Archive for March, 2009
Soldiers: Army forced us to deploy despite health woes
Soldiers: Army forced us to deploy despite health woes
Spc. Mark Oldham was on a plane to Iraq by Dec. 5 despite being declared unfit because he passes out during training and requires a 30-day heart-monitor exam, his medical records show.
Sgt. Jesse McElroy, a combat veteran who had shoulder surgery in September and could barely move his arm, according to his medical records, was told to deploy or face charges for malingering.
Chief Warrant Officer Adisa “A.J.” Aiyetoro, a 19-year veteran who is stricken with active tuberculosis and unable to wear body armor because of back injuries, according to medical and court records, refused to go. “I’m not getting on that plane,” he says. His court-martial on charges of disobeying an order and missing a deployment is scheduled for Monday.
via Soldiers: Army forced us to deploy despite health woes – USATODAY.com.
Death Squad Leader Was Top Cia Agent
Death squad leader ‘was top CIA agent’
THE LATE President Milosevic’s secret police chief and organiser of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the United States’ top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92.
The claim that from 1992 until the end of the decade, Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia’s murderous DB Secret Police, was regularly informing his CIA handlers of the thinking in Milosevic’s inner circle has shocked the region.
Stanisic is said to have loyally served his two masters for eight years. He is facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
advertisement
In the terrifying years of Yugoslavia’s internecine wars, he acted as the willing “muscle” behind Milosevic’s genocidal campaigns in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, including Sebrenica.
via Death Squad Leader Was Top Cia Agent (from Sunday Herald).
TSA Adds a New Twist
TSA Adds a New Twist to Passenger Screening
Just when you thought you had the Transportation Security Administration rules all figured out, here comes a new procedure. Starting sometime in the next few months, you’ll have to provide your birth date and gender whenever you buy an airplane ticket. The TSA is giving the airlines some time to change their websites and retrain their phone-reservations agents to be able to implement the agency’s new Secure Flight program. Expect the changes on domestic flights by this summer.
via TSA Adds a New Twist.
Saving Energy — for an Hour
Saving Energy — for an Hour – By Erik Olsen
New York City’s nighttime skyline will look like it’s had a few teeth knocked out this coming Saturday.
The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and several other structures and landmarks in Manhattan will turn off their night lights for an hour on March 28 to bring attention to climate change.
The so-called “Earth Hour,” organized by the World Wildlife Fund, will take place from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., and will include a variety of familiar Manhattan sites — from Rockefeller Center, 7 World Trade Center and the United Nations headquarters building, to the New York Public Library, and the new Time Warner Center, among others.
This is the second Earth Hour event for the Empire State Building, which Melanie Maasch, the director of brand development and public relations for the landmark, called a “green building.”
via Saving Energy — for an Hour – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.
HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR ON THE FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMP LIST
OPS: MORE – from Inside the mind of a wingnut.
YouTube – HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR ON THE FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMP LIST.
FEMA and Martial law update part 1 – Inside the mind of a wingnut
OPS: This may turn into a series – “Inside the mind of a Wingnut”
YouTube – FEMA and Martial law update part 1.
AIG starts makeover, changes sign at N.Y. office
AIG starts makeover, changes sign at N.Y. office
Ailing insurer looking to overhaul name that has become scorn of America
NEW YORK – Workmen rolled up their sleeves at American International Group Inc this weekend to take down the most prominent sign at the downtown Manhattan offices of the embattled insurer that has become the scorn of America.
A spokesman said the company had decided to replace the large AIG sign — outside the entrance to its property-casualty offices — as part of its plan to change that operation’s name to AIU Holdings Ltd.
The move is designed to “distinguish these well-capitalized businesses from AIG,” said a second spokesman.
via AIG starts makeover, changes sign at N.Y. office – Economy in Turmoil- msnbc.com.
Ann Arbor News to close in July
OPS: Democracy Deathwatch
Ann Arbor News to close in July - by The Ann Arbor News
The Ann Arbor News will close in July and will be replaced by a Web-based, media company called AnnArbor.com, Laurel Champion, publisher of The News, announced in a 9 a.m. meeting with staff.
“While this is an incredibly difficult decision for us, this is by no means the end of local journalism in Ann Arbor,” Champion said.
Champion described AnnArbor.com as an innovative, community news and information service. AnnArbor.com also will produce a twice-a-week newspaper, published on Thursday and Sunday and a total-market coverage product once a week.
The Ann Arbor News will continue publishing a daily newspaper through July, she said.
EFCA backers not interested in alternative
EFCA backers not interested in alternative -By Kevin Bogardus
An alternative offered by three of America’s largest corporations to a labor bill that would facilitate union organizing has been shunned by the legislation’s most prominent champions on Capitol Hill.
Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods offered the alternative to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) Sunday to open up a different approach to reforming labor law. Known as the Committee for a Level Playing Field, the coalition has been met by harsh words from lawmakers in Congress.
via TheHill.com – EFCA backers not interested in alternative.
Third White House Regional Forum on Health Reform
White House Forums on Health Reform – Live Video Stream
at link
Working with Democratic and Republican Governors across the country, the White House has put together six White House Regional Forums on Health Reform. The forums bring together everyday Americans, key health care stakeholders, and elected officials from both sides of the aisle to discuss what must be done to change our health care system. The first two forums were held in Michigan and Vermont.
* Des Moines, Iowa March 23rd 1o AM CST – Live Video Stream
About a dozen leaders from The University of Iowa will be among 500 people participating in the third Regional White House Forum on Health Reform from 10 a.m. to noon today at the Polk County Convention Center in Des Moines. The forum will be moderated by Iowa Governor Chet Culver and South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds. Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office on Health Reform, will represent the Obama administration. Discussion will focus on the need to provide high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans and to curb skyrocketing health care costs.
via Health Reform.
BILBRAY COAUTHORS BILL TO EXEMPT SOLAR FARMS FROM ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW; FEINSTEIN SEEKS TO BLOCK DESERT SOLAR FARM DUE TO SEVERE ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE | East County Magazine
OPS: As much as OPS supports Solar and other alternate energy sources…this is stupid. Even Solar plants are run by corporations. And as we should have learned by now – Corporations cannot be trusted. If Cheney or T-Bone Pickens owns one of these – will you trust it?
BILBRAY COAUTHORS BILL TO EXEMPT SOLAR FARMS FROM ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW; FEINSTEIN SEEKS TO BLOCK DESERT SOLAR FARM DUE TO SEVERE ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
March 23, 2009 (San Diego) – Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego) has coauthored H.R. 964, a measure that would exempt any solar energy project on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands from Environmental Impact Report requirements. Sempra Energy, Bilbray’s third largest campaign contributor, seeks to import power from desert solar farms on BLM lands. On Friday, California’s Senator Diane Feinstein sent a blistering letter to the Secretary of the Interior opposing solar farms on BLM lands, citing massive environmental damage from scraping bare a half-million acres of desert lands proposed for solar mirrors.
“It would destroy the entire Mojave Desert ecosystem,” David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, said of a Mojave Desert solar project which Feinstein seeks to block. Solar farms would do great harm to the desert tortoise, a threatened species and California’s state reptile, he warned.
Gary Thomas, a board member of the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep, charges that “those (energy) farms are nothing more than an open pit mine without a pit. They are going to go in and clean everything out to bare dirt, then they fence them and everything that was living in that place will be gone.”
Lands for the Mojave project were donated or purchased with intent that they would be protected forever. But now, BLM considers the lands to be open to all developments except mining.
IRS Audits of Millionaires Fell 19 Percent in ‘08, Study Shows
IRS Audits of Millionaires Fell 19 Percent in ‘08, Study Shows
March 23 (Bloomberg) — Millionaires were less likely to be called or visited by the IRS last year as the agency cut audits of the wealthiest taxpayers by 19 percent, according to a Syracuse University study.
The Internal Revenue Service audited 21,874 millionaires in fiscal 2008, 1,400 fewer than the year before. At the same time, the number of millionaires filing tax returns rose by more than 50,000, according to IRS figures.
The decline in audits came as the U.S. budget deficit ballooned to $459 billion and is forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to rise to $1.85 trillion this year. In 2008, face-to-face IRS audits of millionaires resulted in recommendations that the taxpayers owed about an additional $200,000, according to the Syracuse study. The additional-tax figure for mail audits was about $136,000, the study said.
via IRS Audits of Millionaires Fell 19 Percent in ‘08, Study Shows – Bloomberg.com.
Regulators seek global approach to short selling
Regulators seek global approach to short selling
LONDON, March 23 (Reuters) – Regulators launched a public consultation on Monday to forge a global approach to regulating naked short selling, a practice critics have blamed for exacerbating slides in bank shares.
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) recommended four principles for regulating naked short selling, whereby a dealer sells shares in a company without borrowing them first.
IOSCO said short selling helped create a “more efficient price discovery” in markets but there are concerns that in some extreme market conditions some types of short selling may contribute to “disorderly markets”. (Reporting by Huw Jones)
Monsanto’s dream bill, HR 875
OPS: Organic Farms in Danger
Monsanto’s dream bill, HR 875
To begin reversing GM contamination will require ending the power biotech companies such as Monsanto exert over our government and through that, over our food.
HR 875, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto.
The bill is monstrous on level after level – the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international “industrial” standards to independent farms – the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.
via OpEdNews » Monsanto’s dream bill, HR 875.
Bernie Sanders: A Growing Outrage
A Growing Outrage – Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
We need a serious investigation into what went wrong on Wall Street.
The following article originally appeared on OpEdNews.org and may not reflect the views or opinions of EconomyInCrisis.org. Feedback is welcome.
The “Masters of the Universe”- on Wall Street–through their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior–have plunged this country and much of the world into a deep recession, causing millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes, their savings and their hope for the future.
One of the institutions that is most responsible for the financial crisis we are in today is American International Group. Over the past several years, AIG moved away from being the largest insurance company in the world to becoming the world’s largest unregulated casino. In essence, AIG placed hundreds of billions of dollars in risky bets on behalf of wealthy investors, banks and hedge funds. Once the bets turned sour, AIG could not cover the losses and turned to the government for help.
As a result of AIG’s risky gambles in what the financial world calls credit default swaps or financial derivatives, the American taxpayers have bailed out the company to the tune of $170 billion–about $600 for every man, woman and child in this country–and now own 80 percent of the company.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
for the past fifty years the policy of the United States government has been to get rid of jobs
SOBER UP
Few people realize that for the past fifty years the policy of the United States government has been to get rid of jobs.
