Archive for February, 2011

Borders Bankruptcy Coming Next Week

Borders Group Inc. may file for bankruptcy reorganization as early as Monday or Tuesday, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The No. 2 traditional bookstore in the U.S. also plans to close about 200 of its 674 stores and cut thousands of jobs, the newspaper reported on Friday, citing sources it did not name.

The story also says Borders is hearing pitches from Bank of America Corp. and General Electric Co.’s finance arm for $450 million in financing to keep operating under bankruptcy protection.

“There have been constant inquiries by reporters, and stories written, regarding whether Borders is considering a Chapter 11 filing,” said Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis. “Borders is not prepared at this time to report on the course of action it will pursue.”

Full Story Here: Borders Bankruptcy Coming Next Week.

OPS: Another victim in the Conservative “Dumbing Down of America”?

German takeover of NYSE seen next week

The board of NYSE Euronext is expected to meet on Sunday to discuss a planned takeover by Deutsche Boerse and a deal announcement is likely to come by Tuesday, according to news reports.

Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext said on Wednesday they were in advanced talks to merge, just hours after London Stock Exchange unveiled a bid for Canadian market operator TMX Group Inc.

Other exchanges said they were considering striking their own deals or looking to take advantage of the distraction, in early signs of ripples through the world’s capital markets.

CBOE Holdings Inc, IntercontinentalExchange Inc , BATS Global Markets and Chi-X Europe all weighed in Friday on the deals that would see Europeans acquire the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange.

“Every exchange that wasn’t involved in the two mergers — the four that were not involved — had to at lunch on Wednesday be asking themselves, ‘Should I be involved in some way?’ and calling their bankers and thinking strategically,” said Alan Dean, CBOE’s chief financial officer.

Full Story Here: German takeover of NYSE seen next week – Business – World business – msnbc.com.

OPS:  So let’s extrapolate.  We have been programmed for years to think that the NYSE = the US Economy.  e.g. When the NYSE went up we  were told that the ‘Great Recession’ was over and the recovery was over and the US Economy was healthy again.  It wasn’t true because there are still no jobs in this country and the number of good paying jobs is the basis for the economy not how well the Casino on Wall Street is doing.  But I digress.  So if the NYSE = Us Economy, then the Germans are going to control the US Economy? And the Fascist Oligarchy is OK with that?

Internet privacy: “Do Not Track” Internet privacy bill introduced in Congress

The bill would allow the Federal Trade Commission to force online advertisers to respect the wishes of users who do not want to be tracked for marketing purposes.

A privacy bill introduced in Congress on Friday raised the possibility that Internet users will be able to prevent advertisers from tracking what they do online.

Similar to the 2003 Do Not Call Registry that prevents telemarketers from calling consumers who don’t want to be contacted, the “Do Not Track” bill would allow the Federal Trade Commission to force online advertisers to respect the wishes of users who do not want to be tracked for marketing purposes.

“Failure to do so would be considered an unfair or deceptive act punishable by law,” said a statement from the office of Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), who is sponsoring the bill.

Full Story Here: Do Not Track, Internet, Web, privacy: “Do Not Track” Internet privacy bill introduced in Congress – latimes.com.

Wis. gov. would end collective bargaining

Saying those who didn’t see it coming must have been in a “coma,” Gov. Scott Walker unveiled sweeping legislation that would severely curtail public employee rights and dramatically change the way Wisconsin negotiates with unions going forward.

Officials alerted the Wisconsin State Employees Union on Friday that expired collective bargaining agreements would be canceled March 13. State unions have been operating under the terms of their previous contracts, an arrangement that can be terminated with 30 days notice.

The news came on the same day the governor unveiled a budget repair bill that would remove nearly all collective bargaining rights for nearly all public employees in the state and make it easier for employers to fire workers that engage in some form of labor unrest.

Full Story Here: Walker takes broad swipe at public employee unions.

Obama budget to propose cuts in heat subsidies for the poor

President Obama’s 2012 budget will propose cutting $2.5 billion from a program that helps low-income people cope with high energy costs in the cold of winter and heat of summer, according to a source familiar with the budget process.

The reduction is steep, and might impact millions of families. In 2010, the program received $5.1 billion in federal funds, which were then distributed to states that have both low average incomes and high energy costs.

The administration is quick to point out that the reduction will bring the funding down to $2.57 billion, which is exactly the same as the fiscal year 2008 level.

Full Story Here: Obama budget to propose cuts in heat subsidies for the poor – Feb. 11, 2011.

Kucinich: Obama should face liberal primary challenger in 2012

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said Thursday that President Barack Obama “absolutely” ought to face a Democratic primary challenge from the left in 2012, predicting it would make him “stronger.”

“I think primaries can have the opportunity of raising the issues and make the Democratic candidate a stronger candidate,” Kucinich told CSPAN’s Washington Journal. “I think it’s safe to predict that President Obama will continue to be the nominee of the Democratic primary, but he can be a stronger nominee if he receives a strong challenge in a primary.”

But it won’t be him, warned Kucinich, a seven-term Democratic congressman who ran for his party’s nomination for the presidency in 2004 and 2008. (He dropped out mid-way through the 2008 primaries and endorsed Obama.)

“I intend to run for reelection in the House,” he said.

Full Story Here: Kucinich: Obama should face liberal primary challenger in 2012 | Raw Story.

Brown: By Blocking Unemployment Aid Set To Expire, The GOP Says ‘Too Damn Bad’ To American Workers

After months of working on anything but jobs legislation, GOP lawmakers got an opportunity this week to actually address the crisis. Tomorrow, the Trade Assistance Adjustment (TAA) Program and the Health Care Tax Credit (HCTC) will expire. TAA helps retrain and re-employ workers who have lost their jobs due to foreign trade. HCTC provides compensation to help unemployed workers afford private health insurance. While 72 percent of Americans oppose cutting such critical unemployment assistance, the GOP is seemingly insistent that it expire.

On Tuesday, the House GOP’s plan to extend TAA was pulled from the House floor due to conservative backlash against the government “getting too involved in the economy.” That left the typically obstinate Senate as the last hope to extend the much-needed aid. Together on the Senate floor yesterday, Sens. Robert Casey (D-PA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) offered three different proposals to extend both benefits for 18 months, 4.5 months, and just the HCTC for 18 months by unanimous consent. However, each time, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) was there to block it.

Increasingly incensed over each of Barrasso’s obstructions, Brown expressed anger uncommon on the Senate floor at Barrasso’s final objection to the HCTC extension. Offended by the apparent GOP hypocrisy in enjoying taxpayer-funded benefits while refusing to aid those “who don’t dress like this everyday” and “don’t make $170,000 a year,” he blasted Senators for “turning our backs” on the American worker:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Brown: By Blocking Unemployment Aid Set To Expire, The GOP Says ‘Too Damn Bad’ To American Workers.

OPS: A fresh batch of 99′ers to help Conservatives WIN the race to the bottom

How The US Chamber Plotted To Smear Unions And Undermine Political Opponents

Yesterday, ThinkProgress released an exclusive investigation into the underhanded and surreptitious campaign waged by a lobbying firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing association representing big business. The report detailed how Hunton & Williams, a lobbying firm hired by the Chamber, solicited “private security” companies to investigate the Chamber’s political opponents, including ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com. Their tactics included planting false documents, creating fake personas, and targeting opponents’ families and children.

In response, the Chamber of Commerce said these were “baseless attacks” because the Chamber had “never seen the document in question.” In addition, they mention that the security firm in question (presumably HBGary) had not been “hired” by the Chamber or on the Chamber’s behalf.

However, as Marcy Wheeler wrote, their response is a “carefully worded nondenial denial.” In reality, the reason why the Chamber can claim not to have “hired” HBGary is because until as recently as a week ago, the security firm was working on spec. As Wheeler pointed out, a February 3 email shows that Hunton & Williams simply got “HBGary to do a month of work for free to decide whether they want to hire them.”

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » ChamberLeaks Primer: How The US Chamber Plotted To Smear Unions And Undermine Political Opponents.

Fox News Hit Man Jesse Watters Won’t Deny Fox ‘Makes Stuff Up,’ Tells TP: ‘Watch My Blazer, Bro’

This week, Media Matters reported that an unnamed former “Fox News insider” confirmed once again the network’s aversion to the truth in the name of promoting the Republican Party. “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up,” the former insider said. Fox News’ “M.O. [is] to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” said the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.” ThinkProgress ran into Fox News ambusher-in-chief Jesse Watters at CPAC this week and wanted to know what he thought about Media Matters’ report. However, Watters wouldn’t comment. Instead, he tried to divert the issue by attempting to belittle ThinkProgress’ “ambush” skills (yes, admittedly, we didn’t stalk Watters to a vacation spot with his significant other) and trying to give us some advice. “You’re just kind of, a little JV,” Watters said on the defensive. While ThinkProgress repeatedly tried to get comment from Watters, he still refused to answer. However, at one point, he seemed to take offense at a slight brush on his sport jacket, saying, “Watch my blazer, bro.”

Watch the interview:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Fox News Hit Man Jesse Watters Won’t Deny Fox ‘Makes Stuff Up,’ Tells TP: ‘Watch My Blazer, Bro’.

Clarence Thomas Is Trying To Get Away With A Felony

Many news outlets that have reported on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to disclose his wife’s income are portraying the allegations as, at most, a misdemeanor.

But as we have reported here at Legal Schnauzer, and now is being reported by protectourelections.org, Thomas’ actions would amount to a felony if proven in a court of law. In fact, Protect Our Elections (POE) cites several cases where individuals have faced prosecution under the felony statute, the same one that Thomas apparently is trying to skirt by amending disclosure forms going back 20 years.

POE also is reporting that Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, is part of an outfit called Liberty Consulting Inc., which appears to be a front organization for conservative interests who have issues before the Supreme Court.

Full Story Here: Legal Schnauzer: Clarence Thomas Is Trying To Get Away With A Felony.

We can’t trust the Supreme Court Five

Conflicts of interest by the right-wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court started with their decision in the 2000 Bush vs. Gore case which stopped the vote counting in Florida and effectively appointed Bush president. The lamestream media wasn’t bothered by the fact that two of Justice Antonin Scalia’s sons worked for the law firm representing George W. Bush. Nor were they concerned that Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife was working at the conservative Heritage Foundation, helping to recruit right-thinking staff for the incoming Bush administration, while he was deciding who would occupy the White House. Although she saw no conflict between her job and her husband’s deliberations, I certainly do. And so does Section 455 of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, “Disqualification of Justices, Judges or Magistrates” that requires court officers to excuse themselves if a spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”

If that case did not shake the public’s confidence in the impartiality of the Supreme Court, the Citizens United case certainly did. In their closely-divided case last year, the court’s right-wing ideologues basically ruled that corporations are persons, and entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections.

