Archive for February, 2011

“Democracy Uprising” in the U.S.A.?: video

Noam Chomsky on Wisconsin’s Resistance to Assault on Public Sector, the Obama-Sanctioned Crackdown on Activists, and the Distorted Legacy of Ronald Reagan

“Democracy Uprising” in the U.S.A.?: Noam Chomsky on Wisconsin’s Resistance to Assault on Public Sector, the Obama-Sanctioned Crackdown on Activists, and the Distorted Legacy of Ronald Reagan

World-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky discusses several domestic issues in the United States, including the protests in defense of public sector employees and unions in Wisconsin, how the U.S. deification of former President Ronald Reagan resembles North Korea, and the crackdown on political activists with anti-terror laws and FBI raids. [includes rush transcript]

Full Story Here: “Democracy Uprising” in the U.S.A.?: Noam Chomsky on Wisconsin’s Resistance to Assault on Public Sector, the Obama-Sanctioned Crackdown on Activists, and the Distorted Legacy of Ronald Reagan.

Is Wisconsin Our Egypt? 15,000 Protest Off-the-Wall Right-Wing Governor’s Policies

I’ve never seen anything like it… there were Steelworkers, Teamsters, Pipefitters, building trades unions and more — unions I’ve never seen at a rally in 10 years.’

The people power in Wisconsin has become too big for the local and national media to ignore. Just a few weeks ago, Milwaukee Labor Press editor Dominique Paul North told me that workers’ rights rallies receive very little media coverage compared to Tea Party rallies. Last month, over 700 people gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol to the hold the state’s first ever anti-inauguration rally, but it got very little coverage in the local media. Numbers clearly matter.

On February 15, an estimated 15,000 citizens, including union and non-union workers, surrounded the state capitol to express opposition to Republican Governor Scott Walker’s plan to strip the state’s 175,000 public employees of almost all of their collective bargaining rights and require them to make larger contributions to their pensions and health insurance plans.

Full Story Here: Is Wisconsin Our Egypt? 15,000 Protest Off-the-Wall Right-Wing Governor’s Policies | News & Politics | AlterNet.

Mexico Continues to Suck Jobs From U.S., S. Korea is Next

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) continues to show its true colors as a proven failure according to data released by the Global Economic Intersection (GEI).

Their report shows that through direct outsourcing and jobs that have been created in Mexico instead of here, the U.S. has lost out on almost 29 million jobs between 1992 and 2010. As there are now less people working today than there were working in 2000, the disastrous effects of NAFTA continue to harm our economy.

The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico rose last year to $61.6 billion, which alone is now up to one-tenth of the total amount.

Full Story Here: Mexico Continues to Suck Jobs From U.S., S. Korea is Next | Economy In Crisis.

Link Confirmed Between Warming and Heavy Storms | Common Dreams

Human-induced heating of the planet has already made rainfall more intense, leading to more severe floods, researchers announced Wednesday.

Two new studies document significant impacts with just a fraction of the heating yet to come from the burning of fossil fuels. Fortunately, another new report shows the world can end its addiction to climate-wrecking fossil-fuel energy by 2050.

“Warmer air contains more moisture and leads to more extreme precipitation,” said Francis Zwiers of the University of Victoria.

Extreme precipitation and flooding over the entire northern hemisphere increased by seven percent between 1951 and 1999 as a result of anthropogenic global warming. That represents a “substantial change”, Zwiers told IPS, and more than twice the increase projected by climate modeling.

Full Story Here: Link Confirmed Between Warming and Heavy Storms | Common Dreams.

How big business subverts democracy

New leaks from Anonymous hackers show how far corporate America will go to smear critics of the Chamber of Commerce

Defendants had a common plan to engage in acts … that deceived the press and public … These infringing and fraudulent acts are antithetical to public debate on important issues, because they prevent the public and the press from knowing the true position … In short, such conduct is destructive of public discourse, and cannot be tolerated under the law.

– Chamber of Commerce lawsuit against the Yes Men and “John and Jane Does 1 through 20″, November 2009

Just a couple of years ago, most people had no idea what the Chamber of Commerce did. Aren’t they mom and pop’s small-business lobby in Washington? Now, thanks in large part to the work of Chamber opponents, we’ve come to learn that the biggest business lobby in the world is also one of the biggest impediments to real democracy in the US, and that they’re a huge force in opposing healthcare reform, employee free choice and other labour legislation, veterans’ rights, banking regulations and, of course, transparency.

The US Chamber of Commerce is the public face of a corporatism that is hijacking our democracy – and so dramatically limits any chances of meaningful reform. Even local chambers, fed up, have been leaving the US Chamber en masse. But what might it take for the “Facebook generation” in the US to topple, Tunisia- or Egypt-style, this arrogant and destructive force in American politics?

Full Story Here: How big business subverts democracy | Joseph Huff-Hannon and Andy Bichlbaum | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Bank of America subpoenaed over Countrywide loans

Bank of America was subpoenaed Wednesday over a loan program that may have given influential people sweetheart deals on their mortgages.

The subpoena was issued by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, a Republican from California who has doggedly pursued the issue for several years.

The subpoena demands Bank of America turn over documents related to a VIP loan program that was administered by Countrywide Financial, which Bank of America purchased in early 2008.

Countrywide was once the nation’s largest mortgage originator, but the company suffered heavy losses in its subprime loan business and had to find a buyer or collapse.

Full Story Here: Bank of America subpoenaed over Countrywide loans – Feb. 16, 2011.

Rejecting Genetically Modified Foods

Picture a supermarket where half the foods contain toxic chemicals. All the contaminated food is clearly labeled, with the health risks displayed on the side of the container. Would you buy the contaminated food?

This situation is not hypothetical. If you’ve ever eaten corn, tofu or canola oil, you’ve been exposed to such foods. In an effort to increase their pesticide sales, biotechnology companies like Monsanto — which also controls a large percentage of the seed market -— have altered the DNA of foods like corn and soybeans to make them less vulnerable to pesticides. This means that they can be sprayed with more weedkiller and other chemicals. Unless you buy organic food, there is no way to avoid this problem.

On the surface, these genetically modified (GM) foods don’t sound so bad. What is wrong with using science to invent foods with more nutrients? And indeed, genetic engineering has led to some great nutritional advances. Golden rice, for instance, is a fortified variety of rice that provides people in developing nations with vitamins their diet may otherwise lack.

Full Story Here: Rejecting Genetically Modified Foods | The Cornell Daily Sun.

Earth Directed X2.2-Class Solar Flare and bright CME

=WARNING=Earth Directed X2.2-Class Solar Flare and bright CME: FIRST X-FLARE OF THE NEW SOLAR CYCLE: Earth-orbiting satellites detected an X2-class solar flare at 0156 UT on Feb. 15th. This is the most powerful solar flare in nearly five years, and the first X-flare of Solar Cycle 24. The source was behemoth sunspot 1158.

Budget Repair Bill Protest! Madison WI 2 15 2011 Students Arrive

Madison East High School students arrive to the WI capital rotunda during the Budget Repair Bill Protest on 2/15/2011.

Type 2 Diabetes: Could You Have it and Not Even Know?

Do any of these sound like you?

1. You feel sluggish or have a little less “get up and go” than previously, but you attribute it to high stress levels or increased age.

2. You’ve had gradual weight gain and chalk it up to age.

3. You have an increased desire for carbohydrates and never really feel full after eating.

4. People close to you wonder how you can always eat at the drop of a hat.

If so, you could you be one of the 7 million people in the U.S. with undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 or adult-onset diabetes does not normally come on like a lightning bolt or an earthquake, but silently develops over years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, type two diabetes affects more than 25.8 million people or 8.3 percent of the U.S population. Experts predict a whopping 10 percent increase in adult diabetes in the next decade.

Full Story Here: Susan B. Dopart, M.S., R.D.: Type 2 Diabetes: Could You Have it and Not Even Know?.

Scientists Connect Global Warming To Extreme Rain

Extreme rainstorms and snowfalls have grown substantially stronger, two studies suggest, with scientists for the first time finding the telltale fingerprints of man-made global warming on downpours that often cause deadly flooding.

Two studies in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature link heavy rains to increases in greenhouse gases more than ever before.

One group of researchers looked at the strongest rain and snow events of each year from 1951 to 1999 in the Northern Hemisphere and found that the more recent storms were 7 percent wetter. That may not sound like much, but it adds up to be a substantial increase, said the report from a team of researchers from Canada and Scotland.

Full Story Here: Scientists Connect Global Warming To Extreme Rain.

OPS: Well, Duhhh……

EEOC Asks: Are Employers Discriminating Against The Jobless?

A Craigslist job ad posted Feb. 6 for a $25-per-hour customer relations position in San Francisco encourages men, women, and students to apply, “No Experience Required” — as long as the applicant already has a job.

“Must be currently employed or recently employed,” the ad specifies.

Three years into the recession, variations of the phrase “must be currently employed” are still appearing in job ads across various kinds of positions all over the web as employers are peppered with applications from a growing pool of long-term unemployed people. Robert Half Legal is running an ad on Monster.com for a “currently employed” defense attorney. Dough, a restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, advertised on Craigslist for pizza cooks who are either “currently employed or recently unemployed (1 to 4) months out.”

Full Story Here: EEOC Asks: Are Employers Discriminating Against The Jobless?.

Colin Powell demands answers over Curveball’s WMD lies

Former US secretary of state asks why CIA failed to warn him over Iraqi defector who has admitted fabricating WMD evidence

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons capability.

Responding to the Guardian’s revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or “Curveball” as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq’s secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war.

In particular he singled out the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency – the Pentagon’s military intelligence arm. Janabi, an Iraqi defector, was used as the primary source by the Bush administration to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. Doubts about his credibility circulated before the war and have been confirmed by his admission this week that he lied.

Full Story Here: Colin Powell demands answers over Curveball’s WMD lies | World news | The Guardian.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker Reiterates That The ‘National Guard’ Will Be Used Against A Worker ‘Walk-Off’

ThinkProgress has been following both Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) recent “budget repair bill,” which would effectively eliminate state workers’ right to collectively bargain, and his coinciding threat to deploy the National Guard to stop a walkout. Yesterday, the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers criticized Walker, saying that collective bargaining is “fundamental” to the middle class.

Approximately 13,000 peaceful protesters flooded the state Capitol yesterday, including nearly 800 Madison East High School students who left school to protest Walker’s bill. Democratic lawmakers listened to testimonies from citizens for more than 20 hours, stretching into the early morning. Many people who hadn’t yet gotten to speak pulled out sleeping bags.

Responding to his inappropriate threat to use the National Guard against resisting workers, Walker said last night on Greta Van Susteren’s On The Record that the National Guard has contingency plans for natural disasters, and a worker “walk-off is part of [the] contingency plan”:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Wisconsin Gov. Walker Reiterates That The ‘National Guard’ Will Be Used Against A Worker ‘Walk-Off’.

