Archive for May, 2009
Two Bush-era officials reject Cheney’s security stance
Two Bush-era officials reject Cheney’s security stance
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Two top Bush-era officials on Friday rejected ex-vice president Dick Cheney‘s scathing criticism of US President Barack Obama, saying the country’s national security was not in jeopardy.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in the same post under former president George W. Bush, and Tom Ridge, the former head of homeland security, both voiced disagreement with Cheney a day after he attacked Obama’s performance as the new commander-in-chief.
Gates said in an interview that opponents of Obama’s decision to close the “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo were engaging in “fear-mongering,” a reference to Cheney’s stance on the issue.
Defending the president’s decision to shut the detention center at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Gates said the prison was damaging America’s image and served as a propaganda tool for Al-Qaeda.
“The truth is, it’s probably one of the finest prisons in the world today. But it has a taint,” Gates told NBC television’s “Today” program during a visit to New York.
via Two Bush-era officials reject Cheney’s security stance – Yahoo! News.
On the Edge with Max Keiser – 22 May 2009
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert
Are the markets recovering or about to get a whole lot worse? (Will get higher res version up online soon!)
via YouTube – On the Edge with Max Keiser – 22 May 2009 – (1 of 2).
The War Cost as of 05-22-09
OPS: Remember when the Republicans said the war would ‘pay for itself’ ?
YouTube – The War Cost as of 05-22-09.
Drinking from Plastic Bottles ‘Increases Exposure to Gender-Bending Chemical’
Drinking from Plastic Bottles ‘Increases Exposure to Gender-Bending Chemical’ – | CommonDreams.org
As well as plastic bottles, BPA is also found in dentistry composites and sealants and in the lining of aluminium food and beverage cans
by Murray Wardrop
Scientists have demonstrated for the first time that polycarbonate containers release the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) into liquid stored in them.
BPA has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.
Experts warned that babies are at greater risk, because heating baby bottles increases the amount of BPA released, and the chemical is potentially more harmful to infants.
via Drinking from Plastic Bottles ‘Increases Exposure to Gender-Bending Chemical’ | CommonDreams.org.
The Crimes of Wall Street: Investigate ‘Control Frauds’
The Crimes of Wall Street: Investigate ‘Control Frauds’
There have been ½ million fraudulent mortgage cases annually that should have been prosecuted, but the FBI only has the capacity to handle 500 per annum.
So many of us know in detail about all the false warnings and exaggerated claims that were used to justify the war in Iraq. By now, six years later, and after many books, reports, news stories and films (hopefully including my two books and film, Weapons of Mass Deception), we see the pattern of lies and deception. We realize what a fraud was committed against the American people and what its consequences have been for the people of this country, Iraq and Afghanistan.
For many of the righteous among us who thunder against these lies, there seems to be a lack of curiosity about the costly frauds that flushed our own economy down the toilet. Here too, there is a tendency to focus blame on politrick(ians), and not look at the larger fraud behind the fraud, in part , because most economists and media outlets minimize its role.
First, its clear that, like on the war, government officials did mislead us, from original deregulators in the Carter-Reagan years to the financial “modernizers of the Clinton-Bush 2 era with their refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences of their free market fantasies, the gutting of rules and regulations and embrace of a phony “ownership society.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Fed Does Not Believe Economic “Stabilization” Will Persist
OPS: It must not be in the interest of this private for profit corporation to have it ‘stabilize’ of it would be stable.
Fed Does Not Believe Economic “Stabilization” Will Persist
The economy is “still facing significant risks” and is still in a very vulnerable state despite some economic indices suggesting otherwise.
Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from their most recent meeting in April and it revealed an extremely gloomy outlook for the economy and forecast much higher unemployment and economic contraction than previously predicted.
The report indicated that the economy is “still facing significant risks” and is still in a very vulnerable state despite some economic indices suggesting otherwise.
“Participants continued to see significant downside risks to the economic outlook,” the minutes said. “While financial strains and risk spreads had lessened somewhat over the intervening period, participants agreed that the global financial system remained vulnerable to further shocks.”
In fact, the central bank concluded that while the pace of economic deterioration has slowed considerably, full economic recovery could be as far as six years out and probably at least two years away.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Federal Reserve Cannot Account for $9 Trillion video
OPS: It’s an unregulated private corporation that has your credit card – What do you expect?
Federal Reserve Cannot Account for $9 Trillion video
The fed cannot account for the whereabouts of $9 trillion worth of off-balance sheet transactions over the course of the past eight months. Nor can it explain the $1 trillion expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet since last September.
Earlier this month, Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman demonstrated why a much greater degree of transparency and accountability are absolutely necessary for the central bank as she testified on Capitol Hill. She stated that the Fed is a little behind on its accounting practices.
So far behind, in fact, that it cannot account for the whereabouts of $9 trillion worth of off-balance sheet transactions over the course of the past eight months. Nor could she explain the $1 trillion expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet since last September.
“We have different connotations,” Coleman replied when asked about the ballooning balance sheet. “We’re actually conducting a fairly high-level review of the various lending facilities collectively.”
However, when pressed by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), Coleman said she could not provide any information on those investigations and claimed that she had no authority to look into the practices of the Fed. Instead she said, her job was simply to oversee the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. She reiterated that statement in an email to Bloomberg News, who originally broke the story of the gaping holes in the Fed’s balance sheet.
“By law, we are the Office of Inspector General for the Board of Governors only,” the statement said. “Consistent with our authority, we cannot conduct a direct audit of Reserve Bank operations.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Catholic Church shamed by Irish abuse report – Yahoo! News
OPS: After all these centuries – finally shamed eh?
Catholic Church shamed by Irish abuse report
DUBLIN – After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland’s castaway children.
The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.
The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.
Wednesday’s five-volume report on the probe — which was resisted by Catholic religious orders — concluded that church officials shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.
“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from,” Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn’t nail down what really matters — the names of their abusers.
via Catholic Church shamed by Irish abuse report – Yahoo! News.
Unconscious Carroll man found after 11-hour search
OPS: Verizon – Pay your bill or die.
Unconscious Carroll man found after 11-hour search
Sheriff unhappy with Verizon’s ‘line’ on emergency
A 62-year-old Carrollton area man was found unconscious and unresponsive Thursday morning during an intense search overnight by Carroll County sheriff deputies, an Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper and the patrol’s airplane.
Two K-9 units, several fire departments and 100 individuals on foot also were involved in the search for the man, who Sheriff Dale Williams said fled his residence on Kensington Rd. after a domestic disturbance call to deputies.
The man, who was treated at the scene by emergency medical technicians, was taken to Aultman Hospital and released Thursday afternoon.
Sheriff Sgt. Ron Clapper and firefighters found the man about 1 a.m. after 11 hours of searching in an area just north of Augusta, including Manfull Orchards, where there is a Verizon cell phone tower.
Williams said he attempted to use the man’s cell phone signal to locate him, but the man was behind on his phone bill and the Verizon operator refused to connect the signal unless the sheriff’s department agreed to pay the overdue bill. After some disagreement, Williams agreed to pay $20 on the phone bill in order to find the man. But deputies discovered the man just as Williams was preparing to make arrangements for the payment.
The sheriff organized the search party for the man after deputies responded to the domestic call Wednesday at 2:21 p.m. at the Kensington Rd. residence. The sheriff said the caller said the man was destroying the house and breaking windows and other items.
But when deputies arrived they were told the man had fled and had taken several bottles of pills.
“I was more concerned for the person’s life,” Williams said. “It would have been nice if Verizon would have turned on his phone for five or 10 minutes, just long enough to try and find the guy. But they would only turn it on if we agreed to pay $20 of the unpaid bill. Ridiculous.”
via Unconscious Carroll man found after 11-hour search – New Philadelphia, OH – The Times-Reporter.
New Funds for IMF Approved by US Senate Would Worsen Global Economic Downturn, Economists Say
New Funds for IMF Approved by US Senate Would Worsen Global Economic Downturn, Economists Say | CommonDreams.org
WASHINGTON – May 22 – $108 billion in new funds for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved by the U.S. Senate yesterday is not likely to help developing countries counter the world recession, according to economists at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Contrary to remarks by IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn that rich country contributions to the IMF make “this…the most coordinated stimulus ever,” the IMF has been mandating economic conditions for countries receiving new loans, including deficit reduction, monetary tightening, and inflation-targeting measures that run counter to the worldwide need for an increased economic stimulus.
“The only reason that the IMF is getting this money is that no one in the House of Representatives is going to have to vote for it,” said economist and CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot, who also noted that given the IMF’s track record and recent loan agreements, “Throwing $108 billion at the IMF without any reforms is a mistake, and one that Americans will later regret.”
In what media reports and observers see as an effort to limit debate and scrutiny, the White House has attempted to obtain the new money for the IMF through back channels by attaching it to the war supplemental bill in the Senate. The House version of the bill does not include the IMF funds, and attaching the IMF funding in conference is likely to face strong opposition from many representatives.
The CIA’s History of Bamboozling The Congress
The CIA’s History of Bamboozling The Congress
By Melvin A. Goodman
“Let me be clear about this,” CIA director Leon Panetta told his troops last week, “it was not CIA policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values.”
Of course, Panetta is entitled to his opinions, but he cannot create his own facts. And, as a long-time member of the House of Representatives, he surely must know that there is a long and substantiated record of CIA deceit and dissembling to the congressional intelligence committees. Here are some highlights of that record.
In 1973, CIA director Richard Helms deceived the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refusing to acknowledge the role of the CIA in overthrowing the elected government in Chile. Helms falsely testified that the CIA had not passed money to the opposition movement in Chile, and a grand jury was called to see if Helms should be indicted for perjury.
In 1977, the Justice Department brought a lesser charge against Helms, who pleaded nolo contendere; he was fined $2,000 and given a suspended two-year prison sentence. Helms went from the courthouse to the CIA where he was given a hero’s welcome and a gift of $2,000 to cover the fine. It was one of the saddest experiences in my 24 years at CIA.
In the new Ford administration, Secretary of State Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and White House chief of staff Cheney orchestrated phony intelligence for the Congress in order to get an endorsement for covert arms shipments to anti-government forces in Angola.
The CIA lied to Senator Dick Clark, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was a critic of the Agency’s illegal collaborations with the government of South Africa against Angola and Mozambique. Agency briefers exaggerated the classification of their materials so that Senate and House members could not publicize this information. Agency shields of secrecy and falsehood were extremely effective.
via The CIA’s History of Bamboozling The Congress.
No euphemisms for enhanced interrogationist Dick Cheney
No euphemisms for enhanced interrogationist Dick Cheney – MinnPost -
n his big AEI speech on national security yesterday (transcript here), former Veep Dick Cheney slammed the Obama administration for, among other things, using “euphemisms” to talk about what his administration called “the global war on terror.” The Obamian doublespeakers, Cheney complained, prefer to call it “overseas contingency operations.”
I gather there may be a modicum of truth here. Some administration spokesters have indeed uttered the phrase in describing the U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the term does the have the air of pettifoggery about it.
I agree with Dick Cheney. Plain-speaking is a good thing. But for the former vice president to deliver a rebuke on the topic is a fairly stunning display of chutzpah.
His was an administration that pushed through a law making it easier to wiretap phones, monitor email, access medical and financial records and deport immigrants, and decided, because of their commitment to candor, to name it “the USA Patriot Act.” It’s education policy was “no child left behind.” The transfer of prisoners to countries that employ torture was “extraordinary rendition.” The Bush policy allowing more “harvesting” of trees was dubbed the “health forest initiative.”
via MinnPost – No euphemisms for enhanced interrogationist Dick Cheney.
U.S. judge warns Justice Dept.
U.S. judge warns Justice Dept.
A federal judge in San Francisco lashed out Friday at the Obama administration for its refusal to share a classified document with an Islamic group that claims it was illegally wiretapped, and said he may declare the group the winner by default in its lawsuit against the government.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who has expressed increasing frustration with the Justice Department’s hard line in the case, raised the stakes in his latest order by suggesting he would issue a final ruling against the government and order it to pay damages.
He ordered the department to tell him, by next Friday, why he should not declare the government responsible for violating the rights of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation as a penalty for “failing to obey the court’s orders.”
Such a ruling would stop short of the conclusion Al-Haramain seeks in its lawsuit – that it was wiretapped as part of the program authorized by President George W. Bush in 2001 to intercept calls between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists. Walker could not issue such a finding because the case has been stuck in a dispute over the organization’s right to sue.
via U.S. judge warns Justice Dept..
