Archive for July, 2009
Full Spectrum Dominance and the NWO
William Engdahl on his book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order 
YouTube – Full Spectrum Dominance and the NWO.
Copyright laws threaten our online freedom
Copyright laws threaten our online freedom
If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.
On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Curb on content threatens France Telecom – Jul-07
E-retailers find big brands hard to touch – Jul-07
This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.
via FT.com / Comment / Opinion – Copyright laws threaten our online freedom.
Murdoch Tabloid Hacked Into Cell Phones Of “Hundreds Of Celebrities And Politicians”: Report
Murdoch Tabloid Hacked Into Cell Phones Of “Hundreds Of Celebrities And Politicians”: Report
LONDON — Britain’s most senior policeman ordered an inquiry Thursday into claims that journalists from a tabloid owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch illegally hacked into the mobile phones of hundreds of celebrities and politicians.
Lawmakers also demanded answers after The Guardian reported that the News of the World _ the country’s most popular Sunday paper _ paid private investigators to obtain voice mail messages, private phone numbers, bank statements and other information about figures including Gwyneth Paltrow, George Michael and some of the country’s most senior politicians.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said he had appointed a senior Scotland Yard officer, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, to look into the allegations against the News of the World, which is owned by News International Ltd., a subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corp.
“We will investigate thoroughly and follow the case to where it leads us,” Stephenson told Sky News.
via Murdoch Tabloid Hacked Into Cell Phones Of “Hundreds Of Celebrities And Politicians”: Report.
The Neocons Have No Credibility, So Why Do They Get So Much Media Exposure?
Commonweal Institute: The Neocons Have No Credibility, So Why Do They Get So Much Media Exposure? – Commonweal Institute:
BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by Brad Reed of Commonweal Institute
If the media coverage of the Iranian elections has taught us anything, it’s that the neoconservatives have held onto their megaphones in the mainstream press. For those of you unfamiliar with the neoconservatives – or neocons, as they are often referred to – they’re a clique of right-wing foreign policy ideologues who think the use of American military power is always justified under any circumstances. The endgame, as neocon Max Boot put it, is to have American troops occupy the “troubled lands” that “cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.” The neocons’ one real attempt at implementing this doctrine so far has been in Iraq, where our country has been fighting for more than six years to take out Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction stockpiles.
Amazingly, the neocons have learned nothing from the bloody experience in Iraq and would like to see it copied several times over. The recent Iranian elections are a case in point, as the neocons used the crackdown on Iranian dissidents as an excuse to both portray President Obama as weak and to restate their calls for regime change in the country. And of course, it isn’t merely Iran where the neocons would like to see military force applied. Neocon guru and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, for instance, has advocated using the American military to preventatively attack not only Iran, but also North Korea, Sudan and even Somali pirates. The neocons don’t seem to understand that it is simply not possible to fight multiple wars at once with our already-overstretched military. When Newt Gingrich was asked on Meet the Press a few years ago if having 130,000 of our troops stuck in Iraq had harmed our ability to deal effectively with Iran and North Korea, Gingrich actually said that it only hurt us “in our minds.”
World Food and Water Shortages Threaten the World’s Population
World Food and Water Shortages Threaten the World’s Population – Political Affairs Magazine
Urgent political change needed to avoid worldwide catastrophe
Dublin – The knowledge by developed countries that a billion of the world’s population are starving and many more millions living in abject poverty is not new. The method of ignoring this crime against humanity is to give them charity and make grand-sounding statements while organizing a world political and economic system that has ruthlessly robbed most of the world of the right to live decently.
It is only now, when alarm bells are ringing for the capitalist countries themselves, that the warnings of those advocating a better system are being listened to. Climate change has dominated the arguments, with powerful transnational and political interests trying to hold back the evidence of how a destructive worldwide economic system is causing global warming.
Food and water shortages, together with the way in which technology is used for economic growth, are threatening the predator countries themselves. For the first time (having refused all previous requests) the World Trade Organization has agreed to hear a report by a United Nations expert appointed as special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, on the effects of free trade on the right to food. This report, presented to the Human Rights Council in March, condemns trade agreements that include agriculture with obligations that cause food shortages to a country’s people.
A leading columnist of the /New York Times,/ Tom Friedmann, warns of the “collapse of civilization” but thinks the United States can lead the new “green” economy! A devastating article in the May issue of /Scientific American,/ “Could food shortages bring down civilization?” by a leading environmentalist, Lester R. Brown, says that, unless the world’s political, social and economic system is changed, food and water shortages will lead to the end of civilization and the world will descend into chaos, with the collapse of national governments.
via Political Affairs Magazine – World Food and Water Shortages Threaten the World’s Population.
Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions”
Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions” – CQ Politics |
CIA Director Leon Panetta told the House Intelligence Committee that the agency had misled and “concealed significant actions from all members of Congress” dating back to 2001 and continuing until late June, according to a letter from seven Democrats on the panel.
The letter was dated June 26, two days after Panetta appeared before a closed door session with the committee and it asked that the CIA chief “correct” his statement from May 15 that “it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress.”
Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week,” states the letter to Panetta from Anna G. Eshoo of California, Alcee L. Hastings of Florida, Rush D. Holt of New Jersey, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Adam Smith of Washington, Mike Thompson of California and John F. Tierney of Massachusetts.
CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta stood by his May remarks and believes Congress must be kept fully informed and Little added, “it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees.”
The disclosure came just as Democrats and Republicans were set to take up an intelligence authorization bill on the House floor on Thursday.
via CQ Politics | Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions”.
MSNBC interviews Gov. Howard Dean on health care reform
As the health care debate heats up, MSNBC interviews Gov. Howard Dean, a medical doctor, about the need for public officials to support the interests of common citizens over corporate health care interests.
YouTube – MSNBC interviews Gov. Howard Dean on health care reform.
Treasury pushes ahead with toxic asset plan
Treasury pushes ahead with toxic asset plan - FT.com
US allocates $30bn and names fund managers
The US Treasury on Wednesday pushed ahead with scaled back plans for public- private partnerships to buy toxic assets, naming nine fund managers and allocating $30bn of public funds, but without securing any further backing from the Federal Reserve.
Officially, the US central bank is still considering providing additional financing for investors buying bubble-era residential mortgage-backed securities, but its decision not to announce anything on Wednesday strongly suggests that it does not intend to take this step.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, meanwhile, said it remained committed to a pilot scheme under which it would provide debt guarantees for funds purchasing bubble-era loans, but initially only from failed banks.
via FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy – Treasury pushes ahead with toxic asset plan.
House Dems look at surtax on the wealthy
OPS: Why Not? Phuck ‘em. They feel the same way about you.
House Dems look at surtax on the wealthy
WASHINGTON – A plan to raise taxes on the wealthy is emerging as the leading option among House Democrats looking to finance health care legislation that President Barack Obama wants.
Numerous officials say that under the proposal, an income tax surcharge would be imposed on individuals earning more than $200,000, with a higher threshold for couples.
The same officials say earlier options under consideration have been abandoned. Among them was a proposal to raise the payroll tax that finances Medicare. The officials spoke anonymously to discuss private discussions.
House Democrats hope to unveil legislation on Friday that reins in the overall growth of health care spending, at the same time it extends coverage to millions who lack insurance.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
via House Dems look at surtax on the wealthy – Yahoo! News.
Poll: 55 percent say Sarah Palin unfit to be president
Poll: 55 percent say Sarah Palin unfit to be president
A new Public Policy Polling survey found that 55 percent of Americans think Sarah Palin is not fit to be president. Thirty-seven percent think she would be able to do the job.
As for her announcement last week that she was resigning as Alaska governor, 57 percent of respondents said that made them less likely to support her for president while 30 percent said it made them more likely to do so.
The poll of 923 likely voters was taken July 6-9 and has a margin of error of 3.2 percent.
via Poll: 55 percent say Sarah Palin unfit to be president.
565K new jobless claims, lowest level since Jan.
OPS: believe it, if it helps you get through the night
565K new jobless claims, lowest level since Jan.
WASHINGTON – The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits last week fell to lowest level since early January, largely due to changes in the timing of auto industry layoffs.
Continuing claims, meanwhile, unexpectedly jumped to a record-high. While layoffs are slowing, unemployed workers are having a difficult time finding new jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent last month and is expected to top 10 percent by the end of this year.
New claims for unemployment insurance plummeted by 52,000 to 565,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s significantly below analysts’ expectations of 605,000, according to Thomson Reuters. The last time new claims were below 600,000 was week of Jan. 24.
via 565K new jobless claims, lowest level since Jan. – Yahoo! News.
Independents said ‘edging away’ from Obama
OPS: He’s losing ground with Dems also. He, and the Dems MUST start proving that there is a difference in having THEM in control of our Government. So far, they are showing little difference.
Independents said ‘edging away’ from Obama
Though he still enjoys a broad base of support — some 56 percent approve of the job he’s doing in the latest Gallup poll — Obama is allegedly losing ground among independent voters in swing states, a critical constituency in a potential re-election bid.
“A source of the shift appears to be independent voters, who seem to be responding to Republican complaints of excessive spending and government control,” Politico’s John Bresnahan and Glenn Thrush wrote Thursday.
“This is a huge sea change that is playing itself out in American politics,” liberal pollster Doug Schoen is quoted as saying. “Independents who had become effectively operational Democrats in 2006 and 2008 are now up for grabs and are trending Republican.
“They’re saying, ‘Costing too much, no results, see the downside, not sure of the upside,’” Schoen told the reporters.
The Obama Administration dismissed such reports saying, “the independent numbers I have seen, public and private, have been relatively steady,” according to Obama’s top political adviser David Axelrod.
via The Raw Story » Independents said ‘edging away’ from Obama.
Michael Moore unveils title of new film: ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’
Michael Moore unveils title of new film: ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’
On Oct. 2, 2009, market capitalism will take on another face — and a challenge from the freewheeling director Michael Moore.
“Capitalism: A Love Story,” is the title of his latest flick.
“It will be the perfect date movie,” Moore said in an announcement. “It’s got it all — lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It’s a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let’s just say it: It’s capitalism.”
The date of the release comes exactly a year and a day after the Senate approved a $700 billion bailout of the nation’s major banks.
According to Variety, it depicts “the disastrous impact that corporate dominance and out-of-control profit motives have on the lives of Americans and citizens of the world.”
Moore previous solicited Wall Street whistleblowers online in an effort to collect material for the film.
“Be a hero and help me expose the biggest swindle in American history,” Moore said.
via The Raw Story » Michael Moore unveils title of new film: ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’.
Govt to Provide Debt Relief for College Grads
Govt to Provide Debt Relief for College Grads
The Department of Education began offering a repayment plan to graduates that will allow borrowers to reduce their monthly federal loan payments, based on income.
College graduates burdened by mountains of debt in the worst job market since the Great Depression received some relief from the federal government last week as the Department of Education began offering a repayment plan that will allow borrowers to reduce their monthly federal loan payments, based on income.