Few people realize that for the past fifty years the policy of the United States government has been to get rid of jobs. Beginning with the Marshall Plan after World War II the government sent money, equipment and expertise to revive the economies of Europe and the Pacific Rim. In doing so, the U. S. called for open markets and free trade. Europe responded, but Japan never opened its market. Instead, Japan started a trade war for market share by closing its domestic market, subsidizing and selling its export at cost, making up the profit in the closed market. It worked. Today, Toyota is #1, while Ford, GM and Chrysler struggle. We have yet to force Japan to open its market. We in Congress tried, but numerous attempts to open Japan’s market and enforce our trade agreements were thwarted by the White House or vetoed by the President. Our attempts were all led by Corporate America to protect their investment and jobs in country. Then with NAFTA with Mexico and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China Corporate America gave up and joined production in China, India and Mexico. Jobs hemorrhaged. Two years ago Alan Blinder, the Princeton economist, estimated that the nation would lose thirty to forty million jobs in ten years to offshoring. The economy boat has sprung leaks from derivatives and credit default swaps. With stimulus, we bail as fast as we can to stop the leaks, but do nothing to plug the hole in the hull ripped by offshoring. Stimulation can be a total success and we’ll still loss more jobs than are created.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Alaska Volcano Mount Redoubt Erupts 4 Times
Alaska Volcano Mount Redoubt Erupts 4 Times
Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano erupts 4 times, sending smoke plumes 50,000 feet high
Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano erupted four times overnight, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles high into the air, but the state’s largest city has likely been spared from any ashfall.
“The ash cloud went to 50,000 feet, and it’s currently drifting toward the north, northeast,” said Janet Schaefer, a geologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.
The first eruption, in a sparsely area across Cook Inlet from the Kenai Peninsula, occurred at 10:38 p.m. Sunday and the fourth happened at 1:39 a.m. Monday, according to the observatory.
via ABC News: Alaska Volcano Mount Redoubt Erupts 4 Times.
Michigan 15-year-old dies after police Taser him
Teen dies after police Taser him
BAY CITY, MI — Police in Michigan say a 15-year-old boy has died after being Tasered by officers who were trying to break up a fight.
Police didn’t release his name and say state police are investigating.
via Michigan 15-year-old dies after police Taser him – 3/22/09 – San Francisco News – abc7news.com.
Broward U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz reveals cancer battle
Broward U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz reveals cancer battle
After telling The Miami Herald that she had successfully fought breast cancer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz vowed to warn younger women about the risks.
WASHINGTON — When Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz steps to the lectern at the Capitol on Monday to push for greater awareness of breast cancer risks in younger women, she’ll be speaking from experience.
The Broward County Democrat and mother of three told The Miami Herald on Saturday that she successfully battled breast cancer for the past year and is going public with her story in the hope of alerting young women to its prevalence. She’ll introduce legislation Monday that calls for a national education campaign targeting women between 15 and 39.
‘I wanted to be able to not just stand up and say, `I’m a breast cancer survivor.’ . . . I wanted to find a gap and try to fill it,” said Wasserman Schultz, 42.
via Broward U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz reveals cancer battle – South Florida – MiamiHerald.com.
More Than 20 Types Of War Crimes Against Children
More Than 20 Types Of War Crimes Against Children Ascribed To /Ex-President Bush In Iraq And Afghanistan
Torture has received the most attention among the many war crimes of the Bush administration. But those who support Bush’s pursuit of the “war on terror” have not been impressed by recriminations over torture. Worse than torture are the murders of at least 50 prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo, but again the hard-hearted are unimpressed when those whom they perceive as terrorists receive illegal extrajudicial capital punishment.
The case for abusing children, however, is more difficult to support. The best kept secret of the Bush’s war crimes is that thousands of children have been imprisoned, tortured, and otherwise denied rights under the Geneva Conventions and related international agreements. Yet both Congress and the media have strangely failed to identify the very existence of child prisoners as a war crime. In the Islamic world, however, there is no such silence. Indeed, the prophet Mohammed was the first to counsel warriors not to harm innocent children.
From jailing children together with adults in prisons where they were raped to failing to notify their parents of their arrest, the U.S. committed numerous war crimes against children in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new book on President Bush states.
“American guards videotaped Iraqi male prisoners raping young boys but took no action to stop the offenses (and) children in Abu Ghraib were deliberately frightened by dogs,” writes political scientist Michael Haas in his new book, “George W. Bush, War Criminal?”(Praeger), a question he answers in the affirmative.
via Scoop: More Than 20 Types Of War Crimes Against Children.
280,000 Baby Seals To Be Slaughtered In Canada
280,000 Baby Seals To Be Slaughtered In Canada
Monday, 23 March 2009, 1:27 pm
Press Release: International Fund For Animal Welfare
280,000 Baby Seals To Be Slaughtered In Canada
(Ottawa, Canada – 23 March 2009) – Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has released this year’s total allowable catch (TAC) for harp seals despite a lack of demand worldwide for seal fur. Experts with IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) are appalled that the Canadian government is persisting with the commercial seal hunt in spite of dwindling international markets.
“This quota is outrageous. With the current state of fur markets, there’s no place for pelts to go, even at reduced prices, yet the Canadian government has no problem allowing 280,000 seals to die even if it means the pelts will likely sit in a warehouse for the foreseeable future,” said Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with IFAW
via Scoop: 280,000 Baby Seals To Be Slaughtered In Canada.
The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone
OPS: RE-POSTED. With highlights from a guest contributor. If you haven’t read this article yet, do.
Some highlights (according to a broke unemployed old lady in W. LA): Contributed by – Sharona:
- Something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream.
- Places mucho blame on Cassano AIGFP in 2001 – blue eyed boy from Maurice Greenberg’s days
- The CDS was popularized by J.P. Morgan, in particular by a group of young, creative bankers who would later become known as the “Morgan Mafia,” as many of them would go on to assume influential positions in the finance world. In 1994, in between booze and games of tennis at a resort in Boca Raton, Florida, the Morgan gang plotted a way to help boost the bank’s returns.
- Cassano’s outrageous gamble wouldn’t have been possible had he not had the good fortune to take over AIGFP just as Sen. Phil Gramm — a grinning, laissez-faire ideologue from Texas — had finished engineering the most dramatic deregulation of the financial industry since Emperor Hien Tsung invented paper money in 806 A.D.
- In 1997 and 1998, the years leading up to the passage of Phil Gramm’s fateful act that gutted Glass-Steagall, the banking, brokerage and insurance industries spent $350 million on political contributions and lobbying. Gramm alone — then the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — collected $2.6 million in only five years. The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards.
- AIG not only allowed Cassano to keep $34 million in bonuses, it kept him on as a consultant for $1 million a month. In fact, Cassano remained on the payroll and kept collecting his monthly million through the end of September 2008, even after taxpayers had been forced to hand AIG $85 billion to patch up his fuck-ups (note this $85 billion came from Bernanke/Federal Reserve. In Wed’s testimony AIG Liddy CONSTANTLY REMINDED the members of Congress that the total amount AIG owed to US Taxpayers did NOT include that $85 Billion…he did not say that directly…but he would say Despite commitments of $170 billion, A.I.G. now owes federal taxpayers $78 billion.
- This is a clip of Liddy insisting/clarifying that AIG only owes $78B:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDwN8JP2qx4
- The bonuses are a nice comic touch highlighting one of the more outrageous tangents of the bailout age, namely the fact that, even with the planet in flames, some members of the Wall Street class can’t even get used to the tragedy of having to fly coach. “These people need their trips to Baja, their spa treatments, their hand jobs,” says an official involved in the AIG bailout, a serious look on his face, apparently not even half-kidding. “They don’t function well without them.”
- End of 2008 SECRECY OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE: the Fed had simply stopped using relatively transparent devices like repurchase agreements to pump its money into the hands of private companies. By early 2009, a whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject cash into the economy, most all of them completely secretive and with names you’ve never heard of. There is the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and a monster called the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (boasting the chat-room horror-show acronym ABCPMMMFLF).
- When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the budget via the normal appropriations process, what’s happening in the Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary — a kind of shadow government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. “We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders. “It is beyond comprehension.”
- Community banks got shafted.
The Big Takeover – by MATT TAIBBI
The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution
It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG’s 2008 losses).
via The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone.
Vermont Senate Panel Approves Gay Marriage Bill
Vermont Senate Panel Approves Gay Marriage Bill
Montpelier, Vermont – A state Senate committee unanimously approved a gay marriage bill on Friday, moving Vermont one step closer to allowing same-sex couples to legally wed.
“It provides … gay and lesbian couples the same rights that I have as a married heterosexual,” said Sen. John Campbell, vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and chief sponsor of the bill.
The measure would replace Vermont’s first-in-the-nation civil unions law with one that allows marriage of same-sex partners beginning Sept. 1.
The committee’s vote ended an intense week highlighted by a public hearing Wednesday night in which more than 500 people swarmed the Statehouse to speak for and against allowing same-sex marriages.
via t r u t h o u t | Vermont Senate Panel Approves Gay Marriage Bill.
How to Pay for a Global Climate Deal
How to Pay for a Global Climate Deal
(Tim Costello and Brendan Smith co-authored this article with Jeremy Brecher)
The G-20 summit convening in London on April 2 is preparing to create a quarter trillion dollars of brand new stimulus money to help poor countries battle the global recession.
World leaders plan to use a little-known form of global currency to pay the freight, a currency known technically as “Special Drawing Rights” (SDRs) but often referred to as “paper gold.” It’s a currency that can be issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and The Telegraph has reported that the U.S. government is keen on the idea.
Senior figures in the U.S. Treasury have been encouraging the Fund to issue hundreds of billions of dollars worth [of SDRs] to prevent the recession from turning into a global depression.
If leaders at the G-20 summit can create “paper gold” to jump-start the global economy, they can also turn it in a green direction to jump-start protection of the global climate.
They should put much of paper gold stimulus under discussion into an international fund, to help developing countries pay for climate protection. Such an action would remove the greatest stumbling block in the way of international climate action – the lack of financing to pay for energy conservation, technology transfer, adaptation, forest conservation, clean energy, and research and development. It would allow negotiators to arrive in Copenhagen for climate talks at the end of the year with the finances in place to negotiate and sign a global deal.
via How to Pay for a Global Climate Deal | SolveClimate.com.
Wall Street’s Economic Crimes Against Humanity
Wall Street’s Economic Crimes Against Humanity
By refusing to consider the consequences of their actions, those who created the financial crisis exemplify the banality of evil, writes Shoshana Zuboff.
The financiers at AIG were awarded millions in bonuses because their contracts were based on the transactions they completed, not the consequences of those transactions. A 32-year-old mortgage broker told me: “I figured my job was to get the transaction done … Whatever came after the transaction – that was on him, not me.” A long list of business executives have reaped sumptuous rewards even though they fractured the world’s economy, destroyed trillions of dollars in value, and disfigured millions of lives.
