6 Reasons Privatization Often Ends in Disaster

By Paul Buchheit

October 20, 2013  |  Private systems are focused on making profits for a few well-positioned people. Public systems, when sufficiently supported by taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner.

The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.

1. The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top

The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 [3] in 2010. The president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times [4] as much in 2012. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made almost 300 times [5]as much in one year, $48 million, most of it from company stock.

In part because of such inequities in compensation, our private health care system is the most expensive system in the developed world. The price of common surgeries [6] is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Two of the documented [4] examples: an $8,000 special stress test [7] for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation [8], for which a private insurance company was willing to pay $2,000.

Tea Partyers’ grave fear: Why they disdain young people — even their own!

Sociologist Theda Skocpol tells Salon what drives the angry right -- and what comes after the government shutdown

By Josh Eidelson

The past weeks’ showdown in Washington, D.C., has shocked and perplexed some observers. Theda Skocpol was not among them. Skocpol, a veteran Harvard professor, is the author of books on topics ranging from the politics of the U.S. welfare state (“Protecting Soldiers and Mothers”) to the state of grass-roots political engagement (“Diminished Democracy”), and of the definitive social science tome on the Tea Party (“The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” with Vanessa Williamson).

With the immediate debt ceiling/shutdown showdown coming to a close, Salon called up Skocpol Wednesday to discuss how the media misunderstand the Tea Party, how an unpopular movement can move so many members of Congress, and why the right hates Obama’s moderate healthcare law so much. What follows is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

Cruz' Father Suggests Ted Cruz "Anointed" to "Bring The Spoils Of War To The Priests"

Bruce Wilson, Wed Oct 16, 2013 at 02:33:36 PM EST

[update: for some additional perspective, see my story The Tea Party Plan To Shatter the American Republic, The Far-Right Christian Movement Driving the Debt Default by Deborah Caldwell and my story Ted Cruz Worked With Religious Right Founder Paul Weyrich, To Elect George W. Bush]

"The pastor [Huch] referred to Proverbs 13:22, a little while ago, which says that the wealth of the wicked is stored for the righteous. And it is through the kings, anointed to take dominion, that that transfer of wealth is going to occur." - Rafael Cruz, August 26, 2012

In a sermon last year at an Irving, Texas, megachurch that helped elect Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, Cruz' father Rafael Cruz indicated that his son was among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as "kings" to take control of all sectors of society, an agenda commonly referred to as the "Seven Mountains" mandate, and "bring the spoils of war to the priests", thus helping to bring about a prophesied "great transfer of wealth", from the "wicked" to righteous gentile believers.

Paul Krugman: The Sad, but Very Serious, Tale of the Right Honorable Saboteur

Tuesday, 15 October 2013 10:26  
By Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed 

Once upon a time, there was a government official with a plan. He had become convinced that the way to fix the economy was to send out teams of saboteurs who would systematically disrupt production around the country.

Why did he believe this?

Never mind; for some reason it was what all the Very Serious People were saying.

Tiny sea creatures are heading for extinction, and could take local fisheries with them

18 October 2013

A species of one of the world’s tiniest creatures, ocean plankton, is heading for extinction as it struggles to adapt to changes in sea temperature. And it may take local fisheries with it.

Research led by Deakin University (Warrnambool, Australia) and Swansea University (UK) has found that a species of cold water plankton in the North Atlantic, that is a vital food source for fish such as cod and hake, is in decline as the oceans warm. This will put pressure on the fisheries that rely on abundant supplies of these fish.

The Abject Failure of Reaganomics

October 17, 2013

 

Exclusive: House Republicans got next to nothing from their extortion strategy of taking the government and the economy hostage, but they are sure to continue obstructing programs that could create jobs and start rebuilding the middle class. What they won’t recognize is the abject failure of Reaganomics, writes Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

Even as the Republican Right licks its wounds after taking a public-opinion beating over its government shutdown and threatened credit default, the Tea Partiers keep promoting a false narrative on why the U.S. debt has ballooned and why the economy struggles, a storyline that will surely influence the next phase of this American political crisis.

