Archive for May, 2011

Stricken Fukushima nuke plant leaking oil

Oil was leaking into the sea from heavy oil tanks for reactors 5 and 6 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday, adding the spill may have been ongoing since the March 11 quake and tsunami.

Tepco said workers at the site saw an oil slick floating on the sea at 8 a.m. Tuesday near the intakes of units 5 and 6.

The oil slick is believed to be 200 to 300 meters long.

The total amount of oil that has leaked is still unknown, and the utility plans to set up a boom to prevent the slick from spreading.

Full Story Here: Stricken Fukushima nuke plant leaking oil | The Japan Times Online.

Martin Jetpack Test Flight Video: Jetpack Travel Becoming Closer to Reality?

Martin Jetpack makes the first true flight test by soaring 5000 feet into the air then parachuting back to Earth reported Stuff.co.nz.

According to Martin Aircraft Company’s Glenn Martin, “no other jetpack has flown higher than 150 feet” and “no one has ever fired a parachute from a jetpack.”

The jetpack was fitted with a test dummy for the flight and luckily so as it had a bit of a rough landing. Even with the heavy landing, Martin says a pilot would have walked away from it.

Full Story Here: Martin Jetpack Test Flight Video: Jetpack Travel Becoming Closer to Reality? – AOL Travel News.

Low Federal Tax Rate Means Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars Lost Annually, Bartlett Says

Hearing some politicians talk about taxes, one might be convinced the United States has one of the highest tax rates in the world.

But the reality is the federal tax rate, broadly measured, is the lowest it has been in 60 years, Bruce Bartlett writes in a new column. A look at the effective tax rate, which expresses taxes as a share of the country’s economic output, belies the stream of political rhetoric arguing that taxes are relatively high, says Bartlett, who was a senior policy analyst under President Ronald Reagan.

Federal taxes will be 14.8 percent of the nation’s economic output this year, according to a recent estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. That’s compared to a postwar annual average rate of 18.5 percent, Bartlett notes.

Full Story Here: Low Federal Tax Rate Means Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars Lost Annually, Bartlett Says.

Why Innovation Needs Big Government

Ian Fletcher :-:

Most people realize that the Federal budget deficit and the trade deficit are serious problems. Unfortunately, as I have argued previously, few people grasp the importance of another big deficit in our economy, without which it will be extremely hard to fix the first two: our innovation deficit.

Simply put: despite appearances to the contrary, our economy is not innovative enough.  And it’s costing us, big-time.

Despite our smug self-image as a global innovation leader, the U.S. actually only ranks in the middle of the pack for resources committed to innovation. See the chart below. (Source.)

Of course, spending money on problems isn’t everything. But it is also true that you generally get what you pay for.  So unless our R&D is somehow more efficient dollar-for-dollar than that of other nations, we’re not setting the pace here.

Our other big problem, of course, is that even when we do succeed in out-innovating other nations, we often can’t hang onto the industries we create. In fact, we have a long record of originating technologies and then “losing our birthright” of commercial dominance in them.  To give just a few examples:

• high-fidelity sound systems
• color television
• digital watches
• videocassette recorders
• semiconductor memories
• semiconductor production equipment (like steppers, the machines that “print” computer chips onto silicon)
• flat panel displays
• robots
• lithium-ion batteries
• advanced ceramics (turbine blades, not coffee mugs)

The weakness of our innovation performance is masked for the time being by the fact that innovations often have long lead times between the stages of the so-called “technology life cycle.”  That is, decades can pass between the beginning and the end of the following process:

1. The key underlying science is discovered or key technology invented
2. The first (exotic and expensive) commercial applications appear.
3. The technology gradually achieves adoption in all uses where it is appropriate.
4. The know-how to build the technology diffuses so much that it becomes a low-cost commodity product that any reasonably competent nation can make.

As a result, a nation that was once on the forefront of innovation can still be harvesting technological positions it previously planted years later. We’re coasting.

This coasting effect is enhanced by the presence of so-called “standards lock-in” protecting the oligopolies of companies like Microsoft and Intel. Microsoft’s products are, as anyone who uses them knows, in many ways abysmal: its desktop operating system delivers a user experience that is no faster or more reliable than the one sold a dozen years ago. People keep using it because of their need to interface with the installed base of other Microsoft users.  Intel is less of a technological laggard, but it still commands a fat market share, and premium prices, based on the difficulty of computer manufacturers adapting to the use of alternative chips.

Other lesser-known companies and industries enjoy similar effects. But these effects are a wasting asset which will not last forever. They are vulnerable to both gradual encroachment and to sudden technology shocks that render their existing products obsolete overnight.

Another factor masking America’s innovation decline is the short-term gains from offshoring, which can make declining tech companies seem to boom as they ramp up profits by inexorably selling off their crown jewels. When a company offshores the least-productive, and least profitable, parts of its supply chain, both its productivity and profitability must, by definition, go up, in the short run.  In the long run, however, this can lead to an insidious logic according to which, in the words of aerospace engineer Dr. L. J. Hart-Smith, who wrote a prescient critique of how Boeing was slowly outsourcing itself to death, the company decides “to outsource everything except a little Boeing decal to slap on the nose of the finished airplane.”

So how can we restore America’s innovation engine?

As I argued in a previous article, the key bottleneck in America’s innovation system isn’t, as many Republicans seem to think, that the government hamstrings would-be innovators with excess regulation or taxes their profits to death.  Outside a few industries with big risks to the environment (nuclear energy) or public health (pharmaceuticals), the regulatory burden is, in fact, relatively light.  Neither does our government impose confiscatory taxation on successful innovators.

Instead, the key bottleneck in our innovation supply chain is what we can call useful unpatentable ideas. (The more sophisticated term is “infratechnologies.”) These are technological innovations  which cannot themselves be commercialized. But innovations that can be commercialized and sold for profit cannot take place without them. As a result, the private sector tends to neglect them.

To take one example: nanotechnology is probably the first major technology since the steam engine in which the U.S. is not the dominant player, research in this area being divided roughly equally between the U.S., Europe, and the Far East. And commercial nanotech companies depend, according to Greg Tassey of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, upon the following infratechnologies:

• Techniques for measuring the shapes, dimensions, and electrical characteristics of the various molecules making up nanoscale devices.

• Techniques for manipulating and measuring the spin of individual electrons.

• Scientific and engineering data for characterizing the fundamental physical behavior and long-term reliability of new nanoelectronic materials

Note that the words “techniques” and “data” figure prominently in the above descriptions. As noted, these are not (usually!) things that can be directly commercialized or patented. Nor are they academic pure science that the National Science Foundation will fund.

Reigning neoclassical economics assumes (often without realizing it) that new technologies grow automatically from advances in pure science. It also assumes that these new technologies automatically commercialize themselves. But if, as noted, there are important gaps in the “innovation supply chain,” this isn’t true. Pure laissez faire doesn’t work well in technology any better than it does in other areas of economics

Back in the golden age of the American economy , the Federal government used to fill these gaps much better than it does today.  In 1965, it funded 65 percent of all American R&D. But it has been walking away from this task for decades, as the chart below makes clear. (Source.)

One big problem for the U.S., as opposed to other countries, is that our publicly-funded R&D is dominated by mission-oriented agencies—NASA, the Defense Department, the National Institutes of Health, etc.  These are fine institutions, but none of them is organized around the economic objective of increasing our GDP. They are all organized around non-economic missions: explore space, defend the nation, cure illness.

Other nations tend to focus R&D funding on what will improve their economies.  For example, Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute has one mission:  technology development and commercialization.  (One consequence is that private industry contributes about a third of its budget; leveraging money this way is key.)  It is no accident that while our Defense Department produces  0.1 patent (an imperfect measure for infratechnology research, but it’s what’s available) per million dollars, ITRI generates twenty times that. (Source.)

Proposals have been made to remedy America’s shortfall in this field.  In 2008, the liberal Brookings Institution and the industry-funded Information Technology and Innovation Foundation proposed a National Innovation Foundation along the lines of the existing National Science Foundation.

Beyond this, what else could we do?  Here are some suggestions:

• Raise the average level of research and development (R&D) in manufacturing to six percent. This would be roughly a fifty percent increase from today.  It wouldn’t push the entire manufacturing sector into the ultra-high R&D category characteristic of true high technology, but it’s a good benchmark of what level we need for the sector to be innovative across the broad range of categories we need.

• Shift American R&D more towards long-term “breakthrough” research, as opposed to short-term research oriented to next week’s product launch.

• Because long-term research is, by its nature, more speculative, encourage a “portfolio” approach in which many projects are pursued, only a few of which will reach fruition in any given time-frame, as opposed to a “bet the house” approach on one or two things.

• Increase the efficiency of America’s R&D spending by supporting a number of policies to this end, like regional technology clusters, supported in part by state governments. Some states are already doing this part on their own.

 

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why. (CPA, 2011, $17.95)

Cell phone radiation officially listed a potential cancer risk

A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies cell phones as a possible carcinogen in the same category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.

A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries in the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, made the determination that cell phone exposure was “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” The team, which included scientists from the U.S., reached their conclusion after reviewing dozens of studies.

“The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences,” Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, told CNN.

Full Story Here: Cell phone radiation officially listed a potential cancer risk | The Raw Story.

U.S. announces charges against five 9/11 terror suspects

US military prosecutors at Guantanamo were expected to file fresh charges on Tuesday against the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four alleged co-conspirators.

The recommendations, which must still be approved by a military tribunal official, set the stage for the high-profile Al-Qaeda suspects to finally face justice almost a decade after the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

President Barack Obama’s administration last month abandoned plans to try the five in a civilian court just blocks from the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, felled by Al-Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001.

Full Story Here: U.S. announces charges against five 9/11 terror suspects | The Raw Story.

Voters Around The Country Afflicted With Buyer’s Remorse Over New GOP Governors

ThinkProgress has done a lot of coverage of controversial policy measures being inaugurated around the country by the new breed of Republican governors elected last fall due to the recession. And according to survey data from Margie Omero at Public Policy Polling, the voters in most of these states (though not all, Nevada’s an exception) aren’t liking the cocktail of budget cuts, union-busting, anti-abortion laws, etc.

Polls show voters in battleground states regret having voted for their new Republican Governors. Since February, Democratic firm PPP released surveys in eight states asking voters “if you could do last fall’s election for Governor over again, how would you vote?” In seven of the eight, the Democrat now would win, with all seven showing double-digit improvements in their margin. (Only Rory Reid in Nevada still trails.) The chart below shows both the actual 2010 margin and the new margin, sorted by the shift.

Full Story Here: Voters Around The Country Afflicted With Buyer’s Remorse Over New GOP Governors | ThinkProgress.

While Slashing Aid To Main Street, GOP Budget Drops Tax Rate For Richest To Lowest In 80 Years | ThinkProgress

Across the country, the House Republican budget plan — designed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — has faced the ire of Main Street Americans, who are outraged that it effectively ends Medicare. But the plan also includes steep cuts to discretionary spending that would gut services and investments upon which Main Street depends.

For instance, the budget dramatically cuts back Pell Grants to college students and guts funding for food stamps. Ryan actually found 2/3 of his cuts in programs benefiting low-income Americans.

But at the same time, the budget would lower the top marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans to a 25 percent, returning the tax rate on the richest to pre-New Deal levels. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) demonstrates this with the following graph: 

Full Story Here: GRAPH: While Slashing Aid To Main Street, GOP Budget Drops Tax Rate For Richest To Lowest In 80 Years | ThinkProgress.

EXCLUSIVE: WI State Election Board Failed to Review Minutes from Waukesha County ‘Recount’ Before Certifying Supreme Court Election Results

Mountains of irregularities, more than 800 official exhibits, and objections by candidate’s attorneys never examined by top state election authority before razor-thin results for 10-year seat on state’s high court certified as ‘correct’…

Last Monday, May 23rd, Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), the state’s top election agency, officially certified [PDF] the controversial results of the extraordinarily close April 5th statewide Supreme Court election and its subsequent “recount.”

However, as The BRAD BLOG has learned, the agency certified those results without reviewing hundreds of official exhibits documenting wholesale ballot irregularities, on-the-record objections from the attorneys of the candidate who filed for the “recount,” and thousands of pages of official transcripts and minutes documenting the entire “recount” process from the election’s most controversial county.

Even more alarming, the agency doesn’t even yet have a copy of the hundreds, if not thousands, of pages which make up the official minutes documenting the nearly month-long “recount” from Waukesha County — the last of the state’s 72 counties to complete its count, and by far the most controversial county following the late discovery there of some 14,000 votes not included in the county’s original Election Night results.

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : EXCLUSIVE: WI State Election Board Failed to Review Minutes from Waukesha County ‘Recount’ Before Certifying Supreme Court Election Results.

For Want of a Dentist

Pr. George’s Boy Dies After Bacteria From Tooth Spread to Brain
Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren’t so hard to find.

If his mother hadn’t been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

Full Story Here: For Want of a Dentist – washingtonpost.com.

