Archive for April, 2009
Fox News’s Jesse Watters Infiltrates GE Shareholders Meeting To Complain Of Press Bias
Fox News’s Jesse Watters Infiltrates GE Shareholders Meeting To Complain Of Press Bias
It’s no secret that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly can’t stand MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. In fact, when a caller into his radio show had the gall to mention Olbermann’s name on air in March 2006, O’Reilly threatened to turn his personal information over to “Fox security.”
Yesterday, O’Reilly took his rivalry a step further. He sent his top henchman, producer Jesse Watters, to infiltrate the GE shareholders meeting and press executives on why MSNBC has a “leftward political slant”:
US jobless claims reach record 6.14m
US jobless claims reach record 6.14m - By Alan Rappeport
New US jobless claims rose last week after easing the week before, the labour department said on Thursday, while the number of workers continuing to claim unemployment grew to a fresh record high as companies continue to shed workers.
Initial claims rose by 27,000 to 640,000, in line with economists’ predictions. Those making continuing claims rose from a revised 6.04m to 6.14m in the second week of April, the highest total since tracking began in 1967.
Economists had expected that new jobless claims would rise to 640,000 after easing by a revised 613,000 the week before. That decline had surprised consensus estimates that claims would rise, but many attributed it to the Good Friday and Passover holidays.
The four-week average for new claims was 646,750 last week, an improvement from the 651,000 average the prior week. The four-week average for continuing claims, however, rose by 142,500 to 5.94m.
via FT.com / World – US jobless claims reach record 6.14m.
UPS profits tumble by 56%
UPS profits tumble by 56%
United Parcel Service reported on Thursday a quarterly profit that missed analysts’ estimates and forecast no quick turnaround as the global economic downturn continued to take its toll on the world’s largest package-delivery company.
UPS’s quarterly net income fell by 56 per cent, dropping to $401m in the first quarter of 2009 from $906m a year earlier. Revenues fell 13.7 per cent to $10.9bn from $12.7bn a year before.
via FT.com / Companies / Shipping – UPS profits tumble by 56%.
Fiat rules out cash for Chrysler
Fiat rules out cash for Chrysler
Fiat denied any plans to invest directly into Chrysler, the heavily indebted US carmaker, or fund it in the future as it reported a wider-than-expected first-quarter loss.
The Italian carmaker, which faces a US government-set deadline next week to conclude a partnership agreement with Chrysler, said final terms of the deal were still being negotiated with the Treasury and the carmaker’s other stakeholders.
via FT.com / Companies / Automobiles – Fiat rules out cash for Chrysler.
Bloomberg Plans to Mandate Green Retrofits
Bloomberg Plans to Mandate Green Retrofits
NEW YORK CITY-As showcased at SL Green Realty Corp.’s Earth Day celebration Wednesday, the inset of a 17th floor roof at the REIT’s 100 Park Ave. is covered with green vegetation that looks out of place among Midtown skyscraper peaks. The “green roof” installation, one of 14 at the newly retrofitted property, catches rain water, eliminating runoff and–unlike its heat radiating concrete neighbor roofs–naturally absorbs rays from the sun, helping cool the building’s interior. Retrofits like these may become a requirement citywide if the Bloomberg administration has its way.
Contained in the proposals announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday are mandates that require older buildings to invest in necessary technology and infrastructure that would increase energy efficiency and reduce the city’s carbon footprint. New York City’s buildings are responsible for 80% of its carbon emissions. The investments could prove costly, but promise tremendous savings in power bills for thousands of properties.
In a release, Bloomberg says his plan “will significantly improve economic competitiveness, put thousands of New Yorkers to work in green jobs, and do more to shrink our own direct impact on global warming than any other actions imaginable.” Speaking to the perilous economic times, Mike Fishman, president of the Service Employees International Union’s Local 32BJ, the largest private sector union in New York, says in a statement that the initiative would “protect the environment, boost the real estate industry and get workers the training they need to get ahead.”
via Bloomberg Plans to Mandate Green Retrofits.
Federal Government Cracks Down on Mercury Pollution From Cement Kilns
Federal Government Cracks Down on Mercury Pollution From Cement Kilns
Air pollution rules from new administration will cut mercury pollution by between 81 and 93 percent
April 21, 2009
Washington, DC — The federal government is proposing, for the first time, to reduce airborne mercury pollution from cement kilns with new rules issued today. The new standards will cut mercury pollution from the nation’s more than 150 cement kilns between 11,600 and 16,250 pounds (or a reduction of 81 to 93 percent), according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.Led by Lisa Jackson, the EPA Administrator newly appointed by President Obama, EPA is proposing first time standards for cement kilns of mercury, hydrochloric acid, and toxic organic pollutants such as benzene. In addition, the agency is strengthening the outdated standards for particulate matter to better control kilns’ emissions of lead, arsenic, and other toxic metals.
Local and national environmental and public health advocates cheered the news, which follows a decade of delay and represents a hard-fought victory for those who have long pushed for these mercury limits. The new standards are being proposed as part of a court settlement reached between the US Environmental Protection Agency, the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice representing Sierra Club and community groups in New York, Michigan, Montana, California and Texas, and the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Earthjustice prevailed in a string of lawsuits aimed at forcing EPA to set limits for airborne mercury pollution from cement kilns for nearly a decade. Such limits were due under the federal Clean Air Act in 1997.
Giant Mystery Blob Discovered Near Dawn of Time
Giant Mystery Blob Discovered Near Dawn of Time
A newly found primordial blob may represent the most massive object ever discovered in the early universe, researchers announced today.
The gas cloud, spotted from 12.9 billion light-years away, could signal the earliest stages of galaxy formation back when the universe was just 800 million years old.
“I have never heard about any [similar] objects that could be resolved at this distance,” said Masami Ouchi, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s kind of record-breaking.”
A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). An object 12.9 billion light-years away is seen as it existed 12.9 billion years ago, and the light is just now arriving.
The cloud predates similar blobs, known as Lyman-Alpha blobs, which existed when the universe was 2 billion to 3 billion years old. Researchers named their new find Himiko, after an ancient Japanese queen with an equally murky past.
via Giant Mystery Blob Discovered Near Dawn of Time.
The Tortured Logic of the Torture Superfans
The Tortured Logic of the Torture Superfans
On average, the same number of Americans who were killed on September 11 will die from cancer over the next two days. 40,000 people this month. More than half a million throughout the course of the year.
Your chances of being killed at the hands of a terrorist, on the other hand, are comparatively remote. Some estimates show the odds at one in 9.3 million.
Why, then, are Republicans — from the very serious moderates to the buggy-eyed Glenn Beck spasmodics — embracing the broadly condemned and immoral act of government sponsored torture, while, often in the same talk radio segment, predicting the end of the world due to government plans guaranteeing that Americans will be able to afford healthcare? Somehow, irrational fear wins the day once again over a very rational desire to be treated for an illness without, you know, going broke.
via Bob Cesca: The Tortured Logic of the Torture Superfans.
GOP backs abortion bill, averts its eyes from CPS
GOP backs abortion bill, averts its eyes from CPS
Republican lawmakers in Austin, including San Antonio Rep. Frank Corte, have proposed legislation that would require doctors to perform an ultrasound on the fetus of women considering an abortion, with the volume turned up on its heartbeat.
Call it the “harass people coping with tragedy” bill — or one more reason to think the GOP has lost its way.
Corte’s bill, an extension of the 2003 Woman’s Right to Know Act, recommends providing materials and counseling about health risks and adoption, among other things, in addition to the ultrasound. It also says a pregnant woman “may avert her eyes from the ultrasound images required to be provided and reviewed.”
Corte said in an interview that he didn’t intend to make women watch or listen to the ultrasound and might have to change the wording to make it clearer. He said he wasn’t sure he liked the “averting the eyes” language himself.
That phrasing disappeared from a companion bill approved Thursday by the Senate State Affairs Committee, though it still appeared the woman might have to hear the heartbeat.
via GOP backs abortion bill, averts its eyes from CPS.
Sioux Split on Suit Seeking Money for Black Hills
Sioux Split on Suit Seeking Money for Black Hills
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — A band of Sioux whose ancestors were driven from the majestic Black Hills more than 130 years ago is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, upsetting other tribal members who say taking money for the sacred land would be legitimizing the theft.
A lawsuit filed last week asks a federal judge to release as much as $900 million in compensation and interest that eight Sioux tribes refused decades ago. The tribes insisted instead on return of the rugged land in southwestern South Dakota they lost in military battles that included Custer’s Last Stand.
The dispute has split the tribes. Some 5,000 tribal members have signed up for the class-action lawsuit, but just 19 plaintiffs are listed because many others live on reservations and fear retribution, said lawyer Wanda L. Howey-Fox of Yankton.
She said tribal members are wrong if they believe taking the money amounts to selling the Black Hills.
via Sioux Split on Suit Seeking Money for Black Hills – NYTimes.com.
UK High Court demands U.S. torture documents
UK High Court demands U.S. torture documents
LONDON — The chief justice of the British High Court on Wednesday gave the British government one week to obtain the U.S. release of classified information about the alleged torture of a British resident who’d been detained at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba .
The court indicated that it would issue its own order if the government doesn’t respond or justify why continued secrecy is warranted.
Noting that President Barack Obama had released highly sensitive documents tracing the decisions on torture during the Bush administration‘s war on terror, the high court judges voiced exasperation that the British government hasn’t acted in what they said was the British public interest in being similarly open.
The hearing illustrated how Obama’s decision to be more transparent about his predecessor’s detainee policies is having ripple effects abroad, but it also threw the ball back to the Obama administration to approve release of the contested information.
The White House said it had no comment yesterday.
via UK High Court demands U.S. torture documents.
Weekly jobless claims up more than expected
Weekly jobless claims up more than expected
Continuing claims rise to another record high again as recession bites
WASHINGTON – New jobless claims rose more than expected last week, while the number of workers continuing to filing claims for unemployment benefits topped 6.1 million.
Both figures are fresh evidence layoffs persist amid a weak job market that is not expected to rebound anytime soon.
The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment compensation rose to a seasonally adjusted 640,000, up from a revised 613,000 the previous week. That was slightly above analysts’ expectations of 635,000.
via Weekly jobless claims up more than expected – Stocks & economy- msnbc.com.
AP Poll – Americans High on Obama, Direction of US
AP Poll: Americans High on Obama, Direction of US
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public’s mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future.
Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.
Nobody knows how long the honeymoon will last, but Obama has clearly transformed the yes-we-can spirit of his candidacy into a tool of governance. His ability to inspire confidence — Obama’s second book is titled ”The Audacity of Hope” — has thus far buffered the president against the harsh political realities of two wars, a global economic meltdown and countless domestic challenges.
”He presents a very positive outlook,” said Cheryl Wetherington, 35, an independent voter who runs a chocolate shop in Gardner, Kan. ”He’s very well-spoken and very vocal about what direction should be taken.”
via AP Poll – Americans High on Obama, Direction of US – NYTimes.com.
Senate Report: Rice, Cheney OK’d CIA Use of Waterboarding
Senate Report: Rice, Cheney OK’d CIA Use of Waterboarding
WASHINGTON – Top Bush administration officials gave the CIA approval to use waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique, as early as 2002, a Senate intelligence report shows.
