the way you should make policy — it’s clumsy, and it will punish some innocent parties while letting the most guilty off scot-free.”
But, Krugman adds, “But — there wasn’t much alternative at this point. And for that I blame the Obama people.” He goes on to call the Obama administration’s handling of the American International Group scandal “bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics” that makes it seem as if the White House is “owned by the wheeler-dealers.”
The New York Times reported Friday that many in government knew about the bonuses weeks ago. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted Thursday that he pushed for the loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed bailed-out executives to receive bonuses.
Republicans in the Senate, meanwhile, have vowed to slow the anti-bonus bill.
via Krugman On Administration: ‘Bad Analysis, Bad Policy, And Terrible Politics’.
Courts need more staff to manage spike in bankruptcy filings
Courts need more staff to manage spike in bankruptcy filings -By STEPHEN LOSEY
Federal courts say they need to hire more support staff to deal with a sharp spike in bankruptcy filings.
The Judiciary’s fiscal 2010 budget request calls for $30 million to hire 754 new support staffers. Judge Julia Gibbons of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told lawmakers Thursday that many of those new hires will be bankruptcy clerks, although she did not say how many bankruptcy clerks the courts want to hire. Gibbons appeared before the House Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government.
The courts expect bankruptcy filings will increase by 27 percent this year to 1.2 million as more people face foreclosures and other financial problems caused by the poor economy. Gibbons said more businesses are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcies, which tend to be large, complex cases.
The courts are asking for $6.6 billion in discretionary funds for fiscal 2010, $562 million more than this year.
An Unexpected Threat to Our Military
An Unexpected Threat to Our Military
Sometimes the threats to our military, and to the nation which it honorably and valiantly defends, come from unexpected sources.
One such threat is a relatively new movement that is beginning to make inroads into the military services. That movement, called Oath Keepers, appears, at least on the surface, to be composed of well intentioned but seriously misguided individuals, many of them in our Armed Forces or retired from our Armed Forces. Oath Keepers seeks to get active duty military personnel to agree to disobey a certain set of potential orders, which the movement considers illegal, that could be issued by military superiors to their subordinates in times of crisis and civil unrest.
Oath Keepers is a fear based movement. It is seriously afraid that our government will devolve into a military dictatorship and that this may happen in the very near future. Where do these fears come from? It would not be unrealistic to think that some of the fears originated from the Bush Administration’s disregard for fundamental constitutional guarantees in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 (Habeas Corpus, warrant less wiretapping, torture, etc.).
via Baldwin Park Democrat: An Unexpected Threat to Our Military.
After Years Of Lies, WSJ Concedes That Employee Free Choice Act ‘Doesn’t Remove The Secret-Ballot Option’
After Years Of Lies, WSJ Concedes That Employee Free Choice Act ‘Doesn’t Remove The Secret-Ballot Option’
In a stunning reversal, the anti-labor Wall Street Journal editorial page admitted today that one of the key messages in Big Business’s fight against the Employee Free Choice Act is false. “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act,” wrote the WSJ editors today.
The acknowledgment by the WSJ that the legislation doesn’t eliminate the option of a secret-ballot election is surprising given that it has been one of the most aggressive pushers of the false meme:
– “Democrats in the House passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure that rewrites the rules for union organizing by eliminating secret-ballot elections.” [WSJ, 3/8/07]
– “Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s.” [WSJ, 10/17/08]
– “Mr. Pryor knew the GOP would block the bill, which gets rid of secret ballots in union elections.” [WSJ, 1/2/09]
– “Big Labor’s drive to eliminate secret ballots for union elections has united American business in opposition.” [WSJ, 3/11/09]
Just this past weekend, the Wall Street Journal’s editors repeatedly claimed on their Fox News show that the bill was an effort “to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections.” Watch it:
Deficit likely to hit $1.8 trillion in 2009.
Deficit likely to hit $1.8 trillion in 2009.
Later today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will be releasing a report projecting the federal deficit. According to aides on Capitol Hill, it will likely reach $1.8 trillion this year, and fall to $1.4 trillion in 2010. The CBO’s previous estimate had the deficit hitting $1.2 trillion. Watch an MSNBC report on the numbers:
via Think Progress » Deficit likely to hit $1.8 trillion in 2009..
The AIG Saga: A Brief Primer
The AIG Saga: A Brief Primer – by Dean Baker
The awarding of $165 million in bonuses to AIG executives has dominated the news in the last week. There has been widespread outrage over the idea that taxpayers’ dollars are being used to reward the people who effectively bankrupted AIG and cost the government more than $160 billion in bailout funds to meet the company’s obligations. This primer addresses some of the issues raised by both the bonuses and the much larger sum going toward the AIG bailout.