The Sky Really Is Falling

Global climate change has made for freak storms and more intense weather. The result is Hurricane Katrina, this month’s devastating tornadoes and floods, and routine forest fires in California. Here, a tornado touches down in Iowa in 2008.

Chris Hedges :-:

The rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago, has been confronted by the power elite with two kinds of self-delusion. There are those, many of whom hold elected office, who dismiss the science and empirical evidence as false. There are others who accept the science surrounding global warming but insist that the human species can adapt. Our only salvation—the rapid dismantling of the fossil fuel industry—is ignored by both groups. And we will be led, unless we build popular resistance movements and carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience, toward collective self-annihilation by dimwitted pied pipers and fools.

Those who concede that the planet is warming but insist we can learn to live with it are perhaps more dangerous than the buffoons who decide to shut their eyes. It is horrifying enough that the House of Representatives voted 240-184 this spring to defeat a resolution that said that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” But it is not much of an alternative to trust those who insist we can cope with the effects while continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Full Story Here: Chris Hedges: The Sky Really Is Falling – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.

A Decade of Magical Tax-Cut Thinking

The 2001 Bush tax cuts added $2.5 trillion to the national debt and disproportionately benefited the wealthiest households. Have we learned anything?

Republican leaders in Congress have a one-point program for whatever ails the nation: cut taxes for millionaires and large corporations.

Got a revenue surplus? Cut taxes. Got a budget deficit? Cut taxes. Got a toothache? Cut taxes.

These politicians are like my uncle who believed the solution to every problem was a wee glass of scotch. They live in a world of magical thinking.

GOP leaders argue that the budget deficit is the great moral issue of our day and requires great austerity.

Yet just before Memorial Day, GOP lawmakers unveiled their bold new economic program. You guessed right: more tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and global corporations.

Full Story Here: A Decade of Magical Tax-Cut Thinking – OtherWords.

The World from Berlin: Nuclear Phaseout Is an ‘Historic Moment’

Angela Merkel’s government has decided to phase out nuclear power by 2022, in a reversal of its previous policy. German commentators are split over the wisdom of the decision, with one newspaper comparing the move to the fall of the Berlin Wall and another saying it will harm future generations.

“This is nothing more and nothing less than a revolution in energy supply,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel. It was September 2010, and she was referring to her government’s newly minted energy strategy. That plan included extending the operating lives of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants, which had been scheduled to go offline by 2021. All of this had been intended to help Germany meet its ambitious goals for reducing climate-killing CO2 emissions.

But on Monday, less than nine months later, the German government announced a new energy plan that could also be fairly described as a revolution — even if it represents a 180-degree reversal of the administration’s previous policy.

In marathon talks that went into the early hours of Monday, the government hammered out the details of its plans to phase out nuclear power. The new strategy foresees all Germany’s reactors going offline by 2021 if possible and 2022 at the latest. Eight plants which are currently temporarily offline will be shut down immediately. The phaseout will be accompanied by a massive increase in the use of renewable energy, and the government intends to pass a law making it easier to construct the new energy infrastructure that will be needed.

Full Story Here: The World from Berlin: Nuclear Phaseout Is an ‘Historic Moment’ – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

Storm suspends work at Japan Fukushima nuclear plant

The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear plant has suspended some of its outdoor work due to a tropical storm, just days after it admitted it was not prepared for harsh weather.

Heavy rain and strong winds are hitting north-east Japan, which was devastated in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

There are fears that more radioactive material from the Fukushima plant could drain into the land and sea.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency has warned of mudslides and floods.

Typhoon Songda weakened to a tropical storm over south-west Japan late on Sunday, but strong winds and rain have continued to pound the north-east of the country.

Full Story Here: BBC News – Storm suspends work at Japan Fukushima nuclear plant.

Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink

Exclusive: Record rise, despite recession, means 2C target almost out of reach

Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius – which scientists say is the threshold for potentially “dangerous climate change” – is likely to be just “a nice Utopia”, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA. It also shows the most serious global recession for 80 years has had only a minimal effect on emissions, contrary to some predictions.

Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.

Full Story Here: Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink | Environment | The Guardian.

Adelino Ramos Killed: Third Environmental Activist Murdered This Week In Brazil

They watched as the Amazon rain forest fell around them. Instead of staying quiet, as so many people in the lawless region do, environmentalist leader Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria, fought back.

They reported illegal loggers to police and federal prosecutors. They confronted powerful interests that destroy the forest for the quick economic gains to be made from selling timber, or from clearing land to raise cattle or soybeans.

This week, like so many Amazon activists before them, the Silvas were gunned down.

Full Story Here: Adelino Ramos Killed: Third Environmental Activist Murdered This Week In Brazil.

Mitch McConnell: Paul Ryan Medicare Plan ‘On The Table’ In Debt Ceiling Discussions

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Sunday that the Medicare reform plan authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would be “on the table” with respect to negotiations over raising the debt ceiling.

“We are going to discuss what ought to be done,” McConnell said during an appearance on Meet The Press. “I can assure you that to get my vote to raise the debt ceiling, for whatever that is worth… Medicare will be a part of it.”

Using the Ryan plan as an option for debt ceiling negotiations is a new marker for GOP leaders, who have long insisted legislation should include strict spending caps. McConnell’s remarks suggest not only that GOP leadership is looking for cover for the party’s Medicare voucher proposal — forcing Democrats to either support elements of the plan or risk default — but also that the two parties may be moving further apart as that deadline nears.

Full Story Here: Mitch McConnell: Paul Ryan Medicare Plan ‘On The Table’ In Debt Ceiling Discussions.

Germany to scrap nuclear power by 2022

Germany on Monday became the first major industrialised power to agree an end to nuclear power in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phase-out to be completed by 2022.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the decision, hammered out by her centre-right coalition overnight, marked the start of a “fundamental” rethink of energy policy in the world’s number four economy.

“We want the electricity of the future to be safer and at the same time reliable and affordable,” Merkel told reporters as she accepted the findings of an expert commission on nuclear power she appointed in March in response to the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima plant.

Full Story Here: Germany to scrap nuclear power by 2022 | The Raw Story.

Anti-war veteran arrested for dancing in Jefferson Memorial 

According to a recent court ruling, the National Park Service was acting lawfully in 2008 when officers shut down a “flashmob” and arrested a woman who was “expressively dancing” inside the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In protest of the judge’s decision to uphold the ban on demonstrations, five activists went to the Jefferson Memorial on Saturday and began silently dancing. They were all rounded up by officers in short order.

One of the activists, anti-war veteran Adam Kokesh, appeared to ignore an officer’s order to stop. As he began to slowly walk away, Kokesh was grabbed and violently thrown to the ground, then held down by an officer who put two hands around his throat.

Kokesh is also the host of a Russia Today political news show called “Adam VS The Man.”

Full Story Here: Anti-war veteran arrested for dancing in Jefferson Memorial | Raw Replay.

The Greek “Ultimatum”: Bailout (For The Bankers) And (Loss Of) Sovereignty

So after one year of beating around the bush, it is finally made clear that, as many were expecting all along, the ultimate goal of the Greek “bailouts” is nothing short of the state’s (partial for now) annexation by Europe. According to an FT breaking news article, “European leaders are negotiating a deal that would lead to unprecedented outside intervention in the Greek economy, including international involvement in tax collection and privatisation of state assets, in exchange for new bail-out loans for Athens. People involved in the talks said the package would also include incentives for private holders of Greek debt voluntarily to extend Athens’ repayment schedule, as well as another round of austerity measures.” Thus Greece is faced with the banker win-win choice, of not only abandoning sovereignty, a first in modern “democratic” history, in the pursuit of “Greek” policies that are beneficial for Europe, or not get a bailout, which would only serve to prevent senior bondholder impairments. How could Greek leaders and its population possibly not accept such an attractive option which either leaves the country as another Olli Rehn protectorate, or forces it to not bailout Europe’s overleveraged banker class. In essence Europe is now convinced, just like Hank Paulson was on September 14, 2008, that the downstream effects from letting Greece implode are manageable. But the key development is that the Greek bankruptcy, which from the beginning, and as Peter Tchir’s note below demonstrates, was always simply a Greek choice, was just made that much easier.

From the FT:

Full Story Here: The Greek “Ultimatum”: Bailout (For The Bankers) And (Loss Of) Sovereignty | zero hedge.

Memorial Day: How America Screws Its Soldiers

Everyone claims to “Support Our Troops.” But as Andrew J. Bacevich explains, telling the military it can do whatever it wants works for everyone—except for the soldiers themselves.

Riders on Boston subways and trolleys are accustomed to seeing placards that advertise research being conducted at the city’s many teaching hospitals. One that recently caught my eye, announcing an experimental “behavioral treatment,” posed this question to potential subjects: “Are you in the U.S. military or a veteran disturbed by terrible things you have experienced?”

Just below the question, someone had scrawled this riposte in blue ink: “Thank God for these Men and Women. USA all the way.”

Here on a 30 x 36 inch piece of cardboard was the distilled essence of the present-day relationship between the American people and their military. In the eyes of citizens, the American soldier has a dual identity: as hero but also as victim. As victims—Wounded Warriors —soldiers deserve the best care money can buy; hence, the emphasis being paid to issues like PTSD. As heroes, those who serve and sacrifice embody the virtues that underwrite American greatness. They therefore merit unstinting admiration.

Full Story Here: Memorial Day: How America Screws Its Soldiers – The Daily Beast.

Education as Crime Prevention

It has become a truism among criminologists that there is an inverse correlation between education and crime: as the level of education increases the likelihood of committing crime decreases. One theory that helps explain this is known as “strain” theory.

This theory was originally articulated by sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1930s and has since become one of the most popular theories of crime. The basic thesis of strain theory is this: Crime stems from the lack of articulation or “fit” between two of the most basic components of society: culture and social structure. Here we refer to culture as consisting of (1) the main value and goal orientations of a society and (2) the institutionalized or legitimate means for attaining these goals. Social structure, as used here, consists of the basic social institutions of society, especially the economy, but also such institutions as the family, education, and politics, all of which are responsible for distributing access to the legitimate means for obtaining goals.

This “lack of fit” creates strain within individuals, who respond with various forms of deviance. People who find themselves at a disadvantage relative to legitimate economic activities are motivated to engage in illegitimate activities (perhaps because of unavailability of jobs, lack of job skills, education, and other factors). Within a capitalist society like the United States, the main emphasis is on success; there is less emphasis on the legitimate means to achieve that success. Moreover, success goals have become institutionalized—they are deeply embedded in the psyches of everyone. At the same time, the legitimate means are not as well defined or as strongly ingrained. In other words, there is a lot of discretion and a lot of tolerance for deviance from the means but not the goals. One result of such a system is high levels of crime, including white collar and corporate crime.

Full Story Here: Education as Crime Prevention | Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

Against Learned Helplessness

Paul Krugman :-:

Unemployment is a terrible scourge across much of the Western world. Almost 14 million Americans are jobless, and millions more are stuck with part-time work or jobs that fail to use their skills. Some European countries have it even worse: 21 percent of Spanish workers are unemployed.

Nor is the situation showing rapid improvement. This is a continuing tragedy, and in a rational world bringing an end to this tragedy would be our top economic priority.

Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.

Full Story Here: Against Learned Helplessness – NYTimes.com.

The Truth About the American Economy

Robert Reich :-:

The U.S. economy continues to stagnate. It’s growing at the rate of 1.8 percent, which is barely growing at all. Consumer spending is down.

It’s vital that we understand the truth about the American economy.

How did we go from the Great Depression to 30 years of Great Prosperity? And from there, to 30 years of stagnant incomes and widening inequality, culminating in the Great Recession? And from the Great Recession into such an anemic recovery?

The Great Prosperity

During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (The Truth About the American Economy).

7 Secret Ways We Are Being Poisoned

The objectivism of the scientific method seems to have been hijacked by corporations who often pay for scientists to support their products, as well as politicians who move through the revolving door between the private and public sector. Even worse is that sometimes the consumer protection agencies themselves are complicit.

The trust placed by consumers in scientific studies and Federal oversight committees has been violated in service to profit so that products are allowed to enter the marketplace with reduced safety standards. The synthetic chemicals we encounter on a daily basis in our food, water, and environment are increasingly shown to be disastrous to our physical and mental well-being. Volumes can be written – indeed have been written – by experts in both mainstream and alternative medicine who have documented the sleight of hand used to hoodwink consumers and threaten our health. The categories below are worth deeper investigation as prime examples of what we might face as a species if this chemical bombardment continues.

Full Story Here: 7 Secret Ways We Are Being Poisoned | Food Freedom.

Radiation Alert; Plant [garden] indoors this year

In some parts of the northern hemisphere, it is the beginning of Spring; and those who love to garden are getting ready to plant their seeds. It is a ritual of renewal that many of us love to do. However, anything started outside now runs a high risk of being planted in radioactive soil –whether or not it is reported.

Please note these educational suggestions below are not cure-alls for radiation exposure. But it is important to support and protect your immune system, as best as possible. These are sensible precautions. If you are on any kind of pharmaceutical drug(s) or have health issues, please check first with your health care provider, writes Dr Perlingieri, after providing background info.