If a large segment of the American public continues to buy into the Tea Party’s fake reality, then it is likely that both the political damage and the economic decline will continue apace, with fewer good-paying jobs, a shrinking middle class and more of the bitter alienation that has fed the Tea Party’s growth in the first place. In other words, the United States will remain in a vicious circle that is also a downward spiral.

Worse Than Watergate

Friday, 18 October 2013 09:46  
By Sam Pizzigati, Other Words | Opinion 

The U.S. Supreme Court is mulling a case that could end up giving America’s wealthy a perpetual green light to contribute as much as they want directly to politicians and political parties.

Credit Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman who owns an electrical engineering company, for getting this ball rolling. In the 2012 election cycle, McCutcheon contributed heavily to conservative candidates and Republican Party committees. But the experience left the mega millionaire feeling terribly aggrieved.

Paul Krugman: The Damage Done

The government is reopening, and we didn’t default on our debt. Happy days are here again, right?

Well, no. For one thing, Congress has only voted in a temporary fix, and we could find ourselves
going through it all over again in a few months. You may say that Republicans would be crazy to
provoke another confrontation. But they were crazy to provoke this one, so why assume that
they’ve learned their lesson?

The Air We Breathe Definitively and Scientifically Linked to Cancer

Think Progress / By Kiley Kroh

October 17, 2013  |  Outdoor air pollution has been definitively linked to cancer and is officially classified as a carcinogen, according to research [2] released Thursday by The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization.

 

“The air we breathe has become polluted with a mixture of cancer-causing substances,” said [3] Kurt Straif, head of the IARC’s monographs section, which is tasked with ranking carcinogens.

The IARC’s research found the toll of air pollution on public health worldwide is significant. In 2010 alone, exposure to ambient fine particles was recently estimated to have contributed to 3.2 million premature deaths, predominantly from cardiovascular disease, and 223,000 deaths from lung cancer. More than half of the lung cancer deaths attributable to ambient fine particles were projected to have been in China and other East Asian countries.

Conservatives Misunderstand What Went Wrong Under Bush

You'd swear from today's rhetoric that the problem was too much compromise. Nope. 

Conor Friedersdorf, Oct 18 2013, 9:00 AM ET

The Tea Party is composed largely of Republicans who supported George W. Bush when he was the GOP standard-bearer, voting for him twice and criticizing him far less frequently than they defended him, only to rebel against his record at the end of his second term. At that point, partisan loyalty and shared hatred of liberals finally gave way to the realization that the GOP's time in power was a disaster for conservatives.

Humans seldom look inward when assigning blame for bygone disasters, and the story conservatives have settled on seems to be that establishment Republicans have long been selling them out by failing to fight hard enough. As a Fox News commentator put it, echoing talking points used by many hardliners, "I’m sure we will hear establishment apologists calling the events of recent days a compromise. But seeing how the president refused to compromise, it’s more likely the Grand Old Party was the only one bending. Establishment Republicans always talk about doing the right thing for the nation, no matter the price. But when push comes to shove, they always throw in the towel."

The Koch brothers' beer offensive against Obamacare loses its fizz

A Koch-funded front is using free beer to entice students away from health exchanges. But Obamacare is made of stronger stuff

Sadhbh Walshe
theguardian.com, Thursday 17 October 2013 08.30 EDT


What's a family values conservative to do when every effort to protect millions of Americans from the scourge of affordable healthcare fails?

Break out the beer, of course. The latest campaign to kill off Obamacare in its infancy is now playing out on college campuses where a conservative group known as Generation Opportunity (GO), who are funded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, is using the lure of free beer and "opt out" beer koozies to persuade young students not to buy health insurance – or, at least, not to buy it from the Obamacare exchanges.

7 Horrifying Things About the Chicken You Eat

By Martha Rosenberg

October 16, 2013  |  Could there be anything worse for the chicken industry than this month's outbreak of an antibiotic-resistant strain of salmonella that hospitalized 42 percent of everyone who got it—almost 300 in 18 states [3]?

Yes. The government also announced that China has been cleared to process chickens [4] for the US dinner plate and that all but one of arsenic  [5]compounds no one even knew they were eatinghave been removed from US poultry production. Thanks for that. Also this month, some food researchers have revealed the true recipe for chicken "nuggets" [6]…just in time for Halloween.

