Archive for October, 2009
Report: News Corp., Liberty could enter mix for NBC Universal
The future of NBC Universal remains in flux, and now, News Corp. and Liberty Media have expressed interest in a possible stake in the company, according to reports from CNBC.
NBCU, which is 80 percent owned and controlled by General Electric Co., has been rumored to be looking at a deal with Comcast that would have the company 51 percent owned by Comcast and 49 percent owned by GE.
The report goes on to say that GE is looking to have a pair of “puts” placed into a deal with Comcast that would have GE put some of the 49 percent stake onto Comcast after three and seven years after the new NBC Universal is created.
Full Story: Report: News Corp., Liberty could enter mix for NBC Universal – Los Angeles Business from bizjournals:.
Supreme Court to Hear Appeal of Enron’s Skilling Supreme
Court To Consider Throwing Out Convictions Of Former Enron CEO
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling’s challenge to his 2006 fraud conviction stemming from the spectacular collapse of the Houston-based energy company.
Mr. Skilling was convicted on charges of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $45 million.
A New Orleans-based federal appeals court affirmed Mr. Skilling’s conviction in January, though the court did rule that his prison sentence was incorrect and needed to be recalculated.
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Mr. Skilling argued the government prosecuted him under an invalid legal theory that he committed fraud by depriving the company of his “honest services.” Mr. Skilling said the government never made any allegations that his actions were motivated by personal gain.
Full Story: Supreme Court to Hear Appeal of Enron’s Skilling – WSJ.com.
Beck-backing protesters raise ruckus outside much-publicized elementary school
A group of protesters have taken it upon themselves to gather outside the school made famous by conservative media after a group of children were filmed singing the praises of President Barack Obama.
A collection of about 60 or 70 protesters, reportedly affiliated with Glenn Beck’s “9/12 Project” and the “tea party” groups, stood in front of New Jersey’s B. Bernice Young Elementary School on Monday morning.
“The protesters sang patriotic anthems and chanted slogans such as ‘Free children, free minds,’” the Associated Press noted.
Full Story: Beck-backing protesters raise ruckus outside much-publicized elementary school | Raw Story.
Goldman Sachs 2009 bonuses to double 2008’s; $23 billion could send 460,000 to Harvard, buy insurance for 1.7 million families
Yesterday, we brought you the insurance company that wouldn’t insure a 17-pound infant because he was too heavy. Today, we bring you the investment bank that manages to double its bonuses during the worst recession since the Great Depression.
On Thursday, Goldman Sachs will announce the firm’s bonus payments for 2009. Analysts expect the bonus pool to mushroom to $23 billion — double the bonus pool paid to employees in 2008. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs said that it had put aside $11.4 billion for bonuses during the first half of the year.
“The absolute size of compensation payouts will rise significantly,” Keith Horowitz, an analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note to clients two weeks ago, highlighted by Andrew Sorkin in The New York Times’ dealbook column Tuesday.
How much is $23,000,000,000?
Stewart skewers CNN for fact checking Saturday Night Live but not their own guests | Video
CNN recently fact checked a Saturday Night Live sketch that criticized President Barack Obama. Jon Stewart wants to know why the network can’t be bothered to fact check Republican lawmakers that cite bogus health care reform statistics.
On his Monday Daily Show, Stewart skewered CNN for tearing apart a comedy skit when they don’t even bother to fact check their own guests.
“You fact checked an SNL sketch?” Stewart remarked. “That’s what you fact checked?… You got together, did some research, and put together a report on a Saturday Night Live Sketch?
“While you were doing your research did you also find that sharks live in water and don’t deliver candy grams. That there’s no African American equivalent of Mr. Rogers? And that the majority of boxes don’t have d*cks in them?”
Then, the Daily Show host turned to CNN’s ability to fact check healthcare reform.
Full Story: Stewart skewers CNN for fact checking Saturday Night Live but not their own guests | Raw Story.
Weiner: Insurance industry’s last-minute pressure backfiring
In its 11th-hour attempt to scuttle health care reform in the Senate, the health insurance industry may have inadvertently strengthened the case for what it fears most — a public health care option, says a New York congressman.
In his set-up to an interview with US House Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), MSNBC’s David Shuster said the health industry may have “shot itself in the foot” by releasing a report on Sunday that predicted insurers would raise health premiums by 40 percent over four years as a result of health care reform.
The study (PDF), commissioned by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and carried out by auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, also said rates would rise a whopping 111 percent by 2019 if the current health care reform proposals are passed into law.
Full Story: Weiner: Insurance industry’s last-minute pressure backfiring | Raw Story.
Echoing Insurance Industry, Lieberman Says He Doesn’t Support Baucus Bill
In August, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told CNN that he believed it was the wrong time for President Obama and Congress to attempt health care reform. “I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy is out of recession,” said Lieberman. “There’s no reason we have to do it all now.”
Asked by radio host Don Imus today what aspects of the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill he supported, Lieberman struck a negative tone, saying, “I’m concerned that there’s a danger that we’re trying to do too much”:
LIEBERMAN: I’ve been saying for a couple of months now that I’m concerned, that I’m concerned that there’s a danger that we’re trying to do too much here and the president is trying to do two good things. But doing them at once in the middle of a recession may be hard to pull off. And the two good things are to bend the cost of health care down by changing a lot of the ways health care is delivered. The second thing is to cover some of the people, millions of people, who are not covered with insurance. So, this puts us in the position where you say, on the one hand, what we’re about to do in adopting health care reform will, will reduce the cost of health insurance from what it would otherwise be and the other hand you say, oh incidentally, we’re going to raise your taxes or cut your Medicare to the tune of $900 billion or a trillion. And people are beginning to think that maybe they’d do better holding on to what they have now.
Full Story: Think Progress » Echoing Insurance Industry, Lieberman Says He Doesn’t Support Baucus Bill.
Chinese Glass in New World Trade Center Causing Outrage
A report by the EPI found that China has risen to become the world’s biggest glass producers mainly through illegal subsidies to manufacturers.
Yet another bitter trade dispute between China and the U.S. could be on the horizon. This one will be centered on Chinese subsidies to glass manufacturers after a Chinese company won the bid to furnish the glass set to be used on the lowest 20 floors of the yet-to-be rebuilt One World Trade Center building.
The glass will be made by a Chinese company. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey shunned a bid by PPG Industries, a Pittsburgh-based company, to manufacture the glass.
PPG Industries had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on plant upgrades in hopes of winning the $82 million contract. Instead, it was awarded to DCM Erectors Inc/Solera Construction, a New York City-based company that intends to subcontract the work to Zetian Systems of Las Vegas, which in turn will subcontract with China Beijing Glass to manufacture the glass.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
High Stocks For Now
Stocks are currently sitting atop 2009-highs, this optimism could either be encouraged or crushed later in the week when major corporations begin releasing their earnings reports.
U.S. markets were expected to open with gains this morning, after a strong close on Friday and a relatively uneventful weekend. The Dow led all gains at the close last week, finishing with a 0.79 percent increase (78.07 points). This was followed closely by the NASDAQ, up 0.72 percent (15.35 points), and the S&P which gained 0.56 percent (6.01 points).
In the first hour of trading the optimism left over from last week was able to push markets further beyond last week’s highs. This optimism could either be encouraged or crushed later in the week when major corporations begin releasing their earnings reports. For now stocks are sitting atop fresh 2009-highs, but bad reports could set back the rally we have seen over the past three months.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
U.S. Must Depend on the Goodwill of Foreign Creditors
If at any point, these countries decided that they were not satisfied with our policies or practices, they could elect to shed this debt.
Foreign countries now finance 47 percent of our total outstanding federal deficit and they fund nearly 100 percent of net new debt issued annually by the US Government. This means we are highly dependent on foreign countries to finance our government. Foreign lending now funds our social programs, our public works programs, and even our national defense. Just like a bank that holds a mortgage over a homeowner, our country is beholden to these foreign creditors to keep constantly refinancing this debt. If at any point, these countries decided that they were not satisfied with our policies or practices, they could elect to shed this debt. In effect the US Government would go bankrupt overnight. Our government is now borrowing nearly $300 billion per year from foreign sources. If these sources were to stop lending or even merely cut back a bit, how would we bridge the gap? We would have to resort to printing money and thereby risk hyperinflation.
While some argue foreign countries are buying US government debt for the yield and safety, this clearly makes little sense. The world’s financial people can easily see how precarious our position really is given our absolute dependence on the goodwill of foreign creditors. The real reason they lend us so much is because they want to have a say in our policies. We can no longer refuse foreigners’ requests to buy our key assets as they are our bankers. Nor can we stand up to them when they want us to enter into lopsided and unreasonable trade agreements. How weak we have become is clearly apparent in the record of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is charged with overseeing acquisitions of American companies by foreign investors. CFIUS is part of the US Treasury – the same department that is charged with raising debt to finance the government. Of all the thousands of proposed foreign acquisitions CFIUS has reviewed in the last 18 years, it has overturned just one.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Rising Waters of Inflation
Despite the common perception that the US Federal Reserve has deftly guided this country through the rising waters of inflation, in reality, two specific factors are responsible for low inflation.
Despite the common perception that the US Federal Reserve has deftly guided this country through the rising waters of inflation, in reality, two specific factors are principally responsible for low inflation in recent years: (1) declining import prices; (2) declining labor costs at home due to pressures from low import prices. Neither of these factors can be expected to control inflation forever. In reality they have merely postponed an inevitable outbreak of inflation. Interest rate and money supply management will not be enough to compensate for the structural imbalances and massive debts that have been accumulated.
By shifting our consumption from domestic to foreign-produced goods, we have shifted wealth-producing industries abroad and dropped our savings rate from double digits to negative digits. So-called globalization and “free trade” have taken our labor force with its world-leading standard of living and pitted it against the bottom of the world in terms of labor rates and standards of living. There is no way our labor force can compete with this. If these trends continue, the massive wealth transfer that is now taking place will dramatically erode the standard of living of our labor force. Already real wages have stopped growing, and we will eventually face severe inflation as our dollar falls on foreign exchange markets and foreign suppliers take advantage of the collapse of our manufacturing base.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Putting the Afghanistan War in Perspective
Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings
Will they never learn?
Let’s go back to 9/11 – the worst of terrorism. Osama bin Laden told us why. He said the U. S. support for Israel was a crusade or holy war against Islam. Osama made so much trouble in his native Saudi Arabia that he was expelled to Sudan. And making trouble there, he went to Afghanistan to train terrorists. Osama told us again and again of his cause for terrorism. He helped blow up our Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, but we didn’t listen. After we went into Kuwait, he blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but we didn’t listen. He then blew up the U.S.S. Cole, but we didn’t listen. Finally, when he blew up the World Trade Towers and Pentagon, we listened. We knew immediately where to go after the culprit. But we misunderstood the cause of the terrorism, saying that the Muslim world was jealous of our freedoms. And to obscure the cause, we lashed out at the world. President Bush characterized 9/11 as a War on Terror, telling the world you’re either “for us or against us.”
Terror is not a war but a tactic, a strategy. Five years ago, I traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Senator Ted Stevens, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Senator John Warner, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Our first stop was Jordan where we had a two hour conference with King Abdullah. As we stood to leave, the King asked Stevens and Warner to get on President Bush to settle the Israel-Palestinian conflict. At our stop in Kuwait, the Emir pleaded the importance of settling the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Again, after a two-hour conference in Pakistan with President Musharraf, as we stood to leave, he urged: “Settle the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and 85 percent of the terrorism in the world will disappear.” The world knows our support of Israel is a principal cause of terrorism against the United States. But politicians in Washington can’t acknowledge this. To confirm Osama’s cause would have AIPAC coming down on your head as being anti-Semitic. But I can state it because I am pro-Semitic, pro-Israel, and have a thirty-eight year voting record to prove it. Washington politicians and the media continue to engage in the charade of a War on Terror.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
It’s Not Too Late to Get Stimulus Cash
Ten Ways You Can Benefit from the Recovery Act
Eight months since President Barack Obama signed his $787 billion stimulus package, the government has obligated only 48 percent of the money, and $214 billion in stimulus cash is still available to families, students, nonprofits, local governments and small businesses. Here are 10 ways to access the stimulus.
1) Weatherize your home
If you want to make your home more energy efficient, the stimulus package sets aside $5 billion for the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program. The average family can make up to $6,500 in energy efficiency upgrades. It’s available to everyone who makes under 200 percent of the federal poverty level – about $44,000 a year for a family of four. Contact your state energy office, which will refer you to a local nonprofit who will visit your house and do an energy audit before carrying out the work.
