Archive for January, 2010
U.S. to store $800m in military gear in Israel
The U.S. Army will double the value of emergency military equipment it stockpiles on Israeli soil, and Israel will be allowed to use the U.S. ordnance in the event of a military emergency, according to a report in Monday’s issue of the U.S. weekly Defense News.
The report, written by Barbara Opall-Rome, the magazine’s Israel correspondent, said that an agreement reached between Washington and Jerusalem last month will bring the value of the military gear to $800 million.
This is the final phase of a process that began over a year ago to determine the type and amount of U.S. weapons and ammunition to be stored in Israel, part of an overarching American effort to stockpile weapons in areas in which its army may need to operate while allowing American allies to make use of the ordnance in emergencies.
Full Story U.S. to store $800m in military gear in Israel – Haaretz – Israel News.
Venezuela announces currency devaluation
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced a currency devaluation and the introduction of a two-tiered official exchange rate as his government aims to boost a sagging economy.
The official exchange rate of 2.15 bolivars to the dollar, in effect since 2005, will be replaced beginning Monday with a dual-rate regime.
Importers of essential items such as food, medicine and heavy machinery will be able to buy dollars at a rate of 2.60 bolivars to the greenback.
The school supply and science and technology sectors, as well as public sector imports and remittances, also will be favoured by that rate, which will represent a 17 percent devaluation.
But a higher rate of 4.30 bolivars to the dollar will apply to most of the economy, including the automobile, chemicals, rubber and plastics, appliances, textile, electronics, tobacco, beverages and telecommunications sectors.
“Non-essential imports are going to get more expensive,” especially vehicles and shoes, Chavez said in a cabinet meeting Friday that was partially televised by state-run VTV television.
Full Story Venezuela announces currency devaluation.
Learning From Europe
Paul Krugman -
As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I’m not just talking about the tea partiers. Even calmer conservatives have been issuing dire warnings that Obamacare will turn America into a European-style social democracy. And everyone knows that Europe has lost all its economic dynamism.
Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn’t true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn’t? But the story you hear all the time — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.
Actually, Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.
In any case, the statistics confirm what the eyes see.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Learning From Europe – NYTimes.com.
Wall Street Will Be Back For More
Chris Hedges -
Corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation—personal power and wealth—as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not. And these corporate heads, isolated from the mass of Americans by insular corporate structures and vast personal fortunes, are no more attuned to the misery, rage and pain they cause than were the courtiers and perfumed fops who populated Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us.
These companies exist in a pathological world where identity and personal worth are determined solely by the perverted code of the corporation. The corporation decides who has value and who does not, who advances and who is left behind. It rewards the most compliant, craven and manipulative, and discards the losers who can’t play the game, those who do not accumulate wealth or status fast enough, or who fail to fully subsume their individuality into the corporate collective. It dominates the internal and external lives of its employees, leaving them without time for family or solitude—without time for self-reflection—and drives them into a state of perpetual nervous exhaustion. It breaks them down, especially in their early years in the firm, a period in which they are humiliated and pressured to work such long hours that many will sleep under their desks. This hazing process, one that is common at corporate newspapers where I worked, including The New York Times, eliminates from the system most of those with backbone, fortitude and dignity.
Full Story Chris Hedges: Wall Street Will Be Back For More – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.
FOX news fans don’t want you fighting Chamber of Commerce corruption
Fox ‘News’ Fans Flood VR With Death Threats, F-Bombs, Racist Email Following Front Page Article on ‘Stop The Chamber’ Campaign
Those “conservative” Fox “News” fans sure do use a lot of F-words in their death threats.
We're used to various death threats by now, of course, even from Drudge's poodle, Andy “Big Government” Breitbart, but those socially “conservative,” American “values”-lovin', Fox “News” viewers have really outdone themselves this time.
On Monday night, FoxNews.com featured a story on the latest announcement from VR's StopTheChamber.com campaign, concerning the offer of a $200,000 reward for insider information leading to the arrest and conviction of Tom Donohue, the CEO of the right-wing corporatist lobbying group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us]
Obama’s Alternate Universe
Scott Ritter: -
As America enters the year 2010 and President Barack Obama his second year in office, the foreign policy landscape presented by American policymakers and media pundits appears to be dominated by two physical problems—Iraq and Afghanistan—which operate in an overarching metaphysical environment loosely defined as a “war on terror.” The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, entering their seventh and ninth years respectively, have consumed America’s attention, treasure and blood without producing anything close to a tangible victory.
What exactly constitutes the “war on terror” has never been adequately defined and, as a result, the United States has been, and continues to be, militarily involved in other regions as well, including Somalia, Kenya, the Philippines and, increasingly, Yemen. The American people today are fatigued, and while their political leadership promises to lead the nation out of the long, dark tunnel of conflict, there continues to be no light emerging in the distance, only the ever-darkening shadows of wars without end or purpose.
While Obama has promised a draw-down of military forces in Iraq, the lack of stability in that nation since the removal of Saddam Hussein precludes any meaningful reduction of troops, and the ever-present potential of renewed civil and sectarian warfare means that whatever troop level is eventually settled upon will be deployed in Iraq for quiet some time. Moreover, the Iraq conflict, built as it was on an American policy that sought the alteration of the political character of the Middle East beyond simply removing an Iraqi dictator from power, has drawn the United States inexorably toward conflict with Iraq’s larger neighbor to the east, Iran.
Full Story Scott Ritter: Obama’s Alternate Universe – Scott Ritter’s Columns – Truthdig.
Who will pay for Amazon’s ‘Chernobyl’?
A film released this week in Britain recounts the 16-year battle by Ecuadorians for damages against Chevron for oil pollution
It’s barely eight in the morning and already the dusty oil town of Lago Agrio, on the fringes of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is sweltering. Its name means “sour lake” in Spanish, after the hometown of Texan oil company Texaco – a fitting name for an area of once-pristine rainforest that has been decimated in the pursuit of oil. So severe is the environmental damage here that experts have called it an “Amazon Chernobyl”.
But the people of Lago Agrio and its surrounding area have been fighting back. Sixteen years ago, 30,000 Ecuadorians began legal action against the US oil company – now owned by Chevron – they hold responsible. Early this year, from the town’s tiny courtroom, a lone judge will deliver a verdict on their class-action case. If the judge rules in favour of the Ecuadorians, Chevron could face damages of $27.3bn (£17bn), making it the biggest environmental lawsuit in history.
This week, while both sides await the verdict, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the case goes on release in Britain. Called Crude, it is directed by Joe Berlinger, whose movie Metallica: Some Kind of Monster charted the band’s travails.
Full Story Who will pay for Amazon’s ‘Chernobyl’? – Green Living, Environment – The Independent.
Afghan bomber turned radical due to US Mid-East policies, reports say
The Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives at a US facility in Afghanistan was a long-time moderate who turned violently against the United States because of its foreign policies in the Middle East, a variety of reports say.
Time reported this week that Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, recruited by Jordan as a double-agent to gather information on suspected terrorist cells, was as recently as 2007 a “useful asset whose work helped the Americans target al-Qaeda leaders.”
In other words, Balawi was once a useful ally to US interests in helping capture the radicals he eventually sided with.
Full Story Afghan bomber turned radical due to US Mid-East policies, reports say | Raw Story.
OPS: From the Department of No Shit Sherlock
The Implosion of the American Political Consciousness
David Michael Green
If you’re looking for a decent indicator of the political health of the nation, consider the following excerpt from a Christian Science Monitor article this week: “The decision by the White House Friday to not preempt the season premiere of the psychedelic crash-drama “Lost” for the State of the Union address reveals the surprising power of that much ridiculed stereotype: the American couch potato.”
Well, at least no one can accuse us of not having our national priorities in order, eh?
Actually, that’s only part of the story – and frankly the more benign part, to boot.
Full Story The Implosion of the American Political Consciousness | CommonDreams.org.
Israelis reject George Mitchell loan guarantee ‘threat’
Israeli officials have shrugged off a suggestion that the US could withhold loan guarantees to pressure Israel over the Middle East peace process.
The finance minister said Israel did not need the guarantees, while the prime minister accused the Palestinians of holding up peace negotiations.
US envoy George Mitchell said this week the US could withhold loan guarantees to extract concessions from Israel.
The guarantees allow Israel to raise money cheaply overseas.
‘Doing fine’
Full Story BBC News – Israelis reject George Mitchell loan guarantee ‘threat’.
Republicans attempt to re-write history with denials of Bush-era terrorism
A disturbing new trend seems to be seeping from the Grand Old Party, and it is one that will force Americans to deny a number of key things such as facts, footage, common sense, and, yes, their own memories. Republicans appear ready to convince the country that September 11, 2001 wasn’t part of George W. Bush’s presidency.
I realize we Americans have short attention spans, but this is ridiculous.
Full Story Republicans attempt to re-write history with denials of Bush-era terrorism.
New Jobs Come With A Price: Lower Salaries, Economic ‘Scarring’ Of Labor Force
Unemployed for nearly a year, David Becker was relieved to land a new job in information technology last summer.
The offer carried a price, though: It was a lower-rung job than the one Becker had lost. He had to uproot his family from Wisconsin to Nevada. And, like many formerly jobless people who find work these days, Becker is now paid far less than before – $25,000 less.
It’s one of the bleak realities of the economic recovery: Even as more employers are starting to hire, the new jobs typically pay less than the ones that were lost.
In the government’s data, a job is a job. More jobs point to a growing economy. But to people who used to earn $60,000, a new $40,000 job means they’ll spend less – and contribute less to the recovery.
Full Story New Jobs Come With A Price: Lower Salaries, Economic ‘Scarring’ Of Labor Force.
White House Believes ‘Liberal Angst’ Over Healthcare Will Go Away
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Better it is to be of humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.
– Proverbs 16: 18-19, the Bible
My Grandma Delphia used to quote that Bible verse. I wonder if other folks heard the same from their grandmothers. I am pretty sure some folks at the highest levels in our government either didn’t trust or honor their grandmothers’ teachings or they just flat don’t think rules of common decency and our shared humanity apply.
Many of us knew in 2008 what the Republicans had in store for us in the area of healthcare reform, and we firmly and overwhelmingly rejected those plans. Instead we took seriously the threat that a John McCain presidency meant taxation of our healthcare benefits and other healthcare horrors, and we overwhelmingly rejected those ideas. We had great angst about the potential that anyone would look at the suffering embedded in the U.S. healthcare system and allow it to continue and even grow worse.
Our angst moved us in another direction at the polls. We were promised by the Democrats that no one with an income under $250,000 per year would have any increase in taxes at all to cover healthcare reform, and we were also heartened to hear Barack Obama state firmly and without hesitation that healthcare is a basic human right.
Full Story White House Believes ‘Liberal Angst’ Over Healthcare Will Go Away | CommonDreams.org.
OPS: More than ignoring the ‘base’ – Obama is flipping them the bird.
Chuck Todd slips, admits conservative bias on Hardball
Chris Matthews asks Chuck Todd about Obama’s “liberal” approach to fighting terrorism. Toward the end of the clip Todd slips up and refers to Obama’s conservative critics as “we”.
Bacteria Linked To Feces Found In Nearly Half Of Fast Food Soda Fountains
Didn’t think the fast food industry could get any grosser? Well it can.
This time, it’s not the food, but the soda fountains to be worried about. According to Tom Laskawy, a media and technology professional and blogger for grist.org, a team of microbiologists from Hollins University found that 48% of sodas tested from the fast food fountains contain coliform bacteria, which is typically fecal in origin. And most bacteria found were antibiotic resistant, as icing on the cake.
