Archive for May, 2009
Krugman: California Becoming a Banana Republic, Is America Next?
Krugman: California Becoming a Banana Republic, Is America Next?
Who would have thought that America’s largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?
The fiscal problems threatening to bankrupt the state of California could soon besiege the entire national government, paralyzing it with partisanship and making the nation ungovernable, according to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman.
California is a special case because of a few arcane laws that make imposing tax increases nearly impossible. Residents must approve increases to property taxes through statewide referendums and tax increases in the state legislature require a two-thirds majority to be approved. As a result, the state is facing a massive budget gap that cannot be closed through increasing revenue due to the lack of will to increase taxes on both the parts of legislators and residents.
The common thread that the state shares with the nation on a whole, however, is the increasing marginalization of the Republican party to its most extreme and conservative elements.
Nationwide, this has been epitomized by the ascendancy of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh as the titular head of the Republican party, the party switch of former Republican senator Arlen Specter and a recent poll showing that just 21 percent of the American people identify themselves as Republicans – the lowest level in the history of the poll.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Saudi Arabia Predicts Oil at $200 Per Barrel in Near Future
Saudi Arabia Predicts Oil at $200 Per Barrel in Near Future
Global oil prices are expected to spike once again in the next two years as the global economy stabilizes and investment in new production continues to lag.
Global oil prices are expected to spike once again in the next two years as the global economy stabilizes and investment in new production continues to lag. That, however, could provide an opportunity for the U.S. to wean itself off foreign oil and reinvigorate its manufacturing base.
Yesterday energy ministers from the G-8 nations along with their counterparts representing 15 emerging and oil-producing countries met in Italy to discuss the continued volatility in oil prices and predicted that oil could reach as much as $200 per barrel in two years.
Last July oil prices reached an all-time high of $147 per barrel. Since that time prices fell as low as $32 per barrel in December. Currently, prices are floating around $60 per barrel.
The price volatility coupled with the recession has caused investors to pull back. Lack of investment will eventually lead to a depletion in supply and a drastic rise in price once the global economy stabilizes.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Economy’s Search for a New Normal
The Economy’s Search for a New Normal
Regardless of what the media says, the reasons for calling this crisis the “worst since the Great Depression,” still exist. Not only this, but new problems are being created that are compounding the old.
The following article originally appeared on OpEdNews.org and may not reflect the views or opinions of EconomyInCrisis.org. Feedback is welcome.
the reality of the economic crisis first made itself known, many who realized what was happening dubbed it “the greatest crisis since the Great Depression.” This description was more than bombast; it was a sober analysis of the immensity of the economic problems in the country — problems that had been building up for years.
The mainstream media is now — for political reasons — in a constant clamor for the economy’s elusive “rock bottom.” This is so people will be more hopeful, less agitated, and more willing to let those who destroyed the economy continue running the country un-challenged. Every time a new economic indicator comes out that wasn’t “as bad as expected,” Wall Street cheers and politicians give their “we’ve turned the corner” speeches. Reality is thus turned on its head.
Regardless of what the media says, the reasons for calling this crisis the “worst since the Great Depression,” still exist. Not only this, but new problems are being created that are compounding the old.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
U.S Retailers Increasingly Concerned About Chinese Products
U.S Retailers Increasingly Concerned About Chinese Products
Nearly six out of 10 American businesses believe that China’s well-known disregard for intellectual property rights poses a risk to their business.
American retailers and manufacturers, hampered by the worst recession since the 1930s, are increasingly concerned about the quality of Chinese products as well as the Asian nation’s propensity for piracy and intellectual property theft.
Last week, Boston-based AMR Research Inc. released a study that revealed those increasing anxieties among American businesses.
The study found that 26 percent of the businesses surveyed said that China poses the most risk to their supply chain. The previous quarter just 21 percent said the same thing.
Another concern among those surveyed was the quality of products the U.S. receives from China. Of those surveyed 51 percent said that Chinese products pose a quality risk. Just 45 percent said Chinese products posed quality risks when the survey was conducted the previous quarter.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
America’s Fuel Economy
America’s Fuel Economy
No single technology will be a saving grace, but one thing is certain: U.S. automakers need to increase their production of a new wave of cars beyond the scope of standard internal combustion. This can hopefully spur some recovery in that battered sector, create jobs nationwide, and tackle our addiction to foreign oil all at once.
There is no doubting that America is addicted to oil. It is the most imported commodity in this country and makes up a massive portion of our annual trade deficit. We use a tremendous amount of oil on transportation, and most of that is burned up in our automobiles.
The Obama administration has attached new fuel economy stipulations to its bailouts of the auto industry in Detroit which should not be horribly difficult to attain. The White House is demanding that fuel efficiency for cars increase by 43 percent and light-trucks and SUVs increase 30 percent by 2016 as part of its new energy plan.
Automakers have bemoaned mileage increases for decades, saying that it was simply impossible to squeeze more out of current technologies – yet they had no problem increasing horsepower dramatically. Now however they have changed their tune in light of current gas prices and stiff competition from foreign companies that are more than willing to beat American automakers at their own game.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Marginal Recovery to be Followed by Another Precipitous Fall
Marginal Recovery to be Followed by Another Precipitous Fall
The so-called “recovery” seen in the United States over the past two months may be nothing more than a blip on the economic radar.
The so-called “recovery” seen in the United States over the past two months may be nothing more than a blip on the economic radar. Stock markets plummeted more than fifty percent during the first year of the downturn. It was only after President Obama took office and began escalating the amount of government funding going into stocks that the sector started to turn around.
However, the Obama administration has established policies that do not address the core instability of the financial sector. The administration only marginally cracked down on corporate mismanagement and has spent well over $1 trillion propping up a dying system.
The slight recovery of share prices in the past several weeks is the net effect of that $1 trillion in spending. The administration has organized perhaps another trillion or more in additional funding which it intends to pump into financials in order to further prop them up.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
California Doesn’t Need to Borrow Billions from Washington — It Can Create Its Own Money
OPS: Wait till Texas hears about this!
California Doesn’t Need to Borrow Billions from Washington — It Can Create Its Own Money
By Ellen Brown
Gov. Schwarzenegger thinks CA can only get credit from DC, but there’s another way of doing it that the prosperous state of North Dakota figured out.
“I understand that these cuts are very painful and they affect real lives. This is the harsh reality and the reality that we face. Sacramento is not Washington — we cannot print our own money. We can only spend what we have.”
- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger quoted in Time, May 22, 2009
Christmas comes early, Governor. You can print your own money. Fiscally solvent North Dakota is doing it…and so can California. Now!
In a May 22 article in Time titled “Billions in the Red: Fiscal Reckoning in CA,” Juliet Williams reports that since California voters have now vetoed higher taxes and further state government borrowing, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated that he intends to close the budget gap almost entirely through drastic spending cuts. The cutbacks could include laying off thousands of state workers and teachers, ending the state’s main welfare program for the poor, eliminating health coverage for about 1.5 million poor children, halting cash grants for about 77,000 college students, slashing money for state parks, and releasing thousands of prisoners before their sentences are finished. Schwarzenegger bemoaned the fact that the state could not print its own money but said it could only spend what it had.
Sonia Sotomayor’s real-life experience
Sonia Sotomayor’s real-life experience - | guardian.co.uk
Sonia Sotomayor’s race, gender and personal history will influence her supreme court opinions. That’s a good thing
Let’s get this out of the way first: Sonia Sotomayor is not a perfect liberal judge. She is not astoundingly progressive or notably feminist. She isn’t a tireless champion of civil rights or a first amendment absolutist. She is, however, a highly intelligent, fair-minded and experienced judge who will make a fine addition to the US supreme court, and who progressives should fully support.
Much has been made of Sotomayor’s life story, and it is impressive. Born and raised into a Puerto Rican family living in a housing project in the South Bronx, Sotomayor earned a scholarship to Princeton University, where she graduated summa cum laude. She went on to Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal, and after graduating worked in the New York district attorney’s office. She was nominated to the federal district court by George HW Bush and elevated to the second circuit court of appeals by Bill Clinton. In both cases, her confirmation went smoothly.
Republicans and conservatives will argue that her nomination is an exercise in affirmative action, and that Barack Obama has effectively posted a “White males need not apply” sign on the doors of the supreme court – a funny complaint about an institution that is almost entirely white and male. Democrats and liberals will predictably trip over themselves arguing that Sotomayor’s race and gender don’t matter, even while race and gender matter.
via Sonia Sotomayor’s real-life experience | Jill Filipovic | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Sarah Palin’s Outrageous Hypocrisy on Teen Sex
Sarah Palin’s Outrageous Hypocrisy on Teen Sex
By Matt Taibbi,
Palin knew her daughter was having sex in her own house. What does it take to get discredited as a right-wing “family values” merchant these days?
So step right up and buy your “I’m SEXY enough… to make you wait!” t-shirts, courtesy of the Candie’s Foundation — the pro-abstinence group whose ambassador is now America’s most famous “Oh, fuck it, it feels better without the rubber” Supermom, Bristol Palin!
So on a flight to London over the weekend I caught the Bristol Palin magazine cover and was blown away. What does it take to get discredited as a moralizing right-wing ”family values” merchant these days?
It was one thing when we found out that super-religious governor Palin was letting Bristol’s hunkface beef accessory Levi nail her daughter more or less regularly under the family roof. It was another when we found out that the governor’s sister-in-law got popped for a B&E while her little daughter was waiting outside in the car. And it was still another thing when we found out that Levi’s Mom was going to eat a bust for dealing Oxycontin (and there’s apparently a lot behind the governor’s interest in that story).
via Sarah Palin’s Outrageous Hypocrisy on Teen Sex | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
MoveOn Remains Silent on Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
MoveOn Remains Silent on Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
By Tom Hayden,
The most powerful grassroots peace movement organization, MoveOn, has not pushed Obama or Congress on U.S. conflicts raging across the planet.
The most powerful grassroots organization of the peace movement, MoveOn, remains silent as the American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simmer or escalate.
The executive director of MoveOn, Justin Ruben, met with President Obama in February, told the president it was “the moment to go big,” then indicated that MoveOn would not be opposing the $94 billion war supplemental request, nor the 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, nor the increased civilian casualties from the mounting number of Predator attacks. [See Ari Melber, The Nation, Feb. 27, 2009]
via MoveOn Remains Silent on Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan | | AlterNet.
Activists arrested protesting dangerous coal sludge dam in West Virginia
POWER POLITICS: Activists arrested protesting dangerous coal sludge dam in West Virginia
Seven people were arrested for trespassing Sunday during a nonviolent protest against a Massey Energy subsidiary’s plans to blast just 100 feet away from a massive dam holding back billions of gallons of toxic coal waste in the mountains of West Virginia.
The Brushy Fork impoundment (pictured below at left), located in Raleigh County, W.V., is the largest such coal impoundment in the country, holding some 7 billion gallons of what’s known as coal sludge or slurry — the poisonous, chemical-laden goo left over after processing coal. According to data gathered by the state Department of Environmental Protection and cited in a citizens’ report, coal sludge contains dangerously high levels of toxic elements including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury, as well as more complex chemicals used in the washing process.
via ISS – POWER POLITICS: Activists arrested protesting dangerous coal sludge dam in West Virginia.
Watermelons Tapped For Ethanol
Watermelons Tapped For Ethanol
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — With their sweet, refreshing juices and succulent interior, watermelons are a favorite summertime treat, especially around July 4th. But now this Independence Day favorite could become even more of a patriotic commodity.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) studies in Lane, Okla., have shown that simple sugars in watermelon juice can be made into ethanol. In 2007, growers harvested four billion pounds of watermelon for fresh and cut-fruit markets. Around 800 million pounds–or 20 percent of the total–were left in fields because of external blemishes or deformities.
Now, instead of being plowed under, such melons could get an economic “new lease on life” as ethanol. Normally, this biofuel is produced from cane crops like corn, sorghum or sugarcane as a cleaner-burning alternative to gasoline. The watermelon work reflects a national push by ARS to diversify America’s “portfolio” of biofuel crops that can diminish the reliance on petroleum, especially from foreign suppliers.
via Watermelons Tapped For Ethanol.
