Archive for August, 2010
In campaign mailer, Ben Quayle discusses raising a ‘family’ by posing with girls who aren’t his.
Ben Quayle, 33-year old lawyer and son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, is running for the Republican nomination for House candidate in Arizona’s third Congressional District. Given his family name and fundraising prowess, he is widely considered a “top tier” candidate by the local press and is expected by many to have a good chance of winning the nomination. As a part of his campaign strategy, Quayle has started to send out mailers emblazened with his slogan, “A New Generation.” In one of these mailers, Quayle poses with two young girls — one seated in his lap and another holding his hand. Below the picture of Quayle and the children is a quotation by the candidate: “My roots in Arizona run deep. My grandparents and great grandparents lived in this district. My parents and all of my siblings live in this district. Tiffany [his wife] and I live in this district and are going to raise our family here.” View a copy of the mailer:
Full Story: Think Progress » In campaign mailer, Ben Quayle discusses raising a ‘family’ by posing with girls who aren’t his..
Keyes Hits Graham For Politicizing The 14th Amendment: This ‘Is Not Something That One Should Play With Lightly’
In recent days, several leading Republicans have launched a movement to review or revoke parts of the 14th amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship. While revoking the 14th Amendment has long been a right-wing fringe favorite, conservatives’ current obsession with undocumented immigration has pushed the issue into the mainstream, with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), and even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), among others, endorsing a review of the amendment.
Today, at a Tea Party Express gathering of African-American conservative leaders in Washington, ThinkProgress asked for their thoughts on the matter, considering the fact that the 14th Amendment was enacted after the Civil War to extend constitutional rights to African-Americans. Perennial GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes responded by warning that “the 14th Amendment is not something one should play with lightly,” before singling out Graham for speaking “carelessly” on the topic:
Virginia GOP Candidates Agree To Closed-Door, No-Media-Allowed Meeting With Tea Partiers
On Monday, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) went on MSNBC and hit Democrats for going into “hiding” this summer, implying that they weren’t planning to peak with their constituents during the August recess:
CANTOR: [Y]ou look at the difference now of what we’re about as Republicans and what Democrats are about the course of this August recess. I would venture to say that Democrats have gone into hiding, whereas John Boehner and I and the rest of our conference are out there, taking our message to the people, talking about the specific things that they can expect if we’re a majority. And we’re frankly shocked — we’re listening to people, and I think the Democrats have demonstrated they’re unwilling to do that, and their agenda reflects that.
Today, however, two Virginia newspapers have editorials criticizing two GOP congressional candidates for banning the media from their closed-door events with Tea Party activists. Both state Sen. Robert Hurt (running for Virginia’s 5th district) and incumbent Rep. Bob Goodlatte (Virginia’s 6th district) have agreed to speak to the Lynchburg Tea Party’s Aug. 5 meeting, even though the media will be shut out. Tea Party Chairman Mark Lloyd said that the members wanted to have a “one-on-one type of setting without the lights and microphones” and claimed that at a May meeting — where there were two tv stations and a newspaper reporter — “nobody could see anything because of the cameras and all that.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Virginia GOP Candidates Agree To Closed-Door, No-Media-Allowed Meeting With Tea Partiers.
Coburn And McCain Troubled By Stimulus Debt, Which Is 488 Times Smaller Than Debt Impact Of Bush Tax Cuts
Yesterday, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) released a report that highlights 100 supposedly “questionable stimulus projects that are wasteful, mismanaged, and overall unsuccessful in creating jobs.” “The only thing getting a boost is our national debt,” the report complains. The “American people have awakened to the incompetency of Washington,” said Coburn. “The rest of the federal government is filled with stuff just like this.”
Coburn went on Fox News today to promote the report and criticized White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ claim yesterday that the report is not credible:
COBURN: Mr. Gibbs knows I don’t mess around when it comes to stealing money from our kids and grandkids. And if he wants to defend this kind of stuff — this isn’t political. It’s too serious to be political no guys. We’re $13.4 trillion in debt and growing and this is the kind of waste that people are sick and tired of.
Watch it:
Federal judge overturns gay marriage ban in Calif.
A person close to the case says a federal judge has overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban in a landmark case that could eventually land before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights.
A copy of the ruling had not yet been publicly released.
Both sides previously said an appeal was certain if Walker did not rule in their favor. The case would go first to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then the Supreme Court if the high court justices agree to review it.
Full Story: Federal judge overturns gay marriage ban in Calif..
Environmental Activist Jerry Cope on “The Crime of the Century: What BP and US Government Don’t Want You to Know”
Environmental activist Jerry Cope has spent the last few weeks traveling along the Gulf Coast and experiencing firsthand the contamination in the air and water. In an article being published on Huffington Post, Cope argues that instead of celebrating the allegedly vanishing oil, we should be concerned about the disappearance of marine life in the Gulf. He describes the Gulf as a “kill zone” and looks into where the marine animals have gone, given that BP has reported a relatively low number of dead animals from the spill.
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Full Story: Environmental Activist Jerry Cope on “The Crime of the Century: What BP and US Government Don’t Want You to Know”.
Utah board upholds strip mine near national park | Seattle Times Newspaper
A coal company claimed victory Tuesday when a Utah state board rejected a legal challenge brought by environmental groups that say a proposed strip mine will pollute waterways and kick up dust at Bryce Canyon National Park.
The Utah Board of Oil, Gas & Mining said Alton Coal Development LLC could strip 440 acres of private lands, the start of a project that could take in thousands of acres of surrounding national forest in southern Utah. Alton is seeking federal approval to enlarge the project.
The state board upheld an October decision by regulators at the Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining, which insisted it followed all legal and technical requirements in approving the mine. The regulators’ approval came after the developer donated $10,000 to Republican Gov. Gary Herbert’s campaign and complained the state was taking too long to approve the project.
Full Story: Business & Technology | Utah board upholds strip mine near national park | Seattle Times Newspaper.
U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers
$22 million, federally-backed program aims to help outsourcers in South Asia become more fluent in areas like Java programming—and the English language.
Despite President Obama’s pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent’s low labor costs.
Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.
Full Story: U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers — InformationWeek.
Corporate Campaign Cash Floods US Elections
Conservative fundraising commitment has stunned Democrats
Business and conservative groups see a chance to influence the midterm election because of rising anger at Democratic policies and recent court rulings on political spending.
Driven by increasing anger at Democratic policies and by recent Supreme Court decisions unshackling corporate contributions, business and conservative groups are preparing a flood of campaign money to try to wrest control of Congress from the Democrats.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest collection point for corporate contributions, has increased its spending for the congressional election in November from $35 million in 2008 to a projected $75 million this year. Officials say it may go even higher.
The chamber has been joined by new conservative fundraising organizations — such as American Crossroads, affiliated with Republican strategist Karl Rove — that have committed to raising tens of millions of dollars.
Full Story: Midterm election: Corporate and conservative groups step up campaign spending – chicagotribune.com.
Obama Drops 2009 Pledge to Withdraw Combat Troops from Iraq
Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.
Obama declared in a speech to disabled U.S. veterans in Atlanta that “America’s combat mission in Iraq” would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of “supporting and training Iraqi security forces”.
That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on Feb. 27, 2009, when he said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”
Full Story: Obama Drops 2009 Pledge to Withdraw Combat Troops from Iraq – IPS ipsnews.net.
Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds
* Study shows fructose used differently from glucose
* Findings challenge common wisdom about sugars
WASHINGTON Aug 2 (Reuters) – Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.
“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.
Full Story: Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds | Reuters.
Health Care Reform Provisions To Go Into Effect Next Month
Health care reform hits another milestone next month, with new provisions that include a coverage expansion for young adults and restrictions on an insurer’s ability to impose annual coverage limits or to reject children with pre-existing medical conditions.
Insurance coverage that starts on or after Sept. 23 will have to comply with these changes and others that were put in place when President Barack Obama signed the health overhaul into law March 23. For most people, the changes won’t affect their plans until coverage renews in the weeks or months that follow. Here are the highlights:
_ Adult children up to age 26 will be able to receive dependent coverage with all individual and group policies.
_ Lifetime limits on the dollar value of insurance coverage will be prohibited. This refers to how much your insurance coverage pays out to cover claims.
_ Restrictions will be placed on annual limits for coverage, a practice that will prohibited in 2014.
_ Insurers will be prohibited from rescinding or canceling coverage except in cases where the customer commits fraud.
Full Story: Health Care Reform Provisions To Go Into Effect Next Month.
Husband Locked In Laundry Room For A Year By Wife Half His Age And Her Lover
In a love triangle that took a terrifying turn, a 45-year-old woman and her lover locked her 80-year-old husband in a laundry room for over a year, Agence France-Presse reports.
He was freed after one of the woman’s children reported to the police that “there was an old man at home who was dirty, who stole food and who was abused because in particular he could make (the child’s) mother angry.”
The elderly man is in stable condition but as of yet has declined to see anyone or speak about the ordeal. Police confirm that he was abused and only “ate twice a day, mostly pastries that were past their sell-by date.”
Full Story: Husband Locked In Laundry Room For A Year By Wife Half His Age And Her Lover.
Colorado Senate Candidate Ken Buck Insists Rape, Incest Are No Excuse For An Abortion
Tea Party-backed contender Ken Buck, who’s facing-off against Jane Norton in Colorado’s GOP Senate primary says he firmly opposes abortion rights and doesn’t “believe in the exceptions of rape or incest.”
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post relays how Buck explained his staunch pro-life stance to a constituent of the Centennial State on Monday:
“I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. I believe that the only exception, I guess, is life of the mother. And that is only if it’s truly life of the mother.
To me, you can’t say you’re pro-life and say — if there is, and it’s a very rare situation where one life would have to cease for the other life to exist. But in that very rare situation, we may have to take the life of the child to save the life of the mother.
In that rare situation, I am in favor of that exception. But other than that I have no exceptions in my position.”
Full Story: Colorado Senate Candidate Ken Buck Insists Rape, Incest Are No Excuse For An Abortion.
States slash pre-K programs as budgets bleed
States are cutting hundreds of millions from their prekindergarten budgets, undermining years of working to help young children — particularly poor kids — get ready for school.
States are slashing nearly $350 million from their pre-K programs by next year and more cuts are likely on the horizon once federal stimulus money dries up, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The reductions mean fewer slots for children, teacher layoffs and even fewer services for needy families who can’t afford high-quality private preschool programs.
One state — Arizona — has proposed eliminating its 5,500-child program entirely. Illinois cut $32 million from last fiscal year’s pre-k budget and plans to slash another $48 million this year.
Full Story: States slash pre-K programs as budgets bleed | Raw Story.
ACLU sues for right to represent US citizen on ‘kill list’
ACLU executive director admits that government action which prevented them from representing accused terrorist al-Awlaqi ‘did raise our eyebrows’
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights announced on Tuesday that they have filed a lawsuit against the United States government in connection with its practice of “targeted killings” of suspected terrorists. There’s a twist to this particular case, however.
The two groups have been prevented from challenging the government’s actions directly by a law which makes it a crime to provide any services to a “specially designated global terrorist” — including legal representation — without obtaining permission in advance from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Full Story: ACLU sues for right to represent US citizen on ‘kill list’ | Raw Story.
Rep. Inglis tells all: GOP using racism, demagoguery in response to Obama.
In June, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) became one of the first incumbent Republicans to be knocked off by an insurgent Tea Party candidate. Although he maintained a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, primary voters deemed Inglis to be insufficiently conservative. In an interview with Mother Jones, Inglis said that one of the reasons for his defeat was because he refused to demagogue like other conservatives in the House. In one instance during the primary, Inglis was chastised simply for not calling President Obama a “socialist.” He also noted that many of the GOPs criticisms regarding Obama’s response to the economic crisis were motivated by racism:
Full Story: Think Progress » Rep. Inglis tells all: GOP using racism, demagoguery in response to Obama..
Pence Can’t Think Of Any GOP Ideas That Are Different From Bush, Says Simply: We Are ‘Pro-Growth’
Yesterday at a fundraiser in Atlanta, President Obama took a jab at Republicans for failing to break away from President Bush and trying to “bamboozle” the American public. “It’s not like they’ve engaged in some heavy reflection,” he said. “They have not come up with a single, solitary, new idea to address the challenges of the American people. They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas – not one.”
Today on MSNBC, when host Joe Scarborough asked Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) to differentiate today’s GOP from Bush, Pence couldn’t offer much in the way of specifics:
SCARBOROUGH: Give Americans listening to you today a vision for America that is different from the vision that George W. Bush had for America because their argument is you guys are all just George Bush clones.
Full Story: Think Progress » Pence Can’t Think Of Any GOP Ideas That Are Different From Bush, Says Simply: We Are ‘Pro-Growth’.
Cornyn Attacks Activist Judges, Then Attacks Kagan As Insufficently Activist
In a floor speech explaining his opposition to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) attacked her for refusing the endorse the frivolous argument that unelected judges should strike down the health care law enacted by elected representatives:
I was also troubled by a couple of other areas . . . One has to do with the power of the federal government and I had mentioned a moment ago. Under the commerce clause of the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court has previously basically given the federal government almost limitless powers and we’ve seen that play here in the debate over the individual mandate in the health insurance bill . . . But Solicitor General Kagan did not seem to recognize that the federal government’s powers are one of enumerated powers delegated by — delegated by the states and by the people.
Just a few minutes earlier, however, Cornyn ranted against judges who have the audacity to substitute their views for those of elected Members of Congress:
Full Story: Think Progress » Cornyn Attacks Activist Judges, Then Attacks Kagan As Insufficently Activist.
The Takeaway from 91,000 Leaked Secret Documents on Afghanistan: It’s Bad. Very Bad. Time to Go
Will Durst:
As unexpected as a checkered tablecloth in a pizzeria, the administration is playing down any revelations about Afghanistan, but we can draw our own conclusions.
To say the release of 91,000 classified documents has revealed a disconnect between our public position on Afghanistan and the actual situation on the ground is like inferring a disparity between yoga and bayonets. Dawn dishwashing liquid and green olive tapenade. A tray full of Southern Comfort old-fashioned sweets and a herringbone Segway.
Unlike the Pentagon Papers, we can’t even work up a good outrage, mainly because come on, 91,000 documents. That’s like reading all seven Harry Potter books thirty times over. I don’t care how authentically rustic your wand is, nobody’s doing that. There’s even questions as to whether it’s 91,000 documents, 92,000 documents, if all the documents have been released or more are being held in reserve for we mere Muggles.