I have had countless calls asking for more suggestions on how we can support our already compromised immune systems, as we are exposed daily to untold levels of radioactive elements that are now traveling world-wide. Due to our already highly polluted air, we now have a multi-pronged attack on our immune systems. We were never meant to be sponges for an assortment of highly hazardous and unregulated chemicals and nano-technology, genetically modified organisms, aerosolized Chemtrails, pesticides, and artificial and poisonous additives in our food supply. This has been going on for most of the twentieth century; and now laws, in place for decades to protect us, have been gutted. Secret political agendas and corporate profits continue to take priority over our well-being and safety. This has a long history in our corporate consumer-oriented society. For the first time in our recorded history, we have multiple and chronic illnesses caused by human intervention. Greed trumps everything else, when the world (gone amok) is filled with moral indifference and decrepitude, along with enormous governmental corruption.

Full Story Here: Radiation Support for Your Immune System; Plant indoors this year | Food Freedom.

100,000 Protesting In Athens Right Now

The first confirmation of protests expected to sweep across Europe tonight from Greece to Spain, France and Italy comes from Syntagma square where up to 100,000 people are protesting at this moment. Ekathimerini reports: “Greeks inspired by the Spanish “Indignant” or “Indignados” movement held their largest protest so far in Athens on Sunday, which some estimates put as high as 100,000 people, although a more accurate assesment seemed to be that those taking part exceeded 30,000. No official figure was given for the number of people packing into Syntagma Square in front of Parliament but it was clear that the protest was by far the largest since the movement began on Wednesday.” For now the Greek protest is peaceful, but with the US on vacation, and the EURUSD about to be very volatile, we urge readers to follow the real time update at the following live webcast.

Full Story Here: 100,000 Protesting In Athens Right Now | zero hedge.

Why Johnny Can’t Innovate:

Ian Fletcher :-:

I argued in a previous article why, despite America’s current obsession with government budget issues, the real key to bringing back our economy lies in a) fixing our trade deficit and b) restoring our capacity for innovation

Although the former problem has now grabbed significant public attention, most Americans seem to think that our national capacity for innovation is healthy and without problems.

After all, we’re the home of Silicon Valley.  So things must be going great, right

Unfortunately, no, and for the same reason that, as I explained elsewhere, our manufacturing sector isn’t healthy. While it’s true that there’s an enormous amount of innovation (and manufacturing) going on in this country, “enormous” is not, in and of itself, an adequate quantity

To figure out how much innovation (or manufacturing) is enough for America, the quantity must be measured against how much we need to maintain our living standard.  And we are, in reality, falling short in both areas

As long as our manufacturing output is so small that we must run a trade deficit with foreign nations in order to satisfy our consumption desires, we aren’t manufacturing enough

As long as our innovation output is so small that American industry can’t keep pace with its foreign rivals and continues to inexorably surrender market share and technological superiority to them, we aren’t innovating enough

Yes, it’s nice that we have iPhones and other innovative American products. But for our economy to be truly healthy, we would have to be exhibiting that level of innovation in products across the board.  Our cars would have to be as innovative as our iPhones. And our consumer electronics. And all the other by-no-means-low-tech products that increasingly aren’t even made in this country

Having a few superstar sectors in our economy simply isn’t enough to deliver the living standard that Americans want.  To deliver this,  we need an economy in which dozens of major metropolitan areas have the same sheen of prosperity, productivity, innovation and all-round economic sophistication that the San Francisco Bay Area has

That’s the vision to keep in your mind. Detroit as San Francisco

People forget how small Silicon Valley really is.  According to the Labor Department, it only employs 225,000 people—in a U.S. economy with a labor force of 238 million. Unfortunately, the media in this country give so much excess attention to it—and the other fancy sectors of our economy, like Hollywood and Wall Street—that people mistakenly think it and industries like it dominate the U.S. economy

Nice work if you can get it, but they don’t

What would it take to restore innovation to those sectors of the American economy that are deficient in it?  The best analysis of this problem I know is by Gregory Tassey, the chief economist of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, America’s only serious civilian industrial policy agency.  In his book The Technology Imperative, and also in his essay, “Rationales and Mechanisms For Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing R&D Strategies,” he argues that the key problem for U.S. innovation is what he calls the “valley of death” between pure science and commercialization

America remains strong (though in relative decline, compared to other nations) in pure science.  We remain good at commercializing discoveries and inventions that can be sold for a profit.  But we are weak at the vast area of research that falls between these two extremes

Before a new scientific discovery can reach fruition in actual products sold to customers, it must pass through many stages of research.  And, crucially, much of this research cannot itself be turned to profit

But profiting from new discoveries is impossible unless this research is done

Because it is unprofitable, companies won’t, as a rule, engage in enough of this intermediate research.  Therefore an economy that relies wholly upon private profit to finance innovation will fall short

This research isn’t academic science either, so don’t expect the professors to fill in

One way to look at this research is to call it useful but unpatentable ideas. Anybody who has ever talked to creative engineers, or patent lawyers, knows that a great many important ideas cannot be patented.  Some are more discoveries than inventions. Others are too generic, or too easy to copy.  Others consist simply in the painful process of trying and ruling out a hundred ways to implement some new fundamental principle in order to find the one or two ways that have a future

Other ideas are not the sort of things for which patents would be even relevant.  In their case, one would ideally capture their value by means of proprietary technologies, first-mover advantage, or other commercial methods.  But, for any of a dozen different reasons, one cannot. So if you do this research, somebody else can harvest the profits as easily as you can

The problem is a kind of “tragedy of the commons” applied to ideas.

Historically, the only companies that engaged in this sort of research were very large companies with monopoly or quasi-monopoly power over their ultimate product markets: companies like the old AT&T with its Bell Labs, the old IBM with its Watson Laboratory, the old RCA with its Sarnoff Research Center, or the old Xerox with its Palo Alto Research Center.  Because of their oligopolistic power, they were assured of a) capturing the value of whatever they discover, rather than having it swiped by a competitor, and b) bringing in enough money, over a long-enough time frame, to pay for expensive laboratories that may take years to produce results.

There are still a few companies like this around, but not nearly enough to bridge the valley of death to the extent we need. So government has a legitimate role.

This fact, of course, drives laissez-faire ideologues crazy. But it was recognized as far back as founding father Alexander Hamilton, whose Report on Manufactures, submitted to Congress in 1791, was partly about this very topic. (What constitutes high technology changes over time, but technological innovation has been the key to economic growth since the dawn of the industrial revolution.)

During the Cold War, hundreds of billions of dollars, from the jet plane to the Internet, went into this sort of research. But because it was justified in terms of national security, not industrial innovation per se, we never really reached a solid understanding of what we was doing. So we never properly institutionalized it as a policy with an economic purpose.

As a result, our efforts today in this area are pathetically small.

For example,  the Federal government’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership maintains a network of centers in every state designed to help American manufacturers adopt innovative technologies. One evaluation found that it generated $1.3 billion a year in cost savings for manufacturers and $6.25 billion in increased or retained sales—all for an annual federal outlay of only $89 million.

A single Boeing 747 costs four times that.

Another good but underfunded program is the Technology Innovation Program. An audit by the respected National Academy of Sciences vindicated its claim to generate economic benefits far exceeding its cost. One single $5.5 million grant, for example, seeded development of the small disk drive industry, which enabled creation of the iPod, the iPhone, TiVo and the Xbox.

TIP’s 2012 projected budget? $75 million.

Our rivals are far ahead of us in this game.  Germany, where factory wages are now higher, and unemployment lower, than here, spends roughly two billion dollars a year on its Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.  They even have a substantial presence in this country, to harvest useful American ideas for commercialization in Germany!

To get our economy back on track, we need to stop dreaming that innovation is purely a self-financing private-sector game and start paying for the innovation we need.  Either that, or we’re not going to get the economy we want.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

We’re not broke nor will we be

Policy choices will determine whether rising national income leads to a prosperous middle class

B Y L AW R E N C E M I S H E L

Many policymakers and pundits claim “we’re broke”1 and “can’t afford”2 public investments and policies that support workers. These claims are meant to justify efforts to scale back government programs and public sector workers’ wages and benefits. The “we’re broke” theme also implies that America’s working families should be satisfied with the status quo in terms of wages that have been stagnant for 30 years.

Despite the rhetoric, it is clear that “we” as a nation are not broke. While the recession has led to job loss and shrinking incomes in recent years, the economy has produced substantial gains in average incomes and wealth over the last three decades, and economists agree that we can expect comparable growth over the next three decades as well. Between 1980 and 2010, income per capita grew 66.4%, and wealth per capita grew 73.2%. Over the next 30 years, per capita income is projected to grow by a comparable 60.6%. In other words, “we” are much richer as a nation than we used to be and can expect those riches

to rise substantially in the future.

So who is the we in the “we’re broke” mantra? The recession has certainly been a rough patch of road for many families, but the output produced by corporations in the private sector has already recovered to pre-recession levels, and these firms’ profits were 21.7% higher overall, driven largely by the 60% jump in pre-tax profits enjoyed by firms in the financial sector.

Full Story Here: We’re not broke nor will we be.

The Demise of the Moderate Republican

As the GOP presidential field shapes up, it’s become clear that any moderate restraints on the party are now gone.

Though commentators often portray the Democrats and Republicans as mirror images of each other, American politics is not symmetrical. We do not have one party that represents the left in just the way that the other party represents the right. Among congressional Democrats, moderates and conservatives sharply circumscribed what Barack Obama could do on the economy, health care, climate, and other issues even when his party had majorities in both the House and Senate.

The Republicans, in contrast, have virtually cleansed themselves of moderates and are poised to move the country sharply to the right if they win the 2012 election. The source of the party’s shift is a mysterious death that may be the single most important contemporary political development — the demise of the moderate Republican in national politics.

Full Story Here: The Demise of the Moderate Republican.

Thought Police

How group think will shape the Republican presidential primaries.

Newt Gingrich probably thought he was being smart when a week ago he publicly rejected the budget plan put forward by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan. After all, Ryan’s idea to change Medicare into a voucher program is profoundly unpopular, particularly with the seniors now enjoying the program’s benefits. So when Gingrich went on Meet the Press and responded to a question about the Ryan Medicare plan by saying, “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” it probably felt politically shrewd. He could distance himself from an unpopular idea and position himself not as the partisan bomb-thrower people used to consider him but as the innovative, post-partisan thinker he fancies himself to be.

It might have been a reasonable strategy — in a different era. But in 2011, identity defines politics more than ever. Gingrich’s mistake was his failure to understand that particularly at this stage of the race, no question is more important for a presidential candidate to answer than this: Are you one of us?

Full Story Here: Thought Police.

The Ideas in This Plan Are Terrible — and Such Small Portions!

The Republicans’ jobs plan was just an excuse to use 10 pages’ worth of clip art.

House Republicans have released their plan for “America’s Job Creators,” and it’s underwhelming, to say the least. Clocking in at a whopping 10 pages, it begins  by indicting Democrats for high unemployment, conveniently ignoring the last four years of extreme economic hardship, and blames “taxation,” “regulation,” and “government takeovers of the economy” for the current mess. What follows is eight pages of silly art, large text, and “solutions” that amount to the same failed Republican playbook of tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts. Indeed, this “plan” is so flimsy, there are only four quantifiable claims. Here they are, and here’s why they are wrong.

1. Claim: “The Small Business Administration has reported that government regulations are estimated to cost our economy over $1.75 trillion a year. To make matters worse, in 2009, the Administration had, ‘under various stages of consideration,’ another 184 regulations that are estimated to cost the economy in excess of $100 million each, and likely to cause more Americans to lose jobs.”

Real Talk: It’s not hard to make a big number sound scary when you take away the context. “Of course regulations cost money,” says Stanley Shapiro, a scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR), “that’s by design. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s bad for the economy. What the economic studies show is that this is a wash and that the cost of regulation is often balanced by the benefits of its effects.” To use an example, cleaning up air pollution might initially cost jobs, but over time, it provides broad economic benefits, including new jobs generated by regulation-related spending (someone has to clean the air, after all).

Full Story Here: The Ideas in This Plan Are Terrible — and Such Small Portions!.

How To Use Hydrogen Peroxide To Clean Your Home

Most people know that when it comes to green cleaning, baking soda, lemons, and vinegar reign supreme. But, how many of you know that hydrogen peroxide also makes an excellent green cleaner?

Yep, hydrogen peroxide isn’t just for the medicine cabinet anymore. The more research I did on this handy green cleaner, the more amazed I was at its usefulness. So, let’s take a look at how using hydrogen peroxide in your home can help keep it clean, help the environment, and help save money.

What Is Hydrogen Peroxide?

First, did you know that hydrogen peroxide is exactly like water, only with one added molecule of oxygen? I was never a whiz at chemistry, so I was surprised to find this out. Its molecular formula is h2o2.

Full Story Here: How To Use Hydrogen Peroxide To Clean Your Home.