Many people have decided to eat only chicken to avoid the health, environmental, worker and humane questions surrounding red meat. Yet the track record of US chicken in these areas is no better than red meat—and may be worse.

The Tea Party Routed; the Next Crisis Set for December

Posted by Robert Borosage

Republicans finally caved. In the third week of the government shutdown, on the eve of an unimaginable default on U.S. debts, the craven Republican leadership, for months cowed by Tea Party zealots, finally ended its destructive folly. Majorities in both the Senate and House – which were in place months ago – were finally allowed to vote on a measure to reopen the government and avoid default, at least for a couple of months. Five takeaways from this utterly contrived crisis.

Even When the GOP Loses, It Wins

Think the Senate deal is a resounding defeat for Republicans? Think again.

The Editors
October 16, 2013

Just hours before a default on our national debt and sixteen days into a wrenching federal government shutdown, it now appears that the barest measure of sanity has prevailed in Washington. The Senate has reached a deal to reopen the government at current funding levels through January 15 and to pass a debt ceiling hike though February 7. The measure is expected to clear the House tonight with scant but necessary Republican support.

Because the deal only includes minor concessions, the Beltway consensus is that it represents a resounding defeat for Republicans, who “surrendered” their original demands to defund or delay Obamacare. In the skirmish of opinion polls, that may be true, for now. But in the war of ideas, the Senate deal is but a stalemate, one made almost entirely on conservative terms. The GOP now goes into budget talks with sequestration as the new baseline, primed to demand longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And they still hold the gun of a US default to the nation’s head in the next debt ceiling showdown.

A Simple Reform Could Save America From Wall Street and Boost the Economy: What’s Washington Waiting For?

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

October 14, 2013  |  It’s a simple tweak that would reign in an out-of-control financial sector, stimulate jobs, generate billions of revenue, and possibly prevent another heart-wrenching crisis. Nobel Prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman want it. Billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates want it. Polls show the majority of Americans want it. Even the Pope wants it.

 

We’re talking about a financial transaction tax (FTT) — a tiny tax of, say, less than half a percent: maybe 3 cents per $100  — on Wall Street trading. It’s simple, more than fair, widely supported by the public, and long overdue.

UMD Researchers Address Economic Dangers of 'Peak Oil'

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks ("Peak Oil"). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors.
 
While critics of Peak Oil studies declare that the world has more than enough oil to maintain current national and global standards, these UMD-led researchers say Peak Oil is imminent, if not already here—and is a real threat to national and global economies. Their study is among the first to outline a way of assessing the vulnerabilities of specific economic sectors to this threat, and to identify focal points for action that could strengthen the U.S. economy and make it less vulnerable to disasters.

ECB’s Draghi: Knowing Too Much About Our Big Banks Could Set Off A Panic

European banks, like all banks, have long been hermetically sealed black boxes. If someone managed to pry open just one tiny corner, the reek of asset putrefaction that billowed out was so strong that the corner would immediately be resealed. In cases where the corner didn’t get resealed fast enough and too much of the reek spread, the whole bank collapsed, only to be bailed out by taxpayers, often in other countries; it’s easier that way.

The only thing known about the holes in the balance sheets of these black boxes, left behind by assets that have quietly decomposed, is that they’re deep. But no one knows how deep. And no one is allowed to know – not until Eurocrats decide who is going to pay for bailing out these banks. How do we know? ECB President Mario Draghi said that on Friday in Washington.

"500 People Will Control American Democracy" If Supreme Court Overturns Campaign Finance Law

The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to strike down most of the remaining limits on massive spending by wealthy donors on political campaigns. On Tuesday, justices heard arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which has been referred to as "the next Citizens United." Republican leaders and wealthy GOP donor Shaun McCutcheon wants the Supreme Court to throw out aggregate limits on individual contributions in a single two-year cycle, saying they violate free speech. "If these advocate limitations go down, 500 people will control American democracy. It would be 'government for the 500 people,' not for anybody else — and that’s the risk," says Burt Neuborne, law professor and founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts indicated he is prepared to strike down caps on donations to individual candidates, but perhaps not on donations to political committees. Justice Antonin Scalia appears to be set to back the lifting of all limits. "The Scalia side says, 'Look, if you're rich, you’re entitled to have as much influence as you can buy,’" Neuborne says. "And the Scalia side has won 5-to-4 consistently in recent years."

