In the absence of enough political support to pass a strong public option at this time, a “trigger” for a strong public option should be considered for inclusion in health reform legislation whether or not a weak public option is included as a political compromise. Even the threat of such a plan being triggered offers the potential to affect market dynamics between insurers and providers.
Friday, November 27, 2009
New Report: Triggered Public Option Is Better Than The Existing Public Option Provisions
A new report from the Urban Institute argues that a “strong” public option — one that is triggered in the event that overall growth in national health spending exceeds a pre-determined target — may do more to control health care spending than the public option proposals offered in existing legislation:
From Dollars To Death Panels: How Republicans Distorted Debates On Capitol Hill
Brian Beutler | November 27, 2009, 8:42AM
With Thanksgiving recess now upon us, it seems an appropriate time to revisit the hysterical Republican whoppers and talking points about the Democratic party agenda that have dominated this Congress. Herewith a top-five list:All Politics Is Tribal
Obama's Afghanistan strategy should team our soldiers with their militias.
Posted Monday, Nov. 23, 2009, at 6:14 PM ET
Though it doesn't claim as much, Dexter Filkins' article in Sunday's New York Times, headlined "Afghan Militias Battle Taliban with Aid of U.S.," may offer a clue to where President Barack Obama's strategic review of the war is going.
Or let's put it this way: If, in the coming days, Obama does decide to deepen America's involvement in Afghanistan, and if his strategy bears no resemblance to the approach Filkins describes, it is almost certain to fail.
Filkins, one of the most intrepid war correspondents, reports that special-operations forces have begun to help anti-Taliban militias in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the insurgents are concentrated. These militias have risen up spontaneously in certain tribal groups, but U.S. commanders hope that they can use the example of these revolts "to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland."
Paul Krugman: Taxing the Speculators
Should we use taxes to deter financial speculation? Yes, say top British officials, who oversee the City of London, one of the world’s two great banking centers. Other European governments agree — and they’re right.
Unfortunately, United States officials — especially Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — are dead set against the proposal. Let’s hope they reconsider: a financial transactions tax is an idea whose time has come.
The dispute began back in August, when Adair Turner, Britain’s top financial regulator, called for a tax on financial transactions as a way to discourage “socially useless” activities. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, picked up on his proposal, which he presented at the Group of 20 meeting of leading economies this month.
Why is this a good idea? The Turner-Brown proposal is a modern version of an idea originally floated in 1972 by the late James Tobin, the Nobel-winning Yale economist. Tobin argued that currency speculation — money moving internationally to bet on fluctuations in exchange rates — was having a disruptive effect on the world economy. To reduce these disruptions, he called for a small tax on every exchange of currencies.
Understanding Our Hollow ‘Centrists’
By Joe Conason
The puzzling thing about politicians of either party who claim to be “centrist” or “moderate” is how much they sometimes sound like party-line right-wing Republicans. Distinguishing among these species of politicians can be almost impossible during the current struggle over health care reform, especially when a senator like Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas tries to explain herself.
Like so many of the Republicans they try to emulate, the conservative Democrats claim to worry about spending and deficits—except with respect to programs that benefit them, their favorite constituents or the lobbyists who pay their campaign expenses.
Facing re-election and plummeting poll numbers, Lincoln voted to commence debate last weekend. But then she turned around and warned that she would probably join a Republican filibuster against the Democratic health reform bill. Why? Because the Democratic legislation, favored by a clear majority, is likely to include a public option.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The NS Interview: Seymour Hersh
Is it always a journalist's duty to report the truth, even if it may damage innocents?
I'm a total First Amendment Jeffersonian. It's their job to keep it secret and my job to find it out and make it public. But once one gets some information, one doesn't run pell-mell into it. You know, maybe six or seven times in 40 years I've had a story and the president has called
up and said: "If you write this story, American security will be damaged." In every case except one, we wrote the story. And son of a bitch, the Russians didn't launch paratroopers into the foothills of San Francisco the next day.
Are there times when you have a scoop, or a piece of information, but let it go?
You're constantly not publishing everything you know. That's part of the game.
Do you ever worry that your phone is bugged?
Some people I only talk to in their home or their office, but I arrange the calls here. To bug me legally they'd have to get a warrant; once you have something illegally you can't use it very much. If the 9/11 attacks taught us one thing, it's that the agencies collect lots of wonderful stuff they don't share with anybody.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Liberal Groups Organize In Opposition To Entitlement Reform Panel
Earlier this month, Republican and Democratic deficit hawks in the Senate, led by Kent Conrad issued a veiled threat to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: let us set up an entitlement-reform commission to address budget deficits, or we'll kill annual legislation raising the country's debt ceiling.
That may sound like a bunch of jargon, but loosely translated it means they want to get their hands on Social Security and they're willing to let America default on its debt, potentially unleashing economic catastrophe, if they don't get their way.
ORNL "deep retrofits" can cut home energy bills in half
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 25, 2009 — Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced plans to conduct a series of deep energy retrofit research projects with the potential to improve the energy efficiency in selected homes by as much as 30 to 50 percent.
The projects will be supported by up to $1.4 million from the Department of Energy's Building America Program, which has received additional funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The Family: C Street Group Tied To Proposed Uganda Law That Would Carry Death Penalty for Gays
Jon Ponder | November 25, 2009
With their reported $13 billion tax-exempt financial empire, the Mormons may be the wealthiest cult in America — and Scientology may be the big thing among the rich and powerful in Hollywood — but when it comes to political power neither of those sects holds a candle to The Family, the Christian extremist political group that operates the now infamous C Street house on Capitol Hill in Washington. Members of The Family have occupied seats in both houses of Congress going back to the 1930s.
For all but its most recent history, the hallmark of The Family has been secrecy. In the past year, however, three sex scandals involving highly placed members of the cult — Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.; Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.; and Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss. — have thrust the group and its C Street house into the national spotlight.
Yes, Sarah, There is a Media Conspiracy
Just to get this out of the way, since the teabaggers have apparently re-discovered my site and in response to the previous Palin post have begun bombarding me with letters of the “Yeah, but Obama…” genus:
Is the media out to get Sarah Palin? It seems like most of the letters I get are insisting that I admit it. “Surely you can’t deny,” writes one woman from Florida, “that no political figure in American history has had to put up with what Sarah Palin has had to put up with from the mainstream media.”
Now, this is the part of this red-blue schtick where I’m supposed to strike back without thinking and re-hash the history of, say, the Monica Lewinsky scandal in rebuttal and then, as the argument progresses, do the whole “I know you are but what am I?” thing until the end of time.FDIC insurance fund closes quarter $8.2 billion in debt
As the number of problem U.S. banks swells to the hundreds, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is increasingly hard-pressed to fill in the gaps where institutions have put depositor's funds at risk.
Unfortunately, a dire prediction made by government officials in early 2009 has come true: the FDIC's deposit insurance fund is now broke, according to published reports.
D.C. to pay 13.7 million to mistreated World Bank, IMF protesters
WASHINGTON — The city of Washington has agreed to pay 13.7 million dollars to some 700 demonstrators and bystanders mistreated by police during demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in 2000.
"We think it's an historic settlement. It's the largest settlement for a protest case in Washington D.C. and we believe in the country," Partnership for Civil Justice, which filed the class action lawsuit, said in a statement.
Thomas Frank: A Liberal Thanksgiving
We hear much less nonsense about the wisdom of markets these days.