In his 2009 State of the Union speech, President Obama criticized the Supreme Court for that decision saying “… the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests including foreign corporations to spend without limit in our elections.” Despite Justice Samuel Alito’s mouthed “not true,” the 2010 campaigns proved the president correct.

Full Story Here: OTHER VOICES: We can’t trust the Supreme Court Five – San Jose Mercury News.

Filed: Formal Complaints to Disbar and Prosecute Clarence Thomas for 20 Years of False Statements, Financial Conflicts of Interest, and Using His Decisions on the Supreme Court to Enrich His Wife

Yesterday, February 8, 2011, ProtectOurElections.org filed two formal complaints against Justice Clarence Thomas for falsifying 20 years of financial disclosure statements, engaging in financial conflicts of interests, and using his decisions on the Supreme Court to enrich his wife. The first complaint, filed with the Washington D.C. Bar Disciplinary Committee, seeks Justice Thomas’ disbarment. It has 19 exhibits and can be viewed at http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Clarence_Thomas_Bar_Complaint.pdf.

The group’s attorney and spokesman Kevin Zeese wrote in the Bar Complaint, “Justice Thomas violated the Rules of Professional Conduct: he committed crimes that carry serious jail time if prosecuted, he acted in a untrustworthy manner, his conduct involved dishonesty, deceit and misrepresentation, and he engaged in conduct that seriously interfered with the administration of justice.”

The second complaint, filed with the Department of Justice Public Integrity Section, seeks criminal prosecution for Justice Thomas’ conduct. It can be viewed at http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Clarence_Thomas_Public_Integrity_Complaint.pdf. In that second complaint, Mr. Zeese, wrote, “Justice Thomas committed at least 20 crimes by falsifying 20 financial disclosure forms in order to hide his wife’s employers and to enrich himself and his family. The crimes he committed carry serious jail time if prosecuted, and those and similar false statement crimes have been prosecuted against many others in the past without allowance for immunity by amendment. … We urge you to treat Justice Thomas with ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ as stated above the main portico of the Supreme Court building. That means he should not get special treatment by virtue of his position but instead should be charged and prosecuted for his 20 years of false statements which benefitted him and his wife while harming those who appeared before him, the institution of the Supreme Court, and the public’s confidence in the rule of law.”

Full Story Here: www.ProtectOurElections.org Files Formal Complaints to Disbar and Prosecute Clarence Thomas for 20 Years… — WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ –.

‘Night Dragon’ attacks from China strike energy companies

McAfee said the intrusions targeted intellectual property and have been going on for as long as four years

Chinese hackers working regular business hours shifts stole sensitive intellectual property from energy companies for as long as four years using relatively unsophisticated intrusion methods in an operation dubbed “Night Dragon,” according to a new report from security vendor McAfee.

The oil, gas and petrochemical companies targeted were hit with technical attacks on their public-facing Web sites, said Greg Day , director of security strategy. The hackers also used persuasive social-engineering techniques to get key executives in Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Greece, and the U.S. to divulge information.

The attacks have been linked to China due to the use of Chinese hacking tools commonly seen on underground hacking forums. Further, the attacks appeared to originate from computers on IP (Internet protocol) addresses in Beijing, between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time there, suggesting that the culprits were regular company employees rather than freelance or unprofessional hackers, McAfee said in its report.

Full Story Here: ‘Night Dragon’ attacks from China strike energy companies – security, mcafee, malware, intrusion, Exploits / vulnerabilities, data breach – Security – Techworld.

Republicans Invent Their Own Facts

Discussing politics with Republicans can be highly frustrating. Unless they have made the effort to inform themselves from multiple independent sources, their version of facts is not the same as mine, removing any common ground for discussion. Most have not, and most of those who have aren’t Republicans anymore. The reason is that Fox, the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, invents facts to support their positions, much like war criminals Bush, Cheney invented facts to “fix the intelligence around the policy”. But some of tha facts that Republicans believe are so outlandish that one mist question the sanity of anyone who believes them.

Ray Edroso wrote an excellent piece addressing ten of these Republican “facts”.

As you may have noticed by following their writings, conservatives are not sticklers for historical accuracy, especially when they have a point to defend and not a lot of evidence to support it…

…I’ve picked out 10 such ideas that are widespread enough to qualify. (In the nomenclature I have treated “Republican” and “conservative” as synonyms because, come on.)

10. The Robber Barons weren’t robbers — they were capitalist heroes.

Full Story Here: Republicans Invent Their Own Facts » Politics Plus.

Fox News Insider: “We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush”

“They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news,” says a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch.

Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”

Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

And that’s the word from inside Fox News.

Full Story Here: “We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush” — Fox News Insider | Media | AlterNet.

Mubarak Steps Down and Fox News Calls the American People Marxist

On America’s News HQ today Fox News set the stage for their reaction to Mubarak’s decision to step down by proclaiming by supporting freedom, that American people have gone Marxist. Fox contributor, Michael Scheuer said, “Americans seem to be increasingly Marxist in their absolute faith in democracy for people who have never had any experience with the process.”

Full Story Here: Mubarak Steps Down and Fox News Calls the American People Marxist.

Strip-searched woman sues U.S. border guards

WARNING: This story contains graphic details

A woman from Stratford, Ont., has launched a $500,000 lawsuit in a U.S. federal court against two female U.S. border guards in Detroit.

In March 2010, Loretta Van Beek was travelling to Savannah, Ga., where she owns a small vacation home, when she was pulled over by customs agents at the Ambassador Bridge, across the river from Windsor, Ont.

Van Beek, 46, told CBC News she was sent to secondary inspection when customs officers found a few raspberries in her car that she’d forgotten to declare. After more than an hour of questions, Van Beek was told she was being denied entry on suspicion that she was living illegally in the U.S.

Full Story Here: CBC News – Windsor – Strip-searched woman sues U.S. border guards.

The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters

Glenn Greenwald :

There’s a very strange episode being widely discussed the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on. The story, first reported by The Tech Herald, has been written about in numerous places (see Marcy Wheeler, Forbes, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing, Matt Yglesias, Reason, Tech Dirt, and others), so I’ll provide just the summary.

Last week, Aaron Barr, a top executive at computer security firm HB Gary Federal, boasted to the Financial Times that his firm had infiltrated and begun to expose Anonymous, the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers that had launched cyber attacks on companies terminating services to the whistleblowing site (such as Paypal, MasterCard, Visa, Amazon and others). In retaliation, Anonymous hacked into the email accounts of HB Gary, published 50,000 of their emails online, and also hacked Barr’s Twitter and other online accounts.

Among the emails that were published was a report prepared by HB Gary — in conjunction with several other top online security firms, including Palantir Technologies — on how to destroy WikiLeaks. The emails indicated the report was part of a proposal to be submitted to Bank of America through its outside law firm, Hunton & Williams. News reports have indicated that WikiLeaks is planning to publish highly incriminating documents showing possible corruption and fraud at that bank, and The New York Times detailed last month how seriously top bank officials are taking that threat. The NYT article described that the bank’s “counterespionage work” against WikiLeaks entailed constant briefings for top executives on the whistleblowing site, along with the hiring of “several top law firms” and Booz Allen (the long-time firm of former Bush DNI Adm. Michael McConnell and numerous other top intelligence and defense officials). The report prepared by these firms was designed to be part of the Bank of America’s highly funded anti-WikiLeaks campaign.

Full Story Here: The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

What a ‘Liberal Media’ Might Look Like

Editor’s Note: For decades now, the American Right has pushed the myth that the national U.S. news media is “liberal,” even though the owners are mostly wealthy corporations run by rich executives who generally favor Republicans over Democrats. And that was true even in the days before Fox News and right-wing-dominated talk radio.

Even the limited inroads of liberalism in media have been under pressure in recent days with MSNBC’s ouster of liberal icon Keith Olbermann and AOL’s purchase of HuffingtonPost (raising new questions about Arianna Huffington’s ideological sojourns). However, in this essay, Lisa Pease contrasts what today’s media is versus what a “liberal media” might look like:

I’m surprised that otherwise intelligent people continue to believe the myth that the media is “liberal.” I think it’s worth discussing what a liberal media would look like if we had one, so we can better understand that we don’t have one.

Let’s imagine a fictional cable network called LNN – the Liberal News Network. What might the morning news on such a channel be?

The show might lead with pictures of starving children all over the world, so that while you sat down to breakfast, you’d be reminded of just how lucky you were to have been born in the U.S., and how others are still very much in need.

Full Story Here: What a ‘Liberal Media’ Might Look Like.

Hard Lessons from the HuffPost Sale

Robert Parry

U.S. progressive media has had a tough few weeks. First, Keith Olbermann, the pioneer for liberal programming during MSNBC’s evening hours, was sent packing. Then, Arianna Huffington allowed AOL to subsume her Huffington Post into AOL’s right-of-center content for the price tag of $315 million.

Leftist bloggers who had provided free content to Huffington Post, enabling it to become a valuable property, found themselves quite literally sold out, with Huffington pocketing $18 million while making clear that she won’t battle for the liberal banner inside AOL.

Huffington joined with her new boss, AOL Chairman Tim Armstrong, to declare that their focus will be on how many eyeballs can be drawn to AOL, not in pushing progressive causes.

“Arianna has the same interest we do, which is serving consumers’ needs and going beyond the just straight political needs of people,” Armstrong said.

For her part, Huffington noted that her Web site was already shedding its political identity, providing more celebrity news and scandal stories, including a new section devoted to divorces. While about half of the traffic was on politics a couple of years ago, she said, that is now down to about 15 percent with only one of two dozen “sections” centered on politics.

via Hard Lessons from the HuffPost Sale.

Budget Cuts Could Imperil ‘Justice For All’

Buried the billions in sharp cuts to federal spending proposed by the House GOP is a $75 million reduction for legal aid to the nation’s poor that would leave millions vulnerable to fradulent foreclosures and other problems, according to the nonprofit organization that provides such assistance.

In addition to cuts to the clean energy initiatives, the Environmental Protection Agency and other programs for the remainder of the current fiscal year, Republicans would cut support to the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) by 17 percent from the White House’s budget request of $435 million for LSC, and a 14 percent decline from LSC’s current funding level, $420 million, the LSC says in a statement.

