Archive for November, 2009
Interest due on U.S. debt: Close to $5 trillion
Unless lawmakers make big changes, the interest Americans will have to pay to keep the country running over the next decade will reach unheard of levels.
Here’s a new way to think about the U.S. government’s epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.
More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.
If that’s hard to grasp, here’s another way to look at why that’s a problem.
In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due – $533 billion – is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group.
On the bright side – such as it is – the record levels of debt issued lately have paid for stimulus and other rescue programs that prevented the economy from falling off a cliff. And the money was borrowed at very low rates.
Full Story Interest due on U.S. debt: Close to $5 trillion – Nov. 19, 2009.
Dodd Muted On Bernanke Renomination Prospects
Just six weeks after he told Reuters it was essentially a done deal, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd punted when asked about the likelihood of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's confirmation for a second term.
Asked by a citizen journalist if it was a foregone conclusion that Bernanke's nomination for a second term would be confirmed by the Senate, Dodd replied: “Not necessarily, not necessarily. We'll see how members react.”
The intervening six weeks have seen a growing public anger about skyrocketing unemployment, and a growing recognition that government bailouts since last fall have helped Wall Street — rather than Main Street.
Dodd's new comments came in a video posted to YouTube today by videoblogger Mike Stark. Stark also asked Dodd about the Obama administration's top economic team and whether a change is needed. Dodd said he was concerned about the country's economic plight, but said: “It's the President's call at this point because those are his choices.”
Full Story Dodd Muted On Bernanke Renomination Prospects.
Health Care, Essential to Democracy
Two weekends ago, after the bait and switch of a vote on single-payer for a vote on an anti-abortion amendment, we felt wizened to the possibility of unknown threats in the legislative churn on health reform. As insurance and pharmaceutical companies, Catholic bishops, and the right wing throw in dollars, lobbyists, and pressure for no votes on the final bill, it is clear we who are in the business of protecting and improving our rights to access to health care, including abortion, must remain vigilant and ready to challenge these threats.
First, a little history is in order. In mid-July Rep. Kucinich passed in the Education and Labor Committee an amendment to the House bill for health insurance reform that would make single-payer easier to enact at the state level. On July 31st Rep. Weiner and 6 other members of Energy and Commerce Committee brought to committee an amendment to that would substitute the text of HR 676, the national single-payer bill, for the House bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered a floor vote on single payer — if Rep. Weiner would withdraw the amendment from committee.
Single-payer advocates embraced these efforts wholeheartedly. And we counted upon our champions in the House of Representatives to stand with us.
Full Story Health Care, Essential to Democracy | CommonDreams.org.
The People Who Couldn’t See an $8 Trillion Housing Bubble and Thought Iceland Was Thriving Oppose Auditing the Fed
Dean Baker
That is what Alan Blinder tells us in a Washington Post column today. Blinder tells us that the vast majority of academic economists and people in the financial industry oppose efforts to make the Fed more accountable to Congress. (He also bizarrely asserts that “very, very few” people support more Congressional control of the Fed. This would seem to be inconsistent with the support for the Paul-Grayson bill to audit the Fed.)
Blinder tells us why more congressional input into monetary policy would be a bad thing. He notes that the Fed will start to raise interest rates at some point when the economy starts to recover. He then presents the hypothetical scenario: “Would we like to see the FOMC members called on the congressional carpet to explain why they are ‘killing jobs’?”
Very good question. Just about everyone I know would say “yes.” As phone records for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner from his days as President of the New York Fed show, Fed officials are in constant contact with top figures in the financial industry. There is no doubt that they would loudly hear the complaints from the industry if they were not raising interest rates fast enough to meet the industry’s concerns about inflation.
Meditation Halves Risk of Heart Attack
and works as well as drugs
Meditation can cut the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death by almost 50% in patients with existing coronary heart disease, according to a new clinical trial. The findings indicate that relaxation and mental focusing can be as effective as powerful new drugs in treating heart disease.
Over the past 4 decades, scientists have found many hints that transcendental meditation–the most widely used meditation technique–can confer a variety of health benefits. The technique, which was invented by an Indian guru named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and grew to popularity after the Beatles practiced it in the 1960s, requires the practitioner to focus on repetitions of a single sound or mantra, such as a phrase from Hindu scripture. Transcendental meditation has been shown to decrease blood pressure, reduce stress, and improve mental focus in college students. It's unclear, however, whether any of these benefits translate to overall health.
In the first study to test the effect of transcendental meditation on the risk of heart attack, preventive medicine specialist Robert Schneider of the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, collaborated with endocrinologist Theodore Kotchen of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. They enlisted 201 patients with narrowed coronary arteries–a risk factor for heart attack and stroke. All volunteers were African American, a high-risk group for heart disease.
The patients were randomly assigned to two groups, both of which were given a standard treatment of prescription drugs for high blood pressure and atherosclerosis, as well as an educational course in cardiovascular health. The team asked one of the groups to also practice transcendental meditation for 15 to 20 minutes a day, following instructions from meditation experts.
Full Story Meditation Halves Risk of Heart Attack — Wang 2009 (1116): 1 — ScienceNOW.
Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious
Researchers at Princeton University recently made a remarkable discovery about the brains of rats that exercise. Some of their neurons respond differently to stress than the neurons of slothful rats. Scientists have known for some time that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells (neurons) but not how, precisely, these neurons might be functionally different from other brain cells.
In the experiment, preliminary results of which were presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, scientists allowed one group of rats to run. Another set of rodents was not allowed to exercise. Then all of the rats swam in cold water, which they don’t like to do. Afterward, the scientists examined the animals’ brains. They found that the stress of the swimming activated neurons in all of the brains. (The researchers could tell which neurons were activated because the cells expressed specific genes in response to the stress.) But the youngest brain cells in the running rats, the cells that the scientists assumed were created by running, were less likely to express the genes. They generally remained quiet. The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.
Full Story Phys Ed: Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious – Well Blog – NYTimes.com.
Thom and Lamar Waldron on JFK’s Legacy of Secrecy
Thom Hartmann – - Did the mob kill JFK?
YouTube – Thom and Lamar Waldron on JFK’s Legacy of Secrecy – Did the mob kill JFK?.
UC Berkeley students take over building
UC Berkeley students took over a campus building in protest this morning, a day after the University of California regents voted to raise tuition by 32 percent.
An undetermined number of protesters barricaded themselves at about 6 a.m. inside Wheeler Hall, which houses the English department.
Several demonstrators wearing bandannas opened a window, displayed a sign reading “32% Hike, 900 layoffs” with the word “Class” crossed out in red. They used a bullhorn to denounce the regents’ decision and to rally support from a group of students chanting outside.
University and Berkeley police cordoned off the building, located just north of Sather Gate, with yellow police tape.
Full Story UC Berkeley students take over building.
Prison has few Taliban die-hards General says
The U.S. military says the vast majority of the 700 detainees at the prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan “could eventually be released because they’re fighting more for money than ideology.” Brig. Gen. Mark Martins said that 10 to 20 percent of the inmates at Bagram are considered hard-core or “irreconcilable” Taliban fighters.
General says U.S. may free the ‘accidental guerrillas’
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — The U.S. military says the vast majority of the 700 detainees at its biggest prison in Afghanistan could eventually be released because they’re fighting more for money than ideology.
That means it may prove easier than previously thought to make peace with some Taliban insurgents through job projects and other economic development efforts, experts said.
Brig. Gen. Mark Martins told USA TODAY that 10% to 20% of the inmates at the U.S.-run prison in Bagram are considered hard-core, or “irreconcilable,” Taliban fighters. The rest of them are candidates for eventual rehabilitation and release, he said.
“There are some of those caught up in this armed conflict who are … accidental guerrillas,” said Martins, who is overseeing a review of U.S. detainee policy here.
The U.S. military shifted its focus this year to trying to win the loyalty of the Afghan people, even those who formerly took up arms against the Afghan government.
President Obama is deliberating an increase of up to 40,000 troops to implement the strategy and turn back a resurgent Taliban.
Full Story USATODAY.com.
California College Tuition Costs To Increase 32 PERCENT Due To State Budget Crisis, Students Protest Hike
As protests resounded outside, the University of California Board of Regents approved a 32 percent fee increase for students attending the state’s premier public schools.
The vote in a windowless University of California, Los Angeles, meeting room took place Thursday as hundreds of students and union members gathered nearby, waving signs, pounding drums and chanting “We’re fired up, can’t take it no more” and “Shame on you.”
The $2,500 increase will push the cost of an undergraduate education to more than $10,000 a year by next fall, about triple the cost of a decade ago. The fees, the equivalent of tuition, do not include the cost of housing, board and books.
“Our hand has been forced,” UC President Mark Yudof told reporters after the vote. “When you don’t have any money, you don’t have any money.”
Full Story California College Tuition Costs To Increase 32 PERCENT Due To State Budget Crisis, Students Protest Hike.
NICE decision on liver cancer drug Nexavar condemned
Thousands of people with liver cancer have been told a life-extending drug is too expensive to be provided on the NHS, provoking outrage among both patients and cancer charities.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has ruled the cost of Nexavar – at about £3,000 a month – is “simply too high” for use in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Andrew Dillon, chief executive of NICE, said: “The price being asked by [the manufacturer] Bayer is simply too high to justify using NHS money which could be spent on better value cancer treatments.”
But Macmillan Cancer Support said the decision was “a scandal”, while patients and their relatives have said it is impossible to put a price on the extra months of life given by the drug. Here are some reactions to the decision.
Full Story BBC News – NICE decision on liver cancer drug Nexavar condemned.
Commercial Real Estate: Zombie Buildings, The Next Hole in the Economy
While the overall U.S. financial system is showing signs of stability,a rapidly rising tide of troubled loans for commercial real estate threatens the survival of hundreds of the nations small and medium-sized banks.
Financial reports this month from federal regulators and industry analysts detail a new cycle of uncertainty that they fear could cripple the economic recovery. Billions of dollars in commercial debt will have to be paid back or refinanced at a time when property values have plummeted. About $500 billion will come due in 2010 alone and an equal amount every year through at least 2012, according to the Federal Reserve. Many banks that cater to regional and community developments were largely unscathed by the residential mortgage meltdown. But now they are facing huge numbers of possible defaults by builders who erected
thousands of office towers, condominiums and shopping centers with the easy credit available five years ago. With few tenants, those developments are turning into what industry insiders call zombie buildings
Full Story YouTube – Commercial Real Estate: The Next Hole in the Economy.
Belgian prime minister named first EU president
European leaders chose Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as the European Union’s first president on Thursday, the EU presidency announced, after Britain dropped its backing for Tony Blair.
Britain in exchange secured the prestigious diplomatic post of European foreign policy supremo for its current EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton.
The two posts are aimed at boosting Europe’s clout in the international arena and allowing it to speak with a unified voice to powers like the United States and China.
“This is the new leadership team of Europe,” said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeld, flanked by Van Rompuy and Ashton, who minutes early had received fulsome backslaps and kisses from the assembled leaders.
Full Story Belgian prime minister named first EU president – Yahoo! News.
1.5 Million Medical Files At Risk In Health Net Data Breach
A hard drive with seven years of personal and medical information on about 1.5 million Health Net customers, including 446,000 in Connecticut, was lost six months ago and was first reported Wednesday, state and company officials said.
The insurance company informed the state attorney general's office and the Department of Insurance Wednesday of the security breach that puts personal medical records at risk in a historic lapse, the first of its kind to be publicly reported.
A portable, external hard drive with Social Security numbers and medical records “disappeared” and is still missing from the insurer's Northeast headquarters in Shelton, a Health Net spokeswoman said Wednesday.
The hard drive contains Social Security numbers, medical records and health information dating to 2002 for 1.5 million customers — past and present — in Arizona, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, the spokeswoman said.
Full Story 1.5 Million Medical Files At Risk In Health Net Data Breach — Courant.com.
