Archive for December, 2009
What is the real goal of the hate the gays movement?DeMint And Ensign Look To Right-Wing Think Tanks Rather Than Judges To Interpret The Constitution
DeMint And Ensign Look To Right-Wing Think Tanks Rather Than Judges To Interpret The Constitution
demintensigncoburn Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV) announced yesterday that they would invoke an unusual Senate procedure — a “constitutional point of order” — to allow the Senate to rule by majority vote on whether the “Democrat health care takeover bill” is unconstitutional.
Significantly, neither DeMint nor Ensign cite a single judge, justice or reputable constitutional scholar who believes that health reform is unconstitutional. Instead, they rely entirely on a study by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a radical “tenther” organization which has endorsed the view that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the federal minimum wage, and the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), rebuts DeMint and Ensign’s constitutional claim by citing numerous constitutional scholars — including right-wing law professor Jonathan Adler — who all agree that health reform is constitutional. Moreover, as ThinkProgress has previously explained, even ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia disagrees with the tenther attack on health reform.
Sadly, DeMint and Ensign’s attempt to change the meaning of the Constitution by invoking a constitutional point of order is an all too familiar tactic. As CQ reports, Republicans often invoke this procedure to claim that bills they don’t like must therefore be unconstitutional. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently invoked the procedure to claim that a $200,000 federal grant to an Omaha, Neb. museum somehow violated the constitution. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used it to protest a bill to enfranchise D.C. residents.
Carl Bernstein: US Congress Is Corrupt, Systemically Broken (VIDEO)
During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today journalist and author Carl Bernstein lamented that the debate over and the writing of health care reform legislation has shown us “Congress at its worst.”
Bernstein harshly critiques the nation’s legislative branch as a body that is “responsive only to money and special interests” while ignoring the public and national interest:
The bad news is the really great problem in this country is the systemic breakdown of one of the three branches of government: the Congress of the United States. And until it’s repaired, [Obama] and this country are going to be undermined. We could have had health care legislation in a meaningful way that would have gone twice as far at solving our budget and our health care problems, but because of the irresponsibility and the systemic corruption of the United States Congress, we don’t.
WATCH:
Full Story Carl Bernstein: US Congress Is Corrupt, Systemically Broken (VIDEO).
Obama Promised
Obama promised America a public option — and opposed the mandates in the Senate bill.
Sign the Petition
The YesWeStillCan.org petition has been signed by over 600 Obama campaign staffers, 40,000 Obama volunteers, and 60,000 Obama donors.
Full Story Obama Promised.
Medicare Prepares Reversal on Covering All Antidepressants and Antipsychotics
“I am not naive; they are reserving the right at a future date to whack out antidepressants and antipsychotics,” acknowledged Andrew Sperling, director of federal legislative advocacy for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
The announcement by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that it would consider elimination of some or all of the 6 protected categories came in the form of a proposed rule issued on October 22. That proposed rule revised 2 key definitions the CMS had adopted in an interim final rule it published on January 16, 2009. The definitions implement new requirements for Part D drug coverage established by a 2008 congressional law. The comments that came in over the next few months on those interim definitions essentially convinced the CMS that the definitions the agency proposed in January—which would determine the future of the protected categories—were too broad and needed to be narrowed. The Obama CMS essentially reversed Bush administration decisions and sided with the Part D drug plans and their pharmacy benefit managers and against drug manufacturers and patient advocacy groups, such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and NAMI.
Full Story Medicare Prepares Reversal on Covering All Antidepressants and Antipsychotics – Psychiatric Times.
Acetaminophen For Mental Health Relief
A provocative new research study investigates the possibility that over-the-counter pain relief drugs may be helpful for treatment of depression and anxiety.
Use of OTC medications for physical aches and pain has been commonplace for decades.
A research team led by psychologist C. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology has uncovered evidence indicating that acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) may blunt social pain.
Full Story Acetaminophen For Mental Health Relief | Psych Central News.
George W. Bush Institute To Co-Produce Public Television Show “Ideas In Action”
The George W. Bush Institute — the “action- oriented think tank” that is part of Bush's Presidential Center — will co-produce a public television show hosted by its executive director, Ambassador James Glassman, in a rare convergence of public broadcasting and a partisan research organization.
“Ideas in Action” will premiere in February and will be co-produced by Andrew Walworth, who produces PBS's “Think Tank.” Glassman, the former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy under President Bush and one-time moderator of CNN's “Capital Gang Sunday,” will lead a discussion on public policy issues in front of a live audience at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He will remain executive director of the Institute.
The show will be distributed by Executive Program Services (EPS) to public television stations nationwide, including many PBS affiliates. Beginning in January, EPS will also begin distributing repeats of “Think Tank,” currently distributed by PBS.
Full Story George W. Bush Institute To Co-Produce Public Television Show “Ideas In Action”.
Geithner: Job Growth Should Resume By Springtime (VIDEO)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gave two significant interviews this week, one to National Public Radio and the other to ABC’s Good Morning America.
Here’s the AP’s summary of Geithner’s words on GMA:
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says he believes it’s reasonable to expect “positive job growth” by spring and that people should have confidence about an improving economic climate.
In an interview broadcast on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Geithner (GYT’-nur) also said he believes many banks around the country still have work ahead of them to regain the public’s faith. He said, “They need to work very hard to shore it up” and said he wasn’t certain that “all banks get it.”
Geithner’s stewardship of the Treasury has come in for criticism on occasion. He said Wednesday, “I think most people would say the economy actually is strengthening now going into the end of the year,” but that the key is to regain lost jobs.
WATCH part one:
Full Story Geithner: Job Growth Should Resume By Springtime (VIDEO).
OPS; Remember Cheney and Rummy about progress in Irag… ” 6 more months….6 more months…6 more months…”
The Rational Case For ‘Kill The Bill’
Over the past week, the media has trained its myopic eye on those in the progressive community who, having seen that the health care reform plan emerging from the legislative process will fall well short of providing all Americans with affordable health care, are urging that the bill be killed. The dominant attitude of the mainstream media seems to be that this response is irrational. John Harwood, to offer just one example, has likened these advocates to drug addicts. (By contrast, the people who continue to hallucinate up “death panels,” are, I guess, simply people who have an interesting and serious point of view on the matter!)
It’s important though, to note, that the Howard Deans and Jane Hamshers of the world neither want LITERALLY want to destroy President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda in a fit of ideological pique, nor do they want to consign millions of uninsured Americans to their deaths. In fact, they desire the opposite: more Americans safely insured, and more electoral success for Democrats — the kind that comes when Democrats actually keep their promises. You want to talk about people who are, in fact, high on drugs? Let’s talk about the Democratic strategists and their journalistic enablers who believe letting down the base is a good thing.
Columbia University Professor Lincoln Mitchell has a post up on these pages on the dynamics of the debate. Let me grab one part of a larger piece that is eminently clarifying:
Progressives who oppose this bill are not being obstructionist, making the perfect the enemy of the good, or sabotaging their president. They are taking the position that history has shown us that opportunities to reform health care do not come along very often, making it essential to get it right when those opportunities arise.
Full Story The Rational Case For ‘Kill The Bill’.
Commander Says He Won’t Court-Martial Pregnant Soldiers, Refuses To Make Plan B More Available
This week, news outlets reported on a controversial new policy that threatens women soldiers on active duty who become pregnant — and the men who impregnate them — with jailtime. Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo issued the new rule, which took effect on Nov. 4, “because he said he was losing too many women with critical skills” and needed the threat of jail and a court martial as an “extra deterrent.”
Since the news of the directive came out, Cucolo has faced strong criticism from women’s rights advocates. The National Organization for Women (NOW) called it “ridiculous.” Four women Democratic U.S. senators — Barbara Boxer (CA), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) — wrote a letter to Cucolo urging him to rescind the policy, saying they could “think of no greater deterrent to women contemplating a military career than the image of a pregnant woman being severely punished simply for conceiving a child.”
Yesterday, Cucolo clarified the directive, saying he has no plans to court-martial pregnant women:
While violation of any of the rules in “General Order Number 1″ could lead to court-martial, Cucolo said he never intended such a drastic punishment for pregnancy.
“I believe that I can handle violations of this aspect with lesser degrees of punishment,” Cucolo told reporters. “I have not ever considered court-martial for this. I do not ever see myself putting a soldier in jail for this.”
Nelson Insists Carve-Out Isn’t ‘A Special Deal For Nebraska,’ Promises To Remove If The Governor Requests
Yesterday, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) took to the Senate floor to defend a provision in the Senate health care bill that requires the federal government to fully fund Nebraska’s Medicaid expansion. Nelson insisted that the deal “lay down” a marker “so that every state could object to this manner of unfunded mandates.” “There is no carve out. Each state between now and 2017…will have an opportunity to come back in and get this bill changed”:
As a governor — and my colleague is a former governor — we fought against federal unfunded mandates. And as a senator back here, I’ve also fought against unfunded and underfunded federal mandates. And this was in fact exactly that. While we weren’t able to get in this legislation an actual opt-out or opt-in for a state-based decision, what we did get was at least a line, if you will, so that in the future other states are going to be able to come forward and say, hey, either the federal government pays for that into the future or the state will have the opportunity to decide not to continue that so that we don’t have an unfunded federal mandate.
Watch it:
Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Worry About the Left
Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
“There are no liberals left to get” in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats.
As the White House leans on conservative Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska for the 60th health care vote, Emanuel has made the case that this generation of liberal political figures will not make the mistake of their predecessors. The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s greatest regret was not cutting a deal with Richard Nixon on universal health care. Former President Bill Clinton has forever rued the day he did not take moderate Republican Sen. John Chafee up on a compromise that could have secured a health care bill early in his presidency.
Liberal senators nearly scuttled the creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program -– S-CHIP –- because Clinton compromised with Republicans and agreed to take the program out of Medicaid and involve private insurers.
Full Story Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Worry About the Left – Washington Wire – WSJ.
Signs Staggering Economy Could Stumble
More proof this morning that the economy needs a new jolt of government intervention to keep it growing out of the Great Recession: The Commerce Department announced this morning a 2.2 percent increase in gross domestic product during the third quarter of 2009. CNBC reports:
The U.S. economy grew at a much slower pace than initially thought in the third quarter, restrained by weak business investment and a slightly more aggressive liquidation of inventories. … Growth was boosted by government stimulus programs, including the popular cash for clunkers and tax credit for first-time home buyers…”
That report follows a dire prediction from economist Joseph Stiglitz that there is “a significant chance” that the U.S. economy will slip back into decline in 2010, bringing into reality the dreaded “W-shaped” recession.
Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, called on Washington to make more funds available to state governments who face a drop in tax revenue. The U.S. economy, the world's largest, must grow at least 3 percent to create enough jobs for new entrants into the labor force, he said. … “If you don't prepare now, and the economy turns out to be as weak as I think it's likely to be, then you'll be in a very difficult position,” he said.