The plan, dubbed income-based repayment, limits monthly payments to a percentage of the borrower’s income. Eligibility is determined based on a borrowers income, debt, size of household and location.
“We know today’s borrowers are concerned about their ability to repay student loans in the current economic environment,” Arne Duncan, the education secretary, said in a statement. “This new plan addresses the issue head-on by giving them the option of a reduced monthly payment tied to their annual income.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Bankrupt: America’s Brand Names
Bankrupt: America’s Brand Names
Some of the biggest companies in their fields have gone bankrupt, including Obama’s suitmaker and an amusement park.
With consumers still reeling from the worst economic crisis to face the nation since the Great Depression, the American people are finally reining in their frivolous spending, and businesses are becoming casualties of this newfound frugality, according to CNNMoney.com.
Those companies that have gone under as a result of the recession are not just local mom and pops shops, but some of the biggest names in their fields, and the list continues to grow by the day.
Newspapers have been battered this decade because of the explosion of new media, but two of America’s largest newspaper operators are now hanging by a thread. Both the Tribune Company – owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times – and the Sun-Times Media Group – operator of 59 newspapers nationally – have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past six months.
Amusement Park operator Six Flags, a New York City-based company with parks across America, filed for Chapter 11 in June with $2.4 billion in debt.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
California Headed for Junk Status?
California Headed for Junk Status?
Fitch Ratings downgraded California’s long-term bond rating to nearly junk status.
The state of California, nearly paralyzed because of a massive budget shortfall, received even more bad news on Monday as one of the nation’s largest credit rating agencies downgraded California’s long-term bond rating to nearly junk status.
Fitch Ratings lowered the state’s long-term bond rating to BBB, just two steps below junk status, citing the state’s massive budget deficit combined with a lack of reliable revenue streams.
“The downgrade to ‘BBB’ is based on the state’s continued inability to achieve a timely agreement on budgetary and cash flow solutions to its severe fiscal crisis,” Fitch said.
Last week, the state began issuing IOU’s to cover some of its bills and maintain enough cash to investors holding the state’s debt. For months now, state lawmakers have been at an impasse over a $26.3 billion budget gap for the fiscal year that began July 1.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Bid to clip Fed’s wings gains support in Congress
Bid to clip Fed’s wings gains support in Congress
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A proposal from a long-time congressional foe of the Federal Reserve that could give lawmakers sway over monetary policy has won the support of a majority in the House of Representatives, alarming officials at the U.S. central bank.
The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, put forward by Republican Representative Ron Paul of Texas, now has 250 co-sponsors in the House. It will get air-time on Thursday during a congressional hearing on Fed independence that will feature testimony from the Fed’s No. 2 official, Donald Kohn.
Public anger over the trillion dollars the Fed has put into play to battle the financial crisis and bail out investment bank Bear Stearns and insurer American International Group has created a backlash and calls for more accountability.
A proposal from President Barack Obama to put the Fed in charge of monitoring risks to the entire financial system has intensified the scrutiny.
via Bid to clip Fed’s wings gains support in Congress | Politics | Reuters.
America Needs to Get Back to its Roots
America Needs to Get Back to its Roots
Americans must again make things the world wants, or foreign investors will buy up their country and swallow their sovereignty much as Roman legions toppled Athens.
The following article originally appeared on The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, the 13 colonies declared independence and unleashed a great experiment in democracy and economics.
The colonies were cogs in the British mercantile system, importing products made in British factories and exporting naval stores and agricultural products at modest prices. In 1776, the colonies lacked the money and industry to properly equip an army.
Tempered by settling a wilderness, Americans were skilled engineers — witness, Washington’s Potomac Canal and Franklin’s inventions. Knowledge of terrain and technology permitted Washington’s officers to rely on their ingenuity to obtain the necessities of war, repeatedly escape annihilation, and surprise and outwit British generals.
Ultimately, the Continental Army wore down Britain’s will to wage war, and many in Parliament grew sympathetic to American grievances and ended the conflict.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Obama’s Wasted WTO Opportunity
Obama’s Wasted WTO Opportunity
The President opted to oppose a so-called “border adjustment tax in the climate context” which would place a tariff on manufactured goods originating in nations with lower standards than the U.S.
One initiative that is near and dear to the Democrats in the United States is improving American environmental standards. Human-induced climate change was given particular importance by the Obama team during the campaign. But early in his first year President Barack Obama already seems to be slipping from his stance.
In June the White House used its considerable political might to criticize a rudimentary border tax provision that penalizes countries for not meeting the United States’ environmental standards. Non-profit group Public Citizen put together its own analysis of the President’s decision and came away with the conclusion that the WTO had a hand in swaying Washington.
The President opted to oppose a so-called “border adjustment tax in the climate context” which would place a tariff on manufactured goods originating in nations with lower standards than the U.S. The intent of the adjustment tax in question, the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” is to protect domestic workers from overseas firms who cut corners. We have climate control regulations in the United States that marginally increase the cost of goods; it would be unfair to allow foreign goods produced without these regulations to capture a market share from American producers who are simply obeying the law.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Rep. Steve King only one to vote against recognizing slave labor’s construction of U.S. Capitol.
Rep. Steve King only one to vote against recognizing slave labor’s construction of U.S. Capitol.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) was the only congressman to vote against a resolution yesterday that acknowledges the role that slaves played in the construction of the U.S. Capitol Building, reports Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post. According to the text of the resolution, which passed 399-1, its simple goal is to recognize those who constructed the Capitol with a marker:
“Whereas enslaved African-Americans performed the backbreaking work of quarrying the stone which comprised many of the floors, walls, and columns of the Capitol…
Whereas recognition of the contributions of enslaved African-Americans brings to all Americans an understanding of the continuing evolution of our representative democracy; and
Whereas a marker dedicated to the enslaved African-Americans who helped to build the Capitol will reflect the charge of the Capitol Visitor Center to teach visitors about Congress and its development…”
First-Class Cornyn Offers Weak Defense Of His Exorbitant Travel Costs: Texas Is A Big State
OPS: You’re Fired.
First-Class Cornyn Offers Weak Defense Of His Exorbitant Travel Costs: Texas Is A Big State
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has tried to portray himself as an upstanding lawmaker dedicated to fiscal restraint. He has frequently criticized “wasteful spending” in the federal government and even called President Obama’s spending plans “reckless.”
Last month, Politico published a chart illustrating the transportation costs from the offices of all 100 U.S. Senators. Topping off the list was Cornyn, who has spent over $150,000 on travel costs during the first half of the 2009 fiscal year.
When a local ABC News affiliate in Dallas (WFAA) asked him about his expensive travel habits, Cornyn called Politico’s report “a cheap shot.” The reporter then asked the obvious follow-up, “In what sense was it a cheap shot? They were using the Secretary of the Senate information?” However, Cornyn wouldn’t budge and instead decided to dig in:
CORNYN: Oh yeah, not every state is the same. When you represent a state as big as Texas and traveling home from Washington D.C. every weekend, it unfortunately costs some money.
McCaskill: I’m Going To Make ‘My Friends On The Left Very Unhappy’ On Clean Energy Legislation
OPS: You’re Fired.
McCaskill: I’m Going To Make ‘My Friends On The Left Very Unhappy’ On Clean Energy Legislation
Sen. Claire McCaskill looking into the camera.Last month, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which aims to transition America to a clean energy economy while combating climate change. After the bill’s passage, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) tweeted that she wanted to “fix” the bill’s cap on carbon pollution because it would “unfairly punish” Missouri’s families and businesses.
Appearing on a conservative Missouri radio show this morning, McCaskill reiterated her belief that the House bill will “hurt a state like Missouri that is so coal dependent.” Asked where she was “on the cap-and-trade,” McCaskill said that her position would make her “friends on the left very unhappy“:
MCCASKILL: Well, I’m going to make people, my friends on the left, very unhappy and I’m going to make those who don’t think global warming is real very unhappy because I’m probably going to be working with a group of moderates in the middle to try to come up with a bill that doesn’t punish coal-dependent states like Missouri. We’ve got to be very careful with what we do with this legislation.
Tell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
Tell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
Add your name below to FAIR’s petition
Reforming the dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system is a major issue in the news these days. The goal of the reform efforts, we’re told, is to expand coverage to the uninsured and to reduce costs. But what many experts and citizens see as the most sensible solution to these problems is kept out of the discussion by the corporate media.
Single-payer national health insurance is a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors). Single-payer is favored by a majority of Americans and physicians, according to recent polls (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09, Annals of Internal Medicine, 4/1/08).
Yet a recent study by FAIR found that of hundreds of stories about healthcare in major outlets earlier this year, only five stories included the views of advocates of single-payer–none of which appeared on the TV networks. In May, news coverage of the arrests of single-payer advocates showed that practically the only way to get single-payer mentioned in the corporate media is to get thrown out of Senate hearings.
more………
via Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.
Three Reasons We Need an Economic Wake Up Call
Three Reasons We Need an Economic Wake Up Call
Several events of the past week should be a wake-up call to the Obama administration. Bottom line: the medicine isn’t working.
By Robert Kuttner
The June Unemployment Numbers. The green-shoots school was expecting that the rising rate of unemployment would continue to slow, as it did in May. But instead the number spiked back up. A total of 467,000 jobs were lost. The unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent, and OECD economists project that U.S. unemployment will still be in double digits as late as 2011.
The 9.5 percent official figure — the worst since 1983 — conceals even worse news. The number of long-term unemployed is at record levels. This is the only recession since the Great Depression in which the job loss wiped out all the job growth of the previous recovery. As our friends at the Economic Policy Institute report.
We now have fewer jobs than in May 2000 when the recovery began, though the economy now has 12.5 million more workers. And there is less than one job opening for every five people seeking jobs. Hidden unemployment is also setting records – people with part time work who want full time work, as well as people whose hours have been involuntarily cut.
via Three Reasons We Need an Economic Wake Up Call | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.
10 Dangerous Household Products You Should Never Use Again
10 Dangerous Household Products You Should Never Use Again
Air fresheners, disinfectants, and cleaners found under your sink are more dangerous than you think.
You would never cross the street without looking both ways, walk alone down a dark alley alone at three a.m., or tell your child to accept rides from strangers. So why let hazardous, toxic, and even carcinogenic chemicals into your home everyday?
The message driven home for millions of Americans each day via TV and internet commercials is this: No need to scrub or scour. With just one squeeze of the spray bottle, you can wipe away dirt, grime, and bacteria.
Alas, there’s that dark alley again. Air fresheners, disinfectants, and cleaners found under your sink are more dangerous than you think. Mix bleach with ammonia, for example, and you’ve got a toxic fume cloud used by the military in WWI. And they weren’t cleaning kitchens.
Here is a list of the ten products you should ban from your home — forever — along with suggested alternatives.
via 10 Dangerous Household Products You Should Never Use Again | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Wingnut Congressman Brian Bilbray’s Ignorance about the Constitution and Citizenship Is Shocking
Wingnut Congressman Brian Bilbray’s Ignorance about the Constitution and Citizenship Is Shocking
On immigration law, and his ‘anchor baby’ nonsense, Bibray makes Ron Paul look like a constitutional scholar.
