Archive for May, 2010
Oil leak is 5 times greater than reported by officials | pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal
The amount of oil gushing from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is five times more than what the oil company and the U.S. Coast Guard are currently estimating, said a Florida State University oceanography professor on Saturday.
At an oil spill environmental forum at the Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front, Ian MacDonald said the blowout is gushing 25,000 barrels a day.
The Coast Guard and BP estimate 5,000 barrels a day of crude is spewing into the Gulf.
MacDonald said his estimate is based on satellite images and government maps forecasting the slick’s trajectory.
Full Story: Oil leak is 5 times greater than reported by officials | pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal.
UN fears ‘irreversible’ damage to natural environment – Yahoo! News
The UN warned on Monday that “massive” loss in life-sustaining natural environments was likely to deepen to the point of being irreversible after global targets to cut the decline by this year were missed.
As a result of the degradation, the world is moving closer to several “tipping points” beyond which some ecosystems that play a part in natural processes such as climate or the food chain may be permanently damaged, a United Nations report said.
The third “Global Biodiversity Outlook” found that deforestation, pollution or overexploitation were damaging the productive capacity of the most vulnerable environments, including the Amazon rainforest, lakes and coral reefs.
Full Story: UN fears ‘irreversible’ damage to natural environment – Yahoo! News.
Baffling Market Plunge — Is There a Shady Game of Market Manipulation At Work?
A week after CNBC assured its high-net-worth viewers that Greece would no longer be a problem, there was an uprising there followed by a volcanic market cliff dive that the White House, NASDAQ and every regulator is now investigating.
There is still a lot of head-scratching, as if to say, how come our casino went batty? It all happened in a couple of minutes, about the time it took for that fail-safe, top-of-the-line, ultra-secure, and unsinkable oil platform to sink.
The whole world of finance couldn’t believe what was happening before its eyes and so quickly.
Full Story: Baffling Market Plunge — Is There a Shady Game of Market Manipulation At Work? | | AlterNet.
Let’s Hold Benedict Arnold Billionaire Warren Buffett Accountable
Buffett has taken to arguing that his own questionable derivatives should be shielded from government regulators.
The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts. In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal. (Berkshire Hathaway annual report, 2002)
Those were some wise words from Warren Buffett, the Will Rogers of the financial world. He used to say such things at his stockholder meetings, where tens of thousands come to savor his homilies and celebrate their own good fortune–a kind of Woodstock for people who dig money more than sex, drugs and rock n roll. His fans love to party with the iconic multi-billionaire from Omaha with the sparkle in his eyes. The guy makes people feel proud to be Americans and capitalists, big and small.
Full Story: Let’s Hold Benedict Arnold Billionaire Warren Buffett Accountable | | AlterNet.
President’s Cancer Panel: Environmentally caused cancers are ‘grossly underestimated’ and ‘needlessly devastate American lives.’
The President’s Cancer Panel on Thursday reported that “the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated” and strongly urged action to reduce people’s widespread exposure to carcinogens.
The panel advised President Obama ”to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”
The 240-page report by the President’s Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer. The panel, created by an act of Congress in 1971, is charged with monitoring the multi-billion-dollar National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President every year.
Environmental exposures “do not represent a new front in the ongoing war on cancer. However, the grievous harm from this group of carcinogens has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program,” the panel said in its letter to Obama that precedes the report. “The American people – even before they are born – are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures.”
The White House Should Stop Pandering to the Street and Support Three Critical Banking Reforms
Robert Reich:
The White House opposes three important financial reforms that have drawn bi-partisan support in the Senate. It should reverse course.
1. Require the Fed to disclose the entities it lends to. There’s no reason the public should be kept in the dark about who benefits when the Fed departs from its traditional interest-setting role and chooses to provide credit (or in Fed parlance, “open its discount window”) to particular companies or entities. To the contrary, a well-functioning capital market and a well-functioning democracy depend on full disclosure about who the Fed picks for such special treatment and why.
Senator Bernard Sanders, Independent of Vermont, pushed an amendment requiring that the Fed be subject to a public audit that reveals which specific companies and entities the Fed is supporting with extra loans. The measure drew support on both sides of the aisle, including conservative Republicans like David Vitter of Louisiana. But Sanders’s amendment met stiff opposition from the White House and the Fed. Both argued that it would undermine the Fed’s independence. That’s a red herring. Fed’s independence is important when it comes to basic decisions about monetary policy and short-term interest rates, but not about which companies and entities get special treatment.
Full Story: Robert Reich (The White House Should Stop Pandering to the Street and Support Three Critical Banking Reforms).
FDA: You have no natural right to food, health, or private contracts
The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), an organization whose mission includes “defending the rights and broadening the freedoms of family farms and protecting consumer access to raw milk and nutrient dense foods”, recently filed a lawsuit against the FDA for its ban on interstate sales of raw milk. The suit alleges that such a restriction is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. Nevertheless, the suit led to a surprisingly cold response from the FDA about its views on food freedom (and freedoms in general).
In a dismissal notice issued to the Iowa District Court where the suit was filed, the FDA officially made public its views on health and food freedom. These views will shock you, but they reveal the true evil intent of the FDA and why it is truly a rogue federal agency.
a. There is No Right to Consume or Feed Children Any Particular Food
b. There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health
c. There is No Fundamental Right to Freedom of Contract
The FDA essentially believes that nobody has the right to choose what to eat or drink. You are only “allowed” to eat or drink what the FDA gives you permission to. There is no inherent right or God-given right to consume any foods from nature without the FDA’s consent.
This is no exaggeration. It’s exactly what the FDA said in its own words.
Full Story: FDA: You have no natural right to food, health, or private contracts « Food Freedom.
Attorney General Backs Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects
The Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. flatly asserted that the defendant in the Times Square bombing attempt was trained by the Taliban in Pakistan.
Mr. Holder proposed carving out a broad new exception to the Miranda rights established in a landmark 1966 Supreme Court ruling. It generally forbids prosecutors from using as evidence statements made before suspects have been warned that they have a right to remain silent and to consult a lawyer.
He said interrogators needed greater flexibility to question terrorism suspects than is provided by existing exceptions.
Full Story: Attorney General Backs Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects – NYTimes.com.
Kagan in Context: Shafting Progressive Values | CommonDreams.org
Norman Solomon
If President Obama has his way, Elena Kagan will replace John Paul Stevens — and the Supreme Court will move rightward. The nomination is very disturbing, especially because it’s part of a pattern.
The White House is in the grip of conventional centrist wisdom. Grim results stretch from Afghanistan to the Gulf of Mexico to communities across the USA.
“It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” President Obama said in support of offshore oil drilling, less than three weeks before the April 20 blowout in the Gulf. “They are technologically very advanced.”
On numerous policy fronts, such conformity to a centrist baseline has smothered hopes for moving this country in a progressive direction. Now, the president has taken a step that jeopardizes civil liberties and other basic constitutional principles.
Full Story: Kagan in Context: Shafting Progressive Values | CommonDreams.org.
Kagan in Context: Shafting Progressive Values
Norman Solomon:
If President Obama has his way, Elena Kagan will replace John Paul Stevens — and the Supreme Court will move rightward. The nomination is very disturbing, especially because it’s part of a pattern.
The White House is in the grip of conventional centrist wisdom. Grim results stretch from Afghanistan to the Gulf of Mexico to communities across the USA.
“It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” President Obama said in support of offshore oil drilling, less than three weeks before the April 20 blowout in the Gulf. “They are technologically very advanced.”
On numerous policy fronts, such conformity to a centrist baseline has smothered hopes for moving this country in a progressive direction. Now, the president has taken a step that jeopardizes civil liberties and other basic constitutional principles.
Full Story: Kagan in Context: Shafting Progressive Values | CommonDreams.org.
Obama’s natural choice of Kagan
- Glenn Greenwald -
It’s anything but surprising that President Obama has chosen Elena Kagan to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. Nothing is a better fit for this White House than a blank slate, institution-loyal, seemingly principle-free careerist who spent the last 15 months as the Obama administration’s lawyer vigorously defending every one of his assertions of extremely broad executive authority. The Obama administration is filled to the brim with exactly such individuals — as is reflected by its actions and policies — and this is just one more to add to the pile. The fact that she’ll be replacing someone like John Paul Stevens and likely sitting on the Supreme Court for the next three decades or so makes it much more consequential than most, but it is not a departure from the standard Obama approach.
The New York Times this morning reports that “Mr. Obama effectively framed the choice so that he could seemingly take the middle road by picking Ms. Kagan, who correctly or not was viewed as ideologically between Judge Wood on the left and Judge Garland in the center.” That’s consummate Barack Obama. The Right appoints people like John Roberts and Sam Alito, with long and clear records of what they believe because they’re eager to publicly defend their judicial philosophy and have the Court reflect their values. Beltway Democrats do the opposite: the last thing they want is to defend what progressives have always claimed is their worldview, either because they fear the debate or because they don’t really believe those things, so the path that enables them to avoid confrontation of ideas is always the most attractive, even if it risks moving the Court to the Right.
Full Story: Obama’s natural choice of Kagan – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Federal Reserve opens credit line to Europe
The Federal Reserve late Sunday opened a program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe in a move to head off a broader financial crisis on the continent.
Other central banks, including the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan also are involved in the dollar swap effort.
The move comes after the European Union and International Monetary Fund pledged a nearly $1 trillion defense package for the embattled euro, hoping to calm jittery markets and halt attacks on the eurozone’s weakest members. The ECB also jumped into the bond market Sunday night, saying it is ready to buy eurozone bonds to shore up liquidity in “dysfunctional” markets.
Full Story: Federal Reserve opens credit line to Europe – Yahoo! News.
Team Harnessing Power of Photosynthesis To Make ‘Green’ Fuel
When people at cocktail parties used to ask Charles Schmuttenmaer what he did, he would say he was a chemistry professor who worked on transient-photo conductivity in gallium arsenide. “At that point they would generally ask me to pass the chips,” the Yale chemist says with a laugh.
Now Schmuttenmaer tells them he’s working on a way to harness the power of the sun to produce carbon-neutral fuel. “And then the response is, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Way to go!’” he says.
