Archive for November, 2011

The Rebirth of Social Darwinism

Robert Reich :-:

What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I’ve been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America.

They say they want a smaller government but that can’t be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government’s powers of search and surveillance inside the United States – eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, “securing” the nation’s borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences, including broader application of the death penalty. Many also want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of private life.

They call themselves conservatives but that’s not it, either. They don’t want to conserve what we now have. They’d rather take the country backwards – before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the forty-hour workweek, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich.

Drones cleared for domestic use across the US

What do you know about drones? You know drones — those robotic, unmanned planes that fire missiles for the American military across Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else the United States needs to get away with murder.

Well if you don’t know too much, don’t worry, that’ll change soon. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into rules that will bring the controversial aircraft into the country, creating an United States airspace buzzing with tiny, robot planes to look over every inch of American soil — and maybe more.

An article published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times reveals that new drone planes could be coming domestically quite soon, as both law enforcement and the agricultural sector are seeing benefits in keeping an arsenal of unmanned planes ready to patrol the skies. For farmers, drones could bring a new method of pumping pesticides into fields of crops from above; for the cops, the aircraft could conduct surveillance over suspected criminals (think police chopper but remote controlled). The Times reports that utility companies see a benefit in drones as well, giving them a new set of eyes to monitor oil, gas and water pipelines.

Full Story Here: Drones cleared for domestic use across the US — RT.

The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loan – Now Do You Understand Occupy Wall Street?

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy.

Full Story Here: The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loan – Now Do You Understand Occupy Wall Street? – YouTube.

Carrier IQ: Researcher Trevor Eckhart Outs Creepy, Hidden App Installed On Smartphones (VIDEO)

A security researcher has posted a video detailing hidden software installed on smart phones that logs numerous details about users’ activities.

In a 17-minute video posted Monday on YouTube, Trevor Eckhart shows how the software – known as Carrier IQ – logs every text message, Google search and phone number typed on a wide variety of smart phones – including HTC, Blackberry, Nokia and others – and reports them to the mobile phone carrier.

The application, which is labeled on Eckhart’s HTC smartphone as “HTC IQ Agent,” also logs the URL of websites searched on the phone, even if the user intends to encrypt that data using a URL that begins with “HTTPS,” Eckhart said.

The software always runs when Android operating system is running and users are unable to stop it, Eckhart said in the video.

Full Story Here: Carrier IQ: Researcher Trevor Eckhart Outs Creepy, Hidden App Installed On Smartphones (VIDEO).

Senators Demand the Military Lock Up of American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window

While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

Full Story Here: Senators Demand the Military Lock Up of American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Senate to Vote on Bill That Allows the US Military to Capture Civilians Anywhere in the World Without Charges or Trial, and More

Thom Hartmann :-:

You need to know this. Now more than 24 hours past their eviction deadline – Occupy L.A. is still camped outside of City Hall – and patriots are turning to the courts to keep it that way. According to the Los Angeles Times, Occupy L.A. filed a court complaint yesterday arguing that the city’s looming crackdown represents an “unconstitutional deprivation of access to [the] traditional public forum…for first amendment activity.” Occupy L.A. is also attacking “anti-camping” laws – claiming that police are selectively enforcing the law – arresting people with the Occupy movement for camping – but letting more than 500 people camp out without a permit just weeks ago while they waited for the new “Twilight” movie to open. After the NYPD raided Zuccotti Park two weeks ago – a judge ruled that camping gear is not an expression of free speech – thus allowing the city to ban people from bringing sleeping bags and tarps into public parks – effectively killing any chance of rebuilding the Occupy Wall Street community. Apparently we live in a nation where the courts have ruled that little green pieces of fabric – money – is a form of free speech, but big green pieces of fabric – tents – are not.

Full Story Here: On the News With Thom Hartmann: Senate to Vote on Bill That Allows the US Military to Capture Civilians Anywhere in the World Without Charges or Trial, and More | Truthout.

Banks May Have Illegally Foreclosed On 5,000 Members Of The Military

For months, major banks have been dealing with the fallout of the “robo-signing” scandal, following reports that the banks were improperly foreclosing on homeowners and, in many instances, falsifying paperwork that they were submitting to courts. Banks have been forced to go back and re-examine foreclosures to ensure that homeowners did not lose their homes unlawfully.

In the latest episode of this mess, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has found that banks — including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup — may have improperly foreclosed on up to 5,000 active members of the military:

Ten leading US lenders may have unlawfully foreclosed on the mortgages of nearly 5,000 active-duty members of the US military in recent years, according to data released by a federal regulator. [...]

The data released by the OCC are based on estimates prepared by lenders and their consultants. BofA said it is reviewing 2,400 foreclosures involving active-duty military families to see if they were conducted properly. Wells Fargo is reviewing 870 foreclosures and Citigroup is looking at 700 cases.

Full Story Here: Banks May Have Illegally Foreclosed On 5,000 Members Of The Military | ThinkProgress.

GOP Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax | ThinkProgress

Senate Democrats yesterday introduced legislation — as they’ve been promising to — that would extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, and pay for it by implementing a surtax on income above $1 million. Republicans, of course, are opposing the plan, reviving their false claims that taxing the very wealthiest Americans will hit small businesses and job creators.

In essence, the GOP is saying that it’s willing to allow higher taxes on middle- and lower-income Americans in order to prevent tax increases on the very wealthy. According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, provided to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, the surtax would affect exceedingly few taxpayers, while a payroll tax cut expiration would wallop more than 100 million households:

The surtax would impact around 345,000 taxpayers, roughly 0.2 percent of taxpayers, or one in 500 of them. Those people would pay on average an additional 2.1 percent of their overall income, or just over 1/50th of that overall income, in taxes.

In a majority of states, only one-tenth of one percent, or one in 1,000 taxpayers, would pay this surtax.

Full Story Here: GOP Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax | ThinkProgress.

Kucinich: Federal Reserve has captured control of our government

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) called for the U.S. Federal Reserve to be reformed after Bloomberg reported the central bank secretly loaned nearly $8 trillion to financial institutions from 2007 to 2009.

Tens of thousands of documents obtained by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act showed that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion in profits thanks to the low-interest loans. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley accounted for $4.8 billion of that total.

“Remember the great debate we had here over the 700 billion in TARP funds?” he said on the House floor Tuesday. “There was no debate over the 7.7 trillion the Fed gave the banks.”

Full Story Here: Kucinich: Federal Reserve has captured control of our government | The Raw Story.

Stonehenge Pits Discovery Suggests Site Was Sacred For Sun Worship Earlier Than Previously Thought

Newly discovered evidence of two large pits on the east and west sides of Stonehenge suggest that the area may have been recognized as a sacred site at a much earlier date than previously thought.

Archaeologists with the University of Birmingham believe the holes could have held stones, wooden posts or fires to mark the sunrise and sunset for a “processional route” used to celebrate the summer solstice before the well-known larger stones were erected.

The pits were found along the Cursus pathway, “two parallel linear ditches with banks either side closed off at the end,” according to the BBC. Researchers also found a gap in the middle of the northern side of the Cursus, indicating a possible entry point for processions.

Full Story Here: Stonehenge Pits Discovery Suggests Site Was Sacred For Sun Worship Earlier Than Previously Thought.

States’ Health Care Hypocrisy Revealed

Federal officials announced Tuesday they are awarding more money to help states carry out President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. So what’s the surprise?

Seven states that are suing to overturn the landmark law are also on the list for funding.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said 13 states will split grants totaling nearly $220 million to help set up health insurance exchanges. Millions of uninsured Americans will be able to buy private coverage through these online supermarkets starting in 2014, with taxpayer-provided assistance to cover the cost of premiums.

“States are moving at their own pace to get their exchanges up and running,” said Sebelius. “This is a natural result of a process that gives states maximum flexibility.”

Full Story Here: Obama Health Care Law: States Suing To Overturn Law Collect Federal Funding.

Laptop WiFi May Damage Sperm, Study Suggests

Men, might want to consider keeping that laptop off your lap.

A new study in the journal Fertility and Sterility found that when exposing sperm taken from 29 men to electromagnetic radiation from laptop WiFi for four hours, the sperm had DNA damage and decreased motility.

Reuters reports that about 25 percent of the sperm had stopped moving after the four-hour laptop radiation exposure, while just 14 percent of the sperm had stopped moving when kept away from a computer. Nine percent of the radiation-exposed sperm had DNA damage, which was three times the damage of the non-radiation exposed sperm.

The researchers, from Nascentis Medicina Reproductiva in Argentina and the Eastern Virginia Medical School, wrote in the study that they “speculate that keeping a laptop connected wirelessly to the internet on the lap near the testes may result in decreased male fertility. Further in vitro and in vivo studies are needed to prove this contention.”

Full Story Here: Laptop WiFi May Damage Sperm, Study Suggests.

Virus So Deadly, Scientists Fighting To Keep It Secret

Bird Flu: Scientists Develop New Strain Of H5N1, Avian Influenza, That Could Kill Millions

It sounds like the setup for a Hollywood thriller: scientists in a lab create a virus as contagious as the flu that kills half of those infected. We’re safe as long as the virus remains locked up, but if it escapes or gets into the hands of bioterrorists, it has the potential to become a pandemic and kill millions around the world.

But this isn’t the latest summer blockbuster. According to New Scientist magazine, researchers in the Netherlands studying H5N1 — commonly referred to as the bird flu or avian influenza — have created a strain of the virus that’s easily passed between mammals, and it’s just as lethal as the original virus.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the H5N1 virus has infected more than 500 people in more than a dozen countries and is known to kill around 60 percent of those that become infected.