Norwegian scientists raise concerns about mutated form of swine flu
Scientists in Norway have identified a mutated form of the swine flu virus that is raising concern because it was found in two patients who died of the flu and a third who was severely ill with the disease, officials announced Friday
In a statement, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said the mutation “could possibly make the virus more prone to infect deeper in the airways and thus cause more severe disease.”
Scientists have analyzed about 70 viruses from confirmed Norwegian swine flu cases and found the mutation in only those three patients, Geir Stene-Larsen, the institute’s director general, said in the statement.
“Based on what we know so far, it seems that the mutated virus does not circulate in the population, but might be a result of spontaneous changes which have occurred in these three patients,” the statement said.
Full Story Norwegian scientists raise concerns about mutated form of swine flu – washingtonpost.com.
State unemployment rates rise
More states report rising unemployment rates, though fewer report joblessness above the national average in October.
A growing number of states reported rising jobless rates in October, and thirteen states reported unemployment rates above the national average of 10.2%, according to a government report released on Friday.
Overall, jobless rates increased in 29 states and the District of Columbia last month, while they fell in 13 states, according to a monthly Labor Department survey on state unemployment.
In September, 23 states and Washington D.C. reported that their unemployment rates increased, and 14 states had jobless rates above the national average.
Michigan remained the state with the highest rate of unemployment at 15.1%, though that rate was down 0.2 percentage points from September. October was the 11th straight month in which Michigan posted an unemployment rate above 10%.
Full Story State unemployment rates rise – Nov. 20, 2009.
Dems: Boehner’s ‘abortion premiums’ claim ‘as ridiculous as it is inaccurate’
House Minority Leader John Boehner’s claim that the Senate health reform bill would force users of the public health care system to pay a “monthly abortion premium” is “as ridiculous as it is inaccurate,” the Democratic Party says.
Boehner, the ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, wrote on the GOP Leader Blog Thursday that “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s … massive, 2,074-page bill would levy a new ‘abortion premium’ fee on Americans in the government-run plan.”
Boehner’s statement says:
What is even more alarming is that a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run health plan. It’s right there beginning on line 11, page 122, section 1303, under “Actuarial Value of Optional Service Coverage.” The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account – and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services.
Full Story Dems: Boehner’s ‘abortion premiums’ claim ‘as ridiculous as it is inaccurate’ | Raw Story.
Six-Year-Old Girl ‘On Verge Of Never Hearing Again’ Due To Insurance Company Denial
One of the worst abuses of the private health insurance industry is its practice of denying claims to pay for necessary care for patients. This practice has become so rampant in the industry that a recent study by the California Nurses Association found that a whopping 21 percent of all insurance claims filed in the first half of 2009 in the state of California were denied by insurers.
As the story of six-year-old Madison Leuchtmann of Franklin County, MO, demonstrates, even children are victims of this insurance company abuse. Madison was born with bilateral atresia, which means she lacks ear canals in both ears. In order to hear, she wears a special device on a headband that allows her to make out sounds. Despite her disability, Madison is at the top of her kindergarten class and is slowly learning to read.
Yet Madison, due to her growth, will soon require a new hearing implant to be able to recognize sounds. Her hearing and speech therapist warns that “if she doesn’t get her implants by age seven, she’s not going to be able to blend her words. … She won’t be able to hear herself [talk].” Madison’s pediatrician, Dr. Randall Clary, also insists that without the implant, the girl may never be able to hear again.
Full Story Think Progress » Six-Year-Old Girl ‘On Verge Of Never Hearing Again’ Due To Insurance Company Denial.
Women can wait until age 21 for cervical cancer test, group says
Women can delay having their first Pap test for cervical cancer until they turn 21 and many can wait longer to go back for follow-up screenings, according to new guidelines released Friday by a major medical group.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommended the change after concluding that more frequent testing did not catch significantly more cancers and often resulted in girls and young women experiencing unnecessary stress, anxiety and sometimes harmful treatments because of suspicious growths that would not cause problems.
“We really felt that the downsides of more frequent screening outweighed any benefits,” said Alan G. Waxman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of New Mexico who led the revision of the guidelines. “More testing is not always more intelligent testing.”
Full Story Women can wait until age 21 for cervical cancer test, group says – washingtonpost.com.
OPS: Insurance Companies trying to save profit at teh cost of women’s lives?
Philip Morris hit with record 300 million dollar fine
A Florida jury has ordered tobacco giant Philip Morris to pay almost 300 million dollars (200 million euros) in damages to a former smoker — the largest fine ever in such a case, lawyers said.
The jury ordered the company on Thursday to pay punitive damages of 244 million dollars and compensatory damages of 55 million dollars to Cindy Naugle, an ex-smoker suffering from severe emphysema.
“Cindy admitted her fault to the jury,” her attorney Robert Kelley said in a statement.
“But Philip Morris refused to accept any responsibility for her emphysema, even though she was an addicted customer for 25 years.”
Philip Morris rejected the ruling in a statement and said they would seek further review.
“We believe that the punitive damages award is grossly excessive and a clear violation of constitutional and state law,” said Murray Garnick, a lawyer speaking on behalf of the tobacco firm.
Full Story Philip Morris hit with record 300 million dollar fine – Yahoo! News.
Give in on same-sex benefits, judge orders feds
The chief federal appeals court judge in San Francisco bluntly ordered the Obama administration Thursday to stop resisting his finding that the wife of a lesbian court employee was entitled to government insurance coverage.
The federal agency that oversees benefits for government employees “shall cease at once its interference with the jurisdiction of this tribunal,” Judge Alex Kozinski said in response to the Office of Personnel Management’s rejection of his earlier ruling in the case.
He told the agency to let Karen Golinski, a staff attorney at the court’s headquarters in San Francisco, enroll her wife, Amy Cunninghis, in the family health plan that already covers their 6-year-old son.
He also ordered court officials to reimburse Golinski for the costs of buying insurance for Cunninghis since she applied for coverage in September 2008. That coverage now costs $429 a month, Golinski’s lawyer said.
Full Story Give in on same-sex benefits, judge orders feds.
US concerned about definition of aggression as international crime
“I would be remiss not to share with you my country's concerns about an issue … to which we attach particular importance: the definition of the crime of aggression,” US war crimes ambassador Stephen Rapp told a gathering in The Hague of the International Criminal Court's Assembly of State Parties (ASP).
The court's founding Rome Statute, of which the United States is not a signatory, determines that the ICC can try aggression, though no legal definition has been agreed upon.
The issue is to be discussed at an ICC review conference in Kampala, Uganda, next May.
Full Story US concerned about definition of aggression as international crime | Raw Story.
OPS: Well gee, that would be just too damn bad now wouldn’t it? It Might cramp our style.
US lawmakers: New tax should pay for Afghan war
Influential US lawmakers on Thursday called for levying a new income tax to pay for the war in Afghanistan, warning its costs pose a mortal threat to efforts like a sweeping health care overhaul.
“Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for,” the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of President Barack Obama, said in a joint statement.
The proposed “Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010″ came with Obama set to announce within weeks his decision on whether to send more US troops to fight the war, now in its ninth year.
The group included House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey; Representative John Murtha, who chair that panel's defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.
The proposal, a heavily symbolic measure seen as having next to no chance of becoming law, would impose a war surtax on income beginning in 2011 — though it would allow the president to delay implementation by one year upon deciding the US economy is too weak to sustain such a tax shift.
It would also exempt members of the US military who have served in combat since the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes, their families, and families of soldiers who died as a result of combat.
Full Story US lawmakers: New tax should pay for Afghan war – Yahoo! News.
Democrats blast McConnell for ‘lying’ about health reform
After releasing their sweeping health care bill in the Senate Wednesday, Democrats are on the attack with a video montage “calling out” GOP leader Mitch McConnell for what they describe as his dishonest effort to obfuscate and kill the legislation.
“The Republican Party is going to have to answer to voters for opposing health insurance reform… all for the sake of politics,” said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan, in a statement to RAW STORY.
The clip, titled “Mitch McConnell: Lying On Health Reform,” and website carrying it feature various sources refuting McConnell's assertions that the Democratic plan will cut Medicare, drive private insurers out of business, force government bureaucrats between doctors and patients, and lead to a single-payer insurance system
Full Story Democrats blast McConnell for ‘lying’ about health reform | Raw Story.
American exceptionalism: a delusional concept
American exceptionalism: a nationalistic belief that the people of America occupy a special niche in the world community of nations; that we are exceptional because of our unique system of beliefs and principles, because of our historical evolution, and our political and religious institutions. There’s only one problem with that concept; it’s no more than a myth.
We Americans have been deluding ourselves into thinking that we are the exceptional society in the world. What extreme arrogance, how egotistical to believe that we are the superior nation and people, above others in the world, better at everything we do. This is reminiscent of the old saying that if you say something often enough and loud enough you may begin to believe it.
For those who may take issue with my premise, let’s examine several important elements of our society and, thereby, judge how we rank in the world relative to our achievements and what value we contribute to the world:
Full Story OpEdNews – Article: American exceptionalism: a delusional concept.
The High Cost of Neglecting Manufacturing
Today, American owned corporations manufacture less and less each year and import more. This difference between the amount we import and export has created a huge balance of trade deficit.
Editor’s Note This article was originally written in 2004. We tried to inform the country five years ago that our direction and priorities were not on the right track. Our erroneous ways continued unchanged, which have caused our present plight.
The United States is considered to be a rich country. We have accumulated much abundance through most of the twentieth century, as we were a very productive country whose wealth derived to a great extent from manufacturing. Our companies invented and produced many of the things we needed plus much of what the rest of the world needed.
Today, American owned corporations manufacture less and less each year and import more each year. This difference between the amount we import and export has created a huge balance of trade deficit. This has caused us to lose over 1 million high paying manufacturing jobs this year alone.
As our American owned companies produce less, they become inefficient, uncompetitive, and ultimately go out of business or are easily taken over by foreign owned corporations with huge supplies of our cash generated through their trade surplus with us.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Reagan Didn’t End the Cold War — Leftist Intellectuals Did
Reagan was inspirational, but to claim he defeated Communism is a disservice to the millions of Eastern Europeans who struggled against great odds for their freedom.
The 20th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that overthrew the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was one of the most impressive civil insurrections in history. It was not the military might of NATO, but the power of nonviolent action by ordinary citizens which brought down the system. The popular uprising against the repressive system that had ruled their country for much of the previous four decades — along with comparable movements, which came to the fore that year in Poland, Hungary and East Germany — marks a great triumph of the human spirit.
These movements were largely led by democratic socialists who mobilized workers, church people, intellectuals, and others to face down the tanks with their bare hands. Yet here in the United States, we are told that it was a result of President Reagan’s militarism and the supposed inherent superiority of capitalism. It is this false narrative that has played such a major role in shifting discourse to the right in subsequent decades and has been used to discredit those struggling for a more just and egalitarian economic system and a more sane and less imperialistic foreign policy.
President Reagan’s verbal support for democracy had little credibility in many of these countries. For example, while he denounced Poland’s martial law regime, he was a strong supporter of the more repressive martial law regime then in power in NATO ally Turkey and scores of other dictatorships. In challenging left-wing governments in the Third World, Reagan gave little credence to nonviolent action and instead backed insurgents with ties to U.S.-backed dictatorships and — in the case of Afghanistan — even Islamic fundamentalists.
Full Story Reagan Didn’t End the Cold War — Leftist Intellectuals Did | World | AlterNet.
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
It’s possible to keep the good parts of religion — like the music, rituals and pageantry — and get rid of the sex-hating dogma, the belief in god and other troublesome aspects.
If religion really were just a metaphor, just a comforting and inspiring story that gives shape and meaning to people’s lives… what might it look like?
One of the most common tropes among progressive religious believers is Religion As Metaphor. “Religious beliefs don’t have to be literally true,” the trope says. “They’re just useful metaphors: stories that give shape and meaning to our lives.”
I’m not buying it. I’m not buying it for one simple reason: If religion is just a story, then why does it upset people so much when atheists say it isn’t true? Any more than it would upset a fan of “Alice in Wonderland” if someone told them it wasn’t true?
