Archive for June, 2009
A Future Laden with Debt
A Future Laden with Debt
There is no way to cure the federal budget problems if we continue to allow our productive assets to be whittled down by hostile takeovers from foreign companies.
America has two major debt problems looming on the horizon: the national public deficit and the international trade deficit. Our national debt is now over $11.4 trillion – more than half of which is held directly by the American public – and our accumulated trade deficits in the past 40 years total over $7 trillion.
There is no way to tackle these problems without a coordinated, sustained effort on the part of every level of the government and population. If the fiscal instability is not addressed with long-term goals in mind Americans will be riddled with debt problems for generations to come.
The projected federal budget deficit for 2009 is $1.7 trillion. The projected trade deficit will probably be in the range of $700 billion. Both must be balanced and eventually eradicated, but in some ways the trade deficit is the worse of the two evils.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Cash For Clunkers: Earn $4,500 For Your Gas Guzzler
Cash For Clunkers: Earn $4,500 For Your Gas Guzzler
If you trade your old vehicle for one that gets better mileage the government could provide you with federal vouchers of up to $4,500. An addition to the $106 billion dollar wartime spending bill, the Cash for Clunkers provision is an attempt to get gas-guzzlers off the road.
If you own a car that’s bought after 1984 that gives you 18 miles to the gallon or less, you’re good to go. For a trade with a car that gives you 22 mpg, you get $3,500. But you’d get $4,500 if the new car is 10 mpg higher in fuel efficiency.
- Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
- Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify
- Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
- Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
- You don’t need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase
- It needs to be worth less4,500
- You cannot trade it in for a car that costs more than45,000
via Cash For Clunkers: Earn $4,500 For Your Gas Guzzler.
Kristof On “Food Inc.”: You May Not Eat For A Week
Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms - NYTimes.com
Growing up on a farm near Yamhill, Ore., I quickly learned to appreciate the difference between fresh, home-grown foods and the commercial versions in the supermarket.
Store-bought lettuce was always lush, green and pristine, and thus vastly preferable to lettuce from my Mom’s vegetable garden (organic before we called it that). Her lettuce kept me on my toes, because a caterpillar might come crawling out of my salad.
We endured endless elk and venison — my Dad is still hunting at age 90 — or ate beef from steers raised on our own pasture, but “grass-fed” had no allure for me. I longed for delicious, wholesome food that my friends in town ate. Like hot dogs.
Over the years, though, I’ve become nostalgic for an occasional bug in my salad, for an apple that feels as if it were designed by God rather than by a committee. More broadly, it has become clear that the same factors that impelled me toward factory-produced meat and vegetables — cheap, predictable food — also resulted in a profoundly unhealthy American diet.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms – NYTimes.com.
UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report
UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report
In an about face, the United Nations on Wednesday lavishly praised drug decriminalization in its annual report on the state of global drug policy. In previous years, the UN drug czar had expressed skepticism about Portugal’s decriminalization, which removed criminal penalties in 2001 for personal drug possession and emphasized treatment over incarceration. The UN had suggested the policy was in violation of international drug treaties and would encourage “drug tourism.”
But in its 2009 World Drug Report, the UN had little but kind words for Portugal’s radical (by U.S. standards) approach. “These conditions keep drugs out of the hands of those who would avoid them under a system of full prohibition, while encouraging treatment, rather than incarceration, for users. Among those who would not welcome a summons from a police officer are tourists, and, as a result, Portugal’s policy has reportedly not led to an increase in drug tourism,” reads the report. “It also appears that a number of drug-related problems have decreased.”
In its upbeat appraisal of Portugal’s policy, the UN finds itself in agreement with Salon’s Glenn Greenwald.
via UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report.
Dems: Obama Open To Dropping Public Option
Dems: Obama Open To Dropping Public Option
According to a report in Bloomberg, President Obama is open to compromising on health care reform by eliminating the public option from his plan.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met last night at the U.S. Capitol with Senate Democrats and told them Obama is “open to alternatives” to a new government insurance program in order to get legislation overhauling the health-care system to his desk, said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
“His message was, it’s critical that you do this,” Conrad said.
via Dems: Obama Open To Dropping Public Option.
North Korea Threatens To Wipe Out The U.S. “Once And For All”
North Korea Threatens To Wipe Out The U.S. “Once And For All”
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea accused Washington of seeking to “provoke a second Korean War” as the regime prepared to hold maritime military exercises off the eastern coast.
U.S. and regional authorities were watching closely for signs that North Korea might fire short- or mid-range missiles during the June 25 to July 10 timeframe cited in a no-sail ban for military drills sent to Japan’s Coast Guard.
North Korea had warned previously it would fire a long-range missile as a response to U.N. Security Council condemnation of an April rocket launch seen as a cover for its ballistic missile technology.
via North Korea Threatens To Wipe Out The U.S. “Once And For All”.
Germany Imagines Suburbs Without Cars
In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars
Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.
Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.
As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.
via Germany Imagines Suburbs Without Cars – NYTimes.com.
Why critics of a public option for healthcare are wrong
Why critics of a public option for healthcare are wrong
Those opposing a public option — Big Pharma, the AMA, the insurers — are doing so out of economic self-interest
By Robert Reich
Without a public option, the other parties that comprise America’s non-system of healthcare — private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies and medical suppliers — have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.
Which is precisely why the public option has become such a lightning rod. The American Medical Association is dead set against it, Big Pharma rejects it out of hand, and the biggest insurance companies won’t consider it. No other issue in the current healthcare debate is as fiercely opposed by the medical establishment and their lobbies now swarming over Capitol Hill. Of course they don’t want it. A public option would squeeze their profits and force them to undertake major reforms. That’s the whole point.
Critics say the public option is really a Trojan Horse for a government takeover of all of health insurance. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an option. No one has to choose it. Individuals and families will merely be invited to compare costs and outcomes. Presumably they will choose the public plan only if it offers them and their families the best deal — more and better healthcare for less.
via Why critics of a public option for healthcare are wrong | Salon.
Some Banks in ‘Healthy’ Bank Bailout Program Appear Not So Healthy
Some Banks in ‘Healthy’ Bank Bailout Program Appear Not So Healthy
Ever since the Treasury Department under Hank Paulson decided to invest billions in banks across the country, Treasury officials have touted the TARP investments as ways to bolster “healthy” banks during tough economic times. More than 600 banks (and credit card companies and soon, insurance companies) have received money through the Capital Purchase Program, the first bailout program Treasury launched and still the one representing the largest sum of TARP funds ($134 billion), even after ten large companies returned $68 billion.
Recipient banks across the country have emphasized that the program is not a bailout for banks. But some of the banks receiving money under the program don’t meet a commonsense definition of “healthy.” Citigroup and Bank of America, for instance, were among the first banks to receive money, only to need further injections of money.
Two recent reports call attention to the banks in the program that are struggling despite having received TARP funds.
via On The Hill: Some Banks in ‘Healthy’ Bank Bailout Program Appear Not So Healthy.
The Fight Over the Federal Reserve
The Fight Over the Federal Reserve
There is a solution to all the complaining by Congress over the Obama administration’s plan to give more power to the Federal Reserve. It is a solution that solves the worries people have about giving a secretive, undemocratic institution that blew it in the run-up to this financial crisis more power. It is a solution that looks at least in part to have broad bipartisan support, if one bill with 238 co-sponsors in the House is any indication. It is a solution that Democrats ought to be excited about if they take all their historic statements about government transparency and more democracy seriously.
The only downside is that it would be picking a big policy fight that directly challenges the power of the too-big-to-fail banks.
The idea is simple, has been around for a long time, should have been done a long time ago: make the Fed a more open and democratic institution, rather than the secretive one tied so closely to the big banks it is supposed to be regulating. There are a variety of ideas in this area, some of my favorites being:
* The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which now has 238 co-sponsors (weirdly a lot more Republicans than Democrats, but with 47 Democrats led by Alan Grayson). This bill gives GAO the authority to audit the Fed and report is findings to Congress.
* Requiring the Fed to disclose which banks are receiving trillions of dollars to prop them up.
* Taking bankers off the governing board of the regional Feds, and making sure that only consumer, labor, and public interest representatives are on the governing boards (currently, banking industry representatives or those affiliated with the banking industry are allowed to have three out of nine seats board seats for each of the 12 Regional Feds). Having those kinds of reps placed inside the Federal Reserve is important as well.
Making the Fed more transparent, and changing the governing structure so that more people than bankers are involved with it, would make it acceptable to progressives to give the Fed more power. Without that kind of restructuring, the issue will not go away, and will likely doom regulatory reform.
via Open Left:: The Fight Over the Federal Reserve.
US nixes 40 percent cuts at climate change talks
US nixes 40 percent cuts at climate change talks
MEXICO CITY — President Barack Obama’s climate envoy dismissed recommendations that the United States and other developed countries reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases 40 percent by 2020.
“The 40 percent below 1990 (levels) is something which in our judgment is not necessary, and not feasible given where we’re starting from, so it’s not in the cards,” Todd Stern said Tuesday at a conference on global warming.
Stern spoke at the end of the two-day meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, a gathering of 19 nations and the European Union that together produce 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. The group, called together by Obama, is trying to build a replacement climate change treaty for the expiring Kyoto Protocol.
A panel of U.N. scientists has recommended that industrial countries cut carbon emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020 to avoid a catastrophic rise in sea levels, harsher storms and droughts and climate disruptions. Some poorer and island countries are pushing for reductions of as much as 45 percent.
After rejecting that idea, Stern pointed to progress on legislation before the U.S. Congress that would require lesser reductions. He said the Waxman-Markey bill is expected to move to the floor of the U.S. House this week for debate, which he said is “quite good news.”
via US nixes 40 percent cuts at climate change talks – Americas AP – MiamiHerald.com.
Public health plan could save money faster: policy group
Public health plan could save money faster: policy group
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A nationwide health insurance exchange that includes a Medicare-like government option could save $1.8 trillion more than if only private plans are offered, a prominent private U.S. health policy group said on Wednesday.
Federal spending on health-related costs would still rise from 2010 to 2020, but they would be less with a plan that pays doctors and hospital rates similar to the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund.
The New York-based health policy research group compared possible savings a health insurance exchange could bring under three different scenarios. One would include a Medicare-like plan along with private insurance. Another would instead offer a government-run plan with rates somewhat higher than Medicare. The final one would be private insurance with no government plan at all.
Such an exchange would offer a central point for consumers to shop for and compare health plans.
An exchange that instead offered a plan with rates slightly higher than Medicare but below current private plan rates would save nearly $800 billion over one with only private options, according to the Commonwealth Fund’s analysis.
via Public health plan could save money faster: policy group – Yahoo! News.
Orders for US durable goods surge in May
Orders for US durable goods surge in May
An employee works on the production line of a factory. Orders for US long-lasting manufactured goods surged unexpectedly in May, government data showed in a report pointing to recovery in the embattled sector amid the prolonged recession.
Orders for US long-lasting manufactured goods surged unexpectedly in May, government data showed Wednesday in a report pointing to recovery in the embattled sector amid the prolonged recession.
The Commerce Department said durable goods orders rose a seasonally adjusted 1.8 percent in May from April.
The increase surprised most analysts, who had projected a decline of 0.9 percent.
The Commerce Department said orders for durable goods, such as household appliances, computers and aircraft, rose in April by a revised 1.8 percent, instead of the 1.9 percent initially estimated.
The last time durable goods orders had surged so strongly was in December 2007, when the world’s largest economy officially entered recession.
via AFP » Orders for US durable goods surge in May.
EPA study: 2.2M live in areas where air poses cancer risk
EPA study: 2.2M live in areas where air poses cancer risk – USATODAY.com
The results, compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency, represent the most sweeping analysis to date of the state of the nation’s air. The analysis is based on emissions from 2002, the latest year for which the EPA had detailed estimates of pollution from across the nation.
Called the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment, or NATA, the study is used by the EPA to identify parts of the country where residents could face the greatest health threats from air pollution.
via EPA study: 2.2M live in areas where air poses cancer risk – USATODAY.com.