While my worldview differs fundamentally from that of Ron Paul, I grudgingly respect the iconoclastic rep’s consistency. He says he loves the Constitution, and he does adhere to its limits.
Paul thinks that the the provision of the 14th Amendment that grants citizenship to all persons born in the United States (and whose parents are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”) is a mistake. So, every year he trots out a proposal to amend the United States Constitution in order to do away with “birthright citizenship” once and for all.
To pass an amendment you need a 2/3 super-majority in both chambers of the Congress and then it needs to be ratified by 3/4 of the states. That is to say, Paul’s scheme to re-write the 14th has as much chance of passage as I have of singing La traviata at the Met.
But even if Paul is tilting at windmills, he accepts the language of the law, and is trying to change it. Good for him. It keeps him from having to engage in wild intellectual contortions in order to argue that the law says something which it clearly does not.
The Most Important Financial Journalist of Her Generation
The Most Important Financial Journalist of Her Generation
Long before most in the business press rose to the challenge, Gretchen Morgenson was reporting that the financial sector had gone rogue.
By Dean Starkman
On April 27, Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, sat down for a meeting at Goldman headquarters with Gretchen Morgenson, reporter, columnist and senior editor of the New York Times. The Wall Street titan and the Pulitzer Prize winner had never met, but this wasn’t the usual polite getting-to-know-you session between reporter and source.
“I feel like I’ve been waterboarded,” Blankfein told her, according to people familiar with the discussion. Blankfein was being dramatic, but he had reason to feel that way. It was Morgenson, after all, who had written the story this past fall that stripped the veil of secrecy from the most momentous closed-door deal in the annals of US finance: the government rescue of fallen insurance colossus American International Group. The September 28 story, “Behind Insurer’s Crisis, a Blind Eye to a Web of Risk,” was the first article published by a major news organization to reveal that the true beneficiaries of the bailout were the institutions to which AIG owed money, known as counterparties (mainly Wall Street investment banks). The 2,700-word piece said, among other things, that an AIG collapse “threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side” and that Blankfein attended a meeting at the Federal Reserve on September 15, the same day decisions were made to let Lehman Brothers fall and to save AIG.
via The Most Important Financial Journalist of Her Generation.
Why the FBI Squelched an Investigation of a Post-9/11 Meeting Between White Supremacist and Islamic Extremists
Why the FBI Squelched an Investigation of a Post-9/11 Meeting Between White Supremacist and Islamic Extremists
By Mark Levine
Shock: It seems the FBI cares more about protecting its illegal surveillance methods than following leads to stop terrorism.
The recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum serves as a stark reminder to us all that murderous racial and religious hatred still endures in America. One would expect the FBI to infiltrate and prosecute individuals and organizations that threaten domestic terrorist acts. But as this investigative report details, the large FBI bureaucracy, from the bottom to the very top, may well be more concerned with covering up its agents’ own illegal misconduct that it is with actually protecting Americans from terrorist attack.
If the leader of the White Supremacist Organization was uncomfortable meeting the brown-skinned supporter of the Islamic terrorist group in Florida, he tried not to show it. After all, the two men had a common agenda, and in the up-coming War Against the Jews, the Islamic Extremist had agreed, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It was January 2002 — a mere four months after 9-11 — and both men were intent on following up on that deadly terrorist attack with a “summit meeting” to discuss how their respective organizations could cement an alliance to cause more death and destruction in the United States and around the world.
It was the first meeting between the men. To break the ice, the White Supremacist mentioned his admiration for Adolf Hitler. The Islamic Extremist readily agreed that he shared that admiration and looked forward to joining with the White Supremacist in the goal of fomenting civil war in the USA. They both approved of suicide bombings. And they discussed how the White Supremacist Organization could launder money and provide financial assistance to the Islamic Terrorist Organization, which had already received arms shipments from Iran.
What Will the G8 Summit Accomplish: Feed the Hungry or Fuel Hunger?
What Will the G8 Summit Accomplish: Feed the Hungry or Fuel Hunger? | CommonDreams.org
As the rich G8 nations convene for their next extravaganza in L’Aquila, Italy from July 8-10, 2009, world hunger will once again take center stage. It is expected that the U.S. will announce “significant” increase in funding for agricultural development aid along with multi-year commitments from other G8 countries. This follows G8′s admission of failure in tackling hunger at its first ever farm conference in Treviso, Italy in April 2009.
Proposals to challenge hunger have become a common feature of international conferences since the 2008 food crisis. An increase of 83 percent in food prices between 2005-2008 led to a massive surge in global hunger — the number of hungry in 2008 increased to 963 million from 854 million a year before (FAO, 2008) — compelling heads of states to discuss food security as warnings of political instability and social unrest grew. The political intent to combat world hunger, however, was short spanned. Perhaps the decline in crop prices that started in the middle of 2008 made the problem appear less severe for policy makers, while the bailouts of failing banks and bankruptcies of automakers, came to capture all attention and resources.
The hunger crisis is however far from over. The number of hungry has reached a historic high in 2009 with 1.02 billion people — one sixth of humanity — going hungry every day. (FAO, 2009a) Despite an improved global cereal supply situation and decline in international prices of most cereals from their highs in the first-half of 2008, food prices remain high in developing countries. (FAO, 2009b) 32 countries face acute food crisis. Economic crisis has worsened the situation by further shrinking the purchasing power of the urban poor and food deficit farmers in poor countries. (TWN, 2009b)
via What Will the G8 Summit Accomplish: Feed the Hungry or Fuel Hunger? | CommonDreams.org.
Credit card firms try end run around new federal rules
OPS: Join a Credit Union.
Credit card firms try end run around new federal rules - Los Angeles Times
Because the law would restrict interest rate hikes unless a card has a variable rate, some banks are doing away with fixed rates.
David Lazarus
Banks are quietly changing the terms of millions of credit card accounts as they brace for a tough new law that will limit rate hikes.
The law would restrict interest rate increases unless a credit card has a variable rate. So at least two major lenders are switching their cards with fixed rates to — you guessed it — variable rates.
“It’s completely unfair,” said Linda Sherry, a spokeswoman for Consumer Action. “It’s an end run around the intent of the new law.”
That law is the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which President Obama affixed with his signature in May. Its various provisions will be phased in between next month and February.
Congress passed the law to curb what politicians called abuses of cardholders by lenders, including runaway interest rates and constantly changing terms
via Credit card firms try end run around new federal rules – Los Angeles Times.
Morgan Stanley Plans to Turn Downgraded Loan CDO Into AAA Bonds
The return of Junk : Morgan Stanley Plans To Repackage Millions In Shoddy Mortgage Loans As Top-Rated Securities
Morgan Stanley Plans to Turn Downgraded Loan CDO Into AAA Bonds – (Bloomberg)
Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale.
Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, according to marketing documents obtained by Bloomberg News. The bonds were created from Greywolf CLO I Ltd., a CDO arranged in January 2007 by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and managed by Greywolf Capital Management LP, an investment firm based in Purchase, New York.
Two years after the credit markets began to seize up, costing the world’s biggest financial institutions $1.47 trillion in writedowns and losses, banks are again taking so- called structured finance securities and turning them into new debt investments with top credit ratings. While the Morgan Stanley deal is the first to involve CDOs of loans, banks have been doing the same with commercial mortgage-backed securities in recent weeks.
via Morgan Stanley Plans to Turn Downgraded Loan CDO Into AAA Bonds – Bloomberg.com.
Decision to dump TVA’s spilled coal waste in Alabama community sparks resistance
Decision to dump TVA’s spilled coal waste in Alabama community sparks resistance
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan last week to dump 3 millions of tons of coal ash that spilled from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in eastern Tennessee in an impoverished, largely African-American community in Alabama — and the decision is sparking resistance among local officials and residents who don’t want the toxic waste.
The district attorney for Perry County, Ala. — where the privately owned Arrowhead landfill that’s getting the ash is located — said yesterday the federal government’s decision to bring the waste to his community was “tragic and shortsighted” and would endanger generations of residents, the Associated Press reports:
Perry County District Attorney Michael Jackson said he would monitor the lengthy disposal process to make sure the landfill operator and the federal utility comply with environmental regulations.
Jackson said he doesn’t know if anything can be done to block the shipments, however.
“We’re looking at every option, talking to different groups,” Jackson said.
The Alabama Department of Environmental Management defends the decision, and some Perry County officials say it will bring millions of dollars in payments and about 50 jobs to the area.
via ISS – Decision to dump TVA’s spilled coal waste in Alabama community sparks resistance.
Canadian Doctor: H1N1 Vaccination a Eugenics Weapon for Mass Extermination
OPS: Another beaut from Alex Jones. The Scary part is that some day he will be correct about one of these tin foil hat episodes. Again, this is from Alex Jones. Take that in to consideration.
Canadian Doctor: H1N1 Vaccination a Eugenics Weapon for Mass Extermination
Prison Planet.com
Canadian doctor Ghislaine Lanctôt, author of the Medical Mafia, has underscored the lawsuit recently filed by Austrian journalist Jane Bürgermeister against the WHO, the UN, and several high ranking government and corporate officials. Bürgermeister has documented how an international corporate criminal syndicate plans to unleash a deadly flu virus and institute a forced vaccination program.
“I am emerging from a long silence on the subject of vaccination, because I feel that, this time, the stakes involved are huge. The consequences may spread much further than anticipated,” writes Lanctôt, who believes the A(H1N1) virus will be used in a pandemic concocted and orchestrated by the WHO, an international organization that serves military, political and industrial interests.
1979 CBS 60 Minutes episode concerning the 1976 swine flu “pandemic” in the U.S.
Lanctôt warns that the elite and their minions will introduce a compulsory vaccination that will contain a deadly virus and this will be used specifically as a eugenics weapon for “massive and targeted reduction of the world population.” Moreover, a pandemic will also be used to further establish martial law and a police state, according to Lanctôt, and activate concentration camps “built to accommodate the rebellious” and eventually transfer power from all nations to a single United Nations government and thus fulfill the sinister plans of the New World Order.
via Canadian Doctor: H1N1 Vaccination a Eugenics Weapon for Mass Extermination.
Fearing the Future
Fearing the Future
The corporate press makes the case for being saved
By Peter Hart
SIDEBARS: Proposed Cure: More of the Disease and Did Google Kill the Newspaper Star?
Corporate media are in a state of severe business shock, it seems—layoffs at newspapers large and small, due to advertising revenue drying up and readers ceasing to pay for a printed copy of a newspaper that they can usually read for free online. The state of the press has generated an enormous amount of attention in the press itself, with journalists and pundits offering any number of plans to “save” dying newspapers. Congressional hearings on the state of the media suggest that lawmakers are worried about what might happen next. And most of the commentary about the media business paints the situation as dire.