I’m seriously not buying it. I think the “metaphor” trope is just a disingenuous way for believers to slip away from hard questions about their beliefs. But it’s got me thinking: If religion really were just a story — a story that people found comforting and inspiring, a story that people sincerely knew wasn’t true but still enjoyed telling and re-telling — what would that look like?
And would atheists have a problem with it?
Using Chicago’s Poor as Guinea Pigs
Doctor-drugmaker ties: Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein received nearly $500,000 from antipsychotic drug’s manufacturer
Company paid him to promote Seroquel despite misgivings about his research
Executives inside pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca faced a high-stakes dilemma.
On one hand, Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein was bringing the company a small fortune in sales and was conducting research that made one of its most promising drugs look spectacular.
On the other, some worried that his research findings might be too good to be true.
As Reinstein grew irritated with what he perceived as the company's slights, a top executive outlined the scenario in an e-mail to colleagues.
“If he is in fact worth half a billion dollars to (AstraZeneca),” the company's U.S. sales chief wrote in 2001, “we need to put him in a different category.” To avoid scaring Reinstein away, he said, the firm should answer “his every query and satisfy any of his quirky behaviors.”
Economic Crisis Is Getting Bloody — Violent Deaths Are Now Following Evictions, Foreclosures and Job Losses
By Nick Turse
Despite ever rosier economic predictions and a surging stock market, the body count from the economic crisis is destined only to grow in the weeks and months ahead.
In 2007, Jason Rodriguez was fired from his position at an Orlando, Florida engineering firm and ended up taking a job as a “sandwich artist” at a Subway restaurant. His salary was cut nearly in half and his debts mounted until, last May, he filed for bankruptcy, listing his assets at just over $4,600 and his liabilities at nearly $90,000. Although he lived only 30 minutes away, according to his former mother-in-law, America Holloway, Rodriguez barely saw his son. When the boy asked why his father didn’t visit, Holloway said Rodriguez told him: “‘Because I don’t have any money. I don’t have a job. I don’t have anything to eat. When things get better, I’ll come see you.’”
Things never got better. On November 6th, the 40-year-old Rodriguez went back to the downtown high-rise office building where he had worked and reportedly opened fire, killing one person and wounding five others at his old firm. Asked to comment following the shooting, a local lawyer who represented Rodriguez in his bankruptcy proceedings, said “That’s how it is right now. He’s a very typical client. Of people that are suffering through the economy right now, there’s nothing extraordinary about him… except that.”
In the wake of the massacre at Fort Hood — which took place a day before the Florida incident — there has, quite understandably, been a search for answers as to the cause of the shooting that left more than 50 dead or injured. Much less attention, however, has been devoted to uncovering the reasons for the much larger number of men and women — including those allegedly shot by Jason Rodriguez — who have fallen victim to violence stemming from the global economic crisis.
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit
Obama’s Meet-and-Greet for Elites
By SHAMUS COOKE
If the President had offered us a job summit a year ago, he might have been taken seriously. Now, however, after more than six million jobs have been lost — and with the bottom still falling — Obama’s brain storming get-together can only be treated with contempt, if not outrage.
What is needed is immediate action, not idle chatter. We already know what works: federal stimulus money channeled directly towards job creation, a public works campaign to help rebuild the U.S. crumbling infrastructure, full funding for education and social services, and more.
Instead, Obama will invite the corporate elite to the White House to hear their advice on how to create jobs, as they continue slashing them by the thousands. The conservative Washington Post reports:
“President Obama plans to bring together CEOs, small business owners and financial experts to sound out ideas for continuing to expand the economy and create jobs” (November 16, 2009).
Labor leaders have also been invited to the meeting.
Full Story Shamus Cooke: A Fraudulent Jobs Summit.
Exiting Afghanistan
A Letter to President Obama
By RALPH NADER
Dear President Obama,
You are nearing the day of decision as to whether you order the dispatch of more soldiers to Afghanistan.
Some of your advisors have urged up to 50,000 more soldiers, including several thousand called trainers of the Afghan army.
Other advisors have urged more caution, notably the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and former general, Karl W. Eikenberry, who opposes more soldiers so long as the Afghan government remains grossly dysfunctional.
Beside your own military and civilian advisors, you are receiving disparate counsel from an anemic Congress and your allies abroad.
But are you soliciting advise from stateside civic groups of experience and repute that represent many Americans? Or from genuine experts on that country such as Ashraf Ghani-a former American professor and later respected member of the Karzai government before his departure to other positions in that country?
Full Story Ralph Nader: Exiting Afghanistan.
Why Can’t We Do to DC What We Did to Seattle?
David Swanson
I’ve been reading a brand new book called “The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle,” which is in large part an analysis of what worked in the protesting of the World Trade Organization 10 years ago. Why is it, I wonder, that activists were able to shut down the center of this major city in Washington state, but for years we have been unable to shut down the center of Washington, D.C., in opposition to wars.
Certainly, we’ve turned out more people to march around DC on a Saturday than took part in the Seattle action. But we’ve never shut the place down on a series of weekdays and prevented congressional, White House, and military staff from getting to work. And we’ve never tried to do so — not with the sort of broad-coalition, grass-roots, strategic organization that led up to Seattle. Handfuls of dedicated activists, sometimes including some of the same people who organized Seattle, have made feeble attempts. Here’s an effort that I coordinated, which failed: http://campdemocracy.org A couple of Iraq War Anniversaries ago, peace groups engaged in creative nonviolent action in DC, but with a different approach from Seattle, and with meager results. As side-shows to marches, or as independent actions, we’ve gotten arrested, including at the Capitol, but we haven’t closed the place down.
Now there are plans for major protests in Copenhagen, but there are also plans to shut down DC in March: http://peaceoftheaction.org Unless this effort grows dramatically very soon, it too will not match what was done 10 years ago. It may be worth our while to look at the lessons in this new book by David Solnit, Rebecca Solnit, and other contributors. One obvious point is that the WTO was scheduled to meet briefly, and a limited protest could actually prevent that meeting. Even if we know that Congress is scheduled to vote on war funding, we could shut Congress down for a week and then watch it pass the war funding on the 8th day. But the WTO, too, could have delayed or moved its meeting. If we were to shut things down for a week and convey the popularity of our cause, we might shut the wars down for good. The popularity of our cause depends on good communications strategies and strict adherence to nonviolence, and therefore also good strategies for countering false charges of violence.
Full Story Why Can’t We Do to DC What We Did to Seattle? | Let’s Try Democracy.
Report: The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society
The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate.
Report Contents:
I: U.S. Societal Breakdown
II: Environmental Crisis
III: The Obama Myth
IV: Economic Coup – Theft of Trillions
V: National Emergency
Download Full Report in PDF format
The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate.
I: U.S. Societal Breakdown
The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society: We are in a NATIONAL EMERGENCYYou may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Before exposing the root causes of this breakdown, let’s look at some vital statistics and facts:
* The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The US already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top one percent, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high.
* As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and just surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefit the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Bloomberg reported: “Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, they are also benefiting by only paying 1% in taxes.
Full Story The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society | Amped Status.
Showdown: Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Take On Fed in House Committee Today
The fight by financial reformers to hold the secretive Federal Reserve accountable for its role in allowing Wall Street and big banks to spiral out of control – and then keeping secret how it bailed them out – faces its first major test today. The House Financial Services Committee will consider two competing amendments on auditing the Fed.
They can't come too soon. Earlier this week, for instance, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) even filed a lawsuit over the Fed's continuing refusal to disclose the financial institutions that have received federal funds in the last six months – and the terms, if any, of federal assistance.
One audit proposal offered by Reps. Ron Paul and Alan Grayson has garnered the backing of the leading reform coalition, the 200-group Americans for Financial Reform and over 300 House co-sponsors for an earlier version. The amendment by the libertarian Republican Ron Paul and Rep. Grayson demands unprecedented auditing of the Fed's actions and public exposure of which financial institutions get its money. As Heather Booth, the director of Americans for Financial Reform, puts it, “We need an audit of the Fed to examine what was the mismanagement of the economy before the meltdown, to look at the role of Chairman Benrnanke – and to see who has gotten what from the Fed and what they're doing with it.”
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Showdown: Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Take On Fed in House Committee Today.
Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option
Robert Reich
First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada — which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)
So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.
So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn't be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and … you know the rest.
Full Story Robert Reich’s Blog: Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option.
Paul-Grayson “Audit The Fed” Bill Passes Financial Services Committee
Today, the House Financial Services Committee passed an amendment to their financial regulatory reform bill that would mandate an audit of the Federal Reserve. The Paul-Grayson amendment, named for its chief sponsors, Reps. Ron Paul and Alan Grayson, passed the committee by a count of 43-26.
Supporters of the audit the Fed effort were concerned that a competing amendment by Mel Watt would gut whatever Paul-Grayson added in transparency to the Fed. After heated discussion today inside the committee, it appears that Paul and Grayson have won this round.
The bill has yet to reach the floor of the House. The Senate’s version of financial reform, written by Chris Dodd, also has a mechanism to audit the Fed, but that has not yet been marked up in the Senate Banking Committee.
…It should be noted that an overall final vote on financial regulatory reform from the Committee, expected today, was blocked, chiefly by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, panicked about having to take the vote at a time of double-digit unemployment.
Full Story FDL News Desk » Paul-Grayson “Audit The Fed” Bill Passes Financial Services Committee.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — The New Arms Race
the Chinese are treating the energy technology competition if it were an arms race. China is spending as much or more on greentech as it does on its military, hundreds of billions of dollars annually
Hobbled by opposition from the carbon incumbents and their short-sighted allies on Capitol Hill the Obama administration acknowledged this week that it would not return from Copenhagen with any groundbreaking commitment to control green house gases. Meanwhile, Congress is backsliding on the administration's wise commitment to impose a rational price on carbon. Behind the logjam, a treacherous U.S. Chamber of Commerce, always willing to put its obsequious scraping to Big Oil and King Coal ahead of its duty to our country, has battled every effort to accelerate America's transition to a market-based de-carbonized economy.
The Chamber has continued to argue, idiotically, that energy efficiency and independence will somehow put America at a competitive disadvantage with the Chinese. Meanwhile, the Chinese have shrewdly and strategically positioned themselves to steal America's once substantial lead in renewable power. China will soon make us as dependent on Chinese green technology for the next century as we have been on Saudi oil during the last.
Indeed, the Chinese are treating the energy technology competition if it were an arms race. China is spending as much or more on greentech as it does on its military, hundreds of billions of dollars annually on renewable energy and grid infrastructure improvements. Those investments, if not vigorously countered, will effectively erode America's greentech industry leadership and secure China's dominance. China's economic stimulus package, targeted 38% of spending on greentech, as compared to a miserly 12% of the U.S. stimulus program. By 2013, greentech will account for 15 percent of the Chinese GDP. While the United States is projected to roughly triple its wind generation by 2020, China will increase its capacity twelvefold to a wind generating capability more than twice that of America's. And, while the United States is projected to increase its installed solar generation a modest 33% by 2020, China's solar generation is projected to increase 20,000%.
Full Story Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The New Arms Race.
Food Manufacturers and Organic Industry Lobbyists Circle the Wagons
Defend Organic Scofflaw in Court to Protect Corporate Takeover of Organics
CORNUCOPIA, Wisc. – November 19 – Two powerful lobby groups in the food industry, The Grocery Manufacturers of America and the Organic Trade Association, recently intervened as friends of the court in a federal consumer class-action lawsuit accusing the nation's largest supplier of private-label organic milk of consumer fraud. In what has been described as “the largest scandal in the history of the organic industry” USDA investigators, in 2007, found that Aurora Dairy had willfully violated federal organic standards. However, industry lobbyists are now concerned that convicting Aurora will set a dangerous legal precedent. Aurora bottles private-label organic milk for Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, Safeway and many other grocery chains.
In August 2007 Bush administration officials were widely criticized for overruling career staff at the USDA and instead of decertifying Aurora as staff had recommended, banning it from organic commerce, the corporate dairy was allowed to continue in business under a one-year probation. Now agribusiness lobbyists are concerned that citizens prevailing in court, alleging fraud, will set a precedent necessitating large corporations to incur added expenses to more carefully check the sources and credibility of their organic suppliers.
