Protesters head towards site of NATO negotiations in Chicago, veterans to return medals

housands of protesters marched in a sweltering Chicago today from downtown Chicago to near the site of the NATO summit at McCormick Place to call for an end to the NATO war machine.

The Coalition Against NATO-G8, which has spearheaded the march and protests, calls for an end to NATO’s war agenda.  The group expected at least 10,000 to join the march.

The final number in the march may well double that, and some protesters report that the police numbers seem to equal the number of protesters.

Veterans have returned their medals at the end of the march, throwing them to the ground, and giving powerful reasons, as @OccupyChicago is documenting:

Full Story Here: Shut Down the War Marchine!: Thousands in Anti-NATO Rally | Common Dreams.

Full Story Here: Congressmen seek to ‘legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences.’ | ThinkProgress.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s budget would add $10.7 trillion to the debt and reduce federal revenues to just 15 percent of GDP, exploding the “prairie fire of debt” Romney warned the nation about in a speech last week in Iowa.

Romney isn’t the only one decrying the debt while ignoring that his budget would make it worse. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an appearance on Fox News this morning, made the laughable claim that a budget that explodes the debt will simultaneously prevent a debt crisis:

RYAN: More to the point, though, the kind of budget Mitt Romney is talking about is one that prevents a debt crisis.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Paul Ryan Claims Romney Budget, Which Adds $10 Trillion To Debt, Will ‘Prevent A Debt Crisis’ | ThinkProgress.

Full Story Here: CNBC Analyst: Bain Capital ‘Fired A Lot Of People’ To Get ‘Prosperity For The Rich’ | ThinkProgress.

The movie is soon getting its major national release in theaters and on Netflix. Viewers will be made to recall the unsettling images of oil slicks, fouled fowl, suddenly unemployed fisher folk, and empty assurances by BP and the Feds.

The partially U.S.-owned British oil company has its origins in geopolitical skullduggery in Iran, explained in the film’s narration and images. The history makes more convincing the subsequent telling of of the corporation’s and the U.S. government’s going to great pains to lie that all was being done that could be done to minimize the blowout’s damage and to clean up the mess.

Full Story Here: The Big Fix: Documentary Exposes BP, US Government on Gulf Disaster.

As hundreds of protesters slowly marched to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Ravenswood neighborhood in Chicago, news trickled in over Twitter that three young NATO protesters recently arrested had their bail set at $1.5 million and were being charged with terrorism-related offences.

The marching protesters were angry and disappointed. Some feared the media’s attention would focus solely on the act of three young men instead of the acts of hundreds who were marching to oppose the closings of six mental health facilities all across the city.

Hosting NATO will likely cost the city an estimated $55 million, and health advocates claim only a fraction of that bill, around $2-3 million, is needed to keep these facilities open.

Basically, priorities are skewed, or as Occupy puts it: “Shit is f-d up and bullshit”.

Full Story Here: Hundreds of Protesters Head to Chicago Mayor’s House to Oppose Health Clinic Closures.

Members of the Class of 2012,

As a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you’re picking up today.

You’re f*cked.

Well, not exactly. But you won’t have it easy.

First, you’re going to have a hell of a hard time finding a job. The job market you’re heading into is still bad. Fewer than half of the graduates from last year’s class have as yet found full-time jobs. Most are still looking.

That’s been the pattern over the last three graduating classes: It’s been taking them more than a year to land the first job. And those who still haven’t found a job will be competing with you, making your job search even harder.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (The Commencement Address That Won’t Be Given).

Barbara Ehrenreich:-:

Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. But as Business Week helpfully pointed out in 2007, the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them.

The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators. Employers, for example, can simply program their computers to shave a few dollars off each paycheck, or they can require workers to show up 30 minutes or more before the time clock starts ticking.

Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest. When supplemented with late fees (themselves subject to interest), the resulting effective interest rate can be as high as 600% a year, which is perfectly legal in many states.

Full Story Here: Preying on Poverty: How Government and Corporations Use the Poor as Piggy Banks | Common Dreams.

Suddenly, it has become easy to see how the euro — that grand, flawed experiment in monetary union without political union — could come apart at the seams. We’re not talking about a distant prospect, either. Things could fall apart with stunning speed, in a matter of months, not years. And the costs — both economic and, arguably even more important, political — could be huge.

This doesn’t have to happen; the euro (or at least most of it) could still be saved. But this will require that European leaders, especially in Germany and at the European Central Bank, start acting very differently from the way they’ve acted these past few years. They need to stop moralizing and deal with reality; they need to stop temporizing and, for once, get ahead of the curve.

I wish I could say that I was optimistic.

Full Story Here: Apocalypse Fairly Soon – NYTimes.com.

Matt Taibbi :-:

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.

The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.

Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

Full Story Here: Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’ | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone.

Knowing how our nervous systems work can help guide what we do—and don’t do—when people burst into tears.

At the site of the 2010 Chilean mine disaster, the son of miner Florencio Avalos burst into tears when his father was brought safely to the surface. Later that month, Caylee Anthony’s grandmother was shown weeping over her granddaughter’s death. How can two such totally different events—one joyful, one tragic—both elicit tears?

This question puzzles many clinicians, including some who are considered experts in the field of emotional expression. The problem is that few of us have received explicit training in theories of emotion. Therefore, our notions about tears and other forms of emotional release are still partly based on “steam-kettle thinking”—the culturally pervasive but biologically absurd notion that emotions are stored quantities of energy, which, like steam, wreak havoc when bottled up too long or released too abruptly. Our everyday language is rife with steam-kettle metaphors. We talk about “blowing off steam,” being “flooded with emotion,” “boiling over” with rage, and “feeling drained” after a good cry. The Freudian theory of catharsis is basically a steam-kettle model, and so are various expressive therapies, such as psychodrama, primal scream, reevaluation counseling, and Gestalt therapy. Similarly, remnants of steam-kettle theory can be found in current approaches toward regulation, stress reduction, and anger management.

Full Story Here: Why We Cry: The Fascinating Psychology of Emotional Release | Personal Health | AlterNet.

New York’s billionaire mayor is so opposed to a tiny raise for workers at companies that get public money that he’s vowed to sue. What’s the deal with living wage laws anyway?

To a few hundred New York workers laboring for $8 or $9 an hour, a living wage bill recently passed by the city council means a raise, a few dollars more a week to help feed their families.

To billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg, it’s a wedge to open the door to communism. That’s right — the mayor told a local radio program that requiring businesses that get taxpayer subsidies to pay their workers a little bit more is just like a centrally planned economy. “The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn’t work out so well,” Bloomberg said.

Full Story Here: Pharoah Bloomberg: Paying Workers Enough to Live Is ‘Communism’ | | AlterNet.

The education of our children is a core cultural and political choice that reflects the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives.

The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere, high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms, and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn’t college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?)

Amid the din, there’s a worrisome trend: liberals keep affirming right-wing talking points, usually without realizing that they’re even right wing. Or saying things like, “The education of our children is a non-partisan issue that should exist outside of any ideological debate.”

The hell it is. People who say stuff like this have no idea what they’re talking about. The education of our children is a core cultural and political choice that reflects the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives — because every educational conversation must start with the fundamental philosophical question: What is an education for?

Our answers to that question could not be more diametrically opposed.

Full Story Here: How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking — and What That Means For Our Kids’ Future | Education | AlterNet.

The highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plants present a clear threat to the people of Japan and the world. Reactor 4 and the nearby common spent fuel pool contain over 11,000 highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies, many of which are exposed to the open air. The cesium-137, the radioactive component contained in these assemblies, present at the site is 85 times larger than the amount released during the Chernobyl accident. Another magnitude 7.0 earthquake would jar them from their pool or stop the cooling water, which would lead to a nuclear fire and meltdown. The nuclear disaster that would result is beyond anything science has ever seen. Calling it a global catastrophe is no exaggeration.

If political leaders understand the situation and the potential catastrophe, I find it difficult to understand why they remain silent.

The following leaves little to question:

Many scientists believe that it will be impossible to remove the 1,535 fuel assemblies in the pool of Reactor 4 within two or three years.

Japanese scientists give a greater than 90 percent probability that an earthquake of at least 7.0 magnitude will occur in the next three years in the close vicinity of Fukushia-Daiichi.

The crippled building of Reactor 4 will not stand through another strong earthquake.

Japan and the TEPCO do not have adequate nuclear technology and experience to handle a disaster of such proportions alone.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote a letter to Japan’s Ambassador to the United States, Mr. Ichiro Fujisaki, on April 16, 2012, discussing his fact-finding trip to the Fukushima Daiichi site.

Full Story Here: Fukushima Daiichi: It May Be Too Late Unless the Military Steps In.

President Barack Obama discussed JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion loss on Monday, saying the bank’s massive failure proves why Wall Street reform is necessary.

“JPMorgan is one of the best-managed banks there is,” Obama said during an interview on ABC’s “The View”, which will air on Tuesday. “Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got, and they still lost $2 billion and counting.”

Dimon, who appeared on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday, told host David Gregory he had been “dead wrong” to dismiss concerns about the banks questionable trades.

“We made a terrible, egregious mistake,” Dimon said. “There’s almost no excuse for it.”

Obama said the bank’s mistakes exemplified the reasoning behind his administration’s Wall Street policies.

“We don’t know all the details,” Obama said. “It’s going to be investigated, but this is why we passed Wall Street reform.”

