Archive for August, 2009
Health Care Reform Needs an Action Hero
Health Care Reform Needs an Action Hero - By Amy Goodman – Truthdig
Imagine the scene. America 2009. Eighteen thousand people have died in one year, an average of almost 50 a day. Who’s taking them out? What’s killing them? 
To investigate, President Barack Obama might be tempted to call on Jack Bauer, the fictional rogue intelligence agent from the hit TV series “24,” who invariably employs torture and a host of other illegal tactics to help the president fight terrorism. But terrorism is not the culprit here:
It’s lack of adequate health care. So maybe the president’s solution isn’t Jack Bauer, but rather the actor who plays him.
The star of “24” is played by Kiefer Sutherland, whose family has very deep connections to health care reform—in Canada. Sutherland is the grandson of the late Tommy Douglas, the pioneering Canadian politician who is credited with creating the modern Canadian health care system. As a youth, Tommy Douglas almost lost his ailing leg. His family could not afford treatment, but a doctor treated him for free, provided his medical students could observe. As an adult, Douglas saw the impact of widespread poverty caused by the Great Depression. Trained as a minister, he had a popular oratorical style.
via Truthdig – Reports – Health Care Reform Needs an Action Hero.
Urban Farms Take Root
ENVIRONMENT-US: Urban Farms Take Root – By Enrique Gili – - IPS ipsnews.net
SAN DIEGO, California, Aug 11 (IPS) – Juxtapose the word urban in front of farm and there’s bound to be a lot of head scratching. But in cities around the U.S. small-scale farms and garden plots are coming to life in unlikely places. Abandoned city lots, and neglected yards are being converted into vegetable gardens – as basic food literacy becomes part of the vocabulary of city dwellers.
Due to a faltering economy and numerous food scares, many U.S. households are asking two basic questions: ‘Where does my food come from?’ Followed by, ‘How do we pay for it?’
The recently established New Roots farm located in San Diego is part of an unusual experiment among food activists to bring sustainable agriculture within city limits. Under the aegis of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a non-profit organisation working with refugees worldwide, the immigrant community of City Heights has started an “urban farm” for local residents.
Open since mid-July, the New Roots Community Farm as the property has come to be called is a raw patch of land located on 2.2 acres of city property with the potential to supplement the diets of hundreds if not thousands of low-income individuals living in greater San Diego.
The so-called farm opened after nearly four years of negotiations with local and federal agencies. “It took us a long time to get access to this land,” mentions Amy Lint, IRC food security coordinator, when speaking of the effort to obtain and secure the proper permits from city planners.
via ENVIRONMENT-US: Urban Farms Take Root – IPS ipsnews.net.
Amex, Discover To End Credit Card Over-Limit Fees
OPS: Banksters Playing ‘nice’ just before new REGULATION goes into effect. Interesting how a little Government over-site and regulation can change the game a little bit in our favor
Amex, Discover To End Credit Card Over-Limit Fees
NEW YORK — American Express and Discover customers will soon be free of fees for charging over their credit limits.
The two companies said separately Tuesday they will soon end the charges that have generated widespread criticism from consumers.
The moves come before credit card regulations set to take effect in February limit the way credit card issuers may charge such fees. Under the legislation signed by President Obama in May, consumers must agree to pay a fee before they can charge more than their credit limit, and card issuers must tell their customers how much those fees would be.
American Express currently assesses a $35 fee to most customers whose balances exceeded their credit card limits.
via Amex, Discover To End Credit Card Over-Limit Fees.
AccuWeather.com: Global Warming News, Science, Myths, Articles
OP:S …at a time when Illinois had the COOLEST July in 68 years
Second Warmest July on Record Globally, according to NASA
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) has determined that July of 2009 was the second warmest July globally, since records were kept going back well over a hundred years.
The global land-ocean temperature anomaly for July 2009 was +.60 Celsius or +1.08 F. Only July of 1998 (a strong el nino year) was warmer.
The image below shows the July 2009 anomalies across the globe (warm is red, cool is blue). Clearly the reds and oranges far outweigh the blues on this map.
via AccuWeather.com: Global Warming News, Science, Myths, Articles.
Isn’t Missing an $8 Trillion Housing Bubble a Mistake?
Isn’t Missing an $8 Trillion Housing Bubble a Mistake? – –Dean Baker - The American Prospect
Not according to the WSJ. It tells us that economists are near unanimous in thinking that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke should be reappointed.
After telling us that the economists who it polled were nearly unanimous in believing that Bernanke should be reappointed as Fed chair, the article concludes:
“Though the economists were overwhelmingly supportive of Mr. Bernanke, they don’t think his tenure was without mistakes. A slow initial response to the credit squeeze and the decision to let Lehman Brothers fail were cited as the biggest errors.”
via Beat the Press Archive | The American Prospect.
‘A Recovery Only a Statistician Can Love’
‘A Recovery Only a Statistician Can Love’ – Annys Shin - Washington Post
Data That Point to Improving Economy Also Suggest Continued Pain for Many
The pile of economic data indicating that the worst of the recession is over just keeps growing. In the past few weeks, the government has reported that businesses last month shed the smallest number of jobs in nearly a year. The savings rate, after rising rapidly, held steady at levels not seen in at least five years. And from April to June, productivity surged to a six-year high.
But the same data also explain why any recovery isn’t going to feel like one anytime soon for millions of Americans. Its existence will be confirmed by statistics, but, over at least the next year, the benefits are unlikely to materialize in the form of higher wages or tax receipts or more jobs.
“It’s going to be a recovery only a statistician can love,” Wells Fargo senior economist Mark Vitner said.
A few recent pieces of data offered reasons for both hope and trepidation.
via ‘A Recovery Only a Statistician Can Love’ – washingtonpost.com.
Letting the Banking Rats Out of the Bag
Letting the Banking Rats Out of the Bag - Truthdig – Reports – Robert Scheer
The good judge smelled a rat.
“Was there some sort of ghost that performed these actions?” New York federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff demanded to know Monday in rejecting a deal that would let Bank of America off the hook in yet another banker bonus scandal. The Securities and Exchange Commission had charged the bank with covering up for outrageous bonuses given out at Merrill Lynch as the bank acquired the failed stockbrokerage, and now it was letting the bank off the hook with a chicken-feed fine.
“Do Wall Street people expect to be paid large bonuses in years when their company lost $27 billion?” the judge asked, and Lewis J. Liman, the lawyer for Bank of America, assured him they do: “My God! Bonuses on Wall Street? It is not a matter of surprise.”
But for those of us less sophisticated in the ways of Wall Street, it is a surprise that Merrill Lynch executives were rewarded for failure at the same time Bank of America was using $45 billion in taxpayer funds to take over the brokerage house. Six hundred ninety-six executives who helped run Merrill into the ground were granted more than a million bucks each.
via Truthdig – Reports – Letting the Banking Rats Out of the Bag.
Documents Show Christian World Domination Group Paid For Bipartisan Congressional Hawaii Trip
Documents Show Christian World Domination Group Paid For Bipartisan Congressional Hawaii Trip - Talk To Action | Bruce Wilson
As shown on Congressional travel disclosure forms obtained through Legistorm.com, a nonprofit dedication to government transparency, in February 2000 a bipartisan pair of US congressional representatives, Frank Wolf (R-VA-10) and former Democratic Ohio Congressional representative Tony P. Hall, traveled with their wives to Hawaii on what the two described as official US government business but the trip was financed by two interconnected fundamentalist ministries, Youth With a Mission and “The Family”, which both advocate Christian theocratic rule.
Suggesting they confused the agenda of those ministries with US government interests, representatives Frank R. Wolf and Tony P. Hall, who is now a US ambassador working to foster a Middle East peace initiative, each signed their names to statements on their travel forms which read:
I have determined that all of the expenses listed above were necessary and that the travel was in connection with my duties as a Member of officer of the U.S. House of Representatives and would not create the appearance that I was using the office for appearance of public gain.
The stated destination of Tony Hall’s and Frank Wolf’s February 18-25, 2000 conjugal junkets was Kona, Hawaii, home of the international campus and headquarters of Youth With a Mission. YWAM is a global Christian ministry that owns the C Street House and whose founder Loren Cunningham proposes an ambitious plan for Christian domination in which believers achieve control of key societal sectors including government, business, media, and education: the 7 Mountains Mandate [ link: "7 Mountains" promotional video.]
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO SINGLE PAYER INSURANCE
Republicans seem to believe that only the rich folks have a RIGHT to health care, and that for the rest of us, it is a “privilege”. I believe that just as all men and women have a “right” to life, liberty , and the pursuit of happiness, that we have a right to health care, because without health, the other rights will not be attainable.
via YouTube – YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO SINGLE PAYER INSURANCE.
Emails show Washington Post reporter coordinated attorney firing story with White House
Emails show Washington Post reporter coordinated attorney firing story with White House - Raw Story »
When a scandal involving the Bush administration’s firing of US Attorneys broke in early 2007, initial coverage by the Washington Post supported the idea that the firings had been politically motivated. That approach, however, quickly changed to one that was far more friendly to the White House.
The House Judiciary Committee has now released over 5400 pages of Bush administration and Republican Party emails (pdf) related to the firings. Several of these emails suggest coordination between Post reporter John Solomon and Bush administration officials on how to manage the Post’s coverage of the widening scandal.
In one email to a Department of Justice spokesperson, Solomon even appears to be suggesting what spin to apply in order to minimize damage from the revelations.
via Raw Story » Emails show Washington Post reporter coordinated attorney firing story with White House.
Officials see rise in militia groups across US
Officials see rise in militia groups across US – The Raw Story »
Report: Officials see rise in militia groups across the country, similar to the ’90s movement
Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends.
The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration.
Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he’s seen in more than a decade.
“All it’s lacking is a spark,” McEntire said in the report.
via The Raw Story » Officials see rise in militia groups across US.
California’s Hidden Deficit: Unemployment Insurance Fund Owes $2.6 Billion
California’s Hidden Deficit: – | GroundReport
California, which now owes $2.6 billion, has the most indebted trust fund in the nation. For the last month, the state has been borrowing at a rate of about $30 million per day.
Source: California Employment Development Department
Source: California Employment Development Department
State workforce department officials estimate that by the end of 2010, the state’s fund will owe a jaw-dropping $18 billion.
A historical compromise left the U.S. with a patchwork system of 53 different trust funds operated by states and territories, which are able to decide their levels of financing and benefits provided they comply with federal guidelines that have not been updated for more than 25 years. The result is a system where some states have ample funds for unemployment insurance, and some run out. Workers in the most generous states get benefits twice as high as those in the stingiest states.