Full Story: It’s Not Too Late to Get Stimulus Cash – NAM.
Domestic Abuse Victims Struggle with Another Blow: Difficulty Getting Health Insurance
In 2006, attorney Jody Neal-Post tried to get health insurance but was rejected because of treatment — counseling and Valium — she received following a domestic-abuse incident. She says the insurer told her that her medical history made her a high risk, more likely to end up in the emergency room or require additional care.
Four years earlier, Neal-Post says, she had been assaulted by her ex-husband in her home in Albuquerque, N.M. According to police records, both she and her ex-spouse were charged in the incident. The charges were later dropped.
She wasn’t prepared for the blow from the insurer. “I was just flabbergasted,” says Neal-Post, a 52-year-old attorney. During the altercation with her ex-husband, “I was beaten and choked in my living room,” she says. “I’m trying to keep my family together and get medical care. And then you make it through, with everyone back on track, and years later, when it’s no longer part of your daily life to remember that and you’re feeling good, it’s back again.”
Full Story: Domestic Abuse Victims Struggle with Another Blow: Difficulty Getting Health Insurance – Kaiser Health News.
The Stupidity of “Zero-Tolerance”: 6-Year-Old Suspended For Bringing Food Utensil to School
What can this teach us about U.S. foreign policy? Quite a lot, actually.
NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.
Zachary’s offense? Taking a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about joining the Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.via It’s a Fork, It’s a Spoon, It’s a … Weapon? — NYTimes.com
When great tragedy happens in this country (say, planes flying into towers or two young men shooting up their high school,) Americans typically react in the following fashion:
- Freak the fuck out
- Believe whatever the loudest politician tells them
- Assign blame to a convenient, but usually incorrect target
- Participate in a reactive, hyper-totalitarian government policy
- Repeat at next tragedy
The list applies to the post-9/11 hysteria, but it also applies to post-Columbine America. “Zero-tolerance” policy arose from the string of shooting sprees in American high schools. As usual, schools did not thoughtfully analyze what kind of school environment (complete with hierarchical sects and rampant bullying) is inspiring such horrific shootings. Rather, schools followed steps 1 through 5, and opted for a hyper-totalitarian state within a state where children are all treated as suspects, including little Zachary Christie.
Full Story: The Stupidity of “Zero-Tolerance”: 6-Year-Old Suspended For Bringing Food Utensil to School | PEEK | AlterNet.
Rachel Maddow, voice of America
By cutting across the grain of US cable news, the sober-minded liberal pundit has become the best talkshow host in America
Rachel Maddow first came on my radar in the spring of 2004, when she, along with Lizz Winstead and Chuck D of Public Enemy hosted an early morning radio show called Unfiltered on the newly minted Air America, an attempt to counter rightwing talk radio with liberal programming.
Radio has this ability to make the listener feel like they share a secret with the hosts and the few, hard-to-know listeners out there. I hoped people tuned in to listen to the hosts trade jokes and talk about politics and music, and mostly I wanted other people to learn about this Maddow character, who brought to every episode a dynamic mix of sparkling good humour, intelligent analysis and a broad view of what issues should matter.
Unfiltered didn’t make the first round of reshuffling at Air America, but Maddow hung in, hosting her own eponymous radio show and eventually moving to television, first as a guest pundit and now as a host of her own night time political talkshow on MSNBC.
Full Story: Rachel Maddow, voice of America | Amanda Marcotte | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Why Republicans Are in the Grip of an Apocalyptic Rapture Cult Centered on Revenge and Vindication
The following is an excerpt from Frank Schaeffer’s new book, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism) (Da Capo Press, 2009) to be released at the end of this month.
Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of sixteen novels (so far!) represents everything that is most deranged about religion. If I had to choose companions to take my chances with in a lifeboat, and the choice boiled down to picking Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, or Christopher Hitchens, I’d pick Hitchens in a heartbeat. At least he wouldn’t try to sink our boat so that Jesus would come back sooner. He might even bring along a case of wine.
The Left Behind novels have sold tens of millions of copies while spawning an “End Times” cult, or rather egging it on. Such products as Left Behind wall paper, screen savers, children’s books, and video games have become part of the ubiquitous American background noise. Less innocuous symptoms include people stocking up on assault rifles and ammunition, adopting “Christ-centered” home school curricula, fearing higher education, embracing rumor as fact, and learning to love hatred for the “other,” as exemplified by a revived anti-immigrant racism, the murder of doctors who do abortions, and even a killing in the Holocaust Museum.
No, I am not blaming Jenkins and LaHaye’s product line for murder or racism or any other evil intent or result. What I am saying is that feeding the paranoid delusions of people on the fringe of the fringe contributes to a dangerous climate that may provoke violence in a few individuals. And convincing folks that Armageddon is on the way, and all we can do is wait, pray, and protect our families from the chaos that will be the “prelude” to the “Return of Christ,” is perhaps not the best recipe for political, economic, or personal stability, let alone social cohesion. It may also not be the best philosophy on which to build American foreign policy! The momentum toward what amounts to a whole subculture seceding from the union (in order to await “The End”) is irrevocably prying loose a chunk of the American population from both sanity and their fellow citizens.
Nissan Scrambles to Create EV Charging Stations
Shouldn’t GM be doing this?
Nissan is planning to roll out thousands of electric vehicles next year and is rushing to establish a network of charging stations where owners can plug in to keep them going.
The Japanese automaker is working with Ecotality to bring 11,210 chargers and 4,700 Nissan Leaf electric cars to five states — Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and Tennessee. Ecotality is getting a big assist from the Department of Energy, which has granted the Arizona company $99.8 million to underwrite The Electric Vehicle Project. Ecotality calls it “the largest deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in history.”
Creating that infrastructure will be a huge challenge, but Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America, tells the Tennessean the company will be ready when the first Leafs (Leaves?) roll into showrooms in December 2010.
“There is a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time to do it,” he said.
No kidding.
Full Story: Nissan Scrambles to Create EV Charging Stations | Autopia | Wired.com.
Schwarzenegger bashes California bar, blocks it from collecting dues
Accusing the State Bar of California of being “overly political, unresponsive … and inefficient,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation Sunday that allows the legal association to collect its annual dues.
In his veto message, Schwarzenegger cited a recent audit critical of the bar and questioned the group’s “impartiality in considering judicial appointments.” The July audit found rising costs at the bar and poor internal controls, which allowed a former employee to embezzle nearly $676,000.
“The conduct of the State Bar itself must be above reproach,” Schwarzenegger wrote in his veto. “Regrettably, it is not.”
Bar President Howard Miller called the veto “regrettable,” but also signaled a willingness to work with Schwarzenegger, calling his concerns “legitimate.”
“Sometimes organizations suffering from inertia need an external jolt to renew themselves,” Miller said. “We regret that it has come in this particular manner.”
Full Story: Schwarzenegger bashes California bar, blocks it from collecting dues | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times.
OPS: OK Arnold, now do the same with the Religious organizations that have been overly political
Obama Administration Accused Again of Concealing Bush-Era Crimes
President Obama promised to usher in a new era of government transparency when he was sworn into office nine months ago.
On January 21, Obama signed an executive order instructing all federal agencies and departments to “adopt a presumption in favor” of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and promised to make the federal government more transparent.
“The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed or because of speculative or abstract fears,” Obama’s order said. “In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.”
But since that time, the Obama administration has sought to conceal information in several high-profile court cases, in an effort that civil libertarians say amounts to covering up crimes committed by the Bush administration.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Obama Administration Accused Again of Concealing Bush-Era Crimes.
N.C. lets insurers charge women more
A 25-year-old woman seeking health insurance in North Carolina on her own could expect to pay $60 to $300 a month for her coverage.
Her twin brother? Up to 50 percent less.
North Carolina is one of all but about a dozen states that still allow health insurance companies to consistently charge women more than men for the same coverage.
The practice, known as gender differentiation, could be banned under nearly all of the health overhaul bills now being considered in Congress.
A Charlotte Observer/(Raleigh) News & Observer review of health premiums in North Carolina found that until patients reach their 50s, women are consistently charged more than men.
Full Story: N.C. lets insurers charge women more | McClatchy.
The Rising Cost of Idiocy
by Len Hart,
The dumbing down of America began with Ronald Reagan who made idiots feel good about being idiots. Reagan proved that not only was intelligence not required to be President, it might even be a handicap.
Reagan proved that any politician ignoring the ‘idiot’ voting block [the GOP] imperils his/her political future. Thus, Sarah Palin, who became an expert on Russia by observing its coast line from across the Bering Strait, is assured a growing constituency: the growing legion of idiots! She is the poster bimbo of idiocy! Its champion!
‘Dumbing down’ implies that the US still has a way to go before bottoming out! But that observation smacks of intelligence and may safely be ignored. The real idiot i.e, a GOP idiot, does not know where the f_ck we are or how we got there! The word ‘idiot’ summons up images of Ronald Reagan and, more recently, George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, Reagan had essential Presidential skills. He could read cue cards. Bush could not read! Reagan taught the GOP that how you say something is much more important than what is said. Bush, by contrast, was challenged even to speak.
Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: The Rising Cost of Idiocy.
Trade in Health Care: When “Free Traders” Become Protectionists
Dean Baker
In Washington policy circles, being called a “protectionist” is only slightly better than being called a criminal. Everyone agrees that protectionists are uneducated people who would do harm to the economy by reducing international trade. And everyone in Washington policy circles knows that trade is good, except when it comes to health care.
If the free traders understood economics, they would be outraged by the enormous gap between the cost of health care in the United States and the cost in other countries with comparable life expectancies. People in the United States pay on average more than twice as much for their health care than people in countries like Canada and Germany, yet people in other wealthy countries enjoy longer life expectancies.
Even worse, the gap in costs is projected to grow enormously in coming decades as the rate of health care cost growth in the United States is projected to exceed the rate of growth of costs in other countries. This implies that the benefits from trade in health care will grow through time.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Trade in Health Care: When “Free Traders” Become Protectionists.
OPINION: More Spending Is Necessary to Clean Up The Economic Mess
By Scott Lilly
The Labor Department’s September jobs report can only be described as horrific. The media and markets focused on the fact that the 263,000 jobs lost in September exceeded the forecast by nearly 100,000. But there was equally bad, in fact worse, news in the details.
Someone who is laid off for a few weeks may have to postpone a vacation. Someone who is out of work for several months may miss a car payment. But people who are out of work for more than six months are likely to see their life become unhinged. The number of people who were looking for work in September but had been out of a job for more than 27 weeks increased by 450,000 to 5.4 million. A look at the bench mark year of 1983 provides some context to that number.
That year was the standard for measuring the severity of subsequent recessions because, up until now, it was by far the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Full Story: On The Hill: OPINION: More Spending Is Necessary to Clean Up The Economic Mess.
Clever New Device Sees Through Walls
A new contraption that essentially sees through walls using radio receivers to track moving objects could one day help police and others nab intruders and rescue hostages or fire victims.
Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari of the University of Utah used so-called radio tomographic imaging (RTI), which can detect and track moving people or other objects in an area surrounded by inexpensive radio transceivers that send and receive signals, they announced today.
To test out the technique, the researchers placed a wireless network of 28 radio transceivers around a square-shaped portion of an atrium and a similar part of the lawn. The transceivers were placed on 4-foot-tall (1.2 m) stands made of plastic pipe so they would make measurements at a person’s torso level.
As a person walked around each area, measurements showed the radio signal strengths between all of the transceivers. The resulting processed data displayed a blob-like image of the moving target on a computer screen.
Full Story: Clever New Device Sees Through Walls | LiveScience.
Thomas Greco’s “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization”: A Review by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook
It’s too late for anyone to pretend that the U.S. government, whether under President Barack Obama or anyone else, can divert our nation from long-term economic decline. The U.S. is increasingly in a state of political, economic, and moral paralysis, caught as it were between the “rock” of protracted recession and the “hard place” of terminal government debt.
Even if the stock market can be shored up by more government borrowing for “stimulus” spending, it’s a temporary reprieve, because nothing can bring back the consumer purchasing power that was lost when the banks stopped pumping money into the economy through out-of-control mortgage lending. We simply no longer have the job base for people to earn the income they need to live.