Cancer Drug Causes Patient To Lose Fingerprints And Be Detained By US Immigration
Cancer Drug Causes Patient To Lose Fingerprints And Be Detained By US Immigration
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — Immigration officials held a cancer patient for four hours before they allowed him to enter the USA because one of his cancer drugs caused his fingerprints to disappear. His oncologist is now advising all cancer patients who are being treated with the commonly used drug, capecitabine, to carry a doctor’s letter with them if they want to travel to the USA
The incident is highlighted in a letter to the cancer journal, Annals of Oncology. According to the oncologist, several other cancer patients have reported loss of fingerprints on their blog sites, and some have also commented on similar problems entering the USA.
Dr Eng-Huat Tan, a senior consultant in the medical oncology department at the National Cancer Centre, Singapore, described how his patient, a 62-year-old man, had head and neck cancer that had spread (metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma), but which had responded well to chemotherapy. To help prevent a recurrence of the cancer the patient was put on a maintenance dose of capecitabine, an anti-metabolite drug.
via Cancer Drug Causes Patient To Lose Fingerprints And Be Detained By US Immigration.
Nearly One Million Californians Seek Medical Care In Mexico Annually
Nearly One Million Californians Seek Medical Care In Mexico Annually
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — Driven by rising health care costs at home, nearly 1 million Californians cross the border each year to seek medical care in Mexico, according a new paper by UCLA researchers and colleagues published today in the journal Medical Care.
An estimated 952,000 California adults sought medical, dental or prescription services in Mexico annually, and of these, 488,000 were Mexican immigrants, according to the research paper, “Heading South: Why Mexican Immigrants in California Seek Health Services in Mexico.”
The paper is the first large-scale population-based research ever published on U.S. residents who travel to Mexico for health services. It is based on an analysis of 2001 data from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the nation’s largest state health survey.
via Nearly One Million Californians Seek Medical Care In Mexico Annually.
A Renewable Energy Standard: The Proof Is in the States
A Renewable Energy Standard: The Proof Is in the States
Congress should look at how renewable standards have helped states as it debates the Clean Energy and Security Act.
Since 2002, Congress has had several opportunities to approve a national renewable energy standard, or RES—requiring that utilities produce a certain portion of electricity from wind, sun, and other renewables—and has faltered each time. Now with the House Energy and Commerce Committee debating and voting on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or ACES, H.R. 2454, Congress has another chance. And if lawmakers look at the track record of states that have already adopted RES policies, they should have no hesitation in accepting that part of this energy bill sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) and Edward J. Markey (D-MA).
At the state level, renewable energy standards, also known as renewable portfolio standards, have become increasingly popular. Today, 28 states and the District of Columbia have an RES on the books, and another five states have renewable energy goals that are not mandatory. All but one of these measures has been approved in the last seven years.
via A Renewable Energy Standard: The Proof Is in the States.
Interactive Map: As General Motors Goes, So Goes the Nation
Interactive Map: As General Motors Goes, So Goes the Nation
The disappearance of America’s manufacturing base has been catastrophic for some states, write Nayla Kazzi and Heather Boushey.
General Motors announced last week that it had notified 1,130 of its “underperforming” dealers—representing nearly one in five (18 percent) of GM’s dealers nationwide—that their franchise agreements would not be renewed in October 2010. GM’s news came three weeks after the company revealed that 13 of its 20 North American plants would go idle for up to nine weeks this summer, and one day after Chrysler announced that 789 of its dealerships—representing nearly a quarter of Chrysler’s dealers nationwide—would be closed by June 9. New data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the states who will likely suffer the most from these cuts already have some of the nation’s highest unemployment rates.
The map below shows which states and regions are experiencing the worst job losses and highest unemployment rates in the country following 16 straight months of declines in payroll employment.
map active at link
via Interactive Map: As General Motors Goes, So Goes the Nation.
Burris taped offering a check to Blagojevich
OPS: …..Crap. Here we go……
Burris taped offering a check to Blagojevich - Chicago Breaking News
A transcript of a secretly recorded phone call between the brother of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and U.S. Sen. Roland Burris was released in federal court today, a call in which Burris, then seeking the Senate seat, was recorded offering the Blagojevich campaign a campaign check.
“I know I could give him a check,” Burris said. “Myself.”
But in the same call, Burris tells Robert Blagojevich he is concerned he and Rod Blagojevich will “catch hell.”
“And if I do get appointed that means I bought it,” Burris said.
“And, and God knows number one, I, I wanna help Rod,” Burris says later in the call. “Number two, I also wanna, you know, hope I get a consideration to get that appointment.
Burris was recorded saying the timing would be crucial to how the fundraising would be perceived.
“And however that goes, ah, it would dictate, ah, you know how the press treats it,” he said.
“Understand,” Rob Blagojevich answered.
via Burris taped offering a check to Blagojevich – Chicago Breaking News.
Frank Luntz: It doesn’t matter what Obama’s health care plan says, we’ll still call it ‘government takeover.’
Frank Luntz: It doesn’t matter what Obama’s health care plan says, we’ll still call it ‘government takeover.’
In an interview with the New York Times, GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz — who recently penned a health care messaging memo instructing Republicans to attack President Obama’s health reform efforts by criticizing the deficiencies in foreign health care systems — concedes that Republicans will label Obama’s reform effort a “government takeover” of health care, regardless of the actual proposal:
Is it a correct description of the president’s plans for reform?
We don’t know what he is proposing. We want to avoid “a Washington takeover.”
But that’s not at issue. What the Democrats want is for everyone to be able to choose between their old, private health-insurance plan and an all-new, public health-insurance option.
I’m not a policy person. I’m a language person.
Shadow Wars
Shadow Wars | CommonDreams.org
Sudan: The two F-16s caught the trucks deep in the northern desert. Within minutes, the column of vehicles was a string of shattered wrecks burning fiercely in the January sun. Surveillance drones spotted a few vehicles that had survived the storm of bombs and cannon shells, and the fighter-bombers returned to finish the job.
Syria: Four Blackhawk helicopters skimmed across the Iraqi border, landing at a small farmhouse near the town of al-Sukkariyeh. Black-clad soldiers poured from the choppers, laying down a withering hail of automatic weapons fire. When the shooting stopped, eight Syrians lay dead on the ground. Four others, cuffed and blindfolded, were dragged to the helicopters, which vanished back into Iraq.
Pakistan: a group of villagers were sipping tea in a courtyard when the world exploded. The Hellfire missiles seemed to come out of nowhere, scattering pieces of their victims across the village and demolishing several houses. Between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, 60 such attacks took place. They killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda members along with 687 civilians.
via Shadow Wars | CommonDreams.org.
ACT NOW TO SAVE 3,500 GOOD AMERICAN JOBS
ACT NOW TO SAVE 3,500 GOOD AMERICAN JOBS - by Jim Hightower
Back when I had a job requiring me to wear suits, my brands of choice were Hart Shaffner Marx and Hickey Freeman. Fine suites they were, too – good cut, fine craftsmanship, fair price. Made me look mighty snappy, which isn’t easy.
Both of those brands are now united in Hartmarx Corporation, which employs 3,500 top-quality workers in places like Rock Island, Illinois, and Rochester, New York. But now, those jobs and the future of Hartmarx, the largest maker of menswear in the nation, are in doubt.
The company still turns out great products, has an excellent distribution network, and has a strong and loyal customer base. However, the thing it does not have is the financial credit it needs to manage its business, thanks to the credit crunch created by Wall Street. Because of this squeeze, Hartmarx was forced into bankruptcy in January.
Its fate is now in the hands of its chief creditor, which can choose to close all Hartmarx plants and liquidate the company – or sell it to a firm that will bring in new credit and revive the whole enterprise. Unfortunately, the creditor is said to be leaning toward cashing out the company and running off with all of the money it can salvage.
via Jim Hightower | ACT NOW TO SAVE 3,500 GOOD AMERICAN JOBS.
TARP Warrants Show Banks May Reap ‘Ruthless Bargain’
TARP Warrants Show Banks May Reap ‘Ruthless Bargain’ – Bloomberg.com
May 22 (Bloomberg) — Banks negotiating to reclaim stock warrants they granted in return for Troubled Asset Relief Program money may shortchange taxpayers by almost $10 billion if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s first sale sets the pace, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
While 17 financial institutions have repaid TARP funds, two have come to terms with the U.S. on the value of the rights to buy stock that taxpayers received for the risk of recapitalizing the industry. The first was Old National Bancorp in Evansville, Indiana, which gave the Treasury Department $1.2 million last week for warrants that may have been worth $5.81 million, according to the data.
If Geithner makes the same deal for all companies in the rescue program, lenders may walk away with 80 percent of the profits taxpayers might have claimed.
“For once we’d like to get a fair value when we come into contact with the banking system,” said Representative Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat and chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of House Science and Technology Committee. “We don’t want a ruthless bargain.”
via TARP Warrants Show Banks May Reap ‘Ruthless Bargain’ (Update2) – Bloomberg.com.
Economy Still Ailing, “Tremendous Amount Of Hurt” To Come
Economy Still Ailing, “Tremendous Amount Of Hurt” To Come
A new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute finds that despite positive signs of the recession leveling off, folks should not be too heartened by talk of “green shoots.”
EPI president and report author Larry Mishel told the Huffington Post that there will still be “high and prolonged unemployment that’s going to have a tremendous amount of hurt.”
Mishel pointed out that fears that, without a stimulus package, unemployment would reach almost 10 percent have become reality — even though the $787 billion package is in place. “What was likely to occur without the stimulus is likely to occur with the stimulus,” he said.
Mishel’s slideshow presentation shows that although the current downturn started at a lower unemployment rate than those past, it has seen a faster increase in job losses and unemployment. While unemployment rose 3.6 percent in 16 months during the 1980s recession, the current recession has featured a four percent jump in the same amount of time.
via Economy Still Ailing, “Tremendous Amount Of Hurt” To Come.
Liberty University Democrats: Why They Were Silenced, And What It Means
Liberty University Democrats: Why They Were Silenced, And What It Means
Just 200 years ago, tens of thousands of whales swam the waters around New Zealand while sharks patrolled the British coastlines, say researchers who tell of lost abundance in the world’s oceans.
Around 100 global experts have united under a group called the Census of Marine Life to study the state of the Earth’s waters from a historical viewpoint and how advances in technology have wielded devastation on sea life.
The decade-long project brings researchers to Vancouver, Canada from Tuesday and aims to publish its final report in 2010 with inputs from historical accounts as well as geological, botanical and archaeological research.
“What we are looking at is a global picture of decline because of fisheries and habitat destruction,” said Poul Holm, professor at Trinity college Dublin and one of the authors of a report to be presented at the three-day conference.
via Kevin Roose: Liberty University Democrats: Why They Were Silenced, And What It Means.
Giant cod and whales were once plentiful: researchers
Giant cod and whales were once plentiful: researchers
Just 200 years ago, tens of thousands of whales swam the waters around New Zealand while sharks patrolled the British coastlines, say researchers who tell of lost abundance in the world’s oceans.
Around 100 global experts have united under a group called the Census of Marine Life to study the state of the Earth’s waters from a historical viewpoint and how advances in technology have wielded devastation on sea life.
The decade-long project brings researchers to Vancouver, Canada from Tuesday and aims to publish its final report in 2010 with inputs from historical accounts as well as geological, botanical and archaeological research.
“What we are looking at is a global picture of decline because of fisheries and habitat destruction,” said Poul Holm, professor at Trinity college Dublin and one of the authors of a report to be presented at the three-day conference.
via The Raw Story | Giant cod and whales were once plentiful: researchers.
US energy chief: Paint roofs white to fight global warming
US energy chief: Paint roofs white to fight global warming
US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday the Obama administration wanted to paint roofs an energy-reflecting white, as he took part in a climate change symposium in London.
The Nobel laureate in physics called for a “new revolution” in energy generation to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
But he warned there was no silver bullet for tackling climate change, and said a range of measures should be introduced, including painting flat roofs white.
