Archive for June, 2011

Cantor could rake in windfall if debt ceiling isn’t raised

Economists have said that failing to raise the debt ceiling could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy, but at least one lawmaker stands to gain financially if the country defaults on its debts.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) latest financial disclosure statement indicates that he owns up to $15,000 of ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT, a fund that will likely skyrocket as U.S. debt becomes less desirable.

“If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, investors would start fleeing U.S. Treasuries,” Motley Fool’s Matt Koppenheffer told Salon. “Yields would rise, prices would fall, and the Proshares ETF should do very well. It would spike.”

“Cantor’s involvement in the fund and negotiations is not ideal,” he added. “I don’t think someone negotiating the debt ceiling should be invested in this kind of an ultra-short… It looks pretty bad.”

Cantor pulled out of negotiations to raise the debt limit last week saying, “Now is the time for these talks to go into abeyance.”

Full Story Here: Cantor could rake in windfall if debt ceiling isn’t raised | The Raw Story.

Major Karl Rove Donor Ken Langone On Debt Negotiations: ‘I Should Pay More Taxes’

In Feb. 2010, Karl Rove and operatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce convened a meeting of mostly Wall Street titans to fund a set of Republican groups designed to run attacks on Democrats. Ken Langone, a wealthy Wall Street investor and controversial former head of the New York Stock Exchange, was one of the very first major donors to the Rove campaign groups, which now include American Action Network, American Action Forum, American Crossroads, and American Crossroads GPS.

Yesterday on the Fox Business Network, Langone was asked by host Lou Dobbs about how to kickstart the economy. Langone repeatedly said high unemployment is the greatest problem, but conceded that corporations are doing better than ever. To get things going, Langone explained, everyone would have to feel “pain.” In a sharp contrast with his friend Karl Rove, Langone said wealthy guys like him “should pay more taxes”:

LANGONE: Well I say this as a devout Republican. I think in these negotiations, I think number one guys like me, I’ve said this before, there’s a caveat. I shouldn’t get Social Security. I should pay more taxes.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Major Karl Rove Donor Ken Langone On Debt Negotiations: ‘I Should Pay More Taxes’ | ThinkProgress.

Republican Senators Defend Corporate Jet Tax Loophole

President Obama’s call during a press conference yesterday to end a tax breaks for private jet owners has been met with derision and confusion by many the right, with most Republicans lawmakers dismissing it out of hand as just another tax hike. “Republicans weren’t having it,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

On MSNBC this afternoon, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) dismissed ending the tax break as just “code for much broader, large tax increases,” saying that the jet tax break is “not the issue we’re debating here.” Watch it:

Sen. Marco Rubo (R-FL) meanwhile, told the National Review that Obama was suggesting corporate jet owners earn too much money. “[D]on’t go around telling people that the reason you are not doing well is because some rich guy is in a corporate jet or some oil company is making too much money,” he said. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) spokesperson defended the tax break without really addressing the issue on its merits, quipping to reporters, “Interesting that he keeps pointing to corporate planes and oil/gas.”

Full Story Here: Republican Senators Defend Corporate Jet Tax Loophole | ThinkProgress.

Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages

After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations. According to the study:

“Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. …The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented.”

The New York Times adds, “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average real hourly earnings for all employees actually declined by 1.1 percent from June 2009, when the recovery began, to May 2011, the month for which the most recent earnings numbers are available.”

Full Story Here: Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages | ThinkProgress.

Court reaffirms: Sex much worse than violence – Sex News, Sex Talk – Salon.com

A high court ruling underlines the increasingly obvious problems we have with nudity but not gore — and why

That was the cultural belief the Supreme Court reinforced on Monday when it rejected an attempt to ban the sale of violent video games to minors. Despite the frequent rhetorical link made by politicians and activists between sex and violence in the media, when it comes to First Amendment exemptions, sex stands entirely on its own. The majority ruling states clearly that federal obscenity law applies only to “depictions of ‘sexual conduct’” and not to scenes that are “shocking” for other reasons, like extreme violence. The Court ruled in the 1968 case of Ginsberg v. New York that states could ban the sale of sexual material to children, even if the content is not considered “obscene” for adults.

This latest ruling reveals a remarkable double standard — one that dissenting justice Stephen Breyer calls out in his written remarks. He asks:

[W]hat sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her? What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman — bound, gagged, tortured, and killed — is also topless?

Full Story Here: Court reaffirms: Sex much worse than violence – Sex News, Sex Talk – Salon.com.

John Dean Knows How to Get Rid of Clarence Thomas

By John Dean

For good reason, there has been serious hand-wringing over what to do about the ethical lapses of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The fact that Supreme Court justices are exempt from the code of ethical conduct which applies to the rest of the federal judiciary; the problem of bringing a sitting justice before the Congress to question the conduct of a constitutional co-equal; the reality that justices cannot easily defend themselves against news media charges; the defiant, in-your-face posture of Thomas—the list goes on but it need not. There is clear precedent for how to deal with the justice. Thomas could be forced off the bench.

As the associate deputy attorney general in President Richard M. Nixon’s Department of Justice, I was there when Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist outlined how to remove a Supreme Court justice who had engaged in conduct not quite as troublesome as that of Thomas. Rehnquist, of course, would later become chief justice of the United States. His memorandum providing the process for the Department of Justice to proceed against then Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas remains solid precedent and the way to deal with Clarence Thomas. But before looking at the solution, I should explain the problem.

To begin with, there is absolutely no question in my mind that Thomas lied his way onto the Supreme Court in 1991 when he denied Anita Hill’s charges that he had sexually harassed her and some of his other subordinates. If anyone needs proof, please examine the reporting of Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, authors of “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas,” which sets forth the case against Thomas with an abundance of clear and convincing evidence (not to mention the evidence corroborating Hill that Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, withheld).

Full Story Here: John Dean: John Dean Knows How to Get Rid of Clarence Thomas – Truthdig.

Atomic Energy: Unsafe in the Real World

Nuclear power requires “perfection” and “no acts of God,” we were warned years ago. This has been brought home by the ongoing disaster caused by the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Fukushimi Daiichi nuclear plant complex, the flooding along the Missouri River in Nebraska now threatening two nuclear plants, and the wildfire laying siege to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of atomic energy.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, fire — these and other disasters will inevitably occur. Add nuclear power with its potential to release massive amounts of deadly radioactive poisons when impacted by such a disaster, and it is clear that atomic energy is incompatible with the real world.

There’s no perfection in human beings or in technology. Accidents will happen. And there will always be natural disasters -­- we can’t eliminate them. But we can –­ and must — eliminate atomic energy.

Full Story Here: Atomic Energy: Unsafe in the Real World | Common Dreams.

The Militarized Surrealism of Barack Obama

It’s already gone, having barely outlasted its moment — just long enough for the media to suggest that no one thought it added up to much.

Okay, it was a little more than the military wanted, something less than Joe Biden would have liked, not enough for the growing crew of anti-war congressional types, but way too much for John McCain, Lindsey Graham, & Co.

I’m talking about the 13 minutes of “remarks” on “the way forward in Afghanistan” that President Obama delivered in the East Room of the White House two Wednesday nights ago.

Tell me you weren’t holding your breath wondering whether the 33,000 surge troops he ordered into Afghanistan as 2009 ended would be removed in a 12-month, 14-month, or 18-month span. Tell me you weren’t gripped with anxiety about whether 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, or 15,000 American soldiers would come out this year (leaving either 95,000, 93,000, 88,000, or 83,000 behind)?

Full Story Here: The Militarized Surrealism of Barack Obama | Common Dreams.

‪Hartmann: Corporate CEOs have a secret they don’t want you to know about…‬‏

Corporate CEOs have a secret they don’t want you to know about…and that’s how much money they’re stealing from their workers. And Republicans are accomplices in the thievery. Last year – as part of the Wall Street reform bill passed by Congressional Democrats and signed by President Obama – there was a provision forcing corporations to disclose just how large the pay gap is between their CEOs and their average workers. As in how much more money the bigwig in the corporate office makes SITTING on his butt all year versus how much money the factory floor worker makes BUSTING his butt all year. The provision was included in hopes that if people knew just how gross the pay gap is between CEOs and workers – then maybe there would be more pressure to shrink it…as they say – sunlight is the best disinfectant. And today – outrageous corporate pay is infecting our economy.

Consider that back in the 1970s – CEOs made about 30 times more than their average worker – as in what they did was 30 times more valuable to the company than what other workers did. But since then – the numbers have exploded – and today – CEOs make as much as 400 times their average worker and in some cases on Wall Street – as much as 2,000 times the average worker. Can today’s CEOs really justify that they are 2,000 times more valuable to the company than their workers? They can’t – and that’s why they don’t want you to know how much money they’re taking from their corporate treasure chest to pad their Armani pockets. And that’s why – as soon as Republican took control of the House of Representatives at the beginning of this year – CEOs from 81 of the biggest corporations in America – including McDonalds – General Dynamics – and IBM started a massive lobbying effort to repeal the new CEO-pay disclosure requirement.

And when corporate CEOs talk – Republicans listen. Last week – Republicans did as they were told – and repealed the CEO pay disclosure provision in a party line vote in a House Committee.
–Republicans don’t think you should know that while unemployment is hovering around 9% and average employee wages are sinking lower and lower – people like Phillipe Dauman made more than $84 million last year as the CEO of Viacom.
–Or that while nearly 50 million Americans languish in poverty – while Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum made $76 million last year.
–Or that while more than 40 million Americans need food stamps just to eat – while Lawrence Ellison of Oracle made $70 million last year.
–Republicans don’t want you to know that every $15 million dollars a CEO is paid for with a $1000 pay-cut to 15,000 workers.
–Or that every $30 million check cut to a CEO – could have instead hired 600 new workers – each making $50,000 dollars a year.

And these are the guys that Republicans call the “job creators” in America – the guys who’d rather stash $30 million in a Swiss bank account – where it will sit untouched collecting interest – rather than spend a dime employing one of the 25 million unemployed people around the nation. This is nothing more than stealing. These CEOs aren’t job creators – they’re stealing from the people who are the ACTUAL job creators – people like you and me who buy stuff. When the middle class in America has money – they buy stuff – and the more stuff they buy – then the more stuff needs to be made – and the more stuff that needs to be made – then more workers need to be hired. That’s how an economy works. But giving a guy who’s already worth a hundred million dollars – another hundred million dollars – won’t create one damn job – and won’t stimulate the economy at all. We need to start calling out the Republican Party for what they are – the wholly-owned Party of the rich CEOs – and not the Party for the other 99% of us.

Harry Truman knew this more than 60 years ago, when he said, “We have been working together for victory in a great cause. Victory has become a habit of our Party. It’s been elected four times in succession, and I’m convinced it will be elected a fifth time next November. The reason is that the people know that the Democratic Party is the people’s party, and the Republican Party is the Party of special interest, and it always has been and always will be.”
Nothing’s changed. It’s time to shed some light on the wealth inequality in America – and expose greedy corporate CEOs for their blatant robbery of the American dream – and expose the Republican Party as their accomplices

Report: Failing To Raise The Debt Ceiling Would Lead To Immediate Cuts To Social Security

Several Republicans have poo-pooed the need to raise the debt ceiling when the nation hits its legal borrowing limit sometime around Aug. 2. “I doubt that it would be disruptive to the economy,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said yesterday that Americans will say “well, good” if the U.S. defaults on some obligations.