Full Story Here: Obama: JPMorgan Disaster Shows ‘Why Wall Street Reform Is So Important’.

1. We’re near the bottom of the developed world in children’s health and safety

According to a 2007 UNICEF report, the U.S. ranked last among 21 OECD nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.

A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the U.S. 24th out of 30 OECD countries for children’s health and safety. It also showed the devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries, the U.S. ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children living in households that are below 50% of the median income).

Full Story Here: Five Facts That Put America to Shame | Common Dreams.

Among Mitt Romney’s timid responses this week after President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality was an admission that he was “fine” with same-sex couples adopting children, saying, “that’s something that people have a right to do.” But by Friday afternoon, he was already backing away from that position, suggesting that he merely “acknowledges” that many states offer same-sex adoption:

ROMNEY: Actually, I think all states but one allow gay adoption. So that’s a position which has been decided by most of the state legislatures, including the one in my state some time ago. So I simply acknowledge the fact that gay adoption is legal in all states but one.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney’s Support Of Same-Sex Adoption Lasts One Day | ThinkProgress.

The global economy is finally shifting away from the model that prevailed for the last three decades. Europeans are rejecting austerity. Latin Americans are nationalizing enterprises. The next head of the World Bank has actually done effective development work.

Maybe that long-heralded “end of the Washington consensus” is finally upon us.

After the near-collapse of the global financial system four years ago, obituary writers rushed to proclaim the death of the prevailing economic philosophy known as neo-liberalism. “Wall Street’s financial meltdown marks the end of an era,” wrote Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers in Counterpunch at the end of 2008. “What has ended is the credibility of the Washington Consensus – open markets to foreign investors and tight money austerity programs (high interest rates and credit cutbacks) to ‘cure’ balance-of-payments deficits, domestic budget deficits and price inflation.

Full Story Here: Waiting for Copernicus: Moving Beyond Wall Street-Centric Economics.

In case after case around the world, water is being turned into a good for sale and for profit. Driven by a different vision and by economic necessity, a global counter-trend is growing to assure that household water be free or cheap, accessible, and safe, and that the earth’s water be kept pure and flowing. Marcela Olivera is a part of this movement. In 2000, she played a key role in organizing the massive protests in Cochabamba when residents of the city forced the Bechtel Corporation to give up control of the municipal water system, thereby restoring water as a human right for all instead of as a source of corporate income. This victory has been repeated elsewhere in Bolivia and around the world.

There have been a series of policies implemented in Bolivia intended to privatize our natural resources. One of these directly impacts people’s everyday lives: it’s the move to privatize water by giving contracts to multinational corporations to manage the municipal water supply and other sources of water. In Bolivia, there was a huge public outcry against this in 2000 and 2005 and, in the end, we were able to reverse the policy.

Now that’s the official, romanticized version of what happened, but nobody sees what’s happened since then. The struggle over who controls water is ongoing.

No one seems to pick up on how closely water issues are related to other urgent things that are now happening in Bolivia. Water is the one issue where everything intersects; it crosses over into political issues and economic issues in every country. In the struggle over water, people have also been fighting to have their voices heard and to better their living conditions. I think it’s really important that we understand that. Even the fact that Evo Morales is president now is really a result of the water war that broke out in 2000.

Full Story Here: Water Is Where Everything Intersects – Water in the Global Commons.

Noam Chomsky:-:

On the History of the US Economy in Decline

The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it’s an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That’s another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s — although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today — nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”

Full Story Here: A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age? | Common Dreams.

After an exasperated rant about Republican obstructionism, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday night that it’s time to revamp the Senate’s longstanding filibuster rule.

“If there were anything that ever needed changing in this body, it’s the filibuster rule, because it’s been abused, abused and abused,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

Reid’s call for changing the procedural rule, which requires 60 votes to end debate on a bill, came after Republicans refused to take up and pass an otherwise noncontroversial bill aimed at reauthorizing the Export-Import bank. Republican leaders said they wanted more time to offer amendments, which forced Reid to file a procedural motion delaying the vote to Monday. Sixty votes will be needed to end debate on the bill, and a simple majority will be required to pass it. The bill regularly clears both chambers with little fanfare and already passed the House unamended and with an overwhelming majority.

Full Story Here: Harry Reid: Filibuster Rule Has ‘Been Abused,’ Needs Changing.

OPS: Senile old coward.  You mean NOW, that it might be too late? Well it’s about fucking damned time.

Should the enormous US military budget—which is more than double the combined levels of military spending by China, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Germany—be cut? This question is finally on the table, thanks to the winding down of combat activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and to Washington’s obsession with tamping down the federal deficits that have arisen from the Great Recession. Many who would like to protect the military from the budget knife raise economic arguments to make their case: Won’t cutting military spending be bad for jobs, just when we need to maintain focus on reducing unemployment? Won’t it threaten the country’s long-term technological capabilities?

The matter assumed increased urgency in November after the Congressional supercommittee failed to agree on a deficit-reduction plan. This failure set in motion an agenda for automatic cuts—or “sequestration” of funds—from military and nonmilitary budgets beginning in January 2013. According to the sequestration scenario, absent the adoption of a large-scale deficit-cutting plan, military and nonmilitary spending would face $55 billion per year in automatic cuts over a decade, relative to previously established spending levels. If Congress and the White House devise a way to exempt the Pentagon from the automatic cuts—as seems increasingly likely—the cuts will instead be taken from healthcare, education, social spending, infrastructure and the environment.

Of course, framing the deficit issue in terms of military versus social spending cuts ignores other options, such as raising taxes on the wealthy. It also erroneously assumes that reducing the federal deficit is necessary now, before the economy has settled onto a sustainable recovery path out of the recession. Even more fundamental, today’s debate largely skirts the question of what the military budget needs to be after Iraq and Afghanistan, and fails to grapple honestly with the impact that major military spending reductions would have on the economy, especially in terms of job opportunities and technology.

Full Story Here: Don’t Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon’s Budget Could Boost the Economy | The Nation.

“The Social Security program…represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.” – President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977.

“[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago…[The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.” – President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983

So said Presidents Carter and Reagan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of horror stories like this:

Full Story Here: Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts | Common Dreams.

 Matt Taibbi :-:

It’s bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it – with a big assist from Congress and the White House.

Two years ago, when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Barack Obama bragged that he’d dealt a crushing blow to the extravagant financial corruption that had caused the global economic crash in 2008. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” the president told an adoring crowd in downtown D.C. on July 21st, 2010. “In history.”

This was supposed to be the big one. At 2,300 pages, the new law ostensibly rewrote the rules for Wall Street. It was going to put an end to predatory lending in the mortgage markets, crack down on hidden fees and penalties in credit contracts, and create a powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to safeguard ordinary consumers. Big banks would be banned from gambling with taxpayer money, and a new set of rules would limit speculators from making the kind of crazy-ass bets that cause wild spikes in the price of food and energy. There would be no more AIGs, and the world would never again face a financial apocalypse when a bank like Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

Most importantly, even if any of that fiendish crap ever did happen again, Dodd-Frank guaranteed we wouldn’t be expected to pay for it. “The American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Obama promised. “There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period.”

Full Story Here: How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

When I first read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine a few years ago, I had no idea how prescient the book was. It was a polemic about “disaster capitalism”, arguing that sudden crises are intentionally manipulated to push through extreme free market policies that were otherwise not politically possible. But early 2008 was a completely different era: although Northern Rock had just suffered the first bank run for 150 years, it seemed like a bizarre blip. The US sub-prime crisis was rumbling away, but it was like sheet lightning from a distant storm. “The deficit” was not an everyday term of political debate. It was not at all clear that the world was about to be utterly transformed.

And yet the past four years have proved a total vindication of Klein’s argument. A crisis of the market was cleverly transformed by free market ideologues into a crisis of public spending. Across Europe, the biggest slump since the 1930s has been used to push through policies straight out of some right-wing wet dream: the slashing of taxes on the rich and major corporations; the selling off of public services; and a bonfire of workers’ rights. It is disaster capitalism on speed.

But, this week, the great revolt against the Shock Doctrine began. That is exactly how we must understand the sudden sea change in European politics: not least, the election of Socialist François Hollande in France, and the stunning breakthrough of anti-austerity leftists in the Greek elections.

Full Story Here: Owen Jones: This austerity backlash across Europe could transform Britain – Commentators – Opinion – The Independent.

Much of the focus since the news broke has been on JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon, one of the staunchest opponents of the so-called ‘Volcker rule’ which would require big banks to keep their risky investment trading separate from their commercial banking divisions.

“This puts egg on our face,” Dimon said.

Asking why average Americans should care about the news, Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, answers: “because J.P. Morgan Chase is a federally-insured depository institution that has been and will continue to be the recipient of massive amounts of public assistance. If the bank fails, someone will reach into your pocket to pay for the cleanup. So when they gamble like drunken sailors, it’s everyone’s problem.”

Full Story Here: JP Morgan’s $2 Billion Tumble Renews Call: ‘Break Up the Big Banks’ | Common Dreams.

Sales over science, profit over people, greed over need

Butterflies waft across a beautiful field of spring flowers. A delightful young family bicycles joyously down a country lane. A couple on a park bench leans sensually into each other. A 40-something woman’s face radiates with both perfect beauty and internal happiness. “All’s right with the world,” is the message… as long as you’ve taken your dosages of Lunesta, Celebrex, Cialis, and Botox.