“Due diligence by food manufacturers and retailers is the heart and soul of what maintaining the integrity of the organic label is about,” said Mark Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute, the farm policy research group that initially exposed the corruption taking place at Aurora.
Full Story Food Manufacturers and Organic Industry Lobbyists Circle the Wagons | CommonDreams.org.
The Vile Scramble For Loot
How British Corporations are Fuelling War in the Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo is suffering what is almost certainly the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. In their 2007 study of mortality rates in the DRC the International Rescue Committee estimated that, as a result of the war, “5.4 million excess deaths have occurred between August 1998 and April 2007.” The IRC report also estimated that the “DR Congo’s national crude mortality rate (CMR) of 2.2 deaths per 1,000 per month is 57 percent higher than the average rate for sub-Saharan Africa”, and in eastern provinces, which are the most violent, the CMR is “2.6 deaths per 1,000 per month, a rate that is 85 percent higher than the sub-Saharan average.” [1 The charity "Raise Hope for Congo" reports that "45,000 people die each month [in Eastern Congo], mostly from hunger and disease resulting from the ongoing conflict, and over 1 million people have been displaced.” [2 That is approximately 1,500 deaths a day, 62 deaths an hour and a death every minute. If you take the figure of 45,000 deaths a month as constant then at the time of writing (November 2009), 1,350,000 people have died as a result of the war in Eastern Congo since the IRC published its study. That would put the total amount of excess deaths at 6,750,000 (6.75 million).
According to the British charity Save the Congo, "You could take all lives lost in Bosnia, Rwanda 1994 [sic] and Darfur then add the 2005 Asian tsunami, then add a 9-11 every single day for 356 days and then go through Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Put all of those together, multiply by 2 and you still don’t reach the number of lives that has been lost in the Congo since the war started.” They also say that “[hundreds of thousands] of women and young girls have been brutally gang raped and around 40% of all adult women have been made widows.”[3]
All over Eastern Congo there are wards “full of women who have been gang-raped and then shot in the vagina.” According to Dr Denis Mukwege, “Around ten percent of the gang-rape victims have had this happen to them”.[4] This means that tens of thousands of women have been raped and shot in the vagina. And this affects of women of all ages, from 3 year olds to old ladies.
Full Story Z Space – Robert Miller.
Virus in voting machines may have tainted results of NY23
New York is trying to force all counties to abandon lever machines and use computerized vote counting systems. Lever machines, however, cannot be infected by a virus, and any potential tampering with the mechanical lever machines will affect machines only one by one, and will be more visible to the naked eye, with less need for expertise.
Lever machines are not subject to last minute reprogramming (or not?) of concealed software; they do not have USB ports, which can be used to introduce new software or download information, they do not have different software running in different locations, and they do not sacrifice voters' political privacy by making them mark ballots in public view.
Furthermore, the software-driven systems cannot be certified as accurate by election commissioners, because they neither have the expertise to examine the software running at the time of the election, nor permission to do so (because the system is a proprietary trade secret and the contract they sign prohibits them from even looking inside the machine, threatening breach of contract and voiding of the warranty. Can you imagine such restrictions with the lever machines? Citizens would scream bloody murder.
New Yorkers are being forced to transition into a more concealed, higher risk, and less democratic election system.
Full Story Black Box Voting : (NY) 11/09 – Hamilton: Virus in voting machines may have tainted results.
The Big Squander
Paul Krugman
Earlier this week, the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a k a, the bank bailout fund, released his report on the 2008 rescue of the American International Group, the insurer. The gist of the report is that government officials made no serious attempt to extract concessions from bankers, even though these bankers received huge benefits from the rescue. And more than money was lost. By making what was in effect a multibillion-dollar gift to Wall Street, policy makers undermined their own credibility — and put the broader economy at risk.
For the A.I.G. rescue was part of a pattern: Throughout the financial crisis key officials — most notably Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed in 2008 and is now Treasury secretary — have shied away from doing anything that might rattle Wall Street. And the bitter paradox is that this play-it-safe approach has ended up undermining prospects for economic recovery. For the job of fixing the broken economy is far from done — yet finishing the job has become nearly impossible now that the public has lost faith in the government’s efforts, viewing them as little more than handouts to the people who got us into this mess.
About the A.I.G. affair: During the bubble years, many financial companies created the illusion of financial soundness by buying credit-default swaps from A.I.G. — basically, insurance policies in which A.I.G. promised to make up the difference if borrowers defaulted on their debts. It was an illusion because the insurer didn’t have remotely enough money to make good on its promises if things went bad. And sure enough, things went bad.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – The Big Squander – NYTimes.com.
A Gift to Credit Card Companies
Editorial – - NYTimes
Congress left consumers extremely vulnerable when it gave the credit card industry as long as 15 months to end the deceptive predatory practices outlawed in the spring in the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act. The credit card industry, which clearly wants to make a killing in the Christmas season, used this unnecessarily long grace period to intensify its predations, doubling interest rates on people who pay on time and driving up rates by an industry wide average of about 20 percent.
These ravages seemed not to have registered with Senator Thad Cochran, a Republican of Mississippi, who represents the nation’s poorest and most economically vulnerable state. On Wednesday, Mr. Cochran blocked a vote on a bill introduced by Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat of Connecticut, that would have immediately frozen credit card interest rates and fees.
Mr. Cochran said through his office that he objected to the bill on behalf of unknown Republican colleagues who had their own objections. But it is difficult not to see his maneuver in yet another act of obeisance by Senate Republicans to the banking and credit card industries.
The same was true of Congress’s decision in May to delay implementation of the original credit card reform bill. Had the act gone into effect immediately, credit card issuers would have been forced to end many of the practices that have trapped millions of Americans in debt that they had no hope of repaying.
Full Story Editorial – A Gift to Credit Card Companies – NYTimes.com.
Geithner Is “Obama’s Rumsfeld”: Replace Him With Robert Reich
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”–Julius Caesar, Act I, ii.
But for his personal tax problems, Tim Geithner would have been a consensus choice of Wall Street for Treasury Secretary last fall. As President of the New York Federal Reserve, he knew all the bankers on Wall Street. He was not only intimately involved with the bank bailouts, he now appears to have been the bankers' lapdog. He speaks fluent Chinese, helpful since China holds a huge amount of US debt obligations. Just months into the financial meltdown, avoiding Wall Street caterwauling about the Treasury Secretary-designate may have been a reasonable consideration for the incoming Administration faced with unprecedented calamities from 8 years of George W.
Yet, from the outset, Mr. Geithner's appointment compromised the Obama Administration-to-be's credibility on ethics. In order not to lose its first key approval, the President-elect had to swallow-hard and excuse his failure to pay social security taxes. That ethics problem was then compounded by Tom Daschle's failure to pay his taxes forced withdrawal of his nomination to be Health & Human Services Secretary.
Geithner survived the Senate approval process in part because he was the first that needed a 'bye' on ethics and in part because his combination of skills and experience were considered indispensable in the time of severe instability.
Full Story Paul Abrams: Geithner Is “Obama’s Rumsfeld”: Replace Him With Robert Reich.
Why America needs to go back to taxing the wealthy
DAVE JOHNSON - fellow at the Commonweal Institute of San Francisco.
While America has always been a place where a person could get rich, it used to be that you got rich a bit more slowly, and everyone benefited in the process. This is because we used to have very high tax rates at the top.
A person could do very well, but income that came in above a certain level was highly taxed and used to pay for the teachers, police, courts and roads that enabled businesses to thrive. Just how high were taxes? During America's “golden years” of 1951-1963, tax rates were over 90 percent on income over $400,000. Then through the 1960s and 70s, they were 70 percent on income above $200,000.
This had many beneficial results — especially for the people who paid higher taxes. Back then, government could afford to invest in programs that improved everyone's standard of living, including health, knowledge and technology, all without borrowing. History recalls these as the years we created and grew our prosperous middle class, built our public universities, conducted our economy-changing scientific research and developed a culture of thriving entrepreneurial businesses.
Back when it took time to make a fortune, business people had to rely on the health of the greater community to nurture their own enterprises. They had to think and act long-term. They had to carefully build solid businesses that satisfied their customers. They had to hold on to workers because their experience was valuable.
Meanwhile, the roads and
Full Story Opinion: Why America needs to go back to taxing the wealthy – San Jose Mercury News.
OPS: The Answer is to remove the Reagan tax cuts. See: Tax Cuts: The B.S. and the Facts
Tax Cuts: The B.S. and the Facts
Larry Beinhart
— - That tax cuts stimulate the economy is taken as a matter of faith, but the brute facts suggest otherwise.
The Myth
Do tax cuts stimulate the economy?
Yes. Tax cuts allow people to keep more of their own money. Therefore, they have more to invest and spend into the economy, and they have more money to start business and create jobs, therefore also helping to stimulate the economy. — Yahoo Answers
I think when people take a look back at this moment in our economic history, they’ll recognize tax cuts work. They have made a difference. — George W. Bush
The Realities
The brute facts are these:
- Large income tax cuts are followed by a bubble and then a crash.
- High income taxes correlate with economic growth.
- Income tax increases are followed by economic growth.
- Moderate income tax cuts are followed by a flat economy.
- All of this is especially true as applied to the top tax rates, the amount paid on income that exceeds the highest bracket.
The Three Great Tax Cuts: Boom, Bubble, Crash
1. Hoover
During World War I, the top marginal tax rate went up to 73 percent — not the highest ever, but pretty high.
In 1922, a series of rate cuts began. Down to 56 percent, 46 percent, and finally, in 1925, it went down to 25 percent.
The stock market took off. There was a boom. But the boom was a bubble.
It was followed by the Great Crash of 1929.
There were bank failures and the Great Depression.
2. Reagan
via Tax Cuts: The B.S. and the Facts | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.
OPS: This was first posted here in April . It needs to be reviewed from time to time. It’s time.
Bush In 2006: Terrorists Should Be “Tried In Courts Here In The U.S.”
With Republicans hammering the Obama administration for trying suspected 9/11 terrorists in a New York court, a Democrat points out that in 2006, George W. Bush seemed to say outright that terrorists should be “tried in courts here in the United States.”
There was no outcry at the time.
In a news conference on June 9th, 2006, Bush described his discussions with the prime minister of Denmark over the fate of Gitmo detainees this way:
I assured him that we would like to end the Guantanamo. We’d like it to be empty. And we’re now in the process of working with countries to repatriate people.
But there are some that, if put out on the streets, would create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world. And, therefore, I believe they ought to be tried in courts here in the United States. We will file such court claims once the Supreme Court makes its decision as to whether or not — as to the proper venue for these trials. And we’re waiting on our Supreme Court to act.
At the time, Bush was waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the military commissions he had established to try alleged members of Al Qaeda. At the presser, he said the administration was waiting for the high court to determine the “proper venue” for trying suspected terrorists, and seemed to say U.S. courts were a valid venue if it came to it.
At a minimum, Bush clearly saw no problem with bringing suspected terrorists to the U.S. for trial — something that the Obama administration is now doing, drawing widespread criticism on the right.
Full Story Bush In 2006: Terrorists Should Be “Tried In Courts Here In The U.S.” | The Plum Line.
Nuclear Power’s Megafraud – Aris Candris and the Fraud of Nuclear Power
Pierre Tristam
Energy independence is the new creationism; nuclear power its deity. As the head glow for nuclear’s new dawn, you can’t do better than Aris Candris. He’s president and CEO of Westinghouse Electric, the company aiming to build 14 of 25 new nuclear reactors planned in the United States. Candris also sums up everything that’s wrong with the nuclear power industry’s orchestrated revival—the deceptions, the manipulated numbers, the false promises and the sheer swindle of taxpayer dollars for a technology with a lethal past and an unproven future. Candris’ Nov. 9 tribute to nuclear in The Wall Street Journal tells the tall tale.
