Archive for August, 2009
German data fuel deflation fears
German data fuel deflation fears - FT.com -By Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt
July producer prices fall 7.8%
German producer prices have recorded their largest year-on-year fall since the second world war, highlighting the weakness of inflationary pressures across Europe.
Prices of industrial products were 7.8 per cent lower in July than 12 months earlier, the steepest such fall since records began in 1949, the German federal statistics office reported.
via FT.com / Europe – German data fuel deflation fears.
Opening the Window on Foreign Lobbying
OPS: That’s all we need. The American People will have to get in line behind American Corporations – transnational Corporations and now Foreign Corporations and anyone else that has the money to bribe Congress. After the Supreme Court ruling coming soon (on hoe much Corporations and ‘contribute’ Democracy will finally, and indisputably, be dead. Then we’ll have CHANGE.
Opening the Window on Foreign Lobbying – On The Hill: – By Anupama Narayanswamy and Luke Rosiak, Sunlight Foundation and Jennifer LaFleur, ProPublica
In 2008, Bermuda’s influential reinsurance industry needed some help. Successive seasons of monster hurricanes in the United States, where much of its client base is, had cost these insurers of insurance companies $22 billion in losses. Eager to avoid a repeat — and unable to change the weather — the companies and Bermuda’s government turned to something they could influence: The U.S. Congress.
At the behest of his government’s lobbyist, Premier Ewart Brown of Bermuda met in June with key congressmen, among them the powerful House Ways and Means chairman, Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and two Democrats from states in hurricane alley, G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
The sessions, Brown boasted later in Bermuda’s Royal Gazette, were part of a “very successful trip” that included “meetings with people who were not even on the schedule.”
via On The Hill: Opening the Window on Foreign Lobbying.
Coal Lobbyists sent 13 fake letters to Hill
Lobbyists sent 13 fake letters to Hill - – - POLITICO.com
A lobbying firm working for a pro-coal industry group sent lawmakers a total of 13 fraudulent letters opposing the House climate bill — five more than initially believed, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming said Tuesday.
The fake letters — sent to Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.), Christopher Carney (D-Pa.) and Tom Perriello (D-Va.) — purported to be from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, senior citizens groups and Creciendo Juntos, a Hispanic advocacy organization.
In total, the firm sent 58 letters, and committee investigators suspect several more may be revealed to be fakes. The newly discovered letters included one, allegedly sent from a senior center in Charlottesville, Va., that the lobbying firm originally claimed was legitimate, the committee said.
Bonner and Associates, a firm that specializes in grassroots lobbying, was hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and by the Hawthorn Group, an Alexandria-based public affairs firm, as a subcontractor. Both companies have since denounced the company for the fake letters; Bonner and Associates has told POLITICO that the letters were sent by a temporary employee who has since been fired.
via Lobbyists sent 13 fake letters to Hill – Lisa Lerer – POLITICO.com.
US STOCKS-China-led sell-off weighs on futures
US STOCKS-China-led sell-off weighs on futures - | | Reuters – By Edward Krudy
NEW YORK, Aug 19 (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures pointed to a fall of about 1 percent on Wednesday as a drop in Chinese shares prompted renewed selling in global equity markets on fears stock prices have outpaced the economic recovery.
China shares slid 4.3 percent, led by recently listed stocks, as nervous investors bailed out on worries the 20 percent slide in just two weeks would deepen, shrugging off official efforts to talk up the market. [ID:nHKG105116]
via US STOCKS-China-led sell-off weighs on futures | Markets | Markets News | Reuters.
Whole Foods Backlash: Bloggers Outraged Over CEO’s Anti-’ObamaCare’ Column
Whole Foods Backlash: Bloggers Outraged Over CEO’s Anti-’ObamaCare’ Column
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed on health care which argues against President Obama’s health reform proposals has caused a firestorm throughout progressive communities and on HuffPost.
Mackey wrote:
“The last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health care system.”
He instead suggested healthy food — preferably purchased from Whole Foods — as an answer to our health care woes:
via Whole Foods Backlash: Bloggers Outraged Over CEO’s Anti-’ObamaCare’ Column.
Man Who Brought Assault Rifle To Obama Rally Was Part Of Radio Stunt (VIDEO)
Man Who Brought Assault Rifle To Obama Rally Was Part Of Radio Stunt (VIDEO)
On Monday, a dozen people packing heat — including at least one man carrying a semi-automatic assault rifle — were spotted at a pro-health care rally next to the convention where President Obama was speaking. While it appeared at the time to be a random incident, similar to several other gun sightings at health care events, it’s become clear today that this time the gun show was at least partially planned.
The man with the semi-automatic (referred to in interviews as “Chris,” no last name) was spotted at the protest by CNN news cameras, in the middle of a Q&A. Today, his interviewer — Ernest Hancock of conservative talk radio show Declare Your Independence With Ernest Hancock — went on CNN and explained to host Rick Sanchez that he and Chris were actually in the middle of a radio broadcast. Hancock, also packing heat at the rally, had invited Chris to come down the protest with his rifle to be interviewed. The two men had known each other for two years, through their work for presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).
During the segment on CNN, Rick Sanchez said, “the more we look into this, the more it appears that it was really planned.” Hancock concurred: “Oh, it’s more planned than you think.” In addition to scheduling the interview, Hancock had also informed the local police force.
via Man Who Brought Assault Rifle To Obama Rally Was Part Of Radio Stunt (VIDEO).
The Greenback Effect
The Greenback Effect - – NYTimes.com
WARREN E. BUFFETT
IN nature, every action has consequences, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect. These consequences, moreover, are not necessarily proportional. For example, doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society. Realizing this, the world properly worries about greenhouse emissions.
The butterfly effect reaches into the financial world as well. Here, the United States is spewing a potentially damaging substance into our economy — greenback emissions.
To be sure, we’ve been doing this for a reason I resoundingly applaud. Last fall, our financial system stood on the brink of a collapse that threatened a depression. The crisis required our government to display wisdom, courage and decisiveness. Fortunately, the Federal Reserve and key economic officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations responded more than ably to the need.
They made mistakes, of course. How could it have been otherwise when supposedly indestructible pillars of our economic structure were tumbling all around them? A meltdown, though, was avoided, with a gusher of federal money playing an essential role in the rescue.
via Op-Ed Contributor – The Greenback Effect – NYTimes.com.
Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason
The Republican Party is turning into a cult
Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason - Johann Hari – The Independent 
How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality?
Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: “The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital.”
The election of Obama – a black man with an anti-conservative message – as a successor to George W. Bush has scrambled the core American right’s view of their country. In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin.
When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn’t compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of “Drill, baby, drill” have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right’s world-view – to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm of their own creation – has swollen. Now it is all they can see.
Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Care Bill
OPS: it’s about damned time
Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Care Bill - - NYTimes.com
— Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.
Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.
“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
via Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Care Bill – NYTimes.com.
GM bringing back 1,350 workers
GM bringing back 1,350 workers
Increased demand for fuel efficient cars is leading General Motors to reinstate workers and increase shifts and overtime in order to build 60,000 additional cars.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors is upping production and calling 1,350 of its U.S. and Canadian auto workers back to work due to increased demand for its vehicles.
The company said Tuesday it is raising production by about 60,000 vehicles in the third and fourth quarters, in response to the increased sales that accompanied the government’s Cash for Clunkers program.
The increased production will come from added shifts and overtime, GM said. In addition, the company will keep select plants open during weeks that they had previously been forecast to be shut down.
For example, the Orion Township, Mich., plant, which had been scheduled to close for nearly two-years in mid-September, will now remain in operation until just before Thanksgiving.
via GM raises production – Aug. 18, 2009.
ACT prognosis: 23% could earn C, at best, in first-year college courses
ACT prognosis: 23% could earn C, at best, in first-year college courses – - USATODAY.com
Even as high school graduates in recent years have grown increasingly better prepared for college, too many members of the class of 2009 cannot adequately perform all of the academic skills they will need to succeed, a report says.
Just 23% of students, up from 22% last year, earned test scores suggesting they can earn at least a C in first-year college courses in English, math, reading and science, says the report, released today by the non-profit Iowa-based testing company ACT. It’s based on scores of 1.48 million 2009 high school graduates who took the ACT’s college entrance exam.
That’s up from 1.42 million test-takers last year and nearly 1.2 million in 2005. It also represents a 42% increase over five years in black test-takers and a 60% increase in Hispanic test-takers — two populations that tend to earn lower scores on average.
Meanwhile, test scores have remained relatively stable. This year’s national average composite scores was 21.1, on a scale of 1 to 36, the same as the past two years, and up 0.1 point from 2005 and 2006.
When the number of test-takers expands to include a more diverse population, “one would reasonably expect a drop,” says Cynthia Schmeiser, president of ACT’s education division. “We’re not seeing that, which to us is a positive indication.”
via ACT prognosis: 23% could earn C, at best, in first-year college courses – USATODAY.com.
European banks identified in U.S. tax probe: report
European banks identified in U.S. tax probe: report | | Reuters
(Reuters) – Wealthy U.S. citizens using a government tax-evasion amnesty program have identified almost 10 European banks where they have accounts, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the situation.
The paper named Credit Suisse Group AG, Julius Baer Holding AG, Zuercher Kantonalbank and Union Bancaire Privee (UBP) in the report, though it said the disclosures did not signal any wrongdoing by the banks.
Credit Suisse and Julius Baer declined to comment on the report, while UBP and Zuercher Kantonalbank and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters.
Last week, the U.S. and Swiss government initialed an out-of-court settlement to end a dispute over whether UBS AG should be forced to disclose the names of 52,000 rich U.S. clients suspected of tax evasion
via European banks identified in U.S. tax probe: report | U.S. | Reuters.
Losing Football Coach, You’re Fired! Failed CEO, You’re Enriched!
Losing Football Coach, You’re Fired! Failed CEO, You’re Enriched! – Bill Hare – economyincisis.org
We used to have regulation. Remember those days?
Editor’s note: The following article originally appeared on OpEdNews and may not reflect the views or opinions of EconomyInCrisis.org. Feedback is welcome.
Anyone who took an elementary economics course heard it. Young Americans growing up heard it.
In America you are given the opportunity to rise on your own bootstraps. Achieve success and you are rewarded.
Failure? Well there is no room for that. If you fail you need to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and try again.
Try and tell that to justifiably angry Americans in the wake of recent events. Yes, if you are a football coach in America, Britain, or Europe and you compile a losing record you will be fired. After all, winning was a condition precedent to being hired.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
China Conquering Void in Auto Industry
China Conquering Void in Auto Industry – Dustin Ensinger economyincisis.org
After manufacturing just 2.1 million automobiles at the beginning of the century, last year China passed the U.S. in vehicle production, pumping out 9.3 million cars and trucks.
The Chinese government is using its the cash from its massive trade surpluses to rapidly buy up American assets including the nation’s debt, toxic real estate assets and even shares of Hollywood production studios.
However, the biggest prize that the Chinese government has its eye on may be a piece of the beleaguered American auto industry.
Since 2000, China has made a concerted effort to become a major player in the world auto market and has been incredibly successful. After manufacturing just 2.1 million automobiles at the beginning of the century, last year China passed the U.S. in vehicle production, pumping out 9.3 million cars and trucks.