Most experts now blame a lack of regulation and oversight for this madness. Or they point to misguided incentive programs associated with the push for shareholder value that tied executive rewards to a firm’s share price. These factors are surely important, but they ignore the terrifying human breakdown at the heart of this crisis.
via t r u t h o u t | Wall Street’s Economic Crimes Against Humanity.
I have attacked America
This is Jerry Lucas RN who is suing the government.
YouTube – I have attacked America.
AIG Shows Why We Need the Employee Free Choice Act
AIG Shows Why We Need the Employee Free Choice Act
At first, it might seem a bit odd that Bank of America and Citigroup paid for a conference call to coordinate a campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act. Why would Bank of America and Citigroup be so interested in hosting efforts against a measure that would allow workers to more easily join unions, since unionization has traditionally had little appeal for financial service workers? As a union organizer, I’ve never heard of stockbrokers wanting to unionize.
The real interest big banks have in opposing unions and the Employee Free Choice Act lies in the unions’ role in preventing corporate greed.
Unions are a countervailing force against corporate greed in a market that has proven incapable of regulating itself. One example is the 2003 dismissal of New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso. CalPERS—the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest pension fund with assets of over $200 billion dollars—raised red flags when it discovered that Grasso was going to receive a compensation package of nearly $140 million. The compensation package was designed for him by a board of representatives from NYSE-listed companies. Since Grasso was charged with regulating these companies, such a large compensation package represented a clear conflict of interest. Under the threat of pulling their investment out of NYSE-listed companies, CalPERS and other worker-run pension funds forced Grasso to step down as NYSE chairman. That was a major victory for workers and for market accountability.
via AIG Shows Why We Need the Employee Free Choice Act | OurFuture.org.
Anti-Capitalism as Suicide Prevention:
Notice how our media are flooded with ‘business’ reports, that never have to do with anything other than Wall Street, as if Wall Street WAS our economy. – epppie (blogger)
Anti-Capitalism as Suicide Prevention: Personal Worth Against Exchange Value and Corporate Thought Control
By Street, Paul
Recently I spoke to an acquaintance who happens to be a psychiatric nurse at a major hospital. She reports an epidemic of distraught people coming and brought into her facility’s emergency room in the wake of mental breakdowns and, often, suicide attempts. She’s seen more of this in recent months than in any previous time in her career.
I asked the obvious question: “is it the economy?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Layoffs. Foreclosures. Bankruptcies. Evictions. Loss of health insurance since that goes out with the job. Divorces resulting from all of the above. They blame themselves.”
They blame themselves.
How tragically horrible but unsurprising. It’s wrong because the United States economy is under the control of a state-capitalist profits system that guarantees no real security to most of its majority working class population. As a prerequisite for being granted the money required to buy basic life necessities (food, clothing, housing, health care and more), that majority is compelled to rent out its labor power to a relatively small class of employers. But employers don’t hire and retain people unless it is profitable to do so. The right to rent one’s self out is contingent upon exploitation – on the existence of an employer-friendly gap between what the worker gets paid and how much the boss[es] can get above that payment. When there’s no profit to be made off workers, employees are sent packing. Beneath occasional nice severance gestures, it’s “See ya. Good luck, punk.”
As it happens, capitalism itself chronically makes it impossible for bosses to employee people profitably. Competition, technological displacement, capital flight (typically from higher to lower-wage zones of the world economic system), excess capacity, the collapse and closing of markets, periodic downturns in the “business cycle,” credit crises, the bursting of speculative asset bubbles, – all of these and other and interrelated factors make it inevitable that vast swaths of the workforce (or proletariat if you will) are periodically evicted from the workforce through no fault of their own. In big economic meltdowns like the current Great Recession (sparked by a collapse of artificially inflated real estate values and the deregulated hyper-financialization and systemic excess of capital lacking profitable productive investment outlets), the number of hardworking wage- and salary-earners who are turned into hapless job-seekers and discouraged unemployed (and suicides) is truly horrific. The profit system’s ever-present “reserve army of labor” (Karl Marx’s useful term) expands to absurd levels. Thousands show up when a fire department announces a handful of openings. Hundreds of unemployed (including people with advanced graduate degrees) apply when a local school district advertises a janitorial position. Millions of human beings are rendered officially redundant practically (it seems) overnight.
Spending demands make single-payer more feasible
Crisis=Opportunity for Single Payer
Spending demands make single-payer more feasible
by Roger Bybee
President Obama seems ready to proceed full-throttle toward a health care reform plan, but one that will keep private insurers at the center of the system. The plan, termed “guaranteed affordable choice,” would allow workers to “keep the insurance they like,” find a rival private insurer, or opt into a Medicare-style public plan.
To date, Obama has sensibly insisted that quick action on health care is imperative. “It’s not something that we can put off because of the [financial] emergency,” Obama declared in December. “This is part of the emergency.” Questioned about the wisdom of launching a $100 billion health care program at a time of mounting government deficits, “I ask a different question,” Obama countered. “How can we afford not to?”
He’s right: economic meltdown is making health care reform more urgent by the day. Hospitals are hurting; while “the number of paying patients and profitable elective procedures is down . . . ,” the LA Times reported recently, “the number of uninsured patients whom hospitals treat is rising.” At the same time, escalating health care costs are squeezing private employers and governments alike. “The new Congressional Budget Office report shows that rising health care costs are the largest driver of the nation’s long-term budget problems,” budget watchdog Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities told Congress last fall.
Frank: Retention Bonuses Are Extortion
Video included
Frank: Retention Bonuses Are Extortion
From Face the Nation March 22, 2009.
Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told CBS News’ Harry Smith on Face The Nation Sunday that the executive branch ought to use its leverage as a majority shareholder in AIG to sue the company for its wrongful use of retention bonuses.
Retention bonuses are to a great extent extortion, Frank argued. “I think there was an element, frankly, with some — not all of them — of almost extortion, where they said, ‘We know what you need to know and we will quit if you don’t bribe us,’” Frank said.
He argued that there is a large pool of very talented people who have lost their jobs in the financial crisis and that AIG could replace the bonus recipients (some of whom are responsible for creating the firm’s now-toxic assets) rather than bribe them with retention bonuses.
Rough transcript to follow.
Smith: Congressman Frank, I want to start with you. You helped push this tax idea through with… to tax these bonuses on AIG. Do you have any you have any support from the White House on this?
via Frank: Retention Bonuses Are Extortion | Video Cafe.
E.J. Dionne Jr. – President Obama Fighting the Politics of Evasion
Obama vs. the Dodgers – By E.J. Dionne Jr.
President Obama’s biggest task at his news conference tomorrow will not be to defend Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner or to push aside the administration’s bungling of the AIG bonus imbroglio. It will be to challenge Washington’s habit of evading substantive issues by transforming them into procedural questions.
A deep narrative is taking root in the political class, and it goes something like this: Obama is biting off way more than he can chew, “overloading” the system and dealing with all sorts of “side issues,” when he should be focusing solely on the broken economy. He is said to be asking Congress to do too much.
Note that anyone who makes an argument of this sort is freed from responsibility to mention any of the specific problems Obama is proposing to take on. Insisting the economy trumps everything means you don’t have to say a thing about health-care reform, energy, education and taxes.
via E.J. Dionne Jr. – President Obama Fighting the Politics of Evasion – washingtonpost.com.
JPMorgan Chase To Spend Millions on New Jets and Luxury Airport Hangar
OPS: Your tax dollars at work.
JPMorgan Chase To Spend Millions on New Jets and Luxury Airport Hangar
Outraged Critics Decry the Proposal, Call For Bank To Abandon Plans
Embattled bank JPMorgan Chase, the recipient of $25 billion in TARP funds, is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets and build “the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard” to house them, ABC News has learned.
The financial giant’s upgrade includes nearly $120 million for two Gulfstream 650 planes and $18 million for a lavish renovation of a hangar at the Westchester Airport outside New York City.
A public hearing will be held by Westchester County officials tonight regarding JPMorgan’s request for new hangar space.
According to JPMorgan Chase architects, the new hangar will be built with reclaimed wood, quarry tile and even a “vegetated roof garden.”
via ABC News: JPMorgan Chase To Spend Millions on New Jets and Luxury Airport Hangar.
The US Government: Of, By, and For…. Goldman Sachs?
The US Government: Of, By, and For…. Goldman Sachs?
Click link for full image
via The US Government: Of, By, and For…. Goldman Sachs? – Democratic Underground.
New Mexico Stealth Creationism Bill Dies, No One Mourns
New Mexico Stealth Creationism Bill Dies, No One Mourns
As we’ve noted previously, New Mexico is one of several states in which Republican politicians have introduced bills intended to sneak the teaching of creationism into science classes, under the deceptive mantle of “academic freedom.” This multi-state effort is based on a Discovery Institute “model bill,” and many of the bills simply copy and paste the language from the Discovery Institute version.
Dave Thomas at Panda’s Thumb reports that the New Mexico bill has now died without ever being heard by committee, an ignominious end to a dishonest piece of creationist legislation: Another Discovery Institute Bill Fails…
Thomas also points out the promotional website used by New Mexico anti-evolutionists: Origins Education.
The site features a picture of an orangutan holding a sign (get it?), and one of those deceptive, out-of-context quotes that creationists dearly love, attempting to make it seem as if Charles Darwin himself doubted the truth of evolution in The Origin of Species:
via Little Green Footballs – New Mexico Stealth Creationism Bill Dies, No One Mourns.
Sen. Gregg says Obama budget will bankrupt US
OPS: Problem is that we were already bankrupt before November 2008 – Bush and 30 years of Reaganomics are responsible here’s the big picture. Keep in mind that this graph was done in about July of 2008, before the bailouts and crash
Sen. Gregg says Obama budget will bankrupt US
WASHINGTON (AP) — The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee says the Obama administration is on the right course to save the nation’s financial system.
But Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire also says President Barack Obama’s massive budget proposal will bankrupt the country.
Gregg says he has no regrets in withdrawing his nomination to become commerce secretary. He pulled out after deciding he could not fully back the administration’s economic policies.
The senator said Obama’s spending plan in the midst of a prolonged recession would leave the next generation with a country too expensive to live in.
Gregg appeared Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
via The Associated Press: Sen. Gregg says Obama budget will bankrupt US.
Diebold Failure: Not Just for E-Voting Anymore
Diebold Failure: Not Just for E-Voting Anymore
Info-stealing malware discovered on their Windows-based ATM systems
Experts suspect insider attack…
According to anti-virus provider Sophos – via ITWire – code has been discovered for a piece of malware that targets automated teller machines from US manufacturer Diebold, better known for its range of voting machines.
