Archive for November, 2009
Senate GOP embrace Inhofe’s boycott of Clean Energy Jobs Act.
Senate Republicans have endorsed Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) plan to boycott the legislative markup of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), scheduled to begin tomorrow. Inhofe’s GOP compatriots on the environment committee hope to block action by refusing to participate in the markup on the pretext that the Enviromental Protection Agency’s economic analysis of the bill is not “complete.” In a letter sent to committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ranking member Inhofe and his counterparts on five other committees said any attempt to begin the markup before acceding to his demands “would severely damage” its chances for passage:
We understand that there may be an attempt to report S. 1733 from the Committee not only without a satisfactory analysis, but also without sufficient opportunity to address the bipartisan concerns raised over the course of legislative hearings on the measure. As we are sure you will understand, from our viewpoint, such an approach would severely damage, rather than help, the chances of enacting changes to our nation’s climate and energy policies.
Full Story Think Progress » Senate GOP embrace Inhofe’s boycott of Clean Energy Jobs Act..
Matthew Hoh: ‘I Firmly Believe That We Are Taking Part In A Civil War’ In Afghanistan
Last week, former Marine captain and State Department employee Matthew Hoh made headlines when he went public with his resignation from the administration over his opposition to the continuation of the war in Afghanistan. In a four-page letter he sent to the State Department, he explained his resignation by writing that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan serves to “bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by [the Afghan] people.”
This past Sunday, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewed Hoh about his views on the war. During one segment of the interview, Zakaria asked Hoh why he feels the U.S. should begin to draw down its troops from the country. Hoh replied that he doesn’t see the Afghan conflict as one between the U.S. and the Taliban, but rather as a 35-year long “civil war” between rural Pashtuns “who want to be left alone” and an urban government the U.S. is backing:
HOH: I firmly believe that we are taking part in a civil war. We are on the same side of the civil war that the Soviets intervened on.
ZAKARIA: So, you have a divide among the Pashtuns. There’s the urban middle class. And Karzai, presumably, who is a Pashtun, comes from this urban middle class.
HOH: Correct.
ZAKARIA: Many of them left the country after the — during the years of the civil war. And the ones who have stayed to fight, who fought the Soviet Union and who are now fighting us, are the rural, mountain tribe Pashtuns who resent the central government and its intrusions.
HOH: Who want to be left alone.
Watch it:
Full Story Think Progress » Matthew Hoh: ‘I Firmly Believe That We Are Taking Part In A Civil War’ In Afghanistan.
Arizona Republican National Committeeman tries to show solidarity with the ‘brown people’ in his city.
Bruce Ash and Bill Kristol Arizona Republican National Committeeman Bruce Ash recently called in to the radio show of right-wing host Jon Justice — who has been called the “Rush Limbaugh of Tucson” — to take issue with local Democratic Party chairman Jeff Rogers’ opposition to a city ballot initiative. Ash said that Rogers doesn’t understand levels of crime in the city. To show how aware he is personally, Ash recounted some of his conversations with the city’s “brown people”:
I listen to the event and I heard the argument, and what was really truly amazing to me, Jon, was the pomposity that Jeff Rogers displayed. He sits in his little house in midtown with his kids who go to school, with his little job, and his job as the Democrat county chairman, and he is blind to all of the crime that is going on in this city.
It’s maybe not happening in his little neighborhood, but you ask any of the brown people who live on the South Side, or the West Side, or the South Central side of Tuscon, and they will tell you, in no uncertain terms, the fear they have getting in their car, walking in the street, and sometimes just sitting in their house.
Listen here:
Despite Rhetoric About Preexisting Conditions, Boehner’s Health Care Plan Doesn’t Bar Denials
While leading GOP opposition to health care reform over the past few months, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) has simultaneously insisted that Republicans believe in helping Americans with preexisting conditions get health care. Currently, “in 44 states, it’s legal for health insurers to deny coverage to people who have previously been sick, or charge them more for treatment.”
“And so there are a number of things that Republicans believe are essential,” Boehner told NPR in September. “We believe that making sure that people who have preexisting conditions have access to affordable health insurance.” On Fox News last week, Boehner said that Republicans wanted to focus on helping “those with preexisting conditions“:
BOEHNER: Most of the 36 million that they say they’re going to cover already have access to some type of government program, or even their employer program, or have chosen just not to have health insurance. When you really boil this down, there are about seven or eight million people in America, those with preexisting conditions, those who are what I would describe as the working poor, and some early retirees who have a difficult time getting health insurance. We can help those people get health insurance and still bring down the cost of health insurance for the 85 percent of Americans who have it and think they pay too much for it.
Watch it:
What Physicians Know
There is no sound reason for Congress to protect the private health insurance industry. But of course they always have and always will because it is the source of huge amounts of money for political campaigns.
I had a long conversation with my favorite physician, who has operated on me twice successfully. He is an incredibly kind person without an ounce of greed or pretense. Like other physicians I have spoken to, he spoke eloquently about the terrible times he consistently has with private health insurance companies.
While he praises Medicare for its simplicity and certainty, he has absolutely nothing positive to say about private insurers. They take up huge amounts of time of him and his staff, trying in every possible way to deny services to their customers (his patients) and also to pay as little as possible to him. His endless struggles with the insurance companies make his life miserable. Meanwhile all he cares about is giving his patients the very best care and not making them suffer because of their insurance carriers.
Like so many of us he sees the need for major reforms of our health care system, but remains pessimistic about what Congress and President Obama will eventually deliver. He is incredulous at how executives of private insurers make vast amounts of money while making physicians and their patients suffer endless annoyances and negative impacts on health care. And they get away with making people pay more and more money for worse and worse insurance.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Lobbyists Quit in Record Numbers
It’s been a rough few years for lobbyists. They have been attacked by President Barack Obama. They have been targeted in corruption probes. And they have been hurt by the economy.
And many have decided they’re not going to take it anymore.
A record number of lobbyists have quit the business this year, according to a study released today.
About 1,400 lobbyists, or 8% of the industry, left in the three-month period ending June 30, according to a joint study of lobbying records by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and OMB Watch. Typically, a few hundred lobbyists leave the business every quarter.
In all, there are still more than 11,000 lobbyists in Washington, according to records. That’s actually up 20% since 1998.
It’s impossible to know for sure the causes of the recent K Street retreat. But the study’s authors blame Obama’s new antilobbying rules. When Obama took office, he imposed a ban on registered lobbyists working in his administration. He has also barred lobbyists from lobbying the administration on certain topics.
Full Story Lobbyists Quit in Record Numbers – Washington Wire – WSJ.
U.S., China Talk Trade Ahead of Presidential Visit
U.S. and Chinese officials met last week for the annual Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting ahead of President Barack Obama’s scheduled China visit next month.
U.S. and Chinese officials met last week for the annual Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting ahead of President Barack Obama’s scheduled China visit next month, achieving little progress and exposing the fissures between the two nations.
Still stung by the White House’s decision to impose 35 percent duties on Chinese tire imports at the behest of the United Steel Workers union, Beijing officials announced that they would launch an investigation into whether American auto companies have unfairly benefited from government aid.
The probe could eventually lead to higher tariffs on U.S. car exports. Both General Motors and Chrysler have received billions of dollars in government assistance in the past year. However, the measure would be largely symbolic, and have very little impact on the Big Three. American automakers export roughly 9,000 vehicles to China each year, but sell millions in the Asian market. All three Detroit companies have joint ventures in China that allow them to manufacture there
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
American Economy Decimated in Phantom Trade War Attributable in Great Measure to “Free Trade”
Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings
American economy decimated in phantom trade war, we lost it because we didn’t even know we were in it so we planned no defenses.
American economy decimated in phantom trade war, we lost it because we didn’t even know we were in it so we planned no defenses. The politics of the President and the Congress, influenced by the politics of the financial community, has left us defenseless in a trade war. The people didn’t realize it or else we would have forced change. We knew something was and is wrong. But our belief in free enterprise, “free trade” and market forces is so strong that we didn’t realize that in “globalization” the economy of the United States was being decimated in a Trade War. Globalization is nothing more than a trade war with production looking for a country cheaper to produce. Japan started this Trade War after World War II by closing its domestic market, subsidizing its manufacture, and exporting its production at or near cost, making up the profit in its closed market. Later, China not only closed its market, but took total control of its financing, investment, production, labor, trade – now the internet. In response, Corporate America off-shores our country’s production, jobs, and economy.
The bailout and bonus crowd call for “free trade;” “don’t start a Trade War” to make sure that nothing is done to slow the off-shoring. “Free trade,” like world peace, is a desirable goal. Of “free trade,” Henry Clay said in the United States Senate in 1832: “It never existed … it never will exist.” Calling for “free trade” in this Trade War is like calling for world peace in a “hot” war. Chinese control makes China the superpower in the Trade War and expecting “free trade” in globalization is ludicrous. The loss of jobs results not nearly so much from the recession, but overwhelmingly from the Trade War. People waiting for the recession to end to find a job will have to wait for the United States to jump into the Trade War and protect its jobs and economy.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Restless Vagina Syndrome
By promoting the idea that ‘normal’ women have explosive sex all the time, BigPharma helped launch ‘female sexual dysfunction’ (FSD).
It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.
You are among the “43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function,” according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties—but only if the woman feels “personal distress” about it.
So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.
Full Story Restless Vagina Syndrome — In These Times.
Are the “New Atheists” As Bad as Christian Fundamentalists?
The most aggressive members of the “New Atheism” movement have quite a bit in common with religious extremists like Pat Robertson and Ted Haggard.
My problem with the so-called New Atheist movement is that several of the most successful of the New Atheist leaders — as judged by book sales and speaking fees — say Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — remind me of the worst of my own fundamentalist evangelical background. They are as close minded as they seem to be almost pathologically certain of their beliefs.
I know a deranged faith-based personality cult when I see one, given that my late father Francis Schaeffer was a fundamentalist guru to millions in the 1970s and 80s and a leading founder of the Religious Right, something Max Blumenthal discusses in his important book Republican Gomorrah and that I go into (in depth) in my book Patience With God–Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion Or Atheism. (In that book I explain what is wrong with evangelicalism — besides paranoia and hate! — and why I got out.)
Full Story Are the “New Atheists” As Bad as Christian Fundamentalists? | Belief | AlterNet.
Fetus-Shaped Potatoes? Going Undercover Inside the Weird World of Right-Wing Abortion Foes
I went undercover to a Pro-Life Federation conference. What I found there was not “middle America” or even conservative America. It was fringe America.
Crossing the lobby outside the Scranton (Pa.) Hilton Hotel ballroom required passing through a phalanx of tables that displayed bloody pictures of aborted fetuses; glossy flyers on the dangers of abortion, condoms, same-sex marriage and euthanasia; a scrubbed russet potato in the shape of a fetus; and a 3-by-5-foot poster of Terri Schiavo in her wedding dress.
It was 9:30 on a Saturday morning, and I had come to attend the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation’s annual conference, this year titled, “Lighting the Way for Life in the Electric City.”