Depending on how long the stalemate lasts, hitting the nation’s debt ceiling could do real damage to the nation’s economic growth, harm the fragile housing market, and even reignite the financial crisis. And as a new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center found, seniors may be among the first harmed if the debt ceiling isn’t raised because the country almost immediately wouldn’t be able to pay all Social Security benefits:

The Bipartisan Policy Center studied Treasury Department receipts and expenditures for August 2009 and 2010 and determined that the government likely would not have enough revenue to pay the full $23 billion payment to Social Security recipients due on Aug. 3.

Full Story Here: Report: Failing To Raise The Debt Ceiling Would Lead To Immediate Cuts To Social Security | ThinkProgress.

Walker: Prosser Choking Scandal Is ‘Extremely Serious’ | ThinkProgress

interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial board, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) called the recent scandal in which state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed another justice around the neck an “extremely serious” matter. Walker noted that the state is investigating it and said it would be inappropriate for him to “prejudge” Prosser. “But what I hear, if it’s true, obviously is extremely serious,” Walker said. “Even if it’s not the truth, but is somewhere in between the two, it is still a serious matter of grave concern, not just to me, but it should be for anybody in the state.” Watch Walker’s full answer:

Full Story Here: Walker: Prosser Choking Scandal Is ‘Extremely Serious’ | ThinkProgress.

Greenland ice melts most in half-century

Greenland’s ice sheet melted the most it has in over a half century last year, US government scientists said Tuesday in one of a series of “unmistakable” signs of climate change.

“The world continues to warm,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a briefing paper for reporters.

“Multiple indicators, same bottom-line conclusion: consistent and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans.”

An annual climate survey, which includes work by scientists from 45 countries, said that ice sheet in Greenland melted at its highest rate since at least 1958, when similar data first became available.

Arctic sea ice shrank to its third smallest area on record, while the world’s alpine glaciers shrank for the 20th straight year, the study said.

Full Story Here: Greenland ice melts most in half-century: US – Yahoo! News.

Whitewashing Red China: a Review of Henry Kissinger’s On China

Ian Fletcher :-:

Begin by remembering who the author of this book is. Henry Kissinger, most familiar to Americans as Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, is, even if we ignore Christopher Hitchens’ allegation that he is a “war criminal,” nonetheless a profoundly problematic character, especially on the subject of China.

For one thing, he is chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international political consulting firm based in New York City and counting among its clients some of the biggest American companies doing business in China.  So the man clearly has a financial incentive to relate a version of Chinese affairs conducive to the interests of these companies—the very ones that have been offshoring American jobs and worsening America’s trade balance through their imports.

Anyone naïve enough to imagine that all this doesn’t make any difference, probably shouldn’t be reading books about politics in the first place.

Furthermore, Dr. Kissinger is demonstrably a man of appallingly callous moral judgment, most notoriously exemplified by his (since apologized for) statement that “if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.”  (He is himself not only Jewish but a refugee from Hitler; if you figure this one out, please explain it to me.)

This callousness shows clearly in his new book on China—which is, after all, the nation with the largest number of exterminated citizens in the 20^th century.  Although obviously well-aware of the 30 million or so victims of the Chinese Communist Party, he confines his outrage to the laconic remark that for some people, “the tremendous suffering Mao inflicted on his people will dwarf his achievements.”

After all, Mao united a nation previously riven by warlords and revolutionaries, and made China a superpower. Too bad about the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Bad things happen.

Kissinger is similarly ambivalent about the Tiananmen massacre.  One must understand the situation autocrats are put in by these things…

It is clearly the superpower game that most holds Dr. Kissinger’s attention. Readers familiar with his previous books, especially the excellent 1994 Diplomacy, will already be aware that the sheer game of power, on the grandest possible scale, is what he likes and does best. (The further into the past his subject matter, the more trustworthy he is; Diplomacy begins in 1648.)

This certainly makes for interesting reading for those who wish to know how the game is played, as this is no armchair or ivory-tower historian talking. This is a man who was there—especially in the case of China, with which America reestablished diplomatic relations during his tenure in office.

Unfortunately… How do we know, even if Dr. Kissinger is supremely qualified to tell us the truth of Sino-American relations over the last 40 years, that he is actually doing so, rather than some brilliantly packaged distortion that serves whatever interests he happens to entertain at the moment?

We don’t; that is always the catch-22 of taking the word of practitioners.

The insider tales he tells of how China’s relations with the U.S. evolved under her various different leaders are certainly interesting.  A large portion of them are probably even accurate. But the overall picture one comes away with is that something is missing.

That something, basically, is economics. For the blunt fact is that, if not for China’s extraordinary economic performance in the last 30 years, and the extraordinarily aggressive policies by means of which that performance has been achieved, Americans would still think of China mainly as the origin of the world’s finest ceramics, a superb cuisine, and little else. After all, the whole Red Menace thing, which was genuinely important during the decade or so during which communism seemed to have even odds of taking over the world, is now passé.

Readers seeking an understanding of China’s economy and its future effects of the U.S. will find little in this book.  Far better to read Richard Navarro’s Death by China for a vivid survey of the problem or Eamonn Fingleton’s In the Jaws of the Dragon for serious analytical depth. Even Martin Jacques’s When China Rules the World or James Kynge’s China Shakes the World would be better.

Dr. Kissinger does not pretend to be an economist, so to some extent, this is to be expected. But it is also very convenient for him, as airbrushing out of the picture the titanic  economic conflict between the China and the U.S. (and increasingly Africa, Latin America, and others) enables this book to adopt a fundamentally “don’t worry, be happy” attitude—albeit one dressed up in the impressively serious tones of high geopolitics.

Nonetheless, that is his basic message in this book: the U.S. and China should be friends, should superintend a benign and stable world order, cannot afford to be driven into conflict by their differences, etc. etc.

It certainly sounds like a pacific and responsible message.  It endorses precisely the status quo that the moneymen who fund Dr. Kissinger’s jet-set socialite lifestyle—the book is dedicated to fashion designer Oscar de la Renta and his wife—surely crave.  But under circumstances in which China is successfully waging a relentless war of economic attrition against the United States, it is a counsel of folly.

What America needs most right now, in relation to China, is a strategy for defending itself in the economic war between them. Given that China has advanced its economic aggressions without triggering “a new Cold War,” there is no reason to suppose that a serious American defense would do so either, if handled with minimal good sense.

This, not reflections on the influence of Sun Tzu on Chou En-lai, is the strategic problem that one wishes a superb strategic mind like Dr. Kissinger’s would give its attention to.

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.

CRITICS STILL WRONG ON WHAT’S DRIVING DEFICITS IN COMING YEARS

Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers

By Kathy A. Ruffing and James R. Horney

Some critics continue to assert that President George W. Bush’s policies bear little responsibility for the deficits the nation faces over the coming decade — that, instead, the new policies of President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress are to blame. Most recently, a Heritage Foundation paper downplayed the role of Bush-era policies (for more on that paper, see p. 4). Nevertheless, the fact remains: Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years (see Figure 1).

The deficit for fiscal year 2009 was $1.4 trillion and, at nearly 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since the end of World War II. If current policies are continued without changes, deficits will likely approach  hose figures in 2010 and remain near $1 trillion a year for the next decade. The events and policies that have pushed deficits to these high levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the  residency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were initiated during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term. While President Obama inherited a dismal fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them.  Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s long-term deficit problem. But we should not mistake the causes of our predicament.

Full Story Here: http://www.cbpp.org/files/12-16-09bud.pdf

Population bomb: 9 billion march to WWIII

Can anyone halt this economic explosive?

Sshh. Don’t tell anyone. But “while you are reading these words, four people will have died from starvation. Most of them children.” Seventeen words. Four deaths. That statistic is from a cover of Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 provocative “Population Bomb.”

By the time you finish this column, another five hundred will die. By starvation. Mostly kids. Dead.

But global population will just keep growing, growing, growing. Why? The math is simple: Today there are more than two births for every death worldwide. One death. Two new babies.

Bomb? Tick-tick-ticking? Or economic bubble? Population growth is a basic assumption hard-wired in traditional economic theory. Unquestioned. Yes, population is our core economic problem. Not a military problem. But the bigger this economic bubble grows, the more we all sink into denial, the closer the point of no return where bubble becomes bomb, where war is the only alternative.

Full Story Here: Population bomb: 9 billion march to WWIII Paul B. Farrell – MarketWatch.

Coburn, Lieberman seek to raise Medicare age to 67

Two Senate rebels jumped into Congress’ cut-the-deficit competition on Tuesday, proposing to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67 and increase monthly premiums for millions of current beneficiaries.

“We can’t save Medicare as we know it,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., who authored the plan with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. “We can only save Medicare if we change it,” he added in an apparent jab at President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

Democrats reacted with criticism of the proposal, which Coburn said was designed to rescue the financially imperiled program and help the nation confront a “wall of debt.” Republicans betrayed no sign of support either.

If nothing else, the response underscored the difficulty of legislative free-lancing at a time the Obama administration and congressional leaders are struggling to negotiate a compromise that cuts future deficits and clears the way for an increase in the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt.

Full Story Here: Excite News – Coburn, Lieberman seek to raise Medicare age to 67.

Google predicts U.S. will miss up to $3.2 trillion in GDP growth if green tech isn’t encouraged

Web giant Google said Tuesday that the United States stands to lose up to $3.2 trillion in potential gross domestic product (GDP) growth if it further delays policies that encourage renewable energy technology.

In an economic study published on the company’s official blog, Google researchers assumed several key breakthroughs would be made in solar, wind and biomass energy, then drew their models outwards through 2050.

Comparing their results to models based on “business as usual” in the carbon-generating energy economy, Google found that delaying public policies to encourage green tech by just four more years could result in the loss of up to $3.2 trillion in GDP and the failure to realize as many as 1.4 million new jobs.

Full Story Here: Google predicts U.S. will miss up to $3.2 trillion in GDP growth if green tech isn’t encouraged | The Raw Story.

Bachmann stands by claims that ‘Founding Fathers’ ended slavery 

Rep. Michele Bachmann, who officially announced yesterday in Iowa that she is running for president, appeared on “Good Morning America” Monday, where George Stephanopoulos attempted to clarify some of her previous statements.

Among them: Bachmann’s claim that “the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence worked tirelessly to end slavery.”

“Now with respect, Congresswoman, that’s just not true,” Stephanopoulos said. “Many of them including Jefferson and Washington were actually slave holders and slavery didn’t end until the Civil War.”

Full Story Here: Bachmann stands by claims that ‘Founding Fathers’ ended slavery | Raw Replay.

Rick Scott Tried To Disband The Florida Highway Patrol

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has launched an aggressive campaign against government services since taking office, slashing funding on everything from unemployment insurance to education to aid for homeless veterans, to high-speed rail, helping him become the least popular governor in America just six months into his term.

But his latest target is one of his boldest yet. According to a report by Florida’s Capitol News Service, Scott wanted to disband the Florida Highway Patrol during the last legislative session, but was rebuffed by the state’s sheriffs, who would have been forced to takeover the disbanded forces’ duties. Aimed at cost-cutting, the move would likely have increased local property taxes, which are used to pay sheriff’s departments:

“If a deal was worked out, the funding might be here one year and the funding could disappear in the next legislative session,” Harrell Reid, president of the Florida Sheriff’s Association said. [...]

Rick Scott side stepped the question of why he was willing to transfer the Patrol to local sheriffs. [...] “It’s good to have a conversation about how can we do a good job with what the state ought to be involved with in law enforcement,” Scott said.

Full Story Here: Rick Scott Tried To Disband The Florida Highway Patrol | ThinkProgress.

