Archive for July, 2009
Should We Bring Back The 90% Top Tax Rate?
OPS: At minimum, roll back the Reagan tax cuts
Should We Bring Back The 90% Top Tax Rate?
How many stories have we heard in recent years of CEO’s and other executives looting, stealing, polluting and wreaking general havoc? The incentive to loot a company’s pension funds is money. The incentive to outsource our jobs is money. The incentive to deny needed treatments to an insured patient is money. The incentive to pollute our rivers and air is money.
Generally the incentive to lie, cheat and steal is money. This is especially true in the corporate world where the reason for … well, everything … is money. This is normal, and can be kept in check. But the temptation that pushes many over the line is not just money, it is the possibility of the big, humungous jackpot. And that is what we have today.
It used to be that you could make, why, millions of dollars if you worked hard, built a company, invented something important, or had amazing talent. But today mere millions is for chumps. Today you can loot a fund, rig an energy market, forward-run stocks or threaten to bring down an economy and end up with a quick payoff of billions.
When excessive, massive paydays are possible, it opens the door to overwhelming greed and a resulting compromising of principles.
There is a way to prevent the destructive behavior we have been seeing from the top. People won’t have an incentive to cheat and steal if they can’t get the huge jackpot from the proceeds. Let’s limit the possibility of collecting a vast and fast return. The vast and fast return is the motivator, so take it out of the equation.
DaveJ :: Should We Bring Back The 90% Top Tax Rate?
The way to do this is with a very steep progressive income tax with a very high tax rate on income above a certain level. So suppose we set the top tax rate back to 90% for people making over, say $3 million. $3 million a year is nothing to sneeze at, so there is still plenty of reason to do what you do to make a lot of money. And if you pass $3 million you still take home $100K for every million more you make, which is also nothing to sneeze at. But there is no longer a reason to engage in quick-buck schemes. Instead there is plenty of reason to build a solid business over time, and hopefully eventually build a fortune of hundreds of millions. As I said, nothing to sneeze at.
via Open Left:: Should We Bring Back The 90% Top Tax Rate?.
Americans Lives vs. Insurance Company Profits: the real battle in healthcare reform
Americans Lives vs. Insurance Company Profits: the real battle in healthcare reform
Lying about healthcare, indeed fear-mongering about healthcare, has ramped up as insurance companies attempt to keep their profits. Those profits are created by a system where the US spends 5% more of its economy on healthcare in exchange for the worst results of anywestern nation. To insurance company executives, their profits, their executive salaries, and their bonuses, are not just worth lying for, but also worth killing for—or at least letting people die.
The Shona Holmes Healthcare Hitjob
Case in point: Shona Holmes is the current poster girl for the liars slandering Canadian health care in an attempt to discredit reform. Ms. Holmes alleges she was horribly endangered by Canada’s healthcare system:
via Americans Lives vs. Insurance Company Profits: the real battle in healthcare reform | Ian Welsh.
Foreign Embassies Urged to Stockpile Local Currencies
OPS: Here it comes.
Foreign Embassies Urged to Stockpile Local Currencies
A top investment advisor, Harry Schultz – who was MarketWatch’s Peter Brimelow pick for financial newsletter of the Year in 2008 – is now claiming:
Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments, quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that ‘something’ is about to happen … within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days.
Investment advisor and former Army Counterintelligence officer Bob Chapman is saying the same thing, reporting on the possibility of a so-called “bank holiday” planned for late August or early September. According to Chapman’s sources, U.S. embassies around the world are selling dollars and stockpiling money from respective countries where they operate.
Leading trend forecaster Gerald Calente has also repeatedly predicted a “bank holiday”.
But the rumors of embassies being advised to stockpile local currency is stunning and – if true – point to a possible huge devaluation in the dollar.
via Foreign Embassies Urged to Stockpile Local Currencies.
California Adopts Unique Solution to Budget Crisis: Give Gifts to Oil Companies and Screw the Poor
Deal Reached To Close California’s $26B Budget Gap
Correction: We mistakenly said that the Medi-Cal program is California’s version of Medicare, the federal health care program for the elderly. The Medi-Cal program is California’s version of Medicaid, a program to provide health care to low-income individuals.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California’s legislative leaders agreed Monday on a plan to close the state’s $26 billion budget shortfall, potentially getting the state back on firm financial ground so it can stop issuing IOUs.
The governor and leaders from both parties announced the compromise after more than five hours of closed-door talks. If the agreement survives its run through both houses of the Legislature, it would provide temporary relief to an epic fiscal crisis that has captured national attention, sunk the state’s credit rating and forced deep cuts in education and social services.
via Deal Reached To Close California’s $26B Budget Gap : NPR.
Senate Beats Back Military-Industrial Complex In Historic Vote
Senate Beats Back Military-Industrial Complex In Historic Vote
President Obama won a major victory in the Senate Tuesday in a dogfight that has major, long-term implications for his agenda.
The Senate, by a vote of 58-40, approved an amendment proposed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to strip $1.75 billion in funding for the F-22 fighter. Levin worked hand in hand to kill the F-22 money with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
“There was an extensive effort by the White House,” said Levin. “The president really needed to win this vote, not just in terms of the merits of the F-22 issue itself, but in terms of the reform agenda.”
The vote had become a proxy fight against the power of the military-industrial complex, a term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address.
“It’s What Eisenhower Warned us About,” tweeted McCain before the vote. The F-22s have not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan and military experts agree they’re not suited for American campaigns, yet lobbying and regional concerns have kept the program funded year after year. The victory over the military-industrial complex is arguably its most significant setback since World War II. For McCain, it was “probably the most impactful amendment that I have seen in this body on almost any issue.”
via Senate Beats Back Military-Industrial Complex In Historic Vote.
Pharmaceuticals – Drug groups to reap swine-flu billions
Drug groups to reap swine-flu billions – FT.com
Some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies are reaping billions of dollars in extra revenue amid global concern about the spread of swine flu.
Analysts expect to see a boost in sales from GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Sanofi-Aventis when the companies report first-half earnings lifted by government contracts for flu vaccines and antiviral medicines.
The fresh sales – on top of strong results from Novartis of Switzerland and Baxter of the US, which both also produce vaccines – come as the latest tallies show that more than 740 people have died from the H1N1 virus, and millions have been affected around the world.
via FT.com / Companies / Pharmaceuticals – Drug groups to reap swine-flu billions.
Children, elderly and black people preyed on by vaccine companies for first H1N1 “clinical” trials in Rochester, New York
Children, elderly and black people preyed on by vaccine companies for first H1N1 “clinical” trials in Rochester, New York
The H1N1 vaccine is going to be tested at the beginning of August in Rochester, New York, on those people who belong to sections of the community that have been hit especially hard by the economic downturn. The clinic conducting the trials has asked, speciifically for elderly people, black people or children. In return for participating, people will get $50-$100 or the children will get a toy.
Novartis appears to have paid people in Poland 3 Euros to get them to participate in clinical trials of their lethal bird flu drug last summer, which caused death and injury to hundreds of people.
While the doctors and nurses have been put on trial in Poland for their role in this crime, even though it appears they were not properly informed by Novarits of the contents of the “trial” drug, Novartis has not yet had to face legal action.
Dr. Matthew Davis, the principal investigator of the Rochester trial, said that because the vaccine only uses pieces of the actual virus, there’s no chance volunteer will get infected with the potentially deadly virus, according to a local newspaper.
So, here we have a doctor admitting that putting whole live attenuated viruses into the “swine flu” H1N1 jab, as Baxter, Novartis and other vaccine companies intend to do, and as WHO has instructed, could lead to an infection with a potentially deadly virus!
Infection is all the more likely if toxic adjuvants are added: even Baxter scientists state in their own clinical trials that the impact of adjuvants are negative.
“It’s really as safe, actually if not safer, than the seasonal influenza vaccine that people will get every year,” Davis said.
Health-Care Firms Have Supported Lawmakers Debating Reform
Industry Cash Flowed To Drafters of Reform - washingtonpost.com
As liberal protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of landmark health-care legislation under consideration by his Senate Finance Committee.
At the table on May 26 were about 20 donors willing to fork over $10,000 or more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, including executives of major insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care firms.
“Most people there had an agenda; they wanted the ear of a senator, and they got it,” said Aaron Roland, a San Francisco health-care activist who paid half price to attend the gathering. “Money gets you in the door. The only thing the other side can do is march around and protest outside.”
via Health-Care Firms Have Supported Lawmakers Debating Reform – washingtonpost.com.
Children tortured before parents, raped, all covered up by Bush/Cheney and our media
Children tortured before parents, raped, all covered up by Bush/Cheney and our media 
Perhaps the worst incident at Abu Ghraib involved a girl aged 12 or 13 who screamed for help to her brother in an upper cell while stripped naked and beaten. Iraqi journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, who heard the girl’s screams, also witnessed an ill 15-year-old who was forced to run up and down with two heavy cans of water and beaten whenever he stopped. When he finally collapsed, guards stripped and poured cold water on him. Finally, a hooded man was brought in. When unhooded, the boy realized that the man was his father, who doubtless was being intimidated into confessing something upon sight of his brutalized son.
They did it brazenly in front of other prisoners. Nothing but a sheet separated the sound of screaming and the torment of children.
This is how you create your own insurgency.
From this PDF obtained by The Washington Post I have transcribed a portion of an Iraqi detainees testimony to a Titan Corp translator detailing horror in Abu Gharib.
via Daily Kos: Children tortured before parents, raped, all covered up by Bush/Cheney and our media.
Taser focus after petrol sniffer catches fire
Taser focus after petrol sniffer catches fire - -
The arrest of an Outback petrol sniffer who erupted into flames after being shot with a Taser has renewed controversy over the use of the electric stun guns by Australian police.
Ronald Mitchell, 36, suffered third degree burns to 10 per cent of his body after he allegedly ran at police with a can of petrol and a cigarette lighter in the tiny Aboriginal community of Warburton, below the Gibson Desert in Western Australia.
Mitchell, who was reportedly hit on the bridge of his nose by the Taser’s probes, was flown more than 1500km to Royal Perth Hospital after the flames were smothered by a policeman. The officer suffered burns to his hands and required five stitches to his head after being struck by a rock allegedly hurled at him by an 18-year-old woman during the incident.
via Taser focus after petrol sniffer catches fire – World – NZ Herald News.