From the doorway I estimated that the ballroom held about 300 patient and pale-white attendees, all quietly sitting at round tables that had been covered with white cloths, each adorned with a water pitcher. The group was predominantly made up of seniors, although I did spot a handful of women and men not yet white-haired.
Climate negotiators grow impatient at lack of leadership from America
UN and EU pile pressure on US to set ambitious carbon cuts and timetables to improve chances of deal at Copenhagen
With just five days’ formal negotiations left before the start of crucial UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month, key figures in the negotiations are showing clear signs of impatience at the US position.
At international climate talks in Barcelona, the United Nations and European Union, backed by international environment and development groups, today piled pressure on the US to set more ambitious targets and timetables to cut greenhouse emissions in order to reach an agreement.
“We expect American leadership. President Obama has created great expectations around the world. Now we urge [the US] to contribute in the way that we have,” said Andreas Carlgren, Swedish environment minister talking on behalf of the EU presidency.
Full Story Climate negotiators grow impatient at lack of leadership from America | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
OPS: Many of us here are impatient with the lack of leadership too
Neocons Salivating Over Their Next Great Exaggerated “Threat”: Electromagnetic Pulse Attack
A diverse array of rightwing factions have united behind the effort to promote the EMP threat thesis.
The EMP Threat: Lots of Hype, Little Traction
Last month, Christian conservatives’ favorite presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee, headlined a national conference in Niagara, New York, titled “Protecting America Against Permanent Continental Shutdown From Electromagnetic Pulse.”
Sponsored by EMPACT America, an organization allied with several leading rightwing advocacy groups, the conference drew some 800 people who came to hear about what organizers regard as a growing threat to the United States: an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that allegedly could destroy much of the country’s infrastructure and send it back to the 19th century. The conference represents the latest step in the effort to hype the supposed menace of EMP, as well as yet another angle on the purportedly diverse array of threats posed by “rogue” states like Iran and North Korea and transnational terrorist groups.
Also addressing the conference via video feed were Republican heavyhitter Newt Gingrich and conservative Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), who has been one of Congress’ loudest advocates of EMP awareness.
Full Story The EMP Threat: Lots of Hype, Little Traction – Political Research Associates – Right Web.
OPS: Remember, the Reich’s major tactic for gaining power is FEAR.
They have to make you afraid of something and then convince you that only THEY can save you from it. This tactic was explored in great detail by Adam Curtis in the BBC documentary:
The Power Of Nightmares. Watch the entire 3 part series here.
Decent Health Care or an Insurance Industry Bailout? 5 Defining Battles in the Final Stretch for Reform
There’s momentum to repair our fractured health care system — but activism is desperately needed to keep the process honest.
Last week, after almost a year of tumult, the final act of the health care reform drama began as House Democrats unveiled their final legislative package, and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., challenged conservative Democrats in the upper house to fall in line by promising to bring a bill with a public health insurance option to the Senate floor.
In the House, the ball’s rolling. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is confident the bill worked out by her caucus will pass now that she has made some steep concessions to conservative Blue Dog Democrats (irking progressive lawmakers and health reform activists). Final touches are being put on the legislation, and it may come up for a vote as early as this week.
Although it’s far from certain that Reid has the votes to pass his bill, which is yet to be finalized, the announcement moves us closer to getting a plan with a public option out of both the Senate and the House.
Our Produce-or-Die Culture Is Killing Us — And We’re Idiotically Grinning and Bearing It
The Iron Cheer of Empire
No free tortillas in the Workhouse Republic
Every afternoon when I knock off from writing, after I suck down a Modelo beer and take an hour nap, I step out onto the 400-year-old cobbled street, with its hap-scatter string of vendors lining both sides. All sorts of vendors — vegetable vendors, vendors of tacos, chicharrones, chenille bedspreads and plucked chickens, cigarros, soft drinks, sopa and suet. Merchants whose business address consists of a card table in front of their casita.
Here in this working class neighborhood on Calle Zaragoza, tourists seldom venture, and the neighborhood merchants’ customers are their neighbors. Their goods are the common fare of daily family life in Mexico. Today, at a table less than two blocks away, I purchased a dozen brown eggs, with the idea of making huevos rancheros. The purchase took three quarters of an hour, and included stumbling but cheerful half English/half Spanish conversations with the six vendors between my casita and the table of Gabriel, the old egg and cheese vendor with an artificial leg and wizened smile who assures me that rooster-fertilized eggs make a man go all night. “I am too old to care about that,” I half speak, half gesture in that rudimentary sign language understood everywhere. “Hawwww” he chortles and says something in Spanish I cannot understand. An English speaking bystander, a teenager with a backward baseball cap and dressed in “L.A. sag,” translates: “He says his pendejo is as hard as his plastic leg. You still alive! You never too old!”
Full Story Joe Bageant: The Iron Cheer of Empire.
India is preparing for possible war with China and Pakistan
Tensions have flared between both China and India militaries along their disputed 2,175 mile-long border, with both sides alleging more frequent troop incursions in recent weeks. China is upset when the Indian prime minister recently visit the disputed region. China considers an Indian-occupied piece of it’s own Tibetan Autonomous Region, has added flames to the fire.
China of course already deeply resents the fact that the top Tibetan leader, and several hundred thousand exiled Tibetans, are allowed to reside in India.
India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers. Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers to hunt down the guerrillas.The Maoists, however, do not want to secede or be absorbed. Their goal is to topple the system.
India’s rapid economic growth has made it an emerging global power but also deepened stark inequalities in society. Maoists accuse the government of trying to push tribal groups off their land to gain access to raw materials and have sabotaged roads, bridges and even an energy pipeline.
Full Story India is preparing for possible war with China and Pakistan.
What Happened to Investing in Young Progressive Voters?
Yesterday Craig wrote about the “Youth Disengagement Meme” and closed with the following paragraph:
Unfortunately, given the lack of funding for many progressive youth organizations, the communications efforts aren’t there. By no means am I an expert in progressive youth infrastructure, but I do want to raise awareness of this. Because I have a feeling that the Corzine campaign’s inability to engage youth on a peer-to-peer level is going to have some rough consequences, I believe we’re going to be facing the “youth are disengaged” meme that will affect our preparations for 2010 and 2012. What are we going to do?
Last week Sarah wrote about the lack of youth outreach from the Democratic establishment. In that piece, she quotes Morley Winograd:
“There’s been a missed opportunity here in showcasing the kind of youthful, optimistic, hopeful energy that greatly Obama benefited from during the campaign,” said Morley Winograd. . .”But of course it does not at all mean that the opportunity has gone away.”
Between 2004 and 2008 progressive youth organizations were building a strategy and infrastructure to turn out young voters and engage them in issue advocacy outside of elections. Major progressive donors seemed to realize the latent power of the youth vote and the need to catch up with the conservative funding machine that supports conservative youth.
Full Story What Happened to Investing in Young Progressive Voters? | Future Majority.
CNN Interviews Matthew Hoh Who Resigned In Protest Over Afghanistan
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Interviews State Department Official Matthew Hoh Who Resigned In Protest Over Afghanistan War – 11/01/09
Full Story YouTube – CNN Interviews Matthew Hoh Who Resigned In Protest Over Afghanistan.
Colour-Coded Revolutions and the Origins of World War III
Introduction
Following US geo-strategy in what Brzezinski termed the “global Balkans,” the US government has worked closely with major NGOs to “promote democracy” and “freedom” in former Soviet republics, playing a role behind the scenes in fomenting what are termed “colour revolutions,” which install US and Western-friendly puppet leaders to advance the interests of the West, both economically and strategically.
Part 2 of this essay on “The Origins of World War III” analyzes the colour revolutions as being a key stratagem in imposing the US-led New World Order. The “colour revolution” or “soft” revolution strategy is a covert political tactic of expanding NATO and US influence to the borders of Russia and even China; following in line with one of the primary aims of US strategy in the New World Order: to contain China and Russia and prevent the rise of any challenge to US power in the region.
These revolutions are portrayed in the western media as popular democratic revolutions, in which the people of these respective nations demand democratic accountability and governance from their despotic leaders and archaic political systems. However, the reality is far from what this utopian imagery suggests. Western NGOs and media heavily finance and organize opposition groups and protest movements, and in the midst of an election, create a public perception of vote fraud in order to mobilize the mass protest movements to demand “their” candidate be put into power. It just so happens that “their” candidate is always the Western US-favoured candidate, whose campaign is often heavily financed by Washington; and who proposes US-friendly policies and neoliberal economic conditions. In the end, it is the people who lose out, as their genuine hope for change and accountability is denied by the influence the US wields over their political leaders.
The soft revolutions also have the effect of antagonizing China and Russia, specifically, as it places US protectorates on their borders, and drives many of the former Warsaw Pact nations to seek closer political, economic and military cooperation. This then exacerbates tensions between the west and China and Russia; which ultimately leads the world closer to a potential conflict between the two blocs.
Full Story Colour-Coded Revolutions and the Origins of World War III.
How the GOP is Killing America
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The US is much, much worse off these days than Mexico which often takes the blame for the drug trade and ‘income disparities’. Fact is –income and wealth inequality is much, much worse in the US than in Mexico. At the end of the Bush Sr era, the upper quintile alone had benefited from the Reagan tax cuts. So –where do the GOP ‘yankees’ get off aiming its demagoguery at Mexico?
The piddly amounts of drugs sold across the border are a strawman –peanuts compared to the heist of US wealth pulled off by just one percent of the US population!
The GOP is either nuts or crooked or both! I often wonder what the US might have been if right wing psychopaths had not demagogued every war or every so-called ‘crisis’ and in ways that enriched only their ‘base’! The end result is that just one percent of the entire population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined!
And if Mexican drugs are sold in the US –what of it? Isn’t that just good ol’ laissez-faire, right wing, GOP ‘free enterprise’. How long would that evil drug trade last if ‘yankees’ were not lined up to buy? And what percentage of the GOP is ‘hooked’ on cocaine? How long would the board traffic last if ‘white shirted’, clean shaven GOP faithful were not lined up to buy?
Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: How the GOP is Killing America.
Republicans say their candidate ‘lacks the integrity to be elected to anything’
Only two weeks ago a Republican party spokesman said Doug Hoffman “lacked the integrity and qualities to be elected to anything much less Congress”. Now in a brazen display of hypocrisy and showing why they are a minority party that most Americans dont trust, the national Republican party is backing the man they said “lacked the integrity to be elected to anything:” after conservatives forced out pro choice and pro gay rights Republican Dede Scozzafava.
Scozzafava had been the choice of the local Republican party to run for the seat in the 23rd district, a seat that has been Republican for decades. And the national Republican party had nothing but bad things to say about him.
But conservatives around the country,the most prominent being Sarah Palin, stuck their noses into local party politics, outraged over Scozzafava’s pro gay rights and pro choice stance and decided she had no place in Republican politics. Their pressure and support of Hoffman, forced her to drop out of the race, and now the same Republicans who said Dough Hoffman didn’t have the integrity to be elected to anything are now supporting him for congress.
Full Story Republicans say their candidate ‘lacks the integrity to be elected to anything’.