Rep. Mike Kelly Falsely Claims Social Security Checks Would Continue During A Government Shutdown

With a potential government shutdown looming, the GOP is attempting to have it both ways on the issue. Earlier this week, an “exasperated” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) declared that a government shutdown was “off the table,” only to be undercut by another GOP House leader, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who told ThinkProgress that a shutdown was “on the table.” Despite Cantor’s best efforts, over a half-dozen other Republicans are publicly calling for a government closure.

Republicans in the pro-shutdown caucus are trying to frame the effects of a potential shutdown as minor. Appearing on Fox News a few months ago, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) argued in favor of a closure, declaring that, “I don’t think [a government shutdown] would hurt one bit.” Paul also told ThinkProgress last weekend that a shutdown is “not something I worry about.”

Now, freshmen Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) is also parroting the notion of a pain-free shutdown. ThinkProgress caught up with Kelly at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Though he stopped short of supporting a government closure, Kelly defended the potential consequences of a shutdown. He argued that even if there is a shutdown, the government is “not going to stop, people aren’t going to lose their Social Security checks and they’re not going to lose their access to Medicare and Medicaid”:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Rep. Mike Kelly Falsely Claims Social Security Checks Would Continue During A Government Shutdown.

After Running Against Govt. Spending, GA Republicans Whine About Not Getting $105 Million Port Grant

During last year’s election season, some of the most vitriolic anti-government rhetoric came from GOP officials in the state of Georgia. Across the state, Republican lawmakers ranging from members of Congress all the way up to gubenatorial candidate Nathan Deal demonized the government and praised the free market as the solution to all of the state’s problems:

- Rep. Jack Kingston: Kingston’s opposition to government spending was so intense that he even put together a PowerPoint presentation about “destroying the infrastructure of spending” that he presented to the House Republican Steering Committee. [11/30/10]

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » After Running Against Govt. Spending, GA Republicans Whine About Not Getting $105 Million Port Grant.

Republican Officials Cut Head Start Funding, Saying Women Should Be Married And Home With Kids

As ThinkProgress has reported, the right wing has been undertaking a war on women, both at the national and state level. House Republicans, for instance, want to cut funding for a variety of programs affecting women’s health and reproductive rights, while Republican legislatures across the country are trying to legislatively restrict choice.

In yet another example, the Frederick County, Maryland, Board of County Commissioners voted to end the county’s contribution to its Head Start program, cutting overall funding for the program by more than 50 percent. Two of the Republican officials justified their decision to cut Head Start — which provides early childhood education to the children of low-income parents — by saying that women should really be married and home with their kids, thus rendering the program unnecessary:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Republican Officials Cut Head Start Funding, Saying Women Should Be Married And Home With Kids.

Justice Clarence Thomas Failed To Disclose That Citizens United Foundation Supported His 1991..

The watchdog group www.ProtectOurElections.org filed a second bar complaint on February 15, 2011 against Justice Clarence Thomas for bias and actual conflict of interest for his failure to disqualify himself from Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010), and hiding the fact that Citizens United Foundation had supported his nomination and spent at least $100,000 on commercials attacking several Senators opposed to his nomination. The second bar complaint, filed with the Washington, D.C. Office of Bar Counsel, is at http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Clarence_Thomas_Bar_Supplement.pdf.

As reported in 1991 by Time Magazine, “The commercials, shown only in Washington at a cost of about $100,000, have reaped millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity through network television and print-media reproductions that have accompanied news stories about the flap. That probably was the intent all along.” http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973826,00.html#ixzz1DzuvQ4Rz See also http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/business/media/13ADCO.html (“The Citizens United Foundation, a group that ran commercials in 1991 supporting the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court…”).

“Justice Thomas was obligated under the Supreme Court’s June 2009 decision in Caperton v. Massey, to disqualify himself from Citizens United,” said ProtectOurElections attorney and spokesman Kevin Zeese. “Indeed, the facts of the two cases are eerily similar, as we now know, with Citizens United Foundation actually supporting Thomas’ nomination and creating what amounted to be millions of dollars in advertising and publicity to attack opposing Senators. Yet, Justice Thomas, just months after the ruling in Caperton, proceeded to sit in judgment of Citizens United without sua sponte recusing himself or disclosing the conflict. Justice Thomas owed his spot on the Court to Citizens United Foundation, and he repaid that debt with his favorable ruling in Citizens United. Clearly, his bias undermined the fairness of the judicial system and deprived the FEC due process.”

Full Story Here: Justice Clarence Thomas Failed To Disclose That Citizens United Foundation Supported His 1991… — WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ –.

Climate change hits Alaska’s national parks in a big way: Alaska Newsreader

Alaska has more than half the nation’s national park lands and is feeling the effects of global warming far more acutely than is the Lower 48. A recent National Park Service report outlines the effects on the parks, from rapidly retreating Exit Glacier to road damage in Denali to the loss of archaeological artifacts to coastal erosion. A new three-year climate scenario project for Alaska parks is part of a $10 million national program to begin park adaptations to climate change. Reuters reports:

These and some better-known impacts — proliferation of invasive plants and fish, greater frequency and intensity of wildfires, and declines in wildlife populations that depend on sea ice and glaciers — are outlined in a recent National Park Service report. …

In some far northern parks such as Gates of the Arctic, average temperatures are expected to shift in coming years from below freezing to above freezing, crossing a crucial threshold, said Bob Winfree, Alaska science adviser for the Park Service.

Full Story Here: Climate change hits Alaska’s national parks in a big way: Alaska Newsreader | adn.com.

Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war

• Man codenamed Curveball ‘invented’ tales of bioweapons

• Iraqi told lies to try to bring down Saddam Hussein regime

• Fabrications used by US as justification for invasion

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”

Full Story Here: Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war | World news | The Guardian.

Are Progressives in California are turning the tables on Darrell Issa?

Thom Hartmann:

Progressives in California are turning the tables on Darrell Issa. While the Republican Chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee solicits the help of lobbyists and transnational corporations to kill government regulations – an organization known as the Third Lantern is digging up the dirt in Issa’ past – looking into past business and personal relationships.

Full Story Here: Are Progressives in California are turning the tables on Darrell Issa? | Thom Hartmann.

Boehner Caught Lying about the Number of Federal Jobs Created in the Past Two Years – So Be It

He Also Inadverdently Exposed a GOP Big Lie – the Federal Government Does Create Jobs, Millions of Them

One of the Republicans’ most often-repeated “big lies” — the Goebbels-Rove tactic of repeating a falsehood over and over until it is perceived to be true or, as Rove put it, until a “new reality” has been created — is that the government cannot create jobs.

This is, of course, demonstrably untrue. Just for starters, there are hundreds of thousands of contractors in aerospace, defense, transportation and elsewhere who owe their jobs to the federal government and no one else.

Notably, the federal government paid, and is still paying, the salaries of tens of thousands of employees of Halliburton and Blackwater in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Full Story Here: Pensito Review » Boehner Caught Lying about the Number of Federal Jobs Created in the Past Two Years – So Be It.

Why We Should Raise Taxes on the Super-Rich and Lower Them on the Middle Class

Robert Reich:

My proposal to raise the marginal tax to 70 percent on incomes over $15 million, to 60 percent on incomes between $5 million and $15 million, and to 50 percent on incomes between $500,000 and $5 million, has generated considerable debate. Some progressives think it’s pie-in-the-sky. Here, for example, is Andrew Leonard, a staff writer for Salon:

A 70 percent tax bracket for the richest Americans is pure fantasy – even suggesting it represents such a fundamental disconnect with the world as it exists today that it is hard to see why it should be taken seriously. I would be deeply worried about the sanity of a Democratic president who proposed such a thing.

Fantasy? I don’t know Mr. Leonard’s age but perhaps he could be forgiven for not recalling that between the late 1940s and 1980 America’s highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent. (Many considered Reagan’s own proposal a “fantasy” before it was enacted.)

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (Why We Should Raise Taxes on the Super-Rich and Lower Them on the Middle Class).

Army admits Gulf War medical records destroyed- letter ordering destruction found

A letter from the Department of the Army telling units to destroy their records after the end of Operation Desert Storm has made it more difficult for injured veterans to get the medical benefits they need.

The letter, never made public before now, says units were told to destroy their records because officials had no room to ship the paperwork back to the United States. The letter goes on to say it was in direct contradiction to existing Army regulations.

“This could have been one, five, six, a couple of hundred or this could be thousands (of soldiers),” says Andrew Marshall, a Florida regional officer with the nonprofit Disabled American Veterans group. “You don’t know.”

One solider trying to get help from the Veterans Administration for combat-related injuries says he has been turned down because his records are missing. He did not want to be identified.

Full Story Here: Army admits Gulf War medical records destroyed- letter ordering destruction found « Wake-up Call.

Army admits Gulf War medical records destroyed- letter ordering destruction found

A letter from the Department of the Army telling units to destroy their records after the end of Operation Desert Storm has made it more difficult for injured veterans to get the medical benefits they need.

The letter, never made public before now, says units were told to destroy their records because officials had no room to ship the paperwork back to the United States. The letter goes on to say it was in direct contradiction to existing Army regulations.

“This could have been one, five, six, a couple of hundred or this could be thousands (of soldiers),” says Andrew Marshall, a Florida regional officer with the nonprofit Disabled American Veterans group. “You don’t know.”

One solider trying to get help from the Veterans Administration for combat-related injuries says he has been turned down because his records are missing. He did not want to be identified.

Full Story Here: Army admits Gulf War medical records destroyed- letter ordering destruction found « Wake-up Call.

House GOP Rejects Requirement That Patriot Act Surveillances Be Conducted in Compliance With the Constitution

Less than a month after making a show of reading the US Constitution into the Congressional Record, the leaders of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives engineered a vote to extend the surveillance authorities that both the Bush and Obama administrations have used to conduct “roving surveillance” of communications, to collect and examine business records and to target individuals who are not tied to terrorist groups for surveillance.

While most Democrats opposed the extension of the surveillance authorities—rejecting aggressive lobbying by the Obama administration and its allies in the House GOP leadership—overwhelming Republican support won approval of the legislation on a 275-144 vote. Thus, the supposedly Constitution-obsessed House has endorsed a measure that is widely seen—not just by Democrats and progressives but by Republicans and conservatives—as a constant threat to privacy protections outlined in the document’s Fourth Amendment.

As Michelle Richardson, the legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, noted Monday night: “It has been nearly a decade since the Patriot Act was passed and our lawmakers still refuse to make any meaningful changes to this reactionary law. The right to privacy from government is a cornerstone of our country’s foundation and Americans must be free from the kind of unwarranted government surveillance that the Patriot Act allows. If Congress cannot take the time to insert the much needed privacy safeguards the Patriot Act needs, it should allow these provisions to expire.”

Full Story Here: House GOP Rejects Requirement That Patriot Act Surveillances Be Conducted in Compliance With the Constitution | The Nation.

President Obama, the Jobs Crisis and Corporate America’s Game Plan

On February 4, the Labor Department released its latest jobs report for the month of January. It showed a deep decline in net jobs created—only 36,000 last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

This was about a third of the average 90,000 jobs created in each of the two preceding months, November-December 2010. For the past three months, November through January, the average number of net jobs created per month has totaled about 70,000. (To put this in perspective, 150,000 jobs need to be created each month just to absorb new entrants into the workforce.)

