Author Archive for OPS_admin

10 Amazing Discoveries You Missed This Week

From medical devices straight out of Star Wars to birds that give Martha Stewart a run for her money, here are 10 fascinating new discoveries.

Here are 10 amazing things research revealed this week.

1) When I’m An Old Crab I Shall Wear Purple

Bright purple crabs with big red claws were one of four species recently discovered on the Phillipine island of Palawan during a study by the Senckenberg Research Institute in Germany and De La Salle University in Manila. Our Amazing Planet calls Palawan a “major biodiversity hotspot” and about half its species are found nowhere else on earth. So of course the crabs’ habitat is threatened, in this case by mining activities.

2) This Might Change Your Mine

There is a kind of mining that can be done without wrecking earthly landscapes: asteroid mining. Getting gold, platinum and rocket fuel out of the fastballs of space is the intention of a group of high-profile tycoons who plan to launch a series of telescopes to find the targeted asteroids within 24 months and have a space-based fuel station by 2020, the AP says.

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

5 Fascinating New Uses For Psychedelics

Scientists are looking into various medical and psychiatric uses for psychedelics. Could the taboo be ending?

On last week’s episode of the drama “Mad Men,” set in 1966, Roger Sterling, the embodiment of the classic old-boys club figure, accompanies his younger wife to a dinner party where the guests “turned on” to LSD. After a night of laughing fits, tears, dancing and hallucinations, the couple have a profound conversation about their marriage’s failure. Sterling wakes up the next morning feeling that he’s been given an entry into “the truth” and in a shockingly sincere tone, declares that it’s going “to be a beautiful day.”

The sequence represents a surprisingly positive portrayal of acid, staying away from cliches and demonstrating how a stuck-in-the-mud character might actually, at least temporarily, be jolted out of despair and complacency by an experience on- drugs.

In some ways, Roger’s fictional night embodies the quintessential mid-’60s “long, strange, trip.” For a brief period before LSD became synonymous with the youth-led counterculture, hippies and burnout, it was taken seriously among elites–it was even legal. The drug, originally being tested for various physical and psychological institutions, began to be recreationally used by professionals like the therapist who encourages the Sterlings to “turn on” as aiding personal development and enhancing insight.

Full Story Here: 5 Fascinating New Uses For Psychedelics | | AlterNet.

The GOP’s Death Wish: Why Republicans Can’t Stop Pissing Off Hispanics, Women, and Young People

Robert Reich :-:

What are the three demographic groups whose electoral impact is growing fastest? Hispanics, women, and young people. Who are Republicans pissing off the most? Latinos, women, and young people.

It’s almost as if the GOP can’t help itself.

Start with Hispanic voters, whose electoral heft keeps growing as they comprise an ever-larger portion of the electorate. Hispanics now favor President Obama over Romney by more than two to one, according to a recent Pew poll.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (The GOP’s Death Wish: Why Republicans Can’t Stop Pissing Off Hispanics, Women, and Young People).

How I Left My Evangelical Christian Faith

Lots of people have successfully left their religious faith behind. Here’s what the path out looks like.

I am what you might call a slow learner. I managed to make it all the way through high school, despite an eating disorder I couldn’t pray away, and all the way through college, despite a suicidal depression triggered by the same eating disorder, and almost all the way through grad school before I finally gave up on my religion and god.

By contrast, my friend Geoff figured things out in the second grade. One day a nun at his Catholic school tried to pour holy water on the one Black kid in the school to exorcise the devil because he kept getting in fights. But Geoff thought to himself: It’s not Satan, it’s because all the other kids pick on him. Today Geoff is a psychologist working for Seattle Children’s Hospital –which is, ironically, the same place that did in the last shreds of my Evangelical beliefs.

I can’t recall the name of the small person who severed the final strands of my faith. There’s just a vague image of soft brown hair and trusting brown eyes. I was 26, in the last stage of my PhD program, which required a year-long internship at the University of Washington. In one of my rotations, the one at Children’s Hospital, interns provided mental health consultation for families of patients on the medical wards. He was two, and in the first phase of treatment for a spinal cord tumor that would leave him paraplegic even if the nightmare course of chemotherapy were successful. I don’t know how long he survived.

Full Story Here: How I Left My Evangelical Christian Faith | Visions | AlterNet.

Armchair Warriors: Why Are Conservatives the Biggest Warmongers?

Conservatives in government have fetishized violence. Why?

What is it about being a great power that renders the imagining of its own demise so potent? Why, despite all the strictures about the prudent and rational use of force, are those powers so quick to resort to it?

Perhaps it is because there is something deeply appealing about the idea of disaster, about manfully confronting and mastering catastrophe. For disaster and catastrophe can summon a nation, at least in theory, to plumb its deepest moral and political reserves, to have its mettle tested, on and off the battlefield. However much leaders and theorists may style themselves the cool adepts of realpolitik, war remains the great romance of the age, the proving ground of self and nation.

Exactly why the strenuous life should be so attractive is anyone’s guess, but one reason may be that it counters what conservatives since the French Revolution have believed to be the corrosions of liberal democratic culture: the softened mores and weakened will, the subordination of passion to rationality, of fervor to rules. As an antidote to the deadening effects of contemporary life—reason, bureaucracy, routine, anomie, ennui—war is modernity’s great answer to itself. “War is inescapable,” Yitzhak Shamir declared, not because it ensures security but “because without this, the life of the individual has no purpose.” Though this sensibility seeps across the political spectrum, it is essentially an ideal of the conservative counter-Enlightenment, which found its greatest fulfillment during the years of Fascist triumph (“war is to men,” Mussolini said, “as maternity is to women”)—and is once again, it seems, prospering in our own time as well.

Full Story Here: Armchair Warriors: Why Are Conservatives the Biggest Warmongers? | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet.

Obama Stunner: Climate Change Will Be A Campaign Issue, We Need to Do Much More To Combat It

In a Rolling Stone interview published today, President Obama broke out of his self-imposed silence on climate change. He made some remarkable statements, including his belief that the millions of dollars pouring into the anti-science disinformation campaign will drive climate change into the presidential campaign.

Earlier this year the President omitted any discussion of climate change from his State of the Union address. And he (or the White House communications team) edited it out of his Earth Day proclamation.

But in this interview, Obama was actually the first to bring up climate change, noting it was one of many big issues he’s had to deal with and then slamming the GOP for moving so far to the right on the issue.

The big news was that the President expects climate change to be a campaign issue:

Full Story Here: Obama Stunner: Climate Change Will Be A Campaign Issue, We Need to Do Much More To Combat It | ThinkProgress.

Bob Kerrey: War With Iran Will ‘Make Iraq And Afghanistan Look Like A Cakewalk’

After a dozen years out of Congress, former Senator Bob Kerry (D) launched a bid to fill his old seat from Nebraska, replacing, he hopes, retiring Senator Ben Nelson (D). This week, the Kerrey campaign released a video staking out an unusually bold stance for a Congressional candidates: strongly opposing a war with Iran.

In the video, released Monday, Kerrey begins by lining up some of the extraordinary costs — human and financial — of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially the tolls these conflicts have taken on members of the armed services. Kerrey then puts Iran in context to these countries: “80 million people in Iran?” He then says of a potential large-scale war with Iran:

Full Story Here: Bob Kerrey: War With Iran Will ‘Make Iraq And Afghanistan Look Like A Cakewalk’ | ThinkProgress.

Despite Backing Subsidies For Big Oil, Mike Pompeo (R-Koch) Says Wind Energy Doesn’t Deserve Financial Support

Koch Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) — who is deeply indebted to Koch Industries for more than $100,000 in donations — is outspoken against clean energy investment. Recently, he celebrated when the Senate failed to extend the wind energy tax credit in a 49-49 vote. However, he is celebrating the threat to 37,000 jobs in the relatively young industry, when the production tax credit is set to expire at the end of the year.

Even as the oil industry enjoys $4 billion in subsidies a year, Pompeo lamented the cost of the production tax credit, claiming the wind industry would be fine on its own:

“The program has been around an awfully long time and it’s time to let that industry stand on its own two feet. And I’m confident that they’ll do it,” he said. “There’s great, creative engineers and innovators in the alternative energy field, and I’m confident they’ll be successful.”

It now costs the government more than $1 billion a year to hand out 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of wind power — and enough is enough, says Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.).

Full Story Here: Despite Backing Subsidies For Big Oil, Mike Pompeo (R-Koch) Says Wind Energy Doesn’t Deserve Financial Support | ThinkProgress.

House GOP Would Kick 280,000 Children Off School Lunch Program To Protect Tax Cut For Millionaires

House Republicans recently proposed cuts to nutrition assistance that will kick 280,000 low-income children off automatic enrollment in the Free School Lunch and Breakfast Program. Those same kids and 1.5 million other people will also lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamp benefits) that help them afford food at home.

Ten years’ worth of these nutrition cuts could be prevented for the price of one year of tax cuts on 3,340 multimillion dollar estates that House Republicans are protecting in their budget.

On April 18 the House Agriculture Committee passed a bill cutting over $33 billion from SNAP over the next decade. About one-third of these cuts ($11.5 billion) comes from putting restrictions on “categorical eligibility,” a provision that enables states to better coordinate between programs and improves access to assistance for low-income families.

Full Story Here: House GOP Would Kick 280,000 Children Off School Lunch Program To Protect Tax Cut For Millionaires | ThinkProgress.

G-Spot Exists? Researcher Says He Has Evidence,

The elusive G-spot has been found, a researcher claims in a new report.

The famed orgasmic spot was identified as a region of tissue, about a third of an inch long and one-tenth of an inch wide, located on the anterior (towards the front of the body) vaginal wall, said Dr. Adam Ostrzenski, of the Institute of Gynecology, Inc., in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“It’s a grape-like structure,” Ostrzenski said. “Nothing else looks similar.”

For his research, Ostrzenski examined the cadaver of an 83-year-old woman who had died from head trauma.

Full Story Here: G-Spot Exists? Researcher Says He Has Evidence, But Skeptics Dispute Finding.

Meteor Explosion In Nevada Was One Third The Size Of Hiroshima Bomb, Expert Says

Tiny meteorites found in the Sierra foothills of northern California were part of a giant fireball that exploded over the weekend with about one-third the explosive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II, scientists said Wednesday.

The rocks each weighed about 10 grams, or the weight of two nickels, said John T. Wasson, a longtime professor and expert in meteorites at UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.

Experts say the flaming meteor, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 to 5 billion years ago, was probably about the size of a minivan when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere with a loud boom early Sunday. It was seen from Sacramento, Calif., to Las Vegas and parts of northern Nevada.

Full Story Here: Meteor Explosion In Nevada Was One Third The Size Of Hiroshima Bomb, Expert Says.

Obama: Romney Can’t Say ‘Everything I’ve Said For The Last 6 Months, I Didn’t Mean’

President Barack Obama framed the 2012 election in some of the starkest terms to date in an interview published Wednesday by Rolling Stone.

Obama said that in this election there “will be as sharp a contrast between the two parties as we’ve seen in a generation.”

“You have a Republican Party, and a presumptive Republican nominee, that believes in drastically rolling back environmental regulations, that believes in drastically rolling back collective-bargaining rights, that believes in an approach to deficit reduction in which taxes are cut further for the wealthiest Americans, and spending cuts are entirely borne by things like education or basic research or care for the vulnerable,” Obama continued.

Full Story Here: Obama: Romney Can’t Say ‘Everything I’ve Said For The Last 6 Months, I Didn’t Mean’.

Phil Bryant, Mississippi Governor: Democrats’ ‘One Mission In Life Is To Abort Children’

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R), in defending his decision to sign a bill that could shut down Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, told conservative radio host Tony Perkins on Tuesday that Democrats’ “one mission in life is to abortion children.”

