Archive for June, 2009
Military-backed public schools on the rise in US
Military-backed public schools on the rise i
n US – washingtonpost.com
ATLANTA — The U.S. Marine Corps is wooing public school districts across the country, expanding a network of military academies that has grown steadily despite criticism that it’s a recruiting ploy.
The Marines are talking with at least six districts _ including in suburban Atlanta, New Orleans and Las Vegas _ about opening schools where every student wears a uniform, participates in Junior ROTC and takes military classes, said Bill McHenry, who runs the Junior ROTC program for the Marines.
Those schools would be on top of more than a dozen public military academies that have already opened nationwide, a trend that’s picking up speed as the U.S. Department of Defense looks for ways to increase the number of units in Junior ROTC, which stands for Reserve Officers Training Corps.
via Military-backed public schools on the rise in US – washingtonpost.com.
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer
Armed Homeland Security Guards Try to Intimidate Demonstrators at Kerry’s Boston Office
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer
By JOHN WALSH
Inspired by the civil disobedience of the Baucus 13, members of SinglePayerAction.org and its allies, including several doctors in Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) took our call for single-payer to Senator John Kerry’s Boston Office last Friday afternoon. To our surprise three police cars and at least five armed, uniformed cops quickly appeared along with a few “undercover” agents to greet us. It is standard for John Kerry to call the cops whenever a protest materializes at his office – but usually it is some very unenthusiastic Boston cops. This time, however, it was the feds, armed, uniformed cops with cars and badges marked “Homeland Security: Executive Protective Service.” They demanded to read our fliers- no problem- and maintained their presence long after we left.
At the Senate hearings on Obama’s Health Care “reform,” Senator Baucus, Obama’s point man in the Senate made fun of the 13 single-payer protesters who were carried off by the cops when they dared to call for single-payer. Baucus ridiculed the demonstrators, in which he was joined by the despicable, narcissist, John Kerry. Baucus famously declared that what was needed was not egalitarian, comprehensive health care for all – but “more cops.” And it looks like Obama’s Homeland Security is doing just that.
The Boston demonstration took place from 4:30 to 5:30 on Friday afternoon, and they will take continue every Friday until Kerry signs onto the Single Payer bill, S. 704, which Bernie Sanders has put before the Senate, a companion bill to Conyers single payer bill in the House, H.R. 676. However although H.R. 676 now has 75 signatories, Sanders bill has not a single co-sponsor to date, another sign of the deep corruption of the Democrat Party. (Where are the signatures of Senators like Russell Feingold who recently identified himself to Amy Goodman as a single-payer supporter? Have they no shame in their hypocrisy?)
via John Walsh: John Kerry vs. Single-Payer.
Maddow Exposes Scott Roeder’s Connections
Maddow Exposes Scott Roeder’s Connections
On Wednesday, MSNBC news anchor Rachel Maddow revealed the ties between Dr. Tiller’s alleged assassin Scott Roeder, to the extremist antiabortion group “Operation Rescue”, and how he repeatedly got away with violating federal laws protecting abortion clinics.
The Rachel Maddow Show:
via Truthdig – A/V Booth – Maddow Exposes Scott Roeder’s Connections.
Canadian, U.S., U.K. life, health insurers investing heavily in tobacco companies
Canadian, U.S., U.K. life, health insurers investing heavily in tobacco companies
Canadian firm Sun Life has $1 billion in two companies
Major U.S., Canadian and British life and health insurance companies have billions of dollars invested in tobacco companies, says a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Wesley Boyd, the study’s lead author, found that at least $4.4 billion US in insurance company funds are invested in companies whose affiliates produce cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.
“Despite calls upon the insurance industry to get out of the tobacco business by physicians and others, insurers continue to put their profits above people’s health,” said Boyd, a faculty member of Harvard Medical School.
“It’s clear their top priority is making money, not safeguarding people’s well-being,” he wrote.
Tobacco is considered the leading cause of lung cancer and a major risk factor for heart attack, stroke, pulmonary disease and cancer.
According to the World Health Organization, it is a contributing factor in 5.4 million deaths a year.
via Canadian, U.S., U.K. life, health insurers investing heavily in tobacco companies.
Bill Moyers Journal : Jeremy Scahill
Bill Moyers sits down with award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill to examine the human and financial costs of America’s wars.
Video & transcript
via Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS.
Company makes any plant produce THC and the tomatoes are especially yummy
OPS: cutting the lawn could become a religious experience. You’d have the kids fighting over it. “It’s MY turn to cut the lawn…”
Company makes any plant produce THC and the tomatoes are especially yummy
Oakdale, CA: Scientists at Montsaint Genie Tech Inc. announced today that they have successfully transferred the gene segment that produces the psychotropic chemical THC in cannabis plants to many other common garden plants, including tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, and more.
“We probably can put the THC segment into almost any plant in existence,” says lead scientist Rebeca Vale. “It’s a very simple process. We are starting work on oak and maple trees now.”
Asked if the resulting plants could be used in ways similar to cannabis, Vale replied, “Well, you can’t make twine out of a tomato plant, but if someone were to dry it and smoke it, all of the medicinal and psychotropic effects of marijuana would be present. And what’s more, we have learned that tomatoes, in particular, actually produce more THC than cannabis itself.”
via Company makes any plant produce THC and the tomatoes are especially yummy : thecrit.com.
Airlines at It Again: Less Legroom
Airlines Are at It Again: Less Legroom - WSJ.com
If you thought legroom on commercial airlines was already cramped, get set to be squeezed some more.
New Boeing 737-800s now being delivered to American Airlines have the same-size cabins as the existing 737-800s in American’s fleet. But the new planes have 12 more coach seats, pushing the total number of seats to 160. Delta Air Lines Inc. has also added 10 seats to its 737-800s, raising the total to 160. So has Continental Airlines Inc.
The seat squeeze shows how airlines are aggressively cramming more seats into jets. The trend has been going on for years, but has picked up momentum of late as airlines take food galleys out of airplanes since they’ve stopped serving free meals. Some carriers also are replacing seats with new ones made with slimmer frames and cushions, creating additional rows.
via Airlines at It Again: Less Legroom – WSJ.com.
The Trouble With Democrats
The Trouble With Democrats
Reclaiming the Economy for the People
By William Greider
The governing party faced an awkward dilemma. People were hurting and furious at the government’s generous bailouts for banks. But how could the Democrats do something for the folks without upsetting their friends and patrons in the banking industry? Democrats think they found a way. They are enacting a series of measures described as “breakthrough” reform and “unprecedented” defeat for the bankers. Only these achievements are more accurately understood as “reform lite.” The house is on fire and Democrats brought a garden hose.
The Democratic Party is changing in some promising ways, but what’s impressive is how much it has not changed. Does that sound harsh? I am relying on private judgments from Washington players regarded as the “white hats” on this subject–consumer lobbyists and other public-interest reformers, who for years have labored in frustration to enact laws that would restore equity and honest relationships to the out-of-control financial system. These organizations mostly endorse the Democrats’ efforts and celebrate their “victories.” But a few minutes of private conversation reveals their doubt and disappointment. “It’s a good bill,” they will say, then after enumerating the shortcomings add, “It’s better than nothing.”
“This has to be on background, OK?” one of the reformers said. “This crisis brought down the world economy and yet Congress still hasn’t passed a bill making sure it doesn’t happen again.”
via The Trouble With Democrats.
Obama Warns not to challenge Official 9/11 Story
Egypt, Cairo June 4th 2009
US President Barack Obama Speech, defends the official 9/11 story. These are not opinions to be debated, these are facts to be dealt with.
YouTube – Obama Warns not to challenge Official 9/11 Story.
May Unemployment 16.4% – continues to rise
Graphs based on data from the BLS website:
keep in mind that U6 is closer to the true unemployment figure than any of the others
Last Update: 6.04.09Unemployment – Seasonally Adjusted
U3 to U6 Comparison
In this graph, the “Difference” is the deception
13 Cities Report Unemployment above 15%
OPS: If you choose to look at the more realistic U6 you find the figure is already 16.4% Nationally, as of May
13 Cities Report Unemployment above 15%
For the fourth consecutive month, unemployment rates rose in all 372 of the nation’s metropolitan areas
For the fourth consecutive month, unemployment rates rose in all 372 of the nation’s metropolitan areas, according to a government report released Wednesday.
The Labor Department reported that a total of 13 cities topped an unemployment rate of 15 percent in the month of April. California, which is facing a budget shortfall of $21.3 billion and has been the epicenter of the housing crisis, is home to nine of the 15 cities on that list.
The city with the nation’s highest unemployment rate is El Centro, California, where 26.9 percent of the city’s residents are without work, according to the Labor Department’s statistics. According to CNNMoney.com, economists blame a largely agrarian economy with seasonal work for the extremely high unemployment rate in the city.
Next on the list was Yuma, Arizona with an unemployment rate of 20.3 percent, followed by Merced and Yuba City, California.
The only four non-California cities on the list – including Yuma, Ariz. – are Elkhart, Indiana; Bend, Oregon; and Longview, Washington.
In contrast, the city with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation is Iowa City, Iowa at just 3.2 percent, well below the national average of 8.9 percent in April. Next on the list was Ames, Iowa at 3.6 percent.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The 31-year-old Shepherding GM through Bankruptcy
OPS: I”m sure he’ll do a ” Heckova job”
The 31-year-old Shepherding GM through Bankruptcy
Brian Deese is not quite out of law school yet. He has no background in economics, business or even the auto industry, for that matter
Brian Deese is not quite out of law school yet. He has no background in economics, business or even the auto industry, for that matter. At just 31-years-old he is virtually unknown in Washington and Detroit.
Yet he is the man charged with reshaping the American auto industry and shepherding General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy.
Serving in his very first government job, Deese is in a position to completely makeover the industrial landscape of America.
Still wet behind the ears, he has emerged as one of the leading voices on President Obama’s automotive taskforce, according to The New York Times.
“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Deese told The Times. “It was a little scary.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
We Are in Real Trouble
We Are in Real Trouble
What’s the matter with the President and Congress?
Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings, with video by Craig Harrington
Now we are in real trouble. We’ve lost the markets for textiles, cameras, radios, TVs, steel, electronics, computers, communications equipment, machine tools, advance technology, robots, steppers, etc. The little that we produce has now been bought up by foreigners. Big Blue, IBM and the Hummer went to China; Westinghouse Nuclear and all of its patents went to Japan; Bell labs and all of its discoveries went to France; Bethlehem Steel to is now Russian; Genentech went to Switzerland. And we can’t prepare for war. Boeing’s fighter planes depend on parts from India and Sikorsky for its helicopter must get its tail motor from Turkey.
We begin a program to stimulate American production and American jobs. But in April President Obama signs a declaration against protectionism at the summit of the big nations. And now The New York Times editorializes “’Buy American’ is a terrible idea.” You would think that having to get a Mexican loan to keep The New York Times going would have sobered them up from their mantra of “free trade” and “protectionism.” Our trouble is most people in the Congress believe The New York Times. Yet Congress is our only hope.
The United States of America began a trade war against the Mother Country’s protectionism. Under the Navigation Act of 1632, England required all production in the colony shipped back to England to be transported in English bottoms. Furthering protectionism, England enacted the Townsend Act with discriminatory tariffs causing the Boston Tea Party, igniting the Revolution. Once we had won our freedom, adopted a Constitution, and adopted a national seal, the first Congress in history, on July 4, 1789, pursuant to Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, assigning the duty of competing in international trade to Congress, enacted a protectionist tariff on numerous articles. We financed and built the industrial giant, U.S.A., with protectionism. Now, the President, the Congress, the press, and the think tanks, all think that protectionism or “Buy American” is a terrible idea.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Cutting Back in the Economy
OPS: A ZERO percent savings rate would be an improvement. By 2005 the US actually had a negative savings rate.
Cutting Back in the Economy
American personal savings rates are raising exponentially while only a few months ago the personal savings was at zero percent.
According to a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal American personal savings rates are at their highest point since February of 1995. After-tax personal savings rose to 5.7 percent in April, up from 4.5 percent in March, according to the Commerce Department.
It was only a few months ago that American personal savings was at zero percent. In fact, when you account for credit spending and accumulated debt, many Americans had a negative personal savings rate going back several years. The recent turnaround, the choice to save money instead of spending it the moment it is earned, is a symbol of the economy we are in today. Americans have finally realized that they cannot simply spend frivolously on anything and everything they choose.
The unfortunate side-effect of personal savings is that, in a consumer driven economy, it dampens domestic growth. As more citizens tuck money away in bank accounts and rainy day funds they spend less on goods and services. This will likely impede any near-term economic growth.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Illiteracy in High Places
Illiteracy in High Places
Paul Craig Roberts, with video by Craig Harrington
The red ink that Washington is generating is a far greater threat to Americans than any foreign “enemies.”
Authors Bio: Dr. Roberts is an economist, a former university professor, a former associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Scripps Howard News Service. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. Dr. Roberts is also a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
If a person lives long enough, he can watch everyone forget everything they learned.