The news is “grim and grimmer by the day,” wrote New York Times media reporter David Carr (5/4/09). “Journalism is collapsing, and with it comes the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law as it has been understood here in the United States,” argued John Nichols and Robert McChesney in the Nation (3/18/09). A Time magazine cover story by former editor Walter Isaacson (2/5/09) was headlined “How to Save Your Newspaper.”
Others are less certain that things are that bad. Veteran reporter and industry analyst John Morton, for example, wrote in the American Journalism Review (12/08–1/09) that profit margins at most papers were actually still healthy; looking at publicly reported earnings data for newspaper operations (excluding non-newspaper properties and some one-time costs and write-downs), Morton saw revenue declines of about 11 percent in the first three quarters of 2008—but a profit margin of about 11 percent as well. As Morton pointed out, this would be a healthy profit in most industries—just not in the newspaper world, where in 2002 average profit margins were about 22 percent.
via Fearing the Future.
Real Health, Real Reform
Real Health, Real Reform
Katrina vanden Heuvel Interview with Bernie Sanders
With both the House and Senate looking to pass health care bills prior to the summer recess, which begins August 8, now is the moment of truth for Democrats: will they offer a real public plan option to compete with private plans and drive down costs? Or will they cater to the healthcare industry, which is now spending $1.4 million per day on lobbyists to protect their profits?
Throughout this debate, one Senator who has been willing to tell it like it is, with the people’s interest at heart, is Bernie Sanders. This week he will publish The Health Care Crisis: Letters from Vermont and America–a collection of healthcare stories sent to him from across the nation.
“In early June we sent out a letter to our email list–and we said two things,” Sen. Sanders told me in an interview this week. “Number one, please sign a petition calling for a single-payer system; and two, give us some of your experiences with the private health insurance and your experience in terms of health care in general. Well, in a few weeks, we got 40,000 signatures on a single-payer petition. But, as important, we received well over 4,000 responses–from Vermont and all over the country–people telling us what’s going on in their lives with regard to healthcare.”
These stories remind us of the powerful, personal experiences that too often get lost in the abstract and arcane arguments over healthcare reform. I spoke with the Senator about these stories and the battle for real reform as it enters the stretch run. Here is our conversation, and some excerpts from the healthcare stories as well:
Sen. Sanders: If you read the responses–they’re just unbelievable. It really makes you believe that in this area [of healthcare] you’re living in a Third World country. You know, people dying because they don’t have access to healthcare. People getting much sicker than they should have because they can’t find a doctor. People going bankrupt. I mean, all of the stories we read about but it really is mind-blowing just to read it in the words straight from people’s mouths. It’s very emotional, I think it’s a good piece.
House Chairman Says CIA Lied to Lawmakers
House Chairman Says CIA Lied to Lawmakers – CQ Politics
House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes has suggested Republicans would be well advised to avoid politicizing the intelligence authorizaton bill later this week in light of evidence that, he says, shows that the CIA “affirmatively lied to” the panel.
In a Tuesday letter to his committee’s top-ranking Republican, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, that was obtained by Congressional Quarterly, Reyes, D-Texas, wrote that the committee has recently received information that reveals significant problems with the intelligence agency’s reporting to the panel.
“These notifications have led me to conclude this committee has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to,” Reyes wrote.
Reyes did not describe or detail the alleged false or misleading statements to the committee.
“This agency and this director are committed to a candid dialogue with Congress,” said CIA spokesman George Little. “When Director Panetta believes something should be raised with the Hill, it gets done quickly and clearly. Our oversight committees recognize that.”
via CQ Politics | House Chairman Says CIA Lied to Lawmakers.
Senators Buck Obama, Urge Progressives To Keep Targeting Dems On Health Care
Senators Buck Obama, Urge Progressives To Keep Targeting Dems On Health Care
Two Senators said on Tuesday that they disagreed with President Obama’s backchannel complaints that progressive advocacy groups ought to stop targeting Democrats on health care.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has been a target of the ads himself, said he was perfectly fine with progressive organizations airing television spots critical of him in his own state.
“Folks are using that wonderful First Amendment to be heard,” said the Oregon Democrat, whose refusal to commit to voting for a public health insurance option has caused great frustration among health care reform advocates.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose progressive tilt has made him a champion of many such activists, was much harsher. Asked about Obama’s remarks, in which the president reportedly bemoaned the ads run by a variety of left-leaning organizations, Sanders whacked the president for trying to stifle the same groups that got him elected.
“My own view is that constitution of this country provides the right of the people to get actively involved in the political process and express their point of view,” the Senator told the Huffington Post. “Barack Obama would not have been elected as president of the United States without the active support of many of those people.
via Senators Buck Obama, Urge Progressives To Keep Targeting Dems On Health Care.
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American | Mother Jones
Book Excerpt:
A journey beneath the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power.
via Book Excerpt: The Family | Mother Jones.
Reid Reassures Finance Panel Republicans
OPS: Grampy Reid isa coward. Maybe his magic underwear is too tight
Reid Reassures Finance Panel Republicans – Roll Call
Senate Finance Committee Republicans emerged Wednesday afternoon from a meeting with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) saying the sides had agreed to continue bipartisan health reform talks within the committee — and that the negotiations would not be subject to artificial timelines.
But sources familiar with the Finance talks said the panel will not make enough headway by Friday to begin marking up a bill next week.
Although Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has not promised a start date for a markup, continued delays could derail plans by Senate Democrats to pass a bill out of the chamber before the August recess.
A Democratic leadership aide said Wednesday the goal “is still to get a bill off of the floor by the start of the August recess.”
Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and his GOP colleagues said they were pleased with the session with Reid.
via Reid Reassures Finance Panel Republicans – Roll Call.
Consumers trim borrowing by $3.2 billion in May as recession bites into investments and jobs
Consumers trim borrowing by $3.2 billion in May as recession bites into investments and jobs
WASHINGTON – Consumers trimmed borrowing in May for the fourth straight month as the recession took another bite out of investments and drove unemployment higher.
Many economists predict that consumers will stay cautious in the months ahead, boding for a lethargic recovery if the downturn ends later this year as many predict.
The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that consumer credit fell at an annual rate of 1.5 percent, or by $3.2 billion, from April. Economists expected a deeper cut of $9.5 billion.
via Consumers trim borrowing by $3.2 billion in May as recession bites into investments and jobs.
Energy investment firm busted for big Ponzi scheme
Energy investment firm busted for big Ponzi scheme - MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Federal authorities have cracked down on an alleged $485 billion Ponzi scheme holding investments in the oil and gas business, with Provident Royalties LLC now facing a suit filed late Tuesday in Texas by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A federal judge agreed to freeze assets of the company, which holds oil and gas interests, working interest and royalty interest in oil and gas properties in the U.S. Three principals of the firm, Paul Melbye, Brendan Coughlin and Henry Harrison, were named in the suit. The SEC charged the scheme drew in 7,700 investors told to expect yearly returns of up to 18%. Beginning in 2006, Provident began offering limited partnership interests or preferred stock to the public through a number of broker-dealers nationwide. Provident filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 22
via Energy investment firm busted for big Ponzi scheme – MarketWatch.
Worst of social, political crisis ahead: WTO chief
Worst of social, political crisis ahead: WTO chief
The worst social and political effects of the economic crisis are “still to come,” WTO chief Pascal Lamy said Tuesday, warning these could push countries deeper into trade protectionism.
Lamy told reporters he thought “the worst of the crisis in social terms is still to come, which means that the worst of the crisis in political terms is still to come.”
Therefore “the stress test for the WTO system as a system that prevents high intensity protectionism is still to come,” he added, and “the fight goes on” against such restrictive trade moves.
Lamy said there had been a trend towards restrictive trade practices despite efforts to curb outright protectionism since the Group of 20 summit of leading economies in London in April, citing a WTO report to member states last week.
“In the past
via The Raw Story | Worst of social, political crisis ahead: WTO chief.
The financial institutions that WaPo dare not name
The financial institutions that WaPo dare not name
Matt Taibbi
Concern over such deal-making reached a fever pitch last summer, when oil prices were sky high and people were feeling pain at the gas pump. CFTC data showed last year that a significant amount of trading in oil was concentrated in the hands of just a few speculators. These worries have waned since then, as gas prices have moderated from last year’s highs, though a recent run-up in fuel prices may prompt new questions.
This is a great example of how a story that’s primarily about Goldman and Morgan Stanley manages never to mention them by name.
The Post leaves out a lot of details in this piece. Among other things, they describe this new plan by the CFTC to place restrictions on speculative commodities trades as an idea that came from new CFTC commissioner Gary Gensler, who of course is a former Goldman banker and was a key aide to Bob Rubin back when the two of them were in the Treasury in the late 1990s and pushing for the deregulation of derivatives.
via Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – The financial institutions that WaPo dare not name – True/Slant.
Exclusive: Robert McNamara deceived LBJ on Gulf of Tonkin, documents show
Exclusive: Robert McNamara deceived LBJ on Gulf of Tonkin, documents show
Official government documents reveal new side of defense secretary’s legacy
Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967, took many secrets with him when he died Monday at 93. But probably no secret was more sensitive politically than the one that would have changed fundamentally the public perception of his role in Vietnam policy had it been become widely known.
The secret was his deliberate deceit of President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 4, 1964 regarding the alleged attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Documents which have been available for decades in the LBJ Library show clearly that McNamara failed to inform Johnson that the U.S. naval task group commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, had changed his mind about the alleged North Vietnamese torpedo attack on U.S. warships he had reported earlier that day.
via Raw Story » Exclusive: Robert McNamara deceived LBJ on Gulf of Tonkin, documents show.
Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix
Video at link
Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix
The Marijuana Policy Project is running ads calling for California to tax the sale of marijuana.
A pro-marijuana group is launching another television bid to legalize pot in California — this time with the pitch that legalizing and taxing the drug could help solve the state’s massive budget deficit.
The 30-second spot, airing Wednesday and paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project, features a retired 58-year-old state worker who says state leaders “are ignoring millions of Californians who want to pay taxes.”
“We’re marijuana consumers,” says Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, who says she began using marijuana after suffering multiple strokes three years ago. “Instead of being treated like criminals for using a substance safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share.”
via Raw Story » Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix.
Arizona state senator argues for uranium mining by claiming the Earth is ‘6,000 years’ old.
Arizona state senator argues for uranium mining by claiming the Earth is ‘6,000 years’ old.
On June 25, the Arizona Senate’s Retirement and Rural Development Committee discussed the prospects for uranium mining in the state. During the hearing, State Senator Sylvia Allen (R), the vice chairman of the committee, argued in favor of mining by saying that the earth “has been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.” “We need to get the uranium here in Arizona, so this state can get the money from it,” argued Allen. Watch it:
Bank Lobbyist’s Freudian Slip: ‘We’re Not For Any Regulation’
Bank Lobbyist’s Freudian Slip: ‘We’re Not For Any Regulation’
Today, Scott Talbott, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at The Financial Services Roundtable (one of the financial services industry’s main lobbying arms) appeared on C-Span to discuss the Obama administration’s proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The Roundtable has already made its opposition to the new agency abundantly clear, while claiming there are other ways to enhance financial regulations. However, when asked what the Roundtable would support, Talbott slipped and said “we’re not for any regulation“:
HOST: So if not this process by the administration, the creation of the CFPA, how would the Financial Services Roundtable go about assessing and remedying this…
TALBOTT: Sure, sure. We’re not for any regulation. In fact, we have some proposals, but what we don’t want to do is separate out the regulation of the entity from the regulation of the product, which is what the CFPA would do.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Bank Lobbyist’s Freudian Slip: ‘We’re Not For Any Regulation’.