This dismal job creation of the last three months followed last summer’s even worse jobs performance, during which job creation was negative for three consecutive months, from May through July 2010—a total of 391,000 jobs lost. Barely half of those jobs were ‘recovered’ from that summer slump. That ‘recovery,’ given last month’s mere 36,000 jobs, appears to be faltering even further once again.

Full Story Here: President Obama, the Jobs Crisis and Corporate America’s Game Plan – Working In These Times.

Patriot Act: Senate passes extension of provisions

Earlier this week, the House passed its own extension of provisions of the terrorist surveillance program set to expire at the end of the month.

The Senate late Tuesday passed a three-month extension of provisions of the USA Patriot Act as Congress works to avoid a lapse of elements of the terrorist surveillance program that expire at the end of the month.

Senate Democrats are hoping to avoid interjecting the national security issue into the 2012 presidential campaign by sending their bill to the Republican-led House, which earlier this week overcame opposition from conservative lawmakers to pass an extension through Dec. 8.

The Senate voted 86-12 to extend three expiring provisions of the act that became law after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Two Republicans, “tea-party”-backed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), joined Democrats in voting against the bill.

Full Story Here: Patriot Act: Senate passes extension of provisions – latimes.com.

World phosphorous use crosses critical threshold

Recalculating the global use of phosphorous, a fertilizer linchpin of modern agriculture, a team of researchers warns that the world’s stocks may soon be in short supply and that overuse in the industrialized world has become a leading cause of the pollution of lakes, rivers and streams.

Writing in the Feb. 14 edition of the journal Environmental Research Letters, Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Elena Bennett of McGill University report that the human use of phosphorous, primarily in the industrialized world, is causing the widespread eutrophication of fresh surface water. What’s more, the minable global stocks of phosphorous are concentrated in just a few countries and are in decline, posing the risk of global shortages within the next 20 years.

“There is a finite amount of phosphorous in the world,” says Carpenter, a UW-Madison professor of limnology and one of the world’s leading authorities on lakes and streams. “This is a material that’s becoming more rare and we need to use it more efficiently.”

Full Story Here: World phosphorous use crosses critical threshold.

Thousands gather at Capitol to protest Walker budget bill

In one of the largest protests in recent memory, thousands of angry union supporters gathered at the state Capitol on Tuesday to oppose a bill by Gov. Scott Walker that would greatly weaken organized labor in Wisconsin.

More than 12,000 protesters gathered in two separate rallies outside the Capitol, many of them carrying signs and chanting “Recall Walker” or “Kill this bill.” Thousands more crowded inside the rotunda and watched TV monitors broadcasting a public hearing on the governor’s proposal.

Capitol Police officers, Department of Natural Resources wardens, UW police and state troopers provided beefed-up security, but the crowd remained peaceful — if loud.

Full Story Here: Thousands gather at Capitol to protest Walker budget bill.

REPORT: The Five Ways That The GOP Is Trying To Eradicate A Woman’s Right To Choose

South Dakota is one of the most anti-abortion states in the country. In 1994, the state banned abortion providers inside its borders. “Planned Parenthood flies a doctor in from out-of-state once a week to see patients at a Sioux Falls clinic. Women from the more remote parts of the large, rural state drive up to six hours to reach this lone clinic” and must “receive counseling and wait 24 hours before undergoing the procedure.”

Now, it seems South Dakota is willing to legalize acts of terror in order to be the number one anti-abortion state in the U.S. The South Dakota House is taking up a bill to redefine “justifiable homicide” that may “make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions,” Mother Jones reports. Passed out of committee on a 9-3 party line vote, the GOP-backed bill “could in theory allow a woman’s father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion — even if she wanted one.”

South Dakota’s House of Representatives is dominated by the GOP — a party that was swept into power by promising job creation, and is delivering the “most comprehensive and radical assault on women’s health in our lifetime.” The recent barrage of anti-reproductive rights bills betray “a broader national strategy” by pro-life advocates to manufacture callous, often perverse, obstacles to women’s reproductive rights. During the first months of their legislative sessions, GOP lawmakers at the state and federal level have come up with four other radical abortion restrictions to marginalize women’s rights and eradicate choice:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » REPORT: The Five Ways That The GOP Is Trying To Eradicate A Woman’s Right To Choose.

Green Bay Packers Criticize WI Gov: ‘Right To Negotiate Wages And Benefits’ Is ‘Fundamental’ To Middle Class

Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted the huge backlash from Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) “budget repair bill,” which would severely limit collective bargaining and eliminate the right of unions to negotiate pensions, retirement, and benefits. When asked by a reporter what would happen if workers resist, Walker threatened to use the “National Guard” against a possible walkout.

In response to Walker’s intent to misappropriate the deployment of the National Guard in an effort to intimidate state workers, the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers released a statement today, expressing that collective bargaining is “fundamental” to the middle class:

As a publicly owned team we wouldn’t have been able to win the Super Bowl without the support of our fans. … They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. But now in an unprecedented political attack Governor Walker is trying to take away their right to have a voice and bargain at work.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Green Bay Packers Criticize WI Gov: ‘Right To Negotiate Wages And Benefits’ Is ‘Fundamental’ To Middle Class.

Missouri Lawmaker Pushes Bill Rolling Back Child Labor Laws

Missouri State Sen. Jane Cunningham (R) is pushing a bill which would dramatically claw back state child labor protections. As the bill’s official summary explains:

This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Missouri Lawmaker Pushes Bill Rolling Back Child Labor Laws.

OPS:  Republican are truly degenerate,  sick.

Five Progressive Deficit Reduction Ideas That Both Obama And The House Republicans Failed To Endorse

In the past week, House Republicans unveiled their fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the operations of the federal government while President Obama announced his 2012 budget request.

Both of the economic plans contained within these documents take aim at the budget deficit in different ways. The House GOP’s CR has far deeper cuts to public investments and social services, including terminating $5 billion in high speed rail funding, $86 million in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and $40 million from the Green Jobs Investment Fund.

While the Obama budget does far more to maintain public investment and does endorse some progressive means of deficit reduction — like ending billions of dollars of taxpayer support for the oil industry — it also includes a number of cuts to social services that assist working class and low-income Americans. Included among these cuts is a $100 billion reduction in the Pell Grant program that involves ending grants for summer classes and terminating federal subsidies “that pay the interest on graduate students’ federal loans while they’re in school” and cutting billions of dollars from the LIHEAP program, which funds energy assistance for low-income Americans.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Five Progressive Deficit Reduction Ideas That Both Obama And The House Republicans Failed To Endorse.

The GOP Plot to Destroy Legal Aid

Behind the conservative effort to gut a crucial anti-poverty lifeline.

Last month, when the House conservative caucus proposed scrapping a program that has provided the poor with free legal assistance for nearly four decades, it felt like déjà-vu. Indeed, this provision of the GOP’s Spending Reduction Act of 2011 was simply the latest salvo against an entity that’s been under siege by conservatives since the day it was conceived.

Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a federally funded nonprofit that doles out money ($420 million this year) to 136 independent groups providing legal services in hundreds of communities around the nation. Debt collectors knocking down your door? Foreclosure mill trying to take your house? If you can’t afford a lawyer and your family is hovering near the federal poverty line, then the LSC is your ticket to legal representation.

Full Story Here: The GOP Plot to Destroy Legal Aid | Mother Jones.

US: Prisoners Have No Choice But to Drink Arsenic-Laced Water

When Kern Valley State Prison opened in 2005, the 379 million dollar facility in Central California was hailed as “state of the art”. But within weeks of opening, a major problem was discovered: its water was poisoned – containing roughly twice the federally permitted level of arsenic, a known carcinogen.

And nothing has been done about it.

“They really don’t care,” says Bertha Nava, the mother of an inmate who has for more than five years been forced to drink the contaminated water at Kern Valley State Prison. He’s complained that the water not only tastes bad, but looks it too – “like part urine, part water”.

In the nearly six years since the issue was uncovered, the more than 5,000 incarcerated men at Kern Valley State Prison continue to consume water that regularly tests positive for elevated levels of arsenic. Every person in a position of authority – every person in a position to change things for the better – from California lawmakers to prison officials to regulators within the state’s Department of Public Health, has failed the prisoners.

The pain Nava feels is evident when she talks about her and other mothers’ efforts to secure their children something as basic as drinking water that won’t slowly kill them.

Full Story Here: US: Prisoners Have No Choice But to Drink Arsenic-Laced Water – IPS ipsnews.net.

TSA comes under fire again as employees admit to repeatedly stealing money from passengers

A TSA supervisor stole money from passengers who went through his security checkpoint and accepted bribes and kickbacks from a colleague.

Michael Arato, a supervisor at Newark Liberty Airport, admitted on Monday that he regularly took money from passengers during security screenings and deliberately targeted foreigners who could not speak much English.

The 41-year-old, from Ewing, admitted in federal court that he permitted a worker he supervised to steal $10,000 to $30,000 in cash from traveller’s bags over a 13-month period.

Full Story Here: TSA comes under fire again as employees admit to repeatedly stealing money from passengers | Mail Online.

Here’s a Common-Sense Place to Reduce Spending: Cut DEA’s $15B Budget, Close Its 62 Overseas Field Offices

The war in Afganistan may have overtaken the Vietnam War to become America’s longest military engagement, but in terms of longevity, cost and futility, nothing can compete with America’s “war on drugs.”

The fact that the war on drugs is failing has become so obvious that even Foxnews.com, the online portal of the Republican Party’s own propaganda channel, said so, at length, in an article published last May:

After 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread…

Full Story Here: Pensito Review » Here’s a Common-Sense Place to Reduce Spending: Cut DEA’s $15B Budget, Close Its 62 Overseas Field Offices.

New information emerges on anti-WikiLeaks plot

Tech firm suspends employee involved in plan to attack WikiLeaks and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald

Here’s an update on the unfolding story of the trio of technology firms that hatched a plan to attack WikiLeaks and their supporters in the press — including Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. The plan was apparently prepared at the behest of Hunton and Williams, a large law firm working for Bank of America, which is worried because it is reportedly the subject of a future WikiLeaks document release.

The plan (.pdf) was outlined in a slideshow prepared by the three security firms; it was obtained and released online by the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers known as Anonymous. One of the three firms, Palantir Technologies, just announced that it has put an engineer who was involved in the project on leave “pending a thorough review of his actions.”

When this story broke last week, Palantir was quick to deny any involvement in the anti-WikiLeaks plan and to sever ties with one of the partner firms, HBGary, that had masterminded the plan. One of several provocative items in the plan said that Greenwald’s public support for WikiLeaks needed “to be disrupted.”

Full Story Here: New information emerges on anti-WikiLeaks plot – War Room – Salon.com.

Chevron pays for poisoning Ecuador

After 17 years of courtroom battling, oil conglomerate to pay $8 billion towards damages affecting 30,000 locals

An Ecuadorean judge ruled Monday that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador’s northern jungle. The plaintiffs’ attorney says the company was fined $8 billion.