Why, Wyden, Why? How Oregon’s ‘Hard-Core Liberal’ Crossed to the Blue Dog Gang of Six on Healthcare Reform
Why, Wyden, Why? How Oregon’s ‘Hard-Core Liberal’ Crossed to the Blue Dog Gang of Six on Healthcare Reform
BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White 
Remember that old game, “one of these things is not like the others?” Let’s play a quick round. Who doesn’t fit in this list of centrist senators, recently annointed the “gang of six?”
Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA) Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Susan Collins (R-ME).
That’s right; it’s Wyden, classified by On The Issues as a “hard-core liberal” who sticks out like a sore thumb. But that didn’t stop him from signing his name along with the others listed above in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asking them to slow down on healthcare reform. A change in pace may seem like a reasonable request, but it is considered a death knell for reform by most observers.
This Daily Kossack writes that, as an Oregonian, he is disappointed in his senator’s recent Blue Dog decision, and plans to make that known:
If he doesn’t get behind a public option, we should get rid of him. He talks the progressive talk but he doesn’t walk the walk. When push comes to shove, he votes with the healthcare industry against the public interest. He needs to be held to account.
But is it true that Wyden “votes with the healthcare industry against the public interest?”
House Dems To Geithner: Stop Backroom Deals With Wall Street
House Dems To Geithner: Stop Backroom Deals With Wall Street 
Now that bailed-out banks are reporting record-breaking profits, the U.S. taxpayer, who bought into these institutions at bottom-barrel prices, could wind up on the winning end of a nice profit. That’s what happens, after all, when you buy low and sell high.
When Congress bailed out Wall Street, it required banks to give warrants to the treasury. That way, if the market turned around and a bank’s stock rose, the taxpayer could profit. Indeed, the notion that the taxpayer might profit from the bailout was floated by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
The Congressional Oversight Panel, however, looked into the early sales of warrants and found earlier this month that Treasury would only get about 66 percent of the market value for the warrants. And it was doing so in private negotiations with the banks.
via House Dems To Geithner: Stop Backroom Deals With Wall Street.
Roubini: Economic Recovery to Be ‘Very Ugly’
Roubini: Economic Recovery to Be ‘Very Ugly’
Nouriel Roubini, the economist whose dire forecasts earned him the nickname “Doctor Doom”, told CNBC Monday that the economic recovery is going to be “very ugly.”
“The recovery is going to be subpar,” Roubini said. “I see a one percent growth in the economy in the next few years. There will also be 11 percent unemployment next year and the recovery is going to be slow. It’s going to feel like a recession even when it ends.”
Asked about his comments in a speech last week about the recession ending in 2009, Roubini said, “I’ve been saying all along the recession is going to last 24 months. It started in December of 2007 and my view is that it won’t be over until December of this year.”
Roubini has said those comments were taken out of context. Several business news outlets, picking up on a report initially from Reuters, cited Roubini as saying that the worst of the economic financial crisis may be over.
When asked about the economy Monday, Roubini said, “We may be out of a freefall for the financial system,” said Roubini. “We have seen the worst in that sense. But in my view there is a sluggish U shaped recovery that might go into a W double dip if we don’t fix the problems in the economy.”
Other comments from Roubini
via Roubini: Economic Recovery to Be ‘Very Ugly’ – General * Asia * News * Story – CNBC.com.
Quake, tsunami potential high on U.S. west coast
Quake, tsunami potential high on U.S. west coast
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have underestimated the potential for a giant quake and tsunami that could swamp much the U.S. northwest and Canadian west coasts, British and U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Geological evidence suggests there have been earthquakes in the past that were even stronger than a magnitude 9.2 quake — the second-biggest ever recorded — which caused a 42-foot-high (12-meter-high) tsunami in the Gulf of Alaska in 1964, they said.
“Our data indicate that two major earthquakes have struck Alaska in the last 1,500 years and our findings show that a bigger earthquake and a more destructive tsunami than the 1964 event are possible in the future,” Ian Shennan, a professor of geography at Britain’s Durham University, who led the study, said in a statement.
“The region has been hit by large, single-event earthquakes and tsunamis before, and our evidence indicates that multiple and more extensive ruptures can happen.”
via Quake, tsunami potential high on U.S. west coast – Yahoo! News.
Towards a Global Currency?
OPS: Well, it will make it easier for The New World Order
Towards a Global Currency?
Towards the integration of the Dollar and the Euro?
by Michel Chossudovsky
With a view to restoring financial stability, World leaders have called upon the Group of 20 countries (G-20) to instigate a new global currency based on the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).
The media has presented the global currency initiative as a consensus building process, in which BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) would participate in the revamping of the international monetary system.
Russia and China have put forth “proposals” which have been highlighted as possible alternatives to the dollar. China has proposed the formation of a new global currency based on a reform of SDR system:
“It is a feasible plan to reform the present SDR and make it into a real settlement currency, a universally accepted ‘currency basket’ that would replace the dollar at the heart of the monetary system,” (Li Ruogu, chairman of the Export-Import Bank of China, Reuters, 6 July 2009)
China’s proposal does not imply a major shift in global banking arrangements, nor does it open up a window of debate regarding monetary reform.
On the other hand, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has explicitly questioned the composition of the SDR basket and has called upon the IMF “to expand the currency basket of SDRs to include the Chinese yuan, commodity currencies and gold in order that it matures into a reserve currency.”
Geopolitics
Global Geopolitics bears a relationship to the international monetary system. Control over money creation is an instrument of economic conquest.
via Towards a Global Currency?.
Healthcare reform: More raw deal than New Deal
Healthcare reform: More raw deal than New Deal - | Salon
We need universal, citizen-based healthcare. It doesn’t look like Obama and Congress are ready to give it to us
In 2001, Ted Halstead and I published a book titled “The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics.” Though I’m not sure we always succeeded, the goal we set for ourselves was to think freshly about how the legacy of the New Deal could be revised and updated for the 21st century. We decided that when it came to benefits our guiding principle should be a “citizen-based social contract.” We chose this phrase, not to discriminate against non-citizens, but to express two ideas: first, that benefits like healthcare ought to be not a privilege but rather an entitlement of all citizens in our democratic republic, and second, that all benefits should be detached from employers and follow individuals through their lives. In thinking about healthcare, we rejected various options that would not move us toward a citizen-based social insurance system. Unfortunately, the health plan being promoted by Obama and Congress is based on one of those bad options.
The present social contract or benefit system inherited from the 20th century is a mix of citizen-based and employment-based benefits. Social Security and Medicare are classic citizen-based entitlements — federal programs for individuals that are linked to a history of employment but not to any particular employer. The employer’s role in Social Security is the purely administrative one of collecting the payroll taxes. (Most economists argue that the “employer portion” of the Social Security payroll tax is actually passed on to be paid by the employee.)
via Healthcare reform: More raw deal than New Deal | Salon.
Headzup: A Message To Blue Dog Democrats
OPS: Not really Breaking News but needs to be shared
YouTube – Headzup: A Message To Blue Dog Democrats.
Canadian Health Care: A Reality Check on a Reality Check
Canadian Health Care: A Reality Check on a Reality Check | CommonDreams.org
For years, Canadians have feared the American health care system; now Americans are being told to fear ours
I’m a secret CNN fan. I just can’t get enough of those talking heads with their gleaming teeth, wet-look lipstick and perfect coiffures. Even at 4 a.m., some gorgeous thing with flawless makeup (men and women) will be gushing about important affairs of state like Michael Jackson or that philandering governor from South Carolina.
Every once in a while, CNN will notice there’s a country north of the 49th parallel that has some weird little customs, like parliamentary democracy or gun control. They then venture forth to do in-depth analysis of our quaint habits for the benefit of the enlightened viewers of, let’s say, Kentucky.
Kentucky is to blame for the latest CNN investigation of Canada — a “Reality Check” on Canada’s health care. It seems the state — known for fried chicken and racehorses — is also home to Senator Mitch McConnell, a high-ranking Republican of impeccable conservative credentials. Senator McConnell does not like President Barack Obama’s plan to reform health care, and he’s decided to use Canada as a weapon to help him fight the battle.
via Canadian Health Care: A Reality Check on a Reality Check | CommonDreams.org.
The Great Tax Con Job
The Great Tax Con Job | CommonDreams.org
by Thom Hartmann
Republicans are using the T-word – taxes – to attack the Obama healthcare program. It’s a strategy based in a lie.
A very small niche of America’s uber-wealthy have pulled off what may well be the biggest con job in the history of our republic, and they did it in a startlingly brief 30 or so years. True, they spent over three billion dollars to make it happen, but the reward to them was in the hundreds of billions – and will continue to be.
As my friend and colleague Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks pointed out in a Daily Kos blog recently, billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times.
Why are these guys willing to lose so much money funding “conservative” media? Why do they bulk-buy every right-wing book that comes out to throw it to the top of the NY Times Bestseller list and then give away the copies to “subscribers” to their websites and publications? Why do they fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year money-hole “think tanks” like Heritage and Cato?
via The Great Tax Con Job | CommonDreams.org.
Judge accuses CIA officials of fraud, unseals secret files
Judge accuses CIA officials of fraud, unseals secret files | McClatchy
WASHINGTON — A federal district judge ruled Monday that the CIA repeatedly misled him in asserting that state secrets were involved in a 15-year-old lawsuit involving allegedly illegal wiretapping.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered former CIA director George Tenet and five other CIA officials to explain their actions or face potential sanctions.
Lamberth also questioned the credibility of current CIA Director Leon Panetta, saying that Panetta’s testimony in the case contained significant discrepancies, and rejected an Obama administration request that the case continue to be kept secret. He released hundreds of previously secret filings.
“The court does not give the government a high degree of deference because of its prior misrepresentations regarding the stated secrets privilege in this case,” Lamberth wrote. “Although this case has been sealed since its inception to protect sensitive information, it is clear . . . that many of the issues are unclassified.”
via Judge accuses CIA officials of fraud, unseals secret files | McClatchy.
Demanding an End to Fed Secrecy
Demanding an End to Fed Secrecy
Goldman repaid its $10 billion taxpayer bailout and now plans to dole out the biggest bonuses in its 140-year history
The following article originally appeared on OpEdNews.org and may not reflect the views or opinions of EconomyInCrisis.org. Feedback is welcome.
Stepping up a campaign for Federal Reserve accountability, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) [July 15] questioned whether some of more than $2.2 trillion in secret subsidies went to Goldman Sachs and other bailed-out banks now planning to shower executives with huge bonuses.