Established in 1974, LSC is an independent, nonprofit corporation that receives an annual appropriation from Congress to promote equal access to justice and to provide for high-quality civil legal assistance to low-income individuals and families. About 95 percent of the appropriation is distributed as grants to the 136 legal aid programs, LSC says. The programs provide legal services to persons at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline.

via On The Hill: Budget Cuts Could Imperil ‘Justice For All’.

Papantonio: The CPAC Freak Show Begins

Mike Papantonio and Ed Schultz discuss the creepy lineup of speakers and guests that the Republican Party is putting on pedestal during this year’s CPAC convention. Bachmann, Gingrich, Donald Trump, Stephen Baldwin? Is this really the best that the GOP has to offer?

Alan Grayson: “President Obama…let these crooks off the hook”

While in Congress, Rep. Grayson served Florida’s 8th Congressional District from 2009-2011. Dylan regards him as one of “the most vocal and aggressive critics of the crony capitalism, corporate communism, and large institutional interests perpetuating their existence at the expense of an increasingly large percentage of the American people.”

We caught up with Rep. Grayson and asked him about the his take on Obama’s handling of Egypt, the potential financial consequences of America’s overextended foreign policy and military, the Federal Reserve audit, and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Before we get to the interview, please watch one of Rep. Grayson’s finest moments on YouTube:

Full Story Here: Alan Grayson: “President Obama…let these crooks off the hook” | Dylan Ratigan.

Private Contractors Plan To Protect Bank Of America From WikiLeaks By ‘Neutralizing’ Glenn Greenwald, Others

On Wednesday, Matt Yglesias ran an item about a “consortium of national security contractors” that are “shopping a counter-WikiLeaks strategy.” It is, in equal parts, sinister and hilarious. The overall intent appears to be to protect Bank Of America from the potential worldwide revelation of their terrible business practices.

According to the Tech Herald, these firms have “worked to develop a strategic plan of attack against WikiLeaks” that includes “pressing a journalist in order to disrupt his support of the organization, cyber attacks, disinformation, and other potential proactive tactics.” The Tech Herald got wind of this from a tip from CrowdLeaks.org:

What was pointed out by Crowdleaks is a proposal titled “The WikiLeaks Threat” and an email chain between three data intelligence firms. The proposal was quickly developed by Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies, after a request from Hunton and Williams, a law firm that currently counts Bank of America as a client.

The law firm had a meeting with Bank of America on December 3. To prepare, the firm emailed Palantir and the others asking for “…five to six slides on Wikileaks – who they are, how they operate and how this group may help this bank.”

Full Story Here: Private Contractors Plan To Protect Bank Of America From WikiLeaks By ‘Neutralizing’ Glenn Greenwald, Others.

Report: Wal-Mart actually kills jobs, creates taxpayer burdens

Wal-Mart’s lengthy struggle to open in New York City has hit fresh problems — a controversial report that said America’s biggest discounter does not just sell cheap, it makes neighborhoods poorer.

The report concludes that Wal-Mart, the biggest U.S. private employer, kills jobs rather than creates them, drives down wages and is a tax burden because it does not give health and other benefits to many part-time employees, leaving a burden on Medicaid and other public programs.

The New York City Council will hold a public hearing on Thursday on the impact a Wal-Mart would have but the retailer has declined to attend.

Full Story Here: Report: Wal-Mart actually kills jobs, creates taxpayer burdens | Raw Story.

Group plans to beam free Internet across the globe from space

The charity group A Human Right said it was planning to purchase a satellite that would provide free basic Internet access to developing countries around the world.

The group, which was founded by 25-year-old Kosta Grammatis, is currently raising money to buy the TerreStar-1, the largest commercial communications satellite ever built. TerreStar, the company that owns the satellite, filed for chapter-11 bankruptcy protection in October 2010, opening the possibility that the satellite may be up for sale.

The group hopes to raise $150,000 to finalize a business plan, investigate the legal and business aspects of submitting a bid for the satellite, and hire engineers to turn the plan into a reality. After this initial phase, the group plans to development an open source low cost modem that could be used to connect to the satellite and finalize plans with partner governments.

Full Story Here: Group plans to beam free Internet across the globe from space | Raw Story.

EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents

ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

According to one document prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents. In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to “generate communications” with Change to Win. View a screenshot below:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents.

CHAMBERLEAKS: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Firm To Investigate Opponents’ Families, Children

Earlier today, ThinkProgress published an exclusive report that the law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing trade association representing big business, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress. According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Attorneys for the firm solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop a sabotage campaign against progressive groups and labor unions, including ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

New emails reveal that the private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, an executive at HB Gary. Barr circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives.

One of the targets was Mike Gehrke, a former staffer with Change to Win. Among the information circulated about Gehrke was the specific “Jewish church” he attended and a link to pictures of his wife and two children (sensitive information was redacted by ThinkProgress):

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » CHAMBERLEAKS: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Firm To Investigate Opponents’ Families, Children.

GOP Backs Massive Tax Increase To Phase Out Abortion Coverage By Private Insurers

The House GOP continues to place its heaviest emphasis on fighting abortion rights, and they’ve taken a lot of heat for it. Progressives, Democrats, pro-choice groups, and others have spared little criticism, but they’ve focused most heavily on three distinct lines: the fact that Republicans are ignoring job-creation as a priority; the fact that one of their pieces of legislation would allow hospitals to refuse to perform an abortion on a dying woman; and the fact that, until recently at least, the GOP wanted to limit tax-payer support for abortion to exclude incidences of non-forcible rape.

Here’s another one: The GOP’s plan to ban tax-payer money from funding abortions includes giant tax hikes for businesses.

More specifically, it would eliminate tax incentives on employer-provided health care benefits if those benefits cover abortion as a medical procedure.

Full Story Here: GOP Backs Massive Tax Increase To Phase Out Abortion Coverage By Private Insurers | TPMDC.

Mississippi Considers License Plate Honoring … KKK Leader Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest

The Sons of Confederate Veterans have rustled up some controversy in Mississippi, by proposing a specialty license plate honoring Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the earliest Grand Wizards of the Ku Klux Klan. The group wants the state to issue a series of plates commemorating the 150th anniversary of what it calls the “War Between the States,” with a different design every year from now to 2015. Forrest would be 2014’s plate, according to the AP.

Full Story Here: Mississippi Considers License Plate Honoring … KKK Leader Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax’

VIDEO:

In this sixth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky talks about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and other business lobbies enthusiastically carrying out campaigns “to try and convince the population that global warming is a liberal hoax.” According to Chomsky, this massive public relations campaign has succeeded in leading a good portion of the population into doubting the human causes of global warming.

Known for his criticism of the media, Chomsky doesn’t hold back in this clip, laying blame on mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, which will run frontpage articles on what meteorologists think about global warming. “Meteorologists are pretty faces reading scripts telling you whether it’s going to rain tomorrow,” Chomsky says. “What do they have to say any more than your barber?” All this is part of the media’s pursuit of “fabled objectivity.”

Full Story Here: Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax’ | The Nation.

Nearly 200,000 Workers Face Benefits Loss As GOP House Bails

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers who lost their jobs due to harmful effects of global trade will begin losing benefits starting on Saturday, unless Congress acts to extend them. Senate Democrats are eager to enact such an extension, but the Republican-led House reportedly has given up on such legislation.

The expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program provides benefits and support to U.S. workers whose jobs have been shipped overseas. TAA programs offer retraining opportunities, health insurance assistance, and other support initiatives to workers affected by globalization.

From May 18, 2009 to January 31, 2011, a total of 406,124 workers were certified under the TAA program, including 170,000 who would not have received benefits if it were not for the now-expiring provisions of TAA, according to estimates provided by Senate Democrats.

Full Story Here: On The Hill: Nearly 200,000 Workers Face Benefits Loss As GOP House Bails.

Contamination From Genetically Modified Alfalfa Certain, Experts Say

Contamination of organic and traditional crops by recently deregulated, genetically modified alfalfa is inevitable, agriculture experts said, despite Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s recent assurances the federal government would take steps to prevent such a problem.

Many farmers had been pushing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to approve the use of genetically modified alfalfa. Monsanto developed the seed to resist the weedkiller Roundup, allowing farmers to use the two together to save time and labor on weeding. Supporters also say the use of the genetically modified seeds lets farmers grow more alfalfa on each acre and helps keep food prices low.

Opponents, many of them organic farmers, say widespread planting of genetically modified alfalfa will result in pollen from those plants contaminating organic and traditional crops, destroying their value. While alfalfa is mostly used as hay for cattle, some consumers don’t want to eat foods, such as milk or beef, from animals that have consumed genetically modified plants.

Full Story Here: Contamination From Genetically Modified Alfalfa Certain, Experts Say.

The Government’s Case Against Julian Assange Is Falling Apart

With popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt spinning along, each with a certain amount of world-reshaping potential, there’s been a lot of new attention focused on the role that WikiLeaks has played in these events. Ian Black, the Middle East editor of The Guardian, one of the key newspapers disseminating diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks’ trove, told NPR last night that he didn’t feel the leaked cables were the primary driver of these uprisings. Nevertheless, WikiLeaks seems to have helped to remove the people now demonstrating on the streets from their isolation by providing a “confirmation of what people in these countries know and feel intuitively,” about the conditions under which they have lived.

If you spend any time at all reading about Bradley Manning, the young U.S. Army private who stands accused of providing WikiLeaks with massive amounts of intelligence pulled from the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network used by the Pentagon and the State Department, the picture that emerges is one of a young man who also felt isolated, one who saw WikiLeaks as a means of ameliorating that feeling. Manning remains in custody — a particularly brutal form of solitary confinement, actually — at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.

Manning still faces charges of his own, but he’s played a larger role in the tensions between U.S. government officials and WikiLeaks, in that he is seen as the key figure in building a larger criminal case against WikiLeaks founder and figurehead Julian Assange. That Manning willingly provided WikiLeaks with classified information does not appear to be in dispute. The issue, rather, is one of “did Manning jump or was he pushed?”

Full Story Here: The Government’s Case Against Julian Assange Is Falling Apart.

Apophis Asteroid Could Hit Earth In 2036, Scientists Say (VIDEO)

Apophis Asteroid is back in the news after a Russian report concluded it could hit Earth in 2036. They even have a date for the potential impact.

“It’s likely collision with Earth may occur on April 13, 2036,” Professor Leonid Sokolov of St. Petersburg State University concluded, according to UPI, which also reports an unrelated 4-foot-wide asteroid passed by Earth this week.

