Archive for June, 2009

Bacteria can anticipate a future event and prepare for it

OPS:  We’re Screwed.

Israeli scientists show bacteria can plan ahead

Bacteria can anticipate a future event and prepare for it, according to new research at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In a paper that appeared today in Nature, Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel, doctoral student Amir Mitchell and research associate Dr. Orna Dahan of the Institute’s Molecular Genetics Department, together with Prof. Martin Kupiec and Gal Romano of Tel Aviv University, examined microorganisms living in environments that change in predictable ways. Their findings show that these microorganisms’ genetic networks are hard-wired to ‘foresee’ what comes next in the sequence of events and begin responding to the new state of affairs before its onset. E. coli bacteria, for instance, which normally cruise harmlessly down the digestive tract, encounter a number of different environments on their way. In particular, they find that one type of sugar – lactose – is invariably followed by a second sugar – maltose – soon afterward. Pilpel and his team of the Molecular Genetics Department, checked the bacterium’s genetic response to lactose, and found that, in addition to the genes that enable it to digest lactose, the gene network for utilizing maltose was partially activated. When they switched the order of the sugars, giving the bacteria maltose first, there was no corresponding activation of lactose genes, implying that bacteria have naturally ‘learned’ to get ready for a serving of maltose after a lactose appetizer.

via Israeli scientists show bacteria can plan ahead | Eureka! Science News.

The Fight Over Evangelizing Military Chaplains

Christian Soldiers  | Newsweek.com

The growing controversy over military chaplains using the armed forces to spread the Word.

Ever since former president George W. Bush referred to the war on terror as a “crusade” in the days after the September 11 attacks, many have charged that the United States was conducting a holy war, pitting a Christian America against the Muslim world. That perception grew as prominent military leaders such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin described the wars in evangelical terms, casting the U.S. military as the “army of God.” Although President Obama addressed the Muslim world this month in an attempt to undo the Bush administration’s legacy of militant Christian rhetoric that often antagonized Muslim countries, several recent stories have framed the issue as a wider problem of an evangelical military culture that sees spreading Christianity as part of its mission.

A May article in Harper’s by Jeff Sharlet illustrated a military engaged in an internal battle over religious practice. Then came news about former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Scripture-themed briefings to President Bush that paired war scenes with Bible verses. (In an e-mail published on Politico, Rumsfeld aide Keith Urbahn denied that the former Defense secretary had created or even seen many of the briefings.) Later in May, Al-Jazeera broadcast clips filmed in 2008 showing stacks of Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari at the U.S. air base in Bagram and featuring the chief of U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, telling soldiers to “hunt people for Jesus.”

via The Fight Over Evangelizing Military Chaplains | Newsweek National News | Newsweek.com.

Blue Dog Effort Threatens Dem Unity On Public Option

Blue Dog Effort Threatens Dem Unity On Public Option 

The key conservative House Democrat who backed a public health care option last week appeared to be backing off that pledge Thursday afternoon when he joined conservatives calling for compromise rather than specific health goals.

“We’re really not here today to discuss a particular bill or even provisions. We’re here to discuss the target we should be aiming at, which is bipartisanship,” said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), the vice chairman of the Blue Dog Health Care Task Force, who proved instrumental in dooming Clinton-era health reform.

[UPDATE: A Cooper spokesman said in an e-mail, "Jim still personally favors a public plan. He just thinks health care reform will die if it's not bipartisan ... Jim is trying to sound the alarm that while reconciliation only requires 51 votes, the rule prohibits many of the changes required for health care reform. So, we shouldn't do bipartisanship just because it feels nice to work together; we should do it because that's the only way the Senate can pass a bill that actually reforms the health care system. "]

As an example of bipartisan compromise, Cooper cited the health care plan outlined Wednesday by former Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Howard Baker — a plan that does not include a federal public option. He joined Mike Castle (R-Del.), Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) to demand a final bill promoted by both sides of the aisle. The other three members of Congress also prioritized cost containment but declined to detail their goals for access or quality of care.

via Blue Dog Effort Threatens Dem Unity On Public Option.

Justice Department Worried About The Chilling Effects Of Late Night Comedy

Justice Department Worried About The Chilling Effects Of Late Night Comedy

Sarabeth at 1115.org has a piece up today explaining that the Obama administration’s efforts to keep the goings-on of the Bush-Cheney White House away from scrutinizing eyes now extends to denying a federal judge notes from the FBI’s interview with ex-Vice President Dick Cheney during the CIA leak investigation. But this pull from the original AP story, which captures the reasoning of Justice Department for attempting to deny the request, is simply mind-blowing:

Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them.

via Justice Department Worried About The Chilling Effects Of Late Night Comedy.

Stanford bank in Antigua seized

Stanford bank in Antigua seized - BBC NEWS |

Caribbean regulators have taken over the Bank of Antigua, owned by the Stanford group, amid fraud accusations.

The move comes after governments elsewhere, including in Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador, suspended operations at banks owned by the group.

Sir Allen Stanford stands accused by US financial authorities of involvement in an $8bn (£5.6bn) investment fraud. He was served civil papers on Thursday.

The billionaire had been the single biggest private investor in Antigua.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Sir Allen of an alleged fraud “of shocking magnitude”.

However, he is not in custody and has not been charged with any criminal violations.

via BBC NEWS | Business | Stanford bank in Antigua seized.

Senate Passes Cash for Clunkers Program

Senate Passes Cash for Clunkers Program

The Senate passed the Cash for Clunkers Program today, which gives consumers with cars that get less than 18 miles per gallon the ability to turn them in for a $3,500 or $4,500 cash voucher. The bill was nearly defeated by Republicans, but Democratic support saved the day in part due to Obama’s lobbying of the program. The President still needs to sign the bill into law.

Although many people believe that the program is designed to reduce global warming emissions through the eradication of gas guzzling cars, its true purpose is to help out struggling automakers and car dealers with new car sales. A person who receives a credit as part of the program cannot buy a used car with the monies. Car sales in 2009 are predicted to be nearly half of what they were in 2008.

via Senate Passes Cash for Clunkers Program | Green Business | Reuters.

WHO | The World Health Report 2008

The World Health Report 2008

Primary Health Care – Now More Than Ever

Why a renewal of primary health care (PHC), and why now, more than ever? Globalization is putting the social cohesion of many countries under stress, and health systems are clearly not performing as well as they could and should. People are increasingly impatient with the inability of health services to deliver. Few would disagree that health systems need to respond better – and faster – to the challenges of a changing world. PHC can do that.

via WHO | The World Health Report 2008.

World Bank raises China’s growth forecast due to effects of stimulus

World Bank raises China’s growth forecast due to effects of stimulus – FT.com

The World Bank raised its forecast for China’s 2009 gross domestic product growth to 7.2 per cent yesterday, saying the apparent success of the government’s stimulus package had improved the outlook from March – when 6.5 per cent growth was predicted.

But the bank said a sustainable recovery was not yet assured, despite the state’s Rmb4,000bn ($590bn, €420bn, £365bn) fiscal stimulus, and that Beijing might have little room for additional measures this year.

Growth would be strongly supported this year, but “there are limits to how much and how long China’s growth can diverge from global growth based on government-influenced spending”, said Ardo Hansson, the bank’s lead economist for China. “It is too early to say a robust, sustained recovery is on the way.”

via FT.com / Asia-Pacific – World Bank raises China’s growth forecast due to effects of stimulus.

Unparalleled and Denied – DNA wont save you

Unparalleled and Denied

In an appalling 5-to-4 ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority tossed aside compelling due process claims, the demands of justice and a considered decision by a lower federal appeals court to deny the right of prisoners to obtain post-conviction DNA testing that might prove their innocence.

The inmate at the center of the case, William G. Osborne, is in prison in Alaska after a 1994 rape conviction based in part on a DNA test of semen from a condom recovered at the scene.

The state used an old method, known as DQ-alpha testing, that could not identify, with great specificity, the person to whom the DNA belonged. The high court sided with Alaska in its refusal to grant Mr. Osborne access to the physical evidence, the semen. His intent was to obtain a more advanced DNA test that was not available at the time of his trial and that prosecutors agreed could almost definitively prove his guilt or innocence.

via Editorial – Unparalleled and Denied – NYTimes.com.

The Secret History of the American Empire

The Secret History of the American Empire

The Truth About Global Corruption

Video - John Perkins, author of Confessions of An Economic Hit Man.

Perkins zeroes in on hot spots around the world such as Venezuela, Tibet, Iraq, Israel, Vietnam and others and exposes the network of events in each of these countries that have contributed to the creation of the American Empire and international corruption in “The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth About Global Corruption”

5 minute excerpt

via : Information Clearing House – ICH.

Steele fearmongers on health care reform, warns of ‘health police’ who will enforce yearly physicals.

OPS:  Insanity is considered normal on the right

Steele fearmongers on health care reform, warns of ‘health police’ who will enforce yearly physicals.

This morning, RNC Chairman Michael Steele hosted Bill Bennett’s radio show. When a caller, who identified himself as a doctor, asked how President Obama would “mandate” preventive care, Steele declared that the government would impose a “national ID system” that would contain every American’s health information “on a grid.” He warned that this system — completely fabricated by Steele — would result in the “health police” enforcing everyone’s yearly check-up:

STEELE: Well you’ll get issued, Doc, you’re gonna issue, to your patients, a health care card that’s gonna be part of a national ID system that, you know, every time I charge something or use that card, it’s going to show up on a grid what I’ve done and what I have failed to do, according to the government plan. So the government will know whether or not I’ve had my physical at the appropriate time and then probably some health police will come knocking on my door telling me I’m now costing the system money because I haven’t, you know, gone and done my preventive care.

Listen to it:

via Think Progress » Steele fearmongers on health care reform, warns of ‘health police’ who will enforce yearly physicals..

The Health Insurance Industry Doesn’t Deserve Our Trust

The Health Insurance Industry Doesn’t Deserve Our Trust    | CommonDreams.org

Farmers often depend on off farm jobs to provide health insurance, if that wasn’t an option they could generally afford an individual plan. Farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in America, heavy machinery, large animals, long hours in the sun, chemicals and that always present independent streak that keeps us from seeing the doctor when we should. Still, we need insurance.

Most jobs are cutting insurance benefits, if the jobs are still there. Individual plans for farmers are expensive with high deductibles since our work is dangerous, we probably have pre-existing conditions and we are nearing an average age of 58 years.

The Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska notes that rural residents are twice as likely to be uninsured as urban Americans while farmers and ranchers are four times as likely to be “underinsured”, covered by insurance with reduced benefits and a high deductibles.

Montana Senator Max Baucus says single payer health care “ is off the table”. Who made him king? What are we, chopped liver, doesn’t our opinion count? A January CBS/New York Times poll showed 59% of respondents favored a national health care plan. A February CNN poll showed 72% favored a government controlled plan. Any issue with that much across the board support should be “on the table”.

via The Health Insurance Industry Doesn’t Deserve Our Trust | CommonDreams.org.