The Halliburton Loophole
Editorial - NYTimes -
Among the many dubious provisions in the 2005 energy bill was one dubbed the Halliburton loophole, which was inserted at the behest of — you guessed it — then-Vice President Dick Cheney, a former chief executive of Halliburton.
It stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. Invented by Halliburton in the 1940s, it involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals, some of them toxic, into underground rock formations to blast them open and release natural gas.
Hydraulic fracturing has been implicated in a growing number of water pollution cases across the country. It has become especially controversial in New York, where regulators are eager to clear the way for drilling in the New York City watershed, potentially imperiling the city’s water supply. Thankfully, the main company involved has now decided not to go ahead.
Full Story Editorial – The Halliburton Loophole – NYTimes.com.
Thom HartmannGoldman takes on new role: taking away people’s homes
When California wildfires ruined their jewelry business, Tony Becker and his wife fell months behind on their mortgage payments and experienced firsthand the perils of subprime mortgages.
The couple wound up in a desperate, six-year fight to keep their modest, 1,500-square-foot San Jose home, a struggle that pushed them into bankruptcy.
The lender with whom they sparred, however, wasn’t the one that had written their loans. It was an obscure subsidiary of Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs Group.
Full Story Goldman takes on new role: taking away people’s homes | McClatchy.
Ellsberg: Obama Fears Military Revolt
Ellsberg gives clues to why Obama will most likely grant military requests to send more troops to Afghanistan.
Paul Jay, senior producer of The Real News Network, interviewed former military analyst and Pentagon whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg about the common thread between the conflict in Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam.
Like Vietnam, Ellsberg said “no victory lies ahead [for the US] in Afghanistan” and President Barack Obama knows it.
Still, Ellsberg believes Obama will “go against his own instincts as to what’s best for the country and do what’s best for him and his administration and his party in the short run facing elections, which is to avoid a military revolt.”
That means the president will likely authorize a sizable increase of US forces in the region, Ellsberg said, because Obama fears that top US military commanders will stage a revolt if he rejects their requests for additional soldiers.
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Ellsberg: Obama Fears Military Revolt.
OPS: Ellsberg is not the first to suggest this recently.
IF true, we are more deeply damaged than most of us can imagine
Scientists claim junk food is as addictive as heroin
With the rumors swirling that Michelle Obama is a big fan of former FDA Commissioner David Kessler’s new book The End of Overeating, it seems reasonable to check in on the science behind an “addiction model” for salty, sweet, and fatty processed food (an assertion at the core of the book). As it happens, a group of researchers from the independent, not-for-profit Scripps Research Institute has just released a new peer-reviewed study on the subject. The conclusion: the brain responds to junk food the same way it does to heroin:
Junk food elicits addictive behavior in rats similar to the behaviors of rats addicted to heroin, a new study finds. Pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive as the binging wore on, making the rats consume more and more food. The results, presented October 20 at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting, may help explain the changes in the brain that lead people to overeat.
“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings,” says study coauthor Paul Johnson of the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla.
Johnson offered one group of rats a broad range of processed food, from bacon and cheesecake to Ho Hos while another received a “high-nutrient, low-calorie chow.” There was an immediate difference:
Full Story Scientists claim junk food is as addictive as heroin | Grist.
Afghan War Vets Patrol Halls Of Congress To Stop Troop Escalation
A little more than two months ago, Brock McIntosh was fighting in Afghanistan, a member of the Army National Guard. This week, he’s walking the halls of Congress, trying to end a war that began when he was 13 years old.
McIntosh, now 21, and four other vets are in Washington for something of a preemptive strike. A new pro-war group calling itself Vets For Freedom plans to begin lobbying Congress Thursday, pushing for an escalation. The anti-war vets hope to head them off.
But if their erstwhile comrades and now political opponents are “for freedom,” that raises an unusual question. “What does that make us?” Devon Read, 29, asks mockingly. “Vets Against Freedom? Vets For Terrorism?”
Full Story Afghan War Vets Patrol Halls Of Congress To Stop Troop Escalation.
Church Online: Believers Can Worship On Web, ‘Click To Accept Christ’
Church volunteers greet visitors entering the lobby. The worship band begins its set and a pastor offers to pray privately with anyone during the service.
When the sermon is done, it’s time for communion, and the pastor guides attendees through the ritual. Later, worshippers exchange Facebook and e-mail addresses so they can stay in touch.
There is nothing remarkable about this encounter, which is replicated countless times each weekend at churches around the world. It’s all happening online.
Full Story Church Online: Believers Can Worship On Web, ‘Click To Accept Christ’.
NSA To Build $1.5 Billion Cybersecurity Data Center
The massive complex, comprising up to 1.5 million square feet of building space, will provide intelligence and warnings related to cybersecurity threats across government.
The National Security Agency, whose job it is to protect national security systems, will soon break ground on a data center in Utah that’s budgeted to cost $1.5 billion.
The NSA is building the facility to provide intelligence and warnings related to cybersecurity threats, cybersecurity support to defense and civilian agency networks, and technical assistance to the Department of Homeland Security, according to a transcript of remarks by Glenn Gaffney, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, who is responsible for oversight of cyber intelligence activities in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.”Our country must continue to advance its national security efforts and that includes improvements in cybersecurity,” Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, said in a statement. “As we rely more and more on our communications networks for business, government and everyday use, we must be vigilant and provide agencies with the necessary resources to protect our country from a cyber attack.”
Full Story NSA To Build $1.5 Billion Cybersecurity Data Center — Cybersecurity — InformationWeek.
OPS: but will it also make for easier spying on Americans?
Microsoft: Worms Still Biggest Security Threat
The Conficker worm, a computer worm built to target Microsoft Windows operating systems, continues to be one of the most prevalent security threats to PCs using Windows, reports a recent Microsoft security brief.
First detected in 2008, the Conficker worm spreads by exploiting flaws in Windows software, as well as infected media, to co-opt machines and link them to another computer, through which the infected PCs can be commanded remotely.
According to Microsoft’s most recent Security Intelligence Report, in the first six months of 2009, 5 million computers were infected with Conficker.
Full Story Microsoft: Worms Still Biggest Security Threat.
Republicans move to delay climate bill progress
All seven Republicans on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee plan to boycott next week’s work session on a climate-change bill, an aide said on Saturday, in a move aimed at thwarting Democratic efforts to advance the controversial legislation quickly.
“Republicans will be forced not to show up” at Tuesday’s work session, said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for Republican senators on the environment panel.
Under committee rules, at least two Republicans are needed for Chairwoman Barbara Boxer to hold the work sessions that would give senators an opportunity to amend the controversial legislation and then vote to approve it in the panel, which is controlled by President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats.
Full Story Republicans move to delay climate bill progress | Green Business | Reuters.
Brown spokesman resigns over secret phone recordings
Scott Gerber, the communications director for Attorney General Jerry Brown who admitted recording phone conversations with reporters without their permission — including Chronicle senior political writer Carla Marinucci — resigned Monday.
Gerber had been on administrative leave.
“I write this letter with a heavy heart,” Gerber wrote Monday to chief deputy attorney general James Humes. “I have let you down and let myself down as well.”
“As we have discussed, I recorded a number of phone interviews with reporters without seeking their permission. My purpose wasn’t to play gotcha but simply to have an accurate record of official, on-the-record statements on matters of public concern.
“It is clear now that the I made serious errors in judgment. I should have asked reporters for permission to record, and I should have followed the guidance you provided. I suspect that the few reporters involved in the calls I taped would have readily said yes, but nonetheless it was wrong not to ask them first.
Full Story SFGate: Politics Blog : Brown spokesman resigns over secret phone recordings.
Food Stamps Will Feed Half Of US Kids, Study Says
CHICAGO — Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.
The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Your neighbor may be using some of these programs but it’s not the kind of thing people want to talk about,” Rank said.
The analysis was released Monday in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The authors say it’s a medical issue pediatricians need to be aware of because children on food stamps are at risk for malnutrition and other ills linked with poverty.
Full Story Food Stamps Will Feed Half Of US Kids, Study Says.
Obama Warns of More U.S. Jobs Losses Ahead
Economists believe that unemployment will exceed 10% and remain high well into 2010.
resident Barack Obama said on Nov. 2 that the U.S. economy will continue to lose jobs in coming months despite exiting a recession, striking a cautious tone on unemployment. “We anticipate that we’re going to continue to see some job losses in the weeks and months to come,” Obama said.
At a meeting of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board at the White House on Nov. 2, Obama stressed that the actions taken by his government had “helped to stem what could have been a disastrous situation for the economy,” adding that “we are starting to see stabilization and indeed some improvement.” But he acknowledged that “we are still seeing production levels that are significantly below peak levels. And most distressing is the fact that job growth continues to lag.”
Obama said that “bold, innovative action” to fight unemployment would be an “overriding focus” for his administration, and he called on both Congress and the private sector to help.
Full Story IndustryWeek : Obama Warns of More U.S. Jobs Losses Ahead.
Union workers reject Ford concessions deal
Union members have rejected a deal to grant Ford Motor Co. concessions awarded to rivals General Motors and Chrysler, the United Auto Workers said Monday.
The UAW, which had endorsed the deal, said it was “respectful” of the decision of its membership and “will not be returning to the bargaining table.”
The tentative agreement would have granted Ford key work rule changes, a six-year wage freeze for new hires and a no-strike clause through 2015.
Full Story Union workers reject Ford concessions deal – Yahoo! News.
Cable news networks help spread Republicans’ ‘highly misleading’ stimulus math.
Back in January, the Republicans claimed that the economic stimulus package would cost $275,000 for every job created, which they calculated by taking the entire cost of the stimulus package and dividing it by the number of jobs created in just one year. At the time, Paul Krugman called the Republicans’ number a “bogus talking point.” With the White House’s announcement last week that the stimulus package has created 640,000 to 1 million jobs, the GOP is employing fuzzy math once again. Don Stewart, spokesman for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), told reporters on Friday to “get out your calculators” and divide the spending by the jobs, producing a figure of $230,769 per job. Media outlets Fox News, CNN, and CNBC have all repeated some variation of the number (using slightly different estimates) in the last few days.
Watch a compilation: video at link
The AP’s Calvin Woodward was not fooled, and today released a piece telling readers to “beware the math” coming from the Republicans and calling it “satisfyingly simple but highly misleading”:
First, the naysayers’ calculations ignore the value of the work produced. Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker’s output — a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid. Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.
As Woodward wrote, “dividing apples by oranges won’t settle” whether or not the stimulus package has been a success.
Full Story Think Progress » Cable news networks help spread Republicans’ ‘highly misleading’ stimulus math..
A faith-based prison is pushed
This tiny town near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line north of Enid may soon own the country’s only all-Christian prison, with Christian administrators, employees, counselors and programs.
The idea is backed by Wakita’s leaders, has some support from state officials, and, its founders believe, is able to pass constitutional muster.
“If Chicken Little doesn’t come to town, we’ll be open in 16 months,” said Bill Robinson, the founder of Corrections Concepts Inc., a Dallas nonprofit prison ministry that is spearheading the project.
Mayor Kelly George said officials of this town of 380 were fully behind the project and have done everything they need to make it happen.