By THOMAS FRANK
The positive psychologists tell us that being thankful makes us healthy and happy. For entirely selfish reasons, it seems, we need to show lots of gratitude as we go through life. And with Thanksgiving coming up, I figure it's time to get with the program.
But what to be thankful for? These are anxious times, with staggering unemployment and record numbers of bank failures.
According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report, the percentage of households that are "food insecure," to use the preferred term, rose to its highest level since 1995, when the current technique for measuring hunger came into use. (Among households with children, the percentage who are "food insecure" is a stunning 21%.)
Obama Risks Losing His Judicial Prize
By Stanley Kutler
During the Civil War and Reconstruction era—best described as our “Second American Revolution”—the political parties marched in virtual lock step in consistent, rigid opposition to each other. Democrats steadfastly resisted the Republicans’ organic program for a new nation, including the Homestead Act, the land-grant college program, a protective tariff, a transcontinental railroad, a national currency and a reordering of judicial power.
Party discipline soon weakened, and legislators again comfortably crossed party lines. Even at the New Deal’s high point, the Republican minority, after opposing many of the details, often supported major reforms, such as Social Security. More recently, in the mid-1960s, conservative Midwestern Republicans helped break filibusters and the obstructionist tactics of conservative Southern Democrats (many still mired in “lost cause” nostalgia).
We have now regressed. Rarely in our history has partisanship been more narrow and rigid. The Republican Party is frozen in an obstructionist, anti-Obama posture, while offering no counterproposals. Our vaunted democratic process is dysfunctional. Party comity and bipartisanship are at an ebb. As a result, the process of nominating and confirming federal judges has broken down.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Geithner's Disgrace
The new AIG report reveals how the Treasury secretary—and U.S. taxpayers—were fleeced by Wall Street banks.
Posted Monday, Nov. 23, 2009, at 2:57 PM ET
The issue has been festering for months: Why were AIG's counterparties—including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS—paid 100 cents on the dollar when the feds rescued the insurance giant, helping raise the cost of the bailout to nearly $200 billion? A new report issued by Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky now reveals that government officials, notably then-New York Fed President and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, grievously damaged the nation and capitulated to the very banks they should have been supervising.
Barofsky's report reads like a case study in failed negotiation. The New York Fed didn't have the backbone to stand up to Wall Street, didn't understand its capacity to protect taxpayers, and didn't appreciate that its responsibility was to taxpayers.
The Budget Crisis: The Blame Is Bipartisan
Monday 23 November 2009
by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The country is being bombarded with stories claiming that record budget deficits threaten our children's future and jeopardize the credibility of the dollar. These stories are a serious problem - they have hugely confused the public about the nature of the country's economic crisis. And both parties share the blame.
Starting with the reality behind the scare stories - trillion-dollar deficits are really huge relative to the money that any of us will ever see in our lifetime. But this is an absurd measure. The United States is a country with more than 300 million people. It doesn't matter than a trillion dollars is a huge amount to any of us individually. What matters is the size of the deficit and the debt relative to the size of the economy.
Blaming It on Obama
Last week I wrote a post about “government debt hysteria” that has gotten a lot of attention because of a link from Paul Krugman. (As Felix Salmon, said, “blogging is a lottery on the individual-blog-entry level.”) The main point of last week’s post was not that it’s wrong to be concerned about the national debt (I think everyone is concerned about it — the question is what to do about it and when), but that it’s irresponsible to title a column “Could America Go Broke?” and talk about hyperinflation without providing some evidence, or at least a logical argument that goes beyond tautology, that hyperinflation is something we should be worrying about it.
Here’s something else that’s irresponsible. In that same column, Robert Samuelson says, “The Congressional Budget Office reckons the Obama administration’s planned budgets would increase the debt-to-GDP ratio from 41 percent in 2008 to 82 percent in 2019″ (emphasis added).
Obama Quietly Backs Patriot Act Provisions
William Fisher
NEW YORK, 23 Nov (IPS) - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
NEW YORK, 23 Nov (IPS) - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
Study: CEOs cashed in before Wall Street meltdown
The CEOs of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the two investment banks that collapsed during last year's financial meltdown, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation even as the company's shareholders lost everything, says a new report from Harvard Law School.
The top five executives at Bear Stearns made a total of $1.4 billion from bonuses and equity sales between 2000 and 2008, while the top five executives at Lehman Brothers made around $1 billion during that same period -- the period during which the companies ran up the bad investments that would see them collapse in 2008, according to "The Wages of Failure" (PDF), a report from Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance.
Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan
By Jonathan S. Landay, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called "a war of necessity" in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.
Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.
Johann Hari: The real reason Obama is not making much progress
Before you can appeal to America's voters you have to appeal to the corporations
Friday, 20 November 2009
Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies - if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital Copenhagen conference by saying the US – the single biggest emitter of warming gases – will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New Depression, like Lawrence Summers, in charge of the recovery. Despite the real improvements on Bush – such as the end of torture, the resumption of stem-cell research, and opposition to the coup in Honduras – many people are asking: why he is delivering so little, so slowly?
Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan Revealed
By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
Posted on November 24, 2009, Printed on November 24, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144153/
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Vampire banks rise again
Wall Street will never be fair while industry lobbyists wander the halls of Congress, sucking the life out of financial reform
Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 November 2009 19.00
There are more than 15 million people unemployed and almost 2 million people set to lose their homes to foreclosure this year. But there is good news: the Wall Street banks are as profitable as ever and set to give out record bonuses this year. The taxpayer bailouts worked.
Congress is now debating a financial reform bill that is supposed to prevent this sort of disaster from ever happening again. Leaders in Congress are promising us tough measures that will put an end to "too big to fail" institutions and the other implicit and explicit subsidies that allow the Wall Street crew to get incredibly wealthy at our expense.
Paul Krugman: The Phantom Menace
A funny thing happened on the way to a new New Deal. A year ago, the only thing we had to fear was fear itself; today, the reigning doctrine in Washington appears to be “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
What happened? To be sure, “centrists” in the Senate have hobbled efforts to rescue the economy. But the evidence suggests that in addition to facing political opposition, President Obama and his inner circle have been intimidated by scare stories from Wall Street.
Consider the contrast between what Mr. Obama’s advisers were saying on the eve of his inauguration, and what he himself is saying now.
Hard-liners Peddle Zombie Lies About Immigrants and Crime
By Walter Ewing, Immigration Impact
Posted on November 22, 2009, Printed on November 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://immigrationimpact.com//144091/
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue, attempts to overturn a century’s worth of research which has demonstrated repeatedly that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to commit violent crimes or end up behind bars. The CIS report focuses much of its attention on questioning the accuracy of the 2000 Census data used in two particular studies, one from the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) and another from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)—both of which dispel the myth of immigrant criminality. However, CIS ignores not only the many other sources of data in these two studies, but also the myriad studies from other researchers which have reached the same conclusion.
The real agenda behind the CIS report seems to be the promotion of the 287(g) and Secure Communities programs, in which local law-enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collaborate for the ostensible purpose of identifying and capturing “criminal aliens.” However, both programs actually end up snaring many individuals who are neither criminals nor immigrants. CIS relies heavily on data generated by these programs, even though this data is of dubious quality and is not representative of the United States as a whole. For instance, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified in March 2009 that the 287(g) program is poorly managed and yields inconsistent data. Secure Communities is an even smaller program with a similarly questionable data and reporting system.