The code for the software uses undocumented features to create a virtual ‘skimmer’ which is capable of recording card details and personal identification numbers without the user’s knowledge, which suggests that the creator had access to the source code for the ATM. While this doesn’t directly point to an inside job, the possibility certainly can’t be ruled out.
Sophos believes that the code was intended to be pre-installed by an insider at the factory…
ITWire explains: “It appears to be an inside job, as it uses undocumented functions of the ATM software and appears to use the printer. This suggests the people behind the malware have access to the Diebold software”.
via The BRAD BLOG : Diebold Failure: Not Just for E-Voting Anymore.
As climate changes, is water the new oil?
As climate changes, is water the new oil?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If water is the new oil, is blue the new green?
Translation: if water is now the kind of precious commodity that oil became in the 20th century, can delivery of clean water to those who need it be the same sort of powerful force as the environmental movement in an age of climate change?
And, in another sense of green, is there money to be made in a time of water scarcity?
The answer to both questions, according to environmental activists watching a global forum on water, is yes.
The week-long meeting in Istanbul ends Sunday, which is International World Water Day, an annual United Nations event that began in 1993 to focus attention on sustainable management of fresh water resources.
The yearly observance recognizes water as an absolute human need: people can live as much as 30 days without food but only seven without water. How long can a person live without oil?
via As climate changes, is water the new oil? | Reuters.
Fox commentator: Positive response by Iran to Obama ‘the worst thing’
Fox commentator: Positive response by Iran to Obama ‘the worst thing’
Barack Obama’s call to Iran to “take its rightful place in the community of nations” by accepting its “real responsibilities” has apparently been met with guarded optimism from Iranian leaders.
However, for Fox News commentator Brit Hume, “the worst thing that could happen would be for the Iranian government to respond favorably and positively and want to engage in a discussion – and then we would be on a track like that which will lead nowhere.”
Hume’s remarks on Fox News Sunday followed equally negative comments by neoconservative Bill Kristol, who called Obama’s overture to Iran “an embarrassment.”
via The Raw Story | Fox commentator: Positive response by Iran to Obama ‘the worst thing’.
Just Like With Stimulus, GOP Lawmakers Slam Omnibus While Touting Its Funding For Local Projects
Just Like With Stimulus, GOP Lawmakers Slam Omnibus While Touting Its Funding For Local Projects
Last month, every single Republican House member and all but three Republican senators voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Yet, as Thinkprogress noted at the time, as many as 22 Republicans who railed against the stimulus then touted the projects the stimulus would fund in their home districts. (A few Democrats who voted against the bill have done the same thing.)
Now, many of those same Republican lawmakers are pulling the same bait-and-switch with the FY2009 omnibus spending bill. The Wall Street Journal notes today that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) slammed the omnibus as wasteful spending, before putting out a press release touting a local harbor project the bill would fund. Similarly, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) voted against the omnibus but then declared he was “proud to have secured these federal funds” for his district. Both insisted to the Journal there was no hypocrisy in their actions:
More on the bank plan
More on the bank plan - Paul Krugman
Why was I so quick to condemn the Geithner plan? Because it’s not new; it’s just another version of an idea that keeps coming up and keeps being refuted. It’s basically a thinly disguised version of the same plan Henry Paulson announced way back in September. To understand the issue, let me offer some background.
Start with the question: how do banks fail? A bank, broadly defined, is any institution that borrows short and lends long. Like any leveraged investor, a bank can fail if it has made bad investments — if the value of its assets falls below the value of its liabilities, bye bye bank.
But banks can also fail even if they haven’t been bad investors: if, for some reason, many of those they’ve borrowed from (e.g., but not only, depositors) demand their money back at once, the bank can be forced to sell assets at fire sale prices, so that assets that would have been worth more than liabilities in normal conditions end up not being enough to cover the bank’s debts. And this opens up the possibility of a self-fulfilling panic: people may demand their money back, not because they think the bank has made bad investments, but simply because they think other people will demand their money back.
via More on the bank plan – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
Real Time: How Dangerous is the Hate Talk From the Right?
Video:
Real Time: How Dangerous is the Hate Talk From the Right?
This week thank goodness Bill Maher went back to his regular format of bringing all of the guests in together unlike last week’s stinker of a show. Thank you Bill. The panel of Andrew Ross Sorkin, Kerry Washington, Bernie Sanders and Keith Olbermann discussed the hatred and outright craziness that’s coming out of the likes of Glenn Beck and others on the right and the danger of whipping up some of the fringe elements of our society with their rhetoric.
Maher: Listening to people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck these days, I cannot figure out whether these right wingers are more dangerous when they’re in power or when they’re out of power, because when they’re out of power, you know their paranoid, their paranoia goes off the charts. This Glenn Beck guy, I wouldn’t even give him the time of day except he’s a big star now on Fox and a lot of people believe, and he’s talking about FEMA concentration camps.
Olbermann: Yeah…
Maher: He says we are headed toward socialism, totalitarianism…
Olbermann: Yeah…
Maher:…beyond your wildest imagination, but apparently not beyond his wildest imagination.
Washington: Right, right.
via Real Time: How Dangerous is the Hate Talk From the Right? | Video Cafe.
The feds must investigate AIG’s fishy $12.9 billion payment to Goldman.
The Real AIG Scandal, Continued!The transfer of $12.9 billion from AIG to Goldman looks fishier and fishier.
By Eliot Spitzer
The AIG scandal is getting ever-more disturbing. Goldman Sachs’ public conference call explaining its trading relationship and exposure with AIG established once again that Goldman knows how to protect itself. According to Goldman, even if AIG had failed, Goldman’s losses would have been minimal.
How did Goldman protect itself? Sensing AIG’s weakening capital position through 2006 and 2007, Goldman demanded more collateral from AIG and covered outstanding risk with instruments from other firms.
But this raises two critical questions. The first is why did $12.9 billion of taxpayer money go from AIG to Goldman? What risk—systemic or otherwise—was being covered? If Goldman wasn’t going to suffer severe losses, why are taxpayers paying them off at 100 cents on the dollar? As I wrote earlier in the week, the real AIG scandal is that the company’s trading partners are getting fully paid rather than taking a haircut.
Power Grid Is Found Susceptible to Cyberattack – Business Center – PC World
OPS: The Grid is 19th Century Technology – it’s inefficient and obsolete. Our power sources must be decentralized and local. It’s the only defense. It’s a matter of National Security
Power Grid Is Found Susceptible to Cyberattack
An emerging network of intelligent power switches, called the Smart Grid, could be taken down by a cyberattack, according to researchers with IOActive, a Seattle security consultancy.
IOActive researchers have spent the past year testing Smart Grid devices for security vulnerabilities and have discovered a number of flaws that could allow hackers to access the network and cut power, according to Joshua Pennell, IOActive’s CEO. Smart Grid devices are small computers that are connected to the power grid, giving customers and power companies better control over the electricity they use. There are about 2 million of these devices currently deployed, but many more are expected to be added in coming years.
The researchers created a computer worm that could quickly spread among Smart Grid devices, many of which use wireless technology to communicate, according to Travis Goodspeed, an independent security consultant who worked with the team. “It spread from one meter to another and then it changed the text in the LCD screen to say ‘pwned’,” he said. Pwned is hacker-speak meaning “taken over.”
via Power Grid Is Found Susceptible to Cyberattack – Business Center – PC World.
Top General: Next-Gen Bomber Ain’t a Bomber at All
Top General: Next-Gen Bomber Ain’t a Bomber at All
Northrop Grumman just unveiled its design patents for the military’s Next Generation Bomber. But one of the Air Force’s top generals is hoping you’d call it something else. Because this aircraft, slated for a possible 2018 takeoff, is going to do much more than drop warheads from on high.
The Air Force has faced resistance to its plans to build a new, stealthy, long-range, supersonic bomber almost since the day the project was announced. “Fielding a penetrating bomber by 2018 is probably not doable, because the technology is not mature enough, and almost certainly not affordable, because the cost of trying to field immature technology will lead to skyrocketing costs,” Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow Clark Murdock wrote last year. The White House now reportedly wants to shelve the program, to save cash. After all, the current fleet of bombers are holding up pretty well.
via Top General: Next-Gen Bomber Ain’t a Bomber at All | Danger Room from Wired.com.
Sugar Is Back on Food Labels, This Time as a Selling Point
Sugar Is Back on Food Labels, This Time as a Selling Point
Sugar, the nutritional pariah that dentists and dietitians have long reviled, is enjoying a second act, dressed up as a natural, healthful ingredient.
From the tomato sauce on a Pizza Hut pie called “The Natural,” to the just-released soda Pepsi Natural, some of the biggest players in the American food business have started, in the last few months, replacing high-fructose corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar.
ConAgra uses only sugar or honey in its new Healthy Choice All Natural frozen entrees. Kraft Foods recently removed the corn sweetener from its salad dressings, and is working on its Lunchables line of portable meals and snacks.
The turnaround comes after three decades during which high-fructose corn syrup had been gaining on sugar in the American diet. Consumption of the two finally drew even in 2003, according to the Department of Agriculture. Recently, though, the trend has reversed. Per capita, American adults ate about 44 pounds of sugar in 2007, compared with about 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup.
via Sugar Is Back on Food Labels, This Time as a Selling Point – NYTimes.com.
Grassroots Politics Examiner: Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) shortchanges students to enhance her career with political base say teachers
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) shortchanges students to enhance her career with political base say teachers
.jpg)
“Logic-defying, dumb-founding, short-sighted – and a slap in the face to parents, children and educators across Alaska.” That’s how the National Education Association of Alaska is describing Governor Palin’s decision to reject more than $160 million of federal stimulus funds for Alaska education.
Katrina flood lawsuit against Army Corps advances
Katrina flood lawsuit against Army Corps advances
NEW ORLEANS – A lawsuit blaming the Army Corps of Engineers for flooding from Hurricane Katrina can proceed to trial, a judge ruled Friday in a case seen as a likely last recourse for storm victims seeking compensation from the federal government for alleged negligence by the agency.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval dismissed the corps’ argument that it cannot be sued for widespread flooding that devastated much of New Orleans during Katrina’s storm surge in 2005. The corps argues federal law gives it immunity from lawsuits and that it properly maintained a waterway at the center of the dispute.
The lawsuit argues that the Army Corps failed to properly maintain a navigation channel called the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, allowing Katrina’s surge to swamp eastern New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish through that waterway.
Lawyers for six flood victims who filed the lawsuit said they did not expect any further hurdles as the decision clears the way for a trial scheduled to start April 20.
The case is being watched by tens of thousands of others with pending damage claims, including storm victims and businesses. Other attempts to obtain compensation from the corps have faltered.
via Katrina flood lawsuit against Army Corps advances.
