Archive for July, 2010
Gulf Coast Chefs File Class Action Suit Against BP
New Orleans chef Susan Spicer has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of local restaurant owners against BP for damages related to the oil spill. Guest host Jacki Lyden talks with Spicer and famed chef Jose Andres about the lasting effects on restaurants and the future of the Gulf Coast seafood industry.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Im Jacki Lyden.
For the last 20 years, Chef Susan Spicer’s restaurant, Bayona, has been rated one of the best in New Orleans. But its reputation for delicious and inventive seafood dishes is being threatened by the lasting effects of the Gulf oil spill. Last week, Friday June the 25th, Chef Spicer filed a class-action suit seeking damages, not just for her business, but other New Orleans restaurants and seafood suppliers affected by oil spill.
Susan Spicer joins us from her restaurant, Bayona, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome to the show.
Chef SUSAN SPICER (Owner, Bayona Restaurant): Thanks, Jacki. Im happy to be here today.
LYDEN: And also with us, famed Chef Jose Andreas and he joins us from his restaurant, Julio, in Bethesda, Maryland. Thanks for being with us once more.
Chef JOSE ANDREAS (Owner, Julio Restaurant): Thank you for inviting me.
Full Story: Gulf Coast Chefs File Class Action Suit Against BP : NPR.
Wyoming threatens to sell prime Grand Teton land
For Sale: Two square miles of Grand Teton National Park.
Majestic views of the Teton Range. Prime location for luxury resort, home development. Pristine habitat for moose, elk, wolves, grizzlies.
Price: $125 million. Call: Gov. Dave Freudenthal.
Wyoming is trying to force the Interior Department to trade land, minerals or mineral royalties for 1,366 acres it owns within the majestic park. If the foot-dragging feds don’t agree to a deal – soon – Freudenthal threatens to put a For Sale sign on the property.
Full Story: News from The Associated Press.
Mexicans vote elections besieged by drug violence
More than a dozen Mexican states held elections Sunday after campaigning besieged by assassinations and scandals that displayed drug cartels’ power. The party that ruled Mexico for 71 years hoped to capitalize on frustrations over the bloodshed and gain momentum in its bid to regain the presidency in two years.
The elections for governors, mayors and other posts are the biggest political challenge yet for the government of President Felipe Calderon, who has deployed troops and federal police trying to wrest back territory from drug traffickers.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held on to power for seven decades through a system of largess and corruption that many considered a quasi-dictatorship, has recovered popularity amid frustration with Mexico’s surging drug gang violence.
Full Story: Mexicans vote elections besieged by drug violence – Yahoo! News.
Republicans spar over ‘death’ of Tea Party movement
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) disagreed Sunday with a notion put forward by a fellow South Carolina Republican senator that the Tea Party would eventually “die out.”
“Lindsey’s a great friend but he is wrong on this,” DeMint said on Fox News.
In an interview with the New York Times Magazine published last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.”
DeMint disagreed
Full Story: Republicans spar over ‘death’ of Tea Party movement | Raw Story.
Republicans spar over ‘death’ of Tea Party movement
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) disagreed Sunday with a notion put forward by a fellow South Carolina Republican senator that the Tea Party would eventually “die out.”
“Lindsey’s a great friend but he is wrong on this,” DeMint said on Fox News.
In an interview with the New York Times Magazine published last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.”
DeMint disagreed
Full Story: Republicans spar over ‘death’ of Tea Party movement | Raw Story.
ExitExit Polls: Komorowski Takes Polish Presidency
Polls in Polish Election Give Komorowski Edge
Interim president Bronislaw Komorowski appeared to have held off a last-minute surge from the identical twin brother of the late president, who died in an April plane crash that shocked the country and forced Sunday’s early election.
Exit polls showed Komorowski with a slight edge over Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who essentially conceded defeat in the presidential run-off by declaring before supporters, “I congratulate the winner.”
A poll released Sunday by the TNS OBOP institute predicted Komorowski winning 53.1 percent of the vote, and Kaczynski winning 46.9 percent. A separate poll, by Millward Brown SMG/KRC, shows Komorowski with 51.8 percent and Kaczynski with 48.2 percent.
The exit polls have a small margin of error, and official results are not expected until Monday.
Full Story: Exit Polls in Polish Election Give Komorowski Edge.
Oh, Look: The Fed Sold Us Junk Bonds!
Hmm. You know, Alex, I think I’ll go with Door No. 2: The Fed knew it was buying weak assets and tried to hide it! Now, what do I win?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money.
The so-called assets included collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed bonds with names like HG-Coll Ltd. 2007-1A that were so distressed, more than $40 million already had been reduced to less than investment-grade by the time the central bankers testified. The government also became the owner of $16 billion of credit-default swaps, and taxpayers wound up guaranteeing high-yield, high-risk junk bonds.
Full Story: Oh, Look: The Fed Sold Us Junk Bonds! | Crooks and Liars.
Punishing the Unemployed
Paul Krugman:
There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.
But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?
The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Punishing the Unemployed – NYTimes.com.
The Scariest Financial Chart of the United States Bar None
INVENTORY / Units For Sale vs. Delinquent Mortgages ‐‐ Arguably the key gauge of our economy, this chart shows high distress among the owners of real estate with the “X” factor of decisive importance. X =delinquent units + for‐sale units. Look at the massive gap between “X” and “Z” ‐‐ where Z = monthly unit sales. Delinquent mortgage loans are equal to SIXTEEN TIMES average monthly sales. The gap frightens all sentient beings and makes a fool of any person who predicts future prices.
The Scariest Financial Chart of the United States Bar None « HousingStory.net.
BP Texas Refinery Had Huge Toxic Release Just Before Gulf Blowout
Two weeks before the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the huge, trouble-plagued BP refinery in this coastal town spewed tens of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the skies.
The release from the BP facility here began April 6 and lasted 40 days. It stemmed from the company’s decision to keep producing and selling gasoline while it attempted repairs on a key piece of equipment, according to BP officials and Texas regulators.
BP says it failed to detect the extent of the emissions for several weeks. It discovered the scope of the problem only after analyzing data from a monitor that measures emissions from a flare 300 feet above the ground that was supposed to incinerate the toxic chemicals.
Full Story: On The Hill: BP Texas Refinery Had Huge Toxic Release Just Before Gulf Blowout.
How Goldman gambled on starvation
Johann Hari:
Speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of millions. What does it say about our system that we can so casually inflict so much pain?
By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You’re wrong. There’s more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here’s the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.
It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people – mostly children – couldn’t afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it “a silent mass murder”, entirely due to “man-made actions.”
Full Story: Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation – Johann Hari, Commentators – The Independent.
Sober Up
Ernest F. Hollings:
Few people realize that for the past fifty years the policy of the United States government has been to get rid of jobs.
Beginning with the Marshall Plan after World War II the government sent money, equipment and expertise to revive the economies of Europe and the Pacific Rim. In doing so, the U. S. called for open markets and “free trade.” Europe responded, but Japan never opened its market. Instead, Japan started a trade war for market share by closing its domestic market, subsidizing and selling its exports at cost, and making up the profit in the closed market. It worked. Today, Toyota is #1, while Ford, GM and Chrysler struggle. We have yet to force Japan to open its market. We in Congress tried, but numerous attempts to open Japan’s market and enforce our trade agreements were thwarted by the White House or vetoed by the president. Our attempts were all led by Corporate America to protect their investment and jobs in country. With the advent of NAFTA with Mexico and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, Corporate America gave up and joined production in China, India and Mexico. Jobs hemorrhaged. Two years ago Alan Blinder, the Princeton economist, estimated that the nation would lose thirty to forty million jobs in ten years to offshoring. The economy boat has sprung leaks from derivatives and credit default swaps. With stimulus, we bail as fast as we can to stop the leaks, but do nothing to plug the hole in the hull ripped by offshoring. Stimulation can be a total success and we’ll still loss more jobs than are created.
Full Story: Sober Up | Economy In Crisis.
Stop the Liquidation of Our Companies
A country that produces nothing produces no wealth.
The companies within a country are that country’s wealth producers. We allow our companies to be snatched up by foreign competitors on the open stock market. Over 16,000 of our best wealth producing companies have been auctioned off and the U.S. has no authoritative government agency prohibiting the Great American Sell-off.
Of course there is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but it merely serves as a rubber stamp with no actual authority. While CFIUS was created as an interagency committee to oversee national security implications of foreign investments into the U.S. economy, it has only stopped one acquisition since its creation.
We are selling out and no longer own or control our own country and must now live on imports while incurring massive debts that can only be repaid through the sale of our wealth producing companies and assets. Very soon we will not even be able to protect or support ourselves.