Full Story Here: Bird Flu: Scientists Develop New Strain Of H5N1, Avian Influenza, That Could Kill Millions.

Cook County Homeland Security Gears Up For Brutal Weather This Season (VIDEO)

As strong winds, rain and snow are already beginning to make a mark on Chicago, Cook County Homeland Security is gearing up for what they expect will be a brutal winter.

High winds and the beginning stages of snowfall prompted the Chicago Police Department to shut down the lakefront bike path from Olive Park to Fullerton Tuesday morning, as gusts brought waves from Lake Michigan dangerously high and close to shore, Fox Chicago reports. A wind advisory is in place until 9 p.m. Tuesday, and gusts are reportedly moving at up to 50 miles per hour.

Cook County officials believe this foreshadows dangerously severe winter weather this season and have advised the Department of Homeland Security to prepare accordingly.

Full Story Here: Cook County Homeland Security Gears Up For Brutal Weather This Season (VIDEO).

How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue.

Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable.

Full Story Here: How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word – Bloomberg.

Time to Retake Politics From the One Percent in Both Political Parties

Dean Baker :-:

The country is still celebrating the inability of the supercommittee to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it is important to move on from this victory to retake control of the political debate from the One Percent. As it stands, the One Percent are insisting that the country genuflect over the non-problem of the budget deficit, at a time when tens of millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed, millions of people are facing the loss of their homes and tens of millions of baby boomers are approaching retirement with little other than their Social Security to support them.

The deficit is the agenda of the One Percent. There is no reason that the rest of us should be concerned about budget deficits when the rest of the country is struggling with the economic disaster created by the greed and incompetence of the One Percent.

This is not a statement of morality; it is a statement based on economic reality. Budget deficits can be a problem when an economy is near full employment and the deficit can be pulling resources away from private investment, thereby slowing growth. However, it is not a problem with large numbers of unemployed workers and vast amounts of excess capacity.

Full Story Here: Time to Retake Politics From the One Percent in Both Political Parties | Common Dreams.

Wisconsin Recall Drive Surpasses 300,000 Signatures

The petition drive to recall and remove Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has surpassed all expectations in its first two weeks, collecting more than 300,000 signatures.

The truly remarkably thing about the total so far is not, however, that it is so large.

What is truly remarkable is where the signatures are coming from: rural and small-town Wisconsin communities are contributing disproportionally high numbers of signatures to the total.

No one, not even the most concerned critic of Governor Walker’s assault on collective bargaining rights, expected the recall campaign would move as quickly as it has.

No one expected United Wisconsin’s recall drive to gather more than half the required signatures in less than two weeks of petitioning. No one expected whole counties to reach their signature goals in the first week. No one expected conservative communities in Republican regions of the state to take the lead in collecting recall signatures against a Republican governor.

But it is happening.

Full Story Here: Wisconsin Recall Drive Surpasses 300,000 Signatures | The Nation.

Does the U.S. Have the World’s Best Health Care System? Yes, If You’re Talking About the Third World

Wendell Potter :-:

A little more than a year ago, on the day after the GOP regained control of the House of Representatives, Speaker-to-be John Boehner said one of the first orders of business after he took charge would be the repeal of health care reform.

“I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country,” Boehner said at a press conference. “That means we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with common sense reforms to bring down the cost of health care.”

Boehner is not the first nor the only Republican to try to make us believe that the U.S. has the world’s best health care system and that we’re bound to lose that distinction because of Obamacare. I’ve heard GOP candidates for president say the same thing in recent months, charging that we need to get rid of a President who clearly is trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixing, something that isn’t broken in the first place.

Full Story Here: Does the U.S. Have the World’s Best Health Care System? Yes, If You’re Talking About the Third World | Common Dreams.

Battlefield America: U.S. Citizens Face Indefinite Military Detention in Defense Bill Before Senate

The Senate is set to vote this week on a Pentagon spending bill that could usher in a radical expansion of indefinite detention under the U.S. government. A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act would authorize the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect — anywhere in the world — without charge or trial. The measure would effectively extend the definition of what is considered the military’s “battlefield” to anywhere in the world, even within the United States. Its authors, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have been campaigning for its passage in a bipartisan effort. But the White House has issued a veto threat, with backing from top officials including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. “This would be the first time since the McCarthy era that the United States Congress has tried to do this,” says our guest, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First, which has gathered signatures from 26 retired military leaders urging the Senate to vote against the measure, as well as against a separate provision that would repeal the executive order banning torture. “In this case, we’ve seen the administration very eagerly hold people without trial for 10-plus years in military detention, so there’s no reason to believe they would not continue to do that here. So we’re talking about indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens, of lawful U.S. residents, as well as of people abroad.”

Full Story Here: Battlefield America: U.S. Citizens Face Indefinite Military Detention in Defense Bill Before Senate.

The Fed Works for Banks, Not The Rest of America

A Revelation; The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans –

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy.

Kucinich also called threats by ratings agency to downgrade U.S. debt a threat to our national sovereignty.

Full Story Here: A Revelation; The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans – The Fed Works for Banks, Not The Rest of America | Common Dreams.

OPS:  and WHO was surprised by this?

Women Aggressive Toward ‘Sexy’ Peers

A new study finds women can be downright nasty when they don’t approve of members of their sex.

The harsh reactions of 43 women to a provocatively dressed peer, caught on tape by Canadian researchers, reveal just how sassy women get when they think someone else is sexier.

“I was convinced, having lived a life as a woman, that we’re not as pleasant as some people make us out to be,” said Tracy Vaillancourt, professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa and lead author of the study published in Aggressive Behavior.

Full Story Here: Women Aggressive Toward ‘Sexy’ Peers – ABC News.

S&P Cuts Credit Ratings on Several Large Banks

Standard & Poor’s reduced its credit ratings on 15 big banking companies, mostly in the Europe and United States, on Tuesday as the result of a sweeping overhaul of its ratings criteria.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, HSBC Holdings and UBS, were among the banks that had their ratings reduced by one notch each. A notch is one third of a letter rating.

S&P also left the ratings of 20 banks as they were and raised the ratings of two in announcing results from its new ratings criteria to 37 of the world’s biggest banking companies. The agency also updated ratings for dozens of bank subsidiaries of the companies.

Although S&P began warning the markets more than a year ago that it was revising its ratings, the announcement comes at a time when the markets for bank debts are fragile.

Full Story Here: S&P Cuts Credit Ratings on Several Large Banks – US Business News – CNBC.

Vt. to get $18 million for US health care reform

The Vermont Agency of Human Services will use an $18 million federal grant to help implement the next phase of the U.S. health care reform law.

That phase is taking place as the state moves toward implementation of the first-in-the-nation, single-payer health insurance system. The grant from the federal Department of Health and Human Services will be used so the state can continue the planning, development and design of its health benefits marketplace, or exchange, which eventually will help people buy private health insurance online.

The grant comes on top of a $1 million planning grant the state received last year, Vermont Health Care Reform Director Robin Lunge said.

Full Story Here: Vt. to get $18 million for US health care reform – Boston.com.

Public sector strike set to be largest for a generation

Up to two million public sector workers are staging a strike over pensions in what is set to be the biggest walkout for a generation.

Schools, hospitals, airports, ports and government offices will be among sites disrupted, as more than 1,000 demonstrations are due across the UK.

It would “achieve nothing”, Downing Street said, calling for more talks.

Unions object to government plans to make their members pay more and work longer to earn their pensions.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Mr Maude branded the action “indefensible and wrong”.

Full Story Here: BBC News – Public sector strike set to be largest for a generation.

A Revelation- The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy.

Full Story Here: A Revelation- The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans – YouTube.

Alan Grayson : Money For (Almost) Nothing

11-28-11 2 – Money For (Almost) Nothing, with Alan Grayson – Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Full Story Here: 11-28-11 2 – Money For (Almost) Nothing, with Alan Grayson – Countdown with Keith Olbermann – YouTube.

Eleven Florida lawmakers get subpoenas in election law case

Eleven state legislators have been hit with subpoenas in a federal lawsuit involving four controversial provisions of Florida’s new election law.

The subpoenas to six senators and five representatives, all Republicans, were issued on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Florida and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic voter advocacy group, by their attorney, Daniel O’Connor of the Washington, D.C., firm Bryan Cave LLP.

Both organizations have been working to prevent the U.S. government from approving the changes, which they say will disenfranchise voters and make it harder to register new voters in Florida headed into a critical 2012 presidential election.

Full Story Here: Eleven Florida lawmakers get subpoenas in election law case – St. Petersburg Times.

Mitt Romney Brazenly Lies and the Media Lets Him Slide

Last week, a lot of media attention was devoted to latest GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich using the word “humane” in a debate answer about illegal immigration, suggesting we should avoid policies that tear families apart. Will erring on the side of humanity sit well with “family values” voters?

There was another big story — the brazen dishonesty of former frontrunner Mitt Romney — that received a lot less attention from the media. Instead of obsessing over whether an element of humanity might disqualify Gingrich with some Iowa voters, the media would be better served focusing on whether out-and-out lying should disqualify Romney with all voters.

The lie is found in Romney’s first television ad, run last week in New Hampshire. The ad shows President Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” What the ad doesn’t tell you is that this was from 2008 — and that Obama was quoting an aide to John McCain at the time. Here is the full Obama quote: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’” (The full speech can be found here.)

Full Story Here: Arianna Huffington: Mitt Romney Brazenly Lies and the Media Lets Him Slide.

Things to Tax

Paul Krugman :-:

The supercommittee was a superdud — and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we’ll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here’s a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

And I don’t just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?

Let me suggest two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions.

Full Story Here: Things to Tax – NYTimes.com.

