Archive for December, 2009
How To Get Rich on the Financial Services Committee
When House leadership was handing out committee assignments to the freshmen class of 2008, in the midst of one of the biggest financial crises to ever rock the country, it was decided that the best thing to do was put new members who needed campaign cash for tough 2010 battles on the Financial Services Committee.
And so 11 freshmen members from conservative leaning districts were assigned to the committee, basically setting them up to be “bribed” by Wall Street.
Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney deserve huge kudos for this piece, which outstrips any coverage I’ve seen in the financial press this year and gets to the heart of darkness as to why the banks continue unregulated.
Here’s a microcosmic view of the problem:
Full Story FDL Action » How To Get Rich on the Financial Services Committee.
Loans to Boost Nuclear Industry Seen Coming Soon
The Obama administration is poised to announce loan guarantees to help kick-start the country’s nuclear power industry, which hasn’t built a new plant in more than three decades.
Congress authorized $18.5 billion for nuclear loan guarantees in 2005, hoping to revive development of the carbon-free source of energy. Investments in nuclear power have dried up on soaring costs following the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.
But earlier this year, the U.S. Energy Department signaled it was keen to aid the industry and narrowed the list of those likely to receive loan guarantees to four:
Full Story Loans to Boost Nuclear Industry Seen Coming Soon – CNBC.
North Magnetic Pole Moving Due to Core Flux
Earth’s north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles (64 kilometers) a year due to magnetic changes in the planet’s core, new research says.
The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field. But researchers can infer the field’s movements by tracking how Earth’s magnetic field has been changing at the surface and in space.
Now, newly analyzed data suggest that there’s a region of rapidly changing magnetism on the core’s surface, possibly being created by a mysterious “plume” of magnetism arising from deeper in the core.
And it’s this region that could be pulling the magnetic pole away from its long-time location in northern Canada, said Arnaud Chulliat, a geophysicist at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France.
Finding North
Magnetic north, which is the place where compass needles actually point, is near but not exactly in the same place as the geographic North Pole. Right now, magnetic north is close to Canada’s Ellesmere Island.
Full Story North Magnetic Pole Moving Due to Core Flux.
Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development
An alcohol substitute that mimics its pleasant buzz without leading to drunkenness and hangovers is being developed by scientists.
The new substance could have the added bonus of being “switched off” instantaneously with a pill, to allow drinkers to drive home or return to work.
The synthetic alcohol, being developed from chemicals related to Valium, works like alcohol on nerves in the brain that provide a feeling of wellbeing and relaxation.
But unlike alcohol its does not affect other parts of the brain that control mood swings and lead to addiction. It is also much easier to flush out of the body.
Finally because it is much more focused in its effects, it can also be switched off with an antidote, leaving the drinker immediately sober.
Full Story Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development – Telegraph.
Review of the Year 2009: Discoveries –
We saw Darwin in a whole new light
Climate change, stem cells and evolution were the three big science themes of 2009, which happened to be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his seminal book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. It was the year when Darwin’s remarkable insight into the evolution of life on earth was celebrated around the world.
But perhaps the most intriguing story of the year was the incredible tale of the shrinking sheep on the Scottish island of Hirta in the St Kilda archipelago, a study that managed to merge the two topics of evolution and climate change. For nearly a quarter of a century the wild Soay sheep on this windswept isle have been getting smaller when Darwinian natural selection should in theory have been making them larger.
The sheep, which fend for themselves, should have been growing bigger because larger sheep are more likely to survive the harsh St Kilda winters. Size is largely determined by genes so, given that larger sheep were more likely to survive, big-sheep genes should be at a premium in the Darwinian struggle for survival.
Full Story Review of the Year 2009: Discoveries – Science, News – The Independent.
Pomegranates: Latest weapon in the fight against MRSA
Pomegranates have already been hailed as a super-food but a team of scientists from Kingston University in South West London has found a new use for the deep red fruit. The team, led by Professor Declan Naughton, has discovered that the rind can be turned into an ointment for treating MRSA and other common hospital infections.
In a series of tests conducted over three years, Professor Naughton and researchers from the School of Life Sciences learnt that the infection-fighting properties of pomegranate were greatly enhanced by combining the rind of the fruit with two other natural products — metal salts and Vitamin C. “We have developed a topical ointment that can successfully attack a range of drug resistant microbes,” Professor Naughton said. “It’s a significant breakthrough and a striking example of the effectiveness of adding more components to create a more active product.”
Full Story Pomegranates: Latest weapon in the fight against MRSA.
Dirty babies get healthier hearts
AFFLUENT, modern babies live in a sanitised world. This has already been blamed for a high incidence of asthma and allergies, but might also up the risk of developing a host of other conditions common in rich countries, such as stroke and heart disease.
According to the “hygiene hypothesis”, our immune system evolved to handle a germ-laden world. If we don’t encounter many pathogens during infancy, it doesn’t learn to keep itself in check, and turns on inflammation – normally a response to infection – in inappropriate situations. This reaction, the hypothesis goes, is responsible for the recent increase in asthma and allergies, both associated with inflammation.
Recently, it has emerged that chronic inflammation may also increase the risk of diabetes, stroke and heart diseases. So might the hygiene hypothesis be implicated here too?
Full Story Dirty babies get healthier hearts – health – 09 December 2009 – New Scientist.
Why powerful people — many of whom take a moral high ground — don’t practice what they preach
2009 may well be remembered for its scandal-ridden headlines, from admissions of extramarital affairs by governors and senators, to corporate executives flying private jets while cutting employee benefits, and most recently, to a mysterious early morning car crash in Florida. The past year has been marked by a series of moral transgressions by powerful figures in political, business and celebrity circles. New research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University explores why powerful people – many of whom take a moral high ground – don't practice what they preach.
Researchers sought to determine whether power inspires hypocrisy, the tendency to hold high standards for others while performing morally suspect behaviors oneself. The research finds that power makes people stricter in moral judgment of others – while being less strict of their own behavior.
The research was conducted by Joris Lammers and Diederik A. Stapel of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and by Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. The article will appear in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science.
Full Story Why powerful people — many of whom take a moral high ground — don’t practice what they preach.
Ron Paul suggests ‘agenda’ to expand terror war, attack American liberty
How does a massive, costly security apparatus fail to stop a known terrorism threat from boarding an airplane and wrecking devastation?
It happened on Sept. 11, 2001, and again on Dec. 25, 2009.
“There must be an agenda,” suggested Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) in a recent video message to supporters.
“It seems ironic that there is so much excitement about this and now talk about attacking Yemen,” he said, noting recent bombing raids by Saudi forces, carried out with the explicit blessing of the United States.
“The Saudis are our close allies,” Paul explained. “We provide them with the weapons and the airplanes and we did sanction and endorse the bombing of Yemen.”
Full Story Ron Paul suggests ‘agenda’ to expand terror war, attack American liberty | Raw Story.
OPS: We agree with Paul on this
Washington Times lays off top editor, dozens of staffers
The Washington Times slashed its 170-member newsroom staff Wednesday, laying off its top editor and scores of reporters, editors and photographers at the 27-year-old newspaper.
The Sports and Metro sections will cease to exist as stand-alone entities after Friday's edition, numerous sources said, and layoffs in those sections neared 100 percent.
At a somber staff meeting at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, the newspaper’s management did not give an overall number of layoffs and did not spell out the fate of various sections and areas of coverage. Instead, after hearing from Times President and Publisher Jonathan Slevin and an official from the human resources department, employees were told to pick up packets that revealed their fates.
The paper’s executives said in early December that impending layoffs would cut about 40 percent of the staff. Several newsroom sources said Wednesday that the layoffs had met or exceeded that percentage.
Full Story Washington Times lays off top editor, dozens of staffers – washingtonpost.com.
Congress lets 50 tax breaks expire at end of ’09
Many likely to be revived sometime in 2010 — but it’s a pain for taxpayers
When members of the U.S. Senate went home earlier this month, they left the future of 50 individual and business tax breaks in limbo. All expire at the end of 2009.
Among the disappearing breaks are the research tax credit and an annual alternative minimum tax “patch,” which keeps 23 million additional middle-income Americans from being forced into calculating and paying the dreaded AMT. (For 2009, with the patch in place, 4 million upper-middle- and high-income families will pay AMT.)
Most of the fading-out-50 can, and likely will, be reauthorized retroactively, creating an inconvenience for some taxpayers, but not the same sort of mess as Congress' failure to resolve the future of the estate tax.
Full Story Congress lets 50 tax breaks expire at end of ’09 – Forbes.com- msnbc.com.
Gingrich openly says let’s ‘profile’ and ‘actively discriminate’
Another prominent Republican has joined the chorus of conservatives championing open discrimination against Muslims after the failed Christmas terror plot.
In an op-ed published Wednesday for the conservative magazine Human Events, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich forcefully slammed the Obama administration's counter-terrorism policies as insufficient and said his approach “must now change decisively.”
“It is time to know more about would-be terrorists, to profile for terrorists and to actively discriminate based on suspicious terrorist information,” Gingrich wrote.
“We know our opponents are radical extremists of the irreconcilable wing of Islam (Islamists, some would call them),” he added.
In an unabashed endorsement of discrimination based on background, Gingrich posited that “[w]e know how to identify these enemies but our elites have refused to do so.”
Full Story Gingrich openly says let’s ‘profile’ and ‘actively discriminate’ | Raw Story.
CHART OF THE DAY: The End Of Newspapers
Newspaper employment has utterly collapsed in the last 15 years, with employment numbers now around where they were in the mid-1950s.
The good news: It’s a great opportunity. The next decade will give birth to new forms of reporting, more in tune with today's technology and news consumption habits.
Full Story CHART OF THE DAY: The End Of Newspapers.
Right and Left Agree: Mandates are the Road to Neo-Feudalism
There is tremendous fear rising on both the right and the left that the announced intention of Congress — to force every American to pay tribute to private corporations, with no government alternative — sets a dangerous and frightening precedent with implications far outside the scope of health care.
If the health care bill written by the Senate is passed, middle class Americans will be mandated to pay almost as much to private insurance companies as they do to the federal government in taxes, with the IRS acting as a collection agency for penalties of 2% of your annual income for refusing to comply.
This is just one of many recent measures that have brought liberal progressives and conservative libertarians together to join forces in opposition:
Full Story Firedoglake » Right and Left Agree: Mandates are the Road to Neo-Feudalism.
Israel’s 10 worst errors of the decade
- Haaretz -
In the Mideast, dreams can only end badly. Not because messianic messages are, in and of themselves, bad dreams, but because of the nature of this place, the history which is as much imagination as it is record, as much sacred hallucination as it is shared memory. And because the dreamers of this place fail again and again because they are under the illusion that they are realists.
The decade just passing is one in which Middle East dreams came to die. It began, appropriately, with an Israeli leader who saw his place in history as dependent on imposing a peace plan on the entire Arab world, and a Palestinian icon who saw his place in history as dependent on saying no.