Making roads and roofs a paler colour could have the equivalent effect of taking every car in the world off the road for 11 years, Chu said.
It was a geo-engineering scheme that was “completely benign” and would keep buildings cooler and reduce energy use from air conditioning, as well as reflecting sunlight back away from the Earth
via Raw Story » US energy chief: Paint roofs white to fight global warming.
Army chief says US ready to be in Iraq 10 years – Yahoo! News
OPS: …or until the oil runs out, which ever comes first
Army chief says US ready to be in Iraq 10 years
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday.
Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the world remains dangerous and unpredictable, and the Pentagon must plan for extended U.S. combat and stability operations in two wars. “Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction,” Casey said. “They fundamentally will change how the Army works.”
He spoke at an invitation-only briefing to a dozen journalists and policy analysts from Washington-based think-tanks. He said his planning envisions combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained U.S. commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.
Casey’s calculations about force levels are related to his attempt to ease the brutal deployment calendar that he said would “bring the Army to its knees.”
via Army chief says US ready to be in Iraq 10 years – Yahoo! News.
Petraeus agrees with Obama: It’s time to close Guantanamo and end torture.
Petraeus agrees with Obama: It’s time to close Guantanamo and end torture.
petraeus In an interview this past weekend with Radio Free Europe, Gen. David Petraeus said that he supports President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and opposes the use of enhanced interrogation techniques:
PETRAEUS: In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.
With respect to Guantanamo, I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice — I talked to the attorney general the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary — again, how to take that forward.
But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.
via Think Progress » Petraeus agrees with Obama: It’s time to close Guantanamo and end torture..
Washington Post Ombudsman Falsely Claims That ‘Ari Fleischer Hasn’t Been Seen Much’ Since 2003
Washington Post Ombudsman Falsely Claims That ‘Ari Fleischer Hasn’t Been Seen Much’ Since 2003
Ari Fleischer carrying a cameraOn Sunday, Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote a column examining former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer’s complaint about how Post columnist Dana Milbank characterized his post-9/11 comment that Americans need to “watch what they say.” Fleischer said it was mischaracterized and demanded a correction.
At the beginning of his column, Alexander claimed that Fleischer has pretty much stayed out of “the public spotlight” since leaving the Bush administration in 2003:
Inhofe worries that Sotomayor may allow ‘undue influence from her own personal race, gender.’
OPS: He must mean UNLIKE Roberts, Scalia, Alito, for example
Inhofe worries that Sotomayor may allow ‘undue influence from her own personal race, gender.’
inhofe222Republican members of Congress have been trying to subtly raise questions about Sonia Sotomayor’s objectivity — simply because of her non-traditional race, gender, and upbringing. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said today that he is concerned Sotomayor has shown “personal bias based on ethnicity and gender.” Similarly, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said in a statement today that Sotomayor may be subject to the “undue influence” of her race and gender:
Robocall case sheds light on a secretive industry
Robocall case sheds light on a secretive industry - - Los Angeles Times
A former employee of Transcontinental Warranty, which is accused of making illegal recorded calls, says workers could be fired for divulging the firm’s name.
The despised robocall companies that send out illegal recorded calls nationwide to try and get people to buy car warranties or apply for credit cards are among the most secretive operations outside the CIA.
Employees are told they can be fired merely for mentioning the name of their employer.
via Robocall case sheds light on a secretive industry – Los Angeles Times.
Toxic Hudson River Sediment Could Poison Texas Aquifer
Toxic Hudson River Sediment Could Poison Texas Aquifer
FORT EDWARD, New York, May 19, 2009 (ENS) – The long awaited dredging of the Upper Hudson River to remove sediment contaminated by PCBs from a General Electric factory began Friday near Roger’s Island in Fort Edward.
The six-year dredging project will be conducted by General Electric under the terms of a November 2006 consent decree. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will oversee all aspects of the work; dredging will continue through October 2009, weather permitting.
This first phase of the dredging project will be conducted 24 hours a day, six days a week and aims to remove 265,000 cubic yards of sediment and 20,300 kilograms of PCBs from a six-mile stretch of the river between Roger’s Island and Thompson Island.
via Toxic Hudson River Sediment Could Poison Texas Aquifer.
Second Giant Solar Plant Planned for Arizona Electricity Users
Second Giant Solar Plant Planned for Arizona Electricity Users
PHOENIX, Arizona, May 25, 2009 (ENS) – A 290 million watt concentrating solar plant, among the largest in the world, is planned for construction in the Harquahala Valley, 75 miles west of Phoenix, the Arizona Public Service utility announced Friday.
Taking the podium at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona Public Service President and Chief Operating Officer Don Robinson said the giant solar plant will produce enough electricity to power more than 73,000 APS customer homes.
The event at ASU was the final stop on the utility’s first solar tour of Arizona, staged to bring the message that APS is on the way to providing more solar electricity per customer than any other U.S. utility.
“It’s always special to hit the road and get to meet the people in our state who are so committed to a better, sunnier, greener and cleaner Arizona,” said Robinson, “We share a common passion for renewable energy here at APS.”
Robinson said the utility wants to help make sunny Arizona the “solar capital of the world.”
Scheduled for completion in 2013, the new solar power plant, dubbed Starwood Solar I, will be owned by an affiliate of Starwood Energy Group Global. All the electricity generated by the facility will be provided to Arizona Public Service through a long-term purchase power agreement.
via Second Giant Solar Plant Planned for Arizona Electricity Users.
White House merging national and homeland security
OPS: They can’t control DHS with the size it is now. Expanding it won’t make it any easier
White House merging national and homeland security – Salon.com
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he is combining White House staffs dealing with international and homeland security, predicting the change will make Americans safer.
Obama also is creating a new office intended to communicate more effectively with other countries about U.S. security policy.
The Homeland Security Council, created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, will be kept as a venue for discussing issues concerning domestic security, including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, natural disasters and pandemic influenza. Its staff will be integrated into the National Security Council.
“These decisions reflect the fundamental truth that the challenges of the 21st century are increasingly unconventional and transnational, and therefore demand a response that effectively integrates all aspects of American power,” Obama said in a written statement.
The president’s national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James Jones, told reporters the reorganization reflects the view that national security has both foreign and domestic components.
via White House merging national and homeland security – Salon.com.
Internet Threatened by Censorship, Secret Surveillance, and Cybersecurity Laws
Internet Threatened by Censorship, Secret Surveillance, and Cybersecurity Laws
At a time of corporate dominated media, a free and open Internet is democracy’s last chance to preserve our First Amendment rights without which all others are threatened. Activists call it Net Neutrality. Media scholar Robert McChesney says without it “the Internet would start to look like cable TV (with a) handful of massive companies (controlling) content” enough to have veto power over what’s allowed and what it costs. Progressive web sites and writers would be marginalized or suppressed, and content systematically filtered or banned.
Media reform activists have drawn a line in the sand. Net Neutrality must be defended at all costs. Preserving a viable, independent, free and open Internet (and the media overall) is essential to a functioning democracy, but the forces aligned against it are formidable, daunting, relentless, and reprehensible. Some past challenges suggest future ones ahead.
Censorship Attempts to Curtail Free Expression
via SteveLendmanBlog: Internet Threatened by Censorship, Secret Surveillance, and Cybersecurity Laws.
5 New Uses For Your Old (Maybe Toxic) Water Bottles
5 New Uses For Your Old (Maybe Toxic) Water Bottles
The water bottle that (kind of) defined a generation…is really a killer.
Last year, toxic plastic struck close to home. In April 2008, the FDA deemed Nalgene water bottles—those awesome, never-break, never-leak containers you had come to depend on—as unsafe for use, due to dangerous levels of toxicity in the plastic. Durability, in other words, came at a higher price than ten bucks. Most of us tossed our bottles out with the trash, and went for the stainless steel varieties deemed safe. But many stubbornly continued to use their Nalgenes anyway; what doesn’t have chemicals, right? Well, according to Mark Schapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power, you really don’t want to mess around with this stuff. What the FDA found in these old Nalgenes is enough to make you run for the hills.
Bisphenol A (BPA), a highly toxic chemical and plastic additive, “makes plastic more rigid and unbreakable,” according to Schapiro. But this should not be considered a dream product for the outdoors enthusiast. In fact, he adds, “BPA has been linked to the development of prostate and breast cancer in adults,” and in regard to the latter, “mimicking estrogen and being carcinogenic.” Case closed. When the FDA broke this news, Nalgene stopped making bottles with BPA at the price of super-durability, and now we’re safe. To the burn pile! But not so fast—throwing them out doesn’t really do the environment any good either, and the last thing we want to do is create more toxic waste to clog the dumps. So what do we do with all our old Nalgenes? I’ve heard some nutty ideas, the best of which include detailed plans for a canine flotation device, lobster trap buoys, and a time capsule. But this isn’t MacGyver. Here are five easy ways you can make the most of yours:
via 5 New Uses For Your Old (Maybe Toxic) Water Bottles.
U.S. economy at risk of double-dip recession
U.S. economy at risk of double-dip recession | Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy appears destined for several years of weak growth and high unemployment that leave it vulnerable to a recession relapse after the massive dose of government stimulus wears off.
While tepid growth looks likely to resume late this year and build modestly into 2010, the credit bust has left households and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow and spend as freely as they did before the crisis.
The U.S. government has stepped in as lender and spender of last resort, but its deep pockets are not bottomless. Waning political and investor appetite for taking on more debt could stand in the way of any additional big spending plans.
via U.S. economy at risk of double-dip recession | Reuters.
California Upholds Gay Marriage Ban
California Upholds Gay Marriage Ban | CommonDreams.org
But 18,000 Same-Sex Couples Who Married Before Prop 8 Can Retain Rights
The California Supreme Court has upheld Proposition 8 — the controversial ballot question that banned same-sex marriage.
At the same time, the ruling will allow about 18,000 same-sex couples already married, to retain the rights they attained during the brief six-month period that gay marriage was legal in the state.
“There it goes,” said Jim Schnobrich, who married his partner of 27 years in Pasadena, Calif., last September. “We have to keep going.”
Still, the couple, who have two children, aged 12 and 16, said that they are now in a “weird class,” as the ruling preserved their 8-month-old same sex-marriage.
“That’s good news, but the bigger thing is that now we have this weird status that other people can’t have. There is this kind of equality situation where people are maybe thinking we aren’t really married.”
via California Upholds Gay Marriage Ban | CommonDreams.org.
Five ways to nail your next job interview
Five ways to nail a job interview
In the past few months we at the Unemploymentality have provided you with a wealth of practical job seeking tips to help you survive and thrive in this down economy. If you’ve followed our advice you’ve already sexed up your resume with a custom header, extended your job search through alternative networks like the casual carpool and chiseled yourself some rock-solid abs to show off at the interview. But even with these fool-proof ways to get your foot in the door, if you can’t handle yourself like a baller in the interview, then you’ll never seal the deal and earn yourself that paycheck. So without further ado, here are five interview tips that are a surefire way of impressing the pants- suit right off of any potential employer.
1) Dress to impress and let your inner tiger roar: Most of us try to manage our lives with humility. But let’s face it. That doesn’t get us anywhere in a job interview. So instead of trying to mute the tiger within, let your wardrobe amplify its roar. For you, this might mean trading in the desperately searching hipster look for the more confident power suit and tie. For me, this means putting the pastels aside for a David Hasselhoff-ian black jeans and jacket ensemble (circa Knight Rider, 1982), and forgoing a tie for a cavalier poof of chest hair. A look that says, “Hello world! I’m here to kick ass and take some names (right after I articulate my career objectives and how I effectively manage conflict in the workplace).
via Five ways to nail your next job interview | Unemploymentality.
President Picks Sonia Sotomayor
President Picks Sonia Sotomayor
« JONATHAN TURLEY
It appears that President Obama will announce his pick for the Supreme Court at 10 am.
The Supreme Court sweepstakes has been raging for weeks. My prediction on the day of Souter’s resignation was Judge Diane Wood of the Seventh Circuit, which I still believe would have been the wisest choice. Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will be much more controversial and divisive for confirmation in my view. This was the highest risk nomination that Obama could pick.