The microbiologists published their findings in the International Journal of Food Microbiology. They tested 90 beverages from 30 soda fountains. Their abstract states:
Full Story Bacteria Linked To Feces Found In Nearly Half Of Fast Food Soda Fountains.
Top 10: Climate Geo-ingineering Ideas to Save Our Planet
The solution to climate change lies not in the hands of politicians, but some seriously nutty scientists.
For the uninitiated, geoengineering is easiest explained as the plan B in the fight against climate change, in case our politicians and world leaders fail. And as the Kyoto agreement is due 2012, with both Bali and Copenhagen settled disappointments, it is perhaps time for drastic action.
Scientists all over the world are already on it.
Full Story Top 10: Climate Geo-ingineering Ideas to Save Our Planet | TotallyTop10 – Funny Top Ten Listings.
Best Products Of CES 2010: The Coolest New Tech From The Consumer Electronics Show (PHOTOS)
Horizon's HydroFill is made to convert water into hydrogen, and hydrogen into juice for your gadgets. CNET explains: "The HydroFill extracts hydrogen gas from water and stores it in Hydrostik cartridges with a metal alloy that absorbs the hydrogen. To then charge electronic devices, people use a pocket-size fuel cell charger, called a MiniPak, which pulls hydrogen from the cartridges and a produces an electrical current."
The 2010 Consumer Electronics Show–the world’s largest consumer tech tradeshow–kicked off this week in Las Vegas.
Bloggers and exhibitors, entrepreneurs and engineers, have turned up at CES 2010 to check out the latest, and hottest, new consumer tech.
Check out some of the coolest new gadgets on show at CES 2010 in the slideshow below — and check back as we’ll be updating it with more awesome gizmos, devices, and cutting-edge tech.
Full Story Best Products Of CES 2010: The Coolest New Tech From The Consumer Electronics Show (PHOTOS).
Egypt Discovers New Tombs Near Pyramids
Egyptian archaeologists discovered a new set of tombs belonging to the workers who built the great pyramids, shedding light on how the laborers lived and ate more than 4,000 years ago, the antiquities department said Sunday.
The thousands of men who built the last remaining wonder of the ancient world ate meat regularly, worked in three months shifts and were given the honor being buried in mud brick tombs within the shadow of the sacred pyramids they worked on.
The newly discovered tombs date to Egypt’s 4th Dynasty (2575 B.C. to 2467 B.C.) when the great pyramids were built, according to the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass.
Full Story Egypt Discovers New Tombs Near Pyramids.
U.S. job loss report is blow to still-fragile recovery
The job market remained in a deep funk in December, according to a government report Friday showing that employers view the economic recovery as too weak and too fragile to begin hiring again on any large scale.
The pace of layoffs has slowed sharply in recent months, but businesses still cut 85,000 net jobs in December, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 10 percent, but economists suspect this is only because hundreds of thousands of frustrated workers stopped looking for jobs.
With the jobless rate stuck in double digits and Democrats worried that the weak economy will prompt voters to turn on them in fall elections, the White House plans more public events in coming weeks to underscore its concern about jobs and the economy. On Friday, President Obama called the employment report a setback during his announcement of $2.3 billion in tax credits to support renewable energy, which the administration says will create 17,000 jobs
Full Story U.S. job loss report is blow to still-fragile recovery – washingtonpost.com.
Financial crisis commission to quiz bank CEOs
As lawmakers start trickling back to Washington next week, a panel tasked with investigating the financial crisis is set to make its first big splash.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a 10-member panel appointed last summer by Congress, will hold public hearings on Wednesday and Thursday.
First up are four chiefs of some of the best-known and largest banks: Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).
The panel’s chairman, Philip Angelides, said he’s interested in hearing about the banks’ role in creating the crisis as well as finding out how they became “too big to fail.” The federal government stepped in to prop up the banks in fall 2008, creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program to help provide them with liquidity.
Full Story Financial crisis commission to quiz bank CEOs – Jan. 9, 2010.
OPS: Like the tobacco CEO’s were ‘quizzed by their partners in crime? Bet they’re petrified…
More Kabuki for the peons.
Bill Moyers Journal: Essay on Greed
The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given 2.3 billion dollars to candidates, leadership PACs and party committees since 1989. You heard me right: Billions.
BILL MOYERS: During the recent holidays, across the ocean in London, in the very heart of the city, the district where St. Paul’s Cathedral and other historic churches nestle in the same neighborhood as the big multinational banks, some financiers were showing signs of contrition. These modern day Ebenezer Scrooges were actually questioning how they earned their fortunes.
According to the “Financial Times,” they were asking themselves how “Financial capitalism has become synonymous with,” and I quote, “Crazy risk-taking, with the passing off of toxic investments to unwitting counterparties and the earning of multi-million dollar bonuses, regardless of merit.” Talk about mea culpa.
This epiphany came soon after the British government said it will slam a fifty percent tax on bonuses over 25,000 pounds — that would be anything over 40,000 dollars here in the U.S. In April the tax on those who make more than l50,000 pounds — that comes out to an annual paycheck of around a quarter of a million, American — could go as high as fifty percent.
But that news — as well as tighter banking regulations in the United Kingdom — elicited a hearty “Bah Humbug!” from the London branch of Goldman Sachs, which has hinted that if the tax hike goes through, it just might shut down its London operations and ship them to Switzerland, land of the cuckoo clock and secret bank accounts. Take that, patriots.
full transcript and video at link
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS.
Let The Cameras Roll
Our guest blogger is John D. Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
PiccspanMy colleagues Igor Volsky and Matt Yglesias have eloquently argued on ThinkProgress that C-Span’s cameras should not be allowed to film the final negotiations between the House and Senate as they hammer out health care legislation that President Obama will soon sign into law. While I respect their arguments, I take a very different view. I have long believed that openness and transparency are essential bedrock measures for ensuring public accountability of our government. Letting C-Span cameras into health care conference meetings will keep negotiators honest, give the public an opportunity for input, and allow the process to be more collaborative.
Open government and citizen access to information is a first principle of liberty in a democracy that has to be defended — even when it’s unpopular or deemed unhelpful in the short term. It is my experience that corruption in government begins at the moment when officials in power believe no one is paying attention. The scrutiny of traditional journalists, citizen journalists, and other interested Americans serves as a powerful disinfectant for our legislative process and restores confidence in our participatory democracy.
Critics have argued that the presence of cameras is likely to produce political posturing and grandstanding by politicians. And indeed, with the cameras rolling, Republicans have said health care reform is a bigger threat than terrorism, claimed that seniors would be told to “drop dead,” and even called the President a liar. But I’m glad cameras were there to capture those demeaning comments. They have helped all Americans gain a better understanding of the unwillingness of some on the right to engage in a rational debate.
Full Story Think Progress » Let The Cameras Roll.
Stunning Comments from the White House on the Burgeoning Geithner/AIG Scandal
David Sirota -
As a follow up to yesterday’s explosive news, check out today’s an amazing – and hideous – interchange between CNN reporter Ed Henry and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about new evidence that Tim Geithner’s New York Fed instructed AIG to hide information from SEC regulators (by the way, big kudos to Henry for trying to get some answers):
Q: Robert, Does the White House believe that Secretary Geithner should testify on the Hill, turn over any documents he has, to sort of clear this up?
MR. GIBBS: Ed, I’d point you to the Treasury Department. I’m sure you’ve already talked to them. Secretary Geithner was not involved in any of these emails. These decisions did not rise to his level at the Fed. These are emails and decisions made by officials at an independent regulatory agency –
Q: But how do you know that he wasn’t involved? He was the leader of the New York Fed.
more…..
Three things here:
1. Notice that the White House is not denying that illegal action may have occurred – the administration is only making the (preposterous) assertion that the regulatory filings of the largest corporation in the New York Fed’s receivership somehow “didn’t rise” to Geithner’s level. That’s right, we’re expected to believe the decisions to authorize and then hide multi-billion-dollar taxpayer-financed sweetheart deals for Geithner’s friends at Goldman Sachs and all the other big banks obviously – obviously! – “didn’t rise” to Geithner’s level. Hmm…where have we heard this “no controlling legal authority” argument before…hmm…oh, right – from top Enron executives. And I thought the President was telling us that he believed in “buck stops here” accountability for those at the top, right? Guess not.
2. Gibbs insists Geithner “wasn’t….
Full Story Stunning Comments from the White House on the Burgeoning Geithner/AIG Scandal | The Smirking Chimp.
Top Muslim clerics issue Fatwa denouncing terror attacks on Canada and U.S
CALGARY – Top Imams affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada have issued a fatwa calling those terrorists who attack the United States and Canada “evil.”
The Fatwa is the most important condemnation of terrorists who try to hurt people living in Canada. Extremists have been told that any attack on the U.S. or on Canada will be construed as an attack on 10 million Muslims who live in these two countries.
“This is the first Fatwa by the Muslim clergy declaring attacks on Canada and the United States as attack on Muslims. Following is the text of the Fatwa. A Fatwa is a religious edict.
“We, the undersigned Imams, are issuing the following Fatwa in order to guide the Muslims of North America regarding the attacks on Canada and the United States by the terrorists and the extremists,” said the declaration.
“In our view, these attacks are evil and Islam requires from Muslims to stand up against this evil. In the holy Qur’an Almighty Allah (God) orders Muslims:
Full Story Top Muslim clerics issue Fatwa denouncing terror attacks on Canada and U.S | VANCOUVERITE.
Independent News Media says US complicit in Flight 253 terror plot
Why would they do it? As if there weren’t enough real threats to the United States, one would think that a scare tactic such as this would be redundant.
However, the detailed report with supporting data is available on Mathaba.net news website. It alleges the cooperation of the FBI, Mossad (Israeli Intelligence Services) and India coming together to produce an event which would receive worldwide coverage, and the support needed for the American President to continue his fight against terrorism, and the possible diminution of liberties guaranteed to the American people.
Al-Qaeda usually plans their attacks months if not years in advance to ensure their success. The more one delves into the article, the more one realizes that the failed attempt was meant to fail. It was only meant to scare. There is a disturbing allegation that Umar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab, the 23-year old Nigerian, who was indicted on terrorism charges, had a father who worried about him according to media reports. However, in this version, we find that Abdul-Mutallab’s father was a man with prominent standing in Nigeria, retired from high level position in banking, and currently holding chairmanship in several businesses. He also ran the national arms industry (DICON) in patnership with Israel. The West may not know, or may not wish to publicize that Nigeria has a strong Mossad presence in the country in order to train their own security agents. A September 2008 article discusses at length the Nigerian position regarding the presence of Israeli agents in its territory.
Full Story Independent News Media says US complicit in Flight 253 terror plot.
Appeals Court Warm to Comcast in Fight Against FCC
It was the hottest ticket in town, a hearing in the high-profile fight about Internet network regulation between media giant Comcast Corp. and the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC had a seat at the front table. But for this show, the FCC perhaps wishes it had been in the back.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit didn’t seem keen on letting stand an FCC finding that Comcast violated “federal internet policy” in interfering with use for certain subscribers. Those consumers were using peer-to-peer software to exchange, among other things, bandwidth-heavy video. Comcast has since abandoned the network management practice that was subject to a complaint at the FCC. The commission did not fine Comcast.