Sanders voiced his concern in a letter to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and during remarks at an Economic Policy Institute conference.
Goldman Sachs yesterday reported that its profits surged on second-quarter income of $3.44 billion. The turnaround came less than a year after reckless investments by Goldman and other Wall Street firms triggered a worldwide recession and drove many rivals out of business.
With the good times rolling again on Wall Street, Goldman repaid its $10 billion taxpayer bailout and now plans to dole out the biggest bonuses in its 140-year history. The investment bank reportedly plans to pay as much as $20 billion this year in bonuses and other compensation, about $700,000 per employee. Goldman is one of 10 big banks that announced plans to return bailout funds so they could evade restrictions on executive compensation and bonuses.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Driven to Distraction – In 2003, U.S. Withheld Data Showing Cellphone Driving Risks
U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving - NYTimes.com 
In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel.
They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.
But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.
On Tuesday, the full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its Web site.
Kansas Electeds Tied to Conservative Cult
Kansas Electeds Tied to Conservative Cult
If you haven’t heard about “C-Street” yet.. or “The Family,” or “The Fellowship” then let me tell you its a little wacky and I have a feeling its only going to get wackier.
Sometimes its tough being an elected official. You have to get really good health care, have a staff of people bring you stuff, and most people tell you you’re great a lot. But a very conservative group of Senators and Congressmen were having a rough time, so they all moved into a quaint little house on C Street.
Nothing says GOP like a good old fashioned . . . frat house? College was the time when you could screw around with lots of women, forget to do your homework, and randomly stand up in class and ponder whether your teachers mom would have had an abortion?
But that’s exactly what happened. Senator John Ensign of Nevada was screwin’ around with the ladies. The Fellowship of C-Street Electeds came together to pray about what they should do. Evidently, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) gave Ensign a pelvic exam … and the flood doors opened.
via Kansas Electeds Tied to Conservative Cult (Everyday Citizen).
Obama’s Trickle Down Stimulus is Failing
Obama’s Trickle Down Stimulus is Failing
The President needs to take quick actions now to stop foreclosures and evictions, and create jobs.
The following article originally appeared on OpEdNews.org and may not reflect the views or opinions of EconomyInCrisis.org. Feedback is welcome.
Less than six months in office and President Obama is already simmering in public opinion hot water, down 7 percent in Rasmussen Reports’–”is the country on the right track” poll released July 16, 2009 among Democrats!
The natives are beating the drums. Some angry dancing has commenced. The detritus thrown out the windows of passing Caddies, Lexi and Daimlers, on their way to pick up yet another unearned megabucks bonus, is being pitched into the fire.
If the Republicans and conservatives thought rank and file progressives were going to go easy on President Obama, stand back. Lives are at stake. Oh, and you guys with your laissez-faire free market (which isn’t fair or free) opposition to any change or help for those not in the top 10% of wage earners are just plain history. Take a hike.
Earlier this year, the President delivered the same old kneejerk trickle down, through the proper political money laundering channels action: Washington to the Federal Reserve, Washington to the States, Washington to Federal Projects, Washington to Wall Street, Washington to Big Greed, with the exception of the “Obama $50 Bill” which comes in the form of a check from your state unemployment dole master every two weeks. Unemployment increases were to stop at 9 percent.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Health Care, Unemployment and Historic National Debt
Health Care, Unemployment and Historic National Debt
This stimulus packages have done wonders for banks, but they were not geared toward the working Americans and businesses that needed the most help.
After being denied any more help from the U.S. government, finance company CIT Group was able to arrange for $3 billion in bondholder-raised capital to stave off its collapse. The company had been given $2.3 billion last December as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but the threat of bankruptcy was on the immediate horizon without a major infusion of funding.
There was very little movement on the major composite indices on Friday July 17th, with the DJIA, NASDAQ, and S&P500 remaining relatively unchanged from the prior day. However, markets did experience a robust opening hour this morning and analysts expect a lift in the wake of CIT Group coming to its last minute agreement.
The American oil addiction heated up as energy prices increased and all-important crude oil futures broke above $64 per barrel. While still much cheaper than it was 12-months ago, a rise in oil could spell doom for consumers who are barely making ends meet. AAA’s FuelGaugeReport.com showed that average national gasoline prices did indeed fall for the 30th consecutive day, but if oil futures continue to rise we should expect to see more expensive fuel within a few weeks.
In other news the fight over health care reform is heating up. Republicans are still adamant that a government-run system will certainly be more expensive than a private version. Ohio Republican Congressman John Boehner, in an op-ed post for Yahoo! News, stated his case against the plan. Meanwhile the White House, not to be outdone, has launched its own campaign via HealthReform.gov.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Obama tells progressive bloggers that ‘a robust public option would be the best way to go.’
Obama tells progressive bloggers that ‘a robust public option would be the best way to go.’
This afternoon, President Obama held a 23-minute conference call with progressive bloggers to discuss the state of the health care debate. ThinkProgress participated in the call. Igor Volsky highlights Obama’s rhetoric in support of the public plan — and in opposition to a co-op — as the key takeaway:
OBAMA: I’m still working out the details of a co-op approach. I will tell you that there are some instances of co-ops being set up and just having a very difficult time getting off the ground because they don’t have the scale and the resources to be able to compete effectively. What I’ve asked my health care team to do is to look at what evidence we have that this could provide the kind of competition that drives or helps to promote insurance reform and helps to include quality and drive down cost. If I can see some some evidence that this could work, then I’d be happy to consider it. But I will tell you that, as I’ve been very clear about before, I continue to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.
Listen here:
Serious About Green Jobs? It’s Time to Throw ‘Free Trade’ out the Window
Serious About Green Jobs? It’s Time to Throw ‘Free Trade’ out the Window
If we want a greener world and green jobs for our citizens, we have to ditch the ‘free-trade’ ideal — markets on their own won’t do it.
If we’re going to have green jobs in this country, we’ll have to face up to the real world, rather than the one imagined by free trade apostles like New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. He seems oblivious to the fact that the every nation, except ours, is trying to protect and enhance its key industries without worrying very much about “free trade” principles. Instead, Friedman believes that with proper carbon pricing and energy efficiency regulations, we can win the global race to produce the next wave of alternative energy technologies. He writes:
“We can either invest in policies to build U.S. leadership in these new industries and jobs today, or we can continue with business as usual and buy windmills from Europe, batteries from Japan and solar panels from Asia. If we do not impose on ourselves the necessity to drive innovation in clean-technology — by imposing the right prices on carbon emissions and the right regulations to promote energy efficiency — we will be laggards in the next great global industry.”
According to Thomas Friedman and other globalization enthusiasts, all countries compete in a flat world, and the ones that are smartest are the ones that walk off with the prize — new jobs and riches for their nations, as well as better products to protect us all from global warming.
Republicans Will Be Toast in 2010 If the Dems Pass Health Reform, and They Know It
OPS: …. which should make you stop an think about what the hell the DLC and Blue Dogs think they’re doing, and where their allegiances really are, and who they really are.
Republicans Will Be Toast in 2010 If the Dems Pass Health Reform, and They Know It
If Obama and the Democrats get health care reform done, the Republican Party is finished in the next election. So it’s pulling out the stops.
If President Barack Obama succeeds in signing a major health care reform bill into law — one that provides a public plan for people currently priced out of the system — he will achieve what at least three presidents before him had hoped for, and failed to do. And he will likely deprive the Republican minority in Congress from anything approaching a comeback in the 2010 midterm elections.
However, if health care reform does not pass early in Obama’s term, the Democrats will likely face midterm elections amid rising unemployment figures with a record of having passed legislation characterized as “bailouts” for megabanks and large corporations — bills whose benefits to the economy have little impact on the person who has already lost a job. So GOP leaders are focused like a laser beam on stopping health-care reform in its tracks.
As Congress cleared two major hurdles last week toward agreement on the provisions in such a bill, the Republican pique approached a new level of shrillness.
What Really Causes Autism? Thousands of Parents Blame Vaccines, and Are Taking on the Medical Establishment
What Really Causes Autism? Thousands of Parents Blame Vaccines, and Are Taking on the Medical Establishment
“There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can’t compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks …to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons,” actor and comedian Denis Leary controversially argued with patented flippancy in a chapter called “Autism Shmautism” from his 2008 book Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid. “I don’t give a shit what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you — yer kid is NOT autistic. He’s just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.”
That explosive insult, intensified by Leary’s decision to pen his riotous book under the assumptive moniker “Dr. Denis Leary,” is just one of many bombs that has rocked either side of autism’s increasingly contentious divide. That currently includes, on one side, scientists and researchers hard at work on discovering the causes of the escalating neurological and developmental disorder, which according to a recent Cambridge University study could affect one in every 64 children. Complicating those efforts is the fact that autism’s far-ranging spectrum of psychological conditions has only widened with time, an increase in diagnosis, awareness and the overall environmental toxicity of our lives which we take for granted.
But Leary’s crack also roiled the other side of autism’s battlefield. It’s commandeered by distraught parents of autistic children, who have mobilized their frustration with a medical and pharmaceutical establishment increasingly short on definitive answers but seemingly long on unnecessary pharmaceuticals and inflammatory theories. Along the way, it has become a critical mass movement aimed at injecting major amounts of anecdotal evidence into what before was almost purely a psychiatric or scientific debate.
Now Legal Immunity for Swine flu Vaccine Makers
Now Legal Immunity for Swine flu Vaccine Makers
by F. William Engdahl
The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new “Swine Flu” vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 virus—which has yet to be rigorously scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted procedure—a global “pandemic” threat?
The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies.
Not so sage SAGE
That is once the WHO in Geneva, on recommendation of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group on Immunizations, declared H1N1 to be Phase 6 or Pandemic, automatic emergency health response programs could be activated even in countries such as Germany where reported outbreaks of even “suspected” H1N1 can be counted to date on the fingers of slightly more than one hand.
The WHO’s SAGE is also worth scrutiny. Its Chairman since 2005 has been the UK Director of Immunization at the British Department of Health, Dr David Salisbury. In the 1980’s Salisbury reportedly drew major fire for backing a massive vaccination of children with a multiple MMR vaccine manufactured by the predecessor company of GlaxoSmithKline. That vaccine was pulled off the market in Japan after significant numbers of children developed adverse reactions to the vaccine and the Japanese government was forced to pay significant compensation to the victims. In Sweden the MMR vaccine of GlaxoSmithKline was removed after scientists linked it to outbreaks of Crohn’s disease. Apparently that had little impact on WHO SAGE chairman Salisbury.
via Now Legal Immunity for Swine flu Vaccine Makers.