President Obama meets this morning with about a dozen smaller banks, following up on a meeting he did earlier this month with some of the nation's largest financial institutions. This meeting, like the one he did with the too-big-to-fail behemoths, is intended to encourage more lending to small businesses and to homeowners so that the faltering economic recovery can gain some momentum. The Associated Press story notes that “cccording to the Federal Reserve, loans by the nation's 8,000 banks fell 8 percent to $6.7 trillion in the past year, and some analysts expect them to keep falling at least through next year.”
Full Story TomPaine.Com – Home.
Gingrich: If GOP takes back the House, Bachmann would become a committee chair.
For much of the year, Newt Gingrich has helped to lead the Republican opposition to President Obama. Gingrich talks regularly with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), sits in on GOP House caucus meetings, fundraises for Republican candidates, sponsors attack ads through his political 527 group, and even used his insurer-funded consulting firm to write a piece of alternative healthcare legislation. Last month, at a right-wing conference hosted by David Horowitz, Gingrich outlined his vision for how Republicans can win control of Congress in 2010. After the victory, Gingrich said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) should become a committee chair (her only current committee assignment is Financial Services):
GINGRICH: I think that both Ed Royce and Michele Bachmann, who are here today, are going to end up being chairs, probably in January of 2011.
Watch it:
Full Story Think Progress » Gingrich: If GOP takes back the House, Bachmann would become a committee chair..
Drug Industry Girds for Rise in Its Share of Overhaul
Facing last-minute liberal resistance in Congress, the drug industry is bracing for an increase in its share of the cost of the proposed health care overhaul beyond the $80 billion over 10 years that it had negotiated with the White House, industry lobbyists say.
House lawmakers and Senate liberals were furious to learn in August that to win drug makers’ political support, the White House and the Senate Finance Committee had struck the deal to cap industry costs at $80 billion. But the White House and the Senate nonetheless appeared to stick by the agreement, which drug lobbyists called “rock-solid.”
Now, after narrowly beating back some Senate proposals to extract far more and facing similar demands from House leaders, the drug makers acknowledge that they may have to renegotiate, several drug lobbyists said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the overhaul legislation is not yet final.
As the health care bills move toward a House-Senate conference, the liberals appear poised to lose on so many other issues — including a proposed government-run insurer, a so-called Cadillac tax on expensive health plans and an independent Medicare-cutting commission — that the drug makers have come to accept that their deal may have to be modified, the lobbyists said.
Full Story Drug Industry Girds for Rise in Its Share of Overhaul – NYTimes.com.
Putting the Science of Happiness Into Practice
Countries around the world are beginning to apply the science of well-being to the decisions they make. News from the 5th International Conference on Gross National Happiness.
The study of happiness is experiencing a boom. Its practitioners include economists who believe that gross domestic product (GDP) is too limited a tool to measure the success of societies, psychologists and sociologists who feel that their disciplines have focused too much on neuroses and social problems and not enough on determining what kind of activities and policies actually contribute to happier societies, and political leaders who want to know how to make use of their findings.
During the 5th International Gross National Happiness Conference, held last week in Brazil, happiness proponents from around the world were able to come together and compare notes about the practical application of “happiness science.”
The Science of Happiness
Not surprisingly, that science has found that beyond a certain minimum level of income, greater happiness comes from strong and plentiful human connections, a sense of control over one’s life and employment, meaningful work, good health, basic economic security, trust in others and in government, and other factors less directly connected with monetary remuneration.
Full Story John de Graaf :: News from the 5th International Conference on Gross National Happiness.
No Need to Wait (or Pay) for Climate Technology
But David E. Martin, an intellectual property activist who works with many developing countries, argues that a great many green technologies are already in the public domain and ready to be developed. They just need to be identified and used.
Martin’s brilliant and subversive innovation, launched earlier this month, is called the Global Innovation Commons (GIC). The project is described in a cover article in the German magazine Der Spiegel called “Patent Lies: Who Says Saving the Planet Has to Cost a Fortune?”
Full Story No Need to Wait (or Pay) for Climate Technology by David Bollier — YES! Magazine.
Lindsey Graham cites blacks as disadvantage for his state
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow caught Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday seemingly arguing that his state’s 31 percent African-American population puts him at a disadvantage — and that it’s a good reason not to support healthcare reform.
What?
Maddow explains. Sen. “Lindsey Graham is a Republican which means in 2009 that he does not support health reform,” she says. “While arguing against the bill that is almost certain to pass the senate this thursday at 8:00 a.m., Sen. Graham made an argument that i think was supposed to be about health reform. But it was one that quickly became more about him than it was about any policy issue whatsoever.
Maddow cuts to Graham:
“Throughout the nation there are going to be thousands more people enrolled in medicaid and every state except one is going to have to come up with matching money,” Graham remarks. “I have 12 percent unemployment in South Carolina. My state’s on its knees. I have 31% African-American population in South Carolina.”
Full Story Lindsey Graham cites blacks as disadvantage for his state | Raw Stor
Would someone ask Steele and the Black republicans on the talk shows to explain this one?
Why conservatives are always WRONG
Suppose you had a friend you had known for many years, one who was very opinionated, who always seemed absolutely certain about everything, and yet who was always turning out to be wrong. He got you to buy stock in Enron and swore it would just keep on rising. He bet on the Yankees to sweep the Red Sox in ’04. He said mobile phones were just a fad, and before long people would give them up and go back to sending telegrams.
Would you trust this person’s powers of analysis? Would you continue putting any faith in his predictions?
“Conservatives,” or those who call themselves this nowadays, have an equally good and much longer record of faulty analysis and wrong prediction. In order to exist as a viable movement, they depend on everyone forgetting that they’re basically always wrong.
Unfortunately, progressives and liberals have obliged. They seem to have forgotten who they’re actually dealing with. I’m not the first to point out that conservatives are always wrong – on any longer view, it’s hard to miss – but after years of observing the dispirited moderate left and the hapless, helpless leadership of the Democratic Party, I thought it was about time for a few reminders. If we step back from the issues that preoccupy us at the moment, it’s easier both to see that conservatism has consistently been failing and to examine the deeper reasons why. There are flaws in conservative positions that eventually cause them to collapse, and those same flaws are at work today. It’s true that one side in America’s great political debates is playing a very weak hand. Fortunately, that side isn’t ours.
Is Obama’s Problem That He Just Doesn’t Want to Deal with Conflict?
Somehow Obama has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010.
As the president’s job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it’s time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those “pesky leftists” — those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.
Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn’t hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president’s leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress’s penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.
What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.
Full Story Is Obama’s Problem That He Just Doesn’t Want to Deal with Conflict? | Politics | AlterNet.
Sorting Through the Jesus Myths
By The Rev. Howard Bess
Editor’s Note: Christians love the Jesus stories – from the Virgin Birth of Christmas through the Resurrection at Easter – but a careful examination of the known history of his life and the early Christian faith suggests that these stories were myths created decades after the actual events for the purpose of building the church.
In this guest essay, retired Baptist minister Howard Bess sorts through the narratives of the New Testament and what they say about who Jesus really was:
Jesus from Nazareth was still a young man when he was killed in Jerusalem. The best estimate is that he was in his early 30s.
His public career as a teacher and prophet was short. No longer than three years. His impact on poor, rural people in northern Palestine was profound.
His listeners had never heard or seen anything quite like him. He made a trip to Jerusalem and his life was snuffed out quickly. He was crucified as a rabble-rousing troublemaker.
After the shock of his death, the truth that he spoke took on a life of its own. His followers were emboldened to repeat his stories and sayings. The phenomenon of oral tradition among poor people worked its magic. His band of followers grew rapidly.
Inevitably the key question was asked: “Who was he?”
Full Story Consortiumnews.com.
Stem cells help cure blindness
Technique could help thousands with Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency
A stem cell treatment developed in Newcastle has restored good vision to eight people who had lost sight in one eye.
“This has transformed my life,” said one of the patients, Russell Turnbull, whose right eye was burned and scarred in an ammonia attack after intervening in a fight on a Newcastle bus 15 years ago. “I’m working, I can go jet skiing and also ride horses.”
The new technique – developed at the North East England Stem Cell Institute – involves taking a small biopsy from the cornea of the patient’s good eye and multiplying its stem cells several hundredfold in the lab with a special culture system. When the cells are transplanted back into the damaged eye, they restore the damaged cornea.
Full Story FT.com / UK – Stem cells help cure blindness.
Smoking marijuana will not cure diabetes or obesity but endocanabinoids might
Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at Kyushu
University in Japan reported that endocanabinoids are a major regulator of physiochemical response to “sweet” tastes.
Endocanabinoids are a naturally produced human body chemicals that are very closely related to THC, the active substance in marijuana.
A basic rule of Chemistry is “structure determines function.”
Sweet taste receptors, like those in the tongue, are also located in the intestine and pancreas.
Two types of receptors located in the same cell are necessary to experience the sweet taste.
Full Story Smoking marijuana will not cure diabetes or obesity but endocanabinoids might.
U.S. financial crisis panel sets first hearings
A U.S. commission created by Congress to investigate the financial crisis has scheduled its first public hearings for January 13 and 14, more than a year since the crisis shook banks and capital markets worldwide.
No witnesses were named by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in a statement distributed on Tuesday. It said the 10-member panel will hold hearings throughout 2010 — a period in which the Senate will be debating regulatory reforms.
Deliberations by the commission could spark interest in the debate in the Senate Banking Committee over reforms. The House of Representatives on December 11 approved a comprehensive bill to tighten government bank and financial market oversight.
Full Story U.S. financial crisis panel sets first hearings | Reuters.
Six Ways to Strengthen the Economy
Economist Pat Choate outlines six “game changing” proposals to meet the challenge presented by global competition and get the U.S. back on its feet.
Economist and best-selling author Pat Choate has crusaded for fiscal responsibility and long-term management in government for many years. He campaigned as the 1996 Reform Party vice-presidential candidate on a platform of responsible spending, balanced international commerce, and government encouragement for domestic employment. He has written several books and news articles on the topic, and his most recent work Saving Capitalism: Keeping America Strong may be his best to date.
In Saving Capitalism Dr. Choate outlines six “game changing” proposals to meet the challenge presented by global competition and get America back on its feet. The first is to impose strict federal supervision of financial markets, refurbishing the regulatory framework destroyed during each presidency from Reagan to George W. Bush.
The second is to replace most income and corporate taxes with a consumption based value-added tax. This would be in line with the practices of every other country on earth and allow the U.S. to raise enough revenue to fund itself and pay down its debt.
Full Story Six Ways to Strengthen the Economy | Economy In Crisis.
REPORT: How To Pay For The Troop Escalation In Afghanistan By Cutting The Defense Budget
In his West Point speech announcing his 30,000 troop escalation in Afghanistan, President Obama declared that he was committed to addressing the ongoing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “openly and honestly.” Though he did not get into specifics, Obama said he would “work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit.”