The underlying cause of the crisis is in fact the debt-based monetary system, whereby the U.S. ruling class long ago sold out our nation and its people to the international banking cartel of which the Rockefeller and Morgan interests have been the chief representatives for over a century. It was lending on a previously unheard of scale for overpriced assets to people and businesses unable to repay that created the bubbles that burst in 2008, not only in the housing market but also in such areas as commercial real estate, equities, commodities, and derivatives. It was an explosion that reverberated throughout the world.
Obama to host Tribal Nations conference
President Barack Obama will host a Tribal Nations Conference discussing issues of importance to Native Americans on November 5, the White House announced Monday.
Representatives from each the country’s 564 federally recognized tribes will be invited to participate, according to the administration.
Three heroes of 9/11 die of cancer in five days
A firefighter and two cops who worked at Ground Zero in the days and weeks after Sept. 11 have died of cancer in the past five days, the Daily News has learned.
Family members and advocates are blaming their deaths on toxins released into the air after the twin towers collapsed – and they’re urging Congress to act on a bill that would help pay for their medical care.
“Everybody is denying that this stuff is connected to 9/11, but it is,” said Stephen Grossman, whose son Robert died of cancer on Friday at the age of 44.
Full Story: Three heroes of 9/11 die of cancer in five days.
Army considers middle-school JROTC program
The U.S. Army wants middle school students.
The Wichita school district in south-central Kansas is one of a few nationwide offering middle school programs based on the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps curriculum. Top Army officials are studying its programs to see if they could be a model for others nationwide.
The Army is collaborating with the National Association of School Boards to develop a so-called JROTC-plus program that would use the high school JROTC curriculum as a basis for a middle school program, Army JROTC director Col. John Vanderbleek said.
“We want to reach students at that age before they make decisions that put them at risk,” said Vanderbleek, who came to Wichita recently from Fort Monroe, Va., to see the Kansas program for himself.
Full Story: Army considers middle-school JROTC program – Army News, news from Iraq, – Army Times.
Economists say recession is over, but jobless rate will stay high
Members of the National Association for Business Economics think that the recession is over, but that the unemployment rate will remain almost as high a year ago as it is now. Those are the highlights of a survey the association released today during its annual convention in St. Louis. Specifically, the survey found:
* 81 percent of NABE members believe that the recession has ended, and members’ median forecast for gross domestic product growth in 2010 is 3 percent. Lynn Reaser, incoming NABE president and an economist at Point Loma Nazarene University, remarked that the consensus forecast is definitely for a V-shaped recovery, not a “W” or any other letter of the alphabet.
* Unemployment will reach 10 percent by the end of this year, up from the current reading of 9.8 percent, and will remain at 9.5 percent at the end of 2010.
* Nearly three-quarters of economists think financial markets will be back to normal in 2010. Twenty-one percent expect a return to normalcy this year, 21 percent say it will happen in the first half of next year and 29 percent say we’ll get there in the second half of next year.
Full Story: Economists say recession is over, but jobless rate will stay high | Mound City Money | STLtoday.
OPS: translation – The Working Poor and Middle Class Americans who work for a living,
ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE FORMULA.
Only Wall Street is considered
Behind Montana Jail Fiasco: How Private Prison Developers Prey On Desperate Towns
With the unraveling of the deal for the shadowy American Private Police Force to take over and populate an empty jail in Hardin, Montana, it’s pretty clear that the small city got played by an ex-con and his (supposed) private security firm.
But an investigation by TPMmuckraker into how Hardin ended up with the 92,000 square foot facility in the first place suggests that, long before “low-level card shark” Michael Hilton ever came to town, Hardin officials had already been taken for a ride by a far more powerful set of players: a well-organized consortium of private companies headquartered around the country, which specializes in pitching speculative and risky prison projects to local governments desperate for jobs.
The projects have generated multi-million dollar profits for the companies involved, but often haven’t created the anticipated payoff for the communities, and have left a string of failed or failing prisons in their wake.
Full Story: Behind Montana Jail Fiasco: How Private Prison Developers Prey On Desperate Towns | TPMMuckraker.
Rangel gets primary challenge from former campaign director
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) will face a 2010 primary challenge from one of his own former campaign directors.
Vince Morgan, a New York banker who once worked for Rangel as a special assistant and subsequently as a campaign director, announced Monday that he would challenge Rangel for reelection.
Morgan’s announcement comes after months of ethical scrutiny surrounding Rangel in regard to his alleged failure to have paid certain taxes and disclose some income on congressional filings.
Full Story: Rangel gets primary challenge from former campaign director – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.
Schwarzenegger signs gay rights bills
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed two gay rights bills, one honoring late activist Harvey Milk and another recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states.
In the last of hundreds of bill actions taken before midnight Sunday, Schwarzenegger approved the two bills by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.
The governor last year vetoed the measure declaring May 22 a state day of recognition for Milk, suggesting that the former San Francisco supervisor be honored locally. But he subsequently named him to the California Hall of Fame.
Full Story: Schwarzenegger signs gay rights bills – Latest News – sacbee.com.
Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude
From The Wall Street Journal, The ‘Democratization of Credit’ Is Over — Now It’s Payback Time. Check out the lead:
NEW YORK — Karen King owes nearly $36,000, more than she’s ever earned in a year.
All day long, bill collectors call. She hunts for a second job, sometimes skips meals, and stays with other family members at a grandfather’s crowded apartment, trying to get out of debt and turn her life around.
She largely holds herself at fault. “Years ago, I lived for now. It was so stupid,” the 28-year-old says. “It’s depressing, but I can’t live that life anymore.” Now, she says, “I basically want to live for the future.”
Full Story: Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude – The Atlantic Business Channel.
Insurance Industry Report Promises To Increase Premiums By 111% Under Health Reform
111% INCREASE under “reform”
After months of publicly supporting health care reform, insurers are warning Congress that under the Baucus health care bill, “the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy…will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system.”
The industry has issued a new report arguing that the weak personal responsibility requirement, taxes on health care providers, spending reductions in Medicare and taxes on high-value health plans will increase “the cost of coverage for both single and family policies in the individual, small group, large group, and self-funded insurance markets.”
Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn dispute the report’s methodology here and here, but it’s worth pointing out that industry’s argument that reform will increase insurance premiums for all Americans is simply untrue. It could also backfire. As Rep. Anthony Weinder (D-NY) explained this morning on MSNBC, “the health insurance lobby today fired the most important salvo in weeks for the public option“:
Full Story: Think Progress » Insurance Industry Report Promises To Increase Premiums By 111% Under Health Reform.
OPS: Can I see the hands of ALL Democrats that support THIS.
Telecom Spies Shared ‘Common Interest’ With Bush & Co, But What Do They Share With Obama’s DOJ?
Last Friday, the Justice Department made yet another last-minute ditch effort to protect lawbreakers of the Bush era. As stories such as these begin to pile up, I’m starting to wonder who is crafting the new(ish) administration’s definition of American justice.
In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that’s been going on for years now, the government was required last EFF AT&T justiceFriday to disclose documents regarding lobbying activities surrounding the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) last year, which ultimately resulted in immunity for telecommunications companies who spied on Americans at the request of the government. Instead of doing so, government lawyers filed for a temporary stay, ostensibly to allow the solicitor general a month to decide whether or not she will file an appeal in the case.
The hook in the story for Wired magazine is that the Obama Administration lawyers argued that the telecom companies should be treated as a government agency. But what they actually said is even more troubling than that bizarre suggestion. The request for a stay was justified with the following language (emphasis mine):
And the communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency because the government and the companies have a common interest in the defense of the pending litigation and the communications regarding the immunity provisions concerned that common interest.
Full Story: Telecom Spies Shared ‘Common Interest’ With Bush & Co, But What Do They Share With Obama’s DOJ? | BuzzFlash.org.
Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare
Can DC’s top bailout cop beat the finance lobby—and Larry Summers?
Bank Buster
Mother Jones – BY HER OWN reckoning, Elizabeth Warren had two transformative experiences on the way to becoming official Washington’s most unconventional expert on the financial industry. Let’s start with the second. It was 2003, and Warren, an earnest-sounding and ever enthusiastic Harvard law professor who specializes in bankruptcy, was on the set of Dr. Phil. She had written a book with her daughter called The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers Are Going Broke, and she’d expected to sit next to the host and explain its key points. Instead, Dr. Phil was interviewing a stressed-out couple with serious medical and financial troubles. After they mentioned they had obtained a second mortgage to pay off their credit card debt, the lights went up on Warren, and Dr. Phil asked her if this had been a smart step. No, she declared, because now they could lose their home if they defaulted.
As soon as her turn was over, Warren found herself thinking, “You’ve been doing this work for 20 years now, and it is unlikely that any of it has had as direct an impact as these 45 seconds.” She had reached millions, some of whom might actually pay attention to her advice. “So here you are, Miss Fancy-Pants Professor at Harvard. What do you plan to do now? Is it all about writing more academic articles, or is it about making a difference for the families you study? I made a decision right then: It was for the families, not the self-aggrandizement of scholarship.”
Full Story: Bank Buster | Mother Jones.
Fox Admits on CNN That It Traffics in Opinion Not News
After a brief but concerted challenge by the White House to the credibility of Fox News Channel as a legitimate news organization — including a detailed takedown by Communications Director Anita Dunn on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday — a spokesman for Fox responded with a de facto admission that the channel is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
CNN described Fox’s statement this way: “In a written statement given to CNN, Fox News said its programming was comparable to the editorial page of a newspaper.”
The fact that Fox says its programming is based on opinions not facts would likely come as a shock to Fox viewers — but, of course, they’ll never know about it. Fox will protect them from this harsh reality the same way it deals with all news that makes conservatives look badly: by not covering it.
Here’s the statement by Fox to CNN:
Full Story: Pensito Review » Fox Admits on CNN That It Traffics in Opinion Not News.
BALD FACED LIES are NOT opinions. they are just bald faced fuckin lies. Fox LIES again.
A Columbus Day Meditation – As Nobel Laureate Obama Decides Whether to ‘Conquer’ Afghanistan…
Thom Hartmann
“Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who has it does all he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to Paradise.” — Christopher Columbus, 1503 letter to the king and queen of Spain.
“Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith.” — George H.W. Bush, 1989 speech
If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea.
The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what’s happening in the whole world.
When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire island was covered by lush forest. The Taino “Indians” who lived there had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by literate members of Columbus’s crew such as Miguel Cuneo.
Full Story: A Columbus Day Meditation – As Nobel Laureate Obama Decides Whether to ‘Conquer’ Afghanistan… | CommonDreams.org.
Solar Decathlon: The Competition For The Best Solar-Powered House (PHOTOS)
University teams from around the world are busy constructing sustainable houses at this year’s U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon competition. 20 teams were selected to come to the National Mall in Washington D.C. to compete against one another in designing, building, and operating the best solar-powered, energy-efficient house. The houses are judged based on 10 competitions, which range in point value, from architecture to lighting design to comfort zone. Check out the houses we’ve featured and vote for which one you want to call home!
As the largest group on the Cornell University campus, with over 150 members, this is Team Cornell’s third consecutive year in the competition. According to the Solar Decathlon website, the Silo house is a “modular structure with three interconnecting cylindrical rooms.” Each of the rooms is 16 feet in diameter, with about 130 square feet of space. The Silo house is expected to generate more energy than it uses; or at the very least, it’ll be a net-zero energy building. Construction costs: $450,000-$650,000.
Full Story: Solar Decathlon: The Competition For The Best Solar-Powered House (PHOTOS).
U.S. Can’t Trace Foreign Visitors on Expired Visas
Eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and despite repeated mandates from Congress, the United States still has no reliable system for verifying that foreign visitors have left the country.
New concern was focused on that security loophole last week, when Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian who had overstayed his tourist visa, was accused in court of plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.
Last year alone, 2.9 million foreign visitors on temporary visas like Mr. Smadi’s checked in to the country but never officially checked out, immigration officials said. While officials say they have no way to confirm it, they suspect that several hundred thousand of them overstayed their visas.
Full Story: U.S. Can’t Trace Foreign Visitors on Expired Visas – NYTimes.com.
Insurers Mount Attack Against Health Reform
The health insurance industry is warning that a comprehensive Senate bill would increase the cost of a typical policy by hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars a year after lawmakers eased up on the requirement that all Americans get coverage.
The stinging attack came on the eve of a pivotal Senate vote and was a clear message to President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders who have been making headway on overhauling the nation’s health care system. The industry fears that a weakening of the penalties for failing to get insurance would let Americans postpone getting coverage until they get sick.