The key in these fights is the first 48 hours and whether the GOP can take control of the debate. It will be the first real test for the new GOP leadership.
Somomayor’s participation in the controversial ruling on Ricci v. DeStefano, the firefighters case, will be a lightening rod. It have serious reservations about the case and the way that the panel handled it. The Republicans will have a field day with it. While Sotomayer gives Obama a “twofer” with the first hispanic and a new female justice, Wood in my view has more intellectual firepower and would have been a better addition to the court. One of the concerns from many is that Sotomayer, who is given bad marks on temperament, will be replaced one of the most easy going and civil justices on the Court.
via President Picks Sonia Sotomayor « JONATHAN TURLEY.
Crisis spurs spike in ‘suburban survivalists’
Crisis spurs spike in ‘suburban survivalists’
SAN DIEGO – Six months ago, Jim Wiseman didn’t even have a spare nutrition bar in his kitchen cabinet.
Now, the 54-year-old businessman and father of five has a backup generator, a water filter, a grain mill and a 4-foot-tall pile of emergency food tucked in his home in the expensive San Diego suburb of La Jolla.
Wiseman isn’t alone. Emergency supply retailers and military surplus stores nationwide have seen business boom in the past few months as an increasing number of Americans spooked by the economy rush to stock up on gear that was once the domain of hardcore survivalists.
These people snapping up everything from water purification tablets to thermal blankets shatter the survivalist stereotype: they are mostly urban professionals with mortgages, SUVs, solid jobs and a twinge of embarrassment about their newfound hobby.
From teachers to real estate agents, these budding emergency gurus say the dismal economy has made them prepare for financial collapse as if it were an oncoming Category 5 hurricane. They worry about rampant inflation, runs on banks, bare grocery shelves and widespread power failures that could make taps run dry.
via Crisis spurs spike in ‘suburban survivalists’ – Yahoo! News.
FDA vs.Cheerios
FDA vs.Cheerios
It costs a lot less to use Zocor or any other statin drug to lower cholesterol than it does to eat Cheerios. Provided you have insurance. Statins work in days Cheerios takes 6 weeks. A marketing fantasy.
The FDA has determined that Cheerios marketing violates the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
The claim that eating two, one and one half cup serving of Cheerios a day for six weeks will lower a person’s cholesterol level by 4% was found to be equivalent to marketing Cheerios as a drug.
Two meals a day of Cheerios for six weeks is a lot of Cheerios. You would have to eat a sixteen ounce box of Cheerios in three days. That is fourteen boxes of Cheerios at $2.50 a box. The cost not counting milk or fruit is $35.
If you have decent insurance you can see your doctor for $10 and get a thirty day prescription for Zocor for another $10. Using Zocor for a month would lower your cholesterol level more than four percent and cost less than Cheerios provided you watch your diet.
via Birmingham Science News Examiner: FDA vs.Cheerios.
NYC Starbucks’ explosion: more “false-flag” union busting?
NYC Starbucks’ explosion: more “false-flag” union busting? -
The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history.
Although it is too early to speculate on the motives behind the explosion outside a Manhattan Starbucks, that has not deterred right-wing bloggers whose hatred of Islam is a key component of their groupthink. Although it was one of their own who was tried and executed for the bombings in Oklahoma City, they blamed Muslims first.
While others are prepared to “round up the usual suspects”, any through investigation would not dismiss the possibility that it was an inside job. Businesses large and small commit insurance fraud that involves destroying their own property, especially through the use of arson. Corporations in the US also have a long history of using unscrupulous tactics and outright violence to prevent workers from organizing. If management was somehow connected to this incident, it would not be the first time that the elites have used explosives to erode popular support for workers’ struggles.
via Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner: NYC Starbucks’ explosion: more “false-flag” union busting?.
Capitalism Produces Rich Bankers, but Socialism Produces Happiness
Capitalism Produces Rich Bankers, but Socialism Produces Happiness - Information Clearing House
By Phillip Bannowsky
May 25, 2009 “News Journal” — Socialism is better than capitalism. So say 20 percent of Americans, and another 27 percent say they can’t say which is better, according to an April 9 Rasmussen poll.
There’s hope.
When you consider that virtually no newspaper, broadcaster, well-funded think tank, teacher, or anybody’s boss or commander ever said something nice about socialism, it’s remarkable that only 53 percent of us still favor rule by the moneyed class. Perhaps folks are learning how capitalism sacrifices happiness for individual gain.
As Billy Bragg exhorts us in his update of the socialist anthem “The Internationale”: “Stand up, all victims of oppression/for tyrants fear your might/Don’t cling so hard to your possessions/For you have nothing if you have no rights.”
No less a “capitalist tool” than Forbes Magazine let a red cat out of the bag with a report this month that the happiest countries tend to be Scandinavian socialist democracies. High per-capita GDP certainly plays a role in their felicity, but even social democratic New Zealand, with per-capita GDP only 64 percent of the United States’, ranks with the 10 democracies above us in the happiness index. They pay high taxes in these pinkotopias, but folks enjoy entitlements like free college, extensive elder care, and 52-week paid maternity leave.
The 2005 poll measured personal reports of enjoyment, pride in achievement and learning, being respected, among other things. Forbes suggests that such happiness derives from family, social and community networks, and a decent work-life balance, noting that the average workweek in Scandinavia is 37 hours.
Home prices fall at record pace
Home prices fall at record pace in first quarter – msnbc.com
Prices are at levels not seen since the end of 2002, index shows
NEW YORK – Home prices fell at the fastest annual rate on record in the first quarter, but the pace of month-to-month declines continues to slow, a closely watched housing index showed Tuesday.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller National Home Price index reported home prices tumbled by 19.1 percent in the first quarter, the most in its 21-year history.
Home prices have fallen 32.2 percent since peaking in the second quarter of 2006 and are at levels not seen since the end of 2002.
via Home prices fall at record pace – Real estate- msnbc.com.
Fixing America, Erasing Bush
Fixing America, Erasing Bush – by: William Rivers Pitt,
President Obama gave a speech on Thursday praising the excellence of the American experiment, and claimed his own life was made possible by the promise of the documents and the ideals that founded this nation. As usual, his delivery and diction was perfect. Unfortunately, his behavior of late has fallen far short of the ideals he has given such eloquent lip service to.
Two thousand pictures of Americans performing acts of savage torture on prisoners will not be released to the general public if Mr. Obama gets his way. Military commissions will continue to try prisoners outside the scope of American law, and will be free to use brazen hearsay as “hard” evidence against defendants. Mr. Obama continues to cleave to the most abhorrent aspects of Bush-era secrecy policies, and has moved to block a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, who was outed by Bush administration officials in order to silence her Iraq whistleblower husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of CREW, responded to the Obama administration’s stance regarding the Plame suit with a statement that succinctly sums up the distance between Obama’s words and his administration’s deeds. “We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm top Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson,” said Sloan. “The government’s position cannot be reconciled with President Obama’s oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions.”
Indeed.
via t r u t h o u t | Fixing America, Erasing Bush.
Showdown Looms Over Use of ‘State Secrets’ Privilege in Wiretapping Case
Showdown Looming On ‘State Secrets’ - - washingtonpost.com
Judge Threatens To Penalize U.S. In Wiretap Case
President Obama vowed last week to rein in the use of a legal privilege that allows the administration to discard lawsuits that involve “state secrets,” promising that a new policy is in the works that will quell criticism by civil libertarians.
But hours after Obama’s speech laid out a “delicate balance” on national security, his Justice Department was criticized by a federal judge in California overseeing a case that has delved deeper than any other into one of the government’s most highly classified data-gathering programs.
The Obama administration has invoked the state-secrets privilege in resisting a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity whose attorneys may have been subjected to warrantless wiretapping. Late Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker issued a terse order that raised the prospect of “sanctions” for government lawyers who have not responded to his order for a plan for how the case should proceed. The sanctions may include awarding monetary damages to the charity, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.
via Showdown Looms Over Use of State Secrets’ Privilege in Wiretapping Case – washingtonpost.com.
How a Greener City Gets Growing
How a Greener City Gets Growing -| CommonDreams.org
Community gardens benefit the neighborhood, the economy and the environment, advocates say
by Meredith Cohn
As a regional “forager” for Whole Foods, Mark Smallwood spends much of his time making sure the green grocer stocks local food, usually from commercial farms. But if he has his way, some products will come from even closer: Baltimore’s community gardens.
To make that happen, he has hatched a plan to vastly expand the number of city residents who know how to grow fruits and vegetables – as well as how to cook, preserve and sell them. He’s negotiating with the city for a site, likely in northern Baltimore, large enough for gardening classes and some individual plots. And he’s applying for grants to cover some of the costs. “There’s no reason why you can’t grow your own food in the city,” said Smallwood, an organic farmer who points to his own planted Woodberry yard as evidence. “This is a years-long project that aims to get a lot of people involved.”
via How a Greener City Gets Growing | CommonDreams.org.
Tough Love for Obama
Tough Love for Obama | CommonDreams.org
by Robert Kuttner
Barack Obama is one of three nominees I voted for with enthusiasm. The first, Lyndon Johnson (then in his 1964 civil-rights and anti-poverty phase), self-destructed over Vietnam. The second, George McGovern, lost 49 states. For the next three decades, Republican presidents pulled the country and the prevailing ideology far right, while Democratic interludes moved it only to the center.
But Obama portended something different altogether. Here was a rendezvous of a gifted, principled, and politically shrewd leader with a deep crisis caused by the failure of free-market ideology. It was — and is — the most stunning political opportunity for American progressives since Franklin Roosevelt. My reaction to Obama’s election was joy, relief, gratitude.
So it is awkward to find myself in semi-opposition after barely 100 days. I’m not a chronic malcontent. I credit Obama with real leadership on multiple fronts, from redeeming the Constitution to reclaiming America’s constructive role in the world. I think he is handling several tricky issues well — accepting the need for large short-term deficits; disclosing details of Bush-era torture without personally sponsoring an inquisition; moving universal health coverage; devising a labor-law reform that can perhaps get 60 votes. All this is huge. But there still is a large risk that Obama will blow the opportunity that history has handed him, and that the political right, though currently in disarray, will pick up the pieces.
via Tough Love for Obama | CommonDreams.org.
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold - | CommonDreams.org
How the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, Subsidizes Wall Street, and Props Up Our Broken Financial System
by Andy Kroll
On October 3rd, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the U.S. government responded with the largest bailout in American history. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized the use of $700 billion to stabilize the nation’s failing financial systems and restore the flow of credit in the economy.
The legislation’s guidelines for crafting the rescue plan were clear: the TARP should protect home values and consumer savings, help citizens keep their homes, and create jobs. Above all, with the government poised to invest hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in various financial institutions, the legislation urged the bailout’s architects to maximize returns to the American people.
That $700 billion bailout has since grown into a more than $12 trillion commitment by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve. About $1.1 trillion of that is taxpayer money — the TARP money and an additional $400 billion rescue of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The TARP now includes 12 separate programs, and recipients range from megabanks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to automakers Chrysler and General Motors.
via The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold | CommonDreams.org.
Obama’s Pick, Sonia Sotomayor, Reflects America
Obama’s Pick, Sonia Sotomayor, Reflects America – by John Nichols -| CommonDreams.org
When Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his planned retirement, the pressure was on President Obama to add a second woman to a bench.
At the same time, Obama was encouraged to pick the first Hipanic justice.
He did both, and a good deal more.
Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the high court, is to made at the White House this morning.
While much will be made of the fact that Obama has chosen a woman of Puerto Rican background to serve on a court that until the 1960s was made up entirely of white man, the president has, as well, chosen a jurist whose specific experience will make her a key player on a court that, in ocming years, will be taking on more and more cases involving financial and economic issues.
via Obama’s Pick, Sonia Sotomayor, Reflects America | CommonDreams.org.
Dollar pulls back from 5-month low
Dollar pulls back from 5-month low - FT.com
Ratings fears persist
The dollar recovered some ground on Tuesday, pulling away from a five-month low as investors focused on problems outside the US.