Sokolov says while the chances for impact are slim, it’s important to plan for all possible scenarios, per Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. He added the asteroid is most likely to disintegrate into smaller parts that could collide with Earth in following years.

The Apophis Asteroid made headlines in 2009 when scientists predicted a greater than 2 percent chance of impact.

NASA scientists are cautious about the prospect.

Full Story Here: Apophis Asteroid Could Hit Earth In 2036, Scientists Say (VIDEO).

Obama To Cut Energy Assistance For Poor; Kerry Urges Him To Reconsider

Reports that President Barack Obama’s upcoming budget will propose steep cuts in the government’s energy assistance fund for low-income Americans ricocheted quickly on Capitol Hill Wednesday, spurring some intraparty squabbling.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to Obama asking him not to drop funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) by about $3 billion.

“I understand that difficult cuts have to be made,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. “But in the middle of a brutal, even historic, New England winter, home heating assistance is more critical than ever to the health and welfare of millions of Americans, especially senior citizens. I request that the administration preserve LIHEAP funding at least to the Fiscal Year 2010 funding at $5.1 billion when it submits its FY12 budget proposal to Congress.”

Full Story Here: Obama To Cut Energy Assistance For Poor; Kerry Urges Him To Reconsider.

White House Seeks $53 Billion For High-Speed Rail

The Obama administration called on Tuesday for Congress to authorize a significant new investment in high-speed passenger rail systems, at a cost of $53 billion over six years.

Appearing at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, Vice President Joe Biden pitched the proposed infrastructure program as a needed dose of stimulus at a time when states are looking for cheap sources of jobs. The proposal would spend $8 billion in its first year, the first step in what the White House projects would be a 25-year shift to modern, speedy railways able to reach 80 percent of the United States and offering thousands of jobs.

That first round of money would be a drop in the bucket relative to the price tag needed to complete a national system, even on top of the approximately $11 billion that the administration has already spent.

Full Story Here: White House Seeks $53 Billion For High-Speed Rail.

New York Fed Economists Say Bush-Era Bankruptcy Law Fueled Over 200,000 Foreclosures

Economists at the New York Federal Reserve have concluded that a controversial 2005 law backed by banks and credit card companies pushed more than 200,000 people into foreclosure and exacerbated the subprime mortgage crisis.

Consumer advocates fought hard against the law, which made it much more difficult for individuals to alleviate credit card debt in bankruptcy. This inability of homeowners to eliminate other debts, the New York Fed economists conclude, in turn made borrowers unable to pay off their mortgages, spurring foreclosures.

Despite opposition from public interest groups, the 2005 law easily cleared both chambers of Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. In a paper released Tuesday, New York Fed researchers Donald P. Morgan, Benjamin Iverson and Matthew Botsch determined that the law sparked about 116,000 additional subprime mortgage foreclosures a year after going into effect.

Full Story Here: New York Fed Economists Say Bush-Era Bankruptcy Law Fueled Over 200,000 Foreclosures.

House Fails To Pass PATRIOT Act Extension

In a surprising vote, the House of Representatives failed to extend controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act this evening. Twenty-six Republicans broke with leadership and opposed the bill, which gained a majority of votes — 227 to 148 — but failed to pass because it was moved to the floor under suspension rules, which require a two-thirds majority for passage. A majority of Democrats voted against the extension, with 122 opposed and 67 in favor. The vote is a temporary victory for civil libertarians and rebuke to the White House, which earlier today released a statement supporting the extension, but the vote is also a significant defeat for the new Republican leadership in the House. Bills are typically only brought up under suspension rules if it’s assumed the vote will be non-controversial, but it’s clear that Republican leaders did not anticipate the opposition from within their party:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » House Fails To Pass PATRIOT Act Extension.

Clarence Thomas Gets Away With Breaking the Law; Ginny Thomas Shills for Right-Wing Interests

When it comes to the financial and ethical improprieties of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, there is only bad news and worse news. That’s true not only in terms of what they’ve done but because there’s so little reason to believe they’ll ever be held accountable for their active role in tainting our judiciary with the money and influence of their wealthy, conservative GOP patrons.

The latest outrage is that Ginni Thomas is embarking on a new career: lobbyist for right-wing causes. But that’s just the most recent in a string of recent news items concerning the Thomases’ fast-and-loose ways with the law. It begins with a January 22 Los Angeles Times piece that reported Justice Thomas’ failure to include his wife’s source of income on his financial disclosure forms for the past two decades. These forms are essential to assessing whether a justice might face a potential conflict of interest when causes or individuals associated with his/her spouse come before the court. Thomas hastily amended his reports after Common Cause brought attention to the years between 2003-2007 when Ginni Thomas earned $680,000 working for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank funded by, among others, the foundations of the Koch brothers, the Coors family and Richard Mellon Scaife.

Full Story Here: Clarence Thomas Gets Away With Breaking the Law; Ginny Thomas Shills for Right-Wing Interests | | AlterNet.

Dean Baker:-: The real effect of ‘Reaganomics’

Dean Baker |

Ronald Reagan promoted the idea that conservatives prefer to leave the economy to the market. Nonsense – we’ve been gulled

At the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, his most important legacy has gone largely overlooked. Reagan helped to put a caricature of politics at the centre of the national debate and it remains there to this day. In Reagan’s caricature, the central divide between progressives and conservatives is that progressives trust the government to make key decisions on production and distribution, while conservatives trust the market.

This framing of the debate is advantageous for the right, since people, especially in the United States, tend to be suspicious of an overly powerful government. They also like the idea of leaving important decisions to the seemingly natural workings of the market. It is therefore understandable that the right likes to frame its agenda this way. But since the right has no greater commitment to the market than the left, it is incredible that progressives are so foolish as to accept this framing.

In reality, the right uses government all the time to advance its interest by setting rules that redistribute income upward. As long as progressives ignore the rules that are designed to redistribute income upward, they will be left fighting over crumbs. There is no way that government interventions will reverse a rigged market. For some reason, most of the people in the national political debate who consider themselves progressive do not seem to understand this fact.

Full Story Here: The real effect of ‘Reaganomics’ | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Thousands Of Dead Fish Wash Ashore In Florida (VIDEO)

Thousands of dead fish washed ashore a Florida state park beach on Friday, WPBF 25 News reports. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologists believe a lack of oxygen resulted in the deaths of thousands of menhaden fish at Sebastian Inlet State Park. The officials say this type of fish is especially prone to dying from a lack of oxygen when they swim closer to shore in such large numbers.

In the week prior, around 500 drum fish were found dead in the Arkansas River, in the same location where 83,000 dead fish were discovered a month earlier on December 29th, AP reports.

After the major fish kill at the end of 2010, and the deaths of thousands of birds also reported nearby in Arkansas days later on New Years Eve, news of mass animal deaths from around the world began receiving prominent coverage, though officials have attested that the events are not connected. More birds were reported to fall from the sky across the U.S. and around the world, while similar mass fish kills were also reported worldwide.

Full Story Here: Thousands Of Dead Fish Wash Ashore In Florida (VIDEO).

Antidepressant Medication: Millions Prescribed Have No Psychiatric Diagnosis

Are you taking antidepressants for something like sleep problems or a sour mood?

Well according to a recent study in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, you may not be alone.

Researchers found that more than a quarter of Americans currently taking antidepressants haven’t actually been diagnosed with the conditions that traditionally qualified one for a prescription, like depression or anxiety disorders.

Antidepressant medication may be prescribed by both psychiatrists and general practitioners.

Full Story Here: Antidepressant Medication: Millions Prescribed Have No Psychiatric Diagnosis.

Child Poverty Hits 25 Percent In Texas, But Gov. Perry Still Proposing Deep Cuts To Child Services

After spending the last few years lecturing the country about how his supposedly “prudent fiscal decisions” stood in stark contrast to fiscal policy at the federal level, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is being forced to grapple with a huge hole in his own state’s budget. At $27 billion (more than twice what Perry had expected it to be), the state’s deficit puts it about on par with California.

It isn’t only Perry that’s been holding out his state as a model of economic performance. The “Texas miracle” has long been touted by conservatives as a success of an economy that is low-tax, low-regulation, and low-social service. But as a new report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities noted, Texas’ child poverty rate is going through the roof, with nearly one in four children living beneath the poverty line:

Full Story Here: Wonk Room » Child Poverty Hits 25 Percent In Texas, But Gov. Perry Still Proposing Deep Cuts To Child Services.

Milwaukee, Chicago areas may face water shortages: report

The Great Lakes region, the world’s largest freshwater system, could face local water shortages in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas due to increased demand and environmental changes, the U.S. Geological Survey said on Monday.

Water levels in Chicago and Milwaukee could drop by an additional 100 feet over the next 30 years due to increased demand from pumping of groundwater that has already reduced groundwater levels as much as 1,000 feet, the report found.

“In some areas, the physical quantity of water may be limiting”,” said Howard Reeves, USGS scientist and lead author on this assessment.

The Great Lakes water basin has seen relatively little overall impact from groundwater pumping, but water is not distributed evenly throughout the region. This could lead to potential local shortages, according to the assessment, conducted over five years.

Full Story Here: Milwaukee, Chicago areas may face water shortages: report | Reuters.

Einstein was right – honey bee collapse threatens global food security

The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN’s index of food prices hits an all time-high, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our food security.

Full Story Here: Einstein was right – honey bee collapse threatens global food security – Telegraph.

New Catholic Bible deletes ‘cereal,’ ‘booty’ and ‘holocaust’

It’s not the first time Catholics have tried to modernize the Bible but it may be the oddest.

The New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), which was set to make its debut on Ash Wednesday, March 9, aimed to make the text easier to understand by making a number of little tweaks, both subtle and obvious, in hopes of making it easier to read. Among them, deleting the words “cereal,” “booty” and, oddly enough, “holocaust,” was said to have taken place to help people better understand scripture.

Catholic translations of the Bible go back to 1582 when the Douay-Rheims Bible was published. The first edition of the New American Bible was published in 1970.

“It will be like going from regular TV to high-definition,” Mary Elizabeth Sperry, associate director of New American Bible utilization for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service. “You’ll have the same programs but more clarity, more detail.”

Full Story Here: New Catholic Bible deletes ‘cereal,’ ‘booty’ and ‘holocaust’ | Raw Story.

Church of Scientology investigated over ‘slave labor’: report

The FBI is investigating the Church of Scientology over allegations its practices may have violated human trafficking laws, a news report states.

According to a profile of filmmaker and former Scientologist Paul Haggis in the New Yorker, the FBI is running an ongoing investigation into claims the church pays some of its workers as little as $50 per week, forces children into “billion-year” contracts and sometimes uses physical force to keep church members from escaping Scientology compounds.