Treasury secretary not allowed to resign: Obama
Treasury secretary not allowed to resign: Obama
There are calls for Mr Geithner’s resignation. (Reuters: Larry Downing, file photo)
United States President Barack Obama has reiterated his support for the embattled treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, saying he would not be allowed to resign.
Mr Geithner is the key member of Barack Obama’s team dealing with the financial crisis.
Next week Mr Geithner is expected to announce a scheme to buy up a mountain of toxic debt that has brought the banks to their knees.
But Mr Geithner has been weakened by public fury. First there was opposition to his appointment because of questions about his payment of taxes.
via Treasury secretary not allowed to resign: Obama – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
Obama should beware the growing anger in America
Obama should beware the growing anger in America – Michael Crowley:
With each revelation of fat bonuses at AIG, Americans grow increasingly willing to embrace a popular anti-Barack demagogue
Spring has come to Washington DC and, with it, the sickly sweet smell of scandal. “Who knew what and when did they know it?” roared the House Republican leader, John Boehner, last week. At the White House’s daily briefing, agitated reporters besieged the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, with similar questions: “Has the president been satisfied that he found out about this in a timely manner?” asked one. “Somebody clearly dropped the ball,” sniped another. “Let’s be fair, let’s be fair,” Gibbs pleaded, his usual easygoing air morphing into defensiveness.
The topic of these Watergate-like grillings is not sex or lies, but, rather, Wall Street bonuses. Specifically, the now $218m in awards that the reeling insurance giant AIG, which has already accepted $170bn in US taxpayer aid to keep it afloat, with another $30bn to come, was recently revealed to have paid out to a few hundred of its employees.
via Michael Crowley: Obama should beware the growing anger in America | Comment is free | The Observer.
Imagine this commercial airing on American TV.
Imagine this commercial airing on American TV.
This will just take a minute.
I often mention how the “Mainstream Media” scrapes any realistic references to “marijuana” out of its presentations, save for a few mentions here and there, either as negative propaganda bits, or “human interests” asides.
I am experimenting with Twitter (gasp!) and have quickly found a great new source of cannabis news and came across this PSA/commercial funded by NORML. I am unsure of how old this is, but I have just seen it.
I don’t watch TV so I have no idea if this has yet been broadcast, but I cannot imagine that it has.
It’s a minute long; those with HD ability, make sure to watch that version.
via Imagine this commercial airing on American TV. | The Smirking Chimp.
EDITORIAL: Guns on a plane
EDITORIAL: Guns on a plane
Obama secretly ends program that let pilots carry guns
After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.
Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.
The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots.
via Washington Times – EDITORIAL: Guns on a plane.
Filmmaker Urges International Tribunal to Probe 9/11
Filmmaker Urges International Tribunal to Probe 9/11
Smoke billows from one of the towers of the World Trade Center
Italian film-maker Giulietto Chiesa, who was in Berlin for a screening of his documentary which questions the official US version of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has called for an international tribunal to probe events.
Chiesa was in Berlin at the weekend for a screening of his film which features, among others, novelist Gore Vidal and playwright Dario Fo as well as retired American professor of philosophy David Ray Griffin who advances conspiracy theories that contradict mainstream accounts of events of 11 September, 2001.
Federal Aviation Administration controllers, US Air Force pilots, military commanders and physicists also appear in the critical documentary, which the director hopes will create “political awareness” of the “faulty” official investigation into the events by the 9/11 Commission.
“Some of the individuals appearing in the film are former FBI and CIA agents, people who have in a sense taken a very big risk in speaking out. I am very grateful to them because they have done a big job,” said Chiesa.
via Filmmaker Urges International Tribunal to Probe 9/11 | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 08.09.2008.
‘Abuse’ Raises Question About Law for Disabled Workers
‘Abuse’ Raises Question About Law for Disabled Workers
A scandal rocking an Iowa town of barely 250 has ballooned into a statewide story. But it has national implications.
Last month, FBI agents, social services and health department officials in Iowa converged on a 106-year-old bunkhouse. It’s where dozens of mentally retarded men lived when they were not working for as little as 37 cents per hour gutting turkeys in a processing plant, according to news [1] reports and documents [2] released by state officials.
Some of the men had been working at the plant and living at the company-owned bunkhouse since the 1970s. The arrangement grew out of a Depression-era federal law that allows employers to pay disabled workers less than the minimum wage. Roughly 400,000 workers are currently covered by the law.
The 21 men in question are Texans who work for a company called Henry’s Turkey Service. According to reports [1] in the Des Moines Register, Henry’s took advantage of a section of the labor law that allows the company to pay lower than minimum wage to disabled workers – and to deduct their living expenses from their pay.
via ‘Abuse’ Raises Question About Law for Disabled Workers – ProPublica.
A Religious War in Israel’s Army
A Religious War in Israel’s Army
JERUSALEM — The publication late last week of eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers alleging acute mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the recent Gaza fighting highlights a debate here about the rules of war. But it also exposes something else: the clash between secular liberals and religious nationalists for control over the army and society.
Several of the testimonies, published by an institute that runs a premilitary course and is affiliated with the left-leaning secular kibbutz movement, showed a distinct impatience with religious soldiers, portraying them as self-appointed holy warriors.
A soldier, identified by the pseudonym Ram, is quoted as saying that in Gaza, “the rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles and their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war.”
via A Religious War in Israel’s Army – NYTimes.com.
Coming Soon: Declassified Bush-Era Torture Memos
Coming Soon: Declassified Bush-Era Torture Memos
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball | NEWSWEEK
Over objections from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House is moving to declassify—and publicly release—three internal memos that will lay out, for the first time, details of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration for use against “high value” Qaeda detainees. The memos, written by Justice Department lawyers in May 2005, provide the legal rationale for waterboarding, head slapping and other rough tactics used by the CIA. One senior Obama official, who like others interviewed for this story requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said the memos were “ugly” and could embarrass the CIA. Other officials predicted they would fuel demands for a “truth commission” on torture.
Because of an executive order signed by President Obama on Jan. 22 banning such aggressive tactics, deputies to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. concluded there was no longer any reason to keep the interrogation memos classified. But current and former intel officials pushed back, arguing that any public release might still compromise “sources and methods.” According to the administration official, ex-CIA director Michael Hayden was “furious” about the prospect of disclosure and tried to intervene directly with Obama officials. But the White House has sided with Holder. Faced with a court deadline in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit regarding the memos filed by the ACLU, Justice lawyers asked for a two-week extension “because the memoranda are being reviewed for possible release.” (White House, Justice and CIA spokesmen all declined to comment.)
via Coming Soon: Declassified Bush-Era Torture Memos | Newsweek Periscope | Newsweek.com.
Kristol Complains That Obama’s Iran Message Is ‘Weak’ And ‘Embarrassing’
OPS: Kristol is a Fascist, desperately seeking relevance and to move discussion away from his, and the Reich’s, disastrous anti-American ideology
Kristol Complains That Obama’s Iran Message Is ‘Weak’ And ‘Embarrassing’
In his latest column for the Weekly Standard, super-hawk Bill Kristol addresses President Obama’s recent Persian New Year message to the Iran’s leaders and its people, calling it a “message of weakness.” He is upset that Obama didn’t use the words “liberty,” “freedom,” “democracy,” or “human rights” and chastises Obama for referring to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” claiming that doing so means that Obama is “kowtowing” to Iran’s leaders.
On Fox News Sunday this morning, Kristol picked up where he left off in his column and continued to whine about Obama’s move, calling it “a weak and embarrassing statement by the President of the United States.” Fox News’s Brit Hume piled on, complaining that it “appears” that the U.S. has now now “joined the rest of the world and practicing the diplomacy of talk.” Watch it:
via Think Progress » Kristol Complains That Obama’s Iran Message Is ‘Weak’ And ‘Embarrassing’.
Banks lend heavily to insiders amid credit crunch, bailouts
Banks lend heavily to insiders amid credit crunch, bailouts
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Banks nationwide hold $41 billion in loans to directors, top executives and other insiders, a portfolio that experts say should be stripped of secrecy.
Insider lending to directors is particularly troublesome because it could cloud the judgment of people charged with protecting shareholders and overseeing bank management, the experts say.
At Charlotte-based Bank of America, those loans more than doubled last year, to $624.2 million – the biggest dollar jump in the country. The largest of them likely went to three directors or their companies. The surge came during the third quarter as credit markets froze, the government prepared to infuse banks with billions in tax dollars and the board approved the purchase of troubled Merrill Lynch.
Top 10 inside lenders
JPMorgan Chase — $1.48 billion
Wachovia — $747 million
M&I Marshall & Ilsley — $644.4 million
Bank of America — $624.2 million
Northern Trust — $523.5 million
Union Bank — $499.3 million
BB&T — $493.8 million
Commerce Bank — $467.9 million
Regions Bank — $444.3 million
Comerica Bank — $391.5 million
via Banks lend heavily to insiders amid credit crunch, bailouts – Business – cleveland.com.
Grassroots Politics Examiner: Folk troubadour Tom Paxton says I’ll change my name to AIG so I’ll get mine
Folk troubadour Tom Paxton says I’ll change my name to AIG so I’ll get mine
Popular artists represent the current fashion of the time and from time to time mirror rather than form the public mood. From Brother Can You Spare a Dime? to Strange Fruit, to Blowin’ in the Wind to Fortunate Son popular songs can become a rallying cry for a generation. Troubadours like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen have penned immortal classics that take on all the significance of our founding documents.
Lifting the Tarp: Will President Obama’s Economic Team Lead Him Off a Cliff?
Lifting the Tarp: Will President Obama’s Economic Team Lead Him Off a Cliff? – Robert Kuttner
In the past two weeks, political support for the Tim Geithner/Larry Summers approach to solving the banking crisis has been unraveling in Congress, with blistering criticism from legislators of both parties.
The financial danger is that the Treasury will burn through the money approved by Congress without fixing the system. The political danger is that Republicans will posture as the populists, expressing faux-indignation that so much taxpayer money has gone to Wall Street. The overarching risk to Obama’s presidency is that the plan won’t work, and his political capital will evaporate along with the financial capital.
via Robert Kuttner: Lifting the Tarp: Will President Obama’s Economic Team Lead Him Off a Cliff?.
Obama Plans Anti-Drug Effort on Border to Aid Mexico
Anti-Drug Effort at Border Is Readied
Obama Plans to Send Agents, Equipment To Aid Mexican Fight
President Obama is finalizing plans to move federal agents, equipment and other resources to the border with Mexico to support Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s campaign against violent drug cartels, according to U.S. security officials.