US should regulate cross-border cash
By Henry CK Liu
In this season of debate on regulatory reform, an obvious area that has been crying out for reform seems to have been overlooked by government officials and market participants.
Much of past and current global financial crises lies in the unrestricted cross-border flow of speculative funds and the ability of market participants to deploy cross-border speculative financial and regulatory arbitrage for risky profit at the expense of central banks and local market fundamentals.
In this season of debate on regulatory reform, an obvious area that has been crying out for reform seems to have been overlooked by government officials and market participants.
Much of past and current global financial crises lies in the unrestricted cross-border flow of speculative funds and the ability of market participants to deploy cross-border speculative financial and regulatory arbitrage for risky profit at the expense of central banks and local market fundamentals.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Matt Taibbi: Sarah Palin, WWE Star
Obama knows the long odds against a right-wing populist winning the presidency, no matter how good she looks in a skirt or running clothes, brandishing a gun. He shouldn’t be too cocky, however, because the death of the center is ultimately a problem for him and the whole country. If the Palinistas seize the GOP, they probably cannot take the White House. But their brand of no-prisoners partisanship sure can tie up Congress.via How Sarah Palin Hurts the GOP And the Country | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com.
The really beautiful thing about the culture war, from an entertainment standpoint, is that it is fundamentally irresolvable. There isn’t a concrete set of issues involved, where in theory both sides could give in a little and find middle ground, reach some sort of compromise.
New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step
WASHINGTON — Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.
No, some conservative-leaning economists counter, we were right: The package has been wasteful, ineffectual and even harmful to the extent that it adds to the nation’s debt and crowds out private-sector borrowing.
These long-running arguments have flared now that the White House and Congressional leaders are talking about a new “jobs bill.” But with roughly a quarter of the stimulus money out the door after nine months, the accumulation of hard data and real-life experience has allowed more dispassionate analysts to reach a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.
Frank Rich: The Pit Bull in the China Shop
AT last the American right and left have one issue they unequivocally agree on: You don’t actually have to read Sarah Palin’s book to have an opinion about it. Last Sunday Liz Cheney praised “Going Rogue” as “well-written” on Fox News even though, by her own account, she had sampled only “parts” of it. On Tuesday, Ana Marie Cox, a correspondent for Air America, belittled the book in The Washington Post while confessing that she couldn’t claim to have “completely” read it.
“Going Rogue” will hardly be the first best seller embraced by millions for talismanic rather than literary ends. And I am not recommending that others follow my example and slog through its 400-plus pages, especially since its supposed revelations have been picked through 24/7 for a week. But sometimes I wonder if anyone has read all of what Palin would call the “dang” thing. Some of the book’s most illuminating tics have been mentioned barely — if at all — by either its fans or foes. Palin is far and away the most important brand in American politics after Barack Obama, and attention must be paid. Those who wishfully think her 15 minutes are up are deluding themselves.
Stolen CRU emails: Who are the criminals behind the conspiracy theorists?
Former Republican strategist Marc Morano is having as much fun with the stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit that he did with the Swift Boat Veteran's for Truth attack he led against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
Morano and his site Climate Depot has become the climate conspiracy hub since this story broke on late Thursday.
This cabal of climate deniers seems to think that 12 year-old emails between climate scientists somehow refutes the thousands of research papers produced over decades by thousands of researchers at some of the best scientific institutions in the world.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Beck's Guest List Included White Supremacists, Other Extremists
Conservative radio and television talk show host Glenn Beck has made his reputation and fortune in part by taking innocent if not strictly professional relations and turning them into major political scandals. His crusades against Obama administration advisers Patrick Gaspard and Van Jones, who has since resigned, stand out as crowning achievements of the guilt-by-association game.
What happens, however, when one looks closely at the people Beck has chosen to invite onto his show, and to whom he has lent his megaphone?
Copenhagen: Getting past the urgency trap
Saturday, November 21, 2009
-- by Sara
-- by Sara
Note: Some of you have wondered where I went. Starting October 1, I went on a much-needed blogging sabbatical to work on my thesis. The current plan is to be back blogging at least weekly starting the first week of January. I had no idea how much I needed the rest. Really.
(Thanks for all the lovely notes enquiring about my disappearance -- I do feel well-missed. And my health is not just good, but robust.)
The article below appeared earlier this week at Grist.
---------------------------------------
Copenhagen’s still three weeks away, but climate activists are already voicing their enormous disappointment about everything that’s not going to get done there. The heat is rising, and we’re all feeling the overwhelming urgency to get a strong global agreement that will get the laggards off their butts and launch the structural reformations most of us know we need to fix the problem. A lot of us, it seems, loaded all our highest hopes onto this one conference, wanting desperately to believe that this would finally be the moment the long-awaited Grand Transformation would occur.
But the hard truth of the matter is this: change of this magnitude never happens with a single conference, a single treaty, or even a single disaster. The structural changes required to get us off carbon and onto a truly sustainable footing challenge the economic assumptions that humans have lived by for 2500 years. Change that wide and deep will be the work of an entire century, maybe two. (If we’re smart and lucky, our grandchildren may live to see it mostly done.) All of us are well aware of the precarious time crunch we’re under here; but humans change only as fast as they change, and forcing the issue isn’t likely to help. And it may even hurt us in the long run.
Copenhagen’s still three weeks away, but climate activists are already voicing their enormous disappointment about everything that’s not going to get done there. The heat is rising, and we’re all feeling the overwhelming urgency to get a strong global agreement that will get the laggards off their butts and launch the structural reformations most of us know we need to fix the problem. A lot of us, it seems, loaded all our highest hopes onto this one conference, wanting desperately to believe that this would finally be the moment the long-awaited Grand Transformation would occur.
But the hard truth of the matter is this: change of this magnitude never happens with a single conference, a single treaty, or even a single disaster. The structural changes required to get us off carbon and onto a truly sustainable footing challenge the economic assumptions that humans have lived by for 2500 years. Change that wide and deep will be the work of an entire century, maybe two. (If we’re smart and lucky, our grandchildren may live to see it mostly done.) All of us are well aware of the precarious time crunch we’re under here; but humans change only as fast as they change, and forcing the issue isn’t likely to help. And it may even hurt us in the long run.
Kelo outcome shows Atlantic Yards risk
The outcome of New York's embattled eminent domain development projects is called into question by the economic development project which made them possible.
The Pfizer research facility at the center of the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision is closing, taking over 1,400 jobs with it. The 5-4 Kelo decision allowed New London, CT to use eminent domain to condemn private property for the "public purpose" of commercial development near a new Pfizer research facility. The city, which gave Pfizer a property tax break of 80% for the first ten years, spent $80 million preparing the seized property to build the condominiums and hotels they promised to draw Pfizer into town. Development was supposed to bring 3,000 jobs to the area.
Coal-Fueled Chamber Of Commerce Demands Lawmakers Defeat Health Reform In Order To ‘Stop’ Clean Energy Bill
Corporate front groups and large business trade associations are funneling their resources into defeating health reform. Even though health reform will lower costs for small businesses and boost worker productivity economy-wide, it appears that corporate entities influenced by major polluters are hoping that the defeat of health care legislation will slow President Obama’s agenda and derail their true enemy: clean energy reform.
Bill Moyers Tells a Tale of Two Quagmires: Vietnam & Afghanistan
posted by John Nichols on 11/21/2009 @ 09:34am
Bill Moyers, who was at the side of President Lyndon Johnson at the time when disastrous decisions were being made to escalate the U.S. presence in the quagmire that was Vietnam, used his experience to speak Friday night to President Barack Obama about what could be an equally disastrous decision to escalate the U.S. presence in the quagmire that is Afghanistan.