Welcome to medicated America, where the fix for every problem–from incontinence to erectile dysfunction, stiff joints to mood swings, weight gain to wrinkles– is just a prescription away. Thus the beautiful images, stirring music, attractive actors, and soothing words in the omnipresent, multibillion-dollar kaleidoscope of drug advertising by Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other giants of Big Pharma–all pitching their particular brand-name nostrum directly at us hoi polloi (the industry spends a fourth of its income on ads and other promotions, nearly double its expenditures on research and development). The corporate come-ons typically conclude with a phrase that has achieved cliche status in America’s vernacular: “Ask your doctor if ‘Suprema Wundercure’ is right for you.”

Full Story Here: Hightower Lowdown | The great American medicine show, a spectacle of deceit, manipulation, and flimflammery.

The phrase “brain drain” used to mean, in the 1950s and ‘60s, the flight of professionally-trained people from dictatorships to find opportunity in the U.S. and other Western countries. Now “brain drain” is used in American media to mean an active U.S. government policy to attract foreign entrepreneurs, scientists, physicians, nurses and other skilled laborers in short supply to the U.S.

Behind this push for a “great sucking sound” are companies like Intel, Google, Microsoft, and Pfizer, with their media cheerleaders like Tom Friedman of the New York Times, and members of Congress like Kansas Republican Congressman Jerry Moran and Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner.

The arguments for a deliberate “magnet brain drain,” are porcine. Our companies need these skills. The foreigners have these skills and we want them here where they can flourish, and create profits and jobs. Never mind that our country has plenty of people waiting to have the same opportunity. By reducing tuition barriers, overcoming historic discrimination (e.g. lack of women engineers), reducing the 40 percent dropout rate from colleges, and working with youngsters on a one-on-one basis so that they are not left behind or skewered by misguided multiple-choice standardized test regimens, are all great ways to reach out to Americans.

Full Story Here: The Greediness of Brain Drain | Common Dreams.

The U.S. has experienced the warmest 12-month period since recordkeeping began in 1895, according to the newest monthly “State of the Climate” report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Full Story Here: NOAA: US Experienced Warmest 12-Month Period in 117 Years | Common Dreams.

“Alarming amount” of plastic having ecosystem-wide effects

Plastic garbage in the ocean has increased 100-fold in the past 40 years and could have ecosystem-wide impacts, according to a study released Tuesday.

Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography looked at the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), known as the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch,’ and found an “alarming amount” of plastic trash, much in small bits.

The plastic trash was leading to an increase in “sea skaters,” a marine insect, eggs because the insects were using the increased plastic floating matter as to lay their eggs on. This increase may have widespread impacts across the marine food web.

Full Story Here: Plastic in ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ Has Increased 100-Fold | Common Dreams.

40 years after original ‘Limits to Growth’ new report says ‘short-termism’ and ‘over-consumption’ killing planet

Rising carbon dioxide CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to grow and cause an increase of 2°C in global temperatures by 2052 and could rise as much as 2.8°C by 2080, according to a new report sponsored by the international think tank Club of Rome. Such drastic temperature shifts are faster than other studies have predicted and would be high enough to trigger self-reinforcing climate change much sooner than previously thought. “Humankind might not survive on the planet if it continues on its path of over-consumption and short-termism,” the report suggests.

The main cause of global warming and climate change — and a panoply of future problems facing mankind — is the dominance of excessively short-term political and economic models, suggests the report’s author, Jorgen Randers.

“We already live in a manner that cannot be continued for generations without major change,” said Professor Randers, speaking in the Netherlands for the book’s launch on Monday. “Humanity has overshot the earth’s resources, and in some cases we will see local collapse before 2052 – we are emitting twice as much greenhouse gas every year as can be absorbed by the world’s forests and oceans.”

Full Story Here: Global Temperatures Could Rise by More than 2°C by Mid-Century: Report | Common Dreams.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been under fire lately after the 15 major corporations and organizations pulled their support for the conservative organization, which helps quietly implement corporate-backed legislation in statehouses across the country.

Now, the watchdog advocacy group group Common Cause has released a complete list of corporations on ALEC’s task forces.

Full Story Here: REVEALED: Full List Of ALEC’s Corporate Members | ThinkProgress.

The GOP-led House’s version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would not only strip away Senate-passed protections for undocumented, LGBT, and Native American victims, it also contains a dangerous provision that violates an undocumented victim’s confidentiality by allowing immigration officials to speak with, and ask for evidence from, his or her abuser.

Visas offered to undocumented victims of domestic violence are called “U Visas” and the Senate version of the bill expanded the number of U Visas offered to victims. The House bill not only strips out the additional visas, it also contains a new provision enabling government officials to inform “the accused” that their victim blew the whistle on their abuse:

During the adjudication of each petition under this paragraph, an investigative officer from a local service center of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services shall conduct an in-person interview of the alien who filed the petition. The investigative officer may also gather other evidence and interview other witnesses, including the accused United States citizen or lawful permanent resident, if they consent to be interviewed.

Full Story Here: House GOP Would Let Domestic Abusers Know Their Victims Called For Help | ThinkProgress.

American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer led the right-wing charge against Mitt Romney’s ousted foreign policy spokesman Ric Grennell, lambasting the presumed GOP nominee for hiring the openly-gay aide. When Grennell resigned under pressure from social conservatives this week, Fischer declared it a “huge win.”

But today, Fischer himself backtracked a bit. On his radio, the far-right activist noted what many liberals have, asking, why should voters trust Romney to confront Russia or North Korea if he can’t even stand up to a “yokel” talk show host? Right Wing Watch flagged the clip:

FISCHER: If Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, co-opted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me? I don’t think Romney is realizing the doubts that this begins to raise about his leadership.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Bryan Fischer To Romney: ‘How Is He Going To Stand Up To North Korea If He Can Be Pushed Around By A Yokel Like Me?’ | ThinkProgress.

CNN is terrible. A God-awful, wall-to-wall, epic mess. And now, they have, in their hands, the clearest sign yet of how bad things have actually gotten. This past April, CNN posted its lowest ratings in 10 years. The New York Times’ Brian Stelter recently noted the slim upside, writing, “people tune in to CNN, the same way they hurry to a hospital when they think they are having a heart attack.” But what news channel does CNN have to tune in to, to learn the gory details of its own longrunning, sad disaster? Good news: we are that news channel.

CNN, of course, has a proud legacy to fall back on, as it is the entity that kicked off the tradition of 24 hour cable news channels in the first place, and its coverage of the first Gulf War demonstrated that it had minted real newsgathering mettle. CNN founder Ted Turner, in a meta-theatrical appearance on Piers Morgan’s show last night, noted that he “wanted CNN to be the New York Times for the news business.” Instead, the network has fallen lower in esteem than the New York Mets, who people actually still watch, on the teevee.

Cue the handwringing! How did this happen, and what’s to be done next? Well, if you listen to the people who run CNN, you will learn that they think April’s ratings low “isn’t much of a problem,” and what needs to happen now is that management needs “to come up with a plan to restore momentum.”

Full Story Here: CNN Is Terrible. Here’s Why..

That helps explain a seeming contradiction in the unemployment numbers — the rate keeps dropping even though job creation has been soft.

In April, the U.S. economy added a mere 115,000 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday. In a normal month, that would not even be enough to keep up with new entrants into the labor market. But in this economy, it was enough to drive unemployment from 8.2 percent down to 8.1 percent, the lowest point since January 2009.

The explanation is a little-watched measure known as the “labor force participation rate.” That tracks the number of working-age Americans who are holding a job or looking for one. Between March and April, it dropped by 342,000. But because the official unemployment rate counts only those workers who are actively seeking work, that actually made the unemployment rate go down.

Full Story Here: The incredible shrinking labor force – The Washington Post.

Latest research shows continuing dramatic change in southern oceans

New research by Australian scientists suggests that up to 60 percent of “Antarctic Bottom Water”, the dense water formed around the edges of Antarctica that seeps into the deep sea and spreads out through the world’s oceans, has disappeared since 1970, reports Agence France-Presse. The research, by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), suggests that the phenomenon is a symptom of man-made climate change, but admitted the feedback effect it might have on ocean temperatures and Arctic climate is difficult to predict.

“It’s a clear signal to us that the oceans are responding rapidly to variations in climate in polar regions. The sinking of dense water around Antarctica is part of a global pattern of ocean currents that has a strong influence on climate, so evidence that these waters are changing is important,” said Dr Steve Rintoul, of CSIRO and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC.

“It’s not driving changes in climate,” Rintoul told AFP, but “it’s responding to changes in climate. So it’s a signal to us that things are changing around Antarctica.”

Full Story Here: Scientists: Deep Ocean Beneath Antarctic Responding Rapidly to Climate Change | Common Dreams.

New Keystone XL route a environmental disaster, say green groups

TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline will reapply today for a federal permit to transport the ‘world’s dirtiest oil’ from the tar sands mines of Alberta to the United States, according to various reports.  The previous permit was rejected by the Obama administration after strategic pressure from environmentalists last fall

Thwarted by public opposition, the pipeline company has re-strategized by breaking up the pipeline into smaller segments and now hopes to achieve completion of the project by gaining approval for each leg separately. The relentless push by TransCanada — including a new route proposed for a section of the pipeline in Nebraska — have not slowed criticism of the overall project.