On July 17, 2002, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who later became secretary of state, said the CIA could proceed with “alternative interrogation methods,” including waterboarding, when questioning suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah.
The decision was contingent on the Justice Department’s determining the method’s legality. A week later, Attorney General John Ashcroft had determined the “proposed interrogation techniques were lawful,” the report said.
The same techniques also were used in the interrogations of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the first person charged in the United States in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
via Senate Report: Rice, Cheney OK’d CIA Use of Waterboarding | CommonDreams.org.
Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown
Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown
Last week, we pointed out that one of the newly released Bush-era memos inadvertently confirmed that the CIA held an al-Qaeda suspect [1] named Hassan Ghul in a secret prison and subjected him to what Bush administration lawyers called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul, and his whereabouts today are secret.
But Ghul is not the only such prisoner who remains missing. At least three dozen others who were held in the CIA’s secret prisons overseas appear to be missing as well. Efforts by human rights organizations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them. (See the full list. [2])
In September 2007, Michael V. Hayden, then director of the CIA, said [3] “fewer than 100 people had been detained at CIA’s facilities.” One memo [4] (PDF) released last week confirmed that the CIA had custody of at least 94 people as of May 2005 and “employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of these “.”
Former President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the CIA program in September 2006, and transferred 14 prisoners from the secret jails to Guantanamo. Many other prisoners, who had “little or no additional intelligence value,” Bush said, “have been returned to their home countries for prosecution or detention by their governments.”
via Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown | CommonDreams.org.
Sherrod Brown Addressing the Core of America’s Problems
OPS: ….and after that they can cancel any trade pacts negotiated under Clinton – like NAFTA for example
Sherrod Brown Addressing the Core of America’s Problems
Sen. Sherrod Brown said that he plans to introduce legislation that would delay Congressional consideration of any trade pacts negotiated under the former President Bush.
With the White House signaling its intention to move forward with leftover “free trade” agreements from the Bush administration in the form of bilateral agreements with Columbia and Panama, Congressional Democrats are pushing back and trying to thwart those efforts.
According to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, avid “free trade” critic Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told the Washington International Trade Association that he plans to introduce legislation that would delay Congressional consideration of any trade pacts negotiated under the former President Bush.
Both agreements and a separate one with South Korea were negotiated and signed during the Bush administration’s second term, however, they have not been ratified by Congress and therefore are not considered law.
The Obama administration in recent days has publicly stated that it is prepared to attempt and finalize the deals with Columbia and Panama. As a Senator and presidential candidate, President Barack Obama opposed both “free trade” agreements. However, after meeting with leaders of both nations during the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago last weekend, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has said that he is eager to begin negotiations with lawmakers in order to gain approval for the pacts.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Long Road to Recovery
Long Road to Recovery
The government keeps telling us that the worst is over, but by all logical accounts the worst is still to come.
Many indicators have shown evidence that the bottom may have been reached in several economic sectors. Housing, for instance, is believed to have almost settled after its precipitous collapse. Gross Domestic Product is still falling in many developed nations, but it is not falling as fast as it once was. Unemployment is expected to grow, but not at the astronomical rates of the last few months.
The decline of the economy seems to be slowing down, but that does not mean it is reversing. The United States is already in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The American auto industry is a shell of its former self. The United States government is entrenched in its support of “free trade” at all costs. The ranks of the unemployed have swollen to over 6 million recipients of government assistance, and outsourcing is still a looming threat for hundreds of thousands of Americans.
If we should expect more declines in the future then, regardless of the rate of digression, things are still going to get worse. Edward Hadas of breakingviews.com, writing for Fortune, certainly sees a long road ahead for the American economy and the people dependent on it
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
D.C’s ghoulish response to suicides
D.C’s ghoulish response to suicides
It’s the nature of Washington to search for and usually find a politically charged subtext to any news event. But that instinct is never more ghoulish when the event is the sudden death of an important person by his own hand.
David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of the troubled Freddie Mac mortgage company, is the latest example of a particular — and particularly macabre — subset of human tragedy: the Washington suicide.
These happen often enough that they follow their own morbid rhythm. The normal human reaction — disbelief, horror, sympathy — is followed almost immediately by the kinds of reactions that are normal only in places suffused by politics and journalism: a rush of suspicion about the motives and speculation over the possible fallout.
via D.C’s ghoulish response to suicides – Eamon Javers – POLITICO.com.
U.S. Senate backs panel to probe financial fraud | Reuters
Votes 92-4 to create commission to look into cause of crisis.
U.S. Senate backs panel to probe financial fraud
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate voted on Wednesday to create an independent commission to investigate the cause of the worst U.S. economic crisis in decades.
“The only way to get an objective evaluation of where mistakes were made is to create an independent commission of experts to ask what went right, what went wrong and what could we have done to prevent this,” said Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, a chief sponsor of the measure.
On a vote of 92-4, the Senate approved the measure as an amendment to a bipartisan bill headed toward anticipated passage that would crack down on financial fraud. Both the House and Senate would have to pass legislation to create a commission before it could be signed into law by President Barack Obama.
via U.S. Senate backs panel to probe financial fraud | Reuters.
Harman wiretap leaked after intelligence mutiny
Intelligence Officials Tipped Pelosi To Harman Wiretap
Intelligence officials, angry that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had blocked an FBI investigation into Democratic Rep. Jane Harman’s interactions with a suspected Israeli agent, tipped off Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, that Harman had been picked up on a court-ordered National Security Agency wiretap targeting the agent.
In doing so, the officials flouted an order by Gonzales not to inform Pelosi, three former national security officials said.
Pelosi, D-Calif., was not officially briefed about the probe, as was widely reported Wednesday. Instead, the information was disclosed to her privately after a planned investigation of Harman was aborted, intelligence sources said.
Pelosi’s spokesman Brendan Daly confirmed as much Wednesday.
“She was notified that Harman had been overheard and that the target was someone else,” Daly said in a brief telephone interview. “It wasn’t a full-scale briefing.”
via CQ Politics | SpyTalk – Intelligence Officials Tipped Pelosi To Harman Wiretap.
Rice gave early ‘waterboarding green light’
Rice gave early ‘waterboarding green light’
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The CIA first sought in May 2002 to use harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding on terror suspects, and was given key early approval by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a US Senate intelligence document said.
The agency got the green light to use the near-drowning technique on July 26, 2002, when attorney general John Ashcroft concluded “that the use of waterboarding was lawful,” the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a detailed timeline of the “war on terrorism” interrogations released Wednesday.
Nine days earlier, the panel said, citing Central Intelligence Agency records, Rice had met with then-director George Tenet and “advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah,” the agency’s first high-value Al-Qaeda detainee, pending Justice Department approval.
via The Raw Story | Rice gave early ‘waterboarding green light’.
Religious Revolt: New Christian Sect Battles Demons, Raises the Dead, Campaigns for Sarah Palin
Religious Revolt: New Christian Sect Battles Demons, Raises the Dead, Campaigns for Sarah Palin
By Bruce Wilson, Religion Dispatches.
This disturbing “Third Wave” of Christianity is growing faster than the earth’s population and faster than Islam.
What is happening to Christianity?
In 1996 a team from Ted Haggard’s New Life Church flew to Mali and began furtively anointing entire towns with cooking oil.
The strangeness of it gripped Dutch missionary René Holvast, who later wrote: “It was confusing and produced a growing uneasiness. It did not seem to fit our current evangelical theological and anthropological textbooks.”
The team from Haggard’s church was a forerunner in a missionary wave that has washed over the world since the early 1990s, bringing what Holvast calls a ‘new paradigm.’
René Holvast has theological training, but his perplexed reaction was similar to that of Alix Spiegel, a radio journalist who went to Ted Haggard’s New Life Church in 1997 to do a story for This American Life. Spiegel encountered something so alluring, even overwhelming, that the secular, urban Jew was almost pulled in. (After several days at Ted Haggard’s church, Spiegel called This American Life‘s Ira Glass who — as if he were a deprogrammer weaning her from a cult — had to convince Alix Spiegel that she really belonged back in her secular realm of origin, Chicago.)
CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow — A New Low in Right-Wing Trash Talk and Hypocrisy
The Rant: CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow — A New Low in Right-Wing Trash Talk and Hypocrisy – By Mark Ames,
Why does Larry Kudlow still have a job? He’s gotten everything wrong, and his irrational anti-Obama rants are truly borderline.
Why does CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow still have a job? Not only is Kudlow a corrupt goon who has called everything 180 degrees wrong over and over, but he pretty much set the standard for Wall Street’s “most humiliating failure” back in the mid-1990s when he was fired from Bear Stears — the last smart move Bear Stearns ever made. Why was Kudlow fired, you axe? Well, it wasn’t because he called the economy wrong at every turn — hell no! Being wrong is a basic requirement for pundits and Wall Street analysts, you just have to be aggressively wrong and not worry about it, something Kudlow excels at. No, Lawrence Kudlow’s career problems in the 1990s stemmed from the fact that he couldn’t handle his drugs. Cocaine, to be exact.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: what sort of man — a rightwing free-market mensch to boot — can’t handle his coke? I mean, cocaine is a sorority girl’s drug. It lasts like 15 minutes, turns you into a babbling idiot who loves everything — the perfect drug for a pro-Reaganomics stock market cheerleader like Kudlow.
Colbert Report: Satire, Yes, But Bears the Brunt
Colbert has built a career mocking the right-wing. So why does new research suggest that the comedian is popular with Conservatives?
The Truthiness of The Colbert Report …
… Is in the eyes of the beholder, who, it turns out, sees what the beholder wants its eyes to see.
So … Stephen Colbert doesn’t really mean all those wacky liberal-bashing things he says, does he? Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report is obviously a parody of a wing-nut right-wing talk show. Right?
Or … is it? (Cut to devilishly quizzical chin-grabbing stare.)
He can’t be serious.
Or … can he sort of be? (Cut to screeching bald eagle.)
Well, apparently Colbert is just that good. His character is so pitch-perfectly ambiguous that, according to a new study, what it is you see in him is whatever it is you want to see in him. If you are liberal, he is a liberal, too. If you are a conservative, he is a conservative, just like you.
And if you are a bear, well, good luck.
Colbert is, it would appear, a fun-house mirror to the deepest recesses of your political soul.
In order to test this scientifically, Heather L. LaMarre, along with Kristen D. Landreville and Michael A. Beam (all communications doctoral students at The Ohio State University), subjected 322 participants with a mix of political ideologies to a three-minute 2006 video clip of Stephen Colbert discussing media coverage of the Iraq war with “super liberal lefty” radio host Amy Goodman.
via Politics Articles | Colbert Report: Satire, Yes, But Bears the Brunt | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.
The Bailout Is a Fraud That Could Bring Down Obama
The Crisis That Could Bring Down Obama
Ruth Conniff, The Progressive
Goldman Sachs reports better-than-expected profits this quarter. Wells Fargo cleared record profits last week. The President, understandably, points to signs of hope and encourages Americans to be optimistic about the economy. But when do we move from healthy confidence to a confidence game? The banks are reporting profits thanks to massive infusions of taxpayer bailout funds. It’s simply silly to be lulled by cheery-sounding reports when the institutions are actually insolvent. At some point we have to take a clear-eyed look at the massive failure of our financial system. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.