Not What Obama Promised
Not What Obama Promised
By David Swanson
In six months as president, Barack Obama has aggressively done the opposite of many specific things he explicitly and unequivocally promised as a candidate. A lot of these were things Obama’s fiercest opponents never wanted. And Obama’s fiercest supporters favor censoring this information. But if we expect public servants to be public servants, the public must know the facts, make of them what it will.
Here’s a video of candidate Obama promising not to change laws with signing statements and denouncing that practice as unconstitutional. In 2007, Obama filled out a questionnaire for the Boston Globe in which he said “It is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability. I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.” Obama now does this routinely. His nominee for the Supreme Court (verbosely) refused to answer a question on the constitutionality of signing statements. She should have asked pre-election Obama to share with her his clear and compelling analysis.
Candidate Obama went beyond promising to sign and enforce laws as written (or veto them). He also promised to take each new bill that reached his desk and post it online for five days before signing or vetoing it, to give the public a chance to review it and weigh in (video). This promise was posted on Obama’s campaign website. Of course, it would make far more sense for Congress to take this step before voting on legislation, but the president’s doing it would be a good thing. Obama hasn’t taken this step with a single bill and has tended to sign them within hours. In the same video, you can watch candidate Obama promise that when a tax bill is debated he will post online the corporations that would benefit. He promised to post online every corporate tax break and every pork barrel project contained in new legislation. He has not done so.
via Not What Obama Promised | AfterDowningStreet.org.
Need Marijuana? Your iPhone Can Help.
Need Marijuana? Your iPhone Can Help. - PC World
Apple has approved an app that will let users find legal dispensaries of medicinal marijuana.
We’ve seen a lot of unexpected, and sometimes cool, iPhone apps approved by Apple, but today’s news might top the rest. Apple has approved a marijuana–that’s right, marijuana–app called “Cannabis,” which lets users find the nearest (don’t worry: legal) supplier of medicinal marijuana.
Created by the founder of Ajnag.com, which was founded in 2006 and was the first medicinal marijuana locater on the Web, the new app is quick and easy to use. Simply open it up on your iPhone or iPod Touch and you’ll see a map with the nearest distributors. The app gives you information on each of the locations, and even step-by-step directions with Google Maps.
That’s not all, though–the creators thought of everything. If you run into any, erm, legal troubles with your newly-secured marijuana, Cannabis also gives you the locations of the nearest lawyers who specialize in marijuana cases. And, if you happen to live in one of the 37 states where marijuana is not legal, the app also provides you with the location of the nearest marijuana activist groups–so you can do your part to promote reform.
via Need Marijuana? Your iPhone Can Help. – PC World.
Nigeria: Investigate Killings by Security Forces
Nigeria: Investigate Killings by Security Forces | Human Rights Watch 
Address Discrimination and Other Root Causes of November 2008 Violence in Jos
(Jos, Nigeria) – The Plateau State Judicial Commission of Inquiry in Nigeria should investigate and call for the prosecution of members of the security forces responsible for the alleged killing of more than 130 people in November 2008, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch testified before the commission on July 20, 2009 in Jos, the capital of Plateau State in central Nigeria, where on November 28-29, 2008, sectarian violence between Muslim and Christian mobs left hundreds dead. During the testimony, Nigeria Researcher Eric Guttschuss recounted chilling accounts of policemen and soldiers gunning down unarmed citizens in their homes, chasing down and killing men trying to flee to safety, and lining victims up on the ground and summarily executing them. Human Rights Watch conducted on-the-ground research in Jos in the immediate aftermath of the violence and in February 2009.
via Nigeria: Investigate Killings by Security Forces | Human Rights Watch.
Mass Transit Helps Cut Global Warming and War
Mass Transit Helps Cut Global Warming and War
Institute for Policy Studies:
We need to start viewing climate change as both a security and environmental challenge.
Two subway cars on Washington, D.C.’s Red Line — which I usually ride to work — recently collided. It was the worst accident in this subway’s history, killing nine D.C. residents and injuring scores of others. The National Transportation Safety Board’s advice to the local transit authority soon came to light: Replace older-model subway cars, including the ones that crashed. The NTSB had said this three years ago, but the transit authority hadn’t had the money to do it.
The Metro disaster has security implications that extend beyond the safety of subway passengers like me. Developing clean mass transit is a key piece of the solution to the most serious security challenge of our time.
World leaders will gather in Copenhagen in December to try to agree on a plan to stop climate change. If they fail, the consequences will include large land masses around the world rendered uninhabitable by drought in some areas and by flooding in others. The U.S. military has begun to see these consequences as not merely a massive human and planetary tragedy, but a major potential cause of increased violent conflict.
Climate change, in other words, is a security challenge as well as an environmental problem. Developing transportation systems that reduce greenhouse gas emissions is part of the solution.
via Institute for Policy Studies: Mass Transit Helps Cut Global Warming and War.
The high cost of cheap food
The high cost of cheap food – The Denver Post
I used to find Flaming Hot Cheetos, bagged pickles, and the occasional plate of fried chicken in my classroom when I taught Senior English in Louisiana.
I allowed some of my students to eat at their desks after lunch. I had to; there were three pregnant seniors in my fourth period.
Shayna, who was in her third trimester during her last semester of high school, mostly snacked on packets of those horribly orange peanut butter crackers. Over half of my class was obese. After pizza or macaroni or hamburgers from the cafeteria, they’d fall asleep against their will, come to, apologize, then nod off again.
My students were kids who carried iPhones and wore brand-name shoes. Eighty percent were black, 98 percent were low-income. They’d been raised to look as good as they could, but eat as cheaply as possible
via The high cost of cheap food – The Denver Post.
Poverty drives Iraq organ trade
Poverty drives Iraq organ trade
Abject poverty across Iraq is fuelling an illegal trade in human organs.
Hundreds of people are believed to have sold kidneys and other organs through dealers in the capital, Baghdad, over the last year.
Karim Hussein made the long journey from Amara, a province in the south of Iraq, to Baghdad because he was desperate for the $3,000 he would get from the sale of a kidney there.
“I have taken a loan to build my house,” he told Al Jazeera. “I thought I would be able to get work in order to be able to pay my debts back, but the daily amount I am getting is not enough to feed my family, I have eight children.”
About 23 per cent of Iraqis live in poverty, meaning that they are forced to survive on $2.2 a day or less, according to government figures.
via Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Poverty drives Iraq organ trade.
Can we stop being a superpower, please?
Can we stop being a superpower, please?
It’s been roughly twenty years since the fall of the Soviet Union, which means that the U.S. has experienced two decades of being the world’s sole superpower. The experience hasn’t been positive. Under the sway of neocon ambitions, in particular, the Bush era was marked by a failed attempt to dominate the globe militarily. Mired in Afghanistan and scarred by Iraq, those ambitions proved to be shameful and foolish. A group of misguided gunslingers created a catastrophe. Have we come to the point where disillusion will lead us where we need to go, to the end of playing the superpower role?
This is a relevant question in the aftermath of President Obama’s visit to Russia, a country that yearns to return to its former status and does everything it can to posture as its old superpower self. Yet other than a bloated nuclear arsenal and swaggering oil production, present-day Russia doesn’t fit the bill and never will again. Its diminished threat is the first reason why the U.S. should abandon the thankless task of policing the world. The second is the enormous waste of resources involved in being a superpower. Sheer inertia keeps fueling the production of new armaments to replace outworn ones that were useless to begin with. Has the Stealth bomber justified its staggering cost, or the nuclear submarine, Polaris missiles, Titan missiles, not to mention Star Wars? Most of these weapons haven’t seen the slightest use. Billions of dollars have been spent on a defense system that is protecting us from a foe who long ago neutralized its threat.
via Can we stop being a superpower, please?.
Seance on Wall Street
Seance on Wall Street – guardian.co.uk
Dean Baker
Financial analysts predicting a default on US government debt need a new crystal ball. The market tells a different story
There is a long history of mediums who claim to communicate with the dead. They sell their services to people anxious to talk to relatives or great figures of the past. Such exercises can be dismissed as harmless entertainment – people spend a few dollars to be treated to tall tales.
There is a Wall Street equivalent to these seances. People who claim to be knowledgeable about financial markets tell policy makers and reporters what the financial markets are thinking about current policy. These Wall Street seers claim to interpret events in financial markets for those of use who are less familiar with the mysteries of market movements.
In recent weeks, the Wall Street seers have been spinning stories about how the financial markets are very worried over the US budget deficit. They have told us that the markets are concerned about the government’s ability to repay its debt. The seers tell us that the markets may soon demand much higher interest rates, if the government does not get its deficit under control.
via Seance on Wall Street | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Regulation of chemicals needs drastic overhaul
Regulation of chemicals needs drastic overhaul
I recently read an article about Bisphenol-A (BPA) that eerily reminded me of the movie “Thank You for Smoking.” In the movie, the “merchants of death” or MOD Squad, as they call themselves, are lobbyists for the alcohol, gun, and tobacco industries and meet for lunch while plotting to keep vital information about the harmful health effects of their products out of the hands of the public. And they do so with great success, not to mention great profit.
What does this have to do with BPA? A recent Washington Post article said a group of chemical industry lobbyists met at the exclusive Washington, D.C., Cosmos Club to develop a public relations strategy to “tamp down public concerns” around the safety of BPA. BPA is a chemical that has been linked to breast cancer, testicular cancer, low sperm count, miscarriage and other reproductive problems. In fact, it has already been banned in Minnesota and Chicago. The BPA lobbyists agreed to use many of the same strategies used in the 1990s to create doubt around the harmful health effects of tobacco.
As the meeting minutes reflected, industry representatives mentioned using fear tactics to dissuade people from choosing BPA-free packaging. They floated messages suggesting that people will no longer be able to buy cheaper canned goods, or that they will lose access to baby food. Furthermore, attendees said they doubted they could find a scientist to serve as a spokesman for BPA, instead deciding to use a young pregnant woman as their “holy grail.” Like Joe Camel or the Marlboro Man, the new “MOD Squad” is looking for ways to put a pleasant face on dangerous product. They can do this because there is so little oversight from any federal agency.
via opinion: Jennifer Rogers: Regulation of chemicals needs drastic overhaul.