I know. What’s a thousand documents amongst friends? Well, there’s your problem. We don’t have any friends. Corruption over there is endemic, pandemic and epidemic. Our allies aren’t necessarily allied on our side. The fighting is going badly and a halfway decent deep-dish pizza crust remains a concept the Afghanis seem unable or unwilling to embrace. Not to mention Democracy.
Why Do the Rich Get to Go Through Airport Security Faster Than You?
Many airports offer express security lines for first- and business-class passengers. Why are the Feds letting rich people cut in line?
After the attacks of 9/11, lawmakers scrambled to beef up airport security. Soon after the dust had settled, we were faced with long lines and invasive searches. Thousands were added to a watch list, from which it seemed impossible to be removed. Shampoo bottles, nail scissors and shoes became potentially lethal weapons.
But apparently enhanced screening is for the rabble, not the elites. Surely the wealthy and powerful couldn’t be expected to stand for such inconvenience.
Recently, flying out of McCarran airport in Las Vegas, I had to wait in a long line to get through the security checkpoint. But only because I was flying “steerage” — economy class. At McCarran, like many other airports in the United States, those who can afford to pay a private airline for a cushy first-class seat get a free perk, courtesy of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) — they can cut in front of the proles by using an express line reserved for first- and business-class passengers.
Full Story: Why Do the Rich Get to Go Through Airport Security Faster Than You? | Economy | AlterNet.
Chocolate That Cures Acne, Potato Chips That Lower Cholesterol — Here Come the Nutraceuticals to a Store Near You
The food industry sees huge dollar signs in erasing the border between medicine and meals.
Cinnamon is no longer just the spunky spice on cinnamon toast. Turmeric is no longer just the bitter yellow dust that colors curry.
These days, both are hailed as superpowered disease-fighting “nutraceuticals” — part nutrient, part pharmaceutical. Along with many other once-humble substances (think pomegranates, fish oil and flax seeds), they’re key ingredients in “functional foods,” which comprise a booming $30-billion-a-year industry bent on erasing the border between medicine and meals.
When is candy not candy? When are potato chips not potato chips? When are crisp salty discs and dark-chocolate balls not mere hedonistic treats? When they’re functional foods, in this case Corazonas chips and foil-wrapped Frutels — bought in hopes of lowering cholesterol and curing acne.
Class Acts: Dion: Abraham, Martin and John
by Len Hart
We have not been told the truth about the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy which is often described as a coup d’etat. By any name or label, it was in fact and practice the overthrow of a legitimate regime elected by a free people. On the other side of it, we have suffered an increasingly reactionary, increasingly militaristic ‘government’ that seems owned by the very Military/Industrial complex that JFK had promised he would oppose and tame. We have likewise suffered inumerable ‘adventures’, blunders and ‘covert operations’ to include assassinations by the same CIA that JFK had promised he would ‘smash into a thousand pieces’. We are likewise victimized by a central banking system –the Fed –which JFK had vowed to reform or put an end to.
We know who the liars are! We know what it is they are lying about! We also know a great deal about why they lied and continue to lie. We also know who is protected by the lies and why. We also know who it was who was photographed ‘hangin’ around’ in front of the TSBD just minutes before a fatal shot would be fired from the grassy knoll killing the last truly legitimate President in our recent and tragic history. The lanky man ‘hangin’ around’ the TSBD is betrayed by his receding hairline and unique slouch. That man is George H.W. Bush.
Full Story: Class Acts: Dion: Abraham, Martin and John.
Senate Pulls the Plug on Drilling Reforms
Democrats–short of 60 votes–could have ulterior motives.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this afternoon he was calling off a set of offshore drilling reforms that had been under consideration since the Gulf oil spill in April. Republicans were surprised. Environmentalists were shocked.
Why delay the response to an enormous disaster that happened way back in April? Well, for starters, the Senate is debating and voting on Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court this week, so committing to a set of drilling reforms could mean staying in session an extra week or longer – an idea all 100 members could be expected to oppose. But then it just gets into politics. Reid said he simply couldn’t get enough votes to pass an effective measure. Republicans said Reid wasn’t willing to reach out to them. But the truth is that the so-called Spill Bill–aimed at firming regulating on new offshore drilling–has never been that controversial. Pictures of oil-soaked pelicans have most of the Senate, save for a few members from oil states, agreeing that something needs to be done on future drilling permits, and the only opposition, really, is from oil companies, which aren’t particularly popular these days anyway. So unless a regulatory bill veers way off course, it should be a guaranteed victory for Democrats, which is useful to keep in their back pocket as the election looms. That said, there are still parts that are controversial, such as raising the liability cap for oil and gas companies, or a formerly-unknown process called hydro-fracking that involves a questionable method of extracting natural gas. So by delaying the bill until September, Democrats deny Republicans a set of talking points in their districts during the August recess.
Full Story: Senate Pulls the Plug on Drilling Reforms – Newsweek.
Desperation Grows as Jobless Benefits Run Out – NYTimes.com
Facing eviction from her Tennessee apartment after several months of unpaid rent, Alexandra Jarrin packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door coupe recently and drove out of town.
Ms. Jarrin, 49, wound up at a motel here, putting down $260 she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set, enough for a weeklong stay. It was essentially all the money she had left after her unemployment benefits expired in March. Now she is facing a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long ago, had a corporate job near New York City and was enrolled in a graduate business school, whose sticker is still emblazoned on her back windshield.
“Barring a miracle, I’m going to be in my car,” she said.
Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim.
Full Story: Desperation Grows as Jobless Benefits Run Out – NYTimes.com.
Democrats To Leave Town Having Ditched Even Their Scaled-Back Energy Bill
Senate Democrats plan to head home for their annual August recess without acting on the scaled-down energy and oil-spill related legislation they unveiled just a week or so ago after having abandoned a more-ambitious comprehensive climate and energy bill.
That leaves undone one more piece of the Democratic agenda, despite weeks of angry rhetoric heaped on BP for the Gulf Coast oil spill and vows from Democrats that they would hold the energy giant accountable.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blamed Republicans for having to leave untouched the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Accountability Act before senators return to work in September.
Full Story: On The Hill: Democrats To Leave Town Having Ditched Even Their Scaled-Back Energy Bill.
China’s Currency Manipulation Cannot Continue Unaddressed
An undervalued currency makes China’s exports to America much cheaper and causes the price of America’s goods sold to China to be overvalued and therefore less attractive.
After helping to usher a slew of bills crafted to bolster the nation’s manufacturing industry through committee, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI) announced on Wednesday that his panel would hold hearings on Chinese currency manipulation next month.
On September 15, the committee will hold a hearing on the proposed Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act, which would define currency manipulation as an illegal, trade distorting subsidy and would provide U.S. lawmakers with the tools to redress the practice.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) has widespread bipartisan support with 130 co-sponsors.
Full Story: China’s Currency Manipulation Cannot Continue Unaddressed | Economy In Crisis.
China Forcing Technology Transfer
Executives of the international companies involved in China’s development of a high-speed railway system claim that China forced them to transfer their technology in order to gain access to the Chinese market. This is not the first in a series of claims in which manufacturers state that China forced the relinquishment of proprietary information before any contract would be signed.