Nixon supported abortion … For interracial babies
Nixon supported abortion … For interracial babies
A White House audio recording released on Tuesday shows that former President Richard M. Nixon — arguably the least popular Republican president in U.S. history and the only one to resign due to ongoing criminal scandals — was a supporter of legal abortion in certain circumstances … Like rape.
Or, interracial babies.
On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.
Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.
“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”
While a majority of the audio recorded in the Oval Office during Nixon’s administration has been released to the public, some tapes had such poor audio quality that archivists were unable to determine if the conversations were on classified matters. The Times noted that new advances in restoration technology allowed the new disclosures.
The new audio also reveals that Nixon had considered pardoning E. Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate hatchet men and a key player in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the report noted.
Read the rest of the Times story. It’s quite good.
via The Raw Story » Nixon supported abortion … For interracial babies.
Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists
Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists - NYTimes.com
— Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.
The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.
via Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists – NYTimes.com.
Infighting over Bailout Watchdog
Infighting over Bailout Watchdog
Neil Barofsky, the inspector general overseeing the TARP bailout, is at odds with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner regarding who is overseeing Barofsky’s reports.
Neil Barofsky, the inspector general overseeing the TARP bailout, is at odds with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner regarding authority over reporting on the bailout. Barofsky’s office was specially created to oversee and audit the bailout, he reports directly to Congress and the President about the progress of his investigations.
Now however, after initiating several investigations of Treasury officials involved with the scandalous AIG bailout and executive compensation arrangements, Secretary Geithner is calling a legal dispute as to who Barofsky reports to. Geithner believes that the reports should go through him to the President’s desk, not directly to the President himself.
Obviously, the Treasury Department does not want to lose clout regarding the bailout and the billions of dollars in TARP allowances handed out. Barofsky’s office is a threat to their legitimacy in that area. More importantly, Barofsky’s investigations are a threat to top Treasury officials, perhaps including Secretary Geithner.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
DeMint refuses to vouch for Sanford’s character: ‘Who knows?’
DeMint refuses to vouch for Sanford’s character: ‘Who knows?’
This afternoon, Fox News’ Glenn Beck suggested that Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-SC) apparent disappearance is simply a media ploy to “discredit” the governor, and that his wife and others knew his whereabouts. (They did not.) When Beck asked Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) whether he could “vouch for [Sanford's] character,” DeMint refused:
BECK: Can you vouch for his character, that he is what he seems to be?
DEMINT: He always has been up front with me, but, you know, who knows? I don’t know if we can vouch for each other’s character, but he is a good friend of mine and obviously I hope he is okay.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » DeMint refuses to vouch for Sanford’s character: ‘Who knows?’.
Why Did Sanford’s Staff Lie About His Trip To South America?
Why Did Sanford’s Staff Lie About His Trip To South America?
When Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-SC) five-day absence was noticed by the national media Monday, Sanford’s staff sought to quell concerns by telling reporters he was hiking the Appalachian Trail:
Then, at 10:01 p.m. Monday, [Communications Director Joel] Sawyer e-mailed reporters an update: “The governor is hiking along the Appalachian Trail. I apologize for taking so long to send this update, and was waiting to see if a more definitive idea of what part of the Trail he was on before we did so.”
Sawyer said Sanford was hiking “to kind of clear his head after the legislative session.” He added emphatically, “[Sanford's] an avid outdoorsman.”
On Tuesday morning, Sawyer said that Sanford had “called to check in with his chief of staff.” Yet he stuck with his claim that Sanford was hiking.
It turns out, however, that Sawyer was lying. This morning, reporters from The State caught up with Sanford at Atlanta’s Hartsville-Jackson International Airport, where he had just returned from a seven day trip to Beunos Aires, Argentina — nowhere near the Appalachian Trial. Sanford refused to say what he had been doing in South America, and offered no explanation for why his staff lied:
via Think Progress » Why Did Sanford’s Staff Lie About His Trip To South America?.
Will the Right Succeed in Butchering the American Clean Energy and Security Act?
Will the Right Succeed in Butchering the American Clean Energy and Security Act?
As Congress inches closer to ushering in a clean energy economy that protects our planet, the far right is ramping up efforts to block it.
Since Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), conservatives have grown increasingly hysterical in their opposition to clean energy and green jobs. Rep. “Smokey” Joe Barton (R-TX) — a prominent global warming denier and top recipient of dirty coal funding — renamed the bill. “They like to call it ACES but I call it C.R.A.P. — continue ruining America’s prosperity,” he snickered. Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) declared that a cap-and-trade system like the one proposed by Waxman and Markey “promises to cap our incomes, our livelihoods, and our standard of living” and will therefore “hurt American agriculture.” Though Republicans have long falsely claimed that a cap-and-trade program will cost every American family $3,000, a new analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found “that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion — or about $175 per household.” This amounts to 48 cents per day — a little more than the cost of a postage stamp. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and former Secretary of State Richard Armitage have argued recently that climate change is also “the biggest long term threat” to America’s national security. Unwilling to wait any longer for much-needed action, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced Monday that she plans to bring ACES for a House vote on Friday. Center for American Progress (CAP) CEO John Podesta acknowledged that ACES is “imperfect in its means” but ultimately “deserves the support of progressives.” Though the bill may not be everything environmentalists and progressives want, Podesta, alluding to the Rolling Stones’s Mick Jagger, said, “They must try this time to pass it through the House so that we can ultimately get what we need: a clean energy law that creates jobs, reduces oil use, and cuts global warming pollution.”
National Review vs The Nation: Is Health Care a Right?
In part one of a three-part series, The Nation‘s Washington editor Chris Hayes debates Reihan Salam of The National Review over healthcare. Is it a universal human right, as Hayes says, or a responsibility, as Salam says? What’s the best system for implementing healthcare in the United States? Will it save money or cost money? Watch and decide.
YouTube – National Review vs The Nation: Is Health Care a Right?.
Replace Petraeus
Replace Petraeus - Truthdig - 
Gen. David Petraeus’ aura of success resulting from reduced violence in Iraq has blinded normally sensible observers to his far greater failure in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His ill-conceived effort to deny al-Qaida and the Taliban “safe havens” in Pakistan—through drone aircraft bombing, special-forces assassination and perhaps torture (by way of association with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his new Afghanistan military commander)—has backfired, driving the Taliban east into Pakistan, where they have joined local allies to weaken the Pakistani government. It has also strengthened, not weakened, al-Qaida and alienated growing numbers of Pakistanis. The Petraeus strategy has thus dramatically strengthened America’s enemies and helped destabilize a nuclear-armed nation of 170 million whose importance dwarfs Iraq and Afghanistan combined. More alarmingly, he now intends to escalate his failed strategy, which could cause unimaginable catastrophes in coming months and years.
President Obama—who may well regret his call as a candidate for attacking Taliban safe havens in Pakistan, given the debacle those attacks have produced—should replace Petraeus, and McChrystal’s nomination should be blocked. However, Obama is unlikely to take such an action absent significant public pressure. Petraeus has enormous leverage over the president. The general is extremely popular because of the perceived success of the Iraqi surge. The Obama administration could be capsized by a combination of likely losses in the “Af-Pak”¬ theater and the popular Petraeus resigning and blaming Obama, one imagines, for “not listening to his military commanders.” Obama could even be defeated in 2012 by Petraeus himself on those grounds, should persistent Washington rumors about a nascent “Petraeus for President” campaign prove true.
via Truthdig – Reports – Replace Petraeus.
McDonald’s Is Poisoning Consumers
McDonald’s Is Poisoning Consumers — And Blaming Everyone Else for the Catastrophic Societal Costs
For most of us it’s not that difficult to understand how McDonald’s share profits rose over 2008 when the rest of the Dow Jones (save for Wal-Mart) was taking a nose dive. After all, they offer a value at the register that’s easy on our thinning pocketbooks.
That said, the value at the register is a misnomer when you look at the true costs McDonald’s is passing on to its patrons. Each year, the direct and indirect costs of diet-related disease cost Americans well over 120 billion dollars. Value meals cost a great deal more when you subdivide that tab by the number of us eating regularly at the Golden Arches and other chains that serve food high in fat, calories, salt and sugar.
McDonald’s has yet to take its share of the blame for this alarming number, let alone the skyrocketing rates of diet-related conditions like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It has instead pumped hundreds of millions into a high-stakes, public relations blame game.
Obama’s Classroom Spies
The Government Is Running a Secretive Intelligence Recruitment Program in Schools. The “Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program” may become a permanent budget item, making universities unwitting agents of state intelligence.
Son of PRISP
Obama’s Classroom Spies
By DAVID PRICE
As the continuities and disjunctures between the Bush and Obama administrations come into focus it becomes increasingly clear that while Obama’s domestic agenda has some identifiable breaks with Bush’s, at its core, the new administration remains committed to staying the course of American militarization. Now we have an articulate, nuanced president who supports elements of progressive domestic policies, can even comfortably say the phrase LGBT in public speeches, while funding military programs at alarming levels and continuing the Bush administration’s military and intelligence invasion of what used to be civilian life.
The latest manifestation of this continuity came last week when Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced plans to transform the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP) from a pilot project into a permanent budget item. Blair also announced plans to establish a “Reserve Officers’ Training Corps” to train unidentified future intelligence officers in US college classrooms. Like students receiving PRISP funds, the identities of students participating in these programs would not be known to professors, university administrators or fellow students—in effect, these future intelligence analysts and agents would conduct their first covert missions in our university classrooms.
via David Price: Obama’s Classroom Spies.
Voter Turnout Required to Match the Recorded Vote
Voter Turnout Required to Match the Recorded Vote for the 1972-2008 Presidential elections
The media is awash with stories about voting turnout in Iran exceeding 100% in various locations.
Let’s look at voter turnout in the U.S. presidential elections since 1972.
The average required turnout of previous election voters was an impossible 101% for the Republicans and 89% for the Democrats.
The average required turnout of returning Nixon, Bush 1 and Bush 2 voters was an impossible 110%.
The average required turnout of returning Ford, Carter and Clinton voters was a plausible 92%.
The analysis is based on the Final National Exit Poll.
The Final is always forced to match the recorded vote by adjusting the returning voter mix and vote shares.
Since the Final was forced to match the recorded vote in 1972, 1988, 1992, 2004, 2008 with Nixon, Bush 1 and Bush 2 returning voter
turnout exceeding 100%, the recorded vote cannot reflect the True Vote.
- Obama won by double the recorded vote in 2008 – over 20 million votes.
- Kerry won in a landslide in 2004 – by over 8-10 million votes
- Clinton won by double his recorded vote margin in 1992 – almost 20 million votes.
- Dukakis may have won in 1988 in a close election.
- Nixon won in a landslide in 1972. No need for all those dirty tricks.
via Voter Turnout Required to Match the Recorded Vote.
Any real effort on climate change will hurt. Start with the easy bits: war toys
Any real effort on climate change will hurt. Start with the easy bits: war toys – The Guardian
Our brains struggle with big, painful change. The rational, least painful change is to stop wasting money building tanks
What would we be doing now if we took climate change seriously? Last week the government released a report on the likely temperature changes in the UK. It shows that life at the end of this century will bear no relationship to life at the beginning. It should have dominated the news for days. But it was too far away, too remote from current problems, too big to see.
Over the past few months Lord Giddens, one of the architects of New Labour, has been touting the hypothesis that people are reluctant to act on climate change until it becomes visible to them, by which time it will be too late. This thought, which has been common currency within the environment movement for at least 20 years, has been christened by this shrinking violet the “Giddens Paradox”. It ranks among his other major discoveries, like the Giddens Postulate (people wear fewer clothes when temperatures rise) and the Giddens Effect (the Earth goes round the Sun). But despite his outrageous expropriation, the point remains a valid one. We will resist taking radical action until we have no choice, whereupon it will have no effect.
FDA warns of salmonella risk in pistachio brands
FDA warns of salmonella risk in pistachio brands
CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. consumers should avoid two brands of pistachios tied to a salmonella-related recall because they may have been repackaged and sold in airports and hotels, the Food and Drug Administration said.
The federal agency identified the suspect brands late on Monday as California Prime Produce and Orange County Orchards, which were repacked by Orca Distribution West Inc of Anaheim, California.