(How is your state’s unemployment insurance trust fund faring? See an updated chart here.)
As is the case with most of the other states whose trust funds are empty, the funds coming into California’s trust fund have barely kept pace with the money being paid out in benefits. In times of recession, unemployment benefits function both as a helping hand for workers in need and an automatic form of economic stimulus by keeping people spending and businesses open.
via California’s Hidden Deficit: Unemployment Insurance Fund Owes $2.6 Billion | GroundReport.
Toxic Assets Still Pose Threat
Toxic Assets Still Pose Threat – Craig Harrington -economyincisis.org
Elizabeth Warren is warning lawmakers in Washington about the threat still presented by toxic assets on bank balance sheets.
Stock markets in the United States retreated yesterday following a boom in share prices during the previous week. The Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P were each down about one-third of a one percent in Monday trading. The opening session this morning was even worse as markets plunged nearly three-quarters of one percent.
Despite news that worker productivity in the U.S was rising at its fastest pace in six years, the markets seem distracted by possible policy measures being crafted by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC is expected to keep its key interest rates near zero as it continues to pour money into the economy.
In other financial news Elizabeth Warren, of the Congressional Oversight Panel, is warning lawmakers in Washington about the threat still presented by toxic assets on bank balance sheets.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Trade deficit harms recovery
OPS: We need to get back to the “protectionist’ policies that created and supported this Country for 200 years before Reaganomics
Trade Deficit Dampens Recovery and Destroys Jobs - Peter Morici – TradeReform.org –
Wednesday, the Commerce Department will report June international trade in goods and services. The trade deficit is expected to rise to $28.5 billion from $26 billion in May.
The ballooning trade deficit is a principal cause of the Great Recession, threatens to stifle recovery and push unemployment above 10 percent through 2011
At 2.2 percent of GDP, the trade deficit subtracts about more from demand for U.S.-made goods and services than President Obama’s stimulus package adds. Moreover, Obama stimulus is temporary, whereas the trade deficit is permanent.
Subsidized manufactures from China and petroleum account for nearly the entire deficit and both will rise as consumer spending and oil prices rebound later in 2009.
via TradeReform.org – Morici: Trade deficit harms recovery.
The Rise of the Electric Car
The Rise of the Electric Car - Craig Harrington economyincisis.org
General Motors issued an official release updating specs for the much anticipated Chevrolet Volt which boasts an average fuel-economy for city driving at an EPA-estimated 230 miles per gallon.
On Tuesday General Motors issued an official release updating specs for the much anticipated Chevrolet Volt. One figure jumped off the page; average fuel-economy for city driving would be an EPA-estimated 230 miles per gallon.
Right now the mileage wars are being won by the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius which, based on driving style, boast average fuel-economy of 50 to 60 miles per gallon. In “real world” driving conditions, the Volt would at least double and perhaps even triple its best competition.
Perhaps the most impressive feature of the Chevy Volt is its drive-train. The motor is fully electric and the car carries a gas-powered electrical generator to replenish the battery rather than turn the wheels. As a result, a commuter could possibly drive 40 miles without ever using any gasoline.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Right-wing global warming deniers protest Clean Energy Summit.
Right-wing global warming deniers protest Clean Energy Summit. – Think Progress »
Yesterday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund hosted the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, a gathering attended by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Steven Chu, Hilda Solis, and many other experts. Unsurprisingly, right-wing protesters – many of whom are global warming deniers – also gathered at the venue. The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson interviewed some of the protesters to get a better understanding of their views. One said President Obama is an “Anti-American Arab” who “is not a natural-born citizen.” Many others said that global warming is a hoax, that Obama is a man of divided loyalties and questionable associations, and that the country is headed toward socialist decline. Watch it:
via Think Progress » Right-wing global warming deniers protest Clean Energy Summit..
Weekly Standard: It’s ‘likely’ that the swastika at Rep. Scott’s office is a ‘fake hate crime.’
Weekly Standard: It’s ‘likely’ that the swastika at Rep. Scott’s office is a ‘fake hate crime.’ - Think Progress »
This morning, Rep. David Scott (D-GA) discovered that someone had spray-painted a swastika on the sign at one of his district offices. On Twitter, various right-wing observers immediately began speculating that it was a staged stunt. Now, Weekly Standard writer John McCormack has legitimized these fringe perspectives:
In recent years self-inflicted hate crimes have come into vogue among certain citizens on the right and the left.
Of course sometimes “hate crimes” are real (for example, this spring a College Democrat desecrated crosses at George Washington University with graffiti and condoms). It’s possible that a neo-Nazi actually vandalized Rep. Scott’s offices. But given the fact that the Nazi imagery so neatly dovetails with the left’s smearing of health-care protesters as fascists, isn’t it more likely that this act of vandalism was committed by one of Scott’s supporters?
Texas judge defends his racist poster showing Obama supporters as criminals: ‘I don’t consider it racist.’
OPS: Time for the BAR Association to step up to the plate.
Texas judge defends his racist poster showing Obama supporters as criminals: ‘I don’t consider it racist.’ – Think Progress »
Judge Tom Head is under fire for an offensive poster he put up on a public bulletin board in the Lubbock, TX county courthouse. The poster shows nine arrest photos of people wearing Obama t-shirts, accompanied by the text:
Did you ever see anyone arrested wearing a Bush T-shirt, or for you older folks, an Eisenhower?, Gerald Ford?, Ronald Reagan?, even Nixon?, or any political t-shirt? There MUST be a message here, but I can’t quite grasp it, or maybe I’m afraid to.
The Threat Is Real: Why Right-Wing Rage at Townhall Meetings Could Quickly Turn Deadly
The Threat Is Real: Why Right-Wing Rage at Townhall Meetings Could Quickly Turn Deadly – By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet.
The insurance industry has agitated the far right to prevent health reform, but they don’t know whom they’re messing with.
rom the Internet to Sarah Palin this strange claim is being made: Obama wants to kill the elderly and the infirm with his health care plan. Palin even said her Down’s Syndrome child would be a target. The claim is being repeated, or rather screamed, by angry groups invading town hall meetings that congresspeople have organized to discuss health care reform. How on earth can the outright lie that health-care reform will lead to the euthanasia of the elderly be accepted by anyone, even by those on the far anti-Obama right?
I happen to have the answer to this question.
Over thirty years ago, my family helped start the myth leading to the present bizarre turn of events. From the mid 1970s to mid 1980s I was an activist on the far right, an evangelical, and a Republican. I quit the movement by the late 1980s. (Disclosure: I’m now a supporter of President Obama and health care reform.) To understand what is happening today in town hall meetings invaded by angry mobs convinced that their representatives are part of a conspiracy to force the elderly to forgo care, you have to understand what we the founders of the pro-life movement set in motion.
Vitaminwater’s Empty Calories Are at the Heart of What’s Wrong with the Beverage Industry
Vitaminwater’s Empty Calories Are at the Heart of What’s Wrong with the Beverage Industry – By Andrea Whitfill, AlterNet.
Vitaminwater tells its customers to “hydrate responsibly.” That means not drinking 125-calorie sugar rushes like … Vitaminwater.
Many millions of Americans continue to seek all sorts of ways to become healthier and control their weight, but let’s get real; it’s not working. The health trend continues, yet our obesity rates remain on the rise.
In this past year, the obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states, according to a new report from the Trust for American’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the state of Colorado is the only state with an obesity rate below 20 percent at 18.9. In 1991, there was only one state with an obesity rate above 20 percent.
Based upon the upward trend, you would expect sales to have risen at fast-food joints. Maybe, but that is not the data that has me raising an eyebrow.
Consider this paradox: As we have become “larger” as a nation, our sales at health food a stores have skyrocketed. Between 2001 and 2008, sales of natural food and drink products at specialty stores in the United States rose from an estimated $11.9 billion to $19.6 billion.
The Tragedy of Our ‘Disappeared’ Veterans
The Tragedy of Our ‘Disappeared’ Veterans - By Penny Coleman, AlterNet.
Wayne McMahon was busted on gun charges six months after he got out of the Marines.
He was jumped by a gang of kids in his hometown of Albany, N.Y. , and he went for the assault rifle he kept in the back of his SUV.
He’s serving “three flat, with two years of post-release” at Groveland Prison in upstate New York.
Maybe it’s tempting to write McMahon off as just a screwed-up person who made the kinds of mistakes that should have landed him in jail, but maybe that’s because his injuries don’t show on the outside.
Unlike physical injuries, psychiatric injuries are invisible; the burden of proof lands on the soldier (or sailor or Marine), and such injuries are easy for the public to deny.
The diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder include a preoccupation with danger.
via The Tragedy of Our ‘Disappeared’ Veterans | World | AlterNet.
‘Evil and Orwellian’ – America’s right turns its fire on NHS
‘Evil and Orwellian’ – America’s right turns its fire on NHS - | | The Guardian
The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative campaigners rail against Britain’s “socialist” system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama’s proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare. 
Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market organisations in scorning the NHS for its waiting lists and for “rationing” the availability of expensive treatments.
As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health policy.
via ‘Evil and Orwellian’ – America’s right turns its fire on NHS | World news | The Guardian.
The Wealthy Elites Play the Racists for Pawns at a Town Hall Meeting in Maryland
The Wealthy Elites Play the Racists for Pawns at a Town Hall Meeting in Maryland
BuzzFlash Guest Commentary By Maria Allwine
On Monday night, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin held a town hall meeting at Towson University, just north of Baltimore. A long-time BuzzFlash reader and Baltimore activsit, Maria Allwine, provided this account.
I was at the protest before Monday night’s town hall meeting on healthcare hosted by Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin. Here are my impressions of last night:
I went to the rally and got there about 5:35 –already there were signs posted saying the event (a huge line already waiting to get in) had reached capacity. I hoped members of Healthcare-Now of MD were there early.
The organized right-wingers were there in droves – I estimate (and I am not the best guesser) at least 1,000, maybe more. They were bused in from all over MD from what I was hearing. There were maybe 500 of us, perhaps more –again a guesstimate. Osler Drive was lined up on both sides for a very long way but the majority of them were the right-wingers. They were all along the west side of Osler and a good deal of the east side where we were. I’ll be interested to read the estimates from a more reliable source than myself.
via The Wealthy Elites Play the Racists for Pawns at a Town Hall Meeting in Maryland | BuzzFlash.org.
Psychopaths have faulty brain connections: study
Psychopaths have faulty brain connections: study – | | Reuters
Psychopaths who kill and rape have faulty connections between the part of the brain dealing with emotions and that which handles impulses and decision-making, scientists have found.