“Even if you believe in abortion, the hypocrisy of the left that now tried to kill this bill, that says that I should have never signed it, the true hypocrisy is that their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter, they don’t care if the mother’s life is in jeopardy, that if something goes wrong that a doctor can’t admit them to a local hospital, that he’s not even board certified.”

Full Story Here: Phil Bryant, Mississippi Governor: Democrats’ ‘One Mission In Life Is To Abort Children’.

‘Mad Cow’ Finding Highlights Food Safety Gaps, Say Critics

The announcement on Tuesday that a California dairy cow had mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), highlights shortcomings of the country’s food safety system, say critics.

The beef industry and the USDA were quick to dismiss worries of contamination to the food supply.  John Clifford, the USDA’s chief veterinary officer, said, “It was never presented for slaughter for human consumption, so at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health.”

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said in a statement: “U.S. regulatory controls are effective, and that U.S fresh beef and beef products from cattle of all ages are safe and can be safely traded due to our interlocking safeguards.”

But Elisa Odabashian, West Coast director of Consumers Union, noted that the monitoring system leaves public health gaps because it is just too small.

Full Story Here: ‘Mad Cow’ Finding Highlights Food Safety Gaps, Say Critics | Common Dreams.

Ann Romney: ‘I Love’ That Some Women Have To Work And Raise Kids

Ann Romney is still talking about the job requirements of stay-at-home moms. At a Republican fundraiser in Connecticut Monday night, Romney described her life as a mom, a job she says her husband would constantly remind her was “more important than his.”

“I know what it’s like to wake up early in the morning and get them off to school; I know what it’s like to be up in the middle of the night when they are sick; and I know what it’s like to struggle and to have those concerns that all mothers have,” she said, according to ABC News.

Romney acknowledged that some women have to both work outside the home and raise their children, according to Politico.

Full Story Here: Ann Romney Talks Motherhood, ‘Emotionally Draining’ Campaign.

BP Engineer, Faces First Oil Spill Charges

Federal officials arrested a former BP engineer on charges of obstruction of justice on Tuesday, in the first criminal charges filed in connection with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Kurt Mix, 50, a senior BP drilling engineer, allegedly destroyed hundreds of text messages sent to a supervisor that described high volumes of oil flowing from the ruptured well, located 5,000 feet underwater, according to a federal affidavit.

Mix “worked on internal BP efforts to estimate the amount of oil leaking from the well and was involved in various efforts to stop the leak,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

Full Story Here: Kurt Mix, BP Engineer, Faces First Oil Spill Charges (UPDATES).

Mad Cow Disease Confirmed In California Dairy Cow, USDA Says

The USDA has confirmed that a case of mad cow disease was found in a California dairy cow. It is the fourth case of mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), found in U.S. cattle since the first in December 2003. Los Angeles-based Baker Commodities confirmed that the cow was discovered in a Hanford, Calif. transfer station after workers selected the cow for random sampling. The company does not yet know from which farm the cow came from.

USDA Chief Veterinary Officer John Clifford said Tuesday afternoon that the cow did not enter the human food chain and that all U.S. meat and dairy supplies are safe. Further mitigating the risk to the public, milk does not transmit BSE.

According to the USDA, the animal’s carcass is being held under state authority at a California rendering facility and will be destroyed. “It was never presented for slaughter for human consumption, so at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health,” Clifford said.

Full Story Here: Mad Cow Disease Confirmed In California Dairy Cow, USDA Says.

The lesson for Obama of Europe’s failed austerity

Robert Reich :-:

With the US economy still vulnerable to shocks, Obama’s re-election prospects are fragile. He must offer a bold alternative

So far, President Obama’s election strategy can best be summed up as: “We’re on the right track, my economic policies are working, we still have a long way to go, but stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

This won’t be enough to win him the election. The US recovery is too anaemic, and the chance of an economic stall between now and election day far too high.

Even now, Mitt Romney‘s empty “I’ll do it better” refrain is attracting as many voters as Obama’s “we’re on the right track.” Each is gathering 46% of voter support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Only 33% of the American public thinks the economy is improving, while 39% say they’re still falling behind financially – an 11-point increase from 2008. Nearly two thirds are concerned about paying for housing, and 23% of Americans with mortgages say they’re underwater.

Full Story Here: The lesson for Obama of Europe’s failed austerity | Robert Reich | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Why Fukushima Is a Greater Disaster than Chernobyl and a Warning Sign for the U.S.

The radioactive inventory of all the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools at Fukushima is far greater and even more problematic than the molten cores.

In the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world posed by the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site are far from over.   After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it is sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins may have far greater potential offsite consequences  than the molten cores.

After visiting the site recently, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. stating that, “loss of containment in any of these pools could result in an even greater release than the initial accident.”

This is why:

Full Story Here: Why Fukushima Is a Greater Disaster than Chernobyl and a Warning Sign for the U.S. – IPS.

Nestle’s New Deal More Proof of Profits Trumping Public Health

Company purchased Pfizer’s infant formula business, creates privatization pathway in emerging Asian markets

A deal that saw pharmaceutical giant Pfizer sell its infant formula business to Nestlé in a $11.85 billion billion deal this week is another attempt by Nestle to put profit over public health, said a watchgroup group on Monday.

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, stated that Nestle’s “renewed focus on growing the market for its infant formula products is troubling given the corporation’s track record of using dubious practices to market infant formula in developing countries, where it is often prepared in unhygienic conditions with unsafe water. It appears this investment will pave the way for more dubious marketing practices, which as recently as last year have been criticized by public health groups in Laos.”

Full Story Here: Nestle’s New Deal More Proof of Profits Trumping Public Health | Common Dreams.

Experts: Contrary to Mainstream Myth, ‘Social Security is Strong’ and Could Be Made Stronger

Lifting the payroll tax cap and better coverage by journalists would help build sustainable future for essential program

The Social Security trust fund is in strong financial standing and the overall program could be further strengthened, say experts and lawmakers, with a simple increase of the current payroll tax cap which is currently set at $110,000. The trustee’s annual financial report was released on Monday.

Most mainstream news and media outlets reported the trustee’s report as a ‘doomsday’ scenario for the benefit program, which was created in 1935 and today supports 55 million Americans, including 38 million retired workers, 6 million widows, widowers and orphans, and 11 million disabled workers. But those reports belie a simple solution to improve the longevity and solvency of the program, and speak to a trend of poor-quality reporting when it comes to the issue of Social Security.

Full Story Here: Experts: Contrary to Mainstream Myth, ‘Social Security is Strong’ and Could Be Made Stronger | Common Dreams.

Open government group accuses ALEC of tax fraud

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative nonprofit that workshops legislation favored by its corporate members, was accused Monday of tax fraud by an open government group that’s seeking to trigger an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit into ALEC’s activities.

The group Common Cause leveled the allegations Monday morning, filing an official complaint with the IRS that accuses ALEC of masquerading as a charitable organization when its real purpose is to give corporations direct access to lawmakers in taxpayer-subsidized forums designed specifically for lobbying.

ALEC insists it does not lobby, but instead connects lawmakers with “job creators” in order to foster legislation that increases business competition. Federal law bans groups from claiming tax-exempt status if a “substantial” part of their activities are dedicated to “attempting to influence legislation.”

Full Story Here: Open government group accuses ALEC of tax fraud | The Raw Story.

Is Obama Getting Serious About Manufacturing? Maybe.

Ian Fletcher :-:

 America has been waiting a long time for the Obama administration to get serious about the problems of our manufacturing sector.

Finally, there has been a small sign that the corner may – may – be turning.  Let’s take a look at a speech recently given by Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council.

I’ve edited it a bit for length.  But it’s still a good metric of whether the administration “gets it” on manufacturing, and gives a fairly clear picture of the evolution of its thinking.

Ignoring the introductory material, here’s where Sperling cuts to the chase, i.e. the fact that mainstream economists generally believe that it’s a waste to time to pay any special attention to manufacturing—a sector they see as in inevitable and well-deserved decline as America’s economy shifts to better things:

Many economists raise the concern that any focus on manufacturing is distortionary industrial policy or misguided because they believe that manufacturing is in an inevitable and irreversible decline due to decades-long productivity and technology gains that will mean a continual loss of jobs.

This is precisely the myth Americans concerned about manufacturing are fighting, whenever they try to persuade Washington that something needs to be done to help the sector.

But it is a myth, as the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs was actually fairly stable from 1965 to about 2000, and productivity was growing all that time.  Productivity on its own doesn’t kill jobs, because while it may reduce the number of workers needed to make any one product, it also makes it possible to produce more products at a saleable price. Which makes it more profitable to employ manufacturing workers, so jobs are (as they were for decades) created to replace those that are lost.

So no, it’s not productivity that’s been killing American manufacturing jobs.  It’s something else, some factor that suddenly got a lot stronger after about 2000.  The right answer here is “a $500 billion a year trade deficit and unfair international competition, due to currency manipulation, foreign trade barriers, intellectual property theft, and related factors.”

Sperling continues…

Yet, we do believe that even if today only 12 percent of the U.S. private-sector workforce is employed in manufacturing, it is a sector that punches above its weight.   When you take into account the outsized role that manufacturing plays in innovation through:

• R&D investment and patents

• The tight linkage between innovation and manufacturing production

• The higher-wage jobs it produces

• Its importance for exports

• The spillover benefits that manufacturing facilities have on firms and communities around them

• The deeper economic harm that comes from allowing our manufacturing production capacity to be hollowed out

Aha!  This is what we need to be hearing from the White House.  Yes, manufacturing really is a uniquely important sector.  It is false that, from a economic point of view, “Computer chips, potato chips, what’s the difference?” in the words of Michael Boskin, one of George H.W. Bush’s economists.

Sperling goes on to successfully hit all the key points of this problem. Manufacturing, contrary to its image as an outdated sector, is responsible for 70 percent of America’s R&D, despite being only 12 percent of our economy.  And it’s very hard to innovate, or learn to make things better, when you don’t know how to make them in the first place. Manufacturing jobs average about 25 percent higher pay than non-manufacturing jobs.  Manufacturing is also the key to America’s trade deficit, as we can’t balance our trade by exporting more soybeans or movies: the numbers just don’t add up.

The economic evidence is increasingly clear that a strong manufacturing sector creates spillover benefits to the broader economy, making manufacturing an essential component of a competitive and innovative economy.

Correct. America can’t be a serious country – let alone a superpower – without a world-class manufacturing sector.

When an economic activity has positive spillover effects that an individual firm cannot capture, there is a risk we as a nation under-invest in areas that can be beneficial to the economy at large.

Correct.  The free market—which doesn’t exist in foreign trade, anyway—won’t solve all our problems. Contrary to laissez-faire mythology which would have appalled Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, there is a public-sector component of economic growth. This is not a liberal or a conservative idea, it is just true, though liberals and conservatives can (and should) argue about the right way to implement it.

If we care about the location of the innovation, we should also care about the location of the manufacturing production… The ecosystems that grow up around these intersections of innovation and production tend to be complex.  They are the result of evolutions that occur over periods of years and decades. Once the virtuous, reinforcing cycles are broken they are difficult to recreate, and they can turn to a vicious cycle… That’s why losing pieces of our manufacturing base should be such a serious concern.

A strong manufacturing sector is not the work of a day, or of any one single government policy.  It is something that takes decades to build up.  It is therefore something that we should not allow to be torn down by the mercantilism of foreign nations.  We can’t afford to wait until all the damage is done, as then it will be too late.

Without these capabilities, companies do not create the process technologies that allow firms to create and scale new products.  So when we remain indifferent to the decision to compete for the manufacturing products of the present, we have to understand that if it leads to a more serious loss of our manufacturing capacity, it can trigger the loss by our nation of the ability to compete for and create the next generation of technologies.  It’s a story we’re already all too familiar with in the United States. In consumer electronics. In metal castings. In machine tools and others. In each industry, firms shifted production out of the U.S., sometimes as products became commoditized.  The subsequent loss of manufacturing capabilities led to leadership in other industries being developed elsewhere.