States That Cut The Most Spending Have Lost The Most Jobs

There’s a new cult of economic thought sweeping the nation — or at least many Republican (and even some Democratic) political circles. Its adherents cling to the erroneous belief that sharp government spending cuts will revitalize economic growth and create much needed new jobs

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is an ardent follower of this Cut-Grow cult, as are a number of high profile governors. For instance, Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) declared, “We’re going to have to reduce spending…to create a platform for economic growth.” When Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) delivered his budget to the state Legislature he argued, “We must continue to cut government spending” to create jobs and prosperity for New Jersey families. Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) vowed his budget “lays [the] foundation to create jobs.”

Now these Republicans want the American public to drink a giant glass of their Cut-Grow Kool-Aid. But the data actually show the opposite of their claims to be true: steep spending cuts are hampering economic recovery in some states, while other states that resisted cuts or increased spending are now seeing declining unemployment rates, faster private-sector job creation, and stronger economic growth.

Full Story Here: CHART: States That Cut The Most Spending Have Lost The Most Jobs | ThinkProgress.

CHART: Lower Taxes On The Rich Don’t Lead To Job Growth

Congressional Republicans — during both last year’s debate over the pending expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the current negotiations regarding raising the nation’s debt ceiling — refused to consider tax increases on even the very richest Americans. In fact, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) blew up debt ceiling negotiations last week due to his insistence that those making more than $500,000 annually be shielded from any tax increase.

The GOP justification for its position — even with income inequality at its worst level since the 1920s — is that raising taxes on the rich will destroy jobs. “What some are suggesting is that we take this money from people who would invest in our economy and create jobs and give it to the government. The fact is you can’t tax the very people that we expect to invest in the economy and create jobs,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

However, history doesn’t back up the GOP’s claim. In fact, as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now”:

Full Story Here: CHART: Lower Taxes On The Rich Don’t Lead To Job Growth | ThinkProgress.

After Taking A $10 Billion Bailout, Goldman Sachs Announces It Will Outsource 1,000 Jobs To Singapore

Less than three years after receiving $10 billion in bailout money from American taxpayers, Goldman Sachs informed its employees recently that it will fire 1,000 workers in the United States and elsewhere, shifting their jobs to the cheaper Singaporean labor market.

According to Fox Business, Goldman Sachs has quietly informed workers and lawmakers of its plan to outsource 1,000 jobs in an attempt to inoculate itself from the impending blowback:

Goldman is so concerned about the potential for criticism that the firm’s representatives have been alerting staffers of lawmakers in Washington of the hiring spree in recent weeks as a way to mollify any concerns they may have about previously undisclosed plans to add 1,000 jobs to the firm’s Singapore office, according to people in Washington with direct knowledge if the matter. Goldman is concerned about criticism because it is adding those jobs while it is planning what could be a significant retrenchment in its U.S. workforce, these people say.

Goldman Sachs has also worked to protect itself by hiring former Republican Sen. Judd Gregg (NH) as an “international advisor.” It is not unreasonable to assume that Gregg’s 26 years in Washington will help the investment firm’s attempts to placate critics.

Full Story Here: After Taking A $10 Billion Bailout, Goldman Sachs Announces It Will Outsource 1,000 Jobs To Singapore | ThinkProgress.

Eric Cantor’s glaring conflict of interest

He’s the GOP’s chief debt ceiling negotiator. He’s also invested in a fund that will skyrocket if there’s a default

When Eric Cantor shut down debt ceiling negotiations last week, it did more than just rekindle fears that the U.S. government might soon default on its debt obligations — it also brought him closer to reaping a small financial windfall from his investment in a mutual fund whose performance is directly affected by debt ceiling brinkmanship.

Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT. The fund aggressively “shorts” long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning that it performs well when U.S. debt is undesirable. (A short is when the trader hopes to profit from the decline in the value of an asset.)

According to his latest financial disclosure statement, which covers the year 2010 and has been publicly available since this spring, Cantor still has up to $15,000 in the same fund. Contacted by Salon this week, Cantor’s office gave no indication that the Virginia Republican, who has played a leading role in the debt ceiling negotiations, has divested himself of these holdings since his last filing. Unless an agreement can be reached, the U.S. could begin defaulting on its debt payments on Aug. 2. If that happens and Cantor is still invested in the fund, the value of his holdings would skyrocket.

Full Story Here: Eric Cantor’s glaring conflict of interest – War Room – Salon.com.

Tepco, Chubu Rally Around Nuclear Future

Tokyo Electric Power Co. led Japanese utilities in rallying around a nuclear future, defying growing public opposition to atomic energy after the worst radiation accident in 25 years.

Shareholders of Tepco, as the utility is known, voted to continue with nuclear power yesterday at the company’s first annual meeting since the crisis at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant wiped off about $36 billion from the utility’s market value. Shareholders of Chubu Electric Power Co. and Kyushu Electric Power Co. also backed continuing with the status quo at their own meetings.

The votes at the utilities, which accounted for 54 percent of Japan’s installed nuclear capacity before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami caused meltdowns at Fukushima, show how reliant Japan is on atomic energy even as opposition grows.

Full Story Here: Tepco, Chubu Rally Around Nuclear Future – Bloomberg.

EPIC v. DHS Lawsuit — FOIA’d Documents Raise New Questions About Body Scanner Radiation Risks

In a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, EPIC has just obtained documents concerning the radiation risks of TSA’s airport body scanner program. The documents include agency emails, radiation studies, memoranda of agreement concerning radiation testing programs, and results of some radiation tests. One document set reveals that even after TSA employees identified cancer clusters possibly linked to radiation exposure, the agency failed to issue employees dosimeters – safety devices that could assess the level of radiation exposure. Another document indicates that the DHS mischaracterized the findings of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, stating that NIST “affirmed the safety” of full body scanners. The documents obtained by EPIC reveal that NIST disputed that characterization and stated that the Institute did not, in fact, test the devices. Also, a Johns Hopkins University study revealed that radiation zones around body scanners could exceed the “General Public Dose Limit.” For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security – Full Body Scanner Radiation Risks and EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of Body Scanner Program).

Full Story Here: EPIC – EPIC v. DHS Lawsuit — FOIA’d Documents Raise New Questions About Body Scanner Radiation Risks.

CBO’s Dire Debt Outlook Is Mainly Due to Lower Revenues

Current Policies Allow Debt to Explode

The Treasury Building is seen in Washington. The Congressional Budget Office’s two scenarios for our long-term budget outlook highlight the fact that, under current policies, we do have a serious revenue problem.

We have a serious revenue problem. And the recent Congressional Budget Office report on the country’s long-term fiscal outlook makes this crystal clear. If we continue our current policies, debt will soar, approaching 200 percent of gross domestic product by 2036. On the other hand, if we follow current law, debt will never crack 90 percent. And the biggest difference by far between these two alternatives is revenue. In fact, reduced revenue is responsible for fully three-quarters of the higher debt level in the current policy scenario compared to just one-quarter from increased spending.

The CBO makes its budget projections under two different sets of assumptions. In the first—the “baseline” scenario—the CBO assumes that future budgets will follow current law, meaning the Bush tax cuts expire as scheduled, the alternative minimum tax grows, the new health care law is implemented, and payments to Medicare doctors are cut.

In this future our debt burden is very manageable. It rises from just under 70 percent of GDP this year to 85 percent by 2036 and 87 percent by 2040. But from there it stabilizes and actually begins to decline.

Full Story Here: CBO’s Dire Debt Outlook Is Mainly Due to Lower Revenues.

The Rise of Fascism in Bush-Perry Texas

Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy :-:

Recently –Texas Gov Rick Perry’s boisterous audience of schizoid GOP idiots were caught waving US flags: SECEDE! Perhaps, because of what the GOP has made of it, Texas should secede. By presiding over the deterioration of public education in Texas, the Bush/Perry GOP has created a fascist model in which the profits of huge, right-wing inclined corporations rise as TX educational standards decline; a model in which illiteracy rises concurrently with corporate profits; a model in which the living conditions of millions deteriorate as the lifestyles of a dwindling few grow opulent beyond the ability of even oil barons to imagine.

Texas is about 50 years behind the US. As Bush-Perry neglected education, crime rates rose, most noticeably –murder! Drop-outs account for most, if not all, increases in violent crimes. Minorities –primarily black and Hispanic –are meanwhile disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system. This is what the GOP has made of Texas.

Texas is about 50 years behind the US, much more so if compared to Europe. Minorities –primarily black and Hispanic –are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

Full Story Here: The Existentialist Cowboy: The Rise of Fascism in Bush-Perry Texas.

How Greed Destroys America

New studies show that America’s corporate chieftains are living like kings while the middle class stagnates and shrivels. Yet, the Tea Party and other anti-tax forces remain determined to protect the historically low tax rates of the rich and push the burden of reducing the federal debt onto the rest of society, a curious approach explored by Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

June 28, 2011

If the “free-market” theories of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman were correct, the United States of the last three decades should have experienced a golden age in which the lavish rewards flowing to the titans of industry would have transformed the society into a vibrant force for beneficial progress.

After all, it has been faith in “free-market economics” as a kind of secular religion that has driven U.S. government policies – from the emergence of Ronald Reagan through the neo-liberalism of Bill Clinton into the brave new world of House Republican budget chairman Paul Ryan.

By slashing income tax rates to historically low levels – and only slightly boosting them under President Clinton before dropping them again under George W. Bush – the U.S. government essentially incentivized greed or what Ayn Rand liked to call “the virtue of selfishness.”

Full Story Here: How Greed Destroys America | Consortiumnews.

Another day – another Supreme Court decision in favor of big money in our politics…

Thom Hartmann :-:

Another day – another Supreme Court decision in favor of big money in our politics. Yesterday – in another 5-4 ruling – the right-wing of the Supreme Court struck down an Arizona law that provides public financing of elections. The law was intended to level the playing field between people with huge fortunes and rich friends – and just average folks running for office, by supplying matching public funds to candidates who are being outspent by private money.

The law made sure that electoral politics in Arizona wasn’t a “whoever has the most money wins” sort of game. But the high court ruled that any attempt by the government to “equalize electoral opportunities” – as in make sure both candidates are on a level playing field financially – is unconstitutional. But what is constitutional to the Conservative Supreme Court nowadays? The corporate takeover of our democracy – as was decided last year in the Citizens United case.

Thanks to this most recent ruling – look for even more corporate-owned candidates to spring up – as in more people who deny global warming – more war hawks – and more shills for Wall Street billionaires.

Full Story Here: Another day – another Supreme Court decision in favor of big money in our politics… | Thom Hartmann – News & info from the #1 progressive radio show.

Iowa Lawmaker Introduces Bill Requiring Country-of-Origin Labeling on Fuel

Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) has introduced a piece of legislation that would require fuel pumps to inform consumers where the gas they are putting in their vehicles is coming from.

The country-of-origin labeling requirements on fuel are supported by Ret. U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark.

“I believe if people go to the gas pump and realize, okay, just spent 42 dollars filling up and 12 dollars is going to Venezuela, 14 dollars of that is going to Nigeria, then suddenly the connection will be made and people will be asking ‘why can’t we find substitutes at home?’” he was quoted by Radio Iowa as saying “why can’t we have more effective exploration and production, and synthetic oil in the United States.”

Full Story Here: Iowa Lawmaker Introduces Bill Requiring Country-of-Origin Labeling on Fuel | Economy In Crisis.

Pythagoras Solar windows and energy breakthrough

A lot of sunlight hits tall office buildings, only to go to waste.

Their relatively small roofs don’t offer much space for solar panels. A solar array crammed onto the top of a typical office tower could produce, at best, a tiny fraction of the electricity the building and its tenants need.

But what if the building’s windows could serve as solar panels?

Pythagoras Solar in San Mateo has developed a window laced with solar cells, a window that generates and saves electricity at the same time.