The potentially tainted pistachios came from Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, California, which issued a nationwide recall of its products in late March after salmonella was found in some nuts.
The bacteria can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.
The FDA said it discovered the potential problem at Orca after conducting a follow-up audit of Setton and that it issued the warning because the company had failed to alert the public that it was recalling the products.
“The company (Orca) did not publicly announce its recall. We are warning consumers not to eat these brands of pistachio,” FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek said on Tuesday in a telephone interview.
via FDA warns of salmonella risk in pistachio brands – Yahoo! News.
Big Brother in Basel: Are We Trading Financial Stability for National Sovereignty?
Big Brother in Basel: Are We Trading Financial Stability for National Sovereignty?
by Ellen Brown
Buried on page 83 of the 89-page Report on Financial Regulatory Reform issued by the U.S. Administration on June 17 is a recommendation that the new Financial Stability Board strengthen and institutionalize its mandate to promote global financial stability. Financial stability is a worthy goal, but the devil is in the details. The new global Big Brother is based in the Bank for International Settlements, a controversial institution that raises red flags among the wary . . . .
“Big Brother” is the term used by George Orwell in his classic novel 1984 for the totalitarian state that would lock into place in the year of his title. Why he chose that particular year is unclear, but one theory is that he was echoing Jack London’s The Iron Heel, which chronicled the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. In London’s book, the oligarchy’s fictional wonder-city, fueled by oppressed workers, was to be completed by 1984. Orwell also echoed London’s imagery when he described the future under Big Brother as “a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” In Secret Records Revealed: The Men, the Money, and the Methods Behind the New World Order (1999), Dr. Dennis Cuddy asked:
“Could the ‘boot’ be the new eighteen-story Bank for International Settlements (BIS) which was completed in Basel, Switzerland, in 1977 in the shape of a boot, and became known as the‘Tower of Basel’?”
The boot-like shape of the building is strange enough to be thought-provoking (see photo), but more disturbing is the description by Dr. Carroll Quigley of the pivotal role assigned to the BIS in consolidating financial power into a few private hands. Professor Quigley, who was Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, claimed to be an insider and evidently knew his subject. He wrote in Tragedy and Hope (1966):
via Big Brother in Basel: Are We Trading Financial Stability for National Sovereignty?.
US-Israel meeting scrapped over settlements
US-Israel meeting scrapped over settlements
A meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Middle East envoy was called off because of disagreements over settlement growth, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
Officials close to Netanyahu said he had called off the meeting and denied an Israeli newspaper report that Washington had cancelled it over Israel’s refusal to halt “natural growth” in the settlements.
“The decision to cancel the meeting … was taken by the prime minister. We must be sure before such a meeting that professional work has been done on a series of issues,” a senior Israeli official told AFP.
“There will be a meeting as soon as this work is done.”
The mass-selling Yediot Aharonot had earlier quoted an unnamed Israeli official as saying Washington issued a “stern” message to Netanyahu to halt all settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land.
“Once you’ve finished the homework we gave you on stopping construction in the settlements, let us know. Until then, there’s no point in having (envoy George) Mitchell fly to Paris to meet you,” the paper quoted the official as saying.
via US-Israel meeting scrapped over settlements – Yahoo! News.
The Conversation: Why Obama won by over 20 Million Votes
A Conversation about the 2008 Election
What is the latest 2008 recorded vote count?
-There are 131.37 million recorded. Obama leads by exactly 9.52m: 69.46-59.94m (52.87-45.62%).
Who voted?
-Returning Kerry, Bush and third-party voters, first-timers and others who sat out the 2004 election but voted in a prior election. In 2004, there were 122.3 million recorded votes. Bush won by 62-59m (50.7-48.3%).
Can we estimate the number of returning Election 2004 voters in 2008?
-The Final 2008 National Exit Poll (NEP) breaks down the mix of returning and new voters:
Implied 2004 Total Mix Obama McCain Other Obama McCain Other
Vote DNV 17.08 13% 71% 27% 2% 12.1 4.6 0.3
42.5% Kerry 48.61 37% 89% 9% 2% 43.3 4.4 1.0
52.9% Bush 60.43 46% 17% 82% 1% 10.3 49.6 0.6
4.6% Other 5.25 4% 66% 24% 10% 3.5 1.3 0.5
114.3 Total 131.37 100% 52.62% 45.52% 1.86% 69.13 59.80 2.44
How could 60.4m (46% of 131.37) have been returning Bush voters?
He had 62.0m votes in 2004. About 59m were alive in 2008. Assuming 95% turned out in 2008, only 56m voted. The NEP is off by 4.0m Bush voters.
And just 48.6m (37%) were Kerry voters?
How could returning Bush voters outnumber Kerry voters by 11.8m? Bush’s 2004 vote margin was only 3.0m.
How could 5.25m (4%) have been third- party 2004 voters?
There were only 1.22m in 2004. The NEP is off by 4.0m third-party voters.
via Progressive Independent – Viewing message.
Sanford met in Atlanta after returning from South America
Sanford met in Atlanta after returning from South America
Governor says he never hiked Appalachian Trail; says he cruised along the coast of Buenos Aires to unwind after stressful legislative session
ATLANTA — Gov. Mark Sanford arrived in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport this morning, having wrapped up a seven-day visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, he said. Sanford said he had not been hiking along the Appalachian Trail, as his staff said in a Tuesday statement to the media.
Sanford’s whereabouts had been unknown since Thursday, and the mystery surrounding his absence fueled speculation about where he had been and who’s in charge in his absence. His emergence Wednesday ended the mystery.
Sanford, in an exclusive interview with The State, said he decided at the last minute to go to the South American country to recharge after a difficult legislative session in which he battled with lawmakers over how to spend federal stimulus money.
via Sanford met in Atlanta after returning from South America – S.C. Politics – The State.
Saudi Royal Family Extensively Involved in Financing Al-Qaeda, Newly Revealed Government Documents Apparently Confirm
OPS: 9/11 just got closer to George W Bush – among other nasty things
Saudi Royal Family Extensively Involved in Financing Al-Qaeda, Newly Revealed Government Documents Apparently Confirm
A BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG – BY Mark Karlin
Since shortly after 9/11, BuzzFlash.com and other progressive sites — as well as many a book — offered extensive information that appeared to closely link some members of the Saudi Royal family to financing and supporting Al-Qaeda. This was something that the Bush Administration went to great lengths to deny, but their deference to the Saudis (including George W. walking pinky-entwined-with-pinky with Saudi princes, for real) was really all as usual about oil.
Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld — in particular — saw 9/11 as an enormous “gift” to rally the public behind first securing American and British access to the Iraqi oil fields and then to the Iranian ones. In the infamous PNAC document written by the Neo-Cons at the end of the Clinton Administration, they predicted that it would take a cataclysmic event to rally the American public behind the overthrow of Saddam (and rights to Iraqi oil) — and they got what they wished for in 9/11.
Those who read BuzzFlash in our early years know that we repeatedly harped upon this issue and identified the connection between Cheney’s vision of controlling natural resources in the Middle East to feed the beast of American empire and our Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran policies of belligerence and war.
Now the Obama administration has, sadly, taken the place of the Bush Administration in keeping 9/11 family members from revealing the role of the Saudi elite in financially and stratetically facilitating Al-Qaeda. This is taking place in courtroom battles involving a 9/11 family lawsuit against the Saudis that is still going on.
Insurance industry blasts government health plan
OPS: Gee, here’s a surprise. Lies and damn lies….
Insurance industry blasts government health plan
Washington — The insurance industry Tuesday laid down a marker on health care, warning in stark terms that a proposed government insurance plan would dismantle the employer coverage Americans have relied on for a half century and overtake the system.
In a joint letter to senators, the two largest industry groups also said they don’t believe it’s possible to design a government plan that can compete fairly with private companies in a revamped health care market. That particular statement seemed to be aimed at lawmakers of both parties who are seeking a compromise on the contentious issue.
Release of the letter from America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association came as House Democrats pushed forward with a partisan health care bill. Meanwhile, key Senate Democrats were still laboring to achieve an elusive bipartisan compromise on President Barack Obama’s top legislative priority of controlling costs and providing health coverage to 50 million uninsured Americans.
via Insurance industry blasts government health plan | detnews.com | The Detroit News.
A BANKRUPT SYSTEM THAT BANKRUPTS FAMILIES
A BANKRUPT SYSTEM THAT BANKRUPTS FAMILIES
Jim Hightower
Listen to this Commentary at link
America’s corportized health care system keeps producing unpleasant surprises.
We’ve known for some time that this system, which puts profit above care, is morally bankrupt – but now we learn that it is literally bankrupting hundreds of thousands of American families. In fact, the system’s exorbitant medical bills have become the number one cause of personal bankruptcies in the USA.
Researchers from Harvard and Ohio State recently conducted a national, random-sample survey of more than 2,300 families who filed for bankruptcy in 2007. As they report in the American Journal of Medicine, 60 percent of those families were forced into bankruptcy by high health-care bills. The situation is likely much worse today, since this survey was taken before the current spike in job losses.
Here’s an even more sobering finding: the great majority of those bankrupted were not uninsured poor folks, but middle-class, well-educated people – 75 percent of whom had health insurance! As one of the researchers, Dr. David Himmelstein, put it: “Unless you’re Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy.”
What a disgrace for the richest country in the history of the world. Indeed, America’s deplorable connection between physical illness and fiscal disaster does not occur in other highly-developed countries, because they provide national health insurance for all of their citizens. Yet, too many of our congress critters in Washington don’t really want to change our current system of health care profiteering. Instead, they merely want to tinker with reform by extending our corporatized system to more people that will neither improve health care nor prevent more of those financial catastrophes. We need a complete overhaul of the system by adopting a single-payer method of insurance coverage for everyone.
via Jim Hightower | A BANKRUPT SYSTEM THAT BANKRUPTS FAMILIES.
DOJ: AIPAC case witness was asked to ‘fake…suicide’
DOJ: AIPAC case witness was asked to ‘fake…suicide’
Two people asked a Pentagon official cooperating with prosecutors in an investigation into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to fake his own death to avoid testifying against two pro-Israel lobbyists charged in the case, according to the Justice Department.
Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin pled guilty in October 2005 to participating in a conspiracy with AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman to obtain and distribute classified information. The Justice Department dropped the case against Rosen and Weissman last month as a trial approached.
“Just prior to the entry of his guilty plea, Franklin was approached by two individuals who made a pitch to Franklin about faking his death by suicide and disappearing, thus thwarting any cooperation in the case against Rosen and Weissman,” prosecutors wrote in a brief filed in connection with a motion to reduce the 12-year prison term Franklin was originally sentenced to.
“In January 2006, Franklin conducted five consensually recorded telephone conversations with one of these individuals, in support of an obstruction of justice/witness tampering investigation; however, the FBI was unable to obtain the requisite incriminating evidence to support a criminal investigation,” the Justice Department brief said.
via DOJ: AIPAC case witness was asked to ‘fake…suicide’ – Josh Gerstein – POLITICO.com.
White House refuses to disclose information on meetings with coal executives
White House refuses to disclose information on meetings with coal executives
Is the White House taking a page from Dick Cheney’s playbook by refusing to disclose who’s visiting the West Wing to lobby on energy and climate issues?
Much like the preceding administration, Team Obama is fighting to keep White House visitor logs secret. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan watchdog group, recently requested that the Secret Service make the White House logs public, asking specifically for access to records of visits by coal company executives. The request was denied, and the group is now filing suit.
CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request [PDF] to the Secret Service on May 15, requesting “all records relating to any visit” made to the White House by the CEOs of 16 major coal companies and lobby groups.
via White House refuses to disclose information on meetings with coal executives | Grist.
Single-Payer — A Plan to be Embraced, Not Feared
Single-Payer — A Plan to be Embraced, Not Feared
The health care debate has taken on an enigmatic quality for me. From President Obama to Senator Baucus to the Republicans to callers on C- Span I hear how proposed legislation will result in “health care reform”- –or NOT. How much the President and Senator Kennedy’s plan will cost the taxpayer over the next 10 years according to the Congressional Budget Office–$1 trillion. And, Senator Baucus’ plan–$1.5 trillion.