In a study of psychopaths who had committed murder, manslaughter, multiple rape, strangulation and false imprisonment, the British scientists found that roads linking the two crucial brain areas had “potholes,” while those of non-psychopaths were in good shape.
The study opens up the possibility of developing treatments for dangerous psychopaths in the future, said Dr Michael Craig of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, and may have profound implications for doctors, researchers and the criminal justice system.
via Psychopaths have faulty brain connections: study | Global Industries | Health & Drugs | Reuters.
LOBBY GROUPS TO USE TOWN HALL TACTICS TO OPPOSE CLIMATE
OPS: Well, it worked in the 20′s and 30′s in Germany. It has gotten them the publicity they wanted with health care. Why wouldn’t they take the show on the road? They will just get louder and more bold.
LOBBY GROUPS TO USE TOWN HALL TACTICS TO OPPOSE CLIMATE BILL Get ready for more mob scenes at congressional town hall events. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Taking a cue from angry protests against the Obama Administration’s health care restructuring, the oil industry is helping organize anti-climate bill rallies around the nation.
The American Petroleum Institute, along with other organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers opposed to the climate legislation Congress will consider again in the fall, is funding rallies across 20 states over the August recess.
In template fliers for rallies produced by the API-founded alliance, EnergyCitizens, the public is warned that “Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain and produce little environmental gain.” [...]
“We’ve all seen those angry folks raising heck about health care,” said Frank O’Donnell, head of the environmental advocacy group, Clean Air Watch. “So I guess it was inevitable a special interest would try the same thing on the climate legislation,” he said in an email.
via LobbyBlog.
Slow Poisoning of Mankind by the Packaged Foods Industry
The food additive MSG (Mono-Sodium Glutamate) is a slow poison.
MSG hides behind 25 or more names, such as “Natural Flavoring.”
MSG
The food additive MSG (Mono-Sodium Glutamate) is a slow poison. MSG hides behind 25 or more names, such as “Natural Flavoring.”
MSG is even in your favorite coffee from Tim Horton’s and Starbucks coffee shops!
I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, and so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and spent years working for the government. He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America.
In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so scientists have to create them. They make these creatures morbidly obese by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and perhaps humans) to become obese. They even have a name for the fat rodents they create: “MSG-Treated Rats.”
via MSG FOODADDITIVE.
America’s Biggest Economic Problem?
America’s Biggest Economic Problem?
Most of Us are Broke … Literally
My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I’m busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I’m busted
I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won’t lay
A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day
The county’s gonna haul my belongings away cause I’m busted.–Ray Charles
Almost half of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage are likely to owe more than their properties are worth before the housing recession ends, Deutsche Bank AG estimates. The percentage of “underwater” loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes, as prices drop through the first quarter of 2011, Karen Weaver and Ying Shen, analysts in New York at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a report published August 6.
In December 2006, only a few months after the peak of the housing bull market, the total value of U.S. residential property stood at $21.9 trillion. Prices have dropped by 31 percent since the end of 2006, so the estimated value today is about $15 trillion; however, the mortgage debt remains more or less unchanged and stands at $10.6 trillion. In other words, whereas debt-to-equity in the U.S. housing market was 48 per cent as recently as in December 2006, it is now 70 per cent and will rise to 80 per cent once house prices have mean-reverted.
Although painful, a rise in debt-to-equity of that magnitude would actually be manageable if it were not for the fact that income and wealth in the US is extremely skewed. The top 1 per cent of income earners in the U.S. account for more than 20 per cent of national income while the median household has seen no improvement in income for the past ten years. Within the median household sector itself, then, there is still a tremendous financial vulnerability which has not been addressed at all by the Obama administration. Home ownership in the U.S. is far greater than in most modern economies. Equity ownership is also high. The bursting of the real estate and equity bubbles has destroyed the wealth of the U.S. middle class to a devastating degree. And it is with this middle class that the high private indebtedness lies. If there is going to be a further financial crisis in the U.S. it is probably going to be focused on the household sector. If balance sheet recession dynamics are going to depress aggregate demand through wealth destruction and debt repayment, it is probably household sector demand where this will surface.
via Marshall Auerback: America’s Biggest Economic Problem?.
Deaths from avoidable medical error more than double in past decade, investigation shows
OPS: So tell me again why we need to kill torte laws?
Deaths from avoidable medical error more than double in past decade, investigation shows
: Scientific American Blog
Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation. The report comes 10 years after the Institute of Medicine’s “To Err Is Human” analysis, which found that 44,000 to 98,000 people were dying annually due to these errors and called for the medical community and government to cut that number in half by 2004.
The precise number of these deaths is still unknown because many states lack a standard or mandatory reporting system for injuries due to medical mistakes. The investigative team gathered disparate medical records, legal documents, personnel files and reports and analyzed databases to arrive at its estimate.
Many, including President Barack Obama, have advocated for a broader adoption of electronic medical records as both a life- and cost-saver. But not everyone is convinced that current technology will help doctors and nurses who already have set ways of handling patient information. “The systems as they stand now are still fairly clunky and user unfriendly,” Robert Wachter, a professor of hospital medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Hearst. “In the last several years, we’ve seen a literature emerge of medical errors caused by computer systems.”
Americans working much harder – for less pay
Americans working much harder – for less pay
Productivity surged, labor costs dropped sharply in the second quarter - – - msnbc.com
Feel like you’re working a lot harder these days, putting in longer hours for the same pay — or even less? The latest round of government data on worker productivity indicates that you probably are.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that the American work force produced, at an annual rate, 6.4 percent more of the goods they made and services they provided in the second quarter of this year compared to a year ago. At the same time, “unit labor costs” — the amount employers paid for all that extra work — fell by 5.8 percent. The jump in productivity was higher than expected; the cut in labor costs more than double expectations.
That is, despite the deep job cuts of the past year, workers who remain on the payroll are filling in and making up the work that had been done by their departed colleagues. In some cases, that extra work came with a smaller paycheck.
via Americans working much harder – for less pay – Eye on the Economy- msnbc.com.
9/11 Mind Swell
9/11 Mind Swell - by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Scientific evidence refutes the official story
As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11 years the scientific evidence for disbelieving the official government story has mounted incredibly. And the number of highly respected and credentialed professionals challenging the official story has similarly expanded. Yet, to the considerable disappointment of the international 9/11 truth movement, the objective fact is that there are no widespread, loud demands for a new government-backed 9/11 investigation. The 9/11 truth movement is the epitome of a marginalized movement, one that never goes away despite not achieving truly meaningful results, which in this case means replacing official lies with official truth. What has gone wrong?
Akin to the definition of insanity, the hallmark of entrenched but marginalized movements is that they continue to pursue exactly the same strategy and tactics that have failed to produce solid results. They indulge themselves with self-delusion, defensive thinking and acting as if the world at large must surely and finally wake up, see the light and embrace the Truth. Years and, potentially, decades go by, but this quixotic status quo remains embedded, as if set in intellectual concrete. There is no brain tumor to blame. Nor any mass hypnosis of true believers to prove. There is just monumental disinterest among the dominant culture, political establishment and the broad public that is far more engaged with other issues, problems and movements.
The 9/11 truth movement, at best, gets meager public attention when it is derided and insulted, used as an example of persistent conspiratorial insanity.
Make no mistake; I concluded a few years back, after using my professional engineering and materials science background to study the evidence, that the official government story is a lie. As a former full professor of engineering, I firmly believe that elements of the US government were involved with contributing to (not just allowing) the 9/11 tragedy, but that does not necessarily eliminate the role of those terrorists publicly blamed for the events. Science, logic, evidence and critical thinking told me this.
Who should we blame for the failure of the 9/11 truth movement to fix the historical record and, better yet, identify those in the government who turned 9/11 into an excuse for going to war, getting them indicted, prosecuted, and punished for their murderous acts?
It is too easy to blame the mainstream media and political establishment for refusing to demand and pursue a truly comprehensive and credible independent scientific and engineering investigation. President Obama with his tenacious belief in looking forward, not backward, exemplifies a national mindset to avoid the painful search for truth and justice that could produce still more public disillusionment with government and feed the belief that American democracy is weak at best, and delusional at worst.
via 9/11 Mind Swell.
You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster
You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster - DAN BARBER- NYTimes.com
The East Coast Tomato Catastrophe
IF the hardship of growing vegetables and fruits in the Northeast has made anything clear, it’s that the list of what can go wrong in the field is a very long one.
We wait all year for warmer weather and longer days. Once we get them, it seems new problems for farmers rise to the surface every week: overnight temperatures plunging close to freezing, early disease, aphid attacks. Another day, another problem.
The latest trouble is the explosion of late blight, a plant disease that attacks potatoes and tomatoes. Late blight appears innocent enough at first — a few brown spots here, some lesions there — but it spreads fast. Although the fungus isn’t harmful to humans, it has devastating effects on tomatoes and potatoes grown outdoors. Plants that appear relatively healthy one day, with abundant fruit and vibrant stems, can turn toxic within a few days. (See the Irish potato famine, caused by a strain of the fungus.)
via Op-Ed Contributor – You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster – NYTimes.com.
Idealab rebounds with recent focus on clean technology
Idealab rebounds with recent focus on clean technology - - Los Angeles Times
The hundreds of glass mirrors break the dusty field in Lancaster, a sea of silver in a landscape of brown.
When switched on for the first time today at an opening gala with investors, local politicians and others, they’ll make up the first operational solar tower energy facility in the United States.
via Idealab rebounds with recent focus on clean technology – Los Angeles Times.
Dog Lifeguards Certified In Italy
Dog Lifeguards Certified In Italy
Three hundred dogs have become certified to save drowning swimmers across the beaches and lakes of Italy, The Guardian reports.
The dogs are trained to look out for swimmers in distress and will leap from boats and helicopters to lend assistance.
Instructors accompany the dogs into the water, and can be towed by the dogs out to sea to give medical attention where needed.
Watch this ITN video of the dogs in action:
via Dog Lifeguards Certified In Italy.
Food crisis could force wartime rations and vegetarian diet on Britons
Food crisis could force wartime rations and vegetarian diet on Britons-- Times Online
The British people face wartime rations and a vegetarian diet in the event of a world food shortage, a new official assessment on the UK’s food security suggests today.
Even though the nation is 73 per cent self-sufficient in food production, higher than during the 1950s, the food chain is at risk from global influences such as a worldwide increase in population, climate change bringing extreme weather patterns, higher oil prices and more crops being grown for bio-fuel instead of food.
Supplies in future may also be disrupted by animal disease outbreaks, disruption of power supplies, trade disputes and interruptions for shipping and at ports.
The UK however has one of the highest cereal production capabilities in the world with seven tonnes grown per hectare, compared a world average of 3.3 tonnes per hectare.
via Food crisis could force wartime rations and vegetarian diet on Britons – Times Online.