Pope calls for a new world order
OPS: Back to the future? He wants to be King of the Western world… like the Pope was in the 1500′s
Pope calls for a new world order
POPE Benedict XVI has proposed a new world political authority “with real teeth”, possibly in place of the United Nations, to enforce an ethical financial order and end the global financial crisis.
Calling for more aid, a bigger role for trade unions and an economic system aimed at the common good as well as profit, the Pope said only a moral market could end the crisis and solve world poverty.
The proposals were in his long-awaited encyclical – the second-highest level of papal teaching – released in Rome yesterday morning Australian time, before the G8 leaders gathered in Italy to discuss the global crisis.
via Pope calls for a new world order.
White House, hospitals reach deal on health care
OPS: how gracious. 
It’s time to crush them .
White House, hospitals reach deal on health care
WASHINGTON – The nation’s hospitals will give up $155 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid payments to help defray the cost of President Barack Obama‘s health care plan, a concession the White House hopes will boost an overhaul effort that’s hit a roadblock in Congress.
Vice President Joe Biden announced the deal at the White House on Wednesday, with administration officials and hospital administrators at his side.
“Reform is coming. It is on track; it is coming. We have tried for decades to fix a broken system, and we have never, in my entire tenure in public life, been this close,” Biden said. And in a firm message to lawmakers, Biden added, “We must — and we will — enact reform by the end of August.”
Obama has set an ambitious timetable for legislation, with the hope of signing a comprehensive bill in October. But lawmakers returned Tuesday from their July 4 break with lots of questions about the complex legislation and deep misgivings about key elements under discussion.
via White House, hospitals reach deal on health care – Yahoo! News.
Senator Bernie Sanders: The Health Care Crisis — Letters from Vermont and America
Senator Bernie Sanders: The Health Care Crisis — Letters from Vermont and America
BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
I sent an e-mail to my Senate mailing list requesting support for a single-payer Medicare-for-All system, and for personal stories describing the problems people are having with their health care coverage. Within a few weeks, some 40,000 people signed the single-payer petition and more than 4,000 sent in their personal stories. I want to thank all of those who responded.
I collected some of the letters in a booklet, “The Health Care Crisis: Letters from Vermont and America.” In poignant and heartbreaking terms, the letters describe the pain and outrage that people are experiencing within our dysfunctional health care system.
A man in Swanton, VT told the story of his younger brother, a combat-decorated veteran of the Vietnam conflict, who died three weeks after being diagnosed with colon cancer. “He was laid off from his job and could not afford COBRA coverage. When he was in enough pain to see a doctor, it was too late. He left a wife and two teenage sons in the prime of his life at 50 years old. The attending doctor said that if he had only sought treatment earlier he would still be alive.”
via Senator Bernie Sanders: The Health Care Crisis — Letters from Vermont and America | BuzzFlash.org.
Report: States Aren’t Using Stimulus Funds as Intended
Report: States Aren’t Using Stimulus Funds as Intended | CommonDreams.org
WASHINGTON – Under pressure to spend stimulus money quickly, many states are using the federal funds for short-term projects and to fill budget gaps rather than spending on long-term improvements, according to a report by congressional investigators.
The report, scheduled to be released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) at a House oversight hearing, also says many states aren’t meeting some goals and requirements of the economic recovery program. Some states, for example, are not sending transportation funding to the most economically distressed areas, and they are using education funds to prevent layoffs rather than fund innovative new programs, the report says.
As required by the $787 billion stimulus law, the GAO is monitoring stimulus spending in 16 states and the District of Columbia that will receive two-thirds of the federal funds. It reports to Congress every two months.
via Report: States Aren’t Using Stimulus Funds as Intended | CommonDreams.org.
Advocates of Full Nationalized Health Insurance Fight On
Advocates of Full Nationalized Health Insurance Fight On | CommonDreams.org
by Rick Schmitt / Kaiser Health News
WASHINGTON – The YouTube video shows Donna Smith pulling on a white hazmat suit and protective rubber gloves. She’s going to work, trying to clean up the nation’s health insurance industry.
With a bullhorn in one hand and a picket sign in the other, she leads a group of a dozen or so similarly attired activists in marching outside a Chicago hotel on a windy morning last fall.
The “Health Care Hazard Cleanup Team” has come to protest an industry it sees as toxic to the health of Americans. Today’s target is an insurance company trade group that’s meeting inside.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho,” a chorus erupts. “Private insurance has got to go.”
via Advocates of Full Nationalized Health Insurance Fight On | CommonDreams.org.
Campaign Finance Moment of Truth
Campaign Finance Moment of Truth | CommonDreams.org
Decades of lawmaking and court decisions restricting the flow of cash into U.S. elections are on the verge of coming undone, placing President Barack Obama in the unexpected position of presiding over the possible demise of the modern campaign finance regime.
Most of the developments now threatening to reverse efforts to reduce the influence of money in politics were set in motion during George W. Bush’s presidency. But Obama is nevertheless poised to watch the regulatory regime crumble around him as his administration follows a cautious approach that mostly ignores calls for more activist steps to salvage the troubled campaign finance system
The irony that the system could collapse on Obama’s watch, after he convinced the advocates for stricter regulations that he was one of their own, is not lost on those who support limits on the flow of money into the American political system.
“I would like to see the president make good on his campaign promises to change the way Washington works,” said Paul Ryan, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that pushes Congress, the White House, the Federal Election Commission and the courts to enact, enforce and uphold strict limits. “With respect to the campaign finance laws and the FEC, the only change we’ve seen has been a change for the worse,” said Ryan, who stressed, “I’m not blaming the president. I’m just stating it as a factual matter.”
via Campaign Finance Moment of Truth | CommonDreams.org.
Criminal Rothschilds
YouTube – Criminal Rothschilds.
If my sons did not want wars, there would be none.” ~ Gutle Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschilds wife
I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing… it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country
.
Andrew Jackson, Letter to L. H. Coleman of Warrenton, N.C., 29 April 1824
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913), Doubleday…
more at link
“Charitable Hospitals” providing very little Charity
“Charitable Hospitals” providing very little Charity
If President Obama wants to “squeeze billions of dollars from (healthcare) spending,” as Associated Press reports(July 1), he could begin by administering a dose of fiscal reality to for-profit hospitals masquerading as charitable institutions.
Such hospitals are getting tax exemptions “because they are providing charitable care—free care or deeply discounted care—for those who can’t pay,” writes law school dean Lawrence Velvel. “The problem, though, is that they’re not providing very much charitable care.”
Velvel cites Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital as a case in point. It is exempt from about $50-million in property and sales taxes and exempt from taxes on the gains of its cash and investments of $1.82-billion. “But the percentage of charitable care Northwestern provides is less than two percent of its revenues,” writes Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Indeed, the $21 million Northwestern spends on charitable care is, according to the Wall Street Journal, but “a fraction of what it received in tax breaks.”
Another example: BJC Healthcare, a 14-hospital, St. Louis-based enterprise, claimed $1.8 billion in “community benefits” to various towns in 2004, Velvel writes, “but over one-half of that, or $937 million, was compensation paid its employees, including $1.8 million to its CEO, while only $35 million was charitable care.” Velvel said BJC is contending that as the jobs it produces have a beneficial impact on its communities “it is proper to call the salaries a community benefit.”
via “Charitable Hospitals” providing very little Charity.
Inhofe defends calling Franken a ‘clown’: ‘He kind of looked like a clown when I was talking to him.’
OPS: Inhofe is treading on thin ice. This will be fun
Inhofe defends calling Franken a ‘clown’: ‘He kind of looked like a clown when I was talking to him.’
Sen. Inhofe Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) extended a nasty welcome to his newest Senate colleague, Al Franken, last week, telling the Tulsa World, “I’ll tell you what a lot of people are thinking, and that is it looks like things are going to be over and we are going to get the clown from Minnesota. … I don’t know the guy, but…for a living he is a clown.” Inhofe is now rushing to defend himself, pointing out that he and Franken “physically embraced” when they ran into each other on Tuesday. However, he still insists that Franken is a “clown”:
On Tuesday, Inhofe again insisted his comments last week were not meant to be derogatory.
He said the “clown comment” did come up during the chance meeting.
“But believe me, he knew. He kind of looked like a clown when I was talking to him,” Inhofe said.
Asked by Bill Press to respond to Inhofe last week, Franken simply replied, “I don’t know how Sen. Inhofe regards clowns, but it might be an incredible compliment.”
So This Is What Victory Looks Like?
So This Is What Victory Looks Like? – Truthdig
By Scott Ritter 
Fireworks lit up the Baghdad sky on the evening of June 30th, signaling the advent of “National Sovereignty Day.” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared the new holiday to commemorate the withdrawal of American combat troops from the Iraqi capital and all other major urban centers, although thousands of “advisers” would remain in the cities, embedded with Iraqi forces. The celebration transpired inside a city that has been radically transformed over the past six years. Even with American combat forces ostensibly withdrawn, Baghdad remains one of the most militarized urban areas in the world. It wasn’t always so. When I was in Baghdad during the 1990s, I was struck by the lack of an overt military presence for a nation purported to be governed by one of the world’s worst militaristic dictatorships.
Of course, in the city areas housing Saddam Hussein, his family and inner circle, and the seat of government, one would see green-clad soldiers of the Special Republican Guard standing watch over the gates controlling access into and out of these islands of power and privilege. But in the rest of the city—the vast majority of the city—there was no military presence. Traffic police stood on little islands in the middle of busy intersections, keeping the bustle of a modern city moving along at a brisk pace. There were soldiers in uniform around, but they carried no weapons, being on leave from their duties in Iraq’s conscript military. Just like their fellow servicemen in other cities around the world, they would enjoy a day or two walking the streets and markets of Baghdad, taking in the sights and sounds, grabbing a glass of tea, a quick meal and the sight of pretty girls neatly attired in Western-style dress.
via Truthdig – Reports – So This Is What Victory Looks Like?.
U.S. Ponders New Curbs on Speculators
OPS: “considers” ? Get the damn thing DONE!
U.S. Considers Curbs on Speculative Trading of Oil – NYTimes.com
Reacting to the violent swings in oil prices in recent months, federal regulators announced on Tuesday that they were considering new restrictions on “speculative” traders in markets for oil, natural gas and other energy products.
The move is a big departure from the hands-off approach to market regulation of the last two decades. It also highlights a broader shift toward tougher government oversight under President Obama.