Chevron confirmed the ruling but not the amount of the fine. The company said in a news release that it would appeal, and called the judge’s decision “illegitimate and unenforceable.”

The high-profile case, fraught with intrigue, corporate espionage and geopolitics, had been winding its way through U.S. and Ecuadorean courts for 17 years.

Full Story Here: Chevron pays for poisoning Ecuador – Environment – Salon.com.

US Boots on the Ground Near Thai-Cambodian Border Fight

Thousands of U.S. troops are currently training Bangkok’s poorly disciplined, coup-prone military to “defend Thailand” while a bloody artillery duel between Thailand and Cambodia has disrupted their border, and a decades-long southern Muslim insurgency smolders out of control.

America’s 30th Cobra Gold, from February 7 to February 18, is one of the biggest multinational land-based military exercises on earth, involving 11,220 people, including 7,200 U.S. service members.

U.S. and other foreign forces are using Thailand’s Vietnam war-era Utapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield in Chanthaburi province and other facilities, about 280 miles (450 kms) southwest of the fighting along the Thai-Cambodian border.

The U.S. Marine Aircraft Group 36, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, Third Marine Expeditionary Force, is deployed in Korat, about 180 miles (290 kms) west of the clashes.

Full Story Here: US Boots on the Ground Near Thai-Cambodian Border Fight | Scoop News.

Why Obama’s Budget Sell-Out to Republicans Threatens Our Economy

Obama’s budget proposal hinges on major cuts that ensure that Republicans get to control the conversation on spending.

President Obama has chosen to fight fire with gasoline.

Republicans want America to believe the economy is still lousy because government is too big, and the way to revive the economy is to cut federal spending. Sunday Republican Speaker John Boehner even refused to rule out a government shut-down if Republicans don’t get the spending cuts they want.

On Monday, Obama poured gas on the Republican flame by proposing a 2012 federal budget that cuts the federal deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. About $400 billion of this will come from a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending — including all sorts of programs for poor and working-class Americans, such as heating assistance to low-income people and community-service block grants. Most of the rest from additional spending cuts, such as grants to states for water treatment plants and other environmental projects and higher interest charges on federal loans to graduate students.

Full Story Here: Why Obama’s Budget Sell-Out to Republicans Threatens Our Economy | Economy | AlterNet.

Bill Moyers: “Facts Still Matter …”

History Makers is an organization of broadcasters and producers from around the world concerned with the challenges and opportunities faced by factual broadcasting. Bill Moyers was the keynote speaker at the 2011 convention on January 27, 2011, in New York City.

Thanks to all of you for your welcome – and for the chance to be here among so many kindred spirits. Your dedication to factual broadcasting, to our craft and calling; your passion for telling stories that matter; for connecting the present to the past, has created a community whose work is essential in this disquieting time when “what is happening today, this hour, this very minute, seems to be our sole criterion for judgment and action.” It is a sad world that exists only in the present, unaware of the long procession that brought us here. As Milan Kundera’s insight reminds us, the struggle against power “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

I talked about this gathering when I was in California this past weekend and spent time with a good friend and supporter of my own work on television, Paul Orfalea. He’s the maverick entrepreneur who founded Kinko’s in a former hamburger stand with one small rented Xerox copier and turned it into a business service empire with more than two billion dollars a year in revenue. After selling Kinko’s, Paul became one of the most popular, if unorthodox, teachers of undergraduates at the University of California/ Santa Barbara. When I told him what I would be doing today he applauded and understood immediately the importance of what you do. He described to me how he teaches history “backwards” to college students who have learned little about the past in high school, don’t know that the past is even alive, much less that it lives in them and question its value today. He hands his students a contemporary story from some daily news source, tells them to begin with the “now” of it and to then walk the trail back down the chronology to trace the personalities, circumstances and choices that made it today’s news. Their assignment, in effect, is to begin at the entrance to the cave and rewind Ariadne’s thread in the opposite direction, back to the deep origins of the story. In an era marked by the lack of continuity and community between the generations, this strikes me as an inspired way to stretch young imaginations across the time zones of human experience.

Full Story Here: Bill Moyers: “Facts Still Matter …”.

Austerity Budget Means More Unemployment

Dean Baker: Obama is arguing on the Republican’s turf, he’s lost control of the debate

Video:

Kentucky Senate Votes to End Guaranteed Pensions

The Kentucky state Senate passed a bill Friday that would end guaranteed pensions for new state and local government employees. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that the bill was designed to address the public pension funds’ growing liability. The paper reports:

Kentucky needs to stay ahead of the multibillion-dollar pension liability problem that is forcing tax hikes and painful spending reductions in other states, said Republican senators backing the bill. “It is just not affordable to go forward with our current plan, for state government or for local governments,” Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, told his colleagues.

Full Story Here: Kentucky Senate Votes to End Guaranteed Pensions.

Giant Hidden Planet, May Exist In Our Solar System

We may have lost Pluto, but it looks like we might be getting Tyche.

Scientists may soon be able to prove the existence of the gas giant, which could be four times the size of Jupiter, according to astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The two first proposed Tyche’s existence in order to explain a change in path of comets entering the solar system, according to The Independent.

From the The Independent:

Tyche will almost certainly be made up mostly of hydrogen and helium and will probably have an atmosphere much like Jupiter’s, with colourful spots and bands and clouds, Professor Whitmire said. “You’d also expect it to have moons. All the outer planets have them,” he added.

For a graphical representation of Tyche, click here.

So how could we have missed such a massive planet in our own solar system?

Full Story Here: Tyche, Giant Hidden Planet, May Exist In Our Solar System.

Award-Winning Inventor Makes Fuel from Plastic Bags

What most of us see as the ubiquitous blight of modern convenience consumerism, i.e., littered plastic shopping bags, Japanese inventor Akinori Ito sees as the “fuel of the future”. Like most sensible inventions, Ito’s began with the simple realization that plastic bags are made from oil. Thus, it should be possible, he theorized, to revert these same items back to their original form.

His invention is actually a non-polluting, fully contained process that heats up the plastic, traps the vapors and channels them through an intricate system of pipes and water chambers. These, in turn, cool the vapors and condense them back into crude oil. This crude oil can be used in generators and even some stoves. An additional refinement step converts the crude oil into gasoline.

The carbon-negative system — now offered by Ito’s Blest Corporation, founded in early 2010 — is a highly-efficient technology, converting 1 kilogram (about 2 lbs.) of plastic into 1 liter (about a quart) of oil using just 1 kilowatt of power (cost: about .20 cents). However, the current cost of this system is just under 10,000 USD. Ito hopes to bring this price down through ramping up the production process as the word gets out and demand increases.

Full Story Here: Award-Winning Inventor Makes Fuel from Plastic Bags – CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views.

Proposed GOP Spending Plan Terminates Important Investments In Infrastructure, Education, Job Creation

The Obama administration officially releases its fiscal year 2012 budget today, but the fate of government funding for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year (which ends in October) is still up in the air. The House Appropriations committee last week released its initial plan to finish the fiscal year, which involved about $30 billion in cuts.

However, more conservative Republicans revolted, and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) was forced to go back to the drawing board for more cuts. His new product would cut about $60 billion relative to the 2010 baseline (under which the government is currently operating), or about $100 billion compared to President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request (which was never enacted).

The GOP’s proposal includes a slew of cuts to important programs, agencies, and investments, and would be detrimental to job creation, education, and scientific research. But they also specifically zero out many programs, cutting their funding entirely, including:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Proposed GOP Spending Plan Terminates Important Investments In Infrastructure, Education, Job Creation.

House Republicans Cut Funding That Protects Us From Nuclear Terrorism

On Friday, House Republicans put forth a “continuing resolution” (CR) to fund the government past March 4th that was filled with spending cuts. While this came as no surprise, one focus of the cuts is causing some heads to turn. House Republicans are choosing to significantly cut the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation programs, the sole purpose of which is to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on loose nuclear weapons and materials. While Republicans have talked about the need to inflict pain in their budget, doing so in a way that increases the risk of the nuclear annihilation of an American city is perhaps taking the pledge too far.

House Republicans have proposed to cut funding for these programs by 22 percent or $647 million. Michelle Marchesano of the Partnership for Global Security warns:

The US programs charged with securing fissile materials and thwarting terrorists’ efforts to acquire them are among the victims of this year’s federal budget fights. … Without appropriated budgets commensurate to program agendas, efforts to improve global nuclear material security will stall.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » House Republicans Cut Funding That Protects Us From Nuclear Terrorism.

OPS: proving once again that republicans are suicidal: Ideology trumps everything , even survival

ChamberLeaks: The Chamber’s Anti-Union Lawyers Solicited ‘Abhorrent’ Privacy Invasions

Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that top lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce solicited private security contractors to investigate the Chamber’s political opponents. The law firm, Hunton & Williams LLP, represents the Chamber against campaigns by unions and political activists. In 2009, the Chamber paid Hunton & Williams $1,147,644 for its services. The law firm has represented subprime mortgagers, global warming polluters, and tobacco giant Phillip Morris.

Three Hunton & Williams partners engaged the services of Palantir, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal to perform the invasions of privacy the Chamber itself now describes as “abhorrent“:

– Richard L. Wyatt Jr., co-head of the firm’s Litigation Group, who is suing the Yes Men on behalf of the Chamber. Wyatt negotiated with the spy firms on pricing and told them he would sell the project to the Chamber.

– Robert T. Quackenboss, a lawyer who handles “the tactical and public communications response to union-coordinated attack campaigns.” In this effort, Quackenboss was the “key client contact operationally” with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

– John W. Woods, an expert on “electronic surveillance” and “corporate crimes.” Woods was the “primary point of contact” with the corporate spy contractors.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » ChamberLeaks: The Chamber’s Anti-Union Lawyers Solicited ‘Abhorrent’ Privacy Invasions.

What Egypt Teaches Us About Iraq: Arabs Can Do Democracy Without Invasion

Although it is still unclear exactly what the many motivations behind the Bush administration-led invasion of Iraq were, one of the most touted justifications for that war was that the United States attacked the sovereign country in order to overthrow a dictator and spread democracy in the Middle East.

Yet as the future of Iraq remains tumultuous and unclear, a recent wave of mostly nonviolent homegrown revolts — being dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution” in reference to a blooming flower — in Egypt and Tunisia that overthrew longtime dictators within a matter of weeks are offering an alternative model of democracy promotion.

Veteran Reuters Middle East correspondent Samia Nakhoul, who has been covering the Middle East since 1986 and reported from post-war Iraq and Egypt during the recent revolution, notes this in a special piece for Reuters today. She observes that the toppling of Saddam Hussein by a foreign army that gave way to an occupation, and later a civil war, “failed to ignite the sense of national triumph among Iraqis,” a stark contrast from the Egyptians who were “dancing in the streets after 18 days of popular protests” that overthrew Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » What Egypt Teaches Us About Iraq: Arabs Can Do Democracy Without Invasion.

Eat the Future

Paul Krugman: :

On Friday, House Republicans unveiled their proposal for immediate cuts in federal spending. Uncharacteristically, they failed to accompany the release with a catchy slogan. So I’d like to propose one: Eat the Future.