Some Democrats, such as Rep. David Obey (D-WI), have suggested a war surtax to pay for the estimated $30 billion it will cost to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But the Obama administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have rejected a tax. In a new report from the Center for American Progress, Lawrence Korb, Sean Duggan, Laura Conley, and Jacob Stokes recommend that the administration “look to the base defense budget” to pay for the escalation:
Rather than allow the supplemental and additional costs of the escalation for FY2011 to add to the large and growing national deficit, the Obama administration should look to the base defense budget for programs and weapons platforms that can be eliminated or scaled back without jeopardizing our national defense strategy or capabilities. Our allies in Great Britain have adopted such a policy. In order to pay for the cost of sending an additional 500 troops and supporting equipment to the front lines in Afghanistan, the British government is currently “reprioritizing” existing Ministry of Defense spending, including domestic cuts in civilian staff, and a commitment to improve procurement.
Full Story Think Progress » REPORT: How To Pay For The Troop Escalation In Afghanistan By Cutting The Defense Budget.
FLASHBACK: Obama Repeatedly Touted Public Option Before Refusing To Push For It In The Final Hours
In recent days, there has been an uproar in the progressive community over the Senate’s decision to drop the public option from its health care bill in order to reach the crucial 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Given that many liberals backed a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system, the public option was seen as a political compromise.
“I didn’t campaign on the public option,” President Obama told the Washington Post. But he touted the public option on his campaign website and spoke frequently in support of it during the first year of his presidency, citing its essential value in holding the private insurance industry accountable and providing competition:
– In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign’s website, candidate Obama promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008]
Bush’s presidential library will produce a public television show titled ‘Ideas In Action.’
President Bush’s presidential library at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas (the “George W. Bush Presidential Center”) will house a think tank called the George W. Bush Institute, which will promote ideas centered around “the principles of freedom, opportunity, responsibility and compassion.” The Huffington Post reports that the Institute will co-produce a new television show titled “Ideas In Action”:
The George W. Bush Institute — the “action- oriented think tank” that is part of Bush’s Presidential Center — will co-produce a public television show hosted by its executive director, Ambassador James Glassman.
“Ideas in Action” will premiere in February and will be co-produced by Andrew Walworth, who produces PBS’s “Think Tank.” Glassman, the former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy under President Bush and one-time moderator of CNN’s “Capital Gang Sunday,” will lead a discussion on public policy issues in front of a live audience at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He will remain executive director of the Institute.
Full Story Think Progress » Bush’s presidential library will produce a public television show titled ‘Ideas In Action.’.
A Quiet End for Boys Choir of Harlem
For more than three decades, they sang Mozart in Latin, Bach in German, and Cole Porter and Stevie Wonder in English, from Alice Tully Hall in New York to Royal Albert Hall in London.
For the audiences that marveled at the Boys Choir of Harlem, it was an additional wonder that the young performers with world-class voices had emerged from some of the most difficult neighborhoods of New York. December was always a busy month, as the choir toured the country’s premier concert halls and appeared on television Christmas specials.
But this year, the boys are nowhere to be found. Last week, Terrance Wright, a 39-year-old choir alumnus, picked up a microphone in front of the altar of Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church in Harlem, the choir’s last home, and delivered news that surprised few people but saddened many.
“Tell the people. Let it be known,” Mr. Wright said, glistening and exhausted after leading a Christmas concert by former singers in the choir. “There is no Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem.”
Full Story A Quiet End for Boys Choir of Harlem – NYTimes.com.
After health-care defeat, petulant Republicans threaten to scuttle the earth
It’s a sorry enough state of affairs that we live in a nation where two precious Senate seats are occupied by the likes of James Inhofe (R-Ok), who invokes his peculiar God to deny climate change, and Tom Coburn (R-Ok), who would sooner see misfortune befall a colleague than help millions of Americans acquire health insurance.
We were hoping it was just an Oklahoma thing. This is a state, after all, that wants to publish personal information about women who get abortions.
But now even the most reasonable members of the Republican Party are behaving like spoiled children, burning down the house because Santa didn’t bring them a Wii.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is the lynchpin vote for the U.S. to pass a law limiting greenhouse gas emissions next year. He and Joe Lieberman agreed to play along only after Democrats accepted concessions promoting nuclear energy, offshore oil drilling, and oxymoronic clean coal.
Industry To Die Without Conservation: Report
One way or another, fossil fuels will be the end of Western industrial society in its current, overarching form.
If humans worldwide continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at Western emission levels, the global climate will change to the point of no human return.
And if fossil fuels that create these gases cease to power industry at today’s levels, then humans will live in a world in which they must find other means to survive.
However, the “alternative” means of energy production by which so many people are pinning their hopes also have their limits, according to a new report by two think tanks in California.
Full Story No Alternative.
Sweden to Donate $1.2B to Help Developing Nations Fight Climate Change
Sweden says it will give $1.2 billion to help developing nations fight climate change.
Government spokeswoman Roberta Alenius says Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt will announce Sweden’s donation to a European Union program for a so-called “fast-start” financing fund on Thursday.
The total EU donation is expected to be proposed at the meeting in Brussels.
Sweden currently holds the rotating EU presidency and is heading talks with other members of the bloc about potential contributions.
Alenius said Wednesday that not all the 27 countries would be able to assist because some are experiencing serious financial problems.
Four Senators Demand General Rescind Order on Pregnant Soldiers
Four Democratic senators have written a letter to an Army general in Iraq asking him to rescind an order that threatened to court martial female soldiers who become pregnant while deployed in the war zone.
The policy by Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo III was instituted on Nov. 4, but it has triggered outrage among women’s groups since it became publicly known in recent days.
“We can think of no greater deterrent to women contemplating a military career than the image of a pregnant woman being severely punished simply for conceiving a child,” the senators wrote to Cucolo today. “This defies comprehension. As such, we urge you to immediately recind this policy.”
The letter was signed by Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
It was the latest salvo to hit Cucolo over the controvesial policy. Earlier the National Organization for Women called the policy “ridiculous.”
Full Story Four Senators Demand General Rescind Order on Pregnant Soldiers – ABC News.
Bill Press Becomes Intern For Bernie Sanders
Radio talk show host Bill Press has become an intern for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-V.T.), the liberal commentator told the Huffington Post on Tuesday.
The move is not some impulsive late-career change on Press’s part. Rather, it is an effort to make it easier for him to report from Capitol Hill.
On December 8, Press was denied a request for media credentials from the Congressional Radio-Television Galleries, effectively limiting the type of on-the-ground journalism he was hoping to do on the Hill. Soon thereafter, the radio host petitioned Sanders for an internship with his staff in hopes of circumventing the red tape.
“I am officially a Senate intern of Bernie Sanders’,” Press told HuffPost. “I am his in-house Senate reporter. Basically, I’m reporting on news from Capitol Hill.”
Full Story Bill Press Becomes Intern For Bernie Sanders.
OPS: Two edges on this sword. Republicans are basically insane. How will they take this and run with it?
Anti-Dean Salvo Fuels War on Progressives – “Bushkrieg” Bares Audacity of Arrogance
Headline from the Wall Street Journal, “Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Worry About the Left,” reporting how Obama’s chief of staff conspired with Joe Lieberman to dump the public option and Medicare buy-in. The result, according to one “former Democratic official,” is White House denial about “how much trouble they’re in” and costly miscalculations about “what’s happening with progressives and the left.”
If instead progressives are right, then this jumble called “health reform” is not just bad medicine for millions, but a drone strike against hard-won Democratic House majorities. As a result, Obama’s war on progressives surged again this week, as the dark side of take-no-prisoners, obedience-is-all, Chicago-style politics surfaced. Two nasty, parallel attacks impugned the leftwing icon, Howard Dean, for logically stating his mind: this is not health reform but an “insurance company’s dream” written by the industry lobby and setting off a “Washington scramble.”
If Dean’s crazy, who’s sane?
Firing the opening ad hominem salvo was top senior adviser, David Axelrod, dismissing Dean’s protest of this instantly sacrosanct proposal as “insane.” Say what? – two weeks before inevitable House conference changes? Hours later, the ganging up was clear: Press Secretary Robert Gibbs likewise disparaged Dean’s reason: “I don’t think any rational person would say killing the bill makes a whole lot of sense at this point.” In fact, the “killing the bill” distortion misses Dean’s focus, his radical reform idea to reinstate what existed a week ago. Is this just coincidence, from guys paid handsomely to voice precisely the president’s message?
Full Story Anti-Dean Salvo Fuels War on Progressives – “Bushkrieg” Bares Audacity of Arrogance | The Smirking Chimp.
Welcome To The Era Of Personalized Medicine
There are certain ideas that hover in the ether, hinting at some perfect future where our cars will fly and robots will fetch our slippers. Personalized medicine is one of these – an idea that someday, somehow, we will all enjoy customized medical care that keeps us healthier and enables us to live better and longer. In the meantime, though, we’re stuck with the healthcare we have now: an inefficient system with cookie-cutter predictions and trial-and-error treatments.
Part of the problem, so far, is that personalized medicine has often been understood as mostly about drugs – specifically, the idea that one day pharmaceuticals will be tailored to us, individually. This has been slow to happen. Aside from a few cancer drugs like Gleevec and Tamoxifen, the science of pharmacogenomics (the term for matching drugs to specific genetic traits) has been largely a disappointment. And until more personalized drugs emerge from the pharmaceutical pipeline, the thinking goes, personalized medicine will remain a pipedream.
But personalized medicine isn’t just about drugs. It’s also about data – our personal data, the stuff in our medical records, as well as less clinical information like how much sleep we get or how often we exercise. All this data can personalize our healthcare right now, today – it can be worked back into the equation of how we care for our health, improving decisions like what we eat, how to reduce our risk factors for disease, and what we get tested for (and when). When you start thinking about our healthcare this way, it starts to look like a series of choices, opportunities we have to make better decisions to affect and improve our health. Line all these choices up in sequence from prevention to diagnosis to treatment, and it takes the form of a Decision Tree – which is what I’ve called my forthcoming book.
Full Story Thomas Goetz: Welcome To The Era Of Personalized Medicine.
McClatchy blog: Checkpoint Kabul
For a good example of how difficult it will be for the US military to regain the momentum in Afghanistan, check out this graphic on the military counterinsurgency (aka COIN) strategy.
The graphic from the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looks like a tangled ball of multicolored yarn, or perhaps it is the military’s depiction of the all-powerful, all-knowing Flying Spaghetti Monster…
Whatever the case, it documents the complex relationships between Tribal leaders, soldiers, aid workers, drug dealers, militants, ethnic groups, government leaders, etc.
“For some military commanders, the slide is genius,” wrote NBC’s Richard Engel, “an attempt to show how all things in war – from media bias to ethnic/tribal rivalries – are interconnected and must be taken into consideration. It represents a new approach to war fighting, looking beyond simply killing enemy fighters. It underscores what those fighting wars have long known, that everything matters.”
Full Story McClatchy blog: Checkpoint Kabul.
McCain Senate Re-Election Race Already Getting Ugly
Talk-radio host, Tea Partier, and former House member J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) hasn’t even filed to run against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the Republican senate primary, but both sides have already gone on the offensive. Even while still in the hypothetical stage, this race has already escalated into push polls, name-calling, and legal complaint filings.
McCain’s former chief of staff and former Arizona Attorney General, Grant Woods, filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) alleging that Hayworth is illegally using his radio-talk show to promote his potential candidacy for McCain’s senate seat. Woods, who says Hayworth has utilized the equivalent of more than half a million dollars of Clear Channel time to promote and “test the waters” of his candidacy, filed the complaint after McCain staffers complained to him several times about Hayworth’s broadcasts. He declared, “You can’t use the public airwaves…to explore your candidacy for public office ad nauseam, and I stress the nausea.”