A few years ago, Schmuttenmaer never imagined he’d be working to solve the world’s energy problem. But that’s exactly what he now does as one of the four founding members of the Yale Solar Group — a team of chemists trying to use sunlight to split water into its elementary components: hydrogen (a green fuel) and oxygen. In doing so, they hope to pave the way for the development of photoelectrochemical cells that could be used to generate an environmentally benign transportation fuel.
It’s a challenge two of the team members — Yale chemists Gary Brudvig and Robert Crabtree — have been working on for the past 25 years, studying the process of photosynthesis and how to replicate it in artificial, “biomimetic” systems.
Full Story: Team Harnessing Power of Photosynthesis To Make ‘Green’ Fuel.
Under Threat in the Gulf, A Refuge Created by Roosevelt
Among the natural treasures at risk from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, created by Theodore Roosevelt to halt a grave threat to birds in his era — the lucrative trade in plumage. Now, oil from the BP spill is starting to wash up on beaches where Roosevelt once walked.
At the heart of the region now threatened by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a chain of islands containing tens of thousands of seabirds. Thin ribbons of sand rising no higher than 19 feet out of the gulf, these islands — part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge — currently hold at least 2,000 nesting pairs of brown pelicans, 5,000 pairs of royal terns, 5,000 pairs of Caspian terns, and 5,000 pairs of various seagulls and shorebirds. Earlier this week, strong winds and barrier-like booms kept the oil slick from washing ashore on Breton Island, the Chandeleur Islands, and other links in the refuge. But the National Audubon Society reported May 5 that oil had reached the beaches of the Chandeleurs, putting the abundant birdlife there in peril.
More than a century ago, these islands held an even richer assemblage of bird species. Breton Island alone was home to 33 species of wintering waterfowl, wading birds, secretive marsh birds, and various shorebirds. When the birds were in full plumage, Breton Island was quite a sight.
Full Story: Under Threat in the Gulf, A Refuge Created by Roosevelt by Douglas Brinkley: Yale Environment 360.
BIODIVERSITY: We Can Live Without Oil, But Not Without Flora and Fauna
The policies and deals that contributed to the massive oil spill under way in the Gulf of Mexico are also jeopardising the Earth’s vital biological infrastructure, according to the Global Biodiversity Outlook 3, published Monday.
The British Petroleum oil spill of 5,000 barrels a day in the Gulf of Mexico, which began Apr. 20 when an explosion caused a rupture at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, will have devastating consequences for marine life and coastal ecosystems for decades, experts say.
Similar business and policy decisions, multiplied thousands times over the last hundred years, have put the biological infrastructure that supports life in jeopardy, according to the Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 (GBO3) report, issued May 10 by the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The report is the most current assessment of the state of the planet’s biodiversity, the living organisms that provide us with health, wealth, food, fuel and other vital services.
Full Story: BIODIVERSITY: We Can Live Without Oil, But Not Without Flora and Fauna – IPS ipsnews.net.
Obama’s Kagan Choice Will Push Court to the Right
Can Kagan Fill Stevens’ Mighty Shoes?
As the Rehnquist court continued to eviscerate the right of the people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens filed principled and courageous dissents. For example, the majority held in the 1991 case of California v. Acevedo that although the police cannot search a closed container without a warrant, they can wait until a person puts the container into a car and then do a warrantless search because the container is now mobile. In a ringing dissent that exemplified his revulsion at executive overreaching, Justice Stevens wrote that “decisions like the one the Court makes today will support the conclusion that this Court has become a loyal foot soldier in the Executive’s fight against crime.”
The founders wrote checks and balances into the Constitution so that no one branch would become too powerful. But during his “war on terror,” President George W. Bush claimed nearly unbridled executive power to hold non-citizens indefinitely without an opportunity to challenge their detention and to deny them due process. Three times, a closely divided Supreme Court put on the brakes. Justice Stevens played a critical role in each of those decisions. He wrote the opinions in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and his fingerprints were all over Boumediene v. Bush.
Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has continued to assert many of Bush’s executive policies in his “war on terror.” Elena Kagan, reportedly Obama’s choice to replace Justice Stevens, has never been a judge. But she has been a loyal foot soldier in Obama’s fight against terrorism and there is little reason to believe that she will not continue to do so. During her confirmation hearing for solicitor general, Kagan agreed with Senator Lindsey Graham that the president can hold suspected terrorists indefinitely during wartime, and the entire world is a battlefield.
Full Story: Obama’s Kagan Choice Will Push Court to the Right | CommonDreams.org.
Corporations are Not People
Thom Hartmann :
Do rulings, old and recent, prove that the Supreme Court has begun ruling in the favor of corporations? If so, is it irreversible? Alyona and Radio Host Thom Hartmann discuss.
Eric Holder: Miranda Rights Should Be Modified For Terrorism Suspects
Attorney General Eric Holder said for the first time today on ABC’s “This Week” that the Obama administration is open to modifying Miranda protections to deal with the “threats that we now face.”
“The [Miranda] system we have in place has proven to be effective,” Holder told host Jake Tapper. “I think we also want to look and determine whether we have the necessary flexibility — whether we have a system that deals with situations that agents now confront. … We’re now dealing with international terrorism. … I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public-safety exception [to the Miranda protections]. And that’s one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress, to come up with a proposal that is both constitutional, but that is also relevant to our times and the threats that we now face.”
America’s system of Miranda rights developed out of a 1966 Supreme Court ruling which found that the Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment rights of an alleged rapist and kidnapper, Ernesto Arturo Miranda, had been violated during his arrest and trial (Miranda was later retried and convicted).
The Court ruled that before being interrogated, people in custody must (among other things) “be clearly informed that he or she has the right to remain silent, and that anything the person says will be used against that person in court,” and that they “must be clearly informed that he or she has the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning.”
Full Story: Eric Holder: Miranda Rights Should Be Modified For Terrorism Suspects.
OPS: an example of the continued Nazification of America
The Crisis Comes Ashore
Al Gore :
Why the oil spill could change everything.
The continuing undersea gusher of oil 50 miles off the shores of Louisiana is not the only source of dangerous uncontrolled pollution spewing into the environment. Worldwide, the amount of man-made CO2 being spilled every three seconds into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet equals the highest current estimate of the amount of oil spilling from the Macondo well every day. Indeed, the average American coal-fired power generating plant gushes more than three times as much global-warming pollution into the atmosphere each day—and there are over 1,400 of them.
Just as the oil companies told us that deep-water drilling was safe, they tell us that it’s perfectly all right to dump 90 million tons of CO2 into the air of the world every 24 hours. Even as the oil spill continues to grow—even as BP warns that the flow could increase multi-fold, to 60,000 barrels per day, and that it may continue for months—the head of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, says, “Nothing has changed. When we get back to the politics of energy, oil and natural gas are essential to the economy and our way of life.” His reaction reminds me of the day Elvis Presley died. Upon hearing the tragic news, Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, said, “This changes nothing.”
However, both the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the CO2 spill into the global atmosphere are causing profound and harmful changes—directly and indirectly. The oil is having a direct impact on fish, shellfish, turtles, seabirds, coral reefs, marshes, and the entire web of life in the Gulf Coast. The indirect effects include the loss of jobs in the fishing and tourism industries; the destruction of the health, vitality, and rich culture of communities in the region; imminent bankruptcies; vast environmental damage expected to persist for decades; and the disruption of seafood markets nationwide.
Full Story: The Crisis Comes Ashore | The New Republic.
New analysis of 40-year-old recording of Kent State shootings reveals that Ohio Guard was given an order to prepare to fire
The Ohio National Guardsmen who fired on students and antiwar protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 were given an order to prepare to shoot, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old audio tape of the event.
“Guard!” says a male voice on the recording, which two forensic audio experts enhanced and evaluated at the request of The Plain Dealer. Several seconds pass. Then, “All right, prepare to fire!”
“Get down!” someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, “Guard! . . . ” followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds.
You Drill, You Spill
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Sobering, is it not, to realize that the possible survival of a huge oil company, of several billion shrimp, assorted species of fish and birds, not to mention avoidance of a near lethal lurch in the fortunes of Louisiana’s fishing and ocean rec industries and the future of offshore drilling up the Atlantic coast could depend on a feat as tricky as rolling a condom on the end of a string onto the penis of a man at street level by remote control from the top of the Empire State Building.
So-called accidents in oil extraction invariably produce numbers as whimsical and liable to sudden change as the currents which will menace British Petroleum’s gigantic steel cap, a telephone booth four stories high, scheduled to be lowered onto the leaking oil pipe on the ocean floor 5,000 feat down, putting out maybe 10,000 barrels of crude a day.
The central fraud here is perpetrated by the word “accident”, which should properly be defined as normalcy, occasionally raised to the level of drama.
Oil spills, particularly from ocean drilling through to transport via pipeline and tanker are dead certs, whether the depth is 5,000 feet or 500, the pipeline broken by incompetence or an earthquake, the tanker steered by a drunk or a seasoned Master sipping herb tea.
Full Story: CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.
Obama’s Oil Response Aggressive As Crisis Unfolded: AP
It was a two-day trip to the Midwest to talk about jobs and clean energy. President Barack Obama didn’t mention the drama unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil was gushing from a broken well pipe a mile beneath the sea.
The situation hadn’t become a priority. Soon it would.
On the return to Washington aboard Air Force One, Obama learned the spill had become more worrisome. A third break was discovered at the destroyed well pipe on the ocean floor 40 miles from Louisiana’s precious coastal marshes. Federal scientists believed at least 5,000 barrels of oil a day were being released – five times more than original estimates.
And there was no way to stop the flow.
Full Story: Obama’s Oil Response Aggressive As Crisis Unfolded: AP.
Robert Gates Says Urgent Need For Big Cuts At Defense Department
Warring against waste, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday he is ordering a top-to-bottom paring of the military bureaucracy in search of at least $10 billion in annual savings needed to prevent an erosion of U.S. combat power.
He took aim at what he called a bloated bureaucracy, wasteful business practices and too many generals and admirals, and outlined an ambitious plan for reform that’s almost certain to stir opposition in the corridors of Congress and Pentagon.
“The Defense Department must take a hard look at every aspect of how it is organized, staffed and operated – indeed, every aspect of how it does business,” he said in a speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in the former commander in chief’s home town. Gates, also a Kansas native, addressed a crowd of about 300 from the steps of the library at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender in World War II
Full Story: Robert Gates Says Urgent Need For Big Cuts At Defense Department.