In Obama’s first major domestic security initiative, administration officials are expected to announce as early as this week a crackdown on the supply of weapons and cash moving from the United States into Mexico that helps sustain that country’s narco-traffickers, officials said.
The announcement sets the stage for Mexico City visits by three Cabinet members, beginning Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and followed next week by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
via Obama Plans Anti-Drug Effort on Border to Aid Mexico – washingtonpost.com.
O’Reilly: If Cheney had ‘an assassination squad,’ he would have killed Seymour Hersh ‘a long time ago.’
O’Reilly: If Cheney had ‘an assassination squad,’ he would have killed Seymour Hersh ‘a long time ago.’
During a speech at the University of Minnesota last week, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh claimed that the Bush administration had employed “an executive assassination ring” that “reported directly to the Cheney office.” In an Boston Herald op-ed today, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly mocked Hersh’s claim, saying “If Cheney really had such a crew,” reporters like Hersh would have already been killed:
Losing the Oxygen of Journalism
Losing the Oxygen of Journalism – By Gray Brechin
Editor’s Note: As more and more daily newspapers fall by the wayside – victims of a terrible economy and the Internet – many critics of the mainstream media say the MSM is getting what it deserves, for having failed in so many of its responsibilities to a democratic society.
But there is a danger as fewer reporters are left to chronicle events, even imperfectly, as author and historian Gray Brechin notes in this guest essay:
We seldom think of oxygen unless it’s absent. You’d think about it a lot if it suddenly exited this room; you’d start gasping and writhing, your eardrums would burst, you and your neighbors would do a lot of bleeding on each other, then you’d die.
But if we gradually replaced oxygen with nitrous oxide mixed with just a soupcon of cyanide gas, you might not notice that anything was missing at all; you might feel very content as your brain and body gradually turned off and you lapsed into a sleep without end.
I’ve frequently criticized the San Francisco Chronicle for just that — for its lack of the kind of mental oxygen that makes for a healthy democratic polity. In my book Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, I showed how it and two other leading San Francisco newspapers a century ago served the interests of their owning families — the deYoung, Hearst, and Spreckels clans.
via Consortiumnews.com.
How to Really Hit Back at Wall Street
How to Really Hit Back at Wall Street – By Brent Budowsky
Editor’s Note: Americans are understandably outraged over Wall Street’s refusal to accept that its days of wine, roses, pricy-commodes, multi-million-dollar bonuses, extravagant parties, ultra-exclusive vacations, et cetera must finally end.
In this guest essay, former congressional staffer Brent Budowsky suggests that the old ways of Wall Street banks greasing the palms of Washington politicians must end, too – and that it may be time to rehabilitate “Wall Street sheriff” Eliot Spitzer:
Let’s ban political contributions to any candidate, of any party, for any office by any company that receives bailout money, until the money is paid back in full.
Taxpayer money should not be used to pay for political donations designed to influence how the taxpayer money is spent. It is ridiculous for political leaders to take political campaign donations with one hand while they hand out taxpayer dollars to the donors with the other.
And let’s bring back Eliot Spitzer to a position in the government involving reform of our financial system.
via Consortiumnews.com.
Religulous: Borat-style satire on faith causes outrage
Religulous: Borat-style satire on faith causes outrage
British release for controversial US movie will increase friction between atheists and believers
Socialism’s all the rage. “We Are All Socialists Now,” Newsweek declares. As the right wing tells it, we’re already living in the U.S.S.A. But what do self-identified socialists (and their progressive friends) have to say about the global economic crisis? In the March 4, 2009, issue, we published Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr.’s “Rising to the Occasion” as the opening essay in a forum on “Reimagining Socialism.” TheNation.com will feature new replies to their essay over the coming weeks, fostering what we hope will be a spirited dialogue.
In the bleak winter of 1929-30, before the Great Depression even had a name, several hundred members of the Young Communist League, inspired by the millenarian spirit of the Comintern’s “Third Period,” attempted to launch a national uprising against unemployment and eviction. Led by class warriors like 27-year-old Steve Nelson and 16-year-old Dorothy Healey (then Rosenblum), they quickly earned the jail cells and beatings that were the ordinary wages of radical free speech in Open Shop America.
via Religulous: Borat-style satire on faith causes outrage – TV & Radio, Media – The Independent.
The Necessary Eloquence of Protest
The Necessary Eloquence of Protest – By Mike Davis
Reimagining Socialism: A Nation Forum
Socialism’s all the rage. “We Are All Socialists Now,” Newsweek declares. As the right wing tells it, we’re already living in the U.S.S.A. But what do self-identified socialists (and their progressive friends) have to say about the global economic crisis? In the March 4, 2009, issue, we published Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr.’s “Rising to the Occasion” as the opening essay in a forum on “Reimagining Socialism.” TheNation.com will feature new replies to their essay over the coming weeks, fostering what we hope will be a spirited dialogue.
In the bleak winter of 1929-30, before the Great Depression even had a name, several hundred members of the Young Communist League, inspired by the millenarian spirit of the Comintern’s “Third Period,” attempted to launch a national uprising against unemployment and eviction. Led by class warriors like 27-year-old Steve Nelson and 16-year-old Dorothy Healey (then Rosenblum), they quickly earned the jail cells and beatings that were the ordinary wages of radical free speech in Open Shop America.
via The Necessary Eloquence of Protest.
Treasury Presses Ahead With Plan For Toxic Assets
Treasury Presses Ahead With Plan For Toxic Assets
New Body to Work With Private Investors
The Treasury Department will unveil the next step in its financial rescue efforts tomorrow, announcing that it intends to create a government body, called the Public Investment Corp., to finance the purchase of as much as $1 trillion in soured loans and toxic assets from ailing banks, according to sources.
The plan calls for the new entity to combine its resources with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Reserve and private investors to buy those loans and other assets. But the government will put far more money into the deals and take on more risk than the investors, which could include hedge funds, private-equity firms, pension funds and foreign investors with U.S. headquarters, the sources said. The corporation will be funded with $75 billion to $100 billion from the $700 billion financial rescue package.
via Treasury Presses Ahead With Plan For Toxic Assets – washingtonpost.com.
Economy causing horse crisis: People ‘giving up their animals’
Economy causing horse crisis: People ‘giving up their animals’
LANCASTER, California (CNN) — The sound of pounding hooves thunders in the high desert air. A cloud of dust marks the trail of a herd of wild horses as they race across the arid plain. This is Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue, a shelter for wild mustangs and unwanted horses near Lancaster, California.
Lifesavers President Jill Starr says she and other shelter operators are witnessing an equine crisis.
“People have lost their homes, their jobs, their hope,” she said. “And they are giving up their animals.”
“We’ve had horses come onto the property in a horse trailer, unannounced, and just offloaded and [owners] ask us, beg us, if we could take these skinny horses,” she said.
Starr says she has taken in so many unwanted horses in the past year that her resources are stretched to the breaking point.
“All of a sudden it’s like somebody flipped a switch and people started bringing back the horses they adopted from us,” she said.
via Economy causing horse crisis: People ‘giving up their animals’ – CNN.com.
Tara Stiles: How Stressed Are You? Take The Stress Test
How Stressed Are You? Take The Stress Test
There’s nothing more comforting than a taking a quiz to find out answers to life’s necessary questions such as: What Disney Princess Are You, or What Color is your Aura? The quiz-taking process reminds us of the order of school or work, but the entertaining and self-focused questions ease our brains and put a soft smile on our faces. Completion is pure satisfaction. We’ve finished something in a couple minutes and get to reap the benefits. We find out if we should live in the country or the city, what Sex in the City character we are, or what 80s Movie suits us best.
We usually even know what our answers to the quiz will bring, and often times go back and change them if we didn’t like the result. (Come on, I know I’m not the only one here.) We crave the order and structure a quiz gives us. It makes us feel safe, probably stemming back to our early days of task completion and reward (brainwashing) from authority in pre-school. Before that our lives were more free. Our parents were the only people who told us what to do and they probably thought most of what we did was spectacular anyway.
via Tara Stiles: How Stressed Are You? Take The Stress Test.
After Voting No, Republicans Tout Funds
After Voting No, Republicans Tout Funds
WASHINGTON — Republicans railed against the Democrats’ massive economic-stimulus and spending bills as fiscally irresponsible, but some GOP lawmakers are taking credit for projects in their own districts funded by the measures.
“Washington needs to stop spending money that it doesn’t have,” Michigan Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra said in attacking the $410 billion omnibus-spending bill, which funds the government through September. But once it passed, he touted its benefits for his district, which stretches along Lake Michigan.
“Safe and navigable harbors are economic engines that drive the communities that surround them,” Mr. Hoekstra declared, announcing $3 million for harbor improvements….
via After Voting No, Republicans Tout Funds – WSJ.com.
TARP Funds Get Recycled as Political Contributions
Follow the Bailout Cash
There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
While a few big firms, such as Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, have curtailed their campaign giving, others are quietly doling out cash to select members of Congress, particularly those who serve on committees that oversee TARP. In recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOPWhip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG “counterparty.” “This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions,” says Brett Kappell, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations. (A spokesman for Cantor did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said it’s his “policy to accept legal contributions.”)
via TARP Funds Get Recycled as Political Contributions | Newsweek Periscope | Newsweek.com.
World Health Assembly: Pope Benedict “wrong”
World Health Assembly: Pope Benedict “wrong”
GEORGETOWN (AFP) — World Health Assembly President, Guyana’s Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy, condemned Pope Benedict’s call for ending condom use in the fights against AIDS, saying he was trying to sow confusion.
“The statement by the Pope is inconsistent with science, it’s inconsistent with our experiences and it is not in sync with what Catholics have experienced and believe,” Ramsammy told a news conference.
The Health Minister, who is regarded by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) as a leading advocate in the fight against HIV and AIDS, accused the leader of the Roman Catholic Church of attempting to “create confusion” and “impede” proven strategies in the battle against the disease.
Declaring the position by the Pope on condom use as “absolutely and unequivocally wrong,” Ramsammy recommended the continued use of condoms as part of an overall strategy that includes education, fidelity and monogamy.
via AFP: World Health Assembly: Pope Benedict “wrong”.
Why the Banking Crisis Is Far From Over
OPS: Krugman and Reich have been saying similar things for a while now. It’s time Obama fire the Clinton and Bush retreads and bring in the smart people with new ideas and directions
Don’t Buy the Chirpy Forecasts
The history of banking crises indicates this one may be far from over.
The good news from our historical study of eight centuries of international financial crises is that, so far, they have all ended. And we confidently predict this one will end, too. We are just not quite so sure it will be nearly as soon as the chirpy forecasts coming from policymakers around the globe. The U.S. administration, for example, is now predicting that growth will renew in the latter part of this year and continue at a brisk pace of 4 percent for several years thereafter. Is this a fact-based forecast or wishful thinking?