“The new Keystone route fails to avoid significant risks to an important aquifer and the rivers and streams that provide fresh water for millions of people and habitat for endangered species like the whooping crane, piping plover, and pallid sturgeon,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which has worked to stop the destructive pipeline project. “It’s a game of environmental roulette, and the American public is being asked to bear all the risk for a pipeline that will mainly benefit big oil’s bottom line by allowing export of dirty tar-sands oil to the global market.”

Full Story Here: TransCanada’s Relentless Push to Get Tar Sands Pipeline Continues | Common Dreams.

Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.

Well, whaddya know?

Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we’re now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion — both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.

Put it this way: If something like the financial crisis of 2008 had occurred in, say, 1971 — the year Richard Nixon declared that “I am now a Keynesian in economic policy” — Washington would probably have responded fairly effectively. There would have been a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of strong action, and there would also have been wide agreement about what kind of action was needed.

Full Story Here: Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity – NYTimes.com.

The economy has stalled.

Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but that’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). We need well over 250,000 new jobs per month in order to begin to whittle down the vast number of jobs lost in the Great Recession. At least 125,000 new jobs are necessary each month just to keep up with an expanding population of working-age people.

With only 115,000 jobs in April, the hole is getting even deeper.

Most observers pay attention to the official rate of unemployment, which edged down to 8.1 percent in April from 8.2 percent in March. That may sound like progress, but it’s not. The unemployment rate dropped because more people dropped out of the labor force, too discouraged to look for work. The household survey, from which the rate is calculated, counts as “unemployed” only people who are actively looking for work. If you stop looking because the job scene looks hopeless for you, you’re no longer counted.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (The Stall Has Arrived).

David Cay Johnston :-:

Which federal program took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty?

Why, Social Security, of course, which ended 2011 with a $2.7 trillion surplus.

That surplus is almost twice the $1.4 trillion collected in personal and corporate income taxes last year. And it is projected to go on growing until 2021, the year the youngest Baby Boomers turn 67 and qualify for full old-age benefits.

So why all the talk about Social Security “going broke?” That theme filled the news after release of the latest annual report of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, as Social Security is formally called.

Full Story Here: Social security is not going broke | David Cay Johnston.

In New Mexico, firefighters stand in the remains of the Santa Fe Forest, which was burned last summer during the state’s worst wildfire in history. In Pakistan, a group of women hold dots in front of the makeshift shelter that became their home after the devastating floods in 2010 that displaced over 20 million people. In Lebanon, over 1,000 students made their dots the wheels of a giant bicycle to protest air pollution and request more bike-lanes to combat the problem. And in Vermont, citizens unfurl a “dot” banner at the site of a covered bridge that was swept away in the devastating flooding brought on by Hurricane Irene last August.

What do these seemingly disparate acts by people who live thousands of miles from one another have in common?  According to the environmental group 350.org — everything. And the images of these actions are part of a larger campaign organized to “connect the dots” between climate change extreme weather worldwide.  “We just celebrated Earth Day. May 5 is more like Broken Earth Day, a worldwide witness to the destruction global warming is already causing,” said Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, the global climate campaign that is coordinating the events. “People everywhere are saying the same thing: our tragedy is not some isolated trauma, it’s part of a pattern.”

Full Story Here: ‘Broken Earth Day’: Connecting Climate Change to Wild Weather | Common Dreams.

From hidden terrorist messages in porn, to smog-eating buildings, to dolphin coworkers, here are some incredible discoveries.

The world is full of surprises — here are 10 from this week.

1. A honey of a moon

Okay, cue up old-time heroic-type music and get ready for … SUPERMOON!

It’s not often that we get to write about something in the world of science that’s going to happen. Usually we report on studies that have already taken place or events so deep in the past they don’t need journalists, they need archeologists.

But tonight at 11:35pm EDT, the moon will be full and it will be at its perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit around the earth. These simultaneous conditions will make it bigger and brighter — 16 percent brighter — than usual, says Space.com via the Christian Science Monitor. (Click on the link for a gorgeous and informative video.)

Full Story Here: 10 Amazing Discoveries You Missed This Week | Environment | AlterNet.

Consumers, not the wealthy, are the key to an economic rebound, and GOP austerity is shackling them

By Joan Walsh :-:

Republicans have made it official: “The wealthy” must be called “the job creators” in any debate about tax policy. Democrats are playing their own word games: Centrists insist the 2012 campaign shouldn’t focus on “income inequality,” or whether the worst concentration of riches since the Great Depression might have to do with what Paul Krugman has taken to calling the Lesser Depression. “Income inequality” is a downer, the centrists say; better to talk about “growth” and “prosperity.”

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that growth and prosperity are threatened by the declining share of income going to the non-wealthy over the last 35 years.

Friday’s disappointing jobs report confirms that “the job creators” should be fired, since they only created 115,000 new jobs in April, which isn’t even enough to employ new entrants to the workforce. And while the unemployment rate ticked down from 8.2 to 8.1 percent, that’s only because more unemployed people gave up and left the labor market entirely. Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom (Mr. Etch-A-Sketch) blames President Obama, and he even pretends his candidate cares that “people are so discouraged they are dropping out of the workforce all together.”

Full Story Here: The real job creators – 2012 Elections – Salon.com.

Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S.

 More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site’s current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over.

But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel — 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment.

Reactor 4: The Most Imminent Threat

Full Story Here: The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb | Environment | AlterNet.

Noam Chomsky has not just been watching the Occupy movement. A veteran of the civil rights, anti-war, and anti-intervention movements of the 1960s through the 1980s, he’s given lectures at Occupy Boston and talked with occupiers across the US. A new publication from the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series brings together several of those lectures, a speech on “occupying foreign policy” and a brief tribute to his friend and co-agitator Howard Zinn. From his speeches, and in this conversation, it’s clear that the emeritus MIT professor and author is as impressed by the spontaneous, cooperative communities some Occupy encampments created, as he is by the movement’s political impact. We are a nation whose leaders are pursuing policies that amount to “suicide” Chomsky says. But there are glimmers of possibility – in worker co-operatives, and other spaces where people get a taste of a different way of living. We talked in his office, for Free Speech TV on April 24.

More GRITtv

Full Story Here: GRITtv » Blog Archive » Chatting With Chomsky.

At a fundraiser in Virginia last night, Mitt Romney touted his experinece running the Salt Lake City Olympic Games in 2002 — a familiar refrain — but also introduced a new rhetorical line about something more specific: lapel pins. He told a story about the “We Stand United” American flag pins he commissioned for the games, which took place just months after the terror attacks on 9/11. Romney touted his creation of the pins as a means to explain how he hopes to bring Americans together:

ROMNEY: And so we created a little pin and we notified people that we’re now going to be selling these pins and the proceeds are going to go [to charity]. … I just remember going downstairs after it was announced — we were in a big, tall skyscraper in Salt Lake City, and it must have been next door I think where they were selling these pins, and there was a line all the way down the street.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Commissioned Pro-America Pins, Made Them In China.

Who would have thought that clean energy would become the source of such scorn for Mitt Romney, a candidate who called transitioning away from fossil fuels “a must” in 2007?

The Romney campaign released a new campaign ad this morning attacking clean energy jobs. Just like every other ad on the issue this election cycle, this one cherry-picks a few stories and claims that efforts to create jobs in this sector have failed.

As numerous reports have shown, the claims in this ad are completely absurd: The Brookings Institution found that the stimulus helped the clean energy sector grow 8.3 percent during the height of the recession; a report from the Department of Energy showed that the 1603 Treasury Grant Program supported 75,000 jobs and $25 billion gross economic activity; and a recent analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the clean economy now employs 3.1 million people — with growth in the last few years happening in every geographic region of the U.S.

Full Story Here: Ignoring The 64,000 Green Jobs In His State, Romney’s Campaign Claims Clean Energy Isn’t Creating Jobs | ThinkProgress.

CEOs were paid 231 times more than workers in 2011.

New analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) details how massive compensation to CEOs is driving inequality.

“CEOs have fared far better than the typical worker, the stock market and the U.S. economy as a whole since the late-1970s,” EPI President Lawrence Mishel said. “Compensation growth for executives and for top-tier financial-sector workers has fueled the enormous growth of incomes at the top.”

According to the new analysis from EPI, on average, CEOs were paid a staggering 231 times more than workers in 2011. In contrast, in 1965, CEOs were paid 20 times more than workers.

The analysis also shows that CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent from 1978 to 2011, while worker compensation only grew by 5.7 percent during the same period.

Full Story Here: Report: How CEO Compensation Is Fueling Inequality | Common Dreams.

A few days after US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a “senior intelligence official” briefing reporters on the materials seized from bin Laden’s compound said the materials revealed that bin Laden had, “continued to direct even tactical details of the group’s management.” Bin Laden was, “not just a strategic thinker for the group,” said the official. “He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions.” The official called the bin Laden compound, “an active command and control center.”

The senior intelligence official triumphantly called the discovery of bin Laden’s hideout, “the greatest intelligence success perhaps of a generation,” and administration officials could not resist leaking to reporters that a key element in that success was that the CIA interrogators had gotten the name of bin Laden’s trusted courier from al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo. CIA Director Leon Panetta was quite willing to leave the implication that some of the information had been obtained from detainees by “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Such was the official line at the time. But none of it was true. It is now clear that CIA officials were blatantly misrepresenting both bin Laden’s role in al-Qaeda when he was killed and how the agency came to focus on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Full Story Here: Exclusive Investigation: The Truth Behind the Official Story of Finding Bin Laden.