All sadly true. Losing manufacturing abilities doesn’t just cost us today; it shuts us out of the industries of the future.  GM was forced to import the batteries for the Chevy Volt from South Korea because nobody in the U.S. had the know-how to make them anymore. China is systematically targeting and killing off America’s solar-cell industry.

Now we get to the administration’s proposed solutions, and things start to sour.

The President’s plan for business tax reform is focused on eliminating loopholes and simplifying tax rates to make the U.S. a more attractive location for firms to invest to spur growth.  Recognizing the intense international competition for manufacturing and the benefits manufacturers provide to the rest of the economy, our plan would lower rates for manufacturers to 25% and even lower for advanced manufacturing.

Uh oh.  This proposal falls squarely into the category of “favors the recipient never asked for.” I don’t ever recall any major organization in this field ever suggesting that manufacturers deserve a special favor on taxes. That would be the kind of naked special pleading that our opponents seem to assume, as a matter of course, that we do. I’m not aware of any. (My apologies if I am mistaken; feel free to write me if you know otherwise.)

American manufacturers don’t need special favors from the government.  They do need to be not especially harmed by unfair foreign competition. The aggressive, cheating economic strategies of foreign nations—starting with China but not ending there—hit the manufacturing sector much harder than the service sectors which make up 75 percent of our economy.  The manufacturing sector is structurally vulnerable to trade problems because most manufactured goods, as opposed to most services, are tradable.

That’s why the Administration is investing in innovation to support manufacturing, increasing our support for advanced manufacturing technologies by 19% to $2.2 billion in FY13.  We recognize investing in basic research isn’t enough to make sure that a new technology crosses the bridge from invention to product development to manufacturing at scale, The President proposed a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, the creation of up to fifteen manufacturing institutes to fill this gap in our innovation infrastructure by letting companies collaborate and access the capabilities of our research universities to support scaling up manufacturing production.

Now this bit is actually good.  One of the few special favors the manufacturing sector may legitimately lay claim to is government support of technological research. Why? Because scientific discovery, and its cousin infratechnology, tends to benefit everyone who eventually commercializes it—not just whoever paid for it.  So the profit motive isn’t enough, and there’s a legitimate public-sector role.

America used to understand all this. (Funny how we used to be the world’s unquestioned number one economy.)

Unfortunately, the specifics mentioned here stuff are mostly in the proposal stage.  We’ll have to see if they really mean it.  The past  three years of this administration don’t exactly fill one with hope here.

And finally, that’s why the President has built on a strong record of trade enforcement with new measures to enhance our ability to go after unfair trade practices, including those of China. In September 2009, President Obama ordered safeguards applied to tire imports from China, a move that addressed a surge of tires from China, adding over 1,000 workers in the process. In so doing, the President applied the “Section 421” safeguard law for the first time since China joined the WTO in 2001 – an action that President Bush never took. In fact, the President has nearly doubled the rate of WTO cases against China from the previous Administration.

Now we’re getting downright disingenuous.  Anyone who deals with these issues knows three things, none of which is reflected in the above paragraph:

1) The U.S. already has all the bureaucratic institutions in place to enforce our trade laws, with China as with every other country.  We just don’t use them.  Until the political decision is made to offend the multinational corporations and get serious about trade enforcement, new laws and new institutions will mean nothing.  It’s just posturing to convince people the administration is “doing something.”

2) China’s currency manipulation is the elephant in the room here.  Any administration that wants to “help” American victims of unfair foreign trade practices, but isn’t doing anything about currency manipulation, simply isn’t serious. It’s a 30-40 percent subsidy to Chinese exports plus an equivalent tariff on American imports. And it drags along third countries whose own currencies are affected by the dollar-renminbi exchange rate.

3) The “rate” of bringing WTO cases is irrelevant, because the dollar amounts of different cases vary so widely that one big case may make more difference to the American economy than ten small ones.

Just two weeks ago, the Administration brought a new trade case against China on rare earth materials¸ which are key ingredients making many high-tech products like advanced batteries and high-tech magnets.  And in February, the President launched an Interagency Trade Enforcement Center (ITEC) which will enhance our capacity even further, representing a “whole-of-government” approach to addressing unfair trade practices.  The President’s fiscal year 2013 Budget includes $26 million in funding and 50-60 dedicated staff.

More nice little bits of posturing.  Which on their own aren’t bad, but do rather smell of panic in the West Wing of the White House over losing manufacturing states in the next election, rather than a serious policy change.

So where is Obama now on trade and manufacturing?  I can’t really tell.

Ironically, this is also how I feel about presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.  As I’ve written before, his policy on these issues, though he promises to designate China a currency manipulator on day one in office, leaves one in a state of uncertainty as to whether he really means it.  Attacking Obama on China seems to be an emerging element of his strategy to win, but he has a lot of rich friends who’ll be seriously offended if he ever does fix the currency problem.

Somebody is going to have to fix America’s trade mess—the key but not sole requirement for restoring American manufacturing to health.  But whether it will be a Democrat or a Republican is still up for grabs at this moment.

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.

Common Cause Files IRS Complaint Against ALEC | ThinkProgress

A day after a front-page New York Times investigation highlighted the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as a “conservative nonprofit” that “acts as a stealth business lobbyist,” a good-government group announced it has filed an IRS complaint against the corporate front group.

ALEC, the “association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty,” has pushed an extreme legislative agenda in states across the country, pushing shoot-first” “stand your ground” laws and voter suppression efforts. In recent weeks, at least a dozen companies announced they would no longer fund ALEC — following pressure from a Color of Change national campaign — and ALEC announced it would refocus its efforts away from “non-economic issues.” Last week, the group’s Louisiana state chairman resigned from the group.

Now, Common Cause is asking the Internal Revenue Service to take action; the group is requesting the agency audit ALEC’s work, impose penalties, and compel payment of back taxes. Common Cause President Bob Edgar (a former Democratic U.S. Rep. from Pennsylvania) said the group is masquerading as a public charity.

Full Story Here: Common Cause Files IRS Complaint Against ALEC | ThinkProgress.

Half Of Recent College Graduates Are Jobless Or Underemployed

The disappearance of mid-level jobs during the Great Recession, along with overall high unemployment, have made it hard for recent college graduates to find good jobs upon leaving school. More than 50 percent of college graduates under age 25 are either jobless or underemployed, according to an analysis from Drexel University and the Economic Policy Institute:

While there’s strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor’s degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.

Full Story Here: Half Of Recent College Graduates Are Jobless Or Underemployed | ThinkProgress.

RNC Spokeswoman: Republican Economic Platform Will Be The Bush Program, ‘Just Updated’

During an interview last week on The Fernando Espuelas Show, Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee, said that the Republican party’s economic platform in 2012 is going to be the same as it was during the Bush years, “just updated”:

ESPUELAS: What do you mean by economic security? Regardless of who the ultimate nominee is, what’s the general idea that the RNC, or the Republican party in general, has in terms of this message?

FRANCESCHI: Well, it’s a message of being able to attain the American dream. It’s less government spending, which a Tarrance Group poll, came out last week actually, shows that the majority of Hispanics believe that less government spending is the way out of this deficit crisis. It’s lowering taxes so small businesses can grow and they can employ more people, because we understand that the private sector is the engine of the economy. It’s not the government. [...]

Full Story Here: RNC Spokeswoman: Republican Economic Platform Will Be The Bush Program, ‘Just Updated’ | ThinkProgress.

OPS: ….because that worked out so well for average America?

Missouri GOP Senate Candidate Sarah Steelman ‘Not Sure’ What VAWA IS

Former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, a Republican now hoping to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), said recently that she was unfamiliar with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the landmark anti-domestic violence legislation whose re-authorization is now stalled in the Senate.

Senate Republicans are objecting to re-upping the 1994 law, which has already been extended several times, because of amendments that would extend protections for Native American women, gay victims, and others.

Full Story Here: Missouri GOP Senate Candidate Sarah Steelman ‘Not Sure’ What VAWA IS.

With High Premarital Sex And Abortions Rates, Evangelicals Say It’s Time To Talk About Sex

The statistics, some evangelicals say, can no longer be ignored.

Eighty percent of young evangelicals have engaged in premarital sex, according to a new video from the National Association of Evangelicals. and almost a third of evangelicals’ unplanned pregnancies end in abortion.

It’s time to speak honestly about sex because abstinence campaigns and anti-abortion crusades often aren’t resonating in their own pews, evangelical leaders say.

In some instances, that is beginning to happen:

Full Story Here: With High Premarital Sex And Abortions Rates, Evangelicals Say It’s Time To Talk About Sex.

Purple Crabs, Including Insulamon Palawanense, Discovered In Palawan, Philippines

You may have heard of blue lobsters, but how about purple crabs? Four new species of the colorful crustaceans were discovered in the hilly Philippine island of Palawan, according to a study published in the journal Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.

Why purple? “It is known that crabs can discriminate colors,” said study author Dr. Hendrik Freitag of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden, according to Phys.org. “Therefore, it seems likely that the coloration has a signal function for the social behavior, e.g. mating.”

Full Story Here: Purple Crabs, Including Insulamon Palawanense, Discovered In Palawan, Philippines (PHOTOS).

Governor Rick Scott Vetoes Funds For Rape Crisis Centers During Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) shocked the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence this week when he vetoed $1.5 million in funding for 30 rape crisis centers in the middle of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. State lawmakers allotted the money to offset an increase in need and a lack of sufficient funding for victim services.

A spokesperson for Scott said he vetoed that particular line item in the state budget because the state already funds sexual violence programs, and nobody was able to make it clear to him why rape crisis centers needed the new funding.

“Governor Scott approved funding for many projects that have statewide impact and do not duplicate programs already funded by the state,” Lane Wright, Scott’s press secretary, told HuffPost. “This new funding of $1.5 million would have been duplicative, since, as a state, we already fund sexual violence programs. There was no information suggesting any needs in this area weren’t already being met. The state already provides about $6.5 million for rape prevention and sexual assault services. That is in addition to the funds available for domestic violence programs — $29 million to be specific. Many victims of sexual violence seek refuge at domestic violence shelters.”

Full Story Here: Governor Rick Scott Vetoes Funds For Rape Crisis Centers During Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Mitt Romney Alleges Media Bias, As Study Finds He Receives More Positive Coverage Than Obama

During the past several months of the Republican primary campaign, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney received a mix of positive and negative coverage, while President Barack Obama got “consistently negative” coverage, according to a new study from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The PEJ study, which examined coverage from the period between Jan 2 and April 15, found that “Obama’s negative coverage exceeded positive coverage in 14 or 15 weeks studied, while positive coverage outweighed negative coverage for Romney in six of the 15 weeks and was fairly evenly divided in four more.”

While former House Speaker Newt Gingrich often railed against the “elite media” and former Sen. Rick Santorum famously called out a New York Times reporter, Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, generally steered clear of media bashing. But as he pivots to the general election, Romney has begun taking jabs likely to play well with the Republican faithful.

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Alleges Media Bias, As Study Finds He Receives More Positive Coverage Than Obama.

The Amnesia Candidate

Paul Krugman :-:

Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are?

If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times.

But the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr. Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the Obama administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right — but not in the way he intended.

First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor’s policy failure?

Full Story Here: The Amnesia Candidate – NYTimes.com.

Dow Chemical Reaps Rewards by Funding PBS’ ‘America Revealed’

Is ‘America Revealed’–or PBS? Dow-sponsored public TV series tracks Dow’s product lines

The four-part series America Revealed, airing on PBS stations this month, looks at big-picture economic issues, from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing. The series underwriter? The Dow Chemical Company, whose commercial interests closely track the subjects covered in the PBS series.