Woods wrote in his complaint,
During the past few weeks, Mr. Hayworth has repeatedly used almost his entire allotted airtime to promote his candidacy. And Mr. Hayworth has stated his intention to continue to use this corporate subsidy to campaign during the coming months.
Full Story Dawn Teo: McCain Senate Re-Election Race Already Getting Ugly.
Caller Asks GOP Senator If He Prayed ‘Hard Enough’ For Byrd To Die (VIDEO)
On Tuesday, a C-SPAN caller appeared to mock Senate Republicans and specifically Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma for a speech he made that seemed to wish death upon Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.
A caller named “Abraham” got through to C-SPAN during an interview with Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and asked Barrasso if Coburn’s call to prayer had backfired on Republicans–on Tuesday it was Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), not Sen. Byrd that failed to appear at a health care vote.
“We got our vigil together and took sen. coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night. how hard did you pray, because I see one of our members is missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? Did one of our members die?!”
Watch the clip below and decide if the caller was joking, or being serious.
Full Story Caller Asks GOP Senator If He Prayed ‘Hard Enough’ For Byrd To Die (VIDEO).
Did Obama Campaign On The Public Option? Yes But Not Entirely
President Barack Obama, in an interview with The Washington Post, said on Tuesday that in the two years leading up to his election he “didn't campaign on the public option” for insurance coverage.
Could that possibly be true? A plan for government-run insurance has been the focal point of the soon-to-be-concluded health care debate; the catalyst of white-hot partisan warfare; and the provision that progressive and conservatives alike have deemed the arbiter of whether legislation is a success. Is it possible the political world was, by-and-large, confused when they assumed this was what candidate Obama had wanted?
Not entirely.
Full Story Did Obama Campaign On The Public Option? Yes But Not Entirely.
ACORN Cleared YET AGAIN of Wrongdoing…
Earlier this month, a two-month independent investigation of ACORN, by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, found incidents of mismanagement, but no criminal wrongdoing by ACORN, the favorite whipping boy of Republican scammers such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox “News” and the GOP itself. That investigation also found that the “sting videos” used recently against ACORN were doctored and manipulated.
Of course, readers of The BRAD BLOG know the Republicans' entire, long, sad, anti-democratic (small “d” and large “d” both) campaign is based on little more than the fact that ACORN registers millions of legal low and middle income voters who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic (large “d”) rather than Republican, and the GOP and their democracy-hating proxies will go to any lengths to keep those legal voters from exercising their legal franchise.
And today, once again, ACORN is cleared of wrongdoing vis a vis yet another independent investigation, this one by the Congressional Research Service [PDF], as noted in a press release from U.S. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers this afternoon (posted in full below).
Full Story The BRAD BLOG : ACORN Cleared YET AGAIN of Wrongdoing….
US woman held after ‘threat to kill’ Michelle Obama
US Secret Service agents have arrested a woman accused of threatening to kill Michelle Obama during a family break.
Kristy Lee Roshia was taken into federal custody on Saturday in Honolulu, Hawaii, where the Obamas are due to spend their holidays.
The Secret Service said Ms Roshia made the threats during a call to its Boston office in November.
Agents said she claimed she knew where Mrs Obama and her husband President Barack Obama would be staying.
She allegedly told a receptionist: “I will kill Michelle Obama” and “I will kill marines”.
Full Story BBC News – US woman held after ‘threat to kill’ Michelle Obama.
Contraception is ‘greenest’ technology
Are condoms and birth control pills more cost effective than windmills and solar panels as tools to curb global warming?
Yes, and by a wide margin, contends a recent study from the London School of Economics asserting that family planning is nearly five times more cost effective in mitigating global warming emissions than green energy technologies like wind and solar power.
Each $7 spent on basic family planning over the next four decades would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a ton. To achieve the same result with low-carbon technologies would cost a minimum of $32. The UN estimates that 40 percent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended.
“It’s always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions –- the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up,” Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, the British environmental group that sponsored the study, said in a statement. “The taboo on mentioning this fact has made the whole climate change debate so far somewhat unreal.”
Yet at the recent Copenhagen climate summit –- which failed to produce any binding resolution on curbing global warming emissions — population control was again an option that was not even mentioned.
Full Story Contraception is ‘greenest’ technology.
Study: Politically-Connected Banks Were More Likely To Get Bailed Out
In a finding that is sure to confirm the musings of conspiracy theorists — or may just prove the obvious to cynics — a new study details how the financial institutions with the strongest political connections ended up getting the biggest bailouts.
Professors Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business found that banks with ties to members of congressional finance committees or whose executives served on Federal Reserve boards were more likely to receive TARP funds (through the Capital Purchase Program) than banks lacking those connections. Also, they found a positive relation between banks’ political contributions and lobbying expenditures and the amount of TARP funds received, concluding that “the effect of political influence was strongest for poorly performing banks.”
Sosyura said: “The effects of political ties on federal capital investment are strongest for companies with weaker fundamentals, lower liquidity and poorer performance — which suggests that political ties shift capital allocation towards underperforming institutions.”
Full Story Study: Politically-Connected Banks Were More Likely To Get Bailed Out.
Microsoft loses i4i appeal; must pay $290M and alter Word
Microsoft Loses Patent Appeal: Word To Be Barred From Sale Starting January 2010
Updated 2 p.m.: Turns out, Microsoft in October quietly released a patch to strip custom-XML support from Word 2007.
Updated 1:35 p.m.: Added additional comment from i4i Chairman Loudon Owen, and spoke to an analyst about the likelihood that Microsoft would now license i4i's technology.
———————
Microsoft must pay more than $290 million, and either stop selling Word or strip its custom-XML editor, after a three-judge panel on Tuesday upheld patent-infringement charges alleged by a small Canadian company.
Microsoft lost its appeal of an August district court decision that awarded i4i Inc. $200 million and slapped Microsoft with an injunction on selling Word in its current form. Toronto-based i4i sells custom-XML add-ons to the ubiquitous word-processing software.
It's unlikely – to say the least – that Microsoft will stop selling Word, so it must alter the software to comply with an injunction that takes effect Jan. 11. It must also pay i4i more than $290 million after additional fees and interest jacked up the jury-awarded legal penalty.
“In this case, a small company was practicing its patent, only to suffer a loss of market share, brand recognition, and customer goodwill as the result of the defendant's infringing acts,” a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in court documents published Tuesday (PDF). “The district court found that Microsoft captured 80 percent of the custom XML market with its infringing Word products, forcing i4i to change its business strategy.”
Full Story Microsoft loses i4i appeal; must pay $290M and alter Word.
Federal Prosecutions Hit Record High in Fiscal 2009
Federal prosecutions soared in the 2009 fiscal year, reaching a record high of 169,612.
The 9 percent increase over the previous year was driven by cases filed against immigration violators, according to Justice Department data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Immigration prosecutions shot up 15.7 percent, and amounted to more than half of all criminal cases brought by the federal government.
Meanwhile, drug, weapons and white-collar cases were up only slightly or declined.
Experts told The New York Times the jump stems from efforts during the Bush administration to step up immigration enforcement and expedite prosecutions. In addition to increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, the Bush administration launched Operation Streamline, which promoted mass processing of plea deals in immigrant cases. The Obama administration has continued the policy. The Obama administration was in power for more than two-thirds of fiscal 2009.
Immigration cases are disposed of in an average of two days, and they are rarely turned down by prosecutors. White-collar cases typically linger for about 460 days, and prosecutors reject about half those referred to them by law enforcement agencies.
Full Story Federal Prosecutions Hit Record High in Fiscal 2009 – Main Justice.
Protection of Desert Land Faces Off With New Energy Sources
Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.
But before the bill to create two new Mojave national monuments has even had its first hearing, the California Democrat has largely achieved her aim. Regardless of the legislation’s fate, her opposition means that few if any power plants are likely to be built in the monument area, a complication in California’s effort to achieve its aggressive goals for renewable energy.
Developers of the projects have already postponed several proposals or abandoned them entirely. The California agency charged with planning a renewable energy transmission grid has rerouted proposed power lines to avoid the monument.
“The very existence of the monument proposal has certainly chilled development within its boundaries,” said Karen Douglas, chairwoman of the California Energy Commission.
Full Story Protection of Desert Land Faces Off With New Energy Sources – NYTimes.com.
Forget the Happy Talk: Longer, Deeper Recession Lies Ahead, Execs Warn
Dave Lindorff -
If you google “recession easing,” you will find articles all the way back to April quoting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as saying that the recession is easing, and that the economy is “improving modestly.” Newspapers and TV news programs too, on their own, have run rose-tinged stories about how things are bad but getting better.
Spins get put on every hint of good news, as when last month “only” 11,000 jobs were lost (a story that was quickly followed by an “unexpected” jump in new unemployment claims by 474,000 in early December).
What didn’t get widely reported was a report by the Association of Financial Professionals, a trade association that includes CFOs, treasurers, comptrollers, and risk managers of mid-sized and large corporations, which asked over 1000 of these executives the question: “When do you expect your company to begin hiring again?”
The answer tells you all you need to know about the depth of the current economic crisis, and blows all the media and government happy talk out of the water.
This Outlook Survey by the APF, which was funded by Wells Fargo Bank, shows that 26 percent of executives expect to see their company payrolls continue to shrink in 2010, while 46% more expect employoment to stay at current low levels. Put another way,only 25% of companies surveyed expect to return to pre-recession hiring levels in 2011, while 32% don’t expect a hiring rebound until 2012. And fully 30% “do not expect their organizations ever to return their payrolls to pre-recessionary levels.”
Full Story Forget the Happy Talk: Longer, Deeper Recession Lies Ahead, Execs Warn | This Can’t Be Happening!.
Japan minister says May is deadline for U.S. base
Japanese Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazwa said on Tuesday that May was the deadline for resolving a row over the relocation of a U.S. military base on the southern island of Okinawa which risks fraying ties with Washington.
His comments came hours after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton summoned Japan’s ambassador to an unscheduled meeting in Washington, at which media said she urged Tokyo to implement an existing plan reached after years of negotiation.
“We have set May as the cut-off point, but that does not mean we’ll be satisfied with doing it by then,” a defense ministry spokeswoman quoted Kitazawa as telling reporters in Tokyo. “It means we should do it as soon as possible.”
He added that he believed all three ruling coalition parties had the same schedule in mind.
Full Story Japan minister says May is deadline for U.S. base – Yahoo! News.
Former CDC head now leads Merck vaccine division
The Revolving Door: Our Broken Government
You’ve heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant “revolving door” through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through January 20, 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She’s the new president of the vaccine division.
How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big payoff: Heading up a $5 billion division that sells cervical cancer vaccines (like Gardasil), chickenpox vaccines and of course H1N1 swine flu vaccines, too.