Full Story: Stop the Liquidation of Our Companies | Economy In Crisis.
Recession Forever Altering Americans’ Lives
The current downturn has affected the majority of Americans. Over half of all the nation’s working age adults experienced work hardships in the form of a job loss, pay cut or involuntary reduction in hours.
Thirty months into the Great Recession, many Americans believe that their lives will be forever altered in ways both large and small by the crisis, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.
Americans are generally less optimistic about their futures and their childrens’ futures, more concerned about pocketbook issues and worried about retirement security.
The nation is going through what is by far the worst recession since World War II. Unlike past recessions, the current downturn has affected the majority of the American people. In fact, over half of all the nation’s working age adults experienced work hardships, either in the form of a job loss, pay cut or involuntary reduction in hours, according to the survey. Nearly one-third of all Americans – 32 percent – have been unemployed at one time or another during the recession.
Full Story: Recession Forever Altering Americans’ Lives | Economy In Crisis.
Treasury orders cabinet ministers to brace themselves for 40% cuts
Shock demand comes as ministers step up emergency cost-cutting across public sector
Cabinet ministers have been ordered by the Treasury to plan for unprecedented cuts of 40% in their departmental budgets as the coalition widens the scope of its four-year austerity drive.
The eye-watering demand from the chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, was sent this weekend to cabinet colleagues ahead of a week in which ministers will step up emergency cost-cutting across the public sector.
The only departments not included in the Treasury trawl will be health and international development, which have been “ringfenced” for the current parliament. Education and defence will also escape lightly. Alexander has told the education secretary, Michael Gove, and the defence secretary, Liam Fox, to plan for two scenarios – cuts to budgets of 10% at best and 20% at worst over four years. All other departments – including the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Transport – have been ordered to produce plans showing the impact of cuts of 25%, and at worst 40%.
Full Story: Treasury orders cabinet ministers to brace themselves for 40% cuts | Politics | The Observer.
EPA chief: I wouldn’t swim off Panhandle
The nation’s top environmental regulator said she would not swim in the waters off an oil- and tar-saturated beach at a Panhandle park and advised beachgoers to trust their noses and eyes when deciding whether to plunge into the gulf.
“I haven’t gone over to the water but based on the facts of this beach and the oil, no, I would not go into the water today,” said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. She spent about an hour touring Gulf Islands National Seashore on Santa Rosa Island near Pensacola Beach on Saturday.
Jackson later met with Florida and Alabama officials to discuss strategy about beach safety. She also responded to accusations by local government workers who had accused her of failing to issue water quality standards they need to decide whether to ban swimming.
Full Story: EPA chief: I wouldn’t swim off Panhandle.
First Amendment Has been Suspended
As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible.
Myths of Austerity
Paul Krugman:
When I was young and naïve, I believed that important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what Serious People believe rests on prejudices, not analysis. And these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions.
Which brings me to the subject of today’s column. For the last few months, I and others have watched, with amazement and horror, the emergence of a consensus in policy circles in favor of immediate fiscal austerity. That is, somehow it has become conventional wisdom that now is the time to slash spending, despite the fact that the world’s major economies remain deeply depressed.
This conventional wisdom isn’t based on either evidence or careful analysis. Instead, it rests on what we might charitably call sheer speculation, and less charitably call figments of the policy elite’s imagination — specifically, on belief in what I’ve come to think of as the invisible bond vigilante and the confidence fairy.
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Myths of Austerity – NYTimes.com.
It’s not just BP’s oil in the Gulf that threatens world’s oceans
click to enlarge
A sobering new report warns that the oceans face a “fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation” not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change already have affected temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.
The report, in Science magazine, brings together dozens of studies that collectively paint a dismal picture of deteriorating ocean health.
“This is further evidence we are well on our way to the next great extinction event,” said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia and a co-author of the report.
Full Story: It’s not just BP’s oil in the Gulf that threatens world’s oceans | McClatchy.
Scientists Make Immune Cells in Mice That Fight Off HIV
Research in mice suggests that scientists may have a new lead on using gene therapy against the virus that causes AIDS.
The researchers tinkered with human stem cells and then inserted them into mice where they multiplied into immune system cells that provided protection against infection with HIV, according to a study released online July 2 in Nature Biotechnology.
The results are unlike typical research in animals because the mice have been “humanized”: They have human immune systems and resisted a human disease. Still, until research is conducted on humans, there’s no way to know if the treatment will work in people. And it may be years until that happens.
But there are high hopes. “It’s a one-shot treatment if it works,” noted study co-author Paula Cannon, associate professor of molecular microbiology at the University of Southern California.
Full Story: Scientists Make Immune Cells in Mice That Fight Off HIV – Yahoo! News.
Why Eating a Low-Fat Diet Doesn’t Lead to Weight Loss
Despite the common observation that obesity runs in families, genetic research shows that the habits you inherit from your family are more important than the genes you inherit. Obesity genes account for only five percent of all weight problems. Then, we have to wonder, what causes the other 95 percent of weight problems?
We are seeing an epidemic of obesity in America today. It is the single most important public health issue facing us. If genes do not account for obesity, perhaps it is our high-fat diet that is to blame. That has been the common belief in our society since nutritional low fat guidelines were pushed upon us in the 1970′s. It seems logical that eating fat makes you fat. Fat contains nine calories per gram, so it would seem that eating more fat (and more calories) would make you gain weight. But that’s not what the science reveals.
Full Story: Mark Hyman, MD: Why Eating a Low-Fat Diet Doesn’t Lead to Weight Loss.
Clinton: Activists Being Crushed By ‘Steel Vise’ Around The World
Intolerant governments across the globe are “slowly crushing” activist and advocacy groups that play an essential role in the development of democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday.
She cited a broad range of countries where “the walls are closing in” on civic organizations such as unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other nongovernmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments’ shortcomings.
Among those she named were Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.
Full Story: Clinton: Activists Being Crushed By ‘Steel Vise’ Around The World.
OPS: she doesn’t mention the US or Canada. Hmmmm….
‘A Whale’, World’s Largest Oil Skimmer, Being Tested In Gulf Oil Spill
Gulf of Mexico cleanup crews working to block millions of gallons of oil from reaching land may soon have a giant on their side, if a weekend test of a new skimmer goes well.
The Taiwanese vessel dubbed “A Whale,” which its owners describe as the largest oil skimmer in the world, began showing its capabilities on Saturday just north of the Macondo Deepwater well site. An April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig there killed 11 workers and began what is now the largest oil spill in Gulf history.
The vessel will cruise a 25-square-mile test site through Sunday, according to TMT Shipping, the company that created A Whale by retrofitting an oil tanker after the explosion sent millions of gallons of crude spilling into the Gulf.
Full Story: ‘A Whale’, World’s Largest Oil Skimmer, Being Tested In Gulf Oil Spill.
For now, government and BP working together to assess oil spill damage
Lawmakers, Environmentalists Call For Independent Assessment
In recent weeks, the Obama administration has sought to distance itself from BP in handling the Gulf of Mexico oil spill — with one notable exception: When it comes to assessing how badly the spill has harmed the gulf, the two sides are working hand in hand.
Their shared goal? To calculate the incalculable: how much it will cost to restore the gulf to its pre-spill state.
But this close collaboration between federal and state authorities and BP — which is routine procedure under a legal process known as the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) — has begun to spark concerns among lawmakers and some environmentalists.
“I want this to be independent, for the credibility of the information,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who as chair of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife will hold hearings this month on the issue.
Full Story: For now, government and BP working together to assess oil spill damage.
OPS: BO is making ‘deals’. Anyone beleive that the American People will break even on this?
Payback Time – Budget in the Red, Illinois Has Stopped Paying Bills
Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois’s comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing memo.
He picks the papers off his desk and points to a figure in red: $5.01 billion.
“This is what the state owes right now to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university — and it’s getting worse every single day,” he says in his downtown office.
Mr. Hynes shakes his head. “This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services,” he says. “That is obscene.”
Full Story: Payback Time – Budget in the Red, Illinois Has Stopped Paying Bills – NYTimes.com.
Iraq withdrawal ‘an exercise in semantics’‘
Stability’ Mission In Iraq Won’t Mean End of Fighting
President Obama has set an August deadline for the end of the combat mission in Iraq. Here at this makeshift desert camp in the insurgent badlands of northern Iraq, a mission is under way that is not going to stop then: American soldiers hunting terrorists and covertly watching an Iraqi checkpoint staffed by police officers whom the soldiers say they do not trust.