Hoover Alabama Police Edit Video Tapes as a practice
Hoover Alabama police beating – calling all attorneys
The most interesting legal statement from the Hoover police spokesperson was that is common practice to edit the police car tapes before transferring them to another jurisdiction or to the prosecutor’s office.
This is a common practice in Alabama.
Anyone who has had any court case where a police tape was listed as evidence should contact an attorney immediately. Traffic citations are allowed.
The statement of practice is cause to reopen all cases on grounds of new evidence. The new evidence is the unedited police tape.
If the state or city can not produce the original tape instead of the edited tape then there should be cause for dismissal.
The dismissal will justify cause to recover costs, attorney fees, fines, and sue for damages.
It is time the Nancy Grace police force was shut down.
Nancy Grace was dismissed from the Atlanta prosecution team for withholding evidence.
Editing a tape is withholding evidence.
This practice is just like Bob Riley and Troy King’s campaign to prevent the use of DNA in death row cases.
via Birmingham Science News Examiner: Hoover Alabama police beating – calling all attorneys.
Elected Officials Selling out America: Roy Blunt
Elected Officials Selling out America: Roy Blunt
Apathetic to the concerns of working Americans, Republican Rep. Roy Blunt may soon become Missouri’s next U.S. Senator.
Editor’s Note: The following article is the ninth installment in an expository series which outlines important issues facing the U.S. economy and reveals your elected officials voting records. Please write to your elected officials and demand that they represent their constituents, instead of succumbing to the whims of big business.
Ambitious, steadfast in his views and completely apathetic to the concerns of working Americans, Republican Representative Roy Blunt may soon become “The Show Me State’s” next U.S. Senator.
Stepping down from his position as House Minority Whip, Blunt has announced that in 2010 he will be running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Kit Bond.
He is expected to face a tough primary challenge from former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman. If he can overcome that challenge, he will likely face off against Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.
If Blunt makes it through the primary battle, his dismal record on “free trade” will certainly become an issue, much as it did in the 2006 race when Democrat Claire McCaskill defeated incumbent Republican Jim Talent partially by emphasizing her support of fair trade policies as opposed to Talent‘s unwavering support for job-killing “free trade“ agreements.
“Free trade creates jobs in America and is the engine of our modern economy,“ Blunt has said in the past. “As the world’s largest economy, trade is critical to both our commerce and our national security.”
Indeed, over the course of his congressional career, Blunt voted against trade barriers that would have protected domestic industries and saved countless jobs 68 percent of the time, according to the Cato Institute. He has received a lifetime score of 97 percent from the rabidly anti-fair trade U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In fact, over the course of his career, Blunt has voted in favor of each and every supposed “free trade” agreement to come before the Congress, including deals with Singapore, Chile, Australia, Morocco, Bahrain, Oman and Peru.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Japanese Manufacturing Thriving Due to Long Held Beliefs – video
Japanese Manufacturing Thriving Due to Long Held Beliefs video
Japanese corporate culture is much more focused on the success of the home country.
Japan’s government-led strategic economy continues to grow regardless of global circumstances and may soon surpass the United States in overall value. Its banks and financial centers were relatively unharmed by the market turmoil which destroyed dozens of U.S. banks and left champions like Bank of American and Citigroup begging for government assistance.
Japanese companies were on a buying spree throughout 2008 as they absorbed billions of dollars worth of U.S. companies. Huge conglomerates like Mitsubishi UFJ bought into Wall Street banks at fire sale prices and the Union Bank of California was completely bought out by Japanese firms.
The post-WWII rise of Japan has been described as nothing short of a miracle recovery and now China and the rest of the renewed Asian tigers are copying their plan. Japan’s economic ministry started them on the road to greatness by focusing on cheaply producing consumer goods.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Jobs Solutions for Our Jobless Recovery Part 1
Jobs Solutions for Our Jobless Recovery Part 1
The U.S. economy lost 540,000 more jobs in April, despite the government adding 72,000 temporary jobs as part of its preparation for the 2010 Census – and it’s a sad commentary indeed when such a huge job loss is perceived by some pundits as a “good sign.”
The following transcript originally appeared on TradeReform.org and is the first in a two part series.
This speech was delivered at The New School on May 19, 2009.
Views on the U.S. economy
Let me start by offering five views of the U.S. economy that in combination are much bleaker than the single “we’re near the bottom” view being put forward by those who seemingly are more interested in resuscitating the banks and Wall Street and in resurrecting their discredited trading practices, than in fundamentally reforming these institutions and providing long-term systemic fixes to our very broken economy. And I should warn you, this tension between the so-called “reformers”, of which I am definitely one, and the laissez faire “resuscitators” is an issue I am going to come back to a couple of times.
As for those five views:
First, and most concerning, when we more accurately add to the 13.7 million officially unemployed workers at the end of April, the 14.8 million workers who are either underemployed – which means part-time of necessity [8.9mm] or otherwise marginally attached [2.1mm] – or in the so-called “labor force reserve” because they have abandoned their job searches [3.8mm], then the current effective unemployment rate is a staggering 17.8%, rather than the half lower official rate of 8.9%. In all, there are now 28.5 million effectively unemployed Americans, and yet only around 3 million job openings.
The U.S. economy lost 540,000 more jobs in April, despite the government adding 72,000 temporary jobs as part of its preparation for the 2010 Census – and it’s a sad commentary indeed when such a huge job loss is perceived by some pundits as a “good sign” because we didn’t lose even more jobs. All in all, 6.2 million jobs have tragically been lost since the start of the recession in December 2007, when instead we should have been creating over the last 16 months up to 2.4 million new jobs just to keep up with population growth.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Steel Trade – Dealing From the Bottom of a Stacked Deck
Steel Trade – Dealing From the Bottom of a Stacked Deck
Over the past two decades, once vibrant cities such as Youngstown, Ohio; Wheeling, West Virginia; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; have been gutted as hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs in steel mills and other supplier industries are shipped overseas
The domestic steel industry began to unravel in the 1980s, when globalization took full effect and trade barriers around the world began to come down – at least in the U.S. Since that time, the industry has struggled to survive, but that struggle became a death match when China entered the picture with its ascendancy into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
China’s mercantilist and industrial policies have decimated many American industries, but perhaps none more so than the already beleaguered steel industry.
Over the past two decades, once vibrant cities such as Youngstown, Ohio; Wheeling, West Virginia; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; have been gutted as hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs in steel mills and other supplier industries are shipped overseas.
Yet, America has utterly failed to adequately protect itself despite the fact that China’s unfair trade practices are killing one of America’s most vital industries. Through its industrial policy, China distorts “free trade” and the concept of comparative advantage, which holds that if China is a stronger producer of iron and steel than the U.S., then it should go ahead and produce that product.
However, that just isn’t the case. China does not hold a comparative advantage with the U.S. in terms of steel production. Yet, China continues to pump out tons and tons of steel, each one representing a lost American job.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Republicans’ “Socialist” Resolution
The Republican National Committee will conclude a special session with a much-anticipated vote on a resolution to re-brand the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
ANP senior producer Harry Hanbury roamed the RNC meeting with a camera and spoke with committeemen and state chairs to hear their thoughts on the vote and their ideas about both parties.
YouTube – Republicans’ “Socialist” Resolution.
Uncle Sam’s Human Lab Rats
Uncle Sam’s Human Lab Rats | Mother Jones
They say government scientists messed with their minds. Now, veterans of secret psychedelic tests want answers.
Their stories are a staple of conspiracy culture: broken men, suffering hallucinations and near-total amnesia, who say they are victims of secret government mind-control experiments. Think Liev Schreiber in The Manchurian Candidate or Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Journalists are a favorite target for the paranoid delusions of this population. So is Gordon Erspamer—and the San Francisco lawyer’s latest case isn’t helping him to fend off the tinfoil-hat crowd. He has filed suit against the CIA and the US Army on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of America and six former American soldiers who claim they are the real thing: survivors of classified government tests conducted at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland between 1950 and 1975. “I get a lot of calls,” he says. “There are a lot of crazy people out there who think that somebody from Mars is controlling their behavior via radio waves.” But when it comes to Edgewood, “I’m finding that more and more of those stories are true!”
That government scientists conducted human experiments at Edgewood is not in question. “The program involved testing of nerve agents, nerve agent antidotes, psychochemicals, and irritants,” according to a 1994 General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) report (PDF). At least 7,800 US servicemen served “as laboratory rats or guinea pigs” at Edgewood, alleges Erspamer’s complaint, filed in January in a federal district court in California. The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency’s infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, “The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed.” Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs “were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge.”
via Uncle Sam’s Human Lab Rats | Mother Jones.
Yet FBI Blows It: Supposed Terror Plot Against NY Synagogues Is Bogus
Yet Another Bogus ‘Terror’ Plot
Turns out it is really the handiwork of a creepy FBI informant. The story strengthens the narrative that the “homeland” is under attack. It’s not.
By the now, it’s maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it’s revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne’er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.
I’ve seen this movie before.
In this case, the alleged perps — Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen — were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they’re not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn’t stop prosecutors from acting as if they’d captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:
Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.”It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as “eager to bring death to Jews.”
via Yet Another Bogus ‘Terror’ Plot.
Elite Colleges Are Promoting a Culture of Selfish, Cutthroat Behavior and We Are All Paying the Price
Elite Colleges Are Promoting a Culture of Selfish, Cutthroat Behavior and We Are All Paying the Price
The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where misguided students are encouraged to become worse.
Like many of us, the nation’s elite colleges and universities have taken a financial beating over the past year.
Among them, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford all watched their endowments shrink by about 20 percent as a result of investment losses.
Despite all their brainpower, such institutions appear to have failed to learn what every simple farmer knows: you reap what you sow. Elite colleges and professional schools bear a share of the blame for the economic crisis that now plagues them, because it is they who educated and bestowed academic credentials upon many of those who got us into this mess.
It should come as no surprise to them that many on Wall Street and in Washington have proven ethically bankrupt and without regard for people of lesser means, because their admissions policies have done much to ensure such a result.
In determining which applicants they will admit and put on the fast track, most elite higher-education institutions systematically favor people from privileged backgrounds who display selfish, cutthroat behavior. The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where bad people are encouraged to become worse.
Consider, for starters, how most such institutions rely on standardized admissions tests such as the SAT, even though they know perfectly well that the nation’s massive test-preparation industry has severely compromised the reliability of such instruments, turning them into tools for measuring, as much as anything, wealth and willingness to seek unfair advantage.
U.K. turns CCTV, terrorism laws on pooping dogs
U.K. turns CCTV, terrorism laws on pooping dogs - | – CNET News
The United Kingdom has the most surveillance cameras per capita in the world. With the recent news that CCTV cameras do not actually deter crime, how can the local town councils justify the massive surveillance program? By going after pooping dogs.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Visual Images Office explained the failings of CCTV:
“Billions of pounds has been spent on it, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It’s been an utter fiasco: only 3 percent of crimes were solved by CCTV. There’s no fear of CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? (They think) the cameras are not working.”
Conjuring up the bogeymen of terrorists, online pedophiles and cybercriminals, the U.K. passed a comprehensive surveillance law, The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, in 2000. The law allows “the interception of communications, carrying out of surveillance, and the use of covert human intelligence sources” to help prevent crime, including terrorism.
Recent reports in the U.K. media indicate that the laws are being used for everything but terrorism investigations:
- Derby City Council, Bolton, Gateshead, and Hartlepool used surveillance to investigate dog fouling.
- Bolton Council also used the act to investigate littering.
- The London borough of Kensington and Chelsea conducted surveillance on the misuse of a disabled parking pass.
- Liverpool City Council used Ripa to identify a false claim for damages.
- Conwy Council used the law to spy on a person who was working while off sick.
via U.K. turns CCTV, terrorism laws on pooping dogs | Surveillance State – CNET News.
The truth outs – CCTV doesn’t cut crime
The truth outs – CCTV doesn’t cut crime - | guardian.co.uk
A Home Office report confirms that the vast spending on CCTV systems is almost certainly unjustified
At last we appear to be nearing the truth about the effectiveness of CCTV. After senior police officers suggested, a few years back, that CCTV had no substantial impact on crime, a research group funded by the Home Office has established that vast spending on systems is almost certainly unjustified.