A 150-acre site on the edge Wakita has been selected, and an agreement has been reached with Corrections Concepts Inc. to manage the 600-bed prison if and when it is built.
Full Story Tulsa World.
BP Contests Record-Breaking OSHA Fine While Allowing ‘Hundreds of Potential Hazards to Continue’
It’s shocking enough to hear that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a small subset of the U.S. Dept. of Labor, dropped a whooping $87.4 million fine on oil giant BP.
It comes as even more of a shock, though, when you find out that BP has challenged the fine, as well as the hundreds of cited health and safety violations that came along with it, as more and more of their employees are being injured due to safety accidents, some being fatal.
Yet that’s what happened last Friday when BP formally contested the fines and citations imposed by the OSHA for what officials said was the company’s failure to correct safety hazards identified after the 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers and injured 170 more at its Texas City refinery, the third largest refinery in the country.
South Carolina gun sales soar on fear of crime, Democrats
So far in 2009, the number of South Carolinians wanting to pack heat nearly has doubled over the previous year as people worry about violent crime and feel threatened by partisan politics.
As of mid-October, 28,197 new concealed weapons permits have been issued this year by South Carolina’s State Law Enforcement Division.
It’s an annual record that already has surpassed the 14,630 new permits issued in all of 2008 and by far outstrips all previous years, according to SLED statistics.
The demand for permits is being driven, in part, over people’s belief that President Barack Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress are a threat to their Second Amendment rights.
Full Story South Carolina gun sales soar on fear of crime, Democrats | McClatchy.
Economic Stress Map: The AP’s Look At The Hardest Hit Counties In America
The economic recovery is proceeding unevenly in its early stages, with areas hurt most by the housing slump still lagging behind other regions, according to The Associated Press’ monthly analysis of economic stress in more than 3,100 U.S. counties.
Counties in the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Southwest are still struggling and have made the least improvement, the analysis of September data found. The northern half of the nation is stabilizing or improving faster than the southern half. Northern counties generally didn’t suffer as much from the housing bust.
The government said last week that the U.S. economy grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the third quarter, ending four straight quarters of decline. But that growth is expected to slow as government stimulus programs wind down.
Full Story Economic Stress Map: The AP’s Look At The Hardest Hit Counties In America.
Fed gathers top bank execs for talk on pay, bonuses
The Federal Reserve is gathering the heads of the largest banks it supervises Monday to discuss its proposal to limit incentive pay and bonuses to promote financial stability, a Fed official said.
“Federal Reserve officials will be meeting with bank executives Monday to discuss the process for the reviews of incentive compensation arrangements at large, complex banking organizations,” David Skidmore, a central bank spokesman, told AFP.
On October 22 the Fed released recommendations calling for banks to ensure their compensation polices “do not undermine the safety and soundness of their organizations.”
Full Story The Raw Story | Fed gathers top bank execs for talk on pay, bonuses.
GOP ‘dividing apples by oranges’ to create bogus stimulus figures, AP says
Beware the math. Some Republican lawmakers critical of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package are using grade-school arithmetic to size up costs and consequences of all that spending. The math is satisfyingly simple but highly misleading.
It goes like this: Divide the stimulus money spent so far by the estimated number of jobs saved or created.
That produces a rather frightening figure on how much money taxpayers are spending for each job.
Full Story GOP ‘dividing apples by oranges’ to create bogus stimulus figures, AP says | Raw Story.
OPS: Good on AP!
Democratic senator ‘not sure’ why Treasury Secretary Geithner still has job | Raw Story
A Democratic senator took some harsh swipes at President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on a Monday morning news show.
Huffington Post’s Rachel Weiner notes, “Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said that Geithner’s plans left banks the same loopholes and encouraged the same risks that led to last year’s economic meltdown.”
“Knowing two massive exemptions in the piece of legislation the Secretary endorsed yesterday on ‘Meet the Press’ … why does Tim Geithner still have a job?” Ratigan asked.
Cantwell shot back,
Full Story Democratic senator ‘not sure’ why Treasury Secretary Geithner still has job | Raw Story.
Stimulus and Jobs: We Can Do Better
Dean Baker –
The Obama administration came out with its first set of numbers on the jobs impact of its stimulus package. It’s pretty much along the lines of what was predicted. To date, the package has created close to one million jobs. That is good news, but in an economy with more than 15 million unemployed workers, it is not nearly good enough. We need to do more, much more.
Fortunately, there is an easy and quick way to begin to get these unemployed workers back to work. It involves paying workers to work shorter hours. The mechanism can take the form of a tax credit to employers. The government can give them a tax credit of up to $3,000 in order to shorten their workers’ hours while leaving their pay unchanged. The reduction in hours can take the form of paid sick days, paid family leave, shorter workweeks or longer vacations. The employer can choose the method that is best for her workers and the workplace.
If take-home pay is left unchanged as a result of the credit, then demand should be left unchanged. If workers are on average putting in fewer hours and demand is unchanged, then employers will need to hire more workers.
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Stimulus and Jobs: We Can Do Better.
20 million years of CO2 and ice sheet/sea level correlation
When you look at the ice core record, there’s a significant amount of correlation between sea level rise and the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air at the time. But the ice core record goes back less than a million years. A study published a couple of weeks ago in the journal Science measured proxy data for CO2 concentration in the ocean and compared that data to other data on the stability of ice sheets. The authors discovered that there is strong correlation between the two going back at least 20 million years.
One of the challenges that the authors had was the fact that few available previous studies didn’t show correlation between the amount of CO2 in the air and the global climate prior to the start of ice core data. The authors hypothesized that this was a problem with the other datasets and developed a set of tests to check their hypothesis.
First they found two sites in the Pacific where they concluded – based on prior published studies – that the effects on marine sediments would be relatively unchanged over the last 20 million years due to specific geologic and oceanographic factors (limited upwelling, geologic stability, low biological productivity, et al). And they measured three different proxies from marine fossils that enabled them to estimate pH, sea surface temperature, and the amount of CO2 in the water.
Full Story Scholars and Rogues » 20 million years of CO2 and ice sheet/sea level correlation.
Document sheds light on ethics probe in Congress
NEW DETAILS ON TWO CHAIRMEN Critics surprised by a prolific panel
After years of criticism that congressional lawmakers were reluctant to investigate their colleagues, the disclosure in recent days of a sensitive document from the House ethics committee offers the contradictory portrait of a panel actively pursuing a range of probes even as Democrats under scrutiny remain in positions of power.
The 22-page document revealed that the ethics committee, as of late July, was looking into the activities of at least 19 lawmakers, including reviews of home mortgages and interviews about corporate-backed trips for members of Congress to Caribbean resorts. Combined with the inquiries being conducted by a new ethics office, the document showed a far more robust set of investigations than previously revealed.
But the document also brings potential political peril for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose party claimed the majority in November 2006 after she promised to “drain the swamp” of corruption on Capitol Hill. Two and a half years into Pelosi’s reign, more than 25 Democrats have been targeted for ethics reviews by the two ethics bodies, while just seven Republicans appeared to be under scrutiny, according to the document.
Full Story Document sheds light on ethics probe in Congress – washingtonpost.com.
DeFOX America
SEND A MESSAGE TO CONGRESS
Dear Congress member,
I am writing to urge you to join me in “Defoxing America.”
Fox “News” personalities are pushing an agenda that is dangerous to ordinary Americans. Using tactics such as placing individuals singled out for censure on a blackboard and linking them to murderous dictators like Josef Stalin, Fox News has deliberately created an atmosphere of hysteria that they have used to attack organizations and individuals fighting for the issues that matter most to working families. I urge you to stand up to these new McCarthy-ite tactics by voting against any unconstitutional legislation that singles out specific organizations. This includes the Continuing Resolution that cuts off Federal support to the national anti-poverty group ACORN.
Don’t let Glenn Beck’s blackboard dictate the people’s agenda. Stand up and “Defox America”.
Full Story DeFOX America.
Band of Dems Blasts Geithner Plan
Proposal Grants White House Broad Bailout Authority
Appearing before a House panel on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made his best pitch for legislation granting the WhiteHouse broad new powers to seize Wall Street firms when their collapse might torpedo others in the industry.
It didn’t go so well.
A number of Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee unfurled a laundry list of charges against the proposal, including the prominent concern that the bill would empower the president — and future presidents — with unlimited bailout authority to prop up “too-big-to-fail” institutions at the expense of taxpayers.
“Mr. Secretary, I’m not a man that fears this administration or you,” Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) told Geithner. “But I do fear the accumulation of power exercised by someone in the future that can be extraordinary.”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) echoed those concerns, arguing that the bill represents “the most unprecedented transfer of power to the executive branch to make decisions about both spending and taxes in history — all without congressional approval.”
Full Story Band of Dems Blasts Geithner Plan « The Washington Independent.
Sessions Lies About Unemployment Benefits Going To ‘Illegals’
Yesterday, on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) proclaimed that Democrats are trying to prevent him from submitting an amendment that would prevent “illegals” from accessing jobless benefits. Sessions is upset that the Senate has denied his amendment to the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act requiring new unemployment benefit applicants to have their citizenship status checked using E-Verify — a controversial and error-ridden web-based employment verification system.
Sessions said, unequivocally, that undocumented immigrants are currently receiving unemployment benefits and are being “rewarded” for their “illegal behavior” by applying with their Social Security Numbers (SSN):
SESSIONS: What we want them to do is, like we’re asking businesses to do, is check with E-verify to see if the person who seeks unemployment insurance and compensation is actually lawfully in the country. That can be done, but they do not want to do that for reasons that baffle me and frankly have said that nothing is going to be voted on…
CAVUTO: So, are illegals presently getting jobless benefits, you can say that unequivocally?
SESSIONS: Yeah, uh, and they file using their Social Security Numbers and they get the benefits and if you check those numbers you would identify some of the people who shouldn’t be getting it. One of the more simple things you should do is simply not reward this illegal behavior.
Watch it:
Full Story Wonk Room » Sessions Lies About Unemployment Benefits Going To ‘Illegals’.
The New Luntz Memo Is The Same As The Old Luntz Memo
GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz has penned another self-aggrandizing memo advising Republicans how to talk about health care reform. The new memo is the same as the old memo: admit the health care system is in crisis but remind Americans that the Democratic proposals would lead to a government-takeover of health care. “Suggestion: So far, most of the ads featuring concerned patients have been women. It’s time to include men in these ads, too. Treatment of prostate cancer can be delayed just as much as for breast cancer when the government takes over care – and American men deserve to know about that,” he writes.
Luntz points to poll numbers that demonstrate unease with the Democrats’ proposals:
Public anger is REAL (note to certain media outlets & bloggers who will eventually savage this memo: the town hall phenomenon is NOT manufactured). A majority of Americans (55%) agree that “When it comes to the healthcare reform debate in Washington, I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” Only 26% disagree (leaving 19%). Nearly one in five Americans strongly agree.
Full Story Wonk Room » The New Luntz Memo Is The Same As The Old Luntz Memo.