Candris claims that, because electricity demand will grow 21 percent by 2030 from current levels, and “renewable energy sources produce only a small percentage” of total electricity output, it’s “doubtful that they can be scaled up to a degree that would make a significant impact on rising electricity demand over the short or intermediate term.” Actually, that’s more true of nuclear, far less so of renewable. Not a single nuclear power plant has been approved and built in the United States since the 1970s. The newest one, Watts Bar in Tennessee, began construction in 1973 and went online in 1996 — a 23-year span that multiplied its initial costs, to $7 billion. Candris gives the impression that a slew of plants are about to be built. Not so. A slew of plants applied for licenses, but only because the federal government is offering up to $1 billion in tax credits per new nuclear plant (once electricity production begins), as long as the application was in by the end of 2008.
Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for ‘global collapse’
Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible “global economic collapse” over the next two years, mapping a strategy of defensive investments to avoid wealth destruction.
In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.
Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.
As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse,” said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.
Under the French bank’s “Bear Case” scenario (the gloomiest of three possible outcomes), the dollar would slide further and global equities would retest the March lows. Property prices would tumble again. Oil would fall back to $50 in 2010.
Full Story Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for ‘global collapse’ – Telegraph.
Are the Earth’s Oceans Hitting Their Carbon Cap?
Like the vast forests of the world, which continually suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen, the planet's oceans serve as vital carbon sinks. Last year the oceans absorbed as much as 2.3 billion tons of carbon, or about one-fourth of all manmade carbon emissions. Without the action of the oceans, the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere would have flame-broiled the planet by now.
But a new paper published in the Nov. 19 issue of Nature demonstrates that the oceans’ ability to absorb man-made carbon may be dwindling — and that has worrying ramifications for future climate change. While the ocean is now absorbing more carbon in total than ever before, the waters are sucking up a smaller percentage of the CO2 emitted by humans. That could mean that there’s a physical limit to the oceans’ capacity — and we could be hitting it. (See the top 10 green ideas of 2008.)
Led by Samar Khatiwala, an oceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a team of researchers reconstructed the amount of carbon that had been annually absorbed by the oceans going back to 1765 — around the time when people began putting large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. “Over time it seems the oceans are becoming less efficient at taking up manmade carbon,” says Khatiwala. “That’s concerning over the long term.”
Full Story Are the Earth’s Oceans Hitting Their Carbon Cap? – TIME.
Conyers Rips Obama, Emanuel For ‘Bowing Down’ To GOP On Health Care
Rep. John Conyers took a broad swipe at President Obama and his chief of staff on Thursday, accusing them of “bowing down” to “nutty right-wing” health care proposals in a principle-less effort to get legislation passed.
Appearing on the Bill Press Show, the longtime Michigan Democrat said he was tired of the just-get-something-done attitude of Rahm Emanuel, and insisted that Obama had moved far away from being the “ardent single-payer enthusiast” he once was.
“I'm getting tired of saving Obama's can in the White House,” said Conyers. “I mean, he only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn't anything to write home about. The public option is only available, which is the only way you manage cost and get some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies, the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for it anyway.”
Asked if the president had shown enough leadership in the health care debate, Conyers facetiously wondered why Press would ask the question.
Full Story Conyers Rips Obama, Emanuel For ‘Bowing Down’ To GOP On Health Care.
The Most Obese Counties In America: Is Yours On The List?
The first county-by-county survey of obesity reflects past studies that show the rate of obesity is highest in the Southeast and Appalachia.
High rates of obesity and diabetes were reported in more than 80 percent of counties in the Appalachian region that includes Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the new research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The same problem was seen in about 75 percent of counties in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina.
The five counties with the highest rates were Greene and Dallas counties in Alabama and Holmes, Humphreys and Jefferson counties in Mississippi. All are small, rural counties in the west central areas of each state, and each reported obesity rates of around 44 or 43 percent. The national adult obesity rate is roughly 26 percent.
Full Story The Most Obese Counties In America: Is Yours On The List?.
Geithner Asked To Resign; ‘Mr. Secretary, The Public Has Lost All Confidence In Your Ability To Do Your Job’ (VIDEO)
A heated exchange erupted on Capitol Hill today as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was explicitly asked to resign.
The ranking House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, Kevin Brady of Texas, ticked off a litany of economic concerns and perceived economic failures, adding that there's a “growing liberal consensus” that Geithner has failed as Treasury Secretary, and that “conservatives agree that as the point person on the economy, you've failed,” before he asked Geithner: “Will you step down from your post?”
Geithner defended his track record, declined to step down, and added, “I agree with almost nothing of what you said… and almost nothing of what you said regarding the economy is accurate.”
Geithner went on to say, reports The Hill:
“Again, it's just a basic fact: A year ago, this economy was falling at the rate of 6 percent a year. We were losing between half a million and three-quarters of a million jobs a month,” he added, noting those numbers changed direction when President Barack Obama took office.
Obama’s Afghan Dilemma: The Only Real Exit Strategy Is Political Suicide
Dan Froomkin:
President Obama said yesterday he is still several weeks away from adopting a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan.
What's taking so long? Obama wants his plan to include an exit strategy — or an “endgame” as he put it yesterday. And there isn't one — at least not one that's politically palatable.
Obama has talked about the need for an exit strategy before, dating back at least to a “60 Minutes” interview in March, during the rollout of his initial Afghan plan. He made the point pretty emphatically: “There's gotta be an exit strategy.”
Up until a few months ago, Obama evidently thought he had one. Presumably, it involved handing the country back to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's stable, united government in fairly short order.
Full Story Obama’s Afghan Dilemma: The Only Real Exit Strategy Is Political Suicide.
US Makes Debut Attendance at Hague War Crimes Court
THE HAGUE – U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues Stephen Rapp made a debut appearance for the United States at the world's war crimes court Thursday and said the U.S. remained wary of politically driven prosecutions.
The United States is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and Rapp’s attendance at meetings this week and next is the clearest sign yet of Washington engaging with the court.
“Our view has been and remains that should the Rome Statute be amended to include a defined crime of aggression, jurisdiction should follow a Security Council determination that aggression has occurred,” he said.
Rapp said however that the United States was keen on “gaining a better understanding of the issues being considered and the workings of the court.”
Full Story US Makes Debut Attendance at Hague War Crimes Court | CommonDreams.org.
Restore law and split up banks
Ten years ago, the Republican-controlled Congress — egged on by that champion deregulator, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm — passed legislation that arguably did more to plunge the United States into our crippling great recession than anything else: It repealed the Great Depression era’s Glass-Steagall Act.
Then on Nov. 12, 1999, an acquiescent Democratic president, Bill Clinton, signed the repeal into law.
Glass-Steagall stood as a firewall between commercial banks and Wall Street since 1933, when the country’s leaders heeded the lessons of the 1929 stock market crash and set in place strict regulations in an attempt to prevent such an economic calamity from happening again.
But the country’s financial institutions chafed for decades under Glass-Steagall’s restrictions. If only commercial banks could merge with investment banks and insurance companies, they argued, it would be so much better for the nation’s economy. Gramm, who infamously insisted that the U.S. had become a nation of whiners when the economy started to tank in the fall of 2008, fought for years to repeal Glass-Steagall and finally got his way. Get government out of the way of the free marketplace, he argued, ignoring the fact that historically conservative banks would be joining the high-risk investment community and all the pitfalls it represents.
Full Story Plain Talk: Restore law and split up banks.
Fine and Inquiry Possible for Blackwater Successor
The international security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide is facing large government fines for unlicensed arms shipments to Iraq, as a key Congressional committee is asking for a separate investigation into whether the company bribed Iraqi officials.
In talks likely to result in millions of dollars in penalties, executives from the company, now known as Xe Services, are negotiating with government regulators over years of violations of export laws. According to government officials and former company employees, many of the violations involve arms shipments to Iraq, to outfit company security guards operating inside the country.
In addition, former company officials say that other penalties could result from violations of licensing requirements for the transfer of other forms of military technology and training expertise to foreign countries.
Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter on Wednesday that his committee was told by a top State Department official that the company had engaged in “broad violations” of export laws and that the unlicensed shipments “went beyond weapons for personal use.”
Full Story Fine and Inquiry Possible for Blackwater Successor – NYTimes.com.
As pensions dried up, four firms paid top execs $49.5M
Top executives at four companies that jettisoned their employee pension plans received $49.5 million in retirement and severance benefits in the years before the companies filed for bankruptcy, while retirees saw their benefits cut by as much as two thirds, congressional investigators conclude in a report to be released today.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that pensions at the companies, United Airlines, US Airways, Polaroid and Reliance Insurance, were underfunded by more than $11 billion when the companies turned them over to a government-backed insurance fund. The report says executives at those four companies and six others that abandoned their pension plans took in a total of $350 million in pay and perks in the years leading up to the bankruptcies.
“If the pension is getting deeper into trouble and the executives are getting richer, there's something wrong with that picture,” said House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif.
Full Story As pensions dried up, four firms paid top execs $49.5M – USATODAY.com.
Sen. HCR Bill Restores Absinance Only Education Funding
Newsweek is reporting this morning that the Senate's version of the Health Insurance Reform bill will feature a restoration of funding for abstinence education.
“Their provision would restore a program called Title V, which, since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, has allocated a yearly $50 million in grants to abstinence-only education programs. Obama let the program lapse in June, leaving some abstinence-only groups in dire straits. So in September, Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment to restore Title V via heath-care reform, which (much to the outrage of liberal groups) just squeaked through the Senate Finance Committee with a 12–11 vote. A similar amendment, offered in the House by Rep. Terry Lee from Nebraska, died in committee.
The American Medical Association reported this summer that Abstinence Only Education programs not only don't work, but they could also be the cause of the spike in teen birth rates in 2006.
Full Story Sen. HCR Bill Restores Absinance Only Education Funding | Future Majority.
U.S. Military Operations in All Major Regions of the World
On January 20, a changing of the guard occurred in the United States White House with two-term president George W. Bush being replaced by former freshman senator Barack Obama.
Bush had continued the policies of his predecessor Bill Clinton in relation to the Balkans, Iraq and Latin America – with troops and a massive military base in Kosovo, regular bombings of Iraq and a monumental expansion of military aid to Colombia – and in addition launched two wars of his own, those against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq two years later.
Obama, so thoroughly does U.S. polity predetermine individual administrations' policies, entered office by intensifying the deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan begun by Bush in late 2008 and announced that he was doubling the number of American troops in Afghanistan.
Already presiding over the world's largest military budget, officially 41.5% of world expenditures in 2008 and far larger with non-Defense Department spending factored in, in April the new president requested from Congress an additional $85 billion in supplemental funding for the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq.
U.S. lawmakers were more than accommodating and on July 24 Obama signed Iraq and Afghanistan War Supplemental Appropriations amounting to $106 billion.
On October 28, he signed the $680 billion 2010 National Defense Authorization Act which includes another $130 billion to fund what his administration now calls overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Full Story U.S. Military Operations in All Major Regions of the World : Information Clearing House - ICH.
The Crazy October Surprise Debunking
Robert Parry (A Special Report)
Patently absurd reasoning in someone’s argument can often tell you about the strength of the underlying facts. If an argument is deceptive on its face, you might suspect the supporting facts are pretty fragile, too.
Such was the situation in late 1992 as America reached an important turning point for whether the people would get to understand their recent history or not. A bipartisan House task force wanted to debunk allegations that Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980 had sabotaged President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations with Iran about freeing 52 Americans, who were taken hostage 30 years ago this week.
That alleged act of treachery, making Carter look weak and inept, set the stage for Reagan’s landslide victory on Nov. 4, 1980, exactly one year to the date after the hostages were seized. But the suspicions about this so-called October Surprise case only reached a critical mass in 1991-92 after several years of disclosures about the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scheme.
Despite Republican denials about any secret pre-election 1980 dealings with Iran – and the anger that the allegations drew from influential neoconservatives in the Washington press corps – a House task force was created to examine the case, although without much enthusiasm and mostly with an eye toward debunking the suspicions.