As Alan Travis reports, the review of 44 research studies on CCTV found that they do have a modest impact on crime overall, but CCTV cameras are at their most effective in cutting vehicle crime in car parks, especially when used alongside improved lighting and the introduction of security guards.
So, there are some benefits, as most acknowledged, but the idea that CCTV has any special power to reduce crime generally is clearly flawed. Travis notes that the investigation by a group including Cambridge criminologist David Farrington was cited by the Home Office in their response to an important report from the House of Lords constitution committee that suggested the spread of CCTV undermined fundamental rights guaranteed by the Human Rights Act.
via The truth outs – CCTV doesn’t cut crime | Henry Porter | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Bill Moyers’ Journal – Single-payer health care
Bill Moyers’ Journal
Friday, May 22, PBS
Single-payer health care
Watch on-line anytime – Video and transcripts
Bill Moyers: Rx and the Single Payer
Rx and the Single Payer | CommonDreams.org
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, “I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.”
Single payer. Universal. That’s health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It’s a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two-to-one.
There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: “All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House.”
Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed — Democrats in control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress. So what’s happened to single payer?
A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked him exactly that. “If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense,” the President replied. “That’s the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.
via Rx and the Single Payer | CommonDreams.org.
Children revolt against classroom CCTV
In a speech two weeks ago, Jack Straw mocked my suggestion that Britain’s pupils were being groomed for the surveillance society. I wonder how the justice secretary reacts to a story from Davenant Foundation School in Loughton, Essex, where pupils walked out of classrooms that were fitted with CCTV cameras – on the grounds that their civil liberties were being breached – and refused to return until the camera system had been turned off.
Straw would no doubt dismiss this incident with the same ease with which he has slunk away from accusations about overcharging the taxpayer for his council tax.
But for the rest of us the story in the Waltham Forest Guardian is pure joy to read. This splendid group of pupils wore masks when they returned to class.
The school, a mixed comprehensive, is at the cutting edge of surveillance technology and has already drawn criticism from parents after introducing finger-scanning technology it its canteen. It is astonishing that schools are spending public money on these surveillance systems, which, whatever Straw says, are grooming pupils for life in a society in which they may expect to be watched at every moment of the day.
Clearly the headmaster, Chris Seward, needs a lesson or two about the essential right of privacy from his own pupils. However this looks like being delivered by the information commissioner, who has been contacted by parents and Epping Forest’s Conservative MP, Eleanor Laing, a shadow minister for justice.
via Children revolt against classroom CCTV | Henry Porter | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Kennedy affirms support for public healthcare plan
Kennedy affirms support for public healthcare plan – TheHill.com -
Liberals pushing for the creation of a federally run health insurance plan won a major victory Thursday when Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) strongly indicated his commitment to the policy, one of the most controversial elements of healthcare reform.
Kennedy has co-sponsored a resolution introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and 26 other Democratic senators that declares the healthcare reform legislation the Senate will consider this summer must include a public plan option people can choose instead of private insurance. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also co-sponsored the resolution.
Though purely symbolic, this show of strength by 28 Democratic senators sends a clear signal to liberals that a public plan, one of the left’s top priorities and a component of President Obama’s healthcare platform, will be part of reform.
Kennedy’s unequivocal support for the public plan marks a return of sorts to the front lines of the battle for healthcare reform.
via TheHill.com – Kennedy affirms support for public healthcare plan.
Liberty University Revokes Recognition Of Democratic Club | Political Hotsheet – CBS News
OPS: Time to drop their 501-C3
Liberty University Revokes Recognition Of Democratic Club
Liberty University in Lynchbyrg, Va., has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club because, according to a university official, the club’s “parent organization stands against the moral principles held by Liberty.”
In a May 15 e-mail to the student group, Liberty Vice President for Student Affairs Mark Hine said the club must end its affiliation with University. The group can no longer use Liberty’s name, logo, or seal for its publications, Web sites, Facebook page, Twitter account or anything else.
“The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of LU and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, Hate Crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc),” Hine wrote in the e-mail to the LU College Democrats.
Liberty, which was founded by the late Christian evangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell, has had a College Republicans club for years. The College Democrats formed late last year and supported Barack Obama in the presidential election.
via Liberty University Revokes Recognition Of Democratic Club | Political Hotsheet – CBS News.
Video: Mancow Waterboarded, Admits It’s Torture
Video Included
Mancow Waterboarded, Admits It’s Torture “It is way worse than I thought it would be” – | NBC Chicago
And so it went Friday morning when WLS radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller decided to subject himself to the controversial practice of waterboarding live on his show.
Mancow decided to tackle the divisive issue head on — actually it was head down, while restrained and reclining.
“I want to find out if it’s torture,” Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture.
The debate over whether waterboarding constitutes torture reached a fever pitch this week as re-ignited claims that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) knew as early as 2002 about waterboarding techniques being used, and former Vice President Dick Cheney and President Barack Obama gave “dueling speeches” Thursday.
Listeners had the chance to decide whether Mancow himself or his co-host, Chicago radio personality Pat Cassidy, would undergo the interrogation method during the broadcast. The voters ultimately decided Mancow would be the one donning the soaked towel and shackles, and at about 8:40 a.m., he entered a small storage room next to his studio that was compared to a “dungeon” by Cassidy
OPS: There is more to the story at the following link. Below that is the video
via Mancow Waterboarded, Admits It’s Torture | NBC Chicago.
Cost of living is on the rise
Cost of living is on the rise
It’s not your imagination.
Your wallet is taking a bigger hit in today’s economy.
Registering your vehicle? The cost just jumped. Headed to college? You’ll soon have to dig deeper to pay higher fees.
Even mailing a letter is costing you more.
Just as families schooling themselves to live on less are starting to make headway, the rising cost of many necessities is delivering a new financial punch.
“If you look at the consumer price index, you would think that the cost of living is very low,” said Sung Won Sohn, professor of economics at California State University, Channel Islands. “Unfortunately, that is not the case. The cost of living for the average person is going up.”
Just ask Alex Serna of Sacramento.
via Cost of living is on the rise | McClatchy.
“Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free” — BuzzFlash Gives This Book Four Stars for Its Insights Into Modern American Ignorance.
Book Review
“Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free”
BuzzFlash Gives This Book Four Stars for Its Insights Into Modern American Ignorance. Inscribed to BuzzFlash Readers by Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher of BuzzFlash.
The publisher calls this new book “a legendary journalist’s acidly funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.”
Since the creation of BuzzFlash in May of 2000, we have struggled to understand how a nation that grew and prospered on innovation, education and grit has seen a good portion of its population sink into the mire of revering ignorance.
Pierce’s book is a must-read wry romp through the lack of the most basic common sense and reasoning that has come to be emblematic of FOX “News” true believers, fundamentalists, and dittoheads.
His three “tenants” of Idiot America are succinct and to the point:
The First Great Premise: Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. (Think Ann Coulter, as just one example, here.)
The Second Great Premise: Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
(Think Bill O’Reilly, as an example, here.)
The Third Great Premise: Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believed it. (Think of how the Bush Admininstration took advantage of this premise to persuade Americans of the “need” for a war against Iraq.)
Study Detects Flu Immunity in Older People
Study Detects Flu Immunity in Older People – washingtonpost.com
Antibodies Found In One-Third of Americans Over 60
A substantial portion of older Americans may have some immunity to the swine-origin H1N1 influenza virus, a finding that may prove useful when and if a vaccine to the new flu strain becomes available.
The questions of whom to target with a swine flu vaccine and how to stretch the supply if it is limited are among the most important issues facing public health officials over the next four months.
Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced yesterday that a study using stored blood samples found that one-third of people older than 60 have antibodies that might protect them from infection with the new virus. If further research is able to better define who has partial immunity, those people might need only one dose of vaccine, not two.
“Our working hypothesis is that everyone who gets this vaccine is likely to need two doses,” Anne Schuchat, CDC’s deputy director for science and public health, said yesterday. She added, however, that the new study suggests “perhaps there will be some people where preexisting immunity will be there, and one dose would lead to a ‘primed’ response. That is definitely . . . something we’re interested in.”
via Study Detects Flu Immunity in Older People – washingtonpost.com.
FCC can search homes without a warrant, agency says
FCC can search homes without a warrant, agency says
Unlicensed advocates disagree
Have a Wi-Fi router? If you do — and it uses an unlicensed frequency — you could be subject to a warrantless search of your home.
Federal Communications Commission guidelines stipulate that the agency can enter property when it suspects radio frequency energy is being abused. The provision, which was originally intended to aid the monitoring of unlicensed radio and tv stations, now has a broader range of application as more consumers join the wi-fi ranks.
“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” FCC spokesman David Fiske told Wired for an article Thursday. The FCC spokesman said the scope included Wi-Fi routers.
“The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts,” Wired’s Ryan Singer wrote. “That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.”
The Electronic Frontier foundation, an online privacy group, called the FCC’s interpretation a “major stretch.”
via Raw Story » FCC can search homes without a warrant, agency says.
US will eventually lose AAA credit rating, top investor says
US will eventually lose AAA credit rating, top investor says
The co-chief investment officer of the world’s largest bond fund said the US will eventually lose its top AAA credit rating the same day that Standard and Poor’s rating service downgraded Britain’s national debt from stable to negative.
The US will likely be downgraded in “at least three to four years, if that, but the market will recognize the problems before the rating services – just like it did today,” said Bill Gross of Pacific Investment Management Co.
Thursday’s market declines, Gross said, reflect the fact that investors fear the United States is “going the way of the UK – losing AAA rating which affects all financial assets and the dollar.”
Britain’s debt is approaching 100 percent of its gross domestic product. Standard and Poor’s says it “faces a one in three chance of a ratings cut.”
via Raw Story » US will eventually lose AAA credit rating, top investor says.
Cheney lied repeatedly in speech on closing Guantanamo, paper says
Cheney lied repeatedly in speech on closing Guantanamo, paper says
American newspapers don’t use the word “lied” as a matter of form — preferring the more innocuous “false statements,” which is supposed to be less biased. But a McClatchy newspaper article Friday says myriad elements of Cheney’s terrorism speech Thursday were tantamount to lies — positing that the former Vice President was guilty of “omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.”
Most significant, notes McClatchy’s Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, are comments Cheney made about how valuable intelligence that was collected during “harsh interrogations” actually was.
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a “deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country.”
In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information “was valuable in some instances” but that “there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general’s investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any “specific imminent attacks,” according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.
FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn’t think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.
via The Raw Story » Cheney lied repeatedly in speech on closing Guantanamo, paper says.
Congressman flattens FBI director on drug debate
Milk is a gateway drug to bourbon – VIDEO
You have never before seen — nor will you ever see again — FBI director Robert Mueller so thoroughly humbled in a discussion about drug policy before the United States Congress.
In this instance, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) gets Mueller to admit that marijuana has never killed anybody, then smashes into tiny bits the decades-old “gateway drug” argument with a unique analogy of milk and bourbon.
via The Raw Story » Milk is a gateway drug to bourbon.
Forget “Centrists,” We Need Progressives in the Supreme Court — Right-Wingers Will Fight Whomever Obama Picks
Forget “Centrists,” We Need Progressives in the Supreme Court — Right-Wingers Will Fight Whomever Obama Picks
Unless Obama gives up his centrist approach and appoints real progressives, our right-wing court may get even more conservative.
I learned long ago, while working at the media watch group FAIR, to be wary of New York Times headlines.
Hearing news that President Obama has a shortlist of candidates to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, I dug up a front-page New York Times Week in Review piece written soon after Obama’s inauguration about his possible impact on the Court. It was headlined: “To Nudge, Shift or Shove the Supreme Court Left.”
I’d like to see Obama shift or shove the Court leftward. But after reading the article, I realized that it could just as easily have been headlined: “Will Obama Move Supreme Court Rightward?”
The centerpiece of the Times article was a fascinating study conducted by two University of Chicago law professors (one of whom is a conservative federal appeals judge) analyzing the judicial records of the 43 justices who’ve served on the Supreme Court since 1937. Four of the five most conservative judges of the last seven decades (Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Alito) now sit on the Court. With Anthony Kennedy at number ten, five of the ten most rightwing judges are currently on the Court. The current majority, in other words, is almost a conservative all-star team.
Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs
Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs
By Jim Hightower
Goldman holds billions in taxpayer cash, plans for billions in exec bonuses this year, and has powerful friends in Obama’s govt. up the wazoo.
No doubt you’re going to feel terrible about this. Top executives of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse, are in a pout about how they’re being treated by you and me — i.e., the public.