The first episode, entitled Food Machine (4/11/12), focused on large-scale agriculture, which is one of the industries in which Dow is a major player. The program featured an extended look at the corn industry, including efforts to control pests. As the program explained, the food industry “needed a game changer” in that fight. And it got one: The “genetically modified organism, better known as a GMO.”

This positively portrayed “game changer” just happens to be the very type of product Dow sells. Indeed, Dow is among a handful of companies that dominate the genetic seed market (Pesticide Action Network, 8/10). The company has recently been trying to win approval for a new genetically modified corn that has been nicknamed “Agent Orange” for its resistance to a highly toxic herbicide. Dow’s application is opposed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Food Safety because of its toxicity, and the likelihood that it will simply create even more resistant weeds (EcoWatch, 4/10/12).

Full Story Here: Dow Chemical Reaps Rewards by Funding PBS’ ‘America Revealed’ | Common Dreams.

Romney Plan Would Cut Benefits For The Poor, Increase Pentagon Budget

Reducing government deficits Mitt Romney’s way would mean less money for health care for the poor and disabled and big cuts to nuts-and-bolts functions such as food inspection, border security and education.

Romney also promises budget increases for the Pentagon, above those sought by some GOP defense hawks, meaning that the rest of the government would have to shrink even more. Nonmilitary programs would incur still larger cuts than those called for in the tightfisted GOP budget that the House passed last month.

Differences over the government’s budget and spiraling deficits are among the starkest that separate Republican Romney and Democratic President Barack Obama. Obama’s budget generally avoids risk, with minimal cuts to rapidly growing health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid while socking wealthier people with tax increases. It’s all part of an effort to close trillion-dollar-plus deficits.

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Budget Cuts Would Have Severe Consequences.

At Wal-Mart in Mexico, a Bribe Inquiry Silenced

Confronted with evidence of widespread corruption in Mexico, top Wal-Mart executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing, an examination by The New York Times found.

In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.

The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.

Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”

The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation.

Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.

Full Story Here: At Wal-Mart in Mexico, a Bribe Inquiry Silenced – NYTimes.com.

The Republicans who want ignorance to get equal time in schools

Education is the new Republican enemy. No more free thinking and empirical evidence, just the Bible, rumour and Fox News

Not content with merely waging war on women, Republicans are targeting another enemy of conservatism: education. New Hampshire state Republican Jerry Bergevin recently railed against science and the atheist eggheads who call themselves teachers: “I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a world view and it’s godless.”

While New Hampshire didn’t end up passing Bergevin’s anti-evolution law, Tennessee did. Its new statute allows – even encourages – teachers to express scepticism toward, as the bill says, “scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, and global warming”. The American Institute of Biological Sciences, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, the National Centre for Science Education and all eight of Tennessee’s members of the National Academy of Sciences oppose the new law, calling it “miseducation”. But what do these no ‘count heathen elitist PhD Darwinites know? The government of Tennessee wants you to know they ain’t kin to no monkey

Full Story Here: The Republicans who want ignorance to get equal time in schools | Diane Roberts | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

How Wealth Reduces Compassion

by Scientific America :-:

As riches grow, empathy for others seems to decline

Who is more likely to lie, cheat, and steal—the poor person or the rich one? It’s temping to think that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to act fairly. After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it’s easier to think about what others may need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline.

Berkeley psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner ran several studies looking at whether social class (as measured by wealth, occupational prestige, and education) influences how much we care about the feelings of others. In one study, Piff and his colleagues discreetly observed the behavior of drivers at a busy four-way intersection. They found that luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for both men and women upper-class drivers, regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian.

Full Story Here: How Wealth Reduces Compassion | Common Dreams.

The Autism Epidemic and Disappearing Bees: A Common Denominator?

On a recent front page of The Salt Lake Tribune, a frightening, oversized headline read, “Highest rate in the nation, 1 in 32 Utah boys has autism.” Less well publicized, another national story ran the same day: “New pesticides linked to bee population collapse.” If you eat food and hope to do so a few years from now, this should be equally frightening. A common denominator may underlie both stories.

A recent Stanford University study, examining 192 pairs of twins, where one twin was autistic and one was not, found that genetics account for 38 percent of the risk of autism and environmental factors account for 62 percent.(1)

Suggesting an environmental and genetic tag team are other studies showing mothers of autistic children and autistic children themselves have a high rate of a genetic deficiency in the production of glutathione, an antioxidant and the body’s primary means of detoxifying heavy metals.(2) High levels of toxic metals in children are strongly correlated with the severity of autism.(3) Low levels of glutathione, coupled with high production of another chemical, homocysteine, increase the chance of a mother having an autistic child to one in three, according to Dr. Jim Adams, director of Arizona State University’s Autism/Asperger’s Research Program. That autism is four times more common among boys than girls is likely related to a defect in the single male X chromosome contributing to antioxidant deficiency. There is no such thing as a genetic disease epidemic because genes don’t change that quickly. So, the alarming rise in autism must be the result of increased environmental exposures that exploit these genetic defects.

Full Story Here: The Autism Epidemic and Disappearing Bees: A Common Denominator?.

BP Blamed for Ongoing Health Problems

Gulf Coast residents and clean up workers have found chemicals present in BP’s oil in their own bloodstreams.

Ocean Springs, Mississippi – Not long after BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, 2010, Lorrie Williams knew something was very wrong with her health.

She began getting frequent headaches, was experiencing shortness of breath, her eyes were burning, and she was having nightmares.

Williams, her husband Bud Waltman, and their ten-year-old son, Noah, have all tested positive for having chemicals in their blood that are also present in BP’s oil. Her 25-year-old son has been to the emergency room twice for haemorrhaging blood from his nose, and several of their neighbours also have experienced ongoing respiratory problems.

Her two-year-old granddaughter has been sick constantly.

Full Story Here: BP Blamed for Ongoing Health Problems.

Five Reasons Why The Very Rich Have NOT Earned Their Money

The wealthiest Americans believe they’ve earned their money through hard work and innovation, and that they’re the most productive members of society. For the most part they’re wrong. As the facts below will show, they’re not nearly as productive as middle-class workers. Yet they’ve taken almost all the new income over the past 30 years.

Any one of these five reasons should reinforce the belief that the rich should be paying a LOT more in taxes.

1. They’ve Taken All the Middle Class Wage Increases

In 1980 the richest 1% of America took one of every fifteen post-tax income dollars. Now, according to IRS figures, they take THREE of every fifteen (doc) post-tax income dollars. They’ve tripled their cut of America’s income pie. That’s a trillion extra dollars a year.

Full Story Here: Five Reasons Why The Very Rich Have NOT Earned Their Money | Common Dreams.

Jailed for $280: The return of debtors’ prisons

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”

Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.

Full Story Here: Jailed for $280: The return of debtors’ prisons – CBS News.

BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deepwater Horizon Spill

Greg Palast :-:

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

Full Story Here: BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill | NationofChange.

Eyeless Shrimp, Clawless Crabs and Mutated Fish Found in Gulf After BP Spill

The Gulf of Mexico is filled with mutated wildlife. Clawless crabs, eyeless shrimp and scarred fish are popping up everywhere leaving scientists to question just how much damage was done by the BP Oil Spill.

On April 20, 2010, an explosion aboard the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people and spewed an estimated 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf, in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

According to an extensive report by Al Jazeera English, scientists and environmentalists are claiming that the deformed sea life is probably the result of the oil released into the Gulf and the chemicals they used to try to clean it up.

Tracy Kuhns, a commercial fisher from Barataria, La., told Al Jazeera, showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp, said,

Full Story Here: Eyeless Shrimp, Clawless Crabs and Mutated Fish Found in Gulf After BP Spill.

Pink Slime? It Gets Worse.

“Pink slime” isn’t the only industrialized meat treated with unappetizing chemicals. Chlorine, tri-sodium phosphate (normally used to clean cement) and hypobromous acid (used to clean swimming pools) are used to treat poultry for salmonella and sterilize feces that might still be on carcasses because the production line speeds are too excessive.

As our food system becomes more industrialized, we increasingly rely on chemical cocktails to keep bacteria and other pathogens under control. Since labeling isn’t required, consumers are left in the dark about what chemicals their food may have been treated with. But this is only the beginning of what consumers don’t know about their meat. 

HIMP — the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP)-based Inspection Models Project – isn’t as memorable of a catch phrase as pink slime, but its implications are more sickening. Since 1998, the USDA has been experimenting with this program that gives the job of monitoring the safety and quality of poultry to the poultry processors and drastically increases the number of birds federal inspectors must examine at a time.

Full Story Here: Pink Slime? It Gets Worse. | Food & Water Watch.

Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Race to the Bottom

The United States seems to possess the unique ability to hurt its own economy. We have passed numerous detrimental trade agreements in recent decades because we have not learned from the mistakes of past agreements. Politicians have railed against NAFTA in their campaigns, but once they take office they do not act on their campaign promises. Instead, they pass more free trade agreements. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is next on their radar, and if passed it will accelerate America’s economic race to the bottom.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is modeled after NAFTA and the more recent South Korea – U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS). Both of these agreements are job-killers for the United States. NAFTA has cost us nearly 700,000 jobs; KORUS is expected to cost us 158,000 more. NAFTA is clearly the more damaging of the two, but its negative effects may seem small compared to the damage the TPP could do. Free trade has allowed companies to seek out the lowest standards in wages and regulatory conditions, and the TPP would give these companies even more low-wage, low-regulation countries to do business in. Americans will either have to lose their jobs, or be willing to work in horrendous conditions for little pay.

Full Story Here: Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Race to the Bottom | Economy In Crisis.

Unethical Predatory Practices Imposed on U.S.

The United States is in open competition with the same countries from which we buy our goods and finance our government. These countries supply our consumption while simultaneously competing fiercely against our companies in international markets. Nations like India, Japan and China, along with trade blocs like the European Union, rail against “protectionism” in the U.S. because they do not want to have their unfettered access to our market tampered with.

The United States is told that it must oblige to its commitment to “free trade,” not because it is in our best interest, but because it is in our foreign creditors’ best interest. They want the current system to continue unimpeded. Foreign exporters finance our government so the U.S. can continue functioning, and then they make all of their money back through the goods we buy from them. The U.S. government then pays back its finance charges and over time foreign financiers virtually double their investments. The United States is told that it must keep up its end of the “free trade” bargain. Meanwhile other countries skirt the rules, using hostile practices to put our companies out of business and capture sectors of the market.

Full Story Here: Unethical Predatory Practices Imposed on U.S. | Economy In Crisis.

Woman’s death blamed on ‘addiction’ to Coca Cola

A New Zealand inquest has been told a woman’s 10-litre (2.2 gallon) a day Coca-Cola habit may have contributed to her death, reports said Friday.

A coroner’s inquest was told Natasha Harris, a 30-year-old mother of eight from Invercargill in southern New Zealand who died in February 2010, drank huge amounts of the caffeinated beverage, Fairfax Media reported.

It said pathologist Dan Mornin told the inquest that he believed Harris died from cardiac arrhythmia and was also suffering from low potassium levels and caffeine toxicity.

Full Story Here: Woman’s death blamed on ‘addiction’ to Coca Cola | The Raw Story.

Space mining startup set for launch in U.S.

A startup evidently devoted to mining asteroids for metals is to make its public debut on Tuesday in the US northwest city of Seattle, seeking to redefine the term “natural resources.”

X Prize founder Peter Diamandis and a former NASA astronaut are slated to unveil Planetary Resources, which boasts an impressive list of backers including Google co-founder Larry Page and famed film maker James Cameron.

“The company will overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP,” Planetary Resources said in a brief release announcing the Tuesday press event in the Pacific Northwest city.

Full Story Here: Space mining startup set for launch in U.S. | The Raw Story.