At its current pace of production, China is set to pass Japan as the world’s largest auto producer, and if the communist nation develops a lasting partnership with Detroit, it could forever alter the landscape of car manufacturing.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
China’s Oil Buying Binge
China’s Oil Buying Binge – Dustin Ensinger -economyincisis.org
The Chinese government, using its massive stockpile of cash compiled through its perpetual trade surpluses, is rapidly expanding its reach into the worlds oil markets, according to CNNMoney.com.
Already the third largest economy in the world, China is now actively trying to compete with Western oil firms as its middle class continues to expand and demand for oil continues to rise precipitously inside the country.
“They are stilting on a huge pile of cash and they’re using this as a buying opportunity,” said Greg Priddy, a global energy analyst at the Eurasia group, a political risk consultancy, according to CNNMoney.com.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The End of “Chinamerica”
The End of “Chinamerica” – Craig Harrington -economyincisis.org
The intricately linked relationship between the United States and China may be disintegrating.
Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor and economic historian, once coined the term “Chinamerica” (or sometimes “Chimerica”) to describe the intricately linked relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic.
However, for nearly one year Ferguson has been discussing not the interlocking of the two countries, but rather their separation.
Ferguson, writing for Newsweek on August 15, 2009 stated emphatically that he sees the end of the U.S.-China partnership on the horizon. In his view the relationship will quickly shift from being cooperative to being competitive, and the first signs are all around.
The Chinese government has already accosted Washington for its lack of fiscal discipline. It has called for a new international reserve currency to replace the dollar. It has threatened, on several occasions, to dump its Treasury assets and bury the American currency.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
GRITtv: Janine Jackson:Breaking Through Corporate Media Rule
GRITtv with Laura Flanders brings participatory democracy onto your computer screen and into your living room, bridging the gap between audience and advocates.
via YouTube – GRITtv: Janine Jackson:Breaking Through Corporate Media Rule.
Senator Sanders Unfiltered: Lies, Fibs and Anti-Reformers
Get weekly Senator Sanders Unfiltered episodes delivered to you on Facebook, Twitter, or email. Sign up at: http://sandersunfiltered.com And, be part of Senator Sanders weekly show. Submit your video question via Twitvid with #Sanders. http://twitvid.com
via YouTube – Senator Sanders Unfiltered: Lies, Fibs and Anti-Reformers.
Keep Up Pressure for a Public Option
Keep Up Pressure for a Public Option - By Byard Duncan, AlterNet
As the debate continues to heat up, pressure from you will make all the difference. Stand up for a public option today.
In an extremely disappointing move, President Barack Obama on Saturday indicated that he would consider jettisoning a public option from his proposed health care overhaul. Addressing a town-hall-style meeting in Colorado, Obama called the public option just “one sliver” of his larger initiative.
“Whether we have it or we don’t have it is not the entirety of health care reform,” he said.
Then on Sunday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told CNN’s John King that the Senate Finance Committee is more likely to favor nonprofit co-ops than a public option. These co-ops, Sebelius argued, would constitute an affordable middle ground between public and private control of health options.
“I think what’s important is choice and competition,” Sebelius said. “And I’m convinced at the end of the day, the plan will have both of those. But [the public plan] is not the essential element.”
via Keep Up Pressure for a Public Option | Take Action | AlterNet.
Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse?
Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse? – | Paul Kingsnorth and George Monbiot | The Guardian
The collapse of civilisation will bring us a saner world, says Paul Kingsnorth. No, counters George Monbiot – we can’t let billions perish
Dear George
On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy’s gross domestic product.
What grips me about these graphs (and graphs don’t usually grip me) is that though they all show very different things, they have an almost identical shape. A line begins on the left of the page, rising gradually as it moves to the right. Then, in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards, like a pilot banking after a cliff has suddenly appeared from what he thought was an empty bank of cloud.
The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos. We know this; some of us even attempt to stop it happening. Yet all of these trends continue to get rapidly worse, and there is no sign of that changing soon. What these graphs make clear better than anything else is the cold reality: there is a serious crash on the way.
20 Foods That Make You Smarter
20 Foods That Make You Smarter - By Sara Ost, EcoSalon.
Here are some healthy, environmentally friendly ways to kick-start your brain.
Simply put, your brain likes to eat. And it likes powerful fuel: quality fats, antioxidants, and small, steady amounts of the best carbs.
On a deadline? Need to rally? Avoid the soda, vending machine snacks and tempting Starbucks and go for these powerful brain boosters instead. The path to a bigger, better brain is loaded with Omega-3 fats, antioxidants, and fiber. Give your brain a kick start: eat the following foods on a daily or weekly basis for results you will notice.
20 foods that will supercharge your brain:
1. Avocado
Start each day with a mix of high-quality protein and beneficial fats to build the foundation for an energized day. Avocado with scrambled eggs provides both, and the monounsaturated fat helps blood circulate better, which is essential for optimal brain function. Worst alternative: a trans-fat-filled, sugar-laden cream cheese Danish.
Green it: you don’t need to buy an organic avocado – conventional is fine. But make sure your supplementary protein is free range, cage free, or organic.
2. Blueberries
These delicious berries are one of the best foods for you, period, but they’re very good for your brain as well. Since they’re high in fiber and low on the glycemic index, they are safe for diabetics and they do not spike blood sugar. Blueberries are possibly the best brain food on earth: they have been linked to reduced risk for Alzheimer’s, shown to improve learning ability and motor skills in rats, and they are one of the most powerful anti-stress foods you can eat. Avoid: dried, sweetened blueberries.
Green it: buy local and organic, and be mindful of seasonality. When blueberries are out of season, opt for cranberries, grapes, goji berries, blackberries or cherries to get your brain boost.
via 20 Foods That Make You Smarter | | AlterNet.
15 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight
15 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism
Remember the days when your metabolism was like a caffeinated mouse in a wheel? Yeah, me neither. If you aren’t one of those lucky gals who can eat whatever she wants and burn it off thanks to an annoyingly fast metabolism, look to these helpful foods for a metabolic boost. (And check out this post on additional tips to speed up a sluggish metabolism.)
via 15 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight | EcoSalon.
In 2002, Bush Neglected Actual WMD Threat In Order Not To ‘Derail’ Iraq War
In 2002, Bush Neglected Actual WMD Threat In Order Not To ‘Derail’ Iraq War- Wonk Room »
In the months since leaving office, Dick Cheney has been hard at work defending his and George W. Bush’s record in the “war on terrorism,” claiming in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute in May that after 9/11 the Bush administration “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.”
As Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel pointed out afterward, Cheney’s claim conveniently ignored the fact that top Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri “remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban.”
In a new article in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Micah Zenko provides further evidence challenging Cheney’s claim about the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war on terrorism.
via Wonk Room » In 2002, Bush Neglected Actual WMD Threat In Order Not To ‘Derail’ Iraq War.
Top Texas Judge On Trial For Blocking Stay of Execution
Top Texas Judge On Trial For Blocking Stay of Execution – Wonk Room »
On September 25, 2007, the morning of the day Michael Wayne Richard was scheduled to die by lethal injection, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would stay another lethal injection until it decided a case challenging the use of the execution practice altogether. Richard’s attorneys began frantically drafting motions to delay his execution as well.
Although the Supreme Court eventually halted lethal injections nationwide while its case on the matter was pending, Richard was executed after Texas’ highest criminal judge allegedly blocked his attorneys from seeking relief in her court. Now, Judge Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, could lose her job for intentionally denying a death row inmate access to the court system.
In a judicial misconduct proceeding similar to the one which removed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore from office, Keller is accused of intentionally deceiving Richard’s attorneys to prevent them from seeking a stay of execution. At 4:45pm on the day of Richard’s execution, his attorneys asked the court if they could file the documents after the clerk’s office closed at 5pm. Judge Keller told court staff to relay a message that the clerk’s office would close at 5. Although literally true, Keller’s message concealed the fact that a member of the court was on duty to hear emergency after-hours motions–had the attorneys known this, they would have filed the as yet incomplete motion.
via Wonk Room » Top Texas Judge On Trial For Blocking Stay of Execution.
As The Rich Got Richer, The Poor Got Poorer
As The Rich Got Richer, The Poor Got Poorer – Wonk Room »
Last week, University of California, Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez released new data showing that U.S. income inequality in 2007 (the latest data available) was the worst that it has ever been. Saez found that the top ten percent of Americans made 49.7 percent of the total wages, a level “higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the ‘roaring’ 1920s.” Paul Krugman called the data “truly amazing.”
And as those at the top of the income scale have been getting richer, those at the bottom have been getting poorer. Bloomberg reported today on a new analysis by Tax Notes:
A separate analysis by the weekly journal Tax Notes suggested the poor got poorer in 2007. The share of all U.S. income made by the 66 million Americans who earn less than $30,000 a year shrank by 2.3 percent from 2006, a decline of $149 per taxpayer.
via Wonk Room » As The Rich Got Richer, The Poor Got Poorer.
GrassleyWatch: Tracking Grassley’s Efforts To Obstruct Health Care Reform
GrassleyWatch: Tracking Grassley’s Efforts To Obstruct Health Care Reform - Wonk Room »
In March, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) raised eyebrows when he urged opponents of health care reform to continue lying about the consequences of comparative effectiveness research and electronic medical records. Since then, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee has adopted the rhetoric of the far right, routinely referring to health care reform as a government takeover of health care, disingenuously misrepresenting reform legislation, and even going so far as to endorse and sign a copy of Glenn Beck’s book.
The Wonk Room has compiled a list of Grassley’s most egregious misrepresentations and will continue monitoring and fact checking Grassley’s statements throughout the reform process. Read the full document HERE.
This afternoon, during an appearance on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, Grassley remained unapologetic for suggesting that the federal government would “pull the plug on grandma.” Instead, Grassley blamed Democrats for his statements, suggesting that they were “diverting attention” from the health bill:
I’m not going to do anything with a health care bill that puts a government bureaucrat, or any government policy making a determination about whether or not we are going to value life and the end of life any more than at age 30 or 20…all of their proposal with end of life are connected in the bill with ways of saving money and takeover of national health care…the Lewin think tank in Washington says that 120 million people are going to crowd out into that plan.
Watch it:
via Wonk Room » GrassleyWatch: Tracking Grassley’s Efforts To Obstruct Health Care Reform.
Cato Economist: ‘Irrelevant’ Unions Are ‘A Kind Of Leukemia On U.S. Industry’
Cato Economist: ‘Irrelevant’ Unions Are ‘A Kind Of Leukemia On U.S. Industry’ – Wonk Room »
Today, Cato Institute economist Daniel Griswold appeared on CNBC as part of a panel discussing whether unions are necessary to build and sustain the American middle class. During the segment, Griswold claimed that unions are “irrelevant” and constitute a “kind of leukemia on U.S. industry”:
Labor unions are becoming largely irrelevant for the vast majority of American workers. In fact, labor unions seem to be a kind of leukemia on U.S. industry. Labor imposes a steep cost, that are higher than their productivity gains.