Full Story Here: Pythagoras Solar windows and energy breakthrough.

Dear Mr. President: Don’t let Republicans blackmail you again!

As the debate over deficits ramped up in Washington on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders laid out the compelling case not to slash programs for working families. Any deficit reduction package must rely on new revenue for at least half the reduction in red ink, he added in a major address in the Senate. Sanders spoke at length about what caused deficits (wars, Wall Street bailouts, tax breaks for the rich) and how to shrink them (more revenue from the wealthiest Americans to match spending cuts). He urged fellow senators not to yield to Republican congressional leaders who “acted like schoolyard bullies” when they walked out of budget negotiations. He summed up the situation in a letter to the president that had been signed by more than 16,000 people by the time he completed his speech.

Shared Sacrifice: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont)

Dear Mr. President,

This is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. Decisions are being made about the national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every American for decades to come. As we address the issue of deficit reduction we must not ignore the painful economic reality of today – which is that the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well while the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. In fact, the United States today has, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth.

Everyone understands that over the long-term we have got to reduce the deficit – a deficit that was caused mainly by Wall Street greed, tax breaks for the rich, two wars, and a prescription drug program written by the drug and insurance companies. It is absolutely imperative, however, that as we go forward with deficit reduction we completely reject the Republican approach that demands savage cuts in desperately-needed programs for working families, the elderly, the sick, our children and the poor, while not asking the wealthiest among us to contribute one penny.

Mr. President, please listen to the overwhelming majority of the American people who believe that deficit reduction must be about shared sacrifice. The wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations in this country must pay their fair share. At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction package must come from revenue raised by ending tax breaks for the wealthy and eliminating tax loopholes that benefit large, profitable corporations and Wall Street financial institutions. A sensible deficit reduction package must also include significant cuts to unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon spending.

Full Story Here: Petition – Shared Sacrifice: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont).

Apple, Google, Microsoft Sitting on 58 Billion in Overseas Profits, Blackmailing Us to Avoid Taxes

America’s largest global corporations are holding $1.5 trillion dollars in profits overseas in order to avoid US taxes. “Apple has $12 billion waiting offshore, Google has $17 billion and Microsoft, $29 billion,” reports the New York Times.

These corporations claim that if we reduce their tax rate on that cash from 35 percent to 5.25 percent (which is less than the rest of us pay in sales taxes), they will bring the money home and invest it in creating badly needed jobs. They claim that for every billion invested, 15,000 to 20,000 jobs will be created directly and indirectly, which means such a tax holiday could create up to 30 million jobs – more than enough to bring us back to full employment and then some!

How does it feel to have the jobs gun pointed at your head? Because that’s what this is – a stickup, a robbery, job blackmail. It’s as if these corporations finally realized that they should emulate Wall Street and pick the carcass clean.

Full Story Here: Apple, Google, Microsoft Sitting on 58 Billion in Overseas Profits, Blackmailing Us to Avoid Taxes | Economy | AlterNet.

The Spam Factory’s Dirty Secret

First Hormel gutted the union. Then it sped up the line. And when the pig-brain machine made workers sick, they got canned.

On the cut-and-kill floor of Quality Pork Processors Inc. in Austin, Minnesota, the wind always blows. From the open doors at the docks where drivers unload massive trailers of screeching pigs, through to the “warm room” where the hogs are butchered, to the plastic-draped breezeway where the parts are handed over to Hormel for packaging, the air gusts and swirls, whistling through the plant like the current in a canyon. In the first week of December 2006, Matthew Garcia felt feverish and chilled on the blustery production floor. He fought stabbing back pains and nausea, but he figured it was just the flu—and he was determined to tough it out.

Garcia had gotten on at QPP only 12 weeks before and had been stuck with one of the worst spots on the line: running a device known simply as the “brain machine”—the last stop on a conveyor line snaking down the middle of a J-shaped bench [DC] called the “head table.” Every hour, more than 1,300 severed pork heads go sliding along the belt. Workers slice off the ears, clip the snouts, chisel the cheek meat. caption TK Matthew GarciaThey scoop out the eyes, carve out the tongue, and scrape the palate meat from the roofs of mouths. Because, famously, all parts of a pig are edible (“everything but the squeal,” wisdom goes), nothing is wasted. A woman next to Garcia would carve meat off the back of each head before letting the denuded skull slide down the conveyor and through an opening in a plexiglass shield.

Full Story Here: The Spam Factory’s Dirty Secret | Mother Jones.

EPA Fracking Study to Focus on Five States—But Not Wyoming

The Environmental Protection Agency will focus its national study of hydraulic fracturing on seven areas in five states but will exclude the two Wyoming gas fields where agency researchers have already collected some of the most in-depth data on drilling’s environmental impacts.

The study—which was announced last March, without specifics on research sites—will investigate alleged water contamination from drilling in five areas in Texas, Colorado, North Dakota and Pennsylvania. It also will encompass cradle-to-grave research projects in Pennsylvania and Louisiana, where the agency will track drilling’s effects on water quality from before the drill bit hits the ground to after hydraulic fracturing has been performed.

“This is about using the best possible science to do what the American people expect the EPA to do—ensure that the health of their communities and families are protected,” said Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development, in a statement.

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: EPA Fracking Study to Focus on Five States—But Not Wyoming.

Gingrich Cites His Sponsorship of Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 – Fails to Note He Was Cheating on His Wife at the Time

If all it took to be president was chutzpah and cojones, Newt Gingrich would be president for life.

With his Mediterranean cruise and its fallout — the abrupt departure of his senior campaign staff — behind him, Gingrich finally showed up in Iowa over the weekend to campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

Iowa is one of a handful of states where gay marriage is legal, so naturally reporters asked the thrice-married Gingrich for his take on the legalization of marriage equality in New York Friday night. He replied:

Full Story Here: Gingrich Cites His Sponsorship of Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 – Fails to Note He Was Cheating on His Wife at the Time.

Preview of “School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias”

The video below is a short preview of the 34-minute video “School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias.” Private schools receiving funding through “school choice” programs are using A Beka Book, Bob Jones University Press, and other Protestant fundamentalist curricula. The textbooks in these series teach that dinosaurs lived on earth with humans; deny global warming; promote hostility toward other religions and other sectors of Christianity (particularly Roman Catholicism); provide a biased and often factually incorrect version of history; and teach extreme laissez-faire economics, claimed to be biblically-based.

The full length video (embedded at end of article) focuses on the state of Pennsylvania and its Education Improvement Tax Credit program or EITC, the oldest and second largest corporate tax credit program in the country. Pennsylvania was the site of Kitzmiller v. Dover, which unfolded in 2005 in the full glare of the press. Meanwhile an end run has been made around this case and other well-publicized battles over curriculum. The EITC program, with little press or controversy, is providing taxpayer funding for private schools that have no accountability to the public whatsoever.

Taxes of all types owed by businesses to the state, are diverted to “scholarships” for private schools. In Florida, the largest of these programs, over 80% of the students subsidized by tax credits are attending religious schools, many of them using fundamentalist curricula.

Full Story Here: | Preview of “School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias”.

Ex-Citigroup VP Gary Foster arrested in $19 million fraud

Gary Foster, a former Citigroup executive, was arrested Monday on charges he embezzled more than $19 million from the bank.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed in New York, Foster allegedly transferred millions of dollars from various Citigroup accounts into his personal account at JPMorgan Chase on eight separate occasions between May 2009 and December 2010.

Foster, 35, is also accused of using fraudulent contracts and deal numbers to mask the transfers.

Full Story Here: Ex-Citigroup VP Gary Foster arrested in $19 million fraud – Jun. 27, 2011.

Wis. Gov. signs budget cutting education $1.85B

Gov. Scott Walker signed his first budget Sunday, a plan that plugs the state’s $3 billion shortfall but also slashes funding for public schools and the University of Wisconsin System.

Walker signed the two-year $66 billion budget at a private ceremony at a Green Bay area manufacturing company. The budget passed the Legislature without a single Democratic vote.

It fulfills Walker’s campaign pledge to balance the budget without raising taxes. He released just 50 vetoes early Sunday morning, signaling the Republican-controlled Legislature had given him almost everything he wanted when lawmakers revised the document. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle issued 81 vetoes with the 2009-11 budget, his last before leaving office.

Full Story Here: Wis. Gov. signs budget cutting education $1.85B – CBS News.

Walker leaving Devil’s Lake

Crowd shouts as Walker leaves.

Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World’s Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say

The chemical at the heart of the planet’s most widely used herbicide — Roundup weedkiller, used in farms and gardens across the U.S. — is coming under more intense scrutiny following the release of a new report calling for a heightened regulatory response around its use.

Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns.

A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals.

Full Story Here: Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World’s Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say.

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station: Flood Berm Collapses At Nebraska Nuke Plant

A berm holding back floodwater at a Nebraska nuclear power plant has collapsed.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the 2,000-foot berm at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station collapsed about 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

There is no danger. The plant has been shut down since early April for refueling, and the commission says there’s no water inside.

Also, the Missouri River isn’t expected to rise past the flood level the plant was designed to handle.

Full Story Here: Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station: Flood Berm Collapses At Nebraska Nuke Plant.

7 Healthy Ways To Lose Weight Without ‘Dieting’

When it comes to losing weight and getting healthy, the little things add up — trying just one new thing every day can quickly make a big difference. With that in mind, we’ve taken science’s best weight-loss strategies and created seven healthy (and slimming) to-do’s!

Studies show that recording meals may help you lose up to 5 percent of your weight, says Robert A. Carels, Ph.D., an associate professor in the psychology department at Bowling Green State University.

Start today: Snap before and after photos of each meal with your camera phone. Keeping a visual food diary is a more accurate way to see what and how much you’re eating, United Kingdom researchers say. Afterward, download the pics so you’ll have a record.

Full Story Here: 7 Healthy Ways To Lose Weight Without ‘Dieting’.

Among The Costs Of War: $20B In Air Conditioning : NPR

The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.

That’s more than NASA’s budget. It’s more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It’s what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.

“When you consider the cost to deliver the fuel to some of the most isolated places in the world — escorting, command and control, medevac support — when you throw all that infrastructure in, we’re talking over $20 billion,” Steven Anderson tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. Anderson is a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. David Patreaus’ chief logistician in Iraq.

Why does it cost so much?

Full Story Here: Among The Costs Of War: $20B In Air Conditioning : NPR.

Joe Biden Warns Republicans On Debt Ceiling Talks

Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday the Obama administration wouldn’t let middle class Americans “carry the whole burden” to break a deadlock over the national debt limit, warning that the Republican approach would only benefit the wealthy.

Addressing Ohio Democrats, Biden said there had been great progress in talks with Republican lawmakers on a deficit-reduction plan agreement. But he insisted that his party wouldn’t agree to cuts that would undermine the elderly and middle-class workers.

“We’re not going to let the middle class carry the whole burden. We will sacrifice. But they must be in on the deal,” Biden said in a speech at the Ohio Democratic Party’s annual dinner.

Biden led efforts on a deficit-reduction plan but Republicans pulled out of the discussions last week, prompting President Barack Obama to take control of the talks.

Full Story Here: Joe Biden Warns Republicans On Debt Ceiling Talks.

Free to Search and Seize

THIS spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime.

In addition, Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers until 2015, and the F.B.I. expanded agents’ authority to comb databases, follow people and rummage through their trash even if they are not suspected of a crime.

None of these are landmark decisions. But together they further erode the privilege of privacy that was championed by Congress and the courts in the mid-to-late-20th century, when the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement was applied to the states, unconstitutionally seized evidence was ruled inadmissible in state trials, and privacy laws were enacted following revelations in the 1970s of domestic spying on antiwar and civil rights groups.