Confirmed: Our Government Has Criminalized Beauty Products

A year and a half ago, I warned that if you bought certain beauty supplies–hydrogen peroxide and acetone–you might be a terrorism suspect.

I’m going to make a wildarsed guess and suggest that the Federal Government is doing a nationwide search to find out everyone who is buying large amounts of certain kinds of beauty products. And those people are likely now under investigation as potential terrorism suspects.

Shortly thereafter, John Kyl basically confirmed that the government had been tracking certain people buying hydrogen peroxide.

Yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller did so in even more explicit terms.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller appeared to indicate for the first time Wednesday that his agency uses a provision of the PATRIOT Act to obtain information about purchases of hydrogren peroxide–a common household chemical hair bleach and antiseptic that can also be turned into an explosive.

The comment in passing by Mueller during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was noteworthy because critics have suggested that the FBI is using a provision in the PATRIOT Act to conduct broad surveillance of sales of lawful products such as hydrogen peroxide and acetone.

“It’s been used over 380 times since 2001,” Mueller said of the so-called business records provision, also known as Section 215. “It provides us the ability to get records other than telephone toll records, which we can get through another provision of the statutes. It allows us to get records such as Fedex or UPS records….or records relating to the purchase of hydrogen peroxide, or license records—records that we would get automatically with a grand jury subpoena on the criminal side, the [Section] 215 process allows us to get on the national security side.” (Emphasis original)

Emptywheel: where you read today about the civil liberties infringements your government will confirm years from now.

Full Story Here: Confirmed: Our Government Has Criminalized Beauty Products | Emptywheel.

Seminar on Major Issues that Affect Our Economy and Country, Todays Issue: America is Shutting Down Part 2

Welcome to the second half of our seminar discussing America’s floundering economic status. We left off discussing how our leaders’ interests are catered to their own careers, wealth and special interests.

Our leaders’ priorities are misguided. Our representatives are too preoccupied with their own agendas. Other countries do not operate this way. Japan, for example, is managed by intelligent, caring leaders working for the best interest of their country. This type of concern has allowed them to develop into the world’s most productive country. With virtually no natural resources and only 4% of our land mass, Japan is the 2nd largest current surplus in the world, second only to China.

Japan has a huge consistent balance of trade surplus with us and even a balance of trade surplus with China. This year, our government budget deficit was approximately $1 trillion on top of an accumulated budget deficit of $10.6 trillion.

Full Story Here: Seminar on Major Issues that Affect Our Economy and Country, Todays Issue: America is Shutting Down Part 2 | Economy In Crisis.

AT&T Wants to Give You an 80s Makeover

If you were around in the 80s, you might be experiencing a horrible flashback right about now.

No, it’s not because legwarmers and spandex are in style again. It’s because AT&T, that monopoly that once lorded over your rotary phone, has resurfaced with a scheme to rule your mobile phone as well.

Back in the 80s, AT&T’s power was near absolute. That’s why antitrust authorities stepped in to break up the monopoly and protect the American people against abuse.

Now, with AT&T’s planned $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile, we’re reaching the danger point again. And this time control over one of the most vital forms of communication is at stake.

If regulators allow AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile, we would be left with a wireless market that is far more consolidated than the markets for oil, banking, automobiles and air travel.

Full Story Here: AT&T Wants to Give You an 80s Makeover | Common Dreams.

A Little Less Corporate Political Corruption

Obama is thinking about issuing an executive order that would mitigate some of the damage done to our democracy by the Supreme Court’s dastardly Citizens United edict.

Jim Hightower  :- :

Come on, Obama, do it. Stand up, stand tall, stand firm. Yes, you can!

President Barack Obama is thinking about issuing an executive order that would mitigate some of the damage done to our democracy by the Supreme Court’s dastardly Citizens United edict, which unleashes unlimited amounts of secret corporate cash to pervert America’s elections.

Obama’s idea is simply to require that those corporations trying to get federal contracts disclose all of their campaign donations for the previous two years, including money they launder through such front groups as the Chamber of Commerce.

Full Story Here: A Little Less Corporate Political Corruption – OtherWords.

Karzai Gives US ‘Last Warning’ Over Civilian Deaths

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the US military on Sunday to avoid operations that kill civilians, saying it was his “last warning” to Washington after 14 people allegedly died in an air strike.

Reacting to the alleged deaths of 10 children, two women and two men in an air strike on Saturday in the southern province of Helmand, Karzai said such incidents were “murdering of Afghanistan’s children and women.”

“The president called this incident a great mistake and the murdering of Afghanistan’s children and women, and on behalf of the Afghan people gives his last warning to the US troops and US officials in this regard,” his office said, adding that he “strongly condemned” the killings.

Full Story Here: Karzai Gives US ‘Last Warning’ Over Civilian Deaths | Common Dreams.

Ocean acidification is latest manifestation of global warming

Carbon dioxide pollution adds to threat to world’s oceans and marine species

- By the middle of the century there will probably be only a few pockets of coral left, in the North Sea and the Pacific. Millions of species of marine life will be wiped out.

The infernal origins of Vulcano Island are easy to pinpoint. Step off the hydrofoil from Sicily and the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulphide strikes you immediately. Beside the quay, there are piles of yellow sulphurous rocks and chunks of pumice; the beach is made of thick, black volcanic sand; while the huge caldera that dominates the bay emits a constant stream of smoke and steam.

According to legend, this was the lair of the Roman god of fire, Vulcan, who gave his name to the island and subsequently to all other volcanoes. An early eruption here also provided history with one of the first recorded descriptions of a volcano in action.

But Vulcano’s importance today has nothing to do with the rock and lava it has spewed out for millennia. It is the volcano’s output of invisible carbon dioxide – about 10 tonnes a day – that now interests scientists. They have found that the gas is bubbling through underground vents and is making the island’s coastal waters more and more acidic. The consequences for sea life are grim with dozens of species having been eliminated.

Full Story Here: Ocean acidification is latest manifestation of global warming | Environment | The Observer.

Papantonio: The Truth About Oil Subsidies

Video:

Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio talks with Tyson Slocum from Public Citizen about the truth behind oil subsidies and the government’s other oil industry giveaways. Here’s a hint, that $4 billion number being thrown around by the media is only one-tenth of what they actually get from the government.

Glenn Beck’s timeline of American history

Hilarious!

Glenn Beck’s been known to wear many hats — radio host, cable newsman, televangelist, sort-of author, gold salesman, and so forth. But the role he relishes most is that of the historian, a self-taught student of the past who digs up in the historical record countless examples of liberal treachery to scrawl on his chalkboards. But Beck’s poor command of the discipline and ideological tunnel vision often lead him to engage in some outlandish revisionism that warps the entirety of American history.

As such, we’ve put together a timeline tracking Beck’s alternate American history from the country’s founding to the present day (and beyond). It’s based on Beck’s own mangling of history and the peculiar views of the historians and curricula he approvingly cites.

Enjoy, and be enlightened:

Full Story Here: Glenn Beck’s timeline of American history | Media Matters for America.

Meet the Movement for a New Economy

The new economy movement seeks an economy that is increasingly green and socially responsible, and one that is based on rethinking the nature of ownership and the growth paradigm that guides conventional policies.

The idea that we need a “new economy”—that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met—runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option. Over the past few decades, however, a deepening sense of the profound ecological challenges facing the planet and growing despair at the inability of traditional politics to address economic failings have fueled an extraordinary amount of experimentation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders. Most of the projects, ideas and research efforts have gained traction slowly and with little notice. But in the wake of the financial crisis, they have proliferated and earned a surprising amount of support—and not only among the usual suspects on the left. As the threat of a global climate crisis grows increasingly dire and the nation sinks deeper into an economic slump for which conventional wisdom offers no adequate remedies, more and more Americans are coming to realize that it is time to begin defining, demanding and organizing to build a new-economy movement.

That the term “new economy” has begun to explode into public use in diverse areas may be an indication that the movement has reached a critical stage of development—and a sign that the domination of traditional thinking may be starting to weaken. Although precisely what “changing the system” means is a matter of considerable debate, certain key points are clear: the movement seeks an economy that is increasingly green and socially responsible, and one that is based on rethinking the nature of ownership and the growth paradigm that guides conventional policies.

Full Story Here: Meet the Movement for a New Economy by Gar Alperovitz.

OPS: the success here will boil down to whether or not this new economy can coexist, and remain independent of, the ‘old’ economy’s mega corporate parasites, and still survive.

Life-saving test for babies cut by governor

The test  takes just a drop of blood and costs about $5.

Heather Smith looks at photographs on a hallway wall that show her smiling son, Brandon. Until he was six months old, Brandon was a healthy baby and then he caught a cold.

“It quickly escalated into pneumonia and hospitalizations,” says Smith. Brandon had Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease or SCID. SCID is also known as “The Bubble Boy Disease.”

SCID prevented Brandon from developing a normal immune system and, in just three weeks, he was gone. “He would have celebrated his 18th birthday this year,” says Smith. “So, of course, I do the ‘what-ifs.’ He would be graduating from high school. We would be looking at colleges.”

Full Story Here: Life-saving test for babies cut by governor | wtsp.com.

Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan ‘unready for typhoon’

Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is not fully prepared for heavy rain and winds of a typhoon heading towards the country, officials admit.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), which runs the plant, said some reactor buildings were uncovered, prompting fears the storm may carry radioactive material into the air and sea.

Typhoon Songda is expected to hit mainland Japan as early as Monday.

Fukushima was heavily damaged by the deadly 11 March quake and tsunami.

‘Inappropriate measures’

“We have made utmost efforts, but we have not completed covering the damaged reactor buildings,” a Tepco official said on Saturday.

Full Story Here: BBC News – Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan ‘unready for typhoon’.

Afghan official: NATO airstrike kills 14

A NATO airstrike targeting insurgents inadvertently hit two civilian homes in the volatile southwestern Helmand province, killing 14 women and children, an Afghan government official said Sunday.

Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial government, said the alliance launched the airstrike late on Saturday in retaliation for an attack earlier in the day on a U.S. Marine base in Helmand’s northwest district of Nawzad. He said NATO hit two civilian houses, killing five girls, seven boys, and two women.

NATO spokesman Maj. Tim James said a joint coalition and Afghan delegation was traveling Sunday to the site to investigate. He didn’t confirm the aistrike and provided no details about it or the attack on the Marines.

Civilian deaths are an ongoing source of tension between NATO and Afghan officials.

Full Story Here: Afghan official: NATO airstrike kills 14 EarthLink – Top News.

Biden Praises Revamped American Auto Industry

Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday credited the Obama administration’s intervention for the American auto industry’s recovery from “the brink of extinction” and pointed to Chrysler’s early repayment of the federal loan that saved it from disaster.

“This announcement came six years ahead of schedule – and just two years after Chrysler Corp. emerged from bankruptcy,” Biden said in the administration’s weekly radio and Internet address. “It’s a sign of what’s happening throughout the American automobile industry.”

Biden also said that General Motors, which went through bankruptcy and has come back strong, announced in the past week that its Detroit Hamtramck factory in Michigan will run three shifts for the first time in its 26-year history.

“You know, that’s 2,500 more good, paying jobs,” he said.

Full Story Here: Biden Praises Revamped American Auto Industry.

Legendary Creature On Camera In Spokane, Washington?

Bigfoot VIDEO:

A Spokane, Washington woman claims to have accidentally caught bigfoot on camera while hiking in the woods.

You can see the alleged bigfoot video for yourself, below. As always, the shot is a bit grainy. The footage was captured on an iPhone at Downriver Park along the Spokane river, according to KXLY.com.

But is it real?

Full Story Here: Bigfoot VIDEO: Legendary Creature On Camera In Spokane, Washington? (POLL).

OPS: We will always post a good Bigfoot Story – LOL

U.S. Runs Short of Gas Used in Detecting Nuclear Material

The United States is running out of a rare gas that is crucial for detecting smuggled nuclear weapons materials because one arm of the Energy Department was selling the gas six times as fast as another arm could accumulate it, and the two sides failed to communicate for years, according to a new Congressional audit.

The gas, helium-3, is a byproduct of the nuclear weapons program, but as the number of nuclear weapons has declined, so has the supply of the gas. Yet, as the supply was shrinking, the government was investing more than $200 million to develop detection technology that required helium-3.

As a result, government scientists and contractors are now racing to find or develop a new detection technology.

Full Story Here: U.S. Runs Short of Gas Used in Detecting Nuclear Material – NYTimes.com.

Fukushima’s No. 5 Nuclear Reactor Cooling Facility Stops

The system to cool the nuclear reactor and fuel pool has stopped at the No. 5 unit of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant in northeastern Japan, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power said Sunday.

A Tokyo Electric official said the operator had started work to repair the cooling facility and hoped to restore the system within several hours.

Full Story Here: Fukushima’s No. 5 Nuclear Reactor Cooling Facility Stops.

Lockheed Martin Hit By Cyber Attack, Department Of Homeland Security Confirms

Hackers launched a “significant and tenacious” cyber attack on Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor holding highly sensitive information, but its secrets remained safe, the company said Saturday.