These execs are used to being revered as financial geniuses, but having taken a $10 billion bailout from us taxpayers last fall, they’re now widely viewed as … well, as welfare recipients. Like other welfare checks, the big one that Washington doled out to Goldman Sachs came with some strings attached, causing the chieftains to get all huffy. Especially galling to these princes of privilege is the limit on salaries and bonuses that bailed out banks are allowed to give to those in the executive suites.
Thus, Goldman recently threw a little hissy fit and haughtily declared that it will pay back our $10 billion to get the blankety-blank government out of its private business. Bold move! At last, Wall Streeters are reasserting their rugged, free-enterprise ethic, right?
Uh, not exactly.
Isikoff: Obama ‘curtly’ dismissed even a single torture prosecution
Isikoff: Obama ‘curtly’ dismissed even a single torture prosecution
President Barack Obama held an unusual meeting on Wednesday with representatives of human rights and civil liberties groups who have been disappointed by many of his recent decisions with regard to detainees.
The meeting was off the record, but MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported that Obama was “demonstrably not pleased” when told that he was “allowing President Bush’s policies to become his own.” Obama also “curtly” dismissed any suggestion of a truth commission or even a single symbolic torture prosecution.
Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, who had spoken with attendees, told Maddow that in addition to the president, the White House was represented at the meeting by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Senior Advisor David Axelrod, Attorney General Eric Holder,and White House Counsel Greg Craig. He called the meeting “extraordinary” and said it was “a sign of just how seriously they take the rebellion … they’re getting from the left.”
According to Isikoff’s sources, “the leaders of these groups repeated many of their criticisms” of Obama’s policies for dealing with detainees — including the use of military tribunals and indefinite detention — and “Obama didn’t like that.”
“He started out the meeting by complaining at one point about the mess he’d been left by his predecessor, and … he was quite clear he didn’t like it,” Isikoff stated. “He said, ‘It’s not helpful to equate me with President Bush.’”
via Raw Story » Isikoff: Obama ‘curtly’ dismissed even a single torture prosecution.
Obama Says, “There will be NO prosecutions of anyone in Bush administration”
Obama Says, “There will be NO prosecutions of anyone in Bush administration” | AfterDowningStreet.org
No 9/11-Type Commissions, either. **BREAKING NEWS**- On The Rachel Maddow Show, Michael Isikoff reports a secret meeting at the White House today with Obama and AG Eric Holder and human rights activists. Obama announced, emphatically, “There will be NO prosecutions of anyone in the Bush administration” and “No 9/11-type commission either.
Obama Issues Another Signing Statement on Same Day He Speaks in Front of Constitution
Obama Issues Another Signing Statement on Same Day He Speaks in Front of Constitution – | AfterDowningStreet.org
Well, OK, the statement is dated yesterday. Here it is.
Here’s the meat of it, telling Congress to go Cheney itself:
Section 5(d) of the Act requires every department, agency, bureau, board, commission, office, independent establishment, or instrumentality of the United States to furnish to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a legislative entity, any information related to any Commission inquiry. As my Administration communicated to the Congress during the legislative process, the executive branch will construe this subsection of the bill not to abrogate any constitutional privilege.
I find the signing statement troubling for a number of reasons. First, Obama’s celebration of investigative tools to combat fraud going forward seems like the same old “look forward” language with which Obama has thus far prevented any inquiry into Bush-era torture and other abuses. Investigative tools are nice, but we need to know what the beast we’re investigating really looks like, which is what the Pecora Commission should tell us.
Also, I just spent several days wading through the 9/11 Commission archives. Having recently been reminded of Bush’s stonewalling of that Commission, on which this Pecora Commission is based (though this Commission will have more members from Obama’s party), I really don’t relish the thought that Obama may soon be stonewalling in similar fashion.
More specifically, though, I’m concerned about what this says about Obama’s approach to executive privilege. The privilege has, traditionally, arisen out of a real concern to protect precisely the subject of the 9/11 Commission–national security information. Bush was, of course, stonewalling the 9/11 Commission to protect himself from embarrassment, but at least any executive privilege there arose out of the traditional purpose for executive privilege.
Olbermann to Limbaugh: ‘Eff you!’
Olbermann to Limbaugh: ‘Eff you!’
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has been needling right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh for a long time, but on Wednesday he was able to pride himself for having finally gotten under Limbaugh’s skin.
“This network’s coverage of him has not only gotten to him but gotten to him to a point perhaps never reached before by any other megalomaniac,” Olbermann said of Limbaugh. “Suddenly the impact of being accurately called out day after day, hour after hour as a faux populist, press release-regurgitating lackey of repressive and regressive political flunkies — that has hit bone.”
Limbaugh recently complained on his radio show that MSNBC “cannot go any appreciable length of time without showing video of me … or having a bunch of hack guests on to discuss me. So my challenge is this to MSNBC: Let’s see if you can run your little TV network for thirty days … without doing a single story on me. And then let’s take a look at your ratings.”
“Eff you!” exclaimed Olbermann in response. “You’re not in charge of this! You put your bile out on the public airwaves for three hours a day and you get to decide how people react to it? The hell you do! … Either man up and live through the bad press or get out!”
“Stand on your own two feet,” Limbaugh had urged MSNBC. “Stand on what you believe.”
via Raw Story » Olbermann to Limbaugh: ‘Eff you!’.
U.S. Senate approves $91.3 bln war funds bill
OPS: It’s BO’s and the Dems now baby
U.S. Senate approves $91.3 bln war funds bill
WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a $91.3 billion measure that President Barack Obama sought to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, meeting some of his priorities but leaving out funding to close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Senate voted 86-3 and now must work out differences with the House of Representatives, which approved a $96.7 billion version of the bill. A single measure is expected to be hammered out and ultimately pass Congress in the coming weeks.
Once approved it will likely bring the U.S. cost of the two wars to over $900 billion.
The Senate bill includes $22 billion for military hardware like F-22 fighter jets, $4.2 billion for armored vehicles to protect soldiers from explosive devices, and $1.5 billion to address a global disease pandemic after the swine flu scare.
via U.S. Senate approves $91.3 bln war funds bill | Reuters.
FACT SHEET: Vice President Cheney Debunked
FACT SHEET: Vice President Cheney Debunked
Today, former Vice President Cheney continues his pro-torture public relations tour with a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. His listeners can expect to hear more arguments for the use of torture and abuse. What they won’t hear from Vice President Cheney is that national security experts overwhelmingly disagree with his assessment about the value of resorting to abusive policies. Those with experience conducting interrogations, leading forces in the military, and doing the work of keeping America safe overwhelming reject the use of torture.
Vice President Cheney says torture prevented attacks following 9/11. Repeatedly, Vice President Cheney has said that information gained by torturing detainees has been crucial in helping the government “defeat or disrupt all further attempts to strike the homeland” (ABC News, Dec. 16, 2008). He says without torture, “we would have been attacked again” (Politico.com, Feb. 4, 2009). Cheney even goes so far as to say that removing the ability to use torture is making the nation less safe. He said Obama is making choices that “raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” (CNN, March 15 2009.)
- Vice President Cheney Debunked: FBI Director Robert Mueller says that isn’t the case. When Vanity Fair asked if torture prevented additional attacks, Mueller said “I don’t believe that has been the case.” (Vanity Fair, Dec. 16, 2008).
via FACT SHEET: Vice President Cheney Debunked.
Cheney’s speech ignored some inconvenient truths
Cheney’s speech ignored some inconvenient truths
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s defense Thursday of the Bush administration’s policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that’s considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were “legal” and produced information that “prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a “deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country.”
via Cheney’s speech ignored some inconvenient truths | McClatchy.
Michael Moore preparing to turn sights on Wall St
Michael Moore preparing to turn sights on Wall St
Oscar-winning director Michael Moore vowed Thursday to turn his sights on the Wall Street chieftains blamed for the global economic meltdown in a new documentary to be released later this year.
Moore, whose past targets have included President George W. Bush, the US healthcare system and the gun lobby, said his as yet untitled film would be released on October 2.
“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more — so they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money,” Moore said.
“Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie.”
The film’s distributors Overture Films and Paramount Vantage said the movie would take “a comical look at the corporate and political shenanigans” that culminated in last year’s multi-billion-dollar Wall Street bailout.
Moore’s 2002 film “Bowling for Columbine” won the best documentary Academy Award the following year, while 2004’s “Fahrenheit 9/11″ — a searing look at the Bush administration’s conduct following the September 11, 2001 attacks — earned the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or.
via AFP » Michael Moore preparing to turn sights on Wall St.
NYT Helps the Bushies, Again
NYT Helps the Bushies, Again
By Robert Parry
The New York Times, which helped sell the Iraq War with a bogus story about aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges and withheld evidence of illegal spying on Americans for more than a year, is again mishandling a sensitive story in a way that panders to the Right.
The Times lead story for its Washington Edition on May 21 was headlined, “1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds,” and starts out by reporting that a Pentagon study has concluded that “about one in seven of the 534 prisoners” transferred out of the Guantanamo Bay prison “returned to terrorism or militant activity.”
But that is not what the Pentagon can possibly know. Beyond the weaknesses in the Pentagon’s evidence, which is only noted deep inside the Times article, there is the unsupported assertion by the Times that the detainees have “returned” to violent activity, thus assuming that the freed prisoners had previously been engaged in terrorism or other extremism.
Even assuming that the study is correct about one in seven engaging in militant activity after release, the evidence is lacking about the prisoners previous acts of terrorism because – if such evidence existed – the Bush administration presumably would not have released them.
via Consortiumnews.com.
Colorado Independent » Fun with Uranium: coming soon to a national park near you
Fun with Uranium: coming soon to a national park near you
Nothing says Wild West, summer road-trip, vacation with the kids quite like dipping a gold pan in a chilly Rocky Mountain stream, taking a burro ride along a dusty mining trail, or sifting for fool’s gold in a sluice box. But a new twist this summer could be rollicking in the yellow-cake uranium at one of eight new claims near the Grand Canyon.
Or how about zip lines between gas rigs in your favorite National Forest roadless area in Colorado? With families staying closer to home and exploring nature’s wonders during the Great Recession — and giving the Heisman (i.e., the stiff arm) to the cruises and theme park visits of more affluent times — the opportunities to Disney-fy the wilderness around energy exploration are virtually limitless.
Even as the National Park Service this week was reminding summer vacationers of our nation’s outdoor bounty, the Pew Environment Group was reminding Interior Secretary Ken Salazar of the energy-industry threats to that bounty. The nonprofit group fired off a letter requesting Salazar remove 1 million acres of public lands from consideration for new mining claims under the — do we have to even note that it’s “antiquated”? — 1872 Mining Law..
via Colorado Independent » Fun with Uranium: coming soon to a national park near you.
You Want Reform? Will You Take Revolution?
You Want Reform? Will You Take Revolution?
We have been told this is our moment
And so we come to the table
With our pent-up agenda,
Eager to load our cafeteria trays,
While the raging, wounded bull
Standing in the doorway
Could be ours for the taking
And all our people could be fed.
It is time to ask ourselves,
Are we progressives for
Sentimental and marketing reasons?
Or do we deeply understand
The world’s present predicament
And our opportunity to fix it?
Friends, there are words we need to know
And use openly, fearlessly:
Finance capital, oligarchy,
And revolution.
Progressive means having the undaunted character
To pursue reform through the existing system,
But to be willing and able
When a crisis gives us the chance,
Perhaps once in our lifetimes,
To be revolutionaries and change things utterly.
via You Want Reform? Will You Take Revolution? | OurFuture.org.
Democratic Socialist? You Bet!
Democratic Socialist? You Bet! | The Progressive
Some in the Republican Party are trying to re-dub the Democratic Party as the Democrat Socialist Party.
Nothing like getting out the old encrusted red paintbrush.
But I hope some Democrats don’t run from this label.
Running doesn’t get you anywhere.
Democrats have been running from the label “liberal” since the days of Michael Dukakis, and that hasn’t helped them.
And for those who, like me, are actually Democratic Socialists, it’s time to come out and say so.
Democratic socialism has brought a much better quality of life to the people in Scandinavia and France and Germany and Britain, and it has not erased one iota of the political freedoms we cherish in this country.
We need to move this country in the direction of democratic socialism.
We need a much sturdier social safety net.
It’s a sin that in this country, 35 million people do not have enough food to eat during at least part of the year.