In no decade of the modern Middle East has the roll of failure been so democratic. The titans Arafat and Sharon fought their battle to the death, and both lost. Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmed Yassin, hilltop youth, Al Aqsa Martyrs, Yossi Beilin, the Yesha Council, even Jimmy Carter – all dreamed Icarus dreams and realized, only too late, that in the brilliant sun of the Holy Land, wings of feathers and wax reveal their true selves, which is to say, nothing more than feathers and wax.
It was a decade framed by a fundamentalist Palestinian belief in salvation through suicide and a fundamentalist Israeli belief in salvation through brutality.
Full Story Israel’s 10 worst errors of the decade – Haaretz – Israel News.
Rick Warren Begs Parishioners For $900K To Keep Saddleback Church Out Of The Red
Evangelical pastor Rick Warren is begging parishioners at his Orange County megachurch to cough up $900,000 before January 1st to keep the parish out of the red.
In an urgent letter posted on the Saddleback Church Web site on Wednesday, Warren says expenses are up because parishioners are out of work and “the bottom dropped out” when year-end donations dropped dramatically.
He asks parishioners to donate before January 1st to keep the church out of debt.
Full Story Rick Warren Begs Parishioners For $900K To Keep Saddleback Church Out Of The Red – cbs2.com.
OPS: …cauze Jesus needs the money for Saddle-sore Church
Iceland approves repayment scheme
Iceland’s parliament approved plans to repay £3.4bn (3.8bn euros) lost by savers in Britain and the Netherlands when the country’s banking system collapsed, it has been reported.
The money will reimburse the British and Dutch governments which stepped in to compensate depositors with Icesave after its parent bank Landsbanki failed last year.
The bank’s collapse left more than 320,000 savers out of pocket.
Iceland’s MPs backed the Icesave Bill by a narrow margin of 33 votes to 30 in a move likely to help boost the country’s bid to join the European Union and repair its battered economy.
There has been strong opposition to the measure in Iceland, amid fears the country would not be able to afford repayments.
“Approving the Bill is the better option and will avoid even more economic damage,” Steingrimur Sigfusson, Iceland’s finance minister, said during the debate.
“History will show that we are doing the right thing.”
Iceland’s MPs approved an initial deal in August that would effectively turn the bailout into a loan, which would be repaid with interest over 15 years from 2016.
But the British and Dutch governments rejected amendments to the agreement introduced by the Icelandic parliament, prompting a new vote.
Full Story The Press Association: Iceland approves repayment scheme.
Amid dark times, meet the most inspiring people of 2009
Johann Hari: -
Newsman Wes Nisker said if you don’t like the news, make your own. These people did
It was a dark year, 2009, sealing a dark decade. It began with the world in economic free-fall and the Gaza Strip being bombed to pieces (again). We watched the vicious crushing of a democratic uprising in Iran, a successful far-right coup in Honduras, and the intensification of the disastrous war in Afghanistan. It all ended at Brokenhagen, where the world’s leaders breezily decided to carry on cooking the planet.
But in the midst of all this there were extraordinary points of light, generated by people who have refused to drink the cheap sedative of despair. The left-wing newsman Wes Nisker said in his final broadcast: “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” I want – in the final moments of 2009 – to celebrate the people who, this year, did just that: the men and women who didn’t slump, but realised that the worse the world gets, the harder people of goodwill have to work to put it right.
Inspiration One: Denis Mukwege. The war in the Congo is the worst since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe: it has killed more than 5 million people and counting. As I witnessed when I reported on the war in 2006, the violence has been turned primarily on the country’s women: one favourite tactic is to gang-rape a woman and then shoot her in the vagina. For years these women were simply left to die in the bush. But one man – a soft-spoken Congolese gynaecologist with a gentle smile – decided to do something mad, something impossible. With scarcely any equipment and no funding, he set up a secret clinic for these women.
Good Riddance to Decade That Began With Theft of the Presidency
John Nicoles –
The British press has taken to referring to the passing decade as “the Noughties” has made quite a big deal of trying to identify the political, economic and cultural trends of period from 2000 to 2009.
It is an amusing pastime that has some value, but only if we’re focused on identifying the root cause of what made the Noughties such a miserable decade.
If we are serious about the task, there is not much mystery.
The original sin of the good-riddance decade came in December of 2000, when the United States Supreme Court intervened to stop a complete recount of the votes in Florida and then declared George Bush to be the president.
This extreme judicial activism was not merely a devastating assault on American democracy. It set in motion the Bush presidency, and with it the pathologies that the Bush-Cheney administration imposed on the country in the form of unnecessary wars, failed economic policies, assaults on civil liberties and crudely divisive and hyper-partisan governance.
Full Story Good Riddance to Decade That Began With Theft of the Presidency.
Guide To Breaking Cell Phone Security REVEALED
A German security expert has raised the ire of the cell phone industry after he and a group of researchers posted online a how-to guide for cracking the encryption that keeps the calls of billions of cell phone users secret.
Karsten Nohl, 28, told The Associated Press this week that he, working with others online and around the world, created a codebook containing how to get past the GSM standard encryption used to keep conversations on more than 3 billion mobile phones safe from prying ears.
Nohl said the purpose was to push companies to improve security. The collaborative effort put the information online through file-sharing sites.
“The message is to have better security, not we want to break you,” he said of the move. “The goal is better security. If we created more demand for more security, if any of the network operators could use this as a marketing feature … that would be the best possible outcome.”
Full Story Guide To Breaking Cell Phone Security REVEALED.
Latest Public Option Concession Comes Into Focus
With several prominent House Democrats acknowledging that they will likely have to give up a public option for insurance coverage in health care reform negotiations with the Senate, the focus has shifted to what concessions they can extract in return.
The main issue on the radar is to try and ensure that newly created health insurance exchanges are national (the House version) and not state-based (the Senate version), say sources on and off the Hill.
“That’s where people are going to be looking,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) when asked if this would be the key compromise if the public option is dropped. “I’m going to give you my own view, which is the House view, which is that I think we need a federal insurance exchange…. I think we’ve got to look closely at this. I think that it’s much easier… to keep insurance companies in check — it is simpler to administer. We’re going to have a checkerboard here [with the Senate bill]. And also I think you have to take a look at the political reality. Implementing reform is going to be much more difficult in some states than in others.”
Full Story Latest Public Option Concession Comes Into Focus.
China: Mentally Ill People Murdered, Used To Blackmail Mine Owners
Police have arrested nine people in southwest China suspected of trafficking mentally ill people to be murdered in mines across the country in a bid to blackmail mine owners into paying compensation, a local official said Thursday.
Mine owners in China face intense pressure to keep deadly accidents under wraps, and have reportedly been found paying off journalists and relatives of dead miners in recent years to keep safety problems from coming to light.
The nine were arrested recently in Leibo county in Sichuan province in connection with suspected murders in nine other provinces, said an official who identified himself as the deputy director of the Leibo government’s propaganda department. Like many Chinese officials, he gave only his surname, Jiang.
He said there were 17 cases of trafficking over the last several years, but did not say how many people had been murdered.
Full Story China: Mentally Ill People Murdered, Used To Blackmail Mine Owners.
How To ‘Fix’ The Sunday Morning Shows
Jay Rosen, saints preserve him, has posted a “Simple Fix For The Messed Up Sunday Shows”. Since Sunday morning is the time when I personally do penitence for the salvation of my immortal soul by watching these infernal displays, I’m interested:
I think the situation calls for cynicism. But I have to admit that is not much of a call. So instead I propose this modest little fix, first floated on Twitter in a post I sent out to Betsy Fischer, Executive Producer of Meet the Press, who never replies to anything I say. “Sadly, you’re a one-way medium,” I said to Fischer, “but here’s an idea for ya: Fact check what your guests say on Sunday and run it online Wednesday.”
Now I don’t contend this would solve the problem of the Sunday shows, which is structural. But it might change the dynamic a little bit. Whoever was bullshitting us more could expect to hear about it from Meet the Press staff on Wednesday. The midweek fact check (in the spirit of Politifact.com, which could even be hired for the job…) might, over time, exert some influence on the speakers on Sunday. At the very least, it would guide the producers in their decisions about whom to invite back.
The midweek fact check would also give David Gregory a way out of his puppy game of gotcha. Instead of telling David Axelrod that his boss promised to change the tone in Washington so why aren’t there any Republican votes for health care? … which he thinks is getting “tough” with a guest, Gregory’s job would simply be to ask the sort of questions, the answers to which could be fact checked later in the week. Easy, right?
Full Story How To ‘Fix’ The Sunday Morning Shows.
2010 Laws Will Target Vices As States Face Budget Gaps
Texting, Smoking, Cooking: What Are The New Laws Targeting In Your State?
Texting while driving, smoking in public and cooking with artery-clogging trans fats will be that much harder under a bevy of state laws set to take effect around the country on Friday.
Faced with huge budget shortfalls and little extra money to throw around, state lawmakers exercised their (inexpensive) power to clamp down on impolite, unhealthy and sometimes dangerous behaviors in 2009.
Even toy guns were targeted.
Among the most surprising new laws set to take effect in 2010 is a smoking ban for bars and restaurants in North Carolina, the country’s largest tobacco producer that has a history steeped in tradition around the golden leaf.
Starting Saturday – stragglers get a one-day reprieve to puff away after their New Year’s Day meals – smokers will no longer be allowed to light up in North Carolina bars and restaurants. There are exceptions for country clubs, Elks lodges and the like, but the change is a dramatic one for North Carolina, whose tax coffers long depended on Big Tobacco.
Full Story 2010 Laws Will Target Vices As States Face Budget Gaps.
Adios BofA!! – She Moved Her Money
So long Bank of America! Hello community bank. That said, make sure you check out the rating of your community bank before opening an account. They are subject to the same risky behavior the big banks engaged in that led to this current financial crisis.
Here’s the original video: MOVE YOUR MONEY
Switch To Electronic Health Records Could Miss Federal Targets
Federal health officials said Wednesday they have cut billions of dollars from the projected cost of a program to push doctors and hospitals to use electronic medical records, suggesting their previous estimates overstated the number of health care providers likely to adopt the technology.
The goal to create a digital health record for every American in the next five years was first set under President George W. Bush. The project picked up steam in the Obama administration, which regards it as vital to controlling soaring health care costs.
In May, budget officials estimated they would spend up to $47 billion in stimulus money to help doctors and hospitals purchase the systems. But in a press briefing on Wednesday, officials said that figure had been chopped nearly in half to between $14.1 billion and $27.3 billion.
Full Story Switch To Electronic Health Records Could Miss Federal Targets.
Free Market Can’t Do This
Norway has managed to beat back the evolution of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. How did they do it? With public health, government regulation, and rationing. Americans are being sold on the idea that the best health care is everything money can buy, but the germs aren’t free-market capitalists. Dosing up some of us and leaving the rest without medical care is a recipe for an epidemic. MRSA kills more Americans than AIDS. Are you scared? You should be.