Assigning Blame for the Economic Crisis

Assigning Blame for the Economic Crisis  | CommonDreams.org

A government investigation into the financial crisis could promote economic reform and give Democrats a big political boost

by Mark Weisbrot

Plans are already being made for the 2010 elections for the US Congress, and the Democrats would appear to have some advantages. They have a popular president, a six-percentage-point lead in party identification and nine points for a generic congressional ballot. Majorities of the electorate see both Barack Obama and the Democratic party as pushing for a change from the failed policies of the past. The Republicans seem divided and confused over a recovery strategy, plagued by high-level defections (such as senator Arlen Specter) and spokespeople (such as Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney) who seem too extreme to win over the necessary swing voters.

But the president’s party almost always loses congressional seats in non-presidential-year elections. And if next year’s elections reduce the Democrats’ margin, it would be even more difficult to make progress on important reform legislation, such as healthcare. At the end of the day, the ability to deliver reforms that actually improve the lives of the majority of Americans will most likely determine their long-term success as a political party.

The 2010 elections will very likely be about who gets blamed for the current economic disaster. Even if the economy is recovering in the latter half of next year – and that is a big “if” – it will not feel much like an economic recovery for most Americans. The labour market will still be very weak, with unemployment projected to pass 10% and rising in the second half of next year.

via Assigning Blame for the Economic Crisis | CommonDreams.org.

Slim job prospects leave many unemployed too discouraged to look

Slim job prospects leave many unemployed too discouraged to look

EPI’s latest jobs analysis shows that millions of people not counted as officially unemployed are either “involuntary part-time” workers who want to work full-time but can’t find the hours, or they are “marginally attached,” meaning that even though they want to work, they did not actively seek work in the past month.

There were 1.3 million marginally attached workers at the start of the recession in December 2007, but that number has since swelled by close to 1 million, underscoring how prolonged economic downturns can make it progressively harder to find work.

“When we see such a dramatic increase in such a short period of time, we know that it’s not caused by a major shift in attitudes toward working, but instead by the fact that many jobless workers have simply realized they have little chance of finding meaningful work in such a weak labor market,” says EPI economist Heidi Shierholz.

via Slim job prospects leave many unemployed too discouraged to look.

NSA monitors millions of American e-mails

NSA monitors millions of American e-mails  - by Tom Eley

Several current and former agents within the National Security Agency (NSA), speaking on condition of anonymity, have told the New York Times that the spy agency likely monitors millions of e-mail communications and telephone calls made by Americans. The new revelations follow the disclosure in April that the NSA’s monitoring of domestic e-mail traffic broke the law in 2008 and 2009.

Last year, Congress passed legislation providing the NSA greater latitude to spy on the communications of Americans, so long as it resulted inadvertently from the agency’s efforts to spy on foreigners or those it “reasonably believed” to be outside US borders. This authorized the NSA to intercept tens of millions of e-mail and phone communications that pass through American telecommunication “gateways.” The measure was attached to a congressional law granting immunity to telecommunications companies that turned over private phone records to federal authorities.

Among those voting for the bill was then-Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. In all, 293 members of the House and 69 senators voted to pass the bill.

To launch investigations specifically targeting American “terror suspects,” the legislation requires that the NSA first gain a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). In fact, this is a mere formality. The FISC almost never turns down a government request for a warrant.

Yet the NSA’s activities have gone beyond even this pseudo-legal system specifically constructed in order to allow domestic spying. It is not known how many Americans have been spied upon, but the Times’s sources report that in 8 of 10 warrants issued by the FISC, the NSA “is believed to have gone beyond legal boundaries.” Further, “Because each order could single out hundreds or even thousands of phone numbers or e-mail addresses, the number of individual communications that were improperly collected could number in the millions,” the Times reported.

via NSA monitors millions of American e-mails.

“The Responsible Left:” Funding Obama’s Expanding Wars $100 Billion a Vote

“The Responsible Left:” Funding Obama’s Expanding Wars $100 Billion a Vote

by Jeremy Scahill

Over the past few days, we reported on how the White House and Democratic Congressional Leadership waged a dirty campaign to scare up votes to support another $106 billion in funds for their wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, several of the so-called anti-war Democrats who left their principles at the House coat check on their way in to vote Tuesday are trying to explain away their hypocritical votes.

New York Democrat Anthony Weiner, who voted against the war funding in May—when it didn’t matter—only to vote Tuesday with the pro-war Dems, sounded like an imbecile when he made this statement after the vote: “We are in the process of wrapping up the wars. The president needed our support.” What planet is Weiner living on? “Wrapping up the wars?” Last time I checked, there are 21,000 more US troops heading to Afghanistan alongside a surge in contractors there, including a 29% increase in armed contractors. Does Weiner think the $106 billion in war funding he voted for is going to pay for one way tickets home for the troops? What he voted for was certainly not the “Demolition of the 80 Football-field-size US Embassy in Baghdad Act of 2009.” To cap off this idiocy, Weiner basically admitted he is a fraud when he said the bill he voted in favor of “still sucks.”

Jan Schakowsky, who has done some incredibly important work on Blackwater and the privatized war machine, also voted against the supplemental in May, but switched her vote on Tuesday. “I do believe my president is a peacemaker,” Schakowsky said. “I’m going to give him what he wants.” A peacemaker who is expanding war? Moreover, what happened to the system of “checks and balances?” If Congressmembers, especially anti-war ones like Schakowsky, start just giving the president “what he wants,” then where is the peoples’ voice?

How are these people sleeping at night?

via “The Responsible Left:” Funding Obama’s Expanding Wars $100 Billion a Vote.

Obama Boost: New Poll Shows 76% Support For Choice Of Public Plan

Obama Boost: New Poll Shows 76% Support For Choice Of Public Plan

New poll numbers from NBC/Wall Street Journal produce two major and potentially conflicting story lines when it comes to the Obama administration’s efforts for a health care overhaul. On the one hand, the American public overwhelmingly favors a choice between getting insurance coverage either through the private market or a government run option. Indeed, 76 percent of respondents said it was either “extremely” or “quite” important to “give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance.”

With the public option being such a lightning rod in the current health care debate, progressive activists are already emailing around these numbers as evidence that voters are way ahead of the politicians. Certainly, the findings provide a boost of sorts to President Obama, who has stood by the public plan even as Republican opposition has crystallized.

That said, the president still has his work cut out for him. In the same NBC/WSJ poll, only 33 percent of respondents said they thought the president’s health care plan, to the extent they knew of it, was a “good idea;” 32 percent said it was a bad idea.

via Obama Boost: New Poll Shows 76% Support For Choice Of Public Plan.

Mafia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills

OPS:  Jaded here.  If the bonds were real, would they say so?  If they were, it would be HUGE news and require LOTS of explanation and probably cause a world wide financial panic. This is the easiest was to dismiss the whole thing. Isn’t it.

Mafia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills -  By FT reporters

One summer afternoon, two “Japanese” men in their 50s on a slow train from Italy to Switzerland said they had nothing to declare at the frontier point of Chiasso.

But in a false bottom of one of their suitcases, Italian customs officers and ministry of finance police discovered a staggering $134bn (€97bn, £82bn) in US Treasury bills.

Whether the men are really Japanese, as their passports declare, is unclear but Italian and US secret services working together soon concluded that the bills and accompanying bank documents were most probably counterfeit, the latest handiwork of the Italian Mafia.

via FT.com / Europe – Mafia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills.

Talk me down, I think we are fucked.

Talk me down, I think we are fucked.  -  – Democratic Underground

This is not a President Barack Obama bashing thread. This is what he inherited the day he took office. I don’t believe this economy is sustainable. I fear we are already a third world nation.

Debt to GDP Ratio for consumers is 97% of GDP

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/02/household_debt_v…

US Deficit is 11 trillion dollars GDP is 13.84 trillion

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock /

Trade Deficit 711 billion. It fell last year but that doesn’t mean we now have a trade surplus

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/indicators_intlpi… /

Income Disparity

Top 300,000 have more than the bottom 150,000,000

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/worldbusines…

Economic Breakdown of US Industry

Only 28% of our GDP is actually derived from making something. The rest is all derived from services.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Stat…

State Budget Deficits. Only 4 states are not running a large deficit in 2009.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711

I also want to add our entire economy is run on a fossil fuel that we have to import from other countries in order to function. We have no public transportation system and the cost of replacing the vehicles we have to fuel efficient vehicles is non-existent.

This is not a President Barack Obama bashing thread. This is what he inherited the day he took office. I don’t believe this economy is sustainable. I fear we are already a third world nation.

via Talk me down, I think we are fucked. – Democratic Underground.

Retirees may well worry about health reform

Retirees may well worry about health-care reform   - MarketWatch

Retirement health-care costs are steep ( $378,000) — are you prepared?

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — If things weren’t bleak before, they certainly are now. Men and women retiring today will need truckloads of money to pay for health-care expenses over the course of their retirement, according to a new study.

And that was the case long before we learned that President Barack Obama plans to cut $313 billion in Medicare and Medicaid spending and reform this nation’s health-care system. It’s anybody’s guess what retirees might need if those reform plans become a reality.

Iran’s top leader warns of protest crackdown

Iran’s top leader warns of protest crackdown

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s supreme leader said Friday that the country’s disputed presidential vote had not been rigged, sternly warning protesters of a crackdown if they continue massive demonstrations demanding a new election.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sided with hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and offered no concessions to the opposition. He effectively closed any chance for a new vote by calling the June 12 election an “absolute victory.”

The speech created a stark choice for candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters: Drop their demands for a new vote or take to the streets again in blatant defiance of the man endowed with virtually limitless powers under Iran’s constitution.

Pro-Mousavi Web sites had no immediate reaction to Khamenei’s warning and no announcement of any changes in a protest planned for 4 p.m. Saturday.

Khamenei accused foreign media and Western countries of trying to create a political rift and stir up chaos in Iran. Iranian leaders often blame foreign “enemies” for plots against the country, but Khamenei’s comments suggest Iran could remain cool to expanding dialogue with the West and the offer of opening talks with Washington.

via Iran’s top leader warns of protest crackdown – Yahoo! News.

US woman to pay 1.92 mln dlrs in music piracy case

US woman to pay 1.92 mln dlrs in music piracy case

A US jury has ordered a 32-year-old woman to pay nearly two million dollars in damages for illegally downloading 24 songs over the Internet in a high-profile digital piracy case.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from the Minnesota town of Brainerd, was found liable of violating music copyrights for using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network to download the songs.

The jury took just under five hours on Thursday to reach its verdict.

It ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay 1.92 million dollars — or 80,000 dollars per song — to six record companies: Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. Records and UMG Recordings.

In his closing arguments on Thursday, attorney Timothy Reynolds said Thomas-Rasset had made copyrighted music available to “millions on the Internet” through Kazaa.

“She infringed my clients’ copyrights and then she tried to cover it up,” Reynolds said.

via The Raw Story | US woman to pay 1.92 mln dlrs in music piracy case.

Reporter: NSA analysts spied on own wives and girlfriends

Reporter: NSA analysts spied on own wives and girlfriends 

According to the reporter who first broke the NSA wiretapping story, there is no proof the agency has scaled back its interception of the personal phone calls and email messages of American citizens as promised by the Obama administration or even that it is being straight with Congress about its activities.