Full Story Here: Free to Search and Seize – NYTimes.com.

Dennis Kucinich Confronts MD Who Claimed Canadian Health Care Was Worse That The US’s

The majority of the American people want a single-payer health care system – Medicare for all. The majority of doctors want it. A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it. But what they want doesn’t appear to matter. Why?

Because a single-payer health care plan would mean the death of the private health insurance industry and reduced profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

Presidential candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Mitt Romney and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talk a lot about universal health care. But not one of them advocates for single-payer – because single-payer too directly confronts the big corporate interests profiting off the miserable health care system we are currently saddled with.

YouTube – Dennis Kucinich Confronts MD Who Claimed Canadian Health Care Was Worse That The US’s.

Bank Errors Continue to Cause Wrongful Foreclosures

Four years into the foreclosure crisis, banks say they’ve made major improvements in how they handle struggling homeowners. They’ve promised, for example, not to foreclose on homeowners who are being considered for mortgage modifications. But that’s still happening.

Consider the cases of Laurie Pinkerton and Lisa Peterson. The two women, both Californians and Bank of America customers, had been assured by the bank that they wouldn’t lose their homes before they’d been evaluated for a possible modification. Both had their homes sold last month.

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: Bank Errors Continue to Cause Wrongful Foreclosures.

What Neocons Don’t Understand About War

Politics shapes strategy in conflicts of choice — which is another reason to avoid them

In National Review, The Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post, leading War on Terror hawks are expressing outrage at the timeline President Obama set for troop reductions in Afghanistan. Their complaint: politics is driving American policy. “So why September 2012?” Bill Kristol writes. “Because, one has to conclude, Election Day is November 6, 2012. The deadline will allow candidate Obama to say that he has completely withdrawn the surge forces, and that we’re on our way out of Afghanistan and coming home. The timetable President Obama has set isn’t based on military considerations, diplomatic strategies, or financial calculations.”

Perhaps it’s time to let these guys in on a secret: elected officials are constantly playing politics. Even on matters of national security. As they wage foreign wars, they concern themselves with the mood of the American people, support for hostilities in Congress, and how troop levels might affect their prospects for being re-elected. Almost inevitably, the strategy and tactics they employ depend at least partly on all those factors, and other political considerations besides.

Most adults know this.

Full Story Here: What Neocons Don’t Understand About War – Conor Friedersdorf – Politics – The Atlantic.

If the Sea Is in Trouble, We Are All in Trouble

The report that the ocean is in trouble is no surprise. What is shocking is that it has taken so long for us to make the connection between the state of the ocean and everything we care about – the economy, health, security – and the existence of life itself.

If the ocean is in trouble – and it is – we are in trouble. Charles Clover pointed this out in The End of the Line, and Callum Roberts provided detailed documentation of the collapse of ocean wildlife – and the consequences – in The Unnatural History of the Sea.

Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learned about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost. Some 90 per cent of many fish, large and small, have been extracted. Some face extinction owing to the ocean’s most voracious predator – us.

Full Story Here: If the Sea Is in Trouble, We Are All in Trouble | Common Dreams.

Spain’s ‘Indignant’ Launch New Protest March

Spain’s Indignant: First We Took the Steets, then the Squares, Now the Roads. “After That, We Will Take Europe.”

Spain’s “indignant” activists began their last and longest protest march on Saturday, leaving from the northeastern city of Barcelona to cover 650 kilometres on their way to a major Madrid rally on July 24.

Two other marches set off earlier this week, from Valencia in the east on Monday and Cadiz in the south on Thursday, spreading the message of their anger at unemployment, welfare cuts and corruption.

Some 50 marchers left Barcelona early in the morning to applause from passers-by and sympathisers, expecting to pick up more en route.

Full Story Here: Spain’s ‘Indignant’ Launch New Protest March | Common Dreams.

Business group: Public companies shouldn’t have to compare CEO and worker pay – The Washington Post

Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker.

Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison.

The lobbying effort began more than a year ago. It involved some of the biggest names in corporate America and meetings with members of both parties on the House Financial Services Committee and Senate banking committee.

The companies and their Republican allies in Congress call comparisons between the chief and everyone else in the company “useless.”

Full Story Here: Business group: Public companies shouldn’t have to compare CEO and worker pay – The Washington Post.

Bankers Gear Up for the Rape of Greece, as Social Democrats Vote for National Suicide

Only a Referendum of the People Can Stop Them Now

\By MICHAEL HUDSON

The fight for Europe’s future is being waged in Athens and other Greek cities to resist financial demands that are the 21st century’s version of an outright military attack. The threat of bank overlordship is not the kind of economy-killing policy that affords opportunities for heroism in armed battle, to be sure. Destructive financial policies are more like an exercise in the banality of evil – in this case, the pro-creditor assumptions of the European Central Bank (ECB), EU and IMF (egged on by the U.S. Treasury).

As Vladimir Putin pointed out some years ago, the neoliberal reforms put in Boris Yeltsin’s hands by the Harvard Boys in the 1990s caused Russia to suffer lower birth rates, shortening life spans and emigration – the greatest loss in population growth since World War II. Capital flight is another consequence of financial austerity. The ECB’s proposed “solution” to Greece’s debt problem is thus self-defeating. It only buys time for the ECB to take on yet more Greek government debt, leaving all EU taxpayers to get the bill. It is to avoid this shift of bank losses onto taxpayers that Angela Merkel in Germany has insisted that private bondholders must absorb some of the loss resulting from their bad investments.

The bankers are trying to get a windfall by using the debt hammer to achieve what warfare did in times past. They are demanding privatization of public assets (on credit, with tax deductibility for interest so as to leave more cash flow to pay the bankers). This transfer of land, public utilities and interest as financial booty and tribute to creditor economies is what makes financial austerity like war in its effect.

Full Story Here: Michael Hudson: Bankers Gear Up for the Rape of Greece, as Social Democrats Vote for National Suicide.

Schumer: Debt limit deal must include revenues | The Raw Story

One day after the debt limit negotiations fell into disarray, Sen. Chuck Schumer made it clear that Democrats won’t accept any deal that doesn’t include revenue increases along with spending cuts.

“Make no mistake: there needs to be revenues in any deal,” the New York Democrat told reporters Friday on a conference call. “Republicans cannot insist on protecting tax breaks for millionaires at the expense of our economy.”

Taxes and revenues are the sticking point in the bipartisan negotiations to raise the nation’s fast-approaching debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion. That’s why House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) abruptly walked away from the discussions Thursday.

Full Story Here: Schumer: Debt limit deal must include revenues | The Raw Story.

Corporate Tax Holiday Would Shift Investment, Jobs Overseas: Report

In recent weeks, Congressional support has been forming around the idea of another “repatriation tax holiday,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The would mean corporations doing business overseas would be permitted to pay only 5.25 percent tax on earnings brought back to the United States for a temporary time period, as opposed to 35 percent corporate tax rate on domestic profits.

Proponents of the proposal claim a tax holiday will bring much needed capital back to the U.S. economy for investment. But not everyone agrees.

Following the conclusion of the last tax holiday, in 2004, corporations actually increased the rate at which they moved investments out of the U.S, according to a study by the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. The decision to move overseas, the study claims, was at least partly in anticipation of there being another tax holiday.

Full Story Here: Corporate Tax Holiday Would Shift Investment, Jobs Overseas: Report.

GOP Blew Up Debt Negotiations To Protect Tax Breaks For People Making $500,000 Or More

Yesterday House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) may well have doomed negotiations to raise the nation’s debt limit when they walked out over a dispute with Democrats about raising revenues. Their theatrics bring the country closer to the brink of financial collapse, and observers have described the move as a “tamper tantrum” and “political grandstanding.” Today, more details emerged about exactly what Republicans are willing to threaten the global economy over to defend.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a member of the bipartisan debt discussion group led by Vice President Joe Biden, said Republicans chose to “protect taxpayer subsidies for big oil companies, tax breaks for corporate jets, and tax breaks for millionaires”:

Democrats want to close tax loopholes that benefit oil companies, and eliminate a tax preference that gives corporate aircraft a friendlier depreciation schedule than commercial aircraft. Additionally, Van Hollen said, Democrats were proposing to phase out tax deductions and certain credits for people making more than $500,000 a year. These would be paired with a reduction in the tax burden on lower earners, by eliminating existing limitations on their deductions. [...]

Full Story Here: GOP Blew Up Debt Negotiations To Protect Tax Breaks For People Making $500,000 Or More | ThinkProgress.

Santorum: ‘There’s No Such Thing As Global Warming’

In an interview with the lame-duck Fox News host Glenn Beck, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum claimed global warming is a hoax. Beck grinned as Santorum called for a “drill everywhere” policy and claimed that there is “no such thing as global warming”:

BECK: Oil?

SANTORUM: Drill. Drill everywhere.

BECK: Coal?

SANTORUM: Absolutely. Natural gas. We have huge stores. 263 years of oil at the current rate, almost 200 years of gas, and 300 years of coal.

BECK: What about global warming?

SANTORUM: There is no such thing as global warming. It is, in my opinion, there are hundreds of factors that cause the earth to warm and cool, and the trace gas – of which human participation in this trace gas – is . . .

BECK: This could seal the deal for me. Whatever, I got enough.

Full Story Here: Santorum: ‘There’s No Such Thing As Global Warming’ | ThinkProgress.

Oil Industry Forms New Astroturf Group To Manipulate 2012 Republican Primary In Iowa

As the Republican presidential candidates tour Iowa hoping to lock up the 2012 nomination, they will hear an assortment of questions on energy policy. Some of them, ThinkProgress has learned, will be planted by the oil and natural gas lobby to steer the candidates toward pro-Big Oil policies.

A recent campaign stop by Rick Santorum reveals at least part of the strategy. During the question and answer period of an event last Monday at the Pizza Ranch in Ames, Iowa, Santorum was asked by a man if he would pledge to support the Keystone XL, an oil pipeline currently under construction to bring crude oil from Canada through several states to refineries in Texas. Santorum disregarded the question, and spoke for a few minutes about problems encountered by the fracking industry in his home state of Pennsylvania. The man interjected and again asked whether Santorum would say definitively if he supports the pipeline. Santorum, looking slightly annoyed, relented and said yes.

Full Story Here: Exclusive: Oil Industry Forms New Astroturf Group To Manipulate 2012 Republican Primary In Iowa | ThinkProgress.

Rep. Murphy Questions Whether Thomas ‘Can Continue To Serve As A Justice’

Lavish Gifts… Political Fundraisers… Undisclosed Income… Conflicts of Interest… His Family May Have a Stake In Citizens United… Justices Have Resigned For Less

hiser on Jun 24, 2011 at 9:40 am

Full Story Here: EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Murphy Says Thomas’ Actions Call Into Question Whether He ‘Can Continue To Serve As A Justice’ | ThinkProgress.

Tax Repatriation: You Can’t Turn This into A Good Idea

My experience in policy making has led me to try to strictly obey a couple of basic precepts. First, keep it simple. Unintended consequences abound, and the more tweaks you have to build in to get the policy to do what you really want it to do, the more likely something will go wrong.

Second, it’s better not to pass a bad policy than to try to make it a good one. Why not? See rule #1 above.

These caveats come to mind in thinking about the tax repatriation holiday that’s getting some buzz these days. This is where you let multinational corporations who’ve been “deferring” taxes they owe to the Treasury—holding them overseas—get a time-limited break to bring them back (to “repatriate” them) at a much reduced rate (5%!!). See here and here.