I was making my home visits and spent some time talking to a nice woman who lives on disability. She told me that she used to work at a strenuous low-wage job. Now she is in a wheelchair, because one of her knees was destroyed by MRSA and cannot be repaired. What should have been routine surgery became a year-long ordeal when infection set in, and she lost the use of one leg.
Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus is the bane of surgeons and the plague of nursing homes. Oceans of disinfectant and mountains of gloves and gowns can’t eliminate it. But Norway has succeeded in beating back the resistant superbugs. From Americablog…
Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway’s public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics.
Now, you economists out there will note the words, ‘public health system’ and also the implication that patients would not be able to shop around for a doctor who hands out antibiotics like candy.
Full Story Free Market Can’t Do This « Kmareka.com.
FCC Moves Toward Net Neutrality Rules
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, in taking the first step toward creating net neutrality rules earlier this year, has reignited a contentious debate about government regulation of the Internet.
Opponents of new net neutrality rules argue that an FCC proposal released in October would create intrusive new rules for the Internet and would mark a major shift in the U.S. government’s generally hands-off approach to Web regulation. The FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules would, among other things, require Internet service providers to “treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner.”
New rules aren’t needed, because there have been few examples of broadband providers blocking or slowing Web content and applications, critics said. “Where’s the beef?” Barbara Esbin, a senior fellow with the free-market think tank Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), wrote in a paper published this month. “There is little or no evidence that broadband ISPs are plotting to alter the fundamental attributes of the Internet in such nefarious ways or of actual consumer harms from today’s broadband network management practices.”
The PFF and other critics say net neutrality rules will hamper broadband providers’ investment in their networks, by creating rules on how they can use those investments. The net neutrality rules could prohibit innovative, new business models focused on tiered pricing or specialized networks, critics have said.
Full Story FCC Moves Toward Net Neutrality Rules – Yahoo! News.
Health Care Bill Comparable to NAFTA
n her “U.S. Liberal Politcs” blog for About.com, Deborah White writes that the Senate bill is a lot like NAFTA; it greatly benefits a few while carrying a heavy cost for the rest of us.
The long-awaited Senate health care bill has finally taken shape. Contained therein are some modest attempts at reform, but by and large very little substance for any progressive agenda. The White House can say “we have reform”, but that reform may not be very useful or helpful to most Americans.
Deborah White writes the “U.S. Liberal Politics” blog for About.com. In her eyes, the Senate bill is a lot like NAFTA; it greatly benefits a few while carrying a heavy cost for the rest of us.
On the surface the health care legislation and the North American Free Trade Agreement have nothing in common. In the end however we may look back at this legislation with the same questioning and animosity that we direct toward NAFTA.
After 15 years it has become readily apparent that our entanglements with NAFTA have hurt America. For that matter, it can be argued that NAFTA has hurt Canada and Mexico as well.
NAFTA has taken away millions of American manufacturing jobs and sent them to Canada and Mexico. It has replaced millions of agricultural jobs in Mexico with American agribusinesses. It has generally lowered the standard of living in the U.S., while failing to raise the living standard in Mexico – as was its stated purpose. In general, it is a failure.
Full Story Health Care Bill Comparable to NAFTA | Economy In Crisis.
Return of the Fungi
Paul Stamets is on a quest to find an endangered mushroom that could cure smallpox, TB, and even bird flu. Can he unlock its secrets before deforestation and climate change wipe it out?
IN THE OLD-GROWTH forests of the Pacific Northwest grows a bulbous, prehistoric-looking mushroom called agarikon. It prefers to colonize century-old Douglas fir trees, growing out of their trunks like an ugly mole on a finger. When I first met Paul Stamets, a mycologist who has spent more than three decades hunting, studying, and tripping on mushrooms, he had found only two of these unusual fungi, each time by accident—or, as he might put it, divine intervention.
Stamets believes that unlocking agarikon’s secrets may be as important to the future of human health as Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillium mold’s antibiotic properties more than 80 years ago. And so on a sunny July day, Stamets is setting off on a voyage along the coastal islands of southern British Columbia in hopes of bagging more of the endangered fungus before deforestation or climate change irreparably alters the ecosystems where it makes its home. Agarikon may be ready to save us—but we may have to save it first.
Joining Stamets on the 43-foot schooner Misty Isles are his wife, Dusty, a few close friends, and four research assistants from Fungi Perfecti, his Olympia, Washington-based company, which sells medicinal mushroom extracts, edible mushroom kits, mushroom doggie treats, and Stamets’ most recent treatise, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. “What we’re doing here could save millions of lives,” he tells me on the first morning of the three-day, 120-mile voyage. “It’s fun, it’s bizarre, and very much borders on something spiritual.”
Full Story Return of the Fungi | Mother Jones.
Monopoly Capitalism Is the Root of All of America’s Problems
Something is rotten in the state of American capitalism, and if you agree with Barry C. Lynn, almost all stinky paths lead to the monopolization of our economy. The rise of behemoths like Wal-Mart and Viacom are not only lowering the quality and safety of the products you use, but also undermining our so-called democracy.
I had a chance to speak to Lynn about just how bad things are — and what we might be able to do about it. Lynn's new book, Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, from Wiley Press, will be out in January.
Q: In the book you say we have no choice but to reverse the process of monopolization in our economy. How can we practically achieve that, at this stage of the game?
Barry C. Lynn: We can achieve it and there’s proof we can because we’ve done it in the past. In the late 19th century there was a really incredible process of monopolization. In the Guilded Age, you ended up with really tight concentration of control over finance in Wall Street. Think of Standard Oil, of U.S. Steel. There was some effort to break up those companies in the early 20th century but the real change took place after what people call the Second New Deal. The Roosevelt administration ended up breaking up a number of companies. What they did most successfully is stop the growth of massive companies and created space for new companies to grow.
Full Story Monopoly Capitalism Is the Root of All of America’s Problems | Politics | AlterNet.
“Blue Moon” to Shine on New Year’s Eve
For the first time in almost 20 years, a bright “blue moon” will grace New Year’s Eve celebrations worldwide
If the skies are clear, revelers looking up at midnight will get an eyeful of the second full moon of the month—commonly called a blue moon. The last time a blue moon appeared on New Year’s Eve was in 1990, and it won’t happen again until 2028.
A blue moon isn’t actually blue—as commonly defined, the name reflects the relative rarity of two full moons in a month and is linked to the saying “once in a blue moon.”
With this New Year’s Eve blue moon, “there is nothing scientific about it, and it has no astronomical significance,” said Mark Hammergren, a staff astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.
“But I believe it does give us some insight into history and makes us think of how our calendar system has derived from motions of objects in the sky.
Full Story “Blue Moon” to Shine on New Year’s Eve.
911 trial could put Bush, Cheney on trial
With Dick Cheney and Republican senator Jim DeMint and Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra accusing the Obama Administration of downplaying the terrorist threat its a good time to go back to the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history — 911 — and recall that the evidence collected by the 911 Commision Hearings proved that the 911 attacks succeeded because of the gross, even criminal negligence of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the Republicans, primarily because they ignored 8 months of terrorist warnings leading up to 911, dismissing it as a legitimate threat.
George W. Bush was never held accountable by the press, congress, or anyone else for the gross negligence, incompetence and criminal recklessness of both he, Rice and Cheney, that resulted in 3000 people losing their lives on 911 and all the upheaval it subsequently created which we are dealing with to this day.
The evidence, all of it irrefutable and documented, is that Bush, Rice and Cheney were grossly negligent, recklessly irresponsible,and completely accountable for the 3000 people killed on Sept. 11 and all because they turned a blind eye to terrorsm until it was too late.
Full Story 911 trial could put Bush, Cheney on trial.
OPS: Well, it would be the correct thing to do, but don’t hold your breath.
13 state AGs threaten suit over health care deal
Republican attorneys general in 13 states say congressional leaders must remove Nebraska’s political deal from the federal health care reform bill or face legal action, according to a letter provided to The Associated Press Wednesday.
“We believe this provision is constitutionally flawed,” South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and the 12 other attorneys general wrote in the letter to be sent Wednesday night to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“As chief legal officers of our states we are contemplating a legal challenge to this provision and we ask you to take action to render this challenge unnecessary by striking that provision,” they wrote.
In a rare Christmas Eve vote, Senate Democrats pushed sweeping health care legislation to the brink of Senate passage, crushing a year-end Republican filibuster against President Barack Obama’s call to remake the nation’s health care system. The 60-39 vote marked the third time in as many days Democrats posted a supermajority needed to advance the legislation.
Full Story AT&T.
US aware ‘Nigerian’ prepared for terror attack
The US was aware that “a Nigerian” in Yemen was being prepared for a terrorist attack – weeks before an attempted bombing on a US plane.
ABC News and the New York Times say there was intelligence to this effect, but its source is unclear.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab flew from Lagos to Amsterdam before changing planes for a flight to Detroit on which he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb.
The Netherlands is to introduce body scanners on US flights within weeks.
Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst said Mr Abdulmutallab did not raise any concerns as he passed through Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to board the flight.
She said the airport would be able to use body scanners on all flights to the US from the airport in three weeks. Nigerian authorities also said they would start using the machines next year.
Full Story BBC News – US aware ‘Nigerian’ prepared for terror attack.
Update on Our Brave New Slavery: Yes, It Applies to American Citizens, Too
I wrote a piece here a few days ago on a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, in which the justices agreed with the passionate plea of the Obama Administration to uphold — and establish as legal precedent — some of the most egregious of the Bush Administration’s authoritarian perversions. This was the gist of the ruling:
The Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.
One of the attorneys involved in the case rightly likened the ruling to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which the Court declared that any person of African descent brought to the United States as a slave — or their descendants, even if they had been freed — could never be citizens of the United States and were not protected by the Constitution. They were non-persons under the law; sub-humans.
I noted the grim irony that this principle of non-personhood had now been reintroduced into the law of the land by our first African-American president. (But this is only to be expected, given the law of opposites that so often governs American politics: only a lifelong Red-baiter like Nixon could make an opening to Communist China; only a supposed liberal like Bill Clinton could gut the federal welfare system. And only an African-American president could reintroduce the principle of slavery and get away with it. No doubt it will be a woman president who finally re-imposes a total ban on abortion.)
Full Story Update on Our Brave New Slavery: Yes, It Applies to American Citizens, Too.
Thank Dennis Kucinich For Launching Fannie/Freddie Investigation
We set a goal today of 100 donors to thank Dennis Kucinich for launching an investigation into the unlimited Fannie/Freddie bailout that the White House tried to hide in the Christmas Eve news dump.
We’re already up to 90. Can you help put it over the top and reward his leadership on this issue?
Leadership in both parties has kept any kind of investigation into these government sponsored entities (GSEs) from happening. But Dennis Kuchinch is the Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and he just doesn’t give a fuck.