“They’re not checking anybody, and they’re wondering why I.E.D.’s are getting in to town,” said Staff Sgt. Kelly E. Young, 39, from Albertville, Ala., as he watched the major roadway that connects Baghdad with Mosul, regarded as the country’s most dangerous city. He referred to improvised explosive devices, the military term for homemade bombs.
The August deadline might be seen back home as a milestone in the fulfillment of President Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq, but here it is more complex. American soldiers still find and kill enemy fighters, on their own and in partnership with Iraqi security forces, and will continue to do so after the official end of combat operations. More Americans are certain to die, if significantly fewer than in the height of fighting here.
Full Story: ‘Stability’ Mission In Iraq Won’t Mean End of Fighting – NYTimes.com.
US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone
US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone 03 Jul 2010 Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees – The Spill and Transparency – Aired July 1, 2010 (Transcript) COOPER: We’re talking about the government, a new a rule announced today backed by the force of law and the threat of fines and felony charges, a rule that will prevent reporters and photographers and anyone else from getting anywhere close to booms and oil-soaked wildlife and just about any place we need to be. By now, you’re probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they’re working for because they’re afraid of losing their jobs… Well, the Coast Guard today announced new rules keeping photographers and reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches — 65 feet… Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges. [Boy, George W. Bush has got to be the most frustrated individual on God's green Earth! Can you *imagine* the outrage -- and protests -- if Bush threatened reporters and photographers with felony charges and fines, as Barack Obama is doing in the Gulf of Mexico? It makes my head *spin* to think of how fast the left would be up in arms. But when Obama lays down and dies for his corporaterrorist paymasters day after day and suspends the First Amendment, the so-called 'left' remains silent. Oh. Not to mention, his thriving assassination squads, busy little CIA bees hunting down US citizens who allegedly support 'terrorism.' --LRP]
Full Story: US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone | Citizens for Legitimate Government.
Slouching Toward a Double Dip or a Lousy Recovery at Best
Robert Reich:
The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession and all the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing. The odds of a double dip are increasing.
In June the nation added fewer jobs than necessary merely to keep up with population growth (private hiring rose by 83,000 after adding only 33,000 jobs in May). The typical workweek declined. Average earnings dropped. Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year.
So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing. The states are running an anti-stimulus program (raising taxes, cutting services, laying off teachers, firefighters, police and other employees) that’s now bigger than the federal stimulus program. That federal stimulus is 75 percent gone anyway. And the House and Senate refuse to pass another one. (The Senate left Washington for the July 4th weekend without even extending unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans now running out.)
Full Story: Robert Reich (Slouching Toward a Double Dip or a Lousy Recovery at Best).
FEMA Plans to Evacuate Tampa Bay Area In Place?
The Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) and the Examiner reported that FEMA has plans in place for the evacuation of the Tampa Bay in the event of a controlled burn of oil threatening to take toxic plumes through Tampa Bay.
There’s no question that the Gulf oil spill is the biggest environmental disaster in the history of this country and maybe the world.
FEMA has plans to evacuate the Tampa Bay area in the event of a controlled burn of surface oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or if wind or other conditions are expected to take toxic fumes through Tampa Bay, according to a report by Maryann Tobin in the Hernando County Political Buzz Examiner.
Tobin has been a freelance writer for more than twenty years, writing for local publications in New York and Florida. Maryann Tobin’s news story has generated high reader interest. It’s obvious that the Gulf oil spill continues to be the leading story in the media as long as the oil well remains uncapped and the threat of exposure to environmental hazards like benezene exists.
Full Story: FEMA Plans to Evacuate Tampa Bay Area In Place? : Veterans Today.
Fourth of July 1776, 1964, 2010
Frank Rich:
ALL men may be created equal, but slavery, America’s original sin of inequality, was left unaddressed in the Declaration of Independence signed 234 years ago today. Of all the countless attempts to dispel that shadow over the nation’s birth, few were more ambitious than the hard-fought bill Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law just in time for another Fourth of July, 46 summers ago.
With the holiday weekend approaching, Johnson summoned the television networks for the signing ceremony on Thursday evening, July 2. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, first proposed more than a year earlier by John F. Kennedy, banished the Jim Crow laws that denied black Americans access to voting booths, public schools and public accommodations. Johnson told the nation we could “eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country” with the help of a newly formed “Community Relations Service” and its “advisory committee of distinguished Americans.” Talk about an age of innocence!
Still, there were some heartening reports of America’s first full day under the new law. A front-page photo in The Times on July 4 showed 13-year-old Gene Young of Kansas City being shorn by a white barber at the Muehlebach Hotel shop “formerly closed to Negroes.” But that Norman Rockwell-like tableau was paired with the image of a white businessman, Lester Maddox, and a teenage accomplice respectively wielding a pistol and an ax handle as they turned away blacks from Maddox’s restaurant in Atlanta. The summer of 1964, which had begun with the lynching of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss., would soon erupt in a bloody wave of terrorism, marked by dozens of bombings of black churches, homes and businesses.
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Fourth of July 1776, 1964, 2010 – NYTimes.com.
Wind’s Latest Problem: It Makes Power Too Cheap
Utilities don’t like wind not because it’s not competitive, but because it brings prices down for their existing assets, thus lowering their revenues and their profits. Thus the permanent propaganda campaign against wind. The reality is that wind power brings prices down for consumers.
by Jérôme Guillet, President and CEO at Energy Bankers à Paris
Bloomberg has a somewhat confusing article about the newest complaint about wind power, but the gist of it is that wind power is an issue for the industry because it brings their revenues down:
operators in Europe may have become their own worst enemy, reducing the total price paid for electricity in Germany, Europe’s biggest power market, by as much as 5 billion euros some years
Windmill Boom Cuts Electricity Prices in Europe
On windy nights in northern Germany, consumers are paid to keep the lights on.
Twice this year, the nation’s 21,000 wind turbines pumped out so much power that utilities reduced customer bills for using the surplus electricity. Since the first rebate came with little fanfare at 5 a.m. one October day in 2008, payments have risen as high as 500.02 euros ($665) a megawatt-hour, about as much as a small factory or 1,000 homes use in 60 minutes.
The wind-energy boom in Europe and parts of Texas has begun to reduce bills for consumers. Electricity-network managers have even ordered windmills offline at times to trim supplies. That hurts profit for wind-farm operators, said Christian Kjaer, head of the European Wind Energy Association, which represents RWE AG of Germany, Spain’s Iberdrola SA and Dong Energy A/S of Denmark.
“We’re seeing that wind energy lowers prices, which is great for the consumers,” Kjaer said at his group’s conference in Warsaw this week. “We as producers have to acknowledge that this means operating the existing plant fewer hours a year, and this has an effect on investors” and profit.
Full Story: Windmill Boom Cuts Electricity Prices in Europe – Bloomberg.
BP Oil Disaster WORST CASE SCENARIO w/ Kindra Arnesen, BP Community Liaison
Kindra Arnesen tells team @PrjGulfImpact about the possible outcomes for the BP Oil Disaster including her worst case scenarios, why she is moving, and her fears for the next 60 days.
What Else You Should Know About Walmart
It’s not just the low wages or the near-scientific union busting. It’s the preference for poverty, the business model built on turnover, the manipulative PR. Is this really the best way to bring jobs and food to the south and west sides?
Nelson Lichtenstein, a crusading labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has written books on the history of unionism and the automobile industry, but over the last few years he’s spent much of his time thinking about Walmart. To research his 2009 book on the corporation, The Retail Revolution, which is newly out in paperback, he combed through scores of articles from Discount Store News, thousands of pages of legal filings and memoirs produced by Walmart employees, and piles of transcripts of in-house management videos recorded by a production company Walmart fired in 2006. Lichtenstein even bought ten shares of Walmart stock so he could attend a stockholders’ meeting. From his efforts came an excellent treatise that details the company’s well-oiled distribution system, its generally shabby treatment of its workers, its rabid anti-unionism, and its evangelistic corporate culture (instead of a board of directors, the company once had a board of “servant leaders”).
As Walmart has grown into one of the largest corporations in history—it’s currently number one on the Fortune 500 list of top earners in the world—its business and labor practices have come under intense scrutiny. Defenders note that the company’s management efficiencies have resulted in lower prices for consumers along with huge profits for shareholders. But critics like Lichtenstein say there are enormous social and economic costs to doing business Walmart’s way, arguing that the company’s industry-defining practices have depressed wages for American workers and hastened the flight of manufacturing jobs overseas.
Full Story: What Else You Should Know About Walmart | Feature | Chicago Reader.
Move the Money, Starve the Empire
We can’t address the economic crisis blighting neighborhoods throughout the United States without moving money away from war.
June 26 may have been the last day of the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit, but it might very well be the emergence of a more powerful antiwar movement in this country.