Shutdown: Conservatives’ Revenge Against the “47 Percent”, Pt.1 

October 10, 2013
Terrance Heath

During the first days of the government shutdown, conservatives were beside themselves with joy. Michele Bachmann (R, MN) told the Washington Post, “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.” Conservative media figures looked forward to “a long siege” that would “ideally” keep the government closed through the 2014 election. It was as if Republicans were relishing revenge against the “47 percent” that Mitt Romney disdained during the 2012 election, and the rest of the American electorate for rejecting the GOP’s agenda.

Shutdown: Conservatives’ Revenge Against the “47 Percent”, Pt.2 

October 11, 2013
Terrance Heath

Punishing the Poor

In the first days of the shutdown, conservatives alternated between celebrating and downplaying the impact. RedState.com’s Erick Erickson insisted Americans would barely notice the government shutdown. But the consequences of the government shutdown are only too real for the families who will lose food assistance, and the children who would lose access to Head Start. Read between the lines. It’s not that no Americans will suffer as a result of the shutdown. It’s that no Americans will suffer who don’t deserve to suffer anyway. According to the conservative worldview, they are the “immoral undisciplined people” who receive undeserved benefits from government, and those who provide those benefits.

Dean Baker: Republicans are delusional about US spending and deficits

The story of out-of-control debts and deficits is just plain wrong. US deficits have fallen in the past four years

Dean Baker
theguardian.com, Monday 14 October 2013 08.30 EDT


It is understandable that the public is disgusted with Washington; they have every right to be. At a time when the country continues to suffer from the worst patch of unemployment since the Great Depression, the government is shut down over concerns about the budget deficit.

There is no doubt that the Republicans deserve the blame for the shutdown and the risk of debt default. They decided that it was worth shutting down the government and risking default in order stop Obamacare. That is what they said as loudly and as clearly as possible in the days and weeks leading up to the shutdown. In fact, this is what Senator Ted Cruz said for 21 straight hours on the floor of the US Senate.

Three more state workers got raises after phantom job transfers

By Jason Stein and Daniel Bice of the Journal Sentinel

Madison — Gov. Scott Walker's administration used phantom job transfers this year to give double-digit pay raises to two employees and a smaller raise to a third, quickly switching them from one post to as many as three others and then back to their original jobs.

The biggest pay increase — $14,416 a year — went to a longtime state economist who helped expose flaws in jobs statistics that were hurting the governor's recall election chances, a Journal Sentinel review has found.

What you learn about humanity from living on the streets

Since I became homeless, people have stolen my belongings and assumed I'm a prostitute. A few have been incredibly kind

Mary, homeless in New York
theguardian.com, Sunday 13 October 2013 07.00 EDT
Passers-by mainly ignore me, a homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk or a bench. The people who do speak to me are either curious, or harpies who give me unsolicited and useless advice, or the more irritable who chastise me. I try to explain by example that there are good, decent, employable but destitute people in New York City.

Many people also assume that the homeless are all drug addicts, criminals or prostitutes. I am none of these things, yet I have seen the stereotypes first-hand.

I try to keep busy, doing whatever jobs I can find, often the kinds of jobs illegal immigrants now do. When I volunteered at a church soup kitchen, hoping to do my part, a stranger claimed all these nasty things about me in the presence of the minster and other members of the church. For years, she continued to make these sorts of remarks and warned new volunteers that I would steal from them. No one said a word in my defense.