So what’s the problem with all this? The problem is that private industry and government health offices such as the CDC or FDA should never be so cozy. When they are, it creates an environment of collusion between Big Government and Big Pharma. We’ve already seen this with the government-led push for swine flu vaccines that are manufactured (and sold) by drug companies like Merck.
Full Story Former CDC head now leads Merck vaccine division « COTO Report.
Healthcare industry stocks explode as bill progresses
Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
Just to put this boon to health insurance stocks in perspective: according an Indianapolis Star article from June, Evan Bayh’s wife, Susan, “owns from $500,001 to $1 million in employee stock in WellPoint, the Indianapolis-based insurance giant on whose board she sits.”
The Senate passed its health care bill “by standing up to the special interests who prevented reform for decades and who are furiously lobbying against it now” – Barack Obama, December 21, 2009.
____________
“‘Healthcare shares rose on Monday as a bill to reform healthcare passed the first critical test in the Senate . . . Shares of Cigna rose 5.3 percent to $37.69. Shares of Aetna Inc rose 5.84 percent to $34.41. Humana Inc rose 3.79 percent to $45.17 and United Health Group Inc rose 5 percent to $33.14. Shares of Wellpoint Inc rose 3.8 percent to $60.51″ — Reuters, yesterday, with this ironic headline: ”Healthcare shares rise as reform bill progresses“.
____________
“Investors are seeing the Senate’s version of health care reform as a massive public subsidy for insurance companies — and as a result, are sending the sector’s stock prices shooting up, up, up. . . . Stripped of a government-run insurance plan, the bill would give tens of millions of Americans no option but to start paying hefty premiums to private companies.
Full Story Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
A New Era Has Begun
by Richard C. Cook
A new era for the human race has clearly begun. When I compare the state of people’s awareness today with what it was just a few years ago, remarkable changes are taking place.
People are finally waking up to the fact that the world of big money, big media, and big business is taking them absolutely nowhere except into degradation, alienation, and slavery.
People are finally becoming cognizant that their destiny lies in their own hands and within their own consciousness.
The “Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” These are the watchwords of the awakening of humanity. It means not just that God lives within each of us but that God is the very consciousness of each. God is my consciousness and your consciousness. But as long as I cling to the sense of personal existence, personal expectation, personal actions and reactions I am setting myself up for deep disappointment.
I must live for this sense of God within. I must seek it daily, even many times a day, within my own field of awareness. And as I begin to sense it, I must look at others in the same way.
Within me is the Christ. Within you is the Christ. Within each of us is the Christ. It does not require a church or formal religion to realize this. In fact a church or formal religion may stand in the way of realization.
Yes we can come together, to work, to pray, to meditate, to celebrate.
Full Story A New Era Has Begun.
Michelle Bachman: Welfare Queen
Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006.
Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.
And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.
Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”
But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.
Full Story Michelle Bachman: Welfare Queen – Truthdig.
Exclusive: Rep. Parker Griffith switches to GOP
POLITICO has learned that Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, will announce today that he’s switching parties to become a Republican.
According to two senior GOP aides familiar with the decision, the announcement will take place this afternoon in Griffith's district in northern Alabama.
Griffith’s party switch comes on the eve of a pivotal congressional health care vote and will send a jolt through a Democratic House Caucus that has already been unnerved by the recent retirements of a handful of members who, like Griffith, hail from districts that offer prime pickup opportunities for the GOP in 2010.
The switch represents a coup for the House Republican leadership, which had been courting Griffith since he publicly criticized the Democratic leadership in the wake of raucous town halls during the summer.
Full Story Exclusive: Rep. Parker Griffith switches to GOP – - POLITICO.com.
Health Care Profiteers: A Billion-Dollar Lobby
A study by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), Northwestern University and the Chicago Tribune, published in the newspaper Sunday, found that health care lobbyists have spent more than $396 million this year to influence senators and congressmen engaged in passing the health care restructuring legislation, and $862 million in 2008-2009 combined.
With the frenzy of lobbying in the last quarter of 2009, the two-year total will go well beyond $1 billion.
The drug industry alone has spent $199 million on lobbying in the first nine months of the year, which CRP said was the largest such amount ever spent by any industry on any issue. The drug lobby negotiated a deal with the White House in the spring to limit to $80 billion over ten years the amount that the drug companies would have to accept in discounts and rebates as their “contribution” to paying for the health care overhaul. Efforts by some Senate and House Democrats to impose greater costs on the industry, as much as $200 billion, have been beaten back with the support of the Obama administration.
The 338 health care corporations and associations hired at least 166 former staffers and 13 former members of the nine congressional leadership offices and five committees with a role in shaping health care legislation. Another 112 former staffers worked as lobbyists on health care legislation for non-health care companies.
Full Story Health Care Profiteers: A Billion-Dollar Lobby.
Pro-Single-Payer Physicians Call for Defeat of Senate Health Bill
Physicians for National Health Program
WASHINGTON – A national organization of 17,000 physicians who favor a single-payer health care system called on the U.S. Senate today to defeat the health care legislation presently before it and to immediately consider the adoption of an expanded and improved Medicare-for-All program.
While noting that the Senate bill includes some “salutary provisions” like an expansion of Medicaid, increased funding for community clinics and the curbing of some of the worst practices of the private insurance industry, the group says the negatives in the bill outweigh the positives.
The negatives, the group says, include the individual mandate requiring that people buy private insurance policies, large government subsidies to private insurers, new restrictions on abortion, the unfair taxing of high-cost health plans, and cuts of $43 billion in Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals. Moreover, at least 23 million people will remain uninsured when the plan finally takes effect, they said.
Full Story Pro-Single-Payer Physicians Call for Defeat of Senate Health Bill | CommonDreams.org.
Obama’s Af-Pak War is Illegal
Marjorie Cohn
President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize nine days after he announced he would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. His escalation of that war is not what the Nobel committee envisioned when it sought to encourage him to make peace, not war.
In 1945, in the wake of two wars that claimed millions of lives, the nations of the world created the United Nations system to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The UN Charter is based on the principles of international peace and security as well as the protection of human rights. But the United States, one of the founding members of the UN, has often flouted the commands of the charter, which is part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
Although the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq, many Americans saw it as a justifiable response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The cover of Time magazine called it “The Right War.” Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war but escalating the war in Afghanistan. But a majority of Americans now oppose that war as well.
Full Story Obama’s Af-Pak War is Illegal | CommonDreams.org.
Quake Threat Leads Swiss to Close Geothermal Project
A $60 million project to extract renewable energy from the hot bedrock deep beneath Basel, Switzerland, was shut down permanently on Thursday after a government study determined that earthquakes generated by the project were likely to do millions of dollars in damage each year.
Every second, a vast quantity of cold, dense seawater equal to six times the combined flow of every land river on Earth streams over an ocean-floor ridge that stretches between Greenland and Scotland. This deep southbound current, flowing from the Norwegian, Iceland and Greenland seas into the North Atlantic, is the lower limb of the Gulf Stream and its northerly extension, a great conveyor belt of ocean heat and salt that transports warm tropical water north from the equator. Most climate change models predict global warming will slow these flows, in part by altering a key component of the Atlantic’s circulation, called deep-water formation. If that happens, northern Europe will cool—or warm less severely—as the rest of the globe swelters.
Understanding the role that deep-water formation plays in driving this grand circulation pattern, more formally called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), will help scientists predict how global warming will affect climate—both in and beyond the Northern Hemisphere. Shifts in the Atlantic’s circulation patterns will alter African and Indian monsoon rainfall as well as hurricane patterns in the South Atlantic, resulting in “a profound impact on the global climate system,” according to a team of international scientists asked by the U.S. government to evaluate the potential for abrupt climate change.
Full Story Quake Threat Leads Swiss to Close Geothermal Project – NYTimes.com.
In Deep Water: Will Essential Ocean Currents Be Altered by Climate Change? [Slide Show]
Scientists are struggling to get a grasp on the huge volumes of water flowing through the world’s oceans
Every second, a vast quantity of cold, dense seawater equal to six times the combined flow of every land river on Earth streams over an ocean-floor ridge that stretches between Greenland and Scotland. This deep southbound current, flowing from the Norwegian, Iceland and Greenland seas into the North Atlantic, is the lower limb of the Gulf Stream and its northerly extension, a great conveyor belt of ocean heat and salt that transports warm tropical water north from the equator. Most climate change models predict global warming will slow these flows, in part by altering a key component of the Atlantic’s circulation, called deep-water formation. If that happens, northern Europe will cool—or warm less severely—as the rest of the globe swelters.
Understanding the role that deep-water formation plays in driving this grand circulation pattern, more formally called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), will help scientists predict how global warming will affect climate—both in and beyond the Northern Hemisphere. Shifts in the Atlantic’s circulation patterns will alter African and Indian monsoon rainfall as well as hurricane patterns in the South Atlantic, resulting in “a profound impact on the global climate system,” according to a team of international scientists asked by the U.S. government to evaluate the potential for abrupt climate change.
Full Story In Deep Water: Will Essential Ocean Currents Be Altered by Climate Change? [Slide Show]: Scientific American.
From Minnie to Mickey (and all they did was turn off a gene)
Simple technique changes sex of a mouse – and reveals the gender war that rages in all of us
The battle of the sexes is a never-ending war waged within ourselves as male and female elements of our own bodies continually fight each other for supremacy. This is the astonishing implication of a pioneering study showing that it is possible to flick a genetic switch that turns female ovary cells into male testicular tissue.
For decades, the battle of the sexes has been accepted by biologists as a real phenomenon with males and females competing against each other – when their interests do not coincide – for the continued survival of their genes in the next generation. Now scientists have been able to show that a gender war is constantly raging between the genes and cells of one individual.
One of the great dogmas of biology is that gender is fixed from birth, determined by the inheritance of certain genes on the X and Y sex chromosomes. But this simplistic idea has been exploded by the latest study, which demonstrated that fully-developed adult females can undergo a partial sex change following a genetic modification to a single gene.
Full Story From Minnie to Mickey (and all they did was turn off a gene) – Science, News – The Independent.
Who Needs the Grid?
In the boardroom at Bloom Energy, a single picture hangs on the wall: a satellite image of the world at night. Clusters of bright lights mark the industrial centers, and thin white lines trace connecting passageways such as the U.S. Interstate System and the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In between, huge swaths lie in shadow.
Standing almost reverently before the image, K. R. Sridhar, the CEO of Bloom, points to the dark areas—places where electricity isn’t accessible or reliable. “This is my motivation for everything,” he says. To improve the lot of the more than 2 billion people living in those dark areas, he says, you have to get them reliable, affordable energy. And if you don’t want to doom the environment in the process, you have to make that energy very clean.
Impossible? No more so than creating enough water and oxygen to keep astronauts alive on Mars. And Sridhar’s already figured out how to do that. In fact, his research on oxygen generators for NASA laid the technical groundwork for his current venture: highly efficient solid-oxide fuel cells that run on everything from plant waste to natural gas and provide electricity while emitting relatively little carbon dioxide.
Such technology might sound far-fetched, but the basic patent behind Sridhar’s cells, which he calls “Bloom boxes,” dates to 1899. Fuel cells—which facilitate a chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen or hydrocarbon fuel without burning anything—have been used aboard NASA vehicles and Navy submarines for years. The biggest challenge in adapting them for commercial use was making the technology reliable and affordable. That’s where Sridhar’s NASA background gave him a breakthrough advantage.