The U.S. Social Forum is a meeting place for progressive social justice organizations to discuss issues, strategies, and ideas for building a social movement in this country. The sessions on the antiwar and anti-militarism track made several linkages: between the domestic economic crisis and the bloated military budget, the expansion of U.S. bases and the displacement of farmers and indigenous peoples from their land and livelihoods, and the rise of militarism and violence against women.
We can’t address the economic crisis blighting neighborhoods throughout the United States without moving money away from war. That’s the only part of the national budget not being cut. Organizers at the USSF united two disparate sectors. One is comprised of grassroots base-building organizations with multicultural constituencies working to secure jobs, education, and services. The other includes national peace organizations with mostly white, middle-class membership.
Full Story: Foreign Policy In Focus | Move the Money, Starve the Empire.
U.S. Experiencing Worst Episode of Prolonged Unemployment Since Great Depression
Adjusting for demographic factors, current labor market downturn steeper than ’82-’83 recession.
Washington, D.C. – As the nation contends with a long and sustained labor market recession, a new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research demonstrates that the current unemployment rate is higher than the conventional measure shows.
“An unemployment rate that has hovered above 9 percent for several months is striking, but the jobs picture is even worse than it looks,” said report author and CEPR Economist David Rosnick.
The study, “The Adult Recession: Age-Adjusted Unemployment at Post-War Highs,” adjusts the current unemployment rate to account for demographic differences and finds that the unemployment rate has not fallen below 10.8 percent in the last 12 months. During the worst episode of the recession of the 1980s — the second half of 1982 and the first half of 1983 — unemployment passed 10 percent for 7 months.
Full Story: U.S. Experiencing Worst Episode of Prolonged Unemployment Since Great Depression | CommonDreams.org.
The CEPR Deficit Calculator
There is considerable concern that the debt burden that United States will face by the end of the next decade will place serious strains on the government and the economy. It is not clear how high the debt can go before it begins to hamper economic growth or raise questions about the creditworthiness of the U.S. government. As is shown on the calculator below, the debt burden has been much higher for the United States in the past and is currently far higher for many countries than it is projected to be in the baseline scenario for the United States in 2020.
This calculator allows users to see how various policies will affect the debt burden in 2020. These options have appeared in public debates (or should) and would have a substantial impact on the deficit. The calculator allows users to select whatever target they consider appropriate given the various reference points shown.
Full Story: The CEPR Deficit Calculator.
Oil Spills Boost Arsenic Levels in Ocean: Study
Oil Spills Up Arsenic Levels, Create ‘Toxic Ticking Time Bombs’
PARIS – Oil spills can boost levels of arsenic in seawater by suppressing a natural filter mechanism on the sea bed, according to a study published on Friday in a specialist journal.
The research was conducted in a laboratory before the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, but its authors say the findings highlight the worrying long-term impact from such disasters.
Scientists at Imperial College London found that sea floor sediment bonds with arsenic. The captured toxic element is then covered by subsequent layers of sediment, which helps explain why concentrations of arsenic in the ocean are low.
But, the researchers found, crude oil acts rather like a sticky blanket, clogging the sediment and preventing it from bonding to arsenic.
Full Story: Oil Spills Boost Arsenic Levels in Ocean: Study | CommonDreams.org.
Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?
Dr. Andrew Weil:
In my home state of Arizona, a restaurant named “Heart Attack Grill” does brisk business in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Waitresses in nurse-themed uniforms with miniskirts deliver single, double, triple and quadruple “bypass burgers” (featuring one, two, three and four hefty patties, respectively) dripping with cheese, to patrons who wear hospital gowns that double as bibs. The motto: “Taste Worth Dying For!”
Now, there is much for a medical doctor (as opposed to “Dr. Jon,” the stethoscope-wearing, burger-flipping owner) to dislike in this establishment. If you visit, I implore you to steer clear of the white-flour buns, the sugary sodas and the piles of “flatliner fries” that accompany the burgers in the restaurant’s signature bedpan plates. This is precisely the sort of processed-carbohydrate-intensive meal that, via this and other fast-food establishments, is propelling the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America.
But the Grill’s essential, in-your-face concept is that the saturated fat in beef clogs arteries, and hamburger meat is consequently among the most heart-damaging foods a human being can consume. As the Grill literature puts it, “The menu names imply coronary bypass surgery, and refer to the danger of developing atherosclerosis from the food’s high proportion of saturated fat…” Aimed at a certain crowd, this is clever, edgy marketing. Some people enjoy flirting with death.
Full Story: Dr. Andrew Weil: Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?.
John McCain’s Former Economist: We Need To Spend On Jobs Or Face Another Recession
Mark Zandi: Congress Should Quit Its Deficit Dithering Unless It Wants Another Recession
Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Economy.com and a former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Friday that Congress needs to hurry up and reauthorize expired jobless aid or risk derailing the nascent economic recovery.
“The odds that the economy will slip back into the recession are still well below even,” Zandi said during a conference call with reporters. “But if Congress is unable to provide this help, those odds will rise and become uncomfortably high.”
Extended unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed lapsed at the beginning of June as a domestic aid bill containing the benefits stalled in the Senate. Since then, nearly 1.7 million people who’ve been out of work for longer than six months have missed benefit checks they would have received had they been laid off closer to the beginning of the recession. President Obama’s stimulus bill and subsequent acts of Congress had given the unemployed up to 99 weeks of benefits in some states.
Full Story: Mark Zandi: Congress Should Quit Its Deficit Dithering Unless It Wants Another Recession.
Rioters Hit Puerto Rico’s Capital Over Budget Cuts
A police riot over budget cuts broke out in Puerto Rico’s capital Wednesday, with cops wielding batons and firing pepper spray on demonstrators.
The demonstrators, many of them students from the local university, attempted to enter the statehouse in San Juan to protest budget cuts and other laws under Gov. Luis Fortuno.
Authorities, who had closed the building after learning of the plan for a protest lined up shoulder-to-shoulder forming a barricade in front of the building.
Full Story: Rioters Hit Puerto Rico’s Capital Over Budget Cuts.
This Is Where You’re Fat
An update on our collective waistline: The Trust for America’s Health has a new report out, with the blunt title “F as in Fat,” and the news isn’t good. The map above shows America’s obesity rates state by state. They hover in the 25 to 30 percent range. To put that in perspective, in 1991, no state had an obesity rate higher than 20 percent.
The report also notes the relationship between income and weight: “35.3 percent of adults earning less than $15,000 per year were obese compared with 24.5 percent of adults earning $50,000 or more per year.” Part of the problem there is that a salad costs more than a Big Mac. So that’s something to remedy. More cycling and walking would help, too.
Colorado has the lowest obesity rate at 19 percent. Apparently a year-round routine of uninterrupted mountain biking, rock climbing, and snowboarding more than offsets the side effects of the munchies.
Full Story: This Is Where You’re Fat – GOOD Blog – GOOD.
OPS: hmmmm, the RED States….. where ignorance rules
Daniel Patrick Moynihan Warned Nixon To Act On Global Warming, New Documents Show
Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon’s inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago.
Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public’s attention.
There is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide content will rise 25 percent by 2000, Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo.
Full Story: Daniel Patrick Moynihan Warned Nixon To Act On Global Warming, New Documents Show.
The Plight of the Sea Turtles
The seemingly endless oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is killing countless sea animals and sea birds, large and small. But there is no story as tragic as the plight of the sea turtles.
These magnificent, graceful, creatures are particularly vulnerable to the effects of oil in the water, which weakens their eggs, chokes and poisons their young, and leaves adults addled and starving.
In the case of the most endangered species, the Kemp’s ridley turtle, hatchlings leaving their nests in Mexico this season are swimming right into the heart of the spill area, where their instinct to seek shelter and prey among floating vegetation is betraying them by leading them straight to thick clots of oil and oil-soaked seaweed.
There, instead of finding security and food, they are getting poisoned, trapped and asphyxiated.
And if that weren’t tragic enough, it turns out that shrimp boats hired by BP to corral floating oil with booms and set it on fire have been burning hundreds if not thousands of the young turtles alive.
Full Story: Gulf Oil Spill: The Plight of the Sea Turtles.
Economy lags as job growth remains weak
The economic expansion is sputtering.
Private employers added only 83,000 jobs in June, the government said Friday, too few to keep up with growth in the working-age population. The unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent, but only because hundreds of thousands of Americans dropped out of the labor force entirely.
Combined with other recent data, the numbers depict a sluggish economy in which nearly 15 million people are out of work and job growth is mediocre. There is little evidence that a dip back into recession has begun. But the chances of a strong, self-sustaining expansion that can significantly improve the job market — which seemed a real possibility during the spring — are now slim.