Since the early 1990s, China has been in development of a high-speed railway system in their country. In 2003 China abandoned efforts to independently build super-fast trains and instead entered into joint ventures with foreign companies to finish completion of the railway. Executives of the international companies involved, however, claim that China forced them to transfer their technology in order to gain access to the Chinese market. This is not the first in a series of claims in which manufacturers state that China forced the relinquishment of proprietary information before any contract would be signed.
He Huawu, chief engineer at the Ministry of Railways in China, did confirm that China’s trains are based on foreign technology, and greatly modified by Chinese engineers. He pretend though that the transfer of technology was not forced.
Under the assistance of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), Peter Navarro authored the book “Manufacturing a Better Future for America” which deals with current challenges facing the Unites States’ manufacturing sector. In the chapter entitled “Benchmarking Foreign Advantages”, Navarro investigates the issue of forced technology transfers in Chinese contract negotiations.
Full Story: China Forcing Technology Transfer | Economy In Crisis.
President Obama Is Leading The Assault on Social Security
William Greider:
Whacking the Old Folks
In setting up his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Barack Obama is again playing coy in public, but his intentions are widely understood among Washington insiders. The president intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan compromise in which Democrats agree to cut Social Security benefits for future retirees while Republicans accede to significant tax increases to reduce government red ink.
Obama’s commission is the vehicle created to achieve this deal. He ducks questions about his preferences, saying only that “everything has to be on the table.” But White House lieutenants are privately talking up a bargain along those lines. They are telling anxious liberals to trust the president to make only moderate cuts. Better to have Democrats cut Social Security, Obama advisers say, than leave the task to bloodthirsty Republicans.
The president has stacked the deck to encourage this strategy. The eighteen-member commission is top-heavy with fiscal conservatives and hostile right-wingers who yearn to dismantle the retirement program. The Republican co-chair, former Senator Alan Simpson, is especially nasty; he likes to get laughs by ridiculing wheezy old folks. Democratic co-chair Erskine Bowles and staff director Bruce Reed secretly negotiated a partial privatization of Social Security with Newt Gingrich back when they served in the Clinton White House, but the deal blew up with Clinton’s sex scandal. Monica Lewinsky saved the system.
Full Story: Whacking the Old Folks | The Nation.
The US economy is not yet on the road to recovery
Dean Baker: :
Getting the economy growing at a more rapid pace will inevitably require another round of stimulus from the government
The 2.4% GDP growth figure reported for the second quarter caused many economists to once again be surprised about the state of the US economy. It seems that most had expected a higher number. Some had expected a much higher number. It is not clear what these economists use to form their expectations about growth, but it doesn’t seem that they have been paying much attention to the economy. For those following the economy, a weak second quarter growth number was hardly a surprise.
As a basic way to assess growth, economists often separate out final demand growth from GDP growth. The difference between GDP growth and final demand growth is simply inventory accumulation. If the rate of inventory accumulation accelerates then GDP growth will exceed final demand growth. If the rate of inventory accumulation slows, then GDP growth will be less than the rate of final demand growth. If there is no change in the rate at which inventories are accumulating, then GDP growth will be equal to final demand growth.
The economy has been going through a classic inventory cycle in the last five quarters. Inventories had been shrinking rapidly in the second quarter of 2009. This is standard in a recession as firms look to dump a backlog of unsold goods. Inventories shrank less rapidly in the third quarter, which means they added to growth. Inventories started growing again in the fourth quarter, and growing rapidly in the first two quarters of 2010. Inventories added considerably to growth in these quarters, making GDP growth considerably more rapid and erratic than the growth of final demand.
Full Story: The US economy is not yet on the road to recovery | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Incredible Planes From The Future (PHOTOS)
How will flying as we know it look in the future? Imagine a personal plane that fits one person only, or jets that fly by flapping their wings.
According to these incredible concepts for the planes of the future, the next generation of air travel is likely to be more comfortable, more eco-friendly, quieter, and more personal than every before.
Take a look at these incredible design concepts for the airplanes of the future. Have you seen other eye-catching ideas? Send them to us!
Full Story: Incredible Planes From The Future (PHOTOS).
GOP Clashes Over Publicizing Schedules
Several House Republicans are balking at a request by their leadership to offer up a copy of their August schedules for a GOP Conference online database.
“My constituents know how to find me,” Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said. “I’m listed in the phone book.”
GOP leaders have asked Members to submit their schedules as part of their “America Speaking Out” agenda project, but some Republicans said doing so would only create opportunities for their opponents to embarrass them.
Rep. John Campbell said Thursday that his recess calendar wasn’t finalized yet and that he had no plans to give the Conference a copy even when it is completed.
Full Story: GOP Clashes Over Publicizing Schedules – Yahoo! News.
Triceratops Was Juvenile Form Of Another Species Of Dinosaur, Scientists Say
New research from a duo at the Museum of the Rockies argues that the triceratops may never have been a distinct species, but rather the younger form of another dinosaur.
After comparing the skull shape of the triceratops to that of its close relative, the torosaurus, researchers John Scannella and Jack Horner concluded that the triceratops may actually be a juvenile form of the torosaurus (not an entirely different species), as dinosaurs’ skulls could change shapes during their lifetime.
New Scientist explains:
Now Scannella and Horner say that triceratops is merely the juvenile form of torosaurus. As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form.
Full Story: Triceratops Was Juvenile Form Of Another Species Of Dinosaur, Scientists Say.
Feds Dramatically Increase Oil Spill Estimate, Making BP’s The Worst Oil Accident In History
BP’s disastrous oil well explosion sent over 4 million barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard announced Monday, dramatically increasing the most recent federal estimate.
That’s more than 170 million gallons, and makes it the worst accidental oil spill in history — outpacing the 1979 Ixtoc spill, also in the Gulf of Mexico, which lasted for a year.
A federal scientific task force, finally allowed access to the wellhead just prior to it being capped on July 15, took elaborate pressure readings and other measurements to reach its conclusions.
Full Story: Feds Dramatically Increase Oil Spill Estimate, Making BP’s The Worst Oil Accident In History.
U.S. regulators lack data on health risks of most chemicals
This summer, when Kellogg recalled 28 million boxes of Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops and Honey Smacks, the company blamed elevated levels of a chemical in the packaging.
Dozens of consumers reported a strange taste and odor, and some complained of nausea and diarrhea. But Kellogg said a team of experts it hired determined that there was “no harmful material” in the products.
Federal regulators, who are charged with ensuring the safety of food and consumer products, are in the dark about the suspected chemical, 2-methylnaphthalene. The Food and Drug Administration has no scientific data on its impact on human health. The Environmental Protection Agency also lacks basic health and safety data for 2-methylnaphthalene — even though the EPA has been seeking that information from the chemical industry for 16 years.
Full Story: U.S. regulators lack data on health risks of most chemicals.
Administration sees $8B Medicare savings in 2011
The new health overhaul law is starting to produce savings for Medicare and will eventually add more than a decade of solvency to the program’s trust fund, the Obama administration said in an upbeat report released Monday.
Medicare will save about $8 billion by the end of next year, and as much as $575 billion over the rest of the decade, the report said.
“This reflects the priority we put on acting quickly to secure Medicare’s future,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters. “We are going to ensure that seniors and Americans with disabilities get more value when they go to the hospital or to see a doctor.”
Full Story: Administration sees $8B Medicare savings in 2011 | Raw Story.
Corporate and conservative groups step up campaign spending
Business and conservative groups see a chance to influence the midterm election because of rising anger at Democratic policies and recent court rulings on political spending.