Romney Blames Obama For Bad Economy At Factory Shuttered Under Bush

Yesterday, presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney made a major campaign stop at the shuttered factory where then-candidate Obama spoke in 2008. The National Gypsum plant has since closed, and Romney said that fact “underscores the failureof this president’s policies with regards to getting the economy working again.”

But Romney’s implication that the plant’s closing is a result of Obama’s economic policies is undercut by the fact that the plant closed before Obama took office.

The factory closed in June 2008, when George W. Bush was still president.

Full Story Here: Romney Blames Obama For Bad Economy At Factory Shuttered Under Bush.

USA Today Journalists Become Victims Of ‘Reputation Attack’ After Reporting On Pentagon Propaganda

The largest circulation daily newspaper in America, USA Today, reports that two of its journalists were targeted by a campaign to discredit their work shortly after publishing pieces about a Pentagon propaganda operation.

The journalists, Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook and editor Ray Locker, worked together on a long and critical feature story — and did follow-up stories — about a Pentagon campaign to improve the image of U.S. military adventures abroad, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon program paid contractors — 172, for example, during a three-year period in Iraq — such as California’s Leonie Industries to run what it calls “information operations.”

Yesterday, USA Today published its own story about what one expert called “reputation attacks” that were likely run by people with experience. USA Today reporter Gregory Korte wrote that after inquiries went in to contractors involved with the Pentagon propaganda campaign and stories were published, fake websites and twitter accounts using the journalists’ names began to pop up. Korte explained:

Full Story Here: USA Today Journalists Become Victims Of ‘Reputation Attack’ After Reporting On Pentagon Propaganda | ThinkProgress.

If It’s Sunday, It’s Meet The Republican White Men

An exhaustive new study by media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting shows that the Sunday morning talk shows have been dominated over the last eight months by white, Republican men.

Between June 2011 and February of this year, 70 percent of all one-on-one interviewees on the four biggest political talk shows — NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday — were Republicans. The numbers were even more lopsided in favor of men and white guests:

Full Story Here: If It’s Sunday, It’s Meet The Republican White Men | ThinkProgress.

Half The Lawmakers On Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ Task Force Are ALEC Members, All Supported Stand Your Ground

Yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) unveiled the members of his task force assigned to investigate the effects of the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws that have come under intense scrutiny and criticism in recent weeks after the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin.

But critics were quick to notice some of the curious appointments made by Gov. Scott’s selection committee.

Take State Representative Dennis Baxley for instance. He was chosen as a member of the task force despite the fact that he authored H.B 249, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. His version of the bill was used by corporate front-group ALEC as a template for similar pieces of legislation that are now in the books in half the country. And in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, Baxley has repeatedly defended the law.

Full Story Here: Half The Lawmakers On Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ Task Force Are ALEC Members, All Supported Stand Your Ground | ThinkProgress.

Wells Fargo Insiders Detail Foreclosure Fraud Practices: ‘It’s Exactly Like An Assembly Line’

That Wells Fargo has fraudulently processed mortgage documents using a process called robo-signing has been evident for nearly two years, since scandal enveloped the mortgage industry in 2010. That it kept doing it even after the scandal broke has been known for months. The practice, at Wells Fargo and other Wall Street banks, has led to waves of improper foreclosures and a $25 billion settlement with the federal government and state attorneys general.

A new report from MSNBC, however, provided an inside account of how Wells Fargo’s robo-signing department works. Unqualified employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 are given titles like “vice president of loan documentation” so they can sign foreclosure documents. Actual supervisors institute quotas on employees, forcing them to sign a certain number of foreclosure files each day — sometimes telling them they can’t eat breakfast or take lunch until they’re done. Documents required for homeowners to avoid foreclosure were ignored, left sitting on an unattended fax machine.

The result: the nation’s largest mortgage servicer often improperly foreclosed on homeowners who weren’t past due or owed little interest while pushing the files out the door as fast as possible, as an insider told MSNBC:

Full Story Here: Wells Fargo Insiders Detail Foreclosure Fraud Practices: ‘It’s Exactly Like An Assembly Line’ | ThinkProgress.

Tea Party Congressman: Obama Will Commit Treason If Reelected

At a campaign fundraiser last week, Tea Party Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) warned attendees that President Obama would commit treason if reelected in November.

Fitzpatrick was listing the reasons why voters should not support the President, and for reason number three, he told the audience that President Obama would have no qualms auctioning off state secrets to foreign countries.

The Huffington Post flagged Fitzpatrick’s comments, which were distributed by the progressive advocacy group Credo SuperPAC:

Full Story Here: Tea Party Congressman: Obama Will Commit Treason If Reelected | ThinkProgress.

OPS: We don’t have to speculate wildly about Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II. They DID commit Treason

Catholic Bishop Who Compared Obama To Hitler ‘Clarifies’ Comment

Last Saturday, Catholic Bishop Daniel Jenky delivered a homily in which he claimed that President Obama “now seems intent on following a similar path” to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Yesterday, Jenky attempted to walk back some of this claim:

“Based upon the current government’s threatened infringement upon the Church’s religious exercise of its ministry, Bishop Jenky offered historical context and comparisons as a means to prevent a repetition of historical attacks upon the Catholic Church and other religions,” said Patricia Gibson, chancellor of the Peoria Diocese.

“Bishop Jenky gave several examples of times in history in which religious groups were persecuted because of what they believed,” Gibson said. “We certainly have not reached the same level of persecution. However, history teaches us to be cautious once we start down the path of limiting religious liberty.”

First of all, nothing Obama has done — including his recent policy guaranteeing women’s access to contraception — violates the Catholic Church’s religious liberty under the United States Constitution. As conservative Justice Antonin Scalia (who happens to be Catholic) explained in a seminal Supreme Court decision more than two decades ago,

Full Story Here: Catholic Bishop Who Compared Obama To Hitler ‘Clarifies’ Comment | ThinkProgress.

Tennessee House Passes Bill To Allow Criminal Prosecution For Harming Embryos

Tennessee has long had a law that allowed prosecutors to charge someone for harming a “viable fetus” — defined as about the 32nd week after conception — when someone kills or assaults a pregnant woman. Last year, lawmakers expanded that definition to apply to any fetus.

Now, they’re looking to criminalize harm to embryos, the cells that are formed before a fetus develops eight weeks after conception. Proponents of the bill say it would clarify last year’s expanded fetal harm bill, but critics say it will be difficult to prosecute because some pregnancies end naturally at that stage. They argue this is simply a fight over abortion:

[I]t will be difficult for prosecutors to prove that an embryo miscarried because of someone else’s action and not from natural causes, predicted Rep. Jeanne Richardson, D-Memphis. [...] “I think your original bill may have been OK and we voted for that. I think extending that would be iffy.”

Full Story Here: Tennessee House Passes Bill To Allow Criminal Prosecution For Harming Embryos | ThinkProgress.

8 Myths About Marijuana

There is no plant in the history of human existence with as checkered a reputation as cannabis. It is either a heaven-sent cure for all that ails us, or it’s a scourge on society on par with the Black Death.

Sussing out truth from fiction when it comes to marijuana is no easy undertaking, but after two years of intensive research related to the publication of my new book Pot Inc. [Sterling, $22.95], I can say with certainty that there are several old myths that can be put to rest for good (or at least put into context).

And no, I’m not talking about the old canards that smoking pot can make you gay or turn you into an ax murderer. I’m talking about those more lingering concerns that Nancy Reagan fretted about and which, despite quantum leaps in scientific knowledge and medical research, President Obama’s Administration hopes you will too.

Full Story Here: Greg Campbell: 8 Myths About Marijuana.

Sister Simone Campbell Fires Back At Vatican Criticism

The head of a Catholic lobbying group is fighting back against criticism from the Vatican.

“I’ve no idea what they’re talking about,” said Sister Simone Campbell told the BBC. “Our role is to live the gospel with those who live on the margins of our society: the hungry, the poor, the ill. That’s all we do.”

Campbell was responding to charges that her group, NETWORK, is engaging “corporate dissent.” The Vatican ordered an investigation of U.S. nun group Leadership Conference of Women Religious and its ties to NETWORK, who supported President Obama’s health care reform push. The Vatican accused the Leadership Conference of promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Full Story Here: Sister Simone Campbell Fires Back At Vatican Criticism.

Citigroup CEO, Directors Sued For Outsized Executive Pay Packages

Days after being rebuked by shareholders, Citigroup Inc Chief Executive Vikram Pandit and the bank’s directors have been sued for allegedly awarding outsized pay to top executives.

The complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court accuses directors of breaching their fiduciary duties by awarding more than $54 million of compensation in 2011 to the executives, including $15 million to Pandit, though the bank’s performance did not necessarily justify it.

At Citigroup’s annual meeting on Tuesday, about 55 percent of shareholders participating in an advisory vote rejected Pandit’s pay package. That marked the first time that investors had rejected a compensation plan at a major U.S. bank.

That vote “has cast doubt on the board’s decision-making process, as well as the accuracy and truthfulness of its public statements,” the complaint said. “Absent this (lawsuit), the majority will of the company’s stockholders shall be rendered meaningless.”

Full Story Here: Citigroup CEO, Directors Sued For Outsized Executive Pay Packages.

FBI: Hundreds Of Thousands May Lose Internet In July

For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.

Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.

The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they’re infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won’t be able to connect to the Internet.

Most victims don’t even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.

Full Story Here: FBI: Hundreds Of Thousands May Lose Internet In July.

The Koch Brothers Exposed

If the Koch brothers didn’t exist, the left would have to invent them. They’re the plutocrats from central casting – oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape, or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their profits.

But no need to invent – Charles and David Koch are the real deal. Over the past 30-some years, they’ve poured more than 100 million dollars into a sprawling network of foundations, think tanks, front groups, advocacy organizations, lobbyists and GOP lawmakers, all to the glory of their hard-core libertarian agenda. They don’t oppose big government so much as government – taxes, environmental protections, safety-net programs, public education: the whole bit. (By all accounts, the Kochs are true believers; they really buy that road-to-serfdom stuff about the the holiness of free markets. Still, you can’t help but notice how neatly their philosophy lines up with their business interests.) They like to think of elected politicians as merely “actors playing out a script,” and themselves as supplying “the themes and words for the scripts.” Imagine Karl Rove’s strategic cunning, crossed with Ron Paul’s screw-the-poor ideology, and hooked up to Warren Buffett’s checking account, and you’re halfway there.

Full Story Here: The Koch Brothers Exposed | Julian Brookes | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

Scott Walker Recall: Republicans May Vote In Democratic Primary, GOP State Senator Says

A top Republican lawmaker in Wisconsin has suggested that GOP voters may cause mischief at the polls in May, when Democratic voters pick the candidate who will face Gov. Scott Walker (R) in the recall’s general election in June.

Wisconsin has open primaries, allowing voters of any party to vote in any election. So Republicans are free to vote in Democratic primaries, and vice-versa.

There are currently four Democratic candidates competing in the May primary. Former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett are considered frontrunners, with state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout (D-Alma) and Secretary of State Doug La Follette also in the race.

Full Story Here: Scott Walker Recall: Republicans May Vote In Democratic Primary, GOP State Senator Says.

European Missile Defense Program Coming Under New Scrutiny

Major delays, cost overruns and critical technological problems are plaguing a missile defense system designed to protect the United States and Europe from an Iranian attack, Pentagon advisers and government investigators say about one of President Barack Obama’s top military programs.

The reports cast doubt on the shield, a politically sensitive issue at home and in relations with Russia. They say missile interceptors are running into production glitches, radars are underpowered and sensors cannot distinguish between warheads and other objects.

A report by the Defense Science Board, an advisory group to the Defense Department, came out late last year but received little notice. While it concludes there are “no fundamental roadblocks” to the system, it points out big problems without saying how they can be fixed.