It’s a sin that 47 million Americans are without health insurance.
via Democratic Socialist? You Bet! | The Progressive.
A Bank For Our Public Needs
A Bank For Our Public Needs
A year ago, I called attention to efforts by some progressives in Congress to establish a national infrastructure bank that would finance critical investments in our transportation network, our waterways and other public assets. This week, that push is happening again—but this time with the help of the White House.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., on Wednesday introduced the National Infrastructure Development Bank Act of 2009 (HR 2521), which would provide financing for projects that have regional or national impact, such as high-speed rail, interstate highways or major water projects.
The bank would be financed with a relatively meager $5 billion a year annual appropriation over the next five years (plus access to another $250 billion in total capital from the U.S. Treasury). But the real breakthrough of this legislation is that finally the federal government will be paying for its capital investments the same way the private sector usually does—through a separate capital budget with its own funding.
President Obama has embraced the idea of an infrastructure bank, and there is a provision allowing for the bank’s launch in the budget resolution Congress approved in April.
America’s Future co-director Robert Borosage explains why this infrastructure bank is significant:
via A Bank For Our Public Needs | OurFuture.org.
Blue Double Cross
Blue Double Cross
Paul Krugman
That didn’t take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it’s now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.
So here’s the question: Will Mr. Obama gloss over the reality of what’s happening, and try to preserve the appearance of cooperation? Or will he honor his own pledge, made back during the campaign, to go on the offensive against special interests if they stand in the way of reform?
The story so far: on May 11 the White House called a news conference to announce that major players in health care, including the American Hospital Association and the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans, had come together to support a national effort to control health care costs.
The fact sheet on the meeting, one has to say, was classic Obama in its message of post-partisanship and, um, hope. “For too long, politics and point-scoring have prevented our country from tackling this growing crisis,” it said, adding, “The American people are eager to put the old Washington ways behind them.”
via Op-Ed Columnist – Blue Double Cross – NYTimes.com.
World economy in freefall
World economy in freefall
Governments of the world’s major economies announced staggering first-quarter contractions in the past few days, as real indicators of the economic crisis continue to worsen.
The occasional piece of good economic news gets spun to show that the world economy is getting over the economic crisis. You can’t blame the various cheerleaders, as economics is driven, in part, by emotion. If people feel good about how things are going, they’re much more likely to spend money than if they think the economy is continuing it’s freefall.
Mexico was the latest country to post a huge decline in the first quarter, announcing Wednesday that its economy shrank by 8.2 percent compared to a year ago. This is the steepest fall since the peso crisis of 1995 brought the country to the brink of insolvency and works out on an annualized basis to a 21.5 percent free fall.
Of course, you’ll hear that Mexico is still a third world economy. Let’s wait to hear how the developed countries are going. Well…it seems not so well.
This followed Tuesday’s announcement that the Japanese economy contracted 4 percent in the fourth quarter, the worst downturn since 1955, and a stunning 15.2 percent annualized contraction. The Japanese economy had shrunk by 3.8 percent in the previous quarter.
via All Over the Board: World economy in freefall.
Columbia Journalism Review Assesses Failure of Business Press to Warn of Crises
Columbia Journalism Review Assesses Failure of Business Press to Warn of Crises
Hat tip to lambert on correntewire for providing the link to the latest cover story in the Columbia Journalism Review, Power Problem: The business press did everything but take on the institutions that brought down the financial system, by Dean Starkman.
Starkman and a team of researchers set out to examine how well the nation’s business press did in providing warning of the coming financial crises in the past decade. They selected a list of the nine business-news outlets they considered the most important (Wall St. Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, and BusinessWeek) and the financial institutions with leading roles in the collapse (Wall Street: AIG, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley. Lenders: Ameriquest, Citigroup, Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, IndyMac, New Century, Washington Mutual).
They then ran a series of search terms (Wall Street: Mortgage backed securities; Securitization AND mortgage; Collateralized debt obligation(s); Derivatives. Lenders: Mortgage lending; Predatory AND lending; Subprime AND mortgages; Bubble AND housing) through the Factiva database, and complied a list of 737 articles from 2000 to 2007 that either warned of the developing problems in financial markets, especially sub-prime mortgages, or were egregiously incorrect in cheerleading for the financial institutions selected.
U.S. Congress to finally stand up against torture?
U.S. Congress to finally stand up against torture? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
Yesterday, President Obama approved a proposed civilian nuclear technology-sharing agreement between the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates and requested its execution, but CNN — in one of the all-time most unintentionally hilarious articles ever written — reports that its ratification is in doubt:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Obama on Thursday sent a civil nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates to the Senate for ratification, but its passage remains uncertain, thanks to a recently disclosed video.
Senior U.S. officials said lawmakers critical of the deal could use the video, which shows a member of the UAE government’s royal family torturing a man, to argue the United States should not have such nuclear cooperation with a country where the rule of law is not respected and human rights violations are tolerated.
How anyone could write or even read that last sentence without succumbing to painful, prolonged cackling is genuinely mystifying.
The videos in questions involve torture by a single individual citizen of the UAE, not an entire government. The individual torturer isn’t even part of the UAE’s government: he never worked in its Justice Department, doesn’t currently sit as a judge on a high-level court, doesn’t teach law in a prestigious university, doesn’t have his torture-defending speeches broadcast on national television by UAE news networks, isn’t constantly defended by admiring journalists any time he’s criticized, and doesn’t have hordes of TV pundits demanding that nothing be done to him. Also, the UAE legislature never passed any laws on a bipartisan basis retroactively immunizing him from the consequences of his torture.
via U.S. Congress to finally stand up against torture? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Iran ‘Holding Back A Flood Of Heroin’
Iran ‘Holding Back A Flood Of Heroin’
Iran ‘Holding Back A Flood Of Heroin’ From Afghanistan, UN Drug Official Says
New York, May 20 2009 4:10PM The top United Nations anti-drug official, on a visit to Tehran, today praised Iran for its efforts to stop the flow of drugs from Afghanistan to the West.
Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said Iran was “holding back a flood of heroin” from Afghanistan, according to a news release.
During his visit, Mr. Costa met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Secretary-General of the Drug Control Headquarters and the Minister of Health, and praised the Iranian Government which he said was making “a massive sacrifice” in its efforts against drug smuggling.
via Scoop: Iran ‘Holding Back A Flood Of Heroin’.
BankUnited Sale May Signal Shift by FDIC in Bank Buyout Rules
BankUnited Sale May Signal Shift by FDIC in Bank Buyout Rules – Bloomberg.com
May 22 (Bloomberg) — WL Ross & Co., Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group’s purchase of BankUnited Financial Corp., the largest U.S. bank to collapse this year, came with a signal from regulators that they may be willing to let more buyout firms snap up banks as failures soar to a 15-year high.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., citing the interest of private-equity firms in buying banks in receivership, said yesterday that it will soon provide “policy guidance” for potential investors. Spokesman David Barr declined to elaborate on the statement.
“The FDIC’s guidance will address the issue of safety and soundness in private equity deals,” said Patricia McCoy, who teaches banking and securities regulation at the University of Connecticut School of Law in Hartford. Regulators “will probably ask for greater assurance that the private equity fund will stand ready as a capital backup if the depository institution becomes undercapitalized.”
Carlyle and Blackstone, the world’s two biggest leveraged buyout firms, are among those considering buying banks on the cheap after global losses from the credit crisis topped $1.4 trillion. The FDIC in January agreed to sell IndyMac Bank to private-equity investors after failing for five months to find a buyer among the lender’s stronger rivals. BankUnited’s winning bidders are injecting $900 million into the Florida lender.
Flagstar Sale
via BankUnited Sale May Signal Shift by FDIC in Bank Buyout Rules – Bloomberg.com.
BPA, Chemical Used To Make Plastics, Found To Leach From Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles Into Humans
BPA, Chemical Used To Make Plastics, Found To Leach From
Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles Into Humans
A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles — the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles — showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.
The study is the first to show that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the level of urinary BPA, and thus suggests that drinking containers made with BPA release the chemical into the liquid that people drink in sufficient amounts to increase the level of BPA excreted in human urine.
In addition to polycarbonate bottles, which are refillable and a popular container among students, campers and others and are also used as baby bottles, BPA is also found in dentistry composites and sealants and in the lining of aluminum food and beverage cans. (In bottles, polycarbonate can be identified by the recycling number 7.) Numerous studies have shown that it acts as an endocrine-disruptor in animals, including early onset of sexual maturation, altered development and tissue organization of the mammary gland and decreased sperm production in offspring. It may be most harmful in the stages of early development.
via BPA, Chemical Used To Make Plastics, Found To Leach From Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles Into Humans.
Wings That Waggle Could Cut Aircraft Emissions By 20%
Wings That Waggle Could Cut Aircraft Emissions By 20%
Wings which redirect air to waggle sideways could cut airline fuel bills by 20% according to research funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Airbus.
The new approach, which promises to dramatically reduce mid-flight drag, uses tiny air powered jets which redirect the air, making it flow sideways back and forth over the wing.
The jets work by the Helmholtz resonance principle – when air is forced into a cavity the pressure increases, which forces air out and sucks it back in again, causing an oscillation – the same phenomenon that happen when blowing over a bottle.
via Wings That Waggle Could Cut Aircraft Emissions By 20%.
Dick Cheney and the GOP’s final curtain
Dick Cheney and the GOP’s final curtain
Seeing how torture has a bad-enough image already, does it really want the brooding, lugubrious Dick Cheney as its public relations man? Or the GOP. Has it thought this through at all? I agree with columnist Roger Simon, who wrote a few days ago that “Dick Cheney is 68, white and bitter. He is the Republican Party.” Simon appended “today” onto that last sentence, but it’s now safe to add “tomorrow” as well, and before long, “forever.”
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Seeing how torture has a bad-enough image already, does it really want the brooding, lugubrious Dick Cheney as its public relations man?
Or the GOP. Has it thought this through at all? I agree with columnist Roger Simon, who wrote a few days ago that “Dick Cheney is 68, white and bitter. He is the Republican Party.” Simon appended “today” onto that last sentence, but it’s now safe to add “tomorrow” as well, and before long, “forever.”
Is this — unfettered Cheneyism in full-throated advocacy of human torture — really the new GOP that the contemporary GOP wants? Just a slightly older version of the GOP that went down in a historic conflagration just months ago?
I appreciate that the Republican Party is in leaderless disarray, and I also appreciate that Mr. Potter Mr. Cheney would sniffishly rebuff any external pleas to shut the hell up for the party’s greater and long-term good, but still, I’ve not read of even one GOP envoy having been dispatched to at least ask Dick just that.
via Dick Cheney and the GOP’s final curtain | BuzzFlash.org.
Boehner Echoes Hoekstra and Gingrich: Only Republicans Are Allowed To Dispute The CIA
Boehner Echoes Hoekstra and Gingrich: Only Republicans Are Allowed To Dispute The CIA
boehnerLast week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that the CIA misled her when they first briefed her on the Bush administration’s torture program. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) responded by saying that it was “hard” for him “to imagine that anyone in our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress.” Today, Boehner made similar comments as he announced that Congressional Republicans would introduce a resolution calling for an investigation of Pelosi’s claims (the resolution failed). Boehner said an investigation was justified because Pelosi made what he called a “serious charge”:
BOEHNER: It has nothing to do about — it has nothing to do with detainees. It has nothing to do with anything else.
The speaker of the House is third in line to the presidency. And for the speaker of the House to lay this kind of charge at the men and women who are charged with helping to protect us is a serious charge.
But when reporters questioned Boehner about his own comments that the intelligence community could not be trusted when the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear capabilities came out 2007, the Minority Leader demurred. Boehner said that the comparison was “mixing apples with oranges”:
Fissures Grow In Right-Wing Business Lobby As Caterpillar Speaks Out In Favor Of Clean Energy Legislation
Fissures Grow In Right-Wing Business Lobby As Caterpillar Speaks Out In Favor Of Clean Energy Legislation
Yesterday, President Obama sat down with members of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board to discuss the pending Waxman-Markey energy reform legislation. One of the advisers is James Owens, who is the CEO of Caterpillar and also a member of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the right-wing trade group that has taken a hard-line approach against any energy reform that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When the President asked Owens if he saw a “competitive disadvantage” as a “big manufacturer” in dealing with energy reform, Owens said placing a cap on carbon would actually spur innovation:
OWENS: I agree with Jeff. I think we have the technology, we have the smarts here, and the product technologies, the economic incents of what’s needed. And that’s why I think of us in industry support a clarity around a carbon price, because that’s going to drive a lot of innovation and a lot of efficiency and will get with the program of reducing carbon emissions.