Very sneaky, Walmart: How the mega-retailer rolled back California regulations

Labor, environmental, and political leaders cry foul as Calif. Democrats curtail landmark environmental law

By Josh Eidelson

While Washington has been warring over the shutdown and the debt ceiling, California Governor Jerry Brown has signed bills expanding access to abortion and restricting local police collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement – bills that advocates hope will join past Golden State laws in proving to be national precedents. But if those bills have gotten little notice amid the showdown in Washington, another – signed by Brown the Friday afternoon before the shutdown – has gotten even less. It’s a “reform” that critics say waters down what’s been the country’s strongest statewide environmental law – and represents Walmart’s latest lobbying coup in a state where Democrats control every branch of government.

“It’s amazing to me how few people are willing to stand up to this corporation,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. “And mainly because they’re afraid.”

Paul Krugman: The Dixiecrat Solution

So you have this neighbor who has been making your life hell. First he tied you up with a spurious lawsuit; you’re both suffering from huge legal bills. Then he threatened bodily harm to your family. Now, however, he says he’s willing to compromise: He’ll call off the lawsuit, which is to his advantage as well as yours. But in return you must give him your car. Oh, and he’ll stop threatening your family — but only for a week, after which the threats will resume.

Not much of an offer, is it? But here’s the kicker: Your neighbor’s relatives, who have been egging him on, are furious that he didn’t also demand that you kill your dog.

And now you understand the current state of budget negotiations.

NY Fed Fired Examiner Who Took on Goldman

by Jake Bernstein
ProPublica, Oct. 10, 2013, 2:45 p.m.

A version of this story was co-published with The Washington Post.

In the spring of 2012, a senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York determined that Goldman Sachs had a problem.

Under a Fed mandate, the investment banking behemoth was expected to have a company-wide policy to address conflicts of interest in how its phalanxes of dealmakers handled clients. Although Goldman had a patchwork of policies, the examiner concluded that they fell short of the Fed’s requirements.

That finding by the examiner, Carmen Segarra, potentially had serious implications for Goldman, which was already under fire for advising clients on both sides of several multibillion-dollar deals and allegedly putting the bank’s own interests above those of its customers. It could have led to closer scrutiny of Goldman by regulators or changes to its business practices.

Republican Extremism and the Lessons of History

This crisis is about nothing other than the Republican Party – its radicalization, its stunning lack of leadership and its disregard for the Constitution

by Sean Wilentz

OCTOBER 10, 2013

 

This latest episode in the endless Republican reality show is not chiefly about the incompetence and incessant squabbling of ideologues and petty politicians, although it's that, too. Nor is it the outcome of the intense partisan polarization that has thrown Washington into gridlock, as if the problem is abstract partisanship itself, with Democrats and Republicans equally at fault. Least of all is it about rescuing the economy from the Democrats' profligate deficit spending, as Republicans claim – not with the deficit shrinking to its lowest level since the financial disaster of 2008 and with the outlook improving. This crisis is about nothing other than the Republican Party – its radicalization, its stunning lack of leadership and its disregard for the Constitution.

The Republicans have now joined a relatively small number of major American political parties that became the captive of a narrow ideology and either jettisoned or silenced their more moderate elements. The Democratic Party suffered this fate in the 1840s and 1850s, when Southern slaveholders took command of the party's levers of power. So, temporarily, did the Republicans in 1964, when Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign claimed the party for extremists on the right, an augury of things to come. But today's Republicans, whatever their pretensions about channeling the Founding Fathers, are so contemptuous of American history and institutions that they cannot learn from even their own recent past.

The Tragedy of Greece as a Case Study of Neo-Imperial Pillage and the Demise of Social Europe

Sunday, 13 October 2013 00:00  
By CJ Polychroniou, Truthout | News Analysis 

In early 2010, Greece, a weak and peripheral economy in the euro area, went bankrupt but was subsequently "bailed out" by its euro partners and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Ever since, the small southern Mediterranean nation and birthplace of democracy has been a guinea pig for the policy prescriptions of a neoliberal European Union (EU) under the command of Germany and its northern allies, with the IMF serving as a junior partner. A public debt crisis has been used as an opportunity to dismantle a rudimentary social state, to sell off profitable public enterprises and state assets at bargain prices, to deprive labor of even its most basic rights after decades of hard-fought struggles against capital, and to substantially reduce wages, salaries and pensions, creating a de facto banana republic. It has been done with the support of a significant segment of the Greek industrial-financial class and with the assistance of the domestic political elite, which since the onset of the crisis has relied heavily on dictatorial action to carry out the commands of the country's foreign creditors.