Obama Supports “Buy American” at North American Summit –
OPS: Talk is cheap. BO has already walked away from it once when it counted.
Obama Supports “Buy American” at North American Summit – Economyincrisis.org -
While he has greatly softened the harsh rhetoric used against NAFTA on the campaign trail, Obama did not back away from his support of the “buy American” provision, even in the face of heavy criticism from Canadian officials.
While he has greatly softened the harsh rhetoric used against the North American Free Trade Agreement on the campaign trail, President Barack Obama did not back away from his support of the “buy American” provision inserted into the $787 billion stimulus package, even in the face of heavy criticism from Canadian officials.
“This has in no way endangered the billions of dollars of trade taking place between our two countries,” Obama said Monday after wrapping up the three day North American Summit.
Obama’s defense of the provision, which bars foreign companies from competing for contracts funded by the stimulus package, comes after it has been assailed by America’s neighbors to the north as blatant protectionism. Some localities have even gone as far as to retaliate with their own “buy local” provisions.
The back-and-forth between Canada and the U.S. on the “buy local” clauses has some “free trade” advocates extremely concerned that a trade war could be sparked.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
American Graduates Flocking to China
American Graduates Flocking to China - Economyincrisis.org
With the bleak U.S. job market American graduates are increasingly flocking to Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai in search of employment.
First it was American companies, dollars, manufacturing facilities, technologies and future wealth being transferred to China in droves. Now, according to The New York Times, it is the actual citizenry relocating to China.
With the U.S. job market as bleak as it has been since perhaps the Great Depression, American graduates are increasingly flocking to Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai in search of employment.
According to The National Association of Colleges and Employers, just 19.7 percent of 2009 college graduates who applied for jobs have found one thus far, down from 51 percent in 2005. Those graduates are also strapped with, on average, $22,000 in debt. The group also found that employers intend to hire 22 percent less college graduates this year.
This past spring alone, approximately 2.3 million new college graduates will enter a jobs market that has lost 5.7 million jobs since December 2007.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Seeing Through Industrial Food’s ‘Personal Responsibility’ Smoke Screen
Seeing Through Industrial Food’s ‘Personal Responsibility’ Smoke Screen - by Rob Smart | CommonDreams.org
I grew up in a home where family meals were the norm. Nearly every night, nine of us would crowd around the kitchen table to enjoy a home-cooked meal together, recount our days, laugh and argue, celebrating each unique personality’s contribution to the whole. Each meal made the fabric of our family stronger. Those experiences have stayed with me as I’ve grown and started a family of my own, where I happily continue the tradition of sitting down together nightly to share a meal and exchange stories.
For us, food is at the core of what makes us strong, happy and healthy as a family and as individuals. It isn’t about calories, nutrients, micro nutrients and so on. It’s about engaging our senses, strengthening our community by buying local foods whenever possible and sharing with our friends and neighbors. It’s about creating a healthy foundation for our growing children.
We knowingly spend a greater portion of our income on food than the average American household, which works because we forgo things that bring us less value, e.g., cable television, new cars, fancy vacations and more. This sort of conscious decision making is at the core of personal responsibility, and is something we work hard at every day. Living in a rural community, surrounded by farms and dairies and being outside the reach of most mainstream media surely helps.
via Seeing Through Industrial Food’s ‘Personal Responsibility’ Smoke Screen | CommonDreams.org.
How the White House’s Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy
How the White House’s Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy
Robert Reich
I’m a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I’m appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying arm to buy their support.
Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That’s basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it’s proven a bonanza for the drug industry. A continuation will be an even larger bonanza, given all the Boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade. And it will be a gold mine if the deal extends to Medicaid, which will be expanded under most versions of the healthcare bills now emerging from Congress, and to any public option that might be included. (We don’t know how far the deal extends beyond Medicare because its details haven’t been made public.)
Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher health-care costs for the rest of us, which is one reason why critics of the emerging healthcare plans, including the Congressional Budget Office, are so worried about their failure to adequately stem future healthcare costs. To be sure, as part of its deal with the White House, Big Pharma apparently has promised to cut future drug costs by $80 billion. But neither the industry nor the White House nor any congressional committee has announced exactly where the $80 billion in savings will show up nor how this portion of the deal will be enforced. In any event, you can bet that the bonanza Big Pharma will reap far exceeds $80 billion. Otherwise, why would it have agreed?
via Robert Reich’s Blog.
Democracy in Action: Congressman Erik Paulsen
This is a back-and-forth between Congressman Erik Paulsen (MN-3) and one of his constituents.
Congressman Erik Paulsen:
Dear Richard:
Thank you for letting me know of your support for H.R. 3200 and a public plan for health insurance
Like you, I do not believe “one size fits all” when it comes to health care. Congress needs to lower health care costs for small businesses and families who are struggling to pay for health care, and to do this we need refor
I am concerned about the costs of the nearly $1 trillion house bill and the proposed government plan that would interfere with the patient-doctor relationship. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates this bill will increase the deficit by $239 billion in the first ten years. And, once the spending fully starts, the bill adds over $60 billion a year to the deficit
An independent study by the Lewin Group estimates that up to 114 million people who receive health benefits through their employer or other sources could lose their coverage. Millions of seniors will also see their Medicare Advantage plans cut, including nearly 20,000 people in the Third Congressional District.
I am supporting a health care reform plan that would lower costs, including paying providers and physicians based on the quality of their care, rather than the number of procedures performed, and focusing on chronic disease management and wellness.
My plan would also allow small businesses to pool together to offer insurance, include legal reforms to prevent trial lawyers from increasing health care costs, and crack down on waste, fraud and abuse
In addition, I support letting young adults stay on their parent’s health care coverage until age 26 and making sure that those with pre-existing conditions are not denied coverage.
Minnesota is widely regarded as a high-quality health care state. We need to keep it that way, while at the same time addressing the cost problems in the system for small businesses and consumers who are struggling to get a handle on coverage and costs.
You can be sure of my continued effort to find bipartisan solutions to expand access to health care and lower costs. Patients must have a choice in health insurance coverage and they and their doctor must have control of their care. With the right reforms, we can control costs, improve access and cure our ailing health care system.
Thanks again for sharing your views, as I appreciate hearing from you. Please let me know whenever I can be of assistance.
Sincerely,
Erik Paulsen
Member of Congress
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Congressman Erik Paulsen’s constituent Richard C. :
Mr. Paulsen,
You assume, and falsely so, that I do not believe that “one size fit all” when it comes to health care. As a proven fact, Medicare and the VA Medical Service have done so for years, and at a fraction of the costs of the private healthcare system.
Similarly, I sincerely believe you should return the campaign contributions you have accepted from the insurance industry, pharma, and their lobbyists; and consider an arms length relationship, tending more to representing those who you are sworn to represent, and less of those who sway you with considerable amounts of money.
If you read the history of our Nation, we have gone through similar financial difficulties before, and it was federal spending that solved the problems each time. Remember also, it is the Wall Street people, your campaign contributors, along with your past president and a republican congress that caused this disaster in the first place. We know what problems you can cause, and no thanks; we are working our way out and reversing 20 years of failed Reaganomics and national debt.
If you are truly looking to reduce healthcare costs, all you have to do is drive to Rochester, take a couple days, and see how the Pro’s do it, better than the rest of the nation, and for a fraction of the cost. I know, because that is where I get treated, because your AMA-leaning private medical campaign contributors here in the cities, thought I was stupid enough to accept subpar healthcare at inflated prices, which is what you profess to actually support by maintaining the status quo system with slight adjustments.
Quoting your figures: $239 billion over ten years? To provide healthcare for 45 MILLION uninsured and underinsured? I’LL TAKE IT!!! IT’S A BARGAIN, COMPARED TO WHAT YOUR SUPPORTER, UNITED HEALTHCARE IS RAPING THIS NATION FOR! $60billion per year? Even better. It’s a drop in the bucket when compared to what your supporters have been taking from the Federal Government in the form or over-billings.
No sir. The times, they are a changing.
By the way, I suppose it’s too much to ask for you to cancel your federal employee insurance. Would you mind? You can always join the self-employed of us, and see what UHC and BCBS quote you for premiums. And just a little advance notice, don’t go get any healthcare after you get that policy. My experience, twice, has been that the $200 premium quickly jumps to $850, along with the deductible going from a $10 co-pay to a $5,000 annual, per-person deductible. I’m still paying off last year’s deductible. So drop me a line and let me know when you drop that federal healthcare plan I’m paying for, will you?
Respectfully, but absolutely embarrassed by you,
Richard Carter
Bloomington, MN
p.s. I’ll be quoting your response and it’s word-smithing and double-speak on the issues (ex: pre-existing conditions, like only those under the age of 26 have to worry about preclusion due to pre-existing conditions…).
Secret Service Has Truck Towed From Site Of Obama Town Hall
Secret Service Has Truck Towed From Site Of Obama Town Hall – - New Hampshire News Story
Bomb Squad Dog Registers Hit On Truck – - WMUR Manchester
A pickup truck outside Portsmouth High School, where President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak Tuesday, was towed away for security reasons.
Officials said a Secret Service bomb dog had a hit on the truck, but they did not say whether there was a specific threat detected. Secret Service members entered the unlocked vehicle after the dog circled it several times.
Japanese poll leader in attack on ‘US-led market fundamentalism’
Japanese poll leader in attack on ‘US-led market fundamentalism’ – FT.com - 
Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of Japan’s opposition Democratic party who is strongly placed to become prime minister after elections this month, has condemned “US-led market fundamentalism” and vowed to shield his nation from the effects of untrammelled globalisation.
With the era of US unilateralism ending and worries about the dollar’s future role growing, Japan should also work towards regional currency union and political integration in an “east Asian community”, Mr Hatoyama wrote in an essay published yesterday in the Japanese magazine Voice.
Mr Hatoyama offered a robust defence of his political philosophy of yuai – fraternity – which critics have derided as wishy-washy wishful thinking, but which he declared a “strong, combative concept” and “banner of revolution”.
With opinion polls giving the DPJ a clear lead over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic party ahead of an August 30 general election, Mr Hatoyama could soon have a chance to implement his philosophy.
via FT.com / UK – Japanese poll leader in attack on ‘US-led market fundamentalism’.
American Library Association Wants Network Neutrality
American Library Association Wants Network Neutrality
At last month’s American Library Association annual conference in Chicago, I served on a Sunday morning panel presentation on the topic of Network Neutrality. On that day, there was no Network Neutrality legislation in Congress (like there is today, thanks to Reps. Markey and Eshoo). There was no flashy evening news piece on the topic, no rock stars on the Hill advocating for a free and open Internet. Yet 500 librarians showed up on a spectacular Chicago summer morning to hear Cliff Lynch, Greg Jackson and me talk about Network Neutrality.