Watch it:
via Wonk Room » Cato Economist: ‘Irrelevant’ Unions Are ‘A Kind Of Leukemia On U.S. Industry’.
Rep. Markey Reveals Five More Forged Astroturf Letters
Rep. Markey Reveals Five More Forged Astroturf Letters - Think Progress »
Last month, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) announced a congressional investigation of the DC lobbying firm Bonner & Associates. The firm, which has a long history of astroturfing, was caught forging anti-clean energy reform letters — purportedly from groups representing women and people of color — to Congress. Coal front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy was eventually revealed to be Bonner’s client in the anti-clean energy campaign. Now, more forged letters have been uncovered.
Today, Markey revealed five new letters, and dozens more may be out there. According to a statement from Markey’s office, the faked letters came from “elderly services and senior centers” and were sent to Democratic Reps. Tom Periello (VA), Kathy Dahlkemper (PA), and Christopher Carney (PA):
The five letters revealed today brings the total number of fraudulent letters to 13, now representing 9 different community groups. Letters released today were staged to look like they were sent by groups representing senior citizen services like the non-profit Erie Center on Health & Aging. Previous letters already made public were from the Charlottesville-based NAACP, Creciendo Juntos, a hispanic advocacy organization, the Jefferson Area Board on Aging, and the American Association of University Women. […]
via Think Progress » Rep. Markey Reveals Five More Forged Astroturf Letters.
Woman yells ‘Heil Hitler’ to Jewish man praising Israel’s national health care system.
Woman yells ‘Heil Hitler’ to Jewish man praising Israel’s national health care system. - Think Progress »
Conservatives have strenuously denied that there is any anti-Semitism on display by anti-health reform protesters at town hall meetings nationwide — despite all the evidence to the contrary. Last week, Las Vegas radio station KDWN AM720 sponsored a “contentious” town hall, emceed by conservative morning show host Heidi Harris. At the event, local news stations were interviewing an Israeli man who was praising the “fantastic” “national health care” in Israel. During his remarks, a woman yelled out, “Heil Hitler!” The man stopped, became visibly upset, and exclaimed, “Did you hear this? She say to a Jew, ‘Heil Hitler’! Hear? I’m a Jew! You’re telling me, ‘Heil Hitler’? Shame of you!” After he angrily confronts her, the woman mocks him by making a crying sound to imply he is a whining baby. Watch it:
Republican in ‘Gang of Six’ wants health care reform in ‘smaller parts’ instead of one bill.
OPS: Of course they do – divide and conquer. It’s easier to kill a small bill, besides that way they would get to have a media orgy on each one
Republican in ‘Gang of Six’ wants health care reform in ‘smaller parts’ instead of one bill. - Think Progress »
Earlier this month, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), the most conservative member of the “Gang of Six” working on a compromise health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee, argued against a Sept. 15 deadline for the bill by saying that he was “committed to getting health care reform right, not finishing a bill by some arbitrary date.” “We’re making progress, but we still have several significant, outstanding items to work on,” said Enzi. But, as Huffington Post’s Sam Stein points out, Enzi indicated to a local crowd yesterday that he disagrees with the entire approach the Finance Committee is taking:
enziCongress should approach health care reform in steps, instead of trying to put together a comprehensive package said U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.
Health care is so massive that reforms can’t be made with one major bill, which is what the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are pushing, Enzi told members of the Casper Rotary Club on Monday at the Parkway Plaza Hotel. [...]
Armey: Obama will hype up ‘outbreak of swine flu’ to get ‘bed-wetters’ to support health care reform.
Armey: Obama will hype up ‘outbreak of swine flu’ to get ‘bed-wetters’ to support health care reform. – Think Progress »
Former House Majority Leader Dick ArmeyFormer House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who is currently one of the leading opponents of health care reform as the head of FreedomWorks, is not above telling lies in his quest to derail President Obama’s reform efforts. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Armey went further than usual, positing a paranoid conspiracy theory about how Obama will push reform through Congress:
Mr Armey, 69, predicted that the “grassroots” backlash against what he called Mr Obama’s “hostile government takeover of a sixth of the US economy” would cause the reform to fail spectacularly. But he predicted that supporters of reform would attempt to win over the “bed-wetters caucus” – a group of wavering lawmakers who spanned both parties, he said – with a fear campaign in the autumn.
50 Top U.S. War Criminals
50 Top U.S. War Criminals - | AfterDowningStreet.org
By David Swanson
Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who
managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.
The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations — including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards — detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.
The list below does not include those responsible for war crimes prior to 2001. Nor does it include those currently in power who a
re making themselves complicit by failing to prosecute or cease commission of these crimes. The list could be greatly expanded. It could also be narrowed. I would argue, however, that it presents a more reasonable starting place than Holder’s reported proposal to investigate only CIA employees who failed to comply with criminal torture policies, of whom there are no doubt more than 50.
Because each of the people on this list should be nonviolently protested everywhere they go (more on that below), I have organized them by location.
via 50 Top U.S. War Criminals | AfterDowningStreet.org.
GOP Rep. encourages guns at town hall meetings
GOP Rep. encourages guns at town hall meetings - Raw Story »
Asked by an MSNBC anchor on Monday, a Georgia Republican member of Congress actually encouraged Americans to attend public forums packing heat.
“It just so happens those same people would take that weapon anywhere they go,” said Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), speaking to Chris Matthews during a Monday broadcast. “They are permitted to carry a concealed weapon. They have the right to do that…”
Matthews interrupted him. “They’re not concealed. … We’re looking at gentlemen here that have guns on them, in their holsters. They’re not concealed. They’re basically displaying their weapons. Armed weaponry at these public meetings. I’m just asking, why is it going on? …”
via Raw Story » GOP Rep. encourages guns at town hall meetings.
Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Townhall Comparing Obama To Hitler
At a Barney Frank town hall meeting in Dartmouth, MA, a constituent asks, “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?”
Frank responds: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” He then calls her approach “vile, contemptible nonsense.” He closes by saying: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.”
via YouTube – Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Townhall Comparing Obama To Hitler.
House ‘Under Water’? Do Like the Banks Do and Just Walk Away
House ‘Under Water’? Do Like the Banks Do and Just Walk Away – By Scott Thill, AlterNet.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” — Warren Buffett
Here’s a terrible new twist to a housing meltdown tortured by too many of them. Banks are refusing to take possession of houses after the foreclosure process because of the prohibitive cost, from legal to maintenance fees, of being stuck with the same worthless mortgages with which they’ve saddled American homeowners.
It’s a problem of their own making: Foreclosures shot up 7 percent in July, and the rate is nearly a third higher than this time last year. There is no end in sight. That’s led to increased homeowner abandonment of their properties, which in turn has led to escalating blight that has depressed property values and tax revenues even further.
By 2011, around half of the mortgages in the shell-shocked United States could be underwater, which is a softball euphemism for utterly worthless. The financial industry is well known for such empty metaphors — including “class warfare,” ably dissected above by Berkshire Hathaway billionaire Warren Buffet. That’s because they are easier to stomach than the purposefully labyrinthine, fearsomely destabilizing details.
The Lanny Davis disease and America’s health care debate
The Lanny Davis disease and America’s health care debate - – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
After Tom Daschle was selected to be Barack Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services and chief health care adviser, Matt Taibbi wrote: “In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle.” One could easily have added: “And then there’s Lanny Davis.”
Davis frequently injects himself into political disputes, masquerading as a “political analyst” and Democratic media pundit, yet is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: “I agree with whoever pays me.” It’s genuinely difficult to recall any instance where he publicly defended someone who hadn’t, at some point, hired and shuffled money to him. Yesterday, he published a new piece simultaneously in The Hill and Politico — solemnly warning that extremists on the Far Left and Far Right are jointly destroying democracy with their conduct in the health care debate and urging “the vast center-left and center-right of this country to speak up and call them out equally” — that vividly illustrates the limitless whoring behavior which shapes Washington generally and specifically drives virtually every word out of Lanny Davis’ mouth.
Davis’ history is as long and consistent as it is sleazy. He was recently hired by Honduran oligarchs opposed to that country’s democratically elected left-wing President and promptly became the chief advocate of the military coup which forcibly removed the President from office. He became an emphatic defender of the Israeli war on Gaza after he was named by the right-wing The Israel Project to be its “Senior Advisor and Spokesperson.” He has been the chief public defender for Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman and the Clintons, all of whom have engaged his paid services. And as NYU History Professor Greg Grandin just documented:
via The Lanny Davis disease and America’s health care debate – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Has the left blown its big chance of success?
Has the left blown its big chance of success? - | | The Guardian
The collapse of unfettered capitalism should have been a golden opportunity for the left. So where did it all go wrong?
It is a rare sunny summer morning and I am on the bus from Stoke Newington to Bloomsbury in central London. In these old, slightly earnest parts of the capital, leftwing politics runs deep: from Karl Marx writing in the British Library to communes in the 70s to today’s dogged socialist flyposters. This morning’s bus ride does not disappoint. Seated in front of me, en route to Marxism 2009, the pre-eminent British gathering of the international radical left, are a clean-cut man and woman in their early 20s. He is wearing a crisp new T-shirt that reads “Revolución Bolivarana”. She has a large rucksack. They are speaking German, but the word “socialism” recurs.
The papers today are full of the recession as usual. On the Today programme, David Cameron has been talking about emergency cuts in government spending, and a union leader has been fiercely defending the wages of public sector workers. It could almost be the heady days of the mid-70s, when capitalism seemed to struggle for breath and all political bets appeared to be off.
At Euston station, the couple get off the bus. I follow them, past the looming tower of Network Rail headquarters – once the chaotic private-sector Railtrack, until it was nationalised – and into the complex of meeting rooms hosting Marxism 2009. But the atmosphere inside comes as something of a shock. It is the final, supposedly climactic day of the conference. The speakers are reasonably intriguing and diverse – the radical playwright David Edgar, the dissident Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, the rising young union boss Mark Serwotka. And yet, Marxism 2009 feels little different from most such leftwing summits in Britain over the last quarter century. The corridors are animated rather than feverish. Attendees greet each other as old friends and comrades rather than eager new converts. The pavement outside has moderately busy stalls for the usual causes: opposition to Israeli land occupations, opposition to the British National Party.
via Has the left blown its big chance of success? | Politics | The Guardian.
Man says he sold kidney in U.S. for $20k
Man says he sold kidney in U.S. for $20k - Health care- msnbc.com
New York recipient says he was near death when Israeli man answered ad
NEW YORK – In 2005, a rebellious and sporadically employed Israeli man flew to New York to give up a kidney to save an American businessman. For that, he says he was paid $20,000, which appeared in a brown envelope on his hospital bed after the operation.
That payoff would be illegal.
But the kidney donor, 39-year-old Nick Rosen of Tel Aviv, says that doesn’t matter. “I smoke pot. That’s also against the law.”
via Man says he sold kidney in U.S. for $20k – Health care- msnbc.com.
Labor Warns Dems: We’ll Sit Out Election If You Oppose Public Plan
OPS: It’s about damned time the Unions spoke up
Labor Warns Dems: We’ll Sit Out Election If You Oppose Public Plan
One of the country’s most prominent union officials is warning that big labor may pull its support from Democrats who don’t fight for a government-run insurance plan.