I’ll explain in a minute. First, let’s talk about the dilemma the G.O.P. faces.

Republican leaders like to claim that the midterms gave them a mandate for sharp cuts in government spending. Some of us believe that the elections were less about spending than they were about persistent high unemployment, but whatever. The key point to understand is that while many voters say that they want lower spending, press the issue a bit further and it turns out that they only want to cut spending on other people.

That’s the lesson from a new survey by the Pew Research Center, in which Americans were asked whether they favored higher or lower spending in a variety of areas. It turns out that they want more, not less, spending on most things, including education and Medicare. They’re evenly divided about spending on aid to the unemployed and — surprise — defense.

Full Story Here: Eat the Future – NYTimes.com.

EPA Wants to Look at Full Lifecycle of Fracking in New Study

The EPA has proposed examining every aspect of hydraulic fracturing, from water withdrawals to waste disposal, according to a draft plan the agency released Tuesday. If the study goes forward as planned, it would be the most comprehensive investigation of whether the drilling technique risks polluting drinking water near oil and gas wells across the nation.

The agency wants to look at the potential impacts on drinking water of each stage involved in hydraulic fracturing, where drillers mix water with chemicals and sand and inject the fluid into wells to release oil or natural gas. In addition to examining the actual injection, the study would look at withdrawals, the mixing of the chemicals, and wastewater management and disposal. The agency, under a mandate from Congress, will only look at the impact of these practices on drinking water.

The agency’s scientific advisory board will review the draft plan on March 7-8 and will allow for public comments then. The EPA will consider any recommendations from the board and then begin the study promptly, it said in a news release. A preliminary report should be ready by the end of next year, the release said, with a full report expected in 2014.

Full Story Here: On The Hill: EPA Wants to Look at Full Lifecycle of Fracking in New Study.

The Republicans are Marketing Treason

Treason is in the air. The Republican Party has declared war on America. While proclaiming the founding documents and holding up the Founding Fathers as heroes, the Republican Party has shown that it either doesn’t know what the Constitution really says, and if it does it doesn’t care, and that what the Founding Fathers really said is irrelevant compared to what Republicans say they said. Republican loyalty is neither to the actual, physical Constitution, nor to the very secular ideals of the European Enlightenment that gave birth to it and to this nation. Their loyalty is to a country that does not exist, has not existed, and was never meant to exist.

All they have to do to avoid charges of treason is convince you a lie is the truth. It’s an easy matter really: just rewrite the history books and keep repeating the lie. They have publishing houses, they have television networks, they have think tanks and they have political action committees up the wazoo and up the yin yang too. It’s a Republican mantra: when you lie, lie big. And blameshift: always, always, blame the other guy for what you’re doing.

Full Story Here: The Republicans are Marketing Treason.

Republicans to Gut the SEC

Republicans plan to roll back the SEC budget to 2008 levels. By doing so, they will not decrease the deficit one penny, because the SEC is funded exclusively through fees charged to Wall Street. So cutting SEC’s budget saves the Republicans’ bankster buddies a small amount on fees. But despite their claims, that is not their real reason. Their goal is to prevent the SEC from regulating Wall Street.

The new financial regulation law gave the Securities and Exchange Commission a big new job to police hedge funds, derivatives dealers and credit agencies — some of the main culprits in the financial meltdown. It authorized raising the commission’s budget to $2.25 billion, over five years. Now Congress is threatening to deny the S.E.C. the necessary financing to carry out its duties.

What makes this even more absurd is that the S.E.C. doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. Its budget, like that of other financial regulators, is covered by fees assessed on Wall Street firms. While the other regulators decide their own financing needs, Congress sets the S.E.C.’s budget.

The agency’s budget was due to rise $200 million this year to $1.3 billion, but hasn’t because of the across-the-board freeze in discretionary spending. If House Republicans get their way and roll back spending to 2008 levels, the S.E.C. budget would fall to $906 million.

Mary Schapiro, the chairwoman of the S.E.C., warns that more

Full Story Here: Republicans to Gut the SEC » Politics Plus.

Wisconsin governor threatens to call National Guard on state workers

Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, announced an assault against state workers last Friday, eliminating collective bargaining rights and threatening to fire workers who go on strike. The plan would divert 5.8 percent of workers’ pay to the state pension fund, and an additional 12.6 percent of their pay to employee health care premiums.

Walker’s proposal, which he said would quickly pass in the state legislature, drastically limits collective bargaining, removing the right of unions to negotiate pensions, retirement and benefits. It further bars union dues check-offs for government workers, meaning that workers will have to pay dues individually.

When asked by a reporter what will happen if workers resist, Walker replied that he would call out the National Guard. He said that the National Guard is “prepared … for whatever the governor, the

Full Story Here: Wisconsin governor threatens to call National Guard on state workers.

Report: Egypt Shut Down Net With Big Switch, Not Phone Calls

The Egyptian government shut down most of its country’s internet not by phoning ISPs one at a time, but by simply throwing a switch in a crucial data center in Cairo.

That according to a February presentation to the Department of Homeland Security’s Infosec Technology Transition Council, obtained by Wired.com.

The presentation — made by Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House — argues that the Egyptian Communications Ministry acted quite responsibly in the procedure it used to cut ties from the net, after the shutdown was ordered by Egypt’s much-feared intelligence service.

“Most of the outage was effected through a breaker flipped in the Ramses exchange, and the rest was phone calls and arm-twisting,” the presentation says. ‘Ramses exchange’ refers to a central building in Cairo where Egyptian ISPs meet to trade traffic and connect outside of the country, a facility known as an Internet Exchange Point.

Full Story Here: Report: Egypt Shut Down Net With Big Switch, Not Phone Calls | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Why the Coming Debate Over Spending Cuts Has Nothing to Do With Reviving the Economy

Robert Reich: :

President Obama has chosen to fight fire with gasoline.

Republicans want America to believe the economy is still lousy because government is too big, and the way to revive the economy is

to cut federal spending. Today (Sunday) Republican Speaker John Boehner even refused to rule out a government shut-down if Republicans don’t get the spending cuts they want.

Tomorrow (Monday) Obama pours gas on the Republican flame by proposing a 2012 federal budget that cuts the federal deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. About $400 billion of this will come from a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending – including all sorts of programs for poor and working-class Americans, such as heating assistance to low-income people. Most of the rest from additional spending cuts.

That means the Great Debate that starts this week will be set by Republicans: Does Obama cut enough spending? How much more will he have cut in order to appease Republicans? If they don’t get the spending cuts they want, will Tea-Party Republicans demand a shut-down?

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (Why the Coming Debate Over Spending Cuts Has Nothing to Do With Reviving the Economy).

Shocking New IMF Report: The U.S. Dollar Needs To Be Replaced As The World Reserve Currency And SDRs “Could Constitute An Embryo Of Global Currency”

The IMF is trying to move the world away from the U.S. dollar and towards a global currency once again. In a new report entitled “Enhancing International Monetary Stability—A Role for the SDR”, the IMF details the “problems” with having the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the globe and the IMF discusses the potential for a larger role for SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). But the IMF certainly does not view SDRs as the “final solution” to global currency problems. Rather, the IMF considers SDRs to be a transitional phase between what we have now and a new world currency. In this newly published report, the IMF makes this point very clearly: “In the even longer run, if there were political willingness to do so, these securities could constitute an embryo of global currency.” Yes, you read that correctly. The SDR is supposed to be “an embryo” from which a global currency will one day develop. So what about the U.S. dollar and other national currencies? Well, they would just end up fading away.

CNN clearly understands what the IMF is trying to accomplish with this new report. The following is how CNN’s recent story about the new IMF report begins….

Full Story Here: Shocking New IMF Report: The U.S. Dollar Needs To Be Replaced As The World Reserve Currency And SDRs “Could Constitute An Embryo Of Global Currency”.

The Invisible, Growing Leaderless Revolution in America

At first glance, the “leaderless revolution” in Egypt has nothing in common with the recent closing of Allyson’s, a local deli here in our small Oregon town. Until you hear why the bank called the note. “… the balance and payments are due.”

Quoting from a CommonDreams.org article by David Porter on Egypt, “It is the slowly-accumulating momentum of hundreds of thousands of confrontations with local officials and elites… that slowly develop the courage, confidence and essential horizontal networks bubbling below the surface…”

How many Allyson’s stories are accumulating throughout America? How many business owners and employees, home owners and credit card users have had their lives turned upside down by banker’s decisions like this one, so utterly devoid of humanity?

Full Story Here: The Invisible, Growing Leaderless Revolution in America | Common Dreams.

Political Powerhouses Tell House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa to Gut Regulations

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, this week released nearly 2,000 pages of documents from more than 100 companies and trade associations outlining federal regulations they’d like to axe.

Most of these groups have also invested significant sums in lobbying and donations to lawmakers to make their political points, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, although numerous small businesses targeted by Issa for feedback do not operate political action committees or hire lobbyists.

By the Center’s count, 58 of these organizations that Issa solicited for comments are politically active, having spent a combined $456 million on lobbying since 2009. And during the 2010 election, through their PACs and employees, they’ve also contributed about $8.9 million to federal-level candidates and committees, with about 68 percent of that sum benefiting Republicans.

Issa defended his tactics in a press release announcing the disclosure of the 2,000 pages of letters from these companies and business groups.

Full Story Here: Political Powerhouses Tell House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa to Gut Regulations – OpenSecrets Blog | OpenSecrets.

Obama domestic budget — cut, cut, cut

President Obama, who is proposing his third annual budget on Monday, will say that it can reduce projected deficits by $1.1 trillion over the next decade, enough to stabilize the nation’s fiscal health and buy time to address its longer-term problems, according to a senior administration official.

Two-thirds of the reductions that Mr. Obama will claim are from cuts in spending, including in many domestic programs that he supports. Among the reductions for just the next fiscal year, 2012, which starts Oct. 1, are more than $1 billion from airport grants and nearly $1 billion from grants to states for water treatment plants and similar projects. Public health and forestry programs would also be cut.

Home energy assistance to low-income families and community service block grants would be cut in half, and an initiative to restore the Great Lakes’ environmental health would be reduced by one-quarter.

Full Story Here: NYT: Obama domestic budget — cut, cut, cut – Politics – The New York Times – msnbc.com.

Obama to seek changes in Pell Grants

President Barack Obama’s budget plan would cut $100 billion from Pell Grants and other higher education programs over a decade through belt-tightening and use the savings to keep the maximum college financial aid award at $5,550, an administration official said.

Nearly $90 billion of the projected savings would be achieved through two changes, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Monday’s release of Obama’s 2012 budget. The spending plan applies to the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

Congress would have to approve both changes.

The first proposal would end the “year-round Pell” policy that let students collect two grants in a calendar year, with the second grant used for summer school. The official said the costs exceeded expectations and there was little evidence that students earn their degrees any faster.

Full Story Here: AP Source: Obama to seek changes in Pell Grants – Yahoo! News.

OPS: Obama, moving farther to the right

Supreme Court Corruption Grows with Clarence & Ginny Thomas, Samuel Alito

–The Supreme Court is increasingly corrupt, starting with Samuel Alito and most recently Clarence Thomas and his wife.