If you are not familiar with librarians, this story might surprise you. But if you have ever found yourself on the business end of a discussion of intellectual freedom issues with someone from our community, you can predict what I am going to say next: The audience asked incredibly thoughtful questions and challenged some basic assumptions.
You see, Network Neutrality is, at its core, an issue central to librarians’ professional hearts. Like other issues that we’ve dealt with – such as censorship or book banning – Network Neutrality is fundamentally about having access to ideas.
via American Library Association Wants Network Neutrality | Save the Internet.
Government Proposes Massive Shift In Online Privacy Policy
Serious Threat To Personal Info
American Civil Liberties Union :
Government Proposes Massive Shift In Online Privacy Policy
Changes Would Pose Serious Threat To Americans’ Personal Information, Says ACLU
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union submitted comments today to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) opposing its recent proposal to reverse current federal policy and allow the use of web tracking technologies, like cookies, on federal government websites. Cookies can be used to track an Internet user’s every click and are often linked across multiple websites; they frequently identify particular people.
Since 2000, it has been the policy of the federal government not to use such technology. But the OMB is now seeking to change that policy and is considering the use of cookies for tracking web visitors across multiple sessions and storing their unique preferences and surfing habits. Though this is a major shift in policy, the announcement of this program consists of only a single page from the federal register that contains almost no detail.
“This is a sea change in government privacy policy,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Without explaining this reversal of policy, the OMB is seeking to allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website. Until the OMB answers the multitude of questions surrounding this policy shift, we will continue to raise our strenuous objections
The use of cookies allows a website to differentiate between users and build a database of each user’s viewing habits and the information they share with the site. Since web surfers frequently share information like their name or email address (if they’ve signed up for a service) or search request terms, the use of cookies frequently allows a user’s identity and web surfing habits to be linked. In addition, websites can allow third parties, such as advertisers, to also place cookies on a user’s computer.
“Americans rely on the information from the federal government to research politics, medical issues and legal requirements. The OMB is now asking to retain the personal and identifiable information we leave behind,” said Christopher Calabrese, Counsel for the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project. “No American should have to sacrifice privacy or risk surveillance in order to access free government information. No policy change should be adopted without wide ranging debate including information on the restrictions and uses of cookies as well as impact on privacy.”
via American Civil Liberties Union : Government Proposes Massive Shift In Online Privacy Policy.
Like Your Health Insurance? Maybe You Shouldn’t
Like Your Health Insurance? Maybe You Shouldn’t. . - washingtonpost.com
Your Health Insurance Is Worse Than You Think
If we fail to reform our health care system this year, a major reason will be that a majority of Americans are satisfied with their health coverage and believe that reform could hurt them. According to a recent (unscientific) Consumer Reports survey, 64 percent of readers are satisfied with their plans — down from 67 percent in 2007, but still a clear majority. A recent New York Times poll found that 59 percent of Americans do not think that health-care reform will benefit them personally; 69 percent are concerned that reform could harm the quality of their own care and 68 percent are concerned that it could limit their access to treatment.
This is deeply misleading, for two reasons. First, what does it mean to say that you are satisfied with your health insurance? Consider homeowner’s insurance. Until you need it — your house burns down — you have no way of judging its quality. The same goes for health coverage; until you have a serious illness, the kind where your plan’s limits and exclusions may kick in, how do you know if your health coverage is any good?
via Like Your Health Insurance? Maybe You Shouldn’t. – washingtonpost.com.
Health Care Protesters Largely From Out Of District, Sign-In Sheets Show
Health Care Protesters Largely From Out Of District, Sign-In Sheets Show
In what became an emblematic scene, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), faced a hostile crowd at a packed health care town hall in Michigan on Thursday. Dingell, a major sponsor of health care reform legislation, was repeatedly shouted down. At one point, a man named Mike Sola wheeled his son to the front of the room and engaged in a YouTube-bound shouting match (see below) with Dingell before being escorted out by police.
But who was actually populating this angry mob? Although town-hall meetings are intended for constituents of congressional members’ districts, some if not a majority of attendees seemed to have come from further away.
Members of Congress routinely ask constituents to sign in when they attend town halls so they can contact them later and gauge where people are coming from. Dingell spokesman Adam Benson estimated that roughly 500 people showed up for the meeting, and half didn’t sign in at all. Of the 262 who did, 80 listed addresses inside Dingell’s district; 100 listed addresses outside the district; and 82 didn’t put down an address at all. Sign-in sheet breakdowns provided to the Huffington Post in two other congressional districts indicated a similar pattern of outside agitation.
via Health Care Protesters Largely From Out Of District, Sign-In Sheets Show.
Financial Times Columnist: Obama Like Felix The Cat — Black And Lucky
Financial Times Columnist: Obama Like Felix The Cat — Black And Lucky
The Financial Times’ Niall Ferguson Tuesday compared President Obama to Felix the Cat, saying that, like Obama, the cartoon cat was black and lucky.
The lede of Ferguson’s column reads:
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just over six months in the world’s biggest and toughest job.
In February, the New York Post came under fire for appearing to compare President Obama to a chimp in a cartoon decrying the stimulus bill. Ferguson’s column was accompanied by a cartoon and caption that read, “Felix the Cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat! Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks!”
via Financial Times Columnist: Obama Like Felix The Cat — Black And Lucky.
Cities Tolerate Homeless Camps
Cities Tolerate Homeless Camps - – WSJ.com
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Last summer, police responding to complaints about campfires under a highway overpass found dozens of homeless people living on public land along the Cumberland River.
Eviction notices went up — and then were suspended by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, a Democrat, who said housing for the homeless should be found first.
A year later, little has been found — and Nashville, with help from local nonprofits, is now servicing a tent city, arranging for portable toilets, trash pickup, a mobile medical van and visits from social workers. Volunteers bring in firewood for the camp’s 60 or so dwellers.
via Cities Tolerate Homeless Camps – WSJ.com.
GEICO Pulls Its Ads from Glenn Beck Show
GEICO Pulls Its Ads from Glenn Beck Show
Great news — yet another major company has acted in response to our campaign calling on Glenn Beck’s advertisers to stop support his show. GEICO told us that they will no longer run ads during Beck’s show.
This comes on the heels of news last week that four other advertisers — Lawyers.com, Progressive Insurance, Procter & Gamble, and SC Johnson — also distanced themselves from Beck. None of this would have been possible without the thousands of people — more than 75,000, now — who have taken action and signed our petition to Glenn Beck’s advertisers.
From the press release we’re sending out this morning:
via James Rucker: GEICO Pulls Its Ads from Glenn Beck Show.
Whistleblower: Insurance firms ‘very much’ behind town hall disruptions
Whistleblower: Insurance firms ‘very much’ behind town hall disruptions - Raw Story »
Health insurance companies deserve “a great deal of the blame” for the sometimes violent disruptions to town hall meetings on health care, says a former health insurance company executive turned whistleblower.
Wendell Potter, a former executive with health insurer Cigna who now works as the senior fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that health insurance companies “are very much behind the town hall disruptions that you see and a lot of the deception that’s going on in terms of disinformation that many Americans, apparently, are believing.”
On her show Monday night, Maddow cited statistics from the Securities and Exchange Commission showing that profits at the US’s ten largest health insurance companies skyrocketed more than 400 percent between 2000 and 2007, from $2.4 billion in 2000 to $12.7 billion in 2007.
via Raw Story » Whistleblower: Insurance firms ‘very much’ behind town hall disruptions.
White House emails, Bush aide implicate Rove in firing of US Attorneys
White House emails, Bush aide implicate Rove in firing of US Attorneys - Raw Story » 
The House Judiciary Committee released thousands of pages of new documents concerning the firing of nine US Attorneys under the Bush Administration — and they heavily implicate the office of onetime Bush adviser Karl Rove.
Moreover, former Bush Supreme Court pick and legal advisor Harriet Miers fingered Rove during her testimony to Congressional investigators.
In an effort to provide an earliest glance at the documents’ contents, RAW STORY has reprinted highlights from a release issued by the Committee Tuesday afternoon. The Committee released, in total, 5,400 pages of White House and Republican National Committee e-mails.
Emails obtained by the Democrat-led committee reveal that Rove and his office were involved in the firing of New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias, who Republicans had criticized as not aggressively prosecuting voter fraud cases — which would have benefited Republicans. According to the committee, Rove and his staff were involved “months earlier than previously known.”
via Raw Story » White House emails, Bush aide implicate Rove in firing of US Attorneys.
Town hall crowd boos Specter when he calls President Obama an ‘American.’
Town hall crowd boos Specter when he calls President Obama an ‘American.’ – Think Progress »
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) held a town hall today in Lebanon, PA, which was carried live by all three cable news networks. Towards the end, a man critical of health care reform asked Specter to “go back to Washington and represent us first as an American and tell Mr. Obama he’s an American and if not, there’s other countries.” When Specter replied by saying that “I think President Obama knows he’s an American,” many in the crowd booed and one person held up a sign saying “liar.” Watch it:
via Think Progress » Town hall crowd boos Specter when he calls President Obama an ‘American.’.
Can We Stop Banksters From Killing Financial Reform?
Can We Stop Banksters From Killing Financial Reform? | CommonDreams.org
Why Wall Street Is Pleased by the Focus on Debating Healthcare
by Danny Schechter
The thermometer is in the red as the heat of August blends into the steam of the health care fight. These two hot subjects seem to be fogging up TV screens during these dog days as the righteous right take up the tactics of the militant left to create the impression that healthcare reform is a commie plot. For his part, President Obama insists a bill will pass and that “sensible proposals” will prevail.
What is sensible these days?
You can count on that gruesome threesome—Bill, Glenn and Sean—to go ballistic whenever it appears that our government is going to do anything beneficial for the people. There’s always a million reasons why it won’t work, or worse, sink the Republic. Rush Limbaugh alternates between arguing that President Obama is a racist, a communist or a Nazi.
via Can We Stop Banksters From Killing Financial Reform? | CommonDreams.org.
Zogby Poll: 71% Favors Clean Energy Bill and Wants Senate to Take Action
Zogby Poll: Majority Favors Clean Energy Bill and Wants Senate to Take Action
Survey finds likely voters connect reducing global warming and promoting clean energy to new American jobs
UTICA, New York – A majority of likely voters – 71% – favors the American Clean Energy and Security Act recently passed by the House of Representatives, and two-thirds (67%) believe Congress is either doing the right amount (22%) or should be doing more (45%) to address global warming, new Zogby International telephone poll shows. Just 28% believe that Congress is doing too much.