OPS: Here is some perspective on the Pentagon’s budget (graph): http://www.1psheet.com/wp-content/ChartsGraphs/GlobalMiltaryspend2009.gif
Felix Salmon’s Message To Investors: Get Out Of The Stock Market Right Now (VIDEO)
Why it makes sense to sell your stocks
Felix Salmon, finance blogger at Reuters, explains that stock-market volatility is bad for your financial health.
Eyjafjallajokul Volcano Ash Closes Airports In Spain, Portugal, Italy
A plume of volcanic ash snaked its way through southern France, Switzerland and northern Italy Sunday, shutting down airports and disrupting flights across Europe.
Weather forecasts said the ash cloud will gradually weaken as it spreads to southern parts of Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria by Sunday night. The ash, stretching from the surface up to 20,000 feet (6,000 meters), has forced the closure of airports throughout much of northern Italy.
Separately, a finger of the main ash cloud – centered in the mid-Atlantic at altitudes of up to 35,000 feet (10,500 meters) – was still touching on parts of Portugal and Spain, affecting airports at Porto, La Coruna, Vigo, and Santiago.
Full Story: Eyjafjallajokul Volcano Ash Closes Airports In Spain, Portugal, Italy.
Senator Bob Bennett Ousted At Utah GOP Convention
Republican Sen. Bob Bennett was thrown out of office Saturday by delegates at the Utah GOP convention in a stunning defeat for a once-popular three-term incumbent who fell victim to a growing conservative movement nationwide.
Bennett’s failure to make it into Utah’s GOP primary – let alone win his party’s nomination – makes him the first congressional incumbent to be ousted this year and demonstrates the challenges candidates face from the right in 2010.
“The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic, and it’s very clear that some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment,” Bennett told reporters, choking back tears.
Full Story: Senator Bob Bennett Ousted At Utah GOP Convention.
Dozens of U.S. Cities Losing Half Their Population
Hastened by the rapid decline of America’s manufacturing capacity, the populations of Midwestern cities have been decimated at a rate rivaled only by that of the population loss experienced in cities across Europe during the Black Plague of the 14th Century, according to Manufacturing and Technology News.
The area of the country that once thrived and led the nation’s industrial revolution and its rise to international economic prominence has been largely abandoned due to America’s free trade policies.
The region “grew around a business model that created enormous wealth that rebuilt the postbellum South and built the West, the Northwest and the Southwest,” Hunter Morrison, director of Youngstown State University’s Office of Planning and Partnerships, told Richard McCormack.
Full Story: Dozens of U.S. Cities Losing Half Their Population | Economy In Crisis.
Regional Chamber of Commerce Changes its Trade Policy
Due to the tireless efforts of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a large, regional Chamber of Commerce last month decided to drastically alter its position on American trade policy.
The Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Pennsylvania, recognizing the need to counteract the effects of currency manipulation and border tax inequities and the progress that could be made by American businesses if the U.S. had a true industrial policy and trade strategy, set itself apart from the national Chamber, which is decidedly pro free trade.
“The Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce & Industry recognizes that the United States is running an unsustainable trade deficit and has lost too much of its manufacturing capacity,” the group said in a statement. “Our Nation’s trade deficit in goods and services was $380.7 billion in 2009. The Chamber believes that the major cause of this is due to unfair trade practices and mercantilist policies by several competing nations.”
Full Story: Regional Chamber of Commerce Changes its Trade Policy | Economy In Crisis.
America Is Drowning In Debt With No End In Sight
Our government now must borrow more to continue to operate and pay its bills. This has impacted every level of our economy
We are now importing more and producing less each year while continuing to sell off more of our large companies. Our tax base has receded and we now have fewer American owned companies remaining to produce wealth and generate taxes.
Our government now must borrow more to continue to operate and pay its bills. This has impacted every level of our economy. Government debt is now more than $12 trillion. The 2007 balance of trade deficit (debt) was $731 billion, while China made a $371 billion profit the same year.
Balance of trade deficits (The means through which foreign countries accumulate our money to buy us out)
Full Story: America Is Drowning In Debt With No End In Sight | Economy In Crisis.
SEIU Elects First Female President
The Service Employees International Union, a key White House ally in the 2008 presidential campaign and the recent health care debate, elected its first female president on Saturday.
In Washington, D.C., SEIU board members chose Mary Kay Henry as the successor to Andrew Stern. Stern abruptly announced his departure last month after running the union for nearly 15 years. Until Saturday’s vote, Henry was an executive vice president with the organization. Watch Henry’s introduction video here.
“This moment marks a renewed commitment to our union’s core mission: to improve the lives of all workers who are struggling to make ends meet in this economy,” Henry said in a statement. “Working people are facing hardships we haven’t seen in generations, and we believe SEIU can be an even more effective vehicle for change to help them improve their lives and the lives of the people they serve.”
Henry aklso said Saturday that she will continue Stern’s close relationship with the White House between now and the next presidential election.
Full Story: CQ Politics | SEIU Elects First Female President.
Pope Benedict accepts bishop’s resignation for beating kids, pedophilia probe underway
Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday accepted the resignation of a German bishop who admitted he beat children in a Catholic orphanage and also faces a pedophilia probe, the Vatican said.
Walter Mixa, 69, had tendered his resignation as bishop of Augsburg and military bishop on Thursday.
The pope “has accepted the renunciation of the pastoral government of the Augsburg diocese submitted by Walter Mixa”, a Vatican statement said.
Benedict accepted the resignation, less than five years after appointing him, under a code of canon law that allows the retirement of priests before the legal age of 75 due to “illness” or unspecified “other serious reasons”, it said.
Full Story: Pope Benedict accepts bishop’s resignation for beating kids, pedophilia probe underway | Raw Story.
The BP Oil Spill’s Toll On Gulf Coast Wildlife: ‘All Bets Are Off’
A look at what is happening to animals in the Gulf region, and the potential for more disaster:
Orange-colored oil from the April 22 BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached Louisiana’s fragile Chandeleur Islands, which are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, an area that officials have now closed so that nesting sea birds will be undisturbed and to “allow cleanup operations continue uninhibited.” Environmentalists are increasingly worried about the toll the spill will take on more than 400 species in this rich nursery area. As Nancy Rabalais, a scientist who heads the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said, “The magnitude and the potential for ecological damage is probably more great than anything we’ve ever seen in the Gulf of Mexico.”
ThinkProgress’ Brad Johnson was blogging from the Gulf Coast and spoke with Gulf Coast marine scientists who all agreed that the “unfolding oil disaster could mean devastation beyond human comprehension” and “all bets are off.” Ichthyologist Bruce Comyns, a research scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory elaborated on the devastating impact the spill may have on the region:
This is “the worst time” of year that this disaster could have begun, Dr. Comyns said, as this is the peak of the spawning and nesting season for marine wildlife in the Gulf, from fish to turtles to dolphins. As he has done in previous years, Dr. Comyns was planning to head out into the Gulf of Mexico to sample larval fishes from the edges of the Loop Current — a research trip that now has newly critical and disturbing import.
Full Story: Think Progress » The BP Oil Spill’s Toll On Gulf Coast Wildlife: ‘All Bets Are Off’.
BREAKING: BP Effort To Use Dome To Contain Oil Disaster Fails
Efforts to contain the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher with a 100-ton, four-story concrete-and-steel box have failed, BP officials announced. The giant box, known as a cofferdam, was lowered onto the leaking wellhead yesterday, with the intent of pumping the leaking oil up a pipe to the sea surface a mile above. However, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles announced in a press briefing this afternoon that the dome effort failed. After the cofferdam was lowered onto the leak site, a slurry of methane crystals formed on the inside of the dome’s surface, making it bouyant and clogging the outtake at the dome’s roof.
The giant box has been moved 200 meters from the disaster site, and is sitting on the sea bed. BP had anticipated that methane hydrates could form within the pipework from the dome to the surface, but not within the dome itself, especially at such a rapid rate.
Suttles, clearly chastened by this setback, had a much less confident tone about containing the leak than he had at previous press conferences, such as the one attended on Tuesday by the Wonk Room when he announced the cofferdam was being shipped out to the disaster site. “It’s very difficult to say whether solutions will work,” he admitted.
Full Story: Think Progress » BREAKING: BP Effort To Use Dome To Contain Oil Disaster Fails.
Gulf spill reminds America: The era of ‘easy oil’ is over
To meet the world’s boundless thirst for oil, drillers are searching in the sand and mud of remote western Canada, the tough shale rock of North Dakota and more than a mile under the seas off the southern U.S. coast, where a drilling accident has sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.
Why are we going nearly to the ends of the earth and the bottom of the seas for oil?
The answer, say many experts, is that we’re consuming as much oil as we ever have but the era of “easy oil” is in our rearview mirror and receding fast.
Full Story: Gulf spill reminds America: The era of ‘easy oil’ is over | McClatchy.
Max Keiser & Ellen Brown on Computerized Manipulation of the Market
On The Edge With Max Keiser -05-07-2010
An exclusive interview with Ellen Brown, Author of Web of Debt”
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Assembly approves protection for homeless
Californian’s civil right to be homeless would be given new legal protection under legislation approved Thursday by the Assembly.
Basically, the measure would deem violence against homeless people or their property as a hate crime for civil litigation.
Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal said her proposal would crack down on beatings, stabbings and shootings that target an extremely vulnerable population.
“There is just a tremendous amount of violence perpetrated against homeless people because they are easy prey,” Lowenthal said.
Full Story: Assembly approves protection for homeless – Sacramento Politics – California Politics | Sacramento Bee.
A fast, inexpensive way to clean up the oil slick in the Gulf
Dried hay. It’s cheap, easy, and environmentally friendly. However, the petrochemical industry doesn’t want you to know that.