The core of the critique is that while the corporations who take advantage of this tax break claim that they’ll invest the tax windfall and create more jobs, the evidence shows otherwise (we tried this before, back in 2004). Over to my CBPP colleagues Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith:

Full Story Here: Tax Repatriation: You Can’t Turn This into A Good Idea | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy.

Advanced Manufacturing Can Boost Jobs says Obama

Obama Pitches Plan to Promote High-Tech Innovation

President Barack Obama says technological innovations can help create jobs and spur growth in clean energy and advanced manufacturing.

In his radio and Internet address, the president promoted a plan he outlined Friday in which the government would join with universities and corporations to re-ignite the manufacturing sector with an emphasis on cutting-edge research and new technologies.

“Their mission is to come up with a way to get ideas from the drawing board to the manufacturing floor to the marketplace as swiftly as possible, which will help create quality jobs, and make our businesses more competitive,” Obama said in the address aired Saturday.

Full Story Here: Obama Pitches Plan to Promote High-Tech Innovation – ABC News.

OPS: Hey, Shit for Brains!  A N Y manufacturing can boost jobs.  It doesn’t HAVE to be high Tech!

Asteroid to Pass Extremely Close By Earth on Monday

UPDATE for 5:35 p.m. ET: NASA has recalculated the time of closest approach for this event to be about 3 1/2 hours later than initially reported. The change is reflected below.

Here’s something to dwell on as you head to work next week: A small asteroid the size of a tour bus will make an extremely close pass by the Earth on Monday, but it poses no threat to the planet

The asteroid will make its closest approach at 1:14 p.m. EDT (1714 GMT) on June 27 and will pass just over 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface, NASA officials say. At that particular moment, the asteroid — which scientists have named 2011 MD — will be sailing high off the coast of Antarctica, almost 2,000 miles (3,218 km) south-southwest of South Africa.

Full Story Here: Asteroid to Pass Extremely Close By Earth on Monday | Near-Earth Asteroids & Potentially Dangerous Asteroids | Asteroid Photos & Comets | Space.com.

10 Things the GOP Doesn’t Want You to Know About the Debt

Just two weeks after he seconded Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s dire warnings about the August 2 deadline to raise the U.S debt ceiling, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of the budget talks aimed at reaching a bipartisan compromise over deficit reduction. Like Arizona GOP Senator Jon Kyl, Cantor shifted the burden to Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Mitch McConnell and President Obama to “get over this impasse on taxes.”

For his part, McConnell promised that no deal to end the GOP’s hostage taking of the U.S. economy will include tax hikes. But while McConnell boasted that “If they couldn’t raise taxes when they owned the government, you know they can’t get it done now,” left unsaid was the inconvenient truth that the nation’s mounting debt is largely attributable to wars, a recession and tax policies put in place under his party’s watch.

Here, then, are 10 things the GOP doesn’t want you to know about the debt:

(Click a link to jump to the data and details for each.)

Full Story Here: Daily Kos: 10 Things the GOP Doesn’t Want You to Know About the Debt.

Is Rand Paul as dumb as he sounds?

Or is the senator from the Tea Parties putting on an act?

Here, via Oliver Willis and Steve Benen, is a clip of Sens. Al Franken, Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul discussing a bill that would help prevent senior hunger:

Video at link

As Sanders and Franken explain: If we make sure old folks have money for and access to adequate nutrition, fewer of them will need to be hospitalized or placed in nursing homes. Because Medicare would pay a lot more money for hospitalization or nursing home care than it would cost to make sure these old folks don’t go hungry to begin with, this program is cost-effective in addition to being humane.

Here is Rand Paul’s rebuttal: “It’s curious that only in Washington can you spend $2 billion and claim that you’re saving money.” Then he went “hyck hyck hyck” and looked sort of smug. When the basic idea — sometimes spending a bit of money now saves a lot of money later! — was explained to him again, his response was to say something about the government being bad, and to suggest that if this insane magical spending-to-save thing is true, why not spend a ZILLION dollars feeding old people? (The cheapest option, I guess, would just be to not pay for old people to eat or go to the hospital at all, and to let them die in their homes and be buried in pauper’s graves, but it is maybe rude to suggest that that is Paul’s “plan.”)

Full Story Here: Is Rand Paul as dumb as he sounds? – War Room – Salon.com.

Least Valuable Player: Rep. Eric Cantor

James Fallows -  – The Atlantic :-:

I’ve complained in the past about Sen. Richard Shelby’s willful veto of Peter Diamond’s nomination as a Fed governor, and about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s intentional stall of nominees across the board, as a passive-aggressive way to hamstring the Administration.

Both of them now give way to Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader (official Congressional photo, via Wikipedia, right), who in walking out of the talks to avoid a default on U.S. debt gives as clear an example of petty-ambition-over-national-interest as we’ve seen in public life in quite a while.

The Atlantic Wire provides background for the move, and Ezra Klein makes the motivations clear. Cantor was happy to stay in the negotiations through the budget-cutting stage. But as soon as the unavoidable other part of the negotiations began — finding ways to raise revenue — he chickened out and left the hard work (for a Republican) to House Speaker John Boehner. As Klein accurately sums up it:

Full Story Here: Least Valuable Player: Rep. Eric Cantor – James Fallows – Politics – The Atlantic.

Defining an American State of War

“Victory” Is the Verbal Equivalent of a Yeti

Now that Washington has at least six wars cooking (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and more generally, the global war on terror), Americans find themselves in a new world of war. If, however, you haven’t joined the all-volunteer military, any of our 17 intelligence outfits, the Pentagon, the weapons companies and hire-a-gun corporations associated with it, or some other part of the National Security Complex, America’s distant wars go on largely without you (at least until the bills come due).

War has a way of turning almost anything upside down, including language. But with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, crumbling infrastructure, and weird weather, who even notices? This undoubtedly means that you’re using a set of antediluvian war words or definitions from your father’s day. It’s time to catch up.

So here’s the latest word in war words: what’s in, what’s out, what’s inside out. What follows are nine common terms associated with our present wars that probably don’t mean what you think they mean. Since you live in a twenty-first-century war state, you might consider making them your own.

Full Story Here: Tomgram: Engelhardt, Defining an American State of War | TomDispatch.

The Lie Behind the Afghan War

Exclusive: A recurring refrain about the Afghan War is that the United States must stay for the long haul now to avoid repeating the “mistake” made in 1989 when Soviet forces left and Americans supposedly disappeared, too. But this conventional wisdom, spread by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others, is a lie, Robert Parry writes.

By Robert Parry

June 24, 2011

In Official Washington, there’s one “fact” about the Afghan War that nearly everyone “knows”: In February 1989, after the Soviet army left Afghanistan, the United States walked away from the war-torn country, creating a vacuum that led to the rise of the Taliban and its readiness to host al-Qaeda’s anti-American terrorists.

It is a point made by senior administration officials, including incoming Ambassador Ryan Crocker and departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who once summed up the conventional wisdom by saying: “We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war and into Taliban hands.”

And Gates was there at the time, as President George H.W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser. So, he should know.

Full Story Here: The Lie Behind the Afghan War | Consortiumnews.

Democrats Consider Offering Medicare Provider Cuts In Exchange For Revenue Increases

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) decision on Thursday to leave ongoing debt ceiling negotiations seemed to bring those talks to an abrupt standstill. But aides on the Hill and a statement from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney seem to suggest that Cantor’s absence means, simply, that the discussions will now get picked up by President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

As the heavier hitters get set to pick up the slack, the contours of a grand bargain are once again emerging, and it may not be to the liking of either party. In exchange for revenue-raisers (most likely in the form of siphoned off tax breaks or the closing of loopholes) Democrats will agree to Medicare cuts — not on the beneficiary side, which would have produced deafening howls from within the caucus, but on the provider side.

The first hint of this deal came on Thursday morning, when Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said the following with respect to the Cantor news:

Full Story Here: Democrats Consider Offering Medicare Provider Cuts In Exchange For Revenue Increases.

Nebraska Nuclear Power Plant on Verge of Shutdown, Media Ignores

-Floods in Nebraska threaten a nuclear power plant, but you would barely know it from the mainstream media, especially since the airspace above the power plant has been shut down, preventing pictures and video from being taken.

–On the Bonus Show Not safe for work song from Netroots Nation, woman cooked alive by bikini, Louis grandmother rant, John McCain blames immigrants for wildfires.

The David Pakman Show is an internationally syndicated talk radio and television program hosted by David Pakman

Stocks Of Socialized Countries Have Outperformed U.S. Since Reagan Era

American traders aren’t likely to take kindly to the suggestion that big government might be good for the stock market. But data from a paper on the job- and income-growth of top earners shows that stock prices in some socialized countries, relative to themselves and adjusted for inflation, have done considerably better than those in the U.S over the last two and a half decades.

Specifically, during the twenty five years after Ronald Reagan took office — a pro-market honeymoon that Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review this week termed “the ascent of laissez-faire economic policies” — French stock prices have performed significantly better than Americans ones, according to the report by Jon Bakija, Adam Cole, and Bradley Heim.

A further examination of the 39-year period extending from the end of the Nixon administration until 2008 shows the Swedish economy, known for its high taxes and heavy regulation, growing at a significantly higher rate than the US.

Full Story Here: Stocks Of Socialized Countries Have Outperformed U.S. Since Reagan Era.

House approves offshore drilling bill

The House on Wednesday night approved H.R. 2021, which would make it easier to obtain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drilling permits by requiring permitting decisions to be made within six months and easing certain environmental standards.

The bill was approved in a 253-166 vote in which 23 Democrats joined all but two Republicans.

Wednesday debate on the bill was marked by Democratic arguments that the bill would weaken air quality standards across the country. The bill would prevent the EPA from regulating emissions from vessels that service offshore drilling operations, a change that Democrats said prevents EPA regulation on what can be the predominant source of emissions.

Full Story Here: House approves offshore drilling bill – The Hill’s Floor Action.

Clarence Thomas Must Go

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I do not like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In my opinion, he has no business sitting on the high court after the reprehensible treatment he forced Anita Hill to endure, and has been a disgrace to the bench lo these last twenty years. Anthony Weiner, one of Clarence Thomas’ most ardent critics, was just run out of Washington DC on a rail for behavior far less offensive; Mr. Thomas is lucky there was no such thing as Twitter when he was sexually harassing Hill, or he’d be chasing ambulances outside of muni court like the hack he is. He sits up there like a lump, never speaking or offering questions to petitioners, and has not had an original thought since his shameful Senate approval.

But his vapid intellectual presence on the bench is only a small part of the story. Mr. Thomas has, by all appearances, turned his position on the court into a license to print money for himself, his family, and a few choice friends.

Full Story Here: Clarence Thomas Must Go | Truthout.

The Coming Upheaval in Republican Economics

Ian Fletcher :-:

Since the late 1970s, when the Eisenhower-to-Nixon era of accommodation to the New Deal sputtered to a close, what it has meant to be a Republican in economics has been obvious

It has meant free markets

Republican free-market ideology was, in fact, so successful for most of this era that it dragged the Democrats, and the country at large, along with it—a process vividly ratified by the “New Democrat” policies of B ill Clinton and shabbily confirmed by the absence of any real economic CHANGE™ by the Obama administration

Margaret Thatcher (ratified by Tony Blair) and others did similarly abroad.

So it may seem paradoxical, even perverse, to suggest that the Republican party is soon going to have to abandon free market ideology as its principal economic lodestar.

But this is quite likely true, and the good news for Republicans is that it may be the political weapon that will marginalize the Democrats for a generation—if Republicans learn to use it right

What’s the coming alternative to free-market-centered economics?  Economic nationalism.

This means, for a start, turning away from the post-1948 Republican party’s embrace of free trade and returning to the party’s traditional protectionism.