Respondents were read the following statement regarding the American Clean Energy and Security Act:
“The House of Representatives recently passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which would require electric power companies to generate 20 percent of their power from clean, renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, by the year 2020. Also included is a global warming plan which would reduce greenhouse gases from sources like power plants and factories by 17 percent, and an energy efficiency plan which includes new appliance standards and building codes to conserve energy.”
via Zogby International.
Endless War: The Suicide of the United States
Endless War: The Suicide of the United States
“We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide.”
- Ramsay MacDonald, British prime minister 1931-1935
Sergio Kochergin, back home from his second deployment in Iraq, held a gun in his mouth, trying to muster the courage to pull the trigger. Untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and accompanying nightmares and insomnia, heavy substance abuse, and several failed attempts at self-medication had taken their toll on him. He was in an apartment he shared with a friend in Texarkana, Texas, after having spent the past few months with his parents, where he “was drinking too much and causing too much trouble, breaking things, flipping out every day, and cursing at them.”
The decision to end his life came in early 2007, from a desperate need for relief and to avoid deployment back to Iraq. Although Kochergin’s contract had expired, it would have taken more than six months for him to be medically discharged from the military, a period during which he was sure to be redeployed.
via t r u t h o u t | Endless War: The Suicide of the United States.
If Private Sector Is Better at Solving Health Insurance Crisis, What’s Stopping It?
If Private Sector Is Better at Solving Health Insurance Crisis, What’s Stopping It? - Pensito Review »
The bottom line for the health-insurance industry is that it is cheaper to kill reform than it is to solve the crisis.
Here’s a fundamental fact, maybe the fundamental fact, that has been obscured in the debate over health insurance reform: We wouldn’t need a government option if the private sector had a plan for covering everyone, and the only reason the plans don’t cover everyone is greed.
Think about it. The health companies have had since they killed the Clinton plan in 1993 to get their collective act together. Instead, premiums are up, fewer people are covered and the public’s collective health and well-being is in decline.
Conservatives assert that only the private sector can solve the insurance crisis — an assertion that ignores the fact that the military, veterans, federal workers and members of Congress, including even Republican congressmen — are covered by government-run plans that perform comparatively well.
Still, let’s assume for a moment that what conservatives say is true — that only the private sector can fix the problem — then here is a question:
What is stopping it?
via Pensito Review » If Private Sector Is Better at Solving Health Insurance Crisis, What’s Stopping It?.
GM says mercury pollution not its problem anymore
GM says mercury pollution not its problem anymore
As hundreds of thousands of clunkers head to the scrap yard, General Motors has dropped out of a partnership that collects toxic parts from recycled automobiles to prevent mercury pollution.
Participants in the environmental program told The Associated Press the timing of GM’s departure could undermine their work. The government’s “cash-for-clunkers” program will lead to trade-in and recycling of an estimated 750,000 vehicles, some of which contain mercury switches.
GM said its new company is not a member of the partnership because it no longer makes vehicles with mercury switches and is not responsible for the older vehicles. The old company, which is still under bankruptcy court supervision, said it is reviewing agreements involving the former company and declined to comment.
via GM says mercury pollution not its problem anymore – Yahoo! News.
GM: New Chevy Volt To Get 230 Miles Per Gallon
GM: New Chevy Volt To Get 230 Miles Per Gallon
General Motors Corp. said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 mpg in city driving, more than four times the current champion, the Toyota Prius.
The Volt is powered by an electric motor and a battery pack with a 40-mile range. After that, a small internal combustion engine kicks in to generate electricity for a total range of 300 miles. The battery pack can be recharged from a standard home outlet.
GM is marketing the 230-mile figure following early tests using draft guidelines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for calculating the mileage of extended range electric vehicles.
The EPA guidelines, developed with guidance from automakers, figure that cars like the Volt will travel more on straight electricity in the city than on the highway. If a person drives the Volt less than 40 miles, in theory they could go without using gasoline.
via GM: New Chevy Volt To Get 230 Miles Per Gallon.
Keith Olbermann Special Comment On Sarah Palin
A “Special Comment” on Sarah Palin’s “death panel” criticism of President Obama’s health care proposal. “There is no death panel… but there is downright evil, and Ms. Palin, you just served its cause…” On her efforts to clarify her comments, Keith says, “Too little, too late, too obvious… You should be ashamed of yourself.”
He closes by predicting she will become “the de facto chairman of a detah panel… your higher calling, Ms. Palin… God forgive you, Ms. Palin…”
Part 1 of a logn “Special Comment” on conservatives and their contribution to health care outrage
YouTube – Keith Olbermann Special Comment On Sarah Palin.
Banking on Overdraft Fees
Banking on Overdraft Fees – Economyincrisis.org
In the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, banks are scoring record-setting amounts of overdraft fees through the misfortune of their customers.
In the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, with millions of Americans losing their homes and jobs, banks are scoring record-setting amounts of overdraft fees through the misfortune of their customers, The Financial Times reports.
American banks are on pace to collect $38.5 billion in overdraft fees this year, more than doubling the 2000 total, according to research by Moebs Services. The study also found that those charges are disproportionately effecting the least economically well-off, with 90 percent of the fees levied on just 10 percent of the nation’s 130 million checking accounts.
The study also found that the median fee charged for overdrafts has actually risen for the first time in the past 40 years during a recession.
“Banks are returning to a fee-driven model and overdraft fees are the mother lode,” said Mike Moebs, the company’s founder, according to The Financial Times.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Rep. Blackburn pushes false myth that health reform will ‘diminish’ Medicare benefits.
Rep. Blackburn pushes false myth that health reform will ‘diminish’ Medicare benefits. - Think Progress »
Republicans have been trying to defeat health reform by scaring seniors that their Medicare benefits will be cut if the bill passes. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) have made the false argument in recent weeks. Today, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) repeated the myth in a phone interview with Memphis’ ABC affiliate. She offered a host of vacuous, Frank Luntz-approved talking points before making this statement:
Our seniors are saying, look don’t diminish Medicare. We have been paying into Medicare. That is pre-paid for us. It’s been coming out of our paycheck for 40 years. And they don’t want that Medicare to be diminished.
Watch it:
How Big Media Subverted US Democracy with Lies, Smears and Gross Propaganda
How Big Media Subverted US Democracy with Lies, Smears and Gross Propaganda
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy 
Rush Limbaugh—as loathsome as he is –is a tool, a media whore! The real power still resides in the media boardrooms and they just don’t give a shit if every media outlet in American is run by a muzak machine or a raving lunatic like Limbaugh.
Limbaugh’s lies and misrepresentations would have been seen to be those of just another run-0-the-mill fringe nut case if the right wing had not succeeded in stealing what had been the publicly owned air waves! They did seized the media as the textbook first step preceding the takeover of legitimate government. The GOP and the complicit Rush Limbaugh conspired to benefit the very, very few –the ever shrinking 1 percent –which as a result of their efforts and others now own more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined, the shrinking number of huge corporate media conglomerates for whom ‘public service’ is just a quaint sop that over some twenty years, they’ve done away with completely.
Rush has served his masters well –hence this ‘site’. He has rationalized and excused the new age of robber barons; he has sugar coated ‘greed is good’; he has elevated Scrooge to sainthood: “Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons…then let them die and decrease the surplus population.”
Christian Cowboy Plots to Bring Christ into Kids’ Social Studies Class
Christian Cowboy Plots to Bring Christ into Kids’ Social Studies Class
David Barton likens himself to a biblical prophet. He wants to destroy the separation of church and state. Why is he designing school curricula?
When the Texas State Board of Education issued a list of proposed “experts” to sit on a social studies curriculum panel, one name immediately leaped out to defenders of church-state separation: David Barton.
The panel is supposed to consist of academics and others with specialized knowledge to assist the board in drafting new social studies standards for public schools across the state. The selection of Barton, a Religious Right propagandist who for years has pushed a fundamentalist “Christian nation” view of American history, is a sure sign that trouble lurks ahead.
At the offices of the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), a group that monitors the Religious Right, staff members were alarmed.
“We believe there’s nothing wrong with teaching about the significance of religion in history and society today,” said TFN President Kathy Miller. “The problem comes when Barton and others try to use public schools to promote their own personal religious beliefs over those of all others.”
via Christian Cowboy Plots to Bring Christ into Kids’ Social Studies Class | Belief | AlterNet.
Despite Promises, Some Rape Victims Stuck Paying Exam Bills
OPS: Is this a quite step towards privatizing the Police? At what point will only the Rich be able to afford justice?
Despite Promises, Some Rape Victims Stuck Paying Exam Bills
Rape Victims Charged Up to $1,200 for Rape Kits. Rape is not something you should budget for. Yet some rape victims, unlike victims of other crimes, have to pay for basic evidence collection.
By Ben Protess, Huffington Post Investigative Fund and Emily Witt, ProPublica
This report was co-published with ProPublica
When a woman is raped, police turn to scientific evidence-semen, blood and tissue samples-to identify her attacker. The evidence is collected through a medical exam of the victim, who is not supposed to pay for this crime-solving process.
But 15 years after Congress passed a law to ensure that rape victims would never see a bill, loopholes and bureaucratic tangles still leave some victims paying for hospital expenses and exams, which can cost up to $1,200.
Congress requires state or local authorities to cover these costs, but the state legislatures that regulate the process offer piecemeal guarantees of Congress’ mandate, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund and ProPublica found. Some states allow hospitals to bill the victim’s insurer. Confusion in California and other states allows police to occasionally ignore Congress’ rules and require victims to cooperate with an investigation before exam costs are covered. Lax enforcement of the law, victims’ advocates say, also means some hospitals in Illinois bill victims directly.
Congress created the Violence Against Women Act to protect victims and encourage them to report rapes. The law known as VAWA has forced many states to crack down on billing problems.
But ambiguities in the law still allow a remarkable disparity in the legal system: Some rape victims, unlike victims of other crimes, have to pay for basic evidence collection.
“We never ask a robbery victim to pay for the cost of fingerprints,” said Sarah Tofte, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, which has been tracking how states comply with VAWA.
via Despite Promises, Some Rape Victims Stuck Paying Exam Bills | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs Enflame Scary Right-Wing Rage
The conservative playbook has been laid bare, and it’s ugly. How long until their overheated rhetoric spills over into violence?
A long, hot summer of hate
It was an ugly week, and a telling one.
“Global warming is no different than health care, is no different than cap and trade,” Rush Limbaugh explained on Monday. “It is simply another branch of liberalism, statism, that is designed to expand government control over individuals and their liberty and their freedom and their income.”