In an interview with the Huffington Post on Saturday, Richard Trumka, the secretary-treasurer and likely next president of the AFL-CIO, said his federation is drawing a line in the sand when it comes to a public option in the health care bill. Lawmakers who don’t support the provision, he said, shouldn’t take anything for granted.
“We’ll look at every one of their votes,” Trumka said after his speech at the Netroots Nation convention. “If they’re against the Employee Free Choice Act, if they’re against health care for that reason, I think it’ll be tough for them to get support from working people.
via Labor Warns Dems: We’ll Sit Out Election If You Oppose Public Plan.
Building block of life found on comet
Building block of life found on comet - | | Reuters
The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space, scientists said on Monday.
Microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles (390 million km) from Earth, in January 2004.
Samples of gas and dust collected on a small dish lined with a super-fluffy material called aerogel were returned to Earth two years later in a canister that detached from the spacecraft and landed by parachute in the Utah desert.
via Building block of life found on comet | Science | Reuters.
The public option’s last stand
The public option’s last stand | Salon
We’ll have no one to blame but ourselves if healthcare reform doesn’t include a public option
By Robert Reich
| I would have preferred a single-payer system like Medicare, but became convinced earlier this year that a public, Medicare-like optional plan was just about as much as was politically possible. Now the White House is stepping back even from the public option, with the president saying it’s “not the entirety of healthcare reform,” the White House spokesman saying the president could be “satisfied” without it, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying that a public insurance plan is “not the essential element.”
Without a public, Medicare-like option, healthcare reform is a bandaid for a system in critical condition. There’s no way to push private insurers to become more efficient and provide better value to Americans without being forced to compete with a public option. And there’s no way to get overall healthcare costs down without a public option that has the authority and scale to negotiate lower costs with pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals, and other providers — thereby opening the way for private insurers to do the same.
via The public option’s last stand | Salon.
Antibiotic Resistance at Factory Farms “Scares the Hell Out of” Johns Hopkins Scientists
Antibiotic Resistance at Factory Farms “Scares the Hell Out of” Johns Hopkins Scientists
BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White
I don’t like it when scientists feel the need to explain that they’re scared out of their wits, or use exclamation 
marks.
I also get a little nervous when they say stuff like, “We’re such a dumb species, we don’t deserve to survive on this planet” because of the great lengths we’re going to just to kill ourselves off.
Nevertheless, I was glued to this shocking piece called simply “Farmacology” in the most recent issue of John Hopkins Magazine on the devastating effects of low level, non-therapeutic antibiotics in industrial agriculture.
It turns out they’re making more than just broilers and bacon on your local factory farm; they’re growing germs that are resistant to antibiotics. And don’t think your commitment to organics or vegetarianism will save you: Your exposure to these superbugs could depend on actions as innocuous as driving behind a truck bound for a Tyson slaughterhouse.
Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, has been studying the phenomenon for years. She’s no radical — she doesn’t even necessarily advocate organic meat production or ceasing the use of antibiotics on farm animals. She simply wants farmers to stop using antibacterial measures to boost profits.
Why Are Smart People So Ignorant When it Comes to Health, Vaccines and Vitamin D? (Part Three)
Why Are Smart People So Ignorant When it Comes to Health, Vaccines and Vitamin D? (Part Three) – by Mike Adams
(NaturalNews) This is the third and final part of a three-part article series. Part one is available at http://www.naturalnews.com/026843_h… and you can read part two here: http://www.naturalnews.com/026851_n…
Solutions
Ultimately, what’s more important than teaching people nutritional knowledge is teaching people the skills of thinking for themselves. A population of independent thinkers would naturally embrace knowledge of nutritional remedies and natural cures. They would naturally resist the FDA’s pro-drug propaganda, and they would be able to more readily recognize the value of safe, effective and low-cost natural medicine.
The reason why this isn’t happening right now in modern society is obvious when you realize that people are not trained to THINK, they are trained to follow orders.
This is especially true with doctors, where the art and craft of medicine has been stolen away from well-meaning physicians by state and federal bureaucrats who wish to centralize all the medical decision making. They want doctors to be robotic enforcers of a centrally-planned medical agenda, not local decision-makers operating with autonomy.
Why Are Smart People So Ignorant When it Comes to Health, Vaccines and Vitamin D? (Part Two)
Why Are Smart People So Ignorant When it Comes to Health, Vaccines and Vitamin D? (Part Two) - by Mike Adams
Enforcing nutritional ignorance
Powerful corporations, of course, require the services of oppressive government to enforce nutritional ignorance across the population. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration is the primary enforcer of nutritional ignorance.
The FDA, as most NaturalNews readers well know, makes one of its primary missions the destruction of knowledge about nutrition and natural remedies. This is accomplished by outlawing any honest speech about nutrition from supplement companies, even going as far as threatening them with arrest and criminal prosecution if they dare link to scientific studies about nutrition (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html).
Meanwhile, the FDA openly approves health claims on processed food products sold by powerful corporations. This is designed to convince consumers that junk foods are healthful foods, even while healthful foods can make no claims whatsoever about their health benefits.
The FTC also gets in the game with its own brand of censorship, arresting and imprisoning owners of companies that offer natural cancer treatments based on good science. That’s why no real cancer cures are offered in the U.S. anymore — all the scientists who know the subject have either been imprisoned or run out of the country.
Why Are Smart People So Ignorant When it Comes to Health, Vaccines and Vitamin D? (Part One)
Why Are Smart People So Ignorant When it Comes to Health, Vaccines and Vitamin D? (Part One)
As an observer of human behavior, one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever witnessed is really smart people dying of diseases that are easily preventable through basic nutrition (vitamin D, plant juices, targeted supplements, superfoods, etc.). I know doctors dying of cancer who take chemotherapy over vitamin D supplements. I know members of MENSA who are killing themselves with junk foods and diabetes. I know extremely intelligent attorneys and physicists who are among the smartest people in their respective fields; but when it comes to basic health, they’re completely ignorant.
In fact, if you look around at all the “smart” people you know, you’re likely to find the vast majority of them are incredibly ignorant when it comes to their own health. They know nothing about basic nutrition, the benefits of superfoods or the dangers of pharmaceuticals. They eat processed junk foods, dairy products and food products contaminated with pesticides and toxic chemicals. They may be the smartest people in the world in their labs or offices, but when it comes to their own bodies, they are among the most ignorant people on the planet.
How can this be?
The Best Interests of the Corporation
The Best Interests of the Corporation – | CommonDreams.org
by Robert C. Hinkley
Every day legal corporate behavior causes much more damage to the commons than corporate illegal behavior. Electricity generators do not break the law when they emit billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year warming the Earth to dangerous levels. No law is broken when automobile manufacturers put out millions of vehicles that contribute to the same problem. Tobacco companies do not break the law when their products kill nearly 5 million people a year. Consumer goods companies are within the law when they buy from third world suppliers who operate sweatshops and use child labor. Employers operate within the law when they pay the minimum, but not a living wage. Manufacturers do not break the law when they threaten communities or leave them for dead when they move their operations overseas.
The problem is not that every once in a while corporation accidentally does something that harms the public interest. Corporate abuse of the commons is a daily ongoing event. At least in theory, those that direct the company have the power to make it stop. It continues as the result of conscious decisions made by company managers.
Think about it. If all modern corporations were good citizens, there would be no corporate abuse of the commons. As corporate damage to the public interest became evident, the directors of the company would simply close or modify the company’s operations to eliminate the behavior or product that was causing the damage.
via The Best Interests of the Corporation | CommonDreams.org.
THE SECRET OF CHINA’S MIRACLE ECONOMY: THE GOVERNMENT OWNS THE BANKS RATHER THAN THE REVERSE
THE SECRET OF CHINA’S MIRACLE ECONOMY:
THE GOVERNMENT OWNS THE BANKS RATHER THAN THE REVERSE
Ellen Brown - webofdebt.com
“The banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place.”
– U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009
While the U.S. spends trillions of dollars to bail out its banking system, leaving its economy to languish, China is being called a “miracle economy” that has decoupled from the rest of the world. As the rest of the world sinks into the worst recession since the 1930s, China has maintained a phenomenal 8% annual growth rate. Those are the reports, but commentators are dubious. They ask how that growth is possible, when other countries relying heavily on exports have suffered major downturns and remain in the doldrums. Economist Richard Wolff skeptically observes:
We now have a situation in the world where we have a global capitalist crisis. Everywhere, consumption is down. Everywhere, people are buying fewer goods, including goods from China. How is it possible that in that society, so dependent on the world economy, they could now have an explosive growth? Their stock market is now 100 percent higher than at its low — nothing remotely like that hardly anywhere in the world, certainly not in the United States or Europe. How is that possible? In order to believe what the Chinese are saying, you would have to agree that in a matter of months, at most a year, no more, they have been able to transform their economy from an export-based powerhouse to a domestically focused industrial engine. Nowhere in the world has that ever taken less than decades.”
Iraq May Hold Vote on Early U.S. Withdrawal
Iraq May Hold Vote On U.S. Withdrawal - – washingtonpost.com
As American Focus Turns to North, Troops Could Be Forced to Leave Early
BAGHDAD, Aug. 17 — U.S. troops could be forced by Iraqi voters to withdraw a year ahead of schedule under a referendum the Iraqi government backed Monday, creating a potential complication for American commanders concerned about rising violence in the country’s north.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s move appeared to disregard the wishes of the U.S. government, which has quietly lobbied against the plebiscite. American officials fear it could lead to the annulment of an agreement allowing U.S. troops to stay until the end of 2011, and instead force them out by the start of that year.
The Maliki government’s announcement came on the day that the top U.S. general in Iraq proposed a plan to deploy troops to disputed areas in the restive north, a clear indication that the military sees a continuing need for U.S. forces even if Iraqis no longer want them here.
via Iraq May Hold Vote on Early U.S. Withdrawal – washingtonpost.com.
White House Strongly Denies It’s Given Up On The Public Option
White House Strongly Denies It’s Given Up On The Public Option – | TPMDC
The White House has strengthened its denial that the administration’s non-committal position on the public option has changed one way or another.
“Here’s the bottom line: Absolutely nothing has changed,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
“We continue to support the public option. That will help lower costs, give American consumers more choice and keep private insurers honest. If people have other ideas about how to accomplish these goals, we’ll look at those, too. But the public option is a very good way to do this.”
via White House Strongly Denies It’s Given Up On The Public Option | TPMDC.
Scarborough Concedes Public Option Is ‘Not A Government Takeover Of Health Care’
Scarborough Concedes Public Option Is ‘Not A Government Takeover Of Health Care’ - Think Progress »
During his “great talk” on health care this morning with MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) observed that the insurance lobby “has done a pretty good job somehow getting people standing up in town meetings defending the poor downtrodden insurance industries. It’s a pretty remarkable thing.”
“I have yet to hear that,” Scarborough responded. “Well why are people against the public plan?” Weiner asked. Scarborough responded with this astonishing admission:
SCARBOROUGH: Because they’ve seen over the past six months government grow, they believe at too rapid of a rate and they’re skeptical. I don’t think there has been an explanation of how the government plan is not equal to the government takeover of health care — which we all know it’s not a government takeover of health care but that’s how it sounds to people.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Scarborough Concedes Public Option Is ‘Not A Government Takeover Of Health Care’.