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed the NSA’s over-collection of data in an article for the New York Times on Tuesday, noting that one NSA analyst was even found to have been reading the private email of former President Bill Clinton.

Risen told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann the next day that he knew of no other cases like the Clinton incident but that many NSA analysts had been abusing their powers in other ways. “It sounded like, from the former NSA analyst that we interviewed, that it was rare to access the emails of celebrities or famous people,” Risen stated, “but that it was fairly routine, according to him, for people to access the emails of girlfriends or wives or other people that they might know.”

via Raw Story » Reporter: NSA analysts spied on own wives and girlfriends.

Dumped: Despite popularity, liberal blogger fired by Washington Post

Dumped: Despite popularity, liberal blogger fired by Washington Post

Update: Froomkin confirms, comments on dismissal

The Washington Post Company has dismissed veteran online columnist Dan Froomkin, according to a company spokesperson.

“I think the easiest way to put it is that our editors and research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other content to make sure we’re giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources,” Washington Post Media Communications Director Kris Coratti said in a statement to Politico. “Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com.”

Author of “The White House Watch” blog, Politico’s Mike Calderone said that Froomkin had been let go. “In so many words,” he writes, “Froomkin was told that his blog had essentially run its course.”

“Froomkin’s work for the Post has, at times, been amongst the most popular, but he has also ruffled some feathers, including former Post ombudsman Deb Howell, who used a column to field complaints over the labeling of Froomkin’s “highly opinionated and liberal” “White House Briefing” column, which was subsequently changed to ‘White House Watch,’” he adds.

Froomkin’s final column is available here.

Salon blogger stunned

Glenn Greenwald, a popular columnist and scholar at Salon, questioned the Post’s intelligence in dismissing one of their most popular online writers.

via The Raw Story » Dumped: Despite popularity, liberal blogger fired by Washington Post.

The United States is Committing Economic Suicide

The United States is Committing Economic Suicide

We are selling off our childrens legacy to foreign owners, and the U.S. government calls it “Investing in America.”

Editor’s Note: The following article was contributed by Gerald Spencer and may not reflect the views or opinions of EconomyInCrisis.org. Feedback is welcome.

When and if foreign individuals and governments stop buying our freshly printed U.S. paper T-Bills, U.S. paper bonds, and other paper U.S. securities at slightly less than face value, and/or start buying these items at the foreign currency exchange equivalent of a few pennies on the dollar, the government checks, social security checks, government payroll checks, and private paychecks will then not buy very much food or anything else that we consume. Your life savings might only sustain you for a couple of weeks.

After we have sold the title to all of our U.S. assets to foreign entities as required to settle our foreign trade obligations, there will not be anything left for the foreign entities to buy and then U.S. government will not be able to raise any funds for any re-industrialization and the U.S. citizens will not have any possibility of employment in their future. The money that was passed out to the financial industries did nothing to create any jobs or eliminate the foreign trade problems with the U.S. economy.

Foreign entities will very soon own everything of value in the U.S. and they will become the major (or only) source of employment for U.S. citizens. The American population will then become employees; possibly indentured servants; or maybe even beg to become slaves owned by the foreign countries and/or foreign individuals that will own everything of value in the U.S. in the very near future.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

CAFTA Empowers China to Cheat U.S. Textile Makers

CAFTA Empowers China to Cheat U.S. Textile Makers

“The cheaters are winning,” Dan Nation told McClatchy Newspapers.  “I’m really getting tired of sitting down and looking at people in the eye and telling them they don’t have a job anymore.”

The same corporate interests that lobbied for the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement will be on Capitol Hill today testifying in front of the House Committee on Small Business, and they are expected to explain just how wrong they were, according to Bloomberg News.

Sold to those in the textile business as a boon to their industry, CAFTA has been an utter disaster for the very same people it was supposed to lift up. According to the National Council of Textile Organizations, more combed-cotton yarn was exported from the U.S. than was produced or imported here in all of 2008.

“I mean, people are lying, or else there’s some awful problem in the data collection somewhere,” David Trumbull, vice president for international affairs for the National Textile Association, told McClatchy Newspapers. “It was a real wake-up call to me.”

Those impossible numbers are due to textile smuggling, mainly by Chinese companies, textile industry insiders say.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

China Adapts“Buy Chinese” After Railing U.S.

OPS:  Republicans and Blue Dogs supported China over Americans in this

China Adapts“Buy Chinese” After Railing U.S.

China adopted a “buy China” clause this week, complete with full-throated defenses of the measure even after calling the American version “poison.”

Despite bitter criticism out of Beijing in February when American lawmakers passed a stimulus package that contained a “buy American” provision, the Chinese government has directed its localities to do much the same.

State-run media in China began reporting on the “buy China” clause this week, complete with full-throated defenses of the measure even after calling the American version “poison” and warned that the American measure could spark a “trade war.”

According to those sources, the Chinese government’s economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, handed down an edict requiring any projects using part of China’s $586 billion package to obtain official permission before using any imported goods.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Concerns for the Obama Health Care Plan

Concerns for the Obama Health Care Plan

The Obama health plan will cost roughly $1 trillion over 10 years and still leave tens of millions – perhaps more than half of current uninsured Americans – without any health care to speak of.

On Monday June 15, President Barack Obama went before a consortium of doctors from the American Medical Association in Chicago to discuss his new plan for revamping the American health care system. Some of his proposals went over well, while others were met with silence and even boos. The message from the President was clear: this nation must change its health care system.

President Obama campaigned on a platform to extend medical coverage to all of the more than 40 million Americans who have no health insurance. He also discussed backstopping coverage for the millions more who are underinsured. His new plan however, though a step in the right direction, seems to fall well short of these goals.

According to The New York Times, the Obama health plan will cost roughly $1 trillion over 10 years and still leave tens of millions – perhaps more than half of current uninsured Americans – without any health care to speak of.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

GOP ‘Rural American Solutions Group’ Peddles Coal Company Document As Its Own

GOP ‘Rural American Solutions Group’ Peddles Coal Company Document As Its Own

Leaders of a new GOP group,

the “Rural American Solutions Group,” are distributing a document attacking climate change legislation as an economic burden to most of the country. As it turns out, the information in the press release was provided to the Republican congressmen by Peabody Energy, a juggernaut of the coal industry. Staffers for GOP Reps. Frank Lucas (R-OK), Sam Graves (R-MO), and Doc Hastings (R-WA) are emailing around a map that purports to detail “how the Democrats’ National Energy Tax unfairly targets rural Americans.”

A closer look at the source of the image reveals the document’s origins:

via Think Progress » GOP ‘Rural American Solutions Group’ Peddles Coal Company Document As Its Own.

Parkinson’s: The Pesticide Link

OPS:  And, as with Tobacco, how long will it be before we find out that the manufacturers have know this for 60 years?

Parkinson’s: The Pesticide Link – - OnEarth Magazine,

Scientists are closing in on an inescapable conclusion: Pesticides may be a cause of Parkinson’s disease

Jackie Christensen was 32 when her body began to betray her. She had just returned to work after the birth of her second son and when she tried to type, two fingers on her left hand refused to cooperate. “They wouldn’t go where I would want them to on the keyboard,” says Christensen, who at the time — it was 1997 — was co-director of the food and health program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis think tank. “I also had what they frequently call frozen shoulder, with a very low range of motion in my left arm.”

The first neurologist Christensen went to responded flippantly to her suggestion that she might have multiple sclerosis, which she had self-diagnosed because of her relatively young age and the fact that she was female. “If you want me to write that down, I will,” she remembers him saying, refusing to pursue the matter further. A second neurologist thought it was all in Christensen’s mind and referred her to a psychiatrist. Over the next several months, her symptoms got progressively worse, and she finally consulted neurologist number three. His startling diagnosis: Parkinson’s disease.

“I thought, ‘I can’t have Parkinson’s because I’m not old,’” Christensen recalls. But a trial of the standard treatment, a drug called L-dopa, seemed to work. Based on that clinical observation, the diagnosis was confirmed. This was in 1998, when Christensen was not quite 35, and she has been on L-dopa, with varying degrees of success, ever since.

via Parkinson’s: The Pesticide Link – OnEarth Magazine, from NRDC, Summer 2009.

Can lack of sleep drive you mad?

Can lack of sleep drive you mad?   - The Independent

Disturbed nights and mental illness have always been linked. Now research shows insomnia is not just a symptom, but a cause

How long could you manage without sleep? The current record-holder is Randy Gardner, who as a 17-year-old Californian high-school student back in 1964 managed a staggering 265 hours – or 11 days – without so much as a nap.

“I wanted to prove that bad things didn’t happen if you went without sleep,” Gardner explained. In fact, by the time he finally broke the record, Gardner had endured crippling exhaustion, forgetfulness, dizziness, slurred speech and blurred vision. He’d been moody and irritable, and unable to concentrate on the simplest tasks. He’d even experienced hallucinations and delusions (on one occasion, for instance, imagining that he was the legendary San Diego Chargers’ running back Paul Lowe). “We got halfway through the damn thing and I thought, ‘This is tough. I don’t want to do this any more,’ ” Gardner recalled in 2006. “But everybody was looking at me so I couldn’t quit.”

Of course, you don’t need to have made an attempt on Randy Gardner’s record to know that lack of sleep can have some pretty unwelcome consequences. Anyone who has ever had to suffer a sleepless night will know just how disruptive it can be. The following day we’re tired, irritable, a little miserable, and generally out of sorts. And the longer sleep problems go on, the more wretched we feel.

via Can lack of sleep drive you mad? – Features, Health & Families – The Independent.

Higher Education Is Stuck in the Middle Ages — Will Universities Adapt or Die Off in Our Digital World?

Higher Education Is Stuck in the Middle Ages — Will Universities Adapt or Die Off in Our Digital World?

There is a huge clash between the model of learning offered by big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital learn.

For fifteen years, I’ve been arguing that the digital revolution will challenge many fundamental aspects of the University. I’ve not been alone. In 1998, none other than, Peter Drucker predicted that big universities would be “relics” within 30 years.

Flash forward to today and you’d be reasonable to think that we have been quite wrong. University attendance is at an all time high. The percentage of young people enrolling in degree granting institutions rose over 115% from 1969-1970 to 2005-2007, while the percentage of 25- to 29-year-old Americans with a college degree doubled. The competition to get into the greatest universities has never been fiercer. At first blush the university seems to be in greater demand than ever.

Yet there are troubling indicators that the picture is not so rosy. And I’m not just talking about the decimation of university endowments by the current financial meltdown.

via Higher Education Is Stuck in the Middle Ages — Will Universities Adapt or Die Off in Our Digital World? | | AlterNet.

Bush Officials Cash In as More Americans Lose Out

Bush Officials Cash In as More Americans Lose Out 

They shredded our economic safety nets, but for them jobs are plentiful and lucrative. You’ll be surprised to know who’s cashing in and where.

Nick Turse,

Here’s a tip for tough times. If anywhere in your genealogy you can find the name Bush or Obama, or anything close to either, no matter how distant the ancestor, start writing and, while you’re at it, contact the nearest “literary” agent! A contract could be in the offing. As everyone knows, President Obama has written two wildly successful books, which have made millions, and since his run for president began, whole bookstore shelves have filled with what can only be called Obamiana, including Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs, Barack Obama: 44th President Collectors Vault, Barack Obama for Beginners, Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope, The Faith of Barack Obama, Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids’ Letters to President Obama, as well as a pile of Obama books for kids, and that barely scratches the surface.