That’s more or less what Elizabeth Warren, the distinguished chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, says in her panel’s six-month report on the bank bailout. Warren, the government’s watchdog, concedes that there are differences of opinion on her panel, which probably accounts for her very carefully couched discussion of the crisis. Although she told The Observer us economy-regulators that it is “preposterous” that the government hasn’t fired the bank managers who are responsible for the derivatives disaster, her panel’s report is cautious, with a scholarly explanation of the crisis in her video introduction. Nonetheless, the underlying criticism is obvious.
In a financial crisis like the current one, Warren explains, the government has three choices: 1. Liquidate failed banks. (That’s what happened in the S&L crisis. The government took over institutions, fired the managers, wiped out investors, but protected depositors. A lot of savings and loans simply went out of business.) 2. Put them in receivership. (That’s what Sweden did in the 1990s: failed managers were fired and replaced, depositors were protected, and the banks were returned to private hands under new management with healthier balance sheets.) or 3. Subsidize the banks. This last option is what led Japan to its “lost decade”–the real value of bank assets are obscured, as the government funnels tax money into in
via The Crisis That Could Bring Down Obama | The Progressive.
TIME TO END A BANKER BOONDOGGLE THAT HURTS STUDENTS
TIME TO END A BANKER BOONDOGGLE THAT HURTS STUDENTS
by Jim Hightower
Listen to this Commentary at link
What do you call it when arrogance, avarice, and absurdity combine? Well, one name for it would be “Sallie Mae.”
Despite the sweet name, Sallie is not a person. It’s a giant financial corporation that is America’s largest provider of student loans. It began in the 1970s as a government entity, but in 1997 it was privatized. Along with such other private lenders as Wells Fargo and Discover, Sallie Mae has used the “Family Education Loan Program” to milk windfall profits from college students. The program is a corporate boondoggle, because the only thing it privatizes are the profits the lenders pocket through hefty fees they levy on students. The industry’s losses, on the other hand, are socialized, for the government covers 97 percent of any loans that students fail to pay.
Because this absurd subsidy of private lenders rips off taxpayers while overcharging students, Obama has proposed ending it in favor of expanding the government’s far-more-efficient and less costly program that loans directly to students. Cutting out the middleman would save taxpayers more than $9 billion a year, while giving college kids a much better deal.
via Jim Hightower | TIME TO END A BANKER BOONDOGGLE THAT HURTS STUDENTS.
Newspaper Reps Seeking Antitrust Relief Find Opposition
OPS: Every time a Corporatist gets into self inflicted trouble, it’s an excuse to whittle away at laws that were put in place to protect “We The People”
Newspaper Reps Seeking Antitrust Relief Find Opposition
WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Tuesday rejected new immunity from antitrust laws for teetering newspapers struggling to compete with Internet providers of news, entertainment and advertising.
Newspapers, however rare and financially weak, can adapt and ultimately conquer the threat posed by the Internet, the Justice Department’s Carl Shapiro told a House panel.
“We do not believe any new exemptions for newspapers are necessary,” said Shapiro, an assistant attorney general for economics.
Newspaper industry representatives told the House Judiciary Committee’s competition policy subcommittee they need more legal flexibility than current antitrust law allows. Current laws limiting mergers are enforced as if newspapers still compete for advertising and readers only with each other, they said.
In reality, they said, newspapers now compete with countless bloggers and online news sources. Industry representatives call that a losing business model, pointing to the rising numbers of newspapers slashing staff and filing for bankruptcy amid a reader exodus for online sources of news and commentary.
via Newspaper Reps Seeking Antitrust Relief Find Opposition.
U.N. torture official on America’s legal obligations to impose accountability
U.N. torture official on America’s legal obligations to impose accountability – by Glenn Greenwald
After President Obama announced last week that he opposes prosecutions of CIA officials who tortured detainees in reliance on OLC memos purporting to legalize that conduct (a decision which is not Obama’s to make), the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, announced that Obama’s policy of immunizing CIA torturers violates international law and, specifically, the clear obligations of the U.S. under the Convention Against Torture (signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988).
This morning, I conducted a 20-minute interview with Nowak — which can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below — regarding the specific legal obligations of the U.S. to provide accountability for crimes of torture; how Obama’s invocation of the “state secrets privilege” to block torture victims from having a day in court independently violates the Convention; and the detrimental impact that will result for the U.N.’s ability to hold torturers around the world accountable if the U.S. announces to the world that its own political leaders who systematically ordered torture will be shielded from all accountability.
On a quite related note, international law professor Kevin Jon Heller — who in the past questioned the argument, made among others by Scott Horton, that prosecutions of Bush DOJ lawyers who authorized torture find precedent in the Nuremberg prosecutions (as part of the Justice Case) of German lawyers who declared various war crimes to be legal — today writes about a separate set of prosecutions by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, as part of The Ministries Case, in which German officials were prosecuted for doing nothing other than stating, when asked, that they had no objection to the deportation of 5,000 Jews from France. These officials, who were convicted at Nuremberg, did not order the deportation or carry it out; rather, they merely failed, when asked, to object to the policy on the ground that it violated international law. Professor Heller argues that this case provides an almost perfect precedent for holding OLC torture-authorizing officials accountable:
Darpa Wants Puppy-Training Machines
OPS: “Automated mammalian training devices” – get it?
Darpa Wants Puppy-Training Machines
The Pentagon already has robotic mules and monkeys capable of controlling robots with their minds. Now, the Defense Department wants to shape real dogs’ minds, without resorting to oh-so-passe human trainers – or their archaic techniques of squeaky toys and personal affection.
“Automated mammalian training devices” are the latest out-there idea from Pentagon spooky research arm Darpa, as it furthers its plot to replace every last military staffer with either a computer or a more subservient creature. The agency is seeking proposals to create a portable gadget that “automates the training of complex behaviors in animals without human intervention.” Among the highly cerebral tasks that Darpa hopes the obedient animals will be able to accomplish:
via Darpa Wants Puppy-Training Machines | Danger Room from Wired.com.
Derek Shearer: Money, Banking and Torture: It’s Just Shocking!
Money, Banking and Torture: It’s Just Shocking!
Official Washington seems shocked that torture has been the rule above the law during the Bush administration. Reaction to the release of the Justice Department memos on the subject seems almost naive–and certainly with no sense of history (in this case, very recent history).
I remember former defense secretary Robert McNamara saying in a documentary about the Vietnam War that he wished he had known more about the country before conducting a war there. Didn’t anyone in the Pentagon or White House bother to tell him about French expert Bernard Fall and his books on the Indochinese war such as Hell In A Very Small Place? At Yale in the mid-60s, I met Fall when he came to lecture, read his books and followed his articles in the New Republic. I also took courses on the history and economy of Southeast Asia. Knowledge of the place was neither Top Secret nor hidden.
Similarly with the story of the Bush administration, the CIA and torture, information has not been secret nor unreported. Wisconsin history professor Alfred McCoy’s book, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, explains the origins of many of the techniques described in the Justice Department memos. The film Taxi to the Dark Side reports on the torture methods used by US officials in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo; it won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2007. New Yorker writer and former Wall Street Journal reporter Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals is a model of investigative reporting on the legal machinations behind the Bush administration’s approach to fighting terrorism. The New Yorker is not a difficult publication to locate.
via Derek Shearer: Money, Banking and Torture: It’s Just Shocking!.
Freezing Settlement Activity and Softening Stance on Hamas Key to Peace Process
Freezing Settlement Activity and Softening Stance on Hamas Key to Peace Process
Joyce Karam Al-Hayat -
In order for the Obama administration to achieve progress in the peace process, it must soften its position on Hamas to promote unity among Palestinians and influence the Israeli government to freeze settlement activity.
President Obama after his meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan Tuesday called for “gestures of good faith” and “confidence building measures” from both the Israelis and the Palestinians over the course of the several months. A move according to a US official, indicates Washington’s deep commitment to the peace process, and its intention to “pursue vigorously” those goals in the coming months. While the President did not give any details on what those measures are, making it clear ” that the parties in the region probably have a pretty good recognition of what intermediate steps could be taken”, Steven Cook a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, reads those steps as meaning the “Palestinian Authority ending incitement” against Israel, and the Israeli government “releasing Palestinians prisoners and lifting roadblocks or other obstacles to the Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza”.
However, and according to Marina Ottaway, the Director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, those measures “are not a game changer” and “might not have any impact” absent of clear and bold set of policies needed to “rescue the two-state solution”. Ottaway emphasizes the sense of urgency regarding the two-state framework and the need for the Obama administration to take “very tough decisions” mainly on issues of Settlement building and Palestinian reconciliation. “We are no more at a point where we can still say ‘well, it did not work this time let’s try it in another year’, this is it” she adds, “if there is no progress now (on the two-state solution), it might be too late in the future”.
via Dar Al Hayat.
Obama: Nearing 100
Nearing 100 - by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Three days after Senator Obama’s historic election, I proposed an agenda for President Obama’s first 100 days. As we near this iconic marker I’m surprised to see just how much of that platform is in motion – from passage of the stimulus and repeal of the global gag rule to the Administration’s pledge to close Guantanamo. I’m frustrated at how slow progress is on other priorities, like health care and labor reform. And I’m troubled by the administration’s direction on some issues, notably the bank bailout plan and Afghanistan. But as voices left and right move to grade Obama’s progress, it is astonishing to see the energy and directness with which Obama’s administration has confronted the issues of our time.
We have arrived, then, at a stunning and troubling moment. Reform opportunity is there. A reform Congress is in place. Big issues are teed up to fight for. But there are two areas which I fear could endanger the Obama Presidency: military escalation in Afghanistan and the banking bailout. Most projections say we’ll have double digit unemployment through 2011. The contrast between the treatment of the auto industry, where workers and managers and creditors and shareholders are taking the hits, and the bailout of banks is corrosive. When more bonuses are paid out, more self-dealing exposed, we may see more anger – especially right wing populism. On Afghanistan, I am concerned that it will bleed us of the resources needed for economic recovery, further destabilize Pakistan, open a rift with our European allies and negate the positive effects of withdrawing from Iraq on our image in the Muslim world.
Alternatively, there is reason for optimism. The President’s commitment to pragmatism suggests that, confronted with sufficient pressure from mobilized citizens and thinkers who understand the endemic problems with the Summers/Geithner plan, he may ultimately move to a Plan B or Team B in order to keep his popularity, credibility and agenda alive. And we can hope that hearings in Congress, and pressure from citizens who seek a non-military path to security in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will push the Administration to bear down on regional diplomacy, commonsense counter-terrorism measures and targeted development aid as the most effective security policies to stabilize the region.
via Nearing 100.
Freddie Mac calls in the forensics – Stratfor
A Stratfor opinion piece arguing that without David Kellermann we’ll never understand Freddie Mac’s books. How convenient. Stratfor is a private intelligence agency serving the rich and powerful. Barron’s has called Stratfor the “Shadow CIA”.