Thom Hartmann on Capital Gains

thom hartmann on Nov 28, 2011

Full Story Here: Thom Hartmann on Capital Gains – YouTube.

DNC TV AD: “Trapped” – Mitt vs Mitt

Mitt V. Mitt: The story of two men trapped in one body. Lean more at http://www.MittvMitt.com

Full Story Here: DNC TV AD: “Trapped” – YouTube.

Hunger In America, By The Numbers

Last year, 17.2 million households in the United States were food insecure, the highest level on record, as the Great Recession continued to wreak havoc on families across the country. Of those 17.2 million households, 3.9 million included children. On Thanksgiving Day, here’s a look at hunger in America, as millions of Americans struggle to get enough to eat in the wake of the economic crisis:

17.2 million: The number of households that were food insecure in 2010, the highest number on record. They make up 14.5 percent of households, or approximately one in seven.

48.8 million: People who lived in food insecure households last year.

Full Story Here: Hunger In America, By The Numbers | ThinkProgress.

Georgia Business Declares New Company Policy: ‘We Are Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone’

A business owner in western Georgia instituted a new company policy recently: “We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”

Bill Looman, who owns U.S. Cranes, LLC in Waco, Georgia, explained that while “I’ve got people that I want to hire now,” he didn’t think he would be able to foot the expense “unless some things change in D.C.”

Not content to simply implement the new policy internally, Looman decided to plaster it on all his company’s trucks. He did so, as 11Alive noted, “for all to see as the trucks roll up and down roads, highways and interstates.” Watch it:

Full Story Here: Georgia Business Declares New Company Policy: ‘We Are Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone’ | ThinkProgress.

Americans Are 20 Pounds Heavier Today Than Two Decades Ago: Report

Americans are reporting that they weigh, on average, about 20 pounds more than they did 20 years ago, according to a new report from Gallup.

The findings, based on the annual Gallup Health and Healthcare Survey, show that men are reporting they weigh 196 pounds on average and women are reporting they weigh 160 pounds on average, up nearly 20 pounds from self-reported weights in 1990.

In addition, our “ideal weight” has also increased — for men, it is now 181 pounds (up from 177 pounds a decade ago), and for women, it is now 138 pounds (up from 137 a decade ago), according to the report.

Full Story Here: Americans Are 20 Pounds Heavier Today Than Two Decades Ago: Report.

Arab League: Syria Sanctions Approved

In an unprecedented move against an Arab nation, the Arab League on Sunday approved economic sanctions on Syria to pressure Damascus to end its deadly suppression of an 8-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.

But even as world leaders abandon Assad, the regime has refused to ease a military assault on dissent that already has killed more than 3,500 people. On Sunday, Damascus slammed the sanctions as a betrayal of Arab solidarity and insisted a foreign conspiracy was behind the revolt, all but assuring more bloodshed will follow.

The sanctions are among the clearest signs yet of the isolation Syria is suffering because of the crackdown. Damascus has long boasted of being a powerhouse of Arab nationalism, but Assad has been abandoned by some of his closest allies and now his Arab neighbors. The growing movement against his regime could transform some of the most enduring alliances in the Middle East and beyond.

Full Story Here: Arab League: Syria Sanctions Approved.

9 Ideas for Congress to Address the 99 Percent

Simple Steps to Get Our Economic Engine Running Again

The Occupy Wall Street movement presents a growing chorus of millions who are fed up with mounting economic inequality in the United States.

The movement reflects the frustrations of people across the country saddled by debt, working harder for less, and with less chance of getting ahead.

It has captured our national attention by demonstrating that America’s economy is not working for most Americans today. But it is working for the richest 1 percent, who control two-fifths of the country’s wealth and get a quarter of all income.

Some people in Washington think the right response to this economic inequality is to give more to the 1 percent and hope it reaches the rest of the country. They support tax cuts for the well off—and spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and other programs that the middle class relies on. They want to slash education, energy, and technology investments that are the bridge to our future prosperity.

We disagree.

Full Story Here: 9 Ideas for Congress to Address the 99 Percent.

And Some Wonder Why Americans Are So Dumbed Down?

The covers of the US edition of this week’s Time Magazine compared to the international editions.

We can’t make this stuff up. It kind of says it all…

Full Story Here: And Some Wonder Why Americans Are So Dumbed Down? | Common Dreams.

Washington Leaves Millions To Die

The wonder of our world is that scientific knowledge is now so powerful that we can save millions of children, mothers, and fathers from killer diseases each year at little cost. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria has mobilized that knowledge over the past decade to save more than 7 million lives and to protect the health of hundreds of millions more. Yet now the Global Fund is under mortal threat because of budget cuts approved by President Obama and the Congress.

The Obama Administration had pledged $4 billion during 2011-13 to the Global Fund, or $1.33 billion per year. Now it is reneging on this pledge. For a government that spends $1.9 billion every single day on the military ($700 billion each year), Washington’s unwillingness to follow through on $1.33 billion for a whole year to save millions of lives is a new depth of cynicism and recklessness.

As a result of US budget cutbacks, and me-too cutbacks by other countries, the Global Fund this week closed its doors on providing new funds to impoverished nations. It was supposed to accept proposals next month from the poorest countries for an 11th round of disease-control funds. Instead, it has scrapped any new funding until 2014 at the earliest, and will only fund the continuation of the coverage of existing programs. US officials will prevaricate, noting that the US spends this amount or that amount. History will treat such excuses with the scorn they deserve.

Full Story Here: Jeffrey Sachs: Washington Leaves Millions To Die.

Max Keiser: The 99 percent movement & Wall Street

In this edition of On the Edge, Max Keiser interviews David DeGraw from AmpedStatus.com.

He talks about the 99 percent movement from which the Occupy Wall Street sprung out and comments on its aims and implications.

Full Story Here: The 99 percent movement & Wall Street-On the Edge with Max Keiser-11-25-2011 – YouTube.

Steve Keen: Another Great Depression is all but inevitable

Sarah Montague talks to Steve Keen, one of the few economists to have predicted the global financial crisis, about the possibility of another Great Depression, and how to avoid it.

‘Another Great Depression is all but inevitable’ – that’s the view of Steve Keen. He’s been called the ‘Merchant of Gloom’, but he’s one of the few economists to have predicted the global financial crisis. While he used to be a lone voice in challenging the economic consensus, more and more people are now listening to him. His way of avoiding depression? Write off the debt, bankrupt the banks, nationalise the financial system, and start all over again. He talks to Sarah Montague.

Full Story Here: Steve Keen on BBC HARDtalk [good sync] – YouTube.

Corporations Are Patenting Human Genes and Tissues — Here’s Why That’s Terrifying

A medical ethicist explains the dark implications of corporate medical patents and the nightmarish scenario of our medical-industrial complex.

Do you think that granting corporations the rights of people in the Citizens United case is disturbing? Then contemplate the fact that corporations have been patenting human genes and tissues at alarming rates — in the last 30 years, more than 40,000 patents have been granted on genes alone.

As the Occupy movement fights against the unmitigated influence of corporations on our lives, author and medical ethicist Harriet Washington’s new book, Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself–And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future, is a timely wakeup call to protect the very essence of human life from the medical-industrial complex.

In a recent phone interview with AlterNet, Washington discussed the dark implications of corporate medical patents, how we find ourselves in this nightmarish scenario and what needs to be done to stop medical research profits from trumping human health. Washington is also the author of Medical Apartheid, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has been a fellow in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School, a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University and a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Full Story Here: Corporations Are Patenting Human Genes and Tissues — Here’s Why That’s Terrifying | Personal Health | AlterNet.

Bill Moyers Journal… The Conversation Continues

I’m Richard Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

And I suspect you’ll find it passing strange for quite such an Ancient as I am still to have heroes…to have lived so long, to have seen so many saints and sinners, to have measured the fancies and foibles of so many persons in the public eye … and still to have held steady in my admiration for one or another of them.

But I very much do, do delight in having heroes, and I’ve inveigled perhaps the liveliest one of all to join me here again for this Open Mind … and to stay with me for at least another one, as well.

Bill Moyers is still a youngster at the top of his form, to be sure — which for me preeminently means as an American “Public Intellectual” and as very much an old-time, long-time preacher and teacher, if you will.

Full Story Here: Bill Moyers Journal… The Conversation Continues | Richard Heffner’s Open Mind | THIRTEEN.

Up with Chris Hayes on lack of consequences for Bush era war criminals

Up with Chris Hayes on lack of consequences for Bush era war criminals

Full Story Here: Up with Chris Hayes on lack of consequences for Bush era war criminals – YouTube.

This Farmer’s Perspective on GMOs

I am a member of an endangered species. I am an American Farmer. We farmers represent less than one percent of this nation’s population, yet our numbers continue to dwindle each year as agri-business giants like Monsanto, Cargill, and ADM devour us. I don’t understand why banks are too big to fail, but nothing is done to stem the alarming loss of healthy small farms, almost always family enterprises. Banks can fail; agriculture cannot. We do not eat or drink money.

These are difficult times, to be sure. The economic and social challenges facing our nation are worsened by the tragic disconnect between our government and the people. Who works for whom? As giant corporations and banks continue to have their cake and eat it too, 99 percent of the rest of us are expected to pay our taxes and to be satisfied with the crumbs. Worse still, the crumbs are genetically modified (GM). They are the illusion of crumbs.

Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) run rampant like a plague, spreading poisonous genes into food and fiber crops, livestock, wildlife, insects, birds, the soil, and unsuspecting people. We are what we eat, and we are eating toxic unnatural food contrived in laboratories by billion-dollar chemical companies. Ninety percent of American corn, cotton, canola, soybeans, and sugar beets are genetically modified today. Eighty percent of all processed foods on our grocery shelves are made with GM ingredients. Livestock are fed primarily with genetically-modified feed in feed lots and factory farms, and those malnourished, sickened cattle, pigs, and chickens are the chief source of our protein.