I found this video when searching for natural and safe alternatives for oil cleanup. I also found an article from Wired that states that states that in addition to the questionable dome, BP’s solution is the application of toxic chemicals. Not only is Corexit 9500 so highly toxic that the British government banned the use of it because it was found to harm and kill coastal invertebrates, it has a 54 percent success rate. For whatever reason, the powers in charge on paper deemed it wiser to use a toxic chemical with a 54 percent rate of effectiveness over a chemical with a 100 percent rate of effectiveness. But don’t worry. BP says they have tested it and it is safe, so all is good. Just in case, Obama is taking action.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Earlier today, DHS Secretary Napolitano announced that this incident is of national significance and the Department of Interior has announced that they will be sending SWAT teams to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs. And I have ordered the Secretaries of Interior and Homeland Security as well as Administrator Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency to visit the site on Friday to ensure that BP and the entire U.S. government is doing everything possible, not just to respond to this incident, but also to determine its cause.”
This is not a Saturday Night LIve skit It’s the real thing.
Full Story: A fast, inexpensive way to clean up the oil slick in the Gulf – Picasso Dreams.
They Don’t Report. You Don’t Have to Decide.
Frank Rich :
“DESPITE the major environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf and the attempted terror attack on New York’s Times Square, President Obama spent his Saturday night laughing it up at the White House Correspondents Dinner,” griped Sean Hannity of Fox News last week. His complaint is not inaccurate. But it’s hardly the whole story. Also laughing it up at that dinner were many of the country’s television news potentates, including some of Hannity’s own colleagues. And unlike the president, they were caught napping on a night that could have been 9/11 redux.
Here’s the time line from last Saturday. At 6:30 p.m. the abandoned Nissan Pathfinder was found smoking in Times Square. Relevant public officials marooned at the correspondents dinner in Washington quickly got word. Over the next hour and a half, several news organizations spread it as well while Times Square was evacuated. To clear the Broadway theater district at curtain time on Saturday night isn’t like emptying a high school; it’s a virtual military operation. By 8 p.m., the crossroads of the world looked like a ghost town, yet if you tuned in to a cable news network, it wasn’t news. No one seemed to know or to care. On MSNBC, which I was watching, it didn’t even merit a mention on a crawl.
MSNBC was instead busy covering the correspondents dinner itself, so we could feast on journalists schmoozing with mostly B-list show business folk — and sometimes C-list, as in Kim Kardashian. (Another NBC employee, Jay Leno, was the evening’s mirthless comic headliner.) This annual Beltway fete, once safely quarantined on C-Span, has now mutated into a poor man’s Golden Globes on all three cable news networks. On MSNBC, this meant red-carpet arrivals, in-depth historical analysis of past dinners, and morning-after post-mortems by network news stars wearing sunglasses on camera (just like Hollywood!).
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – They Don’t Report. You Don’t Have to Decide. – NYTimes.com.
Problem for Containment Dome in Gulf
May 8,2010, 4:41 p.m. | Updated Officials for BP on Saturday encountered a significant setback in their efforts to attach a containment dome over a leaking well on the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico, forcing them to move the dome aside while they find another method to cap the crude oil flowing into the Gulf since April 20.
Officials discovered that gas hydrates, ice-like crystals lighter than water, had built up inside the 100-ton metal container. The hydrates threatened to make the dome buoyant, and they also plugged up the top of the dome, preventing it from being effective.
“I wouldn’t say it has failed yet,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said at a news conference in Robert, La. “What we attempted to do last night hasn’t worked.”
As a consequence, crews had to lift the dome off the well and place it on the seabed.
Full Story: Problem for Containment Dome in Gulf – Green Blog – NYTimes.com.
AP INVESTIGATION: Blowout preventers known to fail
These steel monsters known as blowout preventers or BOPs — sometimes as big as a double-decker bus and weighing up to 640,000 pounds — guard the mouth of wells. They act as the last defense to choke off unintended releases, slamming a gushing pipe with up to 1 million pounds of force.
While the precise causes of the April 20 explosion and spill remain unknown, investigators are focusing on the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig operated by BP PLC as one likely contributor.
To hear some industry officials talk, these devices are virtually foolproof.
But a detailed AP review shows that reliability questions have long shadowed blowout preventers:
Full Story: The Associated Press: AP INVESTIGATION: Blowout preventers known to fail.
CIA allowed to kill terrorist suspects without identification
CIA allowed to kill terrorist suspects without identification 07 May 2010 The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, current and former counter-terrorism officials say. The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush regime and continued by Barack Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern-of-life” analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations. [Why aren't civilians taking down these killer drones?]
Full Story: CIA allowed to kill terrorist suspects without identification | Citizens for Legitimate Government.
Probability that 15 witnesses to the JFK Assassination would die unnaturally within one year of the assassination
Richard Charnin (TruthIsAll)
May 8, 2010
This is an analysis to compute the probability that at least 15 witnesses would die unnaturally within one year of the JFK assassination. The deaths were a combination of homicides, suicides, accidents and undetermined origin.
The deaths could not have been due to chance.
Assuming there were 1000 witnesses, for at least 15 to have an unnatural death in the year following the assassination:
The Probability is 1 in 21,230 trillion.
Assuming there were 10000 witnesses, for at least 15 to have an unnatural death within one year:
The Probability is 1 in 1,000.
An actuary engaged by the London Times in 1963 calculated the probability that 18 witnesses would die of any cause within 3 years of the JFK assassination:
The Probability is 1 in 100,000 trillion.
The book Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination presents vital information on each of more than 1,400 individuals (from suspects to witnesses to investigators) related in any way to the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit and alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22 and 24, 1963. It is based on years of research, a wealth of sources and a study of the Warren Commission’s twenty-six volumes. This encyclopedic book includes A-to-Z entries on virtually all the suspects, victims, witnesses, law enforcement officials and investigators.
This graph displays probabilities over a range of number of assumed witnesses and corresponding unnatural deaths.
Full Story: Probability that 15 witnesses to the JFK Assassination would die unnaturally within one year of the assassination.
Look Out, Obama Seems to Be Planning for a Lot More War
Judging by the Barack Obama administration’s reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months point to even greater war-making across the planet.
There’s more war in America’s future – a great deal more, judging by the Barack Obama administration’s reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months.
The United States government presides as a military colossus of unrivalled dimension, but the QDR, which was published in February, suggests Washington views America as being constantly under the threat of attack from a multitude of fearsome forces bent on its destruction. As such, trillions more dollars must be invested in present and future wars – ostensibly to make safe the besieged homeland.
Full Story: Look Out, Obama Seems to Be Planning for a Lot More War | | AlterNet.
U.S. should prepare for a cyber attack that will ruin the country in just 15 MINUTES, expert warns
The U.S. should prepare for a cyber attack that could cause destruction on the scale of 9/11 in less than 15 minutes, a leading anti-terrorism expert has warned.
Richard Clarke, a former adviser to both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, suggests that the lack of security in place against such an attack could lead to an ‘electronic Pearl Harbor’.
Writing in his new book Cyber War: The Next National Security Threat, penned with Robert Knake, Mr Clarke says: ‘The biggest secret about cyber war may be that at the very same time the U.S. prepares for offensive cyber war, it is continuing policies that make it impossible to defend effectively from cyber attack.’
In the book, Mr Clarke suggests that a cyber attack would first target the Pentagon’s computer network, before affecting the rest of the country’s electrical grids.
Full Story: U.S. should prepare for a cyber attack that will ruin the country in just 15 MINUTES, expert warns | Mail Online.
No joke: Goldman Sachs shorted Gulf of Mexico
It tu
rns out that Goldman Sachs really did place shorts on TransOcean stock days before the explosions rocked the rig in the Gulf of Mexico sending stocks plunging while GS profits soared — benefiting once again from a huge disaster, having done the same with airline stocks prior to 911 then again with the housing bubble.
by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News
On Apr. 30, the Huffington Post published a story stating:
In what is looming as another public relations predicament for Goldman Sachs, the banking giant admitted today that it made “a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico” one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water.
The new revelations came to light after government investigators turned up new emails from Goldman employee Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre in which he bragged to a girlfriend that the firm was taking a “big short” position on the Gulf.
“One oil rig goes down and we’re going to be rolling in dough,” Mr. Tourre wrote in one email. “Suck it, fishies and birdies!”
Full Story: No joke: Goldman Sachs shorted Gulf of Mexico.
Oil You May Never See
Center For American Progress
Large Portion of Gulf Coast Oil Is Exported
Even after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, many politicians continue to insist that the United States must expand offshore oil drilling despite the huge health, economic, and environmental damages in the event of a blowout. They assert that this oil is essential for U.S. economic health and national security. For instance, two weeks after the BP disaster began, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) reiterated that the United States needs “more environmentally responsible development of America’s energy resources.” These are code words for more offshore oil drilling.
More offshore drilling in the Gulf Coast region, however, may not do much to increase our energy security. A CAP analysis (.xls) of Energy Information Administration data found that a large portion of the oil produced in the Gulf Coast region is actually exported to other nations, and this undoubtedly includes some of the offshore oil produced there (see chart at right).
The entire nation is divided into Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts, or PADDs, which are “a geographic aggregation of the 50 States and the District of Columbia into five Districts.” PADD III is the Gulf Coast region of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas.
Full Story: Oil You May Never See.
Unwashed Masses 1, Fed 0: Sanders Scores
Dean Baker :
GAO would make the findings from its audit available to the Congressional leadership. It would also make most of the details of the Fed’s transactions available to the public.
The effort to audit the Fed got a big boost last night when Senator Bernie Sanders reached an agreement with Chris Dodd, the chair of the banking committee. Under the deal, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would undertake a full audit of the special facilities created by the Fed since December of 2007. GAO would make the findings from its audit available to the Congressional leadership. It would also make most of the details of the Fed’s transactions available to the public.
To cope with the economic crisis, the Fed created 13 different special lending facilities. At their peak last year, these facilities had lent out more than $2 trillion. The Fed has only disclosed aggregate data about these facilities, telling us how much each one lent out month by month. It has refused to disclose any information about the specific loans and beneficiaries. This means that we have no way of knowing how much Citigroup, Goldman Sachs or anyone else benefited from these facilities.
Under the terms of the deal, by December 1 of this year the Fed will have posted on its website all the loans that were part of these facilities. Any interested journalist, academic, blogger or generic snoop can read through the data and find exactly how much money Goldman Sachs got, at what interest rate, with what collateral and when they paid it back. This is a big victory.
Full Story: Unwashed Masses 1, Fed 0: Sanders Scores | TPMCafe.