Freddie Mac calls in the forensics
Stratfor
The acting chief financial officer of the US government-backed Freddie Mac, David Kellermann, was found dead in his home April 22. Kellermann’s death — which police are calling an apparent suicide — raises many questions about what Kellermann knew and how his death will affect the future of Freddie Mac.
David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of the US government-backed Freddie Mac was found dead on April 22. Police in Vienna, Virginia have said the death may be a suicide. According to reports from media quoting unnamed police sources, Kellermann was found hanged in the basement of his home. The details on Kellermann’s death are still forthcoming and until an official autopsy is conducted the exact cause of death, and circumstances surrounding it, will remain unknown.
Kellermann was named a senior vice president and acting chief financial officer at Freddie Mac in the September 2008 government-initiated shake up. Prior to holding those posts he was the principal accounting officer and corporate controller — essentially the main accountant — for the mortgage giant. He was one of the longest-tenured members of the current, and government-revamped, Freddie Mac executive board and had worked for the institution for 16 years.
via Business Spectator – Freddie Mac calls in the forensics – Stratfor.
The CraigsList Killer More than “Boy Next Door”
OPS: Is this guy the logical result of rightwing ideology and indoctrination or did he simply gravitate to it for other reasons?
The CraigsList Killer More than “Boy Next Door”
CraigsList killer Philip Markoff was clean cut, handsome, and a College Republican. Still, not all College Republicans become serial killers. It is far more likely some deep-seated hatred of women and people of other races that set off his CraigsList spree. To be clear, College Republicans do not hate women and minorities. Not at all.
Commentary By: Steven Reynolds
It is true that the CraigsList killer is described as being the boy next door. Perhaps Philip Markoff was just an average guy on the surface. Heck, they describe all serial killers that way, don’t they? Here’s part of the description, from the New York Daily News:
English teacher Sonja Hluska remembered him as a smart kid with a good sense of humor.
“He was one of my most polite students. He was kind.
“Just a nice, clean-cut boy wanting to succeed. That type that you’d like to mother,” she said. “I just still can’t believe it.”
At college, he was a member of the College Republicans and was fairly unremarkable except for the occasional offensive comment, said ex-classmate Joe Coe.
“He was someone that had issues with people of color, had issues with women,” Coe told CBS.
“He gave off a creepy vibe,” said another SUNY classmate.
via All Spin Zone » The CraigsList Killer More than “Boy Next Door”.
Quote of the Day
Our fears are like dragons
guarding our most precious treasures
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Medicare says it won’t help seniors overcharged by prescription program
Medicare says it won’t help seniors overcharged by prescription program
WASHINGTON — If you’ve been overcharged by Medicare’s
prescription drug program, don’t count on getting your money back any time soon, if at all.
And don’t count on Medicare to help you, either.
The government-run elderly health care program appears to have washed its hands of any responsibility for mistakes that have cost subscribers and taxpayers several billion dollars.
That was the message contained in Medicare’s response this week to questions about problems with the prescription drug program posed earlier this year by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.
“I was shocked at this answer because it basically said, ‘Tough. We’re not worried about them (seniors),’” McCaskill said at a Senate hearing today.
Wasserman Schultz on Bybee’s future: ‘It doesn’t look good.’
Wasserman Schultz on Bybee’s future: ‘It doesn’t look good.’
This afternoon on MSNBC’s Hardball, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) endorsed House Judiciary Committee Chariman John Conyers’ pledge to hold hearings into the torture techniques authorized by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel. Asked by host Chris Matthews if she believed Judge Jay Bybee “should go” because of his role in authoring the OLC torture memos, Wasserman Shultz said that she believed the government needed to take a “first things first approach,” but said “it doesn’t look very good”:
MATTHEWS: Should we ask Jay Bybee to retire form the court out at the 9th circuit? He’s one of the ones who approved it and sits on the federal bench. Should he go?
WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, I think we need to take a first things first approach, taking a look at who exactly was responsible for these memos. Where was it initiated. We need to go through the process. And you’re still innocent until proven guilty in America, but it doesn’t look very good.
Wasserman Schultz also said she would not rule out prosecuting former President Bush or Vice President Cheney. Watch it:
via Think Progress » Wasserman Schultz on Bybee’s future: ‘It doesn’t look good.’.
Rice, Cheney Approved Waterboarding
Rice, Cheney Approved Waterboarding
WASHINGTON – Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice verbally OK’d the CIA’s request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week.
Rice’s role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It provides the most detailed timeline yet for how the CIA’s harsh interrogation program was conceived and approved at the highest levels in the Bush White House.
The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly.
via Rice, Cheney Approved Waterboarding.
Harman begins to backtrack denials of wiretap story
OPS: Strap in – here we go...
Harman begins to backtrack denials of wiretap story
The California Democrat who was allegedly caught on an FBI wiretap promising to aid accused Israeli spies in 2005 has begun walking back her original denials.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) originally denied — emphatically — that she had in any way agreed in a plot to get herself appointed chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee by getting an Israeli agent to work a major California donor to threaten to withhold campaign contributions from then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The call between Harman and the Israeli national was caught on an FBI wiretap as part of a broader Israeli espionage case.
But in an interview on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Harman began qualifying her answers under heavy questioning.
“We don’t know if there was a phone call,” Harman said, backtracking on her previous statements.
via The Raw Story | Harman begins to backtrack denials of wiretap story.
$750 Million for 750 National Parks Restoration Projects
$750 Million for 750 National Parks Restoration Projects
WASHINGTON, DC, April 22, 2009 (ENS) – The National Park Service will invest $750 million in 750 restoration and protection projects at parks across the country to create jobs and preserve American history and heritage for future generations, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today.
The funding comes under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, part of the $3 billion allotment to the Interior Department.
“From the Civil War to the Great Depression, America’s best ideas for protecting our national parks and open spaces have often come when our nation has faced its greatest challenges,” said Secretary Salazar.
“Today, by investing $750 million to restore and protect America’s most special places, we are creating a new legacy of stewardship for our national park system while helping our economy stand up again,” he said. “These projects at places like Ellis Island in New York and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah are ready to go and will create jobs in communities across the country.”
via $750 Million for 750 National Parks Restoration Projects.
Two Days After Defending Waterboarding, Lieberman Now Claims He’s ‘Strongly Opposed’ To It
Two Days After Defending Waterboarding, Lieberman Now Claims He’s ‘Strongly Opposed’ To It
In a letter to President Obama today, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) asking him to resist prosecuting Bush administration officials who wrote legal memos authorizing torture. “Pursuing such prosecutions would, we believe, have serious negative effects,” wrote the three senators.
Acknowledging that the Office of Legal Counsel memos were “deeply flawed,” the three senators claim that they have always been “strongly opposed” to torturous interrogation tactics like waterboarding:
We disagree, however, with Administration statements suggesting that the lawyers who provided such counsel may now be open to prosecution. Some of the legal analysis included in the OLC memos released last week was, we believe, deeply flawed. We have also strongly opposed the overly coercive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that these memos deemed legal. We do not believe, however, that legal analysis should be criminalized, as proposals to prosecute government lawyers suggest.
Lawrence O’Donnell Rips Into GOP Strategist Over Torture (VIDEO)
Lawrence O’Donnell Rips Into GOP Strategist Over Torture (VIDEO)
Via Media Monitor LaRay B., comes video of a segment between Phil Musser and Lawrence O’Donnell, hosted by Norah O’Donnell on MSNBC. The discussion centered on the torture memos, with Lawrence O’Donnell explaining how the pursuit of al Qaeda-Iraq links is a classic example of the sorts of fallacies that underpin the logic of those who think torture is effective. Musser, for his part, defended the leadership and judgment of Dick Cheney. And then, Musser’s line of thought veered very sharply into the scarily phrenological.
MUSSER: The bottom line is he’s a guy that I watched up close in action and I have great respect for his judgment and wisdom in this regard. And having seen the face of terror, you know I’ve walked through Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay when I was serving in the government, and it changes your nature of the threat to look at the people an the other sides of those fences. And the bottom line is –
And that’s when all the O’Donnells within the sound of Musser’s voice, quite rightly, started to bug out.
via Lawrence O’Donnell Rips Into GOP Strategist Over Torture (VIDEO).
Kevin Roose Infiltrates Liberty University To Write Book
Kevin Roose Infiltrates Liberty University To Write Book
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Kevin Roose managed to blend in during his single semester at Liberty University, attending lectures on the myth of evolution and the sin of homosexuality, and joining fellow students on a mission trip to evangelize partyers on spring break.
Roose had transferred to the Virginia campus from Brown University in Providence, a famously liberal member of the Ivy League. His Liberty classmates knew about the switch, but he kept something more important hidden: He planned to write a book about his experience at the school founded by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell.
Each conversation about salvation or hand-wringing debate about premarital sex was unwitting fodder for Roose’s recently published book: “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.”
“As a responsible American citizen, I couldn’t just ignore the fact that there are a lot of Christian college students out there,” said Roose, 21, now a Brown senior. “If I wanted my education to be well-rounded, I had to branch out and include these people that I just really had no exposure to.”
via Kevin Roose Infiltrates Liberty University To Write Book.
Besides Harman, which lawmakers tried to block the NYT’s wiretapping story?
Besides Harman, which lawmakers tried to block the NYT’s wiretapping story?
On Monday, the New York Times confirmed that in December 2005, its Washington bureau chief, Philip Taubman, “met with a group of Congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish” its story on the National Security Agency’s wiretapping. So who are those other “Congressional leaders”? CQ’s David Nather tries to narrow down the possibilities:
But during the period before the NSA program became public, the members of the Gang of Eight would have included House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.; Nancy Pelosi, initially the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, and later the House minority leader; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and later Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate minority leaders at the time; Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., the ranking Democrat on Senate Intelligence; House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.; and Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence after Pelosi became minority leader.
via Think Progress » Besides Harman, which lawmakers tried to block the NYT’s wiretapping story?.
Commentary: Fujimori’s conviction should give Bush nightmares
Commentary: Fujimori’s conviction should give Bush nightmares
There was a truly remarkable news item recently that received less notice than it deserved. A former president was tried, convicted and sentenced to a long jail term for crimes committed in his government’s fight against terrorism.
No, this was not George W. Bush’s worst nightmare come true. The story came from Peru where Alberto Fujimori was found to be responsible for the killing of a number of innocent civilians by government death squads. The conviction of Fujimori, who had been president from 1990 to 2000, was a rare triumph of justice over the impunity of power and was the first time in Latin America that an ex-president had been called to account in such a manner.
This happened even though Fujimori had a number of accomplishments to his credit as president. He brought Peru’s rampant terrorism under control, reformed its economy and signed a peace treaty with Ecuador ending a long-standing border dispute. Had he stepped down in 2000 with that as his record, he probably would have never been brought to trial. Instead he attempted to perpetuate himself in power by rigging his second reelection. He no doubt thought that, in office, the judicial system was too weak to try him and that, out of office, it would be used against him.
via Commentary: Fujimori’s conviction should give Bush nightmares | McClatchy.
Democrats Consider Bypassing G.O.P. on National Health Care Plan
OPS: Yeah – but will they bypass PHARMA and the Insurance Companies?