Rep. Ted Poe to hold health care town hall at funeral home.
Rep. Ted Poe to hold health care town hall at funeral home. - Think Progress »
Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) has announced that he “will hold a health care town hall at Brookside Funeral Home on Saturday, Aug. 22 at 10 a.m.” The awkward venue selection would seem to suggest that Poe may be interested in furthering the right-wing’s false “death panels” talking point. Late last month, before Congress recessed for August, Poe delivered a speech on the House floor arguing that “when government runs health care, senior citizens are sometimes refused treatment because of their age.” He continued his fear-mongering:
Government-run health care lets bureaucrats decide who receives rationed care and who doesn’t, who lives and who just dies.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Rep. Ted Poe to hold health care town hall at funeral home..
Baucus & Grassley Hijack Obama’s Agenda
Baucus & Grassley Hijack Obama’s Agenda
Barack Obama received 67 million votes in the last election. Senator Max Baucus of Montana received 349,000 votes when he ran for re-election last year. His Republican counterpart on the Senate Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, got just over a million votes when he last ran in ’04.
So how, exactly, was Obama’s landslide victory a mandate for Baucus and Grassley to hijack the president’s agenda? When it comes to healthcare reform, trusting Baucus was the first mistake Obama made. Allowing Baucus to cede so much authority to Grassley is the second.
When Baucus became chairman of the Senate Finance Committee after Democrats recaptured Congress, many Democrats were justifiably worried. After all, Baucus helped shepherd through Congress two of President Bush’s signature initiatives, his tax cuts and Medicare privatization plan. He received a ton of money from corporate lobbyists, many of whom were former staffers of his. In a Nation profile in early ’07, I dubbed him “K Street’s Favorite Democrat.”
via Baucus & Grassley Hijack Obama’s Agenda.
Squandered Opportunity
Squandered Opportunity
By William Greider
After his brilliant beginning, the president suddenly looks weak and unreliable. That will be the common interpretation around Washington of the president’s abrupt retreat on substantive heathcare reform. Give Barack Obama a hard shove, they will say, rough him up a bit and he folds. A few weeks back, the president was touting a “public option” health plan as an essential element in reform. Now he says, take it or leave it. Whatever Congress does, he’s okay with that
The White House quickly added confusion to the outrage by insisting the president didn’t really say anything new. He’s just being flexible. He still wants what most Democrats want–a government plan that gives people a real escape from the profit-driven clutches of the insurance companies. But serious power players will not be fooled by the nimble spinners. Obama choked. He raised the white flag, even before the fight got underway in Congress.
Meltdown 101: Foreign investments in US debt
Meltdown 101: Foreign investments in US debt
WASHINGTON – Many Americans know that China holds the most U.S. Treasury debt, followed by Japan. But who would expect a group of Caribbean countries would collectively come in fifth?
Or that Luxembourg would come in eighth?
A look at which countries hold large amounts of Treasury securities — investments in U.S. debt — provides an interesting glimpse into the world economy. Some governments — like China — have amassed large holdings in an effort to keep their currencies from becoming too valuable against the dollar, which keeps their exports to the United States cheaper.
Others have large holdings because of their financial sectors.
The fifth-largest holder of Treasurys is a collection of Caribbean countries, including the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands, with $189.7 billion. The Treasury Department collectively calls the group “Caribbean Banking Centers.”
The Cayman Islands, for example, has become a major financial center. It is home to 9,000 hedge funds and other investment vehicles, according to a report last year by the Government Accountability Office. Those funds likely hold some Treasury securities.
via Meltdown 101: Foreign investments in US debt – Yahoo! News.
Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop
Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop - - NYTimes.com
If after a few months’ exposure to our David Lynch economy, in which housing markets spontaneously combust, coworkers mysteriously disappear and the stifled moans of dying 401(k) plans can be heard through the floorboards, you have the awful sensation that your body’s stress response has taken on a self-replicating and ultimately self-defeating life of its own, congratulations. You are very perceptive. It has.
As though it weren’t bad enough that chronic stress has been shown to raise blood pressure, stiffen arteries, suppress the immune system, heighten the risk of diabetes, depression and Alzheimer’s disease and make one a very undesirable dinner companion, now researchers have discovered that the sensation of being highly stressed can rewire the brain in ways that promote its sinister persistence.
Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.
via Basics – Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop – NYTimes.com.
“Bananas!” trailer: Pesticides, health risks and lawsuits!
“Bananas!” trailer: Pesticides, health risks and lawsuits!
If you enjoyed Food, Inc., but wanted more of the flavor of protest and outrage that Boulder County has seen during the GMO beet debate, “Bananas!” may be the flick for you:
Of course, it’s not out yet. No, there’s a bit of controversy surrounding this one. For example, here’s an excerpt from an LA Times post on “Bananas!”:
In the eyes of Dole Food Co., Gertten’s film is an egregiously flawed document based on what Dole lawyer Scott Edelman calls “a phony story” that has been discredited by the allegedly fraudulent conduct of the L.A. attorney, Juan J. Dominguez, at the film’s center. Dole, the world’s largest producer of fruits and vegetables, is vowing to sue both the filmmaker and the Los Angeles Film Festival for defamation if it screens the movie this week.
Makes for interesting headlines, though. Dole Sues Bananas!
Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging
Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging - – NYTimes.com
It may be the ultimate free lunch — how to reap all the advantages of a calorically restricted diet, including freedom from disease and an extended healthy life span, without eating one fewer calorie. Just take a drug that tricks the body into thinking it’s on such a diet.
It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. Yet such drugs are now in clinical trials. Even if they should fail, as most candidate drugs do, their development represents a new optimism among research biologists that aging is not immutable, that the body has resources that can be mobilized into resisting disease and averting the adversities of old age.
This optimism, however, is not fully shared. Evolutionary biologists, the experts on the theory of aging, have strong reasons to suppose that human life span cannot be altered in any quick and easy way. But they have been confounded by experiments with small laboratory animals, like roundworms, fruit flies and mice. In all these species, the change of single genes has brought noticeable increases in life span.
via Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging – NYTimes.com.
Wholesale Prices Fell In July, Showed Biggest Drop In 60 Years Over Last Year
Wholesale Prices Fell In July, Showed Biggest Drop In 60 Years Over Last Year
WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices dropped sharply in July, and over the past 12 months fell by the largest amount in more than six decades of record-keeping.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that wholesale prices dropped 0.9 percent last month. That’s triple the decline economists had expected and was driven by big decreases in both energy and food costs. Over the past 12 months, the prices of goods before they reach store shelves fell 6.8 percent.
Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, also was well-behaved. It dropped 0.1 percent in July, better than 0.1 percent gain economists expected.
via Wholesale Prices Fell In July, Showed Biggest Drop In 60 Years Over Last Year.
Israel quietly halts settlement building permits
Israel quietly halts settlement building permits - – Salon.com
JERUSALEM — Israel has quietly moved to halt new housing projects in the West Bank, while outwardly rebuffing U.S. pressure to stop construction in its settlements, Israeli government officials, peace activists and settlers said Tuesday.
It isn’t the full settlement freeze the Obama administration has been demanding, but it indicates that Israel is seeking a compromise in what has become a rare public disagreement with the U.S., its most important ally.
The government has issued no new construction permits for months, the officials, activists and settlers said, a rare agreement among elements that are usually bitter enemies — evidence that this is a new policy aimed at defusing the settlement squabble.
via Israel quietly halts settlement building permits – Salon.com.
U.S. Supreme Court orders new hearing for Troy Davis
U.S. Supreme Court orders new hearing for Troy Davis
Condemned killer on death row for murder of off-duty police officer
Georgia death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis has long insisted that, given another day in court, he could prove he did not kill a Savannah police officer 20 years ago.
On Monday, in an extraordinary order unlike any it has issued in almost half a century, the U.S. Supreme Court gave Davis such a chance.
The high court ordered a federal judge in the Southern District of Georgia to hear testimony that could not have been obtained at the time of Davis’ 1991 trial and decide whether this new evidence “clearly establishes” his innocence in the death of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
Davis’ sister, Martina Correia, said she was overjoyed.
“Finally, it’s going to happen,” she said. “I know that a lot of people still think Troy is guilty. But I know that executing him will not bring justice for Officer MacPhail. I truly believe Troy is innocent.”
via U.S. Supreme Court orders new hearing for Troy Davis | ajc.com.
Recovering from Neoliberal Disaster
Recovering from Neoliberal Disaster
Why Iceland and Latvia Won’t (and Can’t) Pay the EU for the Kleptocrats’ Ripoffs
by Prof. Michael Hudson
Can Iceland and Latvia pay the foreign debts run up by a fairly narrow layer of their population?
The European Union and International Monetary Fund have told them to replace private debts with public obligations, and to pay by raising taxes, slashing public spending and obliging citizens to deplete their savings.
Resentment is growing not only toward those who ran up these debts – Iceland’s bankrupt Kaupthing and Landsbanki with its Icesave accounts, and heavily debt-leveraged property owners and privatizers in the Baltics and Central Europe – but also toward the neoliberal foreign advisors and creditors who pressured these governments to sell off the banks and public infrastructure to insiders.
Support in Iceland for joining the EU has fallen to just over a third of the population, while Latvia’s Harmony Center party, the first since independence to include a large segment of the Russian-speaking population, has gained a majority in Riga and is becoming the most popular national party. Popular protests in both countries have triggered rising political pressure to limit the debt burden to a reasonable ability to pay.
This political pressure came to a head over the weekend in Reykjavik’s Parliament. The Althing agreed a deal, expected to be formalized today, which would severely restrict payments to the UK and Netherlands in compensation for their cost in bailing out their domestic Icesave depositors.
This agreement is, so far as I am aware, the first since the 1920s to subordinate foreign debt to the country’s ability to pay. Iceland’s payments will be limited to 6 per cent of growth in gross domestic product as of 2008. If creditors take actions that stifle the Icelandic economy with austerity and if emigration continues at current rates to escape from the debt-ridden economy, there will be no growth and they will not get paid.
via Recovering from Neoliberal Disaster.
The Second Wave of The Depression: Hyperinflation is Likely
The Second Wave of The Depression: Hyperinflation is Likely
by Webster Tarpley
The second wave of the world economic depression is coming soon. Larry Summers, the economics czar of the Wall Street puppet regime currently in power in Washington, recently confessed to the Financial Times in an unguarded moment: “I don’t think the worst is over ..” A few weeks earlier, Jacques Attali, who served in the 1980s as the main economics adviser to French President Mitterrand, told an audience at the International Economic and Financial Forum (FIEF) in Paris that the world might well soon face a planetary Weimar “in the form of a hyperinflationary depression similar to the German events of 1922 – 1923.