Now comes the news that the president’s Kenyan half-brother George, a community organizer, is writing a book for Simon & Schuster for a mere six-figure advance. So are a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng (for Candlewick Press), and Michelle Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson (for Gotham Books). TomDispatch hears that Bo Obama, too, may be searching for an agent and inking up that little paw to sign on the dotted line.

As for the Bushes: Daughter Jenna proved so naturally skilled with the pen (and the deal) that, at age 25, based on a nine-month UNICEF internship in Central America, she had already published her first book, Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope, signed up for a piddling $300,000 or so with HarperCollins (now, in more straitened publishing times, redubbed just plain Harper). Jenna’s children’s book, Read All About It, followed, selling 80,000 copies. Mom hit her stride this January with a deal for a memoir estimated to be in the range of $3.5-5 million (“I look forward to working with Scribner and the Simon & Schuster team as I tell the stories of the extraordinary events and people I’ve met in my life, particularly during my years in the White House.”)

via Tomgram: Nick Turse, Bush Officials Cash In as More Americans Lose Out.

Newspaper Ignites Hope, Announces “Civil Disobedience Database”

Newspaper Ignites Hope, Announces “Civil Disobedience Database”

TOP HEADLINE: WORLD LEADERS SIGN PACT TO AVERT CLIMATE DISASTER

Global – June 18 – In a front-page ad in today’s International Herald Tribune, the leaders of the European Union thank the European public for having engaged in months of civil disobedience leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference that will be held this December. “It was only thanks to your massive pressure over the past six months that we could so dramatically shift our climate-change policies…. To those who were arrested, we thank you.”

There was only one catch: the paper was fake.

Looking exactly like the real thing, but dated December 19th, 2009, a million copies of the fake paper were distributed worldwide by thousands of volunteers in order to show what could be achieved at the Copenhagen climate conference that is scheduled for Dec. 7-18, 2009. (At the moment, the conference is aiming for much more modest cuts, dismissed by leading climate scientists as too little, too late to stave off runaway processes that will lead to millions or even billions of casualties.)

* Civil-disobedience database: http://BeyondTalk.net

* PDF of printed newspaper: http://iht.greenpeace.org/todays-paper/

* Online version: http://www.iht-se.com/

* Video: http://iht.greenpeace.org/video/ (coming soon)

The paper describes in detail a powerful (and entirely possible) new treaty to bring carbon levels down below 350 parts per million – the level climate scientists say we need to achieve to avoid climate catastrophe. One article describes how a website, http://BeyondTalk.net, mobilized thousands of people to put their bodies on the line to confront climate change policies – ever since way back in June, 2009.

via Newspaper Ignites Hope, Announces “Civil Disobedience Database” | CommonDreams.org.

Out of the Shadows

Out of the Shadows   - NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman

Would the Obama administration’s plan for financial reform do what has to be done? Yes and no.

Yes, the plan would plug some big holes in regulation. But as described, it wouldn’t end the skewed incentives that made the current crisis inevitable.

Let’s start with the good news.

Our current system of financial regulation dates back to a time when everything that functioned as a bank looked like a bank. As long as you regulated big marble buildings with rows of tellers, you pretty much had things nailed down.

But today you don’t have to look like a bank to be a bank. As Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, put it in a widely cited speech last summer, banking is anything that involves financing “long-term risky and relatively illiquid assets” with “very short-term liabilities.” Cases in point: Bear Stearns and Lehman, both of which financed large investments in risky securities primarily with short-term borrowing.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Out of the Shadows – NYTimes.com.

CBS News Legend Cronkite Reportedly Near Death

CBS News Legend Cronkite Reportedly Near Death

Walter Cronkite, 92, the CBS television journalist once known as “the most trusted man in America” was said to be gravely ill and near death Thursday, according a report on the blog site Media Bistro.

The online report cited sources inside CBS, but CBS News officials were not publicly commenting on Cronkite’s health.

Cronkite joined CBS as a television correspondent in 1950 and anchored the “CBS Evening News” for 19 years, from 1962 to 1981.

Cronkite later said he regretted his decision to retire from the anchor desk.

“Twenty-four hours after I told CBS News that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday I was already regretting it and I’ve regretted it every day since,” he said in 2006. “It’s too good a job for me to have given it up the way that I did.”

via CBS News Legend Cronkite Reportedly Near Death – cbs5.com.

Reagan’s Vision for America is Now California’s Reality

Reagan’s Vision for America is Now California’s Reality

his is a video by Avi Lewis, co-host of the show Fault Lines which is shown on Al Jazeera English Language Television, about the crisis in California.

It exposes the Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role in creating the crisis by pushing through another major cut in California taxes in 2003. The situation now is devestating as these two video clips show, and popular protest is mounting (with teachers planning a hunger strike.) The crisis didn’t start with Schwarenegger; nor did it start with the grand fraud perpetrated by Enron. It began when Ronald Reagan was governor in 1978 and pushed through Proposition 13 — a major tax reduction that also instituted the requirement of a 2/3 majority

via Reagan’s Vision for America is Now California’s Reality | ePluribus Media.

Daschle’s Firm And Group Have Ties To Private Health Care Industry

OPS:  BREAKING: Daschle Sells his Soul

Daschle’s Firm And Group Have Ties To Private Health Care Industry

The firm that houses two of the three former Senate majority leaders who proposed a comprehensive health care compromise bill on Wednesday has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on behalf of key players in the health care industry. In addition, the company that presented those findings, the Bipartisan Policy Center, counts as a major fundraiser one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Former Sens. Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Howard Baker joined forces this week to put out a health care plan 15 months in the making. The three political gray beards, who co-founded the Bipartisan Policy Center, called for an approach to reform that included state-operated public insurance options as well as individual and employer mandates for coverage. Their proposal was pitched as a bi-partisan effort at solving one of the most complex legislative issue facing the nation.

Not everyone was ready to take out the anointing oils. Opponents of the proposal and good government groups are questioning the ties the plan’s authors and organizations have to groups with direct financial interests in the health care debate.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, for instance, lists the pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough as a “substantial contributor” on its 990 form. How much money the company contributed is not listed.

via Daschle’s Firm And Group Have Ties To Private Health Care Industry.

Krauthammer concedes Fox News is the ‘voice of opposition’ to Obama ‘in the media.’

Krauthammer concedes Fox News is the ‘voice of opposition’ to Obama ‘in the media.’

In an interview with CNBC this week, President Obama noted the constant criticism he receives from Fox News, saying, “I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.” Some Fox regulars, like Bill O’Reilly, adamantly objected to Obama’s claim. But on Special Report yesterday, Fox contributor Charles Krauthammer admitted that Fox News can “accurately” be described as the “voice of opposition” to Obama:

KRAUTHAMMER: But what’s really interesting, the president yesterday has said, he complained about FOX, and he said, I think accurately, that it is the one, only voice of opposition in the media.

And it makes us a lot like Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run, with the exception that in Hugo Chavez-land, you go after that one station with machetes. I haven’t seen any machetes around here, so I think we are at least safe for now.

Watch it:

via Think Progress » Krauthammer concedes Fox News is the ‘voice of opposition’ to Obama ‘in the media.’.

Major Media Headlines Pretend That Latest Polls Show Obama’s Policies Are Unpopular

OPS:  And Chris “Tweety” Mathews is one of them

Major Media Headlines Pretend That Latest Polls Show Obama’s Policies Are Unpopular

Today, two new national polls were released, one by the New York Times and CBS, the other by the Wall Street Journal and NBC. News headlines quickly settled on a theme: The polls showed that President Obama’s policies were suddenly unpopular:

“Sticker Shock — Obama still popular; his policies, not so much” [ABC's The Note]

“Polls find rising concern with Obama on key issues” [Reuters]

“Polls Show Declining Support For Obama Decisions” [U.S. News & World Report's Political Bulletin]

“Obama’s popularity: Problems testing it” [Chicago Tribune's The Swamp]

“Is ‘Smooth Sailing’ Over for Obama?” [Washington Post]

The headlines have little to no relation to the actual data in the polls, both of which found broad approval for Obama’s foreign policy and economic agendas. From the New York Times/CBS poll:

5. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the economy? 57% approve, 35% disapprove

8. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the threat of terrorism? 57% approve, 27% disapprove

16. So far, do you think Barack Obama’s policies have made the economy better, made the economy worse or haven’t his policies had any effect on the economy yet? 32% say better, 15% say worse

And from the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll:

4b. Do you generally approve or disapprove of the job that Barack Obama is doing in handling the economy? 51% approve, 38% disapprove

4c. Do you generally approve or disapprove of the job that Barack Obama is doing in handling foreign policy? 54% approve , 36% disapprove

9. Which ONE of the following statements best describes your feelings toward Barack Obama?

Like personally and approve most policies…………… 48%

Like personally but disapprove of many policies ……27%

12. And how confident are you that Barack Obama has the right set of goals and policies to improve the economy––extremely confident, quite confident, only somewhat confident, or not at all confident?

Extremely confident………………………. 20%

Quite confident …………………………. 26%

Only somewhat confident ………………….. 24%

Not at all confident …………………….. 29%

Similarly, 68 percent agree with Obama’s view that Guantanamo detainees should be charged with a crime or released back to their home countries, as opposed to only 24 percent who think they should be detained indefinitely. As Glenn Greenwald notes, “The view that detainees should be charged with crimes or released is often depicted as the fringe ‘Far Left’ view. Like so many views that are similarly depicted, it is — in reality — the overwhelming consensus view among Americans.”

via Think Progress » Major Media Headlines Pretend That Latest Polls Show Obama’s Policies Are Unpopular.

Kissinger: Obama is handling the situation in Iran well.

Kissinger: Obama is handling the situation in Iran well.

In an interview with CNN yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized President Obama’s approach to the turmoil in Iran, saying that he shouldn’t be concerned about being seen as “meddling” in Iran’s affairs. But on Fox News last night, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, noting that he was a McCain supporter, said that he thinks “the president has handled this well”:

KISSINGER: Well, you know, I was a McCain supporter and — but I think the president has handled this well. Anything that the United States says that puts us totally behind one of the contenders, behind Mousavi, would be a handicap for that person. And I think it’s the proper position to take that the people of Iran have to make that decision.

Of course, we have to state our fundamental convictions of freedom of speech, free elections, and I don’t see how President Obama could say less than he has, and even that is considered intolerable meddling. He has, after all, carefully stayed away from saying things that seem to support one side or the other. And I think it was the right thing to do because public support for the opposition would only be used by the — by Ahmadinejad — if I can ever learn his name properly — against Mousavi.

Watch it:

via Think Progress » Kissinger: Obama is handling the situation in Iran well..

Boehner admits that stimulus will ‘create much-needed jobs.’

Boehner admits that stimulus will ‘create much-needed jobs.’