The Bonuses: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?
One of the silliest distractions in the AIG saga has been the various accounts of when AIG told Treasury Secretary Geithner of the bonuses and when Geithner passed the information along to President Obama. This discussion is silly because Geithner almost certainly knew of the bonuses ever since the initial takeover on September 15th. He just didn’t think they were important.
via The AIG Saga: A Brief Primer | CommonDreams.org.
Off With the Bankers
Off With the Bankers
A.I.G. can hardly claim that its generous bonuses attract the best and the brightest. So instead, it defends the payments by arguing they’re needed to retain employees who are crucial for winding down transactions that are “difficult to understand and manage.” In other words, only the people who stuck the knife into the American International Group can neatly extract it for a decent burial.
There is no reason to believe this.
Similar arguments made during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, when currencies and stock markets collapsed in much of Southeast Asia, turned out to be a smokescreen to protect the executives who were partly responsible for the mess. Recovery from that crisis required Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand to close or consolidate banks. In all three countries, bankers protested, claiming that their connections with borrowers were critical to recovery.
via Op-Ed Contributors – Off With the Bankers – NYTimes.com.
Seven medical labs accused of Medi-Cal fraud
Seven medical labs accused of Medi-Cal fraud
The private companies, which will be identified today by state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, allegedly overcharged for blood, urine and other tests.
Seven private medical laboratories have defrauded the Medi-Cal program of hundreds of millions of dollars by systematically overcharging the state by as much as 400% for blood, urine and other lab tests, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said Thursday.
Brown plans to announce a civil lawsuit today against the companies, five of which are in Los Angeles. The suit aims to recover at least $100 million worth of the excessive charges paid by the program, which provides health services to the poor.
The attorney general’s office launched an investigation three years ago after an executive of a competing medical lab filed a private false-claims action under seal.
The whistle-blower will be rewarded with a share of whatever fraudulent receipts the state can recover from the seven labs.
via Seven medical labs accused of Medi-Cal fraud – Los Angeles Times.
Lehman Stress Balls Coughed Up By Barclays (Update1)
Lehman Stress Balls Coughed Up By Barclays (Update1) – By Christopher Scinta and Linda Sandler
March 20 (Bloomberg) — Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has negotiated the return of thousands of Lehman-logoed knickknacks that were mistakenly transferred to Barclays Plc through the sale of the bankrupt securities firm’s brokerage unit.
Tote bags, umbrellas, stress balls, Tiffany paperweights and other items now stored in closets and warehouses from New York to Chicago will be returned to Lehman and sold to pay creditors, according to a court filing yesterday. Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September and has about $200 billion in unsecured liabilities left to pay, Chief Executive Officer Bryan Marsal said Jan. 28.
via Lehman Stress Balls Coughed Up By Barclays (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
No Return To Normal
No Return To Normal
Why the economic crisis, and its solution, are bigger than you think.
by James K. Galbraith
Barack Obama’s presidency began in hope and goodwill, but its test will be its success or failure on the economics. Did the president and his team correctly diagnose the problem? Did they act with sufficient imagination and force? And did they prevail against the political obstacles-and not only that, but also against the procedures and the habits of thought to which official Washington is addicted?
The president has an economic program. But there is, so far, no clear statement of the thinking behind that program, and there may not be one, until the first report of the new Council of Economic Advisers appears next year. We therefore resort to what we know about the economists: the chair of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers; the CEA chair, Christina Romer; the budget director, Peter Orszag; and their titular head, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. This is plainly a capable, close-knit group, acting with energy and commitment. Deficiencies of their program cannot, therefore, be blamed on incompetence. Rather, if deficiencies exist, they probably result from their shared background and creed-in short, from the limitations of their ideas.
The deepest belief of the modern economist is that the economy is a self-stabilizing system. This means that, even if nothing is done, normal rates of employment and production will someday return. Practically all modern economists believe this, often without thinking much about it. (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it reflexively in a major speech in London in January: “The global economy will recover.” He did not say how he knew.) The difference between conservatives and liberals is over whether policy can usefully speed things up. Conservatives say no, liberals say yes, and on this point Obama’s economists lean left. Hence the priority they gave, in their first days, to the stimulus package.
via No Return To Normal | CommonDreams.org.