Krauthammer’s Latest Attempt To Avoid Admitting Error
Calling President Obama’s “compulsion to attack” the previous administration “unseemly,” Charles Krauthammer seems to have invented an alternate history of the U.S. in Afghanistan:
It’s as if Obama’s presidency hasn’t really started. He’s still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to “long years of drift” in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan. [...]
The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy “footprint.”
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. For obvious reasons: less risk and fewer losses for our troops, while reducing the intrusiveness of the occupation and thus the chances of creating an anti-foreigner backlash that would fan an insurgency. [...]
Full Story Wonk Room » Krauthammer’s Latest Attempt To Avoid Admitting Error.
Bank Lobbyists: Overdraft Fees Are ‘A Courtesy,’ ‘Very Popular,’ Keep Customers ‘Happy’
Today, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing to examine Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s (D-NY) Overdraft Protection Act of 2009, which would amend the Truth in Lending Act to address a spate of problems with overdraft protection programs.
Overdraft fees — which are incurred when a consumer overdraws a checking account — may climb to $38.5 billion this year, up from $10.3 billion just five years ago. According to the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), at least 50 million Americans overdraw their accounts over the course of a twelve month period, and 27 million of those will incur five or more fees. The standard fee across the banking industry is currently $34.
But you wouldn’t know that there were any problems with overdraft fees if you listened to the representatives of the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers Association, who were singing the praises of such fees during the hearing. They said that overdraft fees are actually “a courtesy,” “very popular,” and ultimately keep customers “happy.” Watch a compilation:
Full Story Wonk Room » Bank Lobbyists: Overdraft Fees Are ‘A Courtesy,’ ‘Very Popular,’ Keep Customers ‘Happy’.
ANALYSIS: House Bill More Affordable Than Senate Legislation
A rough analysis of the affordability measures in the House and Senate conducted by Sonia Sekhar at the Center for American Progress Action Fund demonstrates that the House health bill provides more affordable coverage than the latest available version of the Senate legislation. While the chart below does not provide a perfect comparison between the amount an average family of four would spend on coverage within the exchange, it’s the first actual representation of the premium differences under the two bills.
Both measures provide subsidies on a sliding scale. Under the Senate bill, families between 133-300%FPL have to spend between 2 and 12% of their income on premiums, while families between 300-400%FPL, spend 12% on premiums. In the House legislation families between 150 – 400% of the federal poverty line would spend between 1.5 and 12% of income on premiums. Cost sharing amounts also vary.
The chart below estimates what families will pay for coverage (premiums and cost sharing) in the Exchange in year one, 2013:
Full Story Wonk Room » ANALYSIS: House Bill More Affordable Than Senate Legislation.
Former McCain adviser nervous about moving into the individual health insurance market he once touted.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, “remains unemployed — and his COBRA health coverage is running out,” the Washington Post reports. “Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky ‘preexisting conditions’ that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage”:
Holtz-Eakin said he’s been paying about $1,000 a month to extend the private health insurance he received on McCain’s campaign through the government’s COBRA program, but that will expire in a few months. This is the first time in his life he has not had employer-provided health coverage. “I worry about where I go next in the way many Americans do,” he said.
OPS: Hoist by his own petard
Bush on bin Laden: ‘I guess he is not dead.’
Eight years ago, President Bush asserted with great bravado that al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden would be taken “dead or alive.” “I don’t care, dead or alive — either way,” Bush said at the time. This weekend, while attending a conference of business leaders in New Delhi, India, Bush struck a different tone:
Asked whether al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden could be alive, Bush said “I guess he is not dead.”
He, however, noted that Laden is hiding and “not leading victory parades” or “espousing his cause” on TV.
He expressed confidence that Laden will be brought to justice which “he deserves to be” and it was a matter of time.
Full Story Think Progress » Bush on bin Laden: ‘I guess he is not dead.’.
New York Times “Paid Millions” To Release David Rohde From Taliban: Reporter
War correspondent Michael Yon, currently in Afghanistan, reports on his Twitter that, according to his sources, the New York Times and its associates paid millions of dollars to secure the release of reporter David Rohde from Taliban capture.
# Kept it all quiet for NYT. Now why are the NYT endangering British hostages in Somalia? NYT needs to shut up. They are endangering British.3:59 AM Nov 1st from web
#I have been told by very close sources that ex-CIA officers helped pay off release for Rohde. I knew this while it was ongoing.3:56 AM Nov 1st from web
#NYT is endangering the hostages in Somalia.3:54 AM Nov 1st from web
Full Story New York Times “Paid Millions” To Release David Rohde From Taliban: Reporter.
“Naked Short-Selling” Explained
Short-Selling (VIDEO): Did It Contribute To The Market’s Collapse?
Let’s get our bearings here. What is short-selling? NYU Professor of Finance Steven Figlewski can explain:
“You sell the stock with the expectation, the intention, that you’re going to buy the stock later. And in order to sell the stock, since you don’t own it, you’ve got to borrow it from somebody.”
The short seller intends to profit from the decline in price between the sale and repurchase.
Why do we care about all this market talk? Short-selling is not a new concept, dating back to the 1600s, and playing a part in the 1929 and 1987 crashes. Now, some experts are saying that “shorting” the market contributed in part to the latest global financial crisis, as “it can undermine investor confidence and … in extreme cases, cause a run on a company’s share price.” Yikes.
Full Story Short-Selling (VIDEO): Did It Contribute To The Market’s Collapse?.
Church Of Scientology Chased Down And Brought Back Members Who Tried To Leave (VIDEO)
Former Scientologist: Church Kidnapped Me To Protect Secrets
The St. Petersburg Times has conducted a lengthy investigation into the always controversial Church of Scientology, focusing on their practice of chasing down former members who’ve left the church in order to bring them back and ensure that they do not reveal any of the Church’s secrets. The Times interviewed several high-ranking Scientology members who were involved in these retrieval operations:
Ex-staffers describe being pursued by their church and detained, cut off from family and friends and subjected to months of interrogation, humiliation and manual labor.
They say the church, led by David Miscavige, wanted to contain the threat that those who left might reveal secrets of life inside Scientology.
Marty Rathbun, a former church official and confidant of Miscavige, said the leader especially targeted those he had edged aside during his rise to the top or anyone he feared might threaten his position or the church if left alone on the outside.
Full Story Church Of Scientology Chased Down And Brought Back Members Who Tried To Leave (VIDEO).
Dylan Ratigan: Why Keep Geithner?
A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system was a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs paid themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they didn’t have to customers who couldn’t pay back the loans.
In those dark days between the fall of Lehman Brothers and before the presidential election, we were often carried through that time by the small glimmer of hope in that at least we would soon have a new leader who would hopefully fix this mess and punish those responsible.
Yet in the past 9 months, not only has the administration not fixed anything, they have made things much worse for anyone who isn’t a Wall Street banker. Therefore, we are past the point where anyone in power still gets the benefit of the doubt and the process of taking back our country for all citizens must begin now.
Full Story Dylan Ratigan: Why Keep Geithner?.
Rape Victim confronts David Vitter at Town Hall
Senator David Vitter speaks with a rape victim at a Town Hall event in Baton Rouge
Full Story YouTube – Vitter Town Hall, Baton Rouge, 10/31/09.
With highest rate of cases, Navy sees HIV infections rise
The good news: The virus that causes AIDS is more treatable than ever – and with treatment, individuals infected with HIV can live into old age.
The bad news: The Navy’s HIV infection rate has been rising for a decade and is significantly higher than any other military branch. In 2008, the Navy discovered 36 HIV cases for every 100,000 sailors tested – more than double its 1999 numbers.
Officials say they don’t know why the Navy’s rate is on the rise.
Dr. Rick Shaffer, a retired Navy physician who heads the Department of Defense’s HIV/AIDS effort in San Diego, said military
personnel are less scared about HIV now than they were at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
Their attitude reflects that of society at large. If people are less fearful of contracting the disease, or more confident it can be controlled, Shaffer said, they may be less inclined to use condoms.
One thing is certain, though: Military personnel with HIV have access to individualized, long-term care that often lasts well beyond retirement.
Full Story With highest rate of cases, Navy sees HIV infections rise | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com.
Peak oil review
1. Production and prices
It was another volatile week with oil prices pushing $82 a barrel on Monday and then, after wild gyrations, falling $2.87 on Friday to close at $77. As usual, the dollar and outlook for the global economy were behind the moves. Much of the action centered on the release of the preliminary (or as some say “guesstimate”) third quarter US GDP numbers which were reported to show a growth of 3.5 percent. The voices of those noting that the GDP “growth” was mostly due to “cash for clunkers” and “first-time buyer” stimulus payments were lost in the rush to celebrate the end of the recession. Oil surged $2.41 a barrel after the announcement. By Friday however, the reality of falling consumer spending set in and oil fell along with the equity markets.
With so much uncertainty in the wind, opinions as to where we go from here are all over the map. Some analysts believe declines in OECD demand for oil still will be overshadowed by increasing demand from China and India so we shall see $90 oil shortly. Technical analysis shows oil still in an uptrend. Others believe that $80 oil is too high for the state of the economy.
The growth in China’s demand for oil in September was up 12.5 percent year over year, the sixth increase in a row and the fastest growth since 2006. The fall of 2008 however was a low period for Chinese oil consumption which distorts the rapid growth.
Given the volatility of the markets, OPEC ministers are sending mixed signals about what will happen to production quotas at their December meeting. Some are saying $75 is enough to trigger a production increase while others are talking about $90-100 as the proper level. Still others, realizing that supply and demand is only one component of the recent price move, are back to blaming speculators and US fiscal policy as the reasons for high prices.
Full Story Peak oil review – Nov 2 | Energy Bulletin.
Carbon Cuts: 350 Is Not Adequate
Seeing children, activists, and ordinary people in 181 countries come together around 350.org’s worldwide at 5,200 day of action events last week was truly inspirational. Their goal of putting the focus on science and citizens and not special corporate interests and backroom deals is admirable. They hoped to influence the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark in December to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
But their message could be dangerous, since in his paper, “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Society Aim,” NASA Climate scientist Jim Hansen said recently, “The evidence indicates…that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350ppm.”
If burning fossil fuels like coal and oil during industrialization has created the mess we’re in with climate change, it seems only logical that we should aim for pre-industrial levels of atmospheric CO2 of 280 ppm. We should be aiming for a number that is sure to reverse climate change, especially now that feedback effects like methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than CO2, is bubbling out of melting permafrost in the arctic and could rapidly accelerate climate change. If we’re organizing around a goal that is too little, too late, with the survival of humanity hanging in the balance, we’re not just wasting time, we’re toying with our own annihilation.
Full Story Carbon Cuts: 350 Is Not Adequate | CommonDreams.org.
Who Wore the Klan Robe to the White House Halloween Party?
We love this official White House photo, taken by Pete Souza, of the president and first lady giving out Halloween candy. But we have one question.
What’s up with the Klan costume?
Seriously, we’re sure there’s a reasonable explanation and this is, despite the white robe and white pointy hat, not really a Klan outfit. So. Does anyone have that reasonable explanation handy? If so, please elucidate ye.
Full Story Pensito Review » Who Wore the Klan Robe to the White House Halloween Party?.