Beyond this, it also means turning away from the private-sector-only model of economic growth and back to what Abraham Lincoln would have called “internal improvements,” a term that embraced everything from subsidized railroads to the land-grant colleges that were the technical backbone of the American heartland for a century.

Federalist Alexander Hamilton, the intellectual father of American capitalism,  would also have understood economic nationalism as an appropriate economic philosophy for conservatives. He established America’s Independence-to-WWII protectionist tradition and laid out, in his Report on Manufactures submitted to Congress in 1791, the basic principles underlying governmental support for technological and industrial growth.

So economic nationalism is a perfectly credible conservative economic policy. It is not, pace the ahistorical Johnny-one-note libertarian ideologues who continue to undermine the ability of conservatives to think straight about economics, a form of “socialism.”

Understanding why the Republican party must embrace economic nationalism requires ruthless honesty about what it means to be right-wing in the first place.

Generically speaking, and with a lot of caveats and complexities, being on the right means seeking one’s essential leverage to make society function in the needs of life’s winners, and being on the left means the same but with life’s losers.

This taxonomy is not intended to prove which side is correct—if it did, it wouldn’t be an objective taxonomy —but it does hold, broadly speaking, over a wide range of issues, nations, and historical eras.

In the case of economics, “life’s winners” obviously means the rich, the middle class, and, generically, everyone else who’s satisfied with their economic lot.  “Life’s losers” means the poor and the dissatisfied.

This determines what’s left and right in economics.  But it doesn’t settle what kind of right-wing economics the right will or should embrace at any given moment, because within this general framework, there is more than one option.

Free-market ideology is obviously one choice, because in a free market, the winners come out on top. So that’s one viable rightist economic philosophy, and has, indeed, often been adopted by rightists around the world with political and economic success.

But there’s also another rightist view, which centers not on the inequality between domestic winners and losers, but on the inequality between Americans and the rest of the world.  And that’s what economic nationalism is fundamentally about, and why it’s a plausible rightist position.  This position has also, in many historical circumstances, been adopted by rightists with political and economic success.

What we are probably about to witness—and it’s a good thing—is a flipping of the American right from the one position to the other.

More concretely, the Republican party is going to be forced in this direction by the sheer pressure of events.

Free market ideology—and also, to be fair, “free” market ideology, with scare quotes, because many of these free market policies are only so in name—is directly responsible for two of America’s biggest current economic mistakes: our embrace of free trade and our neglect of federal support for technological growth.

These mistakes are a huge part of why we’re not coming out of recession, can’t create decent jobs, and are having our backsides handed to us in international competition.

I have previously discussed why free trade is harming us here, here, and here.  I have discussed America’s innovation deficit here and here.

What killed free market ideology?  Two things: globalism and state capitalism abroad.

In the absence of globalism, that is, in an American economy where imports are a small percentage of GDP—say, the roughly 5 percent they were in 1970 as opposed to the 17 percent they are now—domestic markets, free or otherwise, are relatively insulated from foreign events.

But with a highly globalized economy, domestic markets are wide open. Which means (as is hardly a secret to most Americans) that foreign competition has a huge impact on our domestic economy.

And unfortunately, that foreign competition is increasingly not based on free markets. Despite all the laissez faire mythology about how government can’t ever make anything work in economics, China is cleaning our clock practicing what Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has called “a central planning form of capitalism.”

As a result, foreign state capitalism is forcing America into economic nationalism.  Like it or not, we don’t have a choice—except, of course, surrender and economic decline. For the first time since the American Revolution, the United States is being pushed around by foreign economic forces, rather than being an economic force reshaping the rest of the world.

The hard fact is that America cannot compete playing Marquis of Queensbury rules against foreign competitors (read “China”) who play by the Law of the Jungle.  We can’t even compete against foreign competitors who play by the cleaned-up, polite, gentrified version of the same practiced by Japan, Germany, and their imitators from South Korea to Switzerland.

From a purely partisan point of view, there’s another risk. If the Republican party doesn’t get ahead of the curve here and proactively embrace economic nationalism, it risks being sidelined for a generation or more by the Democrats embracing it.

The Democrats won’t call it economic nationalism if they embrace these policies. Nationalism hasn’t been a popular concept with them ideologically since Harry Truman’s time. If they go this route, they won’t give the same reasons or appeal to the same historical precedents as Republicans would. But they won’t have to, as there exist perfectly respectable leftist reasons to use instead.

In fact, the Democrats are at present closer than the Republicans to doing both these things. For example, a higher percentage of Democrats in the House have soured on free trade, and a higher percentage are willing to support state-funded innovation.

Which means that Republicans had better start thinking all this through real soon.

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.

Study: Children Born Near Mountaintop Removal Mining 26% More Likely to Have Birth Defects at EnviroKnow

A new study (PDF) in the forthcoming edition of Environmental Research compares the prevalence of birth defects in Appalachian children from mountaintop removal mining communities to non-mountaintop removal mining communities. The investigators found that “children born in counties home to mountaintop coal mines had a 26% higher risk of suffering birth defects, compared to ones born in non-mining regions.”

The researchers looked at birth defects in four Appalachian states — West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia (pictured at right) — from 1996-2003. They found that children born in mountaintop removal mining communities were more likely to have birth defects in six of seven categories, including heart, lung and gastrointestinal birth defects. Due to the correlation between poverty and birth defects, the researchers controlled for social factors such as smoking, drinking and mother’s education.

Melissa Ahern of Washington State University, who led the study, explained the bottom line. “These are costly to the health care system and involve a lot of human suffering,” she said. “I would think public health officials would be interested.” Study co-author Dr. Michael Hendryx said that the study “offers one of the first indications that health problems are disproportionately concentrated specifically in MTM areas.” He also noted that the findings are “significant not only to people who live in coalfields but to policy makers as well.”

Full Story Here: Study: Children Born Near Mountaintop Removal Mining 26% More Likely to Have Birth Defects at EnviroKnow.

Democrats Explicitly Call Out GOP For Sabotaging The Economic Recovery

They’ve made it explicit. Democrats are accusing Republicans of trying to sabotage the recovery — or at least stall it — by blocking all short-term measures to boost the economy, even ones they previously supported.

In a Capitol press conference Wednesday, the Senate’s top Democrats argued that Republicans don’t want to pass measures like a temporary payroll tax holiday for employers because they’ll improve President Obama’s re-election chances.

“Our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate are driven by putting one man out of work: President Obama,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Full Story Here: Democrats Explicitly Call Out GOP For Sabotaging The Economic Recovery | TPMDC.

Congressional Budget Office warns of debt explosion

The national debt will exceed the size of the entire U.S. economy by 2021 — and balloon to nearly 200 percent of GDP within 25 years — without dramatic cuts to federal health and retirement programs or steep tax increases, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.

The dire outlook from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office comes as the White House and congressional leaders are locked in negotiations aimed at cutting spending and stabilizing future borrowing. The CBO report highlights the enormity of that task and the immense difficulty of paying off the debt, given an aging population and soaring health-care costs.

Over the long term, the CBO said, a projected explosion in government spending outside interest on the debt is “attributable entirely” to the ballooning cost of “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and (to a lesser extent) insurance subsidies” intended to help finance coverage for the uninsured under President Obama’s new health-care law.

Full Story Here: Congressional Budget Office warns of debt explosion – The Washington Post.

Will you help Senator Sanders expose the Koch Echo Chamber?

EXPOSE THE KOCHS: The Koch brothers fund multiple think tanks and academic centers to promote their ideology and grow their profits, a Brave New Foundation investigation reveals. Let’s create an echo chamber of truth by using YouTube’s SHARE tools above to protect Social Security and counter the Koch billions. http://KochBrothersExposed.com/socialsecurity

Obama Health Care Law Glitch Opens Medicaid To Millions Of Middle-Class Americans

President Barack Obama’s health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.

The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.

Up to 3 million more people could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the anomaly. That’s because, in a major change from today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility. It might be compared to allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps.

Full Story Here: Obama Health Care Law Glitch Opens Medicaid To Millions Of Middle-Class Americans.

Barney Frank and Ron Paul will Introduce Legislation on Thursday to Fully Legalize Marijuana

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) will introduce “bi-partisan legislation tomorrow ending the federal war on marijuana and letting states legalize, regulate, tax, and control marijuana without federal interference,” according to a press release from the Marijuana Policy Project that just hit my inbox. More from that email:

Other co-sponsors include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). The legislation would limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, allowing people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal. The legislation is the first bill ever introduced in Congress to end federal marijuana prohibition.

Full Story Here: Barney Frank and Ron Paul will Introduce Legislation on Thursday to Fully Legalize Marijuana – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine.

Tritium Leaks Found at Many Nuke Sites

Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.

Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP’s yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard — sometimes at hundreds of times the limit.

Full Story Here: Tritium Leaks Found at Many Nuke Sites | Common Dreams.

GAO: leaks at aging nuke sites difficult to detect

U.S. nuclear power plant operators haven’t figured out how to quickly detect leaks of radioactive water from aging pipes that snake underneath the sites — and the leaks, often undetected for years, are not going to stop, according to a new report by congressional investigators.

The report by the Government Accountability Office was released by two congressmen Tuesday in response to an Associated Press investigation that shows three-quarters of America’s 65 nuclear plant sites have leaked radioactive tritium, sometimes into groundwater.

Separately, two senators asked the GAO, the auditing and watchdog arm of Congress, to investigate the findings of the ongoing AP series Aging Nukes, which concludes that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear power industry have worked closely to keep old reactors operating within safety standards by weakening them, or not enforcing the rules.

Full Story Here: The Associated Press: GAO: leaks at aging nuke sites difficult to detect.

Human retina protein can function as a magnetic sensor

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have discovered that a protein expressed in the human retina has the capability of sensing magnetic fields when placed into fruit flies.

“It poses the question, ‘maybe we should rethink about this sixth sense,’” Steven Reppert, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told LiveScience. “It is thought to be very important for how animals migrate. Perhaps this protein is also fulfilling an important function for sensing magnetic fields in humans.”

The research, published in Nature Communications this week, found that fruit flies could sense and respond to an electric-coil-generated magnetic field when their native retina protein was replaced with a human retina protein called “human cryptochrome 2 protein (hCRY2).”

Full Story Here: Human retina protein can function as a magnetic sensor | The Raw Story.

Sanders: ’5 million seniors face the threat of hunger’

A 12-page report released Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) found that about 5 million senior citizens are threatened by hunger in the United States.

“It is estimated that 5 million seniors face the threat of hunger, 3 million seniors are at risk of hunger, and 1 million seniors go hungry because they cannot afford to buy food,” Sanders said Tuesday during a Senate hearing, summing up the findings.

According to the report, the average cost of a meal brought to a senior’s home is just over $5. By contrast, the average cost of spending a day in the hospital is more than $1,850, while the average yearly cost of care at a nursing home is over $77,700.

Full Story Here: Sanders: ’5 million seniors face the threat of hunger’ | The Raw Story.

U.S. Nuclear Regulator Faces Fresh Scrutiny for Bending Safety Standards

In the wake of Fukushima, story after story has been published about the cozy relationship between Japan’s nuclear industry and its regulators: Japanese nuclear regulators extended the use of reactors despite concerns about equipment upkeep and left key safety measures to the initiative of plant operators, as many have reported in the months since.

While nuclear regulators in the United States don’t have their Japanese counterparts’ explicit dual mission of both regulating the industry and promoting nuclear energy, an investigation by The Associated Press published Monday shows that in several critical ways, the two countries’ regulatory agencies may not be so different.

Officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission repeatedly weakened safety standards or decided not to enforce them in order to keep aging nuclear reactors in compliance, according to the AP:

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: U.S. Nuclear Regulator Faces Fresh Scrutiny for Bending Safety Standards.

Wal-Mart Ruling Decried: From Too Big To Fail, To ‘Too Big To Be Held Accountable’

The conservative bloc of the Supreme Court finds itself under fire once again for a decision being criticized for handing too much authority to large corporations at the expense of average Americans.

The high court on Monday blocked a huge gender-discrimination lawsuit against retail titan Wal-Mart. Just last year, conservatives on the court found themselves criticized for their sweeping decision in Citizens United, which granted corporations wide new influence in U.S. elections.

Although the court was unanimous Monday in its decision the class-action suit against Wal-Mart couldn’t proceed as structured, justices split in a 5-4 ruling that found the women in the case hadn’t shown enough commonality in their complaints against the world’s largest employer. The case involved as many as 1.5 million female workers. The decision also could affect discrimination cases in the future, as well.

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: Wal-Mart Ruling Decried: From Too Big To Fail, To ‘Too Big To Be Held Accountable’.

Out of Power, Right-Wing Hawks Turn Dovish

Matt Taibbi :-:

It’s been interesting, watching the seamless transition many conservatives seem to be making now, from brainless war-drum-beating to Randian isolationism. Six or seven or eight years ago, I seem to remember, anyone who even hinted that not using military force to resolve any foreign policy dispute, no matter how trivial or how imaginary the justification, was to be considered a traitor.

Now, all of the sudden, Republicans are on the outside looking in, and entering a presidential election season, they’ve suddenly decided to play the pacifist card. It makes sense, given the appalling and completely senseless bloodshed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and God knows where else, but it drives me crazy to see the same people who were waving pom-poms for the original invasions suddenly switch sides now.

I’m thinking in particular about New York Times boy-conservative columnist Ross Douthat, who just yesterday wrote a long column called “Rand and Rubio?” about the sudden divide among conservatives on the use-of-force issue.

Full Story Here: Out of Power, Right-Wing Hawks Turn Dovish | Rolling Stone Politics | Taibblog | Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy.

Oceans in Distress Foreshadow Mass Extinction | Common Dreams

Pollution and global warming are pushing the world’s oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water “dead zones,” toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks — all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world’s top ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.

Full Story Here: Oceans in Distress Foreshadow Mass Extinction | Common Dreams.

Obama Administration Touts Foreign Investment

Faced with stubbornly high unemployment and a steady drip of dispiriting news about the economy, the Obama administration has embraced a new strategy to try to generate jobs at home (or at least make it seem like that’s what’s happening): Invite the rest of the world to show up with business plans and paychecks.

The President on Friday issued a formal declaration affirming his administration’s welcoming posture toward investment from abroad, what seemed a clear bid for more of that money.

“My Administration is committed to ensuring that the United States continues to be the most attractive place for businesses to locate, invest, grow, and create jobs,” the President said in a written statement. We encourage and support business investment from sources both at home and abroad. Investments by foreign-domiciled companies and investors create well-paid jobs, contribute to economic growth, boost productivity and support American communities.”

Full Story Here: Obama Administration Touts Foreign Investment.

Man robs bank so he can go to jail and get health care

Often, crimes are borne of desperation. However, most robberies aren’t motivated by a desperate need for health care.

James Richard Verone, of Georgia, attempted to steal one dollar from a bank so that he would be arrested, taken to jail and — most importantly — provided with health care, the Gaston Gazette reported.

Verone worked for Coca-Cola for 17 years, but lost that job three years ago. Now 59 years old, Verone can’t handle the physical demands of the part-time jobs, like working in a convenience store, that he has successfully been hired for. Hence, he has no health care.

“The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept,” he told the Gazette. “I kind of hit a brick wall with everything.”

Full Story Here: Man robs bank so he can go to jail and get health care | The Raw Story.

Keith Olbermann’s ‘Countdown’ returns: Special Comment

Keith Olbermann returned to the airwaves Monday night for the first time since January with the new incarnation of “Countdown,” on Current TV.

“This is to be a newscast of contextualization, to be delivered with a viewpoint that the weakest citizen of this country is more important than the strongest corporation,” he said in his first Special Comment segment of the new show. “That the nation is losing its independence through the malfeasance of one political party, and the timidity of the another. And that even though you and I shouldn’t have to be the last line of defense, apparently we are.”

Watch the Special Comment below, uploaded by YouTube user cruciefiction. Originally aired on Current TV June 20, 2011.

Full Story Here: Keith Olbermann’s ‘Countdown’ returns: Special Comment | Raw Replay.

Justices Have Been Forced To Resign For Doing What Clarence Thomas Has Done

Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe. Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas’ attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn that Thomas doesn’t just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors — they also do expensive favors for him.

Leading conservative donor Harlan Crow, whose company often litigates in federal court, provided $500,000 to allow Thomas’s wife to start a Tea Party group and he once gave Thomas a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which frequently files briefs in Thomas’ Court, also gave Thomas a $15,000 gift.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because America has seen this movie before. Indeed, the Thomas scandal is little more than a remake of the forty year-old gifting scandal that brought down Justice Abe Fortas. Like Thomas, Fortas liked to associate with wealthy individuals with potential business before his Court. And like Thomas, Fortas took inappropriate gifts from his wealthy benefactors.

Full Story Here: Justices Have Been Forced To Resign For Doing What Clarence Thomas Has Done | ThinkProgress.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker To Cut Medicaid Without Public Hearings

Republicans argue that states are the “laboratories of democracy” that should be charged with developing new, innovative ways for delivering quality health care more efficiently. But that point is far harder to make in the face of Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) effort to shut the public out of a debate about Medicaid cuts and shield legislators from having to weigh in on cutting benefits and services for the neediest Americans:

The new state budget bill grants broader power to Gov. Scott Walker’s administration to remake BadgerCare Plus and other state health programs with little legislative oversight, a situation that worries advocates for the roughly 1 million people covered by those programs.

The major question: how the governor’s Department of Health Services will use that authority as it cuts a projected $466 million in costs from the programs over the next two years.

Full Story Here: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker To Cut Medicaid Without Public Hearings | ThinkProgress.

Supreme Court limits Wal-Mart sex discrimination case

In blocking a huge sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Monday, the Supreme Court made it harder for all workers to join together and challenge alleged bias that may not arise from a clear company policy.

The decade-old Wal-Mart case had been the largest job-discrimination class action in history, potentially covering 1.5 million women with potentially billions of dollars in liability for the nation’s largest private employer.

By separate 5-4 and 9-0 votes, the high court said the class action against Wal-Mart had been improperly certified.

Writing for a five-justice majority in the most sweeping part of Monday’s ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia said the women who brought the case, alleging bias in pay and promotions, failed to point to companywide policies that had a common effect on all women covered by the class action.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court limits Wal-Mart sex discrimination case – USATODAY.com.

Three words: Predator Drones. Domestically.

Not that I’m foily, but I’d really hate to be prematurely correct on the idea that Afghanistan is the real-life proving ground for drone technology. Looking on the bright side, though, at least that way we’d have some reason to be there! Still, when you read this story from Elizabeth Bumiller, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the ultimate theatre where drones will be deployed is, er, Northern Command: The continental United States. There have, after all, already been stories of domestic drone deployment against protesters in WaPo, as far back as 2007. Anyhow, I’ll quote from the printed version shown here — that’s right, printed, and then typed in; see NOTE 1 below. The story’s headline is “Unblinking, lethal and soon to be ubiquitous,” and no, they’re not talking about Timmy Geither.

IHT front page

First, let’s get the “Gee whiz!” Popular Science stuff out of the way. Bumiller writes:

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, OHIO — Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds.

The base’s indoor flight lab is called the ‘‘microaviary,’’ and for good reason. The drones in development here are designed to replicate the mechanics of flight of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world.

Full Story Here: Three words: Predator Drones. Domestically. | Corrente.

In Hanford saga, no resolution in sight

Two decades after it began, there’s no end in sight to legal wrangling over the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Is this how litigation is supposed to work?

In some ways, Carole Means’ teenage years on a farm in southeastern Wash­ing­ton state in the 1950s sound so wholesome, almost idyllic. She ate homegrown fruit and vegetables, fish from the nearby Columbia River, and drank milk from the family cows that grazed along its banks.

The farm commanded a view across the river of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the world’s first full-scale plutonium reactor. Hanford produced most of the material for the U.S. arsenal of nuclear bombs, including the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. For local residents, the plant was a source of pride — their unique contribution to winning World War II — and of jobs, employing 50,000 people at its peak.

It was also catastrophically toxic. Starting in 1944, the plant silently released huge amounts of radiation into the air, water and soil — sometimes intentionally, the government now admits.

Full Story Here: In Hanford saga, no resolution in sight.

ANGRY US MAYORS: “That we would build bridges in Baghdad & Kandahar & not Baltimore & Kansas City boggles the mind!”

The following email came from NY Green Party’s Howie Hawkins:

Green Alert: Tell Congress to Vote No on Military Budget

The US conference of Mayors is expected to pass a resolution today calling on Congress to cut $127 billion from the Defense Budget by ending the wars in the Middle East and redirecting the funding towards Domestic Needs.

Unfortunately, Congress is headed in the other direction. The Obama administration has proposed the largest defense budget ever, over $700 billion, as much as the rest of the world combined and double the military budget of a decade ago.

Congress, especially in the House, have voted to slash anti-hunger programs such as WIC and food stamps and many other low-income programs in order to continue to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and unsustainable and unneeded military spending.

Full Story Here: ANGRY US MAYORS: “That we would build bridges in Baghdad & Kandahar & not Baltimore & Kansas City boggles the mind!” | Corrente.

World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.

In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.

They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.

The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.

Full Story Here: BBC News – World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline.

Greenspan’s “Flaw” Highlighted in New Film

For many, Alan Greenspan has become the face of America’s second Gilded Age.

Presiding over the Federal Reserve, which fostered the easy money and free-wheeling financial markets that nurtured the Tech and Housing bubbles, Greenspan was once viewed as the “Maestro” of the economy, but that positive view has become tempered in the wake of recent economic events.

A new documentary by David Sington entitled “The Flaw” takes a look at the role Greenspan and his thinking had in the recent economic downturn. In 2008, Greenspan gave testimony before Congress regarding the role of federal regulators in the 2008 financial crisis. Greenspan testified that, in light of the events of the present financial crisis, he had found “a flaw” in the ideological model that lead him to act in the manner that he did.

Full Story Here: Greenspan’s “Flaw” Highlighted in New Film | Economy In Crisis.

A Call to Arms – (Economic Arms)

The price of freedom and the responsibility of all Americans is eternal vigilance and awareness.

We are losing an economic war, here’s how:

“Free trade” is destroying America. “Free trade” is unrestricted access by foreign companies to everything we have – to buy, to sell, to knock out any business at will. We are doing nothing to stop it – in fact we are encouraging it in “free trade.” One example is the automobile industry – the rest of our former great industries are now following.

This is a call to voice your outrage – write your Senators, Congressional representatives and write letters to the editors of your local papers – tell them we must to re-industrialize America and stop the “free trade” destruction.

Today we have a military army to protect our shores, the FBI, CIA, NSA, NTSB, border patrols, national guards, and airport security to protect us from domestic threats. We have the SEC to protect securities markets and the Federal Reserve Board to regulate and protect our money supply and our banking. We have social security to protect us in old age, Medicare to protect us from illness, clean air and clean water acts to protect the environment, and antitrust laws to protect the freedom of the market.

Full Story Here: A Call to Arms – (Economic Arms) | Economy In Crisis.