Everyone includes Federal Reserve chairmen, economists, Bank of America “strategists” and even Bloomberg.com.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke thinks he can hold down U.S. long-term interest rates by purchasing mortgage bonds and U.S. Treasuries. Sixty years ago, the Federal Reserve understood that this was an impossible feat. After an acrimonious public dispute with the U.S. Treasury, in 1951 the Federal Reserve forced an “Accord” on the government that eliminated the Fed’s obligation to monetize Treasury debt in order to hold down long-term interest rates.
President Truman and Treasury Secretary John Snyder wanted to protect World War II bond purchasers by preventing any rise in interest rates, which would mean a decline in the price of the bonds.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Single-Payer and the ‘Democracy Deficit’
Single-Payer and the ‘Democracy Deficit’ -The BRAD BLOG :
Or, ‘Why corporate control of the media may be hazardous to your health’…
“Americans think that it’s healthcare that produces health, when there really is very little evidence for that. What turns out to be really important is the nature of caring and sharing in society….Where societies are more equal — and economic equality is the thing that is most important in this — people look after each other…and pretty well everyone does better. There’s almost nothing that is better in a society that tolerates the extreme levels of inequality in the United States. And so, we end up dying younger than people in all the other rich countries, despite spending half the world’s healthcare bill.” – Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, March 30, 2009
“Who are we? Is this what we have become — a nation that dumps people off like garbage who can’t pay their hospital bills?” – Michael Moore, following a segment in which a confused elderly woman in a flimsy hospital gown is dumped curbside near a Skid Row rescue mission, in his documentary Sicko!*
via The BRAD BLOG : Single-Payer and the ‘Democracy Deficit’.
Obama: Healthcare ‘no longer a luxury,’ reform ‘necessary’
OPS: Pardon us all to hell there BO – when was Health Care EVER a ‘luxury’ ?
Obama: Healthcare ‘no longer a luxury,’ reform ‘necessary’
President Barack Obama urged Congress Saturday to move ahead on health care reform, arguing that any change in the current system should lower the cost of services, improve their quality and protect consumer choice.
“This week, I conveyed to Congress my belief that any health care reform must be built around fundamental reforms that lower costs, improve quality and coverage, and also protect consumer choice,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.
“That means if you like the plan you have, you can keep it,” he explained. “If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.”
During his election campaign last year, Obama campaigned hard on universal healthcare coverage, vowing to endow all Americans with health insurance, including those 46 million Americans who remain uninsured.
But moves to reform healthcare — an often polarizing issue — have bogged down during virtually every administration since the 1940s and 1950s.
via Raw Story » Obama: Healthcare ‘no longer a luxury,’ reform ‘necessary’.
NYT Finally Runs ‘Editor’s Note’ Correction To Misleading Gitmo Detainee ‘Recidivism’ Story
NYT Finally Runs ‘Editor’s Note’ Correction To Misleading Gitmo Detainee ‘Recidivism’ Story
gitmowebLast month, the New York Times ran a front page story titled “1 In 7 Detainees Returned to Jihad, Pentagon Finds.” Relying on a unpublicized DoD report, the article said that “74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism, making for a recidivism rate of nearly 14 percent.” Critics pointed out that these statistics don’t take into account the possibility that released detainees were not terrorists to begin with and were radicalized by their detention. Seeming to take note of this criticism, the Times soon after changed the headline and lead of the web version of the story.
The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted that the Times’ web-only rewrite ignored the fact that the article “still contain[ed] references to ‘recidivism,’ which still presumes that detainees were involved in terrorism before being detained.” Today, the Times finally got around to addressing the story’s inaccuracies in its print edition in an “Editor’s Note.” And while the article still contains references to “recidivism,” the Times acknowledges the error:
South Carolina Supreme Court orders Sanford to accept stimulus funds.
OPS: Well, he’s off the hook now isn’t he. ‘Those awful ‘activist’ judges made me do it”.
South Carolina Supreme Court orders Sanford to accept stimulus funds.
After waging a months-long war against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) lost his final battle yesterday, when the state supreme court ordered him to accept the $700 million in stimulus funds he had opposed. The court, in a unanimous decision made “with blazing fast speed,” took extra steps to try to ensure Sanford obeys their ruling:
The S.C. Supreme Court also took the rare step of issuing a writ of mandamus, which orders the governor to apply for the money. [...]
As for issuing the writ of mandamus, the other four justices said that “while we recognize and respect Governor Sanford’s sincerely held beliefs concerning (the federal law), those convictions do not alter the ministerial nature of the legal duty now before him.”
The justices added that the decision to issue a writ is “an extremely delicate one.”
$185 million will go to K-12 education this year, on July 1, and $100 million will go to state colleges. “I’m very excited that our schools and our teachers and our education system will be getting the funds that are so desperately needed here in South Carolina, and I’m glad the court case went our way,” said 18-year-old South Carolina student Casey Edwards, who filed the lawsuit.
via Think Progress » South Carolina Supreme Court orders Sanford to accept stimulus funds..
Homeland Insecurity
James Ridgeway | Mother Jones
What happened to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which Democratic leaders promised to make one of their top legislative priorities? What are the most deadly potential terrorist targets no one talks about—and who’s lobbying against securing them? What’s the one measure that could improve our chances of preventing an attack—without costing a penny? Why are the 2008 presidential candidates—Republicans and Democrats alike—nowhere on this issue? In this seven-part series Mother Jones’ senior correspondent James Ridgeway examines how the government has let homeland security languish since September 11, 2001, with dire consequences.
—The Editors
- Part One: Why Congress Hasn’t Implemented the 9/11 Commission’s Suggestions
- Part Two: Hidden Threat: Liquefied Natural Gas Tankers
- Part Three: Hidden Threat: Chemical Freight Cars
- Part Four: Hidden Threat: Port Security
- Part Five: Hidden Threat: The Blame Game
- Part Six: Conspiracy Theories: Theory Vs. Facts
- Part Seven: Hidden Threat: Airport Security
via Homeland Insecurity | Mother Jones.
Homeland Insecurity: The 9/11 Conspiracy File: Myths and Facts
Homeland Insecurity: The 9/11 Conspiracy File: Myths and Facts | Mother Jones
Six years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there are plenty of unanswered questions about why the Bush administration didn’t prevent them. But the most popular 9/11 conspiracy theories are full of holes, too. Part six of a seven-part series on the lessons of 9/11.
—By James Ridgeway
Assessing our vulnerability to terrorist attack remains difficult in part because the events surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001, have not been thoroughly explained. In its investigation into them, the 9/11 Commission slid past many important questions, leaving them unanswered, and did not adequately challenge the Bush administration when it refused to cooperate or obfuscated its own actions. This has naturally spurred the various conspiracy theories that have set out to unravel what happened. Some address legitimate issues, such as the as-yet-unexplained fact that American intelligence had been tracking lead hijacker Mohammad Atta since the late 1990s but did nothing to stop him. But most theories run the gamut from the preposterous (the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were drones) to the improbable (the WTC buildings collapsed due to a demolition charge). The prevailing theory is summed up by a bumper sticker: “9/11 Was an Inside Job.”
via Homeland Insecurity: The 9/11 Conspiracy File: Myths and Facts | Mother Jones.
Hamas: Obama speech “historic” and “wonderful”
OPS: We’ll see……
Hamas: Obama speech “historic” and “wonderful”
Ahmed Yousef, a spokesman for Hamas, an organization that the United States has classified as a terrorist organization and has carried out dozens of terrorists attacks over the last ten years, called Obama’s Cairo “historical” and praised his “wonderful words”. Which is a good indication of why the speech had only lukewarm reviews in Israel and mixed reviews in the rest of the world.
via NY Obama Administration Examiner: Hamas: Obama speech “historic” and “wonderful”.
Dr. Tiller murderer should be charged under anti-terrorism laws
Dr. Tiller murderer should be charged under anti-terrorism laws.jpg)
via NY Obama Administration Examiner: Dr. Tiller murderer should be charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Even Republicans Can’t Believe Holder’s Latest Move in Alaska Case
If you are keeping score at home,
it’s now Republicans 4, Democrats 0
under the Obama DOJ
Even Republicans Can’t Believe Holder’s Latest Move in Alaska Case
Was Eric Holder appointed attorney general for the sole purpose of letting Republican scoundrels off the hook?
It’s starting to look that way after news came yesterday that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking that two former Alaska state legislators be released from prison because of prosecutorial misconduct in their cases. Victor Kohring and Peter Kott, both Republicans, were convicted in the same corruption investigation that netted former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AL).
The Obama Justice Department already has dismissed cases or appeals against Stevens and alleged Republican phone jammer James Tobin. Kohring and Kott make four Republicans who have received favorable treatment since Obama took office in January. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Don Siegelman in Alabama and Paul Minor in Mississippi have received no known reviews of their cases.
via OpEdNews » Even Republicans Can’t Believe Holder’s Latest Move in Alaska Case.
The Ronald Reagan Statue – the Ultimate Lipstick on a Pig
Humor
The Ronald Reagan Statue – the Ultimate Lipstick on a Pig
With President Obama and the Widow Nancy Reagan dedicating a bronze statue of the good and gone President Ronald Reagan this one needs to be revisited. Hopefully not too far in the future Americans will raise the concept of reason and education above dogma and religion (I wouldn’t hold by breath though), and put down their guns (I wouldn’t hold by breath though) long enough to do something unAmerican, think a thing trough! Then rent a truck and some chain and pull down that stature along with all it stood for (wealthy callous disregard) and drag it though the streets hitting it with our shoes… And socks! We got socks…
The biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression finally got the American people to think about their vote rather than just blindly accept whatever stupid conservative homilies came their way. Which has been the status quo since November 1980.
No politician or President has ever enjoyed the success that Ronald Reagen has enjoyed for doing literally nothing other than creating an all encompassing visceral hatred of the United States government.
Time for a New Round of Stimulus
Time for a New Round of Stimulus
Katrina vanden Heuvel
“We might be witnessing the mother of all jobless recoveries.”
That’s how economist Bernard Baumohl described today’s jobs report to the New York Times.
While there were “only” 345,000 jobs lost last month–as compared to 504,000 in April–the report doesn’t account for the upcoming job losses as well as the ripple effect that will result from the GM bankruptcy. Nor does it reflect the severe budget shortfalls states continue to face. It did, however, reveal a continued collapse of wage growth, the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and the loss of 156,000 manufacturing jobs.
Economic Policy Institute economist Heidi Shierholz writes today, “It is only in the midst of a historically steep recession that losing 345,000 jobs in a single month is actually taken as a good sign…. The US labor market is still hemorrhaging jobs. With the continued loss of jobs and hours along with the collapse of wage growth, it is time to start thinking very seriously about additional stimulus spending.”
via Time for a New Round of Stimulus.
If We Don’t Stop Wall Street’s Colossal Theft Now, Where Will This Country Be Next Year?
If We Don’t Stop Wall Street’s Colossal Theft Now, Where Will This Country Be Next Year?
Come attend events across the country next week to learn more about how we can stop Wall Street before it bankrupts all of us
We have the most fundamental fight over power ahead of us — either the banks get bigger and richer and more powerful, or we take away some of their political power for ourselves and our businesses.
Why does this fight matter? Because we have trillions of dollars in deficit, and the financial sector is winning policy after policy and will continue to squeeze tax breaks, loose rules and dollars out of government. The financial sector is stopping our country from getting out of the crisis, it is to blame for our troubles. If we don’t stop it, where will our country be by the end of this year?
But do you feel like you don’t understand big finance, while you feel less financially secure? Wall Street has been getting away with taxpayer dollars, corruption and risky practices, and a massive market failure. It’s because it wants us to believe that “ordinary people can’t understand finance and economics.” Let’s get together and understand why the economic crisis happened and what is being done now.
Why Does the Much-Touted Climate Bill Look Like It Was Stolen From the Republican Playbook?
Why Does the Much-Touted Climate Bill Look Like It Was Stolen From the Republican Playbook?
The new climate bill exemplifies a Republican approach: Don’t tell polluters what to do, bribe them and hope they do what you want.
“Command and control” is a military term the Republicans long ago appropriated to caricature and condemn Democratic programs. Republicans like to contrast the Democrats’ embrace of a command and control, regulation-based you-will-do-as-I-say-or-else strategy with their own, presumably, more effective market-based we-will-make-it-worthwhile-for-you-to-do-what-we-want approach.
Nowhere is the phrase “command and control” used more often and with more passion than when Republicans attack environmental regulation. The 2008 Republican Party platform, for example, declares, “Republicans caution against the doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by the aficionados of centralized command-and-control government.”
Well, when it comes to climate change policy making, the Republican Party can justly claim a major victory for its philosophy. We may have a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, but the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 recently passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is very much a Republican bill characterized by a paucity of sticks and a plethora of carrots.
119 Million Americans Must Be Wrong
OPS: You can’t expect a Parasitic Dinosaur to understand that it is killing it’s host and it’s time is over. You simply have to kill it before it kills you.
119 Million Americans Must Be Wrong
By Robert Parry
As the health insurance industry and its defenders in Congress lay out their case against permitting a public option in a reform bill, perhaps their most curious argument is that some 119 million Americans are ready to dump their private plans and jump to something more like Medicare – and that’s why the choice can’t be permitted.