“It’s entirely possible that this is as low as unemployment will get for quite a while,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight.
Full Story: Economy lags as job growth remains weak.
Facebook to recognize faces, help tag photos
Facebook has begun testing face detection technology for Facebook Photos.
This is the first of what seems like a series of new features for its popular photo product.
The tests, which some users will see starting today [Friday], focus on decreasing the tediousness of “tagging” friends in Facebook photos. In the current Photos feature, users upload photos, click on each face in a photo, tag that photo with the friend pictured therein and continue the process until the album is tagged.
If you’ve got a large album or a lot of friends in a si
Full Story: Facebook to recognize faces, help tag photos – CNN.com.
House committee passes bill that would end Cuba travel ban
A bill to end the effective ban on US nationals’ travel to Cuba, and allow Havana to buy US goods on credit, has been moving through a legislative panel, though it still has a long way to go before it could actually take effect.
The bill was passed in the House agriculture committee.
It would among other things, end the effective travel ban for US nationals; allow communist Cuba to use credit for purchases of US farm goods currently paid for only in cash; and allow direct transfers between US and Cuban financial institutions.
Now it still must make its way through additional commissions before a potential House vote.
The United States has had an economic embargo clamped on Havana for nearly five decades.
Full Story: House committee passes bill that would end Cuba travel ban | Raw Story.
Self Proclaimed Spider Boy Scales Walls Using Recycled Vacuums
Hibiki Kono had a dream — he wanted to be like his hero, Spiderman. Most little kids would have their parents buy them a costume that they could wear to school. Not Kono — the 13 year-old set to work making his dream a reality. He’s used two 1,400-watt recycled vacuum cleaners and a little bit of elbow grease to make a machine that allows him to scale walls — just like his spindly hero!
Full Story: Self Proclaimed Spider Boy Scales Walls Using Recycled Vacuums | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.
Reports: Israel to apologize for flotilla raid
The public rift between Israel and Turkey may be closing somewhat.
Persistent reports in the Turkish press indicate that Israel will formally apologize and pay compensation for the deaths on the Mavi Marmara.
The Mavi Marmara was the blockade-busting ship manned by Turkish citizens on which nine actvists were killed in unclear circumstances by Israeli naval commandos.
Turkish newspaper of record Hürriyet indicates that discussions of apology and compensation took place at a secret meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Israeli Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Benjamin Ben-Eliezer on Wednesday. According to Hürriyet’s source:
Full Story: Reports: Israel to apologize for flotilla raid – Neal Ungerleider – Falafel Mafia – True/Slant.
Miami, Florida Keys Face Up to 80% Chance of BP Oil, U.S. Says
Miami and the Florida Keys face a 61 percent to 80 percent chance of being hit with tar balls from BP Plc’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to U.S. projections.
Shorelines with the greatest chance of being soiled by oil, 81 percent to 100 percent, stretch from the Mississippi River Delta to the western Panhandle of Florida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said today in a statement on its projection for the next four months.
Much of Florida’s west coast has a “low probability” of “oiling” from the leak that began with an explosion on a BP- leased drilling rig on April 20, the agency said.
Full Story: Miami, Florida Keys Face Up to 80% Chance of BP Oil, U.S. Says – Bloomberg.
Crumbling Coalition: Germans Anticipate a Collapse of Merkel’s Government
Pundits think that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is in trouble. A new survey has found that German citizens agree. Almost two-thirds think that the governing coalition in Berlin will not survive much longer.
Commentators and pundits in Germany were unanimous: Wednesday’s laborious election of Christian Wulff as the country’s new president was anything but helpful for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s already ailing coalition. A survey conducted by Infratest dimap seems to indicate that voters agree.
According to the poll, commissioned by public television station ARD, fully 68 percent of Germans believe that the election was a “disgrace” for Merkel and 77 percent feel that she no longer has complete control over her own governing coalition. Sixty-two percent believe that Merkel’s government, which pairs her conservatives with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), will not survive much longer.
Full Story: Crumbling Coalition: Germans Anticipate a Collapse of Merkel’s Government – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.
Mexican murder suspect: US consulate infiltrated
The drug-cartel enforcer told an unsettling story: A woman who worked in the Mexican border’s biggest U.S. consulate had helped a rival gang obtain American visas. And for that, the enforcer said, he ordered her killed.
Nonsense, says a U.S. official, who said Friday the motive for the slaying remains unknown.
The employee, Lesley Enriquez, and two other people connected to the U.S. consulate in the city of Ciudad Juarez were killed March 13 in attacks that raised concerns that Americans were being caught up in drug-related border violence.
Jesus Ernesto Chavez, whose arrest was announced Friday, confessed to ordering the killings, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of anti-narcotics for the Federal Police. Pequeno said Chavez leads a band of hit men for a street gang tied to the Juarez cartel.
Full Story: Mexican murder suspect: US consulate infiltrated – Yahoo! News.
Army drops ‘psy ops’ name for influence operations
The Army has dropped the Vietnam-era name “psychological operations” for its branch in charge of trying to change minds behind enemy lines, acknowledging the term can sound ominous.
The Defense Department picked a more neutral moniker: “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO.
U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw said Thursday the new name, adopted last month, more accurately reflects the unit’s job of producing leaflets, radio broadcasts and loudspeaker messages to influence enemy soldiers and civilians.
“One of the catalysts for the transition is foreign and domestic sensitivities to the term ‘psychological operations’ that often lead to a misunderstanding of the mission,” McGraw said.
Fort Bragg is home to the 4th Psychological Operations Group, the Army’s only active duty psychological operations unit. Psychological operations soldiers are trained at the post.
Full Story: Army drops ‘psy ops’ name for influence operations – Yahoo! News.
Military plans hummingbird-sized spies
Nano Aerial Vehicle will help soldiers fighting in crowded urban areas
Soldiers fighting future battles in crowded urban areas will be able to launch hummingbird-sized unmanned nano aerial vehicles — or NAVs — capable of carrying sophisticated sensors and flying through open windows in buildings to report back on enemy positions.
A new project partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
( DARPA) called the Nano Aerial Vehicle (NAV) program aims to develop an extremely small, ultra-lightweight aerial vehicle for urban military missions that can fly both indoors and outdoors and that is capable of climbing and descending vertically as well as flying sideways left and right.
DARPA says the NAV program pushes the limits of aerodynamic and power conversion efficiency, endurance and maneuverability for very small air vehicle systems.
Full Story: Military plans hummingbird-sized spies – Technology & science – Innovation – msnbc.com.
Utah radio station drops Hannity from its lineup, possibly for being uncivil.
This past week, Utah’s KSL Radio announced that it will be dropping Fox News host and radio personality Sean Hannity from its regular programming lineup. Although the company was tight-lipped about why it chose to end its relationship with Hannity, Utah’s ABC-4 speculates that Hannity’s uncivil behavior on air was behind the move:
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – KSL Radio announced that they will no longer air Sean Hannity’s syndicated national talk show.
The last KSL broadcast of the Sean Hannity show will air on October 1, 2010. The announcement comes after speculation that Hannity’s on-air style was not in line with Deseret Media Company’s mission statement that calls for civility and other ethical stances.
Deseret Media Companies (DMC) is a for-profit arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and manages KSL radio and other media outlets.The DMC “Mission Statement” calls for the dissemination of “light and knowledge” along with the promotion of “integrity, civility, morality, and respect for all people.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Utah radio station drops Hannity from its lineup, possibly for being uncivil..
Americans ramp up bankruptcy filings in 2010: study
It’s tough out there — no jobs, home values plummeting — and Americans are reacting by heading to bankruptcy court.
Bankruptcy filings surged 14% during the first half of 2010, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Filings totaled 770,117 through June, compared to 675,351 during the same period last year.
“Years of rising consumer debt and low savings rates, combined with the housing and unemployment crisis, are causing bankruptcy levels not seen since the 2005,” said Samuel Gerdano, executive director of the institute, in a press release.
In 2005 Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code, making it harder for Americans to file and sparking a rush to file by October of 2005, when the amendments kicked in. In 2005, bankruptcy filings totaled more than 2 million.
Full Story: Americans ramp up bankruptcy filings in 2010: study – Jul. 2, 2010.
Is the Depression Coming? Or Is It Here?
Danny Schechter:
Lying and Spying: The Economy is Sinking, Confidence is Down Along With the Market. Is a Depression Coming?
The FBI arrests 1,200 Americans for mortgage fraud in the largest crackdown of its kind in history. There is no media focus on the companies that securitized and insured their toxic loans. This white-collar crime sweep is, at best, a one-day story with most of the reports carried by local outlets.