Lockheed Martin, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon confirmed that the contractor’s information systems had come under attack. Lt. Col. April Cunningham, speaking for the Defense Department, said the impact on the Pentagon “is minimal and we don’t expect any adverse effect.”

Still, the concerted attempt to breach the contractor’s systems underscored the risk to the nation’s critical defense data. Chris Ortman, Homeland Security spokesman, said his agency and the Pentagon were working with the company to determine the breadth of the attack and “provide recommendations to mitigate further risk.”

Full Story Here: Lockheed Martin Hit By Cyber Attack, Department Of Homeland Security Confirms.

We’ve Gone from a Nation of Laws to a Nation of Powerful Men Making Laws in Secret

Preface: Some defendants are no longer allowed to see the “secret evidence” which the government is using against them. See this and this.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that judges can throw out cases because they don’t like or believe the plaintiff … even before anyone has had the chance to conduct discovery to prove their case. In other words, judges’ secret biases can be the basis for denying people their day in court, without even having to examine the facts. Judges are also becoming directly involved in politics with the other branches of government.

Claims of national security are being used to keep the shenanigans of the biggest banks and corporations secret, and to crush dissent.

But this essay focuses on something else: the fact that the laws themselves are now being kept secret.

Full Story Here:  Washington’s Blog.

Why the Democratic Party Has Abandoned the Middle Class in Favor of the Rich

If politicians care almost exclusively about the concerns of the rich, it makes sense that over the past decades they’ve enacted policies that have ended up benefiting the rich.

In 2008, a liberal Democrat was elected president. Landslide votes gave Democrats huge congressional majorities. Eight years of war and scandal and George W. Bush had stigmatized the Republican Party almost beyond redemption. A global financial crisis had discredited the disciples of free-market fundamentalism, and Americans were ready for serious change.

Or so it seemed. But two years later, Wall Street is back to earning record profits, and conservatives are triumphant. To understand why this happened, it’s not enough to examine polls and tea parties and the makeup of Barack Obama’s economic team. You have to understand how we fell so short, and what we rightfully should have expected from Obama’s election. And you have to understand two crucial things about American politics.

Full Story Here: Why the Democratic Party Has Abandoned the Middle Class in Favor of the Rich | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

Goar: Anti-poverty success airbrushed out

The experiment began in 1974. It was designed to test the concept of a guaranteed annual income in a small, fairly typical, community.

Sitting tantalizingly in a warehouse in Winnipeg are 2,000 boxes of information about one of the most fascinating social policy experiments in Canadian history.

Evelyn Forget, a professor of health sciences at the University of Manitoba, fought for five years to get access to those boxes, owned by Archives Canada. She finally succeeded in 2009, but the bulging files — statistics, completed questionnaires, interview transcripts, all on paper — overwhelmed her. “Until it is computerized, analyzing the data in a systematic way would be incredibly expensive,” she says.

Nevertheless, she has been able to piece together part of the story, using the census, public health insurance records and the recollections of researchers and participants.

Full Story Here: Goar: Anti-poverty success airbrushed out – thestar.com.

Jarring Disconnect: If Joblessness and Hopelessness Undermine Democracy in the Middle East, What about Here at Home?

In his latest speeches on the Middle East, President Obama, both at the State Department and at the G8 meeting in France, has pledged billions of dollars in economic aid to Middle Eastern countries, drawing a direct connection between the unrest and demonstrations that brought down the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, and the joblessness and hopelessness felt by the young people in those two countries.

His adviser on international economics, David Lipton, has been more specific, saying that, “We believe that these two pillars go hand in hand. Without economic modernization, it will be hard for governments trying to democratize to show people that democracy delivers.”

Unemployment in Egypt among young men and women is about 30%. In Tunisia, it is over 40%. The White House claims that with figures like that, the future for democracy in those countries is tenuous.

But wait a minute. What about the US? Unemployment and underemployment here is still up around 20% overall, and it is much higher among young people. Black youth unemployment fell so far in 2011 to an official rate of 44% from 50% last year (because so many young workers just gave up trying to find work)! Among Latino youth, the official unemployment rate is stuck at around 30%. Overall, youth unemployment, according to the official Labor Department figures, is 20%, but remember, the official rate does not count those who are working part time who want full-time work, and does not count those who have given up looking for work. Among young people, it may be that many who work part-time (those who live at home or who are in school or college) actually are not looking for full-time work, so that upward adjustment may not be as great as for older workers, but at the same time, there are certainly more young people who give up looking for jobs than is the case with older workers who have families to support. In any event, it is clear that all these youth unemployment figures are actually too low by a significant amount.

Full Story Here: Jarring Disconnect: If Joblessness and Hopelessness Undermine Democracy in the Middle East, What about Here at Home? | This Can’t Be Happening.

Chart of the Moment: Bush Tax Cuts, Wars Largest Cause (By Far) of Ballooning Federal Debt

By way of reminder, George W. Bush inherited a federal budget surplus from Bill Clinton in 2000, when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had forecast that, at that rate, the debt would be entirely wiped out by 2012.

Any questions?

OPS: View Full sized image at link

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : Chart of the Moment: Bush Tax Cuts, Wars Largest Cause (By Far) of Ballooning Federal Debt.

Federal Judge Denies ‘First Amendment’ Defense by O’Keefe, Giles in ACORN Worker Law Suit

Rightwing activists and propagandists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, employees of con-artist and propagandist Andrew Breitbart, may not use the First Amendment as an excuse for breaking the law in California, according to a federal judge’s ruling this week.

Judge M. James Lorenz rejected the defendants’ argument and motion for summary judgment in federal court, as part of the civil lawsuit filed against them by former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera.

Giles had previously thrown O’Keefe under a bus by arguing that she should not be held accountable at all for violating California’s Invasion of Privacy Act [CA Penal Code § 632], since he, not she, was actually wearing the hidden video camera used to secretly tape their conversations with Vera, even after they had asked if their meeting would be kept confidential.

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : Federal Judge Denies ‘First Amendment’ Defense by O’Keefe, Giles in ACORN Worker Law Suit.

Doubts deepen over TEPCO truthfulness after president’s sightseeing trip uncovered

Suspicions that Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) is hiding information were heightened on May 27 with revelations that its president was not where TEPCO had said he was on the day of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

TEPCO had claimed that on March 11 its President Masataka Shimizu was on a trip to meet with Kansai-area business leaders. The Mainichi discovered, however, that Shimizu was in fact sightseeing in Nara — a discrepancy that TEPCO now refuses to discuss.

According to sources close to the matter and the Nara Prefectural Government, Shimizu, his wife and secretary checked into a hotel in the ancient capital on March 10 for a two-night stay. The trio had planned to go watch a traditional event at Todaiji temple the next day.

Full Story Here: Doubts deepen over TEPCO truthfulness after president’s sightseeing trip uncovered – The Mainichi Daily News.

Massive nationwide protests call for an immediate end to nuclear energy

Demonstrators across Germany are calling for an immediate end to nuclear power after an official commission recommended a decade-long phase out. Some members of the government are concerned about the economic impact.

More than 100,000 demonstrators took to the streets in 20 cities across Germany on Saturday to call for a rapid end to nuclear power, even as a government-sponsored national commission is expected to recommend that Berlin abolish nuclear energy within a decade.

The Ethics Commission is set to announce the results of its final report on Germany’s energy future, calling for nuclear power to be phased out by 2021.

Chancellor Angela Merkel had tasked the commission with forging a national consensus on how to replace nuclear power with renewable energy in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan last March.

Full Story Here: Massive nationwide protests call for an immediate end to nuclear energy | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 28.05.2011.

Only Manufacturing Can Bring Real Recovery

Once the engine that drove the nation’s powerful economy, America’s manufacturing base has been drastically reduced through failed trade policies for decades.

In a sign of just how important manufacturing is to the nation’s economy, the minor improvements that Americans have witnessed in recent months have been driven by the manufacturing sector, according to The Financial Times.

In the first quarter of the year, the economy grew just 1.8 percent overall. The manufacturing sector, on the other hand, grew at an astounding rate of 9.1 percent over the same time.

Full Story Here: Only Manufacturing Can Bring Real Recovery | Economy In Crisis.

Mooseferatu

Paul Krugman :-:

John Cole has been collecting suggested titles for the Sarah Palin movie. Other entries:

From Within Sight of Russia With Love

John McCain’s a Series of Unfortunate Events

The Lyin’, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Full Story Here: Mooseferatu – NYTimes.com.

Gov. Rick Scott Uses Sheriffs To Eject ‘Liberal-Looking’ People From Budget Signing Event In Town Square

Anxious over their increasing unpopularity, Republicans lawmakers across the country are banning media from chronicling the blowback at public events. Florida’s now deeply disliked Gov. Rick Scott (R) adopted a similar tactic yesterday at a “campaign-style” budget signing ceremony at a town square in The Villages retirement community in Central Florida. Before putting his pen to the $69.7 billion state budget, Scott took an ax to $615 million of what he called “shortsighted, frivolous, wasteful spending.” Scott conveniently failed, however, to mention exactly what some of those “frivolous” programs were, including ones that provide help for the most vulnerable in society:

In his speech Thursday, Scott omitted many of the serious-sounding programs he cut: homeless veterans, meals for poor seniors, a council for deafness, a children’s hospital, cancer research, public radio, whooping-cough vaccines for poor mothers, or aid for the paralyzed.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Gov. Rick Scott Uses Sheriffs To Eject ‘Liberal-Looking’ People From Budget Signing Event In Town Square.

More Water On The Moon Than Previously Thought: New Findings Challenge Moon’s Creation Theories

When scientists discovered water on the moon in 2009 it seemed like a big step, but it may have been just the beginning of a deeper look into the origins of the rock that orbits earth.

It turns out there may be 100 times more water in lunar magma than was previously thought. According to the journal Science, these new calculations may shed light on just how the moon came to be.

NASA first discovered water on the moon by crashing a rocket into the crater Cabeus and taking up-close measurements. According to Bloomberg, that find suggested there may be 1 billion gallons of water on the moon, which may have come from meteors or comets.

Full Story Here: More Water On The Moon Than Previously Thought: New Findings Challenge Moon’s Creation Theories.

Mystery Virus Kills 2 In South Korea

An unidentified virus affecting pregnant or recently pregnant women in South Korea has claimed a second fatality in just a few weeks.

A 36-year-old pregnant woman died Thursday morning, Xinhua reports, nearly 15 days after the same virus registered its first fatality.

Earlier this month, another woman died due to the still unknown virus, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported. She was also pregnant when first hospitalized.

Full Story Here: Mystery Virus Kills 2 In South Korea.

Blackbeard’s Anchor Found Off The Coast Of North Carolina

Archaeologists recovered the first anchor from what’s believed to be the wreck of the pirate Blackbeard’s flagship off the North Carolina coast Friday, a move that might change plans about how to save the rest of the almost 300-year-old artifacts from the central part of the ship.

Divers had planned to recover the second-largest artifact on what’s believed to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge but discovered it was too well-attached to other items in the ballast pile, said project director Mark Wilde-Ramsing. Instead they pulled up another anchor that is the third-largest artifact and likely was the typical anchor for the ship.

Apparently, pirates had everyday anchors and special anchors just most people have everyday dishes and good china.

Full Story Here: Blackbeard’s Anchor Found Off The Coast Of North Carolina.

The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig

Chris Hedges

The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.

Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

Full Story Here: Chris Hedges: The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.

GOP Cuts Disaster Preparedness Funds By $1.5 Billion

In response to the deadliest spring of climate disasters in decades, House Republicans are slashing billions from disaster preparedness programs, including support for firefighters. On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee cut the successful Department of Energy clean car manufacturing loan program by $1.5 billion to add $1 billion to disaster relief. But they also slashed other parts of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security budget, including cuts of $1.5 billion from President Obama’s request for next year in firefighter assistance grants and state and local grants administered by FEMA.

During the markup, Reps. David Price (D-NC) and Steve LaTourette (R-IL) attempted to restore $460 million in funding for firefighter grants and $1.1 billion in state and local grants, but their amendment was defeated 20 to 27 by the Republican majority. Price blasted the decision to “decimate funding” for disaster preparedness:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » GOP Cuts Disaster Preparedness Funds By $1.5 Billion.

BREAKING: Republican Judge Strikes Down Ban On Corporate Contributions Directly To Candidates

Reagan-appointed federal Judge James Cacheris just ruled that corporations have a constitutional right to contribute money directly to political candidates:

In a ruling issued late Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Cacheris tossed out part of the indictment against two men accused of illegally reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns.

Cacheris says that under last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court case, corporations enjoy the same right as people to contribute to campaigns.

The ruling is the first of its kind. The Citizens United case had applied only to independent corporate expenditures, not to actual campaign contributions.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » BREAKING: Republican Judge Strikes Down Ban On Corporate Contributions Directly To Candidates.