Wiley Rein partner Helgi Walker, representing Comcast, argued today that the FCC was outside its bounds when it crafted and enforced a policy statement—“basically a piece of paper,” Walker called it—against Comcast. That statement, Walker argued, isn’t enforceable. The FCC is now in the rule-making process, a move that began after the August 2008 order was lodged against Comcast. Walker said Comcast has suffered, among other things, harm to its reputation.
Full Story Appeals Court Warm to Comcast in Fight Against FCC – The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
China learns to ‘work’ Capitol Hill
Ten years ago, U.S. lawmakers publicly accused the China Ocean Shipping Co. of being a front for espionage and blocked plans to expand its Long Beach, Calif., port terminal over fears that Chinese spies would use it to snoop on the United States.
By last year, Congress was seeing the state-owned Chinese behemoth in a far kinder light. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) authored a resolution applauding the company for employing thousands of Americans and helping keep the waters of Alaska clean. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) hailed the firm on the House floor, calling its chief executive “a people's ambassador” to the United States after it rescued Boston's port — and thousands of jobs — when a European shipping line moved out.
The congressional about-face illustrates a dramatic increase in China's influence on Capitol Hill, where for years its lobbying muscle never matched its ballooning importance in world affairs. Members of Congress, lobbyists and other observers said China's new prominence is largely the result of Beijing's increasingly sophisticated efforts to influence events at the center of U.S. power — and a growing realization among U.S. lawmakers that China has become a critical economic player across America.
Full Story China learns to ‘work’ Capitol Hill – Washington Post- msnbc.com.
Frank Rich: The Other Plot to Wreck America
Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.
THERE may not be a person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda, shoulda been done to prevent the underwear bomber from boarding that Christmas flight to Detroit. In the years since 9/11, we’ve all become counterterrorists. But in the 16 months since that other calamity in downtown New York — the crash precipitated by the 9/15 failure of Lehman Brothers — most of us are still ignorant about what Warren Buffett called the “financial weapons of mass destruction” that wrecked our economy. Fluent as we are in Al Qaeda and body scanners, when it comes to synthetic C.D.O.’s and credit-default swaps, not so much.
What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – The Other Plot to Wreck America – NYTimes.com.
Blackwater wants $1 billion to train the new Afghan police force
That’s right. $1 billion:
Blackwater Worldwide’s legal woes haven’t dimmed the company’s prospects in Afghanistan, where it’s a contender to be a key part of President Barack Obama’s strategy for stabilizing the country.
Now called Xe Services, the company is in the running for a Pentagon contract potentially worth $1 billion to train Afghanistan’s troubled national police force. Xe has been shifting to training, aviation and logistics work after its security guards were accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians more than two years ago.
Yet even with a new name and focus, the expanded role would seem an unlikely one for Xe because Democrats have held such a negative opinion of the company following the Iraqi deaths, which are still reverberating in Baghdad and Washington.
Blackwater was basically kicked out of Iraq for wantonly killing civilians in Baghdad while providing “security” for the State Department in 2007. Even though a US court failed to bring them to justice, Iraq is still pursuing the case and has so little trust in Blackwater or the people it hires that the government has explicitly said former Blackwater employees are not welcome in the country.
Full Story The Seminal » Blackwater wants $1 billion to train the new Afghan police force.
Hawaii Budget Crisis: State Can’t Afford Congressional Election
Possibly Leaving 600,000 Residents Without Representation In Washington
Cash-strapped Hawaii can’t afford to pay for an election to replace a congressman who is planning to step down next month to run for governor, potentially leaving 600,000 urban Honolulu residents without representation in Washington.
Budget cuts have left the state Office of Elections with about $5,000 to last until July, with a special election costing nearly $1 million, interim Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago said.
Until the state finds money or this fall’s regularly scheduled elections occur, one of Hawaii’s two seats in the House of Representatives will remain vacant.
Full Story Hawaii Budget Crisis: State Can’t Afford Congressional Election.
Bubble warning
The Economist -
Markets are too dependent on unsustainable government stimulus. Something’s got to give
THE effect of free money is remarkable. A year ago investors were panicking and there was talk of another Depression. Now the MSCI world index of global share prices is more than 70% higher than its low in March 2009. That’s largely thanks to interest rates of 1% or less in America, Japan, Britain and the euro zone, which have persuaded investors to take their money out of cash and to buy risky assets.
For all the panic last year, asset values never quite reached the lows that marked other bear-market bottoms, and now the rally has made several markets look pricey again. In the American housing market, where the crisis started, homes are priced at around fair value on the basis of rental yields, but they are overvalued by almost 30% in Britain and by 50% in Australia, Hong Kong and Spain.
Stockmarkets are still shy of their record peaks in most countries. The American market is around 25% below the level it reached in 2007. But it is still nearly 50% overvalued on the best long-term measure, which adjusts profits to allow for the economic cycle, and is on a par with two of the four great valuation peaks in the 20th century, in 1901 and 1966.
Full Story Markets: Bubble warning | The Economist.
Unions Oppose Possible Health Insurance Tax
When millions of blue-collar workers were leaning toward John McCain during the 2008 campaign, labor unions moved many of them into Barack Obama’s column by repeatedly hammering one theme: Mr. McCain wanted to tax their health benefits.
But now labor leaders are fuming that President Obama has endorsed a tax on high-priced, employer-sponsored health insurance policies as a way to help cover the cost of health care reform. And as Senate and House leaders seek to negotiate a final health care bill, unions are pushing mightily to have that tax dropped from the legislation. Or at the very least, they want the price threshold raised so that the tax would affect fewer workers.
Labor leaders say the tax would hit not only wealthy executives with expensive health benefits, but also many rank-and-file union members who have often settled for lower wage increases in exchange for more generous health benefits.
The tax would affect individual insurance policies with annual premiums above $8,500 and family policies above $23,000, which by one union survey would affect one in four union members.
Full Story Unions Oppose Possible Health Insurance Tax – NYTimes.com.
Did Jesus oppose capitalism, as Moore argues?
Would Jesus Christ — the founder of the largest religion in the world, unequivocally recognized as a messenger of peace and love — support capitalism?
It’s one of the questions filmmaker Michael Moore, the well-known creator of documentaries such as Bowling for Columbine and Sicko, asks in his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story.
In Capitalism, the filmmaker wonders whether Christ would support a system that, as the filmmaker stated, “has allowed the richest one per cent to have more financial wealth than the 95 per cent under them combined.”
Moore, a Roman Catholic, argues that Jesus’ commandments to care for others and feed the poor and hungry go against the love of money and greed that make up capitalism. He argues that one cannot be a religious Christian and a capitalist.
Clement Mehlman, a Lutheran chaplain at Dalhousie University, agrees.
Full Story Did Jesus oppose capitalism, as Moore argues? – Nova Scotia News – TheChronicleHerald.ca.
OPS: “Jesus would have been a communist….” ? This will make a couple of republicans crap in their pants. Queue the firestorm. Without question Jesus was a Liberal, but a Communist?
Sanders a growing force on the far, far left
Vermont senator is gathering clout as he takes on the Fed’s Bernanke
The Senate may pride itself on a reputation as the world’s most exclusive deliberative body, but it is turning into just about the only place in America where a self-described socialist can wield raw power.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has spent his career trying to remake American capitalism in a more Scandinavian image. His favored targets of late have been top finance regulators he considers far too deferential to Wall Street. Last year, Sanders spent five months trying to block a new Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman before securing promises from Gary Gensler to aggressively fight market excesses.
Now Sanders is aiming at the top of the regulatory pyramid, putting a hold on the renomination of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, whom he blames for the country’s financial collapse as a “key architect of the Bush economy.’’
Sanders, however, seems to be hoping that this particular adventure ends not with a peaceful detente but a spectacular confrontation.
“I’m going to do my best to defeat him,’’ said Sanders.
Full Story Sanders a growing force on the far, far left – The Boston Globe.
One More Term Senator Dorgan, Please?
by Ralph Nader
The retiring of veteran Democratic Senators, Christopher Dodd, age 65, of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan, age 67, of North Dakota, have some short and long term consequences for the Democratic Party and its members.
Senator Dodd’s announcement that he was finished did not surprise me. He was going through difficult times with this health, the loss of his closest sibling, and his closest friend in the Senate — Ted Kennedy — and was not inclined to battle through an uphill fight for re-election. 2010 is, arguably, the most important legislative year of his career for financial and health insurance reforms.
Mr. Dodd should be comforted because it is very likely he will be succeeded by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who leads the polls and is expected to win handily. Mr. Blumenthal will find a great opportunity to use his enforcement experience as a leading consumer advocate in the Senate against corporate wrongdoing.
Full Story One More Term Senator Dorgan, Please? | CommonDreams.org.
Answering Helen Thomas on Why They Want to Harm Us
Ray McGovern
Thank God for Helen Thomas, the only person to show any courage at the White House press briefing after President Barack Obama gave a flaccid account of the intelligence screw-up that almost downed an airliner on Christmas Day.
After Obama briefly addressed L’Affaire Abdulmutallab and wrote “must do better” on the report cards of the national security schoolboys responsible for the near catastrophe, the President turned the stage over to counter-terrorism guru John Brennan and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
It took 89-year old veteran correspondent Helen Thomas to break through the vapid remarks about channeling “intelligence streams,” fixing “no-fly” lists, deploying “behavior detection officers,” and buying more body-imaging scanners.
Thomas recognized the John & Janet filibuster for what it was, as her catatonic press colleagues took their customary dictation and asked their predictable questions. Instead, Thomas posed an adult query that spotlighted the futility of government plans to counter terrorism with more high-tech gizmos and more intrusions on the liberties and privacy of the traveling public.
She asked why Abdulmutallab did what he did.
Full Story Answering Helen Thomas on Why They Want to Harm Us | CommonDreams.org.
Did the CIA Deploy a Blackwater Hit Team in Germany?
Jeremy Scahill -
German prosecutors have launched a preliminary investigation into allegations that the CIA deployed a team of Blackwater operatives on a clandestine operation in Hamburg, Germany, after 9/11 ultimately aimed at assassinating a German citizen with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. The alleged assassination operation was revealed last month in a Vanity Fair profile of Blackwater’s owner Erik Prince.
The magazine reported that after 9/11, the CIA used one of Prince’s homes in Virginia as a covert training facility for hit teams that would hunt Al Qaeda suspects globally. Their job was find, fix, and finish: “Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off,” as the magazine put it.
According to Vanity Fair, one of the team’s targets was Mamoun Darkazanli, a naturalized German citizen originally from Syria. Darkazanli has been accused by Spain of being an Al Qaeda supporter with close ties to the alleged 9/11 plotters who lived in Hamburg. The Blackwater/CIA team “supposedly went in ‘dark,’ meaning they did not notify their own station–much less the German government–of their presence,” according to Vanity Fair. “[T]hey then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down.” Authorities in Washington, however, “chose not to pull the trigger.”
Full Story Did the CIA Deploy a Blackwater Hit Team in Germany?.
Court Rulings Erode Spending Restrictions for Elections
Even before a landmark Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance law expected within days, a series of other court decisions is reshaping the political battlefield by freeing corporations, unions and other interest groups from many of the restrictions on their advertising about issues and candidates.
Legal experts and political operatives say the cases roll back campaign spending rules to the years before Watergate. The end of decades-old restrictions could unleash a torrent of negative advertisements, help cash-poor Republicans in a pivotal year and push President Obama to bring in more money for his party.
If the Supreme Court, as widely expected, rules against core elements of the existing limits, Democrats say they will try to enact new laws to reinstate the restrictions in time for the midterm elections in November. And advocates of stricter campaign finance laws say they hope the developments will prod the president to fulfill a campaign promise to update the presidential campaign financing system, even though it would diminish his edge as incumbent.