Timothy Karr: Net Neutrality’s Weird Week
On Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski blinked. He balked. He backed away from phone and cable companies and moved toward broadband policies that will preserve the open Internet and promote universal access.
For a moment, the chairman had a lot of people worried. A Washington Post story from earlier in the week indicated that Genachowski was going to cave to pressure from AT&T and Comcast lobbyists and abandon his pledge to protect Net Neutrality.
Several sources within the agency painted a picture of a chairman with no appetite to do battle with entrenched special interests. And these companies would have kept their stranglehold on policymaking at the FCC were it not for the massive public response in the wake of the Post’s story.
Full Story: Timothy Karr: Net Neutrality’s Weird Week.
Obama Administration Demands Amnesia From Reporters Covering Gitmo
Jack Newfield, the legendary investigative reporter, once wrote that if government officials had their way, journalists would be “stenographers with amnesia.”
The “amnesia” part, at least, was generally considered a bit of an exaggeration.
But now, the Pentagon has banned four reporters from covering the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because they refused to forget something that had already been reported to the world.
The four reporters were covering military commission hearings at which defense attorneys for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr argued that confessions he made as a gravely wounded 15-year-old shouldn’t be admissible in his upcoming trial because they were made under duress.
Full Story: Obama Administration Demands Amnesia From Reporters Covering Gitmo.
Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf
click to enlarge
Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.
The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling
The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.
Full Story: Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf | McClatchy.
Meet the Economist Who Says the Government’s Economic Numbers Are Lies
John Williams: Believe Him or Not
This Oakland economist believes the government’s major economic indicators are lies. Most other economists think he’s a crank. But then, most of them also thought the economy was healthy.
John Williams lives in a one-bedroom Oakland apartment just a few blocks behind the Grand Lake Theater. He doesn’t like to talk about politics, and he certainly doesn’t like to talk about the stock market. He’s sixty years old and has a two-man operation: a webmaster and himself. But in the obscure corners of the Internet, he’s an unlikely legend, an economist who publishes a newsletter that purports to tell the real truth about the state of the nation’s health. His thesis is both simple and surprisingly complex: over the course of thirty years, Washington politicians have pressured federal economists to tweak the methods by which they assess key metrics of the economy, to inflate the numbers and protect the incumbents from voters who would surely rise up in anger, if only they knew the truth.
And the truth, Williams claims, is that the economy has always performed much more poorly than the federal numbers indicate. Prices are higher, fewer people are working, and the economy is growing at a much slower pace. Even now, when the nation faces its greatest crisis since the Great Depression, the real dimensions of the disaster are still being obscured by gimmicks. It’s a message that has earned him an odd bit of notoriety, to the clear frustration of some of the country’s most prominent economists, who claim that Williams has built a career misrepresenting complex mathematical models and spreading panic.
Full Story: John Williams: Believe Him or Not | Feature | East Bay Express.
Liberal activists intensify attacks on Kagan as court pick nears
Liberal legal scholars and experts stepped up their attacks Friday on Elena Kagan as a potential Supreme Court nominee, hoping to dissuade President Obama from selecting her in the last few days before an expected announcement early next week.
A group of four law professors Friday morning published a piece at Salon.com criticizing Kagan, Obama’s solicitor general, for hiring too few women and minorities when she was dean of Harvard law school.
Liberal attorney and blogger Glenn Greenwald — who has taken Kagan to task for her views on executive power and been the chief organizing force behind criticism of Kagan — promoted the column on his Twitter account and kept up a drumbeat against Kagan.
Is Your Senator a Bankster?
Dylan Ratigan:
The one main benefit to the financial reform effort so far is that it helps further do away with the false paradigms of “left” or “right” and “Democrat” or “Republican” – fewer and fewer people are falling for those lies anymore. Try to get an ideological conservative to explain why Republicans love spending and so eagerly give welfare to banks. Try to get your local liberal to explain why it was a good idea to make backroom deals with abhorrent corporations and drill, baby, drill. Heck, even try to get a Tea Partier to explain choosing bailout-lover Sarah Palin to keynote their convention, especially when that movement once had at least some pre-astroturf roots in protesting government giveaways.
What we have now is a group of politicians with shifting alliances on a case-by-case basis to the special interests who fund them. And currently, the most damaging one to our nation is the rise of the Bankster Party. Thankfully, we can now better identify its members.
Anyone who voted for the Kaufman-Brown SAFE amendment deserves to be considered a member of the “People’s Party”, at least for today. And while I may not agree, I am also OK with someone voting no on Kaufman-Brown if they voted no on the bailout in the first place. That at least shows a consistent ideology and we wouldn’t need to break up the banks into smaller parts if our leaders had the will to let them fail.
Full Story: Is Your Senator a Bankster? | The Big Picture.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says oil spill puts survival of BP at stake
As a high-stakes operation to shut off a blown-out oil well unfolded on the seabed and a 130-mile wide slick menaced the coastline of four US states, a top US official was warning that the survival of BP as a company was under threat.
Ken Salazar, the US Interior Secretary, accused the oil giant and its partners in the Deepwater Horizon rig of “major mistakes”, adding that ’s] life is very much on the line here”.
A six-member board made up of personnel from the US Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates the oil industry, will begin hearing evidence next week on the April 20 disaster in which 11 workers were killed when pressure surged up a drill pipe and exploded the rig.
Full Story: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says oil spill puts survival of BP at stake – Times Online.
First U.S. offshore wind farm receives approval
After almost a decade of federal study and analysis, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) approved the Cape Wind project, allowing the first U.S. offshore wind farm to move ahead.
Cape Wind is a 130-turbine wind power project on submerged federal lands in Nantucket Sound off the Massachusetts coast. DOI required the developer of the $1 billion wind farm to agree to additional binding measures to minimize the potential adverse impacts of construction and operation of the facility.
Located in a 25-square-mile section of Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, the Cape Wind project will have a maximum electric output of 468 megawatts (MW), with an average anticipated output of 182 MW. That’s enough to meet 75% of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket Island combined. The Cape Wind developer hopes to begin construction by the end of this year. See the Cape Wind press release.
Full Story: First U.S. offshore wind farm receives approval.
Rep. Alan Grayson: You Own the Red Roof Inn, Thanks to the Fed
Rep. Alan Grayson discussed the Federal Reserve’s purchase of debt from Bear Stearns, including debt from recently foreclosed Red Roof Inn’s.
Report: IAEA to discuss Israel’s nuclear activities for first time
Israeli nuclear capabilities are on the provisional agenda for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s June 7 meeting.
Israel’s secretive nuclear activities may undergo unprecedented scrutiny next month, with a key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency tentatively set to focus on the topic for the first time, according to documents shared Friday with The Associated Press.
A copy of the restricted provisional agenda of the IAEA’s June 7 board meeting lists Israeli nuclear capabilities as the eighth item – the first time that that the agency’s decision-making body is being asked to deal with the issue in its 52 years of existence.
The agenda can still undergo changes in the month before the start of the meeting and a senior diplomat from a board member nation said the item, included on Arab request, could be struck if the U.S. and other Israeli allies mount strong opposition. He asked for anonymity for discussing a confidential matter.
Full Story: Report: IAEA to discuss Israel’s nuclear activities for first time – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.
Study: Stomach Cancer Up In Young, White Adults
Scientists are puzzling over a surprising increase in stomach cancer in young white adults, while rates in all other American adults have declined. Chances for developing stomach cancer are still very low in young adults but the incidence among 25 to 39 year old whites nonetheless climbed by almost 70 percent in the past three decades, a study found.
National Cancer Institute researchers and colleagues examined new cases from 1977 to 2006 of cancer in the lower stomach, which can be caused by chronic infection with a common bacteria called H. pylori. It also causes stomach ulcers.
Overall, there were 39,003 cases detected in a surveillance program that covers about one-fourth of the U.S. population.
Full Story: Study: Stomach Cancer Up In Young, White Adults.
Archbishop Sambi’s Bizarre War of Words With Sex Abuse Protester
When Pope Benedict XVI named Archbishop Pietro Sambi as the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Sates in 2005, he chose a man with broad international experience. The newest Papal Nuncio had spent 36 years in nine countries, including Israel, Indonesia, Belgium and Cuba.
Sambi was hailed by the Catholic News Agency as “one of the Vatican’s most able diplomats” and by the Catholic Exchange as “an energetic and gregarious man with an ability to bring the human touch to diplomatic challenges.”
One of those challenges turned out to be John Wojnowski, 67, who, since 1998 has ceaselessly picketed the Apostolic Nunciature on Washington D.C.’s posh Embassy Row, where Archbishop Sambi, 71, lives and works.
Full Story: Archbishop Sambi’s Bizarre War of Words With Sex Abuse Protester.
Pentagon asking Congress to hold back on generous increases in troop pay
The Pentagon, not usually known for its frugality, is pleading with Congress to stop spending so much money on the troops.
Through nine years of war, service members have seen a healthy rise in pay and benefits, with most of them now better compensated than workers in the private sector with similar experience and education levels.
Congress has been so determined to take care of troops and their families that for several years running it has overruled the Pentagon and mandated more-generous pay raises than requested by the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. It has also rejected attempts by the Pentagon to slow soaring health-care costs — which Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said are “eating us alive” — by raising co-pays or premiums.
Now, Pentagon officials see fiscal calamity.
Full Story: Pentagon asking Congress to hold back on generous increases in troop pay.
OPS: For some perspective on the absurdity of the Pentagon’s position see this graph
Food-stamp tally nears 40 million, sets record
Nearly 40 million Americans received food stamps — the latest in an ever-higher string of record enrollment that dates from December 2008 and the U.S. recession, according to a government update.
Food stamps are the primary federal anti-hunger program, helping poor people buy food. Enrollment is highest during times of economic distress. The jobless rate was 9.9 percent, the government said on Friday.
The Agriculture Department said 39.68 million people, or 1 in 8 Americans, were enrolled for food stamps during February, an increase of 260,000 from January. USDA updated its figures on Wednesday.
Full Story: Food-stamp tally nears 40 million, sets record – Yahoo! News.
Obama: Health reform laws already helping millions
US President Barack Obama highlighted the benefits of the newly-adopted health care reform on Saturday, saying it had already made insurance companies more accountable.
“Aside from providing real, tangible benefits to the American people, the new health care law has also begun to end the worst practices of insurance companies,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.