Full Story Consortiumnews.com.
What Is So Patriotic About Hysteria?
Joe Conason
The loudest voices on the right never tire of telling us that they are the truest patriots. They claim to be the deepest believers in our system, the strongest defenders of our Constitution, the most upbeat, bold and courageous Americans anywhere. But now that the government is finally prepared to put the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on trial, these same patriots are the first to spread doubt, instigate anxiety and abandon constitutional principles.
When did fear-mongering in a time of war become an act of patriotism?
Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try al-Qaida strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other residents of the Guantanamo prison in American civilian courts has provoked angry criticism from all the usual sources, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page to the Fox News airwaves. While some of the complaints are thoughtful, many are nothing more than demagogic appeals that seek to undermine the foundations of justice in a democratic society.
When Holder’s critics say that Mohammed doesn’t “deserve” an open and adversarial trial, they are misunderstanding the spirit of our laws. The right to a trial—indeed, all the rights afforded to criminal defendants under the Constitution—is not apportioned according to what the defendants supposedly deserve. What they deserve is, in fact, precisely what a fair trial is designed to determine.
Full Story Truthdig – Reports – What Is So Patriotic About Hysteria?.
Hasan’s Supervisor Warned Army In 2007
Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan’s incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing. NPR has obtained a copy of the memo, the first evaluation that has surfaced from Hasan’s file.
Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.
Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army’s most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.
The Damning Memo
On May 17, 2007, Hasan’s supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, “Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan.” More than a page long, the document warns that: “The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan’s professionalism and work ethic. … He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.” It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.
Full Story Hasan’s Supervisor Warned Army In 2007 : NPR.
EU leaders set to pick first president
European Union leaders will gather in Brussels later to select their first full-time president and foreign affairs high representative.
The heads of the 27 EU member nations are divided over which candidates to choose, and after-dinner negotiations are expected to last into the night.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair had been an early favourite for president.
But France and Germany look set to back a less prominent figure, the Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy.
Germany has denied reports it is openly backing his candidacy, despite comments attributed to its ambassador to Belgium suggesting otherwise.
Reinhard Bettzuege was quoted as telling the Belgian De Morgen newspaper: “The German government is in favour of Prime Minister Van Rompuy, and if his candidacy fails it will not be because of Berlin.”
Full Story BBC News – EU leaders set to pick first president.
OPS: Tommorow za verld
Analysis: How the Senate health care bill stacks up with the House health care bill.
Analysis: How the Senate health care bill stacks up with the House health care bill.
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) unveiled his comprehensive health reform legislation, which the CBO projects would extend coverage to 31 million uninsured people while reducing the federal deficit by nearly $130 billion over 10 years. The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky has produced this helpful chart explaining how the details of the Senate bill compare with the legislation that the House passed earlier this month:
Full Story Think Progress » Analysis: How the Senate health care bill stacks up with the House health care bill..
Smaller Banks May Be Forced To Subsidize “Too Big To Fail;” Leading House Dem Wants To Change That
A leading House Democrat plans to introduce Thursday a provision that would require those banks deemed “too big to fail” to fund their own insurance fund — in response to concerns from economists who call the existing proposals that call for smaller banks to pay into the fund illogical.
An insurance fund would pay for the orderly unwinding of one or more of the “TBTF” banks if they fail. But the current proposals call for taxpayers to pay creditors of a TBTF firm should it fail or be forced to shut down by regulators. Then, financial firms with $10 billion or more in assets would pay taxpayers back.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) will introduce an amendment to a bill in the House Financial Services Committee to raise the existing threshold to either $50 billion or $75 billion, he told Huffington Post on Wednesday night. Those thresholds could rise in the future should he make them inflation-adjusted, he said.
Full Story Smaller Banks May Be Forced To Subsidize “Too Big To Fail;” Leading House Dem Wants To Change That.
OPS: If the little guy has to subsidize the big guy then obviousy is a crappy plan. Try again.
Warren Winning Means You Won’t Sell It If You Can’t Explain It
In Elizabeth Warren’s world, credit card contracts would be so simple a teenager could read and understand them in four minutes. Loans would be as easy to compare as toasters, and online credit scores would be free.
“We need a new model: If you can’t explain it, you can’t sell it,” said Warren, 60, a Harvard University law professor who is head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in an interview.
The 1966 high school debate champion of Oklahoma may get what she wants. The House of Representatives will vote in December on her idea. She suggested a Financial Product Safety Commission in a 2007 article in the magazine Democracy. President Barack Obama proposed it to Congress in June as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Full Story Warren Winning Means You Won’t Sell It If You Can’t Explain It – Bloomberg.com.
Eliot Spitzer: Obama Economic Policies Ineffective, A Continuation Of Bush (WATCH)
Are Obama’s economic policies actually working?
Intelligence Squared posed this question to six policy experts at a debate in New York this week. The statement, “Obama’s economic policies are working effectively,” was defended by Lawrence Mishel from the Economic Policy Institute; investor and former ‘Car Czar’ Steven Rattner; and Mark Zandi, the chief economist and co-founder of Moody’s Economy.com.
Arguing that Obama’s economic approach is failing were James Galbraith of the University of Texas; Carnegie Mellon’s Allan Meltzer; and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.
The speakers defending Obama’s handling of the economic crisis insisted that the economy, at the precipice a year ago, was brought back from the edge by the administration’s strategy. They urged patience in allowing Obama’s policies to broaden and take effect, and Zandi, who called the measures “successful,” counseled that we should be careful not to be too rash in fundamentally restructuring the economic system:
Full Story Eliot Spitzer: Obama Economic Policies Ineffective, A Continuation Of Bush (WATCH).
Audit The Fed Effort Wins Support From An Unusual Coalition
Economists, Labor Leaders Accuse Fed Of Massive Secret Bailouts And Cronyism
An unusual coalition of progressive economists, labor leaders, and bloggers has decided to fight back against a congressional amendment that would allow the Federal Reserve to continue operating in secrecy.
In a Thursday letter to the House Financial Services Committee, economists like Dean Baker and Rob Johnson, author Naomi Klein, and such labor luminaries as the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka and the SEIU’s Andy Stern, urged committee members to shoot down an amendment by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) that would essentially allow the Fed to keep the lights off while it throws money around.
Watt’s amendment, which could see a House vote today, is a direct attack against a separate measure by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.). That measure, known as the “Audit the Fed” bill, has been gaining momentum in Congress for months.
“A vote for the Watt amendment is a vote for more secret bailouts,” the letter says.
Full Story Audit The Fed Effort Wins Support From An Unusual Coalition.
New Jobless Benefit Claims 505K
The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment insurance was unchanged last week, remaining above the level that would indicate the economy is adding jobs.
Still, new claims – which are considered a gauge of the pace of layoffs and an indication of companies' willingness to hire new workers – are down about 22 percent from this spring.
The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for jobless benefits were a seasonally adjusted 505,000, the same as the previous week's revised figure and matching analysts' expectations. A year ago, there were 533,000 initial claims.
The four-week average, which smooths out volatility, fell for the 11th straight week to 514,000, the lowest level in almost a year.
While the steady decline in claims is evidence that firings are decreasing, most economists say weekly claims would have to fall to about 425,000 for several weeks to signal that the economy is actually adding jobs. Some economists put the number higher, around 475,000.
Full Story New Jobless Benefit Claims Unchanged At 505K.
Jon Stewart Explains To Conservative Pundits Why He Doesn’t Like Sarah Palin (VIDEO)
Jon Stewart gave what seemed like his final word on Sarah Palin last night, explaining to Fox News pundits that he doesn’t dislike her because she’s from Alaska or because she hunts, but because “when you peel back the pretty, shooty layers of the Palin onion, there’s no onion. It’s just a conservative boiler plate mad lib: ‘Freedom is good and taxes are–ooh I need an adjective–how about, I don’t know, silly?’ And the worst part it’s a mad lib delivered as though it were the hard-earned wisdom of a life well lived,” he explained. Stewart took exception to the accusations that Democrats don’t like Palin because she’s attractive and religious, but he was particularly angered by the words of Bernie Goldberg who said on Fox that liberals have “Palin Derangement Syndrome” and are driven crazy by her because she has five kids–one with down syndrome which “liberals certainly don’t allow that to happen [to them.]”
Video at link
Jon Stewart Explains To Conservative Pundits Why He Doesn’t Like Sarah Palin (VIDEO).
Fox acknowledges ‘production error’ and promises ‘disciplinary action’ for misleading Palin footage.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress first reported that Fox News aired old file footage of Sarah Palin rallies to claim that she’s “continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand new book.” Host Gregg Jarrett presented the video with commentary that suggested the footage was “just coming in.” (Watch it.) Media Matters noted that one of the scenes was from a Nov. 1, 2008 Palin rally in Florida. Crooks and Liars’ John Amato filed an FCC complaint for passing on “false information” to the public. By day’s end yesterday, Fox released this statement responding to the controversy:
“This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn’t alert the control room to update the video,” Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at FOX, sad this evening. “There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday.”
Citing unnamed sources, The Swamp reports Fox is planning to take “serious disciplinary action” against those “responsible behind the scenes in the control room.”
Boosting neurotransmitter could reverse Down Syndrome: study
Boosting a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine in sufferers of Down Syndrome could help reverse the condition, which is the most common cause of mental retardation in children, a study showed Wednesday.
“If you intervene early enough, you will be able to help kids with Down Syndrome to collect and modulate information,” said Ahmad Salehi, the lead author of the study, which was published in Science Translational Medicine.
“Theoretically, that could lead to an improvement in cognitive functions in these kids,” he said.
Salehi was part of a team of scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in California who used a precursor of norepinephrine to reverse learning deficits in mice with symptoms very close to those seen in humans with Down Syndrome.
The study was the first to look at treating Down Syndrome by targeting the norepinephrine system, Salehi told AFP.
The mice had three copies of a fragment of mouse chromosome 16, while Down Syndrome occurs when each cell in the body has three copies of chromosome 21, instead of the usual two.
Full Story Boosting neurotransmitter could reverse Down Syndrome: study – Yahoo! News.
US to stop coal ‘overburden’ dumping into waterways
The US government took the first steps Wednesday to reverse a last-minute rule passed by the Bush administration which allowed coal mine operators to dump excavated material into streams.
The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) announced “an advance notice of rulemaking that would govern the overall operations and conduct of where to place excess oil from mountaintop mining,” Frank Quimby, a spokesman for the Interior Department, which oversees the OSM, told AFP.
The Interior Department will also seek to strengthen its oversight of actions to protect streams from the adverse impacts of coal mining, including while the new rules are being worked out, Quimby said.
The administration of former president George W. Bush in its last weeks revised a rule that had stood for 25 years and had broadly prohibited dumping excess material produced in coal mining operations — called overburden — within 100 feet of streams.
Full Story US to stop coal ‘overburden’ dumping into waterways – Yahoo! News UK.
Congress panel backs big bank break-up power
* Break-up power would be given to council- * Size just one of many factors to be evaluated
- * Plan offered as amendment to bill being debated (Adds committee approval of Kanjorski amendment to bill)
WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) – The U.S. House Financial Services Committee voted on Wednesday to approve a proposal that would empower government regulators to break up large financial firms that threaten economic stability.
The measure, offered by Democratic Representative Paul Kanjorski, was added as an amendment to a broader bill that was expected to face a committee vote later, possibly on Friday. Full House action was unlikely until next month.
The government last year stepped in with massive bail outs of firms such as American International Group Inc (AIG.N) and Citigroup Inc (C.N), fearful the collapse of a large firm could bring down the entire financial system.
Full Story UPDATE 4-U.S. Congress panel backs big bank break-up power | Markets | Bonds News | Reuters.
OPS: Talk is cheap. We’ll see
Osama bin Laden’s son: why I refused to follow in my father’s footsteps
Omar bin Laden says he would ‘like to be in a position to promote peace’ in interview in which he recalls hearing about 9/11 attacks
Having a famous father is not always easy: the burden of expectation can weigh heavily on young shoulders. So what to do when your surname is Bin Laden?