Clearly the FBI did not get the media punch it had hoped for. The issue of financial industry fraud did not even register on the media’s Richter scale.
Two weeks later, the FBI tried again, this time with an ill-timed, years in the making bust of 11 alleged Russian spies accused, so it seems, of impersonating Americans with no sign that they carried out successful espionage missions.
Full Story: Is the Depression Coming? Or Is It Here? | The Smirking Chimp.
DEAN BAKER: Cut Social Security to Fund the War?
In a remarkable interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, House Republican Leader John Boehner explicitly called for cutting Social Security in order to pay for the war in Afghanistan. The article reports:
“Ensuring there’s enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country’s entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he’d favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.”
In principle Boehner gave the Democrats as much ammunition as a serious political party could want. After all raising the retirement age and cutting Social Security benefits to pay for the war in Afghanistan is an idea that consistently polls in the high single decimals. We should expect every Democratic politician in the country to be jumping up and down demanding to know whether the Republican leader speaks for all Republicans.
That would be the case, unless of course the Democrats actually hold similar views. After all, several prominent Democrats have been saying in public recently that we will have to cut Social Security benefits (benefits workers have already paid for). These prominent Democrats also support the war in Afghanistan.
Full Story: Dean Baker: Cut Social Security to Fund the War?.
UN report calls for world to ditch dollar, migrate to new global currency
A new United Nations report released on Tuesday calls for abandoning the U.S. dollar as the main global reserve currency, saying it has been unable to safeguard value.
But several European officials attending a high-level meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council countered by saying that the market, not politicians, would determine what currencies countries would keep on hand for reserves.
“The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency,” the U.N. World Economic and Social Survey 2010 said.
The report says that developing countries have been hit by the U.S. dollar’s loss of value in recent years.
Full Story: UN report calls for world to ditch dollar, migrate to new global currency | Raw Story.
Brain freezer in Russia claims secret of eternal life
“I don’t ever want to die… It wouldn’t suit me,” said Innokenty Osadchy. Fortunately, the 35-year-old investment banker is certain he has found a loophole out of death.
Osadchy is ready to pay a small fortune to freeze his brain until future technology allows him to continue his life — after being transplanted into a new body and resuscitated.
“Why do I have to die in a couple decades? I don’t see any logic in this,” Osadchy told AFP. “It won’t be another life, it’ll be the continuation of my life.
“I don’t ever want to die ever. Not in a year, not in a million years.”
Full Story: AFP: Brain freezer in Russia claims secret of eternal life.
Report: US banks laundering money for Mexican drug war
Wachovia admits at least $110 million laundered through its branches
US banks are playing a crucial role in the running of the Mexican drug trade, allowing their facilities to be used to launder money in a drug war that has taken the lives of more than 22,000 people in the past four years, a new investigative report reveals.
According to a report from the August, 2010, issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, both Bank of America and Wachovia are implicated in drug-money laundering schemes to purchase jets to smuggle drugs.
Full Story: Report: US banks laundering money for Mexican drug war | Raw Story.
Haley Barbour: ‘No one has more to lose in this deal than BP.’
Although the BP oil disaster has killed 11 men, poisoned thousands of animals, and ruined the livelihoods of millions of Americans, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) still believes that the foreign oil giant has suffered the most. Gov. Barbour has dismissed this catastrophe from day one, comparing the toxic oil to “toothpaste” and worrying about the impact of paying damages on BP’s finances. In an interview with NPR on Thursday, Barbour brushed off the suggestion that the conservative ideology of deregulation should be reconsidered, saying that “the idea that more regulation is necessarily better, I think a very suspect idea.” In fact, Barbour cited the greatest environmental catastrophe in American history as proof that “the market system works,” saying that BP is the biggest victim “in this deal”:
I think right now every oil company in the world says, I don’t want to pay $100 million a day to cut corners on drilling a well. And that’s where I believe the market system works. Nobody’s got more to lose in this deal than BP.
Listen here
Full Story: Think Progress » Haley Barbour: ‘No one has more to lose in this deal than BP.’.
OPS: The cluelessness, detachment and sociopathy of a republican, writ large
Reagan Raised Taxes At Least 7 Times, Including the Biggest Corporate Tax Hike Ever
Republican former Sen. Alan Simpson — who was a friend of Pres. Ronald Reagan and who was conservative enough to be elected to the Senate three times by voters in Wyoming, Dick Cheney’s home state — is fed up by what the called the “myths and misconceptions and the distortions” about Reagan’s record on raising taxes.
Simpson, who serves on the federal commission charged with finding solutions to lowering the national debt, spoke out during a recent public hearing.
Transcript:
SEN. SIMPSON: Now if we’re going to work through the myths and misconceptions and the distortions, and as one president said, “plain damn lies.” I forget what president — I think it was Harry [Truman]. Uh, I’m going to say one.
Full Story: Pensito Review » Reagan Raised Taxes At Least 7 Times, Including the Biggest Corporate Tax Hike Ever.
The administration defends its assassination program
- Glenn Greenwald -
In the wake of Leon Panetta’s public defense of the targeting of American citizens suspected (but never charged or convicted) of Terrorism, Obama officials are now apparently going around the country and, with chest-beating rhetoric, overtly defending their right to target Americans for assassination with no due process of any kind:
“If someone like Anwar al-Awlaki is responsible” for part of a plot “to kill more than 300 people over the city of Detroit,” [director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael] Leiter said, “I think it would be wholly irresponsible for citizens like me, Leon Panetta, Defense Secretary (Robert) Gates, and ultimately the president, not to at least think about and potentially direct all the elements of national power to try to defend the American people” . . .
A woman in the crowd who identified herself as an American Civil Liberties Union member asked why there was no judicial review of such kill orders, citing the standard warrant requirements facing a policeman before entering a citizen’s home.
Leiter explained that while “a police officer does need a court order to go after a house,” the lawman “has a right of self-defense if someone pulls out a gun.” The U.S. government, Leiter insisted, has the same right. He added that there is congressional oversight of such actions.
For several reasons, this is misleading in the extreme
Full Story: The administration defends its assassination program – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Oil found in Gulf crabs raises new food chain fears
University scientists have spotted the first indications oil is entering the Gulf seafood chain — in crab larvae — and one expert warns the effect on fisheries could last “years, probably not a matter of months” and affect many species.
Scientists with the University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University in New Orleans have found droplets of oil in the larvae of blue crabs and fiddler crabs sampled from Louisiana to Pensacola, Fla. The news comes as blobs of oil and tar continue to wash ashore in Mississippi in patches, with crews in chartreuse vests out cleaning beaches all along the coast on Thursday, and as state and federal fisheries from Louisiana to Florida are closed by the BP oil disaster.
“I think we will see this enter the food chain in a lot of ways — for plankton feeders, like menhaden, they are going to just actively take it in,” said Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. “Fish are going to feed on (crab larvae). We have also just started seeing it on the fins of small, larval fish — their fins were encased in oil. That limits their mobility, so that makes them easy prey for other species. The oil’s going to get into the food chain in a lot of ways.”
Full Story: Oil found in Gulf crabs raises new food chain fears | McClatchy.
Formaldehyde-tainted trailers return to Gulf for spill cleanup workers
Given all the speculation that the Gulf oil spill would become (or is already) “Obama’s Katrina,” the last thing the embattled White House needs is a platoon of formaldehyde-contaminated trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Yet according to a front-page report in Thursday’s New York Times, the very same vehicles that came to symbolize the Bush administration’s bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina are now back in the Gulf region — this time as accommodations for oil cleanup workers.
As Ian Urbina reports, the 120,000 trailers designated to shelter Katrina victims “were discovered to have such high levels of formaldehyde that the government banned them from ever being used for long-term housing again.”
Full Story: Formaldehyde-tainted trailers return to Gulf for spill cleanup workers – Yahoo! News.
BP using dispersants so oil hits “beaches for 10 or 15 years”; To benefit from long-term amortization of costs
Dallas, Texas – Fred McCallister, an investment banker with Allegiance Capital Corporation, will testify tomorrow before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in a hearing titled “The Deepwater Horizon Tragedy: Holding Industry Accountable”. For weeks, McCallister has labored to pierce the red tape involved in bringing oil skimmers and other equipment from Europe to the Gulf of Mexico to assist in cleanup efforts.
“We submitted proposals for oil skimming vessels to BP on Monday June 14th – 25 million gallons of oil ago – and were promised they would be reviewed on an expedited basis. To date we have received no meaningful response,” said McCallister.
On June 22, McCallister gained assistance from Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) in requesting a waiver from the Jones Act, which prevents foreign-flagged vessels from cleaning the BP oil spill and protecting the U.S. coastline from the onslaught of oil. To date, neither Senator Cornyn’s office nor Allegiance Capital has received a response regarding the waiver. McCallister’s first request for a waiver was sent to Admiral Thad Allen on June 16.