“For too long, we have been held hostage to an insurance industry that jacks up premiums and drops coverage as they please,” he said, adding: “But those days are finally coming to an end.
The health care legislation, passed by Congress and signed by the president into law in March, will extend medical coverage to an estimated 32 million Americans who currently lack it.
Full Story: Obama: Health reform laws already helping millions | Raw Story.
BP executives were aboard rig celebrating safety record when methane triggered blast
The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP’s internal investigation.
While the cause of the explosion is still under investigation, the sequence of events described in the interviews provides the most detailed account of the April 20 blast that killed 11 workers and touched off the underwater gusher that has poured more than 3 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.
Portions of the interviews, two written and one taped, were described in detail to an Associated Press reporter by Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety and worked for BP PLC as a risk assessment consultant during the 1990s. He received them from industry friends seeking his expert opinion.
Full Story: BP executives were aboard rig celebrating safety record when methane triggered blast | Raw Story.
Cuccinelli Switches His Explanation For Censoring Virginia Seal Lapel Pins
Virginia’s right-wing Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) has taken heat in recent days after he censored the state seal on lapel pins he handed out to his staff. Virginia’s Great Seal, which has been in use since 1776, shows the Roman goddess Virtus standing over the defeated Tyranny. The official seal shows Virtus with her left breast exposed, but Cuccinelli’s version has her chest covered.
When he handed out the pins, he “joked that it converts a risqué image into a PG one,” but after being widely ridiculed for the new seal, Cuccinelli abandoned the pins and denied that he was trying to censor the seal. He blamed the media for creating a “distraction,” claiming the pins were based on “antique” versions of the seal and that he just wanted to give his employees something “unique.”
But in an interview on WAMU yesterday, Cuccinelli offered a completely new explanation, suggesting that it would be illegal for him to use the official seal on the pins:
Full Story: Think Progress » Cuccinelli Switches His Explanation For Censoring Virginia Seal Lapel Pins.
Death of Brown/Kaufman a Huge Blow
By MATT TAIBBI
So the Senate voted yesterday evening. It went down by 61-33. That is frankly a crushing defeat.
The roll call has its interesting moments, notably that Alabama Republican Richard Shelby voted for it. Shelby is the leading GOP negotiator on the bill. Two other GOPers also backed it.
The Democrats split 30 for, and 27 against. Looking at those groupings will give you a pretty good idea of the nature of the divide within the Senate Democratic caucus.
via Michael Tomasky: The limits of liberalism in the Senate | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
As recently as last night I still had some hopes that this Financial Regulatory Reform bill might turn into something real. I was in DC watching the debate on the Senate floor yesterday and aside from being amused by the utterly schizophrenic Republican strategy for attacking the bill (several Republican Senators yesterday veered into discussions of how the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency would harm, of all people, orthodontists) there was little to the naked eye that suggested the whole thing was a farce.
In general I got the sense that many of the members on both sides of the aisle were genuinely freaked out by the snowballing corruption on Wall Street and wanted to sink at least one real fang or two into the problem, though they differed on how to get there.
Full Story: Death of Brown/Kaufman a Huge Blow – Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – True/Slant.
Greek Debt Crisis Raises Doubts About the European Union
Europe’s consistent inability to move quickly enough to get ahead of the financial markets during the Greece crisis is shaking the euro and the foundations of the European Union itself, as critics of the euro have long predicted would happen.
The question being raised with increasing urgency is whether the European Union can fashion a mechanism to speed decision-making before irreversible damage is done and the euro itself slips into history.
The delays are inevitable, most experts say, stemming from the nature of the European Union and its own institutional voids: no single government, no single treasury, no effective fiscal coordination, no mechanism for crisis management.
Full Story: News Analysis – Greek Debt Crisis Raises Doubts About the European Union – NYTimes.com.
Mystery Disease Linked to Missing Israeli Scientist
Media outlets across the Northwest United States began reporting on April 24 that a strange, previously unknown strain of virulent airborne fungi that has already killed at least six people in Oregon, Washington and Idaho is spreading throughout the region. The fungus, according to expert microbiologists, who have expressed alarm about the emergence of the strain, is a new genotype of Cryptococcus gatti fungi. Cryptococcus gatti is normally found in tropical and subtropical locations in India, South America, Africa and Australia. Microbiologists in the United States are reporting that the strain found here, for reasons not yet fully understood, is far deadlier than any found overseas.
Physicians in the Pacific Northwest are reporting that an undetermined number of people in the region are ill from the effects of the strange strain. Physicians also say that the virulent strain can infect domestic animals as well as humans, and symptoms do not appear until anywhere from two to four months after exposure. Symptoms in humans include a lingering cough, sharp chest pains, fever, night-sweats, weight-loss, headaches and shortness of breath. The strain can be treated successfully, if detected early enough, with oral doses of antifungal medication, but it cannot be prevented, and there is no preventative vaccine. Undiagnosed, the fungus works its way into the spinal fluid and central nervous system and causes fatal meningitis.
The estimated mortality rate is about 25 percent of 21 cases analyzed. Several newspapers and media outlets in the US and overseas quote a researcher at Duke University's Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Edmond Byrnes, as stating: “This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people. Typically, we see this fungal disease associated with transplant recipients and HIV-infected patients, but that is not what we are seeing.”
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Mystery Disease Linked to Missing Israeli Scientist.
Big Banks Making a Bundle On New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost
Democracy NOW!
Charter-school
“Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction,” Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez write in the New York Daily News. “The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.
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Full Story: Juan Gonzalez: Big Banks Making a Bundle On New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost.
The Downward Slope of Empire
Talking With Chalmers Johnson
By Harry Kreisler :
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. He appeared in the 2005 prizewinning documentary film Why We Fight. He lives near San Diego.
Kreisler: Once upon a time you called yourself a “spear-carrier for the empire.”
Johnson: “—for the empire,” yes, yes.
That’s the prologue to Blowback; I was a consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the CIA during the time of the Vietnam War. But what caused me to change my mind and to rethink these issues? Two things: one analytical, one concrete. The first was the demise of the Soviet Union. I expected much more from the United States in the way of a peace dividend. I believe that Russia today is not the former Soviet Union by any means. It’s a much smaller place. I would have expected that as a tradition in the United States, we would have demobilized much more radically. We would have rethought more seriously our role in the world, brought home troops in places like Okinawa. Instead, we did every thing in our power to shore up the Cold War structures in East Asia, in Latin America. The search for new enemies began. That’s the neoconservatives. I was shocked, actually, by this. Did this mean that the Cold War was a cover for something deeper, for an American imperial project that had been in the works since World War II? I began to believe that this is the case.
Full Story: CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.
Safety fluid was removed before oil rig exploded in Gulf
The investigation into what went wrong when the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and started spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is sure to find several engineering failures, from cement seals that didn’t hold back a powerful gas bubble to a 450-ton, 40-foot-tall blowout preventer, a stack of metal valves and pistons that each failed to close off the well.
There was, however, a simpler protection against the disaster: mud. An attorney representing a witness says oil giant BP and the owner of the drilling platform, Switzerland-based Transocean Ltd., started to remove a mud barrier before a final cement plug was installed, a move industry experts say weakens control of the well in an emergency.
When the explosion occurred, BP was attempting to seal off an exploratory well. The company had succeeded in tapping into a reservoir of oil, and it was capping the well so it could leave and set up more permanent operations to extract its riches.
Full Story: Safety fluid was removed before oil rig exploded in Gulf | NOLA.com.
Nuclear Power Nearly as Dangerous as Weapons, Critics Say
The quest for nuclear disarmament is likely to fail if governments and corporations continue to promote nuclear technologies as a solution to the world’s energy needs, say independent experts.
Their warning comes as international talks on the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) continue here at U.N. headquarters in New York. The review meeting on the 1970 treaty is due to conclude by the end of this month.
At the meeting, many delegates from countries that do not possess nuclear weapons called for those nations who have them to take speedy actions towards disarmament. Citing the treaty, some also said it was their “inalienable” right to use peaceful nuclear technologies.
Just like the representatives of nuclear weapons states, almost none of the delegates from non-nuclear countries offered any views on the pros and cons of the use of nuclear technologies for so-called “civilian and peaceful purposes”.
Full Story: Nuclear Power Nearly as Dangerous as Weapons, Critics Say – IPS ipsnews.net.
Stock Market Collapse: More Goldman Market Rigging?
Ellen Brown:
Suspicious Market Maneuverings
Last week, Goldman Sachs was on the congressional hot seat, grilled for fraud in its sale of complicated financial products called “synthetic CDOs.” This week the heat was off, as all eyes turned to the attack of the shorts on Greek sovereign debt and the dire threat of a sovereign Greek default. By Thursday, Goldman’s fraud had slipped from the headlines and Congress had been cowed into throwing in the towel on its campaign to break up the too-big-to-fail banks. On Friday, Goldman was in settlement talks with the SEC.
Goldman and Wall Street reign. Congress appears helpless to discipline the big banks, just as the European Central Bank appears helpless to prevent the collapse of the European Union. . . . Or are they?
Suspicious Market Maneuverings
The shorts circled like sharks in the Greek bond market, following a highly suspicious downgrade of Greek debt by Moody’s on Monday. Ratings by private ratings agencies, long suspected of being in the pocket of Wall Street, often seem to be timed to cause stocks or bonds to jump or tumble, causing extreme reactions in the market. The Greek downgrade was suspicious and unexpected because the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund had just pledged 120 billion Euros to avoid a debt default in Greece.
Full Story: Ellen Brown: Stock Market Collapse: More Goldman Market Rigging?.
Congress Backs Wall Street, Rejects Big Bank Break-Up
Late last night, the U.S. Senate rejected the single most important element of Wall Street reform by a vote of 33 to 61. The SAFE Banking Act would have forced the break-up of the nation’s six largest banks, and dramatically reduced the political clout of America’s financial elite. The 61 votes against the measure are votes in favor of Wall Street’s stranglehold on our economy. No matter what else is ultimately enacted in the name of Wall Street reform, Congress has decided that it will not confront the single greatest problem in the U.S. economy: Too Big To Fail.