"Our country wonders this weekend what is on President Obama's mind," Moyers began, at the opening of a remarkable hour of television. "He is apparently, about to bring months of deliberation to a close and answer General Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops in Afghanistan. When he finally announces how many, why, and at what cost, he will most likely have defined his presidency, for the consequences will be far-reaching and unpredictable. As I read and listen and wait with all of you for answers, I have been thinking about the mind of another president, Lyndon B. Johnson."
America's House of Lords Debates Health Care
The health care debate has been like a tennis match, bouncing from the Senate to the House and back again. Now it's back in the Senate, as the United States tries to end its status as the only advanced economy without universal health care for its people. One hundred Senators from 50 states will decide what lives and what dies, health-care wise.
With so much at stake, it makes sense to ask: who are these 100 Senators? Might that give us a clue as to what to expect from America's upper chamber?
For starters, this "representative" body hardly looks or thinks like the rest of the nation. Only seventeen are women, while the United States is majority female. Only five are Hispanic, black, or Asian American, even as the nationwide melting pot has become one-third minority.
A Show About Nothing: The Placeholder Presidency of Barack Obama
by David Michael Green
Hey, remember Seinfeld? Remember how it billed itself as a "show about nothing", and how, in fact, that's what it was?
I think we're at the point now where it's become inescapable that the Obama presidency is also a show about nothing.
It's the same as Seinfeld. Except for two things.
First, unlike Seinfeld, it bills itself as a show about something, if not everything (remember Mr. Bigtime Change from just last year?).
And, second, the nothingness of the Obama administration is not very goddam funny, thanks just the same.
Naomi Klein: 'No Logo' Revisited
By Naomi Klein, Picador Press
Posted on November 21, 2009, Printed on November 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144106/
The following is from the new introduction to the 10th Anniversary Edition of Naomi Klein's classic book, "No Logo (Picador, 2009)"
A few months later, Starbucks tried to avoid being judged by its own label by opening its first unbranded coffee shop in Seattle, called 15th Avenue E Coffee and Tea. This "stealth Starbucks" (as the anomalous outlet immediately became known) was decorated with "one-of-a-kind" fixtures and customers were invited to bring in their own music for the stereo system as well as their own pet social causes -- all to help develop what the company called "a community personality." Customers had to look hard to find the small print on the menus: "inspired by Starbucks." Tim Pfeiffer, a Starbucks senior vice president, explained that unlike the ordinary Starbucks outlet that used to occupy the very same piece of retail space, "This one is definitely a little neighborhood coffee shop." After spending two decades blasting its logo onto 16,000 stores worldwide, Starbucks was now trying to escape its own brand.
Friday, November 20, 2009
CRA Bashing, Nth Generation
The Community Reinvestment Act is a law originally passed in 1977 that directed federal regulatory agencies to ensure that the banks they supervised were not discriminating against particular communities in making credit available.The onset of the subprime mortgage crisis triggered a flood of sloppy, lazy attacks on the CRA claiming that since the crisis was created by excess lending to the poor, and the CRA was intended to increase lending to the poor, the CRA must have caused the crisis. These arguments suffered from a mistaken premise (subprime lending had a modest negative correlation with income, but many subprime loans were used by the middle class to buy expensive houses in the suburbs and exurbs of California and Nevada) and a failure to check their facts (“Only six percent of all the higher-priced loans were extended by CRA-covered lenders to lower-income borrowers or neighborhoods in their CRA assessment areas, the local geographies that are the primary focus for CRA evaluation purposes.” — Randall Kroszner, former Fed governor appointed by President George W. Bush, in a Federal Reserve study that also found that subprime loan performance was no worse in CRA-covered zip codes than in slightly more affluent zip codes not covered by the CRA.)
Paul Krugman: The Big Squander
Earlier this week, the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a k a, the bank bailout fund, released his report on the 2008 rescue of the American International Group, the insurer. The gist of the report is that government officials made no serious attempt to extract concessions from bankers, even though these bankers received huge benefits from the rescue. And more than money was lost. By making what was in effect a multibillion-dollar gift to Wall Street, policy makers undermined their own credibility — and put the broader economy at risk.
Eliot Spitzer: Obama Economic Policies Ineffective, A Continuation Of Bush
Are Obama's economic policies actually working?
Intelligence Squared posed this question to six policy experts at a debate in New York this week. The statement, "Obama's economic policies are working effectively," was defended by Lawrence Mishel from the Economic Policy Institute; investor and former 'Car Czar' Steven Rattner; and Mark Zandi, the chief economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
What Is So Patriotic About Hysteria?
By Joe Conason
The loudest voices on the right never tire of telling us that they are the truest patriots. They claim to be the deepest believers in our system, the strongest defenders of our Constitution, the most upbeat, bold and courageous Americans anywhere. But now that the government is finally prepared to put the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on trial, these same patriots are the first to spread doubt, instigate anxiety and abandon constitutional principles.
When did fear-mongering in a time of war become an act of patriotism?
Economists Opposing Fed Audit Have Undisclosed Fed Ties
As the debate over an audit of the Federal Reserve intensifies in the House, one camp is trotting out eight academics that it calls a "political cross section of prominent economists."
A review of their backgrounds shows they are anything but.
On the crest of wave energy
Engineers use aerospace approach to design wave energy system
The ocean is a potentially vast source of electric power, yet as engineers test new technologies for capturing it, the devices are plagued by battering storms, limited efficiency, and the need to be tethered to the seafloor.
Now, a team of aerospace engineers is applying the principles that keep airplanes aloft to create a new wave-energy system that is durable, extremely efficient, and can be placed anywhere in the ocean, regardless of depth.
While still in early design stages, computer and scale-model tests of the system suggest higher efficiencies than wind turbines. The system is designed to effectively cancel incoming waves, capturing their energy while flattening them out, providing an added application as a storm-wave breaker.
The Tea Party's Favorite Doctors
They’re not just against health care reform. They think Obama may have hypnotized voters and that climate legislation threatens your health.
—By Stephanie Mencimer
Wed November 18, 2009 3:00 AM PST
—By Stephanie Mencimer
Wed November 18, 2009 3:00 AM PST
Most tea party protests against health care reform feature a standard cast of characters. Revolution-era patriots in greatcoats and tricorne hats; LaRouchies handing out pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache; the people with the giant fetus signs; and some guy dressed as an actual tea bag. Then, there are the doctors. Real doctors. They wear white coats and they look respectable. And many of them come from a group with a respectable-sounding name—the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply
By Yasha Levine, AlterNet
Posted on November 19, 2009, Printed on November 19, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144020/
A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they've pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without causing much public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California's most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us -- and it would, if more people were aware of it. But here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of California's increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California's environment.
Is House Health Care Bill a Threat to Our Constitution?
By Barry W. Lynn, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Posted on November 18, 2009, Printed on November 19, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144045/
EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece was delivered as a statement at a press conference called by the Religious Coaltion for Reproductive Choice at the National Press Club on November 16, 2009. The topic was the anti-choice amendment, authored by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., that was attached to the House health-care reform bill.
In the United States, the institutions of government and religion are separate.This is not just my opinion. It is the law of the land. Our Constitution prohibits Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court has stated more than once that laws must not advance religion or have a religious purpose.