In other words, the industry and its backers are acknowledging that more than one-third of the American people are so dissatisfied with their private health insurance that they trust the U.S. government to give them a fairer shake on health care. The industry says its allies in Congress must prevent that.
The peculiar argument that 119 million Americans must be denied the public option that they prefer has been made most notably by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which is one of two panels that has jurisdiction over the health insurance bill.
“As many as 119 million Americans would shift from private coverage to the government plan,” Grassley wrote in a column for Politico.com. That migration, Grassley said, would “put America on the path toward a completely government-run health care system. … Eventually, the government plan would overtake the entire market.”
via Consortiumnews.com.
Whooping cough near epidemic in US
Whooping Cough vaccinations – get them
Dr. Jason Glanz published a study in Pediatrics on the effects of whooping cough (pertusis) immunization. The study was done by Kaiser Permanente Colorado’s Institute for Health Research on 500 children.
The results are:
- 90 % of those immunized do not get whooping cough,
- 3,000,000 people, mostly children, are not vaccinated in the United States,
- 28 infants die every year if they are not immunized,
- Those who are not immunized and get whooping cough can spread the disease to many others,
- There were 10,000 cases of whooping cough in 2007.
The resistance to immunization is:
via Birmingham Science News Examiner: Whooping Cough vaccinations – get them.
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
For those of you who don’t know, The Dave Thomas Foundation (the Wendy’s fast food guy) is a huge supporter of adopting children who are in foster care (our nations orphans). On June 20 &21 a 50 cent donation will be made for every frosty purchased to help children in fostercare to find adoptive homes. Since I am an adoption worker, I thought I would pass this along and ask that you let friends know. Even if you don’t pass along the message, this is an easy way to care for the hurting children of our country. Take your kids, grandkids or whoever and get some ice cream!
Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption!
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is a nonprofit 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to dramatically increasing the adoptions of the more than 150,000 children waiting in North America’s foster care systems. Created by Wendy’s founder, Dave Thomas, who was adopted as a child, the Foundation works to fulfill its mission by implementing result-driven national signature programs, awareness initiatives and advocacy efforts. As the only foundation dedicated exclusively to foster care adoption, we are driven by Dave’s simple value: Do what’s best for the child.
via Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
apoB better indicator heart health than LDL cholesterol
Good for the heart – Atherotech apoB Patent
Atherotech, Inc., a Birmingham based testing and research lab received a patent for its method to derive and report apolipoprotein B100 (apoB) using the VAP (Vertical Auto Profile) test last April.
The VAP test is the only cholesterol test that reports apoB along with twenty other cardiovascular and diabetes risk factors.
apoB is a much more reliable predictor of cardiovascular events in people who have heart problems and those who have high risk of heart problems. apoB is a better predictor of heart health risk factors than LDL cholesterol alone.
I worked at Atherotech in 2001 and 2002 and can attest to the company’s veracity and reliability of the VAP test. I setup the quality program and made equipment changes that improved the process and reliability of the VAP test. This is not a plug. I do not own stock in Atherotech anymore nor was I paid for this report in any way.
via Birmingham Science News Examiner: Good for the heart – Atherotech apoB Patent.
Warrantless Spying Cases Dismissed: Appeals on Telecom Immunity, Constitutional Issues To Come, ACLU and EFF Vow
Warrantless Spying Cases Dismissed: Appeals on Telecom Immunity, Constitutional Issues To Come, ACLU and EFF Vow
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Christine Bowman
US District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker of San Francisco dismissed the AT&T warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying case (and dozens of related ones) this week, based on Section 802 of Title II of the telecom immunity bill, or FISA Amendments Act (FISAAA), which was passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush last summer. The judge also overruled the plaintiffs’ “hearsay objections,” thus allowing to stand the government’s claim of state secrets regarding certain documents.JUdge Vaughn Walker
Judge Walker sided, by and large, with arguments made by the Justice Department, although he called the plaintiffs’ “nondelegation challenge” which argued that the separation of powers clause of the Constitution had been violated, “a close question.” The judge also made the point in his ruling that the 2008 telecom immunity law affecting the suits had been passed only “after months of election-year legislative exertion …”
Judge Walker’s action will not affect cases filed directly against government entities, but only those suits seeking to hold the phone companies themselves accountable. Thus, El-Haramain v Bush, Jewell v Bush, and Center for Constitutional Rights v Bush, for instance, are not impacted and may go forward for now. In the judge’s view, plaintiff’s may still seek redress against “governmental actors and entities [who] are, after all, the primary actors in the alleged wiretapping activities.”
Creation Museum “Scientists” Hilariously Explain How to be Skeptical of Science, But Accept the Bible Without Question
Creation Museum “Scientists” Hilariously Explain How to be Skeptical of Science, But Accept the Bible Without Question
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White
After a week of BuzzFlash analysis of Government Motors, Obama in the Middle East, North Korea’s capture of American journalists, rape and murder in the Congo, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and much more, I thought I’d take the opportunity to bring you the lighter side of the dark creationist museum dinosaurside. In short, I thought we could talk a bit about the scientific bona fides of people who put saddles on dinosaur statues.
My wonderful boyfriend, knowing how much I love reading the ravings of religious nut jobs, sent me this article from the people who brought you the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY called “Noting News: How to Interpret Science News.”
The article itself does not feature a byline, but it appears on the Web site for Answers in Genesis (or AiG, as they shorten it), the organization that built the Creation Museum to support their beliefs about the incorrectness of evolution and the Big Bang.
The article is basically a checklist of how to deal with science writing when it contradicts creationism. But it contains a fair point: There are tons of inaccurate scientific articles in the media, especially about complex subjects and new discoveries that journalists don’t have the time or training to fully understand on deadline. As someone trained in anthropology as well as journalism, I’ve struggled with the shortcomings of both academic and news compositions.
It’s a Global Wage Crisis
Henry C. K. Liu of the Asia Times: It’s a Global Wage Crisis
H/t to Bigchin who sent me a link to an Asia Times column by Henry C. K. Liu:
“the Fed’s new money has not been going to consumers in the form of full employment with rising wages to restore fallen demand, but instead is going only to debt-infested distressed institutions to allow them to deleverage from toxic debt. Thus deflation in the equity market (falling share prices) has been cushioned by newly issued money, while aggregate wage income continues to fall to further reduce aggregate demand.
Central bankers are savvy enough to know that … [t]o bind money to wealth, … [t]he solution then is to make the working poor pay for the pain of inflation by giving the rich a bigger share of the monetized wealth created via inflation, so that the loss of purchasing power from inflation is mostly borne by the low-wage working poor and not by the owners of capital
….[T]he basic problem of the global economy for the past three decades [has been l]ow wages even in boom times [that] have landed the world in its current sorry state of overcapacity masked by unsustainable demand created by a debt bubble that finally imploded in July 2007….
All the stimulus spending by all governments perpetuates this
dysfunctionality. There will be no recovery from this dysfunctional financial system. Only reform toward full employment with rising wages will save this severely impaired economy.
The entire article is well worth your reading. Liu’s analysis summarizes the root of the global economic crisis in a nutshell. As I’ve written, there can be No Long-term Recovery without real Wage Growth. The massive injections by the Fed and the Treasury are stimulative, but they cannot determine where the liquidity ultimately winds up. For example, who knows whether TARP money has found its way via various back doors into commodity speculation — thereby directly profiting banks/speculators while impoverishing the middle/working class taxpayers who forked over the money and will be expected to pay back the bondholders for the new national debt. I suspect the answer is more likely in the affirmative than not. Thus, the huge financial bailouts only further enrich entrenched financial wealth at the expense of the average worker — even if the bailouts work.
via Henry C. K. Liu of the Asia Times: It’s a Global Wage Crisis | The Economic Populist.
Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D. before the HELP Subcommittee
Video Included at link
Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D. before the HELP Subcommittee - | Physicians for a National Health Program
The following text contains the testimony of Dr. David Himmelstein at a hearing on “Ways to Reduce the Cost of Health Insurance for Employers, Employees and their Families” organized by Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor on April 23 in Washington.
April 23, 2009
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is David Himmelstein. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard. I also serve as national spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program. Our 16,000 physician members support nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance because of overwhelming evidence that lesser reforms will fail.
Health reform must address the cost crisis for insured as well as uninsured Americans. My research group found that illness and medical bills contributed to about half of all personal bankruptcies in 2001, and even more than that in 2007. Strikingly, three-quarters of the medically bankrupt were insured. But their coverage was too skimpy to protect them from financial collapse.
A single-payer reform would make care affordable through vast savings on bureaucracy and profits. As my colleagues and I have shown in research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, administration consumes 31 percent of health spending in the United States, nearly double what Canada spends. In other words, if we cut our bureaucratic costs to Canadian levels, we’d save nearly $400 billion annually — more than enough to cover the uninsured and to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for all Americans.
China Corners Over 90% of Market for Rare-Earth Metals
China Corners Over 90% of Market for Rare-Earth Metals
China has cornered 97% of the world market for rare earth metals, according to Byron King (the Times Online puts the number at 95%, and the Financial Times puts the number at “over 90%”).
What are rare earth metals? Most people define them as including the following 17 metals:
- Cerium
- Dysprosium
- Erbium
- Europium
- Gadolinium
- Holmium
- Lanthanum
- Lutetium
- Neodymium
- Praseodymium
- Promethium
- Samarium
- Scandium
- Terbium
- Thulium
- Ytterbium
- Yttrium
Some people also include some or all of the Actinide Series elements as rare earths. The Actinides include:
- Actinium
- Americium
- Berkelium
- Californium
- Curium
- Einsteinium
- Fermium
- Lawrencium
- Mendelevium
- Neptunium
- Nobelium
- Plutonium
- Protactinium
- Thorium
- Uranium
As the Times Online notes:
via China Corners Over 90% of Market for Rare-Earth Metals.
Securitization: The Biggest Rip-off Ever
Securitization: The Biggest Rip-off Ever
Financial Deregulation has Opened Up A Pandora’s box
by Mike Whitney
Is it possible to make hundreds of billions of dollars in profits on securities that are backed by nothing more than cyber-entries into a loan book?
It’s not only possible; it’s been done. And now the scoundrels who cashed in on the swindle have lined up outside the Federal Reserve building to trade their garbage paper for billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded loans. Where’s the justice? Meanwhile, the credit bust has left the financial system in a shambles and driven the economy into the ground like a tent stake. The unemployment lines are growing longer and consumers are cutting back on everything from nights-on-the-town to trips to the grocery store. And it’s all due to a Ponzi-finance scam that was concocted on Wall Street and spread through the global system like an aggressive strain of Bird Flu. The isn’t a normal recession; the financial system was blown up by greedy bankers who used “financial innovation” game the system and inflate the biggest speculative bubble of all time. And they did it all legally, using a little-known process called securitization.
Securitization–which is the conversion of pools of loans into securities that are sold in the secondary market–provides a means for massive debt-leveraging. The banks use off-balance sheet operations to create securities so they can avoid normal reserve requirements and bothersome regulatory oversight. Oddly enough, the quality of the loan makes no difference at all, since the banks make their money on loan originations and other related fees. What matters is quantity, quantity, quantity; an industrial-scale assembly line of fetid loans dumped on unsuspecting investors to fatten the bottom line. And, boy, can Wall Street grind out the rotten paper when there’s no cop on the beat and the Fed is cheering from the bleachers. In an analysis written by economist Gary Gorton for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s 2009 Financial Markets Conference titled, “Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand; Banking and the Panic of 2007″, the author shows that mortgage-related securities ballooned from $492.6 billion in 1996 to $3,071.1 in 2003, while asset backed securities (ABS) jumped from $168.4 billion in 1996 to $1,253.1 in 2006. All told, more than $20 trillion in securitized debt was sold between 1997 to 2007. How much of that debt will turn out to be worthless as foreclosures skyrocket and the banks balance sheets come under greater and greater pressure?
via Securitization: The Biggest Rip-off Ever.
Bankruptcy filings rise to 6,000 a day as job losses take toll
Bankruptcy filings rise to 6,000 a day as job losses take toll - USATODAY.com
While well below the record 2 million filings in 2005, the number of filings is up sharply from last year’s 1.1 million, says Robert Lawless, professor of law at the University of Illinois.
Bankruptcy filings took a dramatic nose dive after a 2005 bankruptcy reform measure was signed into law to curb bankruptcy abuse and make it harder to erase debts.
But filings are surging back in part because of rising job losses. The unemployment rate could hit 10% this year. And tighter credit, dwindling 401(k) accounts, smaller paychecks and less savings have left unemployed workers and those who are working but struggling with fewer financial resources to keep creditors at bay.
Over the past decades, consumers who were hurting financially could rely on credit cards to help them tread water. “The fact that consumer credit has tightened and shrunk explains why bankruptcy filings have now gone up so dramatically,” Lawless says.
via Bankruptcy filings rise to 6,000 a day as job losses take toll – USATODAY.com.
White House unveils plan to combat drug trade at border
White House unveils plan to combat drug trade at border 
(CNN) — Top Obama administration officials were in Albuquerque on Friday to announce new efforts to combat the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico.