Full Story Court Rulings Erode Spending Restrictions for Elections – NYTimes.com.
OPS: The upcoming ruling by the SCOTUS will be the coup de grâce to the American form of Democracy. Mark your calendars. It will be the end of the Founders dream
Obama: Healths reforms will be felt this year
US President Barack Obama promised on Saturday that Americans will see the effects of health reform this year, saying Congress is “on the verge” of approving the overhaul the nation’s health care system.
“Now, it’ll take a few years to fully implement these reforms in a responsible way,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.
“But what every American should know is that once I sign health insurance reform into law, there are dozens of protections and benefits that will take effect this year.”
The US House of Representatives and Senate both passed sweeping health reform proposals last year, but their bills differ significantly.
Both measures aim to extend health care coverage to more than 30 million out of the 36 million Americans that lack it, end abusive health insurance company practices, and curb soaring costs that take giant bites out of family and government budgets.
Full Story Obama: Healths reforms will be felt this year | Raw Story.
OPS: This way he can start taxing us on this “benefit” in 2010 also
Taser’s new weapon: mobile phone monitoring
Stun gun maker Taser wants to help parents, not with jolts of electricity but with a tool which allows parents to effectively take over a child’s mobile phone and manage its use.
“Basically we’re taking old fashioned parenting and bringing it into the mobile world,” Taser chairman and co-founder Tom Smith said at the Consumer Electronics Show here, where the Arizona company unveiled the new product.
“Because when you give your child his mobile phone you don’t know who they’re talking to, what they’re sending or texting, all of those things,” Smith told AFP.
Full Story Taser’s new weapon: mobile phone monitoring | Raw Story.
Judge orders CHP to return 60 pounds of marijuana
It had been confiscated from a motorist whose attorney convinced a judge that California’s medical marijuana law allowed its transport.
With the debate on medical marijuana still at a full boil in Los Angeles, a judge Friday ordered the return of 60 pounds of pot to a man after his attorneys successfully argued that a state law gave him the right to transport it.
Saguro Doven, 33, was initially charged with possession of marijuana for sale and transportation of the drug, a violation of the state’s health and safety code.
The marijuana was bundled in individual bags that were tucked inside a larger duffel bag when Doven was pulled over on the 101 Freeway by a California Highway Patrol officer, according to court records.
Full Story Judge orders CHP to return 60 pounds of marijuana – latimes.com.
GOP Sen. Dick Lugar rebukes Cheney criticism of Obama as ‘unfair.’
Republicans have sought to exploit the recent attempted terrorism attack on Christmas for political gain, using the incident to smear unions, call for ethnic profiling, rally voters around their political campaigns, and to deride President Obama as an “appeaser.” However, Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) has struck a different tone in analyzing the administration’s response to the attempted attack. In an interview set to air on Bloomberg this weekend, Lugar responded to attacks from the likes of former Vice President Cheney, who has crowed that Obama “is trying to pretend we are not at war” with a “low-key response.” Lugar forcefully said such such criticism is “unfair“:
“It’s unfair,” Lugar said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “I think the president is focused.” [...] To the contrary, Obama has demonstrated “firmness” and “decisiveness,” Lugar, who represents Indiana, said. “That’s been the antidote to the criticism.”
Watch it:
Full Story Think Progress » GOP Sen. Dick Lugar rebukes Cheney criticism of Obama as ‘unfair.’.
OPS: that’s it for Luggie. The teabaggers will throw him under the bus for sure now
Dodd’s Retirement Decision May Increase Chances for Financial Regulatory Overhaul
The announced departure of veteran Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) on Tuesday brought the debate over proposed financial reforms, which would be the most sweeping since the Great Depression, back to the forefront, leading both pro and anti-reform advocates to believe that the retirement should be seen as a victory for their side.
Dodd, who at times has been seen alternatively as a liberal lion in the Senate fighting for working people and also as another too-cozy-for-comfort with Wall Street lawmaker, is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which will spearhead the legislation through the upper chamber. He announced this week his decision to step down at the end of his term rather than face perhaps the toughest reelection fight of his 30-year Senate career, leading to rampant speculation as to which direction negotiations over the bill will go.
Reform advocates believe that his decision to retire will free him of the need to raise massive amounts of money from Wall Street, which has been adamantly opposed to the proposed reforms.
Full Story Dodd’s Retirement Decision May Increase Chances for Financial Regulatory Overhaul | Economy In Crisis.
Bloated Board Pay, Failing Companies
As directorial compensation has ballooned, board members have become less inclined to question actions taken by the company.
The problem of executive compensation has been big news in the last year. Companies with floundering finances had to work harder and harder to account for the lavish pay doled out to special elites. Just as many companies were laying workers off, executives continued to rake in millions in compensation dozens of times higher than their average employee.
According to a recent article published by Fortune, the problem is just as pervasive among certain, supposedly objective, directorial boards. The Board of Directors is generally considered to be a body that balances the debate and is able to rein in CEOs if they are seen to be mismanaging or performing poorly.
However, as directorial compensation has ballooned, board members may have become less inclined to question actions taken by the company.
Full Story Bloated Board Pay, Failing Companies | Economy In Crisis.
New Japanese Finance Minister Looking to Devalue Yen
Taking a page straight from the Chinese playbook of mercantilism, recently named Finance Minister Naoto Kan suggested Wednesday that it would be in the nation’s best interest to devalue its currency in order to boost exports.
Taking a page straight from the Chinese playbook of mercantilism, a Japanese government official suggested Wednesday that it would be in the nation’s best interest to devalue its currency in order to boost exports.
Recently named Finance Minister Naoto Kan, Japan’s top currency official, told reporters Wednesday that it would be beneficial to allow the yen to depreciate against the dollar.
“I hope currency markets correct themselves further, weakening the yen,” he told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
Full Story New Japanese Finance Minister Looking to Devalue Yen | Economy In Crisis.
Iconic Companies Lost in 2009
While iconic American automakers General Motors and Chrysler were saved from the brink of disaster in 2009, others were not so lucky, succumbing to the fate of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
American businesses, struggling with lower consumer demands and hard-to-get credit, attempted to cut costs in a myriad of ways last year – slashing jobs, cutting back hours, freezing wages – but for many, those measures were not enough to survive the Great Recession.
Overall, more than 45,000 businesses closed down last year, some with very recognizable names.
One of the largest closings of the year involved electronics retailer Circuit City. The business, which was founded in 1949, officially closed its doors in March. In total, 567 Circuit City stores closed, resulting in the loss of some 30,000 jobs reportedly.
Full Story Iconic Companies Lost in 2009 | Economy In Crisis.
Fox News: Keeping the faith
At Fox News, religion is easy: Christianity is right and good and must be defended from its relentless persecutors, and other faiths are dangerous, inadequate, or a joke.
Religion is … tough.
The collected spiritual teachings of the world's various deities, messiahs, prophets, monks, yogis, gurus, and shamans are so deeply ingrained in human culture and consciousness that they essentially tell the history of mankind. Their cosmological and philosophical differences have proved to be stubbornly intractable and provided the impetus for many of humanity's more brutal conflicts. The greatest minds of the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds have devoted entire lifetimes delving into the deepest questions that face mankind.
But for Fox News, religion is easy: Christianity is right and good and must be defended from its relentless persecutors, and other faiths are dangerous, inadequate, or funny.
Viewers of this past weekend's Fox News Sunday were treated to an especially stark example of the network's affection for Christendom when Fox News analyst and putative paragon of “straight news” Brit Hume counseled Tiger Woods to ditch Buddhism in favor of Christianity as his best hope for a “total recovery” from the scandal surrounding his marital infidelities. According to Hume: “I don't think that faith [Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.” Hume appeared on The O'Reilly Factor the next day to deny that he was “proselytizing,” explaining that Woods “needs something that Christianity especially provides and gives and offers, and that is redemption and forgiveness.” To attempt to explain how that makes sense is way beyond my pay grade.
Full Story Fox News: Keeping the faith | Media Matters for America.
Book Review: “Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class,”
Whom do you picture when you read the phrase “drug dealer”? It’s probably not the subjects of this book. They’re white, upper-middle class and beyond, upwardly mobile college students blithely enmeshed in a web of criminality — drug use and sales — that, for them at least, goes unnoticed, and even when noticed, largely unpunished.
And that really irks Mohamed and Fritsvold, a pair of Southern California sociologists who gained entrée into a network of drug sellers and users centered on a private college in San Diego and then spent six years interviewing and observing them as they partied hearty, gobbled and swapped pills, and peddled dope with reckless abandon. It’s not, as the authors make clear, that they wish their student subjects were punished with the same heavy hand awaiting a poor black kid slinging crack in on an inner city street corner.
In fact, Mohamed and Fritsvold make equally clear that they view US drug policies as harsh and counterproductive, in no small part because of the race and class biases they so inarguably exhibit. Healthy chunks of “Dorm Room Dealers” are devoted to delineating in detail just how racially skewed and cleaved by class the application of American drug laws are. That’s what really irks the authors.
And that partially answers the questions the authors posed at the beginning of the book. Why do privileged college students — who have everything to lose and little to gain — choose to sell drugs? Well, because they can do so with almost total impunity. They are not the target of the drug war. They’re the wrong color and the wrong class. They essentially get a free pass — from police, who ignore them; from college administrators, who don’t want to upset their parents; from doctors, who are happy to prescribe them whatever pills they desire… because they are the children of “good people,” i.e. white and wealthy people.
TSA funding airport mind-reading scanners
Amid the media furor over the attempted Christmas Day attacks and a renewed political focus on enhancing airport security, attention is turning to a technological advancement that will have civil rights activists — or, for that matter, anyone with a secret –seriously worried: Mind-reading machines.
“As far-fetched as that sounds, systems that aim to get inside an evildoer’s head are among the proposals floated by security experts thinking beyond the X-ray machines and metal detectors used on millions of passengers and bags each year,” AP’s Michael Tarm reports.
Tarm focuses on an Israeli company called WeCU Technologies (as in “we see you”), which is building a system that would turn airport waiting areas into arenas for Pavlovian behavioral tests:
Full Story TSA funding airport mind-reading scanners | Raw Story.
Factory Farmed Meat Can Trigger a Global Pandemic That Wipes Out 60% of Those Infected
The chicken and pork industries have wrought unprecedented changes in bird and swine flu. Billions could die in a deadly flu pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen.
I was intrigued (and disturbed) by a book I just read online – www.BirdFluBook.org — by Michael Greger, M.D. about the potential of a deadly flu pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen. Greger very clearly delineates how a virus begins, mutates, and becomes dangerous. As with so many problems we are seeing lately — environmental or health — factory farmed meat seems to be a big part of the cause. A graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine, Michael Greger, M.D., serves as Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States. An internationally recognized lecturer, he has presented at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit, testified before Congress, and was an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous “meat defamation” trial. His recent scientific publications in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Critical Reviews in Microbiology, and the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition, and Public Health explore the public health implications of industrialized animal agriculture.
Kathy Freston: How likely are we to have a bird or swine flu that turns into something really deadly and widespread?
Cerberus Capital: Literally Blood-Sucking the Poor to Make Their Billions
Wall Street Vampires: Lately, a lot of Americans, myself included, have used the blood-sucking monsters as a metaphor to describe the Wall Street billionaires who rule us, and who are ruining us. Like so many awful stories of the past few years, it turns out that these Wall Street vampire-billionaires really exist, literally. Like all vampires, they live in remote castles, and feed themselves by luring poor, desperate humans into their dens, hooking them into blood-pumping machines, and sucking out their plasma for mind-boggling profits.