After Voting To Slash Funding For The EPA, Rep. Barletta Now Outraged It’s Not Doing More In His District

Three months after voting to eliminate funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) now says he’s outraged that the EPA isn’t doing more to protect the health of residents in his district. Barletta is insisting that the agency pay special attention to an area in Pittson, PA, after one resident alleged that a tunnel near a Superfund site gave him cancer. The EPA held an open house and information session to address the concerns of residents in the area, but said it did not plan to conduct further testing. This outraged Barletta, who called their decision “unacceptable”:

On Wednesday, Barletta sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson asking the agency to perform additional testing in the Carroll/Mill Street neighborhood.[...]“Frankly, this is unacceptable. The EPA’s own Web site indicates that one of the agency’s primary reasons for existence is to ensure that ‘all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work.’”[...]

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » After Voting To Slash Funding For The EPA, Rep. Barletta Now Outraged It’s Not Doing More In His District.

New US jobless claims top 400,000 for seventh straight week

New US claims for unemployment benefits rose last week by 10,000, climbing to a seasonally adjusted 424,000, as the nation’s job markets continue to stagnate. This marked the seventh straight week in which new claims have topped the 400,000 mark, further undermining claims of an economic turnaround by the Obama administration.

On Thursday, the US Department of Labor revised the previous week’s jobless claims number up from an originally reported figure of 409,000. Economists had predicted that claims last week would decline to 400,000 rather than rise.

Labor Department officials could point to no exceptional factors accounting for last week’s rise in claims. While floods and tornadoes have devastated several Midwestern and Southern states over the past month, no states cited the impact of this extreme weather as a factor in the increase.

Full Story Here: New US jobless claims top 400,000 for seventh straight week.

Is Richard Trumka Returning Labor to Its Social Movement Roots?

Let’s hope so

Representing just under 12 percent of America’s workforce, unions must inspire others to fight for moral principles—instead of just 5 cents more an hour—or face irrelevance. Labor can rebuild its critical mass only by motivating people with a compelling moral analysis of what’s going wrong for the vast majority of Americans, and outlining a vision of a different and better America.

Last Friday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka delivered a thunderous speech to the National Press Club that captured wide attention for its forceful assertion of labor’s political independence, widely seen as a warning to President Obama and Democratic members of Congress, and especially aimed at Democratic governors.

But it was also, in my view, an extraordinary step forward in the AFL-CIO’s transformation under Trumka’s leadership toward a social movement with a strong appeal to America’s insecure middle class and struggling poor people.

Full Story Here: Is Richard Trumka Returning Labor to Its Social Movement Roots? – Working In These Times.

‘Tornado Alley’ reactor not fully twister-proof

The closest nuclear power plant to tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo., was singled out weeks before the storm for being vulnerable to twisters.

Inspections triggered by Japan’s nuclear crisis found that some emergency equipment and storage sites at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant in southeastern Kansas might not survive a tornado.

Specifically, plant operators and federal inspectors said Wolf Creek did not secure equipment and vehicles needed to fight fires, retrieve fuel for emergency generators and resupply water to keep nuclear fuel cool as it’s being moved.

Full Story Here: ‘Tornado Alley’ reactor not fully twister-proof | The Tennessean | tennessean.com.

Fed Gave Banks Crisis Gains on $80 Billion Secretive Loans as Low as 0.01%

Credit Suisse Group AG (CS), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) each borrowed at least $30 billion in 2008 from a Federal Reserve emergency lending program whose details weren’t revealed to shareholders, members of Congress or the public.

The $80 billion initiative, called single-tranche open- market operations, or ST OMO, made 28-day loans from March through December 2008, a period in which confidence in global credit markets collapsed after the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Units of 20 banks were required to bid at auctions for the cash. They paid interest rates as low as 0.01 percent that December, when the Fed’s main lending facility charged 0.5 percent.

Full Story Here: Fed Gave Banks Crisis Gains on $80 Billion Secretive Loans as Low as 0.01% – Bloomberg.

Medicare and Mediscares

Paul Krugman :-:

Yes, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is a sore loser. Why do you ask?

To be sure, Mr. Ryan had reason to be upset after Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District. It’s a very conservative district, so much so that last year the Republican candidate took 76 percent of the vote. Yet on Tuesday, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, took the seat, with a campaign focused squarely on Mr. Ryan’s plan to dismantle Medicare and replace it with a voucher system.

How did Ms. Hochul pull off this upset? The Wisconsin congressman blamed Democrats’ willingness to “shamelessly distort and demagogue the issue, trying to scare seniors to win an election,” and he predicted that by November of next year “the American people are going to know they’ve been lied to.”

You can understand Mr. Ryan’s bitterness. He has, after all, experienced quite a comedown over the course of the past seven weeks. Until his Medicare plan was rolled out in early April he had spent months bathing in warm approbation from many pundits, who had decided to anoint him as an icon of fiscal responsibility. And the plan itself received rapturous praise in the first couple of days after its release.

Full Story Here: Medicare and Mediscares – NYTimes.com.

Senate Republicans Block Obama Recess Appointments | TPMDC

Senate Republicans are using a parliamentary trick to block President Obama from making any recess appointments during the Senate’s Memorial Day break — including a long-awaited nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Senate will remain in pro-forma session because Republicans objected to the unanimous consent required to adjourn. The parliamentary maneuver prevented the Senate from officially going into recess for a week, denying Obama a chance for recess appointments even though Republicans openly acknowledge that they don’t expect any.

“Senate Republicans are doing this just in case,” said a House GOP aide.

Full Story Here: Senate Republicans Block Obama Recess Appointments | TPMDC.

Tepco Failed to Disclose Scale of Fukushima Radiation Leaks, Academics Say

As a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency visits Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled nuclear plant today, academics warn the company has failed to disclose the scale of radiation leaks and faces a “massive problem” with contaminated water.

The utility known as Tepco has been pumping cooling water into the three reactors that melted down after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. By May 18, almost 100,000 tons of radioactive water had leaked into basements and other areas of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. The volume of radiated water may double by the end of December and will cost 42 billion yen ($518 million) to decontaminate, according to Tepco’s estimates.

“Contaminated water is increasing and this is a massive problem,” Tetsuo Iguchi, a specialist in isotope analysis and radiation detection at Nagoya University, said by phone. “They need to find a place to store the contaminated water and they need to guarantee it won’t go into the soil.”

Full Story Here: Tepco Failed to Disclose Scale of Fukushima Radiation Leaks, Academics Say – Bloomberg.

Why the Budget is the Wrong Thing to Fight About

Ian Fletcher :-:

The country is consumed right now with the fight over the Federal budget, specifically the plan of Rep. Ryan (R-WI) to balance it by (mostly) radically cutting spending on medical programs, especially Medicare.  The recent Republican loss in New York’s 26^th district’s special election—which had more to do with my friend Jack Davis running on a third-party ticket—has been interpreted as a referendum against the Ryan plan.  And the states are, of course, tied up in budget battles of their own, most visibly the aggressive push to cut the cost of public employees by curtailing their unions.

Unfortunately, while all these fights are, of course, important, they are still, fundamentally, the wrong economic issue for America to be fighting over right now. Because despite  Rep. Ryan entitling his plan “The Path to Prosperity,” none of these controversies touch upon the true fundamentals that determine that prosperity.

All these controversies are, at bottom, about one thing: rebalancing public-sector spending.  And it is fantasy to imagine that this is the key to putting our economy back on track.

To hear some Republicans talk, you’d think that if only we squeeze hard enough, and go whole hog for their eat-your-spinach skinflint economics, prosperity will return. This is the elevation of deferral of gratification to the master key (if not the sole!) economic virtue, from which all else will follow.  If only we’re tough enough on ourselves right now.

Unfortunately for Republicans, that kind of tightwad economics rightly died in the Keynesian revolution over 70 years ago.

It’s not so good for Dems either.

To hear some of them talk, you’d think that if only we pump up government spending enough, perhaps financed by higher taxes on the rich, we can pump-prime our way back to prosperity.  This is the elevation of counter-cyclical Keynesianism (spend your way out of a cyclical downturn) into non-stop stimulation of the economy, whether its problems are cyclical or structural.

The fundamental economic problem we face right now isn’t recession—in which case we could just sit back and wait for it to end, with a little help from the standard playbook. It is the structural underperformance of the U.S. economy, for reasons that weren’t caused by the recession and won’t go away when it ends.

As a result, Republicans and Democrats are arguing about how to divide the pie, when the real question is how to bake more pie in the first place.

So… what is the solution?  What do we have to fix?

The number one thing is trade.  Free trade collapsed a very long time ago.  What we have today is not free trade at all, it’s ruthlessly manipulated trade—manipulated by America’s big trading partners, starting with China but including many others.  And we’re doing nothing to stop them.

America’s titanic ($497 billion last year) trade deficit is ripping the guts out of industry after industry, but we have no answer.  And you can’t gut industry after industry and expect not to reduce your GDP.

If we didn’t have this horrendous trade deficit, we simply wouldn’t be fighting many of these budget battles. Why? because we’d have a larger GDP, so tax revenues would be higher. Spending on public benefits would be lower, and painlessly so, because fewer people would be poor and middle-class people would have more money to take care of themselves.

How much GDP have we already lost?

The Economic Strategy Institute estimated in 2001 that the trade deficit was shaving at least one percent per year off our economic growth. (Source, p.93)  This may not sound like much, but because GDP growth is cumulative, it compounds over time.  Thus economist William Bahr has thus estimated that America’s trade deficits since 1991 alone (they stretch back unbroken to 1976) have caused our economy to be 13 percent smaller than it otherwise would be.

That’s an economic hole larger than the entire Canadian economy.

Size of GDP is, ultimately,  more important than size of government.  We can have legitimate liberal vs. conservative arguments over the latter, but even from a conservative point of view, it’s far more important to have a government that conduces to a GDP large enough to provide all the things we want than to have a small government per se.

Growing the economy may, in fact, call for increased spending in some areas. Even a precocious third-grader can see why even fiscal tightwads should make an exception for spending that ultimately brings in more money than it costs.

What kind of spending are we talking about?  One kind is government programs to fill in the gaps in the private sector’s innovation capabilities. Such programs fund, for example, technology research to bridge the gap between pure science and corporate research and development (R&D).  This is the so-called “Valley of Death” in the innovation system: the private sector can’t make money doing such research, but it can’t ultimately keep generating new products unless somebody does it. So it’s appropriate for the Federal government to step in.

America’s hidden history of doing this stretches from the Internet back to founding father Alexander Hamilton. We still have such programs today, but on a tiny scale compared to what we need—and tiny compared to what our  rivals do.

Thus the giant stimulus package it passed in 2009 included money for every Congressional pork barrel under the sun, but nothing for one of the industrial-policy programs with the best track record of saving and creating jobs: the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, despite a campaign promise to double the program’s funding.  This program maintains a network of centers in every state designed to help American manufacturers adopt innovative technologies. One evaluation found that it generated $1.3 billion a year in cost savings for manufacturers and $6.25 billion in increased or retained sales, all for an annual federal outlay of only $89 million.

Another good but underfunded program is the Technology Innovation Program. Free market ideologues have repeatedly tarred this program as corporate welfare despite the fact that an audit by the respected National Academy of Sciences vindicated its claim to generate economic benefits far exceeding its cost. One single $5.5 million grant, for example, seeded development of the small disk drive industry, which enabled creation of the iPod, the iPhone, TiVo and the Xbox.

This is how you make an economy grow—not by squeezing the economy you already have, or borrowing yet more money to “stimulate” it.

As a result of America’s neglect of such programs, there is a starvation of basic and applied research in areas such as biocomputing, computer architecture, software, optoelectronics, aeronautics, advanced materials, factory automation, sensors, energy conversion and storage, nanomanufacturing, robotics, and green energy.

We are in danger of having our economy fail to grow because we were so busy arguing over the harvest that we neglected to plant the seeds.

 

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

Three reasons why people who work for a living should support unions

The current assault on collective bargaining rights shows that ideology and smash-mouth politics can triumph over economic reality.

Unions did not cause our economic mess: Greedy bankers drove the financial system to the brink of collapse. Moreover, public workers’ desire for decent wages and benefits is not busting state budgets: The same recession is starving states of essential revenue.

Destroying unions will do nothing to create more jobs or balance budgets, but it will further impoverish millions of American workers.

Full Story Here: Three reasons why people who work for a living should support unions | The Progressive.

Fukushima and the Radioactive Sea

Chernobyl Times Ten

By HARVEY WASSERMAN

New readings show levels of radioisotopes found up to 30 kilometers offshore from the on-going crisis at Fukushima are ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas during Chernobyl.

“When it comes to the oceans, says Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceonographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, “the impact of Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl.”

The news comes amidst a tsunami of devastating revelations about the Fukushima disaster and the crumbling future of atomic power, along with a critical Senate funding vote today:

Fukushima’s owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has confirmed that fuel at Unit One melted BEFORE the arrival of the March 11 tsunami.

Full Story Here: Harvey Wasserman: Fukushima and the Radioactive Sea.

Cuba: Facts and Realities

Englightening the President and the Press

“No hay peor ciego que el que no quiere ver”

– Spanish saying

(There is no worse blind person than the one who does not wish to see.)