It’s the right thing to do, it’s smart and it puts him in the driver’s seat. Good for Dennis.
Full Story FDL Action » Thank Dennis Kucinich For Launching Fannie/Freddie Investigation.
How to Solve the Climate Problem
Buy it Here
The following is excerpted from James Hansen’s “Storms of My Grandchildren,” the climate scientist’s new book about what is needed to stop global warming.
We have finally arrived at the main story: what we need to do to solve the climate problem, and how we can save a future for our grandchildren.
The problem demands a solution with a clear framework and a strong backbone. Yes, I know that halting and reversing the growth of carbon dioxide in the air requires an “all hands on deck” approach– there is no “silver bullet” solution for world energy requirements.
People need to make basic changes in the way the live. Countries need to cooperate. Matters as seemingly intractable as population must be addressed. And the required changes must be economically efficient. Such a pathway exists and is achievable.
Let’s define what a workable backbone and framework should look like. The essential backbone is a rising price on carbon applied at the source (the mine, wellhead, or port of entry), such that it would affect all activities that use fossil fuels, directly or indirectly.
Full Story How to Solve the Climate Problem.
Rachel Maddow – questioning during KSM’s torture
Rachel reveals that the questioning of KSM was “focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between al Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link… there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
Part 2
Top 10 Healing Foods Of The Decade
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. — Hippocrates, father of medicine, 431 B.C.
Eat Food. Not Too much. Mostly Plants. — Michael Pollan, renowned food expert and journalist, 2007 A.D.
The healing properties of food have been reported by cultures worldwide throughout history. However, the past decade has presented an explosion of clinical research to show specifically what health benefits individual foods can offer, identifying the various nutrients and phytochemicals associated with these benefits.
Many fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed whole foods have properties that can benefit our health. Studies in the past decade have taken nutritional research beyond protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. Chemicals in the plants called phytochemicals have been a specific focus in the past decade, offering benefits such as cancer prevention, cholesterol reduction, and hormone regulation, to name a few.
There is truly a cornucopia of nutritional benefits that have been discovered. Here are a few “superfoods” that have received a lot of press in the past decade for their research-supported health benefits:
Full Story Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald: Let Food Be Thy Medicine: Top 10 Healing Foods Of The Decade.
Eight GOP Senators Opposed Bill That Funded Airport Screening And Explosive Detection
Some of the same Republican lawmakers currently criticizing the President for softness on terrorism voted back in July 2007 against legislation that, among other reforms, provided $250 million for airport screening and explosive detection equipment.
The Improving America’s Security Act of 2007 was a relatively non-controversial measure that effectively implemented several un-acted-upon recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. Eighty-five Senators voted in favor of the bill’s passage. Seven missed the vote (several of whom were on the campaign trail, including Barack Obama, John McCain and Chris Dodd).
Eight Republican Senators, however, voted against passage, including Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Tom Coburn (R-Okl.) Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), James Inhofe (R-Okl.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ari.).
Full Story Eight GOP Senators Opposed Bill That Funded Airport Screening And Explosive Detection.
Is the “Great Void” One-Billion Light Years Across the Imprint of Another Universe or a Statistical Error?
In 2004 astronomers found an enormous hole in the southern hemisphere of the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen “dark matter.” This was a startling finding, since accepted models of the early universe say that the big bang created an initially uniform cosmic landscape, when viewed on large scales. While earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in the large-scale structure of the Universe, this discovery dwarfed them all. This “nothing” is an enormous hole in the cosmos that defies standard cosmology and might just be the imprint of another universe bumping against our own while some astronomers suggested the spot could be a supervoid, a remnant of an early phase transition in the universe.
This giant cold spot has a cosmic microwave background a chilly 20 to 45 per cent lower than the average for the rest of the sky, according to NASA’s WMAP satellite.
Smitten, astronomer Lawrence Rudnick decided to take a closer look in 2007 by examining a survey done by the Very Large Array radio telescope in Socorro, New Mexico. His team announced that the most likely cause of the cold spot was a giant void nearly 1 billion light years across that contained almost no stars, galaxies or dark matter.
Full Story Is the “Great Void” One-Billion Light Years Across the Imprint of Another Universe or a Statistical Error?.
Politico’s Mike Allen slammed as Cheney ’stenographer’
Journalists are attacking Politico and reporter Mike Allen after an article Wednesday featuring former Vice President Dick Cheney accusing President Obama of insufficiently responding to the failed Christmas terror attempt.
A number of writers and bloggers say Politico failed to perform the fact-checking role expected of reporters, pointing to questionable assertions from Cheney that went unchecked in Allen’s story.
The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan labeled Allen “Cheney’s Chief Spokesman” and quipped that Cheney should “be paying him.”
“There he goes again,” Sullivan said of Allen, “the mouthpiece for Rove and Cheney, believing his ‘access’ as a stenographer makes him a journalist. It doesn’t. It makes him a stenographer.”
“Allen gussies up his source’s bile with a few fig leaf sentences and a gesture from a Democratic rebuttal,” Sullivan added.
Full Story Politico’s Mike Allen slammed as Cheney ’stenographer’ | Raw Story.
Governor Of Katrina-Ravaged Louisiana Tries To Block Climate Change Regulation
Even as the Senate argues whether to pass clean-energy legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally moving to regulate global warming pollution. One of the leading opponents to the EPA’s proposed regulations, slated to go into effect in March, 2010, is Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA). On Monday, Jindal “and the secretaries of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Louisiana Economic Development filed objections with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson,” claiming the Supreme-Court-mandated standards “will certainly have profound negative economic impacts“:
There is no doubt this change will certainly have profound negative economic impacts on the state of Louisiana, as well as the entire country.
In reality, regulations to limit greenhouse gases would reward business investment in labor instead of pollution, in new technology and development instead of reliance on 19th-century fuel sources. An analysis by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute found that strong regulation and standards would create billions in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs:
Full Story Think Progress » Governor Of Katrina-Ravaged Louisiana Tries To Block Climate Change Regulation.
STEPHEN GREEN: A Lawless Presidency
Why the Bush Crowd Shouldn’t Leave the Jurisdiction
It is ironic that a president who owed his election to office to a U.S. Supreme Court decision – and a narrow one at that – spent so much of his eight years in office battling that same court, and the institutions which are the arbiters of international humanitarian law as well.
An early sign that George Bush was receiving (and possibly asking for) bad legal advice, particularly from the staffs of Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, occurred in October 2001, when lawyers from these departments informed him that the Constitution (Fourth Amendment) would permit him to use the U.S. military to arrest several suspected terrorists in the suburbs of Buffalo.
In the end, virulent opposition from attorneys in the State and Justice Departments and the National Security Council prevailed, and the FBI was sent to make the arrests.
An even more embarrassing condemnation of the administration’s legal acuity was delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross in February 2004, with the publication of its “Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation.”
The United States and its Coalition allies, all of which had, of course, signed the Geneva Conventions in 1949 and the protocols of 1970, were accused in the report of:
• brutality against protected persons upon capture and initial custody, sometimes causing death or serious injury;
• absence of notification to their families of arrest of persons deprived of their liberty;
• physical or psychological coercion during interrogation to secure information;
• prolonged solitary confinement in cells devoid of daylight;
• excessive and disproportionate use of force against persons deprived of their liberty, resulting in death or injury during their period of internment.
Full Story Stephen Green: A Lawless Presidency.
Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid
Russia is considering sending a spacecraft to a large asteroid to knock it off its path and prevent a possible collision with Earth, the head of the country’s space agency said Wednesday.
Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis, telling Golos Rossii radio that it would invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project once it is finalized.
ON DEADLINE: Asteroid details
When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37, but have since lowered their estimate.
Further studies ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) above Earth’s surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters
Full Story Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid – USATODAY.com.
Obama set to launch vision for NASA
President Obama will chart a course for NASA within weeks, based on the advice of a handful of key advisers in the administration and Congress.
Obama, who met Dec. 16 with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, hasn’t said when or how he’ll announce his new policy.
The announcement likely will come by the time the president releases his fiscal 2011 budget in early February, because he must decide how much money the space agency should get.
In determining NASA’s future policy, Obama must decide whether to increase the agency’s budget to pay for goals such as sending astronauts to the moon or Mars in missions that could be decades away.
Full Story Obama set to launch vision for NASA – USATODAY.com.
Lithuanian parliamentary commission confirms presence of CIA prisons
A commission set up by the Lithuanian parliament acknowledged last week that at least two sites had been established inside the country to serve as secret detention camps for the CIA’s “war on terror.”
The parliamentary enquiry into the CIA’s activities in Lithuania commenced its investigations following a US media report in August revealing that the agency had organised a secret facility near the capital of Vilnius. It now emerges that at least two sites were established on Lithuania soil—the first of which was already operational in 2002. This admission by Lithuania parliamentarians is the first official confirmation by a European country that it housed such CIA detention centres.
The prisons in Lithuania belonged to the worldwide gulag of “black sites” run by the CIA to interrogate and torture prisoners. These torture prisons were used to systematically subject those deemed to be terrorist suspects to sleep deprivation, waterboarding and beatings in order to obtain information or extort confessions.
Full Story Lithuanian parliamentary commission confirms presence of CIA prisons.
Growing Demand for Soybeans Threatens Amazon Rainforest
Some 3,000 years ago, farmers in eastern China domesticated the soybean. In 1765, the first soybeans were planted in North America. Today the soybean occupies more U.S. cropland than wheat. And in Brazil, where it spread even more rapidly, the soybean is invading the Amazon rainforest.
For close to two centuries after its introduction into the United States the soybean languished as a curiosity crop. Then during the 1950s, as Europe and Japan recovered from the war and as economic growth gathered momentum in the United States, the demand for meat, milk, and eggs climbed. But with little new grassland to support the expanding beef and dairy herds, farmers turned to grain to produce not only more beef and milk but also more pork, poultry, and eggs. World consumption of meat at 44 million tons in 1950 had already started the climb that would take it to 280 million tons in 2009, a sixfold rise.
This rise was partly dependent on the discovery by animal nutritionists that combining one part soybean meal with four parts grain would dramatically boost the efficiency with which livestock and poultry converted grain into animal protein. This generated a fast-growing market for soybeans from the mid-twentieth century onward. It was the soybean’s ticket to agricultural prominence, enabling soybeans to join wheat, rice, and corn as one of the world’s leading crops.
Full Story Plan B Updates – 86: Growing Demand for Soybeans Threatens Amazon Rainforest | EPI.
Israeli court orders opening of segregated road
Rights campaigners were last night celebrating the end of “Apartheid Road” after Israel’s supreme court ordered the military to open up to Palestinians a major highway that cuts through the West Bank, rather than reserving it exclusively for Israelis.
Ending two years of legal sparring between the military and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which challenged the ban on behalf of six Palestinian villages, the court ruled that the Army had not taken into account the harm to the daily lives of the Palestinians caused by the closure.