In the days before Congress voted on and President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) repeatedly derided the legislation as “generational theft,” and declared, “When it comes to slow-moving government spending programs, it’s clear that it doesn’t create the jobs.” But as Media Matters Action Fund notes, Boehner has changed his tune. In a little-noticed statement released Monday, Boehner highlighted the Obama administration’s recent order that the Ohio Department of Transportation redirect $57 million to shovel-ready projects. Boehner admitted that such stimulus projects do, in fact, “create much-needed jobs“:

via Think Progress » Boehner admits that stimulus will ‘create much-needed jobs.’.

Armitage: Obama conducting foreign policy ‘in a more intelligent way’ than Bush.

Armitage: Obama conducting foreign policy ‘in a more intelligent way’ than Bush.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage spoke earlier this week at the Missouri Boys State, an event that was held on the campus of the University of Central Missouri. During the question and answer period, Armitage was asked about President Obama’s “softer force when dealing with other nations.” “Mr. Obama is in some ways presenting a much better face to the world. I wouldn’t call it a soft face, I’d call it a smart face,” Armitage replied. He then took a subtle dig at President Bush:

ARMITAGE: I think he’s using both our soft and hard power in a more intelligent way. [...] I think he’s using our power more intelligently. And using all the tools in our kit box now, in our tool box. Mr. Bush just used sanctions and force. And I think this gives us a better opportunity to prevail. What is soft power? It’s the ability to attract. You want to persuade, you want to attract them. Hard power is coercive. Well, force them to do something. If you can attract people I think it’s always better. It seems to last longer.

via Think Progress » Armitage: Obama conducting foreign policy ‘in a more intelligent way’ than Bush..

The recession tracks the Great Depression

The recession tracks the Great Depression – FT.com

Green shoots are bursting out. Or so we are told. But before concluding that the recession will soon be over, we must ask what history tells us. It is one of the guides we have to our present predicament. Fortunately, we do have the data. Unfortunately, the story they tell is an unhappy one.

Two economic historians, Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley and Kevin O’Rourke of Trinity College, Dublin, have provided pictures worth more than a thousand words (see charts).* In their paper, Profs Eichengreen and O’Rourke date the beginning of the current global recession to April 2008 and that of the Great Depression to June 1929. So what are their conclusions on where we are a little over a year into the recession? The bad news is that this recession fully matches the early part of the Great Depression. The good news is that the worst can still be averted.

via FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf – The recession tracks the Great Depression.

Dodd: Giving the Fed More Power is like Awarding a Son a “Bigger, Faster Car Right after He Crashed the Family Station Wagon”

Dodd: Giving the Fed More Power is like Awarding a Son a “Bigger, Faster Car Right after He Crashed the Family Station Wagon”

The chairman of the senate banking committee – Christopher Dodd -a critic of the plan to expand the Federal Reserve’s powers as being:

like awarding a son a “bigger, faster car right after he crashed the family station wagon.” He added that he hadn’t made a conclusion on the issue.

The critic is correct.

The Fed caused the Great Depression, according to Bernanke himself. The Fed largely caused the current financial crisis. The Fed creates new “money” out of thin air, and then charges massive amounts in interest to the federal government, impoverishing the nation and stealing its natural wealth. And the Fed has refused to tell Congress or the American people where the trillions of dollars in bailout money are going (see this, this, this, and this).

However, Dodd’s statement that he hasn’t yet made up his mind about expanding the Fed’s powers is just for show. In fact, Dodd and House banking committee chair Barney Frank were involved with Summers and Geithner every step of the way in drafting the plan to give the Fed more power.

Washington’s Blog.

Democrats dodge ban on cash from lobbyists – Jonathan Martin – POLITICO.com

Democrats dodge ban on cash from lobbyists

via Democrats dodge ban on cash from lobbyists – Jonathan Martin – POLITICO.com.

THE RETREAT OF THE SHADOW LENDERS: WHY DEFLATION, NOT INFLATION, IS THE ORDER OF THE DAY

THE RETREAT OF THE SHADOW LENDERS:

WHY DEFLATION, NOT INFLATION, IS THE ORDER OF THE DAY

Ellen Brown,

While contrarians are screaming “hyperinflation!”, the money supply is actually shrinking. This is because most money today comes into existence as bank loans, and lending has shrunk substantially. That means the Fed needs to “monetize” debt just to fill the breach.

On June 3, 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke assured Congress, “The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.” Bill Bonner, writing in The Daily Reckoning, said it had a ring to it, like President Nixon’s “I am not a crook” and President Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman.” Monetizing the debt is precisely what the Fed will do, says Bonner, because it has no other choice. The Chinese are growing reluctant to lend, the taxpayers are tapped out, and the deficit is at unprecedented levels. “Even good people do bad things when they get in a jam. The Feds are already in pretty deep . . . and they’re going a lot deeper.”

But Mr. Bernanke denied it. “Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation,” he said.

Both alternatives will be vigorously opposed, leaving Congress in the same deadlock California has been in for the last year. That makes the monetization option at least worth a look. What is wrong with it? Bill Bonner calls it “larceny on the grandest scale. Rather than honestly repaying what it has borrowed, a government merely prints up extra currency and uses it to pay its loans. The debt is ‘monetized’ . . . transformed into an increase in the money supply, thereby lowering the purchasing power of everybody’s savings.”

So say the pundits, but in the past year the Fed has “monetized” over a trillion dollars worth of debt, yet the money supply is not expanding. As investment adviser Mark Sunshine observed in a June 12 blog:

via Web of Debt – THE RETREAT OF THE SHADOW LENDERS: WHY DEFLATION, NOT INFLATION, IS THE ORDER OF THE DAY.

Number of VA claims poised to hit 1 million

Number of VA claims poised to hit 1 million

WASHINGTON – This isn’t the same as getting a free duffel bag for being the millionth person to go through the turnstiles: The Veterans Affairs Department appears poised to have hit the 1 million milestone on claims it still hasn’t processed.

This unwelcome marker approaches as the agency scrambles to hire and train new claims processors, which can take two years. VA officials are working with the Pentagon under orders from President Barack Obama to create by 2012 a system that will allow the two agencies to electronically exchange records, a process now done manually on paper.

Meanwhile, veterans, some of whom were severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue to endure financial hardship while their claims are processed. They wait more than four months on average for a claim to be processed, and appealing a claim takes a year and a half on average.

via Number of VA claims poised to hit 1 million – Yahoo! News.

Single Payer and the Duplicitous Rahm Emanuel

Single Payer and the Duplicitous Rahm Emanuel  | CommonDreams.org

Earlier this year, Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, warned about what she called “the futility of piecemeal tinkering.”

Obama and the Democrats did not heed her warning.

Earlier this week, the most liberal of the Democrats tinkering plans – Senator Kennedy’s – went up in smoke when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the Kennedy plan would cost $1 trillion over ten years and still leave 37 million Americans uninsured.

Three months ago, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) told single payer supporters that he would seek to get the CBO to score single payer legislation (HR 676).

But Steny Hoyer backed off his pledge.

He never did get the CBO to score single payer.

Why?

Because it would show that under single payer, we’d pay what we are paying now – or less – and it would cover everyone.

via Single Payer and the Duplicitous Rahm Emanuel | CommonDreams.org.

Supreme Court makes it harder to prove age discrimination

Supreme Court makes it harder to prove age discrimination  -  The Detroit News

Washington — The Supreme Court has made it harder to prove discrimination on the basis of age, ruling against an employee in his mid-50s who says he was demoted because of his age.

In a 5-4 decision Thursday written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said a worker has to prove that age was the key factor in an employment decision, even if there is some evidence that age played a role. In some other discrimination lawsuits, the burden of proof shifts to the employer once a worker shows there is some reason to believe a decision was made for improper reasons.

Jack Gross had been a vice president of FBL Financial Services of West Des Moines, Iowa. But in 2001, he lost the title of vice president in a reorganization and two years later, some of his responsibilities were given to a colleague.

Gross sued under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act and a jury agreed that his age was a motivating factor in his demotion. Gross was awarded $46,945 in lost compensation.

A federal appeals court in St. Louis overturned the verdict, however.

“We hold that a plaintiff bringing a disparate-treatment claim pursuant to the ADEA must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that age was the ‘but-for’ cause of the challenged adverse employment action,” Thomas said in the high court’s opinion. “The burden of persuasion does not shift to the employer to show that it would have taken the action regardless of age, even when a plaintiff has produced some evidence that age was one motivating factor in the decision.”

via Supreme Court makes it harder to prove age discrimination | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

Fort Detrick Inventory Turns Up 9,220 More Vials of Pathogens – washingtonpost.com

Inventory Uncovers 9,200 More Pathogens

Laboratory Says Security Is Tighter, but Earlier Count Missed Dangerous Vials

An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick’s infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn’t know whether dangerous toxins were missing

After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn’t been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute’s deputy commander.

via Fort Detrick Inventory Turns Up 9,220 More Vials of Pathogens – washingtonpost.com.

More Troubling News About BPA

More troubling news about BPA  / Science News

Animal studies link bisphenol A with new adverse health effects

Heart arrhythmias in females and permanent, deleterious modifications of a gene that plays a pivotal role in reproduction are two new problems being linked to bisphenol A. Best known simply as BPA, this chemical is a building block of polycarbonate plastics — the hard, clear type used in kitchenware and baby bottles — and of resins used to line most U.S. food cans.

Data on BPA’s hormonal alter ego first emerged in 1938, when researchers reported the chemical could trigger biological changes normally seen with estrogen. That’s the primary female sex hormone. By the early 1990s, studies showing how strong this estrogen mimic is and how ubiquitous BPA has become began to trickle out — a flow that has since developed into a wholesale torrent.

At the Endocrine Society meeting in Washington D.C., this week, three different research teams will report new and troubling data from animals experimentally treated with BPA. The scientists shared their findings with reporters, late this morning. Formal presentations of their data are scheduled for later this week.

via More Troubling News About BPA / Science News.

We are Destroying our Nation’s Moral and Fiscal Integrity

VIDEO: We are Destroying our Nation’s Moral and Fiscal Integrity

Another $106 Billion And All We Get Is A Lousy War!

by Rep Dennis Kucinich

via VIDEO: We are Destroying our Nation’s Moral and Fiscal Integrity.

Editorial – The Eavesdropping Continues

The Eavesdropping Continues   - NYTimes.com

Once again, the country is learning about how the federal government has been exceeding its legal authority and violating Americans’ most basic rights in the name of fighting terrorism.

In a disturbing article in The Times on Wednesday, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau said that Congressional investigations suggest that the National Security Agency continues to routinely collect Americans’ telephone calls and e-mail messages — perhaps by the millions.

These sweeps seem unconnected to specific terrorism investigations, and the communications are entirely domestic. The law does not allow fishing trips through Americans’ communications and only permits the government to read e-mails or listen to phone calls in which one party is “reasonably believed” to be outside the United States.

via Editorial – The Eavesdropping Continues – NYTimes.com.

Tom Daschle teams up with republicans to scuttle public option in health care reform effort

OPS: Another sell-out traitorous ex-Democrat

Tom Daschle teams up with republicans to scuttle public option in health care reform effort

Tom Daschle’s joining forces with Bob Dole and Howard Baker to keep a public plan out of the health care reform package.