During the last world economic depression, the first wave came in the form of the famous New York Stock market crash of October 1929. But this was only the beginning, and hardly the main event. The world depression of the 1930s was made irreversible by the British bankruptcy of September 1931, when the Bank of England ceased gold payment. At that time, the vast majority of international trade was financed by pounds sterling bills of exchange drawn on London. When the British Pound began to float through a series of competitive devaluations, the lack of a stable reserve currency – and not the US Hawley-Smoot tariff – strangled world trade, thus making that depression as severe as it was. British default in turn undermined the US banking system, setting the stage for the banking panic which ravaged the United States in 1932 and 1933, to the point that not a single bank in the country was still operating by the time Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the presidency in March of 1933. The United States would almost certainly have been lashed by additional waves of depression had it not been for the banking triage implemented by the Roosevelt administration during the bank holiday, and for other New Deal measures which succeeded in mitigating the Depression. Other countries, notably Germany, went into a permanent depression which was expressed in a series of military campaigns which aimed at the economic looting of the other countries of Europe. Whatever the ideological fanatics of the discredited Austria and Chicago schools of economic analysis may claim, there is no automatic business cycle capable of lifting the modern world out of serious economic disintegration. The depression will end when adequate New Deal style policies are implemented, and not before, as I show in my new book, the second edition of Surviving the Cataclysm.
TODAY: BETWEEN 1929 AND 1931
Today, therefore, we are, so to speak, in the trough between the October 1929 wave (which corresponds to the derivatives crisis and banking panic of 2008) and the September 1931 wave, which this time around is highly likely to take the form of a hyperinflationary dollar crisis, or in other words a hyper stagflation and depression of the world economy radiating out from Wall Street and the City of London. What then might be the leading characteristics of the next wave of the current world economic breakdown crisis?
via The Second Wave of The Depression: Hyperinflation is Likely.
State Legislators Press for Public Option in Health Reform
State Legislators Press for Public Option in Health Reform - Political Affairs Magazine – 
On the heels of media reports that the Obama administration might support a Senate bill that excludes a public insurance program, the White House Working Group of State Legislators for Health Reform reiterated its support for a health reform package that includes a public insurance option.
The White House Working Group of State Legislators for Health Reform is a group of elected officials from 26 states who have worked closely with the Obama administration to coordinate grassroots support for health reform.
According to a recent press statement from the group, the group responded to recent media reports and rumors by gathering the signatures of 850 state legislators from both parties in all 50 states on a letter to the President endorsing the public health insurance option.
Iowa State Senator Jack Hatch, chair of the White House Working Group, said “The White House continues to support the public option and the White House Working Group will continue to work strenuously in all 50 states to see that it is passed into law.”
He added, “We cannot let a small group hijack the debate and distract us from the most historic chance we’ve had in generations to improve the quality of life in this country.”
via Political Affairs Magazine – State Legislators Press for Public Option in Health Reform.
Goldman Sach’s golden parachute
Goldman Sach’s golden parachute – guardian.co.uk
By bailing out investment banks without putting conditions on the aid, the US government is rewarding risky behaviour
Dean Baker
Suppose that a company borrowed billions of dollars from the government at a below market interest rate. Suppose it borrowed tens of billions more using explicit guarantees from the government. Suppose further that it borrowed additional money based on the virtually explicit guarantee that the government would not let the company fail, that in a crisis it would lend the company whatever money it needed to pay off its creditors. Suppose this company then handed out $9bn in bonuses, with its top “performers” getting paycheques in the tens of millions. This company is Goldman Sachs.
The public was rightly appalled at the spectacle of the $700bn Tarp programme last fall, in which the government rushed to the rescue of the banks whose greed and incompetence put them on or over the edge of bankruptcy. Just to be clear, it was important for the economy to do something to save the financial system.
But, the government could have placed serious conditions on the Tarp money and other assistance going to the banks. We could have placed strict restrictions on executive compensation, on dividend payments and the use of borrowed money. We could have also taken over basket cases like Citigroup and Bank of America, replaced their management with competent executives and sold them in pieces back to the private sector. In other words, we could have treated the Wall Street millionaires like the welfare recipients they are. We didn’t just have to hand out taxpayer dollars by the bucket.
via Goldman Sach’s golden parachute | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Ralph Nader: Block Obama’s Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies
Block Obama’s Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies
By RALPH NADER
Never much of a fighter against abusive corporate power, Barack Obama is making it increasingly clear that right from his start as President, he wanted health insurance reform that received the approval of the giant drug and health insurance industries.
Earlier this year he started inviting top bosses of these companies for intimate confabs in the White House. Business Week magazine, which proclaimed recently that “The Health Insurers Have Already Won” reported that the CEO of UnitedHealth, Stephen J. Hemsley, met with the President half a dozen times.
These are the vendors. They and their campaign slush funds cannot be ignored in the power struggle over the legislation percolating in the Congress. One public result of these meetings was that the drug industry promised $80 billion in savings over ten years and the health insurance moguls promised $150 billion over the same decade. Mr. Obama trumpeted these declarations without indicating how these savings would be guaranteed, how the drug companies could navigate the antitrust laws and what was given to the health care industry by the White House in return.
via Ralph Nader: Block Obama’s Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies.
The Spiraling Cost of Inaction: Global Warming Triggers More Disasters
The Spiraling Cost of Inaction – americanprogress.org 
Global Warming Triggers More Disasters
Hurricane Claudette hit the Florida panhandle Sunday, lashing it with heavy rains. Hurricane Bill is gathering strength in the Atlantic, and is “poised to grow into a major storm” later this week. It could hit the East Coast as a Category 3 storm with 121 mile-per-hour winds. Meanwhile, “hot, dry winds and high temperatures continue to fan wildfires across California.” Recent wildfires in the state have burned over 100,000 acres.
These events have a common thread. The ferocity of tropical storms and spread of wildfires will increase as the planet warms. Nonetheless, House opponents of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454, spoke during the bill’s June debate as if there were little urgency for action or costs to delay reductions in global warming pollution. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) raised serious doubts about the “effectiveness of any carbon emissions reduction scheme.”
Recently Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) cited a debunked, unscientific report from an EPA economist to claim that the science on climate change was “inconclusive at best.” But there’s a growing body of scientific evidence that global warming has already harmed the United States. And the soaring number of presidential disaster declarations reflects the growing economic, social, and environmental harms from global warming. These trends should serve as another catalyst for action by the Senate this fall as it debates the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
via The Spiraling Cost of Inaction: Global Warming Triggers More Disasters.
The Limits of Likeability
The Limits of Likeability - | The American Prospect 
The president remains popular even as many of his supporters become uneasy about what he’s actually doing.
Robert B. Reich
My friend Fred voted for Obama and trusts him to do the right thing. “He’s the brightest and most decent person who’s occupied the Oval Office in my lifetime,” Fred says. His trust for the man extends to Obama’s agenda. “I don’t have time to wade into the details of the economy or health care or climate change legislation or anything else, but I know he’s got my interests at heart.”
My friend Sally also voted for Obama and still likes him, but she’s increasingly upset about his policies. “He’s giving away the store,” she complains, pointing to his penchant for compromise. “He gave Wall Street $600 billion in bailouts and doesn’t even want to regulate it, gave big polluters 85 percent of the cap-and-trade permits, and has promised the American Medical Association, Big Pharma, and private insurers whatever they want in return for their support of universal health care.” Sally says she voted for Obama because he promised to change American politics, but she thinks corporate interests are more powerful than ever.
Sally also doesn’t see why Obama is so bent on bipartisanship.
“Republicans haven’t helped him a bit so far, won’t help him, and he doesn’t need their votes, so why compromise with them?”
via The Limits of Likeability | The American Prospect.
Americans Want ‘Freedom to Pay Too Much for Inferior Health Care’
Americans Want ‘Freedom to Pay Too Much for Inferior Health Care’ - – SPIEGEL ONLINE 
US President Barack Obama has lost his messianic status in the row over health care reform, say German media commentators. The debate reveals the downside of America’s ideological aversion towards government: Americans are ready to put up with an inferior health service in the name of freedom, it seems.
US President Barack Obama has made a key concession on his planned health-care reform in response to near-hysterical protests across the nation against the overhaul that was a key plank of his election campaign last year.
Obama has signalled retreat on a proposed provision under which consumers could choose from health insurance sold by the federal government as well as those marketed by private companies.
Man Tasered in stop by state cops dies
Man Tasered in stop by state cops dies – By STEPHANIE FARR – Philadelphia Daily News
A Philadelphia man who was Tasered during a traffic stop Friday after he and his female companion allegedly assaulted state troopers, died from unknown causes Sunday morning at Crozer-Chester Medical Center.
The circumstances of Hakim Jackson’s death are being investigated by the state police.
The Delaware County Medical Examiner’s Office, which was to conduct an autopsy yesterday, did not answer phone calls or return messages.
Jackson, 31, was the passenger in a car driven by Ashley McDaniel, 21, of Elkton, Md., that was pulled over about 5:20 p.m. on Interstate 95 South, in Tinicum Township, for tinted window and other violations, police said.
When the car was stopped, both occupants appeared nervous and gave false identification, police said.
via Man Tasered in stop by state cops dies | Philadelphia Daily News | 08/18/2009.
Giant rat-eating nepenthes plant named after David Attenborough
Giant rat-eating nepenthes plant named after David Attenborough - - Times Online
He may be best known for his mellifluous tones and gentle manner, but for one group of botanists Sir David Attenborough clearly conjures up different associations. Explorers who discovered a new species of giant rodent-eating carnivorous plant have named it after the TV naturalist.
Nepenthes attenboroughii, a previously unknown variety of pitcher plant discovered on a remote mountain in the Philippines, is so big that small rodents could be trapped inside and slowly dissolved by flesh-eating enzymes.
It is thought that only a few hundred of the plants exist, growing only on one mountain on the island of Palawan. The species was discovered by a team of scientists who had heard reports from missionaries who got lost in the dense jungle.
via Giant rat-eating nepenthes plant named after David Attenborough – Times Online.
Obama Administration To Triple Workers In Cash For Clunkers
Obama Administration To Triple Workers In Cash For Clunkers: AP
The Obama administration is tripling the number of workers processing Cash for Clunkers transactions as some dealers complain the government has been slow to reimburse them for the car incentives of up to $4,500 per vehicle.
An administration official said Monday the Transportation Department hoped to have 1,100 public and private sector workers processing the vouchers by the end of the week, up from a work force of about 350 through the end of last week.
Employees at a department service center in Oklahoma City have taken the lead in processing the vouchers, the official said, and workers have responded to calls for voluntary overtime to process the forms. The official was not authorized to discuss the work force issues publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
via Obama Administration To Triple Workers In Cash For Clunkers: AP.
Jon Stewart To Obama: Why Can’t You Guys Just Stay On Message? (VIDEO)
Jon Stewart To Obama: Why Can’t You Guys Just Stay On Message? (VIDEO)
Jon Stewart came down on the Obama administration last night for going off message when talking about health care reform. The president has taken heat from protesters and pundits alike over the past several weeks for his “public option” plan which would provide a government-run alternative to private health insurance. On Saturday Obama’s message wavered when he responded to a question in Grand Junction, Colorado by saying, “…The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”
The next day Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, made a similar statement on CNN saying the public option is “not the essential element” of the administration’s plan. But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, still insist the public option is necessary.
via Jon Stewart To Obama: Why Can’t You Guys Just Stay On Message? (VIDEO).