The dollar suffered last week, with investors becoming increasingly concerned over the risk of the US losing its AAA credit rating as the country continues to rack up debt.
This saw the first signs that dollar was losing its status as a haven in times of trouble as US Treasury bonds, equities and the currency all sold off at the same time.
via FT.com / MARKETS / Currencies – Dollar pulls back from 5-month low.
Obama urged to curb Buy American plan
Obama urged to curb Buy American plan - FT.com
Congress moves may be hurting workers
The Obama administration faces mounting pressure to wind back Buy American measures passed by Congress this year amid growing concerns that they hurt some US workers they were designed to help.
The measures, which were in the $787bn US stimulus bill, require any project funded with stimulus money to use only US-made steel, iron and manufactured goods.
An outcry from the US’s trading partners saw the bill amended at the last minute as the White House urged that it not contravene existing trade agreements. Some businesses and officials say that amendment is proving virtually meaningless in practice.
More than a third of the stimulus money is being disbursed by states and local authorities, which are not party to free trade accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Canadian manufacturers complain that their goods are being shut out of contracts funded by the US stimulus even though Canada is party to NAFTA, which prohibits discrimination.
via FT.com / US / Economy & Fed – Obama urged to curb Buy American plan.
Rio agrees to 33% cut in iron ore price
Rio agrees to 33% cut in iron ore price – FT.com
China has demanded larger reduction
Rio Tinto said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement with Japanese steelmakers for a 33 per cut in iron ore prices for 2009-10 in a deal that could save the benchmark system of annual price negotiations, but opens the door to a battle with China.
The deal with Nippon Steel, JFE Steel and other smaller Japanese mills comes as the talks between the Chinese steelmakers and the miners Vale of Brazil, Rio and BHP Billiton remain deadlocked beyond the traditional deadline of April 1.
via FT.com / Companies / Basic Resources – Rio agrees to 33% cut in iron ore price.
Bets against dollar highest since start of economic crisis
Bets against dollar highest since start of economic crisis – FT.com
Speculators bet on further weakness
Speculative bets against the dollar have risen to their highest level since the onset of the financial crisis.
Positioning data from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, often used as a proxy for hedge fund activity, showed that in the week ending May 19, bets against the dollar – short positions – versus the euro exceeded bets on dollar strength by 12,250 contracts.
via FT.com / MARKETS / Currencies – Bets against dollar highest since start of economic crisis.
Sotomayor chosen for Supreme Court
Sotomayor chosen for Supreme Court - FT.com
President Barack Obama on Tuesday named US Appeals Court judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee for the Supreme Court.
If confirmed, she would become the first Hispanic justice and the third woman justice in the history of the court.
As the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants and a native of New York’s gritty South Bronx district, she would fulfill Mr Obama’s promise to pick someone with a “common touch” who would diversify the nine-member court.
The president made his decision over the long Memorial Day weekend after nearly a month of deliberation since Justice David Souter announced his retirement.
The choice offered Mr Obama an early opportunity to consolidate liberal influence on the court but also threatened a flashpoint with Republicans that could complicate his ambitious legislative agenda on Capitol Hill.
Democrats have a big enough Senate majority to override Republican opposition to any nominee but conservative activists could make it a bruising confirmation process as they scour Ms Sotomayor’s record for signs of political bias.
Securing confirmation for his nominee will be one of Mr Obama’s top domestic priorities over the summer, adding to the workload of the White House and Congress at a time when they are also grappling with healthcare reform, climate change legislation, and economic recovery efforts.
via FT.com / US & Canada – Sotomayor chosen for Supreme Court.
Largest Bank Failure of 2009
Largest Bank Failure of 2009
The collapse of America’s smaller banks is further evidence that the so-called “recovery” being pronounced by major news agencies and the government is still very far away
The FDIC’s failed bank list is growing at an alarming rate with 25 bank closings in 2008 and another 34 in the first few months of 2009. The newest member of that infamous list is BankUnited FSB of Coral Gables, Florida, which officially collapsed on May 21.
BankUnited FSB will remain open at all 86 branches after the FDIC agreed to share losses on approximately $10.7 billion worth of assets. Initial estimates are that the transaction will cost the FDIC roughly $4.9 billion in insured deposits.
The bank was bought up by a consortium of investors in a move which may signal a change in the FDIC’s rules about how failed banks can be bought and sold. The government hopes that it can facilitate similar takeovers of other failed banks in the future and cut back on the number of outright collapses which it has had to deal with.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
U.S. Cracks Down on Corporate Bribes
OPS: ..yeah but only the ones not going to Congress..
U.S. Cracks Down on Corporate Bribes
The Justice Department is increasing its prosecutions of alleged acts of foreign bribery by U.S. corporations, forcing them to take costly steps to defend against scrutiny.
The crackdown under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA — a post-Watergate law largely dormant for decades — now extends across five continents and penetrates entire industries, including energy and medical devices. Among the companies currently under Justice Department review: Sun Microsystems Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, according to the companies’ disclosures.
At least 120 companies are under investigation, according to Mark Mendelsohn, a deputy chief in the Justice Department division overseeing the prosecutions, up from 100 at the end of last year.
The effort began in the wake of a series of business scandals earlier this decade, including the collapse of Enron, that stirred up a new corporate-reform movement.
Today, companies across the U.S. are working to figure out if they are at risk. In some instances, companies have called the Justice Department to come clean, in hopes of obtaining leniency.
“If we call them before they call us, it’s not where they want to be,” Mr. Mendelsohn said.
via U.S. Cracks Down on Corporate Bribes – WSJ.com.
Ethanol lobby could kill climate bill
Ethanol lobby could kill climate bill - Raw Story »
The Democrats’ cap-and-trade climate bill continues to get watered down.
First it was exceptions for utilities, whose coal-producing power plants produce massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
Now it’s the ethanol lobby (Click the image at left to enlarge).
Ethanol producers, who hold sway with a raft of rural Democrats, are taking umbrage with the recent Environmental Protection Agency finding which said that the “indirect land use” involved in ethanol production must be taken into account when calculating the carbon footprint of the gasoline additive. The EPA finding, when indirect land use is taken into account, calls into question the utility of ethanol as a greenhouse-gas-reducing fuel.
“There’s just enough concerns that the committee members have pretty much decided to stick together — that unless we get a resolution here that we think we can live with, we don’t see how we can support this,” House Agricultural Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN) told Politico’s Lisa Lerer Monday.
Peterson — along with 26 other Democrats on the Agricultural Committee — say they’ll oppose climate change legislation authored by the House Energy Commission unless it addresses concerns of farmers (who even want the EPA decision overturned). Peterson also says he’s rounded up 14 more Democrats outside of the committee who’ll vote to kill the bill — bringing the total ethanol naysayers to 40.
via Raw Story » Ethanol lobby could kill climate bill.
Judge threatens to penalize Obama lawyers in state secrets, wiretap case
Judge threatens to penalize Obama lawyers in state secrets, wiretap case 
A District court judge is threatening to “sanction” Obama Justice Department lawyers who’ve refused to respond to an order ordering the Department to provide a plan for how the case of a charity caught in a warrantless wiretap should proceed. Reports The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson:
The Obama administration has invoked the state-secrets privilege in resisting a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity whose attorneys may have been subjected to warrantless wiretapping. Late Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker issued a terse order that raised the prospect of “sanctions” for government lawyers who have not responded to his order for a plan for how the case should proceed. The sanctions may include awarding monetary damages to the charity, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.
The Justice Department must respond by Friday.
via The Raw Story » Judge threatens to penalize Obama lawyers in state secrets, wiretap case.
Fox host: Obama picked Sotomayor to ‘appease the far left’
Fox host: Obama picked Sotomayor to ‘appease the far left’
The “we report, you decide” network has already decided.
Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, is the “most liberal” of any of his candidates and was chosen to “appease the far left.”
Speaking directly after the announcement, Fox legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano (no relation to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano) declared Sotomayor “the most liberal of everybody on that group of the six or eight finalists.”
Fox host Gretchen Carlson, meanwhile, remarked, “It’s one thing to appease the far left with day-to-day ongoing developments. It’s a whole another thing to appease the far left with a Supreme Court pick.”
Later Napolitano said her “track record… is unambiguously liberal,” called her a “deep liberal,” “not just liberal…way left,” and then repeated that she was “way left” again.
This video is from Fox’s Fox & Friends, broadcast May 26, 2009.
via Raw Story » Fox host: Obama picked Sotomayor to ‘appease the far left’.
Right-Wing Interest Groups Driven By Financial Motives In Attacking Obama’s Court Pick
Right-Wing Interest Groups Driven By Financial Motives In
Attacking Obama’s Court Pick
Editor’s Note: Ian Millhiser is joining ThinkProgress to blog on issues relating to the Supreme Court nomination (read his bio here). This is his first post.
hatchWhen Justice David Souter announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, President Obama saw an opportunity to appoint an outstanding jurist who will shape the Court for a generation. But right-wing interest groups saw dollar signs:
[W]ord that Justice David H. Souter plans to retire at the end of this session sent a jolt through the right-wing fundraising circuit late Thursday night.
“This is a nuclear weapon for the conservatives out there,” said Dan Morgan, a veteran conservative fundraiser who founded Morgan, Meredith and Associates. “When you do fundraising, there’s an emotional component in this and boy the emotion is there magnified times 100.”
So it should come as no surprise that these interest groups were already demanding that conservative senators obstruct the President’s choice before he announced his selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. One right-wing group had been running web-ads against three of the front-runners for the nomination. Another was threatening to run ads targeting GOP senators who fail to obstruct the President’s nominee.
Speaking to Politico, Gary Bauer of the anti-choice, anti-gay group American Values urged Senate Republicans to follow their House counterparts’ “Party of No” strategy:
Tom Cruise and a trial that could drive Scientology out of France – Europe, World – The Independent
Tom Cruise and a trial that could drive Scientology out of France
Movement accused of ‘organised fraud’ against two female members persuaded to part with €20,000
By John Lichfield in Paris
The Scientology movement went on trial in Paris yesterday for “organised fraud” in a case which could lead to the cult’s organising bodies being outlawed in France.
The French state prosecution service has failed to back the trial but denies that its decision was influenced by the lobbying of French politicians, including Nicolas Sarkozy before he became President, by leading Scientologists, including the actor Tom Cruise. After an 11-year inquiry, following complaints from four French former Scientologists, an independent, investigating magistrate decided that the prosecution should go ahead.
Two female plaintiffs allege that, between 1997 and 1999, the French movement persuaded them to pay the equivalent of €20,000 each on drugs, vitamins, counselling, saunas and equipment to improve their mental and physical health. This included an “electrometer” to measure the state of their “spiritual condition”.
via Tom Cruise and a trial that could drive Scientology out of France – Europe, World – The Independent.
Foreclosure Crisis Hits Poor Renters Hard: Evicted Families Have to Fight to Live Together
Foreclosure Crisis Hits Poor Renters Hard: Evicted Families Have to Fight to Live Together
With foreclosures and job losses dragging down the whole economy, low-income families of color are falling into an even deeper hole.
Last fall, Yolanda James and her three children were lost in their own city. After foreclosure had forced them from their South Los Angeles apartment, they ran into closed doors at every turn. Aid agencies offered referrals to other offices, but no relief, and neither the shelter system nor the city’s high-priced housing market had room for them. James burned through her welfare money to pay for motel rooms and later resorted to sleeping with her children in their car.
“I was, like, two or three different people at one time,” she recalled. “I had to get on the grind, to hustle, to make sure my kids–when they get out of school, I could feed them, or I could take them somewhere to shower and bathe for the next day.”
Like others in Los Angeles’s Black community, James, who is 34, had some ties to public resources: a rent subsidy voucher under the federal Section 8 program, a monthly food stamp allowance and hard-fought experience with the social service system, having worked as an advocate with a local anti-poverty group. Still, she wasn’t prepared when the foreclosure wave hit her apartment building. Caught between a delinquent landlord and the bank, James, her 12-year-old son and her two teenage daughters lost their apartment and fell straight through the holes in the city’s tattered safety net.