Owens continued laying out his support of clean energy legislation, noting most of Caterpillar’s renewable energy related products are currently sold “outside the United States…partly because of the way we regulate emissions site-specific, as opposed to looking at combined emissions and energy efficiency.” He also emphasized that giving the markets a price for carbon would “help our country be more competitive using the technologies that are out there.”
PA medical marijuana bill a threat to Prohibition’s profiteers
PA medical marijuana bill a threat to Prohibition’s profiteers
Whenever the people are for gay marriage or medical marijuana or assisted suicide, suddenly the “will of the people” goes out the window.
-Bill Maher
The groups and individuals who oppose granting safe access to cannabis for medical use with a physician’s recommendation all seem to have one thing in common: they are addicted to licit and illicit Drug War money. Even in Pennsylvania, where rural residents are often looked down on by urban elitists, 76% of Pennsylvanians favor an end to the current practice of arresting their fellow citizens with a legitimate medical need for cannabis. With numbers like that, it becomes apparent that Philadelphia and Pittsburgh residents cannot be the only ones who object to decisions about medical care being made by those who profit from Prohibition. These are the greatest obstacles to safe access to medical cannabis in Pennsylvania and the other states currently considering an end to this cruel, stupid policy. Even the White House Drug Czar intends to lose the “war” rhetoric, and end prosecutions of medical cannabis users and dispensaries.
- The alphabet soup of of governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations dedicated to and sustained by Prohibition. In 2003, the last year before the Office of National Drug Control Policy began distorting their budget data by excluding funding to law enforcement agencies, the budget was $19.2 billion.
- The prison industrial complex and its subsidiaries. The Pennsylvania Department of Correct ons has requested $1.8 billion dollars in funding for 2009-10.
via Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner: PA medical marijuana bill a threat to Prohibition’s profiteers.
Baucus Flees From Single Payer Advocates
Baucus Flees From Single Payer Advocates
Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) drove up to the Kaiser Family Foundation in downtown Washington, D.C. this morning.
His initial idea – park on G Street in front of the office building – and walk in the front door to meet reporters gathered inside.
But activists from Single Payer Action were out front, waiting to question Baucus about why, over the past two weeks, he ordered thirteen of them arrested, handcuffed, and charged with “disruption of Congress.”
Upon seeing the activists gathered at the front door, Baucus drove down a back alley to a rear service entrance.
The activists followed him down the back alley.
Baucus pulled up to Kaiser’s service entrance.
A large metal door opened.
“I asked Baucus to roll down his window so I could ask him a question,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action and the first of person arrested at the Senate Finance Committee on May 5. “But he shook his head no.”
Baucus drove into the service entrance and the security guards rolled down the metal door. (See video here.)
via Baucus Flees From Single Payer Advocates « Single Payer Action.
Killing the Public Option
Killing the Public Option - by Laura Flanders
The nation’s for profit health insurers are out to scuttle anything within the Obama healthcare plan that might be in any way public.
One week after the insurance lobby pledged to voluntarily constrain rising costs, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is preparing a public message campaign aimed at killing the public non-profit part of Obama’s reform plan.
Anyone who’s been watching has heard the data that have the insurance profiteers so scared. A government-run plan, with no need for profits for Wall Street or bonuses to retain CEOs — a plan run only to deliver healthcare for the public — would cut the cost of healthcare. Period. Single payer advocates say that’s the only way to go but Obama’s still offering a compromise: a bit of both.
According to the Washington Post, as part of what it calls an “informational website,” Blue Cross Blue Shield has hired an outside firm to make a series of videos to terrify the public about Obama’s so-called public option. In three 30-second videos, the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can’t choose their own doctors.
via Killing the Public Option.
FBI arrest four in alleged plot to bomb Bronx synagogues, shoot down plane
OPS: Gee – BO kept us safe and no one was tortured – huh…
FBI arrest four in alleged plot to bomb Bronx synagogues, shoot down plane
The FBI and NYPD busted a four-man homegrown terror cell Wednesday night that was plotting to blow up two Bronx synagogues while simultaneously shooting a plane out of the sky, sources told the Daily News.
The idea was to create a “fireball that would make the country gasp,” one law enforcement said.
Little did they know the plastic explosives packed into their car bombs and the plane-downing Stinger missile in their backseat were all phony – supplied by undercover agents posing as Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda.
“If there can be any good news from this terror scare it’s that this group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early, and not connected to another terrorist group,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “This incident shows that we must always be vigilant against terrorism, foreign or domestic.”
via FBI arrest four in alleged plot to bomb Bronx synagogues, shoot down plane.
Ron Kirk Not Heeding Concerns of American Public
Ron Kirk Not Heeding Concerns of American Public
Kirk basically apologized for America implementing policies that protect its domestic industries and workers and blamed those policies on the American people.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has had a busy week, jet-setting around the world and offering world leaders mea culpa for American policies designed to protect domestic industries and save millions of jobs.
Last Wednesday, Kirk was in the Swiss capital of Geneva assuring member-states of the World Trade Organization that the U.S. is fully committed to finalizing the Doha Round of global trade negotiations.
“President Obama and I are both committed to a successful conclusion to the Doha Development Round,” Kirk said. “We see it not only as a critical component of what the president believes should be an overall, worldwide response to the current economic crisis, but it’s also critical to the sustenance of many of our least-developed countries.”
Yet, the WTO has not been beneficial to the U.S., the worldwide economic structure and certainly not to the least-developed countries of the world.
The World Trade Organization is an undemocratic organization run by the rich, for the rich.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Anniversary of the Epic Meltdown
The Anniversary of the Epic Meltdown
As the two-year anniversary of this catastrophe fast approaches, we would be well served to actually learn something from the financial disaster that this country has become. Thus far we have only worked to keep up the failed status quo.
The domino collapse of the international financial system – which is unfortunately centered in the United States – is still coming into perspective. The effects of this catastrophe are so far-reaching that we may never fully comprehend it. Allan Sloan, editor-at-large of Fortune, wrote a piece for CNNMoney.com detailing what could and should have been learned from the past two years.
First of all, he places the true beginning of the financial crisis at June 12, 2007, the date on which the world found out that large hedge-funds within Bear Stearns were on the verge of collapse. These funds were invested in now infamous mortgage-backed securities, those securities were largely “subprime,” and they were in default.
From that point on the financial system began to hemorrhage cash and the market began losing confidence. Roughly one year later, March 16, 2008, Bear Stearns was bailed out by the Federal Reserve in a government-sponsored takeover by JPMorgan Chase.
After back stopping the collapse of Bear Stearns the government stood idly, allowing Lehman Brothers to fall apart in a scandalous mess. The collapse cost thousands their jobs, but top executives like CEO Dick Fuld walked away with tens of millions from so-called “golden parachutes.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Profiteers Find That Free Trade Is Still An Easy Sell
Profiteers Find That Free Trade Is Still An Easy Sell
There is now a stigma that buying American is cheap, undesirable, of poor quality, and in poor taste. Clearly the only group unquestionably damaged by free-trade is American industry and as a result, the American middle-class that relies on American industry for employment and opportunity
Editor’s Note: This article originally ran in 2004, but is more relevant today than ever.
Free trade sounds great. Consumers get the benefit of increased competition for their buying dollars, manufacturers get to locate or source from the lowest cost labor pool, exporters have the opportunity to sell into new markets with no tariffs. So what could be bad about that?
Fundamental Flaws In Free Trade
There are at least two fundamental flaws with free trade that have led to the most massive wealth transfer in the history of the world ($4 Trillion has been lost by the United States since the 1970′s through trade deficits caused by elimination of tariffs).
1. Impossible to enforce
The premise that all countries will play by the same rules is impossible to enforce and hugely expensive, time consuming, and inefficient to contest. The reality is, trade is impacted not only by tariffs, but by other much more intangible state-sponsored “trade weapons” such as currency manipulation, technology transfer requirements, joint-venture policies, selective customs policies, underhanded government subsidies and incentives, labor rates and policies, and countless other tools.
We are relying on “faith-based economic policy” when we think that somehow, other countries won’t take advantage of the much sought after American wealth when we place them in a situation with no way to oversee or penalize their misdeeds.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Rep. Berman: State Dept. will establish benefits for same-sex diplomats in the ‘very near future.’
Rep. Berman: State Dept. will establish benefits for same-sex diplomats in the ‘very near future.’
Last week, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced the two-year Foreign Relations Authorization Act. One of the provisions of the legislation was to “end the long-standing practice of excluding the committed partners of Foreign Service officers from the benefits routinely provided to the spouses and children of officers serving abroad.” However, today Berman announced that he was dropping that provision because the State Department has promised to act instead:
Berman, in a hearing on funding for the Foreign Service, said he would drop his legislative bid as “it is my expectation, based on very recent conversations, that the Secretary of State will move forward with implementing all of the benefits provided in that provision in the very near future.”
The ranking Republican member on the committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), supported the benefits. But Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) was opposed, worried that the bill would force U.S. diplomats to “be advocates for the homosexual agenda.” A poll earlier this year found that 71 percent of foreign service officers support “official recognition and benefits for same-sex domestic partners of Foreign Service members.”
Cutting the heart out of health care reform? Pt2
Hickey: Now is the time for people to pressure their representatives for a public health-care option.
Paul Jay speaks to Roger Hickey, Co-Director of the Campaign For America’s Future, about Obama’s health-care reform. Hickey says that as the Senate is working on formulating Senator Max Baucus’ reform, “this is the time for Americans to weigh in with their representatives and people like Baucus, to let them hear that they insist on a public plan.
To learn more about how you can help fight for health care reform, click here.
YouTube – Cutting the heart out of health care reform? Pt2.
Do Perfectionists Face Early Deaths? New Study Suggests Yes
Do Perfectionists Face Early Deaths? New Study Suggests Yes
Perfectionism, as a way of life, tends to be self-defeating. New research suggests it may also be deadly.
Perfectionism, as a way of life, tends to be self-defeating. New research suggests it may also be deadly.
That’s the conclusion of a Canadian study of senior citizens just published in the Journal of Health Psychology. Researchers conducted psychological tests on 450 elderly residents of southern Alberta, and then kept tabs on them for 6½ years. During that period, just over 30 percent of the subjects, who ranged in age from 65 to 87, died.
Perfectionists — that is, those who expressed “a strong motivation to be perfect” and revealed a tendency toward “all or nothing thinking” — were approximately 51 percent more likely to have died during the life of the study than those with more reasonable self-expectations. Those who were rated high on neuroticism — for instance, those who reported often feeling tense — did even worse: Their risk of death nearly doubled compared with those with a more relaxed disposition.
In contrast, “risk of death was significantly lower for high scorers in conscientiousness, extraversion and optimism,” reports lead author Prem S. Fry, a research psychologist at British Columbia’s Trinity Western University. She notes that previous research has found that “perfectionism exerts a great deal of stress on health,” while optimism “is viewed as a stress-alleviating factor.”
via Do Perfectionists Face Early Deaths? New Study Suggests Yes | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Gordon Gekko Gets God: The Heritage Foundation of Theology
Gordon Gekko Gets God: The Heritage Foundation of Theology
Why Do Christians Worship Greed? Only in America can one find significant numbers of Christians who argue that unfettered capitalism represents God’s Plan for human thriving.
Even after the “revelation” that letting unregulated moneymen run the country isn’t a good idea, the neoliberals at the Heritage Foundation are still churning out the message; like the latest book by “theologian” Jay W. Richards, Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution And Not the Problem.
Please remember Frederick Douglass.
That is to say, remember the Frederick Douglass of “power concedes nothing without a struggle.” And I’m not sure that the struggle with market fundamentalism has even been joined yet, at least not at the level of principle where it most needs friends.
Like old Simeon in Luke’s gospel, I am one who hopes to live long enough to see the consolation of Israel. Only in my case that consolation would take the form of deliverance from the malignant free-market madness that US conservatives have successfully promoted for four decades. Known (and much loathed) abroad as the “American model,” or the “Washington consensus,” this is the Friedman-Greenspan regime of total deregulation wherein the public, in effect, subsidizes big capital to work its high-growth wonders to the ostensible benefit of us all—that chimera known as the trickle-down effect.