Cerberus Capital, one of Wall Street’s most notoriously ruthless leveraged-buyout firms (or “private equity firms” in PC-speak), recently made a $1.8 billion killing on their human plasma investment, a company called Talecris, which they bought for a mere $82.5 million just four years earlier. Meaning Cerberus made 23 times their investment on human plasma. They did it by the most savage, heartless means possible: by paying peanuts to their impoverished human plasma donors, who increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood-pumping stations set up on the American side, jacking up the price of plasma by restricting supply (a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission accused Cerberus Plasma Holdings of “operat[ing] as an oligopoly”), and then selling the refined products to the most desperately ill, patients suffering from hemophilia, severe burns, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune deficiencies. The products cost so much—one, IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin) cost twice the price of gold as of last summer — that American health insurance companies have been dropping or denying their policy holders in increasing numbers, endangering untold numbers.
Tomas Asher, chairman of a company that trades in plasma, described the business this way: “It’s like selling hog bellies or wheat or beef. It gets sold all over,”
Why is Fox News Leaving Geithner Alone?
Quick question. Why hasn’t conservative media ripped Tim Geithner’s face off yet? He is by far the most incompetent and compromised (nicer than corrupt) member of the Obama administration. There is a mountain of evidence that he has helped his banker friends at the expense of American taxpayers over and over again. He is the Treasury Secretary when the main issue in the country is the state of our economy. And even some Republicans in Congress have gone after him. So, why is Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. keeping their powder dry?
This is weird. If it was anyone else that had screwed up one tenth of what Geithner has, it would be running on a 24/7 loop on Fox News. Geithner gave away over $62 billion to the top banks in the country in secret, tried to cover it up and at the very least overpaid these banks by $13 billion. And that’s just the latest in a series of scandals, with all the same theme – Geithner gives away taxpayer money to the richest (and most culpable) guys in the country. Ah, there it is.
If the right-wing goes after Geithner, then they’re going after the banks and the billions in taxpayer money they received. The right-wing media in this country have no interest in attacking big money, big corporations or big banks. So, while they’ll talk about how Janet Napolitano should be fired for misspeaking for ten straight days, Geithner is remarkably bullet-proof. Why? Because they actually love what he’s doing.
Full Story The Seminal » Why is Fox News Leaving Geithner Alone?.
As probation ends for ‘Baucus 8,’ group vows to press for single-payer health reform
Physicians for a National Health Program -
Members of the “Baucus 8,” a group of doctors and health advocates who were arrested at a Senate Finance Committee meeting last May for standing up and asking why single-payer proponents were not being allowed to testify, appeared at the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse today for their final hearing following six months of probation and, for three of them, 40 hours of community service.
Dr. Pat Salomon, a retired pediatrician, commented on the circumstances that prompted their original action. “When we looked at the list of 41 people testifying in the three days of the Finance Committee’s roundtable on health care, we saw that not a single witness was an advocate of the principle that health care should be a fundamental human right for all in America, nor was there anyone to speak for the majority of the American people who support single-payer Medicare for All,” she said.
Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., chair of the Senate Finance Committee, had convened the May 5 roundtable to kick off the public consideration of the 111th Congress’ legislative proposals for health care reform. Weeks before, the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, a coalition of nurses, doctors, labor, faith, health advocate and community groups representing over 20 million people nationwide, had sent a request to the Finance Committee for one of its leaders testify.
When the request was denied, thousands of single-payer supporters across the nation contacted the committee to request that single payer be included in the discussion of health reform proposals, Salomon said.
Geithner’s In The Soup
Matt Taibbi -
AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
via Geithner’s Fed Told AIG to Limit Swaps Disclosure Update3 – Bloomberg.com.
Sure everyone saw this. Geithner apparently telling AIG to soft-pedal the disclosures about counterparty payments post-bailout.
The House Democrats should be ashamed that it took a Republican member to dig this out. Between owning the individual mandate on health care and allowing the Republicans to seize the moral high ground on the bailouts, the Democrats have just set themselves up to lose a good decade’s worth of elections.
Full Story Geithner’s In The Soup – Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – True/Slant.
Stephanopoulos Concedes Not Pressing Giuliani On 9/11 Attack Was “Mistake” [UPDATED]
An ABC News interview between Rudy Giuliani and newly-minted Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos 
yielded a moment of perplexing amnesia when the former New York City mayor asserted, “We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.” See, I’m pretty certain I remember there being at least one! How did Stephanopoulos jump on that? Well…he didn’t!
GIULIANI: What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did — one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama. Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: So the bottom line is that the President has stepped up, he’s taken responsibility, he’s calling it a war, are you satisfied?
Seriously? This is like Indiana Jones telling you, “Ark of the what, now? Sorry, that doesn’t ring a bell.”
But the narrative, remember, is the media’s most precious bodily fluid. And once you’ve embarked on a critique of Obama’s response to the Christmas Crotchfire attack, I guess it just wouldn’t be sporting to switch gears and ask the public figure most connected to the September 11th attacks how it came to pass that he forgot who was President at the time.
Full Story Stephanopoulos Concedes Not Pressing Giuliani On 9/11 Attack Was “Mistake” [UPDATED].
Defiant Yemen tells US soldiers to keep out
Donald Macintyre reports from Sana’a on the country’s refusal to become the latest hub of America’s war on terror
Yemen insisted yesterday that it could handle its own mounting security challenges without any direct foreign intervention, pointedly warning Washington to learn the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.
While welcoming US intelligence and technological co-operation, the Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security, Rashad al-Alimi, told a crowded news conference in the capital, Sana’a, that the government did not want foreign troops on its soil.
That message was reinforced by Foreign Minister Abukar al-Qirbi, who told CNN that fighting militants was “the priority and the responsibility of our security forces and the army”.
Full Story Defiant Yemen tells US soldiers to keep out – Middle East, World – The Independent.
OPS: Can’t have a pipsqueak like Yemen telling us no. Well, now we’ll have to invade for sure
The Bad Job Numbers and the Secret Second Stimulus
Robert Reich -
The Labor Department reports that 85,000 jobs were lost in December. The official rate of unemployment (which measures how many people are looking for jobs) held steady at 10 percent nonetheless. That’s because so many more people have stopped looking. Reportedly, 661,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force last month, deciding there was no hope of finding a job. Had they continued to look, the official unemployment rate would have been 10.4 percent.
These statistics mask an even more troubling reality. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, around 8 million jobs have been lost. But this doesn’t include all the people who, in a growing national population, would have entered the labor market had there been jobs for them. These “never entereds” amount to an estimated 2.5 million. So, in truth, the national economy is down by 10.6 million jobs overall. There’s no way to make this up for years.
The most painful political truth for Democrats is the nation won’t possibly be out of this jobs hole by the presidential election of 2012, even if the recovery is vigorous. Do the math. In order to get out of the hole, we’d need an average monthly increase of 400,000 jobs between now and then. But even at the peak of the 1990s jobs boom, the highest we ever got was 280,000 jobs a month. At the peak of the last recovery, in 2005, we got no higher than 212,000 jobs a month. Bottom line: Obama will be going into an election year with a higher total level of unemployment than before the Great Recession. He will have to argue that, were it not for his policies, things would be even worse. Counter-factuals like this do not sit well on bumper stickers.
Full Story Robert Reich (The Bad Job Numbers and the Secret Second Stimulus).
“It’s a Trick, We Always Use It.” (calling people “anti-Semitic”)
I’m working on a video about how extreme mainstream media is including the tricks used when covering of key domestic issues like health care.
But this video is a response to the trick repeatedly used against this channel in channel comments. It’s the the standard tactic of calling someone “anti-Semitic,” and its used to sabotage anyone who speaks out against the US government policy of supporting immoral and illegal Israeli policies which violate basic human rights. And as you can see, this person suggests using a new word for the same old trick.
Amy Goodman interviews a former Israeli minister and she helps expose this trick used against dissidents, the defamation tactic of calling people “anti-Semitic.”
OPS: This ‘trick’ is also used quite LIBERALLY against people that do not support the illegal invasion of the United States by ….Illegal Aliens
Daniel Ellsberg: Obama, The Con Man
An Audio interview:
Dan Ellsberg provides us with his analysis of Barack Obama’s presidency, shares with us what led him to cast his vote for Obama, and how and why he’s been let down and betrayed by our current president. He discusses the stark similarities between the previous administration and Obama’s Whitehouse on issues and abuses related to civil liberties, and questions the possibility of ‘hoping’ again. Mr. Ellsberg talks about his experience as a whistleblower, the futility of disclosure to Congress then and today, the current sorry state of the US media, and more!
Ellsberg Dan Ellsberg graduated from Harvard in economics in 1952, served in the US Marine Corps from 1954-57, and obtained a PhD in economics from Harvard while working for the Rand Corporation in 1962. In 1964 he joined the Defense Department to work principally on decision-making in the Vietnam War. Mr. Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a Top-Secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to the New York Times and other publications. Ellsberg has ever since campaigned for peace and encouraged others to speak truth to power.
Here is our guest Dan Ellsberg unplugged!
Full Story Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, dictator of Maricopa Co., under investigation
The Arizona sheriff claims he’s the victim of an abuse of power — and he’s one to know
There’s more than one way in which Joe Arpaio, the longtime sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, resembles a tinpot dictator. For years, a legion of critics has argued that Arpaio seems to suffer from few of the obligations and commitments that typically constrain an official of a democratic government. Maricopa County is massive — it contains Phoenix, among other significant cities — and Arpaio has done his best to militarize its law enforcement, degrade prisoners and attack immigrants, all while running roughshod over rivals and maximizing his own publicity.
The sheriff, fond of rounding up large numbers of people in massive sweeps, is probably most famous for bringing back chain gangs for prisoners in the Arizona desert. He also houses many prisoners in a tent city, boasting, “I put them up next to the dump, the dog pound, the waste-disposal plant.” Reading about Arpaio (particularly in this excellent New Yorker profile from last year), you can’t help but get the sense that he feels like a little kid, testing his boundaries. But instead playing with crayons or dolls, Arpaio uses human beings to get attention. Invariably, he laughs off criticism by pointing out that the people he’s in charge of are, in fact, criminals. Actually, as in any prison system, many of them are still awaiting trial. Although his deputy told the New Yorker’s William Finnegan that the prisoners in the Tent City love the sheriff, they told Finnegan that their nickname for Arpaio is “Hitler.”
He might not be a Nazi, but the sheriff sure knows how to act like a tyrant. And now he can check off another box on his dictator’s bucket list: He’s under investigation for abuses of power.
Full Story War Room – Salon.com.
And Now a Word from the Netroots: Will the Real Barack Obama Please… Sit Down?
As the betrayals by President Barack Obama and the Democrats mount, the Obamapologetics grow more desperate and contradictory by the day. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Harold Meyerson pointed to the lack of “left pressure from below” to account for Obama’s failure to push his supposedly “progressive reforms.” As if a majority of tens of millions weren’t enough, Obama still needs more “aid” from his constituency to find the courage to deliver his promised “change.”
On MSNBC, Chris Matthews took the very opposite tack. Growing apparently more impatient by the day, he suggested that these very people from below- the net-root “troublemakers who love to sit in the back seat and complain,” i.e., his departing viewers-are to blame for Obama’s failures. These “back-seat bitchers,” as he called them, which surely include millions that donated to Obama’s fabulous campaign, have the temerity to oppose his current policies simply because he denounced them in campaign speeches. Matthews’s outrage at these low-life scumbags was palpable. MSNBC is a network of Obamapologists no matter how he betrays his and their own words in every conceivable way and at every turn.