Man Carrying An Assault Rifle And Pistol Outside Obama Event
OPS: so how long will be it before some wingnut Militia gets their entire armed Cell within 100 yards of teh President and decides to ‘open up’ ? It’s just a matter of time - Allowing this is insane
Man Carrying An Assault Rifle And Pistol Outside Obama Event
One Dozen armed civilians at Obama event
An unidentified man carries an assault rifle outside an event in Phoenix where President Obama was speaking.
(Late update: CNN now reports that there were two men carrying assault rifles, reportedly AR-15s, outside President Obama’s event in Phoenix.)
(Late late update: The Associated Press reports that there were about 12 people with guns outside the event.)
A man was seen carrying an assault rifle and a pistol outside the VFW Convention in Phoenix where President Obama spoke today, a local newspaper reports. (Click through for a photo.)
Local police said it’s legal under Arizona law, but two officers kept close by him.
“If we need to intervene, we will intervene at that time,” said Detective J. Oliver.
The man, who gave his name only as “Chris”, was asked why he was armed. “Because I can do it,” he said. “In Arizona, I still have some freedoms.”
via Man Carrying An Assault Rifle And Pistol Outside Obama Event | LiveWire.
Housing starts, permits decline in July
Housing starts, building permits dip – CNNMoney.com
Permits also decline in government report, but single-family construction shows signs of strength.
- Initial construction of U.S. homes edged lower in July following a surge in the previous month, according to government figures released Tuesday.
The report had some modest indications of stabilization. “A mixed bag this time around,” said Mike Larson, real estate and interest rate analyst at Weiss Research, in a research note.
Housing starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 581,000, down 1% from a revised 587,000 in June, the Commerce Department said.
Economists were expecting housing starts to increase to an annual rate of 599,000 units, according to a consensus estimate gathered by Briefing.com.
via Housing starts, permits decline in July – Aug. 18, 2009.
Unemployment Spike Compounds Foreclosure Crisis
Unemployment Spike Compounds Foreclosure Crisis – By Renae Merle – washingtonpost.com
The country’s growing unemployment is overtaking subprime mortgages as the main driver of foreclosures, according to bankers and economists, threatening to send even higher the number of borrowers who will lose their homes and making the foreclosure crisis far more complicated to unwind.
Economists estimate that 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year, up from 1.4 million last year, according to Moody’s Economy.com. And the government, which has already committed billions of dollars to foreclosure-prevention efforts, has found it far more difficult to help people who have lost their paychecks than those whose mortgage payments became unaffordable because of an interest-rate increase.
“It’s a much harder nut to crack, unemployment,” said Mark A. Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. “It’s much easier to bash lenders than to create jobs.”
During the first three months of this year, the largest share of foreclosures shifted from subprime loans to prime loans, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The change to prime loans — traditionally considered safer — reflects the growing numbers of unemployed who are being caught up in the foreclosure process, economists say.
via Unemployment Spike Compounds Foreclosure Crisis.
100 protesters heckle Huckabee in Israel
100 protesters heckle Huckabee in Israel – Raw Story » 
One banner said ‘we are not pawns in your Armageddon’
JERUSALEM — About 100 protesters heckled former US Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee on Monday as he attended a function to support Jewish settlements in mainly Arab east Jerusalem.
Two dozen right-wing Israelis staged a counter-protest, waving huge flags and cheering Huckabee, who has been touted as a possible Republican candidate in 2012.
Huckabee was among about 100 guests, including several Israeli MPs, who attended a private function held at the former Shepherd Hotel, the site of a controversial housing project for Jewish settlers funded by US millionaire Irving Moskovitz.
via Raw Story » 100 protesters heckle Huckabee in Israel.
DNA evidence can be faked and planted at crime scenes, researchers find
DNA evidence can be faked and planted at crime scenes, researchers find - The Raw Story »
Until now, DNA was considered the “gold standard” of criminal investigations: Hundreds of wrongly convicted individuals have been freed around the world after DNA analysis proved them innocent of their crimes; and many of the guilty have been brought to justice through DNA evidence as well.
But the days of DNA’s supremacy in the courtroom could soon come to an end, as researchers in Israel say it can be faked and planted at crime scenes, using basic DNA analysis techniques.
“You can just engineer a crime scene,” Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, told the New York Times. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
The researchers, who published their results in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, say there are two basic ways to fake DNA evidence. One is to obtain a small sample of someone’s DNA — from saliva, or hair, or blood, for example — and multiply it using a common procedure called whole genome amplification.
via The Raw Story » DNA evidence can be faked and planted at crime scenes, researchers find.
Law enforcement group takes ‘legalize drugs’ message to Washington Post readers
Law enforcement group takes ‘legalize drugs’ message to Washington Post readers – The Raw Story »
Peter Moskos and Stanford “Neill” Franklin — one a college professor, the other a former police officer, both members of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) — saw their advocacy of ending drug prohibition published Monday morning by The Washington Post.
Their argument is compelling. Here’s an excerpt:
Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies — and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men — have we and other police officers begun to question the system.
Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn’t work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.
Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.
Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.
The column’s authors argue that among all the reasons for drug war reform, the most important to them is that ending America’s war on its drug users means “more police officers wouldn’t have to die.”
via The Raw Story » Law enforcement group takes ‘legalize drugs’ message to Washington Post readers.
Saving the Rust Belt
Saving the Rust Belt - Craig Harrington - economyincisis.org
Forbes.com list of “America’s Fastest-Dying Cities” was exclusively populated with cities in what is known as the “Rust Belt.”
In August 2008 Forbes.com produced a list of “America’s Fastest-Dying Cities.” It was almost exclusively populated with cities in what is known as the “Rust Belt,” with the worst hit state being the one-time industrial heartland of Ohio – Canton, Dayton, Cleveland, and Youngstown all made the list. Next in line is Michigan, boasting both Detroit and Flint.
In an effort to revitalize their cities and remake their image, mayors and city planners from each of the infamous Forbes selections met in Dayton, Ohio to discuss their comeback.
The meeting took place at the Dayton Convention Center and, according to The Wall Street Journal, those in attendance gave the summit mixed reviews. Many of the city leaders had lofty aspirations for what they need to do in order to remake their cities, but they lacked funding or solid plans.
With declining populations and increasing joblessness, America’s fastest-dying cities lack the necessary tax-bases required to rebuild and refurbish old towns. Detroit and Flint may be helped in the next few years by boosts in wind turbine production and American-built GM, Ford, and Chrysler models.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Enemy in the “War on Terror is Us, We Continue to Fight at Our Own Peril
The Enemy in the “War on Terror is Us, We Continue to Fight at Our Own Peril
I write this as a New York Times article on how criminal the Bush Administration was as it waged and expanded the “war on terror” circulates. It is referenced and discussed at the end of this article and specifically details how the CIA interrogation program was developed.
Underneath the takeover of the health care debate by right wing mobs, beneath the dumbfounding and ostentatious discussion on whether the U.S. economy is out of a recession or has saved itself from a depression, is the central issue of the “global war on terror,” an agenda pursued by “the terrorism industry” that could hold Americans hostage over the next few decades.
In the past week, John Brennan, an assistant to Obama on issues of counterterrorism and homeland security, suggested to an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank that Obama’s approach to fighting Islamic extremism is and will be different than Bush’s approach. If this is true, why does Obama still refuse the release of prison photos and why does Obama plan to send more troops to Afghanistan?
via OpEdNews – The Enemy in the “War on Terror is Us, We Continue to Fight at Our Own Peril.
China Investing in U.S. Mortgages
China Investing in U.S. Mortgages – Dustin Ensinger – - economyincisis.org
China Investment Corp. is planning on investing $2 billion in taxpayer-backed investment funds that will acquire toxic mortgage-backed securities.
Forecasting a recovery in the ailing U.S. housing market, the Chinese government is set to a use a small portion of its massive sovereign wealth fund to invest in the American real estate market, according to Reuters.
China Investment Corp., which is thought to hold roughly $200 billion in assets, is planning on investing $2 billion in taxpayer-backed investment funds that will acquire toxic mortgage-backed securities as part of the government’s Public-Private Investment Plan (PPIP), Reuters reports.
Apparently, the Chinese government feels that investing in PPIP is a much safer bet than the Federal Reserve’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF).
“In this case, CIC feels safer to invest and the safer it feels, the more confident it will naturally feel about its investments, as well as in the prospects for the U.S. economy,” an anonymous source told Reuters.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Why We Need Health Care Reform
Why We Need Health Care Reform – - NYTimes.com
By BARACK OBAMA 
OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.
These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.
I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.
via Op-Ed Contributor – Why We Need Health Care Reform – NYTimes.com.
Wall Street Battered, Pay Czar Tested
Wall Street Battered, Pay Czar Tested – Craig Harrington – economyincisis.org
The morning session today saw 2 percent losses on the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P500.
The enthusiasm and optimism which had buoyed Wall Street to new heights has been battered during the past several trading days. The morning session today saw 2 percent losses on the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P500, and the outlook for the rest of the day is far from upbeat.
The decline in share prices was not only in the United States; it was seen in markets around the world as fears of a weak recovery proved to be self-fulfilling.
The recovery may indeed be weak but, in some countries at least, it has arrived. Figures out of Japan reveal growth in the second quarter, which would officially mark the end to its recession.
Japan is the world’s second largest economy; having skillfully built-up its own resources in manufacturing, banking, finance, and consumption. The government in Tokyo claims that its growth will be slim as the economy deals with its own employment problems.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Spinning the Economic News
Spinning the Economic News - Paul Craig Roberts, with video by Craig Harrington – economyincisis.org
By spinning the financial news, the appearance of recovery is created, and this lures people back into the stock and real-estate markets where they can lose the remainder of their wealth.
Last Friday, a Bloomberg.com headline read: U.S. Stocks Gain, Treasuries Drop as Unemployment Rate Declines.
Let’s have a look at the reported decline in the rate of unemployment. Do you believe that the U.S. auto industry added 28,000 jobs in July amidst the GM bankruptcy, sell-off and close-down of GM auto divisions, and demise of GM suppliers? No? Well, that’s what the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
The 28,000 new jobs were created by “seasonal adjustments.” July is a month when jobs are automatically added by the BLS to seasonally smooth the layoffs of autoworkers during July’s retooling for the new model year. This year, most of the retooling did not occur, yet the annual seasonal adjustments did. Adjustments are also made for supporting industries, which are partially idled while auto production halts for retooling.
More phantom jobs were created by the “Birth-Death Model.” The payroll jobs data contains guesses about the numbers of new startup company hires and jobs lost from business failures. Failed businesses don’t report the lost jobs (deaths), and new jobs from startups (births) are not captured in the reporting. The government estimates these numbers, but the estimates are based mainly on growth periods, not on recessionary times. Consequently, during economic downturns, the Birth-Death Model overestimates the number of new startup jobs and underestimates the job loss.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Unavoidable Deficit
The Unavoidable Deficit – Craig Harrington -economyincisis.org
The Economic Policy Institute published a comprehensive overview of the state of America’s deficit in a policy brief that details the gradual collapse of fiscal discipline in Washington.
The political right in this country has been quick to jump on the Obama administration for creating what it sees as irresponsible debt obligations. What they are quick, and indeed happy, to ignore is the incredible strain put on this economy during the past eight years.