Board members declined repeated requests for comment. Outside

Full Story Here: European Missile Defense Program Coming Under New Scrutiny.

I’m Big Bird and I Don’t Approve This Message

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about how the media giants who own your local commercial television and radio stations have been striking like startled rattlesnakes at an FCC proposal that would shed a light on who’s buying our elections. The proposed new rule would make it easier to find out who’s bankrolling political attack ads by posting the information online.

The stations already have the data and are required by law to make it public to anyone who asks. But you can get only it by going to the station and asking for the actual paper documents – what’s known as “the public file.” Stations don’t want to put it online because — you guessed it — that would make it too easy for you to find out who’s putting up the cash for all those ads polluting your hometown airwaves.

If approved, the new rule would require the ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates in the top 50 markets to make their files on political advertising available on line immediately. Other stations would have a two-year grace period.

In the meantime, the mighty giants of broadcasting have been fighting back. A number of senators serving the industry have spoken up against the proposal and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) — led by their top lobbyist and president, the frozen food millionaire and former Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith – have been meeting with commissioners urging them to scuttle its proposal or at least water it down until it means nothing.

Full Story Here: I’m Big Bird and I Don’t Approve This Message | Common Dreams.

Wikileaks to Break ‘Bank Blockade’ with US Foundation

Whistleblowers seek to restore funding 500 days after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal blocked donations

US backers of transparency organization Wikileaks have announced plans to establish a foundation for the site seeking a way to allow donors to give money to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks once again. Wikileaks has undergone over 500 days of a “banking blockade” after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal blocked donations from going to the website.

WikiLeaks has lost 95% of its donation income since the blockade was called by US senator Joe Lieberman.

“Supporters based in the US are now in talks with Assange to establish a US-based foundation aimed at funding organizations cut off by private companies in situations with first amendment implications,” reports The Guardian.

Full Story Here: Wikileaks to Break ‘Bank Blockade’ with US Foundation | Common Dreams.

“Making It Right” After BP Oil Disaster Is Up to Us – Not BP

Grand Isle, Louisiana. When I returned to Cordova, Alaska, in December 2010 after my first six-month stint in the Gulf coast communities impacted by the BP oil disaster, fishermen greeted me wryly. “See you found your way home.”

Fishermen were interested in stories because even then, twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, there was still no sense of closure. Exxon never “made it right.” How could Exxon “make right” family lives shattered by divorce, suicide, or strange illnesses stemming from the “cleanup” work? Or the sense of betrayal by the Supreme Court to hold Exxon to its promise to “pay all reasonable claims”?

As fishermen listened to the Gulf stories, one asked, “Do they know how f—ed they are yet?” No, I explained, they’ve only lost one fishing season and they just now are filing claims for the first deadline.

Full Story Here: Riki Ott: “Making It Right” After BP Oil Disaster Is Up to Us – Not BP.

Chorus of Anger says Little Learned from BP’s Gulf Disaster

Though BP has agreed to pay billions of dollars in damages, most believe that accountability has been slim compared to the still untold damage that was caused — much of which may not be fully realized for years to come. “BP has already tested the effectiveness of lesser consequences,” says Abrahm Lustgarten, the Polk Award-winning environmental reporter for Pro Publica, “and its track record proves that the most severe punishments the courts and the United States government have been willing to mete out amount to a slap on the wrist.”

Marine life in the gulf and the communities which dot its coast are rife with problems. As Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA and Aaron Viles, Deputy Director of Gulf Restoration Network write today: “Throughout the foodchain, warning signs are accumulating. Dolphins are sick and dying. Important forage fish are plagued with gill and developmental damage. Deepwater species like snapper have been stricken with lesions, and their reefs are losing biodiversity. Coastal communities are struggling with changes to the fisheries they rely upon. Hard-hit oyster reefs aren’t coming back and sport fish like speckled trout have disappeared from some of their traditional haunts. BP’s oily fingerprints continue to mar the landscape and destroy habitats.”

“People should be aware that the oil is still there,”

Full Story Here: Chorus of Anger says Little Learned from BP’s Gulf Disaster | Common Dreams.

Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency

News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

But now many of the country’s biggest media companies, which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations, are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.

The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism — NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and dozens of local TV news outlets — are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure that would require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet.

Full Story Here: Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency – ProPublica.

The Truth about the American Condition

The United States may still be a military superpower, but it is no longer a country that controls its own fate. Shockingly, much of the American public is deluded about this fact. Americans are deceived into believing that they benefit economically from outsourcing, offshoring production and an unprecedented trade deficit. Free trade proponents emphasize the lower prices of imported products to negate the lost incomes and careers destroyed by cheap, foreign labor. They allege that the trade deficit means that we get to consume more of the world’s goods than we produce—with the added benefit of foreign entities paying for our excess consumption by investing in America.

But the truth of the matter is that “foreign investment” in the United States today consists of Asian central banks, mainly from Japan and China. These banks use earnings from massive trade surpluses to prop up the U.S. dollar by purchasing U.S. government bonds.

By doing so, Asia keeps its goods and services cheap, thus worsening the U.S. trade deficit. Washington allows this because these countries use their export surpluses to finance the U.S. budget deficit.

Full Story Here: The Truth about the American Condition | Economy In Crisis.

More Proof that Selling Public Assets Creates Big Problems

Citizens were outraged when Chicago struck a deal to lease its parking meters to a private corporation in 2009, but that was not the first time the city had sold off public assets for a quick cash injection. In 2006 the city leased its parking garages to the same conglomerate that later won the rights to the city’s parking meters. These sales have caused parking prices to skyrocket, and citizens have felt the pinch. Now the City of Chicago itself may join the ranks of those hurt by this deal. The conglomerate who leased the parking garages has brought a massive lawsuit against the city for allowing new private parking garages to be built downtown in violation of the lease agreement. This is further evidence that selling off public assets is a short-sighted fix for budget problems.

Chicago Loop Parking LLC signed a $563 million, 99 year deal for the city’s four downtown parking garages six years ago. An important provision of the deal stated that the city would not allow any competing garages to be built nearby. In the time since, a new private garage has gone up just one block from one of the leased garages. This has angered the investor group, and they have filed a $200 million lawsuit against the city for damages. While the deal may have seemed profitable for the city at first, a $200 million settlement would change the dynamic considerably.

Full Story Here: More Proof that Selling Public Assets Creates Big Problems | Economy In Crisis.

Vivian Norris: Fukushima’s Nuclear Nightmare Is Far From Over (or the Disturbingly Deadly Act of Placing Profits Before People)

The visit to Japan some twenty days after the catastrophic earthquake, horrific tsunami and resulting nuclear accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi site by French president Nicolas Sarkozy is described as having been focused on the continued sale of deadly MOX (a “dirty” mixture of Plutonium and Depleted Uranium). In the article, the claim is made that the French are now seen in Japan as “chi no shonin” or merchants of death. The false assertion that the French team arrived in Japan to show solidarity with those who had so greatly suffered is a joke. This is about a powerful nuclear industry protecting its own, and reaping profits from not only the sale of radioactive materials, but also winning extraordinarily lucrative contracts for the cleanup and disposal of the nuclear waste and what is left of the reactors at Fukushima. In other words, as in the oil industry where companies such as Halliburton make money off the building, operating and selling of materials to the oil industry, when disaster strikes, they also make billions off the cleanup. It’s called a vertical monopoly. In other words, even disasters are lucrative. Just take a look at all of the funds investing on the negative outcomes of our common future if you want to see how the wealthiest are hedging their bets by betting on the worst of the worst kinds of outcomes for humanity and our planet.

This is very similar to what has been going on in the financial sector, where someone is going to find profits as a result of the swapping, debt-incentivizing economy. But these “crises” do not help the majority, they help the minority, those who pocket the profits. In this case, the “fallout” (pardon the pun) from the Fukushima catastrophe is that the French “merchants of death” will rake in profits in the billions (one estimate from a nuclear industry insider says up to half a trillion) dollars and contracts lasting decades. No wonder the French president and his team were on that plane before any other head of state. Yet they did not visit Fukushima itself as did the French Green party candidate, Eva Joly, who actually went to the area and met with people and officials directly impacted by the events. Greenpeace also went in right away to take real measurements that official agencies were either not taking, or simply not reporting.

Full Story Here: Vivian Norris: Fukushima’s Nuclear Nightmare Is Far From Over (or the Disturbingly Deadly Act of Placing Profits Before People).

U.S. Senator Says Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 4 Could Spew More Radiation Than March 11 Accident –

ust how dangerous is the situation at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant? Very, according to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, a senior member of the Senate’s energy committee who toured the plant earlier this month.

Another big earthquake or tsunami could send Fukushima Daiichi’s fragile reactor buildings tumbling down, resulting in “an even greater release of radiation than the initial accident,” Mr. Wyden warned in a Monday letter to Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki.

In particular, Japan isn’t moving fast enough to remove dangerous nuclear-fuel rods from the reactors, and the U.S. should offer its help to speed things along, Mr. Wyden urged, in letters to Ambassador Fujisaki, as well as U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko.

Full Story Here: U.S. Senator Says Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 4 Could Spew More Radiation Than March 11 Accident – Japan Real Time – WSJ.

Japanese Trying to Stabilize Radioactive Fuel Pools, But Are Moving Too Slowly … By a Decade

Tepco Moving To Secure Spent Fuel Pools … But They May Be a Decade Too Late

Scientists say that the big Japanese earthquake last year has increased the chance of a big earthquake near the Fukushima reactors.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February:

The heft from last year’s powerful March 11 earthquake shocked a sleeping fault line close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant back to life, according to a new scientific study. And based on their findings, the scientists who conducted the study warn the battered nuclear power plant should brace itself for another big one.

The new study from the European Geosciences Union, published on Tuesday, cautions that the seismic risk at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has increased because the magnitude 9 earthquake jolted the plates underneath the area into a more precarious position. But that’s not all: The real problem may be the fluids forming as a result of the Pacific plate digging under the adjacent Okhotsk plate. Japan’s northern region lies directly above the Okhotsk plate.

According to the scientists, the fluids threaten to swim up toward fault zones, where they can soak into the brittle crust of the earth along the fault line, reducing friction, pulling the fault lines apart and triggering another large earthquake.

While the epicenter of the March 11 quake occurred about 100 miles away from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the scientists say the next big earth-shaker could be centered much closer. The scientists concluded it would be wise to strengthen the plant’s infrastructure accordingly. The report did not predict when the earthquake will hit, except to say it would be in the “near future.”

Full Story Here: Japanese Trying to Stabilize Radioactive Fuel Pools, But Are Moving Too Slowly … By a Decade.

Farm group seeks U.S. halt on dangerous crop chemicals | Reuters

A coalition of more than 2,000 U.S. farmers and food companies said Wednesday it is taking legal action to force government regulators to analyze potential problems with proposed biotech crops and the weed-killing chemicals to be sprayed over them.

Dow AgroSciences, a unit of Dow Chemical, and Monsanto Co. are among several global chemical and seed companies racing to roll out combinations of genetically altered crops and new herbicides designed to work with the crops as a way to counter rapidly spreading herbicide-resistant weeds that are choking millions of acres of U.S. farmland.

Dow and Monsanto say the new chemical combinations and new crops that tolerate those chemicals are badly needed by corn, soybean and cotton farmers as weeds increasingly resist treatments of the most commonly used herbicide – glyphosate-based Roundup.

Full Story Here: Farm group seeks U.S. halt on dangerous crop chemicals | Reuters.

Lawsuit: Former Bain execs fired employees for not being Mormon

Former executives from Bain Capital, a company founded by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have been accused of firing six out of seven members of a management team for not belonging to the Mormon church.