Restoring our Financial Sovereignty: A New Monetary System
Restoring our Financial Sovereignty
A New Monetary System – By Nikki Alexander
Prologue
When Benjamin Franklin was called before the British Parliament in 1757 and asked to account for the prosperity in the American colonies. He replied, “That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.”
It was the struggle for financial sovereignty that precipitated the American Revolution when the (Rothschild) Bank of England forced the colonies to give up their Scrip and intense poverty followed.
That war never ended.
Throughout their political lives Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Andrew Jackson fought off the European bankers who intermittently controlled the nation’s money supply through privately-owned banks. When Abraham Lincoln issued ‘greenbacks’ that deprived private bankers of their monopoly control of the nation’s money supply he was assassinated. The European bankers battled for more than a century to establish a private central bank in the United States with the exclusive right to print their own paper notes and exchange them for government debt. They succeeded in 1913 with The Federal Reserve Act, a coup that authorized a private cartel to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government with interest and control the national money supply, expanding or contracting it at will. Representative Charles Lindbergh called the Act “the worst legislative crime of the ages.” Fifty years later, President John F. Kennedy defied the central bankers when he issued debt-free Treasury Notes. He too was assassinated.
via Restoring our Financial Sovereignty: A New Monetary System : Information Clearing House – ICH.
Spring Cleaning: 10 Steps To Bring New Life To Your Liver
Spring Cleaning: 10 Steps To Bring New Life To Your Liver
Spring is definitely in the air. Daylight Saving Time allows many of us to leave work to find the sun still shining. Here in Southern California, seeds are sprouting, birds are chirping, and flowers are blooming. People seem to have an extra swing in their step, and that “happy for no reason” feeling.
While winter can be a time for going inward and conserving energy (and probably eating too much over the holidays), spring often inspires regeneration, a renewal of spirit, and a fresh start.
In earlier times, giving special attention to liver health and detoxification was a springtime ritual in many cultures. Although it is, of course, important to take care of our liver (as well as our whole body) year-round, we can often draw inspiration from traditions that have been passed down from our ancestors. The thinking behind supporting the liver in this season is that spring brings new life, so it is time to shed what is no longer needed.
via Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald: Spring Cleaning: 10 Steps To Bring New Life To Your Liver.
Ratings Agencies, To Blame For Some Of The Crisis, Could Now Benefit
Ratings Agencies, To Blame For Some Of The Crisis, Could Now Benefit
The Federal Reserve is in the uncomfortable position of rewarding those who helped cause the financial crisis.
The government’s latest rescue effort involves issuing more than $7 billion in bonds. Each of these bonds will have to be rated by at least two of the three largest ratings agencies: Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings.
This ratings work will generate fees for the agencies, potentially totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, the Wall Street Journal reports.
These firms dominate the credit-ratings business, and their imprimatur is considered crucial for investors that buy bonds and asset-backed securities. They have been vilified in recent months because their ratings on mortgage securities were widely off base.
via Ratings Agencies, To Blame For Some Of The Crisis, Could Now Benefit.
The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers
The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers
by John Nichols & Robert McChesney
Communities across America are suffering through a crisis that could leave a dramatically diminished version of democracy in its wake. It is not the economic meltdown, although the crisis is related to the broader day of reckoning that appears to have arrived. The crisis of which we speak involves more than mere economics. Journalism is collapsing, and with it comes the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law as it has been understood here in the United States.
After years of neglecting signs of trouble, elite opinion-makers have begun in recent months to recognize that things have gone horribly awry. Journals ranging from Time, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New Republic to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times concur on the diagnosis: newspapers, as we have known them, are disintegrating and are possibly on the verge of extinction. Time’s Walter Isaacson describes the situation as having “reached meltdown proportions” and concludes, “It is now possible to contemplate a time in the near future when major towns will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters.” A newspaper industry that still employs roughly 50,000 journalists–the vast majority of the remaining practitioners of the craft–is teetering on the brink.
Blame has been laid first and foremost on the Internet, for luring away advertisers and readers, and on the economic meltdown, which has demolished revenues and hammered debt-laden media firms. But for all the ink spilled addressing the dire circumstance of the ink-stained wretch, the understanding of what we can do about the crisis has been woefully inadequate. Unless we rethink alternatives and reforms, the media will continue to flail until journalism is all but extinguished.
via The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers | CommonDreams.org.
Lessons from AIG
Lessons from AIG – by Robert Weissman
Watch out if you live in or visit Washington, D.C.
If you see a camera or microphone, be careful not to be trampled by a politician rushing to shout their “outrage” at AIG, and its brazen scheme to pay $165 million in bonuses to employees at the company unit responsible for driving the company to the edge of insolvency.