–On the Bonus Show More audience emails, Rumsfeld sheds light on Bush motivations for Iraq War, for profit college recruiters using unethical tactics, and more.

Full Story Here: YouTube – Supreme Court Corruption Grows with Clarence & Ginny Thomas, Samuel Alito.

Cleanup Over? “Football field” of submerged oil found in Florida — “Oil washing onshore everyday”

BP Beach Cleanup, WEAR ABC 3, February 12, 2011:

Transcript Excerpts … BP is now saying the sand is clean, and wants to take all their heavy equipment away. That request is not sitting well with Escambia County commissioners, who say there is still oil washing onshore everyday. Pat Schibline [president of the Eden Homeowners Association on Perdido Key]… says its been a constant fight to get BP to do anything about the submerged oil that is literally sitting in his backyard. There is a tarmat the size of a football field, somewhere between 12-30 inches below the sand level out in front of Eden Each morning after sunrise, beaches are covered with tar balls according to Eden Homeowners. BP crews come scoop them up, then call it a clean beach, which they say just isn’t true…

Full Story Here: YouTube – Cleanup Over? “Football field” of submerged oil found in Florida — “Oil washing onshore everyday”.

US Internet censorship fight falling short: report

State Department efforts to combat Internet censorship in China and other countries have fallen short and funding for the drive should be shifted to another US agency, a Senate committee report says.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report sharply criticizes the State Department for being slow in spending money allocated by Congress for Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology (ICCT).

The report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, recommends that the funding be given instead to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and other US radio and TV networks.

The report is to be released on Tuesday, the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to deliver remarks on Internet freedom at George Washington University here.

Full Story Here: US Internet censorship fight falling short: report | The Raw Story.

Obama’s Big Budget Cut Proposals Target The Poor

As Democrats and Republicans wrangle over fiscal austerity and the shape of the 2012 federal budget, the White House is targeting programs in the $4 trillion budget that benefit low-income Americans.

It’s a sop to moderates and conservatives, and it’s likely to infuriate voters who put President Barack Obama in the White House.

In the past week, the Obama administration has signaled that it will propose significant cuts to community service block grants and an energy assistance program that helps poor people stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

A White House source familiar with the budget process told HuffPost that the president will propose cutting $2.5 billion from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which received $5.1 billion in federal funds in 2009. That program distributes money to states, which then distribute it to social service agencies to help families heat or cool their homes.

Full Story Here: Obama’s Big Budget Cut Proposals Target The Poor.

The States With The Worst Eating Habits

Americans are fat and getting fatter by the year. Recent data reported in medical journal Lancet showed that BMI (Body Mass Index), a recognized measurement of obesity, is higher on average in America than in any other nation.

The obesity problem, however, is international. The report in Lancet states that “In 2008, 9.8 percent of the world’s male population were obese, as were 13.8 percent of women. In 1980, these rates were 4.8 percent and 7.9 percent.” US eating habits and diets have been exported, many experts say. Nations which before had relatively lean diets which were high in grains and fruits now consume many more soft drinks and hamburgers.

Full Story Here: The States With The Worst Eating Habits: 24/7 Wall Street.

CBS’ Bob Schieffer Drops Harry Reid In Favor Of John McCain To Discuss Egypt

On local Washington, D.C. talk radio on Friday, CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer discussed his thought process behind the selection of John McCain to be his guest tomorrow:

We were gonna have Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, and thought this would be the week we could kinda get back to covering what’s going on in Washington. But, we added last night Sen. John McCain from the Foreign Relations Committee. We’ll be spending a lot of time in the square there in Cairo if things continue to go as they are.

The Face the Nation website indicates Harry Reid will not be appearing and that McCain is the only elected official on the show. Listen here:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » CBS’ Bob Schieffer Drops Harry Reid In Favor Of John McCain To Discuss Egypt.

REPORT: Five Arab Countries That The ‘Jasmine Revolution’ May Spread To Next

Last month, the world was shocked as the Tunisian autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled his country for 23 years, was overthrown in a protest movement that lasted only 29 days. The event was soon dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution,” a symbolic reference to a blooming flower. While many doubted that this revolution would spread, it was only days later that massive protests rocked Cairo, resulting in the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for more than 30 years. While the fate of both countries is still unresolved, one thing is clear: the people are demanding democracy, and they have forced massive changes in their government to get it.

Now, many are wondering if this pro-democracy movement that swept Tunisia and Egypt will spread throughout the rest of the Arab world. ThinkProgress has assembled a short list of other autocratic regimes in the region that are facing protests, particularly today, and which may soon be the next to go in the Middle East’s next “Jasmine Revolution”:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » REPORT: Five Arab Countries That The ‘Jasmine Revolution’ May Spread To Next.

Frank Gaffney Braves Muslim Brotherhood Infiltration To Warn CPAC About Grover Norquist

CPAC is the year’s preeminent conservative conference, bringing together the right and the far-right, but one very prominent neo-conservative voice had vowed to boycott the event this year because, he claimed, the Muslim Bortherhood had “infiltrated” its ranks. Center for Security Policy head Frank Gaffney has made a career of spinning theories about Islamic extremists infiltrating the federal government, but could radical Reaganites really be abetting radical Islamists?

ThinkProgress asked him the question Friday afternoon when we spotted him breaking his self-imposed exile to “do some interviews” at CPAC (we saw him again Saturday morning as well). In a lengthy interview with ThinkProgress, Gaffney warned that Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist and influential Republican strategist, was spearheading “active measure” campaigns within the conservative establishment on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. “I belive the conservative movement is being subjected to a concerted Muslim Brotherhood infiltration effort,” Gaffney told us, adding that Norquist began his insidious effort in the 1980s. Norquist’s wife is Muslim.

Asked for evidence of infiltration at CPAC, Gaffney pointed to the presence of Norquist — indeed, they passed within 20 feet of each other at one point — and of former Bush Muslim outreach director Suhail Kahn, whom Gaffney also accused of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood. Asked for further evidence, Gaffney came up empty, saying, “I have not been here long enough.” The presence of Norquist and Kahn was “sufficient” evidence “to be of concern,” Gaffney explained. Watch ThinkProgress’ full ten-minute interview with Gaffney:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Frank Gaffney Braves Muslim Brotherhood Infiltration To Warn CPAC About Grover Norquist.

5 Ways Corporate Scavengers Are Making Big Money Off Our Economic Pain

Big business has found a number of ways to profit from the economic suffering on ‘Main Street.’

The ruins of the American economy represent a massive crime scene. Wall Street built a house of cards on fraud and misrepresentation, it crashed, and Americans’ aggregate net worth is now more than $12 trillion off of its peak. Unemployment remains sky-high and the prospects for a robust recovery anytime soon are dim.

But as Naomi Klein artfully laid out in her book, The Shock Doctrine, a catastrophe for you and I usually presents an opportunity for the Titans of capital. And the grievous economic crisis affecting so many American families is no exception — big business has found a number of ways to profit, directly, from Main Street’s economic pain. Like vultures descending on a rotting corpse, they’ve come up with a variety of innovative methods to pull the last scraps of meat off the bones of America’s middle-class.

Here are five ways these scavengers are making coin from our economic devastation.

Full Story Here: 5 Ways Corporate Scavengers Are Making Big Money Off Our Economic Pain | Economy | AlterNet.

Egypt’s Military Dissolves Parliament – Calls for Vote

The Egyptian military consolidated its control Sunday over what it has called a democratic transition from three decades of President Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian rule, dissolving the country’s feeble parliament, suspending the constitution and calling for elections in six months in sweeping steps that echoed protesters’ demands.

The statement by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, read on television, effectively put Egypt under direct military authority, thrusting the country into territory uncharted since republican Egypt was founded in 1952. Though enjoying popular support, the military must now cope with the formidable task of negotiating a post-revolutionary landscape still basking in the glow of Mr. Mubarak’s fall but beset by demands to ameliorate hardships that percolated across Cairo on Sunday.

Since seizing power from Mr. Mubarak on Friday, the military has sought to strike the right note, responding in words and action to the platform articulated by hundreds of thousands in Tahrir Square. But beyond more protests, there is almost no check on the sweep of military rule, and while opposition leaders welcomed the moves some have quietly raised worries about the role of the army in Egypt’s future.

But others were more optimistic. Ayman Nour, who lost to Mr. Mubarak in the 2005 election, said that the military’s actions should be enough to satisfy the protesters, some of whom nevertheless refused to leave Tahrir Square and resisted soldiers’ attempts to evict them.

Full Story Here: Egypt’s Military Dissolves Parliament – Calls for Vote – NYTimes.com.

Vancouver lawyer says she’ll try to stop George W. Bush from visiting Surrey

A Vancouver lawyer says she will send a dossier on former U.S. president George W. Bush to the Canadian war-crime investigation unit in advance of his visit to Surrey later this year.

Gail Davidson, cofounder of Lawyers Against the War, told the Straight by phone that she’ll also send copies to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and “try to make a little bit more effective noise about keeping him out of the country this time”.

Davidson offered her comments in response to Surrey mayor Dianne Watts’s announcement today that Bush and former U.S. president Bill Clinton will speak at the fourth annual Surrey Regional Economic Summit later this year.

Full Story Here: Vancouver lawyer says she’ll try to stop George W. Bush from visiting Surrey | Vancouver, Canada | Straight.com.

Wikileaks – Saudi asked US to stop oil lawsuits | Citizens for Legitimate Government

Wikileaks – Saudi asked US to stop oil lawsuits 13 Feb 2011 According to US diplomatic cables seen by Wikileaks, Saudi Arabia in 2007 threatened to pull out of a Texas oil refinery investment unless the US government intervened to stop Saudi Aramco from being sued in US courts for alleged oil price fixing. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud, deputy Saudi oil minister, said that he wanted the US to grant Saudi Arabia sovereign immunity from lawsuits by ordering a Department of Justice statement of interest on its behalf. The cable said that Prince Abdulaziz told us that King Abdullah specifically had raised the lawsuit issue with Vice President [sic] Mr Cheney during his May visit and that the Saudi government would judge the administration’s willingness to file an SOI as a test of good faith. [Sounds reasonable. After all, Saudi Arabia provided the key players for Bush’s 9/11 – no 9/11, no phony war on (their own) terror. –LRP

Full Story Here: Wikileaks – Saudi asked US to stop oil lawsuits | Citizens for Legitimate Government.

‘Move to Amend’ but is ‘Corporate Personhood’ Valid Even Under Existing Constitution?

Sotomayor not first Supreme Court Justice to question 125 year-old decision…

As Vermont becomes the first state to consider a Constitutional amendment that would put an end to “corporate personhood”, it is perhaps worthwhile to examine the historical context in which the concept arose and the forceful challenges to its validity that have been mustered by a minority of Supreme Court Justices.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor created a stir when, during oral arguments in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, she not only questioned the validity of the corporate challenge to limits on campaign spending but questioned a legal doctrine which dates back to an 1886 decision, Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. She observed that it was the courts who “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” and that “an argument” could be made “that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”

Sotomayor, whose position was not included in Justice John Paul Steven’s dissenting opinion in Citizens United — a dissent she signed onto — is by no means the first Supreme Court Justice to question the legitimacy of a long-standing doctrine of U.S. corporate law which has served to undermine the very fabric of individual liberty and democratic accountability, permitting wealth, power and control over mass communications to be concentrated in the hands of the privileged few.