Democrats May Limit Tax Increases for Health Care Plan
Democrats May Limit Tax Increases for Health Care Plan – NYTimes.com
As President Obama began a new push to overhaul the health system, Democratic Congressional leaders, bowing to unease among lawmakers and governors in their own party, on Monday suggested scaling back a plan to tax top earners to pay for the sweeping legislation and signaled a retreat from their ambitious timetable.
House and Senate leaders had been pressing for floor votes in each chamber before lawmakers depart for the August summer recess. But Congressional aides said that it was increasingly clear the Senate would not be ready to vote on its bill before its recess begins on Aug. 8, and that House Democrats seemed unwilling to vote to raise taxes without knowing where the Senate stood.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, suggested revising the tax-raising provisions, one of the most contentious parts of the House bill, which would impose a surtax on high-income households. Ms. Pelosi said she would prefer that fewer people had to pay the tax, which was approved Friday by the Ways and Means Committee.
via Democrats May Limit Tax Increases for Health Care Plan – NYTimes.com.
Card Urges Health Care Delay: Push For Reform Is ‘Contrived Haste’
Card Urges Health Care Delay: Push For Reform Is ‘Contrived Haste’
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card pushed the conservative line that health care reform needs to be slowed down, calling it “contrived haste.” “If everything is a haste, haste, haste, there are going to be tremendous unintended consequences,” said Card.
Claiming that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are not seeking a “bipartisan” approach, Card accused the reformers of trying to “bully it through the process” by saying “trust us.” “Don’t trust them,” said Card. “Don’t trust them it’s too big a deal.” When host Mika Brzezinski raised OMB Director Peter Orszag’s argument that Republicans are trying to “drag out” the process in order to “kill” reform, Card claimed that’s not the GOP strategy:
via Think Progress » Card Urges Health Care Delay: Push For Reform Is ‘Contrived Haste’.
Obama hits back at DeMint’s threat: ‘It is about a health care system that is breaking American families.’
Obama hits back at DeMint’s threat: ‘It is about a health care system that is breaking American families.’
President Obama today reaffirmed his commitment to reforming health care to control costs, provide affordable coverage, and ensure quality care by introducing competition and transparency into the current system. In his speech, Obama also took aim at comments made by one of the most ardent opponents of health reform, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). DeMint last week declared that he would do everything in his power to kill health reform in the Senate. Obama struck back today by saying the debate “isn’t about me,” but rather a system that is “breaking American families”:
OBAMA: Just the other day, one Republican Senator said, and I’m quoting him now, “if we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. It is about a health care system that is breaking American families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy.
Watch it
Gingrich Still Clinging To Fiction Novels As The Basis For His Foreign Policy Ideas
Gingrich Still Clinging To Fiction Novels As The Basis For His Foreign Policy Ideas
For the past few months, Newt Gingrich has been trying to sound the alarm that the United States is on the cusp of a monumental security threat far greater than the dangers posed by Germany and Japan in the 1930s and 40s — an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. Gripped by this fear, Gingrich once argued that the U.S. should take out North Korean missiles, while on their launch pads, with lasers because he believes the reclusive communist state has the ability to carry out such an attack on the U.S.
This morning, during a speech at the Heritage Foundation, Gingrich was at it again. He lamented how the world’s democracies “hid from reality” in the 1920s and 30s and failed to confront the emerging threat in Europe and East Asia. Citing what he had read in “novels,” he then linked that to his perceived EMP threat and deplored the “failure to translate the ability of the imagination into public policy.” “We are living at the edge of a catastrophe,” he said:
via Think Progress » Gingrich Still Clinging To Fiction Novels As The Basis For His Foreign Policy Ideas.
Fujimori convicted of corruption
OPS: Are you paying any attention Reid & Pelosi? See, IT CAN BE DONE!
Fujimori convicted of corruption - BBC NEWS
The sentence is the third handed down against Fujimori since 2007
The former President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, has been given a seven-and-a-half-year jail term for corruption.
The 70-year-old was convicted by Peru’s Supreme Court of giving $15m (£9.3m) in state funds to his spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos.
Fujimori admitted making the payment, but said he later repaid the money.
The sentence is the third handed down against Fujimori, who ruled Peru from 1990 to 2000, since he returned from exile in late 2007 to face charges.
Last April, he was sentenced to 25 years in jail for ordering killings and kidnappings by the security forces
via BBC NEWS | Americas | Fujimori convicted of corruption.
Nancy Pelosi: Make millionaires pay for health care
Nancy Pelosi: Make millionaires pay for health care
via Nancy Pelosi: Make millionaires pay for health care – Mike Allen – POLITICO.com.
Sheriff’s Deputy Used Stun Gun On 3 Children: Lawsuit
Sheriff’s Deputy Used Stun Gun On 3 Children: Lawsuit
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — A sheriff’s deputy zapped three children with a stun gun at an Illinois emergency youth shelter, threatening to sodomize one of them before choking a fourth child and throwing her in a closet, according to a federal civil-rights lawsuit.
The suit against Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy David Bowers and another deputy claims they were unprovoked in the incident at the adolescent center in southern Illinois that houses youths ages 11 to 18, often with behavioral issues.
No charges have been filed in the case. Sheriff Roger Mulch, who also is named in the lawsuit, said Monday the deputies followed protocol and did “nothing out of the ordinary.”
The suit, filed July 1, called the deputies’ actions “extreme, outrageous and unjustified,” and it does not release the names or ages of the three boys shot with the stun gun. The fourth kid was a foster child who did not live at the center, according to the lawsuit.
The suit claims that Bowers and sheriff’s deputy Lonnie Lawler went to the center near Marion on July 4, 2008 in response to a report that three teenagers were acting unruly. But the young people suing the deputies were not those disruptive children, the lawsuit said.
via Sheriff’s Deputy Used Stun Gun On 3 Children: Lawsuit.
Judge Rules CIA Committed Fraud In Court
OPS: Ok that would be a crime. Now, what are you going to do about it? Who’s going to jail?
Judge Rules CIA Committed Fraud In Court
WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against an eavesdropping lawsuit and is considering sanctioning as many as six who have worked at the agency, including former CIA Director George Tenet.
According to court documents unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth referred a CIA attorney, Jeffrey Yeates, for disciplinary action. Lamberth also denied the CIA’s renewed efforts under the Obama administration to keep the case secret because of what he calls the agency’s “diminished credibility” and the “twisted history” in the case.
The judge also criticized CIA Director Leon Panetta, saying he’s given conflicting accounts about what should be revealed in the case. The ruling led to the unsealing Monday of more than 200 unclassified versions of classified filings in the 13-year-old case.
via Judge Rules CIA Committed Fraud In Court.
GP Patient Survey shows 91% are satisfied with their care
GP Patient Survey shows 91% are satisfied with their care – Management in Practice -
Nine in ten (91%) patients are satisfied with the overall care they receive at their GP surgery, according to results of the GP Patient Survey, released today (Tuesday 30 June 2009) – yet there is still room for improvement, the Department of Health (DH) has said.
The DH, which commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct the £8m survey – the biggest healthcare survey of its kind – points to getting through on the phone and being able to make appointments more than 48 hours in advance as areas where practices can improve.
This is despite the fact that, overall, 84% of people who tried to get an appointment with a GP in 48 hours reported they were able to do so, and 70% of people reported satisfaction with their ability to get through to their practice on the phone.
Just 7% of respondents nationwide said they were dissatisfied with their GP surgery’s opening hours – with 82% saying they were satisfied or very satisfied (43%).
via Management in Practice – GP Patient Survey shows 91% are satisfied with their care.
The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold
The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold
JOE STIGLITZ: TODAY’S WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS
by Greg Palast
The World Bank’s former Chief Economist’s accusations are eye-popping – including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian elections
“It has condemned people to death,” the former apparatchik told me. This was like a scene out of Le Carre. The brilliant old agent comes in from the cold, crosses to our side, and in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of a political ideology he now realizes has gone rotten.
And here before me was a far bigger catch than some used Cold War spy. Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist of the World Bank. To a great extent, the new world economic order was his theory come to life.
I “debriefed” Stigltiz over several days, at Cambridge University, in a London hotel and finally in Washington in April 2001 during the big confab of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing the meetings of ministers and central bankers, Stiglitz was kept exiled safely behind the blue police cordons, the same as the nuns carrying a large wooden cross, the Bolivian union leaders, the parents of AIDS victims and the other ‘anti-globalization’ protesters. The ultimate insider was now on the outside.
In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz. He was not allowed quiet retirement; US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I’m told, demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz’ having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style.
Here in Washington we completed the last of several hours of exclusive interviews for The Observer and BBC TV’s Newsnight about the real, often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank, and the bank’s 51% owner, the US Treasury.
via Greg Palast » The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold.
Health Care: Understanding the Pivot Points
Understanding the Pivot Points | TPM
This is a critical week for the health reform legislative push, signaled by, among other things, the announcement by the White House that President Obama will be hitting the airwaves aggressively all week. There is such a profusion of information, a good deal of it put forth with the aim of sowing confusion for political reasons. So how do we make sense of it all, how do we understand the critical broad movements in the debate and not get bogged down in the endless detail?
In our editorial meeting this morning, I asked our reporting staff to focus on three pivot points, the pressure points in the conversation that, if they can be isolated and followed, will help us to understand which way the debate is going, who’s winning and losing and most of all who’s controlling the debate.
So here are the three key issues we’re going to be following in every public comment
via Understanding the Pivot Points | TPM.
World’s next top brands set to rise in the east
World’s next top brands set to rise in the east - FT.com
The world’s next Coca-Cola or Starbucks is more likely to emerge from Asia, the Middle East or South America than the US or Europe as global economic wealth shifts.
In research prepared for the Financial Times, Wolff Olins, the consultants behind the London 2012 Olympics logo and the Product Red campaign, has tipped five food and drink brands from emerging markets to become global brands.
They comprise Juan Valdez Café, a Colombian coffee chain; Almarai, a Saudi dairy and fruit-juice company based in Riyadh; Patchi, a Lebanese boutique chocolate chain;
Iceland in key step to restructure banks
Iceland in key step to restructure banks - FT.com
Iceland will announce on Monday a €1.5bn ($2.1bn, £1.3bn) recapitalisation of its banking sector and unveil a deal to hand control of two of the country’s healthy new banks to foreign creditors.