Smile! The U.S. sees you coming
Smile! The U.S. sees you coming - TheStar.com | Canada |
Canadians Take Notice, the U.S. Is Militarizing the Border. More troops, more searches, more surveilance drones. The U.S. is taking Canadians’ pictures as they cross the border, and their 
biometrics.
DETROIT – About 15 metres before a car from Canada reaches the border inspection booth, the screenings begin.
A camera snaps your licence plate.
An electronic card reader mounted on a yellow post scans your car for the presence of any radio-frequency ID cards inside. If there is an enhanced driver’s licence embedded with biometric information, its unique PIN number is read without you offering it.
The Customs and Border Protection computer connects with your province’s database and in less than a second – .56 to be exact – your personal information is uploaded to a screen in the booth. A second camera snaps the driver’s face.
Welcome to the United States of America.
If Canadians were under the impression that the Canada-loving U.S. President Barack Obama would heed pleas to loosen border controls to ease trade and traffic, there should no longer be any confusion. He has not.
via TheStar.com | Canada | Smile! The U.S. sees you coming.
Selective Lion
Selective Lion
Yes He Can, But Will He? Obama Hesitates to Make the Tough Calls Obama doesn’t lack leadership or nerve, which makes his dithering on the financial crisis and straddling on torture all the more bewildering.
This week, we learned that President Obama really is capable of political courage and idealism, as well as calculation. The question is how he will apply these gifts to the financial crisis as well as to issues closer to both his heart and to the strengths of his intellect, such as defense of the Constitution.
Each of his major speeches of the past week was a tour de force. At Notre Dame he spoke candidly and movingly about reproductive rights and tolerance. His quest for common ground won repeated applause from this largely Catholic audience, some of whom evidently are less dogmatic than their church’s leaders. Said Obama:
via Robert Kuttner: Selective Lion.
World Business Leaders Hear Catastrophic Climate Warnings
World Business Leaders Hear Catastrophic Climate Warnings
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, May 25, 2009 (ENS) – “We meet at a critical moment in human history. Our planet is warming to dangerous levels,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the opening session of the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen on Sunday.
Encouraging world business leaders to create a global economy that is “cleaner, greener and more sustainable, Ban told 700 delegates from the business community that “climate change is the defining challenge of our time.”
“You and your colleagues have the ingenuity and vision to lead by example where others, including governments, are lagging behind,” he said. “With your support and through your example, we must harness the necessary political will to seal the deal.”
In Copenhagen in December, governments are expected to conclude negotiations on a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ends in 2012.
“This will not be easy,” warned Ban. “Fundamental change never is. But if we get it right, we can reasonably look forward to sustained growth and prosperity. If we get it wrong, we face catastrophic damage to people, to the planet and to the global marketplace.”
via World Business Leaders Hear Catastrophic Climate Warnings.
Agency says climate change amplifying animal disease
Agency says climate change amplifying animal disease | Grist
PARIS, May 25, 2009 (AFP) – Climate change is widening viral disease among farm animals, expanding the spread of some microbes that are also a known risk to humans, the world’s top agency for animal health said on Monday.
The World Animal Health Organization—known as OIE, an acronym of its name in French—said a survey of 126 of its member-states found 71 percent were “extremely concerned” about the expected impact of climate change on animal disease.
Fifty-eight percent said they had already identified at least one disease that was new to their territory or had returned to their territory, and that they associated with climate change.
The three most mentioned diseases were bluetongue, spread among sheep by biting midges; Rift Valley fever, a livestock disease that can also be picked up by people handling infected meat; and West Nile virus, which is transmitted by mosquito from infected birds to both animals and humans.
“More and more countries are indicating that climate change has been responsible for at least one emerging or re-emerging disease occurring on their territory,” OIE Director General Bernard Vallat said in a statement.
“This is a reality we cannot ignore and we must help veterinary services throughout the world to equip themselves with systems that comply with international standards of good governance so as to deal with this problem.”
via Agency says climate change amplifying animal disease | Grist.
Poll: 1 in 4 Israelis would leave if Iran gets nuclear bomb
Poll: 1 in 4 Israelis would leave if Iran gets nuclear bomb - Haaretz
Some 23 percent of Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, according to a poll conducted on behalf of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Some 85 percent of respondents said they feared the Islamic Republic would obtain an atomic bomb, 57 percent believed the new U.S. initiative to engage in dialogue with Tehran would fail and 41 percent believed Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear installations without waiting to see whether or how the talks develop.
The findings are worrying because they reflect an exaggerated and unnecessary fear,” Prof. David Menashri, the head of the Center, said. “Iran’s leadership is religiously extremist but calculated and it understands an unconventional attack on Israel is an act of madness that will destroy Iran. Sadly, the survey shows the Iranian threat works well even without a bomb and thousands of Israelis [already] live in fear and contemplate leaving the country.”
Women are more fearful than men that Iran will obtain nuclear weapons: 83 percent of female respondents said they fear such a scenario in contrast to 78 percent of men; 39 percent of women said they would consider leaving the country in such an event as opposed to 22 percent of men.
via Poll: 1 in 4 Israelis would leave if Iran gets nuclear bomb – Haaretz – Israel News.
Obama Betrays The Liberals
Obama Betrays The Liberals - by Sherwood Ross
America’s liberals stand betrayed. Their new president, the one they sweated to elect—-a brilliant, charismatic leader with a professional background in constitutional law—has transmogrified himself from the champion who denounced in his campaign the illegalities of the Bush White House into a president bent on their perpetuation.
Liberals are stunned by Obama’s plan to “restart Bush-era military tribunals” for some Guantanamo detainees, reviving what the Associated Press pointed out, is “a fiercely disputed trial system he once denounced.”(May 15). Liberals are appalled by Obama’s May 21st proposal to hold terrorism suspects in “prolonged detention” inside the U.S. without a trial. “Such detention,” Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) wrote him, “is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world.”
If liberals chaffed over Obama’s centrist cabinet choices, they were dismayed by his decision not to release photographs depicting the sadistic tortures the Bush Gang inflicted on prisoners during a so-called “War on Terror” that was nothing but terror itself. A typical reaction comes from Joe Kishore, writing on the World Socialist Website (May 22): “Whatever verbal warnings Obama may make about the erosion of democracy in the United States, the actions of his administration facilitate and escalate its breakdown.”
via Scoop: Sherwood Ross: Obama Betrays The Liberals.
We lose when graduates are told to hit the road
We lose when graduates are told to hit the road
John Chen has served as chairman, chief executive officer and president of Sybase, Inc. since 1998. All views are his own.
As I watched the news showing President Obama reaching out to University of Notre Dame graduates eager to shake his hand, I was impressed by the coalition of colors and nationalities in the faces all round the President that says much good about the United States. I also wondered who, among those shaking President Obama’s hand, will be told by an immigration official next week, ”Congratulations, graduate. Now hit the road, leave the U.S., go home!”
When that happens, if it hasn’t already happened to thousands of graduates across the country, the U.S. will be the loser.
The fact is that at commencement time, foreign science and engineering graduates from U.S. universities are itching to stay in America, especially at this time, and put their energy into the most valuable work. This would eventually help us recover economically and go on to thrive as an innovative world trading powerhouse.
Obama’s Honeymoon is Over
Obama’s Honeymoon is Over -- by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Wake up, Mr. Obama! You are what you do! Have you become Bush?
Barack Obama has had his 100 days! The honeymoon is over! The gloves are off! Mr. Obama, tear down those illegal prisons!
Two thousand pictures of Americans performing acts of savage torture on prisoners will not be released to the general public if Mr. Obama gets his way. Military commissions will continue to try prisoners outside the scope of American law, and will be free to use brazen hearsay as “hard” evidence against defendants. Mr. Obama continues to cleave to the most abhorrent aspects of Bush-era secrecy policies, and has moved to block a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, who was outed by Bush administration officials in order to silence her Iraq whistle blower husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
–William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
It was not merely the stolen elections in Florida and later Ohio that made Bush illegitimate; it was his declaration in both word and deeds: “The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!” Under the cover given him by ‘war’ (however illegal), Bush claimed to be above the law, beyond responsibility to the people, in effect, a dictator!
The sooner that the United States dissociates itself from the crimes of the Bush administration, the sooner will it regain its role as leader of the world’s democracies. Indicting the Bush administration now for its promotion of torture as US policy is the first, and most important, step in that direction.
Unfortunately, there is no way to impeach George Bush retroactively for leading us into the illegal and disastrous Iraq war. Nevertheless, Barack Obama should realize that victory over terrorism depends critically on the United States emphatically denouncing its ties to Bush’s failed policies of unilateralism, militarism and torture.
–Sweep Bush policies into dustbin, John F. Bellantoni, Sarasota
No, we cannot impeach Bush now! We blew an opportunity to make the statement that OUTLAW PRESIDENTS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED! Instead, we bent over and allowed a war criminal to get away with murder.
via The Existentialist Cowboy: Obama’s Honeymoon is Over.
The Crisis and How to Deal with It
The Crisis and How to Deal with It - The New York Review of Books
By Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, Robin Wells et al.
Following are excerpts from a symposium on the economic crisis presented by The New York Review of Books and PEN World Voices at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 30. The participants were former senator Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, and Robin Wells, with Jeff Madrick as moderator. —The Editors
Jeff Madrick: It was six months ago now that the Lehman debacle occurred, that AIG was rescued, that Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch; it was about six months ago that the TARP funds started being distributed. The economy was doing fairly poorly in much of 2008, and then fell off a cliff in the last quarter of 2008 and into 2009, shrinking at a 6 percent annual rate—an extraordinary drop in our national income. It is now by some very important measures the worst economic recession in the post–World War II era. Employment has dropped faster than ever before in this space of time.
We have a three-front problem: a housing market that went crazy as the housing bubble burst; a credit crisis, the most severe we’ve known since the early 1930s; and now a sharp drop in demand for goods and services and capital investment, leading to a severe recession. What gives us the jitters is that all of these are related. We have seen some deceleration in the rate of economic decline, and many people are saying that “green shoots” are showing. What is the actual state of the economy, and do we need a serious mid-course correction on the part of the Obama administration?
Bill Bradley: How far are we along in a recovery? When the market price of Citicorp drops from 60 to 1, and then comes back to 3, I don’t think that’s a recovery. Warren Buffett buys Goldman Sachs, and after he buys, the price drops 45 to 50 percent, and if he’s going to break even on the investment he’s got to earn 9 percent for the next twelve years, I don’t think that’s a recovery. The administration has put in place measures that, if they were to work, could offer some hope.
What I’d like to suggest is that if they don’t work, there’s an alternative. The national government has now made about $12.7 trillion in guarantees and commitments to the US financial sector, and we’ve already spent a little over $4 trillion in this crisis. Some institutions such as Citicorp, for example, received about $60 billion in direct assistance, and $340 billion in guarantees. So US taxpayers are into Citicorp for around $400 billion. If we look out to June, July, and if we see that the PPIP [Public-Private Investment Program, created by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner] is not succeeding, that the bank assets aren’t being bought at levels that they should be bought from the books of banks, then there is an alternative.
via The Crisis and How to Deal with It – The New York Review of Books.
Ben Nelson: Now More Conservative Than Ever
OPS: As with a 2 year old – When there are no consequences for the action there is no reason to change the behavior. As long a a coward is Majority Leader this will drag us down.
Ben Nelson: Now More Conservative Than Ever
If you read this site fairly regularly, you might be thinking that President Obama is having some issues with the Senate. And you’d be correct. Here’s an abbreviated list of hurdles: Dawn Johnsen can’t be confirmed to head the Office of Legal Counsel; health care reform may have to do without a public option–if it happens at all; and Obama’s goal of shuttering the Guantanamo Bay detention center by early 2010 is suddenly imperiled by the common cousins of conservative demagoguery and Democratic sheepishness.
The examples are manifold. And the voices of opposition are united.
“No way I can vote for her,” says a senator of Dawn Johnsen.