The labels of “socialized medicine”- and “government control”- are freely used in an effort to intimidate and thus preserve the intricate, multifaceted structure of corporate power and the insurance industry. Single-payer plans are either denigrated, “off the table”- or ignored.
There is little discussion of how any new plan might be funded to ensure comprehensive coverage for all Americans.
What are they talking about? I ask myself.
via OpEdNews » Single-Payer — A Plan to be Embraced, Not Feared.
US shoppers misled by greenwash, Congress told
American shoppers misled by greenwash, Congress told
98% of supposedly environmentally friendly products in US supermarkets make false or confusing claims, campaigners say
More than 98% of supposedly natural and environmentally friendly products on US supermarket shelves are making potentially false or misleading claims, Congress has been told. And 22% of products making green claims bear an environmental badge that has no inherent meaning, said Scot Case, of the environmental consulting firm TerraChoice.
The study of nearly 4,000 consumer products found “greenwashing” in nearly every product category – from a lack of verifiable information to outright lies.
Even the experts are confused. Case, whose firm runs its own Ecologo certification programme, admitted he had bought a refrigerator only to find it failed to meet its claims of energy efficiency.
via US shoppers misled by greenwash, Congress told | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
The 7 Keys to UltraWellness: Discover Why You are Sick and How You Can Heal
The 7 Keys to UltraWellness: Discover Why You are Sick and How You Can Heal
“I didn’t know how bad I was feeling until I started feeling better.”
That is what my patients tell me every day. They go from being ill or just okay to experiencing UltraWellness.
Most people don’t know how poorly they feel until they feel better. In fact, most of us don’t recognize that fatigue, digestive problems, aches and pains, allergies, headaches, and more aren’t just annoying symptoms. They are early clues to impending diseases that can disable and kill us.
Most heart disease starts in the womb. You can detect brain changes in teenagers that can predict the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Blood tests in children can predict who will develop diabetes later in life. Most cancers take more than 30 years to grow to the size where they can be detected.
How can we address problems that we don’t even know we have?
via Dr. Mark Hyman: The 7 Keys to UltraWellness: Discover Why You are Sick and How You Can Heal.
Gingrich-Run Coal Company Front Group Airing Anti-Climate Legislation TV Ads
Gingrich-Run Coal Company Front Group Airing Anti-Climate Legislation TV Ads
Newt Gingrich’s 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), took to the airwaves yesterday in opposition to the Waxman-Markey clean energy reform bill. The 30-second attack ad falls highlights the Gingrich-inspired Republican strategy of calling the bill a “national energy tax”:
Now Congress is about to make things dramatically worse by passing a new national energy tax. We’ll lose more jobs, pay more for gas and electricity, pushing our economy to its breaking point. Stop the national energy tax, call your member of Congress before it’s too late.
Contradicting ASWF’s “energy tax” attack, a Congressional Budget Office analysis of Waxman-Markey found that the legislation only costs the equivalent of a postage stamp a day, while sharply cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Watch the ASWF ad:
via Think Progress » Gingrich-Run Coal Company Front Group Airing Anti-Climate Legislation TV Ads.
Most American Bankruptcies Include Extreme Medical Expenses
Most American Bankruptcies Include Extreme Medical Expenses
“Unless you’re Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He described the situation as “frightening” in a news release issued by the Physicians for a National Health Program. Himmelstein is lead author of a study to be published in the August 2009 issue of the American Journal of Medicine but the report can be found online now.
The study, conducted by researchers at Harvard’s medical and law schools, as well as researchers at Ohio University, found that, in 2007, two-thirds of all bankruptcies in the US involved medical expenses and related issues. When compared to bankruptcies in 2001, the presence of medical issues in bankruptcies jumped by almost 50%. Other findings include:
- 77.9% of all American families bankrupted by medical expenses were covered by medical insurance at the onset of the medical crisis leading to bankruptcy.
- 60% of those were insured by private insurers.
- Most families were “solidly middle class” before financial disaster occurred.
- Two-thirds of the adults filing for bankruptcies that included medical expenses owned their homes.
- Three-fifths of them enjoyed a college education.
- Even well-insured filers listed out-of-pocket medical expenses, including deductibles, co-payments, and uncovered services in amounts too high to cope with.
- The average bankrupt family with private medical insurance identified $17,749 in unpaid medical expenses.
- The average bankrupt family with no medical insurance coverage listed $26,971 in unpaid medical expenses.
- The average bankrupt family with private insurance coverage at the beginning of the illness but lost it during the struggle had $22,568 in unpaid medical expenses.
- Bankruptcy filings due to medical expenses were highest for those suffering from neurological disorders ($34,167, on average) and diabetes ($26,971).
- The single biggest expense for about 50% of all families filing for bankruptcy was hospital bills.
- Prescription drugs accounted for the largest single expense for 18.5% of bankruptcy filers.
via Most American Bankruptcies Include Extreme Medical Expenses | MedHeadlines.
Sanford’s Hiking Trail Got Stimulus Money He Opposed
Sanford’s Hiking Trail Got Stimulus Money He Opposed
Gov. Mark Sanford has spent a good part of South Carolina’s past legislative session railing against, and even actively turning down, portions of Barack Obama’s stimulus package. And when the session ended with Sanford losing his fight to reject $700 million in federal stimulus cash, he abruptly disappeared. Few people knew where he went.
Several days later, it was revealed that the 2012 presidential hopeful was in the midst of a mind-clearing jaunt through the Appalachian Trail, hoping to do some writing after a stressful few months. But even removed from South Carolina politics, the governor couldn’t escape the stimulus.
The economic recovery package enacted by Obama includes money that will help improve the trail on which Sanford has been hiking.
In late April, the U.S. Department of Interior said that $750 million in stimulus cash would be spent on more than 750 projects at national parks across the United States. The total included $650,000 for enhancing the Appalachian Trail. News reports show that $25,000 of those funds will be dedicated towards relocating two miles of the trail in Virginia. How much money will go to the Georgia portion — where Sanford likely is — isn’t immediately clear.
So even as Sanford enjoys the scenic beauty of the woods, he hasn’t removed himself too far from the national political debate. And if the public relations fallout from his sudden disappearance becomes problematic, he can always say he was doing first-hand research on the impact of the stimulus.
via Sanford’s Hiking Trail Got Stimulus Money He Opposed.
Federal Government to offer bailout to Japanese automaker Nissan to produce cars in Japan.
AP source: Ford, Nissan, Tesla to get govt loans
Nissan is developing an all-electric car with 100 miles of pure battery range for release in late 2010. The car will be made in Japan initially but company officials have said they eventually want to build the vehicle at Nissan’s plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Energy Department is lending money to the Ford Motor Co. and two other automakers from a $25 billion fund to develop fuel-efficient vehicles, congressional officials say.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu was scheduled to announce the loan funding for Ford, Nissan Motor Co. and Tesla Motors Inc. on Tuesday in Dearborn, Mich., the officials said. They requested anonymity because an official announcement was pending.
Dozens of auto companies, suppliers and battery makers have sought a total of $38 billion from the loan program. Ford has asked to receive $5 billion in loans by 2011, but it was unclear how much money the automaker would receive. Nissan has applied for an undisclosed amount of assistance, while Tesla has sought $450 million.
via The Associated Press: AP source: Ford, Nissan, Tesla to get govt loans.
The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy
The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy
How the Economic Stimulus Program and New Legislation Can Boost U.S. Economic Growth and Employment
The United States in the 21st century faces an enormous challenge—successfully managing the transformation from a predominantly carbon-intensive economy to becoming a predominantly clean energy-based economy. The reality of global climate change due to rising carbon emissions makes it imperative that the U.S. economy dramatically cut its consumption of traditional fossil fuels, the primary source of carbon dioxide (CO2) delivered into our atmosphere by human activity. Rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is in turn the primary cause of global warming.
This economic transformation will engage a huge range of people and activities. But there are only three interrelated objectives that will define the entire enterprise:
- Dramatically increasing energy efficiency.
- Dramatically lowering the cost of supplying energy from such renewable sources of energy as solar, wind and biomass.
- Mandating limits and then establishing a price on pollution from the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas.
via The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy.
Working Learners
Working Learners
Educating Our Entire Workforce for Success in the 21st Century
On May 8 President Barack Obama encouraged those who have lost their jobs to “no longer just look for a new job, but also to prepare for a better job.” The administration quickly proposed changes to the primary college-tuition grant program—Pell Grants—and the unemployment insurance system to bring postsecondary education within the reach of greater numbers of working class Americans.
What the president proposes, however, is but a first step to address the nation’s need for a well-trained workforce and the needs of those who have entered the workforce but who require further education to get ahead. These “working learners” are now served by a system that is overly focused on crisis intervention at the point of unemployment and getting people back into jobs, and not focused sufficiently on the need for training and education.
Our nation’s existing postsecondary system is bifurcated, with any part adequately providing for the education of working learners. On the one hand are the tightly-structured, traditional college programs that serve the needs of full-time students who are ushered through the system toward completion of a college degree. This system, however, is ill-suited to workers who receive their education over longer periods during their work and family lives, and during occasional gaps in employment. On the other hand, there is a more flexible workforce development system, but it provides an unstructured hodge-podge of training that often fails to lead to a well-conceived career path and that produces little in the way of meaningful educational credentials for both the worker and the employer.
via Working Learners.
Sen. Bond: Banks Provide ‘Too Much Information,’ So We Don’t Need Consumer Protection
OPS: How far down the rabbit hole of insanity does one have to be to believe this?
Sen. Bond: Banks Provide ‘Too Much Information,’ So We Don’t Need Consumer Protection
Today, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) appeared on CNBC to provide his thoughts on, among other things, the consumer protection agency that the Obama administration wants to create as part of its financial regulation package. Like the banking lobby, the Chamber of Commerce, and some conservatives in Congress, Bond is opposed to creating the agency. However, his reasoning seems to be that, in his personal experience, banks actually provide “too much information” to consumers:
I think, really, the idea to have a consumer protection regulator, in addition to a banking regulator, is a bad idea…We bought a bunch of houses in recent years. My wife likes to move. And each year, each time we go through this, you get these stacks of paper. You get too much information. It is not consumer information, and that is part of the problem.
Watch it:
via Wonk Room » Sen. Bond: Banks Provide ‘Too Much Information,’ So We Don’t Need Consumer Protection.
The Public Insurance Plan Is Not Responsible For High CBO Scores
The Public Insurance Plan Is Not Responsible For High CBO Scores
Since the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued very preliminary cost estimates of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee’s health bill and the Senate Finance Committee’s draft legislation, Republicans and some in the media have argued that the somewhat higher-than expected price tags undermine the President’s contention that a new public heath insurance plan would lower health care spending:
- Rep. John Bohner (R-OH): The Congressional Budget Office came out with a score on Senator Kennedy’s bill, just part of the score — of the — of his bill, that says that the public option would cost over $1 trillion, and would cause 23 million Americans to lose their private health care coverage, and only 16 million of which would — would be covered under the — the government plan. [CNN, 6/16/2009]
- ABC News: The President’s chances for an optional health care plan that would be run by the government may be fading after a Congressional Budget Office report found a Democratic plan in the Senate would cost at least a trillion dollars over the ten years and cover just 1/3 of the uninsured. [ABC News, 6/16/2009]
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan. The finance committee has abandoned that. [This Week, 6/21/2009]
- Fortune Magazine’s Nina Easton: And I think the, the big speed bump this week, of course, was that CBO, Congressional Budget Office study that said that the costs of a public plan are going to be well beyond what they expected. [MTP, 6/21/2009]
Watch it:
via Wonk Room » The Public Insurance Plan Is Not Responsible For High CBO Scores.
Note To Roll Call Editors: Insurers Don’t Believe Obama’s Plan Does Enough…To Circumvent Regulations
Note To Roll Call Editors: Insurers Don’t Believe Obama’s Plan Does Enough…To Circumvent Regulations
Roll Call headlined this story “Greater Insurance Regulation Sought: Some Say Obama’s Plan Doesn’t Do Enough.” It seemed fishy though, that the groups ostensibly looking for more regulation are the insurance and banking industries’ lobbying arms, including the American Insurance Association and the Financial Services Roundtable.