The steps mark an important milestone in efforts to rebuild Iceland’s shattered banks and reintegrate the north Atlantic island nation into the international financial system.
The government will issue bonds worth IKr270bn ($2.1bn) next month to three new banks set up last year after the country’s three main banks fell victim to the global credit crunch.
Creditors to the failed banks, will be offered equity stakes in two of the new banks as compensation for healthy assets that were salvaged from the ruins last October.
A provisional agreement was reached on Friday after weeks of difficult negotiations, clearing the way for the long-awaited recapitalisation, according to people involved in negotiations.
via FT.com / Europe – Iceland in key step to restructure banks.
Michael Steele Unplugged: ‘Don’t Know’ If There’s Moral Responsibility To Cover Uninsured, ‘I Don’t Do Policy’
OPS: Really Mikey? Not very Christian of you…..heal the sick, feed the hungry, cloth the naked……
Michael Steele Unplugged: ‘Don’t Know’ If There’s Moral Responsibility To Cover Uninsured, ‘I Don’t Do Policy’
In prepared remarks this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, RNC Chairman Michael Steele derided President Obama’s health efforts, calling it a “risky experimentation,” a “Grand Experiment,” and the product of a “cabal.”
After reading his speech, Steele then took a few questions. It quickly became apparent that, once Steele ventured off his prepared talking points, he was uncomfortable responding to queries about his health care views. The RNC Chairman offered a host of bizarre, conflicting, and nonsensical responses. Here’s some highlights:
Ted Kennedy Speaks Out on Health-Care Reform
‘The Cause of My Life’ 
Inside the fight for universal health care.
By Edward M. Kennedy | NEWSWEEK
In 1964, I was flying with several companions to the Massachusetts Democratic Convention when our small plane crashed and burned short of the runway. My friend and colleague in the Senate, Birch Bayh, risked his life to pull me from the wreckage. Our pilot, Edwin Zimny, and my administrative assistant, Ed Moss, didn’t survive. With crushed vertebrae, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung, I spent months in New England Baptist Hospital in Boston. To prevent paralysis, I was strapped into a special bed that immobilizes a patient between two canvas slings. Nurses would regularly turn me over so my lungs didn’t fill with fluid. I knew the care was expensive, but I didn’t have to worry about that. I needed the care and I got it.
Now I face another medical challenge. Last year, I was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Surgeons at Duke University Medical Center removed part of the tumor, and I had proton-beam radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital. I’ve undergone many rounds of chemotherapy and continue to receive treatment. Again, I have enjoyed the best medical care money (and a good insurance policy) can buy.
But quality care shouldn’t depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to.
via Ted Kennedy Speaks Out on Health-Care Reform | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com.
Former CIGNA Executive Hails ‘SiCKO’ on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!
As the debate over health care reform intensifies on Capitol Hill, we spend the hour with a former top insurance executive who’s now exposing the industry’s dirty secrets. Wendell Potter once served as the head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nations largest health insurance companies. We speak to Potter about his own transformation from industry mouthpiece to whistleblower, the health care industry’s extensive PR and lobbying machine, the campaign to discredit Michael Moore’s film Sicko, and the insurance industry’s most pressing task: the fight against a public option, let alone a single-payer system.
via YouTube – Former CIGNA Executive Hails ‘SiCKO’ on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!.
Blue Dogs Bribed Over Health Care 0001
Blue Dog Democrats betray 76% of American’s trust on a public health care option. This is CHANGE we cannot believe in or accept. All Americans deserve a competitive health care option. Unfortunately Democrats are following in the footsteps of Republicans by putting politics over people and taking millions in bribes from health care and insurance companies.
America for Purchase
via YouTube – Blue Dogs Bribed Over Health Care 0001.
Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis
OPS: The ‘Grid’ is 19th Century technology. It is an antiquated dinosaur and an expensive inefficient danger to National Security. Power sources must implemented that are decentralized and local. This [below] is headed in the right direction.
Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis | Fast Company 
Why small-scale, local power — the microgrid — could be the answer to our energy crisis. And why the big utilities are fighting it with all they’ve got.
In April 2007, a helicopter landed in a backyard in Johnson Valley, California, a desert hamlet of 440 residents on the outskirts of Joshua Tree National Park. “One of the neighbors went out and asked them what they were doing just a few hundred feet from his house,” Jim Harvey, a local landowner, recalls. “They said, ‘We’re the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and congratulations! You’re the lucky lottery winners of a brand new power line that’s going to come right through the middle of your town.’ ”
That power line is called Green Path North — an 85-mile-long high-voltage transmission wire from Los Angeles through public and private lands, connecting the city to potential geothermal and solar-thermal resources, with the whole shebang to be owned by the LADWP and paid for over the next decade by ratepayers. The cost: up to $1 billion just for the transmission line, plus untold billions for the not-yet-planned power plants themselves. Some 2,000 acres of desert would be sacrificed for a project that would, if it ever gets built, carry about 800 megawatts of renewable electricity — enough for 600,000 homes.
via Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis | Fast Company.
Growing Green Jobs
Growing Green Jobs | Hartford Business
Dave Ljungquist, associate director, project development, Connecticut Clean Energy Fund
Using funds received as part of the federal economic stimulus package (under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — ARRA) to stimulate the development of renewable energy and green jobs in Connecticut, the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund (CCEF) plans to introduce a solar thermal domestic hot water incentive program on or about August 1, 2009. What’s a good nutshell description of this program?
The Solar Thermal (ST) Program will provide grants of approximately 20 percent of the cost of ST systems for domestic hot water heating only. Pool heaters and space heating applications will not be funded. All Connecticut residents and non-residential sites are eligible, regardless of the type of hot water heat they presently use.
The program hopes to support approximately 600 residential and about 100 commercial domestic hot water applications. What’s the impact from taking those applications off the power grid?
Although only about 30 percent of Connecticut’s homes use electric hot water heaters, the economics of using ST are significantly more favorable than for homes or businesses using gas or oil-fired heaters. Consequently, we would expect that more than 30 percent of the applicants will have electric hot water heat. If we assume 50 percent of the residential applicants have electric hot water heaters and 50 percent have either gas or oil, the residential market should account for an annual reduction of 1,159 MWh in electrical generation, and a reduction of 7,623 MMBtu in natural gas and oil consumption. We can assume that the commercial market will be largely oil- or natural gas-fired, so the savings from the commercial installations should be about 15,250 MMBtu (152,500 therms). This is equivalent to 109,700 gallons of fuel oil. The reduction in electrical energy consumption (from the electric hot water heating customers) will reduce fossil fuel consumption at the generating plants by another 10,500 MMBtu, so overall, the ST Program should reduce annual fossil fuel consumption in Connecticut by 33,373 MMBtu, or the equivalent of 240,000 gallons of fuel oil. These systems will avoid the creation of 2,686 tons of carbon dioxide very year, for the life of the systems.
via Growing Green Jobs | Hartford Business.
Gang of Sickos: Six US Senators Sell Out Constituents for $11 Million from Health Industry
Gang of Sickos: Six US Senators Sell Out Constituents for $11 Million from Health Industry
A bipartisan group of six “moderate” US senators, dubbed the “Gang of Six” by news agencies, issued a demand July 17 for a slowdown on Democratic health care reform. These senators – including three conservative Democrats, one conservative Independent who caucuses with Democrats, and two moderate Republicans – asked for a slowdown on health care reform not because their constituents wished it so: recent polls show that a clear majority of Americans want health care reform now including a public health care option such as that proposed by President Obama and progressives in Congress. No, these senators asked for a slowdown on health care reform because the for-profit health, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries have bid them to do so in the hope that reform can be stopped, and because these same industries have generously provided them with career campaign contributions totalling more than $11 million.
These six senators – whom I’ll call the “Gang of Sickos” in honor of Michael Moore’s film on America’s health care crisis similarly titled – are Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Ron Wyden of Oregon; Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut; and Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine (Paul Krugman calls them “the six deadly hypocrites“). Their career total and average daily contributions from the health, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries are summarized by Paul Blumenthal at the Huffington Post based on figures from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).
The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire
The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire
By Jeremy Kuzmarov
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Assistant Professor of History, Tulsa University.
In a recent interview, Richard Holbrooke, White House Special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan and a key architect of President Obama’s “surge” strategy, declared the War on Drugs in Afghanistan to be a failure. After spending millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars, he said, aerial eradication campaigns have not cut supply rates and contributed to the displacement of farmers and loss of their livelihood, causing many to gravitate to the insurgent camp. He might have added that many of these farmers have been poisoned by chemical sprays resulting in the spread of diseases like cancer, and that the U.S. supports some of the major opium warlords in the Karzai government responsible for turning the country into what even Fox News has characterized as a “narco-state.” Drug money has corrupted all facets of society, crippled the legal economy and made it nearly impossible to carry out the simplest development projects. Positions for police chief in many provinces are auctioned off to the highest bidder due to their enormous graft value. The cost for a job as chief of police anywhere on the border is rumored to be upwards of $150,000.
As Holbrooke is well aware, the failure of the war on drugs in Afghanistan fits a long historical precedent. Holbrooke started his career as an employee with USAID, which was involved in pioneering drug interdiction campaigns during another ill-fated occupation where they proved to be an important recruiting tool for the ‘Vietcong.’ American intervention in Vietnam was a watershed in the growth of the global war on drugs, stemming largely from the crisis of addiction in the American armed forces and revelations of CIA support for opium growing warlords in the Golden Triangle.
via The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire.
50 Year Olds are Unemployable Without a Public Option
50 Year Olds are Unemployable Without a Public Option | BuzzFlash.org
I have a friend my age (56) with impeccable credentials: She has a Master’s Degree; 18 years experience as a successful college administrator; glowing recommendations; she shows up for work every day and is hardly ever sick; she’s a team player and works selflessly for whomever she’s employed by.
She also has a pre-existing medical condition (as does virtually everyone by the time they reach 50).
Therefore, she is almost completely unemployable by American companies.
Well, not quite. Store clerk jobs, entry level temp jobs, manual data entry jobs, real estate and consulting jobs are all available to her — as long as they don’t offer benefits.
In this experience my friend is like virtually every other 50+ year old. Unless we make a company a couple hundred thousand a year, increased medical premiums make us too expensive to hire.