Daschle Folds on Federal Public Health Care Plan
Tom Daschle, Howard Baker, and Bob Dole, offered their solution today to the biggest obstacle to achieving health care reform — a public option. …

In a blow to President Obama and many of his Democratic allies in the health care fight, the plan recommends that there be no federal public option, but rather state or regional public-sponsored networks that would compete with private health plans, according to the summary released today by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“If you want to stop this thing dead in its tracks, or dead on arrival, in my view you put the public plan in it,” Dole said when asked whether there were any non-negotiables to deal with when drafting the bipartisan recommendations.

First, we need to get something straight here… the public option is not the biggest obstacle to achieving health care reform. Republicans are. So (apparently) are some Democrats.

Now we’ve all heard about Bill Kristol’s memo from December, 1993, advising Republicans to scuttle the reform effort so they could deny Bill Clinton a big win. Bob Dole played a huge role in making sure the status quo survived. He had plans to run for Bill’s job after all so he wasn’t about to help him on this or any other effort and to heck with the people of this country. Mid-term elections were right around the corner and the Republicans had bigger things on their agenda than saving American lives by fixing our health care system.

via Tom Daschle teams up with republicans to scuttle public option in health care reform effort.

South Africans reveal extent of rape epidemic

South Africans reveal extent of rape epidemic

ONE in four men in South Africa has admitted to rape and many confess to attacking more than one victim, according to a study that exposes the country’s endemic culture of sexual violence.

Three out of four rapists first attacked while still in their teens, the study found. One in 20 men said they had raped a woman or girl in the last year.

South Africa is notorious for having one of the highest levels of rape in the world. Only a fraction are reported and only a fraction of those lead to a conviction.

The study into rape and HIV, by the country’s Medical Research Council, asked men to tap their answers into a PalmPilot to guarantee anonymity. The method appears to have produced unusually frank responses.

via South Africans reveal extent of rape epidemic.

Income tax collections drop in states: report

ncome tax collections drop in states: report  |  | Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Personal income taxes, a key revenue generator for most U.S. states, plummeted 26 percent, or $28.8 billion, in the first four months of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, according to a Rockefeller Institute of Government report on Thursday.

“As we predicted in a previous report, tax returns on 2008 income that were filed in April show huge declines, likely due to stock market-driven declines in investment income and declines in bonus payments,” Institute Senior Fellow Donald J. Boyd, the report’s co-author, said in a statement.

As a result, many states are likely to face more budget cutting this year, additional budget fixes next year and big budget problems when federal stimulus dollars run out in 2011, he added.

States experiencing the biggest decline in personal income tax collections in January-April 2009 compared to the same period in 2008 were Arizona, down nearly 55 percent; South Carolina, off 38.6 percent; Michigan, off 34.4 percent and California, which had a 33.8 percent drop.

via Income tax collections drop in states: report | U.S. | Reuters.

Report: Health care costs to rise 9 pct in 2010

Report: Health care costs to rise 9 pct in 2010

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Employers who offer health insurance coverage could see a 9 percent cost increase next year, and their workers may face an even bigger hit, according to a report from consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Costs will rise in part because workers worried about losing their jobs are using their health care more while they still have it, the firm said in the report released to The Associated Press. The report also said rising unemployment is driving up medical costs.

Health care reform legislation currently being hashed out in Congress likely will have little impact on next year’s costs, said PWC principal Michael Thompson. But he noted that the intense focus on health care may slow price increases.

“Nobody wants to be front page news when all the lights are shining on your industry,” he said.

The report projects the expected cost increase per person for employee benefits plans, and it factors in things such as price increases, as well as utilization changes.

Businesses confronted with increases will likely pass some of the burden to employees via higher premiums, deductibles or copays, Thompson said.

via The Associated Press: Report: Health care costs to rise 9 pct in 2010.

Detroit police routinely underreport homicides

Detroit police routinely underreport homicides -  | | The Detroit News

Actual ’08 total gives city worst rate in nation

Detroit — The Detroit Police Department is systematically undercounting homicides, leading to a falsely low murder rate in a city that regularly ranks among the nation’s deadliest, a Detroit News review of police and medical examiner records shows.

The police incorrectly reclassified 22 of its 368 slayings last year as “justifiable” and did not report them as homicides to the FBI as required by federal guidelines. There were at least 59 such omissions over the past five years, according to incomplete records obtained from the police department through the Freedom of Information Act.

A thorough look at the 2008 homicide statistics reveals other omissions:

via Detroit police routinely underreport homicides | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

Court finds convicts have no right to test DNA

OPS: Otherwise  you can’t keep the Privatized Prison Corporations in business.

Court finds convicts have no right to test DNA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says convicts have no constitutional right to test DNA evidence in hopes of proving their innocence long after they were found guilty of a crime.

The decision may have limited impact because the federal government and 47 states already have laws that allow convicts some access to genetic evidence. Testing has led to the exoneration of at least 232 people who had been found guilty of murder, rape and other violent crimes.

The court ruled 5-4 Thursday against an Alaska man who was convicted in a brutal attack on a prostitute 16 years ago.

via The Associated Press: Court finds convicts have no right to test DNA.

Howard Dean responds to Bush (with RNC host David Gregory)

YouTube – Howard Dean responds to Bush.

REPUBLICANS CONTINUE TO BE DANGEROUSLY STUPID

Republican demands on the Iranian protests for democracy continue to illustrate why they have no business being anywhere near government for at least another generation.

YouTube – REPUBLICANS CONTINUE TO BE DANGEROUSLY STUPID 6 16 09.

Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud

Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud  – The BRAD BLOG :

What’s perhaps most interesting here is what isn’t mentioned in this story, as written on the Los Angeles Times’ “L.A. Now” blog. First, here’s their entire blog item…

via The BRAD BLOG : Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud.

Daring Dragline Protest Launches 7 Days That Will Shake Mountaintop Removal Operations

Daring Dragline Protest Launches 7 Days That Will Shake Mountaintop Removal Operations

by Jeff Biggers

Four daring protestors accomplished something today that no high ranking member in the Obama administration involved in the recent mountaintop removal mining policy decisions has ever bothered to do: These four American patriots made an actual visit to a mountaintop removal site.

They also went beyond the call of duty.

Scaling a towering 20-story dragline (those behemoth stripmining machines that could rip up a Manhattan block in a New York minute) and then unfolding a 15 x 150 foot banner at the Twilight mountaintop removal strip mine in Boone County, West Virginia, they also unveiled a simple message on how the EPA, the Department of Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality can best enforce the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws:

via Daring Dragline Protest Launches 7 Days That Will Shake Mountaintop Removal Operations | CommonDreams.org.

Wall Street rises in choppy early trade

OPS:  Bull within a Bear…..

Wall Street rises in choppy early trade  - FT.com

US financial stocks show signs of strength

US stocks fluctuated on Thursday morning following three successive sessions of losses as investors digested the ramifications of the Obama administration’s plans for an overhaul of financial regulation.

Futures had spent much of the morning flat as Wall Street waited to see how Treasury secretary Tim Geithner’s testimony to Congress on the new regulation would be received. This could set the tone for much of the remoulding of President Barack Obama’s proposals as they pass through the legislative process.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

China optimism boosts commodities sentiment – Jun-18

FTSE steady as regulatory changes loom – Jun-18

Bourses suffer fifth straight day of losses – Jun-18

Surprise drop in retail sales hits pound – Jun-18

Chinese stocks at eleven-month high – Jun-18

Futures then received a boost on the release of figures showing that the number of people continuing to claim jobless benefits unexpectedly fell two weeks ago for the first time since January 3.

via FT.com / Markets – Wall Street rises in choppy early trade.

US groups face regulatory revamp

US groups face regulatory revamp - FT.com

Geithner to testify before Congress

Big US companies ranging from Wall Street banks to insurers, investment groups and General Electric on Wednesday faced fundamental changes in the business environment as President Barack Obama proposed what could be the biggest regulatory revamp since the 1930s.

The plan, which still must win congressional approval, would give the Federal Reserve new powers to oversee companies whose failure could endanger the banking system – a category that includes not only traditional lenders, but any company with significant financial operations, such as GE.

via FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy – US groups face regulatory revamp.

UK: Climate impact report says 800,000 homes will be at risk of flooding – Times Online

Climate impact report says 800,000 homes will be at risk of flooding

The threat to Britain posed by floods, heat waves and coastal erosion is far more serious than previously thought, according to a group of experts appointed by the Government.

Their report, to be published today, is expected to be the bleakest official assessment yet of the impact of climate change in Britain over the rest of this century.

It will say that the estimated number of homes at risk of flooding is likely to double to about 800,000 within 25 years because of rising sea levels. Average summer temperatures in the South of England will rise by 2C by the 2040s and up to 6.4C by 2080, it will warn, increasing the risk of skin cancers and insect-borne diseases

via Climate impact report says 800,000 homes will be at risk of flooding – Times Online.

Michigan’s unemployment rate hit 14.1% in May Press

OPS”  Did a little noodling around but could not find out if  14% represents the U3 or U6.  Given past history – this is the ‘Happy U3′ number making the actual unemployment around 20%. For more on U3 and U6

Michigan’s unemployment rate hit 14.1% in May

Michigan’s woeful labor markets took another steep dive during May, as the state’s unemployment rate surged to 14.1%, a jump of 1.2 percentage points from the month before, state officials said today.

The monthly seasonally adjusted rate reported today is the highest recorded in the state since 14.2% in July 1983. It’s up from 12.9% in April and 8.2% a year ago.

The U.S. unemployment rate rose by half a percentage point in May to 9.4%.

“Major events continued to unfold in Michigan’s auto industry in May, which had a considerable impact on the state’s unemployment rate,” said Rick Waclawek, director of the state’s Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives.

via Michigan’s unemployment rate hit 14.1% in May | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press.

Debt pushes millions below poverty line

Debt pushes millions below poverty line

Four million Americans would fall below the federal poverty line if the interest they pay on their credit cards and other consumer debt were subtracted from their incomes, say two economics professors who call these people the “debt poor.”

In two academic journal articles, economists Steven Pressman and Robert Scott of Monmouth University in New Jersey say the poor couldn’t get credit when poverty guidelines were created in the 1960s, and so debt burden wasn’t included in the calculations.

But in the ensuing decades, credit became pervasive. To assess how debt payments affect low-income households, the two economists studied the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, a detailed look at how Americans of all income levels manage their money.

via Debt pushes millions below poverty line.

Jobless claims edge higher, continuing claims dip

Jobless claims edge up in latest week

But continuing claims are down for the first time since January.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance rose slightly last week, while the number filing ongoing claims fell for the first time since the start of the year, according to government data released Thursday.

There were 608,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended June 13, up 3,000 from a revised-up 605,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said.

The number was just above the 604,000 consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Briefing.com

via Jobless claims edge higher, continuing claims dip – Jun. 18, 2009.

Another Obama Reversal on a “Free Trade” Agreement

Another Obama Reversal on a “Free Trade” Agreement

President Obama once again reversed his campaign position on a “free trade” agreement expressing optimism that a bilateral deal with South Korea would be passed through Congress soon.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama once again reversed his campaign position on a “free trade” agreement and expressed optimism that a bilateral deal with South Korea would be passed through Congress soon.