Democrats Consider Bypassing G.O.P. on Health Care Plan
WASHINGTON — With solid majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats are tempted to use their political muscle to speed passage of health care legislation with minimal concessions to the Republican minority.
That approach may be the only way they can fulfill President Obama’s campaign promises, but it carries high risks as well.
In the budget blueprint for the coming year, Democrats may resort to an obscure procedure known as reconciliation to clear the way for Senate passage of a comprehensive health bill with a 51-vote majority, rather than the 60 votes that would otherwise be needed.
“It may be a struggle to get to 60,” said Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, who is working on the legislation.
via News Analysis – Democrats Consider Bypassing G.O.P. on National Health Care Plan – NYTimes.com.
GM plans to close U.S. factories for nine weeks
OPS: Of course the question becomes: after 9 weeks – will they reopen?
GM plans to close U.S. factories for nine weeks
DETROIT (AP) — Two people briefed on the plan say General Motors Corp. will close most of its U.S. factories for up to nine weeks this summer because of slumping sales and growing inventories of unsold vehicles.
The people did not know exactly when the shutdowns would occur, but both say they will include the normal two-week closure in July to change from one model year to the next. Neither person wanted to be identified because workers have not been told of the shutdowns.
GM spokesman Chris Lee would not comment other than to say the company notifies employees before making any production cuts public.
via GM plans to close U.S. factories for nine weeks | ksdk.com | St. Louis, MO.
Gardener’s Guide – Global Warming Means New Garden Zone Maps
OPS: Great interactive map with this one
Global Warming Means New Garden Zone Maps
Many gardeners are familiar with the USDA’s garden zone maps. They help us know which plants to put in our backyards. They are determined by examining rainfall patterns, sunshine and temperature.
The map below shows how the National Arbor Day Foundation has updated the map to reflect recent trends. This shows clearly how global warming is affecting the plants that we can plant in our backyards.
How is global warming hurting my garden? (This PDF is 287 Kb in size. Do you need PDF help?)
via Gardener’s Guide – Global Warming Means New Garden Zone Maps – National Wildlife Federation.
A Pentagon Cyber-Command Is in the Works
A Pentagon Cyber-Command Is in the Works
The Obama administration is finalizing plans for a new Pentagon command to coordinate the security of military computer networks and to develop new offensive cyber-weapons, sources said last night.
Planning for the reorganization of Defense Department and intelligence agencies is underway, and a decision is imminent, according to a person familiar with the White House plans.
The new command would affect U.S. Strategic Command, whose mission includes ensuring U.S. “freedom of action” in space and cyberspace, and the National Security Agency, which shares Pentagon cybersecurity responsibilities with the Defense Information Systems Agency.
via A Pentagon Cyber-Command Is in the Works – washingtonpost.com.
Hitler’s Mein Kampf Seen As Self-Help Guide For India’s Business Students
Hitler’s Mein Kampf Seen As Self-Help Guide For India’s Business Students
Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf has become a popular book among students in India looking for tips on management tactics, reports the Daily Telegraph. Students striving to become successful businessmen and women are using the Nazi leader’s infamous autobiography as a self-help book.
Sales of the book over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year….
Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we’re happy to sell it to them,” said Sohin Lakhani, owner of Mumbai-based Embassy books who reprints Mein Kampf every quarter and shrugs off any moral issues in publishing the book.
via Hitler’s Mein Kampf Seen As Self-Help Guide For India’s Business Students.
Global recession worst since Depression, IMF says
Global recession worst since Depression, IMF says
IMF SAYS GLOBAL ECONOMY LIKELY TO SHRINK FOR 1ST TIME IN 60 YEARS
WASHINGTON — The global economy is expected to lurch into reverse this year for the first time since World War II with appalling consequences for nations large and small _ trillions of dollars in lost business, millions of people thrust into hunger and homelessness and crime on the rise.
And the pain won’t stop this year, the International Monetary Fund declared Wednesday, for what it said was “by far the deepest global recession since the Great Depression.” To cushion the blow and head off further damage next year, the IMF is calling for more stimulus projects from the word’s governments, including major spending for public works projects.
Even with many countries taking bold steps to turn things around, the global economy will shrink 1.3 percent this year, the IMF predicted in its dour forecast.
“We can be fairly confident that in 2010 or even 2011, economies will not be back to normal,” said IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard. “Which means that governments should today basically think at least about contingent plans for infrastructure spending. … Next year will be too late.”
via Global recession worst since Depression, IMF says.
Police handcuff news crew covering traffic accident
Police handcuff news crew covering traffic accident
When El Paso tv reporter Darren Hunt was asked in a recent interview how he enjoys working for ABC-7, he replied “Life is good and I love El Paso. This is an incredible news town.”
El Paso may have gotten a little more incredible than Hunt would have liked when he found himself handcuffed and detained by a police officer this week, just for attempting to report on a traffic accident.
According to ABC-7, Hunt and cameraman Ric Dupont were sent out to film a flipped semi on the interstate. They parked on the shoulder of the other side of the road as men in military fatigues were helping pull the driver out of the cab.
At that point, Sgt. Raul Ramirez ordered them to leave. When Hunt persisted in trying to ask the men in fatigues what was going on, Ramirez jumped over the barrier and began yelling, “Get in your truck and move!”
via The Raw Story | Police handcuff news crew covering traffic accident.
School districts hand out 5,500 layoff notices
OPS: Sacrificing education and the future for illegal wars and Wall Street greed
School districts hand out 5,500 layoff notices
The Arizona Republic
An estimated 5,500 employees at 120 school districts in the state were recently handed pink slips warning them they may not have jobs next school year, an Arizona Republic survey has found.
About 4,000 of those employees are teachers.
Most school districts have issued layoff notices because they still do not have a state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. They also had to comply with a state law requiring them to tell teachers by April 15 whether their jobs might be cut.
via School districts hand out 5,500 layoff notices.
Turley: ‘God help us’ if torture only gets a ’9/11 commission’
Turley: ‘God help us’ if torture only gets a ’9/11 commission’
The recent release of Bush administration torture memos has given rise to calls for prosecution of the Justice Department lawyers who wrote those memos. However, law professor Jonathan Turley believes that this may represent a deliberate attempt to draw attention away from George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the other high Bush administration officials who ordered the torture.
“That’s the really strange thing,” Turley told MSNBC’s David Shuster on Tuesday. “In the last week or so, we’ve seen an effort to define a potential investigation in terms of the lawyers who wrote these memos. … A war crime investigation does not look at the people who drove the trains — they look at the people who told the trains to roll.”
“George Bush and Vice President Cheney, the CIA director, the attorney general … implemented, in full knowledge that it was a war crime, the torture program,” Turley emphasized. “The effort to define it in terms of lawyers is something of a Beltway shift. That is, it’s setting us up for failure.”
via The Raw Story | Turley: ‘God help us’ if torture only gets a ’9/11 commission’.
FDA will authorize Plan B for 17-year-olds without a prescription.
FDA will authorize Plan B for 17-year-olds without a prescription.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman concluded that Bush administration officials let “political considerations, delays, and implausible justifications” rule decision-making on the emergency contraception Plan B. Korman ruled that “at the behest of political actors,” the FDA commissioner “decided to deny non-prescription access to women 16 and younger before FDA scientific review staff had completed their reviews.” The FDA is now announcing that it will be complying with Korman’s order and reversing the Bush-era policy. Women 17 years old will be able to purchase the emergency contraception without a prescription.
via Think Progress » FDA will authorize Plan B for 17-year-olds without a prescription..
Graham: Prosecution of Bush administration torture officials should not be ‘taken off the table.’
Graham: Prosecution of Bush administration torture officials should not be ‘taken off the table.’
Former Democratic senator Bob Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2001 to 2003, said today in an interview with the Huffington Post that “criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials involved in implementing torture policies should not ‘be taken off the table.’” Graham added that it is “premature with the current state of knowledge to determine if that is appropriate.” Further, Graham said he favored a bipartisan 9/11 commission-style inquiry into what “transpired during the Bush years ‘so that there could be a record that is not too distant from the acts themselves for the benefit of the American people and the benefit of history.’”
Rohrabacher defends Cheney: ‘Wait a minute, this person did some very good things.’
OPS: Bullshit.
Rohrabacher defends Cheney: ‘Wait a minute, this person did some very good things.’
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) appeared on Fox New’s Your World with Neil Cavuto to discuss his exchange earlier today with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in which Clinton took a shot at Dick Cheney’s credibility. Cavuto lauded Rohrabacher as being a “pretty gutsy guy” for defending Cheney “in a packed room that everyone made a laughing stock of the [former] Vice President.” Cavuto then asked Rohrabacher why other Republicans aren’t sticking up for Cheney:
CAVUTO: [S]ome Republicans have been oddly silent in defending him or not. You took the fight on. Do you think that the vice president has been misrepresented here?
ROHRABACHER: I think that there’s a lot of people in this town that don’t have any courage, when someone is being belittled and they’re under attack, to stand up and say, ‘wait a minute, this person did some very good things.’
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Rohrabacher defends Cheney: ‘Wait a minute, this person did some very good things.’.
Senator Feinstein Offers Help To FDIC Who Then Awards Above Market Contract To Husband
Senator Feinstein Offers Help To FDIC Who Then Awards Above Market Contract To Husband
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Folks, whatever your political leanings, you need to watch what is happening in Washington DC these days. The government is getting more and more into the business of the business of America. And this includes real estate.
Senator Feinstein of California has arranged 25 billion dollars to go to the FDIC, which then awarded a contract to her husbands company at above market rates to sell foreclosures. Even if this is on the up and up, it is still shady.
But with the government forcing itself into the private sector and using it’s influence to choose the winners and the losers, you have to start watching Washington.
And you have 3 choices:
* You can play the game and buy influence and business,
* You can ignore it and lose out to your rivals, or
* You can work to change Washington and it’s dynamics.
But the days of ignoring government and hoping it stays out of your way are disappearing fast. And if you do not believe me, try to sell foreclosures while competing against Senator Feinstein’s husband.
Norton Anti-Virus Fails The Test – Beat by Free Software!
Norton Anti-Virus Fails The Test – Beat by Free Software!
I haven’t written for a while as my home life has been extremely demanding since I’ve had to play “Mr. Mom” while my sister was recuperating from major surgery. Furthermore, I have been almost speechless with what I have seen in the political arena during the past couple of months – and until I have a better grasp on the situation, I have chosen to remain silent as I watch this made-for Hollywood script play out – and lately, the “script” hasn’t been to my liking.
I began writing about politics when it was obvious the Bush administration was trashing the rights of the general population. My real expertise lies in the fact that I’ve been a career salesman and an IT Professional for almost thirty (30) years. I have been the lead technician and then sales manager in one of Atlanta’s premier service organizations, worked for Digital Equipment Corporation in their support unit (Lead tech there also.), and managed computer stores for others as well as owning my own store(s). I was also a Microsoft Partner and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of service and computer systems during the course of my employment.
via Norton Anti-Virus Fails The Test – Beat by Free Software! | Justanothercoverup.com.