Full Story Who Needs the Grid? – The Atlantic (December 2009).
The 100,000 words a day that ruin our concentration
The average adult is exposed to more than 100,000 words daily and 34 gigabytes of information …
Having trouble concentrating on this story? It could be because your brain is bombarded with more than 100,000 words a day.
The average adult hears or reads 100,500 words a day, research shows.
And the ‘day’ takes into account only waking hours outside work – meaning the true figure is much higher.
Researcher Roger Bohn estimated the amount of information people are exposed to inside and outside the home, for activities other than work.
Trips to the cinema, listening to the radio, talking on the phone, playing video games, surfing the internet and reading the newspaper were all factored in to create a ‘snapshot of the information revolution’.
Full Story The 100,000 words a day that ruin our concentration | Mail Online.
OPS: “Computer Games” …..adults?
Yellowstone’s plumbing exposed
Detailed seismic images shows the magma plume under Yelllowstone is larger and deeper than thought
The most detailed seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup. A related University of Utah study used gravity measurements to indicate the banana-shaped magma chamber of hot and molten rock a few miles beneath Yellowstone is 20 percent larger than previously believed, so a future cataclysmic eruption could be even larger than thought.
The study’s of Yellowstone’s plume also suggests the same “hotspot” that feeds Yellowstone volcanism also triggered the Columbia River “flood basalts” that buried parts of Oregon, Washington state and Idaho with lava starting 17 million years ago.
Those are key findings in four National Science Foundation-funded studies in the latest issue of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. The studies were led by Robert B. Smith, research professor and professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Utah and coordinating scientist for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Full Story Yellowstone’s plumbing exposed | Eureka! Science News.
Republicans Deciding Whether To Stop Filibustering Health Care Bill, Head Home For Christmas
Republicans Deciding Whether To Stop Filibustering Health Care Bill, Head Home For Christmas
This morning, the Senate cleared a series of procedural votes on the health care bill, paving the way to passing reform on Christmas Eve. All 60 members of the Democratic caucus voted in favor of the three motions, suggesting that Republicans are waging a losing battle to delay the passage of reform.
In fact, given the inevitability of passage, a divide appears to be forming between Republicans who want to head home for the holidays, and those who wish to drag out the debate. Following today’s vote, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested that he is ready to leave. McConnell announced that he is “working on an agreement that would give certainty to the way to end this session.” “Hopefully the two of us together can be recommending something that makes sense for both sides in the not too distant future,” he said. Watch it:
OPS: They, and the DLC & Blue Dog Democrats have already done the Corporate Will. Mission Accomplished – declare victory and go home
Joblessness Not Going Away
In November 2009 unemployment increased by the smallest amount in almost two years. Just 11,000 employees lost their jobs, one-tenth of the figure from October and fifty times smaller than the pace when President Bush left office
White House officials – ranging from Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel – have stated time and again that jobs would be the last part of the economy to rebound.
First we would see financial firms stabilize, then consumption would tick back up, and finally jobs would return.
We have seen, at least in part, some of the first two steps already this year. Banks are paying back their bailout with the TARP money they were given. Consumers are heading out above expectations, home building is on the rise, car buying is strong compared to last year, etc. In general things are looking good.
Unfortunately, there are still no jobs.
Full Story Joblessness Not Going Away | Economy In Crisis.
Nation’s Largest RN Organization Says Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry
The 150,000 member National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in the U.S., today criticized the healthcare bill now advancing in the U.S. Senate saying it is deeply flawed and grants too much power to the giant insurers.
“It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the healthcare crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry,” said NNU co-president Karen Higgins, RN.
NNU Co-president Deborah Burger, RN challenged arguments of legislation proponents that the bill should still be passed because of expanded coverage, new regulations on insurers, and the hope that it will be improved in the House-Senate conference committee or future years.
“Those wishful statements ignore the reality that much of the expanded coverage is based on forced purchase of private insurance without effective controls on industry pricing practices or real competition and gaping loopholes in the insurance reforms,” said Burger.
Full Story Nation’s Largest RN Organization Says Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry.
Nurses Say Senate Bill Entrenches Chokehold of Insurance Giants
John Nichols, The Nation
Want to know what’s wrong — really wrong — with the health-care “reform” bill being pushed through the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid?
Ask a nurse.
“It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the health-care crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry,” says National Nurses Union co-president Karen Higgins, RN.
“Sadly,” adds Higgins, “we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true health-care reform, guaranteeing high quality, cost effective care for all Americans, and instead are further locking into place a system that entrenches the choke-hold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health. If this bill passes, the industry will become more powerful and could be beyond the reach of reform for generations.”
Full Story Nurses Say Senate Bill Entrenches Chokehold of Insurance Giants.
Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade;
Juan Cole
…. the Rise of the New Oligarchs
By spring of 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush was wrapping up the Republican nomination for president, and he went on to dominate the rest of the decade. If Dickens proclaimed of the 1790s revolutionary era in France that it was the best of times and the worst of times, the reactionary Bush era was just the worst of times. I declare it the decade of the American oligarchs. Just as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union allowed the emergence of a class of lawless ‘Oligarchs’ in Russia, so Neoliberal tax policies and deregulation produced American equivalents. (For more on the analogy, see Michael Hudson.) We have always had robber barons in American politics, but the Neoliberal moment created a new social class. At about 1.3 million adults, it is not too large to have some cohesive interests, and its corporations, lobbyists, and other institutions allow it to intervene systematically in politics. It owns 45 percent of the privately held wealth and is heading toward 50, i.e. toward a Banana Republic. Thus, we have a gutted fairness doctrine and the end of anti-trust concerns in ownership of mass media, allowing a multi-billionaire like Rupert Murdoch to buy up major media properties and to establish a cable television channel which is nothing but oligarch propaganda. They established ‘think tanks’ like the American Enterprise Institute, which hires only staff that are useful agents of the interests of the very wealthy, and which produce studies denying global climate change or lying about the situation in Iraq. Bush-Cheney were not simply purveyors of wrong-headed ideas. They were the agents of the one percent, and their policies make perfect sense if seen as attempts to advance the interests of this narrow class of persons. It is the class that owns our mass media, that pays for the political campaigns of ‘our’ (their) representatives, that gives us the Bushes and Cheneys and Palins because they are useful to them, and that blocks progressive reform and legislation with the vast war chest funneled to them by deep tax cuts that allow them to use essential public resources, infrastructure and facilities gratis while making the middle class pay for them.
Here are my picks for the top ten worst things about the wretched period, which, however, will continue to follow us until the economy is re-regulated, anti-trust concerns again pursued, a new, tweaked fairness doctrine is implemented, and we return to a more normal distribution of wealth (surely a quarter of the privately held wealth is enough for the one percent?) It isn’t about which party is in power; parties can always be bought. It is about how broadly shared resources are in a society. Egalitarianism is unworkable, but over-concentration of wealth is also impractical. The latter produced a lot of our problems in the past decade, and as long as such massive inequality persists, our politics will be lopsided.
Full Story Informed Comment: Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade; Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs.
Documents come to light relating to secret nuclear pact between Japan
Documents belonging to the surviving family members of former Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato revealed that an agreement was signed between the Washington and Tokyo that allowed nuclear weapons to come on Japanese soil, according to the Daily Yomiuri newspaper.
According to the newspaper, the document reads, “In order to protect Japan from regional threats, and in the event of acute emergencies, after prior consultation it may be recognized as necessary that atomic weaponry will be accepted in Okinawa. In these circumstances, Washington hopes to receive a favorable answer from Japan,” from the United States side of the agreement.
The Japanese response in the agreement reads: “In preparation for acute emergencies, Japan will not delay in responding to this need.”
The agreement was signed by former U.S. President Richard Nixonand Sato on Nov. 19, 1969, and was marked “top secret”.
Full Story Documents come to light relating to secret nuclear pact between Japan, U.S._English_Xinhua.
Are Blacks Abandoning Obama?
DANNY GLOVER: I See NO Difference Between BUSH And OBAMA Policies
Danny Glover, Jesse Jackson, and other activists talk to Lloyd Grove about disappointment in the African-American community with the president’s first year.
Danny Glover heaved a sigh when I asked him recently what he thought of President Obama’s performance so far.
It wasn’t a sigh of relief.
“I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don’t see anything different,” the activist movie actor said of Obama’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. “On the domestic side, look here: What’s so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street?”
“He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black—and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman,” says Danny Glover. “But what choices do they have within the structure?”
Full Story Are Blacks Abandoning Obama? – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.
Pork greased reform’s passage
The multimillion-dollar deals cut with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and others to win the 60 votes needed for the historic health care reform bill gave President Barack Obama the margin he needed to fulfill a central campaign promise — but may also have upped the ante for future presidential horse trading.
With the bill hanging in the balance, Nelson won a provision exempting his state from paying the usual share of costs for new Medicaid patients. The deal critics have dubbed the Cornhusker Kickback is expected to cost the federal government $100 million over 10 years.
Before a close vote last month, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) won an even larger break for her state — an estimated $300 million in extra federal spending, in a move opponents derided as the Louisiana Purchase.
Some critics branded the special deals as functionally equivalent to the kind of earmarks Obama crusaded against as a senator — and a quantum leap from eleventh-hour deals Obama’s predecessors have cut.
Full Story Pork greased reform’s passage – POLITICO.com Print View.
Howard A. Schmidt Tapped To Be Obama’s Cybersecurity Czar
After months of wrangling and delays, President Barack Obama has chosen a national cyber security coordinator to take on the formidable task of organizing and managing the nation’s increasingly vulnerable digital networks.
Obama has tapped Howard A. Schmidt, longtime computer security executive who worked in the Bush administration and has extensive ties to the corporate world, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement will not be made until Tuesday.
Schmidt’s selection comes more than 10 months after Obama declared cyber security a priority and ordered a broad administration review.
The official said Obama was personally involved in the selection process and chose Schmidt after an extensive search because of his unique background and skills. Schmidt will have regular and direct access to the President for cybersecurity issues, the official said.
Full Story Howard A. Schmidt Tapped To Be Obama’s Cybersecurity Czar.
How Nebraska’s Insurance Companies Stand To Profit From Ben Nelson’s Compromises In Health Care Bill
Nebraska – never seen as a key player with special needs in the health care debate – stands to reap millions of dollars worth of financial goodies should the Senate version of the health care bill get final approval.
Not only did Sen. Ben Nelson help cut a deal that covers the state’s Medicare expansion cost of $100 million over 10 years – all other states will have to help bear their own costs – insurance companies in Nebraska will get tax and fee breaks.
Insurance giant Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Nebraska, for instance, would pay between $15 million and $20 million less in fees under the Senate bill than it would have without a change the Nebraska Democrat helped broker, according to Nelson’s office. Another insurer, Mutual of Omaha, won’t have to pay taxes on so-called Medigap insurance that buttresses Medicare insurance used by the elderly.