McCallister believes there may be an underlying issue affecting BP’s resistance to bringing all available oil skimming equipment to the Gulf.
Stem Cells From Human Blood Can Be Reprogrammed
Blood drawn with a simple needle stick can be coaxed into producing stem cells that may have the ability to form any type of tissue in the body, three independent papers report in the July 2 Cell Stem Cell. The new technique will allow scientists to tap a large, readily available source of personalized stem cells.
Because taking blood is safe, fast and efficient compared to current stem cell harvesting methods, some of which include biopsies and pretreatments with drugs, researchers hope that blood-derived stem cells could one day be used to study and treat diseases — though major safety hurdles remain.
The findings “represent a huge and important progression in the field,” stem cell biologist Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, writes in a commentary appearing in the same issue of the journal.
Three research groups used similar methods to prod certain immune cells in human blood to become induced pluripotent stem cells. Because they are reprogrammed adult cells, these stem cells share many of the same regenerative abilities as true embryonic stem cells but may not have as much versatility in the kinds of mature cells they can become. But induced pluripotent cells are harvested from adults and so don’t face the same ethical mires posed by embryo-derived stem cells. And as techniques for manipulating induced pluripotent cells improve, some researchers think they may be just as useful.
Full Story: Stem Cells From Human Blood Can Be Reprogrammed | Wired Science | Wired.com.
SICK AND SECRET: No Reporters Allowed At Federal Clinic Treating Oil Spill Responders
Reporters Still Given The Runaround Even As Public Health Concerns Mount
The latest chapter in the media’s ongoing struggle to cover the Gulf Oil Spill comes courtesy of PBS Newshour’s Bridget Desimone, who has been working with her colleague, Betty Ann Bowser, in “reporting the health impact of the oil spill in Plaquemines Parish.” Desimone reports that on the ground, officials are generally doing a better job answering inquiries and granting access to the clean-up efforts.
But Desimone and Bowser have encountered one “roadblock” that they’ve struggled to overcome: access to a “federal mobile medical unit” in Venice, Louisiana: “The glorified double-wide trailer sits on a spit of newly graveled land known to some as the “BP compound.” Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it’s tightly restricted by police and private security guards.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up the facility on May 31. According to a press release, the medical unit is staffed by “a medical team from the HHS National Disaster Medical System — a doctor, two nurses, two emergency medical technician paramedics (EMT-P) and a pharmacist.”
Full Story: Oil Spill Media Access: Reporters Still Given The Runaround Even As Public Health Concerns Mount.
Climate Scientist Cleared of Altering Data
An American scientist accused of manipulating research findings on climate science was cleared of that charge by his university on Thursday, the latest in a string of reports to find little substance in the allegations known as Climategate.
An investigative panel at Pennsylvania State University, weighing the question of whether the scientist, Michael E. Mann, had “seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities,” declared that he had not.
Dr. Mann said he was gratified by the findings, the second report from Penn State to clear him. An earlier report had exonerated him of related charges that he suppressed or falsified data, destroyed e-mail and misused confidential information.
Full Story: Climate Scientist Cleared of Altering Data – NYTimes.com.
Pelosi: End The Filibuster
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has some advice for her Senate counterparts: Try majority rule for a change. Pelosi, in an interview with the Huffington Post, called for an end to the filibuster, which she labeled “the 60-vote stranglehold on the future.”
Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that “the Senate has to go to 51 votes, and not 60 votes.”
The filibuster, which was not an original element of the Senate, has evolved over the body’s history and has only recently become the upper chamber’s standard operating procedure. The Senate was designed as a majority-rule institution that allowed for extended debate. Under the Constitution, the vice president is empowered to break 50-50 ties. Such a clause would be wildly out of place if the framers intended for a 60-percent majority to be required
Full Story: Pelosi: End The Filibuster.
First-Ever Photo Of Alien Planet Finally Confirmed (PICUTRE)
An image taken in 2008 by the Gemini Observatory has finally been confirmed to be the first direct image taken by a ground-based telescope of an “alien planet” (a planet outside our solar system).
As Geekosystem notes, “While we have images of other alien planets — a.k.a. “exoplanets” — such images have been composed via indirect means of observation, such as gravitational fluctuations, rather than as true photographs.”
In 2008, astronomers snapped an image of the exoplanet, which is eight times the mass of Jupiter, “using visible light observations from telescopes on Earth,” according to Space.com.
Full Story: First-Ever Photo Of Alien Planet Finally Confirmed (PICUTRE).
Financial Crisis Commission Turns Up Heat On Goldman Sachs: ‘Nobody Here Believes You’
The panel created to investigate the roots of the financial crisis escalated the government’s assault on Goldman Sachs on Thursday, criticizing the Wall Street firm for failing to turn over basic documents and accusing it nearly lying under oath.
For a second consecutive day, the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reiterated its request for additional data from Goldman, namely figures regarding the firm’s derivatives activities. And for a second consecutive day, Goldman’s top executives demurred.
“We generally do not have a derivatives business,” David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, told the panel Thursday under oath.
Full Story: Financial Crisis Commission Turns Up Heat On Goldman Sachs: ‘Nobody Here Believes You’.
Expired Unemployment Benefits Causing Panic, Desperation: ‘I’m Drowning Fast’
Debra Rousey of Gainesville, Georgia, says that she received an unemployment check of $194 last week, half the usual amount she receives, along with a letter announcing that this check would be her last. She is now in a complete panic over what to do next.
“I’m desperate and devastated,” she told HuffPost. “I didn’t get any warning. I was barely making ends meet on $330 a week, trying to diaper my grandchild and put food on the table for the four people I support. What do I do now? How am I going to make rent next month? I keep thinking, ‘If I end up in a cardboard box, can I find one big enough for everybody, or do I have to send my son to live with someone else?’”
Since Rousey, 45, was laid off from her job as a branch manager for Suntrust bank in November, she says she has been “frantically looking” for a job — everything from entry-level marketing positions to a fry cook job at McDonalds — but hasn’t had an interview in months. As of tomorrow, she will be one of nearly 1.7 million people whose unemployment benefits have prematurely expired while Congress sits on legislation that would renew those benefits.
Full Story: Expired Unemployment Benefits Causing Panic, Desperation: ‘I’m Drowning Fast’.
CBO says debt will reach 62 percent of GDP by year’s end
The national debt will reach 62 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by the end of this year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Wednesday.
The budget office said the debt will reach its highest percentage of GDP since the end of World War II. The jump is driven by lower tax revenues and higher federal spending in the recent recession.
And while the national debt would stabilize at 67 percent of GDP over the next decade if current law were maintained, extending tax cuts enacted during the administration of President George W. Bush and keeping growth in appropriations in line with inflation would mean that the debt would reach almost 90 percent of GDP by 2020.
Full Story: CBO says debt will reach 62 percent of GDP by year’s end – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.
US lawmaker: Oil spill costs may run trillions of dollars
The cost of helping the US Gulf Coast rebound from the ruinous Gulf of Mexico oil spill could run into the trillions of dollars, a US lawmaker said Thursday after a briefing from top government officials.
“It will take billions of dollars — even trillions,” Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee told reporters, citing “a presentation by the president’s team on the BP oil spill” early in the day.
“We will have an ongoing and unending commitment to fixing this disaster,” the Texas lawmaker said at a press conference with other representatives calling for blocking an Afghan war spending bill.
Full Story: US lawmaker: Oil spill costs may run trillions of dollars – Yahoo! News.
Presidential scholars: Bush is the worst president of the modern era, bottom five of all time.
Since 1982, the Siena Research Institute has polled presidential scholars on whom they view to be best and worst presidents in American history, based on a variety of issues from “integrity” to economic stewardship. This year’s poll of 238 scholars found that President Franklin Roosevelt was once again ranked on top, joined by Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt to complete the top five. However, President George W. Bush did not fare well since the last poll was conducted in 2002. He dropped 16 places to 39th, making him the worst president since Warren Harding died in office in 1923, and one of the bottom five of all time, according to the experts:
Today, just one year after leaving office, the former president has found himself in the bottom five at 39th rated especially poorly in handling the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence. Rounding out the bottom five are four presidents that have held that dubious distinction each time the survey has been conducted: Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin Pierce.
Full Story: Think Progress » Presidential scholars: Bush is the worst president of the modern era, bottom five of all time..
17 senators from states with double-digit jobless rates repeatedly vote to filibuster unemployment benefits.