Some will argue that Matthews has his counterparts in Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. Meyerson even called on them to lead the charge of the underground brigade. But they do for the Democrats in the media precisely what Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and John Conyers (D-MI) do for them in Congress-provide left cover and keep legions of troublemakers under the Democratic tent, no matter how angry and disaffected they become.
The Huffington Post’s Richard (RJ) Eskow laments the Democrats’ support of the nefarious “Cadillac Tax” on healthcare plans- “a policy,” he writes, “that by 2016 will reduce coverage for one American in five with employer insurance.. .[a] figure would rise sharply each year.” But he chalks up this corporate giveaway (the tax will cause companies to generously reduce their workers’ health benefits so that they won’t have to pay taxes on them) to an “‘aha’ moment, a flash of insight”-rather than to the obvious explanation. To wit, the Democrats serve these very companies and not the workers who will lose by this legislation. As for the pharmaceuticals and the insurance industries, these will benefit from coercion-threats of fines and/or imprisonment that will force more money into corporate coffers.
Full Story Citizens For Legitimate Government.
Behind Mass Die-Offs, Pesticides Lurk as Culprit
In the past dozen years, three new diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, honeybees, and — most recently — bats. Increasingly, scientists suspect that low-level exposure to pesticides could be contributing to this rash of epidemics.
Ever since Olga Owen Huckins shared the spectacle of a yard full of dead, DDT-poisoned birds with her friend Rachel Carson in 1958, scientists have been tracking the dramatic toll on wildlife of a planet awash in pesticides. Today, drips and puffs of pesticides surround us everywhere, contaminating 90 percent of the nation’s major rivers and streams, more than 80 percent of sampled fish, and one-third of the nation’s aquifers. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fish and birds that unsuspectingly expose themselves to this chemical soup die by the millions every year.
But as regulators grapple with the lethal dangers of pesticides, scientists are discovering that even seemingly benign, low-level exposures to pesticides can affect wild creatures in subtle, unexpected ways — and could even be contributing to a rash of new epidemics pushing species to the brink of extinction.
In the past dozen years, no fewer than three never-before-seen diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, bees, and — most recently — bats. A growing body of evidence indicates that pesticide exposure may be playing an important role in the decline of the first two species, and scientists are investigating whether such exposures may be involved in the deaths of more than 1 million bats in the northeastern United States over the past several years.
Full Story Behind Mass Die-Offs, Pesticides Lurk as Culprit by Sonia Shah: Yale Environment 360.
Ethanol good news and bad news
Two papers published on January 7, 2009, by researchers at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University shed more light on the use of ethanol as a fuel.
The Rice study, “Fundamentals of a Sustainable U.S. Biofuels Policy” concludes the following:
1) “We need to set realistic targets for ethanol in the United States instead of just throwing taxpayer money out the window,”
2) “the U.S. government spent $4 billion in biofuels subsidies to replace roughly 2 percent of the U.S. gasoline supply. The average cost to the taxpayer of those ‘substituted’ barrels of gasoline was roughly $82 a barrel, or $1.95 per gallon on top of the retail gasoline price (i.e., what consumers pay at the pump).”
Full Story Ethanol good news and bad news.
US prepares forces for possibility of conflict with Iran
The US does not want to see confrontation with Iran but is still preparing its military for that possibility, America’s top uniformed officer said Thursday.
“We’ve looked to do all we can to ensure that conflict doesn’t break out there, while at the same time preparing forces, as we do for many contingencies that we understand might occur,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during an appearance at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Mullen had been asked whether the US military was stretched too thin to take further action in trouble spots beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We’re very hard-pressed right now” because of the two wars, he noted, but added that it is primarily ground troops that have been deployed, and “the likelihood that our ground forces would have to go somewhere in these kinds of numbers in some other part of the world, or even in the same region, I think is pretty low.”
Many experts assess that any American military engagement with Iran would most likely rely on air and naval power.
Full Story US prepares forces for possibility of conflict with Iran | Iranian – Iran News | Jerusalem Post.
Invitation to Disaster
This is not a disaster waiting to happen. It’s under way.
Bob Herbert -
We didn’t pay attention to the housing bubble. We closed our eyes to warnings that the levees in New Orleans were inadequate. We gave short shrift to reports that bin Laden was determined to attack the U.S. And now we’re all but ignoring the fiscal train wreck that is coming from states with budget crises big enough to boggle the mind.
The states are in the worst fiscal shape since the Depression. The Great Recession has caused state tax revenues to fall off a cliff. Some states — New York and California come quickly to mind — are facing prolonged budget nightmares. Across the country, critical state services are being chopped like firewood. More cuts are coming. Taxes and fees are being raised. Yet the budgets in dozens and dozens of states remain drastically out of balance.
This is an arrow aimed straight at the heart of a robust national recovery. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out that if you add up the state budget gaps that have recently been plugged (in most cases, temporarily and haphazardly) and those that remain to be dealt with, you’ll likely reach a staggering $350 billion for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years.
This is not a disaster waiting to happen. It’s under way.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Invitation to Disaster – NYTimes.com.
“Blackwatergate” – Private Military Firm in Firestorm of Controversy over Involvements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Germany
Blackwater is all over the news. In the last seventy-two hours, a series of breaking developments involving the notorious private military firm have come to light, ranging from their involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even Germany, as well as legal cases here at home. We speak with investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a leading member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, who is launching an investigation into why two Blackwater contractors were among the dead in the December 30 suicide bombing at the CIA station at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan.
Guests
Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent, author of the international bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D – IL), leading member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Available Free: Rush transcript, Audio Stream, MP3 Download, Video
Blackwater report begins at 10:55
Denial of Care Profits: $73 million for CIGNA’s retiring CEO
It’s hard for most of us to imagine a lifestyle supported by a $73 million retirement bonus. It’s even harder to 
imagine a whole nation’s healthcare controlled by those who have benefited so wildly from denying healthcare to those who need it.
But Cigna’s Edward Hanway knows well what it feels like to rest in the lap of luxury thanks to all those profits he helped secure as he led one of the nation’s for-profit insurance giants through some very successful times. And as we lumber toward a new piece of healthcare legislation with new promises of expanded health insurance coverage and mandate for both individuals and employers to purchase 
private health insurance plans, insurance companies will have even more control over our healthcare – and the denials of care that make companies like Cigna pay out such obscene bonuses.
According to CIGNA’s press releases, Hanway had served in leadership capacities with America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the Alliance for Health Reform. “He is an outspoken advocate at the national level for greater transparency regarding health care quality and cost information available to consumers and a strong proponent of national quality standards for health care providers. He is recognized as a leader in the effort to improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of health care in the United States. Through the years, Hanway has been active in a wide range of issues and initiatives associated with health, education and international business.”
Full Story Denial of Care Profits: $73 million for CIGNA’s retiring CEO | Physicians for a National Health Program.
Army Imprisons Soldier for Singing Against Stop-Loss Policy
Army Specialist and Iraq war veteran Marc Hall was incarcerated by the US Army on December 11, 2009, in Liberty County Jail, Georgia, for recording a song that expresses his anger over the Army’s stop-loss policy.
Stop-loss is a policy that allows the Army to keep soldiers active beyond the end of their signed contracts. According to the Pentagon, more than 120,000 soldiers have been affected by stop-loss since 2001, and currently 13,000 soldiers are serving under stop-loss orders.
Hall, (aka hip hop artist Marc Watercus), who is in the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, was placed in Liberty County Jail for the song (click here to listen to “Stop-Loss,” by Marc Watercus), in which he angrily denounces the continuing policy that has barred him from exiting the military.
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Army Imprisons Soldier for Singing Against Stop-Loss Policy.
Why Is Moving A Factory Called “Trade”?
Dave Johnson -
I have a simple question: Why is moving a factory across a border called “trade”?
The process of building up a country is long and difficult. People over time unite and engage in a long, hard struggle to form a democratic government for themselves and build strong public structures — a system of laws, environmental protections, wage and hour rules, worker protections, product safety standards, etc. — all of which work to raise the standard of living for everyone. These strong public structures enable economic growth and empower the people and companies to prosper while protecting the investment that built it all. So people return a portion of the resulting prosperity as taxes to invest in building and maintaining this infrastructure.
That is how good, solid self-government should work. The people build the public structures that enable each other to prosper and that protect the investment. And it worked for us.
But then, along come the quick-buck artists, looking to grab what they can for themselves, as fast as they can, without doing their part or sharing their gains or leaving anything but a mess behind. And they found a way to accomplish this. They found places outside of our borders where the people had not yet built up the solid, democratic governmental institutions that protect people and the environment as ours do. They fired the workers who had built up the companies and communities, packed up the machines that made the products, closed the factories, and opened factories on the other side of those borders.
Moving factories across borders is just a way of evading our laws and our protections, that we have fought so hard to get in place. So why do we let them bring the same products that we used to make here, back across those borders to sell in the prosperous market that our hard-won public structures enabled?
Full Story Why Is Moving A Factory Called “Trade”? | OurFuture.org.
#1 Because the free market system will spur competition, lower prices, bring universal peace and allow us to talk to all the animals!
“Let the Plunder Begin”: The Return of Robert Rubin
by Mike Whitney -
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” John Maynard Keynes
There’s no denying that the economy is getting better, but will it last? Many economists don’t think so, including experts at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, like Paul Krugman and Martin Feldstein. They think the economy will begin to fizzle sometime in the latter part of 2010 when Obama’s $787 billion fiscal stimulus runs out and consumers are forced to pick up the slack in demand. That’s a safe bet, too, considering that unemployment will still be somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 percent and households will still be digging out from the $13 trillion they lost during the crisis. And the fact that the Fed is planning to end its quantitative easing (QE) program in early April, doesn’t help either. That will just suck more liquidity out of the system and push long-term interest rates higher. When that happens, housing prices will fall, inventory will rise, and a surge in foreclosures will put more pressure on the banks balance sheets. That’s why the pros are so glum, because they know the economy needs a second dose of stimulus to stay on track, but the politicos are dead-set against it. Congress is afraid of the backlash from voters in the upcoming midterm elections. They’d rather drive the economy back into recession then risk losing their jobs.
Despite the propaganda in the media, stimulus works. In fact, Goldman Sachs attributes all of last quarter’s (positive) growth to Obama’s stimulus. Here’s how Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz sums it up in his China Daily
Full Story “Let the Plunder Begin”: The Return of Robert Rubin.
Dr. James Hansen “Storms of My Grandchildren:
The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”
Thom Hartmann
Senate’s Tax on High-Cost Health Plans: Democratic Suicide Pact?
A much-vaunted Senate proposal to tax high-cost health plans, once seen as all but inevitable, came under new attacks Wednesday from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, members of the Democratic caucus and influential health policy experts – even as President Obama was reported as pressing Pelosi to accept the Senate version. The Senate bill would impose a 40 percent excise tax on plans worth more than $23,000 for families and $8,500 for individuals, with the purported aim of raising $150 billion in revenues and reducing health care costs from these so-called “Cadillac” plans.
But something new has entered into the political equation, even in the face of the near consensus among Washington insiders in favor of the Senate excise tax: political panic. Democrats, especially in the House, are justifiably worried how this issue will play out in the 2010 election, although the Senate provision wouldn’t kick in until 2013. One labor lobbyist told Truthout bluntly, “Freshman and sophomore representatives, the front-line Democrats who are most vulnerable, are freaking out about this.”