Since the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control of many states, there has been an explosion of legislation advancing privatization of public schools and stripping teachers of job protections and collective bargaining rights. Even some Democratic governors, seeing the strong rightward drift of our politics, have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon, seeking to remove any protection for academic freedom from public school teachers.

This outburst of anti-public school, anti-teacher legislation is no accident. It is the work of a shadowy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973, ALEC is an organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state legislators. Its hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate interests in every sphere, not only education, but healthcare, the environment, the economy, voting laws, public safety, etc. It drafts model legislation that conservative legislators take back to their states and introduce as their own “reform” ideas. ALEC is the guiding force behind state-level efforts to privatize public education and to turn teachers into at-will employees who may be fired for any reason. The ALEC agenda is today the “reform” agenda for education.

ALEC operated largely in the dark for years, but gained notoriety because of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. It turns out that ALEC crafted the “Stand Your Ground” legislation that empowered George Zimmerman to kill an unarmed teenager with the defense that he (the shooter) felt threatened. When the bright light of publicity was shone on ALEC, a number of corporate sponsors dropped out, including McDonald’s, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Mars, Wendy’s, Intuit, Kaplan, and PepsiCo. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said that it would not halt its current grant to ALEC, but pledged not to provide new funding. ALEC has some 300 corporate sponsors, including Walmart, the Koch Brothers, and AT&T, so there’s still quite a lot of corporate support for its free-market policies. ALEC claimed that it is the victim of a campaign of intimidation.

Full Story Here: Bridging Differences – Education Week.

It’s no secret American manufacturing is in crisis, and that its problems form a significant component of our present economic mess. I’ve written before about how the Obama administration may (may!) be starting to get serious about the problem.

Another small but significant data point on the question of whether the administration is serious took place this last week: the government’s new National Network for Manufacturing Innovation held its first conference, designed to elicit public input on how this program will be designed and run.

The event was held at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a good engineering school in Troy, NY, and while I was not there myself, the head of my organization was, and he debriefed me on what went on.  (The NNMI website is here.  RPI’s page on the conference is here. Click here for a pdf of the conference schedule.)

Now the details of NNMI haven’t yet been settled, so I can’t comment on them.  But it is possible to know, even at this early juncture, that if it is to succeed, its policies must rest upon understanding and implementing a correct vision of its economic rationale. Absent this, it is likely to either fail to generate economic benefits to the nation, or collapse outright in a flurry of Solyndra-style scandals.  There is a huge temptation to just declare manufacturing “holy,” as environmental technology was previously declared holy, and throw public money at it.

So what should NNMI do instead?

The first rule of industrial policy is that “create jobs” is not a valid strategy, despite the political appeal of this concept.  Anyone can spend $1.00 to create $.75 worth of jobs. The problem is that the $1.00 has to come from somewhere—it has to be taxed, borrowed, or cut from other spending.  And $1.00 in the public’s pockets will, other things being equal, create $1.00 worth of jobs, not $.75.  As a result, while benefits may be apparent, they will not be real.

Effective industrial policy depends upon finding uses for $1.00 that will somehow create more jobs than would have been created if the money had just been left with the public.  This can be done: the idea that it is impossible is ultimately identical with the proposition that markets are perfectly efficient: a known falsehood in other areas of economics and ultimately an ideological dogma.

Government has a number of legitimate roles to play here, and many of them are quite complex.  But most of what is fundamental boils down to solving two key problems that the private sector cannot solve on its own:

1. Appropriability, or the fact that many useful innovations are difficult for the innovator to capture the full economic value of.

2. Time horizons, or the fact that the private sector won’t invest in projects whose profits, although appropriable, are too far in the future.

So-called infratechnologies fall into the first category. These are technologies, like the Internet, which enable a huge number of profitable innovations but which are themselves, for various reasons, hard to make a direct profit off of. As a result, the free market tends to under-supply them, and there is a strong prima facie case for the government to fund their development.

To take one example, commercial nanotechnology companies depend, according to Greg Tassey of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, upon the following key infra-technologies:

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

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

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

Mainstream neoclassical economics assumes (often tacitly and without even realizing the issue exists) that new technologies grow automatically from advances in pure science. It also assumes that new technologies automatically commercialize themselves. But both these assumptions are observably untrue, largely due to appropriability and time-horizons problems.

Historically, the U.S. solved the problems of appropriability and time horizons by indirect means.  We privileged certain oligopolistic sectors of corporate America to reap exceptionally high profits in exchange for developing technologies that would otherwise probably not have been developed.

Some of this was done by way of defense contractors, some by way of very large companies with monopoly or quasi-monopoly power over their ultimate product markets. Thus the old AT&T with its Bell Labs, the old IBM with its Watson Laboratory, the old RCA with its Sarnoff Research Center, the old Xerox with its Palo Alto Research Center, or GM in its glory days.

Because of these companies’ oligopolistic power, they were assured of a) capturing the value of whatever they discovered or invented, rather than having it swiped by a competitor, and b) bringing in enough money, over a long-enough time frame, to pay for expensive laboratories that could take many years to produce results.

Unfortunately, these companies are largely gone, or so internationalized that they confer no especial benefit upon the U.S. economy, as opposed to any of the other nations where they do business.

Worse, because the U.S. solved the problems of appropriability and time horizons indirectly, there never crystallized an explicit ideological consensus in this country about these being the key rationales for active industrial policy.  Indeed, to a huge extent, we fooled ourselves into thinking that our national economic success was caused by our (fictional) embrace of extreme laissez-faire.

Contemporary venture capitalists almost never operate beyond a seven-year time horizon.  (Thus we observe that the technology underlying Google was developed from research funded by the National Science Foundation on digital libraries.) For all its very real achievements, the venture capital system is largely a system for harvesting fundamental innovation, not creating it.

It follows that the key question that will need to be asked, whenever NNMI considers funding some project, is whether it is being asked to fund something that the private sector should be funding on its own.  (Solyndra clearly fell into this category, as there were no appropriability or time-horizons issues presented in their business model.)  Instead, NNMI should seek out projects that have the following characteristics:

1. They involve developing technologies where much of the benefit will “leak” to parties not compelled, by patent or other regulation, to help defray the cost of developing them.

2. They involve developing technologies whose payoff, though substantial, will occur beyond an approximately seven-year time horizon.

These two key issues are a highly abstract description of the problems involved, and they ramify enormously and interact with other issues—giving rise, for example, to the notorious “valley of death” problem in innovation. So they should not be misunderstood as exhausting the concerns here.  But getting these issues right will be fundamental to any successful active industrial policy.

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.

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.

More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.

Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth’s underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry’s argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.

Full Story Here: New Study Predicts Frack Fluids Can Migrate to Aquifers Within Years – ProPublica.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) made headlines on Monday when he announced that he had pulled in an unprecedented $13.2 million in three months to fend off a Democratic attempt to recall him from office. His campaign said “grassroots donors” had boosted his haul, with 76.4 percent of the contributions coming from donations totalling $50 or less.

But a closer analysis of his contributions by The Huffington Post shows that Walker was aided by individuals outside the Badger State, as well as by deep-pocketed donors who are fueling the conservative super PACs that have become major players in national races. Two-thirds of Walker’s donations came from outside of Wisconsin, and $3.57 million came from individuals giving $10,000 or more.

Full Story Here: Scott Walker’s Fundraising Aided By Out-Of-State Super PAC Donors.

The court’s new numbers, compiled during the first half of April through interviews with more than 3,000 adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, reveal similar ratings among Republicans, Democrats and independents. “There are virtually no partisan differences in views of the Supreme Court: 56% of Republicans, and 52% of both Democrats and independents rate the Supreme Court favorably,” Pew reported.

“The weak ratings for the court across party lines stands in contrast to most previous polls, in which those in the president’s party have viewed the Supreme Court more favorably than those in the opposite party,” the reported noted.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court Favorability Hits New Low In New Pew Research.

Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain’t Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey’s governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm. In February, while discussing New Jersey’s newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett’s observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn’t fair. “He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I’m tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he’s got the ability to write a check—go ahead and write it.”

Heard it all before. At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.

Full Story Here: Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake! – The Daily Beast.

Nina Rhodes-Hughes, a key witness to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968, is making bombshell claims in a CNN interview, suggesting that convicted murderer Sirhan Sirhan didn’t act alone.

“What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right,” Rhodes-Hughes, who was feet away from RFK in a hotel service pantry during the crime, told CNN. “The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups.”

Rhodes-Hughes, now 78, claims the FBI “twisted” her statements to investigators after the incident in order to come up with the conclusion that she had only heard 8 shots, an account that was used as evidence that Sirhan carried out the act without an accomplice.

Full Story Here: RFK Assassination Witness Nina Rhodes-Hughes Says Sirhan Sirhan Didn’t Act Alone.

Touted as a “day without the 99 percent,” and modeled in part on massive immigration reform protests in 2006, Occupy groups in New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago and more than 100 other cities will join forces with immigrant rights groups and labor unions. Organizers expect tens of thousands of supporters to swarm the streets in those cities on the anniversary of the traditional labor movement holiday.