How surprising and appalling, then, to see that a provision designed to curtail women’s right to abortion was slipped into the health-care bill at the behest of a powerful religious group, a provision that reflects the doctrines of that group.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Weekly Standard's ACLU Smear Indicts Only Itself
Even for The Weekly Standard, this bitter, juvenile McCarthyite attack on the ACLUcirca 2002 that anyone who believes in the Constitution -- i.e., radical "far leftist" doctrines such as "trials" and "due process" -- secretly harbors love for the Terrorists and hatred for America ("The ACLU has worked diligently to undermine America's stance in what was formerly known as the 'war on terror,' and has even been willing to disseminate propaganda on behalf of our jihadist enemies"). What the article actually -- and ironically -- reveals is how much contempt The Weekly Standard and much of America's Right has for the nation's core political values and how, in the process, they do more to aid Islamic extremists than even those who directly fund and advocate for them.
The Problem With A Jobs Bill – And Everything Else
By Dave Johnson
Created 11/18/2009 - 2:57pm
The country needs a jobs program and needs it right now. Cash for Caulkers [1] would be a good start. A new Civilian Conservation Corps would be another. But let's not allow a jobs program to cover over the need for real changes in the structure and core principles of our economy.
Yes, an effective jobs program can help people hold out a while longer - until necessary changes are made. It can make the unemployment rate will look better, for a while, and maybe the GDP will climb a little bit. But our low-wage, everything-to-the-top economy is not sustainable and needs to be redesigned and reregulated. The economy has to be changed so that it works for all of us, instead of just a few.
Archives To Proceed with CSI-ish Watergate Test
In July, I was the first to report that the National Archives was considering conducting high-tech forensic tests on two pages of presidential records that could provide key clues to one of the great political mysteries in US history: what was on the 18 1/2 minutes of White House tapes suspiciously erased during the Watergate scandal? Last year, Phil Mellinger, a one-time National Security Agency systems analyst and Watergate researcher, made an intriguing discovery—that meeting notes written by H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon's chief of staff, seemed to contain a gap corresponding to the gap in the recording of the infamous June 20, 1972 conversation during which Nixon and Haldeman discussed the Watergate break-in. Mellinger asked the Archives to test other pages of Haldeman notes from this meeting to determine if indented writing could be found on these pages. The goal would be to find impressions indicating what Haldeman had written on possibly missing pages that covered the part of the conversation obliterated from the tapes. On Wednesday, the National Archives announced it was proceeding with the testing Mellinger requested.
Who Are You and What Have You Done With the Community Organizer We Elected President?
By Robert Scheer
What’s up with Barack Obama? The candidate for change once promised to take on the powerful banking interests but is now doing their bidding. Finally, a leading Democrat, in this case Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, has a good idea for monitoring the Wall Street fat cats who all but destroyed the American economy, and the Obama administration condemns it.
Dodd wants to take supervisory power from the Federal Reserve, which is controlled by the banks it pretends to monitor, and put it in the hands of a new independent agency. That makes sense given the Fed’s abject failure to properly monitor the financial sector over the past decade as that industry got drunk on greed. As Dodd’s spokeswoman Kirstin Brost put it: “The Federal Reserve flat out failed at supervising the largest, most complex firms.” But White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee frets that taking power from the Fed would cause financial industry “nervousness.” Isn’t that the whole point of government regulation—to make the bandits look over their shoulders before they launch their next destructive scam?
The Debt Economy
by James Surowiecki
November 23, 2009
John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that all financial crises are the result of “debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale.” The recent financial crisis was no exception, with everyone—homeowners, private-equity investors, our biggest banks—taking on enormous amounts of debt. If it’s frustrating that the government is footing the bill to clean up the mess, it’s even worse that the government helped pay for the debt binge that created the mess in the first place, thanks to a tax system that actually subsidizes borrowing. Debt didn’t get dangerously out of scale because the system was broken. It got out of scale, in part, because the system worked.Jobs, Jobs, Jobs -- Finally
By Robert Borosage
Created 11/18/2009 - 10:56am
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets it. No wonder she drives the wingnuts batty.
With the Senate befuddled by the antics of Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus on health care and the White House Clintonistas lobbying President Obama to devote his January State of the Union address to deficit reduction, Pelosi ladled up [1] a portion of common sense. Unemployment is over 10 percent and rising. It is time to focus on jobs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid added his support. The President announced a job summit for December. Democrats finally got the subject right.
The need is clear. One in six workers is unemployed, has given up looking or is forced to work part-time. For young workers aged 16 to 24, unemployment is 19 percent. For young African Americans, unemployment is at 30 percent. And as Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke testified [2] yesterday, we're likely to see—at best—a slow recovery with no new job growth. That exacts a devastating toll in hopes crushed, families stressed, young people stalled, and poverty and hunger spreading.
Study: Stupak Amendment Will Eliminate Abortion Coverage 'Over Time For All Women'
A new study by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services adds some expert imprimatur to what many progressives have been saying all along: The Stupak amendment to the House health care bill--which will prevent millions of women from buying health insurance policies that cover abortion--is likely to have consequences that reach far beyond its supposedly intended scope.
Dollar doing the right thing
Scroll down to get to the point of this story--Dictynna
By Julian Delasantellis
[...]
Like the German battleship Bismarck, all of Murdoch's considerable media firepower - from The Times of London to the Wall Street Journal to the New York Post to Fox News and more - are spending sunup to sundown firing on the supposedly poor greenback, before handing the franchise over to the night shift for another round of poundings.
By Julian Delasantellis
[...]
Like the German battleship Bismarck, all of Murdoch's considerable media firepower - from The Times of London to the Wall Street Journal to the New York Post to Fox News and more - are spending sunup to sundown firing on the supposedly poor greenback, before handing the franchise over to the night shift for another round of poundings.
Thomas Frank: The Persecution of Sarah Palin
Her memoir is full of vindictiveness and score-settling.
By THOMAS FRANK
Maybe in their business lives, conservatives are the stern, unforgiving masters of capitalist lore. But when it comes to politics, oh, do they love a whiner!
It is her mastery of the lament that explained former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s appeal last year, and now her knack for self-pity is on full display in her book, “Going Rogue.” This is the memoir as prolonged, keening wail, larded with petty vindictiveness. With an impressive attention to detail, Ms. Palin settles every score, answers every criticism; locates a scapegoat for every foul-up, and fastens an insult on every critic, down to the last obscure Palin-doubter back in Alaska.
From Ms. Palin’s masterwork, we learn that the personal really is the political. Every encounter with a critic seems to be a skirmish in the culture wars, from the Alaska debate moderator who didn’t play fair once to the “wealthy, effete young chap” who ran against her for governor but who, in one of the quickest transitions from anti-snob to snob in all of literature, is also said to have served as “our limo driver at [her husband] Todd’s cousin’s wedding.”
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Big Think Interview with Rick Perlstein
Rick Perlstein: I’m Rick Perlstein. I’m the author of “Nixonland.”
Question: Has Obama succeeded on his promise of being a “post-partisan” President?
Rick Perlstein: Well, the problem with Obama’s post-partisan agenda is that he came into it. He came into his presidency at a time when millions of Americans, perhaps even tens of millions of Americans don’t consider a democrat president legitimate. Don’t consider liberalism legitimate. Don’t consider the idea of the state forming new programs to help people legitimate. So, he’s in a situation a lot like, you know, Abraham Lincoln faced in 1860 when you had millions of Americans who didn’t even consider what was going in Washington to have anything to do with them.