Dangerous People Needed
“The Most Dangerous Man in America”
David Swanson
On Thursday night I had the privilege of viewing a premier of a film together with its star. The theater was in the U.S. Capitol, and the film was “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” ( http://www.mostdangerousman.org ). This is a powerfully and engagingly constructed film about one of the most effective instances of whistle-blowing in our nation’s history.
Ellsberg risked life in prison to expose the lies that had taken this nation into war in Vietnam, lies from Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. And Nixon believed that Ellsberg had incriminating documents on his own lies, which led Henry Kissinger to call Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America.”
Like most whistle-blowers, Ellsberg was not an outside reformer. He had promoted and advanced the war from inside the Pentagon. He had tried to be a force for moderation. But peace activists reached his conscience and persuaded him that he could and must do more. Those close to him supported his decision. Colleagues took similar risks to assist him. Major media outlets risked their futures to publish what Ellsberg gave them and to interview him while he was in hiding from the law. A member of Congress (former senator Mike Gravel, who was present on Thursday) risked his future to read the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record. The Supreme Court ruled against the president of the United States. And Ellsberg became a brilliant spokesman for his cause.
A lot of factors combined to create an incredible impact from the leaking of one 7,000-page pile of documents. This exposure helped end the war in Vietnam, and helped put some spine into our media outlets, our Congress, and our courts’ treatment of the First Amendment.
However, Ellsberg expected more. He expected Americans to change their thinking about wars. He expected us not to fall for obvious lies about wars anymore. He thought that people would digest and synthesize the untold story he exposed. So, in some ways, he was of course disappointed. And, of course, what good he did for the media and Congress quickly wore off.
Full Story Dangerous People Needed.
US Workers Starved Into Service
It was only a matter of time before the nation’s skyrocketing unemployment translated into new recruits for the most powerful military force in the world.
With the official US unemployment rate at 10 percent and climbing (that’s more than 15 million people struggling to put food on the table) and nearly double that number if you include part-time wage-earners who need full-time jobs, never mind all of those ‘discouraged workers,’ it’s little wonder that so many of the nation’s jobless are flocking into its military recruitment offices.
After all, what better way for an unemployed American worker to survive the Great Recession of 2009 than in the ‘service’ of his or her country?
Americans have a long history of consuming and/or killing their way out of crisis. And it isn’t looking as if that model will be up for reassessment anytime soon. The parameters of what we like to call the “national conversation” are as narrow as ever, and they are not widening under the current leadership. So far at least, even Obama’s ‘Clean Energy Economy’ has failed to deliver enough ‘green jobs’ (or any other color jobs for that matter) to begin the process of meaningful transition. With the season of consuming just around the corner, many Americans – especially those in blue collar jobs like construction, manufacturing and retail service – are staring into the economic abyss.
It is hardly surprising in such an environment that a young person with dismal employment prospects and plummeting self esteem would be easily seduced by an ad that promises “more than $49,000 in GI Bill Benefits” as does the US military’s current promo. The same ad promises that young recruits can “connect with military and veteran-friendly schools that offer VA approved education programs,” or “get information” about high-paying degrees like Criminal Justice, IT and Legal Studies.
Full Story US Workers Starved Into Service.
Osama bin Laden Responsible for the 9/11 Attacks? Where is the Evidence?
The idea that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been an article of faith for public officials and the mainstream media. Calling it an “article of faith” points to two features of this idea. On the one hand, no one in these circles publicly challenges this idea.
On the other hand, as I pointed out at length in two of my books – 9/11 Contradictions1 and The New Pearl Harbor Revisited,2 no good evidence has ever been publicly presented to support it.
Colin Powell’s Withdrawn Promise Two weeks after 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking to Tim Russert on Meet the Press, said that he expected “in the near future . . . to put out . . . a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking [bin Laden] to this attack.”3
Powell reversed himself, however, at a press conference with President Bush in the White House Rose Garden the next morning, saying that, although the government had information that left no question of bin Laden’s responsibility, “most of it is classified.”4 According to Seymour Hersh, citing officials from both the CIA and the Department of Justice, the real reason for the reversal was a “lack of solid information.”5
This was the week that Bush, after demanding that the Taliban turn over bin Laden, refused their request for evidence that bin Laden had been behind the attacks.6 A senior Taliban official, after the US attack on Afghanistan had begun, said: “We have asked for proof of Osama’s involvement, but they have refused. Why?”7 Hersh’s answer was that they had no proof.
Tony Blair’s Weak Document
The task of providing such proof was taken up by Bush’s chief ally in the “war on terror,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On October 4, 2001, Blair made public a document entitled: “Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States.” Listing “clear conclusions reached by the government,” it stated: “Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the terrorist network which he heads, planned and carried out the atrocities on 11 September 2001.” Blair’s report, however, began by saying: “This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law.”8 Although the case was not good enough to go to court, Blair seemed to be saying, it was good enough to go to war.
The weakness in Blair’s report, in any event, was noted the next day by the BBC, which said: “There is no direct evidence in the public domain linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks. At best the evidence is circumstantial.”9
Full Story Osama bin Laden Responsible for the 9/11 Attacks? Where is the Evidence?.
Fiscal Blood on the Tracks
LIKE a tsunami that follows an undersea earthquake, collateral damage from the collapse of credit markets is about to strike the millions of daily transit riders in America’s biggest cities. Public transit agencies in cities including New York, Atlanta, San Francisco and Washington are under pressure to surrender $2 billion from their budgets because financial institutions have spotted a chance to gain a windfall from complicated tax-shelter deals known as “leasebacks.”
In the heady 1990s, the federal government encouraged these leaseback deals as a quick fix for budget problems. Transit agencies like New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority would sell their railcars and other equipment to banks, which would then lease them back to the agencies.
Leasebacks appeared to promise that everyone would emerge a winner. Banks — including many that later took federal bailout money like Bank of America and Wells Fargo — were able to cash in on substantial tax deductions through the transactions. The transit companies, which were paid with a portion of those tax savings, could use the cash to modernize their systems and make safety improvements.
Alas, as with any quick fix, the deals have set off a cascade of problems.
Full Story Op-Ed Contributor – Fiscal Blood on the Tracks – NYTimes.com.
EPA coal ruling – electricity rates go up 20 % minimum
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to adopt rules reducing toxic air pollution from the nation’s coal- and oil-burning power plants, by November 2011, according to a settlement agreement reached in a federal lawsuit brought against the agency by a coalition of public health and environmental groups. The announcement of the decision came from Washington, DC on October 23, 2009..
The settlement has been lodged in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Attorneys at Earthjustice, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Clean Air Task Force, Natural Resources
Defense Council, Southern Environmental Law Center, and Waterkeeper Alliance filed the lawsuit last December on behalf of their organizations and the American Nurses Association, Conservation Law Foundation, Environment America, Environmental Defense Fund, Izaak Walton League of America, Natural Resources Council of Maine, The Ohio Environmental Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Sierra Club.
After 20 years of litigation a “solution” has been reached.
Full Story EPA coal ruling – electricity rates go up 20 % minimum.
Toxic Contaminants: The Other Scourge
SYDNEY, Nov 2 (IPS) – As the world focuses on the impact of climate change, little attention is being paid to yet another environmental bane: increasing contamination of air, water and soil.
The combined effects of this environmental scourge have contributed to global epidemics of cancers, lung and other degenerative diseases, and costing health systems across the world millions of dollars, experts say.
Forty-two years after she was exposed to asbestos in the Pambula beach hamlet, 470 kilometres south of Sydney, Jeanette Hennessy Wright, 51, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in July 2008.
“Asbestos was used in the construction of my neighbour’s house while I helped my parents make additions to our own home with fibro sheets that contained asbestos too,” explains Wright.
Two years ago, she began to “feel breathlessness while walking uphill and couldn’t keep up with friends,” she says. After X-rays, a needle biopsy followed by a surgical biopsy, I was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer associated with breathing in asbestos dust and fibres. Being afflicted with the disease is seen as an immediate death sentence, as victims die within 12 to 24 months.
Full Story ENVIRONMENT-AUSTRALIA: Toxic Contaminants: The Other Scourge – IPS ipsnews.net.
Bill Moyers Essay: Restoring Accountability for Washington’s Wars
if our governing Class wants more war, lets not allow them to fight it with young men and women who sign up because they don’t have jobs here at home, or can’t afford college or health care for their families….bring back the Draft
Full Story YouTube – BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Bill Moyers Essay: Restoring Accountability for Washington’s Wars| PBS.
OPS: We agree completely with Mr. Moyers.
TV Finds That a Mortal Foe, the DVR, Is Really a Best Friend
In what may seem a media business version of the Stockholm syndrome, television network executives have fallen in love with a former tormentor: the digital video recorder.
The reason is not simply that more households own DVRs — 33 percent compared with 28 percent at this point in 2008 — helping some marginal shows become hits. It is also that more people seem content to sit through the commercials than networks once thought.
These factors combined mean DVR ratings now add significantly to live ratings and thus to ad revenue.
“The DVR was going to kill television,” said Andy Donchin, director of media investment for the ad agency Carat. “It hasn’t.”
Full Story TV Finds That a Mortal Foe, the DVR, Is Really a Best Friend – NYTimes.com.
Robert Shiller: Address Income Gap, Tie It To Tax Rate (Video)
The US might be in the midst of a second housing and financial bubble, according to economist and Yale Professor Robert Shiller. Shiller and Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf were interviewed by Fareed Zakaria Sunday.
Zakaria asked Shiller and Martin to weigh in on the topic of executive pay at bailed out banks. Both agreed that they were “annoyed” and “irritated” with the issue.
Shiller warned that if the income gap is not addressed, it could do major harm to the US and create a country that even rich people don’t want to live in. The professor proposed a tax tied to the income gap.
Full Story Robert Shiller: Address Income Gap, Tie It To Tax Rate (Video).
Officials give Colombia’s Galeras volcano ‘days or weeks’ before eruption
Officials in southern Colombia have issued a code orange alert for the newly-active Galeras volcano which they said could erupt in a matter of days or weeks, according to the state-run Geological and Mining Institute.
Authorities said they are continuing to monitor the nearby Huila volcano, also on orange alert, where sizeable volcanic activity also has been detected in recent weeks.
The Galeras volcano situated near the southern border with Ecuador is Colombia’s most active volcano, with five eruptions over the past two years. It began rumbling back to life on October 27, officials said.
Full Story Officials give Colombia’s Galeras volcano ‘days or weeks’ before eruption | Raw Story.
Japan plans to begin burying captured carbon emissions
Swathes of dirty clouds brood over a coal plant in rural Japan, but scientists are now hoping to send the pollutants the other way, deep into the bowels of Mother Earth.
The cutting-edge but controversial technology of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being tested at the Mikawa power station, located near the coast of Japan’s southern Fukuoka prefecture.
Toshiba Corp. has chosen it as a pilot site for a technology it sees as a necessary complement to renewable energies such as wind and solar in the battle to cut industrial emissions blamed for global warming.
“There is no silver bullet” to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, said Toshiba engineer Kensuke Suzuki during a tour of the plant, about 900 kilometres (560 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
Full Story Japan plans to begin burying captured carbon emissions | Raw Story.