The allegations center around Sea Org, a religious order inside the church whose 6,000 members are used by the church as labor, including maintenance of church properties.

Full Story Here: Church of Scientology investigated over ‘slave labor’: report | Raw Story.

Leaders Of US Chamber Awarded Themselves Record Compensation While Slashing American Jobs

Today, President Obama addressed the leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a highly ideological right-wing trade association representing mostly large international corporations. Obama urged the audience of business executives to “get in the game” and spend some of the trillions of dollars corporations have compiled in the past year on job creation. Indeed, much of the executive leadership of the Chamber has spent the past few years rewarding themselves with millions in additional compensation while eliminating American jobs.

Trucking Manufacturer Navistar Inc Is On The US Chamber’s Board Of Directors:

– In 2010, Naivstar CEO Daniel Ustian increased his total compensation by 27%, from $6.64 million in FY 2009 to $8.43 million in the year that ended October 31. The company has enjoyed healthy profits: in 2009, it earned $320 million, or $4.46 a share, and in 2010, it made $223 million, or $3.11 a share.

– Navistar has slashed jobs at factories across the country. In Springfield, Ohio, Navistar laid off 250 workers from a truck assembly plant. At its plant in Arkansas, the company laid off 477 in 2009 after letting 300 workers go in 2008. Amid the layoffs and plant closures, Navistar, a major military contractor, opened a new factory in Mexico last year.

Telecommunications Giant AT&T Is On The US Chamber’s Board Of Directors:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Leaders Of US Chamber Awarded Themselves Record Compensation While Slashing American Jobs.

At Tea Party Event, Gov. Scott Unveils Budget That Raids Low-Income Health Services To Cut Corporate Taxes

Today, at a Tea Party event in tiny Eustis, Florida, Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) unveiled his new state budget. Since his time on the campaign trail, Scott has been promising to pair steep budget cuts with reductions in both the corporate and property tax rates. “It’s not daunting. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be exciting,” Scott said when asked about tackling his state’s budget woes. He has said that he plans to make Florida the “most fiscally conservative” state in the nation.

True to his word, Scott’s budget slashes corporate taxes, while raiding Medicaid services for low-income residents in order to come up with savings:

Gov. Rick Scott on Monday afternoon will unveil a proposed state budget that includes deep spending cuts of an estimated $5 billion and will ask lawmakers to approved a dramatic reduction in property taxes…He also wants to trim about $700 million in corporate income taxes in Florida, which already has one of the nation’s lowest rates. [...]

Another big target for savings: the growing health insurance program for the poor and financially challenged, Medicaid. More than half of Medicaid’s $20.3 billion tab is picked up by the federal government, which can halt some wholesale changes. Scott and the Legislature can cut up to half of the program’s so-called optional services, many of which are popular and are designed to save money, however. Regardless, the state would lose hundreds of millions in federal matching money.

ThinkProgress » At Tea Party Event, Gov. Scott Unveils Budget That Raids Low-Income Health Services To Cut Corporate Taxes.

Reagan: Killer, Coward, Con-man

Greg Palast »

You’re not going to like this. You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone’s got to.

On the 100th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, as we suffer a week of Reagan-kitcheria and pukey peons, let us remember:

Reagan was a con-man. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

Full Story Here: Greg Palast » Reagan: Killer, Coward, Con-man.

Minnesota Republicans propose repeal of fair pay laws for women

Minnesota Republicans have introduced legislation that would repeal the 1984 Local Government Pay Equity Act (LGPEA), which directs local governments to ensure that women are paid the same as men. While local governments say reporting requirements are costly, equal rights groups say the law needs to stay intact in order to ensure fair pay, especially for women of color.

HF7/SF159 would repeal a laundry list of mandates on local governments — including regulations on part-time police officers, agricultural programs for low-income farmers and grants for libraries — but buried in the bill is a full repeal of the LGPEA.

The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce is pushing the repeal. In a December report on public employee compensation, the group wrote, “State pay equity/comparable worth law should be repealed. Its purpose is outdated, and requiring governments to correct perceived ‘errors’ in labor markets based on bureaucratic and subjective assessments of the relative value of government jobs is an unnecessary and costly mandate.”

Full Story Here: Minnesota Republicans propose repeal of fair pay laws for women | The Washington Independent.

Droughts, Floods and Food

Paul Krugman:  :

We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.

The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re happening now. And there’s little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.

So what’s behind the price spike? American right-wingers (and the Chinese) blame easy-money policies at the Federal Reserve, with at least one commentator declaring that there is “blood on Bernanke’s hands.” Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France blames speculators, accusing them of “extortion and pillaging.”

Full Story Here: Droughts, Floods and Food – NYTimes.com.

The Chamber Of Commerce Is Anti-Business

President Obama is speaking today to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The press is reporting this as an effort to be “pro-business,” to “patch up” relations with business, to “reach out” to business, to “court” business and to begin a “thaw” or “truce”with “business leaders.”

If the President really wants to be pro-business he should stay away from this partisan lobbying group. The Chamber of Commerce pushes policies that hurt most businesses and most Americans. The president should side with the 99% of American businesses that are not giant multi-nationals or Wall Street con artists.

Chamber Is Anti-Business

The Chamber of Commerce is not “pro-business” it is anti-business. The Chamber represents Wall Street and the giant multinationals that have used their vast sums of money to corrupt our politics to pass legislation that favors these giants over other businesses. They have pushed policies that block small and medium businesses from competing with these giants.

The Chamber pushes policies that hurt businesses,

Full Story Here: The Chamber Of Commerce Is Anti-Business | OurFuture.org.

Air Force legal office: All of our members’ families can be prosecuted for reading WikiLeaks

Almost anyone in the United States, and especially soldiers or the families of US Air Force members, could be under the threat of prosecution by the military, according to a recent “guidance” document issued by the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) public affairs office.

The advisory took on new significance Monday as Julian Assange, founder of the secrets peddling website, was in a British court to argue against his extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted for questioning in relation to allegations of sexual assault and impropriety.

“Classified information does not automatically become declassified as a result of unauthorized disclosure, and accessing the WikiLeaks site would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks,” the Air Force Material Command explained, noting policy well-documented since the start of WikiLeaks’ release of US diplomatic cables.

Full Story Here: Air Force legal office: All of our members’ families can be prosecuted for reading WikiLeaks | Raw Story.

Bill Moyers: The Rule of the Rich

Bill Moyers,

Now, most people know what plutocracy is: the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy. Plutocracy is not an American word and wasn’t meant to become an American phenomenon—some of our founders deplored what they called “the veneration of wealth.” But plutocracy is here, and a pumped up Citigroup even boasted of coining a variation on the word—“plutonomy,” which describes an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer and that government helps them do it. Five years ago, Citigroup decided the time had come to “bang the drum on plutonomy.”

And bang they did. Here are some excerpts from the document “Revisiting Plutonomy”:

“Asset booms, a rising profit share, and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper . . . [and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last twenty years. . . . The top 10 percent, particularly the top 1 percent of the United States—the plutonomists in our parlance—have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surge in the U.S. . . . [and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor. . . . [And they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. Because the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact.”

I’ll repeat that: “The dynamics of plutonomy are still intact.”

Full Story Here: The Rule of the Rich | The Progressive.

The Reagan Legacy: Can We Talk?

While folks born from the late ’70s on reflect fondly on the 100th birthday of Pres. Ronald Reagan, I wanted to inject a little reality on the subject of the Gipper.

As someone who was already around when he was in office, I have a different view of the golden age conservatives now see as the greatest in our country’s history, except of course, for the halcyon days of 3/5ths personhood and what-not at our country’s founding.

* Voodoo economics, aka trickle-down economics, aka supply-side economics, aka tax breaks for the rich

* Tripling the national debt within two years (see “voodoo economics”)

* Just Say No

* Creating a new demographic of Americans: The Homeless

* A 4,370-piece set of dishes (19 pieces per setting), costing $209,508

* Bombing Libya and killing 60 people, including Leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s 15-month-old daughter

* Ketchup as a vegetable in public school lunches

* Lt. Col. Oliver North

Full Story Here: Pensito Review » The Reagan Legacy: Can We Talk?.

Ripple effect: Now Gaza Begins to Shake

Ripple effects of the Egyptian uprising are now spreading to Gaza, where some groups are planning a new rally next week. Moves by some Gazans to mimic protesters in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen by taking to the streets are making the Hamas government nervous.

Government officials sponsored an official rally in solidarity with the Egyptian protesters earlier, but when a small group of journalists and bloggers organized their own, six women and eight men were arrested. Two of the women, known for their outspoken criticism of the regime, were beaten up.

“I found out about the rally through Facebook, and it said the sit-in was in support of the Egyptian people in their revolution. I wanted to be part of something, to help the Egyptian people somehow,” recalls Mahmoud, afraid to give his full name.

Full Story Here: Now Gaza Begins to Shake | CommonDreams.org.

Assange extradition hearing begins Monday

A lawyer for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said this week’s extradition hearing in Britain does not involve allegations serious enough to send him to Sweden.

Jennifer Robinson said that while Assange takes the allegations of rape seriously, the Swedish legal definition of rape is much lower than what constitutes rape in Britain.

“He insists he is innocent and that this was consenting sex between adults,” Robinson told the Washington Post. “The box ticked is ‘rape,’ but Swedish rape law is different than Britain rape law, which is based on consent.”

Full Story Here: Assange extradition hearing begins Monday – UPI.com.

Koch brothers now at heart of GOP power

The billionaire brothers’ influence is most visible in the makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where members have vowed to undo restrictions on greenhouse gases.

The billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington’s political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee’s 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats.

Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group — Americans for Prosperity — to oppose the Obama administration’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group’s separate advertising and grass-roots activity during the 2010 campaign.

Full Story Here: Koch brothers: Charles and David Koch in Washington’s Republican spotlight – latimes.com.

Did the Internet Kill Privacy?

Facebook Photos Lead to a Teacher Losing Her Job; What Expectations of Privacy Exist in the Digital Era?

The pictures were exactly what you’d expect from a European summer vacation: Cafes in Italy and Spain, the Guinness brewery in Ireland. So 24-year-old Ashley Payne, a public high school English teacher in Georgia, was not prepared for what happened when her principal asked to see her in August 2009.

“He just asked me, ‘Do you have a Facebook page?’” Payne said. “And you know, I’m confused as to why I am being asked this, but I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Do you have any pictures of yourself up there with alcohol?’”