The White House released a summary of its National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy, aimed at not only stemming the trafficking of illegal narcotics, but also slowing the flow of cash and illegal firearms into Mexico.
The plan involves increased intelligence and enhanced technology. It also includes “targeted financial sanctions to disable drug trafficking
organizations,” as well as heightened cooperation with Mexico, the White House said.
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder, and White House Drug Policy Chief Gil Kerlikowske planned to discuss the strategy at a news conference.
Rising drug violence in the United States is one of the administration’s top domestic concerns.
–CNN’s Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image
Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image – Bloomberg.com
une 5 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve intends to hire a veteran lobbyist as it seeks to counter skepticism in Congress about the central bank’s growing power over the U.S. financial system, people familiar with the matter said.
Linda Robertson currently handles government, community and public affairs at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and headed the Washington lobbying office of Enron Corp., the energy trading company that collapsed in 2002 after an accounting scandal. She was also an adviser to all three of the Clinton administration’s Treasury secretaries.
Robertson would help the Fed manage relations with lawmakers seeking greater oversight of a central bank that has used emergency powers to prevent Wall Street’s demise. While she wasn’t tied to Enron’s fraud, her association with the firm may raise questions, analysts said.
“Some members of Congress think there are votes in attacking the Fed” after it “unnecessarily and unwisely entangled monetary policy with fiscal policy,” said former St. Louis Fed President William Poole. “The Fed is going to have a tricky time of unwinding what has been done” and will need to “keep in touch with members of Congress more thoroughly,” said Poole, now senior fellow with the Cato Institute in Washington.
Robertson served under Treasury Secretaries Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen. She didn’t return calls seeking comment.
Summers Tie
via Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image – Bloomberg.com.
Bush FBI sent 18 armored agents to search my house, wiretap whistleblower says
Bush FBI sent 18 armored agents to search my house, wiretap whistleblower says
The Bush Administration’s FBI sent 18 agents in body armor to the home of a man who revealed details of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, according to a little-noticed account of the whistleblower published Thursday.
Thomas Tamm, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, revealed details of the wiretapping program to the New York Times in 2004. In 2007, FBI agents raided his Potomac, Maryland home.
Tamm wasn’t there. His college-aged son, wife and young daughter were — but their father had never told them of his leak to the Times.
“They asked me questions like ‘Are there any secret rooms or compartments in the house’?” Terry Tamm, his son, told Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff last December. “Or did we have a safe? They asked us if any New York Times reporters had been to the house. We had no idea why any of this was happening.”
via Raw Story » Bush FBI sent 18 armored agents to search my house, wiretap whistleblower says.
Mudd out as DHS intel chief
Mudd out as DHS intel chief
Phil Mudd, a Bush administration official nominated to be President Obama’s intelligence chief at the Department of Homeland Security, has withdrawn his name from consideration.
“Today I am announcing that I have decided to withdraw my name from consideration to be the Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis,” Mudd said in a statement released by the White House on Friday afternoon, according to a report by CQ Politics. “I know that this position will require the full cooperation with Congress and I believe that if I continue to move forward I will become a distraction to the President and his vital agenda.”
“The President believes that Phil Mudd would have been an excellent Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis but understands his personal decision and the choice he has made,” said White House spokesman Nick Shapiro. “It is with sadness and regret that the President accepted Phil’s withdrawal from consideration as Phil once again demonstrated his duty to country above all things.”
Mudd, according to an Associated Press source, had connections to the Bush administration’s torture program as deputy director of the Office of Terrorism Analysis at the CIA.
The AP noted that it could wind up becoming “an issue during Philip Mudd’s confirmation hearing,” which was expected next week until Friday’s announcement scuttled it.
The wire service continued: “Mudd’s analysts used information obtained through harsh interrogations, and the official said that Mudd is likely to be questioned on whether the analysis branch pressured interrogators in the field to use harsher methods because they believed detainees were not telling the truth.”
via The Raw Story » Mudd out as DHS intel chief.
Rove: ‘Who Cares’ Whether Muslims ‘Approve Or Like The President Of The United States’?
Rove: ‘Who Cares’ Whether Muslims ‘Approve Or Like The President Of The United States’?
Last night, Karl Rove went on Fox News and lambasted President Obama’s speech in Cairo, saying that he would give him a grade of “D minus” on the “important parts of the speech.” Host Bill O’Reilly then decided to play “devil’s advocate” and pointed out that President Bush’s approach wasn’t all that great since Muslim communities around the world “hated him.” Rove responded that it doesn’t really matter what they think:
O’REILLY: Okay? The bottom line on it is that President Bush may have been right in a lot of the things that he said and did during the war on terror in his administration. But the Muslim world would not listen to him. They wouldn’t. They didn’t like him. They hated him. He was demonized. And they didn’t like him at all.
ROVE: No, I totally disagree with you.
O’REILLY: The Muslim world –
ROVE: Totally disagree with you.
O’REILLY: — the Muslim people. They didn’t like him.
ROVE: Well, no, no. Look, I disagree with you.
O’REILLY: Well, all the polls showed in every Muslim country that President Bush’s approval rating was 20 percent. So I mean how can you disagree?
ROVE: You know what? Who cares about whether or not they approve or like the president of the United States? The question is do they respect the policies of the United States government? And you bet they did. Because we showed strength and power and influence.
Watch it:
Burr Defends Mint-Flavored Suckable ‘Tobacco Lollipops,’ Claims They’re Not Being Marketed To Children
Burr Defends Mint-Flavored Suckable ‘Tobacco Lollipops,’ Claims They’re Not Being Marketed To Children
On May 27, CNN’s Carol Costello reported on tobacco company R.J. Reynolds new dissolvable “smokeless products.” Noting that critics call them “tobacco lollipops” that are aimed at getting “kids hooked on nicotine,” Costello reported that “R.J. Reynolds will soon test three new products — Camel sticks that dissolve as you suck them, minty tobacco strips that look like breath strips, and orbs — flavored, dissolvable tablets that some say look and taste exactly like candy.”
On the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) came to the tobacco company’s defense, claiming that it wasn’t trying to deceive anyone; it’s CNN’s fault for labeling Camel Orbs as candy. Burr charged that CNN “mischaracterized the product” because “it’s not candy flavored”:
BURR: But when CNN did their story. Take a guess on the angle that they took. They labeled it as candy. Candy! Even though it’s not candy flavored. They said it was candy. … No, they said it was candy. That’s where they labeled it. … They portrayed Reynolds America as being deceptive and luring children. No candy. It’s not going in the candy section. It’s in the tobacco section where smokeless and stick products is.
Later in his speech, Burr responded to Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) criticism that some of the dissolvable tobacco products are in containers shaped like cell phones to attract kids. “Let me assure you, Mr. President, if a cell phone doesn’t work, children don’t want it,” said Burr. Watch it:
Political Preference Is Half Genetic
Political Preference Is Half Genetic
By Melinda Wenner, Special to LiveScience
Whether you prefer Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olbermann has to do with your genes and your psychology, according to a new study.
People who are more conscientious and prefer order, structure and closure in their lives tend to be more conservative, whereas creative people who are open to new experiences tend to be more politically liberal, says John Jost, a psychologist at New York University who conducted an overview of previous studies involving a total of more than 22,000 participants from 12 countries.
But that psychological profile only pulls half the weight when it comes to determining people’s politics, his review showed. The other half is genetic, as is revealed in studies of twins and their political bent, Jost says.
Politics in America
A number of sociologists have argued that political ideology died in America after World War II because both the left and the right wing were heavily discredited at the time.
via Political Preference Is Half Genetic | LiveScience.
Genes Determine Political Persuasion
Genes Determine Political Persuasion
A study in 2007 showed that genetics has a lot more to do with political belief systems than any other factor;
The other factor that determines a person’s political beliefs is biology. Research by John Hibbing, a University of Nebraska political scientist, showed that identical twins share more political beliefs than fraternal twins. They also, of course, share more genes.
“Forty, perhaps 50 percent of our political beliefs seem to have a basis in genetics,” said Hibbing, whose studies were included in Jost’s analysis. While genetics are unlikely to “hardwire” people into being liberal or conservative, Hibbing said that genes could make people more or less likely to have certain values or react to situations in a particular way.
This knowledge could pave the way to a more tolerant society, Hibbing said.
“If you think your opponents are not just being willfully bullheaded but rather have a kind of biological predisposition toward a set of beliefs, you might not spend as much time beating your head against the wall trying to get them to change,” he said.
After text-battling the Right’s most fanatical foot soldiers in the comments section of political sites and blogs for the last three years, I can verify that there has to be some kind of biologically built-in adherence to ideology for some segments of society. This genetics explanation may help those who, like me, feel they have a duty to try and influence hearts and minds out there, but continually hit “the wall” and are unable to change any minds or make a dent.
Be comforted that it is probably not your ideas that are the problem; it’s more likely the genes in the listener that will determine their ability to understand new paradigms.
via Genes Determine Political Persuasion – Mike Kuykendall.
Are House Democrats about to block Obama’s new secrecy law?
Are House Democrats about to block Obama’s new secrecy law? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
Earlier this week, I noted that the Senate had passed — with Obama’s support — a pernicious amendment to the spending supplemental bill, jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, that empowers Obama and the Pentagon, at their sole discretion, to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.” The amendment has no purpose other than to expressly allow the President to conceal evidence of war crimes (torture) and to block the Supreme Court from ruling (as two federal courts have already held) that the Freedom of Information Act compels disclosure of those photographs. For more on why this new secrecy law is so dangerous, see my post here; even The Washington Post Editorial Page excoriated the amendment and Obama’s support for it.
When I wrote about this several days ago, the Senate had passed the Graham-Lieberman secrecy law as an amendment to the spending supplemental bill (which includes funding for Iraq and Afghanistan) without even bothering to take a formal roll call vote (on a voice vote). Although the House version of the supplemental bill did not contain this amendment, it was widely expected that it would simply be inserted in the House-Senate conference and then easily passed along with the final bill.
via Are House Democrats about to block Obama’s new secrecy law? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Did Obama screw the left on Sotomayor?
Did Obama screw the left on Sotomayor?
Are you starting to get nervous about Judge Sonia Sotomayor? A bit troubled, perhaps, that she may actually end up moving an already ultraconservative Supreme Court even (a little) more to the right?
I am.
Today’s Wall Street Journal, for example, brings another in a growing list of concerning reports on the nominee’s tendency to rule the “right” way in at least a number of contexts. According to the Journal, Sotomayor’s record in the area of criminal law appears to be to the right of Justice David Souter, the moderate she will be replacing.
And have you heard the one about how Judge Sotomayor has agreed with the most conservative members of her current court 95 percent of the time? Well, guess what? It’s true (though many of those cases were no doubt uncontroversial). As E.J. Dionne Jr. has noted:
Republicans would be foolish to fight the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court because she is the most conservative choice that President Obama could have made.
via The Last Chance Democracy Cafe » Blog Archive » Did Obama screw the left on Sotomayor?.
Green Energy Overtakes Fossil Fuel Investment, Says UN
Green Energy Overtakes Fossil Fuel Investment, Says UN | CommonDreams.org
Green energy overtook fossil fuels in attracting investment for power generation for the first time last year, according to figures released today by the United Nations.
Wind, solar and other clean technologies attracted $140bn (£85bn) compared with $110bn for gas and coal for electrical power generation, with more than a third of the green cash destined for Britain and the rest of Europe.
The biggest growth for renewable investment came from China, India and other developing countries, which are fast catching up on the West in switching out of fossil fuels to improve energy security and tackle climate change.
“There have been many milestones reached in recent years, but this report suggests renewable energy has now reached a tipping point where it is as important – if not more important – in the global energy mix than fossil fuels,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN’s Environment Programme.
It was very encouraging that a variety of new renewable sectors were attracting capital, while different geographical areas such as Kenya and Angola were entering the field, he added.
The UN still believes $750bn needs to be spent worldwide between 2009 and 2011 and the current year has started ominously with a 53% slump in first quarter renewables investment to $13.3bn.
via Green Energy Overtakes Fossil Fuel Investment, Says UN | CommonDreams.org.
Whither the Sacred Campaign Promise?
Whither the Sacred Campaign Promise? | CommonDreams.org
by David Sirota
Though not (yet) having children of my own, I often consider what my future offspring won’t know about and will find humorous. I fantasize that they will have no idea what gasoline-powered cars or private health insurance policies are. But I also worry they will guffaw in disbelief when I tell them politicians once knew that breaking campaign promises without explanation had consequences.
Historically, Americans generally held campaign promises sacred. We understood that republican democracy makes us rely on pledges of future action as the metric for choosing representatives; we knew that politicians reneging on pledges without adequate reason were desecrating that democracy; and we therefore often punished promise breakers accordingly.
I’m not idealizing halcyon days that never were – just ask George H.W. Bush, who lost re-election in 1992 after trampling his “no new taxes” guarantee. Indeed, breaking campaign pledges was one of the surest ways for politicians to hurt themselves – until 2006.
That year’s highest-profile campaign was Connecticut’s U.S. Senate race between incumbent Joe Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont – a race signaling a tectonic shift.