ACRI spokeswoman Melanie Takefman said the ruling was “a huge victory” and one that could impact on other road closures. “We hope this will be the end of the segregated roads,” she said.
Full Story Israeli court orders opening of segregated road – World – NZ Herald News.
Carter Tried To Stop Bush’s Energy Disasters – 28 Years Ago
Thom Hartmann
In his recent news conference, George Bush Jr. suggested that our nation’s “problem” with high gasoline prices was caused by the lack of a national energy policy, and tried to blame it all on Bill Clinton. First, Junior said, “This is a problem that’s been a long time in coming. We haven’t had an energy policy in this country.”
This was followed by, “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying to the American people — 10 years ago if we’d had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence. And — but we haven’t done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we’re in.” As is so often the case, Bush was lying.
Consider President Jimmy Carter’s April 18, 1977 speech. Since it was given nearly three decades ago, when many of the reporters in Bush’s White House were children, it’s understandable that they don’t remember it. But it’s inexcusable that Bush and the mainstream media (which, after all, has the ability to do research) would completely ignore it. It was the speech that established the strategic petroleum reserve, birthed the modern solar power industry, led to the insulation of millions of American homes, and established America’s first national energy policy. “With the exception of preventing war,” said Jimmy Carter, a man of peace, “this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes.”
He added: “It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. “We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.
“We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.” Carter bluntly pointed out that: “The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.” He called the new energy policy he was proposing, “[T]he ‘moral equivalent of war’ — except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.”
Full Story Carter Tried To Stop Bush’s Energy Disasters – 28 Years Ago.
US to impose duties on imported Chinese steel pipes
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) said it had made a “final” decision Wednesday that the subsidized pipes adversely impacted the domestic steel industry, paving the way for the Commerce Department to impose countervailing duties of up to nearly 16 percent on the pipes.
This is the largest countervailing duty case filed against China, based on the value of trade, lawyers said.
Beijing had “strongly” opposed the unfair subsidy claims investigated by Washington since early 2009, calling them “blind accusations.”
From 2006 to 2008, imports of such Chinese pipes increased by a massive 203 percent. They were valued at 2.6 billion dollars last year.
Full Story AFP: US to impose duties on imported Chinese steel pipes.
French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax
France’s constitutional court rejected a proposed tax on carbon emissions, saying a web of exemptions violated the principal of equality and rendered efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions ineffective.
The government said it will make new proposals on Jan. 20.
The tax, which would have started on Jan. 1, was set at 17 euros ($24.38) per ton of carbon-dioxide emissions, President Nicolas Sarkozy said in September. To make the tax more palatable, he partially or fully exempted power plants, public transport, airlines, farming and fishing, as well as 1,018 older cement, steel and glass factories.
Full Story French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
Paul Krugman’s Health Care Sell-Out: The Health ‘Reform’ Bill in Congress Is Worse Than Nothing
Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman, one of the few liberal columnists writing for the New York Times, claims that at some point in the hoary past when he “began writing a lot about health care,” he was in favor of a Canadian-style single-payer health care system. He adds that even today if he thought there was “any chance of creating Medicare for All any time in the next decade,” he would be “pushing for single-payer now.”
But on Christmas, Krugman threw in the towel, calling on progressives to support the Senate’s version of health care legislation. Suggesting that the so-called Senate Health Reform Bill, if it had been the law back in Dickens’ time in England, would have saved Tiny Tim without any need for the belated charitable intervention of Ebenezer Scrooge, Krugman says progressives should recognize that the Senate bill is the best they can hope for, and that they need to accept that politics is “the art of the possible.”
Krugman goes on to say that despite some “flaws and limitations,” which he leaves unexplained, the Senate bill is “a big win” for progressives–and for America.”
But is it?
The Public Option Is Dead Or Is It?
When Senate Democrats removed a public option from their final healthcare reform package, supporters of such a provision complained bitterly, as it was widely assumed such a move would permanently kill chances a federally run coverage option would become law.
And while the public option may indeed have met its final end, the concept has been declared dead before — only to have risen again.
To send a final healthcare bill to President Obama to sign into law, congressional Democrats must now reconcile separate House and Senate legislation into a single package each chamber can agreed to. Since the version passed by the House includes a public option provision, it's still at least possible for it to be pushed into that ultimate bill sent to the White House.
Increasingly vocal House Democrats are demanding it. And the potential for a public option to come through is real enough that just days after the Senate was throught to have nailed the public option coffin shut with its Christmas Eve vote, business interests opposed to the idea are still keeping up their fight.
Full Story On The Hill: The Public Option Is Dead Or Is It?.
The Global War on Stealth Underwear
There is no “war” against terrorism. What George W. Bush launched and Barack Obama insists on perpetuating does not qualify. Not if by war one means doing the obvious and checking a highly suspicious air traveler’s underwear to see if explosives have been sewn in. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had put the stuff in his shoes we would have had him because that was tried before, but our government was too preoccupied with fighting unnecessary conventional wars and developing anti-missile defense systems to anticipate such a primitive delivery system.
The explosives-laden underwear-worn by an airline passenger who had previously been flagged as a potentially dangerous fanatic, and who had paid cash for his ticket and had no checked luggage-was the terrorist’s weapon of choice, one that could have blown a hole in the side of Northwest Airlines’ Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas Day, killing hundreds of innocents. But it is not a weapon to be effectively countered with the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American combat troops. Nor can it be stopped by the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of planes, subs and missiles in our arsenal of Cold War-era weapons, part of an annual defense budget that is higher in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any time in the past half-century.
Full Story The Global War on Stealth Underwear | CommonDreams.org.
Made in China Commercial on CNN
Corporate Treason.
Corporations Hate Americana. Read the label they show towards teh beginning. Apparently THAT is supposed to make you feel better.
Take Note: This is the next Rightwing barrage in the race to the bottom
Martin Made in China CNN – 视频 – 优酷视频 – 在线观看 – Martin CNN.
10 Industries That Will GAIN The Most Jobs In Next Decade
Though Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called this decade “the big zero” — as in zero wage growth, zero stock market growth, etc. — it’s probably safe to say that the last ten years weren’t a complete wash.
Of course, we've seen the deterioration of certain industries and massive disruption in employment. But, in the next decade there will certainly be a corresponding expansion in some unexpected areas. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast the industries in which it expects the most job growth over the next decade.
As demographics shift toward an older population and manufacturing jobs in particular dry up, the great bulk of the new jobs — 96% of the increase in new employment — are projected to be created by service industries such as health care services or business services. But there are still a few outliers.
Check out the list — and vote for the ones you think have the most growth potential — below:
Full Story 10 Industries That Will GAIN The Most Jobs In Next Decade.
Jim DeMint Now Says Democrats Are Rushing TSA Nominee
A Republican senator who has been blocking President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration complains that Democrats are trying to rush a vote on the nominee without adequate debate.
Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has placed a hold on the nomination of former FBI agent and police detective Erroll Southers.
DeMint said Wednesday that he is concerned that Southers would let TSA screeners join a labor union.
Full Story Jim DeMint Now Says Democrats Are Rushing TSA Nominee.
POST-MADOFF REFORMS AT SEC SCALED BACK, DELAYED, OR DUMPED
Plan To Inspect 10,000 Money Managers Pared Back 83 Percent After Lobbying
Wall Street Waits as SEC Fails to Bring Madoff-Inspired Reforms –
Mary Schapiro, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said she wanted to show that her agency was cracking down after missing Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. In May, she proposed that almost 10,000 money managers undergo surprise inspections to make sure they weren’t ripping off clients.
“Investors are looking to the SEC to assure the safekeeping of their assets,” Schapiro said at the time. “We cannot let them down.”
On Dec. 16, she settled for something less sweeping. Schapiro joined four other commissioners in approving a rule that requires about 1,600 U.S. fund managers to submit to unannounced audits, 83 percent fewer than seven months ago. The revision came after lobbying by fund companies, including executives from T. Rowe Price Group Inc., who met with Schapiro, and Legg Mason Inc., who met with another commissioner, SEC records show.
Full Story Wall Street Waits as SEC Fails to Bring Madoff-Inspired Reforms – Bloomberg.com.
The Lost Decade
by Brent Budowsky
The lost decade that will thankfully come to an end began with a huge bubble of shameless greed and wanton wealth that was labeled the NASDAQ bubble, which ended in a collapse accompanied by huge paydays, mammoth bonuses and lucrative stock option deals for those who caused it.
The lost decade now ends with a huge bubble of shameless greed and wanton wealth that was labelled the greatest crash since the Great Depression, and was accompanied by huge paydays, mammoth bonuses, and lucrative stock option deals for those who caused it, while working stiffs paid for this largesse with giant bailouts and suffered from this greed with 17% real jobless.
Try this. Most people don't realize it, but a date can be Googled, and one can reread all the news and stories from that date. Google March 10, 2000 and add NASDAQ, which was the time when that market reached 5,000. The stories might as well read from today. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them.
Full Story Brent Budowsky: The Lost Decade | BuzzFlash.org.
Bush Administration freed Gitmo detainees behind airline bomb plot
Two Gitmo detainees who were freed by the Bush Administration ended up in Yemen and have been identified as leaders in the Al-Qeada plot to blow up flight 253 according to information in Dept, of Defense documents.
The two were identified as Gitmo prisoner,#333 Muhammad Attik al-Harbi and prisoner #327 Said Ali Shari, who, according to ABC News, were released Nov.9 2007 and sent to Saudi Arabia.
Both were described in documents as “military commanders” and are now part of the Al-Qaeda leadership in Yemen.
Full Story Bush Administration freed Gitmo detainees behind airline bomb plot.
Dutch court to take on Shell Nigeria cases
Royal Dutch Shell and its Nigerian unit will face compensation demands in a Dutch court for alleged damage caused by oil spills in Nigeria after the court ruled on Wednesday it was competent to handle the cases.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerians aim to sue Shell and Nigeria-based Shell Petroleum Development Co. (SPDC) in a district court in The Hague on charges related to incidents of oil spills in Nigeria.
Shell had asked for a ruling on whether the Dutch court had jurisdiction over SPDC’s Nigerian activities, but the court rejected a claim of incompetence.
“The court has decided that it is competent, so we will be handling the case,” said a court spokeswoman. “The facts are connected and for reasons of efficiency the cases against Royal Dutch Shell and Shell Nigeria will be handled jointly.”
Full Story Dutch court to take on Shell Nigeria cases | Reuters.
New bill introduced to try and lower credit card interest rates
Maybe you spent and spent over the holidays. And now the painful part is those credit card statements are coming in.
You may have noticed the interest rates went up. Well, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter proposed a bill to put a stop to that.
Congresswoman slaughter wants to put a cap on interest rates. It means, you could use your card here at the mall or any other store, and not have to worry that the credit card company is going to charge you even more down the road.