When a job offers benefits — like, oh, say, every single job that her many years of successful service qualify her for — by the end of the training period, employers find that she’s just “not quite right for the job,” that they were looking for a different kind of experience, and gosh darn it if every person who replaces her isn’t about 25 years old with virtually no experience.
via Steve Corrick: 50 Year Olds are Unemployable Without a Public Option | BuzzFlash.org.
CBO Report Ignores Full Savings in Health Reform
CBO Report Ignores Full Savings in Health Reform - Political Affairs Magazine –
Health reform advocates pushed back this weekend against a new insurance industry and congressional Republican offensive to block or slow down President Obama’s push to overhaul health care by pointing out that the most important accomplishment of reform would be to relieve in the financial burden the current broken health system has on the economy.
In a teleconference with reporters last Friday, Harvard economist David Cutler, co-author of a June 2009 report demonstrating that health reform along the lines proposed by President Obama could save as much as $1.5 trillion over a 10 year period, dismissed the idea that health reform would be too costly to implement. Cutler referred to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released last week that claimed the health reform plan working its way through Congress would cost $1 trillion.
“Everything that we know of suggests that by changing the nature of the medical care system, we can have an enormous impact on the growth of cost, both in the short term, and in the longer term,” Cutler said. “I think a lot of the pessimism that we’re seeing is a look at a short-term thing, rather than a long-term look at what health care reform can do.”
The Harvard economist further explained that the CBO report simply failed to report the full savings that health reform could provide over time. The health reform proposals would help reduce the cost of health care spending and payments, but they would also “change the underlying dynamics of the medical system so that it is less costly over time by keeping people of hospitals and from falling through the cracks.”
via Political Affairs Magazine – CBO Report Ignores Full Savings in Health Reform.
Healthcare Reform Isn’t Socialism
The GOP just can’t get enough of the “S” word. Every time President Obama announces a new policy, they are too quick to shout “Socialism,” without realizing what Socialism actually means. Luckily, Mike Papantonio of Air America’s Ring of Fire confronted Fox News’ Bulls and Bears to inform them that nationalized healthcare does not a socialist nation make.
via YouTube – Healthcare Reform Isn’t Socialism.
Geithner Has Tough Task In Marketing US Debt
Geithner Has Tough Task In Marketing US Debt
WASHINGTON — Timothy Geithner, architect of bank, auto and economic rescue plans, has another high-stakes job these days: traveling bond salesman.
The recession, financial crisis and two wars have pushed the federal deficit above $1 trillion, a record level that makes the Treasury secretary’s role as chief marketer of U.S. debt tougher than any of his recent predecessors’.
Geithner, who traveled last week to the Middle East and Europe, has to convince foreign investors to keep buying Treasury bills, notes and bonds; they hold nearly half of the government’s roughly $7 trillion in publicly traded debt.
“He’s a smart guy but it’s a very, very big task,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning Washington think tank.
via Geithner Has Tough Task In Marketing US Debt.
New data on employee salaries, wages, and pay raises
Pay Scales for 20 Different Job Descriptions | Inc.com
Putting a Price on Expertise
Talent may be cheap right now, but if that new hire works out, don’t expect the bargain to last. Even in a weak labor market, salaries rise–often steeply–as employees gain experience. Inc. asked PayScale, the Seattle-based salary and compensation data provider, to calculate the annual increase in employee compensation, based on seniority, for 20 different job descriptions, from office manager to Web developer.
via New data on employee salaries, wages, and pay raises | Inc.com.
Back to Business – A Second Act in the Mortgage Disaster
OPS: Bank Heist II – It worked so well the first time….
Subprime Brokers Resurface as Dubious Loan Fixers - - NYTimes.com 
Each case manager was responsible for as many as 200 files at a time, Ms. Cochems said, making it impossible to keep in regular touch with customers. Some files floated in limbo, because sales agent did not bother handing them over.
“You’re paying the sales agent upfront,” Ms. Cochems said. “So what motivation does he have to get it closed?”
In February, Mr. Anz shut the Los Angeles sales office, uncomfortable with reports that Mr. Soussana had filled it with “unsavory types” from the mortgage industry, he said.
“I’m not a shady person,” Mr. Soussana said.
By March, sales agents were inundated by calls from furious clients who had paid long ago, but not heard from anyone. Some called from motels, their belongings piled in boxes, weeping as they recounted losing their homes.
via Back to Business – A Second Act in the Mortgage Disaster – Series – NYTimes.com.
Grand Canyon Uranium Mining Halted
Grand Canyon Uranium Mining Halted
WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will announce Monday that his department is temporarily barring the filing of new uranium mining claims on about 1 million acres near the Grand Canyon, an Obama administration official said.
The land is being “segregated” for two years so that the department can study whether it should be permanently withdrawn from mining activity, said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The announcement comes ahead of Tuesday’s congressional hearing on a bill to set aside more than 1 million acres of federal lands north and south of the canyon. The bill’s sponsor, Democratic U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and environmental groups had been looking to Salazar for temporary protections at the Grand Canyon while the legislation is pending.
via Grand Canyon Uranium Mining Halted.
Obama Heads to the Front to Do Battle on Health-Care Reform
President Is Set to ‘Take the Baton’ – - washingtonpost.com
As Skepticism on Health Reform Mounts, He Will Intensify His Efforts
Six months into his presidency, Barack Obama may have no greater test of his ability to translate personal popularity into a successful legislative agenda than the upcoming two weeks.
With skepticism about the president’s health-care reform effort mounting on Capitol Hill — even within his own party — the White House has launched a new phase of its strategy designed to dramatically increase public pressure on Congress: all Obama, all the time.
Senior White House aides promise “an aggressive public and private schedule” for Obama as he presses his case for reform, including a prime-time news conference on Wednesday, a trip to Cleveland, and heavy use of Internet video to broadcast his message beyond the reach of the traditional media.
via Obama Heads to the Front to Do Battle on Health-Care Reform – washingtonpost.com.
Workers Rights in America: Card Check’s Death
Workers Rights in America: Card Check’s Death
Maybe you didn’t hear the news: Card Check — the key provision of the Employee Free Choice Act — is dead. You might not have gotten the message because U.S. labor “leaders” are remarkably silent on the issue. Not a peep.
The media, however, has the story right: the Democrats are now officially seeking a compromise, one that strips the bill of its essence — the right for workers to start a union by stating their intention to do so.
So why are most union leaders so quiet? No one likes to talk about their blunders, especially the colossal type. The defeat of Card Check is a mighty blow to labor, and admitting that your strategy failed to achieve it may cause others to question your authority.
So the labor officials remain silent. They ignore the fact that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars in dues money to elect Democrats so that Card Check’s passage would be assured; that they encouraged workers to make thousands of phone calls, knocking on countless doors to garner support for a supposedly Card Check-endorsing Obama; that once Obama was elected, most union “leaders” simply encouraged their members to act like lobbyists, and stay out of the streets. They also ignore history and the similar embarrassments that occurred under Clinton…and Carter, etc. They do the same thing over and over, achieving the same results — absolutely nothing.
via Workers Rights in America: Card Check’s Death.
Quote
“The current system rations care based on an ability to pay.
Right now we are the only nation on earth that barters human life for money.”
Geri Jenkins - California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee co-president
Obamacare: A Health Care Rationing Scheme to Enrich Insurers, Drug Companies and Large Hospital Chains
Obamacare: A Health Care Rationing Scheme to Enrich Insurers, Drug Companies and Large Hospital Chains
by Stephen Lendman
On February 24, Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that “we must….address the crushing cost of health care….caus(ing) a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In (each of) the last eight years….one million….Americans have lost their health insurance….Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold….health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.”
Behind the facade of reform, Obama and leading Democrats ruled universal, single-payer coverage off the table before debate even began. Instead they’ve focused on taxing more, rationing care, placing profits above human need, disdaining vital change, shifting the cost burden to individuals and requiring everyone to be insured; imposing fines up to $1000 for non-compliance, and making a broken system even worse.
On June 10, Physicians for a National Health Program advisor Walter Tsou told the House Education and Labor Committee:
“Attempting to reconcile the dual imperatives of universal coverage and cost control through alternative methods besides single payer is an exercise in futility. When some congressional leaders declare that single payer is off the table, they are in effect saying that insurers will be protected, leaving the pain to patients, taxpayers and health care providers.”
At the same hearing, the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee co-president Geri Jenkins said:
“The current system rations care based on an ability to pay. Right now we are the only nation on earth that barters human life for money.”
The end is near
The end is near - The Boston Globe
By James Carroll
IT USED TO BE that apocalyptic warnings about the approaching end of time came from sign-holding religious nutcases. Now they come from hard scientists.
Most discussion of the threat of global warming is conducted in measured tones, with even dire projections offered with the necessary proviso that the future is uncertain. But as governments fail to act strenuously enough against the villainous carbon emissions, and as the broad public continues in a state of environmental quietude, if not indifference, scientific voices are sharpening the alarm.
E.O. Wilson, in his book “The Creation,’’ used the word Armageddon to describe the rapid shrinking of Earth’s biodiversity. James Lovelock has foreseen a small remnant of the human population in retreat to the Arctic by the end of this century. Less extreme, but still pointed, is this assessment from Jagadish Shukla, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “The potential for catastrophic climate change that can adversely affect the habitability of the entire planet is quite real.’’ Bill McKibben declares that the time to mitigate disaster is upon us: “2009 may well turn out to be the decisive year in the human relationship with our home planet.’’
via The end is near – The Boston Globe.
IPCC Chief: Benefits of Tackling Climate Change Will Balance Cost of Action
IPCC Chief: Benefits of Tackling Climate Change Will Balance Cost of Action | CommonDreams.org
The cost of tackling climate change will be paid for by benefits that would come from better energy security, employment and health, Rajendra Pachauri says ahead of major announcement on 2013 reports
Measures needed to tackle global warming could save economies more money than they cost, the world’s top climate change expert said today.
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Guardian: “The cost could undoubtedly be negative overall.” This is because of the additional benefits that reducing greenhouse gas emissions could bring, beyond limiting temperature rises.
Until now, estimates of the price of preventing dangerous climate change have all indicated significant costs. The most authoritative study, the 2006 Stern report, concluded that 1% of global GDP would be required, and he has since said 2% is now more likely.
via IPCC Chief: Benefits of Tackling Climate Change Will Balance Cost of Action | CommonDreams.org.
Fox News Guest Ralph Peters Suggests Taliban Should Kill U.S. Soldier If He Deserted
OPS: The Fascist Media continues to become bolder in their anti-American propaganda. How much farther will they take it? How much farther will they be allowed to take it?