Lieberman had broken two key promises: He was violating an explicit term-limits pledge, and he vowed to “help end the war in Iraq” while working to continue it. And yet he was re-elected without ever explaining his reversals.
via Whither the Sacred Campaign Promise? | CommonDreams.org.
Gag Me with Clean Coal
Gag Me with Clean Coal | CommonDreams.org
Take a revitalizing breath of those clean coal emissions from the average coal plant, filled with carbon monoxide, mercury, arsenic and lead – all deadly toxic to humans in high amounts. Breathe deeply the pestilence that is clean coal.
If coal’s impact on climate change weren’t so serious, the public relations campaign that asks us to choke down “clean coal” would be farcical. “Clean coal” is a dirty joke that won’t wash.
In his GQ article, entitled Black Tide, Sean Flynn says, “The term clean coal entered the lexicon in its current faux-eco-activist incarnation-with the implication that coal can be a source of nonpolluting fuel, that it can be scrubbed of its toxins and its carbon dioxide rendered harmless-with stunning speed, largely in the past two years through the expensive efforts of two groups: the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a lobbying group for coal-burning industries, and the Hawthorn Group, a marketing firm hired by ACCCE.”
In an ad for ACCCE President Barack Obama is featured saying, “Clean coal technology is something that can make America energy independent…This is America. We figured out how to put a man on the moon in 10 years. You can’t tell me that we can’t figure out how to burn coal that we mine right here…and make it work,” just as the Hawthorn Group had planned.
Contemptible as it is, the Hawthorn Group was understandably proud that Barack Obama and other candidates for President adopted their very language saying, “Soon our message was repeated back to us from the podium by the candidates themselves.” In their newsletter they bragged, that before they began their clean coal campaign for ACCCE, a slim majority of public opinion leaders surveyed, opposed burning coal to generate electricity. But when their PR campaign was complete, they had 72% support.
via Gag Me with Clean Coal | CommonDreams.org.
First Case of Economic Espionage
OPS: First?
First Case of Economic Espionage
During Dongfan “Greg” Chung’s three decades as an innovative engineer for Boeing and Rockwell, federal prosecutors say he was also a hardworking spy.
The first case of “economic espionage” has reached the trial phase in the United States. The case is against Dongfan “Greg” Chung, a 73-year old Chinese-born engineer who worked with various American defense contractors. The trial for Chung was scheduled to begin Tuesday June 2, 2009 in the U.S. District Court of Santa Ana, California.
Prosecutors claim that Chung, during his tenure at Boeing and Rockwell International, used his position as an analyst to steal roughly 250,000 pages of sensitive material. According to the Washington Post these documents contained materials about the U.S. space shuttle, Delta IV rockets, and the C-17 military troop transport aircraft. After accumulating this material Chung is alleged to have then sent the documents to contacts in China.
According to U.S. District Attorney Greg Staples the accumulated specifications amount to “the difference between getting into space and ending up with a plaything for children in a park.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
If You Are Stressed Now, Just Wait
If You Are Stressed Now, Just Wait
Paul Craig Roberts, with video by Craig Harrington
The incompetents who manage U.S. economic policy have created a perfect storm.
Editor’s Note: The following article was contributed by Paul Craig Roberts and may not reflect the views or opinions of EconomyInCrisis.org. Feedback is welcome.
Economic news remains focused on banks and housing, while the threat mounts to the U.S. dollar from massive federal budget deficits in fiscal years 2009 and 2010.
Earlier this year, the dollar’s exchange value rose against currencies, such as the euro, the British pound and Swiss franc, against which the dollar had been steadily falling. The dollar’s rise made U.S. policymakers complacent, even though the rise was due to flight from overleveraged financial instruments and falling stock markets into “safe” Treasuries. Since April, however, the dollar has steadily declined, as investors and foreign central banks realize that the massive federal budget deficits are likely to be monetized.
What happens to the dollar will be the key driver of what lies ahead. The likely scenario could be nasty.
America’s trading partners do not have large enough trade surpluses to finance a federal budget deficit swollen to $2 trillion by gratuitous wars, recession, bailouts and stimulus programs. Moreover, concern over the dollar’s future is causing America’s foreign creditors to seek alternatives to U.S. debt in which to hold their foreign reserves.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Fleischer criticizes Obama’s Cairo speech as being too ‘balanced.’
Fleischer criticizes Obama’s Cairo speech as being too ‘balanced.’
Today, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer told CBS that he disapproved of President Obama’s speech in Cairo about the U.S. relationship with Muslim communities around the world. His problem with the speech? It was too “balanced”:
Fleischer bluntly told [CBS's Mark] Knoller, “bottom line — the speech was balanced and that was what was wrong with it. American policy should not be balanced. It should side with those who fight terror.” [...]
Knoller asked Fleischer if he heard much that is at odds with Bush administration policy.
“In part, it was similar to Bush’s constant message that both sides had obligations to fulfill,” he responded. “But Bush always leaned — privately and publicly — in Israel’s direction because they were being hit with terror attacks. Obama really wants to be in the middle. Bush took sides and was sometimes blunt about it.”
The Obama administration has faced criticism for being too balanced in the past. In January, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League called George Mitchell, Obama’s top diplomatic envoy to the Middle East, too “fair” and “even-handed.” As Matt Yglesias responded, “[N]obody comes out against fairness. It’d be one thing to complain [about being] biased against Israel in a problematic way, but…complaining that he’s too fair and even-handed” is “absurd.”
via Think Progress » Fleischer criticizes Obama’s Cairo speech as being too ‘balanced.’.
GOP Budget Cuts Take Aim At Educational Opportunities For Women, Bike Paths, And Technology Innovation
OPS: Republicans are suicidal. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they didn’t insist on taking the rest of us down with them
GOP Budget Cuts Take Aim At Educational Opportunities For Women, Bike Paths, And Technology Innovation
Today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent President Obama a proposal with budget cuts that they claim could save taxpayers “in excess of $375 billion.” From their letter to Obama:
Of course, reducing spending is never easy. … The proposed terminations and reductions your Administration released last month garnered immediate opposition from many Democrats. Likewise, the proposals we have put forward here will not be supported by all Republicans. However, if we work together, we are confident that we can come up with a common-sense package of entitlement reforms, program terminations, and spending reductions that will generate significant savings for the American taxpayer and reduce our current deficit. For example, enactment of the proposals we have outlined in the enclosed document could save taxpayers in excess of $375 billion [over the next five years].
First of all, Boehner and Cantor are inflating their cuts. Their proposal actually equates to just $23 billion in spending cuts over the next five years. As the AP points out, many of the GOP cuts “haven’t been estimated by federal scorekeepers and the party has padded its own estimate by assuming $317 billion over the next five years from limiting non-defense agency budgets to inflation-adjusted levels that Obama is sure to reject.”
Second, Republicans are planning to slash more than just “wasteful and unnecessary spending,” as Boehner and Cantor wrote in their letter to Obama. A small sampling of the proposed cuts:
Graham: Approving Torture Techniques That Are ‘Clearly Illegal’ Are ‘Not Criminal Mistakes’
Graham: Approving Torture Techniques That Are ‘Clearly Illegal’ Are ‘Not Criminal Mistakes’
This morning on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, a caller asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) why he would not support a possible criminal investigation into the Bush-era torture program. Graham defended the Bush administration by saying they “overreacted” “out of fear,” but insisted that Bush’s “mistakes” were “not criminal mistakes”:
GRAHAM: The reason I don’t want to go back any more than we have already done is because I know what happened. Out of fear, we overreacted. … They took a view of the law that I think was aggressive, and I would not have approached it that way. Right after 9/11, we all thought we were going to be hit again. So as we go back and try to hold people criminally liable. I think we’re doing a lot of damage to the country, because their mistakes were not criminal mistakes. They were mistakes made out of fear.
Watch it:
Inhofe Rips Obama As ‘Un-American,’ Suggests He’s On The Side Of Terrorists
Inhofe Rips Obama As ‘Un-American,’ Suggests He’s On The Side Of Terrorists
Reacting to President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) decried the president’s speech as “un-American” and even suggested Obama might be on the side of terrorists:
Sen. Jim Inhofe said today that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo was “un-American” because he referred to the war in Iraq as “a war of choice” and didn’t criticize Iran for developing a nuclear program.
Inhofe, R-Tulsa, also criticized the president for suggesting that torture was conducted at the military prison in Guantanamo, saying, “There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo.”
“I just don’t know whose side he’s on,” Inhofe said of the president.
Unsurprisingly, actual Iraqis and Iranians — a couple of the key audiences for Obama’s speech — viewed it far more favorably than Inhofe. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the speech reflected greater understanding of Mideast culture and “reduces the chance of growth of extremist ideas that are trying to tarnish the image of Islam in the world.” “Obama’s speech was extraordinary. I loved it,” said 24-year old Iranian Morteza Sinaie. “I wish every Iranian would hear it. I think it would dramatically change their opinion about Obama and the United Sates.”
via Think Progress » Inhofe Rips Obama As ‘Un-American,’ Suggests He’s On The Side Of Terrorists.
The Vatican’s Dirty Secrets: Bribery, Money Laundering and Mafia Connections
The Vatican’s Dirty Secrets: Bribery, Money Laundering and Mafia Connections
A new book offers an unprecedented glimpse of the inner workings of one of the world’s most secretive financial institutions — the Vatican’s bank.
The Vatican appears to have an enduring vocation for Italian political and financial scandal. Secrecy and intrigue were the order of the day when American archbishop Paul Marcinkus held sway in the Bastion of Nicholas V, the medieval tower housing the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican’s central bank.
The requirements of a clandestine global struggle against atheist communism may explain the choice of business partners such as Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi, whose mafia links and ruinous bankruptcies brought lasting discredit on the Catholic church three decades ago.
The Vatican hoped that a goodwill payment of $240m to the creditors of Calvi’s Banco Ambrosiano’s would salve its conscience and erase the memory of Marcinkus’s inept and dishonest banking practices. We were led to believe that a new broom, wielded by the lay banker Angelo Caloia, had since swept the premises of the IOR.
The process of reform has been slower and more painful than previously thought, however, to judge by a new book, Vaticano Spa (“Vatican Ltd”), by the journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi. According to Nuzzi, despite the best efforts of Caloia, a cavalier attitude to financial ethics appears to have continued well into the 1990s, with huge political bribes being laundered through the IOR and funds donated for charitable purposes or to pay for masses for the souls of the dead being casually misappropriated by the bank’s administrators.
via The Vatican’s Dirty Secrets: Bribery, Money Laundering and Mafia Connections | | AlterNet.
Rush and Newt Are Winning
OPS: This is also true of the Political “center”.
Rush and Newt Are Winning - washingtonpost.com
A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.
Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don’t. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.
The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He’s the guy who nominates a “racist” to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America’s defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama’s economic policies to those of Juan Peron’s Argentina.
Democrats are complicit in building up Gingrich and Limbaugh as the main spokesmen for the Republican Party, since Obama polls so much better than either of them. But the media play an independent role by regularly treating far-right views as mainstream positions and by largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left.
via E.J. Dionne Jr. – Rush and Newt Are Winning – washingtonpost.com.
Wake Up America, the Media Treat Far-Right Views as Mainstream
Wake Up America, the Media Treat Far-Right Views as Mainstream
by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
This dynamic produces “a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media’s discussion of policy.”
E.J. Dionne Jr. has a very interesting column today that notes the media’s “tilt to the right.”
Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don’t. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.
The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He’s the guy who nominates a “racist” to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America’s defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. [...]
Democrats are complicit in building up Gingrich and Limbaugh as the main spokesmen for the Republican Party, since Obama polls so much better than either of them. But the media play an independent role by regularly treating far-right views as mainstream positions and by largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left.
Exactly. If far-right voices are characterized as mainstream, it shifts the center of political gravity. For all the talk about media adulation of the president, this dynamic produces “a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media’s discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right.”
via Wake Up America, the Media Treat Far-Right Views as Mainstream | Politics | AlterNet.
Chomsky: What Obama Didn’t Say in His Cairo Address Speaks Volumes About His Mideast Policy
Chomsky: What Obama Didn’t Say in His Cairo Address Speaks Volumes About His Mideast Policy
By Noam Chomsky,
The U.S. has played a decisive role in sustaining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change.
A CNN headline, reporting Obama’s plans for his June 4 address in Cairo, Egypt, reads “Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.” Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.
Keeping just to Israel-Palestine — there was nothing substantive about anything else — Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to “point fingers” at each other or to “see this conflict only from one side or the other.”
There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.
Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.
Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as “an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.” How should the Obama administration see it?
My Experience as a Craigslist Hooker: A Requiem for Cragislist Erotic Services
My Experience as a Craigslist Hooker: A Requiem for Cragislist Erotic Services
On Wed. May 13, Craigslist announced that it will shut down its erotic services section, marking the end of an era. With the negative publicity generated by the Craigslist Killer and a stampede of outraged attorney generals calling for its demise, Craigslist Erotic Services will be no more. This is a requiem. And a plea for a rational discourse about sex work.