Driven by increasing anger at Democratic policies and by recent Supreme Court decisions unshackling corporate contributions, business and conservative groups are preparing a flood of campaign money to try to wrest control of Congress from the Democrats.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest collection point for corporate contributions, has increased its spending for the congressional election in November from $35 million in 2008 to a projected $75 million this year. Officials say it may go even higher.
The chamber has been joined by new conservative fundraising organizations — such as American Crossroads, affiliated with Republican strategist Karl Rove — that have committed to raising tens of millions of dollars.
Full Story: Midterm election: Corporate and conservative groups step up campaign spending – latimes.com.
Dead zone as big as Massachusetts along coast of Louisiana and Texas, scientists say
The annual summertime low oxygen dead zone along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline this year stretches 7,722 square miles across Louisiana’s coast well into Texas waters, an area as big as the state of Massachusetts, scientists with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium announced this morning.
There’s no evidence the low oxygen area, linked to nutrients carried to the Gulf by the Mississippi River, was affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, scientists said.
The size of this year’s dead zone might actually be larger, as LUMCON’s MS Pelican research ship found a large area of hypoxia along the coast west of Galveston Bay and offshore in that area but was unable to finish mapping there before returning to map an area east of the Atchafalaya River after Tropical Storm Bonnie abated.
Full Story: Dead zone as big as Massachusetts along coast of Louisiana and Texas, scientists say | NOLA.com.
Stop buying elections! MoveOn to petition Target
The liberal advocacy group MoveOn has a new target: Target.
The Associated Press reported on July 27, “Under new laws allowing corporations to spend company money on election campaigns, the Minneapolis-based chain gave $150,000 to a Republican-friendly political fund staffed by insiders from departing GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration. The group, MN Forward, is running TV ads supporting state legislator Tom Emmer, the presumptive GOP nominee.”
In Minnesota, where Target has its headquarters and opened its first store 48 years ago, Democrats are grumbling about the large donation, and some are talking about striking back at the popular brand.
Full Story: Stop buying elections! MoveOn to petition Target | Raw Story.
Cold cuts could cause cancer: study
Red meat is being raked over the coals again.
Already linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, including cancer of the pancreas, red meat was found by a team of US researchers to be a possible cause of bladder cancer, a study published in the journal Cancer said.
For those who can’t do without their bacon-cheeseburger, some good news: scientists found no associations between beef, bacon, hamburger, sausage or steak and bladder cancer.
But they did observe a “positive nonlinear association for red meat cold cuts” and bladder cancer, they said.
The culprits in the cold cuts are nitrates and nitrites which are added to meat when it is processed to preserve and enhance color and flavor.
Full Story: Cold cuts could cause cancer: study – Yahoo! News.
Oil company, law enforcement block media access to public sites hit by Michigan oil spill.
Since Enbridge Inc.’s disastrous pipeline leak gushed 1 million gallons of oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River last week, reports suggest that Enbridge officials and law enforcement are blocking the media from public spill sites. The Michigan Messenger reports that yesterday evening, its journalists were denied access — again — “to a key oil spill site after attempting to record video of the Kalamazoo River.” A wildlife group is also reporting similar findings from its volunteers. The Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood elaborates:
However, when Messenger arrived at the site a security officer working for Enbridge approached and said no media was allowed. Messenger requested to speak to the Calhoun County Deputy Sheriff who was at the site. That deputy cleared Messenger’s request with an official from Enbridge, but they would only allow the filming of 30 seconds of video. During the time Messenger was waiting to speak to the deputy, a citizen video crew approached, and was turned back by the security officer.
Full Story: Think Progress » Oil company, law enforcement block media access to public sites hit by Michigan oil spill..
Paul claims mine safety regulations are unnecessary because ‘no one will apply’ for jobs at dangerous mines.
In April, two miners were killed at the Dotiki Mine in Western Kentucky after the mine’s roof collapsed. The non-union mine had been cited for 840 safety violations by federal inspectors since 2009, and the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing issued 31 orders to close sections of the mine or to shut down equipment during the same period. But when asked about the incident, Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate, Rand Paul, said “maybe sometimes accidents happen.” And as it turns out, Paul doesn’t believe that the federal government has any responsibility at all to set safety standards to protect mine workers:
“The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia…“You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”
Bilbray dodges when asked about Cantor’s admission that extending Bush tax cuts will expand the deficit.
Today on MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews aired the clip of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitting that extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would “dig the hole deeper” in terms of the national deficit. With his admission, Cantor has put Republican supply-siders in the awkward position of confronting the fact that their faith-based tax cut ideology would blow an $830 billion hole in the budget. Matthews pressed Bilbray on this point, only to witness his guest stammer and sputter to avoid answering the question directly:
MATTHEWS: Well there he is, Congressman Bilbray, your leader, your whip is now admitting that if you cut taxes, you’re raising the deficit. … Why would he say something like that that runs against your orthodoxy?
BILBRAY: The fact is, look, Chris, you can’t get around the fact –
MATTHEWS: Well the fact is that he just said that. Why did he just say that cutting taxes at this point is going to yield a lower revenue and therefore a bigger deficit? What he just said what contradicts to what you just said.
A Lesson from “Inception”: How the Right-Wing and Corporate Media Brainwash Americans
The illusions spread by both the right-wing and corporate media are deftly presented as fact; can we ever wake up?
For all of its “Matrix”-like convolutions and “Alice in Wonderland” allusions, the new film “Inception” adds something significant to the ancient ruminations about reality’s authenticity — something profoundly relevant to this epoch of confusion. In the movie’s tale of corporate espionage, we are asked to ponder this moment’s most disturbing epistemological questions: Namely, how are ideas deposited in people’s minds, and how incurable are those ideas when they are wrong?
Many old sci-fi stories, like politics and advertising of the past, subscribed to the “Clockwork Orange” theory that says blatantly propagandistic repetition is the best way to pound concepts into the human brain. But as “Inception’s” main character, Cobb, posits, the “most resilient parasite” of all is an idea that individuals are subtly led to think they discovered on their own.
Elizabeth Warren: My Mission Is to Restore America’s Great Middle Class
At Netroots Nation, Elizabeth Warren spoke about how to make the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau help protect the U.S. economy.
My grandmother, when she was a teenager, drove a wagon in the land rush that settled Oklahoma. Her mother was dead, and her little brothers and sisters were in the back of the wagon. Her father had ridden ahead and tried to find a piece of land that might be somewhere near water–a hard task in Oklahoma. She grew up in that part of the world, she met my grandfather, they got married, they started building one-room schoolhouses and little modest homes across the prairie. They had kids, they stretched, they scratched, they worked hard, they made a little money, and they put it aside, put it in the bank. It got completely wiped out in 1907 in an economic panic. But like many American families, they came back. They started scratching and stretching again, and having more babies–and then the Depression came. And they got wiped out one more time.
You see, my grandmother was born into the world of boom and bust, boom and bust, as it had been from 1794 until the Great Depression. But my grandmother also lived in a world of economic transformation. Because coming out of the Great Depression, just three laws fundamentally altered the course of America’s history.
Full Story: Elizabeth Warren: My Mission Is to Restore America’s Great Middle Class | Economy | AlterNet.
How to Dismantle the American Empire Before This Country Goes Under
America’s role in the world should not be to prescribe some specific world order or police the planet by force of arms. It’s to save itself.