And sure enough, if you get down a few paragraphs in the story, what the groups are actually seeking is not more regulation, but the ability to avoid state regulations that they don’t like:
Groups like the American Insurance Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and the American Council of Life Insurers support the White House’s efforts to create a national insurance infrastructure but are also pushing for the creation of an optional federal charter that would allow insurance companies to choose whether to follow state or federal rules.
Bolton Slams Obama For Being ‘Timid’ On Iran, Then Admits U.S. Options Limited Because Of Bush’s Failures
Bolton Slams Obama For Being ‘Timid’ On Iran, Then Admits U.S. Options Limited Because Of Bush’s Failures
Yesterday on Fox News, Sean Hannity and former U.N. ambassador John Bolton joined the right-wing chorus hitting President Obama’s response to the Iranian election crisis. Bolton repeatedly said Obama should act more forcefully and offer the “possibility of concrete assistance” to the Iranian protestors:
BOLTON: Well, it’s not at all what they want, and you know what’s worst of all about this, looking at President Obama, is not only that he’s being timid, he’s being disingenuous. The real reason that he won’t speak out has nothing to do with this argument that we don’t want to meddle. [...]
[Obama] is abandoning the people in the streets and not providing any possibility of concrete assistance to them.
Obama’s (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street
Obama’s (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street – CounterPunch:
How the Financial Reform Plan Protects the Status Quo
By MICHAEL HUDSON
In reaching across the aisle for Republican support – and no doubt future campaign contributions from the financial sector Pres. Obama is morphing into Joe Lieberman. There also is a touch of Boris Yeltsin in his sponsorship of a financial “reform” ominously similar to what advisor Larry Summers backed in Russia – relinquishing government power to a banking elite. The Financial Regulatory Reform proposal promotes Wall Street’s “product,” debt creation, at the expense of the economy at large, and lets financial chieftains continue to self-regulate the debt industry – and to keep scot-free all their gains from the past decade’s worth of fraudulent lending.
Confronting the wreckage of a debt crisis worse than any since the Great Depression, Mr. Obama has achieved what no Republican could have: rescuing the Bush Administration’s pro-creditor policies that fostered the Bubble Economy in the first place. “Most of the financial sector lobby community is happy with what has emerged,” the Financial Times summarized. A spokesman for the Financial Services Forum, a major Wall Street lobbying organization, called the proposals “careful and balanced.”1/ With such endorsements, victims of predatory lending have good reason to worry. The Obama plan is just the opposite from reforming the financial system along lines that progressive Democrats and other critics have urged.
The plan’s six most fatal flaws are apparent in its preamble, which lays out a false diagnosis of the financial problem in a way that whitewashes Wall Street (in contrast to Mr. Obama’s nice televised populist speech giving verbal criticism to “culture of irresponsibility”). A false diagnosis must lead to wrong-headed cures – rarely by accident. There invariably is a financial beneficiary who gains from blind spots in a legal “reform” package.
via CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.
Wanted: Freedom from religion
Wanted: Freedom from religion | Salon
The theocratic repression in Iran is a reminder that there can be no freedom without secular government
In the summer of 1968, as Soviet tanks rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to end the brief period of liberalization known as the “Prague Spring,” W.H. Auden composed a poem titled “August 1968″:
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
Watching the scenes of bravery and brutality that are being played out in Iran brings Auden’s poem to mind. Another line comes to mind as well: the observation by W.E.B. DuBois in 1903 that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.” Racism has not been extinguished, but it has been corralled, by the now-universal principle of the separation of race and state. The demise of political racism leaves political religion standing as the most widespread form of tyranny in the world. The problem of the 21st century is the problem of the creedal line. If the problem is solved, it will be solved by universalizing the principle of the separation of religion and state.
via Wanted: Freedom from religion | Salon.
New Rules Aren’t Enough
New Rules Aren’t Enough | CommonDreams.org
The Obama administration’s financial reforms won’t prevent future economic crises if regulators remain asleep on the job
by Dean Baker
The Obama administration’s proposal for reforming financial regulation has many useful features. In particular, the proposed consumer financial protection agency likely would have prevented many of the worst abuses in the subprime market over the last decade, as well as in other areas of consumer lending.
Other measures, like requiring that standardised derivatives be traded as clearing houses and that hedge funds register their interests with the Securities and Exchange Commission are positive steps towards modernising regulation, although they do not go far enough.
The US Treasury should be trying to standardise all derivatives and have them exchange traded to maximise transparency. There also should be increased public disclosure of hedge fund dealings. But, these are not the biggest flaw in the administration’s regulatory proposals. The biggest flaw is that they help to support the view that the main problem was inadequate regulations, rather than failed regulators.
via New Rules Aren’t Enough | CommonDreams.org.
Obama Running Scared
Obama Running Scared | CommonDreams.org
by Helen Thomas
A universal health care system based on the single-payer model appears to be a bridge too far for President Barack Obama.
A single-payer system, such as Medicare for everyone, would provide health care for all.
President Lyndon Johnson had the courage to weigh in with all his clout to win passage of Medicare and Medicaid.
President Roosevelt put all his chips on the table to win passage of the Social Security Act that makes the elderly more secure.
All around the world, governments have long made medical care available for their citizens. Why not us?
Obama clearly has no stomach for the political battle that any single-payer plan would ignite. So he’s endorsed a step that would allow the government to provide health insurance coverage — not health care — to eligible people. Such government-sponsored health insurance is being considered in Congress as it writes health care reform legislation.
via Obama Running Scared | CommonDreams.org.
Obama’s Right Turn
Obama’s Right Turn | CommonDreams.org
by William Fisher
NEW YORK – Human rights and open government advocates were heartened by President Barack Obama’s pledge during his first week in office to create “an unprecedented level of openness in government” and “establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration”.
But now, well into Obama’s second 100 days in office, many are expressing outrage and disappointment that many of the president’s decisions have followed the path of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
The Obama administration has invoked the “state secrets” privilege several times to prevent lawsuits dealing with “extraordinary renditions” and warrantless wiretapping from ever being heard in court. Justice Department lawyers have argued that detainees at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their detention.
The government has also caved to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to keep any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees from ever entering the U.S., even though the Defense Department has cleared these men for release and declared that they present no threat to U.S. national security.
via Obama’s Right Turn | CommonDreams.org.
‘Public Enemies’ run, not rob, our banks
‘Pretty Boy’ Paulson and the Goldman Gang – Paul B. Farrell: MarketWatch
Commentary: ‘Public Enemies’ run, not rob, our banks today
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, two Great Depressions linked in a mysterious time-warp: Bank robbers and robber banks. Back in the dark days of the first Great Depression John Dillinger was admired, a dapper Robin Hood. Banks were the real villains.
Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and “Machine Gun” Kelly were the “American Idols” of their day — “Public Enemies” to the FBI. But folk heroes to an angry public who cheered when Dillinger destroyed bank records during holdups.
Yes, good ol’ John cared for the little guy, our “stand-in,” a secret way of getting back at the crooks running America’s banks. Imagine him storming into a bank in a three-piece suit sporting a Tommy gun. In broad daylight! A real man. He leaps over a counter confronting a scared teller, gently taps a stack of bills with his gun barrel: “That’s your money, mister?” He nods. “We’re here for the bank’s money, not yours. Put it away.”
via Paul B. Farrell: ‘Public Enemies’ run, not rob, our banks – MarketWatch.
Audacity Would be This: Medicare for Everyone
Audacity Would be This: Medicare for Everyone
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG – By Mark Karlin
The goal and slogan of “healthcare reform” should be quite simple: “Medicare for Everyone.”
Why do we have to wait until we are 65 to be guaranteed the right of health coverage?
Who is publicly against Medicare? Just the fringe right wing loonies in the GOP (although a larger number of Republican politicians oppose it as a government entitlement, but won’t say so because they would be slaughtered at the polls by outraged seniors who love their Medicare.)
Private healthcare insurance only accomplishes two things: increases the costs of healthcare and denies needed care as much as it can get away with.
So when politicians keep talking about free market alternatives as being more efficient: the private health insurance industry proves just the opposite. In order to make a profit or pay high non-profit insurance (think Blue Cross) salaries, they have to add costs onto the healthcare system. It’s that simple.
And they have to deny care as frequently as they can in order to increase profit (or salaries and administrative bureaucracies).
via Audacity Would be This: Medicare for Everyone | BuzzFlash.org.
Big names expected to take on big coal
Big names expected to take on big coal
Actress Daryl Hannah, former Congressman Ken Hechler, and NASA climatologist James Hansen are traveling to Raleigh County.
Hundreds of people are expected at Marsh Fork Elementary in Raleigh County on Tuesday for what’s supposed to be a non-violent demonstration.
To prepare, environmentalists are hosting seminars in peaceful tactics at the Coal River Mountain Watch facility on Monday. A member says it’s an effort to keep tensions low during the demonstration.
The elementary has been in the middle of a debate between environmentalists and Massey Energy for more than four years. The school sits next to a mountaintop removal site and about 400 yards away from an impoundment holding back almost three billion gallons of coal slurry.
via Big names expected to take on big coal-wvpubcast.org.
Public Confidence in Stimulus Package’s Effectiveness Ebbs, Poll Finds
Confidence in Stimulus Plan Ebbs, Poll Finds – washingtonpost.com
Obama’s Approval Rating Remains High, but Shift in Public Outlook Has Political Implications
Barely half of Americans are now confident that President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus measure will boost the economy, and the rapid rise in optimism about the state of the nation that followed the 2008 election has abated, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Overall, 52 percent now say the stimulus package has succeeded or will succeed in restoring the economy, compared with 59 percent two months ago. The falloff in confidence has been sharpest in the hard-hit Midwest, where fewer than half now see the government spending as succeeding. In April, six in 10 Midwesterners said the federal program had worked or would do so.
via Public Confidence in Stimulus Package’s Effectiveness Ebbs, Poll Finds – washingtonpost.com.
Special Interest Money Means Longer Odds for Public Option
Special Interest Money Means Longer Odds for Public Option
As I lamented yesterday, health care is one of those areas where both popular opinion and sound public policy seem to take a backseat to protecting those stakeholders who benefit from the status quo. But can we actually see — statistically — the impact of lobbying by the insurance industry on the prospects for health care reform? I believe that the answer is yes.
Some 37 senators are listed by Howard Dean’s website as supporting the public option so far: 36 Democrats plus Olympia Snowe. To Dean’s list I add Arlen Specter as a ‘yes’ vote, based on a recent public statement.
I decided to build a model to explain and predict whether a particular senator supports the public option. The variables in the model are as follows:
– The senator’s ideology, as measured by his DW-NOMINATE score;
– Per capita health care spending in the senator’s home state;
– Lobbying contributions received by the senator from health insurance PACs since 2004.
Below the jump, I explain each of these in a bit more detail.
via FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Special Interest Money Means Longer Odds for Public Option.
Report: DHS to end use of satellites for domestic spying
OPS: IF you buy this one – I have this bridge…….
Report: DHS to end use of satellites for domestic spying
Department of Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano plans to end domestic law enforcement’s access to spy satellites, a government source told the Associated Press on Monday night.
Funding for the program, announced by the Bush administration in 2007, was included in President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget.
“Napolitano recently reached her decision after the program was discussed with law enforcement officials , and she was told it was not an urgent issue, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it,” the wire service reported .
Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) told AP that deciding to end the program “shows real leadership” by the new Homeland Security secretary. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, called the move a “mistake” and a “step back in the war on terror.
via Raw Story » Report: DHS to end use of satellites for domestic spying.