Since the beginning of the Great Recession, 15 million Americans have lost their jobs. Almost half of them have been out of work for six months or more, and there are currently nearly five workers actively seeking work for every available job. However, the Senate has been unable to extend job benefits because of a Republican filibuster, which has been joined by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE). On three separate occasions, Democrats tried to break the filibuster but were unsuccessful. And while no senator voting to continue the filibuster should be allowed to escape responsibility, many voting to sustain it are from states that have been hit particularly hard by the unemployment crisis. Here are the 17 senators from states with double-digit unemployment who are willing to leave their constituents without a safety net:
Hoekstra skips unemployment extension vote for country club fundraiser, even as unemployment sits at 13.6%.
This afternoon, the House passed a bill to extend unemployment benefits for the next four months. The bill passed with bipartisan support, although 142 Republicans voted against it, along with 11 Democrats. Several members did not show up to vote however, including Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is running for governor. Hoekstra, who hopes to govern a state with an unemployment rate of 13.6%, the second highest in the nation, spent the afternoon instead traveling to the Muskegon Country Club for a fundraiser. If the Senate fails to pass the House’s unemployment extension, then 90,000 Michigan residents are set to lose their unemployment checks by Saturday. Hoekstra also failed to vote on the unemployment insurance extension bill brought to the floor earlier this week
Bachmann: ‘I Don’t Want The United States To Be In A Global Economy’
This past weekend, President Obama attended the G-20 Summit on international economic cooperation in Toronto, which ended with a declaration calling for member countries to work “to ensure a full return to growth with quality jobs, to reform and strengthen financial systems, and to create strong, sustainable and balanced global growth.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), however, fears that the 20 countries were really working to set up “a one world government.”
In an interview on Scott Hennen’s radio show today, Bachmann claimed that the purpose of the G-20 was to “bind together the world’s economies.” Neglecting the already interconnected nature of the global economy, Bachman declared that “President Obama is trying to bind the United States into a global economy”:
BACHMANN: What really concerned me was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that we don’t want to see one country’s economy doing better than another. What? This is the U.S. Treasury Secretary? We don’t want to see Zimbabwe’s economy do better than the United States? Aren’t we supposed to be about the United States and making sure that our economy can be the greatest in the world. If you look at the G20, what they’re trying to do is bind together the world’s economies. Look how that played out in the European Union when they bound all of those nations economies together and one of the smallest economies, Greece, when they got into trouble, that one little nation is bringing down the entire EU. Well, President Obama is trying to bind the United States into a global economy where all of our nations come together in a global economy. I don’t want the United States to be in a global economy where, where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe. I can’t, we can’t necessarily trust the decisions that are being made financially in other countries.
Full Story: Think Progress » Bachmann: ‘I Don’t Want The United States To Be In A Global Economy’.
“Deficit Terrorism” and Economic Warfare
Ellen Brown:
All the Perks are going to Wall Street, while Main Street slips into Debt Slavery
Wall Street banks have been saved from bankruptcy by governments that are now going bankrupt themselves; but the banks are not returning the favor. Instead, they are engaged in a class war, insisting that the squeezed middle class be even further squeezed to balance over-stressed government budgets. All the perks are going to Wall Street, while Main Street slips into debt slavery. Wall Street needs to be made to pay its fair share, but how?
The financial reform bill agreed to on June 25 may have carved out some protections for consumers, but for Goldman Sachs and the derivatives lobby, the bill was a clear win, leaving the Wall Street gambling business intact. In a June 25 Newsweek article titled “Financial Reform Makes Biggest Banks Stronger,” Michael Hirsh wrote that the bill “effectively anoints the existing banking elite. The bill makes it likely that they will be the future giants of banking as well.”
The federal government and Federal Reserve have advanced literally trillions of dollars to save the big Wall Street players, to the point where the government’s own credit rating is in jeopardy; but Wall Street has not had to pay for the cleanup. Instead, the states and the citizens have been left to pick up the tab. On June 17, Time featured an article by David von Drehle titled “Inside the Dire Financial State of the States,” reporting that most states are now facing persistent budget shortfalls of a sort not seen since the 1930s. Unlike the Wall Street banks, which can borrow at the phenomenally low fed funds rate of .2% and plow that money back into speculation, states don’t have ready access to credit lines. They have to borrow through bond issues, and many states are so close to bankruptcy that their municipal bond ratings are collapsing. Worse, states are not legally allowed to default. Unlike the federal government, which can go into debt indefinitely, states must balance their budgets; and they cannot issue their own currencies. That puts them in the same position as Greece and other debt-strapped European Union countries, which are forbidden under EU rules either to issue their own currencies or to borrow from their own central banks.
Full Story: “Deficit Terrorism” and Economic Warfare.
Rethinking Iran-Contra
By Robert Parry:
there appears to have been a single Iran-Contra narrative spanning the entire 12 years of the Reagan and Bush-41 administration, and representing a much darker story.
The conventional view of the Iran-Contra scandal is that it covered the period 1985-86, when President Ronald Reagan became concerned about the fate of American hostages in Lebanon and agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran’s Islamist government to gain its help in freeing the captives.
Supposedly, the scheme went awry when White House aide Oliver North and other participants got carried away, including North’s decision to divert profits from the arms sales to another one of Reagan’s priorities, the Nicaraguan contra rebels whose CIA assistance had been cut off by Congress.
The Iran-Contra scandal was exposed in fall of 1986 after the shooting down of a North supply plane over Nicaragua and revelations in Lebanon of Reagan’s arms sales to Iran. A White House staff shake-up, including North’s firing, and some wrist-slaps from Congress for Reagan’s alleged inattention to details resolved the scandal, at least that was how Official Washington saw it.
The few dissenters who wouldn’t accept that tidy conclusion – such as Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh – were mocked and marginalized by the news media, including the Washington Post (which ran an article concluding that Walsh’s consistency in pursuing the scandal was “so un-Washington” and that he would depart as “a perceived loser”
Full Story: Consortiumnews.com.
The Upcoming Nuclear Peril: Worse Than the BP Oil Disaster
How many crises will it take? The recent destruction wrought by Big Finance and Big Oil will pale in comparison to the destruction wrought by Big Nuclear if we do not use the Gulf disaster as an opportunity to end our dangerous addiction to dirty fuels and to reject the illusion that any industry will “regulate” itself.
The nuclear industry has captured our government and governments around the globe. One single nuclear mistake, whether it be an accident or a security breach, could leave a 10,000-year path of destruction. Even while functioning properly and in accordance with the law, nuclear power plants produce cancer-causing poisons, which enter the bodies of humans at toxic levels.
Today we face a nuclear peril unlike anything we have ever known. We are approaching a tipping point in the global spread of nuclear technology because of a largely out-of-sight, worldwide free-for-all among nuclear power companies and their allied national governments to expand their share of the fast-growing international nuclear energy market. Unless we begin to confront the mounting dangers, we have little chance of keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists and carcinogenic toxins out of our bodies.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | The Upcoming Nuclear Peril: Worse Than the BP Oil Disaster.
Formaldehyde-tainted trailers return to Gulf for spill cleanup workers
Yet according to a front-page report in Thursday’s New York Times, the very same vehicles that came to symbolize the Bush administration’s bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina are now back in the Gulf region — this time as accommodations for oil cleanup workers.
As Ian Urbina reports, the 120,000 trailers designated to shelter Katrina victims “were discovered to have such high levels of formaldehyde that the government banned them from ever being used for long-term housing again.”
Full Story: Formaldehyde-tainted trailers return to Gulf for spill cleanup workers – Yahoo! News.
Wall Street Congratulates Washington: A Job Well Done
Dean Baker :
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is well known for pretentious columns that consist of letters that he suggests some prominent person write. I licensed Friedman’s literary tool in order to present the following letter from the Wall Street CEOs to the political leadership in Washington.
Dear Friends:
We want you know how much we value the support of the leadership of both political parties in your efforts to ensure that we did not suffer from the crisis that we ourselves created. As you recall, back in the fall of 2008, our banks were flat on their backs. If you had not rushed to our rescue with trillions of dollars in loans and guarantees from the Fed and the Treasury at a time where no sane investor would talk to us, most of us would be among the unemployed today. Instead, our banks are hugely profitable and we’re happy to say that bonuses are again hitting record highs.
While this is the sort of support that we expect in exchange for our generous campaign contributions, we are especially impressed how you have managed to so effectively blunt any backlash from the public. After all, with the unemployment rate still near double-digit levels, millions of people facing the loss of their homes and tens of millions seeing their savings wiped out, there is naturally considerable anger. However, you have managed to deftly deal with this problem by diverting their attention elsewhere.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Dean Baker | Wall Street Congratulates Washington: A Job Well Done.
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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. 