I was impressed when the First Lady planted an organic garden near the White House, but I was stunned President Obama hired former Monsanto big wig, Michael Taylor, as this nation’s Food Czar. The former VP of Public Policy at Monsanto, the world’s largest supplier of GM products and the company that brought us DDT and Agent Orange, assures us his former employer’s fake food is safe to eat.  How comforting for all of us.

Full Story Here: This Farmer’s Perspective on GMOs — Son of A Farmer.

We Are the 99.9%

Paul Krugman :-:

“We are the 99 percent” is a great slogan. It correctly defines the issue as being the middle class versus the elite (as opposed to the middle class versus the poor). And it also gets past the common but wrong establishment notion that rising inequality is mainly about the well educated doing better than the less educated; the big winners in this new Gilded Age have been a handful of very wealthy people, not college graduates in general.\

If anything, however, the 99 percent slogan aims too low. A large fraction of the top 1 percent’s gains have actually gone to an even smaller group, the top 0.1 percent — the richest one-thousandth of the population.

And while Democrats, by and large, want that super-elite to make at least some contribution to long-term deficit reduction, Republicans want to cut the super-elite’s taxes even as they slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the name of fiscal discipline.

Full Story Here: We Are the 99.9% – NYTimes.com.

Capital Account: Eric Fry on the Impending Defaults of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal

In Greece, striking power workers occupy a government building but the crisis doesn’t begin to end there. Germany

failed to get bids for 35 percent of the 10-year bonds offered for sale today, propelling borrowing costs in Europe higher and the euro lower on concern the region’s debt crisis is driving away investors. Stocks sank, dragging the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lower for a sixth straight day, and costs to insure European government debt rose to a record after a German bund auction fueled concern the debt crisis is worsening. French and Belgian bond yields surged and commodities tumbled. In the western world of heavily indebted nations, are we all Greeks now? Eric Fry, editor of the Daily Reckoning, believes that’s the case. We find out why. Meanwhile, what does the US assassination of suspected militant Anwar Al-Awlaki, a federal raid of Gibson guitar, and a 900 pound bluefin tuna have in common? They all exhibit examples of government over-reach and an attack on due process, according to an investor who spotted the US housing bubble has his eye on this trend. And we have a Thanksgiving Cinderella story for you. Even though income inequality has been going up in the US, even though social mobility has been going down, there are still some rags to riches stories to be found, they just might not be about people.

Full Story Here: Capital Account: Eric Fry on the Impending Defaults of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal (11/23/11) – YouTube.

AMAZING video of a journalist not taking crap from NYPD

How to successfully Resist Police Intimidation and Defend Your Rights

OccupyTVNY on Nov 22, 2011

An intrepid journalist defends his first amendment rights against a series of attempts to intimidate him by NYPD officers.

Category: Rights Police How-to Cops police state Occupy Wall Street Stock Market Constitution 99% protest press civil liberties Yes Men Igor Vamos NYPD Free speech United States Constitution America

Full Story Here: AMAZING video of a journalist not taking crap from NYPD – YouTube.

Newt Gingrich, Pseudo-Intellectual Free-Trade Kool-Aid Drinker

Ian Fletcher :-:

At least one Republican presidential candidate (Roemer) is actually good on trade issues. At least one (Romney) may be at least o-kay if he really means what he says.  At least one (Cain) is an odd mix of very good and very bad. And at least one (Perry) seems to be just naïve and corrupt on the subject.

But I have yet to report on a candidate who is proactively, deliberately, ideologically wrong on trade as a matter of high principle.

Until now.  His name is Newt Gingrich

Gingrich is, of course, already familiar to Americans from his unhappy stint as House Speaker in the mid 1990s, a stint which ended up disappointing both Democrats and his own Republicans.  Republicans, of course, abandoned him as leader in 1999 after he led his party to the worst-ever  Congressional loss by a party not in control of the White House.

And there was all that nastiness in 1997 about  allegedly using tax-deductible charitable donations to fund a non-charitable college course he taught—and of then lying about it to the House Ethics Committee. Was he innocent? Well, the House voted 395-28 to fine him an unprecedented $300,000 as part of a deal to avoid a full hearing, if that helps the reader any.

Gingrich seemed, as recently as a year or so ago, to have been relegated to well-paid has-been land—decorated, of course, with the polite fiction of his being an elder statesman of the party.

During this earlier career, Gingrich racked up a record of supporting every major wrong move on trade issues the United States has made in recent decades. To wit:

• In 1993, he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Which wasn’t even enough, according to him.  He wanted to eventually add Chile to the deal with the aim of eventually expanding it to cover the entire New World.)

• In 1994, he  voted for creation of the World Trade Organization and American membership.
• In 1998, he supported Most Favored Nation (now  known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations) status with China.

Gingrich has been openly contemptuous of American sovereignty when it comes to trade.  He said, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in June 1994,

I am just saying that we need to be honest about the fact that we are transferring from the United States at a practical level significant authority to a new organization. This is a transformational moment. I would feel better if the people who favor this would just be honest about the scale of change.

This is very close to Maastricht [a key European Union treaty], and twenty years from now we will look back on this as a very important defining moment. This is not just another trade agreement. This is adopting something which twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the U.S. Congress rejected. I am not even saying we should reject it; I, in fact, lean toward it.

Gingrich’s naiveté with regards to America’s most formidable economic adversary, the People’s Republic of China, is astonishing. The following PBS interview excerpt is almost painful to read, pure Thomas Friedman fantasy:

INTERVIEWER: Was it a good thing to allow China to become an open trading partner?

NEWT GINGRICH: Absolutely…Trade increases the likelihood that you and they will engage in win-win activities. The difference between politics and trade is that in politics I may take something from you to give to somebody else, even though you don’t want to lose it, so I raise your taxes. I charge you a fee. I confiscate your farm. In a free market you only do the things that make you happy in order for me to get the things that make me happy, and if we’re not both happy the trade doesn’t occur. So free markets dramatically lower the friction of human relationships and increase the relative pleasure and the relative success of human relationships. The more the Chinese and Americans [sit] down together to create more wealth, the happier they’ll be with each other, the less likely we’ll have conflict.

No concept of state capitalism at all. No concept that under state capitalism, capitalism strengthens, rather than disciplines, the state.  No concept of mercantilism, or the idea that trade can be practiced by foreign nations as rivalry, with a deliberate agenda to weaken the U.S.

Gingrich doesn’t seem to have wised up since, either.  If one consults his current campaign website’s section on jobs and the economy, there is no mention of trade issues. I guess they’re just not that important, despite a $500 billion-a-year trade deficit. The closest he comes to trade issues is to suggest some policies to “strengthen the dollar.”  While I’m sure the use of the word “strengthen” may make some conservative hearts beat faster, a strong dollar is actually something that has been inflicted on us by Chinese currency manipulation, it is a bad thing, and we need to go in the other direction if we ever expect to balance our trade.

How did Gingrich end up with these appalling ideas?  I can’t plumb his personality, but one of his worst liabilities, on a personal and political level, is his astonishing pseudo-intellectualism.  Intellectually pretentious politicians are a dime a dozen in, say, France, but they are quite rare here, so he stands out for this. As a PhD and former history professor, he seems to instinctively believe that his thoughts go on a higher level than other politicians.

This is a recipe for disaster.

First, intellectuals rarely make good politicians. It’s just a different skill set. A historian can spend a lifetime pondering a question and then give a carefully hedged and nuanced answer. A politician must vote Yea or Nay today. A physicist can discover a theory than only a dozen other people in the world understand, win the Nobel for it, and deserve it.  A politician in a democracy must think and act in ways that millions can understand.

This doesn’t mean politicians shouldn’t be smart, but it does mean that they generally shouldn’t be intellectuals.

It’s no accident that we haven’t had a decent intellectual president since Teddy Roosevelt, who could have gotten tenure teaching history at any university he wanted and whose naval history of the War of 1812 is still a standard work on the topic. The Founders’ generation had a lot of highly intellectual political figures. But that’s unsurprising, as this was a time when the ideology this country is based on was new, so it took genuine brains to understand and fight for it.

What’s even worse is that Newt Gingrich isn’t even an actual intellectual so much as a pseudo-intellectual.  He’s not somebody who has mastered an actual intellectual discipline and takes seriously the idea of intellectual discipline—that is, thinking not however one might wish, but in accord with certain canons derived from objective reality.  He’s more somebody who just loves ideas. Especially big ideas.  I am told his staffers used to joke about having a whole filing cabinet labeled “Newt’s ideas” and a file folder labeled “Newt’s good ideas.” There’s a gaseousness, a love of big for the sake of big, a preference for the intellectually flashy over the boring truth, that runs through what he writes and says.  And it’s thus no surprise he’s so hot for globalism, this being one of the biggest, flashiest, most gaseous ideas since the death of Marxism.

America has already had one go at being the lab for Prof. Gingrich’s speculations; we don’t need another.

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.

The Pentagon Flunks Another Audit

How can you know what to cut if you don’t know where the money is going?

The military-industrial complex is in high alert. They can’t really believe that the Obama administration will keep its word and veto any Congressional action that would try and get the Pentagon out from the sequestration problem of cutting over a half a trillion from the Department of Defense (DoD) budget over the next ten years. If they are confident it won’t happen, they are doing a good job of panicking over the cuts

for public consumption and to protect their turf.