In an interview with the New Statesman, Omar bin Laden, the fourth eldest son of the world’s most wanted man, reveals himself as someone definitely not cut from the same cloth as his father.
Asked whether he plans to enter politics or public life, Omar says: “I do not believe that I would be a good politician – I have a habit of speaking the truth, even when it does not serve me well. But I would like to be in a position to promote peace. I believe that the United Nations would be ideal for me.”
Omar ended contact with his father, Osama bin Laden, in April 2001. He says he was asked once to take up arms at a meeting with his father’s fighters.
Full Story Osama bin Laden’s son: why I refused to follow in my father’s footsteps | World news | The Guardian.
Militant group’s recruiting of soldiers worries watchdogs
Acosta: Obama ‘inherited’ civil liberties problems from Bush
A quickly-growing right-wing group that recruits serving soldiers and police officers and encourages members not to obey presidential orders has some watchdogs worried.
The Oath Keepers, founded earlier this year by a former staffer for congressman Ron Paul, say they aren’t a militia group like the many others sprouting up around the country, because they don’t need to be — their recruits are already members of the armed forces or law enforcement agencies, says a report from CNN.
CNN’s Jim Acosta reports that inductees to the group swear an oath of allegiance to the US Constitution that is modeled after the oath given to military recruits, but omits one key phrase: “I will obey the orders of the president of the United States.”
Full Story Militant group’s recruiting of soldiers worries watchdogs | Raw Story.
Obama names Bush’s former spokeperson to Broadcast board
Hopefully, the United States won’t be broadcasting any programs about the Cuban missile crisis to foreign audiences.
President Barack Obama has tapped a former top aide of his predecessor George W. Bush to a key post on a board overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting, just a few weeks after she called his administration’s behavior “unbecoming” with regards to the so-called “White House war with Fox News.”
Dana Perino, the first Republican woman to serve as White House press secretary, was appointed late Wednesday to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).
Full Story Obama names Bush’s former spokeperson to Broadcast board | Raw Story.
OPS: and BO hires yet another rightwing nut job over a progressive or liberal. The Reich is STILL in control.
The Ugly Truth about Jobs
Robert Parry
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke has given Americans a glimpse of the ugly truth about their future job prospects. Simply put, companies have found that they can shed workers and rely on technological advances and overseas factories to operate with a lot fewer U.S. employees.
Bernanke told the Economic Club of New York on Monday that some U.S. companies might begin to add workers to meet rising demand, but he added that “other firms, facing difficult financial conditions and intense pressure to cut costs, seem to have found longer-lasting, efficiency-enhancing changes that allowed them to reduce their workforces. ”
“To the extent that firms are able to find further cost-cutting measures as output expands, they may delay hiring.”
In other words, Americans – from blue-collar manufacturing workers to white-collar office employees – won’t be needed as much in the future by companies that are squeezing more productivity out of the workers that remain and are shifting more jobs overseas.
Full Story The Ugly Truth about Jobs.
OPS: The only way to begin to survive this is for Obama to Fire: Geithner, Bernanke, Summers and install some rational Progressives – NOW!
Mass. Has the Technology, Lacks the Jobs
Massachusetts’ companies are increasingly producing new and efficient green technologies, but the state is outsourcing a majority of the jobs those new technologies create.
Massachusetts’ companies are increasingly producing new and efficient green technologies, but the state is not fully benefiting from the jobs that those new technologies create, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Because of the availability of cheap labor in third world markets such as China and India, companies are seeking to outsource the manufacturing of those green products outside of the U.S.
The paper reports that a maker of lithium-ion batteries, Boston-Power Inc., had planned to build a manufacturing facility in the state that would create roughly 600 jobs. However, after not receiving federal stimulus money, the company decided to outsource production to Asia.
Another company, Evergreen Solar Inc., which produces solar panels, had planned a job expansion in the state until it lost $167 million last year. Now the company plans to move at least a portion of those manufacturing jobs to China.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
How GOP Bigots Scapegoat Obama
Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Hitler scapegoated jews! The American right wing now scapegoats Obama! Why are we surprised? The GOP/right wing is just doing what psychopathic screw-ups and habitual liars always do. They try to find someone else to blame.
Obama is an easy target! Because Obama is black the GOP can depend on getting the support of bigots without ever having to use that 'n' word themselves. They keep their collars lily white even as their motives are of darkest night! Their plans are drawn up on K-street; they don't have to get their hands dirty. Leave that to the rank and file bigots.
In response to my previous post, Noor al Haqiqa wrote:
That is probably one of the saddest vids [The Eagles, Last Resort] I have seen for awhile. Not because I don't delve into the mire a little too often, but because so much of that is part of my life. …there are times I just want to hate the perpetrators of this situation, but I cannot for to do so would be giving them what they want ~ my soul.
Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: How GOP Bigots Scapegoat Obama.
Obama Not Addressing the Currency Issue
Despite urging from many corners, on President Barack Obama’s maiden voyage to China this week, he failed to tackle the issue of currency manipulation.
Despite urging from many corners, on President Barack Obama’s maiden voyage to China this week, he failed to tackle the issue of currency manipulation, which many experts believe is directly responsible for huge trade imbalances and massive job losses.
“Economists have made clear that America’s economic situation will continue to grow worse without a revaluation of China’s currency,” said Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), a co-sponsor of a piece of legislation that would tackle China’s currency misalignment.
Currency manipulation is an illegal market distorting trade practice that China has engaged in for years. By purposely undervaluing their currency, China has been able to make its exports artificially cheap, while at the same time placing a huge, invisible tariff on American products. Experts say that China may undervalue their yuan by as much as 40 percent.
The practice has allowed China to gain a competitive advantage on the U.S. in international trade. The last time the U.S. and China had a balanced trading relationship was in1985. Since 2005, Americans have spent $1.1 trillion on Chinese products; Chinese consumers have bought just $272 billion worth of goods over that same time.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
REAL Bottom-Up Job Creation Ideas
Obama and his misguided collection of Goldman Sachs Economics Experts have either been miserable failures or brutally betrayed American workers, when it comes to helping American workers and main street.
Here are some genuine bottom up ideas that Obama and congress could implement which would start giving people jobs and help.
1-offer to provide 80% of pay as a subsidy to small businesses– really small businesses– under 50 employees. Provide medicare to those employees. This will do a few things. First, it will create actual jobs. The money will be requisitioned by employers but paid to employees. Employers will get workers for a pittance and will be able to take some risks to grow their businesses. The employees, many of whom will have had no health insurance, will have a huge burden lifted.
2-Offer employers who participate in the pay subsidy program more funds if they buy selected items that are predominantly manufactured in the US. This will support US industries.
3- Resurrect the conservation corps. It gave my father a job back in the 30s. Use the workers to do infrastructure improvements– bridge building, national park maintenance, urban cleanup, even refurbing gutted inner city homes.
Full Story OpEdNews – Article: REAL Bottom-Up Job Creation Ideas.
U.S. Must Depend on the Goodwill of Foreign Creditors
I've always depended on the kindess of strangers
If at any point, these countries decided that they were not satisfied with our policies or practices, they could elect to shed this debt.
Foreign countries now finance 47 percent of our total outstanding federal deficit and they fund nearly 100 percent of net new debt issued annually by the US Government. This means we are highly dependent on foreign countries to finance our government. Foreign lending now funds our social programs, our public works programs, and even our national defense. Just like a bank that holds a mortgage over a homeowner, our country is beholden to these foreign creditors to keep constantly refinancing this debt. If at any point, these countries decided that they were not satisfied with our policies or practices, they could elect to shed this debt. In effect the US Government would go bankrupt overnight. Our government is now borrowing nearly $300 billion per year from foreign sources. If these sources were to stop lending or even merely cut back a bit, how would we bridge the gap? We would have to resort to printing money and thereby risk hyperinflation.
While some argue foreign countries are buying US government debt for the yield and safety, this clearly makes little sense. The world's financial people can easily see how precarious our position really is given our absolute dependence on the goodwill of foreign creditors. The real reason they lend us so much is because they want to have a say in our policies. We can no longer refuse foreigners' requests to buy our key assets as they are our bankers. Nor can we stand up to them when they want us to enter into lopsided and unreasonable trade agreements. How weak we have become is clearly apparent in the record of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is charged with overseeing acquisitions of American companies by foreign investors. CFIUS is part of the US Treasury – the same department that is charged with raising debt to finance the government. Of all the thousands of proposed foreign acquisitions CFIUS has reviewed in the last 18 years, it has overturned just one.
Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
America’s leadership deficit
Dr. Peter Morici:
Bigger than the budget deficit, America has a leadership gap.
The economic recovery is not creating jobs, unemployment is rising, and the President and Congress offer little more than nostrums and platitudes.
Republicans push tax cuts that experience teaches have doubtful prospects for success.
Democrats alibi “employment is a lagging indicator” after a $759 billion stimulus has failed. It may be too early in the recovery for businesses to be hiring but big layoffs should have stopped by now and have not.
The huge trade deficit and reckless banking practices caused the Great Recession and still weight down the economy.
Oil imports and cheap consumer goods from China account for nearly the entire trade gap.
Americans drive big cars with thirsty engines. They sit on vast, untapped natural gas reserves but burn too much heating oil in winter. Congressional conservatives are unwilling to submit to genuine energy conservation, and liberals believe developing domestic fossil fuel is immoral.
Full Story Dr. Peter Morici: America’s leadership deficit.
U.S. and China announce “positive, cooperative and comprehensive” plan for collaboration on clean energy and climate change
“Very exciting day here in Beijing. There’s enormous interest in both governments in working together to fight climate change. The package announced today is far-reaching and can make a real difference in cutting emissions.”
That’s an exclusive quote from David Sandalow, DOE’s Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs, who just emailed me from China about the newly announced U.S.-China cooperation plan. Sandalow is going to be in Copenhagen, so I hope to have a real interview with him then. For details on this plan (with links) and what it means, here is analysis by Andrew Light and Julian L. Wong of the Center for American Progress. Note that the deal goes beyond “obvious” areas like efficiency and renewables to include things like shale gas, which appears to exist in abundance in China and could allow repowering of existing Chinese coal plants and more rapid medium-term reductions than people have thought possible.
This morning, a comprehensive plan for U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change was announced in Beijing by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao. The overall plan is much more ambitious in scope and depth than we had anticipated and contains directives to create various institutions and programs addressing a wide array of cooperation on clean-energy technologies and capacity building, including very important efforts on helping China build a robust, transparent and accurate inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions.
These efforts include cooperation in the following areas:
New Mammography Guidelines Hit the Wall of Public Opinion
Controversial new recommendations on breast cancer prevention have caused a stir in the women’s health community. But do yearly mammograms really change death rates?
The new recommendation from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force that women under 50 should not undergo routine mammography is generating a lot of controversy—it is a direct challenge to the strong message women have been receiving for two decades that they should have yearly screening starting at age 40. The task force also recommends that women age 50-74 have a mammogram every two years (rather than yearly) and finds that there is little benefit in screening women over 74 at all.
To the experts who have been questioning the benefits of mammography for several years, these recommendations are no surprise—and they are welcome. The World Health Organization, and many European countries where the government pays for routine mammography screening, already follow these guidelines. But how is this news playing in Peoria?
The initial reaction from many health professionals, breast cancer survivors and advocates has been outrage and anger, with many insisting that women’s health will be compromised if these recommendations are implemented. Still others see the new guidelines as evidence that the government is using comparative-effectiveness studies to justify rationing care. Leading this onslaught are some key members of the cancer establishment: The American Cancer Society, The American College of Radiology and the National Cancer Institute.
Full Story Health Beat: New Mammography Guidelines Hit the Wall of Public Opinion.
Is House Health Care Bill a Threat to Our Constitution?
By Barry W. Lynn, Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The House health-care bill isn’t just a threat to women’s rights; with the Stupak amendment, it’s a breach of the Constitution.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was delivered as a statement at a press conference called by the Religious Coaltion for Reproductive Choice at the National Press Club on November 16, 2009. The topic was the anti-choice amendment, authored by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., that was attached to the House health-care reform bill.