Cornyn Cites Inaccurate Powerline Blog Post To Claim That The Public Health Insurance Isn’t Popular
OPS: 3/4 of American want single payer or at least a solid Public Option. The Reich will have to lie like there’s no tomorrow to pull this off, which is not a problem for them
Cornyn Cites Inaccurate Powerline Blog Post To Claim That The Public Health Insurance Isn’t Popular
Yesterday, the New York Times and CBS News (NYT/CBS) released a new poll showing broad support for health care reform, with 72 percent of respondents favoring the creation of a publicly-funded health insurance option. The conservative blog Powerline immediately took issue with the poll, arguing (wrongly) that the sample was skewed because 48 percent of respondents reported voting for President Obama last fall, while just 25 percent of respondents reported voting for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Powerline compared the NYT/CBS figures to the actual election results in which Obama won 53 percent of the vote and McCain won 46 percent.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), apparently convinced by Powerline’s argument, cited the blog in two cable news appearances this afternoon to deny that there was any significant public support for the creation of a public health insurance option. “With all due respect to the New York Times and CBS, this polling sample was skewed,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Similarly, on Fox News Cornyn said, “I think there’s been some particularly good blog coverage like Powerline blog talking how that sample was so skewed as to be meaningless.” Watch it:
Don’t Forget Mousavi’s Bloody Past
Robert Baer: Don’t Forget Mousavi’s Bloody Past – TIME
Before we go too far down the road cheering the forces of Iranian democracy, let’s not forget that its public face, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has American blood on his hands. He was Iran’s Prime Minister during most of the 1980s, a time when the country was waging a terrorist campaign against the U.S.
Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from a Lebanese who was present at the creation of the country’s Iranian-backed, Shi’ite militia Hizballah in 1982 and on familiar terms with its most radical and violent members. He wrote: “Are you people crazy backing Mousavi, a patron of Hizballah’s terrorist wing?” (See behind-the-scenes pictures of Mir-Hossein Mousavi.)
Indeed, Mousavi, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1989, almost certainly had a hand in the planning of the Iranian-backed truck-bombing attacks on the U.S. embassy in April 1983 and the Marine barracks in October of that same year. Mousavi, as my Lebanese contact reminded me, dealt directly with Imad Mughniyah, the man largely held responsible for both attacks. (Mughniyah was assassinated in Damascus last year.) The Lebanese said Mughniyah had told him over and over that he, Mughniyah, got along well with Mousavi and trusted him completely.
via Robert Baer: Don’t Forget Mousavi’s Bloody Past – TIME.
The liberals’ Iran dilemma
The liberals’ Iran dilemma – | | The Indianapolis Star
By E.J. Dionne
Protesters hit the streets demanding freedom and fair elections. A repressive government strikes back and denounces the dissidents as unpatriotic subversives. Change, even revolution, is in the air.Liberals and progressives should be natural allies of those trying to overturn the existing order. They stand for democracy, equality and freedom, or they stand for nothing. In principle, it’s conservatives who preach prudence.
But there is a tension in the progressive worldview. Usually, the left also favors restraint in foreign policy. It typically prefers negotiation to war, advises caution in the use of American power, and recoils at what it sees as the trigger-happiness of parts of the right. Iraq is Exhibit A for the dangers of presuming that American power can easily remake the world.As Iranians battle in the streets to transform their nation, President Barack Obama finds himself caught squarely in this liberal dilemma.
via The liberals’ Iran dilemma | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star.
Financial Reform
Financial Reform
Americans wanted help, hope, and progressive reform. What they have received instead is voluminous government edicts, legislative reform bills, or executive orders which largely prop up the old crumbling economy.
The Obama administration took office amid a wave of change in Washington, D.C. Congress and the White House were now controlled by liked-minded progressives looking to get things done and change the status quo. The old Republican regime was marginalized to such a degree that its votes were no longer necessary to pass any legislation.
With this sort of power and authority it would seem as if major sweeping mandates would pass in a flash; reform would come in wave after wave. Unfortunately, this is not at all what happened in the U.S. The Obama administration has shown that it is, after all, nothing more than a cog in the American political machine. The vast reforms proposed for the banking industry, the insurance industry, the credit and finance markets, or stock and commodity trading, were all swept quickly under the rug or watered down to the point of becoming irrelevant.
Americans wanted help, hope, and progressive reform. What they have received instead is voluminous government edicts, legislative reform bills, or executive orders which largely prop up the old crumbling economy. According to MediaChannel.org, the elite Wall Street interests were given free reign to pick and choose which oversight they would prefer.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Do Americans Have a Right to Healthcare?
Do Americans Have a Right to Healthcare? - by Staff, The Nation
The Nation’s Washington editor Chris Hayes debates Reihan Salam of The National Review.
In part one of a three-part series, The Nation‘s Washington editor Chris Hayes debates Reihan Salam of The National Review over healthcare. Is it a universal human right, as Hayes says, or a responsibility, as Salam says? What’s the best system for implementing healthcare in the United States? Will it save money or cost money? Watch and decide.
via Do Americans Have a Right to Healthcare? | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Why a Car-Free Suburbia May Become a Reality
Why a Car-Free Suburbia May Become a Reality
One man in California’s East Bay is attempting to build a new car-free community — and his enthusiasm is catching on.
California’s East Bay — the collection of towns, cities, and suburbs across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco — has a lot to boast about. There’s the perpetually great weather, enlightened inhabitants, and a halfway decent, if in my opinion overpriced, public transit system in the form of BART. Yet despite BART’s 43 stations spanning 95 miles, most folks in the area find they need a car, too.
But one man thinks his town, Hayward — or at least a part of it — can make the leap to automobile-free. “I want to live a lifestyle that’s less dependent on cars,” says Sherman Lewis, a retired poli-sci professor at Cal State East Bay and president of the Hayward Area Planning Association since 1978. But, he admits, he’s chosen a relatively difficult way to achieve it, “by trying find 950 other families who want to live the same way.”
Lewis has developed plans for Quarry Village, a 1,000-unit development about a mile from the Hayward BART station and a short skip from the Cal State campus and downtown Hayward. It includes townhouses, condos, walking paths, shuttle buses to the rail … and no garages. It would fill 22 acres on a former rock quarry (hence the name) currently owned by Caltrans, the California DOT; the land is not yet for sale, but Lewis says the agency is supportive of his redevelopment vision. The residences will be officially affordable, at least by Hayward’s definition: studios to six-bedrooms between $250,000 and $650,000. Lewis believes the larger units will appeal to telecommuters, who can use the extra bedrooms as offices.
via Why a Car-Free Suburbia May Become a Reality | Environment | AlterNet.
Rev. Moon, North Korea & the Bushes
Rev. Moon, North Korea & the Bushes
By Robert Parry – June 16, 2009 (Originally Posted Oct. 11, 2000)
Editor’s Note: As the nuclear crisis with North Korea worsens, a little-known part of the story is how one of America’s favorite right-wing financial benefactors, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, secretly funneled money to the communist leadership in Pyongyang while also supporting the Bush Family in the United States.
Though holding an American residency permit and boasting about the influence that his Washington Times gives him in the U.S. capital, Moon breezily ignored U.S. legal embargoes against financial dealings with North Korea’s dictatorship, as Consortiumnews.com reported on Oct. 11, 2000, less than a month before the election that restored the Bush Family to power:
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s business empire, which includes the conservative Washington Times, paid millions of dollars to North Korea’s communist leaders in the early 1990s when the hard-line government needed foreign currency to finance its weapons programs, according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents.
via Consortiumnews.com.
Mind-enhancing drugs: Are they a no-brainer?
Mind-enhancing drugs: Are they a no-brainer?
Advocates say they are an irresistible way of improving students’ performance. Critics argue they are a dangerous fad.
In the middle of the exam season, the offer of a drug that could improve results might excite students but would be likely to terrify their parents. Now, a distinguished professor of bioethics says it is time to embrace the possibilities of “brain boosters” – chemical cognitive enhancement. The provocative suggestion comes from John Harris, director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Ritalin is a stimulant drug, best known as a treatment for hyperactive children. But it has also found a ready black market among students, especially in the US, who are desperate to succeed and are turning to it in preference to the traditional stimulants of coffee and cigarettes. Users say it helps them to focus and concentrate, and this has been confirmed in research studies on adults.
David Green, a student at the University of Harvard, told The Washington Post: “In all honesty, I haven’t written a paper without Ritalin since my junior year in high school.”
via Mind-enhancing drugs: Are they a no-brainer? – Science, News – The Independent.
The Virginity Movement, Rebranded
The Virginity Movement, Rebranded – The Nation
Keith Deltano has a high school student tied up onstage and is precariously dangling a cinder block over the young man’s genital region. Deltano is not a school bully or an escaped lunatic. He’s an abstinence proponent, a comedian who uses this brick trick to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of condoms (although the actual lesson learned may be to steer clear of comics brandishing bricks).
Under the Bush administration, stories like this were commonplace. There was the Virginia Beach teacher who told her ninth graders they could be arrested for having premarital sex. And the abstinence teacher who explained to the young women in his class that women are like wrapped lollipops, and that after having sex they’re nothing more than “poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled suckers.”
This would be comical if not for the fact that these people have been teaching–or not teaching, more accurately–young Americans about sex. And then there are the assorted ridiculous sex-scare policy decisions–like the FDA holding up over-the-counter status for emergency contraception out of fear that it would make young women promiscuous or even lead to teens forming “sex-based cults.”
via The Virginity Movement, Rebranded.
IMF and flu preparedness don’t belong in Iraq war supplemental funding
IMF and flu preparedness don’t belong in Iraq war supplemental funding
What do all these things have in common: Cash-for-clunkers, IMF funding, pandemic flu preparations, and anti-narcotic aid to Mexico? They’re all considered “supplemental war funding” that the Senate approved in a late-night session July 18th.
Excuse me, Mr. President, but I thought I heard you promise not to use supplemental war funding bills any more. Apparently, according to PoliFact, I misheard (thank Bush for only funding Iraq and Afghanistan through September, 2009, instead of the whole year). But still, I’d really like to know how those programs are related to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, that’s right. They’re not.
I’ve railed against emergency supplemental war funding bills for several years now. After all, we’ve been in Iraq for just over six years and in Afghanistan for nearly eight – you’d think we knew how much they were costing us every year. To his credit, Obama claims that he’s going to regularly fund the military in Iraq and Afghanistan via the normal appropriations bills starting in fiscal year 2010 (as of October 1, 2009). We’ll see. But there’s no way that a cash-for-clunkers program has anything to do with a war supplemental.
via Scholars and Rogues » IMF and flu preparedness don’t belong in Iraq war supplemental funding.
Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut
Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut – CQ Politics |
He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched him to Damascus as Iran’s ambassador, according to former CIA and military officials.
The ambassador in turn hosted several meetings of the cell that would carry out the Beirut attacks, which were overheard by the National Security Agency.
“We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon,” retired Navy Admiral James “Ace” Lyons related by telephone Monday. In 1983 Lyons was deputy chief of Naval Operations, and deeply involved in the events in Lebanon.
via CQ Politics | SpyTalk – Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut.
Barney Frank Files Bill To Decriminalize Pot
Barney Frank Files Bill To Decriminalize Pot 
A controversial law in Massachusetts could go national if Congressman Barney Frank gets his way.
Frank has filed a bill that would eliminate federal penalties for personal possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana.
It would also make the penalty for using marijuana in public just $100.
“I think John Stuart Mill had it right in the 1850s,” said Congressman Frank, “when he argued that individuals should have the right to do what they want in private, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else. It’s a matter of personal liberty. Moreover, our courts are already stressed and our prisons are over-crowded. We don’t need to spend our scarce resources prosecuting people who are doing no harm to others.”
Frank filed a similar bill last year, but it failed.
The law passed in Massachusetts last November.
Ten other states have also reduced penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana – in some cases they are a civil fine. These states include California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, and Oregon.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
via Barney Frank Files Bill To Decriminalize Pot – wbztv.com.
MISSING since Thursday: Where In The World Is SC Gov. Mark Sanford?
MISSING: Where In The World Is SC Gov. Mark Sanford?
Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), a champion of both economic and social conservatism, has gone missing, and has not been seen since this past Thursday.
From The State:
First lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press today her husband has been gone for several days and she doesn’t know where he is.
The governor’s personal and state phones have been turned off and he has not responded to phone and text message since Thursday, a source said.
Jenny Sanford said she was not concerned.
She said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.
The governor’s office issued a statement Monday afternoon: “Gov. Sanford is taking some time away from the office this week to recharge after the stimulus battle and the legislative session, and to work on a couple of projects that have fallen by the wayside.
via Talking Points Memo | Breaking News and Analysis.