I know it seems strange to eulogize what was basically an online red light district, but in my experience there was a brief moment when Craigslist Erotic Services transformed both the meaning and the means of being a sex worker. There one could open a virtual lemonade stand which operated according to self-imposed rules and regulations. Anonymity was almost guaranteed. Craigslist Erotic Services made sex work accessible to people who would never have considered doing it otherwise. I was one of those people.
It was the autumn of 2003. I’d come back to New York after an extended period away with the realization that yet again, I was flat broke. A struggling writer and artist, I’d been earning a living as a licensed massage therapist. I’d used Craigslist once before to find a subletter for my Brooklyn apartment. That had worked out incredibly well, so I decided to advertise my massage business there (in the therapeutic services section). It seemed ideal.
via Ester Amy Fischer: My Experience as a Craigslist Hooker: A Requiem for Cragislist Erotic Services.
Econocide: Body Count 3
Economic Fallout Has Spurred an Epidemic of Murder and Suicide That Has Gone Largely Unnoticed. A silent, nationwide epidemic of drastic measures may be underway, so why aren’t we talking about it?
Nick Turse, A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic
In a recent interview about our economic meltdown moment, economist James Galbraith spoke of widespread fraud in the financial system, pointing out that, in response to the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, “there were 1,000 felony convictions for S&L insiders and about 700 or so went to jail. This is a bigger crisis, so you could easily be talking about a larger number of convictions.”
Here’s what’s strange, though, at least for now: The only significant person to be brought up on charges, tried, and sent to jail, as far as I know, has been Ponzi-schemer par excellence Bernie Madoff. A few smaller-scale Ponzi-schemers are lined up behind him, possibly on their way to jail as well. As for the rest of the looters at the top of our semi-collapsed financial system, all of them, as far as I can tell, have either been allowed to go about their business or, at least, take their booty, including bonuses, and head for home to await better times.
Mind you, we live in a nation where the smallest things can land you in jail, and the prison population has “skyrocketed over the past quarter century.” According to a report by the Pew Center on the States, the U.S. now has “5% of the world’s population, but 25% percent of the world’s prison inmates.” One out of every 31 adult Americans, 7.3 million of us, is now in prison, on parole, or on probation. Moreover, in these truly bad times, as the New York Times reports, “As states face huge budget shortfalls, prisons… are driving the spending increases.” And yet this is the moment when, it seems, the government and the justice system have suddenly discovered the merits of mercy?
via TomDispatch.
Facing Down the Private Insurance Industry
Facing Down the Private Insurance Industry | CommonDreams.org
by Robert Kuttner
Despite budget pressures, President Obama has not backed off his commitment to universal healthcare reform. But the devil is in the details. And if he is not careful he could end up with a reform worse than nothing.
A crucial question is whether the law will include a public, Medicare-style plan. This public plan could be used by people who otherwise lack good insurance, or by employers who conclude that the public plan is a better deal for themselves and their workers.
The public plan would be the gold standard of both good coverage and cost-containment. Without the public option, a system to cover everyone by relying on the existing private insurance industry will realize few cost savings. The result would be increased pressures over time to cut care and shift out-of-pocket costs from insurers to consumers.
The administration’s projections have relied heavily on the supposed savings of better use of computerized medical records. However, absent a single unified system, or a strong public option, better computerization will not realize major savings.
via Facing Down the Private Insurance Industry | CommonDreams.org.
Michael Rowe: KRXQ Sacramento Radio Hosts Encourage Violence Against Transgender Children
OPS: Luv the zygote – hate the child
KRXQ Sacramento Radio Hosts Encourage Violence Against Transgender Children
Even by the flexible moral, ethical, and professional standards of American talk radio, the May 28th segment of KRXQ 98.5 FM Sacramento’s Rob, Arnie, & Dawn in the Morning radio talk show makes for a sickening half-hour of ugliness and cruelty. For once, the focus was not LGBT adults, but minors. The hosts, Rob Williams and Arnie States, devoted the segment in question to a vicious diatribe against transgender children, some as young as five, focusing in particular on the case of one Omaha family raising a gender dysphoric child, and their decision to support her transition from male to female.
Williams and States took turns referring to gender dysphoric children as “idiots” and “freaks,” who were just out “for attention” and had “a mental disorder that just needs to somehow be gotten out of them,” either by verbal abuse on the part of the parents, or even shock therapy.
“Allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with the animals,” they said.
via Michael Rowe: KRXQ Sacramento Radio Hosts Encourage Violence Against Transgender Children.
Obama’s “Open Government” Deletes Top Proposal on “End Imperial Presidency”
Obama’s “Open Government” Deletes Top Proposal on “End Imperial Presidency” | AfterDowningStreet.org
By David Swanson
Is irony even the word for this? The president created a new online “open government” system in which people were free to brainstorm and vote proposals up or down. Far and away the leading proposal in the category of “Legal and Policy Challenges” as of the scheduled end of brainstorming was End Imperial Presidency. You can still find it, but it’s been removed from that category and from the list of all proposals. Unless you have the direct link to it, you cannot find it, and when you do you can no longer vote for it. It has a label at the top with a closed lock and the words “pending moderator approval.” When voting was scheduled to end on the 28th, this proposal was at the top in its category and ranked #3 over all.
Then the Open Government announced that it would keep the brainstorming open until June 19th and not begin Phase 2, involving discussion of the brainstormed ideas until June 3rd. So, voting continued, and “End Imperial Presidency” moved up to second place over all. And here we are on June 3rd, and the proposal has been removed from the running. I’m not sure if you call this irony, but I definitely wouldn’t call it Open Government. During the campaign, the top demand of Obama’s supporters on his website was that he keep his promise to oppose and filibuster immunity for telecom companies. During the presidential transition, the top question was whether Obama would allow the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor for Bush-Cheney. Both of those proposals were rejected. Now this one has been rejected as well.
In case it’s deleted from the “Open” Government, this was the proposal to end the imperial presidency:
Leave the White House less imperial than you found it. Appoint an independent prosecutor to prosecute Bush, Cheney, and their top officials in order to deter in the future the crimes of aggressive war, misleading congress, defrauding congress, misspending funds, war crimes, murder, warrantless spying, torture, domestic propaganda, violations of the Hatch Act and the Voting Rights Act, obstruction of justice, misprision of felony, retaliating against whistleblowers, etc. Restore to Congress the power to legislate, the power to begin and end wars, the power to raise and spend money, the power to approve or reject treaties and appointments, and the power to oversee the functioning of the federal government including through the power of impeachment and the power of inherent contempt. That means no more signing statements rewriting laws, and instead support for legislation that would criminalize such behavior. And it means similar action on each of the other offenses.
We, the people, must:
via Obama’s “Open Government” Deletes Top Proposal on “End Imperial Presidency” | AfterDowningStreet.org.
How many homes do banks really own?
How many homes do banks really own? - Las Vegas Sun
Housing analysts and Realtors have long speculated about how many foreclosures are lurking in the Las Vegas market.
Foreclosures have dominated the housing market with more than 60 percent of the sales each month being bank-owned properties. That continues to drive down prices.
With sales at their highest level since June 2006 and first-time homebuyers and investors gobbling up inventory, it has raised the question of whether lenders will flood the market with a backlog of foreclosures.
Some analysts have suggested that banks may have as many as 25,000 homes in foreclosure inventory that they have been holding back to prevent prices from dropping too far.
Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research, says the inventory of existing homes continues to be a hot topic. He says that if you supplement the Multiple Listing Service data with daily anecdotal information that comes from Realtors, it appears the inventory of existing homes has reached the point where major banks will soon start releasing some of their foreclosure properties that they have been holding back.
via How many homes do banks really own? – Las Vegas Sun.
The OTHER Reason for the American Revolution
The OTHER Reason for the American Revolution
Everyone knows that the American colonists revolted largely because of taxation without representation and related forms of oppression by the British. See this and this.
But – according to Benjamin Franklin and others in the thick of the action – a little-known factor was actually the main reason for the revolution.
To give some background on the issue, when Benjamin Franklin went to London in 1764, this is what he observed:
When he arrived, he was surprised to find rampant unemployment and poverty among the British working classes… Franklin was then asked how the American colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor houses. He reportedly replied:
“We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had some, there would be nobody to put in them, since there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps.”
In 1764, the Bank of England used its influence on Parliament to get a Currency Act passed that made it illegal for any of the colonies to print their own money. The colonists were forced to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold. Anyone lacking in those precious metals had to borrow them at interest from the banks.
Only a year later, Franklin said, the streets of the colonies were filled with unemployed beggars, just as they were in England. The money supply had suddenly been reduced by half, leaving insufficient funds to pay for the goods and services these workers could have provided. He maintained that it was “the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the Revolutionary War.” This, he said, was the real reason for the Revolution: “the colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction.”
via Washington’s Blog: The OTHER Reason for the American Revolution.
As Alaskan Village Sinks Into the Sea, GAO Says We Need to Create U.S. Office for Climate Change Refugee Assistance
As Alaskan Village Sinks Into the Sea, GAO Says We Need to Create U.S. Office for Climate Change Refugee Assistance
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White
There are more of them than there are people who contract new cases of malaria each year. There are ten times more of them than people injured in traffic accidents each year.
They are climate change refugees: people forced to flee their homes due to environmental degradation — generally never to return. According to a recent report from the Global Humanitarian midnight sun alaskaForum, a worldwide organization headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, there are hundreds of millions of climate change refugees already, and that number is rising rapidly.
The environmentally displaced aren’t just in Bangladesh, either. U.S. citizens are current being forced to relocate due to climate change, but the lack of federal leadership is emerging as an “impediment” to their plans to reach higher ground, according to a new government report.
In a little-noticed report released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office suggested Congress create a lead government agency to direct the relief efforts now necessary due to global climate change.
The report (summary here, full text here) notes that because of the lack of recognition of unincorporated Alaskan Native villages as “eligible” by the federal government, the Native American communities there cannot receive affordable housing or relocation assistance from Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Block Grant program.
Oh Bummer: Time to Look Past Obama’s Words and Face-up to His Actions
Time to Look Past Obama’s Words and Face-up to His Actions
U.S. Foreign Policy Continues Rapidly in the Wrong Direction
The Peace Movement Needs to Escalate Anti-War Actions
What Really Happened
There is long-time saying about politicians: you cannot trust their words, but must judge them by their actions.
President Obama is very good with words, perhaps the best communicator we have seen in the White House in a generation. But now he has been in office long enough that he should be judged on his actions.
The direction of U.S. foreign policy is moving rapidly in the wrong direction on many fronts. It is time for the peace movement to step up its activities throughout the country and demand a change in course.
The U.S. passed the 5,000th death of a U.S. service member in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This death seemed to be barely noticed by a peace movement that during the Bush years highlighted every major milestone. This sad body count is the tip of the iceberg of the dire effects of these wars – mass deaths and maiming of civilians, millions forced to flee their homes described as “an exodus that is beyond biblical.”
Wars are raging. Indeed, the deadline for U.S. troops to leave Iraqi cities is being met, not by U.S. troops actually leaving the cities but by Iraq redrawing city boundaries. General Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the Pentagon must plan for extended U.S. combat and stability operations in two wars – up to ten more years in Iraq. And, General McChrystal testified before the Congress this week that Afghanistan is likely to cost American taxpayers and NATO member nations billions of dollars for many years.
via Oh Bummer: Time to Look Past Obama’s Words and Face-up to His Actions.
Auschwitz survivor: “I can identify with Palestinian youth”
Israel war on Gaza: Share Album – Get Embed Code
Auschwitz survivor: “I can identify with Palestinian youth”
Hajo Meyer, author of the book The End of Judaism, was born in Bielefeld, in Germany, in 1924. In 1939, he fled on his own at age 14 to the Netherlands to escape the Nazi regime, and was unable to attend school. A year later, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands he lived in hiding with a poorly forged ID. Meyer was captured by the Gestapo in March 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp a week later. He is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz.
Adri Nieuwhof:What would you like to say to introduce yourself to EI’s readers?
Hajo Meyer: I had to quit grammar school in Bielefeld after the Kristallnacht [the two-day pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany], in November 1938. It was a terrible experience for an inquisitive boy and his parents. Therefore, I can fully identify with the Palestinian youth that are hampered in their education. And I can in no way identify with the criminals who make it impossible for Palestinian youth to be educated.
AN: What motivated you to write your book, The End of Judaism?
HM: In the past, the European media have written extensively about extreme right-wing politicians like Joerg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. But when Ariel Sharon was elected [prime minister] in Israel in 2001, the media remained silent. But in the 1980s I understood the deeply fascist thinking of these politicians. With the book I wanted to distance myself from this. I was raised in Judaism with the equality of relationships among human beings as a core value. I only learned about nationalist Judaism when I heard settlers defend their harassment of Palestinians in interviews. When a publisher asked me to write about my past, I decided to write this book, in a way, to deal with my past. People of one group who dehumanize people who belong to another group can do this, because they either have learned to do so from their parents, or they have been brainwashed by their political leaders. This has happened for decades in Israel in that they manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid. In 2005 [then Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon illustrated this by saying in the Knesset [the Israeli parliament], we know we cannot trust anyone, we only can trust ourselves. This is the shortest possible definition of somebody who suffers from clinical paranoia. One of the major annoyances in my life is that Israel by means of trickery calls itself a Jewish state, while in fact it is Zionist. It wants the maximum territory with a minimum number of Palestinians. I have four Jewish grandparents. I am an atheist. I share the Jewish socio-cultural inheritance and I have learned about Jewish ethics. I don’t wish to be represented by a Zionist state. They have no idea about the Holocaust. They use the Holocaust to implant paranoia in their children.
via Auschwitz survivor: “I can identify with Palestinian youth” | Palestine Think Tank.