The industry has worked for months behind the scenes to help shape health care reform. Unlike the 1990s, when it contributed to the failure of President Bill Clinton’s health overhaul, the insurance industry has been attracted by the promise of millions of more people getting coverage. Translation: millions of new consumers buying policies.
Full Story: Insurers Mount Attack Against Health Reform.
Lou Dobbs heading to Fox Business?
The New York Times’ Brian Stetler reports that Fox News is relishing its position as the leading voice of partisan opposition to Obama. Fox’s senior vice president for programming, Bill Shine, says of the criticism from the White House, “Every time they do it, our ratings go up.” Stetler reports that Fox is trying to bolster its oppositional forces by adding CNN’s Lou Dobbs to its roster:
Certainly, Fox continues to aggressively bolster its on-air talent, most recently with the hiring of John Stossel, the libertarian investigative journalist from ABC News, for its spin-off channel, Fox Business. The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.
Dobbs would of course be a natural fit for the Fox News network. He has given inordinate airtime to the “birther” conspiracies and mused about whether President Obama himself is “undocumented.” CNN might be content to part with Dobbs, given that he has become a “publicity nightmare” for the network.
Full Story: Think Progress » Lou Dobbs heading to Fox Business?.
Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves
Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.
Policy makers boosted foreign currency holdings by $413 billion last quarter, the most since at least 2003, to $7.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63 percent of the new cash into euros and yen in April, May and June, the latest Barclays Capital data show. That’s the highest percentage in any quarter with more than an $80 billion increase.
World leaders are acting on threats to dump the dollar while the Obama administration shows a willingness to tolerate a weaker currency in an effort to boost exports and the economy as long as it doesn’t drive away the nation’s creditors. The diversification signals that the currency won’t rebound anytime soon after losing 10.3 percent on a trade-weighted basis the past six months, the biggest drop since 1991.
Full Story: Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves (Update2) – Bloomberg.com.
British have covered up hundreds of Iraqi casualties, ex-officer says
The British military’s chain of command has instructed the country’s top investigators not to examine hundreds of incidents involving Iraqi deaths and serious injury, a former British military police officer told the BBC Sunday.
“I’ve seen documentary evidence that there were incidents running into the hundreds involving death and serious injury to Iraqis where the chain of command of the Army had decided that the circumstances did not warrant a Royal Military Police investigation,” the former British Army officer, whose face was obscured, told a BBC interviewer. “And if you look at the general picture that the media says, Afghanistan seems a lot quieter in terms of alleged misconduct of British troops, that to me is quite concerning, because it tells me that the Army hasn’t suddenly gotten a lot better. It tells me that the Royal Military Police are very efficiently toeing the party line for the Army.”
The BBC interview has received scant attention, meriting only a brief mention in the UK Guardian and little coverage by outlets cataloged in Google News. Video of the interview is available here.
Full Story: British have covered up hundreds of Iraqi casualties, ex-officer says | Raw Story.
First woman awarded Nobel Prize in economics
The Nobel Economics Prize was awarded Monday to US economists Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the award, for research on corporate governance and natural resource management.
Their work may be seen as particularly germane in the wake of the global financial crisis and ongoing efforts to combat climate change.
“The research of Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson demonstrates that economic analysis can shed light on most forms of social organisation,” the jury said.
Ostrom won half the 10-million-kronor (1.42-million-dollar, 980,000-euro) prize “for her analysis of economic governance” especially relating to the management of common property or property under common control, such as natural resources.
Full Story: First woman awarded Nobel Prize in economics | Raw Story.
TX governor replaces another member of key investigative committee
After a state-funded report revealed in August that Texas may have executed an innocent man under the watch of Governor Rick Perry, the Texas Republican currently facing a steep re-election climb was quick to act in his own best interest.
He replaced three members on the key committee charged with investigating the report’s truth, installing what CNN called a “political ally” to head up the Texas Forensic Science Commission.
Sunday, the cable news network reported that Perry had moved to replace a fourth member of the commission, reaching the legal limit of how many members he can seat. The five other members are selected by the attorney general and lieutenant governor.
Full Story: TX governor replaces another member of key investigative committee | Raw Story.
Countries Are Preparing for Rising Seas But the U.S. Is Far Behind
The Rising Sea: By Orrin Pilkey and Rob Young, Island Press.
Sounding Retreat
’Round the World
All around the globe, there is growing awareness of coming sea level rise. To date, the United States appears to be behind in what are still very preliminary efforts of many other countries. In 2008, the EPA released an important document intended to set the stage for the nation’s response to sea level rise, but the stated goal of the report was to add to the nation’s prosperity while responding to sea level rise. Maintaining prosperity may be desirable, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. A report with such conflicting goals cannot be taken seriously. Response to a major sea level rise will, of course, involve economic sacrifice on the part of property owners, government, and society as a whole even though jobs will be created in building relocation and other industries.
Initial major sea-level-rise impacts on U.S. development will likely occur along our barrier island coasts. Eventually, urban problems, especially stormwater and wastewater disposal, will begin to take precedence over preservation of beach communities. When our main population centers are truly threatened, and we begin to build dikes and move ports and other infrastructure, small beachfront communities are likely to become declining public priorities. The end result, decades from now, but certainly in this century, will be abandonment of many island tourist communities and, unfortunately, massive seawalling of others.
Full Story: Countries Are Preparing for Rising Seas But the U.S. Is Far Behind | Water | AlterNet.
Right-Wingers Believe Ayn Rand’s Every Word, But They Forget One Thing: She Wrote Fiction.
The cult of Rand is resurgent — two new biographies and maybe even a new film, are in the works. But her economic ideas were pure fairy tales.
Ayn Rand Redux. The New World Foundation
Ayn Rand is popular again. Her most popular novels Atlas Shrugged from 1957 and The Fountainhead from 1943 are still being bought in large numbers. While it’s plainly fashionable for right wing activists and pundits to bandy about her ideas to discredit the Obama administration, it’s worth remembering one thing…
The American right sees Atlas Shrugged as an almost prophetic masterpiece that describes “the economic lunacy” of the bailout and economic stimulus plan. As Stephen Moore (formerly of the CATO institute) explains in the Wall Street Journal, the warning of Atlas Shrugged is clear – the more government tries to fix things, the more they break. “When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer,” he says, concluding that the abolition of income tax would be a much better policy idea.
Two new biographies of Rand and maybe even a new film, are in the works. The cult of Ayn Rand has inspired think tanks like the Ayn Rand Institute, and The Atlas Society, and she has numerous followers in high places, notably including Alan Greenspan (former chairman of the Federal Reserve and soloist for the out-of-tune hymn to the inexorable free market). A copy of Atlas Shrugged may have been one of the more popular accessories at recent TEA parties.
Full Story: Ayn Rand Redux | The New World Foundation.
OPS: Ayn Rand wrote fiction – so did L.Ron Hubbard and others
Columbia Medical School’s 200 Dirty Little Secrets
Government Orders Columbia to Tell Patients ‘True Nature’ of Drug Study
Officials Say Research May Have Caused Harm to People Who Had Heart Surgery
NEW YORK — The man who would be known as Patient No. 1 emerged from routine open-heart surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in stable condition. Then he began to bleed uncontrollably. Surgeons rushed him back to the operating room to reopen his chest, but by the time they could stop the hemorrhaging, Patient No. 1 was barely breathing and in a coma.
On Aug. 15, 2000, shortly before he was discharged on his way to a nursing home, a physician wrote a terse final diagnosis in his chart: “Medical disaster.”
Patient No. 1, along with more than 200 other open-heart surgery patients, was part of a two-year medical study at Columbia that government regulators now say was carried out with ethical and regulatory mistakes and may have caused harm to some patients. The study was testing a commonly used intravenous surgical fluid that previous studies had shown could cause hemorrhaging at high doses. At least two patients in the study died shortly after receiving the fluid and more than two dozen others required transfusions, according to documents submitted to the federal government by the hospital and obtained by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
In the past decade, Columbia has conducted three separate internal reviews of the study. The reviews raised serious questions about the drug trial’s design, management and oversight. But they concluded that there was no evidence that the fluid caused deaths or other medical problems for the patients and that there was no need to provide the patients with additional information about the study.
Now federal regulators have decided not to accept that conclusion. They have taken the rare action of demanding that Columbia track down the patients and their families, and acknowledge that they never were informed about the “true nature” of the drug study, the risks they faced or the consequences of their participation.
New information shows that “at least some of the subjects appear to have suffered harms that were a function of the design and procedures of the study,” the federal Office of Human Research Protections wrote to the hospital in a June 8, 2009, letter obtained by the Investigative Fund.
Federal officials also demanded that Columbia turn over a newly completed internal analysis of how the patients fared in the study.
The issues raised by the Columbia study, which was indirectly funded by a pharmaceutical company, reflect the ongoing national debate over flaws in the system designed to protect people who participate in medical research. The federal oversight office has cited more than 40 hospitals and academic medical centers in the past two decades for falling short. The Columbia case stands out for the bitter controversy it has engendered for years inside the hospital, the courts and the federal government – reported here for the first time – and for the hospital’s failure to contact patients even after federal investigators recommended it do so in 2003.
The study, conducted between December 1999 and February 2001 in the famed heart surgery unit at what is now called New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, involved four blood expanders approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The fluids are generally administered by anesthesiologists and combat medics when patients or soldiers have lost significant quantities of blood.
Two of the blood expanders in the study contained a substance known as hetastarch, a clear fluid made of a starch and salt solution. Published studies dating back to 1981 showed that hetastarch can prevent blood from clotting properly, especially when used at higher doses. According to documents filed by the hospital in New York state court, one purpose of the Columbia trial was to test whether a new formulation of hetastarch, manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, was less likely to trigger serious bleeding at high doses than the other fluids. It was largely funded from a $150,000 unrestricted grant given by the drug company to the hospital and lead researcher, records show.
In the consent form used in the study, patients were told that they would receive one of four fluids approved by the FDA and routinely “used to replace blood and fluid lost during surgery.” The consent form stated that the researchers would extract a few tablespoons of blood from the patient to test a machine that monitors clotting. Patients were not told that they could be given high doses of the fluids or that they faced a risk of serious bleeding, according to a copy of the consent form obtained by the Investigative Fund.
Documents later filed in court show that about half of the 215 people who agreed to participate were given hetastarch, and some received up to three times the level recommended by the manufacturers. Some of the subjects were Spanish-speaking patients who lived in low-income neighborhoods near the hospital and were admitted through the emergency room, according to people who worked at the hospital at the time. The names of the patients and details about their cases have not been made public because of medical privacy rules.
Two hospital doctors raised concerns about the study with hospital authorities in 2000, triggering the internal Columbia reviews. The hospital decided in 2002 to discipline the study’s lead researcher because, Columbia alleged, he had not properly disclosed the nature of the drug study to the hospital or the patients and had failed to report promptly a “substantial number” of medical complications among the participants, according to court papers. The researcher, Elliott Bennett-Guerrero, an anesthesiologist, subsequently filed a lawsuit against the hospital and its officials that vigorously challenged their claims and decision. The lawsuit ended with a confidential settlement in 2003, court records show, and Bennett-Guerrero left Columbia for another hospital.
Columbia hospital officials declined requests for interviews and would not discuss the recent findings by federal regulators that some patients appear to have been harmed or the government’s demand that the hospital notify the study’s participants.
In a statement to the Investigative Fund, Columbia said its internal reviews had concluded that neither patients nor the hospital board that approves clinical trials “were adequately informed of the risks posed by one of the treatments in the study.” Nevertheless, the hospital said, its most recent review completed in 2008 — which included outside experts — analyzed patient records and concluded that the medical outcomes did not meet the definition of “harm.”
Columbia also said that as a result of its investigations it had made “substantial improvements” in its procedures for overseeing research on humans.
In the lawsuit he filed against Columbia in 2003, Bennett-Guerrero said that proper consent was obtained from all the patients in the study. He said there was no misrepresentation of the study’s design or purpose, that hospital officials had been fully informed and had approved every aspect. He contended that their actions against him were meant to hide weaknesses in their own hospital procedures.
Bennett-Guerrero, who joined Duke University Health System in 2003, declined a request for an interview. He said in e-mails: “It is hard to imagine that an unbiased expert in cardiac surgery clinical trials could conclude that subjects were harmed in this study, since with only 50 patients per group the study was not designed or powered to prove any differences in major complications including death.”
Bennett-Guerrero wrote that the study proposal and consent form “were approved by Columbia’s Institutional Review Board. The Columbia IRB sought comments from members of the Departments of Surgery, Anesthesiology, and Medicine and the IRB had before it the package inserts for each of the four FDA approved fluids, as well as the protocol and the consent form.”