Stephanie major, the manager of Francesca’s at Eastview Mall, says fewer people are using credit cards because interest rates and fees keep going up.
“They’re just making it so you can’t pay your minimum balance and people are shying away from getting credit cards.”
Full Story www.WHEC.com – New bill introduced to try and lower credit card interest rates.
OPS: Have to wonder how hard they will actually try. Kabuki?
Democrat Socialists Vote to Unilaterally Rebrand GOP As the ‘New Dixiecrat Party’
At their annual meeting on Dec. 25 in San Francisco, leaders of the Democrat Socialist National Committee (DSNC) unanimously approved a resolution that would unilaterally rename the Republican Party the “New Dixiecrat Party.”
The action by the nation’s top liberals is seen as a response to a resolution floated by the Republican National Committee earlier this year that rebranded 250-year-old Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
In remarks before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her party had taken note of discussions after the 2008 elections about the damage done to the Republican “brand” during the Bush presidency. Many political observers believe that by rubberstamping Bush’s initiatives, especially the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq and anti-regulatory economic policies that caused the Bush Recession, the GOP leadership had befouled its image with the public.
Full Story Pensito Review » News » Democrat Socialists Vote to Unilaterally Rebrand GOP As the ‘New Dixiecrat Party’.
Big Budget Deficits Demand Solutions
As Congress puts the final touches on its health care reform bill next month, the Obama administration is expected to pivot to job creation and deficit reduction on the domestic front, the two of which, the White House has said, go hand-in-hand.
“If we can't grow our economy, then it is going to be that much harder for us to reduce the deficit,” President Barack Obama said at a White House jobs summit earlier this month. “The single most important thing we could do right now for deficit reduction is to spark strong economic growth.”
With millions unemployed, the government is facing a two-fold problem: much lower income and tax receipts combined with an increased demand for social safety net spending such as unemployment compensation.
As the economy continued to be mired in recession, the government accumulated a record $1.42 trillion budget deficit in the 2009 fiscal year. Over the next decade, based on the administration’s current projections, the budget deficit is not expected to fall below $739 billion per year. In total, that will add $9.05 trillion to the national debt, which is already a staggering $12 trillion.
Full Story Big Budget Deficits Demand Solutions | Economy In Crisis.
GMAC Set for Third Cash Infusion
For the third time since December 2008, GMAC Financial Services may receive an infusion of cash from the government to keep the company afloat amid its poor performance.
While bailouts of huge, failing companies may seem like a thing of the past as some of the largest recipients of taxpayer aid begin to pay back their loans, others are seeking more federal aid.
For the third time since December 2008, GMAC Financial Services may receive an infusion of cash from the government to keep the company afloat amid its poor performance, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company, which services car loans for GM and Chrysler, is deemed vital to the U.S. auto industry, which the federal government has invested heavily in to save.
“As we have previously stated, GMAC has been conducting a strategic review of its business and evaluating options to address the challenges at ResCap and the mortgage operations,” said GMAC spokeswoman Gina Proia in a statement to CNN. “Critical objectives in the process would be to take actions that position GMAC for improved financial performance and to repay the U.S. government.”
The struggling lender is currently in negotiations to receive approximately $3.5 billion, according to the report.
That would be in addition to the$13.5 billion the company has already received through the TARP program. The federal government currently owns a 35 percent stake in the beleaguered company.
Full Story GMAC Set for Third Cash Infusion | Economy In Crisis.
10 Defining Feminist Moments of 2009
A look back on the times in 2009 when feminists asserted ourselves and our belief in equality, often in the face of powerful opposition.
This year, I’m not keeping score of feminist victories and defeats. That strategy feels artificially black-and-white and imposes a false sense of closure on an ongoing process. Instead, I’m looking back on those times in 2009 when feminism felt strong and when feminists spoke out — the times when feminists asserted ourselves and our belief in equality, often in the face of powerful opposition, and even when it seemed like no one was listening.
A feminist moment isn’t only when we’re dancing in the streets celebrating a victory, although that certainly counts. We also reaffirm our commitment as feminists when we continue to advocate for equality despite roadblocks, setbacks and challenges. A woman running for president of the United States is a defining feminist moment, and it is also one when she loses. At such turning points, we must reassess the state of our movement and rethink its direction. What follows is a list of some of my defining feminist moments for the year. They’re not all positive — some, like the health care reform process, were mega-downers — but they were the moments when I felt the most sisterhood.
Full Story 10 Defining Feminist Moments of 2009 | Reproductive Justice and Gender | AlterNet.
6 Lessons Progressives Should Take Away From the Underpants Bomber Incident
What a foiled terrorist plot can tell us about bankrupt GOP thinking.
There are a few lessons to be learned about the bathroom bomber incident. Here are six lessons that come to mind:
- It is pretty easy for single, incompetent individuals to change United States federal policy through the threat of violence.
- Many Republicans believe that unions are a greater threat to national security than terrorists.
- Quite a few conservatives don’t believe any criminal suspects are entitled to due process.
- Many conservatives believe that we should institute an apartheid state against Muslims in America.
- If Al Gore had been President on September 11, 2001, there would have been no bi-partisan, United We Stand language coming from conservatives. The aggressive, partisan response we have seen to even this failed attack would have almost certainly meant impeachment proceedings against President Gore sometime in late 2001 or early 2002.
- A substantial minority of elected officials in the Democratic Party is willing to go along, or at least keep silent on with #3 and #4, either because they believe it or because they don’t have core values and think those positions are electoral winners. For the same reasons, a smaller minority of elected officials the Democratic Party would even be willing to go along with #2 and #5.
Although, since these are not the first examples of these outcomes, beliefs or counterfactuals, I guess all of these are actually reminders, not lessons.
Full Story 6 Lessons Progressives Should Take Away From the Underpants Bomber Incident | World | AlterNet.
A nation of five-year-olds
You know that we’ve reached a new level of Sovietization when you’re treated to statements from the Transportation Security Administration claiming confusion to be all a part of the plan. If you’re confused then the terrorists will be confused too. Freedom’s last hope is that nobody knows what’s going on, and the subtext is that not establishing a protocol publicly allows the TSA to be “flexible.” Just remember that even in their flexibility, the organs never make mistakes.
Let’s be honest, the TSA personnel who deal with passengers are pretty much the same just-enough-above-minimum-wage-to-justify-wearing-the-uniform rent-a-cops that the airlines used to hire before “the day that everything changed.” The only difference is that now they have the full weight of federal law enforcement behind their badges and some sort of conviction that they’re keeping the world safe from evil. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that some of them can barely read; no protocol is going to be effective when implemented by the incompetent.
But that’s just my disgruntled, i now hate airports, self bitching. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing anyone…not even super-genius, secret government agents with perfect teeth and a lovely December tan…can do to make us perfectly secure. So it really doesn’t matter who’s manning the TSA checkpoints; at least those folks have a semi-decent, if rotten, job. Hopefully they can pay the bills.
Full Story Scholars and Rogues » A nation of five-year-olds.
America the Traumatized: How 13 Events of the Decade Made Us the PTSD Nation
It’s been one helluva decade, even though we’ve reached the end without knowing what to call it. Some have tried “the aughts,” others the “double-Os.” I’m content to simply call it over. To mark its location in the great march of history, I’ve taken to calling it the millennial decade, after the great numerological transition it heralded. Yet for describing its character, nothing comes closer than the Decade of Trauma — American trauma, that is.
Here in the home of the brave, we’ve endured a decade that shattered nearly every notion of what it meant to be an American, whether you live on the left or the right. And so we shout. Or hide. Or startle too easily.
In America today, it seems we all have a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder, as evidenced by our increasingly vitriolic political environment, where reality is denied and histrionics run riot. Anger, we’re told, is the natural reaction to trauma; in people with PTSD, the anger is out of control. By that measure, the millennial decade has brought us 10 years of PTSD politics — with no end in sight.
Full Story America the Traumatized: How 13 Events of the Decade Made Us the PTSD Nation | Politics | AlterNet.
Corruption in Panama : Former President on the Lam
On December 28 — ironically, the Day of the Holy Innocents, which is Panama’s functional equivalent of April Fools Day in the United States — prosecutors revealed that they had issued an order for police to arrest former President Ernesto “Toro” Pérez Balladares and bring him in for formal interrogation and possible preventive detention on charges that he laundered the proceeds of kickbacks he received from a gambling concession contract awarded by his administration. This was no joke.
The alleged crime is money laundering, arising from a 1997 no-bid gambling concession that the Pérez Balladares administration awarded to Lucky Games SA, a subsidiary of a mostly Spanish-owned investment group. It is alleged that a piece of that business went to a company controlled by Mr. Pérez Balladares, Shelf Holdings SA, and that from the concession’s inception up until the middle of this year Toro received a steady stream of payments from Lucky Games through Shelf Holdings.
Full Story The Rag Blog: Corruption in Panama : Former President on the Lam.
Obama feigns outrage over bonuses, then approves bigger bailout for bonus-givers Fannie and Freddie
This deserves — and will get — much more than the passing reference of a weekend blog post, but it is significant to see this news go down the Christmas news dump:
“The Obama administration pledged Thursday to provide unlimited financial assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an eleventh-hour move that allows the government to exceed the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid without seeking permission from a bailout-weary Congress. The Christmas Eve announcement by the Treasury Department means that it can continue to run the companies, which were seized last year, as arms of the government for the rest of President Obama’s current term. … Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disclosed that they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009. The compensation packages [include] up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s chief executives.”
A Convenient Delusion
The same sort of public relations wizardry that once convinced Americans that cigarette smoking was harmless is now convincing our citizens that global warming is at least of little consequence
The same sort of public relations wizardry that once convinced a sizeable portion of Americans that cigarette smoking was harmless, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet, and that John Kerry’s war record was fraudulent, is now convincing an increasing number of our citizens that global warming is at least of little consequence, or, at most, a massive hoax.
This trend is reported by the Pew Research Center which, in August, 2006, found that 77% of the public believed that there is solid evidence that the earth is warming. In October, 2009, that number had dropped to 57%. In the same period, the percentage of those who denied that there is such evidence increased from 17% to 33%. An early Pew poll found that “global warming ranked dead last among 40 concerns ranked by the 1503 respondents to the poll.”
Unfortunately, as John Adams observed, “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Here are some of those stubborn facts:
- The decade of the 2000s was the warmest on record, containing eight of the ten warmest years.
- The summer Arctic ice cap is likely to disappear completely in 30 to 40 years. This alarming trend is reported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and McGill University (Canada). Ice reflects 80% of solar radiation, while the open sea absorbs 80% of the radiation, which means that an open Arctic Ocean is certain to heat up the atmosphere.
- Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which means that it “captures” incoming solar radiation. This is fortunate, for without atmospheric CO2, most of the earth would be too cold to support human life. These facts were discovered by John Tyndal in 1859 and confirmed by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. But with the advent of the industrial revolution and the massive consumption of fossil fuels, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has almost doubled to nearly 390 parts per million today.