Because Americans live in a kind of perceptual bubble—a bubble related to but not identical to financial bubbles of recent memory—we have never seen the full extent of the devastation wrought by the “Washington consensus” on the lives of others and on the life of the planet itself. We’ve never seen the effects of the global sweatshop up close; we’ve never seen what privatized water markets look like in places like Bolivia; we’ve never asked whether there might be a connection between NAFTA’s effects within Mexico and the urgent need of Mexicans to reach El Norte, even risking death by dehydration to get here.
Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Torture Companion
Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Torture Companion
The soft-spoken Keillor warns us not to get into a “”bloody battle over war crimes,” as though this is about revenge, not justice.
Garrison Keillor claims to be a liberal. He – and we — should know better. Keillor has just joined the already large and ever-growing list of allegedly ‘liberal’ media figures who either advocate or apologize for torture.
In a recent column, (syndicated by the New York Times,) the National Public Radio mainstay (and author, storyteller, humorist, and musician,) allowed that “widespread waterboarding and other acts of torture carried out in secret CIA prisons are no small matter.” He added, “The free play of sadism on the helpless in the name of national service is not to be ignored.” He called for “a fair and thorough congressional investigation.” He said we should “subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it.”
But when it comes to “criminal prosecution,” and “holding the Bush administration responsible for torture,” the Man from Lake Wobegon says we be going too far, that something is rotten in America: “I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished.”
via Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Torture Companion | Media and Technology | AlterNet.
Are We Going to Let Health Industry Propaganda Derail Obama’s Plans for Reform?
Are We Going to Let Health Industry Propaganda Derail Obama’s Plans for Reform?
Millions of dollars will be poured into deceptive media ads by the health care industry — will you step up to stop them?
Editor’s note: Click here to help fight Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s deceptive campaign to undermine real health care reform!
The health industry is preparing to launch a lie-packed propaganda campaign in an attempt to rip the heart out of President Barack Obama’s plans for an overhaul of our health care system.
Reports of the campaign come just a week after the health care lobby joined with SEIU to make a weak, unenforceable “commitment” to reduce the spiraling rate of health care costs to “only” 50 percent above the average growth rate of the economy overall.
Big Health said it wanted to be a proactive partner with a “seat at the table”; it’s remarkable how quickly it has shown that its true intent was to derail any serious attempt at reform from a cozy place on the inside of the process.
Only three days after Obama hailed the health lobbyists’ proposal as a breakthrough in the battle for reform, Big Health was already backing away from its vague and noncommittal “commitment.”
According to the New York Times, “Hospitals and insurance companies said … that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending.” Richard Pollack, the executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, one of the industry groups that made the proposal, stated definitively that Big Health “did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually” as had been widely reported.
Exposing Endemic Election Fraud: A Recursive True Vote Model (1968-2008)
Exposing Endemic Election Fraud: A Sequential True Vote Model (1968-2008)
The analysis covers all elections from 1968 to 2008. The Excel model is only 95k bytes and calculates the True Vote. Recorded and total votes cast, National Exit Poll vote shares, voter turnout and annual voter mortality drive the model. The returning voter mix is calculated in four ways: 1) prior election recorded vote, 2) prior total votes cast, 3) the NEP voter mix (weights) and 4) the prior election True Vote. Method 4 is the best approach for calculating the True Vote.
There are drawbacks for methods 1-3.
1: The returning mix is based on prior recorded votes and does not include millions of uncounted votes.
2: The returning voter mix is based on total votes cast in the previous and current election – but ignores the cumulative impact of earlier elections.
3: The Final NEP weighting mix is adjusted to force a match to the recorded vote. It implicitly assumes that all elections, not just the current, are fraud-free. But the process of matching to the official vote required millions more returning Bush voters than were alive in 1988, 1992, 2004 and 2008 (the turnout rate exceeded 100%). Therefore, the official vote counts for those elections cannot be correct.
4: This is the correct method for calculating the True Vote. It eliminates the problem of the endemic fraud perpetuated by the Final National Exit Poll. Beginning with the 1968 election, the model derives a feasible returning vote mix and calculates the True Vote for each election in succession. True vote shares cast in the prior election are reduced by voter mortality and turnout in the current election as new voters are added to the mix.
The model indicates that two elections were definitely stolen (2000 and 2004) and probably two others (1968 and 1988) as well.
There was an impossible 114% average Republican turnout in elections when Nixon or Bush was President; it was 98% in the others.
There was a 9.7% average True Vote discrepancy with Nixon and Bush in office; it was 3.5% in the others.
via Exposing Endemic Election Fraud: A Recursive True Vote Model (1968-2008).
Top Powell aide says Congress is most ’spineless’ he’s seen in 65 years
OPS: Yep – most of us have known that for a decade or two. And the ones that aren’t spineless are actually republicans who pretended to be Dems so they could get elected. We call them Blue Dogs and DLC now.
Top Powell aide says Congress is most ’spineless’ he’s seen in 65 years - Raw Story »
The former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell — who of late has been supportive of more liberal positions — launched a stunning broadside against the Democratic-controlled Congress Wednesday, asserting that it’s been “spineless” when it comes to oversight and the most feckless he’s seen in 65 years.
Former Powell aide Col. Lawrence Wilkerson said he agrees with Democrats who say the CIA isn’t known for telling the truth. But he also launched a salvo at Congress for its alleged failure to investigate abuses of power.
“We could have less feckless leadership in the Congress in terms of oversight,” Wilkerson said. “And I’m not just talking about the Select Committees in the House and the Senate for Intelligence. I’m talking about the leadership in the Congress.
“This has been the most feckless Congress ever since 2000 that I’ve seen in my 65 years,” Wilkerson added. “I just don’t think there’s leadership over there. It’s spineless, it lacks courage, lacks political will.
He continued: “I shudder for the fact that we’ve got to face these economic and financial challenges we’ve got to face — Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and other things — and we don’t have a Congress that has any leadership.”
via Raw Story » Top Powell aide says Congress is most ’spineless’ he’s seen in 65 years.
Russia Dumps US Dollar as basic reserve currency
Russia Dumps US Dollar as basic reserve currency – Pravada
The US dollar is not Russia’s basic reserve currency anymore. The euro-based share of reserve assets of Russia’s Central Bank increased to the level of 47.5 percent as of January 1, 2009 and exceeded the investments in dollar assets, which made up 41.5 percent, The Vedomosti newspaper wrote.
The dollar has thus lost the status of the basic reserve currency for the Russian Central Bank, the annual report, which the bank provided to the State Duma, said.
In accordance with the report, about 47.5 percent of the currency assets of the Russian Central Bank were based on the euro, whereas the dollar-based assets made up 41.5 percent as of the beginning of the current year. The situation was totally different at the beginning of the previous year: 47 percent of investments were made in US dollars, while the euro investments were evaluated at 42 percent.
The dollar share had increased to 49 percent and remained so as of October 1. The euro share made up 40 percent. The rest of investments were based on the British pound, the Japanese yen and the Swiss frank.
The report also said that the reserve currency assets of the Russian Central Bank were cut by $56.6 billion. The losses mostly occurred at the end of the year, when the Central Bank was forced to conduct massive interventions to curb the run of traders who rushed to buy up foreign currencies. The currency assets of the Central Bank had grown to $537.6 billion by October 2008. Therefore, the index dropped by almost $133 billion within the recent three months.
The majority of Russian companies, banks and most of the Russian population started to purchase enormous amounts of foreign currencies at the end of 2008. The dollar gained 16 percent and the euro 13.5 percent over the fourth quarter. The demand on the US dollar was extremely high, and the Central Bank was forced to spend a big part of its dollar assets, experts say.
The change of the structure of the currency portfolio of the Bank of Russia has not affected the official peg of the dual currency basket, which includes $0.55 and 0.45 EUR.
The investments of the Bank of Russia in state securities of foreign issuers have been considerably increased, the report said. About a third of Russia’s international reserves are based on US Treasury bonds.
Russia became one of the largest creditors of the US administration last year, the US Department of the Treasury said. Russia increased its investments in the debt securities of the US Treasury from $32.7 billion as of December 2007 to $116.4 billion as of December 2008.
via Russia Dumps US Dollar as basic reserve currency.
Russia Dumps Dollar as Reserve Currency – Adopts Euro
OPS: Last week it was China and Brazil considering this
Russia Dumps Dollar as Reserve Currency – Adopts Euro<
Pravda wrote yesterday:
The US dollar is not Russia’s basic reserve currency anymore. The euro-based share of reserve assets of Russia’s Central Bank increased to the level of 47.5 percent as of January 1, 2009 and exceeded the investments in dollar assets, which made up 41.5 percent, The Vedomosti newspaper wrote.
The dollar has thus lost the status of the basic reserve currency for the Russian Central Bank, the annual report, which the bank provided to the State Duma, said…
The change of the structure of the currency portfolio of the Bank of Russia has not affected the official peg of the dual currency basket, which includes $0.55 and 0.45 EUR.
Anyone see a trend?
Michaelann Land: Tent city “more like homesteading,” Marysville Councilor says
Police and city council in Marysville, CA are trying to figure out
what to do about a growing homeless encampment in the Thorntree area of the city, but, unlike so many other communities, they seem to have some understanding and sympathy for the camp’s residents.
The people living there are “working class folks just looking for a place to sleep at night,” (Police Captain Mike) Wilson told the City Council on Tuesday night.
What had once been a violent population of transients living along the trees and heavy brush is now a clear product of the current downturn in the economy, he said.
The occupants — perhaps 40 or more at night, Wilson said — have a series of neatly kept campers, some of them fenced.Appeal-Democrat.
City Councilor Michael Selvidge, who’s seen the encampment, said it was less like a transient camp and more like homesteading.
Some U.S. cities are reporting a decline in the numbers of “chronically” homeless people. But how many people are homeless right now? The federally-sponsored Point-in-Time Count, done this past January, haven’t been released yet for the country as a whole. Then there’s the question of definition. Homeless activist Diane Nilan at Invisible Homeless Kids, wants to know why H.U.D. is still refusing to expand the definition of homeless “to include families and teens in motels, doubled-up with others, or outside the sparse HUD-funded shelter system.” She could use signatures on a petition in support of HR 29, The Homeless Children and Youth Act of 2009.
Michaelann Land: Tent city “more like homesteading,” Marysville Councilor says.
Sensitive data missing from National Archives
Sensitive data missing from National Archives
WASHINGTON – The National Archives lost a computer hard drive containing massive amounts of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House operating procedures, congressional officials said Tuesday.
One of former Vice President Al Gore’s three daughters is among those whose Social Security numbers were on the drive, but it was not clear which one. Other information includes logs of events, social gatherings and political records.
Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said in a written statement that the agency was preparing to notify affected individuals of the breach. The representative of former President Bill Clinton has been notified, but Cooper gave no indication whether the former president’s personal information was on the hard drive.
“The drive contains an as yet unknown amount of personally identifiable information of White House staff and visitors,” the statement added.
via Sensitive data missing from National Archives.
A Sample of Health Insurance CEO Compensation
OPS: Here’s a large part of the reason health care is so expensive in America – Greed. Trading you health for their profit
A Sample of Health Insurance CEO Compensation
Despite the trials and tribulations of the past year, there are several executives still raking in quite a few dollars at the end of the day. This is a look at some of the top total compensation packages from 2008 based on information gathered from the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission.
Aetna’s Ron Williams – CEO Compensation
Total Compensation: $24,300,112
Details: Williams earned $24,300,112 in total compensation for 2008, with more than half of that ($13,537,365) coming from option awards. He also received an additional $6,456,630 in stock awards to go along with his base salary of $1,091,764.
Personal use of a corporate aircraft and vehicle, as well as financial planning and 401(k) company matches added up to $101,487 for Williams.
Source URL:
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/aetnas-ron-willia…
Links:
<1> http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/aetna-stock-falls…
<2> http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/aetna-pay-5m-over…
<3> http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/aetna-will-pay-20…
<4> http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/aetna-enters-phr-ma…
CIGNA’s H. Edward Hanway – CEO Compensation
Total Compensation: $12,236,740
Details: Hanway took a significant pay cut from 2007 to 2008, due mainly to a drop off of more than $11 million in his non-equity incentive plan compensation. Still, his base salary of $1,142,885 surpasses that of Aetna’s Williams, and is supplemented by just over $3.6 million in option awards, and just over $820,000 in non-qualified deferred compensation earnings.
Also, nearly $21,800 in “other compensation” included the use of a company car with a driver, in-office meals, and emergency assistance services relating to medical exams.