Since Mr. Obama took office, the Justice Department has stepped up antitrust enforcement activities, abandoning many legal doctrines adopted by the Bush administration.
The Obama administration is also proposing an overhaul of financial regulation that would include tougher capital requirements for big banks, tighter regulation of hedge funds and a new consumer protection agency with broad power to regulate credit cards, mortgages and other consumer lending.
via U.S. Ponders New Curbs on Speculators – NYTimes.com.
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant – | Germany | Deutsche Welle |
Four days after a technical failure shut down a nuclear power station in northern Germany, operator Vattenfall admitted to having made a mistake, while Social Democrats and Green are urging a boycott.
Vattenfall admitted that a mistake had been made at the Kruemmel nuclear power station and confirmed that it had fired the plant manager. The Swedish operators said the head of the reactor had broken an agreement with German authorities to install discharge detectors on a transformer.
It was a short-circuit on one of the transformers that caused the Kruemmel plant to shut down last weekend, thus restricting power supplies across much of the city of Hamburg.
Vattenfall has now said it will not repair the electrical transformers, responsible for the supply of power to on-site machinery, but will replace them entirely. As a result, the reactor will not resume operations for several months.
via Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 08.07.2009.
US bank capital changes opposed
US bank capital changes opposed – FT.com
Private equity objects at meeting with FDIC
Private equity investors have objected to a new rule proposed by regulators that would require them to inject nearly four times the minimum capital normally required into troubled banks in which they invest.
The objections were raised during a marathon meeting this week between Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, and private equity and other potential investors in troubled banks. It came a week after the regulator proposed new policies governing private capital investment in failed banks.
The requirement that new investors post 15 per cent of tier one capital for at least three years upsets plans by some private equity firms to use new banks as platforms to acquire other banks, thus pushing along badly needed consolidation in the banking industry.
via FT.com / Companies / Financial Services – US bank capital changes opposed.
IMF says world economy stabilising
OPS: Buy it, if it helps you sleep
IMF says world economy stabilizing – FT.com
Recovery ‘likely to be sluggish’
The global economy is starting to drag itself out of recession and will grow by 2.5 per cent next year, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, a slightly rosier prediction than it made three months ago.
The IMF said financial conditions had improved more than expected since it predicted in April that the global economy would grow by just 1.9 per cent next year.
via FT.com / Global Economy – IMF says world economy stabilising.
Vitamin D and Mental Health
Vitamin D and Mental Health 
It was with interest that I read Dr. Soram Khalsa’s post on The Huffington Post about the Vitamin D epidemic in this country today. The medical doctor writes this:
As a board certified internist, I have chosen, for the last 30 years, to take a personalized approach in my practice of integrative medicine. I have worked with literally hundreds of herbs, vitamins and dietary supplements, to help my patients, often when drugs did not work. In all this time, I have not seen one nutritional supplement that has the power to affect human health as much as vitamin D. This is because Vitamin D is not actually a vitamin — it is a hormone that has the ability to interact and affect more than 2,000 genes in the body.Over my 30 years of practicing medicine, countless times I have had to deliver or discuss with a patient their sad and possibly terminal diagnosis. Diseases like cancer and heart disease are at best life altering, and most times life threatening. When I have this kind of difficult conversation with a patient, I often reflect that if their vitamin D level had been normal for the previous many years, maybe they would never have developed this disease.
Ideally, your health care provider is your partner in exploring your vitamin D status, but patients usually do not want to visit their doctor just to ask for a vitamin D level, and many doctors are not yet up to date on the importance of vitamin D. If you use the at-home test kit and your blood level of vitamin D is low, I would encourage you to discuss this information with your physician.
I found this particularly interesting because a few weeks ago, I spoke to a highly-recommended internist about my overall health. She had me get all kinds of blood work done, and in her summary, she wrote that most of my levels looked good with exception to my vitamin D. I had a substantial deficiency that she suspected could explain my symptoms of fatigue and sluggishness.
via Therese Borchard: Vitamin D and Mental Health.
Rove Deposed In U.S. Attorney Probe
Rove Deposed In U.S. Attorney Probe – under ‘oath’
WASHINGTON — Former Bush White House official Karl Rove was questioned by House Judiciary Committee lawyers Tuesday on any role he may have played in politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.
Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., confirmed Rove’s closed-door appearance through a committee spokesman who was not authorized to be quoted by name.
The committee has been seeking answers on who created the list of federal prosecutors who would lose their jobs. Conyers has suspected the trail led to the White House but couldn’t prove it. Former President George W. Bush asserted executive privilege for Rove and former White House lawyer Harriet Miers and refused to let them testify.
via Rove Deposed In U.S. Attorney Probe.
City To Deploy Debt Collectors As Budget Gap Grows
City To Deploy Debt Collectors As Budget Gap Grows
The same bill collectors who pester debtors on behalf of credit-card companies are being recruited by Chicago City Hall to go after anybody who owes money to the cash-strapped city.
via City To Deploy Debt Collectors As Budget Gap Grows.
Out Of Cash, Small Vendors Still Waiting For California IOUs
In California, Even the I.O.U’s Are Owed
The only thing worse than being issued an i.o.u. rather than a check from the State of California may be not getting the i.o.u. at all — at least in time to meet the deadline of your bank.
But across California on Tuesday, many vendors who had been told they would receive the i.o.u.’s instead of actual money said they had not yet received them. And if they do not arrive soon, they may be hard to turn into cash.
Last week, the state began issuing the warrants for the second time since the Great Depression. It ran out of cash to pay its bills as the Legislature and the governor failed to resolve the state’s $26 billion budget deficit.
via In California, Even the I.O.U’s Are Owed – NYTimes.com.
HuffPost Crashes GOP Senator’s Shady Lobbyist Party
Sen. Johnny Isakson’s Shady Dinner With Lobbyists: Crashing The Party
Just for fun, the Huffington Post decided Tuesday night to crash a dinner party for Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). It was one of many fundraisers happening every day for different politicians around town. The event’s location was listed on the Sunlight Foundation’s website, www.politicalpartytime.org, as a townhouse just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
The three-story red brick house, appraised at over $1.3 million, is owned by Mark Curry, according to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. Curry is chairman of the board of the Online Lenders Alliance, a trade group for Internet payday lenders. The Sunlight Foundation calls this building the “OLA Townhouse.”
This reporter arrived at the same time as John Greene of the National Association of Health Underwriters, which has a lobbying income of $250,000 so far in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Isakson is a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.)
via Sen. Johnny Isakson’s Shady Dinner With Lobbyists: Crashing The Party.
Minimum wage increase slated for July 24
Higher minimum wage coming soon
Federal wage floor will rise to $7.25 an hour on July 24. Hike will be felt in 29 states. Can the job market handle it?
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The federal minimum wage is set to increase later this month as the job market shows signs of further decay.
The federal minimum wage will go to $7.25 an hour on July 24 from its current level of $6.55, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The impact will be felt in 29 states, and many of them plan to match the federal minimum when it goes through.
Seven states already have laws mandating $7.25 minimum pay, while 14 states and Washington, D.C., exceed the new minimum. Employers are required to pay whichever is the highest: Federal or state.
via Minimum wage increase slated for July 24 – Jul. 6, 2009.
British scientists grow sperm in laboratory
British scientists grow sperm in laboratory | Metro.co.uk 
Women who say they don’t need a man may well be right – after human sperm was created in the lab.
The breakthrough could give hope to infertile couples and men left unable to have children after having cancer treatment.
But don’t worry guys, the scientists who created the sperm using stem cells don’t plan to take you out of the baby-making process just yet.
While we can understand some people may have concerns, this does not mean that humans can be produced in a dish and we have no intention of doing this,’ said researcher Prof Karim Nayernia.
‘The work is a way of investigating why some people are infertile and the reasons behind it.
‘It could also allow men who are currently infertile the chance to have a child which is genetically their own but this will be many years away – at least a decade.’
via British scientists grow sperm in laboratory | Metro.co.uk.
Department of Defense throws money at algae
Department of Defense throws money at algae
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the military’s research arm, awarded two separate three-year contracts in December 2008. DARPA awarded a 20 million dollar contract to General Atomics and a 15 million dollar contract to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to conduct research in creating biodiesel for jets from algae.. General Atomics plans to build a research facility in Texas and both companies are distributing the money to multiple universities and research companies in an effort to produce $3 a gallon jet fuel.
The present state of technology using algae produces $15 a gallon jet fuel. The DOD wants to reduce its energy consumption and dependence on fossil based fuels and foreign imports.
Algae is a high yield biofuel source. The right algae can produce 123 times more oil than an equivalent amount of corn. Algae beats all other food based sources.
via Department of Defense throws money at algae.
U.S. consumers fall behind on loans at record pace
U.S. consumers fall behind on loans at record pace | Reuters
Soaring U.S. unemployment and a shrinking economy drove delinquencies on credit card debt and home equity loans to all-time highs in the first quarter as a record number of cash-strapped consumers fell behind on their bills.
Delinquencies on the value of all card debt soared to a record 6.60 percent from 5.52 percent in the fourth quarter as more cardholders relied on plastic to meet day-to-day expenses, the American Bankers Association said.
Late payments on home equity loans rose to 3.52 percent from 3.03 percent, and on home equity lines of credit climbed to 1.89 percent from 1.46 percent.
A broader gauge showing late payments on eight categories of loans rose for a fourth straight quarter to a new record, edging up to 3.23 percent from 3.22 percent. That rate actually understates consumer pain because it excludes credit cards. The ABA tracks loan payments that are at least 30 days late.
via U.S. consumers fall behind on loans at record pace | Reuters.
Swiss to stop UBS handing over data in U.S. tax row
Swiss to stop UBS handing over data in U.S. tax row | Reuters
ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland has vowed to prevent UBS from handing over client information to U.S. authorities, in an attempt to defend bank secrecy, saying a tax case targeting its main bank is souring diplomatic ties.
Wealth management giant UBS is facing a court hearing in Miami next week after refusing to disclose data on 52,000 Americans holders of secret Swiss bank accounts to U.S. tax authorities.
The Swiss Justice Ministry said on Wednesday that Swiss law prevents UBS from handing over client information and the government would seize UBS client data, if necessary, to stop that happening.
via Swiss to stop UBS handing over data in U.S. tax row | Reuters.
Google to launch its own PC operating system
Google to launch its own PC operating system
Google has plans for its own personal computer operating system, it announced on its blog, setting up another clash between the Internet search giant and PC software supremo Microsoft.
“We’re announcing a new project,” said the Mountain View, California-based company, revealing the system would be based on its nine-month-old Chrome browser and would be an open source operating system initially targeted at netbooks.
The move is “our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Google said in a statement posted late Tuesday.
The search engine giant said it would open-source the code for “Chrome OS” for user input and that netbooks running the system would be available by the middle of next year.
“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds,” the company said.
via AFP » Google to launch its own PC operating system.