Full Story How Nebraska’s Insurance Companies Stand To Profit From Ben Nelson’s Compromises In Health Care Bill.
Citigroup Hacked, FBI Reportedly Investigating
The FBI is investigating a hacker attack on Citigroup Inc. that led to the theft of tens of millions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Citing anonymous government officials, the Journal reported that the hackers were connected to a Russian cyber gang. Two other computer systems, at least one of connected to a U.S. government agency, were also attacked.
Citigroup denied the report. “We had no breach of the system and there were no losses, no customer losses, no bank losses,” said Joe Petro, managing director of Citigroup’s Security and Investigative services. “Any allegation that the FBI is working a case at Citigroup involving tens of millions of losses is just not true.”
Full Story Citigroup Hacked, FBI Reportedly Investigating.
On health-care bill, Democratic senators are in states of denial
Formally, it is known as H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But this week, it has acquired an unhelpful nickname: “Cash for Cloture.”
As Senate Democrats finally complete their health-care legislation, those combing through the bill have uncovered many backroom deals that were made to buy, er, secure the 60 votes needed to “invoke cloture” — the legislative term for cutting off debate and holding a final vote.
It will take years to see how well the measure reduces costs and expands insurance coverage. But already, the bill has been a bonanza for wordsmiths.
First there was the “Louisiana Purchase,” $100 million in extra Medicaid money for the Bayou State, requested by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
Then came the “Cornhusker Kickback,” another $100 million in extra Medicaid money, this time for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).
Full Story On health-care bill, Democratic senators are in states of denial – washingtonpost.com.
GDP Up 2.2% In 3Q, But Recovery Is Much Slower Than Previously Thought
The economy grew at a 2.2 percent pace in the third quarter, as the recovery got off to a weaker start than previously thought. However, all signs suggest the economy will end the year on stronger footing.
The Commerce Department’s new reading on gross domestic product for the July-to-September quarter was slower than the 2.8 percent growth rate estimated just a month ago. Economists were predicting that figure wouldn’t be revised in the government’s final estimate on third-quarter GDP.
The main factors behind the downgrade: consumers didn’t spend as much, commercial construction was weaker, business investment in equipment and software was a bit softer and companies cut back more on inventories, according to Tuesday’s report.
Full Story GDP Up 2.2% In 3Q, But Recovery Is Much Slower Than Previously Thought.
In Repaying U.S., Banks Reap a Bounty in Fees
Here comes another payday on Wall Street, just in time for the holidays.
No, I’m not talking about the big bonuses you’ve been reading about already.
I mean a new one, courtesy of companies like Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America returning their federal bailout money and raising new capital to replace it.
And that means big fees for all the banks that will hawk these new shares for themselves and their rivals.
More than $50 billion of new capital was raised as part of the effort by the biggest banks to repay the money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and get out from under the thumb — and pay caps — of Washington.
All told, December was the biggest month in history for offerings, according to Thomson Reuters.
Full Story Dealbook Column – In Repaying U.S., Banks Reap a Bounty in Fees – NYTimes.com.
Judge orders NYPD to reveal racial data on all people shot at by cops from 1997 to 2006
A judge Monday ordered the NYPD to turn over the racial breakdown of all people shot at by police officers between 1997 and 2006.
The New York Civil Liberties Union sued the NYPD in 2008 for racial data about shooting victims.
The NYPD agreed to release the racial breakdown of those injured by police gunfire, but not data about those who were shot at but not hit.
In an opinion dated Dec. 15, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden ruled the NYPD had not met its burden under the state’s Freedom of Information Law to withhold the data.
Full Story Judge orders NYPD to reveal racial data on all people shot at by cops from 1997 to 2006.
Secret neo-Nazi documents published
11 membership lists about to go online
Exclusive Wikileaks is in the process of making a cache of documents and files from eleven different neo-Nazi organisations readable, and readily available, online.
The membership records and private messages are currently being formatted to make them easy for non-techies to read and will be released on the Wikileaks site shortly.
The organisation got massive publicity last year when it published a BNP membership list handed over by a disgruntled ex-member.
The raw data is already available but needs formatting so: “your grandmother can read them and google can find them… Journalists won’t write about it otherwise.”
The site is asking for volunteers with enough database skills to be able to expand fields and dumping to text.
The compressed data is about 54MB.
Full Story Secret neo-Nazi documents published • The Register.
Drug violence leaves 23 dead in northern Mexico
Drug-related violence has claimed the lives of at least 23 people in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, authorities said.
Of the 23 deaths, 13 were in the city of Ciudad Juarez alone — not far from the US city of El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juarez is Mexico‘s bloodiest city with more than 2,500 murders this year alone.
In one of the cases from Sunday to Monday, a couple was gunned down in front of their children, aged 3, 5 and nine, who were not injured, police said.
Full Story Drug violence leaves 23 dead in northern Mexico – Yahoo! News.
Video: Afghanistan’s Toking Troops Not Exactly Battle-Ready
Top NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal calls training local soldiers and cops “our main effort” in Afghanistan. But whipping recruits into shape is a whole lot harder when they’re stoned out of their minds.
“You walk into a whole squad of ANA [Afghan National Army] smoking hashish. They don’t understand that the use of drugs, it effects the way that they accomplish their mission,” says one disgusted marine. “Soldiers come out without helmets, soldiers come out missing a lot of gear.”
Obviously, there are plenty of units that are more professional. But this isn’t the first time red-eyed Afghan troops have been caught on tape.
Full Story Video: Afghanistan’s Toking Troops Not Exactly Battle-Ready | Danger Room | Wired.com.
States’ jobless funds are being drained in recession
States Will Need $90 Billion In Loans To Keep Issuing Checks, Feds Say
The recession’s jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.
The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments.
Debates over the state benefit programs have erupted in South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Vermont and Indiana. And the budget gaps are expected to spread and become more acute in the coming year, compelling legislators in many states to reconsider their operations.
Currently, 25 states have run out of unemployment money and have borrowed $24 billion from the federal government to cover the gaps. By 2011, according to Department of Labor estimates, 40 state funds will have been emptied by the jobless tsunami.
Full Story States’ jobless funds are being drained in recession – washingtonpost.com.
Priest advises congregation to shoplift
Poor people who are desperate for cash have been advised to go forth and shoplift from major stores – by an Anglican priest.
The Rev Tim Jones said in his Sunday sermon that stealing from successful shops was preferable to burglary, robbery or prostitution.
He told parishioners it would not break the eighth commandment ‘thou shalt not steal’ because it ‘is permissible for those who are in desperate situations to take food that they might not starve’.
But his advice was roundly condemned by police and the local Tory MP. Father Jones, 42, was discussing Mary and the birth of Jesus when he went on to the subject of how poor and vulnerable people cope in the run-up to Christmas.
My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,’ he told his stunned congregation at St Lawrence and St Hilda in York.
‘I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.
Full Story Priest advises congregation to shoplift | Mail Online.
Kenneth Feinberg Allows Pay Increase for A.I.G. Executive
A top executive of the American International Group has been granted more than a $4 million increase in a pay package because the executive has decided to remain with the company.
The Obama administration’s pay adviser, Kenneth R. Feinberg, approved a request by A.I.G., the insurance giant, to grant the executive a long-term compensation package that included stock options with a current value of $3.26 million and an additional incentive award of up to $1 million. The package comes on top of the person’s 2009 base salary of $450,000.
In a letter released by the Treasury Department on Monday, Mr. Feinberg said he was granting the request so that the executive’s long-term package would be comparable to those already granted to A.I.G.’s other top 25 executives. The executive had been planning to leave the company and had not been granted long-term compensation benefits.
The Treasury, citing privacy restrictions, declined to reveal the executive’s name, and an A.I.G. spokesman said the company would not disclose it, either.
Full Story Kenneth Feinberg Allows Pay Increase for A.I.G. Executive – NYTimes.com.
The “Slow Money” Movement May Revolutionize the Way You Think About Food
In an economy structured around industrial agriculture, sustaining small farms can be a challenge. ‘Slow money’ economics could be the answer.
The slow food movement that started in Italy two decades ago has gained much attention and popularity, with a blossoming of community supported agriculture (CSA), local organic farms and general awareness of where our food comes from. But money doesn’t grow on trees, and in an economy structured around industrial-scale global agriculture, starting and sustaining small farms and local, sustainable food processing and delivery systems can be a challenge.
About five years ago, veteran financial manager Woody Tasch and his colleagues at the Investors’ Circle began discussing how an intentional and organized influx of investment into localized sustainable food systems could be paired with a general increasing philosophical commitment to slow food principles.
The result is the Slow Money movement, shepherded by the Slow Money Alliance, of which Tasch is executive director. Now 750 members, including individual investors and sustainable farms and food-related businesses, are members of the alliance, and 450 people attended a Slow Money conference in Santa Fe in September.
Full Story The “Slow Money” Movement May Revolutionize the Way You Think About Food | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Glenn Beck: Media Matters ‘ 2009 Misinformer of the Year
Glenn Beck’s well of ridiculous was deep and poisonous before he launched his Fox News show, but the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States — and the permissive cheerleading of his Fox News honchos — uncorked the former Morning Zoo shock jock’s unique brand of vitriol, stage theatrics, and hyperbolic fright, making him an easy choice for Media Matters’ 2009 Misinformer of the Year.
When he wasn’t calling the president a racist, portraying progressive leaders as vampires who can only be stopped by “driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers,” or pushing the legitimacy of seceding from the country, Beck obsessively compared Democrats in Washington to Nazis and fascists and “the early days of Adolf Hitler.” He wondered, “Is this where we’re headed,” while showing images of Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin; decoded the secret language of Marxists; and compared the government to “heroin pushers” who were “using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state.”
Like his predecessor, Beck spat on scruples, frequently announcing his goal to get administration officials fired. He increasingly acted not as a media figure, but as the head of a political movement, while helping to bring fringe conspiracies of a one-world government into the national discourse.
And he all too frequently helped to set the mainstream media’s agenda.
Glenn Beck’s disturbing use of race and race-baiting
Video and more story at link
Full Story Glenn Beck: Media Matters ‘ 2009 Misinformer of the Year | Media Matters for America.
How Wall Street Bought Barney Frank
Barney Frank takes pride in being the Left’s darling, but he’s almost entirely funded by Wall Street and his votes show it.
Few members of Congress are considered more liberal than Barney Frank. Gay, left-handed, and Jewish, as his biography’s title proudly proclaims, he clearly enjoys living in direct contravention of right-wing ideals.
A favorite conservative punching bag, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly have their tea party base convinced that it was actually Frank who sent the country into an economic tailspin, through some curious combination of incompetence, redistributive zeal, greed, and homosexuality. Beck’s conspiratorial chalkboards link Frank to the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, back to the community organization ACORN, and by implication, to the poor and undeserving. Naturally, liberals have responded by closing ranks around the congressman.
The pseudo-research of Fox News and friends, and their obsession with Fannie and Freddie – hardly the root of all economic troubles – have distracted from a core reality of Frank’s recent career in Congress. Since becoming the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee seven years ago, he has built a formidable Wall Street donor base, even by Washington’s standards; as the housing bubble grew, so too did his fundraising purse and his stature, in Congress and beyond.