Maybe the politicians really are outraged. (They definitely know their constituents are.) But it would have helped if they had expressed some outrage — and opposition — during the decades-long period of deregulation that brought us the AIG collapse and the financial meltdown.
It is indeed unfathomable that AIG went ahead with the bonus payments, and that the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve failed to act to stop the bonus payments before they were made.
What is vital now is that the public’s righteous anger is not expressed only as “no.” There are a lot of things to which We The People do need to say “no.” But we need a lot of “yes’s,” too. We need to demand that policymakers impose public controls over the financial sector. The financial sector restraint, shrinkage and displacement agenda is long and diverse, but there are a number of lessons that flow directly from the AIG debacle.
via Lessons from AIG | CommonDreams.org.
Israeli Soldiers Admit to Deliberate Killing of Gaza Civilians
Israeli Soldiers Admit to Deliberate Killing of Gaza Civilians -by James Hider
JERUSALEM – The Israeli army has been forced to open an investigation into the conduct of its troops in Gaza after damning testimony from its own front line soldiers revealed the killing of civilians and rules of engagement so lax that one combatant said that they amounted on occasion to “cold-blooded murder”.
The revelations, compiled by the head of an Israel military academy who declared that he was “shocked” at the findings, come as international rights groups are calling for independent inquiries into the conduct of both sides in the three-week Israeli offensive against Palestinian Islamists.
The soldiers’ testimonies include accounts of an unarmed old woman being shot at a distance of 100 yards, a woman and her two children being killed after Israeli soldiers ordered them from their house into the line of fire of a sniper and soldiers clearing houses by shooting anyone they encountered on sight.
“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy, who asked him why a company commander ordered an elderly woman to be shot.
via Israeli Soldiers Admit to Deliberate Killing of Gaza Civilians | CommonDreams.org.
Is Pope Benedict a PR novice, or dog-whistling to conservatives?
OPS: PR Novice or blowing the Reichwing dog whistle?
The off-message pontiff
Is Pope Benedict merely a PR novice, or are his clumsy statements carefully calculated to appeal to conservatives?
If there is one leader on earth who ought to be sending out clear and unequivocal messages, then it is surely the pope. Yet, once again, the signals from Benedict and the Vatican this week have been oddly confusing. In his written clarification of the pope’s remarks aboard the plane taking him to Africa, his spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, explained that the church’s policy was to concentrate on educating people in sexual responsibility, and that it did not believe that “aiming essentially at the wider diffusion of condoms was really the best, most far-sighted or efficient way to combat Aids”.
Now, if that is what the pope had actually said, there might not have been such a storm. Everyone knows the Catholic church is opposed to the use of contraception in all forms, even when its purpose is not primarily to prevent pregnancy. At the same time, few experts would now argue that giving out condoms is of itself enough to prevent the disease from spreading – there are cultural and social obstacles to their use in Africa that have become apparent with time.
One-third of US birds are endangered, says conservation report
One-third of US birds are endangered, says conservation report
Energy production deriving from wind, ethanol and mountain-top coal mining contributing to steep drops in bird populations
Nearly one-third of US birds are endangered, threatened or in significant decline, according to a government conservation report.
It says the findings are “a warning signal of the failing health of our ecosystems” and reports that birds in Hawaii, the most bird-rich state, are “in crisis”.
The authors say that energy production deriving from wind, ethanol and mountain-top coal mining is contributing to steep drops in bird populations.
The State of the Birds report chronicles a four-decade decline in many of the country’s bird populations and provides many reasons for it, from suburban sprawl to the spread of exotic species to global warming.
via One-third of US birds are endangered, says conservation report | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
Which Side Are You On?
Which Side Are You On? - By Christopher Hayes
The Nation
100 Days
Legislative fights in Washington rarely break down neatly along class lines. Often, the coalitions on either side of an issue are unwieldy and eclectic, with one sector or industry battling another. The notable exception is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would reform a broken labor elections system, making it easier (one might say possible) for workers to unionize.
On March 10 the bill was reintroduced in the House and the Senate, ushering in the final act in a six-year legislative battle that has become the most bruising and intense in Washington, one that–literally–pits Capital against Labor.
For the GOP the politics are straightforward. Woven into the DNA of the modern conservative is opposition to unions and unionism of any kind. Defeating the bill has become a kind of jobs program for right-wing hacks: no fewer than sixteen groups are raising money, mobilizing constituents, running ads and lobbying senators to kill it.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