On May 13, Miami newspaper headlines and TV leads should have said: “Obama makes fool of himself.” The “leads” would have referred to his statement: “I would welcome real change from the Cuban government.”

Obama’s conditions? “For us to have the kind of normal relations we have with other countries, we’ve got to see significant changes from the Cuban government and we just have not seen that yet.”

A clever tabloid might have headlined, “Obama Goes Blind – Can’t See Changes Right in Front of His Eyes!”

If Granma had a sense of humor its editorial would have begun with: “President Obama stands for `Change we can believe in,’ but does not stand for change Cuba’s leaders believe in.”

Full Story Here: Saul Landau and Nelson Valdés: Cuba: Facts and Realities.

As the Economy Wavers, Is Washington Paying Attention?

The latest economic numbers have not been good. Jobless claims rose last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Another report showed that economic growth at the start of the year was no faster than the Commerce Department initially reported — “a real surprise,” said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics.

Perhaps the most worrisome number was the one Macroeconomic Advisers released on Wednesday. That firm tries to estimate the growth rate of the current quarter in real time, and it now says annualized second-quarter growth is running at only 2.8 percent, up from 1.8 percent in the first quarter. Not so long ago, the firm’s economists thought second-quarter growth would be almost 4 percent.

An economy that is growing this slowly will not add jobs quickly. For the next couple of months, employment growth could slow from about 230,000 recently to something like 150,000 jobs a month, only slightly faster than normal population growth. That is certainly not fast enough to make a big dent in the still huge number of unemployed people.

Full Story Here: As the Economy Wavers, Is Washington Paying Attention? – NYTimes.com.

Obama signs Patriot Act extension

President Obama signed the extension late Thursday, just hours before the law’s provisions were set to expire.

President Obama signed an extension of the Patriot Act late Thursday, just hours before the law’s provisions were set to expire.

The Senate was able break through legislative gridlock and pass the bill Thursday night, sending it to Obama, who is in Europe, for his signature. The president was expected to use an automated signature to sign the bill into law.

The Obama administration had pressured Congress to approve the four-year extension before the Friday deadline, arguing that if it were allowed to lapse for even a short period of time, it could endanger natonal security.

Full Story Here: Obama signs Patriot Act extension – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.

Bowing To Koch Pressure, Chris Christie Announces Plan To Withdraw From Successful Climate Initiative

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to kill New Jersey’s participation in the nation’s first successful carbon trading program. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a ten-state climate and clean energy program that has reduced emissions and brought tens of millions of dollars to New Jersey ratepayers. Following a multi-million-dollar campaign to derail RGGI by the Koch front group Americans for Prosperity, Christie today called RGGI a “gimmicky” program that is “nothing more than a tax on electricity.”

But in a 2008 campaign ad, Christie said, “I will be New Jersey’s number-one clean-energy advocate.” He explicitly embraced President Obama’s climate and clean energy goals, which included a national cap-and-trade system for clean energy investment:

There is no doubt that renewable energy is the future here in New Jersey and there is really no better time for us to begin the discussion about how it will not only lead us to energy independence, but also how it will help create more good paying, middle class jobs in New Jersey. It’s a change that President Obama stands firmly behind. I couldn’t agree more.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Bowing To Koch Pressure, Chris Christie Announces Plan To Withdraw From Successful Climate Initiative.

OPS: Remember that “Bowing” from the other angle, is BENDING OVER. Fat Bastard is Bending over.

The American Manufacturing Crisis and Why it Matters

Ian Fletcher :-:

Despite the denial chorus of the same politicians, financiers, and economists who told us prior to 2008 that our financial sector was fine, the American public is increasingly aware of the truth: American manufacturing is in a state of deep crisis. (And ,as I argued in a previous article, the recent small uptick in this sector doesn’t change that fact.)

Let’s start with manufacturing employment.  Below is a chart giving the grim story of job losses in this sector. (Source.)

This degree of  manufacturing job loss is not inevitable or normal.  The U.S. actually enjoyed relatively stable employment levels in manufacturing as recently as the year 2000.  Then, thanks to our burgeoning trade deficit, things fell off a cliff.

Neither is there anything inevitable about our poor export performance—which is, by definition, half the cause of that deficit.  Over the decade after 2000, America’s share of world exports dropped from 17 to 11 percent. But the share of the European Union, home of trade-savvy export superstars like Germany, held steady at 17 percent, despite the relentlessly expanding share of China and the rest of the industrializing Third World. (Source.)

Our trade deficit is going to be balanced, the hard way or the easy way, eventually.  And it will be essentially impossible for the U.S. to balance its trade without healthy manufacturing exports.  Unless, of course, we are willing to radically curtail our imports, which means either:

a)      A reduced living standard, or:

b)      We start producing the formerly imported goods for ourselves.  This, of course, itself

b)requires a strong manufacturing sector, so we’re back where we started.

So there’s no way to avoid manufacturing.

People sometimes imagine that the U.S. can balance its trade by exporting more services or agricultural goods.  Unfortunately, the numbers just don’t add up.

For example, in 2010, we ran a deficit in goods of $646 billion, while our surplus in services was only $149  billion. (Source.) Even worse, thanks to the offshoring of services, our surplus in services is shrinking, not expanding.

As for agriculture, forget it. Our surplus in agriculture is less than a tenth the size of our overall deficit.

It is crucial to understand that manufacturing is not the “past” of our economy.  It is, in fact, a big part of our future (albeit an endangered part).

For example, it is no secret that the U.S. will need to transition, over the next few decades, to green energy technologies—whatever form they ultimately take. And these technologies, be they solar cells, windmills, electric cars, fusion reactors or dilithium crystals, are emphatically not virtual. One cannot download them.

They are good old -fashioned things.  And there’s nothing low-tech about an electric car.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is losing its position in green-energy manufacturing, as shown by the fact that we now run a multi-billion dollar deficit in these goods.

One fact that belies the idea that manufacturing belongs to the past is that manufacturing is the origin of 70 percent of U.S. research and development.  (According to one recent study, 22 percent of manufacturing firms engage in some kind of innovation, compared to only 8 percent of other companies.) So despite the myth that innovation is a post-industrial activity, losing our manufacturing means losing a lot of our future opportunities to innovate.

Can service industries fill the gap?  No.  Among other things, even healthy service companies frequently depend upon manufacturing. For example, many companies sell design, customization, operation, optimization, training and maintenance for the products they make.  But the skills needed to provide these services often only accrue to those who are intimately involved with building the product in the first place.

Manufacturing tends to draw these other activities along with it. In the words of economist Gregory Tassey of the National Institute for Standards and Technologies—which is, by the way, just about the only serious national civilian industrial-policy agency left in this country:

When technological advances take place in the foreign industry, manufacturing is frequently located in that country to be near the source of the R&D. The issue of co-location of R&D and manufacturing is especially important because it means the value-added from both R&D and manufacturing will accrue to the innovating economy, at least when the technology is in its formative stages. Thus, an economy that initially controls both R&D and manufacturing can lose the value-added first from manufacturing and then R&D in the current technology life cycle—and then first R&D followed by manufacturing in the subsequent technology life cycle.

It is no accident that 90 percent of electronics research and development now takes place in Asia, hardly boding well for America’s future in an industry we dominated as recently as the early 1970s.

This won’t just hurt blue-collar workers.  Despite the unfortunate image of manufacturers employing lunch-bucket labor, in reality, 51 percent of their  current workforce consists of  skilled production workers, 46 percent of scientists and engineers, and only 7 percent is unskilled production workers. (Source.) So losing manufacturing industry means losing not just assembly-line jobs, but many white-collar jobs, too.

It’s not just electronics that’s decaying. Other high-tech industries are, with a few exceptions, in no better shape, as shown in the chart below. (Source.)

What categories of manufactured goods does the U.S. still have a strong position, signaled by a trade surplus, in?  Only aircraft, aircraft parts, weapons, and specialized machine tools (mainly machine tools for making the former).  These areas are the last redoubt of American industry largely because they have been the beneficiaries of just about the only institution in the U.S. which still does serious industrial policy and blocks inappropriate trading relationships: the U.S. military.

This may be a clue to what America needs: an appropriate dose of protectionism, plus some serious government-led industrial policy to stoke the fires of industry bright again.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why. :-:

For-Profit Colleges Spend Much Less On Educating Students Than Public Universities

For-profit colleges devote less than a third of what public universities spend on educating students, even though the for-profit institutions charge nearly twice as much as their public counterparts for tuition, according to new federal government data released Thursday.

Students attending bachelor’s degree programs at for-profit schools are also much less likely to graduate than students who attend public universities or private non-profit schools, concludes the report from the National Center for Education Statistics. One in five students graduate from for-profit bachelor’s degree programs within six years, compared to more than half of students at public universities.

The new federal data lands amid fierce debate over the practices of for-profit colleges, which confront the stiffest government scrutiny in decades. The Obama administration has been crafting new rules aimed at preventing schools from promising more than they can deliver, in response to reports that many tout their training programs as stepping stones to lucrative careers only to set up students up for jobs whose wages will rarely keep pace with their resulting debt burdens. The for-profit industry relies heavily on federal student aid as part of its business model, but the industry is responsible for an increasing number of defaults in the federal student loan program.

Full Story Here: For-Profit Colleges Spend Much Less On Educating Students Than Public Universities.

Judge throws out Wisconsin union-busting bill

A judge in Wisconsin on Thursday threw out legislation backed by Republican lawmakers and the state’s governor that would have stripped public workers of union bargaining rights.

Circuit court judge Maryann Sumi said the legislation, which Governor Scott Walker signed into law in March after weeks of massive protests in the state capital, violated a state law requiring lawmakers to give at least two hours’ notice before voting on legislation and breached the trust of the public.

Walker had pushed hard for the law, arguing that it was necessary to get rid of collective bargaining rights for unions to close the state’s yawning budget deficit.

In the midst of huge protests in Madison, the state capital, over the bill, minority Democratic lawmakers fled to a neighboring state to prevent a quorum needed in the legislature to pass the law, which was originally tied to the state budget.

Full Story Here: AFP: Judge throws out Wisconsin union-busting bill.

Protesters Crash Gov. Walker’s Voter ID Signing Party

Despite the pouring rain, about a hundred people showed up to protest outside of Governor Walker’s office on Wednesday as he signed ceremonial copies of Act 23, known by critics as the Voter Suppression Act. Another 150 – 200 protesters were inside the Capitol at the Solidarity Sing Along. At its height the noise was so loud that even the conservative Journal Sentinel couldn’t avoid reporting on it.

Thirty minutes before the bill was signed, protesters began amassing underneath the windows of the Governor’s office shaking metal lunchboxes with pennies inside, playing vuvuzuelas and trumpets, banging on drums, and shrieking as if for their lives.

A contingent from the Republican Party of Waukesha County was escorted into the governor’s parlor by Rep. Don Pridemore of Hartford, who recently introduced a racial profiling/anti-immigrant bill. Soon the Waukesha Republicans were chatting it up with Rep. Jeff Stone, co- author of the Voter Suppression bill. As the chants of protesters penetrated the walls and windows of the parlor and cries of “Who’s in ALEC?” wafted through the doors, one Waukesha County stalwart inquired about the identity of the rabble outside. Stone said, “Oh, they are just the same 20 people who are here every day disrupting hearings. I know them all. They try to make it seem like there’s a big grassroots movement behind them, but after the out-of-state union protesters left in March the people protesting now are really just the same 20 people.”

Full Story Here: Protesters Crash Gov. Walker’s Voter ID Signing Party | The Progressive.

40 Republican U.S. Senators Vote to Kill Medicare

The GOP continued its bloody walk into the Medicare buzzsaw on Wednesday, when 42 out of 47 Senate Republicans voted for the House GOP budget, and its plan to phase out and privatize the popular entitlement program.

The budget failed by a vote of 57-40. But the roll call illustrates that Medicare privatization — along with deep cuts to Medicaid and other social services — remains the consensus position of the GOP despite the growing political backlash against them.

Voting with all of the Democrats were Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — both 2012 incumbents — along with Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Rand Paul (R-KY) voted against it because it wasn’t radical enough.

List of the senators who voted to kill Medicare follows:

Full Story Here: Pensito Review » 40 Republican U.S. Senators Vote to Kill Medicare.

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

You think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden says it’s worse than you know.

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation — an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

Full Story Here: There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says | Danger Room | Wired.com.

PPP Poll: Wisconsin Wants To Recall Walker

A new survey of Wisconsin from Public Policy Polling (D) finds some good news for Democrats in their efforts to take control of the state Senate in the upcoming recall elections, in a backlash against Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) anti-public employee union legislation: The state’s voters want to recall Walker — and they would rather have the Democrats in control of the state Senate, too.

The poll finds Walker with an approval rating of only 43%, with 54% disapproval. The poll also asked: “Would you support or oppose recalling Scott Walker from office before his term is up?” The result was support 50%, oppose 47%.