News articles and columns are popping up with various lists of what could be cut to come up with the money, and the DoD is maneuvering to offer up cuts on military pensions and health care, readiness and training budgets to save the required amount of money without touching their holy grail, the overpriced and ineffective weapons systems.

Full Story Here: The Pentagon Flunks Another Audit | Truthout.

The First Amendment Upside Down. Why We Must Occupy Democracy

Robert Reich :-:

You’ve been seeing this across the country … Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed … Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly — protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top.

And what’s Washington’s response? Nothing. In fact, Congress’s so-called “supercommittee” just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich.

Arctic Sea Ice Shrinking at ‘Unprecedented’ Levels

The recent loss of sea ice in the Arctic is greater than any natural variation in the past 1½ millennia, a Canadian study shows.

“The recent sea ice decline … appears to be unprecedented,” said Christian Zdanowicz, a glaciologist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the study and is a co-author of the paper published Wednesday online in Nature.

“We kind of have to conclude that there’s a strong chance that there’s a human influence embedded in that signal.”

Full Story Here: Arctic Sea Ice Shrinking at ‘Unprecedented’ Levels | Common Dreams.

Drugged-Up Turkey: Antibiotic Use On Farms Linked To Rising Rates Of Drug-Resistant Infections

As families across America adorn their dinner tables with plump, juicy turkeys this Thursday, they’ve likely given little thought to what their future food previously consumed.

By the end of this year, an estimated 248 million turkeys will have been raised in the U.S., approximately 83 percent on farms that produce more than 60,000 turkeys each and most eating a diet that includes low doses of antibiotics. This common agricultural practice results not only in more meaty birds, according to experts, but also in greater risks to public health.

“Antibiotic use in animals comes back to haunt people,” said Stuart Levy, a Tufts University microbiology professor who focuses on antibiotic resistance. He recently co-authored a review of the evidence showing how animal antibiotics affect human health — via direct contact and indirectly via food, water, air and anywhere manure goes.

Full Story Here: Drugged-Up Turkey: Antibiotic Use On Farms Linked To Rising Rates Of Drug-Resistant Infections.

Brinicle, Underwater Icicle, Captured Forming By Time-Lapse Camera (VIDEO)

New video has been released that shows the formation of a brinicle on the ocean floor. Essentially an underwater icicle, the brinicle, or “finger of death,” freezes everything in its path.

Hugh Miller and Doug Anderson filmed the stunning time-lapse clip below, which is apparently the first of its kind. Shot for the BBC’s “Frozen Planet,” the clip was recorded using a special time-lapse camera that caught the brinicle’s entire formation process.

What’s really going on here is the freezing of warmer waters as sub-zero brine slowly sinks to the ocean floor.

Full Story Here: Brinicle, Underwater Icicle, Captured Forming By Time-Lapse Camera (VIDEO).

Mitt Romney: ‘I’m Not Looking To Put Money In People’s Pockets’

If you’re looking for some extra spending money, don’t ask Mitt Romney.

The GOP candidate– who once had a hard time finding a bill in his wallet that wasn’t a $100– told an audience that “I’m not looking to put money in people’s pockets.”

Romney’s claim came in the middle of discussion of his economic plan at a campaign stop in Iowa. After skipping the Iowa Straw Poll this summer, he is taking a more aggressive approach to the state now that its primary is looming.

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney: ‘I’m Not Looking To Put Money In People’s Pockets’.

Sarah Palin Hacking Trial: Husband Todd Paid By Government To Attend Despite Not Testifying

The government paid nearly $2,500 for Sarah Palin’s husband to come to the trial of a Tennessee college student who hacked into her email – even though Todd Palin never testified, court records show.

In all, the government paid more than $29,000 to fly members of the Palin family and other witnesses to Knoxville, send a prosecutor to Alaska for research and pay other travel expenses, according to the Department of Justice records obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request. Air travel totaled about $18,600, and hotel bills amounted to nearly $3,300.

Full Story Here: Sarah Palin Hacking Trial: Husband Todd Paid By Government To Attend Despite Not Testifying.

Pro-Recall Group Outs Facebook Page That Boasts About Destroying Signatures

One Wisconsin Now calls on all recall supporters to be vigilant, but only one instance of actual recall destruction found.  [So Far - OPS]

Wisconsin recall supporters outed an anonymous Facebook group called Operation Burn Notice on Tuesday as a coordinated effort designed to destroy petitions signed to force Gov. Scott Walker and other Wisconsin Republicans out of office.

Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, denounced the anonymous group, in a Madison press conference.

“We cannot allow democracy to be threatened by those who would illegally destroy recall petitions with valid signatures on them,” Ross said. “We intend to keep the public informed about its rights during the signature gathering process and alert those who would engage in illegal conduct that they do so at their own peril.”

Full Story Here: Pro-Recall Group Outs Facebook Page That Boasts About Destroying Signatures – Caledonia, WI Patch.

The GOP’s dual-trigger nightmare

 Ezra Klein :-:

Imagine if the Democrats offered Republicans a deficit deal that had more than $3 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts, assigned most of those spending cuts to the Pentagon, and didn’t take a dime from Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare beneficiaries. Republicans would laugh at them. But without quite realizing it, that’s the deal Republicans have now offered to the Democrats.

In August, Republicans scored what they thought was a big win by persuading Democrats to accept a trigger that consisted only of spending cuts. The price they paid was 1) concentrating the cuts on the Pentagon while exempting Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiaries, and 2) delaying the cuts until January 1, 2013. That was, they figured, a win, as it eschewed taxes. Grover Norquist’s pledge remained unbroken.

But 12 years earlier, George W. Bush had set a trigger of his own. In order to pass his tax cuts using the 51-vote budget reconciliation process, he had agreed to let them sunset in 2010. A last-minute deal extended them until the end of 2012.

Full Story Here: Wonkbook: The GOP’s dual-trigger nightmare – The Washington Post.

The Average Bush Tax Cut For The 1 Percent This Year Will Be Greater Than The Average Income Of The Other 99 Percent

As Occupy Wall Street protestors continue to demonstrate across the country, congress’ fiscal super committee failed to craft a deficit reduction package due to Republican refusal to consider tax increases on the super wealthy. In fact, the only package that the GOP officially submitted to the committee included lowering the top tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, even as new research shows that the optimal top tax rate is closer to 70 percent.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who co-chaired the super committee, explained that the major sticking point during negotiations with the GOP was what to do with the Bush tax cuts. With that in mind, the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

Full Story Here: The Average Bush Tax Cut For The 1 Percent This Year Will Be Greater Than The Average Income Of The Other 99 Percent | ThinkProgress.

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Plan Feast In Zuccotti Park

Occupy Wall Street protesters plan on marking Thanksgiving with a feast in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan today.

A volunteer with the demonstrators’ public relations group says they will have meals and music for 5,000 people.

The food is being donated by restaurants and individual supporters.

They also say they will be abiding by Department of Health code by wrapping all the plates of food individually.

The music will be acoustic, because protesters do not have a permit for loudspeakers.

There will also be a canned food drive, with donations going to local food banks and pantries.

Full Story Here: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Plan Feast In Zuccotti Park – NY1.com.

AT&T Pulls T-Mobile Merger Application From FCC, Will Take $4B Charge

AT&T said today that it withdrew from the Federal Communications Commission its application to acquire T-Mobile, and will incur a $4 billion “break-up fee.”

The wireless carrier insisted, however, that the deal is not dead, and said it will instead focus on winning an antitrust lawsuit brought forth by the Department of Justice, which seeks to block the merger over competition concerns.

“AT&T Inc. and [T-Mobile parent company] Deutsche Telekom AG are continuing to pursue the sale of Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless assets to AT&T and are taking this step to facilitate the consideration of all options at the FCC and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice either through the litigation pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia … or alternate means,” AT&T said in a statement. “As soon as practical, AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG intend to seek the necessary FCC approval.”

Full Story Here: AT&T Pulls T-Mobile Merger Application From FCC, Will Take $4B Charge | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

Congress Insider Trading

http://www.guerillastocktrading.com/business/congress-insider-trading/ (CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL REPORT) In case you haven’t heard, the same people who control the SEC that busts people trading on insider information, are in fact insider traders themselves.

Content talked about in this video:

’60 Minutes’ Blows The Lid Off Congressional Insider Trading

Breitbart.tv » ’60 Minutes’ Ambushes… Nancy Pelosi.flv

Rick Perry on Congressional Insider Trading

Scarface – Say Hello To My Little Friend

Full Story Here: Congress Insider Trading – YouTube.

  ‘World fears US as a war-hungry drunk’ – ex-Senator  :  Information Clearing House

November 23, 2011 — The US is like a drunkard who charges to war with anyone who might pose a threat, ex-Senator and former US presidential candidate Mike Gravel says.

­“I like the US. But at the same time I think my country is an imperial country that is going downhill, and our leadership does not even acknowledge the problem,” confesses Gravel.

“Phony triumphalism has turned into a device to make Americans live in fear of a terrorist attack, yet you are a thousand times more likely to catch cancer than ever be hurt by that,” he points out.

“All I can say about what the US is doing – it‘s immoral,” Gravel says, explaining that “as a result of 9/11, we have altered our moral compass. And people began to get used to brutalizing each other.”

Full Story Here:   ‘World fears US as a war-hungry drunk’ – ex-Senator  :  Information Clearing House.

Bush, Blair found guilty of war crimes in Malaysia tribunal – YouTube

Former US president George Bush and his former counterpart Tony Blair were found guilty of war crimes by the The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal which held a four day hearing in the Malaysia.

The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in blatant violation of international law.

The judges ruled that war against Iraq by both the former heads of states was a flagrant abuse of law, act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people.