The world — we are incessantly told — is becoming ever smaller, more complex, and more dangerous. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the nation to intensify the efforts undertaken to “keep America safe,” while also, of course, advancing the cause of world peace. Achieving these aims — it is said — requires the United States to funnel ever greater sums of money to the Pentagon to develop new means of projecting power, and to hold itself in readiness for new expeditions deemed essential to pacify (or liberate) some dark and troubled quarter of the globe.
At one level, we can with little difficulty calculate the cost of these efforts: The untold billions of dollars added annually to the national debt and the mounting toll of dead and wounded U.S. troops provide one gauge.
Full Story: How to Dismantle the American Empire Before This Country Goes Under | Books | AlterNet.
Poll: Rangel Scandal Will Hurt Dems
Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) is guilty of ethics violations, and the scandal surrounding the once-powerful lawmaker will bite Democrats in the coming midterm elections, according to results of a new poll.
The poll involved participants reporting their perceptions while viewing a video in which Rangel declares his innocence in regard to the ethics charges against him, according to the pollster, HCD Research.
The survey, which included 1,019 Americans, finds a majority of all parties reporting that Rangel, deposed this year as the influential chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is guilty.
Full Story: On The Hill: Poll: Rangel Scandal Will Hurt Dems.
A Police State You’d Better Believe In
We should not let a smooth talking political leader like our current President talk us out of the civil liberties he seemed zealous to protect.
When our nation is waging “war on” so many things (drugs, crime, poverty, terrorism), it’s hard to know where to enlist and when to defect. Or put another way, when should a patriot oppose his government? One answer, which we may hope is obvious, is when his government is waging war on liberty. The trick, of course, is to recognize it as such, since the government will always claim to be defending liberty when waging war against it.
Thus it is that in the “war on terrorism” our government is building, brick by brick, a new police state, called “Security.” Consider, for example, this item from The Washington Post:
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
Full Story: A Police State You’d Better Believe In « Wake-up Call.
Why We Really Shouldn’t Keep the Bush Tax Cut for the Wealthy
|Robert Reich |
The economy is slouching backward because consumers can’t and won’t spend enough to revive it. Congress is about to recess for the
summer without doing anything to fill the gap. And it looks like the only issue it will be debating when it returns is who, if anyone, should pay more taxes next year – just the very rich, everyone, or no one? The cuts enacted by George W. Bush will expire in January, and with midterm election pending in November we’re about to be treated to months of tax demagoguery.
From a strictly economic standpoint – as if economics had anything to do with this – it makes sense to preserve the Bush tax cuts at least through 2011 for the middle class. There’s no way consumers – who comprise 70 percent of the economy – will start buying again if their federal income taxes rise while they’re still struggling to repay their debts, they can’t borrow more, can no longer use their homes as ATMs, and they’re worried about keeping their jobs.
But the same logic doesn’t apply to people at the top, earning over $250K, who represent roughly 2 percent of tax filers. Restoring their marginal tax rates to what they were during the Clinton administration (36 and 39 percent) won’t inhibit their spending. That’s because they already save a large portion of what they earn, and already spend what they want to spend. (During the Clinton years the economy created 22 million net new jobs and unemployment dropped to 4 percent.)
Full Story: Robert Reich (Why We Really Shouldn’t Keep the Bush Tax Cut for the Wealthy).
Economists Tell the Masses: “It Could Have Been Worse”
It is amazing that angry mobs have not risen up and chased all the economists out of the country. While the greed of the Wall Street gang provided the fuel for the bubble, the economists played an essential role as enablers. This was most directly true for economists in policymaking positions, like Alan Greenspan at the Fed.
It was Greenspan’s job to stop the housing bubble. A competent and honest Fed chair would have recognized the bubble by 2002 and taken whatever steps were necessary to rein it in. And we should be 100 percent clear, in spite of all the song and dance about how the financial reform bill will prevent another bailout, the Fed absolutely had all the tools needed to stop this disaster. They just lacked either the competence or the integrity, or both.
But the economists in policymaking positions are just the beginning. There are thousands of macroeconomists across the country, in government, academia and private industry who track the economy as a full-time job. It is actually a well-paid job, with many drawing six-figure salaries and big name types getting close to $1 million a year.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Economists Tell the Masses: “It Could Have Been Worse”.
Scientists Deeply Concerned About BP Disaster’s Long-Term Impact
Contrary to recent media reports of a quick recovery in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists and biologists are “deeply concerned” about impacts that will likely span “several decades”.
“My prediction is that we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me,” Dr. Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer, as well as a marine and oyster biologist, told IPS, “I won’t be here to see the recovery.”
Cake’s grim assessment stems partially from a comparison he made to the Exxon Valdez oil disaster and the second largest oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (BP’s being the largest), that of the Ixtoc-1 blowout well in the Bay of Campeche in 1979.
“The impacts of the Exxon Valdez are still being felt 21 years later,” Cake said, “The impacts of the Ixtoc-1 are still being felt and known, 31 years later. I know folks who study oysters in bays in the Yucatan Peninsula, and oysters there have still not returned, 31 years later. So as an oyster biologist I’m concerned about that. Those things are still affected 31 years later, and that was a smaller spill by comparison.”
Full Story: Scientists Deeply Concerned About BP Disaster’s Long-Term Impact – IPS ipsnews.net.
Companies brace for end of cheap made-in-China era
Factory workers demanding better wages and working conditions are hastening the eventual end of an era of cheap costs that helped make southern coastal China the world’s factory floor.
A series of strikes over the past two months have been a rude wakeup call for the many foreign companies that depend on China’s low costs to compete overseas, from makers of Christmas trees to manufacturers of gadgets like the iPad.
Where once low-tech factories and scant wages were welcomed in a China eager to escape isolation and poverty, workers are now demanding a bigger share of the profits. The government, meanwhile, is pushing foreign companies to make investments in areas it believes will create greater wealth for China, like high technology.
Many companies are striving to stay profitable by shifting factories to cheaper areas farther inland or to other developing countries, and a few are even resuming production in the West.
Full Story: Companies brace for end of cheap made-in-China era – Yahoo! News.
Defining Prosperity Down
|Paul Krugman|
I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.
Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.
And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.
Not long ago, anyone predicting that one in six American workers would soon be unemployed or underemployed, and that the average unemployed worker would have been jobless for 35 weeks, would have been dismissed as outlandishly pessimistic — in part because if anything like that happened, policy makers would surely be pulling out all the stops on behalf of job creation.
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Defining Prosperity Down – NYTimes.com.
BP Spill May Cost Gulf Coast Homes $56,000 Apiece in Value
Gulf of Mexico coastal homes may lose as much as $56,000 each in value as buyers shun areas marred by the worst oil spill in U.S. history, according to CoreLogic Inc.
Waterfront properties in Gulfport, Mississippi, face the biggest average declines, followed by those in Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida, the real estate data company said in a report. Losses along the coast may total $648 million in 2010 and $3 billion over five years, CoreLogic estimates.
The disaster threatens to wipe out the premium Gulf Coast homebuyers paid for ocean views and water access. BP Plc’s efforts to staunch the oil may not be enough to stem a drop in property prices, said Mark Fleming, chief economist of Santa Ana, California-based CoreLogic.
Full Story: BP Spill May Cost Gulf Coast Homes $56,000 Apiece in Value – Bloomberg.