A careful look at the international evidence on severe banking crises suggests a far more cautious assessment. The recessions that follow in the wake of big financial crises tend to last far longer than normal downturns, and to cause considerably more damage. If the United States follows the norm of recent crises, as it has until now, output may take four years to return to its pre-crisis level. Unemployment will continue to rise for three more years, reaching 11–12 percent in 2011.
The news on housing prices and the stock market is arguably a little better, mainly because there has been so much damage already. The typical fall in inflation-adjusted stock prices is 55 percent, a benchmark the U.S. has more or less achieved. The typical decline in housing prices is 36 percent. According to some indicators, inflation-adjusted housing prices have already fallen roughly 30 percent. The bad news is that these down price cycles typically last for several years. So, even if the big hit on stocks and house prices has come already, the bottom might not be reached until the end of 2010.
via Why the Banking Crisis Is Far From Over | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com.
Some say Cheney ‘feeling the heat’ over potential probes
Some say Cheney ‘feeling the heat’ over potential probes
While the rest of the mainstream press has largely reacted to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s harsh critique of the Obama administration in last Sunday’s interview on CNN as business as usual for the man, several observers have a different theory – that Cheney is nervous about calls for investigations into the Bush adminstration and is going on the offensive.
Bobby Ghosh writes for Time, “Several observers think Cheney may be starting to feel the heat from Democrats’ efforts to investigate the Bush Administration’s counterterrorism policies – policies Cheney advocated, and for which his proteges allegedly provided the legal basis. But if he was trying to deflect attention from Bush-era policies, Cheney’s aggression will likely have the opposite effect.”
“If his goal was to tamp down talk of a truth commission, he has probably exacerbated the problem,” a veteran Republican told Time.
via The Raw Story | Some say Cheney ‘feeling the heat’ over potential probes.
Woman recovering from cancer surgery fired for ‘job abandonment’
Woman recovering from cancer surgery fired for ‘job abandonment’
A Maine woman fired while recovering from major surgery necessary for cancer treatment has filed a civil-rights lawsuit against her employer, Bank of America, and seems to be winning. This week, a U.S. District Court Judge recommended denying a motion filed by Bank of America lawyers seeking summary judgment, which would have kept the suit from becoming a full trial.
Holly Swift of Owls Head, Maine, was on the mend from her surgery in late July 2006 when she was contacted by the bank and told that she was fired. Asked the cause of her dismissal, Bank of America told her simply, “job abandonment.” She was confused. Her physician had complied with all of the bank’s requests for information about her ongoing limitations and reasons for being out of work. Not only were all her papers in order; Swift was within the 26 weeks short term disability leave allowed under bank policy.
via The Raw Story | Woman recovering from cancer surgery fired for ‘job abandonment’.
US Fed’s move is the bigger problem
US Fed’s move is the bigger problem – By Julian Delasantellis
The issue of who loosed the shadow banking/CDS financial system onto the world is mostly uninvestigated. There was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, pushed through the Congress with no debate in either chamber, mostly by Republicans such as Phil Gramm of Texas, and signed into law by president Bill Clinton a month before the end of his term. It removed private party derivatives from regulation by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission; as applied to CDS, that was what allowed one to hold so many of them without posting a margin.
On April 28, 2004, the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule that permitted major investment banks to operate with much higher leverage ratios, allowing for up to $40 in loans for each dollar in capital. Explaining his vote for the change, SEC commissioner Rod Campos is heard on the tape of the meeting saying that “I keep my fingers crossed for the future”.
We now see that more in terms of prudent regulation was needed than just what could be provided for by commissioner Campos’ digits.
via Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs.
The Modern Militia Movement: Fascism in MO.
OPS: Note – this is a pdf and may take longer to load
The Modern Militia Movement
Even if you are a hard core DemoTriumphalist, this document should (assuming it is for real) send a chill through your soul. It appears to be a state law enforcement ‘information’ document from MIssouri, which blatantly and repeatedly blurs the distinction between citizens with views that the government might not sanction, and citizens who intend violence. People, you have to know something is wrong when the “Don’t Tread On Me” symbol is cited as an indicator of suspicion. When Bush was president, it was the lefties who were labeled terrorists. Now it’s the rightwingers. EITHER WAY IT’S WRONG.
via The Modern Militia Movement
————————-
OPS: The Missouri governor is standing behind this blatantly fascist document.
New militia movement draws criticism
A new document by The Missouri Information Analysis Center meant to help identify militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism.
A report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” tells law enforcement agencies to look for red flags-which can include talk of conspiracy theories, possession of subversive literature. Even political bumper stickers for third-party candidates are part of the movement.
Critics say it appears to give officials a green light to stifle political thought.
“So that’s going to set up a dangerous situation where a police officer maybe stops a car a sees a bumper sticker and automatically has a prejudgment that this person is going to be dangerous to them,” said Libertarian Party Member Tamara Millay.
Gov. Nixon addressed criticism of the report yesterday and defended the agency that produced it.
Connecticut, 19 other states launch AIG investigations
Connecticut, 19 other states launch AIG investigations
Twenty state attorneys general announced investigations Friday into the $165 million bonuses paid by insurance giant AIG last week, with Connecticut’s top lawyer issuing subpoenas to CEO Edward Liddy and 11 other executives.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the Democratic chairman of the General Assembly’s Banks Committee want Liddy and other executives to appear Thursday and bring with them “original or copies of documents regarding the AIG Financial Products Corp. retention bonus plan and any related contracts or agreements.”
“Now living off supersized taxpayer-paid bonuses, these AIG employees have a moral and legal obligation to appear at this legislative hearing and disclose details about corporate compensation to employees as well as investment decisions by AIG Financial Products Corp. involving credit derivatives and dealings that have led to market destruction,” said Blumenthal, a Democrat.
…snip…
The attorneys general of Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia have also launched investigations. New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram said all 19 state attorneys signed a letter to Liddy demanding names and documents concerning the bonuses.
“We are investigating whether this compensation was paid to those working in the AIG subsidiary largely responsible for the financial crisis at the company,” Milgram said.
via Connecticut, 19 other states launch AIG investigations – CNN.com.
Do GM Crops Increase Yield? The Answer is No
Do GM Crops Increase Yield? The Answer is No
Monsanto’s claim that GM crops increase yields is not only false, but also fraudulent. Please, don’t try and fool the world by fabricating and distorting scientific facts, says Devinder Sharma.
20th March 09 – Devinder Sharma ~ STWR
Lies, damn lies, and the Monsanto website. Tell a lie a hundred times, and the chances are that it will eventually appear to be true. When it comes to genetically modified crops, Monsanto makes such an effort – and it could be that you too are duped into accepting their distortions as truth.
My attention has been drawn to an article titled “Do GM crops increase yield?” on Monsanto’s web page, although I must confess that this is the first time I have visited their site.
This is how it begins: “Recently, there have been a number of claims from anti-biotechnology activists that genetically-modified (GM) crops don’t increase yields. Some have claimed that GM crops actually have lower yields than non-GM crops. Both claims are simply false.”
It then goes on to explain the terms germplasm, breeding, biotechnology, and then finally explains yield.
Here is what it says: “The introduction of GM traits through biotechnology has led to increased yields independent of breeding. Take for example statistics cited by PG Economics, which annually tallies the benefits of GM crops, taking data from numerous studies around the world:
via Do GM Crops Increase Yield? The Answer is No – STWR – Share The World’s Resources.
Iraqi Children: Bearing the Scars of War
Iraqi Children: Bearing the Scars of War – By César Chelala
With just one child psychiatrist working at a government hospital, Iraq’s healthcare system is unprepared for the treatment of its children — many of whom suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the long-running war. Middle East Times International correspondent César Chelala investigates this pressing issue.
The great number of Iraqi children affected by post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the saddest, and least known, legacies of the Iraq war.
That a new clinic for their treatment — opened last August in Baghdad — is the first of its kind says a lot about how this problem is being addressed.
via Iraqi Children: Bearing the Scars of War by César Chelala – The Globalist.
Green Group Buys CO2 Emissions Permits to Retire Them
Green Group Buys CO2 Emissions Permits to Retire Them
NEW YORK, New York, March 20, 2009 (ENS) – The first market-based, mandatory cap-and-trade program in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions held its third auction of emissions allowances in a 10-state region from Maine to Maryland on Wednesday. Allowances for 1,000 tons of emissions were purchased by an environmental group, not for use but to remove them from the market.
In a report on the auction today, the 10 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative said all of the 31,513,765 allowances for the 2009 emissions sold at a clearing price of $3.51 per allowance.
The participating states have regulations in place to cap and then reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, that power plants in their region are allowed to emit, limiting the region’s total contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.
Power sector CO2 emissions are capped at current levels through 2014. The cap will then be reduced by 2.5 percent in each of the four years 2015 through 2018, for a total reduction of 10 percent.
via Green Group Buys CO2 Emissions Permits to Retire Them.
Questioning the Motives and Bias of Prominent Newspaper Critics
Questioning the Motives and Bias of Prominent Newspaper Critics – By Randy Siegel
NEW YORK (Commentary) As many newspaper companies try to turn themselves around in a brutal economy, under huge debt loads and against a backdrop of increasingly funereal media coverage, it’s worth looking at the behavior and motives of some of the industry’s harshest critics.
Earlier this month, Time magazine, struggling for its own survival in the hemorrhaging newsweekly marketplace, published a column on its website entitled “The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America,” which hundreds of news outlets around the world ran under the headline “What Newspapers Will Die in 2009?” complete with a list of soon-to-be-dead newspapers.
The trouble is: Time’s “report” appears to have been created from pure speculation, with minimal reporting or research, by a Time.com affiliate called 24/7 Wall St.
Needless to say, the Time piece roiled the newspaper industry, sparking denials and rebuttals while driving already beaten-down newspaper-company stocks even lower. Though 99% of the people who read this premature obituary probably assumed it was written by the professional journalists at Time magazine, it actually was written by Douglas McIntyre, an editor at 24/7 Wall St., which, according to its website, also runs a site called Volume Spike Investor, whose self-described goal is to bring stock-market speculators “5 to 10 stock ideas per day in unusual trading activity that we see in stock volume and in options activities. Many of these stocks are among very active and very liquid stocks, yet we will always aim to bring you key ideas in stocks that might not otherwise get noticed.”
It’s a sad day when Time magazine, once one of the most trusted publications in America, runs an unsubstantiated article on its website, without a single disclaimer, from Wall Street speculators who make their living peddling tips to help day-traders jump in and out of distressed stocks.
via Questioning the Motives and Bias of Prominent Newspaper Critics.
Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived? – Frank Rich
Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived? – Frank Rich
A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”
Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country’s surge of populist rage could devour the president’s best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn’t get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived? – NYTimes.com.
Bill in Texas would allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees
OPS: Insanity still prevails in the Evangelical Reich
Bill in Texas would allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees
If a private college doesn’t receive funds from any governmental organization, should they have to be held to any standards or requirements when they award degrees? No, one Texan lawmaker is insisting.
Texas State Representative Leo Berman has proposed House Bill 2800, which would exempt any private non-profit institution that requires students to complete “substantive course work” from having to acquire a certificate of authority from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board(THECB). “If you don’t take any federal funds, if you don’t take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding,” Berman says. “Why should you be regulated if you don’t take any state or federal funding?”
Because creationism isn’t science, critics argue.
via The Raw Story | Bill in Texas would allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees.
Feinstein Seeks To Block Solar Power From California Desert Land
OPS: Feinstein must GO!
Feinstein Seeks To Block Solar Power From California Desert Land
WASHINGTON — California’s Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop renewable energy.
Nineteen companies have submitted applications to build solar or wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 desert acres, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Friday such development would violate the spirit of what conservationists had intended when they donated much of the land to the public.
Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.
via Feinstein Seeks To Block Solar Power From California Desert Land.
Chinese-made drywall ruining homes, owners say – CNN.com
Chinese-made drywall ruining homes, owners say
Officials are looking into claims that Chinese-made drywall installed in some Florida homes is emitting smelly, corrosive gases and ruining household systems such as air conditioners, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says.
The Florida Health Department, which is investigating whether the drywall poses any health risks, said it has received more than 140 homeowner complaints. And class-action lawsuits allege defective drywall has caused problems in at least three states — Florida, Louisiana and Alabama — while some attorneys involved claim such drywall may have been used in tens of thousands of U.S. homes.
Homeowners’ lawsuits contend the drywall has caused them to suffer health problems such as headaches and sore throats and face huge repair expenses.
The drywall is alleged to have high levels of sulfur and, according to homeowners’ complaints, the sulfur-based gases smell of rotten eggs and corrode piping and wiring, causing electronics and appliances to fail.
via Chinese-made drywall ruining homes, owners say – CNN.com.
Keith Olberman Special Comment- ENOUGH! 3/19/2009
OPS: KO tags another one out of the Park! Must View. – REPOSTED!
YouTube – Keith Olberman Special Comment- ENOUGH! 3/19/2009.
Britain at risk of serious social unrest, report warns
Britain at risk of serious social unrest, report warns
Britain is in danger of serious social unrest and public disorder in response to the economic crisis, according to a new report.
Bouts of social upheaval are set to disrupt economies and topple governments around the globe over the next two years, the Economist Intelligence Unit warned.
Britain is at “moderate risk” of the protests with “far from a clean bill of health”, the study said, in contrast to previous years when western European states were almost automatically rated at “low risk”.
The paper, called Manning the Barricades, identified Britain as one of a group of “heavily indebted economies that experienced housing bubbles” and “are particularly vulnerable to deleveraging and asset price declines”.
It added: “The UK has been among the worst-hit developed countries by the global downturn and the majority of the population fears a deep and long recession and the onset of mass unemployment.
“Popular discontent and anger are likely to rise, and populist sentiments to strengthen. The news of big personal payouts to bankers who have failed spectacularly has incensed public opinion.”
via Britain at risk of serious social unrest, report warns – Telegraph.
Administration Seeks Increase in Oversight of Executive Pay
OPS: this will drive the fat cats out of their little minds. Wonder where the loop holes will be?
Administration Seeks Increase in Oversight of Executive Pay
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.
The outlines of the plan are expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for President Obama’s first foreign summit meeting in early April.
Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.
The officials said that the administration was still debating the details of its plan, including how broadly it should be applied and how far it could range beyond simple reporting requirements. Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.
via Administration Seeks Increase in Oversight of Executive Pay – NYTimes.com.
Shell oil company bails on most alternative energy research
Shell oil company bails on most alternative energy research
International oil giant Shell announced this week that it plans to suspend funding and research into solar and wind alternatives to fossil fuels. Shell also said it does not view hydrogen as a viable energy alternative either, but that it plans to continue its work on biofuels, Reuters reports.
Energy analysts cite the huge drop in oil prices since last summer as the key reason that Shell pulled the plug on renewables research. “It’s not much of a surprise given the current oil price environment,” says Ian Nathan, senior research analyst at Energy Intelligence. “Shell, like any other oil and gas company, has shareholders it’s responsible to, and in an economic downturn, where revenues are under strain, it would seem to make sense for the company to focus its spending on its bread and butter business, which is oil and gas.”
In a strong indication of how the sour global economic climate has hit Shell, the company posted a $2.8 billion loss in the last quarter of 2008 – its first loss in a decade, according to the New York Times. Still, the energy colossus made over $26 billion in profits for the year, thanks in part to oil barrel prices hitting record highs last summer.
It’s not clear how Shell’s cuts might influence long-term alternative energy investment by other major international oil players such as BP and ExxonMobil.
via Shell oil company bails on most alternative energy research: Scientific American Blog.
Link between body clock and metabolism may help fight obesity, aging and more
Link between body clock and metabolism may help fight obesity, aging and more
New research pinpointing the link between the body clock and metabolism may pave the way for scientists to treat an array of health problems, ranging from diabetes to sleep disorders.
In humans and other mammals, circadian rhythms, or the body clock, control everything from sleep to hormones. It is present – albeit less sophisticated – in life forms all the way down to plants and yeasts to ensure that important functions, such as cell regeneration, occur at the optimal time of the 24-hour day-night cycle. (It’s also to blame for jet lag.) Scientists have long suspected that it is connected with metabolism (the way our bodies use energy), but they weren’t sure exactly how.
In an attempt to unlock this molecular mystery, Joe Bass, an assistant professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and colleagues wanted to see how the two functions might be related in mammals. They placed the mice – some with normal circadian rhythms and others whose rhythms had been disrupted – in complete darkness for 48 hours (in an effort to confuse normal body cycles). Their findings, published today in an online edition of Science: levels of the enzyme Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), known to play a key role in metabolism, were low and constant in the mice with disrupted clocks but, even in perpetual darkness, levels of the enzyme in unaltered animals fluctuated in tune with daily cycles.
Global Wheat Crop Threatened by Fungus: A Q&A with Han Joachim Braun: Scientific American
Global Wheat Crop Threatened by Fungus: A Q&A with Han Joachim Braun
A new strain of a devastating fungus could impact wheat crops the world over–and scientists are scrambling to nip it in the bud
In 1999 agricultural researchers discovered in Uganda a new variety of stem rust—a fungus that infects wheat plants and wiped out 40 percent of U.S. wheat harvests in the 1950s. Millions of spores have spread from Uganda to neighboring Kenya and beyond to Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, wiping out as much as 80 percent of a country’s harvest. In fact, the only thing that has stopped the rust from devastating the breadbaskets of China, India and Ukraine has been several years of drought in Iran.
The world should hope for three more dry years in that region, because that’s how long it will take to breed enough seeds of wheat strains that are resistant to the fungus, according to Hans Joachim Braun, director of the global wheat program at leading agricultural research institute, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico. An international symposium on the agricultural threat was held this week in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico, and ScientificAmerican.com spoke with Braun, who attended, to glean the latest developments on efforts to defeat the fungus.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
via Global Wheat Crop Threatened by Fungus: A Q&A with Han Joachim Braun: Scientific American.
Stimulus Appears to Be Sparking Alt-Energy Revival
Stimulus Appears to Be Sparking Alt-Energy Revival
But clean-tech still must clear the hurdle of a frozen credit market
NEW YORK—There are signs that the federal stimulus might be pumping a little life into the alternative-energy industry.
Financiers and law firms specializing in renewable energy say they see growing interest in reviving moribund projects and breaking ground on new deals. And while big banks that have braced the industry’s backbone are still on the fence, some hedge funds and private equity and venture capital firms are cautiously looking to take advantage of stimulus provisions that temporarily eliminate the need for tax equity financing, which has long been a mainstay for renewable energy projects.
“Whether it’s the stimulus package or the return of the banks, there is early evidence of a growing appetite for the types of small- to medium-size projects that they sponsor,” said Tucker Twitmyer, managing partner at the venture capital firm EnerTech Capital.
The stock markets are still no place to raise cash, but if activity from many nontraditional sources of financing lifts the clean-tech sector faster, as many experts predict, that may encourage banks to ease their strict lending requirements and again lift renewable energy finance if credit markets start to normalize.
via Stimulus Appears to Be Sparking Alt-Energy Revival: Scientific American.
Canada’s hypocrisy: George W. Bush permitted, George Galloway banned
Canada’s hypocrisy: George W. Bush permitted, George Galloway banned - by Lech Biegalski
Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything
On March 17, 2009, George W. Bush was allowed to enter Canada and give a speech to the business community in Calgary. His arrival was accepted by the Canadian government which completely ignored the Letter to the RCMP issued by the Lawyers Against the War organization.
On March 21, 2009, the BBC reported, “George Galloway, a British member of Parliament, has been banned from Canada on security grounds. /…/ British media reported the decision was due to his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there.”
Shortly after George Galloway was denied entry to Canada to speak at an anti-war event in Toronto, The Canadian Press reported that several organizations expressed their appreciation of the government’s decision:
“The Canadian Jewish Congress quickly issued a statement commending the government for its decision.
via Canada’s hypocrisy: George W. Bush permitted, George Galloway banned.
Is there such a thing as a core, common mystical experience?
Mystics Under the Microscope -by Peter Bebergal
Is there such a thing as a core, common mystical experience?
marsh chapelUntil 2006, John Hayes, a psychologist and self-described Zen-Catholic, had never taken a hallucinogenic drug. In the 1960s, Hayes was a Franciscan friar watching with curiosity while the counter-culture used psychedelics with impunity. Through his own meditation and religious practice, Hayes believes he has had sensations that he would label mystical. But these mystical states—which he described to me as “moments of unitive experience” —were significant enough that when he heard about a surprising research project at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine he was more than intrigued. Doctors at JHU were investigating the effects of psilocybin—the active ingredient in the more common variety of hallucinogenic mushroom—and looking for volunteers.
After some considerable thought, he signed up. For three sessions Hayes is certain he received a placebo. Then, in the fourth session, something happened that had never happened before in all his years of prayer and meditation.
“It was like ‘All right, what’s the big deal?’ Then ba-boom!” he says. “There was a sense of moving in some sort of astral space with stars whizzing by me. It was like getting the big picture.”
via Search Magazine – Mystics Under the Microscope.
-
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
-
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. 