“No work, no school … don’t bank, don’t buy,” posters for the day that have been circulating around New York say. But activists are mixed on whether they expect the day of action to result in large-scale walk-offs from work, and one of the most controversial actions, a proposal to block traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge, was called off over the weekend.

Full Story Here: Occupy Wall Street May Day ‘General Strike’ Planned With Unions, Immigrant Groups.

A federal court in Texas ruled to stop a new law on Monday that excluded Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women’s Health Program, which serves about 130,000 low-income women in the state. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it bars eight Planned Parenthood clinics that don’t provide abortions from participating in the program based on their affiliation with legally and financially separate entities that offer abortions.

Yeakel also cited the fact that the Department of Health and Human Services cut off all Medicaid funding for family planning to Texas because of the new law, which could jeopardize the entire program.

“The court is particularly influenced by the potential for immediate loss of access to necessary medical services by several thousand Texas women,” Yeakel wrote in his ruling. “The record before the court at this juncture reflects uncertainty as to the continued viability of the Texas Women’s Health Program.”

Full Story Here: Texas Planned Parenthood Defunding Halted By Federal Judge.

Caro sat down for an interview with The Huffington Post in conjunction with the release of the fourth volume of his biography, “The Passage of Power,” which covers Johnson’s vice presidency and some of his presidency.

“Harry Reid as a majority leader operated in near impossible circumstances,” Caro said. “The other side is intractable and it has the votes to stop legislation. That he has been able to get as much as he has — as little as it is — through the Senate is a tribute to him as majority leader. I think he’s in near-impossible circumstances. I think he’s done a terrific job.”

Full Story Here: Robert Caro: GOP Abuse Of Filibuster ‘Unconscionable,’ Harry Reid Has Done ‘A Terrific Job’.

Declaring Tuesday, International Workers’ Day, “a holiday for the 99%,” Occupy is calling for a general strike – no work, no school, no shopping – to “unite against a system which does not work for us (and) begin to build the world we want to see.” Many activities here, here and here; Pete Seeger sings L’Internationale to fire you up.

Full Story Here: May Day For the 99%: Resistance Is Fertile | Common Dreams.

1. The Rich Pay Almost All the Taxes

That’s simply not true. The percentage of total taxes paid by the very rich (the top 1%) is approximately the same as the percentage paid by middle class Americans (the 4th quintile, average income $68,700). Here are the details:

Internal Revenue Service figures show that the very rich paid 23% of their incomes in federal income taxes in 2006. The middle class paid about 8% of their incomes in federal income taxes. Based on U.S. Congressional Budget Office figures, the very rich pay just under 2% of their incomes toward social security, while the middle class pays just under 10%. According to a study by The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the very rich pay about 7% of their incomes in state and sales and property and excise taxes, while the middle class pays approximately 10%. Another year of Bush tax cuts will reduce the taxes of the very rich by at least 3% more than the middle class.

So total taxes for the very rich are 29% of their incomes (23% + 2% + 7% – 3%). Total taxes for the middle class are 28% of their incomes (8% + 10% + 10%). These figures agree with CTJ’s 2011 estimate of total taxes paid.

2. Tax Rates Are Too High

Full Story Here: Five Tax Fallacies Invented by the 1% | Common Dreams.

A radio personality in Cleveland is facing tremendous backlash after telling a father that he should get one of his male friends to rape his daughter to force her to turn straight.

In response to an email from a father who suspected his daughter was gay after discovering her kissing another girl, DJ Dominic Deiter declared on the air that “You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

You read that correctly. An apparently anti-gay radio personality told a father that he should arrange for his daughter to be raped repeatedly until she magically turns straight.

Full Story Here: Rape Away The Gay? Radio Personality Tells Father To Get A Man To Rape His Daughter Until She Turns Straight | Addicting Info.

“He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can’t even carry on a conversation about the budget. It’s an absolute and utter disgrace.”

–House Speaker Tip O’Neill, after a meeting with Reagan, November 23, 1981

“For the last 30 years he’s been in a dream world…. I think he actually believes that giving more to rich people will make them work harder, whereas the only way to make poor people work is to tax their unemployment benefits.”

–NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks commenting on Reagan’s economic policies, January 25, 1983

“Reagan, who more than any president in history railed against government benefits and spending, set the standard for all members of his administration. In addition to his presidential pension of $99,500 a year for life and his annual pension as a former governor of California of $30,800…he received Secret Service protection from forty full-time agents and other security at a cost to the government estimated at $10 million annually, more than double that of other living presidents. A suite of offices atop a new thirty-four-story office building twenty minutes from his home, commanding a view that extended from the Pacific Ocean to the towers of downtown Los Angeles, cost the government $173,000 a year to lease.”

–Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

“At his seventh press conference, President Reagan…responds to a question about the 17% black unemployment rate by pointing out that ‘in this time of great unemployment,’ Sunday’s paper had ’24 full pages of…employers looking for employees,’ though most of the jobs available–computer operator, for example, or cellular immunologist–require special training, for which his administration has cut funds by over 30%.”

–Paul Slansky, The Clothes have no Emperor

Full Story Here: Economic Policy – The Reagan Years.

Computerworld :-:

As unemployment among tech workers increases with the recession, the U.S. government is raising broad questions as part of a federal case over H-1Bs about the connection of visa fraud to the unemployment of IT workers.

The government’s interest in H-1B fraud-related unemployment turned up in court filings in a case in U.S. District Court in Iowa against a New Jersey IT firm, Visions Systems Group in South Plainfield, NJ, which was indicted in February on visa-related fraud charges.

Visions Systems was included in a sweep that led to arrests of some 11 people in six states. The government, in announcing its action, said the companies and people involved were “displacing qualified American workers,” but didn’t identify how many. In court papers filed last month, the U.S. indicated it may be getting ready to do just that.

Full Story Here: U.S.: H-1B workers outnumber unemployed techies – Computerworld.

Up With Chris Hayes 4.29.12

This is your Income.

This is your Income on Republican ideology.

Any questions?

Digital Domain CEO John Textor: “Free Labor Is Much Better Than Cheap Labor” – YouTube.

OPS: in other words: Slaves.

The Senate campaign of Florida Republican Marco Rubio has agreed to pay an $8,000 fine for accepting slightly more than $210,000 in improper contributions.

Considered a top candidate for the vice presidential spot on the Republican ticket this fall, Rubio won his Senate seat from Florida in 2010 in a race against independent candidate Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek.

Full Story Here: Marco Rubio Campaign Fined For Improper Contributions.

As Of Earth Day 2012, the organic and natural food superstore Whole Foods no longer carries fish considered unsustainable.

In a post on its company blog, Whole Foods explained that its decision to eliminate “red-rated” seafood — species that suffer from overfishing or catching methods that harm other marine life or habitats — is motivated by a desire to reverse these global trends. The sustainable seafood rating systems used by Whole Foods were devised by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch and the Blue Ocean Institute.

Whole Foods had already stopped selling orange roughy, shark, bluefin tuna and most marlin.

But do such high-minded measures really help the environment? Some scientists are now voicing doubt, saying that some labels lead customers to wrongly believe that the impact of choosing one fish over another is greater than reality.

Full Story Here: Whole Foods Seafood Ban: Unsustainable Fish No Longer Sold Include Skate And Atlantic Cod (PHOTOS).

While delivering his remarks at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, comedian Jimmy Kimmel addressed the issue of marijuana legalization.

“What is with the marijuana crackdown? Seriously, what is the concern? We will deplete the nation’s Funyun supply?” Kimmel said. “Pot smokers vote too. Sometimes a week after the election, but they vote.”

Full Story Here: Jimmy Kimmel Addresses Marijuana Legalization At White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2012.

The U.S is ratcheting up a societal-level war on public education. At issue is whether we are going to make it better — build it into something estimable, a social asset that undergirds a noble and prosperous society — or whether we’re going to tear it down so that private investors can get their hands on the almost $1 trillion we spend on it every year. The tear-it-down option is the civilian equivalent of Ben Tre, but on a vastly larger scale and with incomparably greater stakes: we must destroy public education in order to save it. It’s still early in the game, but right now the momentum is with the wreckers because that’s where the money is. Whether they succeed or not will be up to you.

Here’s a three-step recipe for how to destroy education. It maps perfectly to how to make a prodigious profit by privatizing it. It is the essential game plan of the big money boys.

Full Story Here: How to Destroy Education While Making a Trillion Dollars | Common Dreams.

Moyers & Company :-:

How big money and big media have coupled to create a ‘Disney World’ of democracy. Plus, a Bill Moyers Essay on Rep. Allen West (R-FL) and McCarthyism.

Video and full transcript at link

BILL MOYERS: This week on Moyers & Company.

MARTY KAPLAN: It’s all about combat. If every political issue is the combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other. And you have an audience that hasn’t a clue, at the end of the story, which is why you’ll hear, “Well, we’ll have to leave it there.” Well, thank you very much. Leave it there.

BILL MOYERS: And how the ghost of Joe McCarthy is back to haunt America.

SENATOR JOSEPH McCARTHY: They shouldn’t be called Democrats, they should be referred to properly as the Commiecrat Party.

BILL MOYERS: Welcome. How about this: enterprising and intrepid journalism students at Kent State University in Ohio took up our challenge to go to nearby television stations, collect data on the political ads they run and post that information on the Internet. It’s supposed to be public information in the first place.