Full Story t r u t h o u t | Senate’s Tax on High-Cost Health Plans: Democratic Suicide Pact?.
Resignation letter from Framingham Democratic Committee Chair – Framingham
Here is an edited copy of the letter Rochelle Sivan sent Thursday to members of the Framingham Democratic Town Committee:
Friends and members of the FDTC,
I am writing this letter to tell you that as of this morning I have switched my voter registration from Democratic to Unenrolled and hence am resigning as the FDTC chair.
I am a lifetime Democrat so this has been a very hard step for me to take but I've come to the conclusion that the Democratic Party no longer stands for anything I believe in.
The reasons are many and have been accumulating since the Democratic takeover of the House in 2006 and have only come faster and more furious since the 2008 elections giving the Democrats full control. Here are some of these reasons:
Full Story Resignation letter from Framingham Democratic Committee Chair – Framingham – Your Town – Boston.com.
House Considers Payroll, Excise Taxes for Health Plan
U.S. House lawmakers may agree to pay for the nation’s health-care overhaul by adopting versions of Senate proposals to raise Medicare payroll taxes and tax health benefits for the first time, Democratic aides said.
House leaders may also discard a plan to impose a surtax on the wealthiest Americans, which has come under fire from some Senate Democrats, aides said.
Financing the expansion of insurance coverage to more than 90 percent of Americans looms as the largest issue facing Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, seeking to merge her bill with Senate legislation, yesterday briefed the Democratic caucus on party leaders’ discussions during a conference call.
Full Story House Considers Payroll, Excise Taxes for Health Plan (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
Consumer borrowing falls sharply in November
Americans borrowed less for a 10th consecutive month in November with total credit and borrowing on credit cards falling by the largest amounts on records going back nearly seven decades.
The dramatic declines raised new worries about whether consumers will cut back further on spending, making it harder for the economy to mount a sustained rebound.
The Federal Reserve said Friday that total borrowing dropped by $17.5 billion in November, a much bigger decline than the $5 billion decrease economists had expected.
Americans are borrowing less for a number of reasons. They remain fearful about their job prospects and they are also trying to replenish depleted investments. The government reported Friday that employers cut an additional 85,000 jobs in December, bringing total job losses to more than 8 million since the recession began in December 2007.
Full Story Consumer borrowing falls sharply in November – Yahoo! News.
Foot Locker To Cut 120 Jobs, Close 117 Stores
Foot Locker Inc. said Friday it plans to cut about 120 jobs and to have closed 117 stores by the end of this month as it looks to become a more efficient and competitive business.
The footwear and accessories company also said it will consolidate its management staff in order to sharpen its attention to female shoppers’ needs.
The company’s stock gained 36 cents, or 3 percent, to $12.17 in afternoon trading.
Full Story Foot Locker To Cut 120 Jobs, Close 117 Stores – Consumer – Money News Story – WEWS Cleveland.
U.S. is now reaping the whirlwind
Greed, war, partisanship and economic disparity will hinder America’s future prosperity
In the rose-coloured and relentlessly upbeat years that preceded the nearly unprecedented meltdown that surfaced first in the U.S. in the early autumn of 2007, its citizens experienced a sense of seemingly permanent euphoria. The earlier demise of Soviet communism (“the end of history”) signalled the apparent triumph of the distinctively American brand of free enterprise. Subsequent economic growth, despite a corrective tweak now and then, seemed to confirm it.
In retrospect, those golden years may have been the modern-day equivalent of what nearly 150 years earlier and just before the end of the Battle of Gettysburg and its defining moment, Pickett’s Charge, became known wistfully as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. Will those several buoyant years prior to 2007 be commemorated by historians as the High Water Mark of the Great Republic?
The U.S. has been in many tough spots over the years and has almost always emerged from them with colours flying. Never underestimate the resilience and the resolve of Americans as individuals and America as a polity. And yet…
Full Story U.S. is now reaping the whirlwind – thestar.com.
Modern Money Mechanics
A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion
The purpose of this booklet is to describe the basic process of money creation in a “fractional reserve” banking system.
This complete booklet is was originally produced and distributed free by: Public Information Center Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Introduction
The purpose of this booklet is to describe the basic process of money creation in a “fractional reserve” banking system. The approach taken illustrates the changes in bank balance sheets that occur when deposits in banks change as a result of monetary action by the Federal Reserve System – the central bank of the United States. The relationships shown are based on simplifying assumptions. For the sake of simplicity, the relationships are shown as if they were mechanical, but they are not, as is described later in the booklet. Thus, they should not be interpreted to imply a close and predictable relationship between a specific central bank transaction and the quantity of money.
The introductory pages contain a brief general description of the characteristics of money and how the U.S. money system works. The illustrations in the following two sections describe two processes: first, how bank deposits expand or contract in response to changes in the amount of reserves supplied by the central bank; and second, how those reserves are affected by both Federal Reserve actions and other factors. A final section deals with some of the elements that modify, at least in the short run, the simple mechanical relationship between bank reserves and deposit money.
Money is such a routine part of everyday living that its existence and acceptance ordinarily are taken for granted. A user may sense that money must come into being either automatically as a result of economic activity or as an outgrowth of some government operation. But just how this happens all too often remains a mystery.
What is Money?
If money is viewed simply as a tool used to facilitate transactions, only those media that are readily accepted in exchange for goods, services, and other assets need to be considered. Many things – from stones to baseball cards – have served this monetary function through the ages. Today, in the United States, money used in transactions is mainly of three kinds – currency (paper money and coins in the pockets and purses of the public); demand deposits (non-interest bearing checking accounts in banks); and other checkable deposits, such as negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts, at all depository institutions, including commercial and savings banks, savings and loan associations, and credit unions. Travelers checks also are included in the definition of transactions money. Since $1 in currency and $1 in checkable deposits are freely
convertible into each other and both can be used directly for expenditures, they are money in equal degree. However, only the cash and balances held by the nonbank public are counted in the money supply. Deposits of the U.S. Treasury, depository institutions, foreign banks and official institutions, as well as vault cash in depository institutions are excluded
ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf (application/pdf Object).
Overcoming the Copenhagen failure
Joseph E. Stiglitz: -
NEW YORK – Pretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate conference, it is clear that the world’s leaders were unable to translate rhetoric about global warming into action.
It was, of course, nice that world leaders could agree that it would be bad to risk the devastation that could be wrought by an increase in global temperatures of more than two degrees Celsius. At least they paid some attention to the mounting scientific evidence. And certain principles set out in the 1992 Rio Framework Convention, including “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” were affirmed. So, too, was the developed countries’ agreement to “provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology, and capacity-building” to developing countries.
The failure of Copenhagen was not the absence of a legally binding agreement. The real failure was that there was no agreement about how to achieve the lofty goal of saving the planet, no agreement about reductions in carbon emissions, no agreement on how to share the burden, and no agreement on help for developing countries. Even the commitment of the accord to provide amounts approaching $30 billion for the period 2010-12 for adaptation and mitigation appears paltry next to the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been doled out to the banks in the bailouts of 2008-09. If we can afford that much to save banks, we can afford something more to save the planet.
Full Story Joseph E. Stiglitz: Overcoming the Copenhagen failure.
We don’t need this culture of overwork
Britain now has the longest work hours in the developed world after the US
This year, we all need to become more like Utah, under its Republican governor – and then go further. No, dear reader, don’t panic – I have not converted to Mormonism, nor have I tossed out my sanity with my old Santa hat and Christmas decorations. The people of one of the most conservative states in the US have stumbled across a simple policy that slashes greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent, saves huge sums of money, improves public services, cuts traffic congestion, and makes 82 per cent of workers happier. It can do the same for us – and point to an even better future beyond it – without the need for the Arch-Angel Moron (yes, Mormons really do believe in him) to offer his blessing.
It all began two years ago, when the state was facing a budget crisis. One night, the new Republican Governor Jon Huntsman was staring at the red ink and rough sums when he had an idea. Keeping the state’s buildings lit and heated and manned cost a fortune. Could it be cut without cutting the service given to the public? Then it hit him. What if, instead of working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, the state’s employees only came in four days a week, but now from 8 to 6? The state would be getting the same forty hours a week out of its staff – but the costs of maintaining their offices would plummet. The employees would get a three-day weekend, and cut a whole day’s worth of tiring, polluting commuting out of their week.
He took the step of requiring it by law for 80 per cent of the state’s employees. (Obviously, some places – like the emergency services or prisons – had to be exempted.) At first, there was cautious support among the workforce but as the experiment has rolled on, it has gathered remarkable acclaim. Today, two years on, 82 per cent of employees applaud the new hours, and hardly anyone wants to go back. Professor Lori Wadsworth carried out a detailed study of workers’ responses, and she says: “People love it.”
Full Story Johann Hari: We don’t need this culture of overwork – Johann Hari, Commentators – The Independent.
UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld deserves statue on Wall Street, not prison sentence
Barack Obama, who entered the White House promising all this change, should be hailing Bradley Birkenfeld as a modern-day hero.
He should erect a statue on Wall Street for this former banker for Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax-evasion scheme in U.S. history.
Instead of rewarding Birkenfeld, Obama’s Justice Department is sending him to prison. He begins serving a 40-month federal sentence Friday for conspiracy and bank fraud.
What about his former bosses and fellow bankers at UBS and thousands of rich American clients who for decades stashed billions of dollars in secret UBS accounts to evade paying federal taxes?
Full Story UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld deserves statue on Wall Street, not prison sentence.
Barney Frank: I Want Hearings On Geithner’s AIG Role
Representative Barney Frank said the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s 2008 order to American International Group Inc. (AIG) to suppress disclosures of bank payments is “troubling” and he supports hearings on the issue.
Frank retains confidence in Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who led the New York Fed at the time, he said today in a Bloomberg Television interview. The U.S. House last month passed legislation that would prevent the Fed from having the power to bail out companies such as AIG, he said.
“To the extent that there were problems in that AIG situation, we have taken steps to prevent their occurrence,” said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Full Story Frank: Fed’s Role in AIG ‘Troubling’ – BusinessWeek.
OPS: Barney is not clean enough to do this
In New York Commercial Real Estate, News Is Bad (or Worse)
There are 920 football fields of available office space in Manhattan. More than 180 major buildings totaling $12.5 billion in value — from Columbus Tower at 1775 Broadway to the office tower 400 Madison Avenue — are in trouble, meaning in many cases they face foreclosure or bankruptcy, or have had problems making mortgage payments. Rents for commercial office space fell faster over the past two years than in any such period in the last half century.
“I have been in the business for 12 years. I have never seen it this bad,” Peter Von Der Ahe, vice president of investments for the brokerage Marcus & Millichap, said of New York City’s commercial real estate market. According to more veteran colleagues, he said, things have not been so dire since at least the early 1990s.
And that is not the most sobering assessment.
“It hasn’t hit bottom,” Mr. Von Der Ahe added.
He is not alone. More than half a dozen experts on commercial real estate in New York City said that despite some flickering signs of economic recovery here and elsewhere in the country, the universe of big buildings and giant apartment complexes has further to tumble.
Rents, they say, will go lower. Vacancy rates are likely to rise, too. Owners of troubled properties will face a final day of reckoning and in some cases lose their properties.
Full Story In New York Commercial Real Estate, News Is Bad (or Worse) – NYTimes.com.