In their verdict, the judges said that the United States, under the leadership of Bush, forged documents to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

They further said the findings of the tribunal be made available to members of the Rome Statute and the names of Bush and Blair be entered into a war crimes register.

Both Bush and Blair repeatedly said the so-called war against terror was targeted at terrorists.

Lawyers and human rights activists present here say the verdict by the tribunal is a landmark decision. And the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Foundation said it would lobby the International Criminal Court to charge former US president George Bush and Former British prime minister Tony Blair for war crimes.

Full Story Here: Bush, Blair found guilty of war crimes in Malaysia tribunal – YouTube.

Paper Ballot Election Results Flipped After ‘Recount’ Finds New Tally ‘Extremely in Favor of Opposite Candidate’

‘We’re doing recounts of recounts of recounts,’ says candidate announced as ‘loser’ on Election Night…

After the Municipal Council elections in Provo, Utah on November 8, residents had been told that Gary Winterton had narrowly defeated Bonnie Morrow for the District 1 seat — by just 9 votes.

The margin was close enough that Morrow was allowed to ask for a recount of the paper ballots which were tallied on Election Night by the city’s optical scan systems made by Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (Following years of failure of Diebold’s voting systems, the company changed their name to Premier, only to see the assets of the failing company finally purchased last year by Dominion Voting, a Canadian firm which now services the machines.) The same optical scan systems are used all over the country, and are set once again for use in the New Hampshire’s “first in the nation” GOP Presidential primary to be held in January.

The first “recount” of Provo’s Municipal Council District 1 ballots — carried out on the same op-scan systems that tallied them in the first place — was held yesterday, only to be abruptly called off

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : Paper Ballot Op-Scan Election Results in Utah Flipped After ‘Recount’ Finds New Tally ‘Extremely in Favor of Opposite Candidate’.

Former AIG CEO Sues Claiming Taxpayers Need To Pony Up $25 Billion More

For many years, insurance behemoth AIG was so poorly managed that the American taxpayer eventually had to invest nearly $70 billion in the incompetently run company to prevent its collapse from taking the entire U.S. economy along with it (much of this money has since been repaid). Former AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg, however, thinks that the American people haven’t done enough to protect his massive fortune, so his company filed a lawsuit demanding even more taxpayer money:

Starr International, the company run by the former head of insurance giant American International Group (AIG), has filed a $25 billion lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that the takeover of the insurance company at the height of the financial crisis was unconstitutional.

When the government took an 80 percent interest in AIG during the financial crisis, it did so without “due process or just compensation,” in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, according to the suit filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Full Story Here: Former AIG CEO Sues Claiming Taxpayers Need To Pony Up $25 Billion More | ThinkProgress.

OPS: The Fascist Oligarchy speaks

GOP Super Committee Co-Chair: Lawmakers Failed Because Democrats Refused To Privatize Medicare

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) faults the Democrats’ refusal to accept partial Medicare privatization for the super committee’s inability to come up with a bipartisan plan to lower spending in today’s Wall Street Journal. He writes, “Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president’s health law was off the table” and pretends that the spending in the Affordable Care Act added to the deficit (it actually reduces it). “Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year,” he continues and lays out the premium support proposal offered by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici:

The Medicare reforms would make no changes for those in or near retirement. Beginning in 2022, beneficiaries would be guaranteed a choice of Medicare-approved private health coverage options and guaranteed a premium-support payment to help pay for the plan they choose….These seniors would be able to choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget’s approach—except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.

This approach was also rejected by committee Democrats.

The Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare trustees, and the Government Accountability Office have each repeatedly said that our health-care entitlements are unsustainable. Committee Democrats offered modest adjustments to these programs, but they were far from sufficient to meet the challenge. And even their modest changes were made contingent upon a minimum of $1 trillion in higher taxes—a move sure to stifle job creation during the worst economy in recent memory.

Full Story Here: GOP Super Committee Co-Chair: Lawmakers Failed Because Democrats Refused To Privatize Medicare | ThinkProgress.

OPS: The Face of Fascism.

Bill Mitchell, Illinois State Representative, Proposes Separating Cook County From Rest Of State (POLL)

Republican State Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Decatur, introduced a bill Tuesday urging Congress to “enact legislation dividing Illinois and Cook County into separate states.”

The bill [HJR0052] argues that the state of Illinois is “functional to the extent that its people agree on politics, society, and economics.” Because, according to the bill, the majority of Cook County residents “hold different and firmly seated views on these important questions” than residents of the state’s other 101 counties and have roughly equivalent populations. They both should each “enjoy the chance to govern themselves with their firmly seated values,” the bill’s sponsors believe.

Mitchell’s bill goes on to cite Maine’s secession in 1819 from the state of Massachusetts after over forty years of being a “physically separate but politically contiguous” part of the state.

Full Story Here: Bill Mitchell, Illinois State Representative, Proposes Separating Cook County From Rest Of State (POLL).

Thom Hartmann: Occupy Wall Street is Bringing Down the Big Banks

You need to know this. Occupy Wall Street is bringing down the big banks. The bank consulting firm “cg42” is projecting that the top 10 mega banks in America could lose $185 billion in deposits through next year as a result of people taking the advice of the 99% Movement and moving their money from banksters on Wall Street to local credit unions on Main Street. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Well Fargo, and Citibank will account for nearly three-quarters of all the losses alone. So far – since the 99% Movement kicked off two months ago– more than 700,000 people have made the switch – depositing their money into local credit unions instead of mega banks. That’s more people making a switch than through all of last year. Time to redefine exactly what “starve the beast” means in the Occupy age.

Who’s screwed? American workers. A new report out of the Commerce Department shows that over the last decade – U.S.-based transnational corporations laid off 864,000 American workers – while hiring more than 1.5 million new Asian workers and hiring nearly 500,000 new workers in Latin America. Also during the last decade – these transnational giants reduced how much money they were investing in the U.S. economy – but increased their investment in foreign economies by 4%. Currently – American corporations pay the second lowest amount in taxes of all the developed nations in the world – and many like General Electric pay absolutely no taxes at all. Yet – they have no interest in keeping all their extra profits right here in America. There used to be a business ethic in our nation that a corporation not only focuses on making a profit – but also serves the community it belongs to. Unfortunately – thanks to thirty years of Reaganomics, Clintonomics, and Bushonomics – and all the tax cuts, deregulation, and so-called Free Trade deals – it’s all about getting as rich as you can – as fast as you can – and to hell with the nation you call home. Can you hear the giant sucking sound that Ross Perot warned us about?

Full Story Here: On the News With Thom Hartmann: Occupy Wall Street is Bringing Down the Big Banks, and More | Truthout.

Super Committee Fails: How Republican Tax Intransigence Killed It: A Timeline

By now we have all heard the latest in the months-long debate over reducing the nation’s deficit — barring a last-minute miracle, the congressional super committee tasked with finding at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction will fail to come to an agreement. Cue handwringing by pundits lamenting the inability of both Democrats and Republicans to compromise.

The notion that both sides share in the blame is an easy line for commentators to repeat, but it isn’t true. Time and time again, the only thing preventing an agreement on long-term deficit reduction has been the Republicans’ absolute refusal to consider any tax increases on high-income households as part of the solution. Michael Linden and I created a timeline of major events in the past six months of deficit talks:

Full Story Here: Super Committee Fails: How Republican Tax Intransigence Killed It: A Timeline | Truthout.

The People’s Surveillance State

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.

- George Orwell

In the aftermath of September 11, there was a big push to create a national surveillance system in the name of national security. Cameras were installed at traffic lights, ostensibly to catch people running red lights and stop signs, but those cameras came with a nifty side benefit: they recorded everyone within reach of the lens in their comings and goings. Cameras were installed at street corners, ostensibly to provide security against crime, but again, you were recorded wherever you went. Bank machines all come with security cameras, and those added to the ever-broadening web of national surveillance. Finally, almost every cell phone now comes with software that, so long as the thing is turned on, can track your every step by triangulating your position via GPS and the cell towers your phone signal bounces off of.

Full Story Here: The People’s Surveillance State | Truthout.

FBI Sanctioned for Lying About Existence of Surveillance Records

An order from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has revealed the FBI lied to the court about the existence of records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), taking the position that FOIA allows it to withhold information from the court whenever it thinks this is in the interest of national security. Using the strongest possible language, the court disagreed: “The Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court.” Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal. v. FBI (“Shura Council I”), No. 07-1088, 3 (C.D. Cal. April 27, 2011) (emphasis added).

This case may prove relevant in EFF’s ongoing FOIA litigation against the FBI. As discussed further below, one of the issues in Shura Council was the FBI’s extensive and improper use of “outside the scope” redactions. The agency has also used these heavily in at least one of our current cases — in areas where it is highly unlikely the material blocked out is actually outside the scope of our FOIA request. (see example to the left from our case seeking records on the government’s push to expand federal surveillance laws). We’ll be writing more about that case in the coming weeks and posting the documents we received on this site soon.

Full Story Here: FBI Sanctioned for Lying About Existence of Surveillance Records | Common Dreams.

Iran and the I.A.E.A.

Seymour M. Hersh :-:

The first question in last Saturday night’s Republican debate on foreign policy dealt with Iran, and a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report, which raised renewed concern about the “possible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran,” struck a darker tone than previous assessments. But it was carefully hedged. On the debate platform, however, any ambiguity was lost. One of the moderators said that the I.A.E.A. report had provided “additional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon” and asked what various candidates, upon winning the Presidency, would do to stop Iran. Herman Cain said he would assist those who are trying to overthrow the government. Newt Gingrich said he would coördinate with the Israeli government and maximize covert operations to block the Iranian weapons program. Mitt Romney called the state of Iran’s nuclear program Obama’s “greatest failing, from a foreign-policy standpoint” and added, “Look, one thing you can know … and that is if we reëlect Barack Obama Iran will have a nuclear weapon.” The Iranian bomb was a sure thing Saturday night.