He added: “Please understand that I am, and have throughout my entire professional career been, committed to patient safety and improving patient outcomes. Indeed, as a practicing anesthesiologist who takes care of high risk patients, my primary focus in the operating room is patient safety and reducing pain and suffering.”
An Unrestricted Grant
The Columbia study came at a time when Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer of one of the blood expanders, was looking to boost its share of the business. The fluids were often needed during more than half a million cardiac surgeries each year and in the late 1990s the market for blood expanders containing hetastarch was growing due to a shortage of albumin, one of the older, more commonly-used products.
In 1999, Bennett-Guerrero, then 34, was recruited to serve as clinical director of Columbia’s division of cardiothoracic anesthesiology. Within two years, records show, he was simultaneously running 25 clinical trials. He received approximately $150,000 in the form of an unrestricted grant from Abbott Laboratories as reimbursement for the comparative study of blood expanders, according to his statements in his lawsuit against the hospital. Medical centers welcome such grants, since they typically can take a portion for overhead.
Several previous studies had shown that the original hetastarch product could sometimes trigger excessive bleeding during surgery. If Abbott’s new formulation of hetastarch – called Hextend — turned out to be safer in high doses, anesthesiologists might be persuaded to switch, even though Abbott’s price was about 40 percent higher.
Before the study could begin, it had to pass muster inside the hospital. Under federal regulations, every clinical trial must be approved by an institutional review board, or IRB — a panel of doctors, other medical professionals and at least one non-medical professional from outside the hospital — that is charged with protecting human test subjects and ensuring that they are fully informed of the potential risks. The board must also ensure that studies are properly designed.
According to court documents, half of the open-heart patients in the study were slated to receive one of the two hetastarch solutions. The other half would get either albumin or a salt solution.
The original proposal requested a waiver from the standard requirement of obtaining written patient consent, on the grounds that participation in the trial “will not increase the likelihood of patients requiring blood transfusions . . . [or] any additional discomfort or risk.”
The study proposal and request for a waiver was reviewed in 1999 by the IRB, whose approximately 12 members met once a month. But there was no expert in blood expanders on the board and no member examined the published studies about the risks of high levels of hetastarch, according to court documents.
The review board did insist that patients sign a written consent form. Columbia investigators later concluded that the consent form failed to inform patients of the risk of bleeding. They also found that the IRB was unaware of those risks, in part because the panel “failed to adequately use data provided” by the hospital’s departments of surgery and anesthesia, which also reviewed the proposed study. A surgeon on the review board told the investigators that the board’s members, 11 of whom had other full-time duties in the hospital, didn’t have enough time to probe. “When we do these reviews we are presented with the investigator’s stack of IRB stuff,” he said, according to the court papers. “Most of us barely get to read the birthday cards from our kids . . .”
‘A Very Common Deficiency’
In November 2000, two Columbia anesthesiologists – Marc Dickstein and Mark Heath– sought out the head of the institutional review board, Paul Papagni, a lawyer. They told Papagni that they had been in the operating room when a number of patients had hemorrhaged. They feared the study’s design virtually guaranteed that there would be more who would suffer hemorrhaging, according to Heath’s statements to hospital investigators, included in court filings.
Dickstein would later tell Columbia investigators that he and Heath assumed the study would be suspended and reviewed since they had alerted the board. In court documents, he said, “We were two reasonably senior members of the cardiac anesthesia team coming in saying patients are being harmed. . . . [we thought] anyone who actually would look at the literature [on blood expanders] . . . would come to the same conclusion.” But the IRB did not suspend the study.
Heath and Dickstein declined to comment for this article. Attempts to contact Papagni were unsuccessful.
Court records show that Bennett-Guerrero and his department head, Margaret Wood, disagreed with the assessments of Heath and Dickstein. Columbia investigators later suggested that the concerns raised by Heath and Dickstein may have been initially cast aside as rooted in professional rivalry with Bennett-Guerrero.
Five months after the study ended, Heath and Dickstein wrote to Gerald Fischbach, dean of Columbia’s medical school, with their concerns. According to court documents, Fischbach soon ordered Bennett-Guerrero to stop enrolling patients in studies, pending the results of an investigation.
Fischbach later removed Bennett-Guerrero as clinical director of the division of cardiothoracic anesthesiology, according to court records. The university took him off tenure track in 2002, barred him from conducting research, and told him in a letter that he could not publish the results of the blood expander study.
In September 2002 Columbia sent a letter about the matter to the federal Office of Human Research Protections, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The letter, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, affirmed the chief complaints that Dickstein and Heath had raised. Columbia alleged that Bennett-Guerrero “failed to convey” the purpose of the study to the review board and patients, had not informed the patients of the risks and did not appropriately report serious medical complications. The letter also faulted the manner in which fluids were prepared for the study (they were allegedly mixed in an unsanitary, blood-spattered room). Columbia also assured federal regulators in the letter that it was overhauling its review process.
But hospital officials stated that patients had not suffered harm as a result of participating in the study. Columbia’s investigation, said the letter, “failed to show a causal relationship” between the fluids and the two deaths. It also added that there was “no evidence of harm to any particular patient that could be attributed to the study.”
What the letter did not say was how Columbia investigators calculated harm. Columbia reviewed only 14 patient charts of the more than 200 in the study, according to court documents. The investigators looked for kidney damage, another potential side-effect of blood expanders, but at that point did not report on bleeding.
Fischbach, who retired as dean in 2006, declined requests for an interview.
Federal officials responded to Columbia in a letter dated January 2003. They suggested that the university “re-consent patients,” which meant finding them or their survivors and informing them that the study may have put them at greater risk than they had been told when they gave informed consent. But the federal regulators didn’t force the issue. Columbia decided, as it had the year before, that there was no need to tell the patients.
That same month, Bennett-Guerrero filed suit against Columbia and Fischbach in New York Supreme Court, claiming the university had harmed his reputation and wrongly stripped him of his ability to conduct and publish research. Bennett-Guerrero attacked the university’s findings about the study and denied that he acted improperly in any way. The settlement, reached in June 2003, is confidential but the court file remains public.
E-mails obtained through a public records request from the Office of Human Research Protections show that Heath and Dickstein continued to ask the government to re-examine the study and its outcomes. In July 2006, a compliance officer responded that the federal agency would not challenge Columbia again. Failing to disclose risks to subjects in completed research was “a very common deficiency,”the officer wrote in an e-mail, adding that the agency “is not inclined, at this time, to investigate this matter further.”
Then in early 2007, for reasons that are not apparent from any documents, Columbia initiated yet another internal examination of the blood expander study. It was completed in the fall of 2008 and the hospital contacted federal regulators and acknowledged some deficiencies in a letter dated March 31, 2009. In the letter, the hospital again concluded that “the conditions necessary for a finding of patient harm had not been met.”
This time, federal regulators balked. In its letter to Columbia on June 8, the oversight office wrote that “new information” provided by the hospital now showed that among study participants who received hetastarch there was “a statistically significant higher rate” of “negative clinical outcomes, including bleeding events (requiring use of transfusions) and decreases in renal [kidney] function. Beyond that, there was the trend toward increased need for re-operation.” The letter said that the analysis “supports the hypothesis” that patients who received hetastarch did worse than the others.
The federal office instructed the hospital to draft a letter explaining the study to its former patients. Regulators also asked Columbia to hand over a full accounting of what happened to the patients who agreed to be part of its study. The federal agency has issued such a directive only three other times since 2000. Although the office has no direct authority to enforce its demands, it can cut off federal research funding to institutions that fail to comply.
This week, neither Columbia nor the federal government would say when the patients and families will learn the whole story behind the heart operations they underwent 10 years ago.
***
Full Story: Government Orders Columbia to Tell Patients ‘True Nature’ of Drug Study | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
4 Supreme Court Cases That Will Say a Lot About the Direction of Our Country
Would a Human Sacrifice TV Channel be protected by the First Amendment? Answers to this and other key questions will be answered.
As the Supreme Court kicked off its new season last week with a brand new justice on the bench, the cases on the docket provided a fascinating glimpse into the judicial soul of the country.
In the first days alone, there were cases involving dog fighting, a controversial cross on public land, and a number of prickly criminal justice issues.
The months to come will test laws on some of the most controversial issues of our time, including guns, sex offenders and the uniquely American question of whether teenagers can be sentenced to life without parole. The outcomes will tell us a lot about the future direction of the Roberts court, and what it might mean to have Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the bench.
Full Story: 4 Supreme Court Cases That Will Say a Lot About the Direction of Our Country | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
Republican Senate Sex Scandals Point Back to Secretive Conservative Christian “Family”
It was a hot summer for the Family, the exclusive conservative Christian group with designs on DC power—three politicians with ties to their C Street headquarters were caught in sex scandals. Jeff Sharlet, author of the definitive book on the secretive group, talks with us about the flickering media spotlight, and the future of the Family.
efore the Tea Party Express brought tens of thousands to protest in the nation’s capital, and before town hall meetings about health care devolved into shout downs, there was the story of the boys of C Street.
What at first seemed like a series of public sex scandals turned out to have a connective thread. The main protagonists (Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Senator John Ensign of Nevada, and former Arkansas Congressman Chip Pickering) were all one-time residents of C Street and members of the Family, otherwise known as the Fellowship. As the summer unfurled, the “three amigos” gave mainstream media outlets plenty to talk about, and this highly secretive and powerful right-wing group got a lot of exposure. And then, as is the wont of the media, the story of C Street disappeared from the headlines.
In this exclusive Religion Dispatches interview, Jeff Sharlet, author of 2008’s The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, talks about The Family and its summer of scandal, the organization’s tarnished present and future possibilities, and why the mainstream media had such a difficult time dealing with the group’s unusual political/religious beliefs.
Full Story: C Street Scandal, the Media, the Future of the Family: An Interview with Jeff Sharlet | Politics | ReligionDispatches.
Bill Moyers: how about calling it what it is: a friendly takeover of government. A leveraged buyout of democracy.
Bill Moyers: Simon Johnson and Rep. Marcy Kaptur October 9, 2009
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL. (Video here)
I sat in a theater packed with passionate moviegoers, every one of them seemingly aghast at the Wall Street skullduggery exposed by Michael Moore in his latest film. It’s called ‘Capitalism: A Love Story.’ Here’s an excerpt:
MICHAEL MOORE: We’re here to get the money back for the American People. Do you think it’s too harsh to call what has happened here a coup d’état? A financial coup d’état?
MARCY KAPTUR: That’s, no. Because I think that’s what’s happened. Um, a financial coup d’état?
MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah.
MARCY KAPTUR: I could agree with that. I could agree with that. Because the people here really aren’t in charge. Wall Street is in charge.
BILL MOYERS: That’s the progressive Representative from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, she’s with me now. She has a Masters from the University of Michigan, did graduate study at M.I.T. and still lives in the same house in the Toledo working class neighborhood where she grew up.
She’s in her 14th term in Congress, the longest-serving Democratic woman in the history of the House, and she’s an outspoken financial watchdog on three important Committees: Appropriations, Budget and Oversight and Government Reform.
Also with me is a familiar face to viewers of this broadcast. Simon Johnson is the former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. He now teaches Global Economics and Management at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. He’s one of the founders of the website Baselinescenario.com. I check it out daily for Simon’s take on the economic and financial crisis.
It’s been a year since the great collapse and both my guests are well equipped to assess what’s happened since then. Welcome to you both.
Full Story: Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS.
Simon Johnson Confirms William K. Black’s Explanation of Fraud, Boom and Bust
In a new interview with Bill Moyers, Simon Johnson confirmed what William K. Black has said about fraud by the financial sector, booms and busts.
As I previously wrote:
Black explained that fraud by a financial company usually involves the company:
1) Growing like crazy
2) Making loans to people who are uncreditworthy, because they’ll agree they’ll pay you more, and that’s how you grow rapidly. You can grow really fast if you loan to people who can’t you pay you back
and
3) The use of extreme leverage.
This combination guarantees stratospheric initial profits during the expansion phase of the bubble.
But it guarantees a catastrophic subsequent failure when the bubble loses steam.
And collectively – if a lot of companies are playing this game – it produces extraordinary losses (more than all other forms of property crime combined), and a crash.
In other words, the companies intentionally make loans to people who will not be able to repay them, because – during an expanding bubble phase – they’ll make huge sums of money. The top executives of these companies will make massive salaries and bonuses during the bubble (enough to live like kings even even if the companies go belly up after the bubble phase).