Discretion and financial regulation
An enduring truth about financial regulation is this: Given the discretion to do so, financial regulators will always do the wrong thing.
It's easy to explain why. In good times, regulators have every incentive to take banks at their optimistic word on asset valuations, and therefore on bank capitalization. It is almost impossible for bank regulators to be "tough" in good times, for the same reason it is almost impossible for mutual fund managers to be bearish through a bubble. A "conservative" bank examiner who lowballs valuation estimates will inevitably face angry pushback from the regulated bank. Moreover, the examiner will be "proven wrong", again and again, until she loses her job. Her fuddyduddy theories about cash flow and credit analysis will not withstand empirical scrutiny, as crappy credits continually perform while asset prices rise. Valuations can remain irrational much longer than a regulator can remain employed.
The Ugly Truth about Jobs
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke has given Americans a glimpse of the ugly truth about their future job prospects. Simply put, companies have found that they can shed workers and rely on technological advances and overseas factories to operate with a lot fewer U.S. employees.
Bernanke told the Economic Club of New York on Monday that some U.S. companies might begin to add workers to meet rising demand, but he added that “other firms, facing difficult financial conditions and intense pressure to cut costs, seem to have found longer-lasting, efficiency-enhancing changes that allowed them to reduce their workforces. …
“To the extent that firms are able to find further cost-cutting measures as output expands, they may delay hiring.”
Who Are the Blue Dogs?
By Michael Tomasky
A crucial fact about today's Congress, and one that even many politically astute observers may not fully appreciate, rests in the vast ideological differences between the two congressional parties. I don't mean by this that the Democrats have become uniformly liberal and the Republicans uniformly conservative, which is the standard grievance issued by the press, but rather that only the latter has happened—and that it has happened with surprising speed.
Consider, for example, a comparison of the makeup of the House of Representatives today versus twenty years ago, looking at the 101st Congress (1989–1990) and the current 111th Congress. The parties' numbers of seats in both congresses is about the same: the Democrats had a 261–174 advantage in 1989 and enjoy a 258–177 margin today. But the changes in how each party got to those numbers reveals a great deal.
Christian Bootcamp Seeks to Arm Home-Schooled Youths for "Spiritual Warfare"
By Eleanor Bader, RH Reality Check
Posted on November 16, 2009, Printed on November 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/143975/
Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas, Assistant Director of Operation Save America, is worried. According to studies by the Barna Research Group, California pollsters specializing in tracking religious and spiritual attitudes, only nine percent of teenaged Christians believe in moral absolutes. What’s more, Barna reports that the vast majority of kids raised Christian will abandon all or part of their faith by the time they finish high school. "Assembly of God leaders estimate between 65 and 70 percent will depart, while the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life estimates roughly 88 percent will leave," Thomas writes.
To remedy this, Thomas' Elijah Ministries has started the Kingdom Leadership Institute, a weeklong ideological boot camp for home-schooled Christians between the ages of 14 and 21. His recently released book, The Kingdom Leadership Institute Manual, is a roadmap for their training and a fascinating -- if twisted -- look at the concerns of far right evangelicals, complete with a game plan for action.
Sarah Palin's Poison: The Secret of Her Right-Wing Success
By Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, The Nation
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143922/
This article is adapted from Going Rouge: Sarah Palin--An American Nightmare, edited by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, available only by direct order from OR Books.
In one way of looking at it, Sarah Palin is the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party.
Electorally, she is the GOP gift that keeps on giving. First there was Campaign 2008, which flamed out with her car-crash Katie Couric interview just as spectacularly as it had begun, three weeks earlier, with her star turn at the Republican convention. More recently, in the November 3 elections this year, she played a crucial role in delivering the Democrats one of their few victories. Palin and her culture-war comrades Rush Limbaugh, Dick Armey and Glenn Beck took up the cause of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the 23rd District Congressional race in New York. As a result the moderate, prochoice Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, bowed out, endorsing Democrat Bill Owens. Hoffman was unable to convince the district's overwhelmingly white rural voters that banning abortions and gay marriage and bashing government held the answers to their concerns, and on election day the Democrat triumphed, capturing a district that had been in Republican hands since the nineteenth century.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tea partiers punk’d into supporting removal of white people from US
A speaker at an anti-immigration rally in Minneapolis this past weekend got the crowd to support more than just the deportation of all illegal immigrants -- he got them cheering for the eviction of all European-descended immigrants to America who "stole this land through genocide and ethnic cleansing."
A crowd of some 40 people showed up to the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol on Saturday to protest proposed reform of US immigration law. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that the Obama administration was pushing for immigration reform that would create a pathway for the legalization of undocumented immigrants.
Nanoparticles used in common household items caused genetic damage in mice
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, found in everything from cosmetics to sunscreen to paint to vitamins, caused systemic genetic damage in mice, according to a comprehensive study conducted by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The TiO2 nanoparticles induced single- and double-strand DNA breaks and also caused chromosomal damage as well as inflammation, all of which increase the risk for cancer. The UCLA study is the first to show that the nanoparticles had such an effect, said Robert Schiestl, a professor of pathology, radiation oncology and environmental health sciences, a Jonsson Cancer Center scientist and the study's senior author.
Investors Cut Back US Stocks, Seeking Bigger Growth Abroad
Even as the US market continues to rally, many institutional investors are trimming their US holdings and putting more money in foreign stocks—especially those in emerging markets.
Expectations that the US economy faces slow growth in the years ahead—which likely means tepid gains for domestic stocks—have prompted more investors to look abroad for better growth opportunities
Expectations that the US economy faces slow growth in the years ahead—which likely means tepid gains for domestic stocks—have prompted more investors to look abroad for better growth opportunities
Paul Krugman: World Out of Balance
International travel by world leaders is mainly about making symbolic gestures. Nobody expects President Obama to come back from China with major new agreements, on economic policy or anything else.
But let’s hope that when the cameras aren’t rolling Mr. Obama and his hosts engage in some frank talk about currency policy. For the problem of international trade imbalances is about to get substantially worse. And there’s a potentially ugly confrontation looming unless China mends its ways.
Some background: Most of the world’s major currencies “float” against one another. That is, their relative values move up or down depending on market forces. That doesn’t necessarily mean that governments pursue pure hands-off policies: countries sometimes limit capital outflows when there’s a run on their currency (as Iceland did last year) or take steps to discourage hot-money inflows when they fear that speculators love their economies not wisely but too well (which is what Brazil is doing right now). But these days most nations try to keep the value of their currency in line with long-term economic fundamentals.
Echoing a right-wing blog, Doocy repeatedly claimed Obama's bow was unprecedented
November 16, 2009 11:04 am ET — 30 Comments
In reporting on the manner in which President Obama greeted Japanese Emperor Akihito, Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy repeatedly claimed that "dating back to the very founding of this Republic, American leaders do not bow to leaders of other countries." In fact, Obama's greeting was far from unprecedented, as several past Presidents have bowed while greeting foreign leaders. Additionally, in reporting on Obama's bow, Fox & Friends repeatedly cited right-wing blog Hot Air in their reports on Obama's greeting.
Why the Afghan Surge Will Fail
Before the Obama administration buys into General Stanley McChrystal's escalation strategy, it might spend some time examining the August 12 battle of Dananeh, a scruffy little town of 2,000 perched at the entrance to the Naw Zad Valley in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province.