The Coming Fury of an Angry America
A tiny part of a tiny part of the population of the earth will set the terms for the future of all humans. A tiny part that is broken, spent out, and increasingly disillusioned. That sliver of humanity is the broken, spent out, and increasingly disillusioned American middle class, burdened with the task of spending all America out of catastrophe. When they break under the weight of desperate impossibility, how will the heartlands good citizens react, and what will they do?
According to the World Bank, there are 6,692,030,277 human beings on the earth. 308,108,741 of them live in the United States, about 4.6% of the total. Of these fortunate Americans, about 231,000,000 are of voting age. In general elections in history’s greatest democracy, about half those eligible to vote actually do… 115 million people. History’s greatest “democracy” has only two options every election, a choice between two almost similar positions, and the winning option typically enjoys the support of only half of those who choose, approximately 60 million individuals.
For a scant 90 years, America has been the wealthiest, most powerful group of humans in all 20,000 years of recorded civilization. Decisions made by Americans can and do affect the lives of every other human on the planet, often for both present and future, good and bad. By brute force of American economics alone, a single, small 0.9% of the 6.6 billion people who call earth home set the agenda for each and every one of all the rest of us. Not even by force of arms has there ever been a time in glorious history when so few people dominated so many in so complete a way.
Full Story Dissident Voice : The Coming Fury of an Angry America.
UBS Whistleblower Enters Prison
National Whistleblowers Center -
Minersville, PA. January 8, 2010. At 2 pm today UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld surrendered to U.S. authorities and commenced serving a three-year and four-month sentence at the Schuylkill County Federal Correctional Institution in Minersville, Pennsylvania.
Stephen M. Kohn, the Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center and one of Mr. Birkenfeld’s attorneys issued the following statement:
“An American tragedy. A disgraceful miscarriage of justice. An insult to every honest American who must work hard and pay their taxes. The imprisonment of Bradley Birkenfeld, the most important tax whistleblower in history, is shocking and unjustified. This decision is not only grossly unfair and personally harmful to Mr. Birkenfeld, it will also have a radical chilling effect on the willingness of other bankers to step forward and expose fraud. This is devastating to any efforts to expose the use of illegal offshore bank accounts by criminals who want to avoid taxes.”
“After a careful investigation, we have now demonstrated that the justifications provided by the Justice Department for this unprecedented act of retaliation against a whistleblower were not true. Justice Department lawyers misled the public and a court in justifying their reasons for indicting Mr. Birkenfeld and asking the Court to sentence him to a long prison term.”
Full Story National Whistleblowers Center – UBS Whistleblower Enters Prison.
Portugal’s parliament approves same-sex marriage.
Portugal’s parliament approves same-sex marriage.
Portugal’s parliament passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage today. The bill “now goes to conservative President Anibal Cavaco Silva who can ratify or veto it, but a veto can be overturned by Parliament.” If approved, Portugal would become “the sixth European country to allow same-sex marriages.” As Joe Sudbay notes, Portugal is heavily Roman Catholic, with more than 84 percent of the population identifying as such.
Full Story Think Progress » Portugal’s parliament approves same-sex marriage..
Former Racial-Profiling Critic Geraldo Rivera Now Supports Profiling Muslims: ‘That’s Just The Way It Is’
As a whole host of Fox News guests and contributors have in the past supported racial profiling, one hold-out has been Geraldo Rivera. As Think Progress has documented, following the Fort Hood massacre, he passionately attacked the ineffective and discriminatory practice on Fox and Friends, where he warned against casting a “gloomy cloud of suspicion” on all Muslims and recounted his father’s fear of racial profiling as a Hispanic:
RIVERA: I think that the great tragedy of [terrorism] is that it will cast a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim GI’s who serve with great honor …. I remember my dad, just very briefly, when we were growing up there would be a notorious crime and my dad used to gather the family and we used to say a little prayer, please God that it’s not a Puerto Rican. …. This is the same thing with American Muslims.
Watch it:
How to Save Journalism
John Nichols – The Nation -
The founders of the American experiment were even by their own measures imperfect democrats. But they understood something about sustaining democracy that their successors seem to have forgotten. Everyone agrees that a free society requires a free press. But a free press without the resources to compensate those who gather and analyze information, and to distribute that information widely and in an easily accessible form, is like a seed without water or sunlight. It was with this understanding that Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and their contemporaries instituted elaborate systems of postal and printing subsidies to assure that freedom of the press would never be an empty promise; to that end they guaranteed what Madison described as “a circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people…[that] is favorable to liberty.”
Two centuries after Madison wrote those words, American news media are being steered off the cliff by investors and corporate managers who soured on their “properties” when the economic downturn dried up what was left of their advertising bonanza. They are taking journalism with them. Newsrooms are shrinking and disappearing altogether, along with statehouse, Washington and foreign bureaus. And with them goes the circulation of news and ideas that is indispensable to liberty. This is a dire moment for democracy, and it requires a renewal of one of America’s oldest understandings: that a free people can govern themselves only if they have access to independent information about the issues of the day and the excesses of the powerful, and that it is the duty of government to guarantee both the promise and the reality of a free press.
When we recommended government subsidies last year in a Nation cover article (“The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers,” April 6), some publishers and pundits objected, forgetting their Jeffersonian roots and arguing, with no sense of irony, that policies promoting diversity and robust debate would foster totalitarianism. Even well-intended Congressional hearings on the crisis avoided discussion of this logical response.
Full Story How to Save Journalism.
Battle Over ‘Exchanges’ Regulator
Health insurers are girding for a fight over who should regulate the new marketplaces that would sell policies to 30 million Americans under the health-care bills pending in Congress.
Lawmakers liken the marketplaces, or “exchanges,” to travel Web sites where consumers buy airline tickets after seeing side-by-side comparisons of prices and schedules. The health-care exchanges would be mainly for people who don’t have insurance coverage from their job, and for some small businesses.
Congressional Democrats and insurance companies both say they want robust regulation of the exchanges to prevent deceptive marketing of health plans and to ensure that customers can exercise the rights guaranteed by the bills, including the right to buy coverage even if they have a pre-existing medical condition.
Full Story Battle Over ‘Exchanges’ Regulator – WSJ.com.
America: What works, and what doesn’t
The list of what works in other countries, but no longer does in the U.S., is growing.
Lately, I’ve been studying the melting of glaciers in the greater Himalayas. Understanding the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet’s most magnificent landforms has, to put it politely, left me dispirited.
It is impossible to focus on those Himalayan highlands without realizing that something that once seemed immutable and eternal has become vulnerable, even perishable. Those magnificent glaciers are wasting away on an overheated planet, and no one knows what to do about it.
Another tipping point has also been on my mind lately, and it’s left me no less melancholy. In this case, the threat is to my own country, the United States. We Americans too seem to have passed a tipping point. Like the glaciers of the high Himalaya, long-familiar aspects of our nation are beginning to seem as if they are, in a sense, melting away.
Full Story America: What works, and what doesn’t – latimes.com.
Monsanto GMOs linked to organ damage
In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.
Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn, Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603, were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. Made public by a European court in 2005, Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats that these researchers analyzed is the same data, ironically, that was used to approve them in different parts of the world.
The Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen studied Monsanto’s 90-day feeding trials data of insecticide producing Mon 810, Mon 863 and Roundup® herbicide absorbing NK 603 varieties of GM maize.
Full Story Asheville Global Report.
When Americans No Longer Own America
Thom Hartmann -
So-called “conservatives” and “flat world” globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.
Through a combination of the “Fast Track” authority pushed for by Reagan and GHW Bush, sweetheart trade deals involving “most favored nation status” for dictatorships like China, and Clinton pushing us into NAFTA and the WTO (via GATT), we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years.
The old concept was that if there was a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of shoes made in the USA, and somebody wanted to import shoes from China where there may only be ten cents worth of labor in those shoes, we'd level the playing field for labor by putting a 90-cent import tariff on each pair of shoes. Companies could choose to make their products here or overseas, but the ultimate cost of labor would be the same.
Then came the flat-worlders, led by misguided true believers and promoted by multinational corporations. Do away with those tariffs, they said, because they “restrain trade.” Let everything in, and tax nothing. The result has been an explosion of cheap goods coming into our nation, and the loss of millions of good manufacturing jobs and thousands of manufacturing companies. Entire industry sectors have been wiped out.
Full Story When Americans No Longer Own America | Economy In Crisis.
UPS to cut 1,800 jobs in U.S. segment realignment
Shipping giant UPS Inc. will cut 1,800 management and administrative jobs, less than 1 percent of its global work force, as it repositions itself for a gradual economic recovery.
About 1,100 employees will be offered a voluntary separation package as part of the work force reduction, which is meant to streamline the company’s U.S. small package segment. Other cuts will come through attrition and layoffs. The U.S. small package segment represents roughly 60 percent of UPS’ annual revenue. It handles shipments of up to 150 pounds by ground and air.
UPS, based in Atlanta, has 408,000 employees worldwide. About 340,000 of those workers are in the U.S.
UPS also raised its profit forecast for the fourth-quarter that ended in December, citing improving operations and cost cuts.
UPS will reduce its U.S. regions from five to three and its U.S. Districts from 46 to 20 in April. There are no plans to close any operating facilities. UPS said the consolidation of offices will not affect the sales and operations team, including drivers. UPS expects to incur a one-time charge in 2010 because of the restructuring.
Full Story UPS to cut 1,800 jobs in U.S. segment realignment | Business – cleveland.com – - cleveland.com.
Fake Secret Service Agent: Frederick James Nickerson Charged
A man posing as a U.S. Secret Service agent flashed a fake badge and credentials to con his way past security at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, demanding to meet Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, federal authorities said.
Frederick James Nickerson, 46, was arrested Tuesday and charged with pretending to be a Secret Service Special Agent, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Nickerson appeared in U.S. District Court on Wednesday. He did not have an attorney listed in online court records.
Sebelius wasn’t in the building at the time, and he was eventually captured when employees recognized his name from a list of people banned from federal buildings.
Full Story Fake Secret Service Agent: Frederick James Nickerson Charged.
Scientology Archives Released, Including Works Of L. Ron Hubbard
More than 1,000 unreleased recordings of lectures by L. Ron Hubbard and reams of corresponding writings have been unveiled in the culmination of a 25-year project to locate, restore and transcribe lost pieces of the Scientology founder’s work.
Though sure to be derided by the church’s many critics, its followers say the materials amount to an opportunity to deepen understanding of the religion and to release the last known unpublished Hubbard works dealing with Scientology and Dianetics.
“It would be like discovering that Buddha, unbeknownst to anybody, had sat down and wrote down the entirety of his discoveries and it could be verified that he wrote it,” said Tommy Davis, the church’s top spokesman.
Full Story Scientology Archives Released, Including Works Of L. Ron Hubbard.
Housing Forecast: More Foreclosures, Home-Price Declines
The decimated housing market may get considerably worse before it gets better, according to housing-industry professionals, who expect foreclosures and home-price declines to continue pressuring the sector through at least the first half of 2010.
The biggest problem will likely be a flood of inventory hitting the market from rising foreclosures, says Bob Curran, a managing director at Fitch Ratings. With a mountain of specialized adjustable-rate mortgages, known as option ARMs and certain Alt-A mortgages, slated to reset over the next 12 to 18 months and unemployment projected to hit 10.5% this year, the number of homeowners defaulting on their mortgages is expected to surge. At least $64 billion in option ARMs will reset in 2010 and another $68 billion in 2011, according to First American CoreLogic, a real estate and mortgage-data company.
Full Story Housing Forecast: More Foreclosures, Home-Price Declines – TIME.
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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. 