“And if this plays out right … you can do some great damage, culturally, to liberalism,” he concluded.
The next five days showed how seriously the right wing is taking those words and how far it is willing to go to confuse and manipulate the public, and to capitalize on the ensuing fear and rage. The goals: the complete delegitimization of Obama and the wholesale destruction of the progressive movement he leads.
Glenn Beck is anti-violence, pro-poison
via Media Matters: A long, hot summer of hate | Media Matters for America.
13 Secret Toxins Lurking in Your Food, and How to Avoid Them
13 Secret Toxins Lurking in Your Food, and How to Avoid Them
Here are some tips to help you steer clear of hidden toxins that masquerade as safe products.
Various shelves throughout every aisle of your grocery store are stocked with wolves in sheep’s clothing. Colorful packaging, appetizing pictures, and nutrition claims hide the truth: unhealthy chemicals are lurking in many these seemingly harmless foods. Here are some tips to help you steer clear of hidden toxins that masquerade as safe products.
1. Stay away from processed meats like bacon, hot dogs, and sausage. Sodium nitrate accounts for their appetizing red hue, but this additive can also cause the formation of nitrosamines in your system, which can lead to cancer.
2. Stick to low-mercury fish like American-farmed tilapia instead of swordfish or tuna. Overexposure can cause memory problems, fatigue, and other health issues, and besides, most wild fish stocks are threatened these days. (Looking for an alternative? There’s branzini, the fish you’ve never heard of.)
via 13 Secret Toxins Lurking in Your Food, and How to Avoid Them | | AlterNet.
Kansas eliminates state funding for abortion alternatives
Kansas eliminates state funding for abortion alternatives – | McClatchy
Catholic bishops and other abortion opponents are criticizing the governor of Kansas and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for stripping funding from a program that provides state money to groups that offer alternatives to abortion.
To meet budget reduction mandates, KDHE eliminated funding for the Sen. Stan Clark Pregnancy Maintenance Initiative.
The Legislature established the fund in 2005 in honor of Clark, a leader of Senate conservatives who was killed in a car accident near his hometown of Oakley.
Lawmakers approved $295,000 for the program in 2009 and $345,000 for 2010, state records show.
via Kansas eliminates state funding for abortion alternatives | McClatchy.
BIG INSURANCE GIVES OUT AWARDS FOR SCARIEST LIES ABOUT HEATH CARE REFORM
BIG INSURANCE GIVES OUT AWARDS FOR SCARIEST LIES ABOUT HEATH CARE REFORM - Citizens For Legitimate Government
“Since big government prohibits us from feeding Muslims to the lions, what better way to keep people’s eyes off the ball with a fun contest?” –Ed Hanway, CEO of CIGNA
Satire by R J Shulman
BETHESDA, Maryland – (PTSD News) – Two heath insurance giants have announced the winners of their “Scare Health Care Reform to Death” contest. Starting in March, UnitedHealthcare and CIGNA Health Insurance joined forces to create a contest that would award prizes to American citizens who came up with the scariest talking points against health care reform, slogans that would most likely turn public opinion against any changes to the current system. Truth was not a requirement–in fact, it was discouraged for blocking the creative process.
“We had to distract the public from the fact that a whopping portion of America’s wealth has been flowing into a few big insurance and pharmaceutical companies,” said Stephen Hemsley, CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
“We especially wanted to keep them from finding out about my bonus, my salary and my stock options, said Ed Hanway, chairman and CEO of CIGNA, “and since big government prohibits us from feeding Muslims to the lions, what better way to keep people’s eyes off the ball with a fun contest?”
The response has been decent, according to CIGNA , if a bit derivative. “About 95% of the entries said, ‘it costs too much taxpayer money’ and included a tea bag,” said Hanway.
The winners were announced earlier today on “Fox and Friends.”
via Citizens For Legitimate Government.
H1N1 directives from CDC
These are CDC guidelines, not the MSM drivel. Check what your school system is supposed to be doing.
H1N1 directives from CDC
School started Monday in many parts of Alabama.
So you can know what the schools and governments are supposed to be doing and what you can do the following links are to the full text of the information not the MSM versions.
Ask your kids if the school is following the guidelines and if not find out why. The school theoretically works for you.
http:// www.flu.gov.
For Schools
CDC Guidance for State and Local Public Health Officials and School Administrators
http://flu.gov/plan/school/schoolguidance.html
Technical Report for State and Local Public Health Officials and School Administrators on CDC Guidance
http://flu.gov/plan/school/k12techreport.html
Preparing for the Flu: A Communication Tool kit for Schools (Grades K-12)
http://flu.gov/plan/school/toolkit.html
Alabama Specific
http://www.flu.gov./plan/states/alabama.html
Tests, Vaccines, and Medications, and Masks
http://www.flu.gov./issues/index.html
The “death panels” are already here
OPS: this is at least the second solid article posted here making the point that Death Panels have existed under our current Pay or Die system for decades.
The “death panels” are already here – | Salon News
Sorry, Sarah Palin — rationing of care? Private companies are already doing it, with sometimes fatal results
The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they’re ready to operate, but the bureaucracy — or as Palin would put it, the “death panel” — steps in and says it won’t pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl’s family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent — but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.
It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama’s healthcare reform plans are. Except that’s not the future of healthcare — it’s the present. Long before anyone started talking about government “death panels” or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company’s analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn’t have saved her life.
That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. “Such a system is downright evil,” Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the “death panel” specter. “Health care by definition involves life and death decisions.”
via The “death panels” are already here | Salon News.
Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries
Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries
Growing Unequal? brings together a range of analyses on the distribution of economic resources in OECD countries. The evidence on income distribution and poverty covers, for the first time, all 30 OECD countries in the mid-2000s, while information on trends extending back to the mid-1980s is provided for around two-thirds of the countries.
The report also describes inequalities in a range of domains (such as household wealth, consumption patterns, in-kind public services) that are typically excluded from conventional discussion about the distribution of economic resources among individuals and households. Precisely how much inequality there is in a society is not determined randomly, nor is it beyond the power of governments to change, so long as they take note of the sort of up-to-date evidence included in this report.
via Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries.
White House Didn’t See Right Wing Demagoguery and Thuggery Coming? Do Dems in Leadership Have Rocks for Heads?
White House Didn’t See Right Wing Demagoguery and Thuggery Coming? Do Dems in Leadership Have Rocks for Heads?
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG By Mark Karlin
If there is one thing that motivated BuzzFlash to start online in May of 2000, it was how the Democratic leadership was always blindsided and helpless against Right Wing demagoguery and lies. We were committed to filling that gap.
And now, with the Obama White House, it is “deja vu all over again.”
In two telling interviews yesterda, White House staffers acted is if Republicans never acted like brown shirts and propagandists without scruples before.
A threesome of WH anonymous WH aides — who might be identified as Curly, Larry and Moe — told the Huffington Post:
In a sit down with online reporters on Monday, the three Obama aides, who spoke only on condition that they not be identified by name, stressed that they were still committed to crafting health care with Republican input and would continue to work with conservative media outlets despite the harsh reception they have received.
Governors oppose DoD emergency powers
Governors oppose DoD emergency powers – TheHill.com -
A bipartisan pair of governors is opposing a new Defense Department proposal to handle natural and terrorism-related disasters, contending that a murky chain of command could lead to more problems than solutions.
Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R), chairman of the National Governors Association, and Vice Chairman Gov. Joe Manchin (D) of West Virginia penned a letter opposing the Pentagon proposal, which they said would hinder a state’s effort to respond to a disaster.
Current law gives governors control over National Guard forces in their own states as well as any Guard units and Defense Department personnel imported from other states.
via TheHill.com – Governors oppose DoD emergency powers.
If Medicare for Everyone is So Bad, Why Does Every Nation Who Has It Keep It? 10 Questions
If Medicare for Everyone is So Bad, Why Does Every Nation Who Has It Keep It? 10 Questions - | BuzzFlash.org
by Dave Lindorff
Forwarded by Dave Lindorff (based on an idea from one of his readers)
Questions Should You Find Yourself at a microphone at a ‘Town Meeting’:
1. If Canada’s single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don’t like their health care system, why haven’t they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?
13 Things Made Of Bacon That Shouldn’t Be (SLIDESHOW, POLL)
13 Things Made Of Bacon That Shouldn’t Be (SLIDESHOW, POLL)
We all know bacon is awesome, but do some bacon products go too far? Do we really want bacon clothes and bacon home decor? Tell us which of the following items you love and which you’d like to send back to the pig.
via 13 Things Made Of Bacon That Shouldn’t Be (SLIDESHOW, POLL).
GOP rebranding effort flames out
GOP rebranding effort flames out - - – POLITICO.com
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) generated the kind of buzz other politicians covet when he launched his bid to help rebrand the Republican Party last spring.
Television crews and reporters wedged themselves among the crowd of party faithful to cover the National Council for a New America’s first event at a packed pizza parlor in an Arlington, Va., strip mall. The resulting coverage dominated cable news chatter for the next week. Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney were also on board.
But the council has since flamed out – at least publicly.
Since its launch, the National Council hasn’t held a single public event, despite more than 5,000 invitations to take their show out on the road. Congressional ethics rules limit what Cantor can do with the group because he launched it from his leadership office, making it harder to organize events and recruit partners. Despite that caution, the group is still taking heat from outside watchdog groups that argue he is violating the spirit, and perhaps the letter, of those rules.
via GOP rebranding effort flames out – Patrick O’Connor – POLITICO.com.
FusterClucked Again: The Commercial Real Estate Crash Is On
FusterClucked Again: The Commercial Real Estate Crash Is On 
News about the economy has gone from apocalyptic to merely bad. Stock indexes and commodity prices have been on a five month tear. Hints are showing up that at least the worst of the home mortgage disaster might be over. Unemployment is still at scary levels, but at least the rate of its increase is slowing.
All in all, it would seem that maybe the Fed printing a stack of dollars one trillion high and throwing it at the banks might actually be working, if by “working” one means a long-term debasing of the currency to get a short-term boost in the economy, though I doubt B. Bernanke would explain it in precisely those terms. However, there is another major jolt on the way for credit markets, banks, and, by extension, the rest of the economy: commercial real estate.
It’s not too tough to find out that there is something amiss with commercial real estate. A quick walk around Manhattan does the trick, seeing the amount of prime first floor retail space currently seeking offers. The same is true when reserving a room in a hotel more expensive than a Super 8. I was in Boston for work a month ago and stayed in the hotel I usually use and the room that cost me (or rather, my employer) $375 two years ago was going for $149 and the parent company of the hotel was offering a “stay 3 days get one free” deal. However, the anecdotal evidence is nothing like a chart of hard numbers. Here’s one:
via FusterClucked Again: The Commercial Real Estate Crash Is On – By Mr. Walker – The eXiled.