Dananeh is a textbook example of why counterinsurgency won't work in that country, as well as a case study in military thinking straight out of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Home Builders (You Heard That Right) Get a Gift
ON Nov. 6, President Obama signed the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009 into law, extending unemployment benefits by 20 weeks and renewing the first-time homebuyer tax credit until next April.
But tucked inside the law was another prize: a tax break that lets big companies offset losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004. The tax cuts will generate corporate refunds or relief worth about $33 billion, according to an administration estimate.
Before the bill became law, the so-called look-back on losses was limited to small businesses and could be used to counterbalance just two years of profits. Now the profit offset goes back five years, and the law allows big companies to take advantage of it, too. The only companies that can’t participate are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and any institution that took money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Welcome, comrade Maobama
A truly wicked piece--Dictynna
By Pepe Escobar
BEIJING - Dear comrade Maobama,
It's such an honor to receive you here in the northern capital of the Middle Kingdom as you pay tribute to the hub of the already developing 21st-century multipolar world.
Excuse us if we may diverge for a while from the outlines of established diplomatic finesse, but as we fully admire your integrity, honesty and magnificent intellectual accomplishments, allow us to address you with a measured degree of frankness.
By Pepe Escobar
BEIJING - Dear comrade Maobama,
It's such an honor to receive you here in the northern capital of the Middle Kingdom as you pay tribute to the hub of the already developing 21st-century multipolar world.
Excuse us if we may diverge for a while from the outlines of established diplomatic finesse, but as we fully admire your integrity, honesty and magnificent intellectual accomplishments, allow us to address you with a measured degree of frankness.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’
WASHINGTON — In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.
E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.
The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.
The Fed Is Responsible for 10.2 Percent Unemployment in the Same Way That Al Queda Was Responsible for September 11th
The reason for repeating the obvious is that David Ignatius in the Washington Post is trying to rewrite history on this topic. He belittles people who hold the Fed responsible for the economic downturn:
"With unemployment above 10 percent, the public is angry about last year's financial crunch -- and looking for people to blame. The Fed is just elitist enough, and Bernanke is just enough of a professorial egghead, to make them targets for popular anger."
Financial crisis investigators are taking Wall Street names
By Greg Gordon and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Leaders of a congressional commission investigating the causes of the recent financial crisis are threatening to publicly identify any company or government agency that stalls in voluntarily producing requested documents.
Phil Angelides, the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, told McClatchy in an interview that the panel would investigate the role that Wall Street firms played in causing the crisis to mushroom.
Glenn Greenwald: The Right's Textbook 'Surrender to Terrorists'
"We're too scared to have real trials in our country" is a level of cowardice unmatched in the world.
Understanding and Combatting Terrorism, USMC Major S.M. Grass, 1989:
Terrorism is a psychological weapon and is directed to create a general climate of fear. As one definition cogently notes, "terror is a natural phenomenon, terrorism is the conscious exploitation of it." Terrorism utilizes violence to coerce governments and their people by inducing fear.
At its heart terrorism is about fear. While terrorist attacks destroy, maim and kill, the intended audience for these attacks is almost always the whole body politic and the terrorist's goal is to strike fear into their hearts.
The Obama Administration’s irresponsible decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people.
The Board Of The ‘Voice Of Business’ Is A Republican Money Machine
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which purports to be “the voice of business,” is run by a Republican money machine. As the nation’s largest lobbying shop, the Chamber is spending millions of dollars from its corporate members against President Obama’s progressive agenda of health care, energy, and financial reform. The Chamber claims that the “board’s membership is as diverse as the nation’s business community itself,” but this is false.
Frank Rich: The Missing Link From Killeen to Kabul
THE dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right.
Their verdict was unambiguous: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born psychiatrist of Palestinian parentage who sent e-mail to a radical imam, was a terrorist. And he did not act alone. His co-conspirators included our military brass, the Defense Department, the F.B.I., the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and, of course, the liberal media and the Obama administration. All these institutions had failed to heed the warning signs raised by Hasan’s behavior and activities because they are blinded by political correctness toward Muslims, too eager to portray criminals as sympathetic victims of social injustice, and too cowardly to call out evil when it strikes 42 innocents in cold blood.
The invective aimed at these heinous P.C. pantywaists nearly matched that aimed at Hasan. Joe Lieberman announced hearings to investigate the Army for its dereliction of duty on homeland security. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, vowed to unmask cover-ups in the White House and at the C.I.A. The Weekly Standard blog published a broadside damning the F.B.I. for neglecting the “broader terrorist plot” of which Hasan was only one of the connected dots. Jerome Corsi, the major-domo of the successful Swift-boating of John Kerry, unearthed what he said was proof that Hasan had advised President Obama during the transition.
Welcome home, war
By Alfred W McCoy
In his approach to National Security Agency surveillance, as well as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) renditions, drone assassinations, and military detention, President Barack Obama has to a surprising extent embraced the expanded executive powers championed by his conservative predecessor, George W Bush.
This bipartisan affirmation of the imperial executive could "reverberate for generations", warns Jack Balkin, a specialist on First Amendment freedoms at Yale Law School. And consider these but some of the early fruits from the hybrid seeds that the "war on terror" has planted on American soil. Yet surprisingly few Americans seem aware of the toll that this already endless war has taken on our civil liberties.
In his approach to National Security Agency surveillance, as well as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) renditions, drone assassinations, and military detention, President Barack Obama has to a surprising extent embraced the expanded executive powers championed by his conservative predecessor, George W Bush.
This bipartisan affirmation of the imperial executive could "reverberate for generations", warns Jack Balkin, a specialist on First Amendment freedoms at Yale Law School. And consider these but some of the early fruits from the hybrid seeds that the "war on terror" has planted on American soil. Yet surprisingly few Americans seem aware of the toll that this already endless war has taken on our civil liberties.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Hersh: Obama finally ‘taking control’ on Afghanistan
In the wake of an AP report on Wednesday that President Barack Obama is not satisfied with any of the options on Afghanistan he has received from his national security team and is demanding revisions, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow turned to veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh for insight.
"It could be huge," Hersh told Maddow, "simply that the president's finally saying, 'I'm taking control.'"
Karl Rove's buddy resigns post as WH Counsel
Greg Craig has finally been pushed out as White House Counsel. But we can thank him for all of his efforts in crafting what has come to be known as the "deal with the devil" - the deal between Karl Rove and the House Judiciary Committee.
Here are some snips from an article I did on the deal:
A deal brokered by the Obama White House to obtain Karl Rove’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee contains a number of unusual provisions, prominent legal scholars say.
Rove testified before the Judiciary Committee on July 7 concerning his alleged involvement in the December 2006 firings of seven US Attorneys and the prosecution of Don Siegelman. The Committee is being extremely tight-mouthed about the result, and Rove himself has also declined to comment.
The Lies They Told
When Sept. 11, 2001, dawned, the Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, N.Y., went on full alert — to prepare for a training exercise that envisioned a sneak attack by Russian planes flying over the North Pole to bomb the United States, a prospect that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had dismissed as outdated in 1966. Later that morning, after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 had hit the World Trade Center and American Airlines Flight 77 the Pentagon, three F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from Langley Air Force Base to form a combat air patrol over Washington. But degraded radio transmission quality meant that the pilots were left clueless about the nature of their mission. On seeing the Pentagon in flames, the lead fighter pilot later explained, “I reverted to the Russian threat. . . . I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning, and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. . . . You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.”