At a Rose Garden press conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, the president struck a much different tone on the leftover Bush administration “free trade” agreement than he did on the campaign trail.

“We want to make sure that we have … an agreement that I feel confident is good for the American people, that President Lee feels confident is good for the Korean people, before we start trying to time when we would present it,” Obama said.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Boeing-Airbus Battle Set to be Back on

Boeing-Airbus Battle Set to be Back on

“We are ready to build America’s next tanker with whatever capability our customer requires.”

An ongoing bidding war between a European aircraft maker Airbus and Chicago-based Boeing to replace the Air Force’s aging refueling tanker fleet is set to heat up again very soon as the Department of Defense prepares to issue a request for offers.

The acrimonious bidding process is already into its eighth year. Both aircraft manufacturers have bitterly battled over the lucrative $35 billion contract. The bidding process has become a politically sensitive issue plagued by scandals, investigations and trade disputes.

Last February, as EconomyInCrisis reported, the Air Force awarded the contract to French aircraft manufacturer Airbus and its partner Northrop Grumman over the only other bidder, Boeing.

The contract, however, was stripped in September after the Government Accountability Office deemed that the original bidding process was deemed to have contained “significant errors.”

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Obama Administration Set to Unveil Sweeping Financial Reforms

Obama Administration Set to Unveil Sweeping Financial Reforms

The government is seeking authority to preemptively dismantle large financial firms that pose systemic risks to the economy.

Just before 1 p.m. today, President Barack Obama is set to unveil the most sweeping banking reforms since the 1930’s that, according to his administration, will curb excessive risk taking and prevent future crises of the current meltdown’s magnitude.

“Unfortunately the growth of the non-bank sector as well as all the complexities and financial instruments outstripped those old regulatory regimes,” Obama said in an interview on Tuesday with The New York Times and CNBC.

The reforms will greatly expand the role of both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. The administration will also announce the creation of two new entities to oversee the financial markets and will shutter another office.

The Federal Reserve will be granted the powers to oversee the entire financial system, including the derivatives and mortgage-backed securities.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

China’s role in the Great Recession

China’s role in the Great Recession

Unfortunately for the U.S., China profits more from our economy than from all other economies of the world combined.

The United States is in the midst of its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In many ways our economy today is worse than it was in the 1930s. Our official unemployment rate is lower than it was then, but our productivity in relation to the rest of the world has softened and our economy has developed massive budget and trade deficits.

Making matters worse, our government must fund itself through overseas loans. These keep us technically in the black, but they come in exchange for influence on U.S. policies.

In each of these areas the United States has one competitor in particular: China. China is the United States’ largest trading partner; it is also the nation with which we carry our largest trade deficit. It is the nation that funds the largest amount of our government deficit, and it is the nation which hopes to exact the most influence over our domestic affairs.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Wasted Efforts and Lost Opportunities

Wasted Efforts and Lost Opportunities

The administration worked diligently on such a diverse array of topics that the overall affect of each was diluted.  Nothing was given priority other than saving the banks.

The Obama administration, for all intents and purposes, rode into the White House on a white horse of sorts. The Bush administration was leaving, and the new president and his officials were there to clean up the mess. At the same time, this paradigm changing president was keen to stick to his promise of bi-partisan dealings and moderate political stances.

Many on the right thought he was far too liberal, now many on the left believe President Obama has simply been too conservative. The administration had the chance to stamp out excessive executive pay schemes and renegotiate trade deals for U.S. benefit. It had the chance to decrease military expenses, and redefine the tax structure so as to erase the enormous growth of the Bush era federal deficit.

According to a recent article in BusinessWeek, many believe the Obama administration has lost much of the momentum behind its ideas for reform. This comes from the fact that the White House has not moved quickly on many of its campaign ideals. The administration seems to have been swept up by entrenched lobbies and political coalitions.

via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Copy Of Black’s ‘Strongly Worded Reprimand’ To Aide For Racist E-mail: ‘I Look Forward To Working Together’

Copy Of Black’s ‘Strongly Worded Reprimand’ To Aide For Racist E-mail: ‘I Look Forward To Working Together’

Pressure has been building on Tennessee State Sen. Diane Black (R) to fire her aide, Sherri Goforth, who sent an e-mail with a racist image of President Obama. Today on CNN, for example, former Cheney aide Ron Christie said that “I think the appropriate course of action would be for this staffer to be dismissed.”

However, Black has dug in her heels. Yesterday, she told CNN that that although the e-mail “does not represent the beliefs or opinions of my office,” she decided to keep Goforth on:

When I did find out about the communication that was sent out, I immediately called the H.R. department and through their advice did what they told me needed to be done when there was a violation of an e-mail policy by the state. And so, therefore, as you have already stated, Miss Goforth did get a verbal reprimand as well as a very strongly worded reprimand written and it was put in her file that if this should ever occur again, that she should be immediately terminated.

via Think Progress » Copy Of Black’s ‘Strongly Worded Reprimand’ To Aide For Racist E-mail: ‘I Look Forward To Working Together’.

Sen. Johnny Isakson thinks a public plan competing against private health care programs is a ‘good system.’

Sen. Johnny Isakson thinks a public plan competing against private health care programs is a ‘good system.’

On Monday, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) told the Georgia Public Broadcasting News that although he opposes a single-payer system, he would support a system where there is competition between public and private health care programs:

ISAKSON: Having private competition, facilities like Emory that are private, public like Grady competing with one another is a good system. What we have got to guard against is becoming a single-payer government system. You take competition out of health care and you’ll have less quality and a higher cost.

Listen here:

via Think Progress » Sen. Johnny Isakson thinks a public plan competing against private health care programs is a ‘good system.’.

Reneging on pledge to give Obama his ‘silence,’ President Bush criticizes Obama’s health care plan.

Reneging on pledge to give Obama his ‘silence,’ President Bush criticizes Obama’s health care plan.

After initially stating that he wanted President Obama to “succeed” and that he owed Obama his “silence,” President Bush yesterday decided to reverse course and criticize the President. The former President took aim at Obama’s desire to introduce a public health insurance option for Americans:

“There are a lot of ways to remedy the situation without nationalizing health care,” Mr. Bush said. “I worry about encouraging the government to replace the private sector when it comes to providing insurance for health care.”

Asked by the evening emcee at the 104th annual Manufacturer and Business Association meeting if he finds the new president’s policies “socialist,” Mr. Bush started then stopped.

“I hear a lot of those words, but it depends on…,” he said, breaking off. He later offered a more diplomatic assessment: “We’ll see.”

Former Gov. Howard Dean, a strong advocate of a public plan, responded to Bush’s criticisms this morning on NBC’s Today Show. “We’ve had a government system for 50 years,” Dean said. “The Republicans didn’t like it then — it’s called Medicare. Everybody over 65 is already in the government system. Let the people who are under 65 make a choice.” Watch it:

via Think Progress » Reneging on pledge to give Obama his ‘silence,’ President Bush criticizes Obama’s health care plan..

A Chemical Found in Most Consumer Products May Cause Heart Disease in Women

A Chemical Found in Most Consumer Products May Cause Heart Disease in Women – By Elizabeth Grossman,

Bisphenol A is used in countless consumer products including food and beverage containers, kitchen appliances, electronics, and packaging.

A study released this week by researchers at the University of Cincinnati says that exposure to bisphenol A may increase heart disease in women.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is the chemical building block of polycarbonate plastics and is used in countless consumer products including food and beverage containers, kitchen appliances, electronics, and packaging and is used to make resins that line food and drink cans.

Research by Scott Belcher and colleagues in the university’s department of pharmacology and cell biophysics has found that environmentally available levels of BPA — a synthetic chemical known to mimic the behavior of estrogen — can disrupt normal heart muscle function and prompt arrhythmia or irregular heartbeat.

via A Chemical Found in Most Consumer Products May Cause Heart Disease in Women | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.

More Power for the Fed?

– Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA)

The New York Times reports: “The plan the president will formally announce on Wednesday would give the Federal Reserve greater supervisory authority over large financial institutions whose problems pose potential risks to the economic system.”

ROBERT AUERBACH

Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Auerbach wrote the book Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan’s Bank. He said today: “The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach. The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate. Bank regulation begins at its 12 district Federal Reserve Banks, each governed by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district.

“The plan for a separate federal government ‘board’ over all regulators to coordinate systemic risk management is also not a good idea. There have been poor results with divided regulation between bank regulators despite the creation of the Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) in 1979 to coordinate regulation. The FFIEC has had as much influence on the secretive Federal Reserve, which regulates the financial holding companies of the huge superbanks and foreign banks, as hitting the powerful bureaucracy with a wet noodle.”

NOMI PRINS

Author of Other People’s Money and the forthcoming It Takes a Pillage, Prins just wrote the piece “The Big Bank Bailout Payback Bamboozle.” She said today: “As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner talks tough about financial regulation, the banks are paying back federal subsidies with other federal subsidies — classic definition of a Ponzi scheme.

via More Power for the Fed? — Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA).

Warning: Health Care Lobbyists Are Winning the Battle to Screw All of Us

Warning: Health Care Lobbyists Are Winning the Battle to Screw All of Us

Lobbyists sense that their chances of protecting big insurers, drug companies, medical specialties, technology companies are improving.

WASHINGTON — You can’t get there from here. Not if there is defined as health insurance coverage for everyone in the United States, lower costs for the millions of insured who are being crushed by its price, and relief for employers who are burdened by an expense many wish they could wipe off their books. And not if here is where the health insurance political debate is stuck.

At the moment, Republicans are gleeful and Democrats glum because of a Congressional Budget Office analysis — based on an incomplete and early draft of what is likely to be the most liberal-leaning health care proposal to emerge from the Senate — that shows the measure just won’t get the job done. The budget office says the partial draft put together mainly by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., would reduce the number of uninsured by only about 16 million (out of upwards of 47 million) and cost about $1 trillion over the next decade. That’s very little bang for a lot of bucks. But no one should be surprised at either number. For starters, candidate Barack Obama never ran on a platform to provide universal coverage. Of course he always said — then and now — that his goal is to cover everyone. But he has never put forward a concrete proposal for doing so, and hasn’t endorsed a firm mandate that everyone purchase insurance. Remember those primary-season debates in which rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards criticized him for this? Attention should have been paid.

via Warning: Health Care Lobbyists Are Winning the Battle to Screw All of Us | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.

How Obama’s regulation plan aims to fix what went wrong

Does the plan reinstate and strengthen Glass-Steagall?  No?  Huh. No wonder Summers, Geithner and the rest of the  crew think it’s a good idea.

How Obama’s regulation plan aims to fix what went wrong  | McClatchy

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s proposed overhaul of financial regulations aims to eliminate a number of the loopholes that contributed to the recession. Here’s a summary of what went wrong and how his proposals would try to fix it:

- Nobody looking out for the little guy. At least five federal regulators had some responsibility for protecting consumers from fraud and predatory lending involving credit cards, payday loans, mortgages and other credit products. Yet this responsibility was the primary focus of none. Obama’s plan would strip the Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission and other regulators of certain powers and give them to a newly created Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It would be independent and would have the power to make and enforce consumer-protection rules. States could pass rules even tougher than those of the new agency.