N. Korea said behind successful attacks on US government websites
N. Korea said behind successful attacks on US government websites
Government Web sites attacked; N Korea suspected
Massive cyber attack affects government Web sites in US, S Korea; N Korea suspected
A widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several U.S. government agencies as well as sites in South Korea, in a cyber foray that South Korean intelligence officials believe was carried out by North Korean or pro-Pyongyang forces.
The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. South Korean Internet sites began experiencing problems Tuesday.
U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack.
But South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the nation’s main spy agency, told a group of South Korean lawmakers Wednesday it believes that North Korea or North Korean sympathizers in the South “were behind” the attacks, according to an aide to one of the lawmakers briefed on the information.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the information. The National Intelligence Service — South Korea’s main spy agency — said it couldn’t immediately confirm the report, but it said it was cooperating with American authorities.
Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and “advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks.”
via The Raw Story » N. Korea said behind successful attacks on US government websites.
Fears of a Second Recession
Fears of a Second Recession
During the G20 summit in London last April, President Obama firmly planted the American flag on a policy of maintaining the old façade. Now is the time for prompt change and progressive economic action.
According to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the global economy still faces the real prospect of falling even deeper into recession. Patrick Wintour, political editor for The Guardian, said in a recent piece that the Prime Minister intends to address his concerns before the latest G8 summit scheduled in Italy July 8-10.
Brown considers global complacency to be the preeminent threat of a recovery, as far too many media and government outlets have already begun to claim that the downturn is over. It is popular to say that things are getting better, but most indicators still show a continued and prolonged slowing of the global economy. The worst hit is the United States with a financially and consumer dependent economy, but others have been caught in the wake of the sinking American giant.
The only countries that have actually found benefit and growth in this downturn are China, India, and a few other developing countries which focus heavily on manufacturing. Even in those cases the growth is not optimal – though it is still obviously preferable to contraction.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
DeMint on Honduran coup: It was ‘no more a coup than…Al Franken’s election to the Senate.’
DeMint on Honduran coup: It was ‘no more a coup than…Al Franken’s election to the Senate.’
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) today defended Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s recent removal from office by the Honduran military. In the course of defending the military coup, DeMint attacked President Obama for having what he called an “ad hoc and personalized foreign policy that seems less about supporting the rule of law than it is about supporting particular rulers.” Zelaya’s “removal from office was no more a coup than was Gerald Ford’s ascendence to the Oval Office or our newest colleague Al Franken’s election to the Senate,” DeMint claimed. Watch it:
Emanuel assures House Democrats that he won’t compromise on public plan.
Emanuel assures House Democrats that he won’t compromise on public plan.
After initially indicating his support for a public plan “trigger,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel reassured House Democrats tonight that he strongly backs a public plan. Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said she told Emanuel that support for a “trigger” would cause health reform to lose Democratic votes:
“We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game,” Woolsey said she told Emanuel. “People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives.”
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said Emanuel reassured him that he “doesn’t stand by that trigger.”
via Think Progress » Emanuel assures House Democrats that he won’t compromise on public plan..
What’s So Scary About Offering People the Option of a Public Health Plan?
What’s So Scary About Offering People the Option of a Public Health Plan?
By Dean Baker,
If the public plan is bad, then people will just stay with the options currently available in the private sector.
Independence Day is a time to reflect on the United States and to ask what it is that we really value about our country. Most people would probably list the freedoms that it has usually guaranteed to most members of society. The opportunities for economic success, while not as great as often touted, are nonetheless impressive.
However, some members of Congress were apparently celebrating our system of employer-provided health insurance last weekend. Or, at least that is what they want us to believe.
As Congress starts to delve into the dirt of a health care reform package, the clearest point of conflict is over the existence and structure of a public health care plan. Some members of Congress have thrown down the gauntlet, insisting that they could never allow the public to have the option of buying into a government-run plan.
The New Energy Bill May Create a ‘Super Lobby’ of Powerful Opposition
The New Energy Bill May Create a ‘Super Lobby’ of Powerful Opposition
If we don’t act now to strengthen the bill, it could create a “super lobby” that will diminish the possibility of achieving future reforms.
The recent passage of the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACES) through the U.S. House of Representatives drew different reactions from climate and environmental advocates. But one key perspective shared by most advocates is that, despite its weaknesses, the bill is a good first step. ACES builds a solid foundation for future progress on U.S. climate mitigation, the argument goes, and climate advocates will be well-positioned to strengthen the legislation in years ahead.
But what are the prospects for strengthening ACES in future years? This question is subject to many uncertainties, depending on the vagaries of the political climate. But a closer examination reveals that ACES could create a “super-lobby” of interest groups that will significantly diminish the possibility of achieving future reforms.
The newest climate lobby — and potentially one of the most powerful in years to come — is the financial industry. If ACES is signed into law, the global carbon market could become the largest commodity market in the world. According to Bart Chilton, Commissioner of the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), “The potential size and scope of a structured carbon emissions market in the US is unequivocally vast. It is certainly possible that the emissions markets could overtake all other commodity markets.”
via The New Energy Bill May Create a ‘Super Lobby’ of Powerful Opposition | Environment | AlterNet.
Palin, the press, and her “no más” moment
Palin, the press, and her “no más” moment – | Media Matters for America
It’s the Right-Wingers Who Are Unloading the Harshest Critiques About Palin’s Bizarre Departure. The split among conservatives over who’s to blame for Palin’s early exit from the national stage is breaking out into the airwaves.
Like frustrated welterweight Roberto Duran, who stunned the sporting world by walking away, mid-bout, from his 1980 prize fight against Sugar Ray Leonard with the memorable, muttered Spanish phrase for “no more,” Sarah Palin’s decision last week to walk away, mid-term, from her governorship stunned Beltway spectators and left bewildered Alaskans scratching their heads in amazement.
Palin’s “no más” moment initiated lots of intriguing storylines, but, for me, the most fascinating one has been the visible split within the conservative movement over who’s to blame for her early exit from the national stage. And specifically, how much culpability do the hated mainstream media deserve for the way Palin has been covered? For the way she’s been smeared and attacked?
Seems to me 99 out of 100 times, conservatives would find common cause on an unfolding story like this and agree that the media, to a huge degree, are guilty of some kind of unimaginable double standard, that the press had stacked the deck against the Republican and treated that pol unfairly. That’s been the go-to playbook for more than four decades now.
via Palin, the press, and her “no más” moment | Media Matters for America.
Taibbi’s Scream: Stop the Political System That Has Let Goldman Sachs Fleece Us for 90 Years
Taibbi’s Scream: Stop the Political System That Has Let Goldman Sachs Fleece Us for 90 Years
The sordid story of how Goldman Sachs and Co. engineered bubbles in the economy and made a hefty profit.
I hold my hands in front of me to block my line of sight
It seems my eyes are growing tired of staring in the light
The more I see the more I feel the less I want to knowBecause if you think to much you’ll blow your mindYou might just lose control and scream-Lyrics to “Scream,” by Seven Nations (Kirk McLeod)
In Matt Taibbi’s vivid and provocative new article in Rolling Stone, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” the man absolutely screams. Evoking the image in Edvard Munch’s famous Norwegian painting, Taibbi sounds the alarm to American readers as he explores the sordid story of Goldman Sachs and Co. Tracing 90 years of political and market history, Taibbi colorfully describes the firm headquartered at 85 Broad Street as: “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
Such evocative imagery will surely be discounted by some as hysterical or exaggerated, particularly by those whose senses are deadened by the business press or CNBC-style babble. Rather than engage in a dissection of the details, I would like to explore why Taibbi is screaming and ask why he is screaming for all of us in a way we are not seeing elsewhere in the media. In addition to screaming for us, I wonder whether he is also screaming at us. One thing is certain: he is screaming in a way that a healthy press would do in a hysterical time. Goldman Sachs’ uncontested success blurring the boundaries between market and state is symbolic of a tremendous malfunction in finance, politics and civil society. That the firm is well-managed by all measures and that some fine, well-meaning individuals work there is beside the point. Taibbi is telling us that the rules are rigged. That we are being abused.
This is a time for vivid outrage.
Howard Dean: “This Is Ridiculous. We’re 60 Years Behind the Times” on Fixing Health Care
Howard Dean: “This Is Ridiculous. We’re 60 Years Behind the Times” on Fixing Health Care
Progressive leader and health crusader Dean on what it’s going to take to overhaul our health care system.
During the 2004 presidential primaries, the conventional wisdom among Howard Dean’s energized supporters was that the over-the-top conservative attacks on the Vermont governor reflected the degree to which the right feared his nomination. With his blunt, plainspoken populism, the argument went at the time, Dean represented a threat to the Bush administration’s prospects for re-election that his more polished Democratic opponents lacked.
Five years later, and it may be the “disease care” industry — now spending $1.4 million each and every day to lobby lawmakers against implementing significant health reforms — that may be sweating Dean’s simple, but uncompromising, brand of politics.
In his new book, Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Health Care Reform, the physician and former candidate explains what makes the American health care system the most expensive in the world but nowhere near the best. He calmly destroys the industry’s arguments against substantial change and offers a plan to give everyone access to quality health care at a price that won’t break the bank.
AlterNet caught up with Dean to discuss the book and the larger political landscape in which the debate over health care is taking pace.
Poll: Would you be willing to pay higher taxes for government paid health insurance?
OPS: Interactive Poll at link
An Examiner poll: Would you be willing to pay higher taxes for government paid health insurance?
via An Examiner poll: Would you be willing to pay higher taxes for government paid health insurance?.
Major nations drop goal of halving CO2 by 2050: draft
OPS: Suicide
Major nations drop goal of halving CO2 by 2050: draft | Reuters
ROME (Reuters) – Major nations have failed to agree to set a goal halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to a draft document ahead of talks on Thursday – a setback to efforts to secure a new U.N. climate pact.
Neogotiations involving senior officials from the 17-nation Major Economies Forum broke down overnight after China and India opposed any mention of the target, a source familiar with negotiations told Reuters.
They first want to see rich nations commit to making deep cuts in their own emissions by 2020 and they want developed nations to work out plans to provide developing nations with short-term finance to help them cope with ever more floods, heatwaves, storms and rising sea levels, the source said.
via Major nations drop goal of halving CO2 by 2050: draft | Green Business | Reuters.
The Coming Economic Apocalypse
“Things are about to become ugly. Very Ugly.”
By: Roy F Grieder
Astonishing to me is the fact that no one seems to understand the ultimate result of the current policies and practices of Washington D.C. and the Federal Reserve Bank, the Fed. I have studied our economic situation for about 3 hours per day for the last 8 months and conclude we are bankrupt. Think about the facts.
Certainly most of the automobile industry, the airlines, 37 out of 50 states, are bankrupt. The lending industry, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac are bankrupt. Insurance giant AIG, bankrupt. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, or PBGC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, Social Security including Medicare and Medicaid are rapidly approaching insolvency.
In 1929 personal and corporate debt had risen to 365% of Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, before the Crash. We are now at 375% of GDP. So all of this excessive credit got us into this mess in the first place, right?. And the government and Fed solution to this mess is to print up an extra trillion dollars or so, give it to the lending industry and yell “Lend!, Lend!”. That should work, right?.