Dallas to power inner-city block with solar and wind
Dallas to power inner-city block with solar and wind
With the World Environment Day coming up tomorrow, Dallas has a lot to celebrate. A neglected parking lot across the street from City Hall will next year become the home of the nation’s first self-sustainable inner-city block.
“I’d like to see Dallas be at the forefront of design, sustainability and vibrancy of cities”, said Mayor Tom Leppert.
Indeed. The block, that aims to change the economic, social and ecological face of Dallas, will run “off the grid” using wind, solar, water and geothermal energy resources, and 176 architecture firms across 26 countries competed to provide the design.
“The quality of the thought and effort of the designing teams is astounding”, said John Greenan, Executive Director of Central Dallas Community Development Corporation (CDC), a lead developer for the project.
via Dallas Environmental Policy Examiner: Dallas to power inner-city block with solar and wind.
A Seat at the Table for Single-Payer
A Seat at the Table for Single-Payer
This week, Senator Bernie Sanders has been firing on all cylinders as he continues his advocacy for real healthcare reform that controls costs while extending quality care to every American. Monday he held a town meeting in Burlington to discuss what we can learn from other countries that have developed cost effective universal health care systems. On Tuesday he met with President Obama along with other members of the Finance and Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committees responsible for drafting the Senate’s healthcare legislation. Yesterday he arranged a meeting between single-payer advocates and Finance Chair Max Baucus–Baucus had previously not only denied them a seat at the table for his hearings but even had some arrested.
I had the opportunity to speak with Senator Sanders this evening as he took a brief break from ongoing discussions within the HELP Committee, and prior to his making the case for single-payer on The Ed Show (a case Schultz has featured on his five-night-a-week MSNBC program and in town halls across the country). This is what the Senator had to say:
Q: Tell me about the purpose of the meeting with Senator Baucus today?
Senator Sanders: The truth of the matter is–and I say this not ideologically but just from an objective analysis of the health care situation–the only way you’re gonna provide comprehensive, universal, and cost-effective healthcare to every man, woman, and child in this country is through a single-payer system. That’s just a simple reality. And the reason for that is that to pay for universal comprehensive healthcare you have to deal with the enormous amount of waste that is currently within the private health insurance industry. The estimate is about $400 billion a year in administrative costs, in billing, in profits, in CEO compensation, in advertising–all of those things which have nothing to do with the provision of healthcare…
via A Seat at the Table for Single-Payer.
Unending Media Misinformation on Florida 2000/2004
Unending Media Misinformation on Florida 2000/2004
The media mis-informationists still claim that even though Gore won the 2000 national popular vote by 540,000, Bush won Florida and therefore the electoral vote. There is no end to the propaganda. The media just can’t get themselves to admit that elections are stolen – even Florida 2000.
They are wrong, very wrong about Florida and the True National vote. And they know it. But the onslaught of lies continues.
There were 5.4 million net uncounted votes (net of stuffed ballots). Gore won about 4 million of them, so he won the popular vote by over 3 million. Not even close. There were 180,000 uncounted ballots (65,000 under-punched, 110,000 over-punched,
5,000 butterfly). The media doesn’t mention the double and triple over-punched ballots which were 75% for Gore. And the apologists continue to spread the myth that Bush won the recount. The recount considered under-punched ballots only.
Gore won every scenario.
They also fail to analyze Florida 2004. According to the Census, 238,000 more
ballots were cast than recorded. HAVA guess why.
Are you listening, Keith and Rachel?
Official vote:
Gore 2912k
Bush 2912k
Other 138k (Nader et al)
There were approximately 180k uncounted (over and under-punched) ballots
Gore had 125k (70%)
Bush had 55k (30%)
According to the Census, 43k more votes were cast than recorded.
Since Net uncounted = uncounted – stuffed,
43k = 180k – stuffed ballots
Stuffed = 137k
via Progressive Independent – Viewing message.
Republican First, American second.
Intel firestorm: GOP reveals briefing info - The Hill.com
Republican First, American second.
Republicans ignited a firestorm of controversy on Thursday by revealing some of what they had been told at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
Democrats immediately blasted the GOP lawmakers for publicly discussing classified information, while Republicans said Democrats are trying to hide the truth that enhanced interrogation of detainees is effective.
GOP members on the Intelligence Committee on Thursday told The Hill in on-the-record interviews that they were informed that the controversial methods have led to information that prevented terrorist attacks.
When told of the GOP claims, Democrats strongly criticized the members who revealed information that was provided at the closed House Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing. Democrats on the panel said they could not respond substantively, pointing out that the hearing was closed.
In the bowels of the Capitol Visitor Center, members of the panel gathered behind locked doors on Thursday morning to begin a series of hearings on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
via TheHill.com.
More Medical Bankruptcy-Have Insurance, Go Bankrupt (updated)
OPS: THIS is part of the core of the issue: “Will your health reform end medical bankruptcy?”
More Medical Bankruptcy-Have Insurance, Go Bankrupt (updated)
Dear President Obama,Senator Baucus and Speaker Pelosi:
Will your health reform end medical bankruptcy?
Just asking…?
Sincerely,
America
What a great system we have in the United States!
As Senator Baucus and other continue to defend propping up the “uniquely American” system of for-profit private insurance, that system continue to cause a uniquely American event: Personal bankruptcy due to illness and medical bills. This does not occur in other countries.
There is a new, follow-up study (.pdf) on the subject just out today, in the leading professional peer review American Journal of Medicine:
Illness and medical bills linked to nearly two-thirds of all United States bankruptcies in 2007
Harvard study finds 50 percent increase from 2001
Most of those bankrupted by illness were middle class and had insurance
Follow me over for the sad gory details.
via Daily Kos: More Medical Bankruptcy-Have Insurance, Go Bankrupt (updated).
Sarkozy’s Secret Plan for Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination
Sarkozy’s Secret Plan for Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination
The French Government is developing secret plans to impose mandatory vaccination of the entire French population, allegedly against possible Swine Flu disease according to reports leaked in a French newspaper. The plan is without precedent and even defies recommended public health advice. Pharmaceutical giants benefit from the move, as the Swine Flu increases the trend towards the militarization of public health and use of needless population panic to advance the agenda.
According to a report in the May 30 edition of the French newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, the Sarkozy government has authorized spending of an estimated €1 billion to buy vaccines allegedly to combat or protect against H1N1 Swine Flu virus. The only problem is that to date neither the WHO nor the US Government’s Center for Diseases Control (CDC) have succeeded to isolate, photograph with an electron microscope and chemically classify the H1N1 Influenza A virus. There is no scientifically published evidence that French virologists have done so either. To mandate drugs for a putative disease that has not even been characterized is dubious to say the least.
Even more bizarre is the admission by the US Government’s Food & Drug Administration, an agency responsible for health and safety of its citizens, that the ‘test’ is approved for premature release to test for H1N1 is not even a proven test. More to the point, there is no forensic evidence in any of the deaths reported to date that has been presented that proves scientifically that any single death being attributed to H1N1 Swine Flu virus was indeed caused by such a virus. European epidemiologists believe the deaths reported to date are ‘coincidental’ or what are called opportunistic infections.
What we know conclusively is that the people who died often had prior respiratory complications of an undisclosed nature. People die every day with respiratory diseases. In the USA alone some 36,000 flu-related deaths are recorded yearly with no undue panic or alarm. Most are elderly or patients with lung diseases. To date in all France, 24 people have been identified by health authorities as even having ‘symptoms’ of H1N1. It is worth noting that the WHO and CDC list the symptoms of H1N1: temperature, coughing, headache, runny nose. Hmmmmm. Do you know anyone with such Swine Flu symptoms? Also worth noting is that in the counting of the more than 15,000 ‘confirmed’ H1N1 Swine Flu cases worldwide the vast majority made miraculous recovery within three to seven days, just as in the case of a bad cold.
via Sarkozy’s Secret Plan for Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination.
Comment by Sparrows @ BF: I will eat my brain before I believe that the French govt would do this to their own people or would even try. The French people would not stand for it. HOWEVER, are the French trying to warn us in the most subtlest of ways that the US govt has this in store for Americans?
Firms storing oil in anticipation of price increases
Firms storing oil in anticipation of price increases
The giant US bank JPMorgan Chase has reportedly hired a newly-built supertanker to store heating oil off the Mediterranean island of Malta. Other companies, including BP and a unit of Citigroup, have also hired ships to store either crude oil or oil products.
According to Bloomberg.com, “Traders were already using smaller tankers to store record volumes of jet fuel and heating oil in Europe as on-shore tanks filled up.”
This latest move comes amid suggestions that recent increases in oil prices may be the result of speculators looking for a new financial bubble, prompting fears that increases in energy costs could stall any hope of an economic recovery.
According to MSNBC, “Even though most analysts say crude is still overpriced, the market has created its own momentum with an enormous amount of money fleeing equity and currency markets. … With so much money flowing into the market, prices are likely to hold close to where they are, until market fundamentals can take hold.”
It has recently been suggested, however, that “prices will fall substantially” once speculators run out of storage.
via Raw Story » Firms storing oil in anticipation of price increases.
ABORTION FOE TO LEAD HHS FAITH-BASED OFFICE.
ABORTION FOE TO LEAD HHS FAITH-BASED OFFICE. - The American Prospect
President Obama has appointed Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), to head the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Health and Human Services. Kelley is a leading proponent of “common ground” abortion reduction — only CACG’s common ground is at odds with that of Obama. While the administration favors reducing the need for abortion by reducing unintended pregnancies, Kelley has made clear that she seeks instead to reduce access to abortion. That is an extremely disturbing development, especially coming this week in the wake of George Tiller’s assassination.
Under George W. Bush, the faith-based centers didn’t play a policy role. But Obama has expanded the faith-based project to include a policy side, and one of its chief goals is to reduce the need for abortion. I have opposed this, because reproductive health is a public health, not a religious issue. Also problematic: It is counterproductive for Obama to appoint someone who disagrees with the administration’s stance. Obama finds himself now in the difficult position of having elevated the importance of religion to making policy, and having appointed a religious figure whose opinions on policy conflict with his.
Kelley and CACG have made clear they are committed to Catholic doctrine on abortion and birth control. CACG has supported the Pregnant Women’s Support Act, aimed at stigmatizing abortion and making it less accessible. In discussing legislation on reducing the need for abortion, Kelley has written that various pieces of legislation concerned with women’s health “are not all perfect; some include contraception — which the Church opposes.” Never mind that more than 90 percent of American Catholics use it anyway.
As Catholics for Choice points out in its press release criticizing the pick, “the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for providing and expanding access to key sexual and reproductive health services. As such, we need those working in HHS to rely on evidence-based methods to reduce the need for abortion. We need them to believe in men’s and women’s capacity to make moral decisions about their own lives. Unfortunately, as seen from her work at CACG, Ms. Kelley does not fit the bill.”
via TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect.
Keeping Them Honest
Keeping Them Honest – NYTimes.com
Paul Krugman
“I appreciate your efforts, and look forward to working with you so that the Congress can complete health care reform by October.” So declared President Obama in a letter this week to Senators Max Baucus and Edward Kennedy. The big health care push is officially on.
But the devil is in the details. Health reform will fail unless we get serious cost control — and we won’t get that kind of control unless we fundamentally change the way the insurance industry, in particular, behaves. So let me offer Congress two pieces of advice:
1) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
2) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
The Democratic strategy for health reform is based on a political judgment: the belief that the public will be more willing to accept reform, less easily Harry-and-Louised, if those who already have health coverage from private insurers are allowed to keep it.
But how can we have fundamental reform of what Mr. Obama calls a “broken system” if the current players stay in place? The answer is supposed to lie in a combination of regulation and competition.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Keeping Them Honest – NYTimes.com.
Pastor Organizes Gun Celebration at Church
OPS: “Jeezuz loves guns this I know, cause the Bible tells me so”….. and then they can march around the pews singing hymn #666 “… this is my weapon, this is my gun, this one’s for Jeezuz this one’s for fun….”
Pastor Organizes Gun Celebration at Church – ABC News
Gun Control Advocates Oppose Pastor Ken Pagano’s ‘Open Carry Celebration’
A pastor in Kentucky is redefining the tradition of wearing your Sunday best to services by encouraging his congregation to strap on holsters and bring their weapons to church.
Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church in Louisville, Ky., says that he organized an “Open Carry Celebration” to promote responsible gun ownership.
“As a Christian pastor I believe that without a deep-seeded belief in God and firearms that this country would not be here,” Pagano told ABCNews.com. “I’m not ashamed of that fact. I’m proud of it.”
The celebration scheduled for Sunday, June 27, will feature YouTube videos promoting gun safety and will ask congregants to join in singing patriotic songs, according to Pagano.