Fox News Guest Ralph Peters Suggests Taliban Should Kill U.S. Soldier If He Deserted
Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who has been captured by the Taliban and appears in a video released this weekend by his captors, “went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan on June 30.” The circumstances of his capture are still unknown. ABC News reports, “Defense officials said it appeared he somehow left his base in Paktika Province at night, likely accompanied by several Afghan soldiers.” On July 6, the Taliban claimed that “a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison” and was captured by them.
On Fox News yesterday, guest Ralph Peters, a retired Army Lt. Col., urged against leaping to conclusions. “I was to stress first of all that we must wait until all of the facts are in until we make a final judgment,” Peters said, but quickly added, “He is an apparent deserter,” “he is collaborating with the enemy,” and “we know that this private is a liar.” Peters then suggested that if Bergdahl is a deserter, the Taliban should kill him:
Could Dick Cheney Go to Prison?
Cheney Sweats Out the Summer – Consortiumnews.com
By Ray McGovern 
So far the summer has been mild in the Washington, D.C., area. But for former Vice President Dick Cheney the temperature is well over 100 degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly clear why.
Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one issue of transcendent importance — to Cheney. For whatever reason, Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off into the sunset.
Cheney has complained bitterly that his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby should have been pardoned, rather than simply having his jail sentence “commuted.”
Cheney told the press that Bush left Libby “sort of hanging in the wind” by refusing to issue Libby a pardon before Bush left office. Libby had been convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to federal agents investigating the leak of a former CIA operations officer’s identity.
via Consortiumnews.com.
The Bank Lobby’s Insane Assault on Consumer Protection
The Bank Lobby’s Insane Assault on Consumer Protection 
Even after causing millions of foreclosures and the worst recession since the 1930s, the bank lobby is still trying to screw us.
Without question, the most important part of President Barack Obama’s new plan for financial regulation is the creation of a special regulator to protect consumers.
If the administration’s plan goes through, the existing sieve of consumer protections in the financial world will finally be consolidated into a single agency that answers only to consumers, not bank balance sheets. Anyone who sells financial products to consumers, from the lowliest mortgage brokers to high-flying Wall Street elites, will finally have to play by a single, fair set of rules.
You might think that after watching predatory mortgage lending drive the entire global economy off a cliff, the bank lobby would try to keep a low profile during the debate. But you would be wrong.
The bank lobby, led by the terrifyingly powerful American Bankers Association, is in full-on attack mode. And while Big Finance has several aspects of the Obama overhaul in its sights, it’s fighting hardest against the new consumer regulator. The ABA has already launched a barrage of money, distortions, contradictions and outright lies in an attempt to protect its inalienable right to pillage our pocketbooks.
Did Anti-Drug Propaganda Help Bring About a Psychedelic Renaissance?
Did Anti-Drug Propaganda Help Bring About a Psychedelic Renaissance?
As the anti-drug program spread into 3/4 of all school districts by the ’90s, America’s youth enjoyed a psychedelic renaissance.
The following is an excerpt from Ryan Grim’s new book, “This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America (Wiley, 2009) This is the 2nd excerpt in a series from the book. Read the first excerpt here).
The D.A.R.E. program is now in three-quarters of all school districts, reaching more than twenty-five million American kids. It also has branches in more than fifty nations worldwide. Ironically, it was born just as more than a decade of rising drug use was ebbing among all age groups, including baby boomers, who now had the sorts of responsibilities that can preclude taking recreational drugs: careers, mortgages, and, most important, children.
Apprehensive new moms and dads in the eighties and early nineties helped make D.A.R.E. a global phenomenon, but they were surrounded by countless other sources of parenting help. Best sellers such as Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More and Charles Whitfield’s Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, both published in 1987, helped to build a massive market in recovery and wellness literature during the period. Self-esteem, self-actualization, and self-help, pop-psychological leftovers from the individualistic sixties and narcissistic seventies, became buzzwords to live by as millions of Americans were introduced to their “inner child” and the potentially catastrophic consequences of neglecting it. “With our parents’ unknowing help and society’s assistance, most of us deny our Inner Child,” Whitfield writes of this hidden, wounded aspect of the psyche. “When this Child Within is not nurtured or allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges.”
via Did Anti-Drug Propaganda Help Bring About a Psychedelic Renaissance? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Rachel Maddow Takes Down MSNBC’s Resident Racist, Pat Buchanan
Rachel Maddow Takes Down MSNBC’s Resident Racist, Pat Buchanan
By Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show.
On her show recently, Rachel Maddow showed just how dated and racist conservative whining about affirmative action and “reverse discrimination” is.
Editor’s Note: For decades, conservatives played on the racist and sexist fears of their constituents by spinning dramatic tales of the white man’s decline in the face of advances by women, African-Americans, Hispanics and other minority groups. Conveniently putting aside their calls for personal responsibility, conservative pundits and many GOP legislators blamed the woes of working-class white men on affirmative action programs.
Uppity women and minority groups, or so the story went, were exploiting past injustice to gain an unearned leg-up over more deserving white males. White men were, allegedly, increasingly victimized by government policies that privileged women and minorities.
Needless to say, conservatives were far more concerned with rolling back the rights of women and minorities than offering policy solutions that truly helped low-income white men.
via Rachel Maddow Takes Down MSNBC’s Resident Racist, Pat Buchanan | | AlterNet.
My Son Was Taught to Believe in Jesus by His Mother — How Do I Help Him Become a Free Thinker?
My Son Was Taught to Believe in Jesus by His Mother — How Do I Help Him Become a Free Thinker?
By Danny Postel, New Humanist.
Panicked by his son’s Jesus references, an agnostic dad discovers a skeptic’s reading list for kids. But is counter-indoctrination really the answer?
“Daddy, why did Jesus invent butterflies if they die after two weeks?”
I just about hit the panic button when my 6-year-old son Theo put this question to me not long ago. His mother, who is a Christian, had taught him that Jesus was God. When Jesus’s visage appears in a painting or on television, Theo sometimes exclaims, “That’s God!”
In his butterfly question, he seemed to reason, syllogistically, that if Jesus was God, and God created the world and its life forms (butterflies being one of them), Jesus “invented” the winged creatures. Either that, or God and Jesus are simply interchangeable in his mind.
New Geothermal Heat Extraction Process To Deliver Clean Power Generation
New Geothermal Heat Extraction Process To Deliver Clean Power Generation
A new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources holds promise for generating virtually pollution-free electrical energy. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will determine if their innovative approach can safely and economically extract and convert heat from vast untapped geothermal resources.
The goal is to enable power generation from low-temperature geothermal resources at an economical cost. In addition to being a clean energy source without any greenhouse gas emissions, geothermal is also a steady and dependable source of power.
“By the end of the calendar year, we plan to have a functioning bench-top prototype generating electricity,” predicts PNNL Laboratory Fellow Pete McGrail. “If successful, enhanced geothermal systems like this could become an important energy source.” A technical and economic analysis conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that enhanced geothermal systems could provide 10 percent of the nation’s overall electrical generating capacity by 2050.
via New Geothermal Heat Extraction Process To Deliver Clean Power Generation.
Army Study Links Multiple Deployments, Combat Exposure to Soldier Violence
Army Study Links Multiple Deployments, Combat Exposure to Soldier Violence – ABC News
Study Prompted by 14 Murders Near Fort Carson, Colo., Between 2005 and 2008
The Army released a study Wednesday that looks at how deployments, prior history, or other factors could cause soldiers to commit violent acts, including homicide.
Although “higher levels of combat intensity” among the units involved likely contributed in some way to some of the crimes, analysts could not pinpoint any one factor as a cause.
“Identifying at-risk soldiers is a complex issue,” said Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, commanding general of Fort Carson, Colo., during a phone briefing with reporters. “How do we know which soldier may be the very one to take his own life or the life of someone else — this is a hard question to answer.”
via Army Study Links Multiple Deployments, Combat Exposure to Soldier Violence – ABC News.
Financial Rescue I.G. Says Banks Funneled TARP Aid to Various Expenses
Bailout Overseer Says Banks Misused TARP Funds – washingtonpost.com
Many of the banks that got federal aid to support increased lending have instead used some of the money to make investments, repay debts or buy other banks, according to a new report from the special inspector general overseeing the government’s financial rescue program.
The report, which will be published Monday, surveyed 360 banks that got money through the end of January and found that 110 had invested at least some of it, that 52 had repaid debts and that 15 had used funds to buy other banks.
Roughly 80 percent of respondents, or 300 banks, also said at least some of the money had supported new lending.
via Financial Rescue I.G. Says Banks Funneled TARP Aid to Various Expenses – washingtonpost.com.
Jimmy Carter: The words of God do not justify cruelty to women
The words of God do not justify cruelty to women | The Observer
Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society, argues the former US president
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …” (Article 2, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when th e convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief – confirmed in the holy scriptures – that we are all equal in the eyes of God.
via The words of God do not justify cruelty to women | Jimmy Carter | Comment is free | The Observer.
Krugman warns on rewards
Krugman warns on rewards – BussinessDay
NEW YORK — Goldman Sachs Group ’s move to increase compensation after posting record earnings shows Wall Street bankers have every incentive to increase risk, setting the stage for the next financial crisis, Paul Krugman says in his latest column.
Wall Street firms, whose liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee after receiving taxpayer-funded rescue funds, will need tighter regulation and a reform of their compensation policies to avoid an even bigger financial disaster in a few years, the Nobel prize-winning economist wrote in the New York Times.
“The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry high-fliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.”
He says the events of the past year have increased the imbalance by making the taxpayers as well as investors liable if things go wrong.
He says he agrees with those who advocate bail-outs to avoid another Great Depression, “but the result is the financial system’s liabilities are now backed by an implicit state guarantee”. Bloomberg
via BusinessDay.
Opposing healthcare reform: knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing
Opposing healthcare reform: knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing
You’re sitting in your doctors office. You are told some sobering news about a medical condition that needs immediate attention. You listen. Your doctor says you need to get started immediately. You nod. Then your doctors asks, ” so how are you going to pay for it”?
No one, surely not the Republicans who have been the most vocal opponents of a public option, ever ask, “how are we going to pay for police protection?” Or fire protection.They never asked “how are we going to pay for a Star Wars program?” or national defense.
via Opposing healthcare reform: knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
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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. 