- Methane is about 22 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and vast amounts of methane are being released in the warming arctic tundra and from the warming oceans (in the form of methane cathrate).
Full Story Scoop: Ernest Partridge: A Convenient Delusion.
You Have The Right To Be An Airline Prisoner
Just last week the Department of Transportation seemed to deliver a huge Christmas gift. They ruled that, among other things, airlines can no longer keep us waiting on tarmacs for more than three hours with no food, water or bathroom access.
This was a long time coming for many of us who had spent the equivalent of a Shark Week marathon stuck on a runway–or just those of us who thought we could somehow go our entire lives without enjoying this wonderful experience. But our terrorist friend, besides burning off his privates, has pushed the pendulum back in the other direction. The TSA is already responding in a manner that we've sadly become all too used to since 9/11. Instead of finding better ways to keep bombs and bombers off airplanes, they have reacted by not even applying a band aid to a wound, but by blindly trying to pin a tail on a donkey.
Because this guy chose the last hour to make his attempt at mass murder, instead of the 1st hour like the 9/11 hijackers, or the 5th hour or the 3.5th one, now we all have be locked in our seats like we're in a Clockwork Orange (all that is missing are the eyelid pins) for the last hour of a flight?
Full Story You Have The Right To Be An Airline Prisoner | The Smirking Chimp.
Arab States Take 4 of Top 5 Spots in Purchase of U.S. Weapons and Services
Most of the leading buyers of American military hardware in 2008 had two characteristics in common: they speak Arabic and their governments are opposed to democracy and basic freedoms. Information compiled by the Congressional Research Service revealed that the biggest recipients of U.S. arms sales last year were (in order): the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq and Egypt. With the exception of the popularly-elected government in Baghdad, all of these American military partners are ruled by autocratic or theocratic regimes.
The leading defense contractors manufacturing the weapons for these governments are Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Raytheon.
Earlier this month, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of the potential for $2.2 billion of new weapons sales to Arab dictatorships, in particular $1.2 billion worth to Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt for air-to-surface missiles, anti-ship missiles, aircraft engines, and Fast Missile Crafts (FMC). The rest of the proposed weapons sales are for the royal families of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
OPS: So who is actually arming our enemy?
The Trouser Bomber Effect: Watching Government Cure Incompetence with Idiocy
We have all been drowning in ink and losing our collective eyesight with various media attempts over the holidays to explain how a young Nigerian whose own father had warned the US Embassy in Lagos about him just last month, was allowed to climb on a an airliner at Schiphol in the Netherlands, bound for the United States.
Would requiring passengers to stand on their heads belted “securely” in their seats for the last hour before arrival to make sure no blankets, books, computers, whatever, obscured a clear vision of their laps after a full body search manually and with X-ray equipment before boarding help discover the next Abdulmutullab in time? It isn't the terrorists who have created the morass of asinine travel restrictions. They are thoughtlessly piled on by CYA-schooled public servants willing to do anything but really seriously think about what they are doing. And, like Janet Napolitano, they stand ever ready to take credit for an accident as a direct result of their planning.
There is something about terrorism that seems to bring out the absolute worst in bureaucracy in attempting to match wits with terrorists as untoward events take place.
Full Story Thomas Lipscomb: The Trouser Bomber Effect: Watching Government Cure Incompetence with Idiocy.
MOVE YOUR MONEY
The Move Your Money Project
A 4 min video worth your time
For more, go to http://moveyourmoney.info
Full-body scans at O’Hare months away
More than a year after full-body scanners were scheduled to arrive at O’Hare International Airport, the city’s aviation commissioner said the controversial security technology finally is expected to arrive in the next six months.
Some politicians and safety experts have said such scanners could have prevented the botched terror plot aboard a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day, though Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino said plans to bring the technology to O’Hare were in place before that.
The Transportation Security Administration has 150 such machines it will distribute to airports nationwide next year, spokesman Jim Fotenos said, but hasn’t finalized who will get them or when. Andolino also couldn’t say if Midway Airport will be included.
Nineteen U.S. airports already are using full-body imaging machines, which show an explicit silhouette of passengers that can identify explosives or other weapons concealed on the body.
The terror suspect aboard the plane headed for Detroit reportedly had a device attached to his body that contained an explosive.
Full Story Full-body scans at O’Hare months away – Chicago Breaking News.
OPS: Still addressing the symptom and not the root cause
Officials: U.S., Yemen reviewing targets for possible strike
The U.S. and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets in Yemen for a potential retaliation strike, two senior U.S. officials told CNN Tuesday, in the aftermath of the botched Christmas Day attack on an airliner that al Qaeda in Yemen claims it organized.
The officials asked not to be not be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information. They both stressed the effort is aimed at being ready with options for the White House if President Obama orders a retaliatory strike. The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airliner incident and its planning.
U.S. special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential al Qaeda targets in Yemen, one of the officials said. This is part of a new classified agreement with the Yemeni government that the two countries will work together and that the U.S. will remain publicly silent on its role in providing intelligence and weapons to conduct strikes.
Full Story Officials: U.S., Yemen reviewing targets for possible strike – CNN.com.
Pa. Supreme Court rules against gov on layoffs
Pennsylvania’s highest court ruled that the state constitution does not prohibit the governor from continuing to employ and pay state employees during a budget impasse.
The state Supreme Court on Monday sided with state workers’ unions and against the position that Gov. Ed Rendell had taken in the months leading up to the July 2008 budget deal.
The unions had argued that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act trumped a section of the state constitution that requires an appropriation to be passed, in most cases, before money can be paid from the state treasury.
Full Story Pa. Supreme Court rules against gov on layoffs – washingtonpost.com.
Ayatollah Khamenei’s Jet Checked, Iran Supreme Leader May Flee To Russia If Necessary
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei could flee to Russia should the situation in his country continue to spiral out of control, according to Radio Netherlands.
The media organization reports that the Supreme National Security Council ordered a check-up Sunday of the jet on standby to evacuate Khamenei and his family should the need arise.
If Khamenei does depart the country, it would be reminiscent of an historic event in Iranian history: Jan. 16, 1979, when the Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi fled Iran following an increase in violent protests. The anniversary of that event is coming up soon.
The plane check is already being viewed by some as an indication that Khamenei will in fact leave Iran, as protests continue.
This is a developing story.
Full Story Ayatollah Khamenei’s Jet Checked, Iran Supreme Leader May Flee To Russia If Necessary.
Obama orders creation of declassification center
President Obama created by executive order Tuesday a National Declassification Center to oversee efforts to make once-secret government documents public.
The order comes as part of Obama’s promise to push government to err on the side of disclosure as it tackles the need to keep certain information from the public.
In a post on the White House blog, William H. Leary, the senior director of records and access management at the National Security Council, writes that the effort is aimed at shifting the burden of defending secrecy to the government.
“While the Government must be able to prevent the public disclosure of information that would compromise the national security, a democratic government accountable to the people must be as transparent as possible and must not withhold information for self-serving reasons or simply to avoid embarrassment,” Leary wrote.
Full Story 44 – Obama orders creation of declassification center.
OPS: Talk is cheap. We’ll see. So far, the transparency promised has not materialized.
Disaster brewing in Miami’s commercial real estate market
It’s a great time to be a commercial tenant in downtown Miami or the Brickell Avenue financial district, thanks to a glut of new office space that will begin flooding the market next year.
But for everyone else in the downtown commercial real estate game — lenders, brokers, bankers, construction workers — there’s a disaster brewing, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1980s.
The recession already has businesses downsizing or closing. At the same time, there are no new tenants moving into the area and vacancy rates have soared to 15 percent — a level unseen since 2004.
Full Story Disaster brewing in Miami’s commercial real estate market | McClatchy.
American Greetings to close Michigan plant
On December 22, the greeting card and party goods maker American Greetings announced it would close its Kalamazoo, Michigan, plant by April, resulting in 225 layoffs. Company spokesman Patrice Sadd explained that the firm had reached a “strategic alliance” with New York-based rival Amscan, Inc., and would no longer produce party products of its own.
All the layoffs at the Kalamazoo DesignWare plant will take place between now and March, the company said. American Greetings will also eliminate 12 positions in its Cleveland, Ohio, headquarters. The DesignWare plant manufactures disposable plates, napkins, cups, and other party accessories. American Greetings’ eight other US plants, some of which produce greeting cards, will remain open.
American Greetings, which competes with Hallmark in the greeting card market, offered no explanation for the Kalamazoo plant closure, announced just three days before Christmas, besides saying the compact with Amscan would “broaden its portfolio.” The company will receive $25 million from Amscan and a warrant to buy 2 percent of common stock in its parent company, AAH Holdings.
Full Story American Greetings to close Michigan plant.
U.S. eyeing more targeted sanctions against Iran
The United States and its allies are weighing focused sanctions against Iran’s leadership rather than broad-based penalties that they fear could harm the protest movement, officials and diplomats said.
Increasingly frustrated by Iranian defiance over its nuclear program, the Obama administration has been crafting a “menu” of sanctions that could be imposed by the United Nations or in concert by the United States and its European allies.
U.S. officials, congressional aides and Western diplomats said the administration has grown increasingly cool to broad-based sanctions targeting the oil sector with the aim of destabilizing the Iranian economy.
Full Story U.S. eyeing more targeted sanctions against Iran – Yahoo! News.
Setback for Israeli housing plan
Israel announced yesterday that it is building nearly 700 new apartments for Jews in east Jerusalem, where Palestinians hope to set up the capital of a future state.
The United States, Palestinians and the European Union condemned the plan, a fresh setback to American efforts to restart Mideast peace talks.
The Palestinians have said they will not resume talks without an Israeli settlement freeze, and criticised what they said was another show of bad faith by Israel.
“With each individual action it undertakes on the ground, Israel is saying no to meaningful negotiations,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, who is trying to find a formula for reviving negotiations, is due in Israel and the West Bank in the second week of January.
Full Story Setback for Israeli housing plan – World – NZ Herald News.
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?
By Ray McGovern -
In the past, I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors — the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s Aug. 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.”
Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation — as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all — the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA Torturers Running Scared.”]
Panetta is even older than I, and hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”
As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest — not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.
Three of the seven — George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden — were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination and illegal eavesdropping.
Full Story Consortiumnews.com.
The Iranian Nuke Forgeries
CIA Determines Documents Were Fabricated
U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.
Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told me that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.
The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted “an Asian intelligence source” – a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials – as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.
The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear programme targets if diplomacy fails.
Full Story Gareth Porter: The Iranian Nuke Forgeries.
Federal Reserve Board Urged to Ban Mortgage Kickbacks that Cost Homeowners Billions
As the year ends with a spotlight on pending health and financial reforms in Congress, the Federal Reserve closed its comment period for mortgage rules that could save families billions of dollars. In a detailed comment letter, a Washington organization dedicated to eliminating abusive financial practices recommends that the Federal Reserve Board strengthen a proposal to ban routine kickbacks for steering borrowers into unnecessarily risky or expensive home loans.