I’ve been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker for the past decade, with a focus on the repeated inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran. The goal of the high-risk American covert operations was to find something physical—a “smoking calutron,” as a knowledgeable official once told me—to show the world that Iran was working on warheads at an undisclosed site, to make the evidence public, and then to attack and destroy the site.

Full Story Here: Comment: Iran and the I.A.E.A. : The New Yorker.

Texas town still suffers effects of heat, drought; water supply down to two weeks

The Texas town of Groesbeck is on the verge of running dry.

“We have about two weeks of water left,” Groesbeck Mayor Jackie Levingston said. Her central Texas town, population 4,300, is one of the latest victim’s of the state’s ongoing drought.

A lack of rain and the summer’s intense heat — more than 90 days of triple-digit temperatures — combined to dry out the Groesbeck water supply.

“We lost more water to evaporation than we were using this summer,” Levingston said in a telephone interview.

Full Story Here: Texas town still suffers effects of heat, drought; water supply down to two weeks – CNN.com.

Merck to Pay $950 Million Over Vioxx

Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx, the company and the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The negotiated settlement, which includes resolution of civil cases, was the latest of a series of fraud cases brought by federal and state prosecutors against major pharmaceutical companies.

By the time Vioxx, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1999, was pulled off the market in 2004 because evidence showed that it posed a substantial heart risk, about 25 million Americans had taken the drug.

Full Story Here: Merck to Pay $950 Million Over Vioxx – NYTimes.com.

F.C.C. Seeks Review of AT&T Merger With T-Mobile

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission took steps Tuesday to block the proposed $39 billion merger of the mobile phone companies AT&T and T-Mobile USA.

The chairman, Julius Genachowski, made the move after the commission’s staff concluded that the deal would harm consumers, kill jobs and result in an overly concentrated wireless phone industry, F.C.C. officials said.

The decision puts another large roadblock in front of AT&T, the nation’s second-largest wireless phone company, in its effort to buy T-Mobile, the fourth-largest carrier. In August, the Justice Department filed a federal antitrust lawsuit to block the merger, saying it would stifle competition.

Full Story Here: F.C.C. Seeks Review of AT&T Merger With T-Mobile – NYTimes.com.

Space Time-Lapse Video:

Ron Garan, the space-tweeting NASA astronaut who returned in September from five-and-a-half-months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), released a video on Monday that he says “is about as close as we can come to show what astronauts see in space.”

The video, made from time-lapse photographs taken from the ISS’s Cupola observatory module, takes us around the world from Africa to the Mediterranean Sea, North America to South America and Europe to the Middle East, among more than a dozen other journeys. It passes over Hurricanes Katia and Irene and catches a number of lightning bolts in its lens as well.

The ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, and the footage in the video was taken during some of Garan’s final “laps” around the planet before returning home.

Full Story Here: Space Time-Lapse Video: ISS Travels Around The World In ‘The Journey Home’ (VIDEO).

Failure of the Super Committee Might Be the US’s Best Hope for Economic Recovery

“Drawing blood” from the economy by cutting government expenditures at a time of high unemployment and underused resources will only ensure the patient’s death, not recovery.

The bipartisan super committee will probably fail to meet the self-imposed November 23rd deadline to enact $1.2trillion of cuts over the next ten years. That failure, as Paul Krugman notes in the New York Times, is a good thing: “Any deal reached now would almost surely end up worsening the economic slump. Slashing spending while the economy is depressed destroys jobs, and it’s probably even counterproductive in terms of deficit reduction, since it leads to lower revenue both now and in the future.”

If the super committee fails to come up with an alternative plan by Thanksgiving, the cuts will hit defense and domestic programs equally. But those cuts won’t begin to go into effect until January 2013, two months after next fall’s election, which also means that the programmed fiscal restriction planned for next year won’t come into effect. The likelihood of failure is provoking a negative reaction in both the markets and the mainstream press. But in spite of that, failure might be the difference between sluggish, moderate growth in the U.S. and double dip recession.

Full Story Here: Failure of the Super Committee Might Be the US’s Best Hope for Economic Recovery | Economy | AlterNet.

Tampa Police Roll Out A TANK To Deal With A Few Dozen Protesters

According to The Daily, the Tampa police produced this vehicle to deal with some protesters.

Overkill, much?

(As many folks have observed on Twitter, these sorts of responses are playing right into the protesters’ hands.)

UPDATE: It’s not actually a “tank,” of course, though it certainly looks like one. It’s a “12-ton armored personnel carrier.” It is supposedly for “rescue” operations, though why it needs to be armored to do that is not clear

Full Story Here: Tampa Police Roll Out A TANK To Deal With A Few Dozen Protesters – Business Insider.

OPS: Looks like the Tampa police win the award for the biggest cowards.

U.S. tax burden at lowest level since ’58

Americans are paying the smallest share of their income for taxes since 1958, a reflection of tax cuts and a weak economy, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

The total tax burden — for all federal, state and local taxes — dropped to 23.6% of income in the first quarter, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

By contrast, individuals spent roughly 27% of income on taxes in the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s — a rate that would mean $500 billion of extra taxes annually today, one-third of the estimated $1.5 trillion federal deficit this year.

The analysis comes as President Obama and Congress debate whether to cut federal spending, raise taxes or both.

Full Story Here: U.S. tax burden at lowest level since ’58 – USATODAY.com.

OPS: With twice the population. And you wonder why our infrastructure is crumbling and we are in debt…

Internet Blacklist Bill on Fast-Track Toward Becoming Law

Internet piracy has not ceased to boil the blood of entertainment industry heavy weights since Napster allowed nominally savvy users to widely share music online without a penny going back to major record labels. The distributors of movies and music largely located in Hollywood have not adapted to the new age of information sharing, and instead continue to lobby for legislation to restrict the ability for internet users to consume their content online for free. Two bills under consideration in the House and the Senate are born of this tension between new media and old, the better known is the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. SOPA, introduced by Texas Congressman Lamar Smith,

Full Story Here: uprisingradio.org » Internet Blacklist Bill on Fast-Track Toward Becoming Law.

Banks near record spending on D.C. lobbyists

The money banks spend on lobbying is on pace to reach a record high again this year as the industry battles to weaken or repeal hundreds of rules being crafted by federal regulators.

Lobbying outlays by the five biggest spenders in the commercial banking sector increased 12 percent in the first three quarters of 2011 over the same period last year, an Observer analysis of federal lobbying disclosure records shows.

Wells Fargo in particular is turning into a major player in Washington. The San Francisco-based bank’s spending on lobbying is up 80 percent in the first three quarters of the year, compared with the same period in 2010.

Full Story Here: Banks near record spending on D.C. lobbyists | McClatchy.

Newt Gingrich Campaign Ad On How Child Labor Laws Are Stupid

Newt Gingrich’s new campaign ad on how child labor laws are stupid, and how schools should fire janitors and have poor kids clean the schools.

Full Story Here: Newt Gingrich Campaign Ad On How Child Labor Laws Are Stupid – YouTube.

Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don’t Watch Any News: Study

Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don’t watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that “people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government” and “6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government” compared to those who watch no news.

Overall, 53% of all respondents knew that Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak and 48% knew that Syrians have yet to overthrow their government.

Full Story Here: Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don’t Watch Any News: Study.

Religious Lobby on the Rise

The religious lobby is on the rise, according to a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The number of religious organizations playing the influence game in Washington has swelled since 1970, according to the Pew study. In 1970, less than 40 groups were involved with lobbying or advocacy efforts. Now, that number has risen to more than 200.

The Pew report notes that lobbying for the faithful is often a multi-million-dollar prerogative.

Pew estimated that more than 200 groups currently spend a combined nearly $400 million a year on lobbying and advocacy work.

Full Story Here: Religious Lobby on the Rise – OpenSecrets Blog | OpenSecrets.

Will the Euro be Destroyed?

DEAN BAKER :-:

We could be living through the last days of the euro. That is not a happy thought. While there were many negative aspects to the rules governing the European Central Bank and the eurozone economies, no one can want to see the economic chaos that will almost certainly follow the collapse of the euro.

There will likely be a wave of bank collapses as banks are forced to write down much of the debt they hold in Italy, Ireland and other heavily indebted countries. This would bring about another Lehman-type situation where finance freezes up. Banks would stop lending to each other and even healthy businesses would find it difficult to obtain credit.

That is the story of a severe double-dip in the eurozone, with the spillover effect almost certainly pushing the United States and most of the rest of the world into recession. It could easily be over a decade until these economies recover from the damage.

Full Story Here: Will the Euro be Destroyed? » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

Is the end of the world really nigh?

How Long Until Humans Go Extinct?

Judging by the run of successful natural disaster films in the past few years, people are fascinated by the idea of the end of the world. In Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, a virus ravaged the UK and beyond; an asteroid was the world-ending threat in Deep Impact and Armageddon; and climate change got a starring role in The Day After Tomorrow.

In the real world, we don’t know how the Earth (or humanity) might meet its end or when that will happen. Pondering and predicting the event has usually been a job for the world’s great religions: all of them have some idea about how humans will meet their maker. Indeed, “the end” (or judgement day) is usually a deity’s way of cleansing our planet, to allow a fresh race of people who are morally purer to repopulate the resulting clean slate. Usually, there is too much sin or debauchery and the time has come to start again.

Stories of brimstone, fire and gods make good tales and do a decent job of stirring up the requisite fear and jeopardy. But made-up doomsday tales pale into nothing, creatively speaking, when contrasted with what is actually possible. Look through the lens of science and “the end” becomes much more interesting.