The Collapse of “The Movement”: the Resistance and the Revolutionary Movement We Need
The Collapse of “The Movement”: the Resistance and the Revolutionary Movement We Need – By Andy Zee | RevCom
Part I. Introduction
A grievous, shameful and dangerous state of affairs permeates the movements of opposition in the U.S. Their outlook and politics have collapsed into passive acquiescence and even overt criminal complicity with the policies and actions of the ruling class, and are doing so by promoting the deadly illusion that the election of Barack Obama is bringing progressive change.
This is bullshit, it’s knowable, and it must change.
Some basic reality of Obama’s first 80 days:
* Obama has escalated the illegal war in Afghanistan with an additional 21,000 troops.
* Obama has expanded the war into Pakistan areas, using troops and unmanned drones.
* Obama has extended the deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq to 2010—and even that date may be extended by the Pentagon.
* Obama said he plans to leave 35,000-50,000 troops plus 50,000-100,000 mercenaries in Iraq after that, effectively continuing the illegal occupation.
* Obama said he would close Guantanamo within 1 year, yet prisoners there are still being force fed with tubes shoved down their throats.
* Obama approved $60 million to double the size of Bagram prison in Afghanistan.
* Obama’s Justice Department has defended the Bush policy of illegal warrantless wiretapping and asserted far broader claims of executive branch immunity than even the Bush regime.
This is not all, and it is not without lived impact
“Hizzhonor:” Chicago Politics Under Richard M. Daley
“Hizzhonor:” Chicago Politics Under Richard M. Daley
First the father, Richard J. (mayor from April 20, 1955 – December 20, 1976), now the son. To Chicagoans – “Hizzhonor,” and for some – “Hizzhonor Da Mare.” Authors Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor called the elder an “American Pharaoh.” For former Chicago columnist, Mike Royko, he was “Boss” in his 1971 book by that title. When he died on December 20, 1976, Royko wrote:
“If ever a man reflected a city, it was Richard J. Daley,” for better or worse. He was “strong (and) hard-driving” with Texas-sized ambitions, but also “arrogant, crude, conniving, ruthless, suspicious, intolerant, raucous, hot-tempered, devious, big and powerful.” He was Chicago.
Now the son – mayor since April 24, 1989. His official biography reads:
Now in his sixth mayoral term, “Richard M. Daley has earned a national reputation for his innovative, community-based programs (on) education, public safety, neighborhood development and other challenges facing American cities.” More on that below.
On April 25, 2005. Time magazine called him “the nation’s top urban executive.” A week earlier, it said:
“He wields near-imperial power” (in) steer(ing) the Windy City into a period of impressive stability, with declining unemployment and splashy growth.” Never mind that the facts belie the hyperbole. More on that as well.
Earlier, the Wall Street Journal praised him as “a fix-it, problem-solving man” and most recently in a February 7 interview as: “The President’s Mayor….whose personality and history are inseparable from Chicago(‘s) political culture….successful and enormously popular.” He hopes bringing the 2016 Olympics to Chicago will “showcase the city (as a) gleaming tourist destination (and) At this stage in the process, the city’s bid is not just Chicago anymore. It’s the United States of America.” Indeed, and like the nation, Chicago and Illinois reek with problems, corruption, and are for sale to the highest bidders, business ones, of course.
via “Hizzhonor:” Chicago Politics Under Richard M. Daley | AfterDowningStreet.org.
Study: Pre-School Investments Increase GDP And Pay For Themselves
Study: Pre-School Investments Increase GDP And Pay For Themselves
ap090419014056.jpgWe’ve been arguing that the Obama administration should seriously consider investments in human capital, not only to reverse America’s falling educational attainment, but also because it makes sense economically.
While most of the administration’s focus in this area has been on college accessibility and retention, that shouldn’t be the only avenue for investment. According to a study from the Center on Children and Families, an investment in preschool education would provide a desperately needed boost to our human capital supply while also causing the economy to grow. As the study’s authors noted, “well-educated individuals are more likely to be employed at all points in their lives and live longer than those who are less educated which in turn increases labor supply and thus GDP“:
via Wonk Room » Study: Pre-School Investments Increase GDP And Pay For Themselves.
PhRMA’s Compromise: Subsidize Our Over-Priced Products And Provide Us With More Customers
PhRMA’s Compromise: Subsidize Our Over-Priced Products And Provide Us With More Customers
Families USA and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) are joining forces to launch a multi-million lobbying campaign to convince Congress to increase Medicaid eligibility to 133% of the federal poverty level, offer income-adjusted subsidies, prevent insurers in the individual market for denying coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions, and cap out-of-pocket expenses.
PhRMA may be exploiting the coalition to curry favor with the public and fend-off proposals for a new public health care plan, but proposals that expand affordable coverage to the neediest Americans should not be vetoed just because they bolster the profits of private industry. In fact, as Families USA President Ron Pollack pointed out during a recent interview with ThinkProgress, having industry stakeholders “engage in a way that is designed to enable… [reform] to take place in a way that fits their business model, but yet helps people who are currently shut out of the healtchare system — I think that’s a step in the right direction.”
The direction may be right but it’s unclear how this early cooperation bodes for comprehensive health care reform. In fact, Big Pharma, like the insurance industry, is willing to support government intervention that bolsters its bottom line. In this case, rather than lowering drug prices — in fact, “the prices of a dozen top-selling drugs increased by double digits in the first quarter from a year earlier” and Americans are still paying some of the highest prices in the world — the industry is urging the government to subsidize PhRMA products for Americans who can’t otherwise afford them.
STUDY: China Spending $12.6 Million Every Hour Greening Their Economy
STUDY: China Spending $12.6 Million Every Hour Greening Their Economy
China GDP StimulusUnless we act now, we might lose the race to the clean energy economy of the future.
A new report from the Center for American Progress points out that the United States is slipping behind other nations in the development and deployment of clean energy and efficient infrastructure even as China spends $12.6 million every hour greening their economy.
Read the full study here.
China, as part of their two-year stimulus plan, is poised to spend 3% of their GDP a year on public investments in renewable energy, low-carbon vehicles, high-speed rail, an advanced electric grid, efficiency improvements, and other water-treatment and pollution controls. This is about $12.6 million every hour. In the United States, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act invests about half as much as China on comparable priorities. This represents less than half of one percent of our 2008 gross domestic product.
via Wonk Room » STUDY: China Spending $12.6 Million Every Hour Greening Their Economy.
Economic Analysis: Waxman-Markey Clean Energy Act Can Cut Pollution, Create $465 Billion In Wealth A Year
Economic Analysis: Waxman-Markey Clean Energy Act Can Cut Pollution, Create $465 Billion In Wealth A Year
According to a new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Americans can “significantly reduce carbon emissions and lower energy bills” by implementing green economy legislation. In a two-year study, UCS analyzed the economic, emissions, and energy effects of their recommendations for clean energy, clean vehicles, and global warming standards. The UCS approach of comprehensive energy, transportation, and cap policies is similar to that in the American Clean Energy Security Act, released in draft form earlier this month by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA). The analysis finds that by 2030, net household savings will reach $900 a year, while oil use drops 6 million barrels a day and global warming pollution is cut in half:
Billions Of Dollars In Annual Savings Across The Nation
Regional Savings
Source: 4/22/09 Congressional Testimony, Kevin Knobloch, Union of Concerned Scientists
UCS will soon release the complete version of its two-year study, “Climate 2030: A National Blueprint for a Clean Energy Economy,” which uses a modified version of the Department of Energy’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) to project “how UCS recommendations would reduce emissions and lower energy costs over the next 20 years.” Tomorrow, UCS president Kevin Knobloch will testify before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about the initial findings of the Clean Energy Blueprint:
EPA Analysis: Clean Energy Act Will ‘Play A Critical Role In The American Economic Recovery And Job Growth’
EPA Analysis: Clean Energy Act Will ‘Play A Critical Role In The American Economic Recovery And Job Growth’
EPA Preliminary Analysis
EPA’s Waxman-Markey Discussion Draft Preliminary Analysis: Executive Summary, Full Analysis
As Congressional hearings on draft green economy legislation begin, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the bill will “play a critical role in the American economic recovery and job growth.” The initial EPA analysis, based on the draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) released by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), looks only at the effects of the cap-and-trade “market-based emissions program,” without modeling the effects of the complementary renewable energy and energy efficiency standards in this comprehensive legislation. Despite the limited review, the EPA has found that Waxman-Markey would “enable American workers to serve in a central role in our clean energy transformation”:
Do The Stress Tests Favor Wall Street Banks?
Do The Stress Tests Favor Wall Street Banks?
ap090324015495.jpgA few weeks back, we noted that the stress tests being performed on the nation’s largest banks may amount to a papering over of the banking system’s ills. Today, the Associated Press released Federal Reserve documents showing that this suspicion may be accurate, as the tests “take a harsher view of loans than of other troubled assets,” which is an approach that favors the Wall Street banks grappling with securitized assets:
The regulators’ focus could spell trouble for big regional banks undergoing the tests. Their portfolios have more individual loans and fewer of the big pools of securitized loans that Wall Street giants specialize in. Some analysts said regulators are favoring the largest banks because if even one failed that would pose a severe economic risk. Banks that deal in securities are more interconnected to other corners of the global financial system.
via Wonk Room » Do The Stress Tests Favor Wall Street Banks?.
Corporations Lowering Their Tax Rate More Than 20 Points Due To Offshore Deferral
Corporations Lowering Their Tax Rate More Than 20 Points Due To Offshore Deferral
As we’ve noted before, the business lobby has gone into high gear to defeat the Obama administration’s proposal to stop allowing corporations to defer taxation on profits they make overseas. “This one hits the bottom line of companies more than any other issue right now. We have to defeat it,” said Ralph Hellmann, the lead lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council.
With that in mind, it’s worth looking at how corporations use this deferral to avoid paying taxes. And courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, we have the amount by which some corporations lowered their effective tax rate in 2008 thanks to the current law:
Corporation Percentage taxes lowered
- General Electric 26.9%
- Pfizer 20.2%
- Hewlett-Packard 16.9%
- Cisco 16.1%
- Coca-Cola 14.3%
- Johnson & Johnson 12.4%
- Merck and Co. 11.7%
Remember, the statutory rate that the right-wing is always up-in-arms about — but which few corporations actually pay — is 35 percent. But General Electric was actually able to lower its effective rate all the way down to 5.5 percent, due to its use of deferrals, tax havens, and other intricacies of the corporate tax code.
via Wonk Room » Corporations Lowering Their Tax Rate More Than 20 Points Due To Offshore Deferral.
Possible Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich – The Dark Side
Newt Gingrich’s Skeleton Closet
Mr. Family Values is amazingly similar to Bill Clinton – both are pot smoking, draft-dodging adulterers from poor Southern families. Click on the allegation of your choice:
Adultery:
Callista Bisek. Anne Manning. The unnamed “young volunteer”. Are we missing anyone?
Draft dodger
Dead-Beat Dad
Family Values? Pressing Wife for Divorce in the Hospital
House Banking Scandal: Newt Bounced 22 Checks
Book Deals: Murdoch’s $4.5 Million wasn’t the first
GOPAC sleaze: Taxpayer subsidies for his partisan campaign course.
Corporate reward: $2,500/month to Newt’s wife
Who Owns Him?
more……
via Possible Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich – The Dark Side.
Key to preventing allergies and asthma: Lice?