If finalized as proposed, the ban on kickbacks (often called “yield-spread premiums”) would apply to mortgage brokers, loan officers, and any party that originates mortgages for lenders who fund the loans.
“The Federal Reserve has proposed to correct a direct conflict of interest between consumers and lenders, one that fueled the dangerous lending that triggered the housing crisis,” says Kathleen Keest, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). “Many people are still wondering why so many bad loans were made. A big part of the answer is yield-spread premiums. These kickbacks are easy to hide from consumers, and they encourage brokers to aggressively market the worst kinds of loans — even when their customers qualify for better.”
Full Story On The Hill: Federal Reserve Board Urged to Ban Mortgage Kickbacks that Cost Homeowners Billions.
Sprint fed customer GPS data to cops over 8 million times
A blogger has released audio of Sprint’s Electronic Surveillance Manager describing the carrier’s cooperation with law enforcement. Among the revelations are that Sprint has so far filled over 8 million requests from LEOs for customer GPS data.
Christopher Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing, has made public an audio recording of Sprint/Nextel’s Electronic Surveillance Manager describing how his company has provided GPS location data about its wireless customers to law enforcement over 8 million times. That’s potentially millions of Sprint/Nextel customers who not only were probably unaware that their wireless provider even had an Electronic Surveillance Department, but who certainly did not know that law enforcement offers could log into a special Sprint Web portal and, without ever having to demonstrate probable cause to a judge, gain access to geolocation logs detailing where they’ve been and where they are.
Through a mix of documents unearthed by Freedom of Information Act requests and the aforementioned recording, Soghoian describes how “the government routinely obtains customer records from ISPs detailing the telephone numbers dialed, text messages, emails and instant messages sent, web pages browsed, the queries submitted to search engines, and geolocation data, detailing exactly where an individual was located at a particular date and time.”
The fact that federal, state, and local law enforcement can obtain communications “metadata”—URLs of sites visited, e-mail message headers, numbers dialed, GPS locations, etc.—without any real oversight or reporting requirements should be shocking, but it isn’t. The courts ruled in 2005 that law enforcement doesn’t need to show probable cause to obtain your physical location via the cell phone grid. All of the aforementioned metadata can be accessed with an easy-to-obtain pen register/trap & trace order. But given the volume of requests, it’s hard to imagine that the courts are involved in all of these.
Full Story Sprint fed customer GPS data to cops over 8 million times.
Health Care Industry Coordinating Effort To Opt States Out Of Health Care Reform
As Congress prepares to pass the final health care reform legislation early next year, health care lobbyists are mobilizing legislatures in approximately 14 states to ratify constitutional amendments that would repeal all or parts of the new measure. “The states where the amendment has been introduced are also places where the health care industry has spent heavily on political contributions,” the New York Times notes:
Over the last six years, health care interests have spent $394 million on contributions in states around the country; about $73 million of that went to those 14 states. Of that, health insurance companies spent $18.2 million.
Overall, at least 21 states have indicated a desire to opt out of federal health care reform or block fundamental features of the reform bill, including mandatory health coverage. While Arizona, is the only state legislature to place an opt-out measure on the 2010 ballot, a significant number of gubernatorial and state legislature candidates across the country have also said that they are strongly “leaning towards” opting out of reform.
Full Story Think Progress » Health Care Industry Coordinating Effort To Opt States Out Of Health Care Reform.
Most frequent ‘Meet the Press’ guest in 2009: Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich On Sunday, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on NBC’s “Meet the Press” where he said he suspected that “every Republican running in ‘10 and again in ‘12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal” the health care reform legislation. The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen points out that Gingrich has been the show’s most frequent guest in the past year:
[Sunday]was Gingrich’s fifth appearance on “MTP” just this year. In fact, Newt Gingrich, despite not having held any position in government for over a decade, was the single most frequent guest on “Meet the Press” in 2009 of any political figure in the United States. Literally.
From March to December, Gingrich appeared on “MTP,” on average, every other month. No one else in American politics was on the show this often. [...]
Keep in mind, “Meet the Press” didn’t have the actual Speaker of the House on at all this year. It also featured zero appearances from all of the other living former House Speakers (Hastert, Wright, Foley) combined.
Full Story Think Progress » Most frequent ‘Meet the Press’ guest in 2009: Newt Gingrich..
The Cash Committee: How Wall Street Wins On The Hill
The question was simple: Should the lending practices of auto dealers be regulated?
It was already October and the 42 Democrats and 29 Republicans on the House Committee on Financial Services had spent the better part of the year hashing out the details of a new federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers from dangerous and deceptive financial products.
Auto dealers seemed like an obvious target for the new agency; nearly every time someone buys a car, the dealer also sells them an auto loan, complete with promises like zero per cent interest and a pile of cash back. Americans hold some $850 billion in car debt and dealers are responsible for marketing roughly four-fifths of that amount. They pocket lucrative commissions with little oversight, and the committee seemed poised to change that.
Full Story The Cash Committee: How Wall Street Wins On The Hill.
Sex-obsessed Foley returns to limelight with Facebook ‘drunk smear’
An Internet rumor about a Democratic senator being drunk on the Senate floor has prompted Mark Foley, the disgraced Florida Republican, to issue harsh words of condemnation that some observers see as being hypocritical.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) was accused last week by an anonymous YouTube user of being drunk on the Senate floor December 22 when he criticized Republicans for negotiating in bad faith on health care reform. The video, posted by a user named “SocialistsSteal,” shows Baucus slurring his words on several occasions during his address.
As David Weigel points out at the Washington Independent, Baucus often slurs his words, and Politico reports that the Montana senator’s spokespeople are slamming the claim as an “untrue personal smear internet rumor.”
Full Story Sex-obsessed Foley returns to limelight with Facebook ‘drunk smear’ | Raw Story.
Karl Rove Divorce: GOP Strategist Breaks With Wife Darby
Famed Republican strategist Karl Rove got divorced last week, Politico reports.
Spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “Karl Rove and his wife, Darby, were granted a divorce last week. The couple came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship. There will be no further comment and the family requests that its privacy be respected.”
Karl married Darby Hickson in 1986. They have one son, Andrew. Rove's previous marriage to a Houston socialite ended after a year.
Actor Randy Quaid recently complained in a letter to a judge that Rove hit on his wife, Evi.
Rove’s memoir, “Courage and Consequence,” comes out in March 2010.
Full Story Karl Rove Divorce: GOP Strategist Breaks With Wife Darby.
Ben Nelson’s Medicaid Deal Approved By Only 17% Of Nebraskans
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb,) doesn’t seem to be getting any favors from his local constituents for bringing home the health care pork.
Just 17 percent of Nebraska voters said they support the deal their senator cut in the last round of health care negotiations, in which the federal government will pick up the tab for Medicaid expansion in the state.
The number comes from a new Rasmussen Reports survey, which, considering the long-standing quibbles with the firm’s polling methods, means it should be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, 17 percent is strikingly low, especially when one considers how much Nebraska will benefit financially from the deal struck by Nelson — the Congressional Budget Office pegged the amount at $100 million.
The survey also highlights intense disapproval of Nelson within his home state. If Republican Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson in the 2012 Senate election, he would currently get 61 percent of the vote to Nelson’s 30 percent, according to the survey. Nelson’s low approval stems from more than just his support for health care reform. As Rasmussen notes:
Full Story Ben Nelson’s Medicaid Deal Approved By Only 17% Of Nebraskans.
OPS: Maybe they’ll fire the bastard
Rosa DeLauro, Key Pro-Choice Dem, Makes Case For Senate Abortion Language
A key pro-choice House Democrat, working on health care in Congress, hinted on Monday that said she might be willing to support the Senate’s abortion language.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) who has been tasked by leadership with helping hammer out a compromise on abortion between the two chambers, said she was not thrilled with either the House or Senate legislation’s provisions. But in an interview with the Huffington Post, the Connecticut Democrat did say she would support the Senate’s version of abortion-related language provided that she could confirm her belief that it did not go beyond current law.
“There are some questions I still have,” DeLauro said. “And that’s why I want to see this side-by-side with the language. It’s not Stupak-Pitts [the House's language]. So, it’s already [an improvement]. And it would appear to be current law. I would have to look at the questions that surround it, et cetera. But if it is current law then it would be something that was my goal at the outset: let’s maintain current law and then let’s pass health care.”
Full Story Rosa DeLauro, Key Pro-Choice Dem, Makes Case For Senate Abortion Language.
Rahm Emanuel, Corporatist for Hire: Part of the Revolving Door Between D.C. and Millions in Financial World
In case you missed it over the holidays, there’s been a fair amount of internecine conflict over FireDogLake.com founder Jane Hamsher’s decision to target White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s supposed misdeeds on the board of the troubled semi-governmental lending entity known as Freddie Mac in the early part of this fading decade.
Some of the uproar clearly comes from the way Hamsher decided to do it. Teaming up with the notoriously conservative Grover Norquist to sign a letter calling for the attorney general to investigate and for Emanuel to resign easily evokes the term “strange bedfellows,” and mistrust along with it.
FiveThirtyEight.com founder Nate Silver wrote that he found the “conspiracy theory” to be “bizarre.” The New York Times’ Caucus Blog seemed to roll its collective eye at Hamsher’s “viewing [Emanuel] as a sort of presidential puppet-master.”
Personally, I can’t say if Emanuel had anything to do with the stripping of Acting Inspector General Ed Kelly’s authority to investigate the apparent crimes of Freddie Mac, though I find it marginally more convincing than the funnel a “trillion-dollar slush fund into corruption-riddled companies with no oversight in place.” More troubling to me is Hamsher’s childish and short-sighted oversimplification of the healthcare reform process as a way to further her vendetta against Emanuel.
Republican Sen. Hatch: ‘It Was Standard Practice Not to Pay for Things’ Under Bush-GOP Congress
Six years ago, when the Republicans controlled the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of government, they rammed through Congress a Medicare prescription drug bill that they paid for by borrowing billions of dollars, presumably from Communist China.
This month, when Democrats in the Senate proposed a health-care overhaul that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office adjudged to pay for itself and would require no borrowing, all the Republicans voted against it, including 24 senators — over half the caucus — who voted for the budget-busting Medicare expansion in 2003.
These same Republicans were also onboard for George W. Bush’s tax cut for the wealthy and deficit funding of Bush’s two wars. They also advocated underfunding the regulatory agencies that provided oversight for financial institutions and even the nation’s food supply.
So how do they justify this gigantic — and nonsensical — flip-flop on fiscal responsibility?
Here’s what Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said — in a classic Kinseyan gaffe*:
[When Bush and the GOP controlled the government six years ago] “it was standard practice not to pay for things…We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question.”
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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. 