A $1 raffle to win a free handgun will also be part of the festivities.
via Pastor Organizes Gun Celebration at Church – ABC News.
S.E.C. Accuses Countrywide’s Ex-Chief of Fraud
OPS: If they’re going to start worrying about fraud all of a sudden they’ll have to arrest 90% of the Sr. Management of the Fortune 500 and beyond.
S.E.C. Accuses Countrywide’s Ex-Chief of Fraud - NYTimes.com
Angelo R. Mozilo, the self-made man from the Bronx who built Countrywide Financial into the nation’s largest mortgage lender before the credit squeeze hit, has been charged with securities fraud and insider trading in a civil suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Citing e-mail messages in which Mr. Mozilo referred to Countrywide loan products as “toxic” and “poison,” S.E.C. officials said that he had misled investors about growing risks in the company’s lending practices from 2005 through 2007. During this time he also generated $140 million in profits by selling stock in the company, the S.E.C. said.
“This is the tale of two companies,” said Robert Khuzami, enforcement director at the S.E.C. “Countrywide portrayed itself as underwriting mainly prime-quality mortgages, using high underwriting standards. But concealed from shareholders was the true Countrywide, an increasingly reckless lender assuming greater and greater risk.”
At a news conference announcing its filing of the suit, the most prominent against an executive involved in the mortgage crisis, Mr. Khuzami said the S.E.C. had made it a priority “to pursue cases at the root of the financial crisis.” As the nation’s largest mortgage lender, Countrywide helped fuel the housing boom by offering loans to high-risk borrowers.
via S.E.C. Accuses Countrywide’s Ex-Chief of Fraud – NYTimes.com.
Shredded Tires on Play Surfaces Could Be Toxic, EPA Admits
Shredded Tires on Play Surfaces Could Be Toxic, EPA Admits
WASHINGTON, DC, June 4, 2009 (ENS) – The Obamas have installed it as a surface for their children to play on at the White House, and it is used on playgrounds and playing fields across the nation, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is rethinking its endorsement of shredded tires as cushioning material to reduce injuries from falls.
According to EPA documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER, the environmental agency admits that more research is needed on the safety of the millions of pounds of tires that are recycled into ground rubber, called tire crumb.
A January 2008 memo to EPA Headquarters from the Denver office states that EPA Region 8 has identified potential hazards to children playing on surfaces made of tire crumb that include toxics entering the lungs from particulates, fibers, volatile organic compounds and latex.
Toxics ingested by children at play may include heavy metals and dyes, the memo indicates.
via Shredded Tires on Play Surfaces Could Be Toxic, EPA Admits.
GOP Congressmen Smear Green Collar Workers, Claim Their Jobs Are ‘Paper Mâché,’ ‘Subprime,’ ‘Gangrene’
OPS: The Sociopathic Party of Suicide weighs in…
GOP Congressmen Smear Green Collar Workers, Claim Their Jobs Are ‘Paper Mâché,’ ‘Subprime,’ ‘Gangrene’
Yesterday, House Republicans took to the floor for an hour-long series of speeches dedicated to attacking Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation. But in addition to doing the usual — misrepresenting an MIT study to claim the legislation would result in a tax and flaunting their skepticism of global climate change — the members of Congress decided to fire a volley of smears at workers doing green jobs as well. ThinkProgress has compiled a video of some of the attacks:
REP. JOHN FLEMING (R-LA): What we really get is a pass-through of taxpayer dollars that go into what I would call artificial – or I call them paper mâché jobs, so-called green jobs.
REP. TODD AKIN (R-MO): The green jobs that are being talked about, we’re going to create all these green jobs. In Spain, they call them subprime jobs.
REP. G.T. THOMPSON (R-PA): This is all in the name of green, greening America, specifically solar and hydro. But I have to – in terms of the economy, the other green that comes to mind is gangrene.
Watch it
Sanford’s Priorities: Nix School Funding And Reform, Allow Guns At School
Sanford’s Priorities: Nix School Funding And Reform, Allow Guns At School
Mark Sanford Gun Free ZonesGov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) has been waging a months-long war against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, refusing to apply for $700 million in federal stimulus funds, most of which would go to improving South Carolina’s failing schools.
Yet denying his state needed stimulus funds is just the start of Sanford’s recent highly partisan moves. Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that Sanford had refused to join a national school reform effort to set curriculum standards. Sanford claimed that he refused to sign on because the “governor does not have a role in implementing education policy.”
Now the governor has taken action on two bills that show where his priorities really lie: He vetoed a bill reigning in predatory payday lending, and signed a bill allowing loaded guns on school grounds.
via Think Progress » Sanford’s Priorities: Nix School Funding And Reform, Allow Guns At School.
Inhofe’s Strategy To Block EPA Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases: ‘We Can Stall That Until We Get A New President’
Inhofe’s Strategy To Block EPA Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases: ‘We Can Stall That Until We Get A New President’
In April, the Environmental Protection Agency “formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that will lead to the regulation of the gases for the first time in the United States.” Though President Obama has said that he would “prefer that Congress address global warming rather than have the EPA tackle it through administrative action,” the EPA’s finding allows the agency to move forward with regulations to limit greenhouse gas pollution to build a clean-energy economy.
Republicans and some centrist Democrats have attacked the EPA’s potential regulation of greenhouse gases. But the Senate’s top global warming denier does not not appear worried.
In a speech for the Heartland Institute yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that the Senate could just “stall” any EPA regulation:
INHOFE: Don’t be distressed when you see the House passes some kind of cap-and-trade bill. And you know it could be worse and she could still pass it, so it’ll pass there. The EPA has threatened to regulate this through the Clean Air Act. That isn’t going to work in my opinion because we can stall that until we get a new president – that shouldn’t be a problem.
Watch it:
Actor David Carradine found dead in Bangkok
Actor David Carradine found dead in Bangkok
Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series “Kung Fu” who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok.
BANGKOK —
Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series “Kung Fu” who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He says Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.
The Web site of the newspaper The Nation cited unidentified police sources as saying Carradine was found Thursday hanged in his luxury hotel room and is believed to have committed suicide.
Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith.
via Nation & World | Actor David Carradine found dead in Bangkok | Seattle Times Newspaper.
As New Afghanistan Commander Sails Toward Confirmation, Key Torture Questions Go Unasked
As New Afghanistan Commander Sails Toward Confirmation, Key Torture Questions Go Unasked
Gen. Stanley McChrystal testified before the Senate this week, but no one asked him about the skeletons in his closet.
General Stanley McChrystal, the media darling/special ops ogre of the Bush era is no stranger to movement. During his yearlong fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2000, he would rise at the crack of dawn every morning to run 12 miles from his home in Brooklyn to his office in Manhattan. Before that job, he bounced from West Point to Fort Bragg to South Korea to Saudi Arabia, building his military credentials and sharpening an intellect so intense, colleagues dubbed him “scary smart.” As he prepares to dart out of the special ops shadows and into the boots of Gen. David McKiernan, the recently fired head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, it’s worth listening for the rattle of skeletons McChrystal will be dragging behind him.
First up is the issue of torture. McChrystal has been linked to an operation called the Terrorist Screen Center (TSC), which was located at Camp Nama in Iraq. The institution was one of several Saddam-era torture centers converted into U.S. “interrogation facilities” by special ops forces under the general’s command. A 2006 Human Rights Watch report documents extensive prisoner abuses at Nama, including sleep deprivation, the use of extreme heat and cold, sexual humiliation and simulated drowning. One soldier quoted in the report describes the torture of a detainee believed to be an Al-Qaeda financier:
Bush Left America’s Standing in the Mideast at Rock Bottom — Can Obama Turn It Around in Cairo?
Bush Left America’s Standing in the Mideast at Rock Bottom — Can Obama Turn It Around in Cairo?
“We have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam,” Obama says ahead of his major speech in Egypt.
WASHINGTON, In his most widely anticipated speech to date, U.S. President Barack Obama will reach out directly to the Muslim world Thursday morning at Cairo University.
The address will set out an approach – likely broad, but at times with specific concrete goals – designed to ease the concerns of many of the globe’s 1.4 billion Muslims, many of whom view the U.S. and its foreign policy negatively. But his attempt is fraught with stumbling blocks.
On Monday, Obama told the French television channel ‘Canal Plus’ that he intends to “create a better dialogue” by “provid[ing] a framework, a speech of how I think we can remake relations between the United States and countries in the Muslim world.”
In the interview he also spoke of a knowledge deficit about Islam in the U.S. and the West, and said that “we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.”
Is Bill O’Reilly Spawning Killers?
Is Bill O’Reilly Spawning Killers?
O’Reilly turns political spats into “moral” crusades and his opponents into monsters — an extremist worldview that leads to violence.
The killing of Dr. George Tiller is, of course, the second recent politically-motivated church shooting. The first occurred in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on July 27th of last year. And although one was targeted at a doctor, and the other at liberals in general, both share a common element: Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly had targeted Tiller repeatedly on his show, claiming he ran a “death mill” and quoting a description of him as “Tiller the Baby Killer.” And as for the Unitarian killing, the shooter infamously had a copy of O’Reilly’s book in his home, and wrote a vitriolic screed about his hatred for liberals.
Of course, the factors motivating each killing cannot be boiled down simply to the influence of Mr. O’Reilly. However, Mr. O’Reilly bears a unique responsibility for this kind of violence, not only because his show and opinions reach millions of viewers, but also because he is a figure who not only disagrees with but dehumanizes his opponents. Using words like “evil” and “villain” to describe his targets, O’Reilly turns political spats into sweeping moral crusades.
via Is Bill O’Reilly Spawning Killers? | | AlterNet.
Chinese Company’s Hummer Buy Raises Questions
OPS: Hmmmm…But then Hummer makes a pretty good Military vehicle…doesn’t it. Is GM selling a country we will eventually have a war with – the means to better military transport? In additon, the kind of people that buy Hummers in the US don’t give a rats ass where their toys come from, how environmentally friendly they are, or if they are screwing American workers in the process. And perhaps this is a front for GM’s onw China operations
Chinese Company’s Hummer Buy Raises Questions
Tengzhong is just a four year old company with under 5,000 employees and no experience in manufacturing passenger vehicles
Hummer, which exemplified American overindulgence for nearly a decade, was sold to a little-known Chinese machinery company yesterday as part of General Motor’s restructuring plan, paving the way for the entry into the U.S. auto market by a Chinese company for the first time ever.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. had reached a tentative deal to purchase the beleaguered GM brand that has seen its sales fall 67 percent this year. Although details of the deal were scarce, it was widely believed that the deal was for less than $500 million and would save approximately 3,000 American jobs.
“The Hummer brand is synonymous with adventure, freedom and exhilaration, and we plan to continue that heritage by investing in the business, allowing Hummer to innovate and grow in exciting new ways under the leadership and continuity of its current management team,” Yang Yi, the chief executive of Tengzhong, said in a statement released by G.M. “We will be investing in the Hummer brand and its research and development capabilities, which will allow Hummer to better meet demand for new products such as more fuel-efficient vehicles in the U.S.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
VAT Impeding U.S. Businesses
VAT Impeding U.S. Businesses
In 2006, VAT nations collected rebates totaling $218.2 billion while the U.S. was forced to pay $122.4 billion in taxes due to other nations’ VATs
Yesterday, an American business lost out on a lucrative contract to export heating elements to China due to the trade distorting practices that the Communist nation engages in, according to TradeReform.org.
New York-based I Squared R Element Company was informed yesterday that, despite being the lowest bidder on a contract to export the industrial heating components to China, it would not be receiving the contract because it did not account for the 10 percent customs duty and the 17 percent Value-Added Tax that must be paid at the Chinese border.
Currently over 150 nations utilize the VAT. The VAT works like an export subsidy for foreign exporters and an import tariff at the same time, which places the U.S. in a comparatively most uncompetitive situation due to the fact that we do not utilize the VAT or any countervailing measures.
In 2006, VAT nations collected rebates totaling $218.2 billion while the U.S. was forced to pay $122.4 billion in taxes due to the VAT. Each year the VAT imposes a $290 billion burden on U.S. goods exported and another $85 billion on services. This encourages outsourcing as American companies move offshore in order to circumvent the VAT and reap the same benefits as the companies producing in those nations.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Future of Chevy Volt Uncertain
OPS: Would you be shocked to learn, at some point in the near future, that the Volt was just BS to grease GM’s bailout?
Future of Chevy Volt Uncertain
It is unclear if the capital exists to finish the development of the Volt, which GM hails as the wave of its future
Monday’s bankruptcy filing by General Motors leaves the company’s future in doubt. Plans are underway to shutter plants, sell brands, slash jobs and cut ties with hundreds of dealerships. What is even more unclear is the future of GM’s newer products, especially those currently in development that will still require substantial capital investment to get them market-ready.
The most interesting of those products is the Chevy Volt, the vehicle in which GM has staked its newer, more energy efficient future to. Even before the recession, the collapse of demand for new vehicles and the eventual bankruptcy, GM had hailed its Chevy Volt as the wave of the future and its ticket back to the top of the auto manufacturing mountain.
Now the company is doubling-down on that promise, even though it is unclear if it will have the capital to finish the development.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
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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. 