Karzai elected as Afghan poll called off
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, was declared the winner of the country’s presidential elections on Monday by the election commission following the decision of his main rival to withdraw from a planned run-off.
Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Karzai’s main rival, effectively handed Mr Karzai victory on Sunday when he said he would not participate in a planned second round on November 7 because he could not be sure the vote would be free and fair.
Azizullah Lodin, the head of the Independent Election Commission, declared Mr Karzai the winner at a news conference in Kabul, saying he had won the majority of votes in the first round.
Full Story FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Karzai elected as Afghan poll called off.
Bill Moyers Journal . James K. Galbraith
“….. it could have been prevented. The people in authority two, three, five years ago, knew how to prevent it. They chose not to act, because they were getting a political and an economic benefit out of the speculative explosion that was occurring.”
Video and transcript available
The headlines are trumpeting recovery — some are even proclaiming an end to the recession in the United States (unofficially, that is). The US economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in a year. But there are some caveats — although jobless claims dipped slightly, many analysts still warn of a “jobless recovery.” for a number of years to come.
And then there’s the small print — will this recovery be permanent or is it a function of the stimulus masking bigger problems? THE WALL STREET JOURNAL warned: “The recovery thus far has been heavily supported by federal money, casting a question mark over the economy’s underlying strength as government support dwindles.” That unease is echoed by JOURNAL guest James K. Galbraith:
The fact is, the economy — production is going to turn around, has started to recover. But it will be six months in before a strong growth of production leads to new employment. And the question is, will that growth of production continue, after six months? The problem here is that we have a stimulus package, which is helping now, but it will be over with at the end of next year. Will there be a basis for another strong, privately financed expansion at that point? I don’t see the evidence for that now. And that seems to me to be something we should be worrying about.
Another Crash, Another Galbraith
Full Story Bill Moyers Journal . James K. Galbraith | PBS.
Glenn Beck’s Phony Rich-Guy Populism
The Fox News shock jock weaves a tale of wealthy elites who are victims of tyrannical government hell-bent on taking their hard-earned money.
One curious consequence of the Democrats’ electoral triumph last year has been the rise of Glenn Beck, a right-wing populist whose daily ravings on Fox News have helped inspire the anti-government “tea party” rallies across the country. In a lot of ways, Beck’s popularity reflects the current emotional state of American conservatives.
When they ran the entire government just a few short years ago, it was fashionable for conservatives to tune into braying, overconfident bullies such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Now that they’re totally shut out, however, they’ve found solace in the conspiratorial and weepy Beck, who stokes their fears that shadowy elements within the government are plotting to end freedom as we know it.
The irony is that Beck is only really opposed to big government when Republicans aren’t controlling it. For instance, he has no issues with allowing the government to torture prisoners and is supportive of police brutality. And those big government bailouts of the financial industry that Beck rails against on a regular basis? Back when George W. Bush was president, Beck actually chided Congress for not giving more money to rescue the banks.
Full Story Glenn Beck’s Phony Rich-Guy Populism | Commonweal Institute.
Health Care Reform is Critically Important, But Getting Americans Back to Work is More So
Robert Reich -
Presidents tend to overcompensate for the errors of their predecessors in the same party and in so doing sow seeds of their own mistakes. Bill Clinton wanted above all to avoid Jimmy Carter’s fate — losing re-election because the economy was heading south on Election Day. So Clinton made a deal with Alan Greenspan to slash the budget deficit and thereby jettison much of his ambitious campaign agenda (that was Greenspan’s precondition for lowering interest rates and causing an economic boom in time for the re-election) and then Clinton took direction from Dick Morris, who told him to move to the right. The result: Clinton avoided Carter’s failure and won re-election handily. But the Clinton years produced few if any major social reforms. Clinton spent so much of his initial political capital, as well as his time and energy, on deficit reduction that he didn’t have enough left to enact health care in 1994.
Barack Obama came to the White House intent on not repeating Clinton’s failure to enact universal health care. Did he overlearn the Clinton lesson? Obama seems to have made all the right moves to enact something he can credibly label health-care reform: Rather than spend his political capital elsewhere, he reserved most of it for health care.
I sincerely hope America gets genuine health reform and I hope it’s stronger than what’s emerging in the Senate. (Whoever voted for Joe Lieberman last time around ought to pray for continued good health.) I worry, though, that Obama’s strategy may turn out to be a mistake comparable to Clinton’s overemphasis on deficit reduction. Obama’s focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable health care is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent. Yet the administration’s efforts to date on this more basic concern have been neither particularly visible nor coherent.
Has the Government Broken the Social Contract with the American People?
In a provocative comment to an essay I wrote, Kevin de Bruxelles argues that the government has broken the social contract with the American people, and discusses the ultimate meaning of such a breach of contract:
One only needs to consult Hobbes to see where the answer lies.
In Leviathan, Hobbes contrasts two states for human society. The first being a state of nature which is described as perpetual war between individuals. The moral logic of the state of nature is that there is no right or wrong: “To this war of every man against every man, this is also consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notion of right or wrong, justice and injustice have no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where there is no law, no injustices. Force and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.” (13.13) And then Hobbes goes on to describe the moral logic of the state of nature: “And because the condition of man is a condition of war of every one against every one; in which case every one is governed by his own reason; and there is nothing he can make use of, that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his life against his enemies, it followeth, that in such a condition, every man has a right to every thing, even to another’s body. (14.4)
In order to transcend the state of nature, men accede to a social contract with each other to submit to a sovereign and in the process establish a civil society. To Hobbes (later diminished by Locke) the sovereign is almost all powerful. His job is to keep the peace, to install laws and justice, and to coerce the population to live within the limits he sets. But the one of the few limiting factors on his subject’s duty to submit to the sovereign is “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign, is understood to last as long, and no longer, that the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no covenant be relinquished.” (21.21)
Obamacare Will Go Untested Until After 2012 Election: Appearance of Reform vs. Reality of Faux Reform
It occurred to me yesterday that when the new health care system kicks in, it will be AFTER the 2012 election. Obama’s re-election won’t be all that dependent on the actual outcome of his health care reform. This revelation makes me all the more cynical about the health care bait-and-switching and in-your-face pro-corporate cronyism we have been witnessing since Obama’s election.
My broken, bitter, single-payer-loving heart concludes the appearance of achieving reform seems to be a greater priority with Obama than the quality of said reform. How frustrating for him when those darn obstructionist Republicans robbed him of the “appearance” of bipartisanship reform, too. Nevertheless, there will be celebratory spinning by many when all is said and done soon. And those representatives railing the loudest against the new bill will be from the Right. They will not be the sad moralists, but even harsher saboteurs to the basic needs of a desperate citizenry.
I mourn this generation’s lost opportunity to achieve universal health care — health care as a human and civil right. I have complete confidence the upcoming health care bill will be WIN/LOSE in nature. Yes, some wins for the citizenry, no doubt. But the colossal wins will be for the corporatists who will be capable of devastating the lives of even more Americans with costliness and critical abandonment during crises. Epiphanies of the scope of such windfall corporate profits and savvy contractual loopholes engineering tragic human ambushes will only be appreciated after the bill fully unfolds in 2013.
Too Little of a Good Thing
Paul Krugman
The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that’s also the bad news — because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes drastically, we’re looking at many years of high unemployment.
And the really bad news is that “centrists” in Congress aren’t able or willing to draw the obvious conclusion, which is that we need a lot more federal spending on job creation.
About that good news: not that long ago the U.S. economy was in free fall. Without the recovery act, the free fall would probably have continued, as unemployed workers slashed their spending, cash-strapped state and local governments engaged in mass layoffs, and more.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Too Little of a Good Thing – NYTimes.com.
Scozzafava has endorsed Democratic candidate Bill Owens
Scozzafava has endorsed Democratic candidate Bill Owens over conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman.
—
Moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava’s departure from upstate New York’s special congressional election is, senior Democrats predict, bad news for the Democratic Party.
While the state’s 23rd district is decidedly conservative, having last sent a Democrat to Congress in the 1800s, there had been hopes that a three-person contest would catapult Dem Bill Owens to the House of Representatives. Now, conventional wisdom holds that Scozzafava voters will likely head towards the conservative party’s Doug Hoffman or simply stay at home.
In the White House, at the very least, officials are bracing themselves for a loss, calling Scozzafava’s departure bad news for Owens. The one hope, they say, is if Scozzafava — who has more philosophical similarities with the Democratic Party than Hoffman’s brand of Republicanism — was to formally endorse her former rival.
Full Story White House Pushing To Get Dede Scozzafava’s Endorsement For Dem (UPDATED).
Fox’s Chris Wallace Conducts Sycophantic, Softball Interview With Rush Limbaugh
When the White House snubbed Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace of an interview with President Obama in September, Wallace defended his program by claiming it is a “truly fair and balanced show.” This morning, he had an opportunity to demonstrate his fairness, but failed miserably.
During his 30-minute on-air interview with Rush Limbaugh, Wallace did not ask a single critical question of the hate radio host, nor did he ever seriously challenge Limbaugh’s views at any point in the interview. Wallace relished engaging in a hostile interview with President Clinton in 2006, arguing afterwards that, “My instinct is to go after them with the high hard one.” He showed none of those instincts this morning.
Instead, Wallace teed up a series of softball questions, allowing Limbaugh to offer unchallenged accusations of Obama. Some examples:
Full Story Think Progress » Fox’s Chris Wallace Conducts Sycophantic, Softball Interview With Rush Limbaugh.
Bob Schieffer Likens H1N1 Flu Vaccine Shortages To Hurricane Katrina
This summer, the Obama administration announced that it would spend more than $2 billion to buy enough H1N1 flu vaccines to inoculate every American and said that companies could have up to 80 million ready by October. But only a fraction of those vaccines have been produced so far. “[W]e probably did overpromise, and we overpromised on the basis of what was represented to us” by the manufacturers, senior White House adviser David Axelrod said this week.
Some conservatives are now calling the mishap “Obama’s Katrina.” Today in an interview with Axelrod on CBS’ Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer advanced that view:
SCHIEFFER: What do you do to correct this kind of thing? You’re told one thing, you’d have so much and you didn’t. These are the kinds of things we heard after Katrina during a previous administration.
NPR’s Juan Williams noted the huge distinction between the two situations on Fox News Sunday this morning:
Full Story Think Progress » Bob Schieffer Likens H1N1 Flu Vaccine Shortages To Hurricane Katrina.
Walmart eyes urban expansion in US
Walmart has stepped up efforts to mobilise local political support for new store openings in US cities and urban areas that were last month identified as a growth priority for the retailer by Mike Duke, its chief executive.
In addition to a renewed drive to open a second Supercenter store in Chicago, the retailer is also raising its political profile in Philadelphia and continuing to cultivate the ground for a potential move into New York City.
Walmart has long faced political resistance to its plans in the largest US cities, largely orchestrated by the UFCW grocery workers’ union and its political allies. Walmart, the largest US private employer, is strongly anti-union.
Full Story FT.com / Retail & Consumer – Walmart eyes urban expansion in US.