David McCurdy and four other co-plaintiffs are suing Sorenson Capital Partners (SCP), Care Holding Co., Care Senior Living, and SCP Care Acquisition because they say the private equity firm fired them from their jobs at Care Senior Living because they were not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), according to Courthouse News Service.

“Despite the promise of 5-years employment, in mid-November 2011, after only 7 months Plaintiffs were told that their employment would be terminated effective February 2012,” the lawsuit (PDF), which was filed in federal court in Oregon, states.

Full Story Here: Lawsuit: Former Bain execs fired employees for not being Mormon | The Raw Story.

Study: GOP guests dominate Sunday morning talk shows

If you feel like the Sunday morning political talk shows are overrun by Republican politicians, their surrogates and other right-wing spinners, you’re actually right, according to a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group.

FAIR’s magazine, Extra! tracked the breakdown of guests featured in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions on the four main Sunday morning talk shows, ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday” from June 2011 to March 2012. The results skewed heavily Republican, white and male, with only token representation by blacks and Latinos, and virtually no appearances by guests outside of one of the two national political parties.

Extra! points to November 6 of 2011 as typical of the ideological breakdown of the Sunday shows. CBS’s Bob Schieffer welcomed “a cross section of Republicans” to discuss the issues facing the primary that week. On ABC’s “This Week,” lone liberal Arianna Huffington was featured alongside conservatives Matthew Dowd, George Will and Niall Ferguson. “Meet the Press” featured Republican operative Alex Castellanos with Wall Street Journal conservative scribe Kimberly Strassel alongside a pair of middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists.

Full Story Here: Study: GOP guests dominate Sunday morning talk shows | The Raw Story.

Supreme Court: Law says organizations cannot be sued for torture

The United States Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a law on the books since 1991 precludes organizations, both political and corporate, from sued for torture or murder outside of the U.S.

In a unanimous ruling on Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority (PDF), Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the careful text of the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1991, the way it is written “convinces us that Congress did not extend liability to organizations, sovereign or not.”

She added: “There are no doubt valid arguments for such an extension. But Congress has seen fit to proceed in more modest steps in the Act, and it is not the province of this branch to do otherwise.”

Full Story Here: Supreme Court: Law says organizations cannot be sued for torture | The Raw Story.

Republicans Advance Ryan Budget Using An ‘Unconstitutional Legislative Trick’

In 2010, Republicans accused Democrats of “rushing their massive government takeover of health care through Congress” and considering an “unconstitutional legislative trick” called deem and pass for advancing the measure.

“We’ve seen all week, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader [Harry] Reid continuing to scheme and plot trying to find some way to get their big government takeover of health care enacted,” then-Republican Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in January of 2010, setting the tone for the Republican outrage. Shortly thereafter, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) introduced a resolution stating “that the House disapproves of the malfeasant manner in which the Democratic Leadership has thereby discharged the duties of their offices” and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) took to the floor and accused Democrats of “greasing the skids for an abuse of the budget procedure.” “The arrogance, the paternalism, the condescension to the American people is just breathtaking,” Ryan declared. “This is not just a simple fixer bill either. This is the linchpin for healthcare.”

Well, what a difference two years make. Despite vociferously opposing “deem and pass” in 2010 — a tactic the Democrats ultimately abandoned — Republicans are now relying on the procedure to advance their budget resolution. Yesterday, the GOP claimed that “deem and pass” was necessary to “set in motion a 2013 fiscal plan in the absence of an action or agreement with the other chamber” and approved the measure in a vote of 228-184:

Full Story Here: Republicans Advance Ryan Budget Using An ‘Unconstitutional Legislative Trick’ | ThinkProgress.

Legacy Of BP Oil Spill: Eyeless Shrimp And Fish With Lesions

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded nearly two years ago to the day, beginning an oil spill that lasted three months and released some two hundred million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. BP may have declared their mission accomplished, but the results of the spill are still trickling out.

The latest? Shrimp with no eyes, fish with lesions, and clawless crabs.

Scientists believe that shrimp, fish, and crabs in the gulf have been deformed by the chemical released to disperse oil during the spill. Fishers in the area say that they’ve been noticing deformities on their catches since. Al Jazeera reports:

“At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” [Louisiana commercial fisher Tracy] Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

Full Story Here: Legacy Of BP Oil Spill: Eyeless Shrimp And Fish With Lesions | ThinkProgress.

GOP Rep. Tiberi Defends Tax Hikes For The Poor Because They ‘Don’t Have Skin In The Game’

Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, defended the House Republican budget at a tax policy summit yesterday — as well as the broader idea that taxes on the wealthy need to be cut while taxes on lower-income Americans should be raised. When asked by ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes to square the GOP’s explicit desire to cut taxes for the rich with the fact that it’s budget would raise taxes on low-income working Americans, Tiberi responded by saying that to do otherwise would be to “beat up on people who are trying to be successful.” He then made the case for raising taxes on the poor by lamenting that they don’t have any “skin in the game”:

TIBERI: I think the federal government has an obligation to make sure that we deal with people who have difficulties. But at the same time, the tax code shouldn’t be used as a tool to just bring revenue in and beat up people who are trying to be successful…So I think we’ve got to lower the tax rates, both for corporations and for American individuals. And let them try to grow our economy and grow jobs so people like you and me can have an opportunity to work.

KEYES: But you’re only talking about lowering tax rates on individuals in the upper income areas. You’re talking about raising taxes…

Full Story Here: GOP Rep. Tiberi Defends Tax Hikes For The Poor Because They ‘Don’t Have Skin In The Game’ | ThinkProgress.

GOP Proposal Would Take Coverage Away From 350,000 People, Disproportionately Hurt Women

Since passing the House Budget using a legislative tactic they’ve previously described as “unconstitutional,” Republicans have begun their appropriations process by marking up legislation that would cut millions from federal safety net programs and middle class health care benefits in order to finance their $3 trillion giveaway to corporations and the richest Americans.

Under the Republican-approved budget, for instance, the House Ways & Means committee is instructed to reduce the deficit by $53 billion between 2013 and 2022 and members are not wasting any time going after the benefits that lower and middle class Americans rely on and block granting social programs to the states. First on the chopping block: are health care subsidies for middle class families earning up to $90,000 a year who will purchase insurance in the state-based exchanges, child care and related assistance for 4.4 million children, Meals On Wheels and other home-based services for nearly 1.7 million older Americans, and transportation services for almost 1 million disabled individuals.

During this morning’s hearing, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) pressed the Joint Committee on Taxation on the consequences of the GOP’s health subsidy proposal — which would require families to pay back the government if their incomes fluctuate and dissuade people from claiming credits in the first place. Under current law, the premium support is paid out as an advance refundable amount to insurance companies based on an estimate of annual income (the assistance is available, on a sliding scale, to families of four making up to $90,000 a year). Should a family’s income change during the year, it will have to pay the government back a specific dollar amount come tax season. Congress has increased the amount since the law passed and under the current Republican proposal, “an individual would be liable for the full amount of the overpayment.”

Full Story Here: GOP Proposal Would Take Coverage Away From 350,000 People, Disproportionately Hurt Women | ThinkProgress.

Mitt Romney Lies About John Kerry’s Tax Returns

Kerry released 20 years worth – not 2 – Mit lied….again

Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign have offered a misleading explanation for why the likely Republican presidential nominee will only release one additional year of tax return data during the rest of this campaign.

The topic of additional disclosure has come up in various interviews and press events during the past few days, as President Barack Obama’s campaign has demanded that Romney release more than his 2010 and 2011 tax returns, the latter of which will become public sometime in the next six months. At each interval the Romney camp has had a ready answer: He’s meeting the same standard prior candidates, including Democrats, have met.

“John Kerry released two years of taxes,” Romney recently told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. “I’ve released one already, put the estimate out for the next year. We’ll have two years of taxes.”

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Misled About John Kerry’s Tax Returns.

A President Who Doesn’t Even Try

Is Obama Kowtowing to the Right? Or Is He One of Them?

The President’s progressive critics blame him for continuing and expanding upon his Republican predecessor’s policies. His supporters point to the obstructionist, Republican-controlled Congress. What can Obama do? He’s being stymied at every turn.

The first problem with the it’s-the-GOP’s-fault defense is that it asks voters to suffer short-term memory loss. In 2009, you probably recall, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. By a sizeable majority. They even had a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. His approval ratings were through the roof; even many Republicans who had voted against him took a liking to him. The media, in his pocket, wondered aloud whether the Republican Party could ever recover. “Rarely, if ever, has a President entered office with so much political wind at his back,” Tim Carney wrote for the Evans-Novak Political Report shortly after the inauguration.

If Obama had wanted to pursue a progressive agenda—banning foreclosures, jailing bankers, closing Guantánamo, stopping the wars, pushing for the public option he promised in his healthcare plan—he could have. He had ample political capital, yet chose not to spend it.

Full Story Here: A President Who Doesn’t Even Try | Common Dreams.

OPS: BO has been and is, a moderate republican.

How the Goldman Vampire Squid Captured Europe

Ellen Brown :-:

The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers.

In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress.  But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair.  Paulson’s plea for a permanent bailout fund—the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.

By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500 billion Euro bailout for European banks without asking anyone’s permission.  And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press.  The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.

Full Story Here: How the Goldman Vampire Squid Captured Europe | Common Dreams.

How the Goldman Vampire Squid Captured Europe

The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers.

Full Story Here: How the Goldman Vampire Squid Captured Europe | Common Dreams.

The Citizens United Gang Executes a Corporate Coup D’etat

by Jim Hightower :-:

The Lone Ranger was a masked man who was out to bring bad guys to justice. Ed Conard is a masked man who is out to bring bad guys to power.

A multimillionaire financier who was a top henchman in Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s old outfit of corporate plunderers, Conard is currently riding with the small but fearsome Citizens United Gang, which has taken over presidential politics in our country.

Unlike the James Gang, the Dalton Boys and other robbers of yore who stole from banks and railroads, these thieves are bankers and high-rolling railroaders. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s edict in the infamous Citizens United case, they are now able to use unlimited amounts of their corporate wealth to create Super PACs, which are proving to be devastating weapons against democracy.

Full Story Here: The Citizens United Gang by Jim Hightower on Creators.com – A Syndicate Of Talent.

Obama Echoes Bush, Sets Plan for Polar Bear Extinction

“President Obama’s proposal for these magnificent and imperiled animals is a gift to Big Oil”

The Obama Administration issued a proposed rule yesterday that disregards the effects of greenhouse gases on polar bear habitat leading one conservation group to say that the rule echoes former President George W. Bush’s plan, and that it will lead to the extinction of polar bears.

Noting that polar bears are only on the endangered species list precisely because of loss of habitat caused by greenhouse gases generated from activities outside the Arctic, the proposed rule excluding activities outside the range of polar bears from regulations will lead to the bears’ demise.

Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity called the rule “complete doublespeak,” the Associated Press reports.  “It’s saying, ‘Here is a rule necessary for the conservation of the polar bear,’ yet the only thing it does is exempt from regulation the overwhelming threat to the species.”

Full Story Here: Obama Echoes Bush, Sets Plan for Polar Bear Extinction | Common Dreams.

Oklahoma State Senator Justifies Need For ‘Open Carry’ Gun Law Due To Threat From Wild Turkeys

In Oklahoma, state lawmakers are poised to enact an “open carry” law which would allow residents with a permit to display their guns in grocery stores, libraries, and anywhere else in public. The measure is expected to be passed by the legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin.

Oklahoma law currently requires that people must generally conceal their handguns. In 2010, then-Gov. Brad Henry (D) vetoed an open carry bill because state police expressed concern that it would make it hard for them “to distinguish criminals from law-abiding citizens.” Keith Barenberg, the president of the Oklahoma State Troopers Association, maintains his concern: “Law-enforcement officers will be that much more jumpy and nervous if they see a gun.” And such confrontations could lead to loss of innocent life. As Norman McNickle, president of the Oklahoma Association of Police Chiefs, put it: “How does the first arriving officers know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? It makes their job exponentially harder.”