Gale Norton Subpoenaed By Grand Jury: Report
Gale Norton is being investigated by a federal grand jury for allegedly talking to Shell about a job, while she was Interior Secretary in 2006, reports National Journal. Both Norton and Shell are said to have received subpoenas.
The existence of the federal investigation was first reported last month by the Los Angeles Times. In a nutshell, the Feds have been looking at an episode in which Norton’s Interior Department awarded three oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado — potentially worth hundreds of billions — to a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. Two months later, Norton resigned, saying she had no job lined up. But later that year, she was hired by Shell as in-house counsel.
Federal employees are prohibited by law from discussing employment with a company while that company is involved in dealings with the government that could benefit it. They’re also prohibited from “violating the public trust” by, for instance, giving contracts to friends or associates. The Feds are said to be looking into whether Norton broke either of those laws.
Full Story: Gale Norton Subpoenaed By Grand Jury: Report | TPMMuckraker.
OPS: Make an example of her.
20 years in federal prison for selling out the public trust
US disappointment reason for joint maneuver cancellation
A joint military exercise that Israel, the US, NATO, Turkey and Italy were scheduled to conduct this week, was taken off the table because of American disappointment with Ankara’s decision to withdraw from the maneuver due to Israel’s planned participation, Israeli defense officials said Sunday.
Turkey informed Israel of the cancellation of the Anatolian Eagle exercise last week, saying this was because the planes that Israel was going to send likely bombed Hamas targets during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.
According to officials quoted by Israel Radio, the cancellation of the exercise came after both the US and NATO threatened to pull out if the IAF did not participate.
Full Story: US disappointment reason for joint maneuver cancellation | International News | Jerusalem Post.
Misguided Monetary Mentalities
Paul Krugman
One lesson from the Great Depression is that you should never underestimate the destructive power of bad ideas. And some of the bad ideas that helped cause the Depression have, alas, proved all too durable: in modified form, they continue to influence economic debate today.
What ideas am I talking about? The economic historian Peter Temin has argued that a key cause of the Depression was what he calls the “gold-standard mentality.” By this he means not just belief in the sacred importance of maintaining the gold value of one’s currency, but a set of associated attitudes: obsessive fear of inflation even in the face of deflation; opposition to easy credit, even when the economy desperately needs it, on the grounds that it would be somehow corrupting; assertions that even if the government can create jobs it shouldn’t, because this would only be an “artificial” recovery.
In the early 1930s this mentality led governments to raise interest rates and slash spending, despite mass unemployment, in an attempt to defend their gold reserves. And even when countries went off gold, the prevailing mentality made them reluctant to cut rates and create jobs.
But we’re past all that now. Or are we?
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Misguided Monetary Mentalities – NYTimes.com.
Cocaine addiction vaccine
The first working vaccine for cocaine addiction is now being tested.
The vaccine uses the immune system to block cocaine’s euphoric effect. Antibodies are created that bind to the cocaine and prevent it from entering the blood stream. A blood enzyme, cholinesterase, breaks down the cocaine continuously. The breakdown products are eliminated through the kidneys and liver.
The first trial involved 94 subjects. The majority of the subjects used crack cocaine. Randomized subjects received the vaccine five times over a twelve week period. The vaccine worked for 38 percent of the subjects that received it.
The vaccine’s effect depended on the level of antibody achieved. Those who reach high levels of
antibodies are more likely to be able to stay cocaine-free. The problem to be overcome is the lack of antibody response. Twenty-five percent of those treated did not have an antibody reaction. The group is pursing several alternatives to improve the results.
This is a relapse prevention medication.
Full Story: Cocaine addiction vaccine.
‘The Treason of the Senate’: Bill Moyers on Max Baucus and Senate health insurance reform bill – video
BILL MOYERS: You know from the news that early next week the Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote on its version of health care reform. And therein lies another story of money and politics.
Polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative — like Medicare — that would give the private health insurance industry some competition. But if so many Americans and the President himself want that public option, how come we’re not getting one?
Because, the medicine has been poisoned from day one, in part because of that same revolving door that Congresswoman Kaptur and Simon Johnson were just talking about. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the lucrative private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget who they’re working for.
Full Story: YouTube – Bill Moyers on Max Baucus and Senate health insurance reform bill.
Panic in Detroit: 35,000 line up for federal poverty help, conservatives laugh
Something happened in Detroit on Wednesday this week that flew beneath the radar of many Americans. Nearly 35,000 Detroiters converged on Cobo Hall to get one of the 5,000 applications for federal aid to people in poverty.
Via the Detroit News:
They came by foot, wheelchair, bicycle and car. About six left by ambulance after tensions rose and people were trampled, according to a paramedic on the scene. One unfortunate soul got his car booted.
Detroiters were trying to pick up 5,000 federal assistance applications from the city at Cobo because Detroit received nearly $15.2 million in federal dollars under the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program, which is for temporary financial assistance and housing services to individuals and families who are homeless, or who would be homeless without this help.
People in wheelchairs and others using canes were being leaned on by people too weak to stand. Emergency medical technicians on the scene said they treated applicants who were injured during the rush to get inside the venue.
Meanwhile, conservatives laugh.
* Eclectablog’s diary :: ::
*
Cross-posted at Eclectablog.
This is the reality of poverty in the USA today. 35,000 people show up for a chance at one of 5,000 applications for assistance. In the process, scuffles break out causing injuries. More from the Detroit Free Press:
The economic tsunami washing over metro Detroit swept its casualties to the doors of Cobo Center on Wednesday in the form of 35,000 people so desperate for help with mortgage and utility bills that threats were made, fights broke out and people were nearly trampled.
It was one of the most dramatic signs to date of how deeply joblessness and the home foreclosure crisis have pushed people from the lower and middle ends of the economic scale to seek help wherever they can.
City officials said a total of about 65,000 people over the past few days have gotten applications — due next Wednesday — for a share of $15.2 million in federal stimulus money to help people avoid foreclosure or quickly rebound from homelessness.
Ultimately, as few as 3,500 people may receive the help.
Full Story: Daily Kos: UPDATEx2: Panic in Detroit: 35,000 line up for federal poverty help, conservatives laugh.
H-1B visas: A mess that could get even worse
Our broken visa system is bad for U.S. IT workers and the guest workers who are misled, underpaid, and exploited
It’s bad enough that American workers are losing jobs to foreign labor imported via the broken H-1B visa system. Now there’s even more evidence that unscrupulous companies are exploiting the hopes and labor of foreign workers who obtained those visas as they searched for better jobs and better lives.
Two of those workers, an MBA student named Vimal Patel and an Indian software programmer Prasad Nair, were featured in an investigative story on the H-1B mess in the current issue of BusinessWeek. Their stories have a lot of complications, and Patel — who wound up working at a gas station — apparently committed a relatively minor violation of the law. But those young men and many others paid thousands of dollars to companies that promised them jobs that ultimately didn’t materialize or turned out to be for significantly less money than they had been led to expect.
[ InfoWorld's Bill Snyder argues why the H-1B visa has got to go. ]
Aside from humanitarian concerns, is there a reason why you should care about these guys? There is. With layoffs continuing to decimate the technology industry — about 100,000 IT workers lost their jobs in the last 12 months — employers can still bring in as many as 85,000 H-1B workers, including 20,000 who hold advanced degrees from U.S. universities. And now some of the outsourcers are preparing to move jobs to Mexico if visa regulations get tighter. The system works against U.S. workers, and it leaves plenty of room to exploit foreign workers. It’s broken and needs to be fixed.
Full Story: H-1B visas: A mess that could get even worse | Outsourcingoffshoring – InfoWorld.
Steep Losses Pose Crisis for Pensions
The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.
The upheaval on Wall Street has deluged public pension systems with losses that government officials and consultants increasingly say are insurmountable unless pension managers fundamentally rethink how they pay out benefits or make money or both.
Within 15 years, public systems on average will have less half the money they need to pay pension benefits, according to an analysis by Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Other analysts say funding levels could hit that low within a decade.
After losing about $1 trillion in the markets, state and local governments are facing a devil’s choice: Either slash retirement benefits or pursue high-return investments that come with high risk.
Full Story: Steep Losses Pose Crisis for Pensions – washingtonpost.com.
Foreclosures Grow in Housing Market’s Top Tiers
New data suggest that foreclosures are rising in more expensive housing markets.
About 30% of foreclosures in June involved homes in the top third of local housing values, up from 16% when the foreclosure crisis began three years ago, according to new data from real-estate Web site Zillow.com. The bottom one-third of housing markets, by home value, now account for 35% of foreclosures, down from 55% in 2006.
The report shows that foreclosures, after declining earlier this year, began to accelerate in the late spring and that more expensive homes have more recently accounted for a growing share of all foreclosures. “The slope of that curve in recent months is much sharper than it was recently,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Zillow. Rising foreclosures among more-expensive homes could create added pressure for a housing market that has shown signs of stabilizing in recent months as sales of lower-priced homes pick up.
The Zillow research compared homes against the median values for their local market and broke each market into three tiers by value. Zillow then looked at the share of monthly foreclosures in each tier over the past decade.
Full Story: Foreclosures Grow in Housing Market’s Top Tiers – WSJ.com.
Arianna On This Week: Rangel Should Resign Chairmanship Of Tax-Writing Committee
Arianna joined ABC’s This Week Roundtable today, along with George Will, Donna Brazile, and Nicolle Wallace, hosted by George Stephanopoulos. The spirited discussion covered the surge in momentum for passing health care reform; President Obama’s upcoming decision on whether to send up to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan; and the calls for Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel to resign his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee, a key tax-writing body, for multiple tax violations.
Arianna said Rangel should step down on Monday. She discussed Rangel in her recent blog post.
WATCH:
Full Story: Huff TV: Arianna On This Week: Rangel Should Resign Chairmanship Of Tax-Writing Committee.
Mammoth remains from the Russian permafrost offer up rich bounty | World news | The Guardian
Discoveries give scientists insight into animals’ demise as reindeer herders turn chance finds into lucrative paydays
It was 15 years ago when Vasily Ivanovich spotted something curious poking out of the side of a lake. Scrambling down a reed-lined bank, the reindeer hunter gently coaxed the object from the mud. “It was a mammoth tusk,” Ivanovich said. “It wasn’t very big,” his wife, Valentina, pointed out. “There are lots of them,” she added.
Ivanovich is one of a group of nomadic reindeer herders who live in Russia‘s remote Yamal peninsula, a vast wilderness of frozen tundra in north-west Siberia. It was here that in May 2007 another reindeer herder stumbled on the corpse of a perfectly preserved female baby woolly mammoth – which he named Lyuba, after his wife.
Some 9,700 years after woolly mammoths became extinct, mysteriously dying out at the end of the last ice age, more mammoth remains are emerging from Russia’s thawing permafrost. Russian experts say that the question of why the mammoth died out may shed light on our own prospects of survival in a world gripped by rapid climate change.
Full Story: Mammoth remains from the Russian permafrost offer up rich bounty | World news | The Guardian.
Health care costs stymie hiring
So far, it has been a jobless recovery, with employers hesitant to hire until they’re sure the expansion will last.
And they have an additional hurdle to face: rapidly rising health care costs that make it even more expensive to add workers.
“Rising health care costs are going to put the brake on job creation, which in turn puts the brakes on economic recovery,” said Kenneth Adams, president and CEO of The Business Council of New York State.
“For the past 20 years, our members have identified health insurance as their number-one concern,” said Mike Elmendorf, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business in Albany.
A Towers Perrin nationwide survey found that employer-sponsored medical benefit costs are expected to rise 7 percent next year, topping $10,000 for the first time.
And some smaller employers are expecting double-digit percentage increases, anecdotal information suggests.
Health insurance premiums made up 6.1 percent of total compensation in 1991, according to figures from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Last year, it was 7.9 percent.
Full Story: Health care costs stymie hiring — Page 1 — Times Union – Albany NY:2820:.
Parents of “chunky” infant weigh in on health insurance reform
Frustrated parents of a big infant who is being denied insurance view the system as “absurd.”
Alex Lange is a chubby, dimpled, healthy and happy 4-month-old.
But in the cold, calculating numbered charts of insurance companies, he is fat. That’s why he is being turned down for health insurance. And that’s why he is a weighty symbol of a problem in the health care reform debate.
Insurance companies can turn down people with pre-existing conditions who aren’t covered in a group health care plan.