Full Story Here: Full Show: Big Money, Big Media, Big Trouble | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com.

In recent weeks some of the nation’s biggest media outlets have turned their eyes toward seafood sustainability—a subject that can be as slippery and tough to pin down as a fish flopping across the deck of a pitching and rolling fishing boat.

As consumers and corporate buyers allow sustainability ratings to drive more of their purchasing choices, it’s becoming increasingly important to know who is doing the rating and how they’re arriving at their decisions. The ultimate goal of such programs is to allow the market to drive behavior; in this case, the manner in which fishermen go about the business of fishing. But if doing so makes it impossible for fishermen to maintain their business, then the ratings are forfeiting one of the inherent goals of sustainability: the availability of fish over the long term.

Two recent pieces in the national news media expose some of the problems with the current piecemeal system of sustainability ratings that establish guidelines with no clear accountability to any third-party source. The New York Times’s Abby Goodnough analyzed a decision by the organic supermarket chain Whole Foods this month to no longer sell seafood not certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council or if it was red-listed by either the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program or the Blue Ocean Institute. And The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin probed questions about the credibility of such labeling in the first place.

Full Story Here: Sustaining Seafood Sustainability.

There’s some good news this month as families’ economic security is slowly improving: The labor market is adding jobs and household wealth is gradually rising. But substantial challenges remain including comparatively high unemployment rates, especially among vulnerable population groups; high poverty rates; a depressed housing market; large household debt burdens; and rising gasoline prices.

Unfortunately no single policy can quickly bring solid gains to families’ economic security. It will take comprehensive and targeted policy to secure America’s struggling middle class.

Sustained and faster job creation should be policymakers’ top concern, especially for vulnerable groups such as African Americans, young labor-force participants, and people without a high school degree. Other priorities require income support through things like extended unemployment insurance benefits, higher minimum wages, and more opportunities for employees to join a union.

Full Story Here: Economic Snapshot for April 2012.

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

Full Story Here: Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. – The Washington Post.

Health insurance agents and brokers will no longer be getting paid to tell sick people about a government-backed health insurance plan that can’t turn them down.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is ending a program at the end of this month that gave $100 to agents and brokers who referred customers to the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, which was created by the health care reform law President Barack Obama enacted in 2010. The PCIP, as it’s known, was designed as to provide help to people who can’t find affordable health insurance because of their medical histories.

The PCIP’s performance has been underwhelming: enrollment remains far below expectations even as the $5 billion set aside for the program is spent faster than predicted. Through the end of February, 56,257 people had PCIP benefits. This represents a tiny portion of the 50 million Americans who are uninsured and is far below the 200,000 to 375,000 people who were projected to join the Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan. Moreover, each PCIP enrollee is costing almost $29,000 a year, which is more than twice government estimates from 2010.

Full Story Here: Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care.

Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states.

Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains.

California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.

Full Story Here: Apple’s Tax Strategy Aims

at Low-Tax States and Nations – NYTimes.com.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is proposing a bold new plan to rebuild the city’s aging infrastructure. He has lined up financing giants including Citibank NA, Citi Infrastructure Investors, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets Inc. and JPMorgan Asset Management Infrastructure Group willing to invest $1.7 billion in Public Private Partnerships with the city.

Chicago knows how partnerships can sour. Former Mayor Richard Daley’s sale of the city’s parking meters is now widely recognized as a poorly negotiated partnership that locked the city into a bad deal (for the city, not the investor partners) for 75 years.

Dozens of websites and tons of business literature warn about the perils of partnerships. They all say pay attention to the details now or pay the price later in litigation over ambiguities, poorly drafted language or an unanticipated and unpredictable future; make sure you really trust your new partner shares your interests and vision; and above all don’t rush into it until you are absolutely certain.

Full Story Here: Fool Us Twice? Think Again, Chicago.

Our political leaders often play off the downturn in American manufacturing by touting a focus on areas such as new, high tech manufacturing and alternative energy, but it appears China has the same goals and is taking targeted steps to meet them.

Since 1953 the Chinese government has been using five-year plans to focus its goals both economically and socially. The latest incarnation of the plan (the 12th overall) has a number of economic focuses that could be in direct competition with those of the U.S.; namely Strategic Emerging Industries.

Strategic Emerging Industries include: New-generation information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, advanced materials, alternative-fuel cars, energy conservation and environmental protection, alternative energy and biotechnology.

Full Story Here: China Moves Forward While America Falls Behind | Economy In Crisis.

Free trade policies have unfortunately become the exception rather than the rule in the United States. Politicians from both parties now push them on the American people. They have become so standard that they now encounter little resistance in Washington, while Americans in the rest of the country reel from their devastating effects. This is why politicians go to Rust Belt states and say they are going to do something about our trade problem. Politicians purport to recognize that these agreements are hurting the American way of life when they visit these states, yet they go back to Washington and pass more bad trade deals.

Full Story Here: Free Trade has Eroded the American Way of Life | Economy In Crisis.

Food safety in the United States is often an overlooked area of concern. Americans generally do not spend much time thinking about deadly toxins that could be in their food. But with Americans eating more and more imported food from poorly inspected and unknown places, the possibility of tainted food continues to rise.

Americans now get 15 to 20 percent of all of the food they consume from overseas. This includes two-thirds of our fruits and vegetables, and 80 percent of our shrimp and other seafood. Despite the nearly unavoidable nature of imported food, our government agencies lack the ability to properly inspect imported food for contaminants. We currently inspect only a small fraction of all imported food, and Americans are getting sick as a result.

Full Story Here: How Safe is the Food We Eat | Economy In Crisis.

The GOP has been very vocal in recent years about establishing fairness in taxation. In an effort to protect the wealthy from what some conservatives have dubbed “socialism,” Republicans have argued that the only fair system is to tax every American at the same rate, regardless of their income. They claim this belief was adopted to prevent the rich from paying more than their share in taxes than the middle and lower classes. Yet unfathomably, plenty of America’s wealthiest citizens actually pay a much lower percentage of their income for Federal taxes than the rest of the nation.

President Barack Obama has stated that around 25 percent of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than many middle-class households, and some billionaires actually pay a tax rate as low as 1 percent. This means that, in addition to the deductions and earmarks the super wealthy use to reduce their taxes, they are already encountering a much lower rate to begin with. Meanwhile, the burden to increase the nation’s revenue falls squarely on the shoulders of the middle class, whose 2010 tax breaks were rejected by the Senate for renewal.

Full Story Here: The U.S. Tax Hypocrisy | Economy In Crisis.

Laws are being made that encourage foreign corporations to set up shop in the U.S. They receive huge tax benefits and various subsidies for bringing their jobs to our country. This sounds like good business on the surface, but further inspection reveals some long-term problems.

• American owned factories are going out of business in record numbers because they can’t compete.
• Thousands of other businesses are selling out to foreign ownership or moving entirely overseas to keep costs down.

Full Story Here: Our Government Has No Economic Plan | Economy In Crisis.

Almost certainly doomed is France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, with François Hollande poised to win in the second round, but Marine Le Pen’s fiery, anti-banker populism has reaped her deserved rewards. As Ambrose Evans’Pritchard writes in the Daily Telegraph:

“Elected governments have already been swept away – or replaced by EU technocrats without a vote, indeed to prevent a vote – in every eurozone state where unemployment has reached double-digits: Spain (23.6 per cent), Greece (21 per cent), Portugal (15 per cent), Ireland (14.7 per cent) and Slovakia (14 per cent).The political carnage has been striking. Ireland’s Fianna Fail, creator of the Irish free state, has lost every seat in Dublin. Greece’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) – torch-bearers of Greek democracy since the Colonels – has fallen to 14 per cent in the polls and faces ruin next month.

Full Story Here: As the Mutiny Spreads, It’s Clear: Europeans Have Had Enough! » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

One Guy Totally Predicted What Today’s Big Problem Would Be—94 Years Ago! | MoveOn.Org.

He has attacked the right of citizens to dissent and to have a voice in the legislative process.

He has even attacked voting rights, with a draconian Voter ID bill that is seen as the most restrictive in the United States.

The list of assaults on basic rights is so long that it is not surprising that close to 1 million Wisconsinites have petitioned for the recall and removal of Walker in a June 5 election.

The list of reasons for voting Walker out of office is so long that it is hard to imagine what more could be added to it.

But there is the matter of what the governor’s critics refer to as “Scott Walker’s War on Women.”

Full Story Here: Not Just Labor Rights; Scott Walker Is Also Dismantling Women’s Rights | The Nation.

With the nation’s unemployment rate still above eight percent, millions of Americans are looking for work, and the country’s biggest corporations are hiring. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, however, many of those corporations are adding jobs overseas at a faster pace than they are at home. Even worse, others are cutting their domestic workforces while adding jobs in other countries at a rapid pace:

Those companies, which include Wal-Mart Stores Inc., WMT +2.70% International Paper Co., Honeywell International Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc., boosted their employment at home by 3.1%, or 113,000 jobs, between 2009 and 2011, the same rate of increase as the nation’s other employers. But they also added more than 333,000 jobs in their far-flung—and faster-growing— foreign operations.

The companies included in the analysis were the largest of those that disclose their U.S. and non-U.S. employment in annual securities filings. All of them have at least 50,000 employees. Collectively, they employed roughly 6.4 million workers world-wide last year, up 7.7% from two years earlier. Over the same period, the total number of U.S. jobs increased 3.1%, according to the Labor Department.