Source URL:
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/cignas-h-edward-h…
Links:
via A Sample of Health Insurance CEO Compensation – Democratic Underground.
Non-GMO Shopping
Become a non-GMO Shopper - Institute for Responsible Technology
Buying non-GM not only helps address you and your family’s health concerns, it also can influence the decisions of food manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Food manufacturers worldwide have switched to non-GM ingredients to appeal to consumer demand–make a change or lose the customer.
The guide is a joint project brought to you by the Institute for Responsible Technology and the Center for Food Safety. Watch for additional products and new product categories!
Download for free or Order in bundles of 50 (priced at cost) with discounts for larger quantities.
Other resources:
Find local sources of organic food and GM-free meats.
Sources for Non-rBGH Cheese & Dairy.
To learn more about eating non-GM in restaurants.
View individual items on True Food Network’s Non-GMO Shopping List
via Non-GMO Shopping – Institute for Responsible Technology.
Sanford to file lawsuit over stimulus
OPS: Why do Republicans hate Americans who aren’t multimillionaires?
Sanford to file lawsuit over stimulus
The taxman cometh for soft drinks. Or so it appears these days. We already know they’re on the table as a possible funding source for Obama’s health care reform. And behind the scenes, the co-author of an influential paper on the potential positive effect of soda taxes, New York City’s Health Commissioner Tom Frieden, has just been named to run the Centers for Disease Control. And today David Leonhardt, one of the NYT’s top economics writers published a column praising the benefits of taxing soda in particular and calories in general. I even learned that taxes on activities or objects we want less of have a cosmically appropriate name, at least in terms of calories. They are technically known as Pigovian taxes and are named not after our barnyard friends, but after Arthur Cecil Pigou, an English economist. But I digress.
As interested as I was in Leonhardt’s arguments in favor of a soda tax, I was even more interested in the nifty chart that appeared with the article. It traces the drop in soda prices which began, suspiciously, in the early 80s just as High Fructose Corn Syrup was taking off. But it also traces the rise in the price of fruits and vegetables over the same period. The chart is a bit confusing as it’s actually measuring the price rise relative to the Consumer Price Index. So, as the chart explains, fruit and veg prices have risen 40% faster than the CPI over the last 30 years.
via Sanford to file lawsuit over stimulus – Local / Metro – The State.
Tax junk food, but also subidize veggies
Tax junk food, but also subidize veggies
The taxman cometh for soft drinks. Or so it appears these days. We already know they’re on the table as a possible funding source for Obama’s health care reform. And behind the scenes, the co-author of an influential paper on the potential positive effect of soda taxes, New York City’s Health Commissioner Tom Frieden, has just been named to run the Centers for Disease Control. And today David Leonhardt, one of the NYT’s top economics writers published a column praising the benefits of taxing soda in particular and calories in general. I even learned that taxes on activities or objects we want less of have a cosmically appropriate name, at least in terms of calories. They are technically known as Pigovian taxes and are named not after our barnyard friends, but after Arthur Cecil Pigou, an English economist. But I digress.
As interested as I was in Leonhardt’s arguments in favor of a soda tax, I was even more interested in the nifty chart that appeared with the article. It traces the drop in soda prices which began, suspiciously, in the early 80s just as High Fructose Corn Syrup was taking off. But it also traces the rise in the price of fruits and vegetables over the same period. The chart is a bit confusing as it’s actually measuring the price rise relative to the Consumer Price Index. So, as the chart explains, fruit and veg prices have risen 40% faster than the CPI over the last 30 years.
via Tax junk food, but also subidize veggies | Grist.
Xe (Blackwater) is the Problem
Xe is the Problem – In These Times
Keeping the corporation formerly known as Blackwater out of Skunk Hollow.
At first glance, it appears that 2009 didn’t start so well for the military contractor Xe, until February known as Blackwater Worldwide. In January, with multiple other lawsuits pending, six of its former employees went on trial for the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in September 2007 in Nisoor Square, Baghdad. And in March, its contract in Iraq, where it has so far made more than $1 billion dollars, was canceled.
Yet, on April 20 the AP reported that Xe (pronounced “zee”) will remain in Iraq until the summer. It has been widely reported that its aviation company, Presidential Airlines, will continue operations in Iraq until the fall. And Triple Canopy, the company that will assume Xe’s contract in Iraq to protect U.S. personnel, will be hiring former Blackwater/Xe personnel.
The private military corporation (PMC) market, of which Xe is a boutique part, is growing globally at 6 to 8 percent a year and has now surpassed $100 billion, mostly based in the United States and the United Kingdom. The use of mercenaries goes back millennia, but the phenomenon of corporate private armies capable of challenging the nation state’s “monopoly on violence”—as President Barack Obama put it—is a late 20th century development that worries peace activists around the globe. These private armies are used not just on the battlefield but also to protect corporations, train public law enforcement personnel and, as after Katrina, patrol city streets.
via Xe is the Problem — In These Times.
Sats Show Pakistan Super-Sizing Its Nuclear Weapons Complex
Danger Room What’s Next in National Security
Sats Show Pakistan Super-Sizing Its Nuclear Weapons Complex
Top U.S. officials recently made public concerns that Pakistan may be ramping up its nuclear weapons capability, despite a looming civil war. Now we have some visual evidence: Satellite imagery that appears to show the expansion of Pakistan’s plutonium production program and a possible increase in stocks of weapons-grade uranium.
Commercial satellite images released today by the Institute for Science and International Security — a very credible source for arms control analysis — appear to underscore Pakistan’s determination to increase its supply of fissile material and develop more destructive nuclear weapons. Most worryingly, the report suggests that Pakistan may be on the path to creating thermonuclear weapons that would be more powerful and potentially easier to package in a warhead.
Among the findings: Pakistan appears to have increased its plutonium separation capability at a site near Rawalpindi. According to ISIS, the new construction seems to indicate that Pakistan will be increasing its supply of spent fuel from new heavy water reactors, providing the raw material for separating out fissile plutonium. The country is also apparently expanding a facility at Dera Ghazi Khan that produces uranium hexafluoride and uranium metal, two basic ingredients for producing the bomb.
via Sats Show Pakistan Super-Sizing Its Nuclear Weapons Complex | Danger Room | Wired.com.
Big donor with no experience is new ambassador to UK
OPS: What Change? Wonder if BO will, at some point, have to say “heckova job Louie” ?
Obama picks financial backer for UK ambassador post | guardian.co.uk
Chicago friend Louis Susman chosen for plum posting despite president’s promise to end cronyism in Washington
A little bit of Chicago’s ruthless and combative political machine is soon to descend on the decorous calm of the Court of St James. Despite promising to end cronyism in Washington, Barack Obama is about to appoint one of his home town friends and financial backers to the plum posting of US ambassador to London.
The next ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary will be Louis Susman, a lawyer and financier with little experience of foreign affairs.
The appointment will end months of speculation. Susman’s name first surfaced in a diary column in the Washington Post in February, but Caroline Kennedy was also mentioned, as was Oprah Winfrey, another of Obama’s Chicago supporters.
via Barack Obama picks Louis Susman for UK ambassador post | World news | guardian.co.uk.
Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan
OPS: “Deemed”?
Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan
President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
The discussion, in a 90-minute meeting in the Cabinet Room that included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other top administration officials, came on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Mr. Obama is to give Thursday on a number of thorny national security matters, including his promise to close the detention center at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Human rights advocates are growing deeply uneasy with Mr. Obama’s stance on these issues, especially his recent move to block the release of photographs showing abuse of detainees, and his announcement that he is willing to try terrorism suspects in military commissions — a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.
The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.
via Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan – NYTimes.com.
Using the courts to undercut union power
Using the courts to undercut union power
THE JUDGE who barred a one-day strike by Los Angeles teachers May 15 cited student safety as a primary concern.
What? The kids would be safer at school than at home? I wonder how long it’s actually been since that’s been the case in many schools?
In reality, Los Angeles County Superior Judge James Chalfant was acting on behalf of powerful political forces that want to break United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). And by issuing a restraining order against the union–including threats of fines that would bankrupt it–Chalfant was following in a long American tradition of using “injunction judges” and other government intervention against workers’ democratic right to strike.
The reply, of course, should be that teachers should have their one day strike anyway. Teachers, as with all workers, have the right to unionize and the right to strike. A judge issuing an injunction is a bar to that fundamental right.
By the late 19th century, the anti-strike injunction was already commonplace, as U.S. workers struggled to organize militant and effective labor organizations. The great railroad workers’ uprising of 1877, the bitter fight for the eight-hour day in the 1880s and the dramatic Pullman rail strike of 1894 were all met with state repression. Strikebreaking by state militias–the forerunners of today’s National Guard–was commonplace.
via All Over the Board: Using the courts to undercut union power.
Will Obama Move Supreme Court Rightward?
Will Obama Move Supreme Court Rightward? | CommonDreams.org
by Jeff Cohen
I learned long ago, while working at the media watch group FAIR, to be wary of New York Times headlines.
Hearing news that President Obama has a shortlist of candidates to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, I dug up a front-page New York Times Week in Review piece written soon after Obama’s inauguration about his possible impact on the Court. It was headlined: “To Nudge, Shift or Shove the Supreme Court Left.”
I’d like to see Obama shift or shove the Court leftward. But after reading the article, I realized that it could just as easily have been headlined: “Will Obama Move Supreme Court Rightward?”
The centerpiece of the Times article was a fascinating study conducted by two University of Chicago law professors (one of whom is a conservative federal appeals judge) analyzing the judicial records of the 43 justices who’ve served on the Supreme Court since 1937. Four of the five most conservative judges of the last seven decades (Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Alito) now sit on the Court. With Anthony Kennedy at number ten, five of the ten most rightwing judges are currently on the Court. The current majority, in other words, is almost a conservative all-star team.
via Will Obama Move Supreme Court Rightward? | CommonDreams.org.
Where’s the Goddamn Outrage: When It Comes to Labor Laws, We Have a Corporate Crime Wave
Where’s the Goddamn Outrage: When It Comes to Labor Laws, We Have a Corporate Crime Wave
By Dave Lindorff
A new study of 1004 union organizing drives conducted by the
director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations has found that two-third of the
companies involved were violating US labor law by holding one-on-one interrogations of workers, by threatening workers about their union support, by firing union organizers or using half a dozen other illegal tactics to defeat unionization campaigns.
Prof. Kate Bronfenbrenner, author of No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition ot Organizing,
says that these illegal tactics by employers have been used to drive
union representation at American companies down to only 12.4 percent from a level of 22 percent just 30 years ago.
If a similar level of illegal behavior by companies was reported
dealing with, say, false billing of customers, deceptive reports to
shareholders or violation of environmental laws, there would be a
clamor for action in Congress, and among the public, but so far, there is no outcry over this wholesale violation of the nation’s labor laws.
One reason may be because nobody except the unions themselves and the companies breaking the law would know about this particular corporate crime wave.
The only article I’ve seen on this study was published by the New
York Times, but it was run in an inside page of the Times business
section, which is largely ignored by most readers.
A Recipe For Longevity: 33 Of The Healthiest Foods On Earth
A Recipe For Longevity: 33 Of The Healthiest Foods On Earth
Is it possible to live to 125 or maybe 150? It’s certainly a possibility, as discussed on Oprah Winfrey’s recent show on longevity. She visited me at my farm to learn how, at 86, I am enjoying the robust health, energy, and mental creativity of someone many decades younger. My secret: large quantities of fruit and vegetables, plus an hour of daily exercise.
No pills, not even aspirin, and certainly no supplements ever enter my mouth — everything I need comes from my fish-vegetarian diet, which incorporates 30-40 different kinds of fruit and vegetables every week. Even though I am Chairman and Owner of Dole Food Company, I do most of my own grocery shopping, and even took Oprah on an impromptu trip to Costco, in a day that included bike riding, exercise in the gym, and juicing vegetables in the kitchen. Oprah marveled at how much I eat, and yet never gain a pound. In fact, I expend a lot of energy in my 50-60 minutes of cardio and strength training every day. Plus there’s the fact that fruit and vegetables tend to be lower in calories, but higher in filling fiber and other nutrients that help you feel satisfied.
By eating many fruits and vegetables in place of fast food and junk food, people could avoid obesity. Obesity accelerates aging even faster than smoking, according to scientific research.
via David H. Murdock: A Recipe For Longevity: 33 Of The Healthiest Foods On Earth.
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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. 