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : ‘Move to Amend’ but is ‘Corporate Personhood’ Valid Even Under Existing Constitution?.

Obama assertion: FBI can get phone records without oversight

The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.

That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.

Critics say the legal position is flawed and creates a potential loophole that could lead to a repeat of FBI abuses that were supposed to have been stopped in 2006.

The controversy over the telephone records is a legacy of the Bush administration’s war on terror. Critics say the Obama administration appears to be continuing many of the most controversial tactics of that strategy, including the assertion of sweeping executive powers.

Full Story Here: Obama assertion: FBI can get phone records without oversight | McClatchy.

Letter to the Department of Justice re: Conflicts of Interest in the Citizens United case – Common Cause

The Honorable Eric Holder, Jr.

Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder,

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010), has had a dramatic impact, overturning prior Court precedent, ending restrictions on corporate and union political spending that had been in place since 1947, and fueling a surge in secret and independent spending in the 2010 elections. Outside groups spent more than $296 million on the 2010 Congressional midterms – a 330 percent increase over 2006 – with more than $135 million of that coming from undisclosed donors¸ according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Since that decision, information has come to light that raises serious questions about the impartiality of Justices Thomas and Scalia in the Citizens United case. It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision. With respect to Justice Thomas, there may also be an undisclosed financial conflict of interest due to his wife’s role as CEO of Liberty Central, a 501(c)(4) organization that stood to benefit from the decision and played an active role in the 2010 elections.

Until these questions are resolved, public debate over allegations of bias and conflicts of interest will serve to undermine the legitimacy of the Citizens United decision and erode public confidence in the integrity of our nation’s highest court. As Attorney General, you are ideally situated to address this matter, both in the interest of justice and in the interest of your client, the Federal Election Commission. The Commission was the losing party in Citizens United, but may now have legitimate grounds to seek reconsideration.

Full Story Here: Letter to the Department of Justice re: Conflicts of Interest in the Citizens United case – Common Cause.

Warren Buffett: ‘Too Big To Fail’ Will Never Be Resolved

No matter what the government does, taxpayer bailouts of the financial sector will sometimes be necessary, according to the nation’s second richest man.

As markets crashed in the fall of 2008, government officials feared that if certain financial institutions failed, the entire financial system — or perhaps even the entire economy — would come down with them. In the months after the government extended a $700 billion bailout to the financial sector, lawmakers have striven to ensure that no institution poses such a systemic risk that it would be too big, or too interconnected, to be allowed to fail.

But famed investor Warren Buffett, whose own firm profited handsomely from the bailout, said bailouts are an inevitable feature of finance, Bloomberg reports.

Buffett, who is personally worth at least $45 billion, told the government panel charged with investigating the causes of the financial crisis that its work would not prevent the phenomenon of “too big to fail.”

Full Story Here: Warren Buffett: ‘Too Big To Fail’ Will Never Be Resolved.

Supreme Court, Inc.? Questions Remain about Scalia and Thomas’ Corporate Connections

A couple weeks ago, Change.org reported on a startling accusation: Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia may have had serious conflicts of interest when they decided the Citizens United case, a ruling which allowed corporations and unions unprecedented spending in elections. The case was decided by a 5-4 vote and has led to an avalanche of undisclosed outside money into electoral politics.

“It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision,” claimed Common Cause in a Jan. 20th letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The letter also calls attention to the fact that Justice Thomas’ wife may have benefitted financially from the decision, a fact that the Justice failed to disclose.

Justice Scalia also offered his constitutional expertise to the House Tea Party Caucus while Virginia Thomas, Justice Thomas’ wife, started a consulting firm to support the Tea Party and other conservative causes.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court, Inc.? Questions Remain about Scalia and Thomas’ Corporate Connections | Change.org News.

Public-sector workers earn less

It has become popular to target public-sector workers’ compensation as the cause of the budget shortfalls that many state and local governments face.  But evidence shows these workers earn less than their private-sector counterparts.

Last year, EPI published a paper by Rutgers University professor Jeffrey Keefe, which supplied overwhelming evidence that public-sector workers, on the whole, earn less than those in the private sector.

Keefe offered some suggestions for why these public employees are often perceived to be overcompensated. For starters, public sector workers are, as a group, more highly educated, work in more highly paid occupations and they tend to work moderately fewer hours than those in the private sector. In addition, it is frequently noted that public employees earn more in benefits such as health care and pensions: therefore, a simple wage comparison will not accurately capture difference in total compensation. Nonetheless, after controlling for multiple factors including level of education, hours worked and non-cash compensation, Keefe found that, on average, full-time state and local employees are undercompensated compared to “otherwise similar private-sector workers.”

Full Story Here: Public-sector workers earn less.

Failure by Design

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The Story Behind America’s Broken Economy

A new book by EPI’s Josh Bivens illustrates how U.S. economic policy over the past 30 years led to the large income disparities that laid the foundation for the Great Recession.

“The good news is that policy does what it is designed to do,” says Bivens. “The bad news is that we designed it to funnel lots of money to the very rich.” [OPS: What is this ‘WE whiteman?”

In Failure by Design, the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens takes a step back from the acclaimed State of Working America series, building on its wealth of data to relate a compelling narrative of the U.S. economy’s struggle to emerge from the Great Recession of 2008. Bivens explains the causes and impact on working Americans of the most catastrophic economic policy failure since the 1920s.

As outlined clearly here, economic growth since the late 1970s has been slow and inequitably distributed, largely as a result of poor policy choices. These choices only got worse in the 2000s, leading to an anemic economic expansion. What growth we did see in the economy was fueled by staggering increases in private-sector debt and a housing bubble that artificially inflated wealth by trillions of dollars. The bursting of the housing bubble had disastrous consequences for the broader economy, spurring a financial crisis and a rise in joblessness that dwarfed those resulting from any recession since the Great Depression. The fallout from the Great Recession makes it near certain that there will be yet another lost decade of income growth for many families, whose incomes had not been boosted by the previous decade’s sluggish and localized economic expansion.

Full Story Here: Failure by Design.

Huffington Post Bloggers Looking For Compensation

When news broke that The Huffington Post was acquired by AOL for a cool $315 million, many HuffPost contributors have their hands out and are asking “How do I get my piece of the pie?” A group of Huffington Post bloggers have grown frustrated that they receive no payment for their writing and have taken their cause to the web with the creation of the “Hey Arianna, Can You Spare a Dime” Facebook group. A post on the group’s wall lays out their mission in rather straightforward terms.

This $315 million buyout by AOL, along with [Arianna Huffington's] $4 million annual salary, was built on the backs of hard-working writers who never saw a dime for their labor. We call on Ms. Huffington to live up to the ideals she so earnestly professes and share her profits with the people responsible for the Huffington Post’s success.

Huffington sent an email to all HuffPost bloggers, past and present, in which she explained how the new AOL-HuffPost model will boost traffic, but will still not compensate writers.

Full Story Here: Huffington Post Bloggers Looking For Compensation – FishbowlNY.

Chaos on the Right: ‘Total Crazies’ Now Control the Asylum

With the less-than-graceful exit of former Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) from the House Republican Conference last year, the moderate wing of that group has pretty much disappeared altogether. But the bitterness and animosity that was once directed at the moderates has not. New political fault lines have emerged between what I would call the “right-wing conservatives” and the “total crazies.”

At the center of the conflict is Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who by almost anybody’s measure is a right-wing conservative. He is the principal author of “A Roadmap to America’s Future,” a budget plan that among other things would largely turn the Medicare program over to private insurance carriers.

More recently he used the extraordinary powers granted to him by the House Rules Committee—it provided him the authority to unilaterally determine the limits on federal discretionary spending for the remainder of the year giving his personal judgment the same standing as a resolution approved by majorities in both houses of Congress—to direct a cut of as much as 19 percent in the funding levels for 12 of the 15 departments of the federal government and nearly all of its independent agencies.

Full Story Here: Chaos on the Right: ‘Total Crazies’ Now Control the Asylum.

Interactive Map: Foreign Aid Analysis Made Easy

U.S. foreign aid is in the headlines now as almost never before, with massive political upheaval in Egypt, calls by House Republicans to dramatically slash funding for development programs, and a major overhaul of our aid programs announced by the Obama administration last year. The new interactive tool below is designed to accompany our latest report on foreign aid, “U.S. Foreign Aid Reform Meets the Tea Party,” by John Norris, the Executive Director of the Sustainable Security Program here at CAP. It lets you better explore where U.S. foreign aid dollars are spent and how these countries rank in terms of basic indicators such as political rights and civil liberties, corruption, and overall development.

Both Congress and the Obama administration should support a more selective approach to delivering aid that produces lasting economic growth and is designed with the direct input of the people of the developing world themselves. Foreign aid can work wonders in those countries willing to make hard choices, combat corruption, and support reform—and is often starkly ineffective when those conditions do not exist.

Full Story Here: Interactive Map: Foreign Aid Analysis Made Easy.

Court Dismisses Targeted Killing Case On Procedural Grounds Without Addressing Merits

Judge Acknowledges ACLU And CCR Case Raises Important Questions About Legality Of Obama Administration’s Claimed Authority To Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones

December 7, 2010 WASHINGTON – A federal court today acknowledged the serious issues raised by a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s targeted killing policy, but dismissed the case on the grounds that the plaintiff did not have legal standing to challenge the targeting of his son, and that the case raised “political questions” not subject to court review. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in August, charging that the administration’s asserted authority to execute U.S. citizens outside combat zones who do not pose an imminent threat violates the U.S. Constitution and international law. The judge did not rule on the merits of the case.

Despite granting the government’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia called the case “unique and extraordinary,” said it presented “[s]tark, and perplexing, questions” and found that the merits “present fundamental questions of separation of powers involving the proper role of the courts in our constitutional structure.” Ultimately, however, he dismissed the case on procedural grounds and found that “the serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day…”

Full Story Here: Court Dismisses Targeted Killing Case On Procedural Grounds Without Addressing Merits | Center for Constitutional Rights.

Bush Torture Indictment

Center for Constitutional Rights : :

CCR Announces Bush Indictment for Convention Against Torture Signatory States

On February 7, 2011, two torture victims were to have filed criminal complaints for torture against former president George W. Bush in Geneva, who was due to speak at an event there on February 12th. On the eve of the filing of the complaints, George Bush cancelled his trip. Swiss law requires the presence of the alleged torturer on Swiss soil before a preliminary investigation can be open. The complaints could not be filed after Bush cancelled, as the basis for jurisdiction no longer existed.

These two complaints are part of a larger effort to ensure accountability for torturers, including former U.S. officials. So on February 7, 2011, CCR publically released the “Preliminary Bush Torture Indictment.” This document presents fundamental aspects of the case against George Bush for torture, and a preliminary legal analysis of his liability for torture and a response to some anticipated defenses. This document will be updated as developments warrant. The exhibit list contains references to more than 2,500 pages of supporting material.