Full Story Here: Report: American Corporations Are Adding More Jobs Overseas Than They Are At Home | ThinkProgress.

Chevron posted a modest 4.2 percent increase in first-quarter profits compared to 2011, increasing net gains from $6.2 billion to $6.5 billion. That still translates to more than $71 million per day in the first three months of 2012.

Despite a drop in production, a 12 percent increase in average oil prices boosted Chevron’s profits this quarter.

Meanwhile, Chevron has faced recent protests in California, home to Chevron CEO John Watson, for environmental damage and tax dodging.

Here’s the context for Chevron’s $6.5 billion profits:

Full Story Here: Chevron’s Quarterly Profit Is Up To $6.5 Billion, Production Is Down, Tax Rate Is Still Lower Than Yours | ThinkProgress.

The House will vote today on a bill to prevent the interest rate on government-backed student loans from doubling. Both Republicans and Democrats support the extension on the lower rate, but not the Club for Growth, the deep-pocketed political group backed by wealthy conservative donors, especially from the financial sector.

The group put out a “Key Vote Alert” this morning “urg[ing] all House members to vote “NO” on the Interest Rate Reduction Act (HR 4628)” and warning members that their vote may be used against them on the Club’s Congressional Scorecard, which they use to rate members when making considerations about endorsements and independent expenditures.

The Club explains that it thinks the government should not be subsidizing student loans and that the the Affordable Care Act should only be repealed as a whole:

Full Story Here: Conservative Group Club For Growth: Let Student Loan Rates Double.

Congress is on the cusp of passing a new bill that could threaten any internet user’s civil liberties. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a digital equivalent of allowing the government to fight perceived threats by monitoring which books citizens check out from the library, passed the House yesterday and will now be taken up by the Senate.

Online advocates, fresh off their victory against the Stop Online Piracy Act, are now gearing up to oppose CISPA because of the disastrous effect the bill could have for private information on the internet. The bill’s opponents argue that it goes too far in the name of cybersecurity, endangering citizens’ personal online information by giving the government access to anything from users’ private emails to their browsing history.

As the fight in the Senate begins, here is everything you need to know about CISPA:

Full Story Here: What Everyone Who Uses The Internet Needs To Know About CISPA.

A ginormous number of brands are controlled by just 10 multinationals, according to this amazing infographic from French blog Convergence Alimentaire. Now we can see just how many products are owned by Kraft, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, P&G and Nestlé.

(Disclaimer: We are not sure how up-to-date the graphic is. For example, it has not been updated to reflect P&G’s sale of Pringles to Kellogg’s in February.)

Full Story Here: These 10 Companies Control Enormous Number Of Consumer Brands [GRAPHIC].

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tried to send the message this week that, contrary to “urban legend,” he is not obsessed with philosopher and author Ayn Rand.

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told National Review on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”

Best known for her novels “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand advocated a philosophy that emphasizes the individual over the collective, and viewed capitalism as the only system truly based on the protection of the individual. She has been a significant influence on libertarians and conservatives.

Full Story Here: Paul Ryan Suddenly Does Not Embrace Ayn Rand’s Teachings.

OPS: Anybody really buy this????????

Tomorrow’s world looks a bit brighter with MIT’s new self-cleaning glass that is able to resist fogging and glare effects. Such technology could lead to smudge-free touch screens for smartphones and tablets, or even cleaner, nonreflective windows for car drivers.

The new glass eliminates reflections and repels water droplets like “tiny rubber balls” bouncing off the ground, according to MIT News. Its secret recipe consists of tiny surface features that resemble nanoscale cones — 1,000 times to 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. If made inexpensively enough, the glass could end up in cameras, smartphones, televisions, solar panels, car windshields or even building windows.

“For the first time, as far as I am aware, this paper learns a lesson in manufacturing efficiency from nature by making an optimized anti-reflective and anti-fogging device,” said Andrew Parker, a senior visiting research fellow at Oxford University’s Green Templeton College in the U.K. (Parker was not involved in MIT’s work).

Full Story Here: MIT Glass Innovation Is Self-Cleaning, Resists Glare VIDEO).

On March 30, a district court ruled in Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) that a loophole in FEC rules that allowed certain independent group campaign efforts to keep private the names of donors was invalid and needed to be rewritten or reset to the original language.

On Friday, the court not only refused to stay the ruling, as requested by two intervening groups that are appealing the case, the Center for Individual Freedom and the Hispanic Leadership Fund, but the court also found that its ruling invalidated the FEC loophole, which required it to be immediately closed, resetting to the original language in the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, known officially as the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA).

Full Story Here: FEC Disclosure Loophole Closes On Secret Donors As Court Won’t Stay Ruling.

Speaking during a campaign stop Friday, Mitt Romney encouraged students at Otterbein University in Ohio, to show enterprise by going into business — with a little help from their parents, if necessary.

Romney cited the example of Jimmy John’s owner Jimmy John Liautaud, who borrowed money from his father to start his successful sandwich franchise.

“We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business,” Romney said.

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Tells Otterbein University Students To Borrow Money From Their Parents.

The House of Representatives advanced a bill Friday that funds cheaper student loans by cutting a preventive health care program — sparking a heated battle in which House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) accused Democrats of manufacturing a war on women.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 215 to 195, with 30 Republicans bucking their party to oppose the bill, and 13 Democrats voting in favor. Democrats might have blocked the measure if they had stayed together. The interest rate for federally subsidized student loans is scheduled to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent for some 7.4 million students on July 1 if Congress does not act.

Full Story Here: Student Loan Interest Rate Bill That Cuts Health Care Program Passes House.

The corporate money coup over America’s electoral democracy has rampaged through the Republican presidential primaries, and is now surging with even greater fierceness into this fall’s general election.

A handful of millionaires and billionaires, pooling their corporate cash into secretive political arsenals called SuperPACs, which technically are independent from the candidates’ campaigns. They dominated the GOP race. The one backing Mitt Romney, called Restore Our Future, was by far the richest, and it has made him the nominee. In this Brave New World of millionaire-and-up politics, size matters – not the size of the candidate’s heart or ideas, but the size of the SuperPAC, which is now far richer than the candidates themselves. Against president Obama, not only will Restore Our Future be flush with special-interest cash, but the super-rich are also rolling out an even bigger, supersized-SuperPAC to back Romney. Created by political attack-miester Karl Rove and called American Crossroads, it intends to pound Obama relentlessly with a staggering $200 million in bloody-ugly negative campaign ads.

Full Story Here: Jim Hightower | To the barricades, people!.

free audio Listen to this Commentary at link

Joseph Stiglitz.:-:

‘The Occupy movement has been very successful in bringing those ideas to the forefront of political discussion.’

Europe is headed down the same path that most Republicans — and many Democrats — are suggesting for the US: reductions in the public sector, cuts in benefits, slashing investments in infrastructure and education.

Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz speaking in Vienna, Austria Thursday night said that it’s a suicidal path for Europe — and that such a policy has never worked in any large country.

Youth unemployment in Spain has been at 50 percent since the crisis in 2008 with “no hope of things getting better anytime soon,” said Stiglitz, who is a professor for economics at Columbia University. “What you are doing is destroying the human capital, you are creating alienated young people.”

Full Story Here: European, US Austerity Drive is Suicidal: Nobel Economist Stiglitz | Common Dreams.

Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in the late 1990s, the number of people on prescription drugs for life has ballooned.

Why has Big Pharma failed to produce new antibiotics for deadly infections like MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococci), C. Difficile and Acinetobacter baumannii even as they leap from hospital to community settings? Because there is no money in it.

Pharma executives “have shown less interest in medicines like antibiotics that actually cure disease than in those that only treat symptoms,” writes Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds. “Most blockbusters are pills for conditions such as anxiety, high cholesterol or constipation that must be taken daily, often for months or years. They are designed for rich Americans who can afford to buy them.” Nor are medicines for tropical diseases like malaria, which kills a child every 30 seconds, a priority, notes Petersen. They also lack ka-ching.

Full Story Here: 6 Kinds of Pills Big Pharma Tries to Get You Hooked on for Life | Personal Health | AlterNet.

Once a promising young magazine writer, the bow-tied Daily Caller pundit has come to epitomize right-wing hackdom

In many ways Tucker Carlson’s a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck or the late Andrew Breitbart, to name two of his contemporaries with a much larger following. Glenn Beck started as a no-account shock jock and is now a no-account Internet show host. Breitbart at least went from Drudge lackey to successful right-wing media mogul. Carlson, though, began his career in the most respectable fashion possible and has spent the ensuing decades gradually lowering himself into the gutter. His story illustrates why we can’t have a responsible or at least slightly less hysterical conservative media.

The Daily Caller, the site he launched with a promise to offer a new model for conservative journalism, is primarily a catalog of sleazy traffic-baiting aggregated Web garbage (“Top 10: Most beautiful ‘most beautiful’ women [SLIDESHOW]“), ancient relics of online commentary with nowhere else left to publish (Ann Coulter, Mickey Kaus), and overblown scandal-mongering headlines that promise much more than they can deliver. In other words it is like a mean-spirited parody of a conservative version of the pre-AOL Huffington Post, with a healthy dose, recently, of attention-grabbing race baiting. This is not the sort of thing Carlson used to be known for.

Full Story Here: Tucker Carlson’s downward spiral – Salon.com.