On Wednesday, the Senate also voted down a $50 billion Wall Street tax that would have been used to fund the cost of shutting down a major failing bank. By rejecting both the break-up bill and the bank tax, the Senate has punted on ending too-big-to-fail. For now, it appears that Wall Street has emerged from the Great Financial Crash of 2008 with even greater political might than it wielded during the reign of George W. Bush. In the Citizens United era, both Democrats and Republicans have decided they can only get so tough with Corporate America.
Last night, 27 Democrats joined all but three Republicans to vote against breaking up the banks. President Barack Obama opposed both the tax and the break-up measures, and hosted J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for dinner at the White House on Monday. J.P. Morgan is the largest U.S. bank, and spent more money on lobbying in 2009 than any other bank. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has aggressively courted Dimon for campaign cash.
Full Story: Congress Backs Wall Street, Rejects Big Bank Break-Up | OurFuture.org.
Poll: Grassley’s reelection opponent within striking distance
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) Democratic opponent looks to be within striking distance of the veteran senator, a new poll found Friday.
Forty-nine percent of likely Iowa voters said they would reelect the veteran GOP senator, compared to 40 percent who said they would support Roxanne Conlin, a Democratic attorney running against the senator.
Eleven percent of Iowans said they were undecided in such a match-up. Grassley has won reelection with 66 percent of the vote or more in each of his bids since first being elected in 1980 with almost 54 percent of the vote.
Full Story: Poll: Grassley’s reelection opponent within striking distance – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.
Israel Ready For Deal On Palestinian State, Peres Says
Israel is ready to negotiate the terms of Palestinian statehood, although it wants its security concerns addressed in the initial stages of indirect talks, the Israeli president said Friday after meeting with the U.S. Mideast envoy.
George Mitchell, who is President Barack Obama’s special representative for Mideast peace, is in the region for the start of four months of indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians that aim to bridge vast differences between the sides on the contours of a future Palestinian state.
The Palestinians want the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem – territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War – for their state, but have said they are willing to make some minor land exchanges.
Full Story: Israel Ready For Deal On Palestinian State, Peres Says.
Oil Spill: Concrete Box To Contain Spill Touches Down On Gulf Floor
Rig workers tell BP’s internal investigators that a deadly blowout of an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a methane gas bubble that escaped and shot toward the surface.
The interviews were described in detail to an AP reporter by an oil pipeline safety expert who received them from former industry colleagues seeking his opinion.
Deep beneath the seafloor, methane gas is in a slushy, crystalline form. As the workers removed pressure from the well and introduced heat, the cement seal around the pipe destabilized, creating a gas bubble. It intensified and grew, breaking through the rig’s various safety barriers.
Seven BP executives were on board the rig celebrating the project’s safety record when it occurred.
Full Story: Oil Spill: Concrete Box To Contain Spill Touches Down On Gulf Floor.
MEET AMERICA’S DISASTROUS REGULATORS
Gulf Oil Rig Disaster And Mine Explosion Highlight Weak Safety Regulations
“I have here before me a pile of news clips collected over the last couple of weeks describing workers, men and women, young and old who have been crushed, electrocuted, burned, or who have died in falls, trench collapses and forklift accidents. These are the invisible relentless daily tragedies of the American workplace.” — OSHA Administrator David Michaels, April 27
Coal miners and oil drillers may not have been on T.S. Eliot’s mind when he penned “The Wasteland,” but April was surely the cruelest month for those who work in two of the most dangerous jobs in America. Last month saw the two biggest disasters in those industries in decades, with 29 miners dying in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion on April 5 and 11 workers killed in the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.
In the wake of the tragedies, headlines have been dominated by searing accounts of these workers’ last moments, lawmakers are demanding investigations and the public is looking for heads to roll at the mining conglomerate, Massey Energy, and the oil giant BP.
Full Story: Gulf Oil Rig Disaster And Mine Explosion Highlight Weak Safety Regulations.
Nuclear Proliferation in Latin America: Is Brazil Developing the Bomb?
Brazil has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but experts suspect it may be working on a nuclear bomb. The country is allowed to legally enrich uranium for its nuclear submarines, but nobody knows what happens to the fuel once it is on restricted military bases.
In October 2009, the prestigious American periodical Foreign Policy published an article titled “The Future Nuclear Powers You Should Be Worried About.” According to the author, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Burma, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela are the next candidates — after Iran — for membership in the club of nuclear powers. Despite his interesting arguments, the author neglected to mention the most important potential nuclear power: Brazil.
Nowadays, Brazil is held in high esteem by the rest of the world. Its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has become a star on the international stage. “That's my man right here,” US President Barack Obama once said, in praise of his Brazilian counterpart. Lula, as he is known, can even afford to receive Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with all honors and demonstratively endorse his nuclear program, for which Iran is now ostracized around the world
Full Story: Nuclear Proliferation in Latin America: Is Brazil Developing the Bomb? – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.
7 arraigned after foreclosure protest at Stony Ridge
Seven people were arrested during the forced evacuation of a Stony Ridge house early Friday, including the homeowner who spent the week barricaded inside with several protesters in an attempt to resist eviction because of foreclosure.
The defendants appeared via video conference Friday afternoon in Perrysburg Municipal Court, all represented by attorney Terry Lodge. Judge Dwight Osterud released them on their own recognizance. Pretrial hearings will be scheduled later. The judge asked homeowner Keith Sadler if he understood that he could not return to his residence and he answered in the affirmative.
It took nearly two hours for authorities to arrest all in the home, including Mr. Sadler, 53, of Stony Ridge; Connie Smithingell, 20, of Perrysburg; Bryan Baumgartner, of Toledo, 19; Nicholas Botek, 23, of Maumee; Jessica Angelov, 20, of Oregon; Daniel Orange, 25, of Toledo; and Johnny W. Kutsch, Jr., 22, of Oregon.
Full Story: toledoblade.com — The Blade ~ Toledo Ohio.
Latest Jobs Report Refutes Republican Claim That Stimulus Created Only Government Jobs
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy added a better than expected 290,000 jobs last month. The BLS also revised the jobs number for both February and March upwards, putting both of those months into the black in terms of job creation. (Due to 805,00 discouraged workers “feeling better about their prospects” and resuming their search for work, the unemployment rate actually ticked up to 9.9 percent.)
The continued turnaround of the labor market is a strong sign that the economic stimulus package passed last year is doing what it is supposed to. But today’s report also refutes one of the favorite Republican talking points about the stimulus, which is that it only preserved government jobs:
– Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN): These are mostly government jobs, you know…The idea that government grows the economy when all they really do is extract money from taxpayers, bring it into the bureaucracy and put it back out into the economy on a political agenda is not growth.
Full Story: Think Progress » Latest Jobs Report Refutes Republican Claim That Stimulus Created Only Government Jobs.
Florida legislature fails to outlaw sex with animals.
As ThinkProgress recently noted, the Florida legislature has been trying to close a “loophole” that made it one “of only a dozen or so states that don’t have a law against having sex with animals.” While the state has been unable to pass a bestiality law, it has had no problem finding time to make sure it’s illegal to get married or adopt a child if you’re gay. Now, the legislative session has ended, and lawmakers have once again failed to outlaw sex with animals. This time, they were thwarted by fertilizer:
The Senate passed the measure twice, but it did not earn so much as a hearing in the House until this session, when [House Majority Leader Adam] Hasner [R] proposed a compromise. The ban was tucked into an omnibus agriculture bill, which passed in the House.
Full Story: Think Progress » Florida legislature fails to outlaw sex with animals..
Following oil spill disaster, 55 percent of Floridans now oppose offshore drilling.
As emergency responders struggle to contain the devastating economic and ecological effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, many fear that the Floridan coastline will be the next ecosystem devastated. A new Mason-Dixon poll released today finds that, in the wake of the oil disaster, 55 percent of Floridians now oppose offshore oil drilling, a complete reversal from polling conducted last year:
In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida voters have reversed their view on drilling off of the state’s coast, according to new poll released by Mason-Dixon. Statewide, only 35% currently support offshore drilling, while a 55% majority are now opposed to it.
Full Story: Think Progress » Following oil spill disaster, 55 percent of Floridans now oppose offshore drilling..
Will The Right Wing Attack General Petraeus For Saying Times Square Bomber Is A ‘Lone Wolf’?
Last Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that authorities had “no evidence” that the failed bombing in Times Square which occurred the day before was “anything other than a one-off” incident. However, she also said “[w]e are treating it as if it could be a potential terrorist attack. The derivation of that we do not know and that’s what the investigation will tell us.”
Looking for a line of attack on the Obama administration, the Republicans and other right wingers latched onto Napolitano’s “one-off” comments, claiming they indicate that she and the administration don’t understand the true nature of the threat:
– House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH): “The Obama administration has spoon-fed the American people with bland reassurances that this was just one off, or that this was just a lone wolf. This is the rhetoric of an administration that continues to operate without a real comprehensive plan to confront the terrorist threat.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Will The Right Wing Attack General Petraeus For Saying Times Square Bomber Is A ‘Lone Wolf’?.
Pence and Boehner ignore Cantor’s claim that ‘job growth is always a good thing, period.’
Earlier today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy added a better than expected 290,000 jobs last month while also revising the jobs number for both February and March upwards. President Obama called the report “very encouraging news,” noting that it “is the largest monthly increase in four years.” The jobs number was so positive that even House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) had to admit in a statement that it was undeniably good news:
An employment report that shows job growth is always a good thing, period. What concerns me, however, is whether we are creating long-term, sustainable jobs that will help America reclaim its place as the world’s sole economic superpower. The agenda being pursued by Democrats in Washington—fueled by a spend-now, pay-later governing philosophy—is a barrier to the kind of job growth that America so desperately needs.
Full Story: Think Progress » Pence and Boehner ignore Cantor’s claim that ‘job growth is always a good thing, period.’.
Nasa Seeks ‘Warp Drive’, Anti-Gravity Space Craft
Len Hart,
The state of Texas and NASA hope to take an early lead in interstellar space travel with technologies that sound like dialogue from Star Trek or Star Wars peppered with terms like 'Warp Drive' and, prominently, 'anti-gravity'. Simplistically, a new generation of space-craft may be capable of producing 'tuned' gravity waves by which it may literally surf a veritable 'grid' of gravity waves that form a cosmic, universal 'net'.