_ No regulator looking at the entire financial system. Individual regulators saw parts of the problem, but nobody saw how together they posed a systemic threat. The Federal Reserve would be charged with guarding against threats to the broad financial system. It would have until Oct. 1 to propose what new powers or changes in law it would need to do this.

via How Obama’s regulation plan aims to fix what went wrong | McClatchy.

Obama’s Money Men Finally Get It

Obama’s Money Men Finally Get It

By Robert Scheer

Now they tell us.

On Monday, two men with considerable responsibility for enabling the banking meltdown confronted the error of their ways. Not directly, of course, for accountability is hardly the mark of either Lawrence Summers, the top White House economic adviser, or Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Their careers have long been fueled by error. Summers was one of the leading prophets of radical financial deregulation in the Clinton administration. And Geithner, as head of the New York Fed, looked the other way during Wall Street’s collapse and then responded by opening wide the spigot of taxpayer dollars to resuscitate Citigroup and AIG.

What they wrote this week in a joint op-ed article in the Washington Post is a condemnation of the Wall Street shenanigans they once abetted and celebrated. I hope their apparent sudden conversion to common sense indicates the seriousness of the banking regulation plan that President Obama will present to Congress today.

via Obama’s Money Men Finally Get It.

Help Save the Earth, Time to Subsitute Hemp for Oil

Help Save the Earth, Time to Subsitute Hemp for Oil 

Every man-made fiber we wear, sit on, cook with, drive in, are by-products of the petroleum industry — all of which could be replaced by hemp.

As the recession renews interest in the growing hemp marketplace as a potential boon for the green economy — even Fox Business News has touted it — hemp is becoming impossible to ignore.

But the plant’s potential extends far beyond consumer-generated greenbacks. A low-input, low-impact crop, industrial hemp can play a significant role in our desperate shuffle to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“In terms of sustainability, there are numerous reasons to grow hemp,” says Patrick Goggin, a board member on the California Council for Vote Hemp, the nation’s leading industrial-hemp advocacy group.

Goggin launches into its environmental benefits: Hemp requires no pesticides; it has deep digging roots that detoxify the soil, making it an ideal rotation crop — in fact, hemp is so good at bioremediation, or extracting heavy metals from contaminated soil, it’s being grown near Chernobyl.

via Help Save the Earth, Time to Subsitute Hemp for Oil | Environment | AlterNet.

Sen. John Ensign: The Plot Thickens

The Plot Thickens

It’s getting pretty thick. Don’t step in it. The woman involved in the affair with Sen. John Ensign is asking why he felt the need to confess. She wasn’t ready to go public.
Cindy Hampton and her husband and her kid all have their names in the papers and they are not happy.

“It is unfortunate the senator chose to air this very personal matter, especially after the Hamptons did everything possible to keep this matter private,” Las Vegas lawyer Daniel Albregts said in the statement. “It is equally unfortunate that he did so without concern for the effect such an announcement would have on the Hampton family.”

The wronged husband, Doug Hampton, was making over $13,000 a month working for Ensign as an ‘administrative assistant’. All you administrative assistants out there–I never knew the job was so lucrative.

It’s going to be more about lucre than lust when the full story comes out. I’m tired of seeing people outed for private behavior–even hypocrites who brag about their valuable families. But if Ensign used public money for private misbehavior he’s got nowhere to hide.

via The Plot Thickens « Kmareka.com.

Sickly talk about fixing healthcare

Sickly talk about fixing healthcare  | Salon

President Barack Obama was elected with perhaps the best chance in a generation to reform America’s unjust and grotesquely inefficient healthcare system. To do so, however, he’ll have to conquer not only entrenched special interests like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and the American Medical Association but also his own sentimental rhetoric about bipartisanship.

President Obama, ditch the rhetoric about bipartisanship and enact reform with or without the GOP and the AMA

President Barack Obama was elected with perhaps the best chance in a generation to reform America’s unjust and grotesquely inefficient healthcare system. To do so, however, he’ll have to conquer not only entrenched special interests like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and the American Medical Association but also his own sentimental rhetoric about bipartisanship.

According to Washington Post columnist David Broder, “The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48.” That kind of talk gets a certain kind of Beltway pundit purring like a housecat on a windowsill.

It’s a mistake, anyway. As the source for this heartwarming anecdote was evidently Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who recently dispatched a peevish Twitter message complaining about Obama’s “sightseeing” while visiting France to commemorate D-Day, perhaps it needn’t be taken too seriously.

via Sickly talk about fixing healthcare | Salon.

The Illegal Spying Game, played over and over

The Illegal Spying Game, played over and over

Glenn Greenwald

Ever since The New York Times revealed in December, 2005 that the Bush administration had spent the last four years illegally spying on Americans’ communications without warrants, there have been numerous additional revelations of various types of massive illegal government spying. Yesterday’s New York Times article by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau — reporting that “recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged” — is but the latest such revelation. Congress never does anything about these revelations other than enact new laws that increase the government’s spying powers still further and gut the few remaining oversight mechanisms that exist (while immunizing the lawbreakers). All of that compels the conclusion that Congress — regardless of which party controls it — is either indifferent to or in favor of this unchecked illegal government spying. What other conclusion could a rational person possibly reach?

Every time new revelations of illegal government spying arise, the same exact pattern repeats itself: (1) euphemisms are invented to obscure its illegality (“overcollection”; “circumvented legal guidelines”; “overstepped its authority”; “improperly obtained”); (2) assurances are issued that it was all strictly unintentional and caused by innocent procedural errors that are now being fixed; (3) the very same members of Congress who abdicate their oversight responsibilities and endlessly endorse expanded surveillance powers in the face of warnings of inevitable abuses (Jay Rockefeller, Dianne Feinstein, “Kit” Bond, Jane Harman) righteously announce how “troubled” they are and vow to hold hearings and take steps to end the abuses, none of which ever materialize; (4) nobody is ever held accountable in any way and no new oversight mechanisms are implemented; (5) Congress endorses new, expanded domestic surveillance powers; and then: (6) new revelations of illegal government spying emerge and the process repeats itself, beginning with step (1).

via The Illegal Spying Game, played over and over – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Obama and Anti-War Democrats

Obama and Anti-War Democrats   | CommonDreams.org

by Norman Solomon

Days ago, a warning shot from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue landed with a thud on Capitol Hill, near some recent arrivals in the House. The political salvo was carefully aimed and expertly fired. But in the long run it could boomerang.

As a close vote neared on a supplemental funding bill for more war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “the White House has threatened to pull support from Democratic freshmen who vote no.” In effect, it was so important to President Obama to get the war funds that he was willing to paint a political target on the backs of some of the gutsiest new progressives in Congress.

But why would a president choose to single out fellow Democrats in their first congressional term? Because, according to conventional wisdom, they’re the most politically vulnerable and the easiest to intimidate.

Well, a number of House Democrats in their first full terms were not intimidated. Despite the presidential threat, they stuck to principle. Donna Edwards of Maryland voted no on the war funding when it really counted. So did Alan Grayson of Florida, Eric Massa of New York, Chellie Pingree of Maine, Jared Polis of Colorado and Jackie Speier of California.

Now what?

via Obama and Anti-War Democrats | CommonDreams.org.

Dem, GOP centrists meet in secret

Dennis Kucinich: How Do We Support The Troops?

YouTube – Dennis Kucinich: How Do We Support The Troops?.

Today’s Best Cartoons

Today’s Best Cartoons.

Today’s Best Cartoons

Today’s Best Cartoons.

Religious right leaders say it is anti-Christian to oppose hate

OPS:  YEP – you read that right….extreme right

Religious right leaders say it is anti-Christian to oppose hate

In the war of ideas those who believe only they have Truth on their side often find they provide the best ammunition for their opponents. This is certainly true in the hysterical reaction on the extreme religious right’s opposition to hate crime legislation. They worry that prohibiting the encouragement of violence against certain groups will have a “chilling effect” on religious free speech.

via Religious right leaders say it is anti-Christian to oppose hate.

Republicans try to obstruct health care bill.

Republicans try to obstruct health care bill.

Today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee began marking up Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) Affordable Health Care Act. Republicans, who pushed for the incomplete HELP legislation to be studied by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and then pretended that the agency scored the entire bill, tried to obstruct the effort by complaining that the CBO had not yet scored the full proposal. During the hearing, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) argued that the hearing be postponed until a full cost-analysis is available. Watch it:

via Think Progress » Republicans try to obstruct health care bill..

The private health industry’s time is up

Sanders Op-Ed: The private health industry’s time is up

By Bernie Sanders

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.

Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated, and bureaucratic in the world. But in America, the people who have to navigate that maze are the lucky ones. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. At a time when 60 million people, including many with insurance, do not have access to a medical home base, more than 18,000 Americans die every year from preventable illnesses. That is six times the number who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

via U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

Eddie Bauer files for bankruptcy protection

Eddie Bauer files for bankruptcy protection

Struggling retailer Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc., which began as a Seattle fishing shop, later outfitted the first American to climb Mt. Everest and made thousands of newfangled down jackets and sleeping bags for the military during World War II, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday.

Still known for outdoorsy clothing but serving a distinctly more domestic clientele of students and other mall patrons, the company said Wednesday that a bidder has agreed to keep the majority of its 371 stores open and honor its gift cards and hold onto most employees.

The company said CCMP Capital Advisors LLC has bid $202 million in cash for its assets. Other buyers may also make bids while the company is under court protection.

via Eddie Bauer files for bankruptcy protection.

Economists, small business owners say health reform key to economic revival

Economists, small business owners say health reform key to economic revival

The idea that the US can’t afford comprehensive health care reform during a recession, as pushed by some opponents of President Obama’s call for reform this year, is flat out wrong, said a statement signed by more than 330 economists and released this week by the Institute for America’s Future.

On the contrary, health care reform would help revitalize the economy and remove a major barrier to long-term dynamic growth: the rapid growth of health insurance and health care costs, the statement indicated.

“Affordable coverage with good benefits,” the statement read, “will give cash-strapped lower and middle-income Americans greater financial security – and the ability to pay their mortgages, start small businesses, save for college, pursue new job opportunities, and make other choices that will benefit our economy.”

The long-term costs of the current broken health care system drag on the economy, drain investments in innovation, and add to the federal deficit by driving up Medicare and Medicaid costs.

Another long-term benefit is that health reform would generally improve the health of American workers. “Reforming the system through new emphasis on prevention, chronic disease management and effective treatments will eliminate wasteful spending and build a healthier, more productive workforce,” the experts agreed.

via People’s Weekly World – Economists, small business owners say health reform key to economic revival.

The Untold Story of the 2001 Anthrax Attacks

Thom Hartmann  talks with Eric Nadler author of Dead Silence www.anthraxwar.com

YouTube – The Untold Story of the 2001 Anthrax Attacks.

What Did The Fed Do With 9 Trillion Dollars?

Thom Hartmann

YouTube – What Did The Fed Do With 9 Trillion Dollars?.

How did the evil empire take hold?

Thom Hartmann

YouTube – How did the evil empire take hold?.