Full Story Here: Is the end of the world really nigh? | Science | The Observer.

Fukushima Plant Disaster Long Term Effects Still Unknown

Even if the worst nuclear accident in 25 years leads to many people developing cancer, we may never find out.

Looking back on those early days of radiation horror, that may sound implausible.

But the ordinary rate of cancer is so high, and our understanding of the effects of radiation exposure so limited, that any increase in cases from the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster may be undetectable.

Several experts inside and outside Japan told The Associated Press that cancers caused by the radiation may be too few to show up in large population studies, like the long-term survey just getting under way in Fukushima.

Full Story Here: Fukushima Plant Disaster Long Term Effects Still Unknown.

Don Young, Doug Brinkley Argue In House Natural Resources Committee Hearing

Alaska Congressman Don Young got into a heated discussion with Rice University professor Doug Brinkley at a hearing on Friday.

Young addressed Brinkley as “Dr. Rice” and called his testimony “garbage.” Brinkley replied, “Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university. I know you went to Yuba College and you couldn’t graduate.”

“I’ll call you anything I want to call you when you sit in that chair. You just be quiet,” Young quipped.

“You don’t own me,” Brinkley shot back. “I pay your salary.”

The exchange took place at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing to discuss the possible effects of drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Full Story Here: Don Young, Doug Brinkley Argue In House Natural Resources Committee Hearing.

Lobbying Firm’s Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street

A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.

CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

Full Story Here: Lobbying Firm’s Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street | Common Dreams.

It’s not just our leaders who are in a crisis. Democracy itself is failing

The world’s statesmen no longer shape events but merely respond to them, in thrall to market forces

Are the following intimations of a global crisis in the legitimacy of western democracy? Ireland’s confidential budget plan, unseen by the Irish electorate, is leaked by European finance officials to the German parliament where the proposals are examined by the German finance committee.

In Italy, Mario Monti, the country’s unelected new prime minister and a former international adviser to Goldman Sachs, stands in the Giustiniani Palace as head of a cabinet of similarly unelected technocrats. Imposed in place of the corrupt, useless and seedy Silvio Berlusconi to satisfy the “markets”, Monti promises what we are told the markets want, and that is “sacrifices”.

In Greece, both left and right of the country unite against their own technocrat, the former head of Greece’s Central Bank, Lucas Papademos, brought in, too, at the behest of the markets. And in Berlin on Friday, David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party, which could not manage to secure a mandate to govern the UK on its own, sits down with a German chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose countrymen do not trust her to handle the eurozone crisis.

Full Story Here: It’s not just our leaders who are in a crisis. Democracy itself is failing | Peter Beaumont | Comment is free | The Observer.

Israel Shuts Down Dovish “All for Peace” Radio Station

Israel has ordered the shutdown of a dovish Israeli-Palestinian radio station, officials and the station’s operators said on Sunday.

The station and other critics said the move was politically motivated, and part of a broader assault on democracy by conservative forces in the government.

Some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have pushed forward a series of measures recently that critics say are aimed at stifling opponents.

Among the proposed legislation are attempts to block most foreign funding for dovish nonprofit groups, lowering the threshold for politicians to file libel suits against the media, and a push to shift control of Supreme Court appointments from an independent panel to parliament.

Full Story Here: Israel Shuts Down Dovish “All for Peace” Radio Station | Common Dreams.

Recall Walker Rally at Capitol Draws 25,000 to 30,000

Huge crowds show up Saturday as recall organizers announce they’ve collected more than 100,000 signatures on petitions.

As tens of thousands of people descended upon the state Capitol Saturday, organizers of the effort to remove Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office announced they have collected more than 105,000 signatures on recall petitions.

“As of (Friday) night — the fourth day of signature collection, more than 105,000 Wisconsin residents have already signed their name to a petition to recall Scott Walker,” said Heather DuBois Bourenane, a volunteer with United Wisconsin, the group spearheading the recall effort. “Across the state, people are talking with their friends, family and neighbors about Walker’s destruction and are doing all they can to end his days as governor.”

Organizers need to collect 540,000 signatures by Jan. 17 to force a recall election. United Wisconsin, which is working with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin on the recall effort, says it hopes to gather between 600,000 and 700,000 signatures by that deadline.

Full Story Here: Recall Walker Rally at Capitol Draws 25,000 to 30,000 – Brookfield, WI Patch.

Officers in pepper spray incident put on leave

Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in pepper-spraying seated protesters are being placed on administrative leave as the chancellor of the school accelerates the investigation into the incident.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi on Sunday said she has been inundated with reaction over the incident, in which an officer dispassionately fires pepper spray on a line of sitting demonstrators.

Video of the incident was circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on Saturday, in which protesters flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked, as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

Full Story Here: Officers in pepper spray incident put on leave – CBS News.

Gingrich: Laws preventing child labor are ‘truly stupid’

Newt Gingrich proposed a plan Friday that would allow poor children to clean their schools for money, saying such a setup would both allow students to earn income and endow them with a strong work ethic.

Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the former House Speaker said his system would be an improvement on current child labor laws, which he called “truly stupid.”

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in child laws which are truly stupid,” Gingrich said. “Saying to people you shouldn’t go to work before you’re 14, 16. You’re totally poor, you’re in a school that’s failing with a teacher that’s failing.”

Gingrich then proposed a system he said would help those students rise from poverty.

Full Story Here: Gingrich: Laws preventing child labor are ‘truly stupid’ – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs.

UC Davis launches investigation after pepper spray video; chancellor calls video ‘chilling’

Video surfaced online Saturday showing an officer at a California university calmly pepper-spraying a line of several sitting protesters, who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

The chancellor of the University of California, Davis described the video images as “chilling” and said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a faculty group called for her resignation because of the incident Friday.

“The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school’s web site on Saturday.

Full Story Here: UC Davis launches investigation after pepper spray video; chancellor calls video ‘chilling’ – The Washington Post.

How Wall Street Rally Views the Protesters

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes just aired an exclusive that provides an interesting look at how some of those being targeted by Occupy Wall Street may really view the protests. He reported that a memo from a prominent corporate lobbying firm to the American Bankers Association proposed an extensive public relations campaign — including opposition research into key movement figures and an elaborate media strategy — designed to discredit the movement, and Dems who embrace it.

The memo was authored by lobbyists at the firm Clark Lytle Geduldig Cranford — and there are two key takeaways. The first is that some allies of Wall Street firms see Occupy Wall Street as a potential long term political threat. The second is that they see the Democratic strategy of embracing the populist message of the protests as something that could work, rather than something that is an automatic negative for Dems, as conservatives keep proclaiming is the case.

From the memo:

Full Story Here: How Wall Street Rally Views the Protesters | Common Dreams.

Fukushima: Cesium fallout widespread

Simulation determines much of east, northeast likely contaminated

Radioactive cesium from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant probably reached as far as Hokkaido, Shikoku and the Chugoku region in the west, according to a recent simulation by an international research team based on data after March 20, a week after the hydrogen explosions.

Large areas of eastern and northeastern Japan were probably contaminated, with concentrations of cesium-137 exceeding 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of soil in some places, says the study, which was posted Monday on the website of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers for the U.S.-based organization said the study, based on the partial data readings, is the first to estimate potential cesium contamination across the country. But the scientists also played down the impact of the fallout on the three distant regions.

Full Story Here: Cesium fallout widespread | The Japan Times Online.

Details on Fukushima: Info from INPO

Union of Concerned Scientists ,

Last Friday the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) released a detailed timeline of events at Fukushima in the days following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, titled “Special Report on the Nuclear Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.”

The report doesn’t seem to break much new ground, but is a nice summary of what is known about those initial days.

INPO is a not-for-profit organization set up by the nuclear industry following recommendations of the Kemeny Commission that investigated the March 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Full Story Here: All Things Nuclear.

Finally, a Constitutional Amendment for the 99%

Today, Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL) offered the strongest constitutional amendment introduced in either House of Congress so far to rectify the imbalance of power between the corporations and the people in our democracy.

As the struggle in the streets intensifies, and Occupy Wall Street refuses to remain silent, it’s good to know there are champions in Congress who have stepped up to the challenge of amending the US Constitution. It’s called OCCUPIED: Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy, here.

The Supreme Court, in the 5-4 Citizens United decision of January 2010, declared that corporations have free speech rights like human beings and invalidated the ban on corporate election spending that Congress had enacted. Since then, a grassroots movement has emerged to generate popular support for a constitutional amendment to reverse that decision, including months of work by Move to Amend, Free Speech For People, Public Citizen, People For The American Way, Common Cause, and the Center for Media and Democracy.

Full Story Here: Finally, a Constitutional Amendment for the 99% | OurFuture.org.

The Provocation: Catholic Church Fans Flames in African Witch-Hunt Craze

THE NEWS: Pope Benedict XVI is in Africa, where his agenda calls for warning the people about witchcraft and calling on them to turn away from the practice.

THE PROVOCATION: It continually amazes me how the Catholic Church has a tendency to cut off its nose in a valiant effort to spite its face – or, more precisely, to preserve outdated policies that really don’t have much place in the modern world.

Exhibit A: The celibate priesthood. This is a policy that was put in place with a very specific purpose. Priests weren’t allowed to marry so they couldn’t have any heirs. As a result, they were expected to donate their estate to the church. This was significant because, during the Dark Ages and medieval period, sons of wealthy families generally had two choices: serve in the military or join the priesthood. So those who chose the latter course often had quite a nice inheritance to leave the church.

Full Story Here: The Provocation: Catholic Church Fans Flames in African Witch-Hunt Craze.