Full Story How Wall Street Bought Barney Frank | Politics | AlterNet.
10 Greediest People of 2009
As ordinary Americans reel from the Great Recession, these gluttonous all-stars continue to claw in absurd amounts of money.
Has picking a year’s greediest “top ten” ever been easier? We don’t think so. We could, this year, fill an entire top ten just with bankers from Goldman Sachs — or JPMorgan Chase or any of a number of other Wall Street giants. All sport executive suites packed with power suits who fanned the flames that melted down the global economy, then helped themselves, after gobbling down billions in bailouts, to paydays worth mega millions — at a time when, in over half our states, over a quarter of America’s kids are living off food stamps.
Now that’s greed. But that’s also not the whole picture. The Great Recession’s greedy don’t just sit on Wall Street. They occupy perches of power throughout the reeling U.S. economy. So we’ve tried, in this our latest annual ranking of avarice, to survey that bigger picture.
Where does all this greed come from? We humans have always, of course, had greed among us. But levels of greed vary enormously from one historical epoch to another — and from one society to another.
What determines which societies see the most greed and grasping? In a word: inequality. The more wealth concentrates, the more greed grows. The United States remains the most unequal nation in the developed world. Next year, we suspect, will bring us still another bumper crop of greedy.
Full Story 10 Greediest People of 2009 | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.
To Progressives: What Now?
We lost this one. Unless the Senate uses reconciliation to strengthen the current Senate version of the HCR bill, the bill will pass with an individual mandate but no public option. All progressives will agree this constitutes a betrayal of the initial contract that won progressives’ support for an insurance industry-based plan. Those who argued for a stronger starting negotiating position have been vindicated and can tell those who didn’t “I told you so.”
Now that we’ve got that behind us, let’s focus on a constructive answer to, “What now?” I see two options: work to kill the Senate healthcare bill and work to move the center of the Senate majority left, or just work to move the Senate majority left.
To get no healthcare bill at all is the gift most wanted by the Republicans, and is more damaging to our interests than even this travesty Obama and Reid have managed. So killing the bill outright is a non-starter for me.
I personally have yet to see a way to kill the Senate healthcare bill and replace it with something that doesn’t violate the mandate-for-a-public-option contract at this late date, but if someone more imaginative than me can figure it out, I’m all ears.
Obama has shown he’s not real interested what’s in the bill as long as something called a healthcare bill passes. He and Rahm seem to have concluded they don’t need to heed the cry of their base, so I’m at a loss as to how we get through to them in time for this legislation.
Reid has shown he’s not going to risk defeat of the legislation over the public option if Obama doesn’t care, so all these dreams of getting it through leadership threats of reconciliation are just fantasies.
Full Story The Seminal » To Progressives: What Now?.
Is your bank in trouble? More report bad loans – BankTracker
Look up any bank in the BankTracker from msnbc.com and American U.
Interactive Map at link
The number of banks with risky levels of bad loans continues to climb rapidly, particularly in the West and Southeast, according to federal data analyzed by msnbc.com and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University in Washington.
A total of 369 banks had high “troubled asset ratios” at the end of September, up from 297 in June, an increase of one-fourth, according to the analysis. A high ratio means a bank had more troubled loans than money set aside to cover potential losses.
The states with the heaviest concentrations of banks with high levels of bad loans are Nevada, Washington, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Oregon and Utah.
Here are four ways you can check the health of any bank or credit union in the United States
Full Story Is your bank in trouble? More report bad loans – BankTracker- msnbc.com.
Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator
As the president’s job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it’s time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those “pesky leftists” — those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.
Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn’t hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president’s leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress’s penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.
What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.
Taxpayers Lose in Citi’s Payback Plan
Taxpayers are getting a raw deal in Citigroup’s plan to repay its bailout funds, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the news. Policymakers are emphasizing the wind-down of the unpopular Troubled Asset Relief Program, and most media outlets are doing the same. But the sloppy structuring of Citi’s repayment plan is going to cost the government literally billions of dollars.
The government has two types of investments in Citi: $20 billion in the company’s preferred stock, and a 34 percent stake in its common stock. Preferred stock is basically a loan that Citi has to pay back with interest, while each share of common stock gives us partial ownership of the firm. With an interest rate of 8 percent on the preferred stock, the loan is well below market rates, since the government funneled the money to Citi when it was on the verge of collapse last year, and emergency loans like that carry a very high interest rate among investors. But we do at least get paid a return on that investment.
The value of our 34 percent stake in Citi’s common stock, by contrast, depends on the stock’s trading price. The government bought its roughly one-third stake in February for $25 billion. On Friday, the last trading day before Citi announced plans to repay TARP, the value of that stake had risen to $30.7 billion, for a gain of $5.7 billion. That’s a terrible return given the risk taxpayers were taking, but it’s still a return.
Full Story Taxpayers Lose in Citi’s Payback Plan.
Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican
By John Gray Cincinnati, Ohio
Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.
All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.
Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”.
By John Gray Cincinnati, Ohio - jgray7@cinci.rr.com – Published July – 2004
Laredo could be largest US city without bookstore
The final chapter has been written for the lone bookstore on the streets of Laredo.
With a population of nearly a quarter-million people, this city could soon be the largest in the nation without a single bookseller.
The situation is so grim that schoolchildren have pleaded for a reprieve from next month’s planned shutdown of the B. Dalton bookstore. After that, the nearest store will be 150 miles away in San Antonio.
The B. Dalton store was never a community destination with comfy couches and an espresso bar, but its closing will create a literary void in a city with a high illiteracy rate. Industry analysts and book associations could not name a larger American city without a single bookseller.
“Corporate America considers Laredo kind of the backwater,” said the city’s most prolific author, Jerry Thompson, a professor at Texas A&M University International who has written more than 20 books.
Full Story The Associated Press: Laredo could be largest US city without bookstore.
Potatoes and algae may replace oil in plastics – Telegraph
Frederic Scheer is biding his time, convinced that by 2013 the price of oil will be so high that his bio-plastics, made from vegetables and plants, will be highly marketable.
Scheer, 55, is the owner of Cereplast, a company that designs and makes sustainable plastics from starches found in tapioca, corn, wheat and potatoes.
He has believed for the past 20 years that the price of oil will eventually make petroleum-based plastics obsolete and clear the way for his alternative.
“The tipping point for us is 95 dollars (£59) a barrel,” he said. At that price “our product becomes cheaper” than traditional plastic.
“The day where we hit 95 dollars a barrel I think all of a sudden you’re going to see bio-plastics basically explode,” he said.
Full Story Potatoes and algae may replace oil in plastics – Telegraph.
OPS: Say goodbye to : “would you like Fries with that?”
MEXICAN DRUGS CARTELS EXPLOITING GANG CONECTION WITHIN US MILITARY
where until around early 2008, scores of adolescents frequented the infamous Avenida Juarez, a street in Ciudad Juarez lined with bars known to cater to American teens visiting Mexico for a night of revelry and recklessness.
El Paso mules
For well over a decade, teens from El Paso, both rich and poor, have worked for Mexican cartels as mules.
University of Texas at El Paso professor and author of “Drug War Zone,” Howard Campbell, told ISN Security Watch that he recalled a 1991 Texas Monthly magazine feature about the children of El Pasos affluent citizens who would travel into Mexico and return with a load of drugs to drop off at some point north of the border.
On 14 August 2007, Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents arrested an 18-year-old high school student from Horizon City, just outside of El Paso, who over the course of a year had recruited between 15 and 20 of his fellow students to smuggle a total of 30,000 pounds a marijuana from Mexico to locations as far away as Oklahoma City.
MOre…..
Full Story YouTube – MEXICAN DRUGS CARTELS EXPLOITING GANG CONECTION WITHIN US MILITARY.
Mexico City Approves Gay Marriage
Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children.
The bill passed the capital’s local assembly 39-20 to the cheers of supporters who yelled: “Yes, we could! Yes, we could!”
Leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the Democratic Revolution Party was widely expected to sign the measure into law.
Mexico City’s left-led assembly has made several decisions unpopular elsewhere in this deeply Roman Catholic country, including legalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. That decision sparked a backlash, with the majority of Mexico’s other 32 states enacting legislation declaring life begins at conception.
Full Story Mexico City Approves Gay Marriage.
Taxpayers to help with the rent at Goldman’s new office tower
As if billions in cash and government guarantees wasn’t enough, it turns out investment bank Goldman Sachs will also be sucking on the taxpayers’ teat when employees move into their slick new digs at the corner of West and Vesey in Manhattan next year.
The New Goldman Sachs World Headquarters — a 43-story office tower next to the World Trade Center site — is being built with the help of millions of dollars from taxpayers, Bloomberg news service reports.
The company that has been the focus of populist anger since the TARP bailout last year took advantage of programs the government set up to revitalize lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. Setting up shop next to the WTC qualified Goldman Sachs for $49 in “job-grant funds, tax exemptions and energy discounts,” Bloomberg’s Christine Harper reported.
Full Story Taxpayers to help with the rent at Goldman’s new office tower | Raw Story.
FLASHBACK: Bernanke Blew Off Warnings About Housing Crisis Because He’d Been Hearing Them Since 1979
In today’s Washington Post, Binyam Applebaum and David Cho took a long look at the Federal Reserve’s complete failure to take note of the subprime housing bubble. “The Fed’s failure to foresee the crisis or to require adequate safeguards happened in part because it did not understand the risks that banks were taking,” they wrote. “[R]ather than looking for warning signs, the Fed had joined — and at times defined — the mainstream consensus among policymakers that financial innovations had made banking safer.”
Of course, much of the focus — and the blame — falls to current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Applebaum and Cho rightly remind readers of Bernanke’s 2007 declaration that “we see no serious broad spillover to banks or thrift institutions from the problems in the subprime market.”
And it’s not like there was a shortage of warnings given directly to the Fed regarding the housing market’s problems. In one of many such instances, National City bank’s chief economist told the Fed in January 2005 that “an increasingly overvalued housing market posed a threat to the broader economy.” But “the message wasn’t well received” :
There Were Lots of Clues
There were lots of clues prior to the 2008 presidential election pointing to a substantially more conservative Barack Obama than most people realized.
Most liberals, myself included, have become progressively disenchanted with President Obama since the beginning of his administration. With the recent health care debacle that disenchantment has reached such an intensity that for the first time I consider it unlikely that he will be re-elected. Therefore, barring unforeseen circumstances, I am hoping to see a serious challenge to his re-nomination from the Democratic left.
The main reason for our disenchantment has been Obama’s turn to the center or center-right since being elected: His decision to “look forward” rather than prosecute Bush administration officials for their use of arbitrary incarceration, torture, and preemptive war seemed inconsistent with his outspokenness against these crimes as a U.S. Senator; his rhetoric in favor of fair trade during his campaign gave way to following the advice of his free trade advisors as President; his campaign pledges to focus on relief for homeowners gave way to a massive bailout of Wall Street as President; and most recently, his campaign promise to offer public health insurance to all Americans was dropped as President.
Full Story Time for change’s Journal – There Were Lots of Clues.
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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. 