Proponents of the “open carry” legislation, like Tim Gillespie, director of the Oklahoma 2nd Amendment Association, claim the measure is necessary because “we live in a dangerous world.” So dangerous, according to Republican state Senator Ralph Shortey, that people need the open display of guns to help fend off attacks from wild turkeys:

Full Story Here: Oklahoma State Senator Justifies Need For ‘Open Carry’ Gun Law Due To Threat From Wild Turkeys | ThinkProgress.

Tennessee Senate Approves Bill To Warn Students That Hand-Holding Is A ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’ | ThinkProgress

Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.

Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.

Since the bill specifically bans teachers from “demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws could result in a lawsuit, as Hunter from Daily Kos notes:

Full Story Here: Tennessee Senate Approves Bill To Warn Students That Hand-Holding Is A ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’ | ThinkProgress.

What Obama’s Tax Returns Tell Us: His Taxes Would Go Up Under His Own Plan

President Obama and Vice President Biden today released their 2011 tax returns, ahead of Tuesday’s tax filing deadline. The returns show that Obama paid a 20.5 percent tax rate last year on $789,674 in income. About half of that income came from Obama’s presidential salary, while the rest came from book royalties.

As White House Press Secretary Jay Carney noted in a blog post, “under the President’s own tax proposals, including the expiration of the high-income tax cuts and limitations on the value of tax preferences for high-income households, he would pay more in taxes.” Obama, indeed, would see his tax rate go up due to his called for expiration of the Bush tax cuts above $250,000 in income. Obama would not, however, have been affected by the Buffett Rule — which he is stumping for this week — in 2011, as he did not have $1 million in income.

Full Story Here: What Obama’s Tax Returns Tell Us: His Taxes Would Go Up Under His Own Plan | ThinkProgress.

Ablow: Working Moms Like Rosen Despise Themselves

In a new column rife with his usual brand of audacious conjecture, Keith Ablow of Fox News’ Medical A-Team takes aim at Hilary Rosen and all working moms (and arguably all feminists), suggesting they are “anti-gender” and “despise the parts of themselves” drawn to motherhood:

These “anti-gender” women have it in for anyone who embraces her femininity, maternal instincts and capacity to nurture as their highest priority — postponing or passing up other laudable opportunities to work at, say, a law firm or as a marketing executive. They despise the notion that some women may indeed be drawn — instinctively and happily — toward creating special and loving environments in which to raise their children, while spending all their available time sustaining and enriching those environments and those children.

They despise the parts of themselves that may be drawn to such roles, as well. That’s why women like Hilary Rosen make such outlandish statements, to begin with. They’re essentially talking to themselves — albeit, with the rest of the world forced to listen — trying to reassure themselves that their own choices in life weren’t only equally as good as those of other women, but better. Far, far better. They feel like their choices are better because they have thrown off the shackles of roles that were once “expected” of them, leaving them not only freer than, but superior to, those women who don’t feel enslaved at home, but feel fulfilled at home.

Full Story Here: Ablow: Working Moms Like Rosen Despise Themselves | ThinkProgress.

Bank Of America Forecloses On Homeowner With Disabled Daughter

A California woman is facing foreclosure from Bank of America after taking out a loan to make her home more accessible for her disabled daughter, shining light on yet another improper foreclosure practice perpetuated by America’s largest banks.

Dirma Rodriguez fell behind on her original loan after spending thousands of dollars installing tile floors and a wheelchair ramp to make it easier for Ingrid Ortiz, her daughter who has cerebral palsy, to move around the house. When Rodriguez fell behind on her original loan, Bank of America offered her a trial modification. Even though Rodriguez kept up with those payments for more than a year, the bank sold her home at auction, and the new owner is pursuing eviction, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Rodriguez took out a loan to retrofit her house for her special-needs daughter. After she fell behind on her payments, the Bank of America lowered her monthly obligation, but then sold the house at a foreclosure auction last September. The new owner, a house flipper from El Segundo called West Ridge Rentals, moved to evict the family. [...]

Full Story Here: Bank Of America Forecloses On Homeowner With Disabled Daughter.

Does Mitt Romney Support Paid Sick Days?

Our guest blogger is Melissa Boteach, Director of the Half in Ten project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Raising children is hard work. And no one is arguing that Ann Romney — who has been the center of attention since Democratic strategist Hillary Rosen contended that she “never worked a day in her life” — or any other stay-at-home mom doesn’t deserve our respect. But the question is not whether child-rearing is work. It’s whether the policies championed by the candidates afford the same respect and deference to the moms who have no choice but to balance the demands of being a breadwinner with the demands of motherhood.

Ann Romney has tweeted, “All moms are entitled to choose their path.” But unfortunately for low-wage working moms and nearly half of private sector workers, the” choice” is either “go to work and send my sick kid to school” or “stay at home with my sick child and risk losing my job or needed income.” That’s a choice no parent should have to make. Does Mitt Romney agree?

Women are now half of all workers on U.S. payrolls and breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of all families. Their incomes are sorely needed to provide basic economic security for their families.

Yet the U.S. also faces high rates of work-family conflict with few laws to support working families. One of the biggest culprits is workers’ lack of paid sick days to care for themselves, an elderly parent, or a sick kid – an issue that has been largely absent in the election debates.

Full Story Here: Does Mitt Romney Support Paid Sick Days? | ThinkProgress.

How the Trade Deficit Kills Jobs

While many politicians are now blaming the lack of jobs on the federal budget deficit, it is actually America’s trade deficit that is to blame for many of our problems. The U.S. is still millions of jobs behind where it was when the Great Recession started, and the country now has less people employed than it did in 2001. The economy has been unable to create jobs due to America’s massive trade deficit caused by failed economic policy.

Since 1975, the U.S. has imported more goods than it has exported. In 2010 alone, the U.S. had a deficit of $478 billion in global trade. A large portion of this is oil imports, but consumer goods are another area where the U.S. imports virtually everything.

Trade policy that encourages businesses to relocate production of goods to other nations without penalizing them for selling those goods back to this nation has resulted in millions of lost jobs. White House estimates show that for every $1 billion in goods exported, the economy creates 5,000 jobs. Unfortunately, that street goes both ways—data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that for every $1 billion in goods imported, the economy LOSES 9,000 jobs.

Full Story Here: How the Trade Deficit Kills Jobs | Economy In Crisis.

Trade Deal with Korea is Stacked Against Us

Some free trade advocates misleadingly say that free trade deals put us on a level playing field with other countries. This is a view that proponents have tried to attach to the recently enacted Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). Some who export to Korea even seem to think this is true. KORUS did remove some tariffs for American exporters, but it is far from a level playing field. Due to export limits and, more importantly, Korea’s 10 percent Value Added Tax (VAT), American exporters are still at a huge disadvantage. Meanwhile, South Korea obtained unfettered access to our economy. This will be yet another lopsided agreement that destroys American jobs.

Calling KORUS a free trade agreement is misleading. Under the agreement we opened our borders almost completely to Korean-made goods, but they have restricted many of our exports. While we allow Korean cars such as Hyundais and Kias to enter our country in unlimited numbers, American automakers are limited in how many cars they can ship to South Korea. Ford, Chrysler and GM can only ship a combined 75,000 cars to South Korea–Korea regularly sells over 600,000 cars a year in the United States. The U.S. also provides a much bigger market in general, as our population is more than six times larger than South Korea’s.

Full Story Here: Trade Deal with Korea is Stacked Against Us | Economy In Crisis.

Why Men And Women Can’t Be ‘Just Friends’

When I was younger, my Dad used to tell me: “Boys don’t want to be your friend.” He then left the rest to my imagination.

At the time, I didn’t agree. I thought: I can crack a good joke, I know how to shoot a hoop, and I’m a cheerful person (but not in an annoying way). What kind of boy wouldn’t want to be around that kind of girl?

Turns out, my Dad was right. Not to be all “Samantha Brick” about it, but in my experience, single, heterosexual men aren’t actively looking for an exclusively platonic relationship with a woman they find sexually attractive. This of course is not a revolutionary concept. In fact, it seems pretty natural to me.

Full Story Here: Natasha Scripture: Friends or ‘Menemies?’.

Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They’ve Been In 100 Years : It’s All Politics

When President Obama recently complained to news media executives about their ostensibly even-handed “pox on both of your houses” coverage of the partisan battles in Washington, it might have seemed like, well, a partisan shot from a Democratic president.

After all, his complaint was that the GOP had moved so far right, and intransigently so, that it was wrong to create a false “equivalence” by blaming both parties equally for the Washington gridlock. To a skeptic that comment, coming from a Democrat, sounded suspiciously partisan itself.

But while the president was making the kind of argument you would expect of the nation’s top Democrat, he actually had the support of science — well at least political science research that maps that rightward GOP shift.

Full Story Here: Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They’ve Been In 100 Years : It’s All Politics : NPR.

GOP Senate Candidate Slams Fair Pay Act: ‘That Thing Is A Nuisance’

Former Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra, who is now running to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), weighed in on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on Thursday, saying the law was a “nuisance” that shouldn’t be in place.

The issue came up during a campaign event in Royal Oak, Mich. An attendee asked whether Hoekstra would support or “work to repeal” the law if elected to office.

“Will, you know, will repealing it be a priority? If you came back and said, you know, that’s really the thing that’s hurting my business the most. My guess is there are other things that we can do that have a higher priority in terms of what I, what I believe might need to be done. I think you know we need to create — that thing is a nuisance. It shouldn’t be the law,” replied Hoekstra.

Full Story Here: Pete Hoekstra On Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: ‘That Thing Is A Nuisance’.

Tell us more about Romney’s ‘private’ views

ROMNEY ADVISER: MITT’S ‘PRIVATE’ VIEW DIFFERENT FROM PUBLIC COMMENTS

E.J. Dionne Jr. :-:

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece on Thursday, the veteran conservative journalist Fred Barnes offered Mitt Romney some advice for improving his campaign, including the sensible (and one might also say humane) suggestion that on immigration, the presumptive nominee “would be wise to move away from his harsh position in the primaries.”

Then Barnes included this fascinating sentence: “According to a Romney adviser, his private view of immigration isn’t as anti-immigrant as he often sounded.”

What exactly does that mean? Does it mean Romney said things that he doesn’t really believe? What are we supposed to make of a candidate who takes certain public positions to court one group of voters — and then tries to reassure an entirely different group of voters by leaking the fact that he doesn’t really believe what he said to win votes from the first group? How many other “private” positions does Romney hold that we don’t know about?

Full Story Here: Tell us more about Romney’s ‘private’ views – PostPartisan – The Washington Post.

Stop the nuclear industry welfare programme

Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander :-:

After 60 years, the taxpayer should not continue to subsidise multibillion-dollar corporations in the nuclear energy sector

The US is facing a $15 trillion national debt, and there is no shortage of opinions about how to move toward deficit reduction in the federal budget. One topic you will not hear discussed very often on Capitol Hill is the idea of ending one of the oldest American welfare programmes – the extraordinary amount of corporate welfare going to the nuclear energy industry.

Many in Congress talk of getting “big government off the back of private industry”. Here’s an industry we’d like to get off the backs of the taxpayers.

As, respectively, a senator who is the longest-serving independent in Congress and the president of an independent and non-partisan budget watchdog organisation, we do not necessarily agree on everything when it comes to energy and budget policy in the US. But one thing we strongly agree on is the need to end wasteful subsidies that prop up the nuclear industry. After 60 years, this industry should not require continued and massive corporate welfare. It is time for the nuclear power industry to stand on its own two feet.

Full Story Here: Stop the nuclear industry welfare programme | Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.