Unemployment: The Hardest-Hit States (CHART)
Unemployment: The Hardest-Hit States (CHART)
Michigan has the highest unemployment rate of any state at 14.1 percent, a distinction the state has held for 25 of the last 26 months.
The next-highest unemployment rates after Michigan’s were found in Oregon (12.4 percent), Rhode Island and South Carolina (12.1 percent), and California (11.5 percent), according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Friday. The unemployment rate reached double-digits in five states and the District of Columbia in May. The national rate is 9.4 percent.
Some economists have touted “green shoots” and talked up the recession as “bottoming out” this year. But the misplaced optimism hasn’t reached everybody.
via Unemployment: The Hardest-Hit States (CHART).
Outsourcing on the Rise, Not Just in China, India
Outsourcing on the Rise, Not Just in China, India
In addition to China and India, companies are increasingly outsourcing jobs and sending them to places such as Brazil, Vietnam and even Canada.
While China and India remain the most popular destinations in the world for outsourced jobs, companies are increasingly looking to diversify their outsourcing, sending jobs to numerous companies an taking advantage of the expertise available in each region, according to PC World.
In addition to China and India, companies are increasingly outsourcing jobs and sending them to places such as Brazil, Vietnam and even Canada.
China and India are certainly big draws because of the huge populations and relatively cheap labor, however, market saturation is causing prices in those nations to rise, making nations like Brazil and Vietnam more attractive.
Outsourcing exploits cheap labor, takes away American jobs, drives down the wages of those Americans still employed in the industry and lessens the quality of goods and services.
Recently a study found that even America’s newest class of jobs – “green collar” jobs – are being sent overseas.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
By Robert Parry
The usual knock on government programs is that they’re not as efficient as the private sector, which we’re told can provide the same product for less money and with higher quality. Thus, it should be no big deal when the public and private collide because the private sector should prevail.
However, in providing health insurance, those rules clearly don’t apply, which is why congressional Republicans and so-called “centrist” Democrats are going to such lengths to deny the American people access to a public option on health insurance.
Indeed, if a public option were to be piggybacked onto the existing Medicare bureaucracy, the chances for savings could be impressive for average Americans and the overall American economy.
Insurance middlemen could be eliminated; investigators who ferret out “preexisting conditions” wouldn’t be needed; doctors could save on administrative costs; the burden on U.S. industry providing health benefits could be reduced; and more money could be freed to cover the nearly 50 million uninsured or for actual doctoring.
For a nation facing multiple fiscal crises – all complicated by the costs of health care – one might think that the most sure thing in the health care debate would be to allow a cost-saving public option, which as President Barack Obama says would help keep private health insurers “honest” regarding their promises to trim waste and control premiums.
via Consortiumnews.com.
Roubini’s View of Recovery
Roubini’s View of Recovery
Many have said that the slight market recovery and the return of oil profitability were signs the market was recovering. Roubini has a different idea, believing the U.S. is experiencing something aptly called a “W recession.”
Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, is considered an authority on global macroeconomics. His tenure at NYU has brought new prestige to the Stern School, an already renowned institution, and his professional career includes advisory stints with the U.S. Treasury and International Monetary Fund. His RGE Monitor is a successful research and analysis firm for international economics and finance, yet Roubini’s popular acclaim has come in light of the downturn of the past two years.
Roubini is widely considered a “doomsayer” in the economic community, but for the most part his pronouncements about the timing and severity of America’s national collapse were accurate. A new piece published in The Taipei Times, as well as on his own website outlines the “recovery” being witnessed in the U.S. today.
Many have said that the slight market recovery and the return of oil profitability were signs that demand was trending up and the market was recovering. Roubini has a different idea. He believes that the United States is experiencing something aptly called a “W recession.” This is not an ode to the former president whose administration is responsible for much of the economic turmoil, but rather to the shape off market trends.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Former Rep. Tom Davis To Elderly Woman With Diabetes: ‘Good Luck’ Finding Health Insurance
Former Rep. Tom Davis To Elderly Woman With Diabetes: ‘Good Luck’ Finding Health Insurance
On CSPAN’s Washington Journal yesterday, former Republican congressman Tom Davis received a call from an elderly woman named Dorothy, who said that because she has diabetes, health insurance companies “reject” her. “They don’t even want to accept me,” said Dorothy. “Is that, is that possible they could get away with that? That seems like discriminating.”
Davis responded by saying that he understood her “dilemma” and that she probably wouldn’t be able to retire by 62 as she desires. Advising her that she’d be alright if she found “a job with a major employer,” Davis said it would be “difficult” on her own:
DAVIS: I don’t think you’ll find, probably be able to find some health insurance but if its with a small business or you’re going out on your own, it’s difficult at this point. There may be a government plan or private plans that are mandated coming out of this that are maybe able to help you. … I don’t know any reason why you shouldn’t be able to find something out there, but you want to look for an employer that has a health care plan. Good luck.
Dodd comes out in support of marriage equality.
Dodd comes out in support of marriage equality.
Yesterday, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) wrote an op-ed in the The Meriden Record-Journal announcing that he had shifted his position on gay marriage. He now supports full marriage equality:
Public officials aren’t supposed to change their minds. But I firmly believe that it’s important to keep learning. Last week, while I was in Connecticut meeting with members of the gay and lesbian community from across the state, I had the opportunity to tell them what I’ve learned about marriage, and about equality.
While I’ve long been for extending every benefit of marriage to same-sex couples, I have in the past drawn a distinction between a marriage-like status (“civil unions”) and full marriage rights.
I believe that, when my daughters grow up, barriers to marriage equality for same-sex couples will seem as archaic, and as unfair, as the laws we once had against inter-racial marriage. And I want them to know that, even if he was a little late, their dad came down on the right side of history.
via Think Progress » Dodd comes out in support of marriage equality..
Barack Hoover Obama — (Harper’s Magazine)
Barack Hoover Obama – By Ken Silverstein 
Kevin Baker has an excellent piece in the July issue of the magazine (available to subscribers) about the similarities between our current president and our thirty-first, Herbert Hoover:
The comparison is not meant to be flippant. It has nothing to do with the received image of Hoover, the dour, round-collared, gerbil-cheeked technocrat who looked on with indifference while the country went to pieces. To understand how dire our situation is now it is necessary to remember that when he was elected president in 1928, Herbert Hoover was widely considered the most capable public figure in the country. Hoover—like Obama—was almost certainly someone gifted with more intelligence, a better education, and a greater range of life experience than FDR. And Hoover, through the first three years of the Depression, was also the man who comprehended better than anyone else what was happening and what needed to be done. And yet he failed.
Mind you, Baker is not (like the majority of the GOP) rooting for Obama to fail:
It is impossible not to wish desperately for his success as he tries to grapple with all that confronts him: a worldwide depression, catastrophic climate change, an unjust and inadequate health-care system, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ongoing disgrace of Guant·namo, a floundering education system. Obama’s failure would be unthinkable. And yet the best indications now are that he will fail, because he will be unable—indeed he will refuse—to seize the radical moment at hand.
Every instinct the president has honed, every voice he hears in Washington, every inclination of our political culture urges incrementalism, urges deliberation, if any significant change is to be brought about. The trouble is that we are at one of those rare moments in history when the radical becomes pragmatic, when deliberation and compromise foster disaster. The question is not what can be done but what must be done.
via Barack Hoover Obama—By Ken Silverstein (Harper’s Magazine).
Women’s voices ‘make plants grow faster’ finds Royal Horticultural Society
Women’s voices ‘make plants grow faster’ finds Royal Horticultural Society - Telegraph
Talking to plants makes them grow, especially if you are a woman, according to an experiment by the Royal Horticultural Society.
Women gardeners’ voices speed up growth of tomato plants much more than men’s, it found.
In an experiment run over a month, they found that tomato plants grew up to two inches taller if they were serenaded by the dulcet tones of a female rather than a male.
via Women’s voices ‘make plants grow faster’ finds Royal Horticultural Society – Telegraph.
A Ticket For Marijuana Possession In Cook County? Reduced Pot Penalty Proposed As Budget Woes Deepen
A Ticket For Marijuana Possession In Cook County? Reduced Pot Penalty Proposed As Budget Woes Deepen
Getting caught with a small amount of marijuana would not automatically lead to arrest if a Cook County Commissioner gets her way.
An ordinance proposed this week by Commissioner Earlean Collins (D-Chicago) would allow county sheriffs to write tickets for possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana rather than automatically making arrests. It’s an effort, she says, to simultaneously boost sagging county revenues and ease overcrowding at the Cook County Jail.
“I know we’re going to have a deficit budget,” Collins told the Huffington Post. “This ordinance would help the County generate money and reduce the jail population.
via A Ticket For Marijuana Possession In Cook County? Reduced Pot Penalty Proposed As Budget Woes Deepen.
The private health industry’s time is up
Obama has been supportive of a public option, but how do you solve the healthcare problem when you fail to deal with its root?
| Physicians for a National Health Program
By Bernie Sanders
Washington – President Obama has indicated he wants a healthcare bill on his desk sometime around October, before we worry about timetables, however, we as a nation have to answer two very fundamental questions.
First, should all Americans be entitled to healthcare in the same way we respond to other basic needs such as education, police, and fire protection? Second, if we are to provide quality healthcare to all, how do we accomplish that in the most cost-effective way?
The answer to the first question is pretty clear, and one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected president. Most Americans believe that all of us should have healthcare coverage, and that nobody should be left out of the system. The real debate is how we accomplish that goal in an affordable and sustainable way.
To me, the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of healthcare in our country and move toward a publicly funded, single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach.
via The private health industry’s time is up | Physicians for a National Health Program.
Court will not revive Plame’s lawsuit
Court will not revive Plame’s lawsuit
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will not revive a lawsuit that former CIA operative Valerie Plame brought against former members of the Bush administration.
The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
A lower court last year threw out the lawsuit in which Plame and Wilson accused former Vice President Dick Cheney and several former high-ranking administration officials of revealing her identity to reporters in 2003. Plame and Wilson said that violated their constitutional rights.
The lawsuit named former presidential adviser Karl Rove; Cheney’s former top aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby; and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that Plame and Wilson did not meet the legal standard for constitutional claims, in part because the lawsuit hinges on alleged violations of the Privacy Act — a law that does not cover the president or the vice president’s offices.
via The Associated Press: Court will not revive Plame’s lawsuit.
Judging John YooThe ruling that could actually lead to accountability for torture.
OPS: Boo Hoo Yoo
Judging John YooThe ruling that could actually lead to accountability for torture. - - Slate Magazine
In 2002, Justice Department lawyer John Yoo wrote a memo recommending that Jose Padilla, arrested in Chicago in the wake of 9/11 and held on suspicion of plotting a dirty-bomb attack, be classified as an enemy combatant. Yoo also wrote memos arguing that American law does not prevent the president from ordering such enemy combatants tortured. This January, after enduring years of abuse in prison, Padilla sued Yoo for violating his constitutional rights.
Judge Jeffrey White ruled that Padilla’s allegations were plausible enough to justify denying Yoo’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. White was appointed by George W. Bush the year Yoo was writing his memos.
White’s decision is the first of its kind: Until now, although other lawsuits have been brought, no government official has faced personal liability for his role in the torture or deaths of detainees. But it probably won’t be the last. These cases are just beginning to address the fraught questions of justice that have emerged in the aftermath of the Bush era—what atrocities were committed in the name of national security, who bears responsibility, and how should they be punished? Although neither the Obama administration nor most members of Congress want to deal with these questions directly, they’re even more opposed to letting judges (and juries) take a crack at them. Padilla v. Yoo is an example of a surprising development: a conservative judge putting pressure on the Democrats in Washington to create some system of accountability for the Bush administration. It could help spawn more such rulings.
via Padilla v. Yoo: accountability for torture. – By Ady Barkan – Slate Magazine.
Court OKs dumping gold mine waste in lake
Court OKs dumping gold mine waste in lake - Salon.com
Jun 22nd, 2009 | WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal permit to dump waste from an Alaskan gold mine into a nearby lake, even though all its fish would be killed. Environmentalists feared the ruling could weaken protection of other lakes, streams and waterways from mining waste.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices said a federal appeals court wrongly blocked on environmental grounds the Army Corps of Engineer’s waste disposal permit for the Kensington gold mine 45 miles north of Juneau. The mine, which had been closed since 1928, has been awaiting a resumption of operation, pending approval of the waste disposal issue.