“HUGE discrepancies”: 1.8 million gallons of dispersant “now in question”, “Either BP was lying to Congress or to the Coast Guard”
The analysis also found that the amounts of surface dispersants used that were reported by BP to Congress and the amounts reported to have been used that were contained in BP’s requests for approval by the Coast Guard also vary widely, bringing into question whether BP was being truthful about the total amount used, and whether the Coast Guard was conducting rigorous monitoring and oversight over the company’s use of the chemical.
For example, in one approval request, one of BP’s top executives, Doug Suttles, claimed that the maximum daily application of dispersants on the surface in the days preceding June 16, 2010 was 3,360 gallons on June 12. However, an examination of the dispersant totals BP provided to congressional staff in its daily “Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response Updates” indicates that on June 11, BP said it applied 14,305 gallons of the chemical on the surface; on June 13, 36,000 gallons; and on June 14, 10,706 gallons.
According to publicly disclosed amounts on DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com, more than 1.8 million gallons of toxic dispersants were used to break up the oil as it came out of the well, as well as after it reached the ocean surface. The validity of those numbers are now in question.
The crisis of middle-class America
Technically speaking, Mark Freeman should count himself among the luckiest people on the planet. The 52-year-old lives with his family on a tree-lined street in his own home in the heart of the wealthiest country in the world. When he is hungry, he eats. When it gets hot, he turns on the air-conditioning. When he wants to look something up, he surfs the internet. One of the songs he likes to sing when he hosts a weekly karaoke evening is Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black”.
Yet somehow things don’t feel so good any more. Last year the bank tried to repossess the Freemans’ home even though they were only three months in arrears. Their son, Andy, was recently knocked off his mother’s health insurance and only painfully reinstated for a large fee. And, much like the boarded-up houses that signal America’s epidemic of foreclosures, the drug dealings and shootings that were once remote from their neighbourhood are edging ever closer, a block at a time.
Full Story: FT.com / Reportage – The crisis of middle-class America.
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
|DAVID STOCKMAN |
IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.
More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one
Full Story: Op-Ed Contributor – Four Deformations of the Apocalypse – NYTimes.com.
Breitbart Rules of War: If You’re on Defense, You’re Losing – The GOP-Tea Party Is on Defense, And Dem Polling Is Up
There’s a spoof of a training video at Conor Friedersdorf’s blog at True/Slant titled, “How to Argue with Andrew Breitbart,” in which one animated character receives tips on arguing with Breitbart, the new phenom of right-wing racism — the guy behind the smearing of Shirley Sherrod and the bogus but effective destruction of the anti-poverty group, ACORN.
The video is funny, if a bit long, and the instructions go into a lot of specifics. “If Breitbart says ‘x,’ then whatever you do, don’t say ‘y.’” That sort of thing.
The Worst Ever President
|by Len Hart |
REAGAN was among, perhaps the worst U.S. President in U.S HISTORY.
Reagan blew a chance for nuclear disarmament when Gorby put it on the table. Reagan blinked, wimped out, feared he would lose his prototypical ‘neocon’ support.
At the Reykjavik summit meeting Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met to discuss an issue for which a solution remains essential to the future of mankind. Their ‘meeting’ spanned the dates –October 11-12, 1986 about which it is said that the two leaders very nearly reached agreement on the total elimination of nuclear weapons and production of additional weapons. Nearly! In this case, ‘nearly’ is not partial success; it is utter failure.
As a symbol, and ‘example’, Reykjavik proved that nuclear disarmament is attainable only when political leaders have both the courage and the ‘freedom’ to decide and act positively. It is clear in retrospect that Ronald Reagan was not his own man. He was indebted to handlers, financiers, a ‘ruling elite’ and the alliance that it had forged with the Military-Industrial complex.
Full Story: The Existentialist Cowboy: The Worst Ever President.
Beyond State Capitalism
The Commons Economy in our Lifetimes
In considering the essential problem of how to produce and distribute material wealth, virtually all of the great economists in Western history have ignored the significance of the commons — the shared resources of nature and society that people inherit, create and utilize. Despite sharp differences in concept and ideology, economic thinkers from Smith, Ricardo, and Marx to Keynes, Hayek, Mises and Schumpeter largely based their assumptions on the worldʼs seemingly unlimited resources and fossil fuels, their infinite potential for creating economic growth, adequate supplies of labor for developing them, and the evolving monoculture of state capitalism responsible for their provision and allocation. Hence, in the Market State that has emerged, corporations and sovereign states make decisions on the production and distribution of Earthʼs common resources more or less as a unitary system — with minimal participation from the people who depend on these commons for their livelihood and well-being. Because our forbears did not account for the biophysical flow of material resources from the environment through the production process and back into the environment, the real worth of natural resources and social labor is not factored into the economy. It is this centralized, hierarchical model that has led to the degradation and devaluation of our commons .
Over the past seventy years especially, the macroeconomic goals of sovereign states — for high levels and rapid growth of output, low unemployment and stable prices — have resulted in a highly dysfunctional world. The global economy has integrated dramatically in recent decades through financial and trade liberalization; yet the market is failing to protect natural and social resources, the state is failing to rectify the economic system, and the global polity is failing to manage its mounting imbalances in global resources and wealth. Without a ʻunified field theoryʼ of economics to explain how the commons is drastically undervalued and why world society is amassing huge debts to the environment, the poor and future generations, policymakers and their institutions lack the critical tools and support to address the massive instability that is now gripping the global economy. Businesses and governments are facing the Herculean challenge of reducing climate change and pollution while alleviating poverty without economic growth — a task for which the Market State is neither prepared nor designed to handle.
Full Story: Beyond State Capitalism | On the Commons.
Empty jail cells are saving millions
The San Francisco jail population has dropped 21 percent since March – the same month that the Police Department crime-lab scandal broke, leading to the dismissal of more than 750 pending drug cases.
“The timing seems to make it obvious that the reduction in jail population is related,” said Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who runs San Francisco’s lockups.
At the same time, the Police Department is reporting a dip in crime, which may be another reason more jail cells are empty.
Before March, San Francisco’s daily inmate census averaged 2,100; today, the average is 1,650, said Eileen Hirst, Hennessey’s chief of staff. As a result, the sheriff closed Jail No. 6, a dorm facility at San Francisco’s jail complex in San Bruno.
Full Story: CITY INSIDER / Empty jail cells are saving millions.
Cenek – TYTOut of Afghanistan
|Ralph Nader:|
The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels.
America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing.
This is an asymmetrical, multi-matrix war. It is a war defined by complex intrigue, shifting alliances, mutating motivations, chronic bribery, remotely-generated civilian deaths, insuperable barriers of language and ethnic and subtribal conflicts. It is fought by warlords, militias, criminal gangs, and special forces discretionary death squads. Millions of civilians are impoverished, terrified and live with violent disruptions. There is no central government to speak of. The White House uses illusions of strategies and tactics to bid for time. In Afghanistan, the historic graveyard of invaders, hope springs infernal.
Full Story: Out of Afghanistan | CommonDreams.org.