In fact, the picture that concerned the principal – showing Payne holding a glass of wine and a mug of beer – was on her Facebook page. There was also a reference to a local trivia contest with a profanity in its title.

Full Story Here: Did the Internet Kill Privacy? – CBS Sunday Morning – CBS News.

10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Reagan

Tomorrow will mark the 100th anniversary of President Reagan’s birth, and all week, conservatives have been trying to outdo each others’ remembrances of the great conservative icon. Senate Republicans spent much of Thursday singing Reagan’s praise from the Senate floor, while conservative publications have been running non-stop commemorations. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich are hoping to make a few bucks off the Gipper’s centennial.

But Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill.

ThinkProgress has compiled a list of the top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » 10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan.

How a zap to the brain could bring out the genius in you

A blast of electricity to the brain could provide a flash of inspiration when under pressure.

Scientists have shown that zapping the grey matter with a gentle electrical current helps us discard our preconceptions and think outside the box.

Donning such a ‘thinking cap’ could help us solve infuriating problems from balancing budgets at work to cracking the final crossword clue.

Researcher Allan Snyder said the controversial technique could help distract us from the humdrum and unlock our inner potential, ‘seeing the world anew

Full Story Here: How a zap to the brain could bring out the genius in you | Mail Online.

Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities

Robert Parry:

When you’re listening to the many tributes to President Ronald Reagan, often for his talent making Americans feel better about themselves, you might want to spend a minute thinking about the many atrocities in Latin America and elsewhere that Reagan aided, covered up or shrugged off in his inimitable “aw shucks” manner.

After all, the true measure of a president shouldn’t be his style or how he made us feel but rather what he did with his extraordinary power, what were the consequences for real people, either for good or ill.

Yet, even as the United States celebrates Reagan’s centennial birthday and lavishes praise on his supposed accomplishments, very little time has been spent reflecting on the unnecessary bloodbaths that Reagan enabled in many parts of the world.

Those grisly deaths and ugly tortures get whisked away as if they were just small necessities in Reagan’s larger success “winning the Cold War” – even though the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was already winding down before Reagan arrived on the national scene. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Myth.”]

Full Story Here: Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities.

Wallflowers at the Revolution

Frank Rich: :

A month ago most Americans could not have picked Hosni Mubarak out of a police lineup. American foreign policy, even in Afghanistan, was all but invisible throughout the 2010 election season. Foreign aid is the only federal budget line that a clear-cut majority of Americans says should be cut. And so now — as the world’s most unstable neighborhood explodes before our eyes — does anyone seriously believe that most Americans are up to speed? Our government may be scrambling, but that’s nothing compared to its constituents. After a near-decade of fighting wars in the Arab world, we can still barely distinguish Sunni from Shia.

The live feed from Egypt is riveting. We can’t get enough of revolution video — even if, some nights, Middle West blizzards take precedence over Middle East battles on the networks’ evening news. But more often than not we have little or no context for what we’re watching. That’s the legacy of years of self-censored, superficial, provincial and at times Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media. Even now we’re more likely to hear speculation about how many cents per gallon the day’s events might cost at the pump than to get an intimate look at the demonstrators’ lives.

Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news — at once threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip — can’t get enough of this cliché.

Full Story Here: Wallflowers at the Revolution – NYTimes.com.

The February 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report: What a mess!

The big news in today’s job report that will be hyped in this report is that unemployment fell 0.4% from 9.4% to 9.0%. The bad news is that this decrease is meaningless. It is the result of the BLS playing with their numbers for a second straight month, not people finding jobs. Although it comes from a different data series, the weak 36,000 growth in jobs reflects this fact.

In the last two months, the BLS has revised down the U-3 unemployment rate by 0.8%. None of this decrease has come from anyone who was unemployed finding a job. This all happened on paper. Now 0.8% may not seem like much to you, but the US labor force is 150+ million, and this 0.8% represents an error of 1.2 million. Another way of looking at this is the last two months changes in the U-3 rate have reduced that rate by 8.2%. On top of this, these changes are using data from the 2000 Census for their baselines, that is ten year old material.

The question we have to ask ourselves is is such a large error acceptable? And if this is the best the BLS can do, what does this have to say about how we use and view its numbers? Each month we hang upon and are spun stories about whether unemployment has increased or decreased by a tenth of a percent, but the BLS is telling us with these revisions that the unemployment could be off by around a percentage point.

Full Story Here: The February 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report: What a mess! | Corrente.

Why the Republican Budget Plan is a Hairball.

Robert Reich : :

The federal budget is $3.8 trillion.

The Republicans have just come up with their plan to cut the federal budget. They’ve found $32 billion of cuts.

Their fiery campaign rhetoric, fierce determination, righteous indignation, and bloviated anger have summoned forth a hairball.

What happened to John Boehner’s $100 billion budget-cutting commitment? What became of Paul Ryan’s big ideas? Where did all the roaring and raging on the right during the 2010 election go?

This is embarrassing.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (Why the Republican Budget Plan is a Hairball.).

Alternate Unemployment Charts

The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.

The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

Full Story Here: Alternate Unemployment Charts- ShadowStats.

New GOP Bill Would Allow Hospitals To Let Women Die Instead Of Having An Abortion

The controversy over “forcible rape” may be over, but now there’s a new Republican-sponsored abortion bill in the House that pro-choice folks say may be worse: this time around, the new language would allow hospitals to let a pregnant woman die rather than perform the abortion that would save her life.

The bill, known currently as H.R. 358 or the “Protect Life Act,” would amend the 2010 health care reform law that would modify the way Obamacare deals with abortion coverage. Much of its language is modeled on the so-called Stupak Amendment, an anti-abortion provision pro-life Democrats attempted to insert into the reform law during the health care debate last year. But critics say a new language inserted into the bill just this week would go far beyond Stupak, allowing hospitals that receive federal funds but are opposed to abortions to turn away women in need of emergency pregnancy termination to save their lives.

The sponsor of H.R. 358, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) is a vocal member of the House’s anti-abortion wing. A member of the bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus and a co-sponsor of H.R 3 — the bill that added “forcible rape” to the lexicon this week — Pitts is no stranger to the abortion debate. But pro-choice advocates say his new law goes farther than any other bill has in encroaching on the rights of women to obtain an abortion when their health is at stake. They say the bill is giant leap away from accepted law, and one they haven’t heard many in the pro-life community openly discuss before.

Full Story Here: New GOP Bill Would Allow Hospitals To Let Women Die Instead Of Having An Abortion | TPMDC.

Five myths about Ronald Reagan’s legacy

On Sunday, America celebrates the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, whose presidency is a touchstone for the modern conservative movement. In 2011, it is virtually impossible for a major Republican politician to succeed without citing Reagan as a role model. But much of what today’s voters think they know about the 40th president is more myth than reality, misconceptions resulting from the passage of time or from calculated attempts to rebuild or remake Reagan’s legacy. So, what are we getting wrong about the Gipper?

Full Story Here: Five myths about Ronald Reagan’s legacy.

Obama: U.S. Businesses Have Responsibility To Hire American Workers, Pay Decent Wages

Government has a responsibility to make the U.S. the best place in the world to do business, but companies have a responsibility to invest in the nation’s future by keeping jobs here, hiring American workers and paying decent wages, President Barack Obama says.

Obama devoted his weekly radio and Internet message Saturday to ideas from his State of the Union address, specifically a plan to put the U.S. on a more competitive footing globally by spending scarce dollars on innovation, education and the nation’s infrastructure.

“In today’s global, competitive economy, the best jobs and newest industries will take root in countries with the most skilled workers, the strongest commitment to research and technology and the fastest ways to move people, goods and information,” the president said, previewing a speech he is giving to the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce early next week.

Full Story Here: Obama: U.S. Businesses Have Responsibility To Hire American Workers, Pay Decent Wages.

OPS: talk is cheap Barry. What are you prepared to do about it?

Reagan Celebration Hides Brutal History

Wilkerson and Parry on Reagan centenary: Many of today’s catastrophes traced to Reagan’s Presidency

5 Ways to Help Your Community Go Local

Buy Independent and Buy Local campaigns have a big effect, according to a new survey of independent businesses. Here’s how you can reap the benefits for your local economy.

For four consecutive years, Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) has undertaken a unique research project, surveying thousands of independent businesses across the United States about their holiday season sales figures. The results of ILSR’s latest survey (measuring sales for last Thanksgiving through Christmas) offered encouraging news for entrepreneurs battered by the recession and for organizations working to sustain vital communities.

Independent businesses in communities with an active Buy Independent / Buy Local (BIBL) campaign reported the strongest figures since the surveys began—a 5.6 percent increase over the previous holiday season. This increase was more than two and a half times the gain (2.1 percent) reported by independent businesses located in areas lacking such a campaign.

Full Story Here: 5 Ways to Help Your Community Go Local by Jeff Milchen.

Monsanto Nation: Exposing Monsanto’s Minions

My expose last week, “The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?” has ignited a long-overdue debate on how to stop Monsanto’s earth killing, market-monopolizing, climate-destabilizing rampage. Should we basically resign ourselves to the fact that the Biotech Bully of St. Louis controls the dynamics of the marketplace and public policy? Should we seek some kind of practical compromise or “coexistence” between organics and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)? Should we focus our efforts on crop pollution compensation and “controlled deregulation” of genetically engineered (GE) crops, rather than campaign for an outright ban, or mandatory labeling and safety-testing? Should we prepare ourselves for a future farm landscape where the U.S.’s 23 million acres of alfalfa, the nation’s fourth largest crop, (93% of which are currently not sprayed with toxic herbicides), including organic alfalfa, are sprayed with Roundup and/or genetically polluted with Monsanto’s mutant genes?

Or should we stand up and say Hell No to Monsanto and the Obama Administration? Should we stop all the talk about coexistence between organics and GMOs; unite Millions Against Monsanto, mobilize like never before at the grassroots; put enormous pressure on the nation’s grocers to truthfully label the thousands of so-called conventional or “natural” foods containing or produced with GMOs; and then slowly but surely drive GMOs from the market?

Full Story Here: Monsanto Nation: Exposing Monsanto’s Minions | CommonDreams.org.

Egypt’s military-industrial complex Resides in Washington, DC

With US-made tear gas canisters fired on protesters in Cairo, Washington’s role in arming Egypt is under the spotlight

In early January 2010, Bob Livingston, a former chairman of the appropriations committee in the US House of Representatives, flew to Cairo accompanied by William Miner, one of his staff. The two men were granted meetings with US Ambassador Margaret Scobey, as well as Major General FC “Pink” Williams, the defence attaché and director of the US Office of Military Cooperation in Egypt. Livingston and Miner were lobbyists employed by the government of Egypt, helping them to open doors to senior officers in the US government. Records of their meetings, required under law, were recently published by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, DC watchdog group.