The term breakthrough propulsion refers to concepts like space drives and faster-than-light travel, the kind of breakthroughs that would make interstellar travel practical.
For a general explanation of the challenges and approaches of interstellar flight, please visit the companion web site:Warp Drive: When? The Warp-When site is written for the general public and uses icons of science fiction to help convey such notions. This web site, on the other hand, is intended for scientists and engineers.
Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: Nasa Seeks ‘Warp Drive’, Anti-Gravity Space Craft.
Shell to court: We’re ready to drill Arctic Ocean
Shell Oil is ready to drill in the Arctic Ocean this summer and asked a federal appeals court Thursday to rule quickly on a challenge by environmentalists concerned about the risk of a major spill after the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
Kathleen Sullivan, an attorney for Shell, said the company has spent at least $3.5 billion on Alaska operations in the past few years as it prepares for exploratory drilling set for July in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
“Shell has waited years to recover its investment,” Sullivan told a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland. “We’re ready to go.”
“I’m sure Shell would like to win,” replied Chief Judge Alex Kozinski.
Full Story: The Associated Press: Shell to court: We’re ready to drill Arctic Ocean.
Dadeus Grings: We’re all potential paedophiles, says archbishop
An archbishop has defended the child sex scandal that has engulfed the Roman Catholic Church by claiming it reflects the behaviour of society at large.
Brazilian priest Dadeus Grings also said adolescents are ‘spontaneously homosexual’ and in need of guidance.
He said: ‘Society today is paedophile, that is the problem. So people easily fall into it. And the fact it is denounced is a good sign.’
Full Story: Dadeus Grings: We’re all potential paedophiles, says archbishop | Mail Online.
Joe Lieberman Should be Disbarred for His Disregard for the American Justice System (He’s Lucky He Gets to Keep His Citizenship)
Quick. Someone strip Joe Lieberman of his citizenship before he causes actual damage to the country. Oh, wait. I forgot; we don’t engage in that kind of Orwellian nonsense in this country.
Yet.
You probably heard about the latest idea from the “independent” senator from Connecticut (who seems to be independent of nothing more than reality) to strip citizenship from people who are accused of having ties to terrorism. Somehow this incredibly stupid idea got codified into an actual bill, which was introduced yesterday. The fact that this knee-jerk response is now present in the Congressional Record is an anathema to our justice system.
Countless questions have been raised about this ridiculous notion advanced by Lieberman. Like, for one: “Why?”
After all, what good does this actually accomplish? The ability to try someone in a military tribunal comes easier when the accused is not a U.S. citizen, but then again, what’s the problem with criminal court? And apparently the Miranda rights argument advanced by Lieberman is erroneous as well.
So why would a graduate of Yale Law, who should know better, introduce such a legally fraught, Draconian law?
Oh, of course! I should have known. Thanks for spelling this one out, Rep. Charlie Dent:
The (Almost) Crash of Wall Street
Robert Reich -
Ninety minutes before the end of the trading day today, the U.S. stock market almost melted down The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,000 points. The market regained ground before the end, like a giant 747 narrowly averting a crash landing, but the questions of the day are: What happened? And What does it mean?
At this point no one knows why. Some say it was sudden burst of worries about Greece’s debt and the increasing possibility of a default that might cause a run by global investors. Others point to a “trading error.” Giant high-speed computers generate millions of trade based on instructions embedded in computer programs designed to move fast enough to beat everyone else. So when there’s a glitch in one of them it can immediately spread to all the other programs designed to move just as fast. Some say it was an erroneous trade entered by someone at a big Wall Street bank who mistyped an order to sell a large block of stock, and that the big drop in that stock’s price (Procter & Gamble?) triggered “sell” orders across the market.
Regardless of why it happened, it’s further evidence that the nation’s and the world’s capital markets have become a vast out-of-control casino in which fortunes can be made or lost in an instant — which would be fine except for the fact that most of us have put our life savings there. Pension funds, mutual funds, school endowments — the value of all of this depends on a mechanism that can lose a trillion dollars in minutes without anyone having a clear idea why. So much of the market now depends on computer programs and mathematical models that no one fully understands, so much trading is in the hands of a few people whose fat thumbs or momentary carelessness might sink the economy, so much of global wealth now depends on who can move their money quickest at the slightest provocation — that we are toying with financial disaster every day. The luck or foolishness of a few traders, and inside knowledge and information that some possess and others don’t, combined with ultra high-speed computers, put us all at the whim of a system whose risk is way out of proportion to any public benefits.
Full Story: Robert Reich (The (Almost) Crash of Wall Street).
Safety barrier removed before rig exploded: report
- MarketWatch:
An attorney representing a rig worker who survived the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion said oil giant BP Plc /quotes/comstock/13*!bp/quotes/nls/bp (BP 49.02, -0.04, -0.08%) and the drilling platform’s owner, Transocean Ltd. /quotes/comstock/13*!rig/quotes/nls/rig (RIG 68.10, +0.09, +0.13%) , started to remove a mud barrier before a final cement plug was installed, The Times-Picayune reported on Friday.
When the explosion occurred, BP was attempting to seal off an exploratory well. To properly cap a well, drillers rely on three lines of defense to prevent an explosive blowout: a column of heavy mud in the well and the drilling riser that runs up to the rig; at least two cement plugs in the well with a column of mud between them; and a blowout preventer that is supposed to seal the well if the mud and plugs fail. If all of the mud was still present, it would have helped push back against the gas burping up toward the rig, though it might not have held it back indefinitely, the paper said.
BP declined to answer the paper’s questions about exactly how far along they were in the process of closing the well head 5,000 feet below the Deepwater Horizon rig when the explosion occurred.
Full Story: Safety barrier removed before rig exploded: report – MarketWatch.
AT LONG LAST, U.S. JOB MARKET STARTS TO LOOK PRETTY GOOD….
Washington Monthly:
click to enlarge:
It seemed all but certain that the economy added jobs in April; the question was how many, and the extent to which the larger trend would be encouraging or discouraging.
With that in mind, the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics offered some very good news at a key moment this morning, with job totals exceeding expectations.
More confident employers stepped up job creation in April, expanding payrolls by 290,000, the most in four years. The jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent as people streamed back into the market looking for work.
Full Story: The Washington Monthly.
Gov’t Report Suggests Fixes for Broken Unemployment Insurance System
As we’ve previously reported, state unemployment insurance systems are in crisis.
Some 33 states have run out of money to pay benefits and been forced to borrow nearly $38 billion from the federal government just to keep benefits flowing to unemployed workers. Those financial difficulties are also taking a human toll as states scramble to replenish their funds through tax increases and limits on benefits.
A report released by the GAO (PDF) today both points to this pressing problem, and confirms our report from last year showing that much of the blame lies with states, many of which maintained dangerously low levels of reserves even before the recession began.
Going one step further, the report outlines policy changes that are on the table to prevent a repeat of this mass insolvency (which itself is a repeat of solvency crises in the 1970s and 1980s), including:
Full Story: On The Hill: Gov’t Report Suggests Fixes for Broken Unemployment Insurance System.
Senate rejects GOP effort to weaken proposed consumer agency
With a strong push from the White House, the Senate on Thursday rejected 61-38 a Republican-led effort to dilute strong new protections for consumers who face problems with mortgages and other forms of credit.
The bill to overhaul U.S. financial regulation, written largely by Democrats, would create a new consumer finance protection agency. Republicans argued that the agency would have broad, dangerous power to dictate how small businesses operate.
“This is a massive new grant of authority that should give every American pause,” contended Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.
Full Story: Senate rejects GOP effort to weaken proposed consumer agency – KansasCity.com.
Iceland arrests ex-chief of collapsed bank Kaupthing
The former chief executive of the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing has been arrested, authorities say.
Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson is suspected of embezzlement, trading irregularities, and other breaches of banking laws, the special prosecutor’s office has said.
It is the first high-profile arrest since the country’s financial collapse in 2008.
Mr Sigurdsson is being held by police until a bail hearing on Friday at the Reykjavik District Court.
Kaupthing, once Iceland’s biggest bank, collapsed under a mountain of debt at the height of the country’s banking crisis.
Full Story: BBC News – Iceland arrests ex-chief of collapsed bank Kaupthing.
Papantonio: BP – Shills, Shills, and More Shills
Video:
Even with more than 200,000 gallons of oil being pumped directly into the Gulf of Mexico everyday (thanks to BP's negligence on the Deepwater Horizon well,) right wing wackos are still clinging to their “drill baby, drill” mantra. We're being told that yes, this is an atrocity, but we still need that oil at the bottom of the sea floor. Mike Papantonio appears on MSNBC's The Ed Show to take on the offshore drilling cheerleaders, as well as explain the basics of his class action suit against BP.
Sanders Full Floor Speech on Federal Reserve Transparancy Amendment
Sen. Bernie Sanders argues for his amendment which would bring greater transparency to the Fed.
SEIU announces Arizona boycott
One of the nation’s biggest labor organizations announced today it will boycott Arizona.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said its 2.2 million members will not attend any meetings or conventions in Arizona as long as the new immigration law is in place.
“On behalf of working families and the more than 8 million residents of Arizona, we will not back down until the Arizona state legislature, the courts or the Federal Government invalidates this dangerous and discriminatory law,” said Eliseo Medina, SEIU Executive Vice President.
Full Story: SEIU announces Arizona boycott – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.
We Need a Road Map to a Coal Free Future
In the wake of the worst coal mining disaster in 40 years, compromise and political machinations this spring have resulted in a regulatory crisis of failure; workplace safety in the mines, including the black lung scandal, has emerged as a national tragedy; toxic coal ash remains uncategorized as hazardous waste; mountaintop removal operations and devastating strip mining in 24 states continue under regulatory plunder, not abolishment; billions of taxpayers’ dollars pour down the black hole of carbon capture and storage boondoggles, increasing coal production; climate legislation hangs in the balance of political games.
In 1776, Thomas Paine challenged our country to embrace the cause of independence over compromise. In a moment of crisis, he declared: “We have it in our power to make the world over again.”
Our modern-day Paine, James Hansen at the NASA Goddard Center, has issued a similar clarion call: “Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet. Our global climate is nearing tipping points.”
Full Story: We Need a Road Map to a Coal Free Future | CommonDreams.org.
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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. 