However, recalls in Wisconsin do not take the form of a yes-or-no question on the incumbent, but are effectively special elections pitting the incumbent against an opposing candidate. Thus, Walker was also tested in hypothetical match-ups against two potential Democratic nominees. Former Sen. Russ Feingold, who lost re-election after three terms in the 2010 Republican wave, leads Walker by 52%-42%. And Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial nominee whom Walker defeated by a margin of 52%-47%, now leads Walker by 50%-43%.

Full Story Here: PPP Poll: Wisconsin Wants To Recall Walker — And Put Dems In The State Senate | TPMDC.

New GOP Budget: Hands Off Medicare, But Potentially Worse

The Senate may have defeated a House GOP budget that would have turned Medicare into a private voucher-based programs, but Republicans haven’t given up.

But Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) has proposed a budget that leaves Medicare alone, but is potentially worse, according to an independent analysis.

Senators on Wednesday voted down the budget blueprint first offered by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), with a handful of Republicans joining Democrats to block further consideration of the bill, which included the Medicare overhaul.

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: New GOP Budget: Hands Off Medicare, But Potentially Worse.

Wis. protest update: Groups want teacher names

School districts across Wisconsin are being asked to release the names of teachers who called in sick during protests in February at the Capitol, a move that led to closures for a day or more in many districts.

Some districts had to close for a day or more after teachers went to Madison to protest against Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to end collective bargaining for most state employees.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that it’s unclear how many of the state’s 424 districts received requests for names, but that many have released them.

he Madison School District has denied several requests, saying it could risk the safety of teachers and students, and disrupt morale and learning in schools.

Full Story Here: Wis. protest update: Groups want teacher names – chicagotribune.com.

How China Plans to Leapfrog the American Economy (And it’s Not What You Think)

Ian Fletcher :-:

Many Americans are already concerned about China’s growing economic challenge to the United States.  Indeed, the challenge itself is hardly news anymore. But a new book, Red Alert by Stephen Leeb, argues that Americans have radically misunderstood just what this challenge consists of.

Everyone who has “woken up” to the problem (i.e. not the administration, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or the Republican leadership) understands the threat posed by China’s cheap labor and low standards for everything from child labor to environmental protection. Most people who aren’t hopeless laissez-faire ideologues are twigging to the fact that China’s state-directed capitalism is running rings around America’s private-sector capitalism right now.  But what few people realize is that China has an even more radical economic strategy up its sleeve, a strategy that aims not just to equal the United States but to surpass it and quite possibly shut America out of the economic future.

The basis of China’s strategy is the fact that the world is heading rapidly into the era of fundamental resource constraints.

Up until the present time in human history, although various natural resources have been scarce enough to fight over, no important natural resource have ever been scarce enough that humanity simply ran out of it. (Dodo birds don’t count.)

This, the author argues, is going to change.

The interesting thing is that the resource in question isn’t the usual suspect: oil—though oil is certainly going to become prohibitively expensive as we hunt down the last few drops in harder-and-harder-to-reach places that require more-expensive drilling and extraction techniques for less return. It isn’t gas or coal, either, though these have similar futures.

(Any reader who believes these resources will last indefinitely can stop reading right here; those who are unsure should consult the persuasive analysis in the book itself.)

The resource, paradoxically, is every environmentalist’s dream: green energy.

Huh?  How can the world run out of green energy?  Isn’t that the whole point?

Oops. In our rush to green energy, we’ve forgotten something. Those pretty blue photovoltaic cells glinting in the sunlight don’t grow on trees. Neither do those magnificent 300-foot windmills or their smaller cousins.

They have to be made, and they are made out of some very scarce materials.

Like Indium. And antimony. Beryllium. Gallium. Germanium. Tungsten. Lanthanum. Tantalum. Neodymium. Niobium. Rhenium. Cobalt. Tantalum. Even familiar platinum, silver, and chromium. Even humble graphite.

Go look on the periodic table that you vaguely remember from high-school chemistry.  These elements are the ones whose names you had to memorize but which nobody had much significant use for until recently.  These obscure substances may one day be more strategic than the oil of the Middle East.

These are elements, remember.  That means—basic chemistry—that you can’t make them out of anything else. You either have them or you don’t

Why are they important?  For example, the so-called rare earths among these materials are needed to make the super-strong magnets that are needed whenever you want to mechanically generate (or consume) electricity efficiently. The authors estimate that a three-megawatt wind turbine contains nearly two tons of rare earths of various kinds.  Even a humble Toyota Prius contains 22 pounds of lanthanum in its battery.

No lanthanum, no electric cars.

“Fine,” you say. “Surely clever scientists will find other ways of making all these products if their present ingredients become unavailable?”

Not so fast.  The problem here is that, unlike inventing a new computer program, what these products do is closely constrained by fundamental laws of physics. There simply aren’t an infinite number of ways to make, say, a small but powerful magnet or a silicon wafer that will generate electricity when exposed to the sun.

It’s like trying to find a substitute for water.

Innovation and creativity will probably loosen some of these raw-materials constraints a little, as alternative ways of making things are discovered.  But only a little.  Mother Nature bats last.

What about the old American faith that “innovation can solve anything.” Well, be careful with that word “anything.”  If you look at the successfully innovative parts of our economy, they are all industries where innovation isn’t blocked by fundamental physical laws.  So we simply cannot assume that technology is going to bail us out of this one.

It is equally unjustified to retort that all gloom-and-doom analyses are wrong because gloom-and-doom analyses have been wrong in the past.  So they have.  (Club of Rome, anyone?) This proves, on its own, nothing but the need to examine every analysis on its own factual merits.

How about the “magic of the marketplace” ? Nope.  Having a market economy will (more or less) guarantee that whatever physical resources we have will be used in the way that adds the most economic value. It cannot itself magically bring those resources into being.

Here’s where China comes in.  China is seeking to establish a strategic lock on these key raw materials.  It plans to build itself an economy powered by this energy and then just sit back and watch the United States run out of gas.

This strategy doesn’t only consist in establishing a monopoly on key raw materials, though this is its hardest point of ultimate leverage.  China also aims to dominate the industries that convert these materials into green energy products.  It is using price competition to squeeze out the American solar industry, for example, which it hopes to dominate as Japan now dominates consumer electronics

If China’s master plan reaches even partial fruition, it will gain a gigantic economic advantage over the U.S. Americans will be left struggling with $10/gallon gasoline and its likely inflationary and recessionary consequences. Our living standard will be hobbled for decades.

And if China’s master plan reaches its full fruition, the game is simply over for us as a superpower.  Indeed, under some scenarios, it may well be over for us as a developed nation.

This is grand strategy on a civilizational scale.

It is possible that economic and military decline will prove mutually reinforcing. If the world decisively moves—as it is already gradually moving—away from market allocation of natural resources to political allocation and so-called resource nationalism, then the inability to project sufficient power to guarantee access to key resources will itself curtail that access, weakening the economy that supports that military strength.

There is a huge controversy right now about whether China is sincere about cleaning up its environmental act.  The authors argue that in significant part, it is indeed, as evidenced by the fact that China is now the world’s largest producer of green energy technologies.

But they’re not doing it because they’ve joined the Sierra Club.  They’re doing it for the same reason they do everything: because it is a component of their plan for advancing national power.

Beijing makes plans in very long increments.  They, unlike our own election-cycle worshiping rulers, think through where they want their country to be 100 years from now.

This is why China is busy economically colonizing Africa—now home to an estimated one million Chinese workers—and is making fools of us in Afghanistan, where American military power is currently protecting huge Chinese investments in coal, copper, and other resources.

We, on the other hand, sold off most of our own strategic minerals reserve in 1992, confident that the end of history had arrived and the Soviet Union was the last enemy we would ever face. We allowed Molycorp’s Mountain Pass mine in California’s Mohave desert—historically one the entire world’s largest sources of rare earths—to be shut down by cheap Chinese competition.

We almost allowed China to buy this mine outright in 2005, when it was owned by a subsidiary of Unocal petroleum.  We didn’t.  So there may be hope for us yet.  Congress passed a strategic minerals bill , the Rare Earths and Critical Materials Revitalization Act,in 2010, albeit a tiny sop compared to Beijing’s grand strategy on the issue. Australia similarly checked a Chinese buyout in 2009.

James Schlesinger, who served under President Carter as our first Secretary of Energy, once noted that the American public has only two attitudes towards energy policy: “complacency and panic.”  I suspect, after reading this book, that a little bit of salutary panic might be in order.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

Rush Limbaugh’s Ratings Have Fallen 30% In The Last Six Months

The just-released Arbitron report reveals that a lot less people are listening to right-wing talk radio.

With a lull in ratings since November, Rush Limbaugh had a 3.0 share of listeners for his radio time slot, which is a 33% slide from October and from last April, reports Crain’s Business.

Meanwhile, The Sean Hannity Show was reported to be down 28% from its peak numbers in the fall.

Full Story Here: Rush Limbaugh’s Ratings Have Fallen 30% In The Last Six Months.

Rush Limbaugh’s Ratings Have Fallen 30% In The Last Six Months

The just-released Arbitron report reveals that a lot less people are listening to right-wing talk radio.

With a lull in ratings since November, Rush Limbaugh had a 3.0 share of listeners for his radio time slot, which is a 33% slide from October and from last April, reports Crain’s Business.

Meanwhile, The Sean Hannity Show was reported to be down 28% from its peak numbers in the fall.

Full Story Here: Rush Limbaugh’s Ratings Have Fallen 30% In The Last Six Months.

Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.

More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.

Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings including of two suspected pyramids.

“To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist,” says Dr Sarah Parcak.

She has pioneered the work in space archaeology from a Nasa-sponsored laboratory in Birmingham, Alabama and says she was amazed at how much she and her team have found.

Full Story Here: BBC News – Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images.

India Infosys says gets subpoena from U.S. court on visas

Indian software services exporter Infosys Technologies said on Tuesday it received a subpoena from a grand jury in a U.S. district court that requires the company to provide certain documents and records related to B1 business visas.

B1 business visas allow companies to send their employees to the United States for short-term business purposes.

Infosys said it intended to comply with the subpoena and to cooperate with the investigation. (Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Aradhana Aravindan)

Full Story Here: India Infosys says gets subpoena from U.S. court on visas | Reuters.

Unintended Pregnancies Cost Taxpayers $11 Billion A Year: Report

During a recent debate over a bill that would make it necessary for women to buy separate, abortion-only insurance policies to cover the expensive procedure, some Kansas lawmakers questioned whether it was realistic to expect women to prepare in advance for a rape or an unplanned pregnancy.

Rep. Pete Degraaf (R-Mulvane), in response, compared an accidental pregnancy to a flat tire.

“We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?” said Degraaf during the House debate. “I have a spare tire on my car.”

Conservative state lawmakers have spent their 2011 legislative sessions trying to make it as difficult and costly as possible for women to access both abortions and family planning services, ostensibly to prevent taxpayers and business owners from indirectly paying for abortions. But experts worry that this kind of social policy actually encourages unplanned pregnancies and births, which come at a very high cost to the American public.

Full Story Here: Unintended Pregnancies Cost Taxpayers $11 Billion A Year: Report.

Ted Turner Says Coal, Oil Industries Need ‘A Good A** Kicking’

Philanthropist and CNN founder Ted Turner has turned his sights to renewable energy — and he had some fighting words for the wind industry at the kickoff to its annual convention on Monday.

Turbine manufacturers and clean energy utilities can’t sit idly by while the coal industry touts its “clean coal” plan and oil companies flood the airwaves, Turner said. He noted that he had “nightmares” caused by clean coal advertisements.

Wind energy companies, which created a quarter of the nation’s new electricity capacity last year, need to fight back, Turner said.

“Let’s go out and kick their asses. That’s what they need, a good ass-kicking,” Turner told the group assembled for the American Wind Energy Association’s conference. He was speaking in an unscripted conversation with the group’s CEO, Denise Bode.

Full Story Here: Ted Turner Says Coal, Oil Industries Need ‘A Good A** Kicking’.

Japan’s TEPCO admits further nuclear reactor meltdowns

The operator of Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday said it believed fuel had partially melted inside three reactors, as long suspected by experts.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said new readings on water gauges indicated that the fuel had dropped to the bottom of the containment vessels of units two and three, matching its earlier assessment of unit one.

In all three reactors, relatively low temperatures indicated that the fuel was now mostly covered by water that has been pumped into the vessels, meaning there was no immediate threat of an uncontrolled full meltdown.

Full Story Here: Japan’s TEPCO admits further nuclear reactor meltdowns | The Raw Story.

Cantor Says Congress Won’t Pay For Missouri Disaster Relief Unless Spending Is Cut Elsewhere

Firefighters and rescue workers who arrived in Joplin, MO, found that the deadly tornado that hit the state Sunday had left a “barren, smoky wasteland” in its path. Rescue workers worked through more storms in an effort to find potential survivors, even as the death toll rose to at least 119. President Obama pledged full support to the state Monday, telling survivors, “We’re here with you. We’re going to stay by you.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), however, said that before Congress approved federal funds for disaster relief, it had to offset the spending with cuts to other programs. The Washington Times reports:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Cantor Says Congress Won’t Pay For Missouri Disaster Relief Unless Spending Is Cut Elsewhere.