Alex’s pre-existing condition — “obesity” — makes him a financial risk. Health insurance reform measures are trying to do away with such denials that come from a process called “underwriting.”
“If health care reform occurs, underwriting will go away. We do it because everybody else in the industry does it,” said Dr. Doug Speedie, medical director at Rocky Mountain Health Plans, the company that turned down Alex.
Full Story: Parents of “chunky” infant weigh in on health insurance reform – The Denver Post.
US facing massive economic ‘power shift’ with dollar’s downward spiral
The dollar’s position as the world’s leading reserve currency faces increased pressure as the financial crisis allows emerging economies greater influence on the world stage, analysts said.
A report last week in The Independent claiming that China, Russia and Gulf States are among nations prepared to ditch the dollar for oil trades has heightened the uncertainty surrounding the US currency’s future.
The dollar slumped against rivals last week in the wake of the British daily’s controversial report.
“The US dollar is being hurt by the continued talk of a shift away from a dollar-centric world,” said Kit Juckes, an analyst at currency traders ECU Group.
Full Story: US facing massive economic ‘power shift’ with dollar’s downward spiral | Raw Story.
WH communications director: Fox News operates as ‘a wing of the Republican Party.’
This morning on CNN’s Reliable Sources, White House communications director Anita Dunn defended her recent comment to Time magazine that Fox News is “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” Noting the inordinate amount of attention Fox devotes to stirring fake controversies like Bill Ayers and ACORN, Dunn explained:
The reality of it is that Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it’s not ideological. I mean, obviously there are many commentators who are conservative, liberal, centrist, and everybody understands that. What I think is fair to say about Fox is — and certainly the way we view it — is that it really is more of a wing of the Republican Party. [...]
They’re widely viewed as, you know, a part of the Republican Party — take their talking points, put them on the air, take their opposition research, put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network they way CNN is.
Watch it:
Full Story: Think Progress » WH communications director: Fox News operates as ‘a wing of the Republican Party.’.
OPS: It’s about time they noticed
Head of NFL players union opposes Limbaugh’s bid: Sports are meant to reject ‘discrimination and hatred.’
DeMaurice Smith Since Rush Limbaugh came out and expressed interest in buying the St. Louis Rams, black NFL players have let it be known that they would never play for a team owned by the hate radio host. “He’s a jerk. … He could offer me whatever he wanted, I wouldn’t play for him,” said New York Jets linebacker Bart Scott. Now, NFL Players executive director DeMaurice Smith is also opposing Limbaugh’s bid. In an e-mail to the union’s executive committee yesterday, Smith wrote:
I’ve spoken to the Commissioner [Roger Goodell] and I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages. But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred. [...]
I have asked our players to embrace their roles not only in the game of football but also as players and partners in the business of the NFL,” said Smith in the e-mail. “They risk everything to play this game, they understand that risk and they live with that risk and its consequences for the rest of their life. We also know that there is an ugly part of history and we will not risk going backwards, giving up, giving in or lying down to it.
Legal Authority Says SEC Looked The Other Way on Madoff
Report: Not only was the SEC negligent in the Madoff crime, it was a willing partner
The SEC Inspector General’s 457-page recent report on fraudster Bernie Madoff shows that the “negligence and malperformance” of the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) were so great that it acted “as if it did intend for Madoff not to be caught and stopped,” says a legal authority who lost money invested with Madoff.
The report shows that the SEC “did the very things one would do if one were trying to enable Madoff not to be caught and were thereby attempting to destroy the antifraud policy of the statute that the SEC is instead supposed to enforce,” says Lawrence Velvel, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover (MSL) and formerly an attorney on major antitrust cases.
Based on the just issued 457-page report of SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz, Velvel gave the following reasons showing that the SEC looked the other way to such an incredible extent that its failure to catch and stop Madoff was “defacto intentional.”
Full Story: Legal Authority Says SEC Looked The Other Way on Madoff.
Michael Moore: Second Thoughts
Second Thoughts
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
Friends,
Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize. “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. I thought it was important to remind him he’s now conducting the two wars he’s inherited. “Yeah,” she said, “but to tell him, ‘Now earn it!’? Give the guy a break — this is a great day for him and for all of us.”
I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack’s big day. Did I — and others on the left — do the same?
We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation — financially and morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving too slow for most of us — but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell?
Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted. What keeps us from forming the same local groups we put together to get out the vote last November? C’mon! We’re the majority now — the majority by a significant margin! We call the shots — and we need to tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say — or else.
Full Story: Second Thoughts | CommonDreams.org.
Natural Gas May Climb to $7, Invest AD Says: Technical Analysis
Natural gas may climb to $7 per million British thermal units after the commodity last month rebounded from a long-term support level, according to Abu Dhabi-based Invest AD.
Natural gas futures have almost doubled to $4.77 per million British thermal units since reaching a more than seven- year low on Sept. 4.
“Holding above a 20-year support and rebounding sharply from that level, signals an increase in demand for natural gas,” said Aksel Kibar, a portfolio manager at Invest AD, the investment firm owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council. “Any break above the $5.00-$5.50 range will push the prices toward the $6 to $7 area.”
Full Story: Natural Gas May Climb to $7, Invest AD Says: Technical Analysis – Bloomberg.com.
Millions will starve as rich nations cut food aid funding, warns UN
Aid agencies fear global disaster as support for World Food Programme hits 20-year low
Tens of millions of the world’s poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because rich countries have slashed aid funding.
The result, says Josette Sheeran, head of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), could be the “loss of a generation” of children to malnutrition, food riots and political destabilisation. “We are facing a silent tsunami,” said Sheeran in an exclusive interview with the Observer. “A humanitarian disaster is unrolling.” The WFP feeds nearly 100 million people a year.
Food riots in more than 20 countries last year persuaded rich countries to give a record $5bn to the WFP to help avert a global food crisis brought on by record oil prices and the growth of biofuel crops. But new data seen by the Observer show that food aid is now at its lowest in 20 years. Countries have offered only $2.7bn in the first 10 months of 2009.
Full Story: Millions will starve as rich nations cut food aid funding, warns UN | Environment | The Observer.
Occupying Afghanistan Is Making Things Worse
President Obama is coming under attack from the Right for his reluctance to grant the request of General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, for more U.S. troops. On the other side of the equation sits the majority of the American people, who are against sending more troops and in fact oppose this seemingly endless war that has now entered year nine.
Obama should go with the people and set a timetable to get our troops out of Afghanistan as soon as is practically possible, which should be less than one year. Their presence cannot contribute to bringing peace and security to that country, nor does it contribute to the security of the United States. In fact, the occupation of Afghanistan is making things worse on both counts.
With regard to the people of Afghanistan, my colleague Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy presents the most compelling piece of recent evidence that the occupation is a complete failure. Five years ago, 70 percent of eligible voters participated in the Afghan presidential election. This year it was down to 38 percent. This is mainly because the security situation has deteriorated over the last five years. It also represents a political failure: the inability or unwillingness to negotiate a political settlement that would have allowed many more people to vote.
Full Story: Occupying Afghanistan Is Making Things Worse | CommonDreams.org.
Bush Policy on DNA Test Waivers in Guilty Pleas Reviewed
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has ordered a review of a little-known Bush administration policy requiring some defendants to waive their right to DNA testing even though that right is guaranteed in a landmark federal law, officials said.
The practice of using DNA waivers began several years ago as a response to the Innocence Protection Act of 2004, which allowed federal inmates to seek post-conviction DNA tests to prove their innocence. More than 240 wrongly convicted people have been exonerated by such tests, including 17 on death row.
Full Story: Bush Policy on DNA Test Waivers in Guilty Pleas Reviewed – washingtonpost.com.
Obama to end restrictions on gays in military
President vows to overturn ‘don’t ask don’t tell’policy
WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, speaking on the eve of a major gay-rights march, told gay supporters on Saturday he would fight for their causes and renewed a pledge to end restrictions on their service in the US military.
To a standing ovation at a dinner held by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group, Obama said he would ”end ’don’t ask, don’t tell,’ That’s my commitment to you.”
Full Story: FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy – Obama to end restrictions on gays in military.
5 Essential Green Living Skills Our Grandparents Knew
We’re losing the skills our grandparents once had – green skills we need to know today.
Our grandparent’s generation didn’t use the word green to describe their lifestyle, but many of the things they knew how to do are now considered to be green living skills. Using those old-time green skills can not only save you money, but can also help to preserve our planet’s precious resources.
1. Organic Gardening: Planting a kitchen garden or Victory Garden was an essential skill for supplying fresh food with high nutritional value at a low cost. And they didn’t choose to grow organically, as that was how everyone gardened. For those without much space, a community garden is a great alternative, or for city-dwellers, try a fire-escape garden, like Mike in NYC.
2. Food Preservation: Many people used to can or dry the produce from their garden to ensure their winter food supply, or they had a cold storage area to keep root vegetables, winter squash, and fruits like apples through the fall and winter. Local Ag Extension offices and Master Gardeners can help you find classes about canning food safely.
Full Story: 5 Essential Green Living Skills Our Grandparents Knew : Planet Green.
The Statistics Of The Great Recession
A year ago this weekend, the Dow Jones industrial average had just finished a slow-motion crash. Over eight days, it fell 2,400 points, or 22 percent, and stood at 8,451.
One year later, the Dow is at 9,865. It’s up 51 percent from a 12-year low of 6,547 on March 9 – when some investors feared the financial world was coming to an end.
But the complete story of the Dow’s journey since the economy soured goes back a little further. Two years ago this week, on Oct. 7, 2007, the Dow set its record high of 14,164.
What followed was a three-act play. For five months, from October 2007 through the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns in mid-March 2008, the Dow fell 2,000 points in an orderly fashion as investors anticipated a garden-variety recession. From mid-March until Labor Day, the Dow rose and fell but was little changed. Right after Labor Day, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG failed over 10 days. The credit markets froze, and investors panicked, fearing another Great Depression. There were rallies amid the downward spiral that ensued, but over six months – until the low on March 9 – the Dow fell 5,000 points.
So where do we stand today?
Full Story: The Statistics Of The Great Recession.
Lobbyists Fight Last Big Plans to Cut Health Care Costs
As the health care debate moves to the floor of Congress, most of the serious proposals to fulfill President Obama’s original vow to curb costs have fallen victim to organized interests and parochial politics.
And now the last two initiatives with real bite that are still in contention — a scaled-back “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans and a nonpartisan Medicare budget-cutting commission — are under furious assault.
Most economists’ favorite idea for slowing the growth of health care spending was ending the income tax exemption for employer-paid health insurance to make lower-cost plans more attractive. But that would hurt workers with big benefit plans, and a labor-union lobbying blitz helped kill that idea by the Fourth of July.
Lobbying by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, meanwhile, dimmed the prospects of various proposals to cut into their incomes, including allowing government negotiation of Medicare drug prices and creating a government insurer with the muscle to lower fee payments.
Full Story: Lobbyists Fight Last Big Plans to Cut Health Care Costs – NYTimes.com.
Colorado Solar Power Outshining Sate’s Gas Industry
The sun had just crested the distant ridge of the Rocky Mountains, but already it was producing enough power for the electric meter on the side of the Smiley Building to spin backward.
For the Shaw brothers, who converted the downtown arts building and community center into a miniature solar power plant two years ago, each reverse rotation subtracts from their monthly electric bill. It also means the building at that moment is producing more electricity from the sun than it needs.
“Backward is good,” said John Shaw, who now runs Shaw Solar and Energy Conservation, a local solar installation company.
Good for whom?
Full Story: Colorado Solar Power Outshining Sate’s Gas Industry.
Is Your Digestive System Making You Sick?
There might be something wrong with your inner tube, and it could be making you sick and fat.
You may not even realize you have a problem … but if you have health concerns of any kind or you are overweight, your inner tube could be the root cause.
Of course, I’m not talking about a beach toy. I mean the inner tube of life — your digestive system!
It is likely that you suffer from (or have suffered from) some type of digestive disorder — irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, reflux, gas, and other things too gross to mention in print.
And you are not alone. More than 100 million Americans have digestive problems.
Full Story: Mark Hyman, MD: Is Your Digestive System Making You Sick?.
Soros to Invest $1 Billion in Clean Energy, Form Advisory Group
Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the “political problem” of climate change, said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and create an organization to advise policy makers on environmental issues.
Soros, the founder of hedge fund Soros Fund Management LLC, announced the investment in Copenhagen yesterday at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate. The group is an international association made up of 430 newspapers from 150 countries.