Every sperm is a living, breathing person!
Every sperm and every egg, fertilized or not, is a living, breathing person, endowed by its Creator with certain inalienable rights. At least, that’s what the proposed 2010 personhood amendment to the Colorado state constitution implies. No, it doesn’t say that literally, but thanks to the vague wording of the amendment, that’s one possible interpretation.
It’s also clear from an article in The Colorado Independent that this is only half of what the amendment’s authors intended.
“It’s intended to account for human beings who may be created through asexual reproduction in laboratories and used as raw material for research, organs, or stem cells. Fertilization would not have properly applied to asexually reproduced humans, but even asexually reproduced human beings have a definite biological beginning,” [Gualberto Garcia] Jones explained. (Jones heads the organization that initiated this year’s amendment)
That this law could be interpreted to include sperm is an ironic example of the law of unintended consequences.
Full Story Scholars and Rogues » Every sperm is a living, breathing person!.
Has Baxter International released a biological weapon?
Evidence appears to suggest that Baxter International is responsible for a new deadly outbreak of viral pneumonia in Ukraine.
In February of 2009 Bloomberg reported that Baxter “accidentally” send vaccine material containing both live Avian bird flu and seasonal influenza to multiple laboratories worldwide. A laboratory decided to test the vaccine on it’s ferrets, but the ferrets all unexpectedly died. It must be noted that Baxter has made a “mistake” like this before. Blood products produced by Baxter once containd HIV. Thousands of haemophiliacs died due to this, and many went on to infect their spouses.
Later in the year, a bizarre story emerged on the internet. The Huffington Post reported on a a man named Joseph Moshe who was arrested after a hours long standoff with the police because he had supposedly made threats against the White House. The man was able to withstand multiple rounds of tear gas.
Full Story David Rothscum Reports: Has Baxter International released a biological weapon?.
Deficit Hawk Hysteria – William Greider
The deficit hawks are flapping their wings and making a terrible squawk about the government’s gusher of red ink. Good grief, a federal deficit of $1.4 trillion! What will become of us?
The gloom chorus includes GOP heavies and right-wing frothers, the editors of the Washington Post and other pinch-penny establishment journals, Blue Dog Democrats and even some of Barack Obama’s own advisers. Never mind the bloody mess we’re in, they insist. People should hunker down and accept their pain. Suffering is good for the soul.
This nonsense, grounded in ignorance and discredited nineteenth-century bromides, is a recipe for continuing the economy’s downward spiral and could prove poisonous for the country. The hawks claim self-righteous rectitude in their warnings, but their real intent is to stymie the very spending programs that can deliver economic recovery and relief to battered citizens. Whining about deficits is a way to halt promising talk about another substantial stimulus package, one that should be focused more concretely on job creation. That will require more deficit financing, for sure; but at a time when unemployment hovers near 10 percent and foreclosures are in hemorrhage, more is needed.
Full Story Deficit Hawk Hysteria.
Clean Energy Works a Model of American Recovery and Reinvestment
In Portland, Recovery Act funds are “laying the foundation for long-term economic, environmental, and community health.”
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) promised to pump millions into projects promoting green jobs and energy efficiency. Though much of the money has yet to be spent (only 12 percent of the money allocated has been used), early projects are demonstrating the returns that green investments will have.
Take the City of Portland’s Clean Energy Works program, whose goal is to retrofit Portland homes to be more energy efficient while creating green jobs and raising home values. In the next two years, 500 homes will be retrofitted—part of a pilot program that, pending approval by the state government in Salem, will expand to cover 100,000 homes.
In a recent conference call organized by Green for All, a national organization working to create green jobs, Portland Mayor Sam Adams discussed why Clean Energy Works is so important right now. “In Oregon, a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, this program stands to provide a scalable national model by leveraging federal recovery dollars to put people back to work and achieve significant carbon reductions.”
Full Story Portland :: Clean Energy Works a Model of American Recovery and Reinvestment.
CIT Approaches Bankruptcy After Striking Icahn, Goldman Accords
CIT Group Inc., the 101-year-old commercial lender seeking to avoid collapse, may file for a prepackaged bankruptcy as soon as today after striking deals with billionaire Carl Icahn and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
A prepackaged bankruptcy “is probably going to go through,” Icahn said Oct. 30. He will supply a $1 billion loan for “supplemental liquidity” that can be used as bankruptcy financing, the New York-based company said. CIT also said it reached an agreement with Goldman Sachs to keep a credit line open should the lender file for court protection.
The accords were disclosed the day after a deadline passed for CIT to solicit votes in support of either a $30 billion out- of-court debt exchange or a prepackaged bankruptcy. CIT is seeking to reduce debt by at least $5.7 billion after being locked out of credit markets it relies on for funding and posting nine quarters of losses totaling more than $5 billion.
Full Story CIT Approaches Bankruptcy After Striking Icahn, Goldman Accords – Bloomberg.com.
Neo-Nazi Sam Johnson, Leads Itty-Bitty Minn Protest & Gets Chased Away by Crowd; What a Pathetic Pussy
The mainstreaming of the radical right: Conservatives run and hide from their culpability in spreading hate
German industry: Don’t cut our taxes
German industry warns on tax cuts
They followed veiled warnings from the European Central Bank and Germany’s Bundesbank that excessively expansionary policies could backfire and that European Union fiscal rules be upheld. Central bankers fear breaches of fiscal rules would send a disastrous signal to other eurozone countries.
Germany’s main industry lobby group has sounded the alarm over the tax cutting plans of chancellor Angela Merkel’s new government, warning that priority should be given instead to bringing the country’s spiralling deficit back under control.
The comments on Sunday by the president of the BDI business association highlight growing concern that the centre-right coalition in Berlin will jeopardise Germany’s reputation for fiscal prudence by pushing ahead with sweeping tax cuts.
Full Story FT.com / Germany – German industry warns on tax cuts.
OPS: They are smarter than we are
Homeless carted out of Cape Town and Johannesburg for World Cup
South African cities are planning to create “concentration camps” to house thousands of poor people well away from the football stadiums where next year’s World Cup will be staged, charities say.
Human rights groups in Cape Town and Johannesburg have expressed outrage at leaked plans to clear the streets of the homeless during the tournament. Councils in Johannesburg and Durban have told charities that street children and the destitute will be “compassionately” relocated out of city centres from next month.
Bill Rogers, from the Addiction Action Campaign, which helps thousands of drug abusers in Johannesburg, said the city had asked charities for assistance with the scheme.
He said: “We’ve been made aware of the city’s plans to move thousands of homeless people to shelters away from the city.”
Full Story Homeless carted out of Cape Town and Johannesburg for World Cup – Times Online.
Obama orders more options on Afghanistan
Washington Post claims White House ‘appears committed’ to sending up to 15,000 more soldiers
obamahonorsfallensoldier Obama orders more options on AfghanistanUS President Barack Obama has asked the Pentagon for more options on troop levels in Afghanistan including sending less than the roughly 40,000 new soldiers requested, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
Citing two unnamed US officials, the newspaper said the request came at Obama’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House on Friday.
The military chiefs have been largely supportive of a resource request by General Stanley McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, that would by one Pentagon estimate require the deployment of 44,000 extra troops, it said.
But opinion among members of Obama’s national security team is divided, and he now appears to be seeking a compromise solution that would satisfy both his military and civilian advisers, the paper said.
Full Story Obama orders more options on Afghanistan | Raw Story.
Breckenridge, Colorado voters may legalize pot, paraphernalia
On Tuesday, Breckenridge, Colorado could become the latest American city to legalize recreational use of marijuana for adults.
The legalization measure, placed on the ballot after campaigners turned in a petition with almost three-times the number of signatures required, would also permit adults to posses bongs, pipes, bubblers and other so-called marijuana paraphernalia.
Allowing paraphernalia would be a first for U.S. voters, according to Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Bruce Mirken, who spoke with the Associated Press. “I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the country that has legalized paraphernalia,” he said.
Full Story Breckenridge, Colorado voters may legalize pot, paraphernalia | Raw Story.
Chrysler offers buyout to 23,000 workers
Latest move to pare workforce comes just before automaker reveals 5-year recovery plan.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Days before unveiling its latest recovery plan, Chrysler Group has extended a buyout program to 23,000 U.S. workers in an effort to further trim its workforce.
In a statement, Chrysler said workers have until Nov. 13 to accept the proposal, and that the company would determine who qualifies for it depending on operational needs. The company said termination dates would be at its discretion.
The automaker said special programs were being offered at facilities that are being forced to close as a result of the bankruptcy process that occurred earlier this year. The deadline for accepting those programs depends on the facility, Chrysler said.
Full Story Chrysler offers buyout to 23,000 workers – Nov. 1, 2009.
Brit UN nuclear expert may have been murdered, police say
A British nuclear energy expert who plunged 40 metres to his death at the United Nations’ (UN) building in Vienna may have been murdered, police said today (Thurs).
Timothy Hampton died on the spot on Tuesday after falling from a 17th floor window at the Vienna International Centre (VIC) – one of the UN’s three headquarters.
The UN confirmed the death of the 47-year-old – who was involved in disarmament negotiations with Iran as a member of the UN’s Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) – but refused to give any further information on the circumstances of the fatality.
A police spokesman told the Austrian Times today that investigators had not ruled out murder as no suicide note has been found.
Full Story Brit UN nuclear expert may have been murdered, police say – General News – Austrian Times.
Defining excessive pay
Investor case may hint at high court approach to compensation
The Supreme Court this week will hear a case that raises bedrock questions about the ability of the market to set “reasonable” corporate compensation, and experts say its outcome could hold important clues about the judiciary’s view of extraordinary interventions in the economy by the executive branch and Congress.
At issue in Jones v. Harris Associates is whether investment advisers charged too much for their services to a mutual fund under their control. But it contains natural parallels to the current controversy over executive compensation at publicly held companies.
“The fact that the Supreme Court is looking at compensation again is in itself extraordinary,” said Charles M. Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, adding that the court’s history is to defer to the markets rather than to intervene. “But I think it also demonstrates the political reality that compensation is sort of foisted onto the national scene, whether in Congress and now certainly at the Supreme Court.”
Full Story Defining excessive pay – washingtonpost.com.
Axelrod On H1N1 Vaccines: ‘We Overpromised’
NPR: Audio & transcript
David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior adviser, says the administration based its predictions about how many doses of the H1N1 vaccine would be available by mid-October on bad information. Host Scott Simon visited the White House on Friday to ask Axelrod about the criticisms of the government’s handling of the H1N1 vaccine, how the administration counted the number of jobs the stimulus is responsible for, and the controversy over the DNC promising donors access to senior officials at the White House.
On H1N1
Scott Simon: On Friday, the president talked about his frustration that H1N1 vaccine hasn’t gotten out to more Americans. In August, the Centers for Disease Control said that 120 million doses would be available. They later scaled that back to 45 million. We’re speaking today, on the last day of October, 25 million doses reportedly are ready. Did the government overpromise?
Full Story Axelrod On H1N1 Vaccines: ‘We Overpromised’ : NPR.
-
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
-
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. 