Key to preventing allergies and asthma: Lice?
Study of mice suggests allergies may heightened by hyper-clean living
WASHINGTON – Could lice be the secret to preventing asthma?
Research on mice shows that those carrying the most lice had calmer immune systems than uninfested rodents, and they said their finding may have implications for studying the causes of asthma and allergies in people.
The study, published in the BioMed Central journal BMC Biology, adds to evidence supporting the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which holds that the rise in asthma and allergies can be linked to hyper-clean living
WASHINGTON – Could lice be the secret to preventing asthma?
Research on mice shows that those carrying the most lice had calmer immune systems than uninfested rodents, and they said their finding may have implications for studying the causes of asthma and allergies in people.
The study, published in the BioMed Central journal BMC Biology, adds to evidence supporting the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which holds that the rise in asthma and allergies can be linked to hyper-clean living
via Key to preventing allergies and asthma: Lice? – Allergies and asthma- msnbc.com.
Holding Pelosi Accountable For Torture
Holding Pelosi Accountable For Torture – By Andrew Sullivan
The speaker was briefed on waterboarding and other torture techniques used by the White House. She was part of the select group of congressmen and women told of the program. She did nothing to stop it and now claims she was never told it was going to be used. Porter Goss has a different recollection:
“We were briefed, and we certainly understood what C.I.A. was doing,” Mr. Goss said in an interview. “Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough.”
For what it’s worth, I believe Goss. Getting to the bottom of how the US became a torturing nation is not about one party or another. It’s about getting accountability from all those who made it happen.
via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
GM won’t make $1 billion June debt payment
GM won’t make $1B June debt payment
June payment would be due a day after government’s deadline for company to submit restructuring or bankruptcy plan.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors won’t be making a June 1 debt payment of $1 billion, a company spokeswoman said Wednesday.
The debt is due the day after GM’s government-imposed May 30 deadline to have an aggressive restructuring plan in place or be left to face bankruptcy.
GM (GM, Fortune 500) said it wouldn’t make the June 1 payment because as part of its restructuring, the company will be offering to exchange bondholder’s debt for equity in the company.
“We’re going to have an exchange offer open anyway,” said GM spokeswoman Julie Gibson.
A press representative for GM bondholders was not immediately available to comment.
via GM won’t make $1 billion June debt payment – Apr. 22, 2009.
Pelosi Knew About Harman Wiretap
Pelosi Knew About Harman Wiretap
The National Security Agency briefed Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “a few years ago” that they had wiretapped Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), Pelosi revealed Wednesday.
But Pelosi said she was not told what federal eavesdroppers picked up on the call — and never alerted Harman to it.
“It was not my position to raise it with Jane Harman,” Pelosi told reporters at the Christian Science Monitor lunch. “In fact, I didn’t even know if what they were talking about was real. All they said was that she was wiretapped.”
Pelosi also offered her strongest support to date for Harman, a sometimes-foe that has been rattled this week by charges that the wiretap caught her agreeing to seek leniency for two suspected spies in return for help securing the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee. Harman was ranking member on Intelligence at the time of the alleged wiretap, and she was ultimately passed over for the chairmanship by Pelosi when Democrats won the House majority in 2006.
“I have great confidence in Jane Harman,” Pelosi said. “She’s a patriotic American. She would never do anything to hurt her country.”
via Pelosi Knew About Harman Wiretap – Roll Call.
Reduce the Meat in Your Diet: Become a Weekday Vegetarian
Reduce the Meat in Your Diet: Become a Weekday Vegetarian
Between Passover and Easter we’ve been going to a lot of family dinners. Roasts were served and leftovers were sent home with us. My husband complained that he’s been eating too much meat and he’s ready to go back to our regular eating habits, which means mostly vegetarian meals. We eat very little meat at our house now and my cooking has changed quite a bit in the past five or so years.
There are lots of compelling reasons to become vegetarian, both personal and political, but not everyone is willing to give up meat consumption entirely. There is a growing trend towards being weekday vegetarians, or flexitarians. In a way, it’s the old model of moderation in everything.
By cutting meat out of your diet entirely you save 5,000 lbs of carbon emissions per year, so even reducing your meat intake to two out of seven days will still make a big difference. A vegetarian diet is significantly cheaper than eating meat every day, so with the savings you can afford to buy locally raised meat and vegetables and save the emissions from the 1,200 miles that the average American ingredients travel. With need for pasture lands, that land could be re-forested with a further decrease in CO2.
via Reduce the Meat in Your Diet: Become a Weekday Vegetarian : Planet Green.
2010 Prius To Actually Get Cheaper
2010 Prius To Actually Get Cheaper
NEW YORK — Toyota Motor Corp. said it won’t change the price tag on its next-generation Prius when the hybrid hits U.S. showrooms in late May and will release an even cheaper version later this year, as the automaker aims to compete with the latest hybrid from rival Honda Motor Co.
Toyota said Tuesday the 2010 Prius will start at $22,000 _ unchanged from the base price for the 2009 model. Toyota will release a more basic model later this year starting at $21,000, the Japanese automaker said, but did not elaborate on what features it will or won’t come equipped with.
Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker by sales, has long been the leader in the hybrid market, and the Prius remains the most popular hybrid in the U.S. But Prius sales fell 57 percent in March. Although Toyota attributed much of the decline to the sell-down process ahead of the rollout of its latest model, hybrid sales overall have fallen sharply as gas prices plunged and as the economic downturn makes it more difficult for consumers to pony up the premium that many hybrids carry.
via 2010 Prius To Actually Get Cheaper.
Can We Control the Weather? – ABC News
Can We Control the Weather?
Many Have Attempted to Change Weather, but Nearly All Have Failed
Why don’t we just wrap the entire solar system in aluminum foil so we can capture every bit of energy released by the sun, and use that power to rebuild Earth and even re-engineer our neighboring terrestrial planets?
That idea sounds almost as crazy today as it did half a century ago, when it was first proposed by one of the world’s most creative thinkers. But in some ways, we’re moving closer.
No one is talking about building the “Dyson Sphere” that astrophysicist Freeman Dyson conceptualized so long ago, but some thought is being given to far out ideas that could move us closer to taking control of our planet.
But are they feasible? Can we really figure out how to use orbiting solar power plants to deflate and redirect hurricanes? Can we build mini-volcanoes that will flood the upper atmosphere with tiny particles to help shield us from the sun and curb global warming? Can we eliminate major earthquakes?
via Can We Control the Weather? – ABC News.
NY Times Handing Out Exec Bonuses While Cutting Employee Salaries
At a time when New York Times managers are forcing all employees to take a five percent pay cut, and demanding 
even larger sacrifices from the NYT-owned Boston Globe, top executives of the beleaguered newspaper received substantial bonus and fringe benefit payments over and above their salaries, according to a proxy statement released on March 11.
These bonuses and benefits to top Times company executives have provoked growing resentment among Times staffers, and frank anger from Globe reporters who have been warned by Times executives that their paper will be folded if they do not come up with $20 million in pay cuts and layoffs.
On Tuesday, the Times disclosed a $74 million first quarter loss, 221 times larger than the $335,000 loss in the first quarter of 2008.
According to the New York Times proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, corporate president and CEO Janet L. Robinson received a total compensation package valued at $5.58 million in 2008, up well over a million from the $4.14 million she received in 2007, and the $4.4 million she received in 2006.
via Bonuses To New York Times Execs Under Fire.
Sen. Whitehouse: Anyone who acted outside of OLC limits is ‘wide open’ to torture prosecution.
Sen. Whitehouse: Anyone who acted outside of OLC limits is ‘wide open’ to torture prosecution.
This morning on MSNBC, host Norah O’Donnell asked Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) about President Obama leaving the door open to torture prosecutions yesterday. Obama said yesterday that the decision of whether to bring torture charges is more “for the attorney general…and I don’t want to prejudge that.” Whitehouse agreed with Obama’s assessment, but added that anyone who exceeded the limits outlined in the OLC torture memos would be “wide open for potential prosecution”:
WHITEHOUSE: If someone reasonably relied on orders and legal authorities that they were given, if they stayed within those authorities, if they limited themselves to the predicates of those authorities, and if they acted in good faith, then yeah, there is no case. But those who acted outside the authorities. … Those who acted either unreasonably or in bad faith, I think they are wide open for potential prosecution and that’s a decision that down the road…the attorney general will have to make.
Watch it:
Report: Bush Officials Relied On Communist Torture Techniques To Press Detainees For Al Qaeda/Iraq Link
Report: Bush Officials Relied On Communist Torture Techniques To Press Detainees For Al Qaeda/Iraq Link
Late yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee made public an unclassified version of its November 2008 report, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody.” The report reveals that top Bush administration officials were so eager to start harsh interrogations on detainees that they often ignored warnings from military advisers, skipped a thorough legal review process, and failed to fully investigate the origins of the dangerous techniques. Moreover, the consequences of their actions trickled down to lower-ranking officers and led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Here are some highlights from the report:
– Top Officials Were Unaware Of The Gruesome Origins Of The Interrogation Program. The Bush administration’s interrogation program was based on the U.S. military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE), which is used to train U.S. troops if they are ever tortured by an enemy that doesn’t adhere to the Geneva Conventions. However, none of the top CIA, Cabinet, or congressional officials who approved of the Bush administration’s recommendations knew that SERE was designed around “torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War…that had wrung false confessions from Americans.” These officials were unaware that veteran SERE trainers said the methods were ineffective for getting useful information and the former military psychologist who recommended that the CIA adopt SERE “had never conducted a real interrogation.” One CIA official called the process “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm.”
Torture architect John Rizzo is still serving as the CIA’s acting general counsel.
Torture architect John Rizzo is still serving as the CIA’s acting general counsel.
One of the important players in developing the Bush administration’s interrogation program was CIA General Counsel John Rizzo. Rizzo was part of a group of Bush administration lawyers that pushed for the authorization of torture. So what is Rizzo doing now? Marcy Wheeler notes that he is still serving as acting general counsel at the CIA:
On April 16, President Obama nominated attorney Stephen Preston, although he has not yet been approved by the Senate. Rizzo was never able to move beyond his acting title and become the agency’s general counsel; the White House had to withdraw his nomination because of protests from key senators and human rights groups.
via Think Progress » Torture architect John Rizzo is still serving as the CIA’s acting general counsel..
LEAKED! Bank Stress Test Results !
LEAKED! Bank Stress Test Results !
The Turner Radio Network has obtained “stress test” results for the top 19 Banks in the USA. (Corrections/clarifications below in orange)
The stress tests were conducted to determine how well, if at all, the top 19 banks in the USA could withstand further or future economic hardship.
When the tests were completed, regulators within the Treasury and inside the Federal Reserve began bickering with each other as to whether or not the test results should be made public. That bickering continues to this very day as evidenced by this “main stream media” report.
The Turner Radio Network has obtained the stress test results. They are very bad. The most salient points from the stress tests appear below.
1) Of the top nineteen (19) banks in the nation, sixteen (16) are already technically insolvent. (Based upon the “alternative more adverse” scenario which had a 3.3 percent contraction of the U.S. Economy in 2009, accompanied by 8.9 percent unemployment, followed by 0.5 percent growth of the U.S. Economy but a 10.3 percent jobless in 2010.)