Remember TARP?, the money given to the banks and others to remove their “Toxic Assets” (sorry too harsh, let’s rename them “Troubled Assets.) Well, the toxins still remain. They exist in the form of Financial Derivatives, Credit Default Swaps, or CDS, and Collateralized Debt Obligations, or CDO. These financial instruments sound complicated, and they are. They are the inventions of Wall Street wunderkinds, the ones that get paid a couple of millions per year for their “brilliance“. The worldwide market (if you could call it that) or value of CDS is in the neighborhood of 600 trillion dollars, or 10 times the entire Worlds yearly economic output. How the banks and insurance giants are to clear their balance sheets of these toxins is no mystery . They cannot. Was it wise to take TARP money, 20 billion dollars, give it to General Motors when their market cap (the value of their common stock) was 985 million?. Will they pay us back?. No. They are bankrupt. The TARP was a fraud from the start, but it has bought the powers that be some time. Time, time for what?
via “Things are about to become ugly. Very Ugly.”.
Reid to Baucus: Stop Chasing GOP Votes on Health Care
OPS: Whats’ the back story? Reid finally grow a pair, or has the Dem ‘leadership’ already sold us out?
Reid to Baucus: Stop Chasing GOP Votes on Health Care - - Roll Call
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.
Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama is to deliver on his promise of enacting health care reform this year, offered the directive to Baucus through an intermediary after consulting with Senate Democratic leaders during Tuesday morning’s regularly scheduled leadership meeting. Baucus was meeting with Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Tuesday afternoon to relay the information.
According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.
via Reid to Baucus: Stop Chasing GOP Votes on Health Care – Roll Call.
Pickens calls off massive wind farm in Texas
OPS: This was always a front, a diversion. The real goal of this project was to quietly get his grubby hands on and own The Ogallala Aquifer which would have given him dictatorial control over several western states. This is a case of good riddance. Of course the question becomes: Will he have a fire sale on teh Turbines he’s already bought, or sit on them and make sure they never go in to use?
Pickens calls off massive wind farm in Texas
Pickens calls off plans for world’s biggest wind farm in Texas
HOUSTON (AP) — Plans for the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle have been scrapped, energy baron T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday, and he’s looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines.
Pickens has already ordered the turbines, which can stand 400 feet tall — taller than most 30-story buildings.
“When I start receiving those turbines, I’ve got to … like I said, my garage won’t hold them,” the legendary Texas oilman said. “They’ve got to go someplace.”
Pickens’ company Mesa Power ordered the turbines from General Electric Co. — a $2 billion investment — a little more than a year ago. Pickens said he has leases on about 200,000 acres in Texas that were planned for the project, and he might place some of the turbines there, but he’s also looking for smaller wind projects to participate in. He said he’s looking at potential sites in the Midwest and Canada.
In Texas, the problem lies in getting power from the proposed site in the Panhandle to a distribution system, Pickens said in an interview with The Associated Press in New York. He’d hoped to build his own transmission lines but he said there were technical problems.
Wind power is a big part of the “Pickens Plan,” which was announced a year ago Wednesday. Pickens has spent $60 million crisscrossing the country and buying advertising in an effort to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil.
via Pickens calls off massive wind farm in Texas – Yahoo! Finance.
Stimulus Raises Questions, Another on the Way?
Stimulus Raises Questions, Another on the Way?
While economic conditions continue to deteriorate with unemployment nearly in double-digits, the Obama administration is actively looking to tamp down expectations for its $787 billion stimulus.
While economic conditions continue to deteriorate with unemployment nearly in double-digits, the Obama administration is actively looking to tamp down expectations for its $787 billion stimulus package passed five months ago. It is also not ruling out the possibility of passing another one.
In recent days, the administration has been under heavy fire from both the left and the right for the perceived ineffectiveness of the stimulus package that officials claimed would hold the unemployment rate under 8 percent. Just last week, the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate had risen to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent in the month of June.
“This was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, and jobs,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “The fact is, it turned into nothing more than spending, spending, and more spending. I don’t believe it will create jobs.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Homeless Families on the Rise in Summer
Homeless Families on the Rise in Summer
The number of families living on the streets is on the rise across America during the summer months.
With the U.S. economy mired in the worst recession since the Great Depression, the number of families living on the streets is on the rise across America and further straining the budgets of already-strapped local governments.
In New York City, the homeless population increased 20 percent in the spring compared with the same period last year, according to The New York Times. Due to that, the city had expected 10,000 families to seek services at the city’s shelters this summer. Already New York City is serving 9,420 families.
In Indiana’s largest county, Marion County, home of Indianapolis, the number of homeless families has increased 78 percent compared to last year, according to The Indianapolis Star.
According to The Times, the reason that homelessness rises during the summer months is twofold. One, landlords are less hesitant to evict renters in the warmer, summer months. Two, parents are more likely to willingly leave and not fight an eviction during the summer when their children are no longer attending school.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
WTO Complaints: China vs U.S.
WTO Complaints: China vs U.S.
The U.S. frequently comes out a loser in trade complaints brought before the WTO due to America’s unwillingness to fight tooth and nail for its interests – as our Chinese counterparts do.
America’s membership in the World Trade Organization has not been nearly as fruitful as proponents would have you believe. The U.S. frequently comes out a loser in trade complaints brought before the undemocratic organization which effectively ensures that America cannot protect itself economically.
According to Howard Richman of Seeking Alpha, this is due to America’s unwillingness to fight tooth and nail for its interests – as our Chinese counterparts do.
The U.S. has a tendency to let trade disputes drag out unresolved for years or win cases and simply wait for the Chinese to do the right thing rather than take preemptive action to remedy a problem.
The Chinese, on the other hand, are much more proactive in protecting their economic interests – WTO be damned. China is known to take action while waiting for a dispute settlement from the WTO. Oftentimes that action is extraordinarily harsh. For example, recently the Chinese put a ban on poultry imports from the U.S.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
China Defending its Illegal Trade Policy
China Defending its Illegal Trade Policy
The government in Beijing believes that its policies which block mergers and acquisitions with foreign-based firms are fair to all parties involved.
Beijing has a long history with employing protectionist strategies to force out foreign competition and maintain its captive domestic market. On July 4th the Chinese government once again declared that its policies were not out of line with international agreements.
According to Kirby Chien of Reuters, the government in Beijing believes that its policies which block mergers and acquisitions with foreign-based firms are fair to all parties involved. Most importantly, the Chinese firmly believe that “broader national concerns take precedence over the potential benefits to any single company.”
In September of 2008 American icon Coca Cola attempted to purchase a domestic juice company in China. The $2.4 billion deal was blocked by the Ministry of Commerce on March 18, 2009. This was the largest and most public instance of overt Chinese blockades of foreign mergers, but it is hardly out of the ordinary.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Adding Up the True Costs of Two Wars
Adding Up the True Costs of Two Wars | CommonDreams.org
by Joseph Stiglitz & Linda Bilmes
Last week the U.S. “stood down” in Iraq, finalizing the pullout of 140,000 troops from Iraqi cities and towns — the first step on the long path home. After more than six years, most Americans are war-weary, even though a smaller percentage of us have been involved in the actual fighting than in any major conflict in U.S. history.
But not so fast. The conflict that began in 2003 is far from over for us, and the next chapter — confronting a Taliban that reasserted itself in Afghanistan while the U.S. was sidetracked in Iraq — will be expensive and bloody. The death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan reached 5,000 in June. An additional 80,000 Americans have been wounded or injured since the war in Iraq began. More than 300,000 of our troops have required medical treatment, and Army statistics show that more than 17 percent of our returning soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, even though most of the population has long told pollsters they can’t wait for U.S. forces to leave, U.S. officials have said we are likely to station 50,000 troops at military bases in the country for the foreseeable future. This is because the situation in Iraq is highly precarious.
via Adding Up the True Costs of Two Wars | CommonDreams.org.
New Charges Added to Blackwater Lawsuit
New Charges Added to Blackwater Lawsuit | CommonDreams.org
by William Fisher
NEW YORK – New charges filed against private security contractor Blackwater accuse the company of murder, destruction of audio and videotaped evidence, distribution of controlled substances, tax evasion, child prostitution, and weapons smuggling.
The new charges were filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO) by several of the Iraqi civilians who were injured or who lost family members when Blackwater personnel opened fire in Nisoor Square in Baghdad in September 2007.
The new allegations, which have been added to an ongoing civil lawsuit in Virginia federal court, charge that then Blackwater chairman Erik Prince “has created an enterprise that has engaged in a series of illegal acts that suffice as RICO predicate acts extending over a substantial period of time beginning at least in 2003.”
“The Prince RICO Enterprise continues to exist, continues to engage in repeated illegal acts, and poses a grave and special threat to the social well-being of the world,” say documents filed in the case.
via New Charges Added to Blackwater Lawsuit | CommonDreams.org.
Palin Hit With Another Ethics Complaint
Palin Hit With Another Ethics Complaint
In the wake of Governor Palin stepping down from her job, new allegations have surfaced today in Alaska charging Palin with additional violations of the Alaska Executive Ethics Act.
Zane Henning — a conservative government watchdog from the governor’s hometown of Wasilla and an oilfield worker on Alaska’s North Slope — asserts in a letter to Alaska Attorney General Daniel S. Sullivan that Palin has “been charging and pocketing per diem to live in her home and has used the process for a personal gain since being elected.”
The Washington Post first broke this story last September during the 2008 presidential race, but until now, no formal ethics charges have been brought on the matter in Alaska.
In a detailed press release accompanying his complaint, Henning declared that:
Palin’s use of the per diem is in direct conflict with Section 39.52.120. (a) of the Alaska Executive Ethics Act….More than a thousand state employees commute from the Mat-Su Valley daily and none of them get to pocket free money.
via Geoffrey Dunn: Palin Hit With Another Ethics Complaint.
Howard Dean Interview on Public vs Private Health Care Reform
Howard Dean: Private Health Care Is Breaking Our Economy – Esquire
And the Republicans are all a bunch of liars. And Washington is as scared of change as a cult. And other things you’d expect Howard Dean to say in a hot-button debate. Except, when it comes to this
particular hot-button debate, Howard Dean really knows what he’s talking about. And so should you.
via Howard Dean Interview on Public vs Private Health Care Reform – Esquire.
‘Absolutely’ no green light for Israel to strike Iran: Obama
OPS: Joe – Keep your mouth shut
‘Absolutely’ no green light for Israel to strike Iran: Obama
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday strongly denied that the United States had given Israel a green light to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, in an interview on CNN television.
Asked by the cable television broadcaster whether Washington had given Israel the go-ahead to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Obama answered: “Absolutely not.”
In the interview, which was broadcast from Russia, where he is on an official visit, he added: “We can’t dictate to other countries what their security interests are.
“What is also true is, it is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” Obama said.
This would be achieved “through diplomatic channels,” he added.
via The Raw Story | ‘Absolutely’ no green light for Israel to strike Iran: Obama.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