Rep. Blackburn pushes false myth that health reform will ‘diminish’ Medicare benefits.
Rep. Blackburn pushes false myth that health reform will ‘diminish’ Medicare benefits. – Think Progress »
Republicans have been trying to defeat health reform by scaring seniors that their Medicare benefits will be cut if the bill passes. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) have made the false argument in recent weeks. Today, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) repeated the myth in a phone interview with Memphis’ ABC affiliate. She offered a host of vacuous, Frank Luntz-approved talking points before making this statement:
Our seniors are saying, look don’t diminish Medicare. We have been paying into Medicare. That is pre-paid for us. It’s been coming out of our paycheck for 40 years. And they don’t want that Medicare to be diminished.
Watch it:
Seeds of Destruction
Seeds of Destruction
How the Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida
By ALAN FARAGO
In a series of reports, The Miami Herald discloses the astounding facts behind the $7 billion fraud of Stanford Financial. An absence of regulators. Shredded documents. Bags of cash airlifted from Miami International. It all sounds so Miami Vice. But it is more. Back in the late 1990s, when the Stanford scheme gathered the support of Florida regulators, I toiled as a late career financial advisor at Smith Barney. What it means to be “late career” is that I knew enough by that time that honestly toiling within the lines and hash marks of regulatory authority could not possibly account for the wealth that defined the Miami skyline. Its provenance had far more to do with flight capital from Latin and South America, drugs, and the snatch-and-grab growth schemes that turned Florida’s Everglades into Mercedes, private jets, and educational family vacations in Europe by an entire supply chain that prospered by turning a blind eye to the true costs of development. Their Grand Tour of Europe excluded every aspect of the strip mall culture that paid the freight.
Although the Stanford thievery by-passed 99 percent of Quik Mart consumers who bought a pack of cigarettes, a six-pack of beer and a quick box of cereal for the kids, its genesis shares certain common traits with the avoidance and sometimes criminal disregard of development regulations, laws and accounting that provided the backdrop for so much Florida Chamber of Commerce cheerleading, love, and fun in the sun. Stanford created and sold CD’s to anyone, but especially to investors who sought out a little more yield, a little better return, and who bought the promise that financial regulators in Florida had guaranteed these were real debt instruments and not a Ponzi Scheme through which Stanford funded his own lifestyle, trappings and accoutrements of a billionaire including virtual control of a sovereign nation, the island of Antigua in the Caribbean. That’s where the $7 billion went in satchels, exchanged as script of currencies, then disappeared in a blizzard of electronic transfers through undersea fiber optic cables to accounts and banks in places far, far removed from the scrutiny I endured as a financial advisor who believed in the bedrock values of buying and holding great American corporations as the dot.com bubble inflated, turning the US economy into a patient sucking on a tube filled with laughing gas.
via Alan Farago: Seeds of Destruction.
Bill Gates Dumps 7 Million Microsoft Shares
Microsoft chairman made five “sell” transactions starting Aug. 3, according to SEC records. – -- InformationWeek
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chairman Bill Gates is trimming his stock portfolio–he’s sold off 7 million shares in the company he founded since the beginning of August.Securities and Exchange Commission records show Gates launched the selloff on August 3rd, when he disposed of 2 million shares at a price of $24.17 per share. Gates then made four additional sales of shares totaling 5 million through Friday.
The price Gates received for the shares ranged from $23.64 to $24.17. Microsoft shares were off .81% to $23.17 in afternoon trading Monday. The company on Sunday announced a deal to sell its Razorfish digital ad agency to France’s Publicis Groupe for $530 million in cash and stock
via Bill Gates Dumps 7 Million Microsoft Shares — InformationWeek.
White House Insists It Didn’t Give Away The Store To Big Pharma
OPS: $80 billion over 10 years is Chump change in this game. …but he didn’t give away the Farm-a
White House Insists It Didn’t Give Away The Store To Big Pharma
In the latest in a series of conflicting statements, White House officials on Monday insisted that they never entered into a deal with pharmaceutical companies whereby they agreed not to allow the government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare.
In a briefing with mostly new media reporters, three senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity pushed back against reports that the White House had made such a pledge in return for $80 billion in promised cost savings over ten years.
“There was no discussion” of refraining from using the government’s purchasing power to lower prices, said one of those aides. “It just didn’t come up,” said another.
via White House Insists It Didn’t Give Away The Store To Big Pharma.
Stephen Quake, Stanford Prof, Sequences Own Entire Genome In A Week
Stephen Quake, Stanford Prof, Sequences Own Entire Genome In A Week
SAN FRANCISCO — It might not be long until there is a gene scanner in every doctor’s office, as DNA sequencing becomes faster and cheaper. 
A Stanford University professor reported Monday that he has sequenced his entire genome in a week for under $50,000 using a single machine.
Six years ago, hundreds of researchers at the Human Genome Project completed the same task for $300 million. It took 13 years.
The breakneck pace of technological progress in the field of DNA sequencing has raised hopes that affordable gene scans will be available to all patients soon.
via Stephen Quake, Stanford Prof, Sequences Own Entire Genome In A Week.
“The Twilight Zone.” Stamp on Sale Tuesday
Just the Facts: “Dragnet” Stamp on Sale Tuesday – | NBC Los Angeles
Here are the facts.
A ceremony is scheduled at the Los Angeles Police Academy Athletic Field for a stamp that honors the TV show “Dragnet.”
The stamp’s first day of sale is Tuesday, more than 50 years after “Dragnet” first aired. The program was based on the cases of LAPD detective Sgt. Joe Friday and his partners.
At 2 p.m., the event will be open to “Dragnet” fans and stamp collectors.
via Just the Facts: “Dragnet” Stamp on Sale Tuesday | NBC Los Angeles.
There is No Recession
There is No Recession – It’s a Planned Demolition
By MIKE WHITNEY
Credit is not flowing. In fact, credit is contracting. When credit contracts in a consumer-driven economy, bad things happen. Business investment drops, unemployment soars, earnings plunge, and GDP shrinks. The Fed has spent more than a trillion dollars trying to get consumers to start borrowing again, but without success. The country’s credit engines are slowing to a crawl.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has increased excess reserves in the banking system by $800 billion, but lending is still slow. The banks are hoarding capital in order to deal with the losses from toxic assets, non performing loans, and a $3.5 trillion commercial real estate bubble that’s following housing into the toilet. That’s why the rate of bank failures is accelerating. 2010 will be even worse; the list is growing. It’s a bloodbath.
The standards for conventional loans have gotten tougher while the pool of qualified credit-worthy borrowers has shrunk. That means less credit flowing into the system. The shadow banking system has been hobbled by the freeze in securitization and only provides a trifling portion of the credit needed to grow the economy. Bernanke’s initiatives haven’t made a bit of difference. Credit continues to shrivel.
via Mike Whitney: There is No Recession.
Senator Sanders Unfiltered: America’s Class Crisis
Get weekly Senator Sanders Unfiltered episodes delivered to you on Facebook, Twitter, or email. Sign up at: http://sandersunfiltered.com
YouTube – Senator Sanders Unfiltered: America’s Class Crisis.
Thom Hartmann – The Crisis of Western Culture
Interview with Thom Hartmann author of “Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture”
via YouTube – Interview – Thom Hartmann – The Crisis of Western Culture.
As more U.S. troops arrive, is Afghan war worth it?
As more U.S. troops arrive, is Afghan war worth it? – | | The Indianapolis Star
Seventy-five U.S. and NATO troops died in Afghanistan in July, the deadliest month for allied forces in nearly eight years of fighting. More than 1,000 Afghan civilians have died this year, up 24 percent from 2008.Tens of thousands more American troops are en route, adding to the approximately 90,000 troops, both U.S. and allied, already on the ground. The U.S. military leadership likely will request more troops in the months ahead. President Barack Obama will have to make a crucial decision on the future of a conflict that has become his war.
Three decades of fighting have ravaged Afghanistan. There are massive historical, cultural and tribal forces in Afghanistan that the U.S. cannot alter, although we may be able to influence them on the margins.Currently, the writ of President Hamid Karzai extends little beyond Kabul. He has shown little interest in, or skill at, sharing power and lacks broad popular support.
via As more U.S. troops arrive, is Afghan war worth it? | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star.
Gabrielle Giffords Town Hall: Gun Left Behind
OPS: NOW because of the Reichwingnuts we have to pay for metal detectors at Town Hall meetings
Gabrielle Giffords Town Hall: Gun Left Behind
Town hall disruptions around the country have led to some outbreaks of violence. Unions participating in town halls have received death threats. At an event held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) last week, the threat of violence led her aides to call the police after one attendee dropped a gun.
“Yelling and screaming is counterproductive,” she told the Sierra Vista Herald at a Congress on Your Corner event last week. There, one visitor dropped a gun at the meet n’ greet held in a Douglas Safeway, her staff says.
That has aides, who called police to the event, concerned for her safety.“We have never felt the need before to notify law enforcement when we hold these events,” said spokesman C.J. Karamargin.
via Gabrielle Giffords Town Hall: Gun Left Behind.
Our Fuzzy President Is About To Come Into Focus
Our Fuzzy President Is About To Come Into Focus
Dan Froomkin 
We’re finally going to get to know the real President Obama.
Once the final outlines of health-care legislation become clear, we’ll know what really matters to him. Where he draws the line. How he wields the levers of power. Whose ox he gores when there’s goring that has to be done.
We’ll know who’s really in charge.
What’s amazing is that more than six months into a presidency that Obama vowed would be the most transparent in history, we still know so little about some basic things like how he makes up his mind and who influences him the most.
Yes, pulling the economy out of the death-spiral bequeathed him by the Bushies was no small accomplishment. But the real test of his character comes now, with the first of two major legislative initiatives that embody his campaign slogans of hope and change.
via Our Fuzzy President Is About To Come Into Focus.
Alberto Gonzales: My Reputation has Suffered -
OPS: And he just can’t figure out how THAT could have happened -
CBS
Former attorney general Alberto Gonzales says that there is “no question” that his reputation has taken a turn for the worse after undergoing an investigation into his role in the firings of nine federal prosecutors.
Still, he says that being the attorney general was a “remarkable privilege” and that he stands by his service.
In an interview with the New York Times, Gonzales says that it “sometimes makes him angry” that his character has been damaged by his work at the White House.
Law firms haven’t been offering him jobs, Gonzales said, although there has been some interest.
Alberto Gonzales: My Reputation has Suffered – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.
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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. 