In the United States, the institutions of government and religion are separate.
This is not just my opinion. It is the law of the land. Our Constitution prohibits Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court has stated more than once that laws must not advance religion or have a religious purpose.
How surprising and appalling, then, to see that a provision designed to curtail women’s right to abortion was slipped into the health-care bill at the behest of a powerful religious group, a provision that reflects the doctrines of that group.
A few days ago, Rep. Bart Stupak, the prime mover of this provision, told the Associated Press, “The Catholic Church used their power — their clout, if you will — to influence this issue. They had to. It’s a basic teaching of the religion.”
Full Story Is House Health Care Bill a Threat to Our Constitution? | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
If Nothing Else, Save Farming
Modern Life Is Probably Screwed by Peak Oil, But It’s Not Too Late to Avoid Mass Starvation. The challenge of feeding 7 or 8 billion people while oil supplies are falling is stupefying. It’ll be even greater if governments keep pretending that it isn’t going to happen.
By George Monbiot
It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production.
I don’t know when global oil supplies will start to decline. I do know that another resource has already peaked and gone into freefall: the credibility of the body that’s meant to assess them. Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world’s oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets(1). Three days later, a paper published by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden showed that the IEA’s forecasts must be wrong, because it assumes a rate of extraction that appears to be impossible(2). The agency’s assessment of the state of global oil supplies is beginning to look as reliable as Mr Greenspan’s blandishments about the health of the financial markets.
If the whistleblowers are right, we should be stockpiling ammunition. If we are taken by surprise; if we have failed to replace oil before the supply peaks then crashes, the global economy is stuffed. But nothing the whistleblowers said has scared me as much as the conversation I had last week with a Pembrokeshire farmer.
Full Story Monbiot.com » If Nothing Else, Save Farming.
How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply
A group of water oligarchs engineered a disastrous privatization scheme to make a fortune out of California’s most precious natural resource. A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they’ve pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without causing much public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California’s most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us — and it would, if more people were aware of it. But here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of California’s increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California’s environment.
California is in year three of a fairly nasty dry spell. And some very powerful forces are not letting this mini-crisis go to waste, fiercely lobbying Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein, paying off corporate shills like Fox News’ Sean Hannity and capitalizing on people’s fear of drought to push a massive waterworks project that will pump more water, build more dams and keep sucking the state’s rivers dry. The fearmongering schtick goes like this: California is on the brink of a water crisis of cataclysmic proportions, with a life-or-death struggle just around the corner, pitting small farmers who want to save their livelihood against big city elitists who care more about the environment than they do about American jobs. But in reality, this drought hysteria is nothing more than political theatrics, a scare tactic backed by big agribusiness to strong-arm California voters into building a multi-billion dollar system of dams and canals that would not really help small farmers — of which there are very few anyway — but would deliver more water to corporations, subsidize their landholdings, fuel real estate development and enable large-scale water privatization. At its core, it is a war waged for water by California’s megarich on everyone else.
The leader of these recent water privatization efforts in California is a Beverly Hills billionaire named Stewart Resnick. Stewart and his wife, Lynda Resnick, own Roll International Corporation, a private umbrella company that controls the flowers-by-wire company Teleflora, Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, pesticide manufacturer Suterra and Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming company in America and the largest pistachio and almond producer in the world. Roll Corp. was ranked #246 on Forbes’ list of America’s largest private companies in 2008 and had an estimated revenue of $1.98 billion in 2007.
Opposition to Desalination Escalates in Rockland County, New York
Washington, D.C.—“Public resistance to desalination mounted last week when two towns in Rockland County, New York, issued resolutions voicing opposition to the proposed Haverstraw Water Supply Project. The towns of Ramapo and Stony Point passed resolutions speaking out against the project. An initiative of the private corporation United Water, the project would supply water to the Rockland County area by desalinating water from the Hudson River just north of New York City. Proponents tout the project as a means of supplying long-term drinking water to the area. Yet, there are major problems with the proposal.
“If constructed, the facility will generate a generous annual profit stream for United Water. Yet, local water customers will pay for United Water’s gain in the form of the rate increases that will be necessary to address the costs of United Water’s capital investment, as well as the massive amounts of energy that it takes to run a desalination facility. Because it will draw from the Hudson River, the drinking water the plant produces may contain traces of radioactive chemicals that pose a threat to human health. The plant may also damage the local marine environments and could contribute to global warming. A desalination facility would be an impractical and damaging investment for a state trying to lower its carbon emissions.
“Food & Water Watch and the Rockland Coalition for Sustainable Water applaud the towns of Ramapo and Stony Point for their commitment to ensuring that area water infrastructure needs are addressed in the safest, most cost-effective way possible. Desalination should only ever be considered after all other possible methods of water conservation and delivery have been exhausted. Rather than saddling area residents with the financial burdens of building and operating a desalination facility, conservation methods such as rainwater harvesting, upgrading leaking municipal water pipes, and promoting green infrastructure systems should instead be implemented. We commend the commitment of these municipalities for their proactive position of protecting consumer interests in Rockland County and urge other towns in the area to follow their lead and issue similar resolutions.”
Full Story Opposition to Desalination Escalates in Rockland County, New York — Food & Water Watch.
GOP senators block effort to freeze credit card interest rates
Republican senators on Wednesday blocked an effort to debate a bill that would prevent credit card companies from raising interest rates ahead of new regulations coming into force next year.
The move angered congressional Democrats who were pushing for an emergency freeze on credit card rates.
“I’m extremely disappointed that the financial health of millions of American taxpayers has been completely brushed aside by a handful of Wall Street banking interests in the US Senate,” Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO) said, as quoted in the Coloradoan.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), who heads the Senate Banking Committee, had authored a bill that would have prevented credit card issuers from hiking interest rates ahead of a new law coming into effect in February that restricts how and when rates can be raised.
Earlier this year, Dodd wrote and passed through the Senate the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act, which requires credit card issuers to give customers advance notice before hiking rates and fees.
Full Story GOP senators block effort to freeze credit card interest rates | Raw Story.
OPS: SO ask yourself, do Republican support me or Corporate Profits?
TEST: Republican controlled both housed for 12 years. Name one bill that the republicans put forward and passed in that time that placed People over Corporations
Probing into Depression
Deep brain stimulation, already established as a treatment for stubborn Parkinson’s disease, may also be useful as a therapy for drug-resistant clinical depression.
What would it take for you to allow a surgeon to probe deep into your brain to implant permanent electrodes that would administer behavior-altering electric shocks? Anyone undergoing brain surgery risks stroke and possibly death, and even if the surgery is successful there is the potential for infection, which would require even more surgery with all its attendant risks.
Tens of thousands already have electrostimulation devices implanted in their brains, and millions more may join them if the technique, called “deep brain stimulation” (DBS), gains wider acceptance. DBS was originally developed as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, and it has been remarkably effective. The primary symptom of Parkinson’s is uncontrollable body tremors that can make it nearly impossible to perform basic daily functions like eating and drinking, writing, and even walking. An acquaintance of mine who has Parkinson’s opted for the DBS procedure and now functions perfectly normally—it’s impossible for the casual observer to notice anything unusual about how he moves. He went from being nearly incapacitated to being renewed as a healthy, fully functional person. Perhaps it’s no wonder that he was willing to submit to such an invasive procedure.
Full Story Probing into Depression § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM.
Weekend lie-ins for teenagers wards off obesity
Teenagers lying in at the weekend might seem like laziness, but it will actually help them stay slim and healthy, claim scientists.
New research suggests lazing in bed at the end of a busy week is just what children need to ward off obesity.
The scientists, who studied children aged five to 15, found those who slept in on Saturdays and Sundays were much less likely to have weight problems.
They believe the weekend snooze is crucial for school-age children to catch up on the sleep they miss out on during a busy week.
In the process, it helps to regulate calorie intake by reducing snacking during waking hours.
The findings, published in the journal Paediatrics, add to earlier research that showed a link between regular sleep deprivation and obesity.
It is well known that lack of sleep and disturbed sleep patterns causes obesity as they affect the body’s natural metabolism and also encourage snacking to ward of tiredness.
Full Story Weekend lie-ins for teenagers wards off obesity – Telegraph.
In landmark ruling, judge says Corps’ negligence caused Katrina flooding
A federal court judge has ruled in favor of several plaintiffs in a case deciding whether the Mississippi River Gulf Coast Outlet is in part to blame for the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina.
Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr awarded over $719,000 to four different sets of plaintiffs who alleged that the MRGO, a 76-mile manmade waterway that allowed vessels to quickly get from the Gulf of Mexico to the Industrial Canal, exasperated the conditions that led to flooding in the St. Bernard area.
The ruling could set a precedent for over 400,000 other residents who have filed damage claims against the government — and that, says Dr. Ivor Van Heerden, is a huge win for the city of New Orleans.
“But I think this is a huge win, not only for the plaintiffs but also the people of New Orleans, and that finally we've got some acknowledgement of the [Army Corps of Engineers] fault and the failure of the levee system,” said Van Heerden, who provided data and consulted for the plaintiffs.
Full Story In landmark ruling, judge says Corps’ negligence caused Katrina flooding | wwltv.com | News.
CIA to Dish out $3 Million to buy silence in Another Narco Scandal
Sibel Edmonds
The Mighty Agency on it’s Knees in another Legal Battle
After 15 years of legal battles the CIA agrees to pay $3 million to a former DEA agent who accused a former CIA official of illegally eavesdropping on him as part of a joint CIA and State Department effort to thwart DEA’s anti-narcotics mission in Burma in the early 1990s.
Richard Horn was stationed in Burma in the early 1990s as the DEA country attaché to Burma, a nation that is ranked as one of the top opium poppy producing countries in the world. He was in charge of overseeing DEA’s mission in Burma involving eradication of the opium poppy, which is used to produce heroin.
Bill Conroy of Narco News covers the latest on State Secrets Privilege recipient Richard Horn. As always Conroy dares to dig and cover this significant story when the rest of the media stenographers are avoiding it like the plague and as they are told by their mighty government sources above.
“The CIA’s efforts to undermine Horn’s work in Burma in getting that nation’s government to stem the flow of heroin to the United States should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the “Agency’s” history. It seems the CIA, over the decades, has often found itself in the corner of narco-traffickers and thugs who support the Agency’s covert objectives in areas deemed critical to U.S. special interests – whether that be in Southeast Asia, Central Asia or Latin America.”
Full Story Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority.
SC panel says governor should face ethics charges
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will face charges he violated state laws, according to an ethics panel ruling Wednesday that came after its three-month investigation into his use of state, commercial and private airplanes and his campaign finance practices.
The State Ethics Commission did not provide details of its decision or the specific charges the governor would face during a hearing of the panel early next year. Sanford's lawyer, however, predicted the governor would be cleared and said none of charges are criminal but “limited to minor, technical matters.”
The commission said details – which should include whether the accusations involve civil or criminal allegations – will be released next week. Questions about Sanford's use of state, private and commercial planes arose after he disappeared from the state in June and admitted he had been in Argentina visiting his mistress.
Full Story TBO.com – News From AP.
Fire Geithner and Summers, prominent Democrat says
‘We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans’
President Barack Obama “is being failed by his economic team” and should replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House economic policy director Larry Summers, says US House Rep. Peter DeFazio.
The prominent member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told MSNBC’s The Ed Show that he and other House members are growing increasingly frustrated by a White House economic policy that focuses on maintaining the financial stability of Wall Street firms while largely overlooking Main Street concerns.
“I think there is a growing consensus in the [Democratic] caucus [that] we need a new economic team that cares more about jobs, Main Street and the American people than it does about Wall Street and huge bonuses,” DeFazio (D-OR) told host Ed Schultz.
DeFazio suggested that the government “reclaim the unspent funds … reclaim some of the funds that are being paid back, which will not be paid back in full, and we use it to put people back to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure.
Full Story Fire Geithner and Summers, prominent Democrat says | Raw Story.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