Although the names of those who attended the meetings have to be made public, the details of what was discussed are confidential. I called Miner to ask him about their meetings, but he referred me to Karim Haggag, the spokesman for the Egyptian embassy in Washington, who did not respond. Miner did confirm that he was a retired Navy pilot who had worked for clients like the Egyptian government, as well as several military contractors.

The cozy relationship between the lobbyists, members of the US Congress, Pentagon officials and the Egyptian government is easily explained: much is at stake. Egypt has received over $70bn in economic and military aid approved by the US Congress in the past 60 years, according to numbers compiled by the Congressional Research Service. Maj Gen Williams is the man in charge of the $1.3bn in annual US military aid supplied to the country.

Full Story Here: Egypt’s military-industrial complex | Pratap Chatterjee | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

January Report Shows More Americans Give Up On Finding A Job

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than half a million people gave up looking for work, echoing a trend from December, bringing the unemployment rate down to 9 percent as the economy added a paltry 36,000 jobs last month.

A large portion of that drop occurred as a result of many of those out of work giving up on their job search. When unemployed people stop looking for jobs, the government no longer counts them as unemployed.

“The unemployment rate may go down, but that has nothing to do with an improving job market. It means there are more discouraged workers out there,” John Silvia, Wells Fargo chief economist, said to CNN. The number of people unemployed fell by more than 600,000 in January to 13.9 million. That’s still about double the total that were out of work before the recession began in December 2007.

Full Story Here: January Report Shows More Americans Give Up On Finding A Job | Economy In Crisis.

OPS:

So all of a sudden under the miracle of ‘Change can beleive in’ ‘creating’ 35,000 jobs causes a .2% drop in the U3 and a .6% drop in the U6?

really? ……REALLY?

Who’s buying … sorry, ‘BELIEVING IN’ THIS crap?!

Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat…….

Structural Unemployment Threatens Businesses and Job Seekers

The number of job openings has increased to 3.2 million (compared to a low of 2.3 million when the recession began in late 2007), but unemployment remains stuck, prompting many to declare the nation is now suffering from structural unemployment.

A major sign of structural unemployment is when the skills of job seekers do not match what employers need. For example, in Fresno, CA, unemployment is at almost 17 percent, but a poll of employers says their major problem is finding qualified job applicants for positions such as medical technicians and even janitors.

“Economies are funny. They seem to work so well, but when they get knocked off their moorings, it takes awhile to reorganize everything,” Stephen J. Rose, a senior economist at Georgetown University said. While many of the unemployed in this country would not use the word ‘funny’ to describe the current economic situation, he makes a point of how America’s outsourcing of its industrial sector and the financial collapse combined to produce an unprecedented situation.

Full Story Here: Structural Unemployment Threatens Businesses and Job Seekers | Economy In Crisis.

Illegal Immigration and NAFTA

An influx of highly subsidized corn flooding the Mexican market has displaced millions of rural farmers, according to McClatchy Newspapers. Prior to the implementation of NAFTA, Mexican officials claimed that factory jobs would fill the void left by disappearing work on family farms.

One of the largely overlooked aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement is the fact that the failed trade pact has been the catalyst for the massive increase in illegal immigration over the past two decades or so.

An influx of highly subsidized corn flooding the Mexican market has displaced millions of rural farmers, according to McClatchy Newspapers. Prior to the implementation of NAFTA, Mexican officials claimed that factory jobs would fill the void left by disappearing work on family farms.

Mexican officials had promised that NAFTA would result in the “export of goods, not people.” That, however, has turned out to be far from reality.

Full Story Here: Illegal Immigration and NAFTA | Economy In Crisis.

Guantanamo death highlights U.S. detention policy

A 48-year-old Afghan citizen and Guantanamo detainee, Awal Gul, died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack. Gul, a father of 18 children, had been kept in a cage by the U.S. for more than 9 years — since late 2001 when he was abducted in Afghanistan — without ever having been charged with a crime. While the U.S. claims he was a Taliban commander, Gul has long insisted that he quit the Taliban a year before the 9/11 attack because, as his lawyer put it, “he was disgusted by the Taliban’s growing penchant for corruption and abuse.” His death means those conflicting claims will never be resolved; said his lawyer: “it is shame that the government will finally fly him home not in handcuffs and a hood, but in a casket.” This episode illustrates that the U.S. Government’s detention policy — still — amounts to imposing life sentences on people without bothering to prove they did anything wrong.

This episode also demonstrates the absurdity of those who claim that President Obama has been oh-so-eagerly trying to close Guantanamo only to be thwarted by a recalcitrant Congress. The Obama administration has sought to “close” the camp only in the most meaningless sense of that word: by moving its defining injustice — indefinite, due-process-free detention — a few thousand miles north onto U.S. soil. But the crux of the Guantanamo travesty — indefinite detention — is something the Obama administration has long planned to preserve, and that has nothing to do with what Congress has or has not done. Indeed, Gul was one of the 50 detainees designated by Obama for that repressive measure. Thus, had Gul survived, the Obama administration would have sought to keep him imprisoned indefinitely without any pretense of charging him with a crime — neither in a military commission nor a real court. Instead, they would have simply continued the Bush/Cheney policy of imprisoning him indefinitely without any charges.

Full Story Here: Guantanamo death highlights U.S. detention policy – Guantanamo – Salon.com.

Corporate Control? Not in These Communities

Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process—democracy.

The citizens of Mt. Shasta have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.

Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal movement making its way across the United States in which communities are directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local government.

Full Story Here: Corporate Control? Not in These Communities by Allen D. Kanner.

US-Russia nuclear arms treaty takes effect

A U.S.-Russia nuclear arms treaty that limits the number of atomic warheads the former Cold War foes can possess and allows them to inspect each other’s arsenals — securing a key foreign policy goal of President Barack Obama — went into effect Saturday.

The New START treaty was approved by the U.S. Senate in December after Obama pressed strongly for its passage. Russia ratified the deal last month.

The 10-year treaty, which can be extended by another five years, went into effect when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton exchanged the ratification papers with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of an international security conference in Munich.

Full Story Here: US-Russia nuclear arms treaty takes effect – Yahoo! News.

Rush Limbaugh Cannot Defend Ronald Reagan

I chatted with Rush LImbaugh on the Friday before Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. Tired of hearing conservative talk radio show hosts rewrite history, I decided to drop some inconvenient knowledge and ask for a little bit o’ reconciliation.

OPS: Fat Bastard falls on his face – SPLAT!   LOL

Uncontacted Amazon Tribe Filmed, Governments Take Notice (VIDEO)

Worldwide attention has turned to the Peru-Brazil border where uncontacted Indians live, and the South American countries are finally feeling the pressure to protect them.

Survival International’s campaign with newly released photos of the tribe, followed by a breathtakingly haunting film by the BBC, has raised awareness of one of the last uncontacted tribes in the world.

The BBC film, narrated by actor Gillian Anderson was made in collaboration with the Brazilian government for the new BBC 1 ‘Human Planet’ series. Shooting from a kilometer away with a powerful zoom lens in order to minimize disturbance, the BBC crew captures gardens, homes, and people covered in red body paint. An undisturbed civilization. Unfortunately, it may not remain this way.

Full Story Here: Uncontacted Amazon Tribe Filmed, Governments Take Notice (VIDEO).

Justice Department To Gulf Oil Spill Claims Czar Kenneth Feinberg: Loosen The Purse Strings

The job of the administrator of the $20 billion fund for Gulf oil spill victims is not to preserve money or return it to BP, and he should loosen the purse strings to help people still suffering from last year’s disaster, the Justice Department said Friday.

In a letter to claims czar Kenneth Feinberg obtained by The Associated Press, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli alluded to the fact that only roughly $3.5 billion of the fund has been spent. Any money not spent goes back to BP.

Perrelli also said that Feinberg needs to be more transparent, and that his Gulf Coast Claims Facility should take a second look at the emergency advance payments the fund paid to victims to determine if the process was fair.

Full Story Here: Justice Department To Gulf Oil Spill Claims Czar Kenneth Feinberg: Loosen The Purse Strings.

Nasdaq Hackers Reportedly Penetrated Computer Network Multiple Times

The computer network that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market has been penetrated by hackers multiple times during the past year, according to a newspaper report.

The Wall Street Journal reported on its website late Friday that federal investigators are trying to identify the perpetrators and their motive.

People familiar with the investigation say the exchange’s trading platform, the system which executes trades, was not compromised, according to the report.

Full Story Here: Nasdaq Hackers Reportedly Penetrated Computer Network Multiple Times.

OPS: Just another reason to keep your money out of the Wall Street Casino.

Pope’s organs are too holy to donate to mortals, says Church

Benedict XVI has tried to scotch rumours that he carries an organ donor card after his secretary revealed that his ascension to the position of Holy Father means he is no longer able to bequeath his body parts to lesser mortals.

On the pontiff’s instructions, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, Benedict’s personal secretary, fired off a letter to quell the rumours that started in the Pope’s native Germany.

“It’s true that a simple cardinal can have an organ donor card but, despite public declarations to the contrary, it ceased to apply when he was elected head of the Catholic Church,” Mgr Gaenswein said.

Full Story Here: Pope’s organs are too holy to donate to mortals, says Church – Europe, World – The Independent.

OPS:  Ya Think Jesus would agree?

Bush’s Swiss visit off after complaints on torture

Former U.S. President George W. Bush, under fire from human rights group over allegations of ordering torture, has canceled a visit to Switzerland where he was to address a Jewish charity gala.

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say, and several human rights groups signaled that they were poised to take further legal action this week.

Full Story Here: Bush’s Swiss visit off after complaints on torture | Raw Story.

Media Matters debunks Obama’s alleged Bible misquote

Fox News recently accused President Barack Obama of misquoting a passage from the Bible during his address this week at the National Prayer Breakfast. However, a liberal media watchdog group pointed out that Fox Nation failed to realize that “there is more than one version of the Bible.”

“Obama was quoting from the New International Version,” Ben Dimiero of Media Matters for America wrote Friday, “while Fox Nation was pointing to the King James Version to ‘debunk’ him.”

Fox Nation blasted Obama’s reading of Isaiah 40:31, stating that the passage is, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Full Story Here: Media Matters debunks Obama’s alleged Bible misquote | Raw Story.