2) Of the 16 banks that are already technically insolvent, not even one can withstand any disruption of cash flow at all or any further deterioration in non-paying loans. (Without further government injections of cash)
via Scoop: Blogwatch: LEAKED! Bank Stress Test Results !.
Jesus Worshipers Run Amok in Florida Public School
Jesus Worshipers Run Amok in Florida Public School
Public schools in St. Johns County, Florida have been infiltrated by Christianist radicals from the top of the organization down, leaving the community in an uproar and the school district in federal court.
The trouble started when several teachers at Webster Elementary School in St. Augustine decided this little ditty, “In God We Still Trust” by the country music group Diamond Rio, should be sung by third graders in their annual assembly at the end of the year.
Parents of several children objected to the song, which calls for an end to separation of church and state through a Christian uprising.
Now there are those among us
Who want to push him out
And erase his name from everything
This country’s all about
From the schoolhouse to the courthouse
They’re silencing his word
Now it’s time for all believers
To make our voices heard
The parents were told their children didn’t have to sing this song. There’s just one little catch. If they chose to abstain they would be barred from participation in the entire program. Cue up the first lawsuit.
via Pensito Review » Jesus Worshipers Run Amok in Florida Public School.
How Chernobyl could happen in the US
How Chernobyl could happen in the US – by Harvey Wasserman
A catastrophe like Chernobyl could happen here. It’s the radioactive core of the second biggest lie in US industrial history.
The atomic pushers say such a disaster is “impossible” at a US reactor. But Chernobyl’s explosion spewed radiation all over the world. And Sunday’s tragic 23rd anniversary reminds us that any reactor on this planet can kill innumerable people anywhere, at any time, by terror, error and more.
It further clarifies why yet another grab at billions of taxpayer dollars for new reactor construction must be stopped NOW!
The BIGGEST lie in US industrial history is that “nobody died at Three Mile Island.” Just before last month’s thirtieth anniversary of the central Pennsylvania melt down, critical new evidence was completely ignored by the corporate media.
Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, a former industry executive, reported in Harrisburg that new findings show far more radiation may have been released than previously estimated. Epidemiologist Stephen Wing of the University of North Carolina joined in a study indicating human health was indeed compromised downwind.
To this day neither TMI’s owners nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knows how much radiation escaped, where it went or whom it impacted. The Gundersen/Wing findings cast new light on the question of building more reactors.
But they got a Stalinesque blackout from ALL corporate media, which parroted the official lie that “nobody was harmed” at the 1979 disaster.
This week comes official Radioactive Lie #2: “Chernobyl can’t happen here.”
via Scoop: How Chernobyl could happen in the US.
Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link
Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.
The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush’s quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.
via Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link | McClatchy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): Socialist Successes
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): Socialist Successes
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Representative Spencer Bachus is one of the only people I know from Alabama. I bet I’m the only socialist he knows. I’m certainly the only one the congressman from Birmingham could name after darkly claiming that there are 17 socialists lurking in the House of Representatives.
I doubt that there are any other socialists, let alone 17 more, in all of the Congress. I also respectfully doubt that Spencer Bachus understands much about democratic socialism. I hope this is an opportunity to shed some light on a viewpoint that deserves more attention throughout America and in our capital.
At its best, Washington brings people such as us together to fight for our principles and work things out for the good of the country. Spencer and I used to serve together on the House Financial Services Committee. I don’t mean to hurt him back home, but the truth is that he even cosponsored an amendment of mine once on credit card ripoffs.
At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy. A standard refrain in John McCain’s presidential stump speeches last fall was a claim that Barack Obama’s Senate voting record was more liberal than Senate’s only socialist, yours truly. That is nonsense on several levels. Even as political hyperbole, the attack didn’t work out all that well for my colleague from Arizona.
Still, branding someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh. Some, such as Mike Huckabee, intentionally blur the differences between socialism and communism, between democracy and totalitarianism. “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff,” Huckabee told last winter’s gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.
I was honored last year to show Ambassador Pekka Lintu of Finland around my home state of Vermont. There was standing-room only at a town meeting where people came to hear more about one of the world’s most successful economic and social models.
via Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): Socialist Successes | BuzzFlash.org.
ABC News Intentionally Misleading Viewers with RFK-Obama Clean Coal Story
ABC News Intentionally Misleading Viewers with RFK-Obama Clean Coal Story
Here is the first paragraph and a box on the left side of the page:
“Clean coal is a dirty lie,” says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it “indentured servants” of the coal industry.
The reader is left with the distinct impression that Robert Kennedy Jr. called President Obama an indentured servant to the coal industry today. RFK has been calling politicians “indentured servants” for years. One problem: he didn’t actually say it about President Obama. Essentially, ABC pulled together a collection of old quotes and mashed them together out of context to create tension in their story.
Here’s RFK on July 7, 2007 at Live Earth:
Now we’ve all heard the oil industry, and the coal industry, and their indentured servants in the political process telling us that global climate stability is a luxury that can’t afford -that we have to choose now between economic prosperity on the one hand, and environmental protection on the other – and that is a false choice. In 100% of the situations, good economic policy is identical to good environmental policy.
And here he is on December 12th, 2008, referring to President Bush, testifying before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming:
via ABC News Intentionally Misleading Viewers with RFK-Obama Clean Coal Story : EnviroKnow.
The Legal Case Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Et Al., Is Murder One, Not Just War Crimes
The Legal Case Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Et Al., Is Murder One, Not Just War Crimes
THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG – by Mark Karlin
BuzzFlash fully supports trying Bush, Cheney, and their band of fellow sadists for war crimes, but while they are in the courtroom, let’s not forget Murder One. Apparently, many in the mainstream press and blogosphere already have.
The focus right now is on legal memos justifying the horrifying and numbing repetition of torture against “high profile” targets. We have a short memory in America — and most of what was in these memos — except for the diabolical excess of the waterboarding and the medieval torture by insects — was, as President Obama has said, pretty much already known.
Also known, but not discussed at this time, is that less upper echelon Al-Qaeda figures were murdered as a result of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture jihad (euphemestically called in the mainstream corporate press “harsh” or “enhanced interrogation”).
Uh, remember those photos of bludgeoned prisoners in body bags that came out of Abu Ghraib? (And we still have only seen a small portion of the visual evidence.) Those people were murdered as a result of the green light on torture. Even the Pentagon has declared some of the Guantanamo dead were victims of homicide. Then there are many “renditioned” individuals who disappeared into torture prisons around the world and have never reappeared.
In 2008, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and a man who came over from the dark side to tell the truth, testified before Congress that a minimum of 25 people died in U.S. detention as a result of homicides — and that the figure was probably higher.
Group Seeks Review of Ex-Alabama Governor’s Conviction
Review of Governor’s Conviction Sought
75 former state AGs Urge Review of Siegelman Case
Less than a month after the Justice Department asked a judge to drop the case against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska because of prosecutorial misconduct, 75 former state attorneys general from both parties have urged Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to conduct a similar investigation of the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, who was convicted nearly three years ago on bribery and corruption charges.
In a letter to Mr. Holder, the attorneys general said Mr. Siegelman’s defense lawyers had raised “gravely troublesome facts” about his prosecution that raise questions about the fairness and due process of the trial.
“We believe that if prosecutorial misconduct is found, as in the case of Senator Ted Stevens, then dismissal should follow in this case as well,” the group said in the letter, which was organized by Robert Abrams, a former attorney general of New York.
Lawyers for Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, have long accused the Justice Department under President George W. Bush of conducting a politically motivated prosecution that they say was filled with irregularities, including a failure to turn over pertinent information to the defense team.
In the weeks since the Stevens prosecution was dropped over similar issues, Mr. Siegelman’s team has made efforts to draw parallels between the two cases.
via Group Seeks Review of Ex-Alabama Governor’s Conviction – NYTimes.com.
Climate change will overload humanitarian system, warns Oxfam report
Climate change will overload humanitarian system, warns Oxfam
Number of people affected by extreme weather has doubled in 30 years and is expected to reach 375 million a year by 2015
Emergency organizations could be overwhelmed within seven years by the rising number of people in poor countries affected by floods, droughts, heatwaves, wild fires, storms, landslides and other climate hazards.
Analysis by Oxfam International of the 6,500 climate-related disasters recorded since 1980 show that the numbers of people affected by extreme weather events, many of which are linked to climate change, has doubled in just 30 years and is expected to increase a further 54% to more than 375 million people a year on average by 2015. The figure does not include people hit by other disasters such as wars, earthquakes and volcanoes.
Worldwide emergency aid spending will have to be nearly doubled to at least $25bn (£17.2bn) a year to cope, says the report, The Right To Survive.
“Climate change is set to overload the humanitarian system and destroy the lives and livelihoods of people today and into the future. The system can barely cope with the current level of disasters and could be overwhelmed,” said Oxfam’s chief executive, Barbara Stocking.
via Climate change will overload humanitarian system, warns Oxfam report | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
Franken Legal Team Files Motion For Sped-Up Appeal
Franken Legal Team Files Motion For Sped-Up Appeal
The Franken campaign has filed its motion for an expedited appeal with the Minnesota Supreme Court, arguing for a quick response to Norm Coleman’s appeal of his defeat in the election trial.
The court is widely expected to grant a fast-tracked appeal, whether it’s by the Franken camp’s exact requested timeline or in some other way. The proposed schedule from Team Franken calls for Coleman to submit his legal brief by next Monday, April 27, for Franken to submit his brief by Saturday, May 2, and for Coleman to file any new reply by that Monday, May 4, with oral arguments scheduled as soon as possible after those preparations.
The filing cites the election-contest statute itself, and its requirement that the appeal “takes precedence over all other matters before the Supreme Court.” Beyond the strict legalese, they also get into the political significance of this whole matter: “Under the United States Constitution, Minnesota is entitled to be represented by two United States Senators. Minnesota has been without its second Senator for more than 100 days.”
via Franken Legal Team Files Motion For Sped-Up Appeal | TPMDC.
Mortgage Crisis Suicide? Wife and Mother on Verge of Losing Home Kills Herself
Mortgage Crisis Suicide? Wife and Mother on Verge of Losing Home Kills Herself
For many months I have been reporting on the surge in suicides among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan war. Now another grim phenomenon is rearing its head: the suicide of homeowners who have lost their homes during the mortgage crisis.
Police in Taunton, Mass., report today that Carlene Balderrama, 53, a wife and mother, shot herself to death Tuesday afternoon — 90 minutes before her foreclosed home was scheduled to be sold at auction. Balderrama faxed a letter to her mortgage company at 2:30 p.m., saying that “By the time you foreclose on my house I’ll be dead.”
The Boston Globe reports today: “The mortgage company notified police, who found her body at 3:30 p.m. The auction had been scheduled to start at 5 p.m., when bidders showed up at the house and found it surrounded by police cruisers. But, unbeknownst to buyers and to Balderrama, the auction had been postponed by the time she grabbed her husband’s high-powered rifle, [Police Chief]O’Berg said.”
via Greg Mitchell: Mortgage Crisis Suicide? Wife and Mother on Verge of Losing Home Kills Herself.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