Seeking to protect health insurance companies, which would be hard pressed to compete with a government provider, one senator called the idea of a publicly run insurance option a “deal breaker.”
And on Guantanamo, the voice of the opposition in the Senate can be summed up thusly: “I think they need to be kept elsewhere, wherever that is. I don’t want to see them come on American soil.”
via Ben Nelson: Now More Conservative Than Ever | TPMDC.
“The Eliminationists” Warns of the Radicalized Right Wing’s Violent Potential Through the Shills of Hate
David Neiwert’s Book “The Eliminationists” Warns of the Radicalized Right Wing’s Violent Potential Through the Shills of Hate
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Hate-talk radio is all about Manichean dualism: Dividing the world into good and evil, black and white, conservative and liberal. And I’m convinced that it actually services a significant bloc of the American public that craves this kind of explanation of their world, because it has a comforting value to them. These are the people Robert Altemeyer calls “the authoritarians” –- the people who actively seek authoritarian rule.
– David Neiwert, author, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right
If BuzzFlash has emphasized three things in its nine years of being online as a progressive news and commentary site over nine years, it’s that the right wing engages in demagoguery, hypocrisy and lies.
Right wing radio and television roll all three of these nefarious techniqures together and deliver up a combo plate heaped high with a dangerous appeal to primal fears and emotions that threaten the basis of a reasoned democracy based on mutual respect.
They also threaten the “other” — as in “liberals,” for instance — by branding them (“us”) as the enemy. We might laugh condescendingly at right wing media shills, but they are very dangerous indeed.
As David Neiwert writes in his introduction, “Eliminationism [is] a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejction, or extermination.”
Their rhetoric is “focused on an enemy within, people who constitute entire blocs of the citizen populace. It advocates the excision and extermination of those entire blocs by violent or civil means.”
Why Infosys cuts H1-B visas
Why Infosys cuts H1-B visas
Even as the strong anti-outsourcing lobby in the US is forcing US lawmakers to take a relook at their H1-B visa strategy amid huge job losses, Infosys Technologies – which holds the largest number of H1-B visas among all the Indian IT services companies – has started reducing the number as a part of the company’s policy to reduce its ‘overseas bench’ strength.
The number of H1-B visa holders in the company, which was 8,700 as of December 31, 2008, came down to 8,200 as of March 31, 2009, according to information available with Business Standard.
This number is expected to come down further by another 500 at the end of the first quarter of FY10, as the company is further rationalising its workforce in the US by inducting more locals (Americans) in its rolls, a source close to the development said.
However, even as the company is reducing its ‘overseas bench’, it has simultaneously committed to add another 1,000 American citizens to its rolls in the next 12-18 months, which will take the total number of US citizens on its rolls to 1,800.
However, Infosys member of the Board and Head of HR, T V Mohandas Pai, insisted that the current reduction in the number of H1-B visa holders had nothing to do with the ‘reduction in the overseas bench’.
“The number of people (H1-B visa holders) go up and down based on business requirements. When the business is down due to the recession, we don’t need so many people (in the US),” he said.
via Why Infosys cuts H1-B visas : Rediff.com news.
Tech employment shrinks for fifth straight month
Tech employment shrinks for fifth straight month
Recruiters say U.S. firms should resume hiring IT workers by year’s end
Computerworld – The number of IT workers in the U.S. has declined steadily since December, a trend that wasn’t helped by Hewlett Packard Co.’s announcement last week that it is cutting 6,000 employees..
Employment in technology occupations peaked last November at 4.058 million, according to the TechServe Alliance (formerly the National Association of Computer Consultants), which analyzes federal labor data on IT-related occupations. By the end of April, the number had declined to 3.87 million, the alliance said.
IT recruiters are mostly optimistic that the end of the decline is in sight, though most agree that the IT labor force will continue to shrink through the summer, typically a period of slower hiring because of vacations.
via Tech employment shrinks for fifth straight month.
Climate change: World’s destiny at stake
Climate change: World’s destiny at stake
PARIS (AFP) – Ministers from economies accounting for 80 percent of the globe’s greenhouse gases met Monday to warnings that “the world’s destiny” may lie in the outcome of a mooted pact on climate change.
The so-called Major Economies Forum (MEF) met in Paris ahead of a new round of UN talks aimed at culminating in a sweeping global treaty in Copenhagen in December.
“The world’s destiny will probably be at stake in Copenhagen,” French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said as he opened the two-day meeting in Paris.
He spoke out against skeptics who predict the accord will cripple the world’s economy.
“Copenhagen is not a retrograde vision, it’s not the start of negative growth, but a new start for strong, sustainable, sober carbon development,” he said.
The 192-nation process under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aims at securing cuts in emissions of heat-trapping carbon gases and building defences for poor countries most exposed to changing weather patterns.
via Climate change: World’s destiny at stake – Yahoo! News.
Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure
Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure - NYTimes.com 
As job losses rise, growing numbers of American homeowners with once solid credit are falling behind on their mortgages, amplifying a wave of foreclosures.
n the latest phase of the nation’s real estate disaster, the locus of trouble has shifted from subprime loans — those extended to home buyers with troubled credit — to the far more numerous prime loans issued to those with decent financial histories.
With many economists anticipating that the unemployment rate will rise into the double digits from its current 8.9 percent, foreclosures are expected to accelerate. That could exacerbate bank losses, adding pressure to the financial system and the broader economy.
“We’re about to have a big problem,” said Morris A. Davis, a real estate expert at the University of Wisconsin. “Foreclosures were bad last year? It’s going to get worse.”
Economists refer to the current surge of foreclosures as the third wave, distinct from the initial spike when speculators gave up property because of plunging real estate prices, and the secondary shock, when borrowers’ introductory interest rates expired and were reset higher.
via Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure – NYTimes.com.
Israel’s parliament to consider loyalty oath
Israel’s parliament to consider loyalty oath - – The Independent
An ultranationalist party headed by the Israeli Foreign Minister said yesterday that it has prepared legislation linking citizenship to an oath of allegiance, in what amounted to a threat to the country’s Arabs to swear loyalty to the Jewish state or risk severe punishment.
The bill follows a separate proposal on Sunday by the same party that would make it illegal for Arabs to mourn the “catastrophe” – the term Palestinians use to describe their defeat and exile in the war that surrounded Israel’s founding.
Both proposals by the Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party focus on the perceived disloyalty of the country’s Arab citizens, roughly a fifth of Israel’s population of seven million.
via Israel’s parliament to consider loyalty oath – Middle East, World – The Independent.
A G.M. Bankruptcy Would Tax the Experts
Bankruptcy for G.M. Would Tax the Experts – NYTimes.com
The decline of General Motors may be putting thousands of auto workers and managers out of work, but it will be putting a lot of lawyers to work.
How many lawyers will end up working on G.M.’s expected bankruptcy case still is not clear, but in legal circles, the joke is that there may not be enough experienced bankruptcy lawyers available to handle the filing.
In part, that is because so many top lawyers are already running up lots of billable hours working on the Chrysler bankruptcy case, while others have been hired by the government, which is financing the way through bankruptcy for Chrysler and, presumably, G.M.
It is not just lawyers who will be busy handling a G.M. bankruptcy filing, which would be perhaps the biggest and most-watched in legal history. Because of its size and scope, the bankruptcy would be the most complicated that any American company has gone through — more complex than those of Chrysler and Lehman Brothers, two other notable bankruptcy cases now making their way through the system.
via A G.M. Bankruptcy Would Tax the Experts – NYTimes.com.
‘God’s debt cancellation’ donations help evangelist strike it rich
‘God’s debt cancellation’ donations help evangelist strike it rich
In a detailed investigation of South Carolina’s Inspiration Network, the Charlotte Observer reports that the network’s on-air promises that viewers can obtain prosperity and “God’s debt cancellation” by donating $200 or more have made its CEO David Cerullo a wealthy man and his cable network “one of the world’s fastest growing Christian broadcasters.”
With a salary that in 2007 amounted to $1.52 million, Cerulla is “the best-paid leader of any religious charity” and earns far more than CEOs of larger non-profits, such as Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. An additional $600,000 was paid in 2007 to his wife and children.
Last year, Cerullo’s network had a budget of nearly $80 million, half derived from donations, much of which is going into building the “City of Light” in northern Lancaster County, SC. According to the Observer, “Taxpayers are also helping to pay for it. Eager to bring jobs to a county with 19 percent unemployment, South Carolina offered the network incentives worth up to $26 million to land the campus — a deal that has been questioned by economic development experts.”
via Raw Story » ‘God’s debt cancellation’ donations help evangelist strike it rich.
British police state clamping down
UK rolling out scanning software that can track all cars
British police state clamping down
The British government will soon have a fully-operational network of cameras fitted with license plate recognition software, according to a published report.
In a major first for any Western government’s police enforcement apparatus, the new system will allow any vehicle in the United Kingdom to be tracked to its precise location.
A number of local councils are signing up their Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems to the ANPR network. As long as the cameras are technically good enough, they can be adapted to take the software.
[...]
John Dean, who is co-ordinating the ANPR network for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “It’s the finest intelligence-led policing tool we’ve got.
“It covers so many different areas from crime reduction, crime detection to road safety and everything in between.”
The British news service also details the case of John Catt, who’s already had a rather unpleasant run-in with Britain’s Big Brother.
via The Raw Story » British police state clamping down.
Bailed Out Banks May Be Driving Up Oil Prices
Bailed Out Banks May Be Driving Up Oil Prices
Today, McClatchy took a look at current oil prices, and came to the conclusion that its “not because supplies are tight or demand is high” that prices are rising, but rather that “Wall Street speculators — some of them recipients of billions of dollars in taxpayers’ bailout money — may be to blame“:
Big Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley and others are able to sidestep the regulations that limit investments in commodities such as oil, and they’re investing on behalf of pension funds, endowments, hedge funds and other big institutional investors, in part as a hedge against rising inflation.
According to McClatchy, “critics say this speculative flow of money into commodities markets is a self-fulfilling prophecy that’s distorting the usual process by which buyers and sellers set prices and is driving up the prices of oil, gasoline, grains and other essentials.” Both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have received $10 billion in TARP money.
via Wonk Room » Bailed Out Banks May Be Driving Up Oil Prices.
Elizabeth Edwards: $1 Of Every $700 Went To Pay Salary Of UnitedHealth CEO
Elizabeth Edwards: $1 Of Every $700 Went To Pay Salary Of UnitedHealth CEO
Last night, CAPAF Senior Fellow Elizabeth Edwards appeared on The Daily Show with John Stewart to discuss her new book Resilience and health care reform. Edwards stressed the importance of restoring competition in health insurance markets noting that at one point, “the President of UnitedHealth made so much money, that one of every $700 that was spent in this country on health care went to pay him”:
It’s really important, and this is the part I’m afraid will get negotiated away. We have to have a public provider. That is, instead of buying your insurance from United Health Care, or from Blue Cross. You could actually pick a government provider. The insurance companies are against it because they don’t want that competition. And because they’re afraid of the threat of the competition they’re already saying we’re going to cut prices, we’re going to make this so much easier to get. Just the threat, so imagine what the reality will do. We will actually have health costs that could work.
Watch it:
via Wonk Room » Elizabeth Edwards: $1 Of Every $700 Went To Pay Salary Of UnitedHealth CEO.
STUDY: Without Health Reform, Premiums Will Increase Over 70% In The Next Nine Years
STUDY: Without Health Reform, Premiums Will Increase Over 70% In The Next Nine Years
An America without health care reform is an America where families face spiraling health insurance premiums, businesses drop coverage and trim benefits, doctors are denied objective information about the treatments they provide, and millions of Americans live just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.
Those who oppose health reform are choosing to maintain this status quo.
A new paper from the Center for American Progress, “America Without Health Reform,” points out that, absent reform, average premiums (the cost of health insurance to families and businesses) are projected to rise more than 70 percent from 2010-2018, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Read it here.
Premium Growth
via Wonk Room » STUDY: Without Health Reform, Premiums Will Increase Over 70% In The Next Nine Years.