The unfunded spending and tax-cuts of the Bush administration not only decreased government revenue, they increased outlays and made the economy dependent on foreign loans. These policies were fine in a time of opulence, but now the entire nation is paying the price for them.
The nonpartisan, non-profit Economic Policy Institute published a comprehensive overview of the state of America’s deficit in an August 14th policy brief. This brief details the gradual collapse of fiscal discipline in Washington beginning with the 2000 election and continuing through to today.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Obama Justice Department files new DOMA brief, calling the law ‘discriminatory’ and in need of repeal.
Obama Justice Department files new DOMA brief, calling the law ‘discriminatory’ and in need of repeal. - Think Progress »
The Obama administration has been seeking to dismiss a suit brought by a gay couple in California challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In June, the Obama Justice Department’s brief defending DOMA infuriated LGBT activists because it referenced incest and child rape when talking about marriage equality. Today, however, the Justice Department has filed a new brief making clear it believes DOMA is “discriminatory” and should be repealed. The White House even put out a statement from Obama on the matter:
Scalia says there’s nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent.
Scalia says there’s nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent. - Think Progress »
Almost two decades ago, Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Since then, seven of the witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, and some have even implicated Sylvester “Redd” Coles, a witness who testified that Davis was the shooter. In light of the very real evidence that Davis could be innocent of the crime that placed him on death row, the Supreme Court today invoked a rarely used procedure giving Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction:
This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.
via Think Progress » Scalia says there’s nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent..
Eight more companies stop advertising on Glenn Beck.
Eight more companies stop advertising on Glenn Beck. - Think Progress »
Eight more companies — including Allergan, Ally Bank, Best Buy, Broadview Security, CVS, Re-Bath, Travelocity, and Wal-Mart — have agreed to stop advertising on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show. Their announcements are in response to a ColorOfChange campaign after Beck said that President Obama is a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” A total of 20 companies have now pulled their advertising. “We support vigorous debate, especially around policy issues that affect millions of Americans, but we expect it to be informed, inclusive and respectful, in keeping with our company’s core values and commitment to diversity,” explained Carolyn Castel, Vice President of Corporate Communications for CVS Caremark.
via Think Progress » Eight more companies stop advertising on Glenn Beck..
Luntz admits he tries to convince focus group attendees to oppose health care reform.
Luntz admits he tries to convince focus group attendees to oppose health care reform. – Think Progress »
In May, pollster Frank Luntz presented a memo to congressional Republicans, laying out a strategy for opposing health care reform. Since then, the GOP has closely followed his script. Appearing on Fox News today, Luntz claimed that his recent focus groups have shown how “angry” Americans are about President Obama’s push for health care reform. But Luntz also admitted that he tries to convince people at his focus groups to be more scared of government than insurance companies:
LUNTZ: They were more angry and more fearful of government than insurance companies, but not by much. And what I’m saying to people who are nervous about this health care, as I listen to the give and take, is if you don’t like the insurance companies — and most people don’t — then do you really want to add an extra layer of bureaucracy and an extra level of bureaucrats and yet another set of people who can say no to you.
Watch it:
‘Egg-as-Person’ Crusade Drives Big Money to Anti-choice Groups
‘Egg-as-Person’ Crusade Drives Big Money to Anti-choice Groups – | RHRealityCheck.org
Anti-Choice Zealots Make Bank Promoting the “Personhood” of Zygotes
Wendy Norris is a freelance writer from Denver, Colorado working on special assignments for RH Reality Check, including investigative research into the anti-choice movement at the state level. She is currently covering the “egg-as-person” movement for RH Reality Check. Her most recent previous article on this issue for RHRC can be found here. Other posts on this issue can be found by searching “personhood” and “egg-as-person” on our site. Recent pieces include others by Wendy, analyses by Lynn Paltrow, and this cartoon.
Wendy’s work can also be read at the public policy blog, Unbossed.com.
In just five short years, the primary movers and shakers in the absolutist anti-abortion/anti-choice movement seeking to promote the “personhood” of zygotes (the single cell that forms after a sperm fertilizes an egg) have amassed nearly $58 million in tax-deductible contributions for their cause.
Even the lead up to one of the worst economic periods in U.S. history has barely registered a blip in the group’s collective money-drawing power according to an examination of IRS and state campaign finance records conducted for RH Reality Check. Four out of the five groups are raising more cash than ever with sophisticated fundraising operations, flush investment portfolios, and robust revenue-generating activities.
This isn’t your grandma’s church bake sale by any stretch of the imagination.
via ‘Egg-as-Person’ Crusade Drives Big Money to Anti-choice Groups | RHRealityCheck.org.
Is Whole Foods Sustainable or Just a High-Priced Hoax? I Took a Job There to Find Out
Is Whole Foods Sustainable or Just a High-Priced Hoax? I Took a Job There to Find Out – By Jill Richardson, Ig Publishing
Was Whole Foods truly sustainable, or was it just a high-priced version of the same food one could find in a conventional supermarket?
From Recipe for America by Jill Richardson. Reprinted with permission of Ig Publishing.
As a sustainable-food aficionado, my attitude toward Whole Foods and other national chains offering organic food changes based on the available alternatives.
When I can buy directly from local farmers and food artisans, I avoid places like Whole Foods. However, when I am on the road and my next best option is Subway, I look to Whole Foods as an oasis.
After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma’s harsh account of Whole Foods and its suppliers (Michael Pollan traces some of the food sold at Whole Foods back to its suppliers, and what he discovers is not necessarily the “supermarket pastoral” that the company promises) and then seeing Pollan debate Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, I decided to get to the bottom of the matter by taking a job in the bakery at a Whole Foods in San Diego. My goal was to answer the following question: Was Whole Food truly sustainable, or was it just a high-priced version of the same food one could find in a conventional supermarket?
Right off the bat, Whole Foods made an impressive effort to train its new staff members on how to properly handle organic food. I, along with the rest of the new hires, had to complete an eight-week training course with team trainers before going before team and store managers to be quizzed on the information we had learned. In addition, we had to complete computer-based training on various topics (earning a free organic-cotton T-shirt in the process).
It’s Now or Never for a Public Option: Why We Need to Take a Stand Against to the Insurance Industry’s Greed
It’s Now or Never for a Public Option: Why We Need to Take a Stand Against to the Insurance Industry’s Greed – By Joshua Holland, AlterNet.
We are at a crucial moment in the health care debate — Obama needs pressure from all of us to keep the public option as part of his agenda.
Editor’s note: It’s now or never for the public option. Campaign for America’s Future has put together 4 key actions you can take to win back the health care debate. “We absolutely cannot let the far right fringe do the bidding of the insurance and drug lobbies and hijack the debate,” they write. “The battle for health care reform has moved to town halls during the August congressional recess. But the wild mobs disrupting events, intimidating lawmakers, and shouting down reform are not just expressing their views, they are doing the dirty work for corporate interests that want to cut the heart out of the Obama health plan.”As Joshua Holland explained in a recent article, this fight is about making your health care more affordable, giving you better coverage and helping people who have no coverage under the current system.
Now or never — Push for the public option:
1. Call your representative and senators to find out when and where August town halls will be in your area, using the main congressional switchboard number: (202) 224-3121. You can also check this calendar.
2. Go to the Congress.org congressional directory to get the direct phone lines of your representatives’ offices.
3. Find out when and where citizen groups will be meeting and organizing throughout August, and find out what’s happening in your area at Health Care for America Now.
4. When you’re at a town hall, communicate a simple message for your representatives to understand what their constituents want:
- I support health care reform with a strong public plan option—and most people I know do, too.
- We sent you to Washington to get health care for all—and we will support you if you work to get that done.
- Please ignore the right-wing extremists who are attacking health reform—and do what a majority of your constituents want: Vote for health care for all.
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Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle
Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle – | Mother Jones
The Fiji Phenomenon: It’s a Human Rights and Environmental Nightmare, So Why Is It the #1 Imported Bottled Water in the US? How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?
Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won’t sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?
—By Anna Lenzer
via Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle | Mother Jones.
Poll: Fox News Seen As Least Trustworthy, Viewership Mostly Old Southern Republicans
Poll: Fox News Seen As Least Trustworthy, Viewership Mostly Old Southern Republicans – Pensito Review »
Fox News has the largest viewership of all cable news channels, despite the fact that its work product is not actua journalism. Fox has never broken a story, for example. Instead, what it broadcasts is an admixture of right-wing propaganda and fear-porn for feeble-minded paranoiacs, served up by spokesmodels who have no clue what they are reading.
A new poll from DailyKos/Research 2000 finds that while almost all normal Americans see through this ruse, Fox depends almost exclusively on middle-aged and older Southern Republicans for its success.
How to kill a coal plant
How to kill a coal plant – By Mark Engler | Salon
As a recent British protest shows, nonviolent civil disobedience may be our best hope to counteract global warming
In the early morning of Oct. 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England. While other activists cut electricity on the plant’s grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block letters a demand that Prime Minister Gordon Brown put an end to plants like the Kingsnorth facility, which releases nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day.
The activists, most of them in their 30s and 40s, expected the climb to the top of the smokestack would take less than three hours. Instead, scaling a narrow metal ladder inside took nine. “It was the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done,” 35-year-old Ben Stewart said later. “It was like climbing through a huge radiator — the hottest, dirtiest place you could imagine.”
In the end, the fatigued, soot-covered climbers were only able to paint the word “Gordon” on the chimney before, facing dizzying heights, police helicopters, and a high court injunction, they were compelled to abandon the attempt and submit to arrest. They could hardly have known then that their botched attempt at signage would help transform British debate about fossil-fuel power plants — and that it would send tremors through an emerging global movement determined to use direct action to combat the depredations of climate change.
via How to kill a coal plant | Salon.
Hartford Courant Consumer Columnist Fired For Pissing Off Advertiser
Hartford Courant Consumer Columnist Fired For Pissing Off Advertiser
Consumer affairs columnist George Gombossy has worked for the Hartford Courant since 1969—longer than most Consumerist readers have been alive. Yesterday was his last day at the paper, but he wasn’t caught up in one of the rounds of buyouts and layoffs hitting the newspaper industry. Gombossy claims that he was “was fired for doing [his] job,” after his last column exposed the bedbug-infested mattresses sold by a major Courant advertiser.
Gombossy is probably best remembered here at Consumerist for exposing the dastardly employees-only price-matching web site practices of Best Buy back in 2007.
He wrote his Watchdog column for the Courant for three years, and was the paper’s business editor for twelve years before that. So what did he do to justify being shown the door?
The last column, which the paper refused to run, is about a Connecticut Attorney General investigation into mattress emporium Sleepy’s. The chain is accused of selling used mattresses as new, and—even worse—selling used mattresses infested with bedbugs as new. Ew.
We’re sorry to hear of yet another newspaper losing its consumer columnist, and are particularly annoyed (though not surprised) to hear of this collision of advertising and editorial. Consumerist, like our sister publication Consumer Reports, doesn’t accept any advertising.
via Newspapers: Hartford Courant Consumer Columnist Fired For Pissing Off Advertiser.
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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. 