Full Story Here: Bush Torture Indictment | Center for Constitutional Rights.

A Primer on the Muslim Brotherhood

It’s time to dispel some myths about the Muslim Brotherhood and its role in Egypt.

There have been a lot of primers on the Muslim Brotherhood recently, owing to the protests in Egypt and the fact that Americans know very little about the internal politics of Arab countries. The increased interest in the Brotherhood also dovetails with long-standing conservative conspiracy theories about the group’s beliefs, capabilities, and behavior that largely replicate red-baiting paranoia during the Cold War. In the interest of responding to those issues without sugarcoating the Muslim Brotherhood’s very real flaws, I’ve tried to answer some questions and correct some misconceptions.

History. The Society of Muslim Brothers, known colloquially as the Muslim Brotherhood, was founded in 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna. It was targeted during the crackdown against Islamist groups following the attempted assassination of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954. A number of its members were radicalized during that time, and some of them justified the use of violence as a political tool. After years of repression, the group renounced violence as part of a truce with Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, and rode an intense wave of religious revival that swept the Arab world in the 1970s and 1980s. While technically banned from participating in elections, its ability to deliver social services and “articulate a narrative of defiance” against the regime of Hosni Mubarak and the West has helped the Brotherhood become the most prominent opposition group in Egypt.

Full Story Here: A Primer on the Muslim Brotherhood | The American Prospect.

Free Trade Isn’t the Solution, It’s the Problem

Detroit is evidence of the failure of our trade policies, crafted by armchair opinion makers who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs as ‘free trade’ ruins our industries and economy.

Detroit is evidence of the failure of our trade policies, crafted by armchair opinion makers who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs as ‘free trade’ ruins our industries and economy.

The relative success of the Big Three in Detroit has been partially due to embracing instead of fighting the race to the bottom. Ford recently opened production facilities in Mexico to lower labor costs. General Motors produced and sold more cars in China last year than in America and 25 percent of Chrysler is owned by the Italian company Fiat.

While executives in Detroit prosper, former workers are forced into unemployment lines, and in extreme cases, homelessness. There has been a total disconnect between gains for the elite and middle class, as multinational corporations can now play countries against each other, in a battle where one side gets no jobs and the other gets bad jobs. The skyrocketing stock market (which has nearly doubled in value since 2008) compared to the stagnant unemployment rate is the clearest example.

Full Story Here: Free Trade Isn’t the Solution, It’s the Problem | Economy In Crisis.

Eliminating AmeriCorps Would Produce More Costs Than Savings

As part of a program to reduce $35 billion in federal government spending, Republicans are planning to eliminate the Corporation for National and Community Service, which provides the funding for AmeriCorps programs.

As part of a program to reduce $35 billion in federal government spending, Republicans are planning to eliminate the Corporation for National and Community Service, which provides the funding for AmeriCorps programs.

The Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930′s was a keystone of the New Deal, and helped provide economic and educational opportunity for millions of Americans. Doing the same when education is more paramount than ever, and unemployment remains high is a logical choice.

AmeriCorps programs have existed since the 1960′s, following Sargent Shriver’s idea for a domestic Peace Corps. The Corporation for National and Community Service was created in 1993, in order to reward individuals for their participation in the program with a minor grant for college or to pay student loans (the value of which is pegged to the Pell Grant).

Full Story Here: Eliminating AmeriCorps Would Produce More Costs Than Savings | Economy In Crisis.

The Next Economy and America’s Future

“The Structural problem we are dealing with is that although the economy has been growing for the last 30 years,  almost ALL of the gains of growth have gone to a small sliver of people at the top.”

Robert Reich : : Video :

Reich (Supercapitalism), secretary of labor under Bill Clinton and former economic adviser to President Obama, argues that Obama’s stimulus package will not catalyze real recovery because it fails to address 40 years of increasing income inequality. The lessons are in the roots of and responses to the Great Depression, according to Reich, who compares the speculation frenzies of the 1920s–1930s with present-day ones, while showing how Keynesian forerunners like FDR’s Federal Reserve Board chair, Marriner Eccles, diagnosed wealth disparity as the leading stress leading up to the Depression.

By contrast, sharing the gains of an expanding economy with the middle class brought unprecedented prosperity in the postwar decades, as the majority of workers earned enough to buy what they produced. Despite occasional muddled analyses (of the offshoring of industrial production in the 1990s, for example), Reich’s thesis is well argued and frighteningly plausible: without a return to the “basic bargain” (that workers are also consumers), the “aftershock” of the Great Recession includes long-term high unemployment and a political backlash–a crisis, he notes with a sort of grim optimism, that just might be painful enough to encourage necessary structural reforms.

Full Story Here: The Next Economy and America’s Future | Economy In Crisis.

America Full Speed Ahead Inexorably Headed into Colonial Status

Why are we killing ourselves? China, Japan and Germany sell very few companies to their competitor nations. When they do sell their businesses, they sell to their own countrymen.

China now has $2.6 trillion worth of convertible currency reserves, it accumulated this wealth through its balance of trade surplus with the United states – Japan has $1 trillion.

These convertible currency reserves are economic bullets poised to strike – the reserves are used to buy out our companies on our open stock market.

We have sold 16,613 of our country’s best companies to our competitors – foreign countries – in the past 30 years. These companies once produced wealth for this nation, now they generate profits for other nations.

Today, we can no longer produce enough for ourselves. We are living on ever increasing imports and debt.

Full Story Here: America Full Speed Ahead Inexorably Headed into Colonial Status | Economy In Crisis.

Trade Deficit Jumps 33 Percent in 2010

Overall, America’s trade deficit grew by 33 percent in 2010, to $497.8 billion, according to the data.

The U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world had its largest annual increase percentage-wise in the past decade, according to information released Friday by the U.S. Commerce Department.

Overall, America’s trade deficit grew by 33 percent in 2010, to $497.8 billion, according to the data.

On the year, imports grew at a rate of 19.7 percent, to $2.33 trillion. Exports grew as well, but not at the same pace.

Exports jumped to $1.83 trillion on the year, an increase of 16.6 percent. That is a good start toward President Barack Obama’s goal of doubling exports by 2015. However, it is all for naught if the pass of imports is growing faster.

Full Story Here: Trade Deficit Jumps 33 Percent in 2010 | Economy In Crisis.

The GOP Budget Proposals Could Gut Food Safety

The newly minted majority has proposed their own budget, which would cut $32 billion from 70 different programs and agencies.

A landmark piece of legislation designed to improve the nation’s outdated food safety system could be in danger of losing funding if House Republicans have their way.

The newly minted majority has proposed their own budget, which would cut $32 billion from 70 different programs and agencies.

Among the targeted agencies are the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The proposal would slash each agency’s budget by 14 percent, amounting to about $3.2 billion in cuts overall.

Cuts that steep could endanger the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act. The bill was passed late last year, but not before conservative Republicans complained that the measure was yet another government overreach.

Full Story Here: The GOP Budget Proposals Could Gut Food Safety | Economy In Crisis.

U.S. files two new trade cases against China with WTO

The Obama administration said Friday that it had launched two new appeals against China to the World Trade Organization as new data showed the trade gap between the two countries rose to a record level last year.

The new appeals to the WTO are part of an evolving administration strategy to press China for better market access while playing down the high-profile dispute over how Chinese authorities manage the value of the country’s currency.

The latest cases attack import duties imposed on certain types of U.S. steel and challenge the virtual monopoly over electronic payment processing granted to a state-owned Chinese company. They come on top of other trade actions filed by the administration, including the tariffs on imported Chinese tires and a high-profile challenge of the subsidies and other support that the country provides to its alternative-energy industries.

Full Story Here: U.S. files two new trade cases against China with WTO.

Kasich (Ohio) ending bargaining for state workers

Experts disagree on whether public workers make more than those in private sector.

Gov. John Kasich and Republican lawmakers made it clear this week that big changes are coming to the public employees collective bargaining law as the state looks to close an $8 billion budget gap.

“All of this is an effort to reduce the cost of government to reduce the tax burden on families and job creators,” said Rob Nichols, spokesman for Kasich.

Kasich said Thursday if lawmakers don’t dismantle public employees collective bargaining then he will. “All this is rooted in job creation.”

It’s a fight shaping up with unions in states across the country, particularly those with Republican-dominated governments that are in fiscal trouble. Indiana, Idaho and Tennessee all have legislation in the works that would scale back or eliminate collective bargaining.

Full Story Here: Kasich ending bargaining for state workers.

Bent Whale May Suffer From Scoliosis

Whale experts believe a sick whale spotted off Kauai this week may be suffering from scoliosis or curvature of the spine.

It’s a rare disorder but scientists say they have seen it in other marine mammals like dolphins.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine mammal response coordinator, David Schofield, says officials are confident the whale was either born with the condition or acquired it over the course of its life.

Full Story Here: Bent Whale May Suffer From Scoliosis (PHOTO).

Voynich Manuscript Dated: Makes ‘DaVinci Code’ Look Lackluster

The Voynich Manuscript, a book seemingly written in an “alien” language, has stumped scientists and historians for decades.

But at least now they have a date.

The book, which was found by a book dealer in an old chest outside of Rome in 1912, was carbon-dated by a team of scientists from the University of Arizona, according to an UA press release.

Carbon-14 dating suggests the book was created between 1404 and 1438, reports Fox News.

The team, led by Greg Hodgins of the University’s department of physics, dated the book back to the early 15th century. The manuscript is written on animal skin (which allowed it to be dated), and now outdates the Gutenberg Bible by 25 years.

Full Story Here: Voynich Manuscript Dated: Makes ‘DaVinci Code’ Look Lackluster.

Ex-Shell CEO: Big Oil Doesn’t Need Government Help

A former top oil executive said on Thursday that big oil companies don’t need government help, inserting a new dynamic into the debate over oil subsidies in the context of the deficit.

“In the face of sustained high oil prices it was not an issue–for large companies–of needing the subsidies to entice us into looking for and producing more oil,” John Hofmeister, who retired from Shell in 2008 and now runs Citizens for Affordable Energy, told National Journal.

Democrats are pushing for Republicans to remove subsidies that help large oil companies, while the GOP pushes deep cuts to education and other social programs.

House Republicans will try to

Full Story Here: Former Big Oil CEO Gives New Life To Oil Subsidy Debate.

Cell Phone Towers To Be Replaced By Tiny Antennas

As cell phones have spread, so have large cell towers – those unsightly stalks of steel topped by transmitters and other electronics that sprouted across the country over the last decade.

Now the wireless industry is planning a future without them, or at least without many more of them. Instead, it’s looking at much smaller antennas, some tiny enough to hold in a hand. These could be placed on lampposts, utility poles and buildings – virtually anywhere with electrical and network connections.

If the technology overcomes some hurdles, it could upend the wireless industry and offer seamless service, with fewer dead spots and faster data speeds.

Full Story Here: Cell Phone Towers To Be Replaced By Tiny Antennas.