Reports: A Strong Federal Renewable Electricity Standard Would Save Over $200 Billion While Raising Rates Less Than One Percent
Reports: A Strong Federal Renewable Electricity Standard Would Save Over $200 Billion While Raising Rates Less Than One Percent
Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
A new study by a Department of Energy laboratory predicts that consumers would see a negligible increase in their electricity costs if Congress requires utilities to produce up to a quarter of their power from renewable sources. The analysis of three Democratic proposals to impose a national renewable energy standard (RES) of 20 to 25 percent concludes that electric rates would increase less than one percent under any of the plans proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA). The report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. concludes:
None of the RES bills modeled have a significant impact on consumer electricity prices at the national level.
During Senate debate on a 15 percent RES in late 2007, utilities including Southern Co. and American Electric Power Co. claimed the measure could cost $67 billion or more. The NREL study is the latest analysis to rebut arguments from some utility companies that a national RES would impose high costs on consumers. On the Waxman-Markey proposal of 25 percent RES by 2025 and a 15 percent electricity and 10 percent natural gas EERS by 2020:
NYT Again Repeating Pentagon Propaganda
NYT Again Repeating Pentagon Propaganda
Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The New York Times is at it again. Reaching back into an old bag of tricks, Bush administration holdovers in the Pentagon have used the paper of record to spread false propaganda at a critical juncture in a key national security debate, this time about released Guantanamo detainees supposedly returning to terrorism. This article has just one purpose: to mislead readers about the true nature of the threat posed by released Guantanamo detainees.
Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller discards any semblance of journalism and merely serves as a conduit for unnamed Pentagon officials to claim without any supporting evidence that 74 released Guantanamo detainees are “engaged in terrorism.” The headline screams “1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds,” and the entire opening of the story presents the Pentagon figures as conclusions of fact that are being withheld for political purposes.
Not until the 17th paragraph does this key passage appear:
The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.
via Wonk Room » NYT Again Repeating Pentagon Propaganda.
The KBR Disaster In Iraq
The KBR Disaster In Iraq
Our guest blogger is Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
The Senate Democratic Policy Committee held the 19th in its series of hearings on waste, fraud and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday. What we heard was really stunning.
We learned that the Army’s biggest contractor in Iraq, KBR, received bonuses totaling $83.4 million for work done during 2007 under LOGCAP III Task Order 139, which included electrical wiring work throughout Iraq. According to the Army’s own criteria for performance bonuses, in order to properly receive such a bonus, the firm’s work was to have been “excellent.”
Witnesses told our committee KBR’s work was far from excellent. As they described it, it sounds more like a disaster:
– One witness was Eric Peters, a former KBR Master Electrician who worked in Iraq for KBR as recently as this year. He said he quit the company after determining that KBR was incapable of doing the electrical wiring work properly, did not care about the safety of its own employees, and sought to intimidate those who spoke up. Peters also noted that KBR hires third country nationals who are not electricians to do wiring work. Often, workers and supervisors don’t even speak the same language.
– Another witness was Jim Childs, also a Master Electrician. The Army hired him to inspect KBR’s wiring work in Iraq after I asked the Army to take a closer look at what KBR was doing. He told us KBR’s electrical wiring work in Iraq was the “most hazardous, worst quality work I have ever inspected. During my theatre-wide inspections, I concluded that roughly 90 percent of the new construction building work by KBR was not properly wired. This means that over 70,000 buildings in Iraq were not up to code.”
via Wonk Room » The KBR Disaster In Iraq.
Baucus Continues To Waffle On Tax Haven Crackdown
Baucus Continues To Waffle On Tax Haven Crackdown
Earlier this month, President Obama released his plan for cracking down on corporations that use overseas tax havens, a practice that costs the U.S. billions in lost tax revenue every year. “Within minutes” of Obama’s announcement, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) was putting on the brakes by calling for “further study” of Obama’s proposals.
Baucus continued his waffling on tax havens today, rebutting a push by Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) to hold off on a free trade agreement with Panama until the Panamanian government makes more of an effort to stop tax avoidance within its borders. At the moment, “Panama is one of only 13 countries – and the only current or prospective FTA partner – that is listed on all of the major tax-haven watchdog lists.”
“In this time of economic distress, we can no longer afford to ignore the billions of dollars of tax revenue lost to the U.S. Treasury due to the bank secrecy practices of Panama and other tax havens,” wrote Doggett and Levin. Baucus countered with this:
via Wonk Room » Baucus Continues To Waffle On Tax Haven Crackdown.
Allowing Banks To Buy Back TARP Warrants May Shortchange Taxpayers Billions
OPS: Thanks Timmy.
Allowing Banks To Buy Back TARP Warrants May Shortchange
Taxpayers Billions
When the U.S. Treasury attempted to recapitalize the nation’s banks via TARP, it received stock warrants in return, which amount to the right to buy stock sometime in the future. The idea was that these warrants would become more valuable as the banks got healthier, which is how taxpayers would see “the upside” from the TARP investments.
Now that banks are hustling to pay back their TARP money, Treasury has to decide what to do with the warrants, and the options are either selling them back to the original bank or selling them to third party investors. So far, only one bank — Old National Bancorp of Evansville, Indiana — has worked out a deal with Treasury for the warrants. And according to an analysis by Bloomberg News, if Old National turns out to be the model for all the other banks, taxpayers may be shortchanged billions:
via Wonk Room » Allowing Banks To Buy Back TARP Warrants May Shortchange Taxpayers Billions.
Begala Memo Makes Case For Defining Progressive Health Proposals
Paul Begala has released a point-by-point debunk of Frank Luntz’s
now infamous health care memo, in which the GOP wordsmith instructed Republicans to attack the president’s health reform efforts by criticizing the deficiencies in foreign health care systems.
The top quote is key: “The only people who give any credence to Republican Senators’ rhetoric is Democratic Senators,” Begala quotes George Mitchell as saying. In other words, the public agrees with progressive health care priorities and in this health care debate, Americans start out on our side. Begala:
That fact is this: the overwhelming majority of American support health care reform. In fact, Dr. Luntz himself notes that voters trust Democrats over Republicans by a whopping 20 percent on health care . If health care reform were unpopular, Republicans would not resort to misleading rhetoric to mask their opposition. The striking thing about Luntz’s memo is how the rhetoric he advocates apes our message.
So the problem is not in convincing the American people that we need reform; they’ve heard that message before and they overwhelmingly agree with it. The real goal, this time, is to do a better job in mobilizing that public support into action for change. As Chris Jennings often argues, “when it comes to health reform, fear beats hope. In the past, this has meant that nothing gets done.”
via Wonk Room » Begala Memo Makes Case For Defining Progressive Health Proposals.
Cleaning Up The Polluter Influence On Waxman-Markey
Cleaning Up The Polluter Influence On Waxman-Markey
The challenge for progressive climate activists, now that the Waxman-Markey clean energy act has been approved by the energy committee, is to turn the central flaw of the political process shaping the legislation into a strength.
The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy Security Act has been corrupted with weakened targets and incredibly large bailouts of the fossil fuel industry, because of the overwhelming influence of polluting corporations on the political process. As Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) explained during the markup on Wednesday, the history of US policy is to give “huge subsidies” to the coal and nuclear industry, and this bill is no exception:
So in talking about socialism, if, if you look at what the nuclear industry has received from this committee, what the coal industry in terms of subsidies has received from this committee, oil industry received in benefits from this committee, it so dwarfs the benefits that we have or even remotely intend to provide for these nascent renewable energy sources. The truth is, this entire bill is a clean energy bill. We have in huge subsidies for clean coal. Huge. Much more than we have in for renewables. . . .
But, please understand that it is a balanced bill. Nuclear, coal, oil, gas, all of these renewables, all part of the mix, including new hydro. Okay. All of it. And I just beg you to give these new renewable energy technologies a chance to play their role as well.
Watch it:
via Wonk Room » Cleaning Up The Polluter Influence On Waxman-Markey.
Liz Cheney considering run for public office?
Liz Cheney considering run for public office?
The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen has been keeping a close watch on Liz Cheney, noting that the ubiquitous daughter of the former vice president “practically lives on cable news” these days. “She also lies routinely, accuses the president of helping terrorists, and is so mindless in her attacks on the nation’s elected leadership, she’s something of a national embarrassment,” Benen writes. And according to close friends of hers, she may be the next Cheney to run for office:
“She’s awesome. Everyone wants her to run,” said a close friend. [...]
“She’s a chip off the block!” said a longtime friend. [...]
“It’s a two-fer. She comes off a bit better than he does sometimes,” a conservative consultant said.
Asked about the possibility that Liz Cheney might make a run for office, Republican operative Karl Rove responded, “She might!” Watch it:
via Think Progress » Liz Cheney considering run for public office?.
Fear And Loathing: ‘Backlash’ Potential As Bailed Out Carmakers Still Bleeding Jobs
OPS: Personally, I will buy a car from a Japanese or European manufacturer – or ride a bicycle before I buy one from ANY of these Treasonous ‘American’ companies importing them from China. That of course assumes that I have a job, and can afford one.
Fear And Loathing: ‘Backlash’ Potential As Bailed Out Carmakers Still Bleeding Jobs - On The Hill:
Lawmakers plan to haul the heads of Chrysler and General Motors to Washington next month to testify how their companies will hemorrage tens of thousands of U.S. jobs — even as the carmakers operate with taxpayer-paid bailout funds.
Anger is rising on Capitol Hill, as some warn of a political backlash over the federally bailed out carmakers purposely throwing 100,000 or more Americans out work.
In a letter dated May 22, the chairman and ranking Republican of the Science and Transportation Committee told the CEOs of the bailed out corporations, General Motors and Chrysler, to expect to testify next month to address the jobs issue, which is being excaserbated by the expected closure of hundreds of GM and Chrysler dealerships nationwide. A recent increase in claims for unemployment insurance was directly attributable to job losses in the auto industry.
via On The Hill: Fear And Loathing: ‘Backlash’ Potential As Bailed Out Carmakers Still Bleeding Jobs.
Waterboard the Fed?
OPS: The Fed is a private for profit corporation – we have no rights
Waterboard the Fed? | Dean Baker | guardian.co.uk
American taxpayers have the right to know where the trillions of dollars being pledged in their name are going
To my knowledge, no one has proposed waterboarding the US Federal Reserve. But the hostile reaction of much of the country’s political leadership to suggestions that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit the Federal Reserve Board might lead people to think that waterboarding was being called for.
The basic story is straightforward. The US Congress has lent more than $700bn, via the Treasury, to bankers at below market interest rates through the troubled assets relief programme, or Tarp. This was to keep the banks from going belly up. At the same time, the Fed has lent more than $2 trillion to banks and non-financial institutions to maintain liquidity in the financial system.
The congressional oversight panel, led by Elizabeth Warren, has frequently complained that the Treasury has not always been altogether forthcoming in providing information about its lending practices under the Tarp. However, there is at least a public paper trail. We can find out how much money each bank received and under what terms.
By contrast, there is no public paper trail for the Fed’s loans, even though it has more than three times as much money outstanding as does the Treasury through the Tarp. The Fed has only provided aggregate information on the amount of loans in each of its various lending programs, and general information on the terms of the loans and the types of collateral received.
via Waterboard the Fed? | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
New Justice Could Hold the Key to Presidential Power
New Justice Could Hold the Key to Presidential Power – NYTimes.com
As President Obama prepares to replace Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court, conventional wisdom says his nominee will have little chance to change the court because all the contenders appear to share Justice Souter’s approach on social issues, like abortion rights.
But the effect on presidential power could be pivotal. Important rulings on executive authority — striking down military commissions and upholding habeas corpus rights for Guantánamo detainees — have been decided by a five-vote majority, including Justice Souter, on the nine-member court.
“Given that the decisions have generally been 5-4 in this area, this could be terribly consequential,” said David Golove, a New York University law professor. “We’re losing one of the court’s strongest leaders on the side of limiting executive power to reasonable bounds. If the person who replaces Souter is different than him, the balance of power may shift.”
via Washington Memo – New Justice Could Hold the Key to Presidential Power – NYTimes.com.
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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. 