Calling For An ‘Innovation Economy,’ Rep. McCotter Makes The Case For 19th-Century Technology

During his State of the Union Address, President Obama focused on how the United States can “win the future.” The “first step,” he declared, “is encouraging American innovation.”

One of the leading Republicans in Congress, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy Show yesterday and discussed this notion of an “innovation economy.” After Liddy peddled the ludicrous claim that House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) had implemented a ban on incandescent light bulbs in the United States, McCotter used the opportunity to scoff at liberal efforts to improve the incandescent light bulb, a product that was first invented over 200 years ago. He called the irony “striking” that liberals would “prais[e] the end of the incandescent bulb at the very time they’re talking about an innovation economy”:

…snip….

The smaller point here is that, as Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress writes, “there was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs,” despite Liddy’s insistence to the contrary.

The larger point, however, is that McCotter’s idea of “innovation” in the 21st century is holding on to a 19th-century product with an iron grip

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Calling For An ‘Innovation Economy,’ Rep. McCotter Makes The Case For 19th-Century Technology.

The For-Profit College Rip-Off: Predatory Schools Take 90 Percent Of Revenue From Govt, Leave Students Bankrupt

The Education Department today released new data on the rate at which higher education students default on their student loans, which showed that students at for-profit colleges — schools like the University of Phoenix or Strayer University — are defaulting at rates far above those at other institutions. In fact, 25 percent of students who attend for profit colleges default within three years. Here’s a chart comparing default rates at different types of schools (the green bar represents defaults at private, for-profit schools).

Here are some more key facts about for-profit colleges:

– Just 11 percent of higher education students in the country attend for-profit schools, yet they account for 26 percent of federal student loans and 44 percent of student loan defaults.

– Many of the schools make up to ninety percent of their revenue from U.S. taxpayers, through the Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, and other federal assistance used by their students. 91.5 percent of Kaplan’s revenue comes from the government, along with 88 percent revenue at the University of Phoenix.

– CEO’s of for-profit colleges receive up to 26 times the amount of pay that the heads of traditional universities do.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » The For-Profit College Rip-Off: Predatory Schools Take 90 Percent Of Revenue From Govt, Leave Students Bankrupt.

Bachmann Surrenders On Support For Draconian Cuts To Veterans’ Benefits

Last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) unveiled a plan to cut $400 billion in federal spending, and included a controversial target. The Tea Party favorite proposed freezing the Veterans Affairs Department’s health care spending and cutting veterans’ disability benefits. Her plan sliced $4.5 billion from the VA and reduced 150,000 veterans’ disability compensation and the amount they receive in Social Security Disability Income. Veterans groups blasted the proposal as “totally out of step with America’s commitment to our veterans,” and as something that shows “contempt for American servicemembers’ sacrifices.” Democrats outside her state even began targeting Bachmann’s proposal; Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) wrote her a letter which said her ideas were a “giant step in the wrong direction.” After days of similar criticism, Bachmann has finally retreated and withdrew that part of her spending reduction proposal today:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Bachmann Surrenders On Support For Draconian Cuts To Veterans’ Benefits.

Is Ginni Thomas Getting Rich Off Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court Decisions?

Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas has a new job — as the head of a Tea Party lobbying firm called “Liberty Consulting.” Her new firm, which promises to give “voice to principled citizens and the tea party movement in the halls of Congress through governmental affairs efforts” also offers very unusual service to its clients:

Liberty Consulting offers advice for short or long term projects and bringing resources to bear for impact — whether it includes a short term bill-reading project, assistance on congressional oversight efforts or an effective coalition for impact. Additionally, Liberty Consulting offers advice on optimizing political investments for charitable giving in the non-profit world or political causes.

Ginni Thomas’ new career advising clients on how to donate money to political causes is striking in light of the fact that this career path was much more difficult to break into just one year ago. In Citizens United v. FEC, Ginni’s husband Clarence cast the key fifth vote enabling corporations to spend unlimited money influencing U.S. elections. As a result of this vote, outside groups spent nearly $300 million influencing the 2010 elections — much of which would have been illegal before Justice Thomas greenlighted this spending.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Is Ginni Thomas Getting Rich Off Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court Decisions?.

Kucinich Requests To See Bradley Manning, Soldier In Solitary Confinement For Alleged Leaks

Last May, the military arrested Private First Class Bradley Manning, a military intelligence officer who had served overseas in Iraq, over charges that he was involved in leaking numerous classified documents and videos to the Wikileaks whistleblowing group, including a video of a U.S. attack helicopter killing numerous unarmed journalists.

Since his arrests, numerous civil liberties groups and investigative journalists have protested the conditions under which Manning is being held, noting that he has been kept in solitary confinement and is denied even access to a pillow or bed sheets. This is particularly shocking in light of new information revealed that Manning was suspected of having poor mental health before he was deployed to Iraq, with some superiors even requesting that he not be given firearms. Yet despite this press coverage of Manning’s treatment the military has offered very limited access to him and has refused to address the concerns of human rights and civil liberties advocates.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Kucinich Requests To See Bradley Manning, Soldier In Solitary Confinement For Alleged Leaks.

Bewitched by the Numbers

The data zealots have utterly discombobulated themselves.

They were expecting something on the order of 150,000 new jobs to have been created in January. That would have been a lousy number, but they were fully prepared to spin it as being pretty good. They thought the official jobless rate might hop up a tick to 9.5 percent.

Instead, the economy created just 36,000 jobs in January, an absolutely dreadful number. But the unemployment rate fell like a stone from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent.

The crunchers stared at the numbers in disbelief. They moved them this way and that. No matter how they arranged them, they made no sense. Nothing even close to enough jobs were being created to bring the unemployment rate down, but for two successive months it had dropped sharply. (It dived from 9.8 percent to 9.4 in December.)

Full Story Here: Bewitched by the Numbers – NYTimes.com.

OPS: So all of a sudden under the miracle of ‘Change can beleive in’ ‘creating’ 35,000 jobs causes a .2% drop in the U3 and a .6% drop in the U6?

really? ……REALLY?

Who’s buying … sorry, ‘BELIEVING IN’ THIS crap?!

Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat…….

Debunking the Reagan Myth

Paul Krugman

And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.

Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?

For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder.

Full Story Here: Debunking the Reagan Myth – New York Times.

OPS: this is from 2008 but in light of the Reichwing attempts to canonize him this week it’s important to review reality

The Egyptian Uprising Is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism

Economic decline at the hands of ‘hot’ money has driven Egyptians’ discontent.

The revolution in Egypt is as much a rebellion against the painful deterioration of economic conditions as it is about opposing a dictator, though they are linked. That’s why President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement that he intends to stick around until September was met with an outpouring of rage.

When people are facing a dim future, in a country hijacked by a corrupt regime that destabilized its economy through what the CIA termed, “aggressively pursuing economic reforms to attract foreign investment” (in other words, the privatization and sale of its country’s financial system to international sharks), waiting doesn’t cut it.

Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian who catalyzed this revolution, didn’t set himself on fire in protest of his inability to vote, but because of anguish over his job status in a country with 15.7 percent unemployment. The six other men in Algeria, Egypt and Mauritania who followed suit were also unemployed.

Full Story Here: The Egyptian Uprising Is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism | World | AlterNet.

What Mubarak must do before he resigns

As Egyptian citizens and human rights defenders, we have been on the streets here, including in Tahrir Square, since Jan. 25 to demand dignity and freedom for all Egyptians. There is nothing we want more than an immediate end to the Mubarak era, which has been marred by repression, abuse and injustice. We are heartened by the international community’s shift from demanding “restraint” and “responsiveness” to echoing our call for Hosni Mubarak to step down and for an immediate transition toward democracy.

But for a real transition to democracy to begin, Mubarak must not resign until he has signed decrees that, under Egypt’s constitution, only a president can issue. This is not simply a legal technicality; it is, as Nathan Brown recently blogged for ForeignPolicy.com, the only way out of our nation’s political crisis.

Full Story Here: Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty – What Mubarak must do before he resigns.

$5 million lawsuit targets Jimmy Carter for ‘attacking Israel’

Former President Jimmy Carter has become the target of a class action lawsuit over ostensibly mean things he said about Israel in his best-selling 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The lawsuit, filed in New York by an Israeli firm, alleges that the book “contained numerous false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author’s agenda of anti-Israel propaganda and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as advertised.”

The five American plaintiffs, two of whom are dual citizens of the US and Israel, seek $5 million in damages over the book (which is being sold for less than $10 on Amazon) on the basis that its criticisms of Israel violated consumer protection safeguards.

Full Story Here: $5 million lawsuit targets Jimmy Carter for ‘attacking Israel’ | Raw Story.

US lawmakers clash on Patriot Act measures

The “Clash” is in HOW LONG TO EXTEND these draconian Police State policies.

US lawmakers clashed Friday over how long to extend key provisions of a controversial surveillance law, designed to help authorities thwart terrorist plots, before they expire at month’s end.

At issue were three core measures in the Patriot Act adopted in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes to fill what the government complained were gaps in its abilities to track and catch extremists.

The provisions allow authorities to use roving wiretaps to track an individual on several telephones; track a non-US national suspected of being “lone-wolf” terrorist not tied to an extremist group; and to seize personal or business records seen as critical to an investigation.

Top Senate Republicans called Friday for the three powers to be made permanent — a step rejected in the original law in favor of “sunsets” to ensure regular reviews by Congress to ferret out possible abuse.

Full Story Here: AFP: US lawmakers clash on Patriot Act measures.

Gun Lobbyist Wants a Patron Saint for “Hand Gunners”

A group led by a longtime gun lobbyist is petitioning the Vatican to make a nineteenth century Passionist seminarian “the patron saint for hand gunners.”

I am not making this up. But the lobbyist’s case for making an existing saint, Francesco Possenti also a patron for hand gunners, appears to be a fabrication.

Francesco Possenti (1838-1862) was a young man who lived in Central Italy in the mid-eighteenth century. He was known for both his intelligence and affinity for “la dolce vita” – parties and fancy dress. However, during an illness he promised that if he recuperated (he did) he would join a religious order as gesture of gratitude (he did not). Following several family deaths and a second illness, Possenti joined the Passionist order of priests as a seminarian.

He then changed his name to “Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows.” The young noviciate became known for his devotion to the Virgin Mary and his deep spirituality. Almost simultaneously, he contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis, dying before he could take his priestly vows. During this time, however, Possenti remained highly spiritual and serene in the face of death. He passed away in February 1862.

Full Story Here: | Gun Lobbyist Wants a Patron Saint for “Hand Gunners”.