The court ruling clears the way for as much as 4.5 million tons of mine tailings — waste left after metals are extracted from the ore — to be dumped into Lower Slate Lake in the Tongass National Forest and about 3 miles from the mine, instead of being disposed of in a special tailings pond.
via Court OKs dumping gold mine waste in lake – Salon.com.
American Airlines Exposes Bush’s Big Lie: Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!
American Airlines Exposes Bush’s Big Lie: Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!
American Airlines itself is the source for information that AA Flights 11 (North Tower) and 77 (Pentagon) did not fly on 911. These flights are critical to the the government’s crumbling cover up! Without those flights, Bush and his murderous co-conspirators will have to revise the big lie. They will have to concoct yet another cover story from the ground up! A cover up is on the brink of collapse when those guilty of capital crimes and high treason either turn on one another or are forced to revise the lie!
Already several demonstrable lies (many referenced in previous EC articles) are probable cause to begin a Federal Grand Jury investigation of George W. Bush’s role in 911. Bush should be compelled by subpoena and Federal Marshals to testify under oath before an independent Federal Grand Jury. The AA revelations literally demand it!
WikiScanner discovered that American Airlines changed their Wikipedia entry to state that Flights 11 and 77 never flew on 9/11.
Original entry was:
Two American Airlines aircraft were hijacked and crashed during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack: American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and American Airlines Flight 11 (a Boeing 767).
New entry is:
Two American Airlines aircraft were hijacked and crashed during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack: Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and Flight 11 (a Boeing 767). Although these flights were daily departures before and a month after September 11, 2001. Neither flight 11 nor 77 were scheduled on September 11, 2001. The records kept by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov/gis/) do not list either flight that day.
A Google search of the IP address that made the change – 144.9.8.21 – is located at American Airlines.
Why the change American airlines? Did the flights actually operate or did we just imagine all of that?
–LiveLeak
via The Existentialist Cowboy: American Airlines Exposes Bush’s Big Lie: Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!.
Comcast experimenting with Big Brother technology for your cable box
Comcast experimenting with Big Brother technology for your cable box
Excerpted from NewTeeVee:
If you have some tinfoil handy, now might be a good time to fashion a hat. At the Digital Living Room conference today, Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who’s in your living room.
The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the “holy grail” because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads. Yikes.
Kunkel said the system wouldn’t be based on facial recognition, so there wouldn’t be a picture of you on file (we hope). Instead, it would distinguish between different members of your household by recognizing body forms. He stressed that the system is still in the experimental phase, that there hasn’t been consumer testing, and that any rollout “must add value” to the viewing experience beyond serving ads.
Wow. That’s just plain creepy. If you follow the link, Comcast made a statement in response, then the reporter responded back. It sounds like Comcast is trying to get away with something. Either way, I don’t trust this at all. Even the thought that the cable company might have the ability to spy on me in my own home, or would even think about spying on me in my own home, is cause for great concern.
via Comcast experimenting with Big Brother technology for your cable box « Last Free Voice.
TECHNOLOGY; Many Tools Of Big Brother Are Now Up And Running
FLASHBACK December 2002 - The New York Times
TECHNOLOGY; Many Tools Of Big Brother Are Now Up And Running
In the Pentagon research effort to detect terrorism by electronically monitoring the civilian population, the most remarkable detail may be this: Most of the pieces of the system are already in place.
Because of the inroads the Internet and other digital network technologies have made into everyday life over the last decade, it is increasingly possible to amass Big Brother-like surveillance powers through Little Brother means. The basic components include everyday digital technologies like e-mail, online shopping and travel booking, A.T.M. systems, cellphone networks, electronic toll-collection systems and credit-card payment terminals.
In essence, the Pentagon’s main job would be to spin strands of software technology that would weave these sources of data into a vast electronic dragnet.
Technologists say the types of computerized data sifting and pattern matching that might flag suspicious activities to government agencies and coordinate their surveillance are not much different from programs already in use by private companies. Such programs spot unusual credit card activity, for example, or let people at multiple locations collaborate on a project.
via TECHNOLOGY; Many Tools Of Big Brother Are Now Up And Running – The New York Times.
Under Misspelled Banner, Buchanan And White Nationalist Brimelow Argue For English-Only Initiatives
Under Misspelled Banner, Buchanan And White Nationalist Brimelow Argue For English-Only Initiatives
On Saturday, Pat Buchanan hosted a conference to discuss how Republicans can regain a majority in America. During one discussion, panelists suggested supporting English-only initiatives as a prime way of attracting “working class white Democrats.” The discussion ridiculed Judge Sotomayor for the fact that she studied children’s classics to improve her grammar while attending college. The panelists also suggested that, without English as the official language, President Obama would force Americans to speak Spanish.
One salient feature of the event was the banner hanging over the English-only advocates. The word conference was spelled “Conferenece.” View it here:
Coal Exec Challenges Climate Scientist To Debate (VIDEO)
Coal Exec Challenges Climate Scientist To Debate (VIDEO)
Massey Energy President Don Blankenship challenged one of the world’s top climate experts to a debate on global warming this week after learning NASA scientist James Hansen would be attending an anti-mountaintop removal protest in West Virginia led by Bobby Kennedy Jr.
The “Charleston Gazette” reports that Blankenship said he’s:
“…More than willing to invite Dr. Hansen to have a factual discussion about coal mining in West Virginia, which provides thousands of jobs in the state and provides low-cost energy to millions of Americans. I look forward to hearing from Dr. Hansen, as I’m sure a productive dialogue – not publicity arrests – is what Dr. Hansen, a university professor who values an exchange of ideas, surely, must desire.”
Hansen is best known for his climate research and the testimony he gave to Congress in 1988 that helped put global warming at the forefront of environmental activism. Blankenship, on the other hand, doesn’t believe global warming exists:
via Coal Exec Challenges Climate Scientist To Debate (VIDEO).
US shoppers misled by greenwash, Congress told
American shoppers misled by greenwash, Congress told
98% of supposedly environmentally friendly products in US supermarkets make false or confusing claims, campaigners say
More than 98% of supposedly natural and environmentally friendly products on US supermarket shelves are making potentially false or misleading claims, Congress has been told. And 22% of products making green claims bear an environmental badge that has no inherent meaning, said Scot Case, of the environmental consulting firm TerraChoice.
The study of nearly 4,000 consumer products found “greenwashing” in nearly every product category – from a lack of verifiable information to outright lies.
Even the experts are confused. Case, whose firm runs its own Ecologo certification programme, admitted he had bought a refrigerator only to find it failed to meet its claims of energy efficiency.
via US shoppers misled by greenwash, Congress told | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
Fuel Efficiency How To: Simple Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage
10 Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage
How often do you have to stop and fill up your tank? Frequent trips to the gas station may be a sign that you’re not maximizing your car’s fuel efficiency. As it turns out, trading your ride in for a hybrid isn’t the only way to improve your gas mileage. Here are some simple pointers to get started.
Lighten your load. Take out your golf clubs, toolbox and other heavy items when you don’t need them. Any extra weight reduces your car’s fuel efficiency.
Use cruise control as much as possible because driving at a constant speed increases your gas mileage. Plus, it sure makes that daily commute a little more bearable.
Switch into overdrive to decrease the engine’s speed and save gas.
via Fuel Efficiency How To: Simple Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage | EcoSalon – The Green Gathering.
Donald Rumsfeld in Repose
Donald Rumsfeld in Repose – TIME 
Unrepentant Rumsfeld Opens Up: Slams The Media, Still Rages At Rice And Powell
For a few months after his departure as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld occupied a suite of government-provided transition offices in a high-rise building in Rosslyn, Virginia, up the Potomac River a short way from the Pentagon. There he began sorting his papers for a memoir and charting his next course.
Rumsfeld’s roots were in Chicago, where he and his wife Joyce still enjoyed an extensive network of friendships and where he had returned after his first stint as secretary. But this time he chose to remain in Washington, eventually renting space in a downtown office building, hiring a staff of several people, and setting up a new headquarters not far from his house in the city. On the walls of the office, Rumsfeld hung photos of Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, framed certificates marking his own years of service under several presidents, and other mementos. In a corner stood a parting gift from the Joint Chiefs of Staff: a bronze bust of Winston Churchill with a cigar in his mouth. The inscription, quoting Churchill, read, “Victory is never final. Defeat is never fatal. It is courage that counts.”
Rumsfeld explained his decision to stay in Washington as a matter of convenience that allowed him ready access to his Pentagon files and facilitated work with the Library of Congress to archive his personal papers. It also kept him near friends and former associates and afforded a close sidelines view of the capital’s political scene, although as the Bush administration ran out its term, he purposefully maintained a low profile, giving few public speeches or media interviews and spending large chunks of his time at two other homes outside Washington — the old manor in St. Michaels, Maryland, and the farm in Taos, New Mexico.
Several longtime friends who visited Rumsfeld in the weeks after he left office described him as somewhat subdued initially, but it wasn’t long before the former secretary was exhibiting his customary exuberance in private gatherings. “He’s extraordinarily resilient,” said Frank Carlucci. “You could bash him all you want and he’ll bounce back right away. It rolls off him.”
via Donald Rumsfeld in Repose — Printout — TIME.
Kodak Kills Kodachrome Film
Kodak Kills Kodachrome Film
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Sorry, Paul Simon, Kodak is taking your Kodachrome away.
The Eastman Kodak Co. announced Monday it’s retiring its most senior film because of declining customer demand in an increasingly digital age.
The world’s first commercially successful color film, immortalized in song by Simon, spent 74 years in Kodak’s portfolio. It enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s but in recent years has nudged closer to obscurity: Sales of Kodachrome are now just a fraction of 1 percent of the company’s total sales of still-picture films, and only one commercial lab in the world still processes it.
Those numbers and the unique materials needed to make it convinced Kodak to call its most recent manufacturing run the last, said Mary Jane Hellyar, the outgoing president of Kodak’s Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group.
“Kodachrome is particularly difficult (to retire) because it really has become kind of an icon,” Hellyar said.
via Kodak Kills Kodachrome Film.
Towards an Inflationary Depression
Towards an Inflationary Depression
A macroeconomic review
by Bob Chapman
As Emperor Obama (Romulus the Usurper) fires GM’s CEO, steals money from Chrysler’s bondholders, puts together Public-Private Investment Partnerships (PPIP’s) that will privatize gains and socialize losses in an attempt to stabilize derivative prices by having banks buy their toxic waste from one another in the usual “smoke and mirror” tradition of Wall Street, and creates what currently is an annualized 1.8 trillion dollar federal budget deficit that will grow exponentially over time to finance zombie banker bailouts, to fascistically nationalize the financial, insurance and auto manufacturing industries, and to provide inane, flash-in-the-pan, socialistic spending programs (euphemistically called “stimulus packages” that will do little or nothing to stimulate production or to create permanent jobs), while simultaneously supporting the Fed’s actions, which amount to little more than using chewing gum and bailing wire to keep the money and credit markets from collapsing as it creates and distributes, in arrogant, secretive, crony-capitalist fashion, a gargantuan pile of counterfeit monopoly money in an amount on par with total US GDP for an entire year, you can just sense and feel that there is now a runaway, hyperinflationary freight train rumbling down the tracks at ever greater speed that is soon going to derail and create a train wreck out of our economy.
Since hyperinflation is clearly in our future, let’s talk about what inflation really is, what causes it, what the different degrees or levels of inflation are, and what it takes to put a stop to inflation?
By modern definitions, inflation is basically an overall increase in the prices charged for goods and services in a particular economy over time. This is a pretty simple concept, but there is some real confusion as to what the root cause of inflation is. It does not come from people willy-nilly charging more for their goods and services. People can raise prices all they like, but if there is not enough money and credit available to purchase their goods and services at the prices they are charging, they will eventually have to either lower their prices, or expect to make far fewer sales.
via Towards an Inflationary Depression.
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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. 