“It’s Not A Market, It’s An HFT ‘Crop Circle’ Crime Scene” – Further Evidence Of Quote Stuffing Manipulation By HFT
Recently we posted a required reading analysis by Nanex in which the market trading analytics firm presented irrefutable evidence of quote stuffing by HFT algorithms in tens of stocks, in which thousands of cancelled quotes would reappear each second with a definitive periodicity and regularity, around the time of the May 6 flash crash. Aside from the fact that it is illegal to indicate a quote without a trade intent, this form of quote stuffing is in fact manipulative when conducted by HFT repeaters in specific “shapes” as it actually moves the NBBO actively higher or lower, in cases pushing the bid/offer range up to 10% higher without even one trade ever having occurred, simply by masking a big block order which other algos interpret as bid interest and pull all offers progressively or step function higher (or vice versa, although we have rarely if ever seen the walking down of a stock over the past 18 months). It is as if the HFT lobby has been given the green light by the powers that be that it is safe to activate merely the bid-size quote stuffing algorithms, and not worry: the fact that the market is so one sided in its quote stuffing patterns is sufficient reason to worry of a concerted effort to push stocks higher, initiated from the very top, and effected by not only the Primary Dealer community but by the end-market “liquidity providers.” Today, courtesy of Nanex we demonstrate that this type of illegal stock manipulation continues rampant to this very day, and the SEC still fails to acknowledge that it is precisely the HFT market participants that persist in destabilizing stock prices, which have given up responding to fundamentals and merely move up or down based on quote stuffing interventions by those who plead innocence and claim to only be providing liquidity. Well take a look at the millions in fake, and thus illegal, bids demonstrated below and tell us just how any of this manipulation is “providing liquidity” – the second the patterns break, the algos responsible for the churn pattern disappear, thus eliminating numerous levels of so called bid liquidity below the NBBO: break enough patterns and you have another flash crash as the market once again goes bidless.
So while the SEC continues to pander merely to the interests of the market manipulation lobby, and is now doing it in more style than ever by refusing to answer to FOIA requests going forward, here is Nanex with yet more evidence that we no longer have a market, but merely a daily recurring crime scene.
Distressed Soldiers Get Mental Health Treatment…On The Battlefield
Sgt. Thomas Riordan didn’t want to return to Afghanistan after home leave. He had just fought through a battle that killed eight soldiers, and when he arrived home his wife said she was leaving. He almost killed himself that night.
When his psychologist asked what he thought he should do, Riordan said: Stay in Colorado.
Instead, the military brought Riordan back to this base in the eastern Afghan mountains, where mortar rounds sound regularly and soldiers have to wear flack jackets if they step outside their barracks before 8 a.m., even to go to the bathroom.
Increasingly, the army is trying to treat traumatized soldiers “in theater” – where they’re stationed. The idea is that soldiers will heal best if kept with those who understand what they’ve been through, rather than being dumped into a treatment center back in the States where they’ll be surrounded by unfamiliar people and untethered from their work and routine.
Full Story: Distressed Soldiers Get Mental Health Treatment…On The Battlefield.
Dutch troops end Afghanistan deployment
The Netherlands has ended its military mission in Afghanistan, after four years in which its 1,950 troops have won praise for their effectiveness.
Dutch military chief Gen Peter van Uhm said security had improved in Uruzgan province during the Dutch deployment.
But he acknowledged that “a lot still has to happen” after the withdrawal.
Nato has played down its significance, but analysts say this is a sensitive time for the alliance, with growing casualties and doubts about strategy.
Full Story: BBC News – Dutch troops end Afghanistan deployment.
Obama On GOP Deficit Talk: ‘I’m Going To Call Them On Their Bluff’
President Barack Obama has a warning for Republicans who denounce the federal deficit but reject proposals to cut it.
Obama tells CBS, “I’m going to call them on their bluff.”
The president promises to have “a bunch of ideas” for deficit reduction, but he didn’t specify them in the broadcast interview.
Many analysts say both spending cuts and tax increases are needed to tame the soaring deficit.
Republicans in Congress oppose almost any form of tax increases, as do some Democrats. Lawmakers in both parties call for spending cuts, but they often hedge when cuts are proposed to specific programs.
Full Story: Obama On GOP Deficit Talk: ‘I’m Going To Call Them On Their Bluff’.
OPS: Of course the Reich will now double-down.
The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
A Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers. First in a series.
Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty’s computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.
The file consists of a single code— 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37—that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in Nashville, Tenn.
The code knows that her favorite movies include “The Princess Bride,” “50 First Dates” and “10 Things I Hate About You.” It knows she enjoys the “Sex and the City” series. It knows she browses entertainment news and likes to take quizzes.
“Well, I like to think I have some mystery left to me, but apparently not!” Ms. Hayes-Beaty said when told what that snippet of code reveals about her. “The profile is eerily correct.”
Ms. Hayes-Beaty is being monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a “beacon” to capture what people are typing on a website—their comments on movies, say, or their interest in parenting and pregnancy. Lotame packages that data into profiles about individuals, without determining a person’s name, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers. Ms. Hayes-Beaty’s tastes can be sold wholesale (a batch of movie lovers is $1 per thousand) or customized (26-year-old Southern fans of “50 First Dates”)
Full Story: The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets – WSJ.com.
Greece will be a war zone, Sect of Revolutionaries warns tourists
Security forces fear wave of terror as austerity programme provokes strikes, protests, violence – and assassination
Greek security forces have warned of a wave of violence reminiscent of the terror that stalked Italy in the seventies after urban guerillas threatened last week to turn the country into a “war zone”.
“Greece has entered a new phase of political violence by anarchist-oriented organisations that are more murderous, dangerous, capable and nihilistic than ever before,” said Athanasios Drougos, a defence and counter-terrorism analyst in Athens.
“For the first time we are seeing a nexus of terrorist and criminal activity,” he said. “These groups don’t care about collateral damage, innocent bystanders being killed in the process. They are very extreme.”
Full Story: Greece will be a war zone, Sect of Revolutionaries warns tourists | World news | The Observer.
Kiss This War Goodbye
|Frank Rich: |
IT was on a Sunday morning, June 13, 1971, that The Times published its first installment of the Pentagon Papers. Few readers may have been more excited than a circle of aspiring undergraduate journalists who’d worked at The Harvard Crimson. Though the identity of The Times’s source wouldn’t eke out for several days, we knew the whistle-blower had to be Daniel Ellsberg, an intense research fellow at M.I.T. and former Robert McNamara acolyte who’d become an antiwar activist around Boston. We recognized the papers’ contents, as reported in The Times, because we’d heard the war stories from the loquacious Ellsberg himself.
But if we were titillated that Sunday, it wasn’t immediately clear that this internal government history of the war had mass appeal. Tricia Nixon’s wedding in the White House Rose Garden on Saturday received equal play with the Pentagon Papers on The Times’s front page. On “Face the Nation” the guest was the secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, yet the subject of the papers didn’t even come up.
That false calm vanished overnight once Richard Nixon, erupting in characteristic rage and paranoia, directed his attorney general, John Mitchell, to enjoin The Times from publishing any sequels. The high-stakes legal drama riveted the nation for two weeks, culminating in a landmark 6-to-3 Supreme Court decision in favor of The Times and the First Amendment. Ellsberg and The Times were canonized. I sold my first magazine article, an Ellsberg profile, to Esquire, and, for better or worse, cast my lot with journalism. That my various phone conversations with Ellsberg prompted ham-fisted F.B.I. agents to visit me and my parents only added to the allure.
Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Kiss This War Goodbye – NYTimes.com.
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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. 