The NS Interview: Robert Skidelsky
You lived in Keynes's house for 20 years. Has he always loomed large in your life?
He started to loom large when I was working on my thesis, which became Politicians and the Slump. He seemed to have very good answers to the slump that were never adopted.
What has driven the current financial crisis?
Faith in risk-management models, and the belief that you could reduce all uncertainty to risk. In risk, you have numbers; in uncertainty, you don't. The bankers believed you could work out the odds on anything, like a game of dice or roulette. The pervasiveness of uncertainty seems to be Keynes's central point: those wedded to the efficient market don't take sufficient account of it. It's right at the root of his economics. He rejected probability as a statistical concept and thought of it instead as a logical concept. This was key. If you have probabilities without numbers, you open the barrier to uncertainty: you have knowledge, but it's not precise.
Climate Rage
The only way to stop global warming is for rich nations to pay for the damage they've done - or face the consequences
One last chance to save the world - for months, that's how the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, which starts in early December, was being hyped. Officials from 192 countries were finally going to make a deal to keep global temperatures below catastrophic levels. The summit called for "that old comic-book sensibility of uniting in the face of a common danger threatening the Earth," said Todd Stern, President Obama's chief envoy on climate issues. "It's not a meteor or a space invader, but the damage to our planet, to our community, to our children and their children will be just as great."
That was back in March. Since then, the endless battle over health care reform has robbed much of the president's momentum on climate change. With Copenhagen now likely to begin before Congress has passed even a weak-ass climate bill co-authored by the coal lobby, U.S. politicians have dropped the superhero metaphors and are scrambling to lower expectations for achieving a serious deal at the climate summit. It's just one meeting, says U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, not "the be-all and end-all."
The Only Anchor
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that some top al-Qaeda 9/11 conspirators will be tried by jury in New York not far from the scenes of devastation that they had wrought.
This decision by the Obama administration demonstrates faith in the American way of life, and a conviction that even the worst mass murderers can be dealt justice by democratic institutions.
It's Baaaack: The Catfood Commission
By Digby
Created 11/13/2009 - 8:42am
Not that it ever went away. The catfood commission [1] is the Zombie that has been clawing at the door since Obama was elected:
Senators from both parties on Tuesday put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.
Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the committee legislation.
“You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who said he hasn’t ruled out offering the independent commission legislation as an amendment to the healthcare reform bill.
The panel, which has been championed by Conrad and ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H), would be tasked with stemming the unsustainable rise in debt.
Among its chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The Government Accountability Office recently reported the gap is on pace to reach an “unsustainable” $63 trillion in 2083.
You'll recall that during the transition period Obama was all for this commission (it was part of the Grand Bargain [2]) and put it off [3] until after health care reform was passed once people raised a fuss shortly after the inauguration [3]:
McConnell said that when Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had previously spoken to Republicans, they struck a tone that indicated a willingness to work on Social Security. "That was the place that I hoped, based on what both he and the chief of staff had said earlier, we'd be able to move on a bipartisan basis. He kind of brushed over that issue" in his speech, said McConnell.
Katha Pollitt: The Democratic Party: Whose Team Is It, Anyway?
By Katha Pollitt, The Nation
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143931/
You know what I don't want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidized health insurance policies? That it's the price of reform, and prochoice women should shut up and take one for the team. "If you want to rebuild the American welfare state," Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, "there is no alternative" than for Democrats to abandon "cultural" issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?
For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.
Did Big Oil Win the War in Iraq?
By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143879/
Last week, ExxonMobil became the first U.S. oil company in 35 years to sign an oil-production contract with the government of Iraq.
As I write, several other contracts with the world’s largest oil companies are being finalized, and more are expected when a new negotiating round kicks off in Baghdad on Dec. 11.
Do these contracts represent a "victory" for Big Oil in Iraq? Yes, but not one as big as the companies had hoped for (at least, not yet).
Don't You Think It's Time to Reinstate the Laws That Would Have Prevented the Financial Crash?
By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143942/
This week marks the tenth year anniversary of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley or Financial Services Modernization Act, marking the moment when we were royally screwed by the banking system. Thank you to all those involved.
It's amazing how downright ebullient, President Bill Clinton was at that signing ceremony on November 12, 1999. an event introduced by then Treasury Secretary (now Obama advisor) Larry Summers, successor to Robert Rubin. Those restricting, anti-competitive Depression era, laws were finally behind us. Awesome.
Japan: A new battle over Okinawa
United States President Barack Obama's visit to Japan comes as rifts deepen between Washington and the new government in Tokyo over US troops in Okinawa. Tokyo still sees the US's strike capabilities as crucial for ensuring Japan's security, but it is gradually shifting its axis of cooperation towards Asian nations.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Paul Krugman: Free to Lose
Consider, for a moment, a tale of two countries. Both have suffered a severe recession and lost jobs as a result — but not on the same scale. In Country A, employment has fallen more than 5 percent, and the unemployment rate has more than doubled. In Country B, employment has fallen only half a percent, and unemployment is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis.
Don’t you think Country A might have something to learn from Country B?
This story isn’t hypothetical. Country A is the United States, where stocks are up, G.D.P. is rising, but the terrible employment situation just keeps getting worse. Country B is Germany, which took a hit to its G.D.P. when world trade collapsed, but has been remarkably successful at avoiding mass job losses. Germany’s jobs miracle hasn’t received much attention in this country — but it’s real, it’s striking, and it raises serious questions about whether the U.S. government is doing the right things to fight unemployment.
Byron Dorgan's Financial Plan: Common Sense From The Senator Who Saw This Coming
First Posted: 11-12-09 02:02 PM | Updated: 11-12-09 03:37 PM
He got it right last time.
Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, was one of eight senators who stood up to oppose the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1999. That repeal, which was signed into law by President Clinton exactly 10 years ago today, broke down the barriers between commercial banking and investment banking, and led to the growth of behemoth financial firms that were able to take enormous risks with impunity, because they were "too big to fail."
How 7.4% of Americans can block humanity’s efforts to save itself
A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece on what’s really killing climate legislation: the absurd procedural chokepoints in the U.S. Senate, coupled with an unprincipled minority devoted to obstruction. I’m happy to report there’s been an uptick lately in people trying to draw attention to this problem. From the last week or two:
- Univ. of Miami professor Greg Koger, who has a book coming out on filibusters, has a series of five posts offering history and analysis of the filibuster. See esp. The Rise of the 60-Vote Senate.
- Chris Bowers: If GOP wins 3 Senate seats, and Dems don’t destroy filibuster, then Dems can’t govern after 2010—Bowers advocates Dems using the “nuclear option” to get rid of the filibuster.
- The Nation‘s politics editor Chris Hayes: What Ails the Senate.
15 Awful Things Republicans Would Do If They Had the Chance
By Dennis Rahkonen, The Smirking Chimp
Posted on November 13, 2009, Printed on November 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143917/
Always the political instrument of moneyed elites, and a retrograde societal force, the GOP today is more negatively impactful than ever. Its agenda, if fully implemented, would prove catastrophic. Here's what an unfettered Republican Party would do "for" America:
1) Greatly reduce or entirely eliminate taxes on the rich, thereby forcing hard-pressed working families to painfully make up resulting revenue shortfalls.
2) Bust labor unions, cruelly preventing the collective bargaining that's the key reason why US workers ever won decent wages and benefits.
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