“I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments,” said Soros in an e-mailed message. “They should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem.”
Full Story: Soros to Invest $1 Billion in Clean Energy, Form Advisory Group – Bloomberg.com.
Bloody siege at Pakistan army HQ ends with 20 dead
Pakistani commandos freed dozens of hostages held by militants at the army’s own headquarters Sunday, ending a bloody, 22-hour drama that embarrassed the nation’s military as it plans a new offensive against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The standoff killed 20 people, including three captives and nine militants, who wore army fatigues in the audacious assault. The rescue operation began before dawn Sunday, ultimately freeing 42 hostages, the military said.
One attacker, described as the militants’ ringleader, was captured.
The attack on Pakistan’s “Pentagon,” home to the nation’s most powerful institution, showed the continued strength of insurgents allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban despite military operations and U.S. missile strikes that have battered their ranks. It was the third major attack in Pakistan in a week and threatens to deflate the army’s growing popularity in the wake of successful operations against the Taliban in the Swat Valley, Buner and Bajur.
Full Story: Bloody siege at Pakistan army HQ ends with 20 dead.
First-of-Its Kind Study: Medicare for All (Single-Payer) Would Be A Major Stimulus for Economy
First-of-Its Kind Study: Medicare for All (Single-Payer) Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy with 2.6 Million New Jobs, $317 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages
Establishing a national single-payer style healthcare reform system would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs, and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study released today. It may be viewed at www.CalNurses.org.
The number of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008.
“These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single-payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery,” said Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, which sponsored the study.
CBO Report: Medical malpractice reform savings would be small – .05%
An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found the savings — about 0.5% or $11 billion a year at the current level — far lower than advocates have estimated.
Reporting from Washington – Medical malpractice reform is unlikely to cut healthcare spending significantly, the Congressional Budget Office reported Friday.
Enacting a cap on pain-and-suffering and punitive damages, changing liability laws and tightening the statute of limitations on malpractice claims would lower total healthcare spending by about one-half of 1% each year — $11 billion at the current level — according to an estimate by the nonpartisan agency.
The figure is far lower than previous estimates by groups backing malpractice reform. On Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) blasted Democrats for blocking attempts to reform malpractice laws. “Almost everybody agrees that we can save between $100 billion and $200 billion if we had effective medical malpractice reform,” he said.
Full Story: Medical malpractice reform savings would be small, report says — latimes.com.
Continuing to Lose the Economic War
Foreign entities will very soon own everything of value in the USA and then become the major (or only) source of employment for US citizens.
Economic value is created only when you grow something in the earth, mine something from the earth, or make (manufacture) something. Transportation/distribution/warehousing/tax/sales costs are added to the value of the product that was initially created by these basic creative efforts. If we are not creating new wealth for each child born, then we are creating a downward spiral in the standard of living for that child. The continued loss of manufacturing capability in the US is making it impossible to reverse this trend. Printing new money to stimulate the economy just makes the existing money have less value and less buying power.
Free trade of products and commodities means that we must compete internationally based mainly upon price, and labor costs is normally the greatest cost component of most products and commodities. The country with the lowest labor cost then gets the product sale, manufacturing jobs, and the foreign exchange currency to manufacture these products. Free Trade benefits the US importers and US distributors of foreign made products for US average citizen’s consumption with less expensive products, but it costs us jobs in the USA to make these products. If we had innovative products that foreigners did not have, then we could get higher prices for those products, until foreigners copy our inventions.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Economically, America is Unilaterally Disarming Itself
Foreign entities spent $267.8 billion to acquire or establish U.S. businesses – certainly a recipe for disaster.
Foreign direct investment flocked to America in 2007. According to a preliminary analysis of the data available, the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that in 2007 foreign direct investment reached nearly record levels.
The analysis found that foreign entities spent $267.8 billion to acquire or establish U.S. businesses in 2007. That number is matched only by FDI in the U.S. in 2000, when foreign entities went on a spending spree, using $335.6 billion to gobble up American assets.
Allowing this insane amount of FDI in the U.S. is akin to American unilaterally disarming itself in an economic war.
The year-over-year increase in FDI for 2007 was 67 percent – a drastic increase, however, down from the 81 percent increase in 2006.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Barack Obama ready to pay Afghan fighters to ditch the Taliban
The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.
Despite five war councils in two weeks, President Barack Obama has so far failed to come up with a strategy for the conflict that may define his presidency. Fierce infighting continues between his own generals and advisers.
Obama has been handed three options by General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the US forces in Afghanistan. These range from 20,000 to 60,000 more troops, which would almost double the US military presence. McChrystal is said to favour an increase of 40,000 men, without which he warns the mission will fail.
Full Story: Barack Obama ready to pay Afghan fighters to ditch the Taliban – Times Online.
OPS: Ok, but how long will that last?
Top Judge Calls Calif. Government ‘Dysfunctional’
Fifth Largest Economy In The World: ‘Dysfunctional’
In a rare public rebuke of state government and policies delivered by a sitting judge, the chief justice of the California Supreme Court scathingly criticized the state’s reliance on the referendum process, arguing that it has “rendered our state government dysfunctional.”
In a speech Saturday before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass., the chief justice, Ronald M. George, denounced the widespread use of the referendum process to change state laws and constitutions. And he derided California as out of control, with voters deciding on everything from how parts of the state budget are spent to how farm animals are managed.
The state is unusual, he said, because it prohibits its Legislature from amending or repealing many types of laws without voter approval, essentially hamstringing that body — and the executive branch.
Full Story: Top Judge Calls Calif. Government ‘Dysfunctional’ – NYTimes.com.
Grayson: GOP wishes there were Nobel prize for ‘fear, hatred, racism’
Members of the Republican Party are angry at President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize for Peace because none of their politicians will win one anytime soon, says US House Rep. Alan Grayson.
“I think I understand their disappointment,” Grayson told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on Friday. “They’re not going to be winning the Nobel Peace Prize anytime soon. They probably wish there was a Nobel prize for fear, a Nobel prize for hatred, a Nobel prize for racism. Then they’d be in the running.”
Schultz aired a clip of Grayson speaking on the House floor Thursday, in which the Florida congressman took on the Republicans for their opposition to much of the Obama White House’s agenda.
“America understands that there’s one party in this country that’s in favor of health care reform, and one party that’s against it, and they know why,” Grayson told the House.
Full Story: Grayson: GOP wishes there were Nobel prize for ‘fear, hatred, racism’ | Raw Story.
Top economist: Obama ‘missed opportunity’ to reform financial system
“Don’t leave your home. Because you know what? When those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his or her finger on that mortgage, you don’t have that mortgage, and you are going to find they can’t find the paper up there on Wall Street. So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don’t you leave. In Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and all these other places our people are being treated like chattel, and this Congress is stymied.”
The Obama administration “refused” to take meaningful steps to reform the banking system in the wake of last year’s financial crisis, and the opportunity to do so has now been missed, says a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund.
Simon Johnson told PBS’s Bill Moyers that he expects an even larger financial crisis to hit the United States in the coming years because the system was not fixed through reform, but rather through a massive injection of taxpayers’ money into the failing banks.
“The short term opportunity was missed,” Johnson said on Bill Moyers Journal Friday night. “There was an opportunity the Obama administration had. President Obama campaigned on a message of change. … The time for change for the financial sector was absolutely upon us, this was abundantly apparent in January of this year.”
Johnson continued: “Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, is known for saying ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ The crisis for the big banks is substantially over. And it was completely wasted. The administration refused to break the power of the big banks when they had the opportunity earlier this year. And the regulatory reforms they are now pursuing … will turn out to be essentially meaningless.”
Full Story: Top economist: Obama ‘missed opportunity’ to reform financial system | Raw Story.
Obama Stands By His LGBT Nominees Under Attack From The Right: ‘I Will Not Waver In My Support’
President Obama received a warm welcome at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner tonight, where he promised to sign hate crimes legislation — which just passed the House — into law and repeal both Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, although he didn’t outline a specific timeline. Acknowledging some frustrations that there hasn’t been quicker action on these issues, Obama reiterated that he remains committed to the fight for LGBT equality:
OBAMA: This story, this fight, continues, now, and I’m here with a simple message: I’m here with you in that fight. (APPLAUSE)
For even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot and we will not put aside issues of basic equality. I greatly appreciate the support I’ve received from many in this room. I also appreciate that many of you don’t believe that progress has come fast enough. I want to be honest about that. (APPLAUSE) Because it’s important to be honest amongst friends.
Full Story: Think Progress » Obama Stands By His LGBT Nominees Under Attack From The Right: ‘I Will Not Waver In My Support’.
Discussing Afghanistan, McCain Dodges Question On ‘Whether We Should Have’ Invaded Iraq
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been a regular face on the Sunday morning talk shows this year, primarily because, as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos has said, he “is the leading GOP voice on Afghanistan” (despite the fact that he has consistently been wrong about the war there.)
McCain made his 14th Sunday show appearance since January on CNN today to discuss Afghanistan. During the interview, McCain again called on President Obama to ramp up U.S. troop levels there, modeled after the “surge” in Iraq. “Many see a parallel to Iraq in the sense that it’s been eight years in Afghanistan now it has been billions of dollars” and “we have shed American blood there,” host John King said. But McCain didn’t want to go there:
MCCAIN: First of all, rightly or wrongly we were focused on Iraq. I happened to believe we had to win there. Whether we should have gone in or not, weapons of mass destruction, you covered on other days.
Watch it:
Full Story: Think Progress » Discussing Afghanistan, McCain Dodges Question On ‘Whether We Should Have’ Invaded Iraq.
The IMF’s misguided new mission
The IMF wants to expand its role in the global economy and be the world’s lender of last resort. We shouldn’t give it more power
Mark Weisbrot | guardian.co.uk
Rescued from a state of near-irrelevance by the world recession and an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars (mostly from the US, Europe and Japan), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now thinking of expanding its role into previously uncharted territory.
In Istanbul for the annual meeting of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director, said: “Given the costs associated with reserves accumulation, there is clearly a need for reliable emergency financing and hence for a global lender of last resort. The Fund has the potential to serve as an effective and reliable provider of such insurance.”
Strauss-Kahn is correct to point out that developing countries pay a substantial price for accumulating foreign exchange reserves in order to “self-insure” against a financial crisis. But can the IMF play this role of a world’s central banker?
Full Story: The IMF’s misguided new mission | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Supreme Court could expand corporate rule
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
- Thomas Jefferson
The wise words of this nation’s third president are more true today than they were when he wrote them nearly two centuries ago, and the aristocracy of multinational corporations only will increase if some in Washington and on Wall Street have their way.
Muckraking moviemaker Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” could not be more trenchant and timely in today’s United States of America, which is not a democracy and not a republic, but a plutocracy – a nation ruled and rigged in favor of the wealthy. In his hard-hitting documentary, Moore says this country is quite literally in the pockets of a wealthy elite comprising about 1 percent of its 300 million people.
America’s two major political parties, the Democrats and, especially, the Republicans, are puppet political parties for the faceless corporadoes who really rule this nation, Moore says in his latest film. Though “Capitalism: A Love Story” once again will anger many of those who will refuse to see it, Moore once again has provided a needed gadfly’s sting to the horse’s hind end of 21st-century American compliance and complacency.
Full Story: Supreme Court could expand corporate rule | The Smirking Chimp.
Can This Film Save Afghanistan?
It took documentarian Robert Greenwald 40 years to become an activist, but it was worth the wait, writes Gail Sheehy—his new film about Afghanistan is a clarion call for peace.
Many of us who marched against the Vietnam War 40 years ago have a terminal case of déjà vu over Afghanistan as we blunder into our ninth year of bombing and occupation. More than 90 percent of U.S. funding there goes to military purposes, and we still aren’t winning hearts or minds. Our Nobel Prize-winning president promised to “forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan,” but so far he has only threatened to escalate our troop level by tens of thousands.
In the film, Greenwald and his team ask Afghans themselves if American troops are making them safer. The answers are no, no, no, a thousand times no.
So thank goodness for documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald, a latter-day saint in my book. It took Greenwald 40 years to figure out how to be the activist he was not during Vietnam. But he’s making up for lost time by getting us to rethink what’s going on in Afghanistan.
Greenwald was born into the back end of the Silent Generation, in 1943. Despite being raised in the hot pink sandbox of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he joined a common fraternity for boomers in college—those whose only resistance was to the draft.
Full Story: Can This Film Save Afghanistan? – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.
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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. 