Secret FISA Court Extends NSA Phone Spying

- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer

The secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved a request made by the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue its dragnet collection of records on all U.S. phone calls.

In what it claimed to be move for transparency, the office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the announcement late Friday.

Clapper "has decided to declassify and disclose publicly that the government filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, and that the court renewed that authority," the office's statement read.

Paul Krugman: Dealing With Default

So Republicans may have decided to raise the debt ceiling without conditions attached — the
details still aren’t clear. Maybe that’s the end of that particular extortion tactic, but maybe not,
because, at best, we’re only looking at a very short-term extension. The threat of hitting the ceiling
remains, especially if the politics of the shutdown continue to go against the G.O.P.

So what are the choices if we do hit the ceiling? As you might guess, they’re all bad, so the question
is which bad choice would do the least harm.

Dean Baker: The Ravings of Niall Ferguson, the Real World, and the Needless Suffering of Tens of Millions

For reasons I cannot imagine, Niall Ferguson has achieved some standing as an intellectual with interesting things to say about the economy. Whenever I have read one of his pieces I almost always find it so confused that it would take a blog post at least as long as the original to set it straight. This is why I generally ignore Ferguson, except when prodded by friends and readers.

For this reason I was struck to see that my occasional Niall Ferguson corrections got me on the list of Paul Krugman’s

“like-minded bloggers who play a sinister game of tag with him, endorsing his attacks and adding vitriol of their own. I would like to name and shame in this context Dean Baker, Josh Barro, Brad DeLong, Matthew O'Brien, Noah Smith, Matthew Yglesias and Justin Wolfers.”

Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach Has New Plan to Keep 17,500+ Legal Voters From Voting

Scheme LITERALLY creates two different classes of voters

UPDATED: Arizona Attorney General announces identical plan...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 8th October 2013 @ 06:35 

The man who wrote Arizona's "Papers Please" ^[2] law before running for Kansas Secretary of State in 2010 on the premise of stamping out "voter fraud" there ... before winning and subsequently not being able to find much, if any of it, at all ^[3], is nonetheless still at work attempting to keep legitimate voters from being able to cast their vote under the premise that thousands of non-citizens are somehow, secretly, illegally voting in the state of Kansas.

"In Kansas, the illegal registration of alien voters has become pervasive," Kris Kobach's personal website still reads ^[4] today. He just can't seem to find any.

Police Worldwide Criminalize Dissent, Assert New Powers in Crackdown on Protests

By Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Abby Deshman, Anthony Romero, Hossam Bahgat

October 10, 2013  |  In a major new report, the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations details a global crackdown on peaceful protests through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report, "Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World," warns of a growing tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right — the right to protest — as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain. The report’s name comes from a police report filed in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to "take back the streets." Within a span of 36 hours, more than 1,000 people — peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents — were arrested and placed in detention. We are joined by three guests: the report’s co-editor, Abby Deshman, a lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union; and Hossam Bahgat, an Egyptian human rights activist and the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Charles Pierce: The Reign Of Morons Is Here

Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.

In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.

Rick Perlstein: Thinking Like a Conservative (Part Four): Goalpost-Moving

Some thoughts today on the apocalyptic horror that envelops us this week, thanks to our friends on the right. Last week I noted that conservatives are time-biders: “The catacombs were good enough for the Christians,” as National Review publisher William Rusher put it in 1960. That’s their imperative as they see it: hunker down, for decades if need be, waiting for the opportune moment to strike down the wickedness they spy everywhere—in this case, a smoothly functioning federal government. “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years,” Grover Norquist said in the first part of the quote, whose more famous second half is “to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Welcome to Commonomics: How to Build Local Economies Strong Enough for Everyone

In our new series, YES! Magazine investigates what it will take to strengthen our local economies for the benefit of all. 

by Laura Flanders 


Chokwe Lumumba was an unlikely candidate for high office in Mississippi. But last June, the former Black Nationalist and one-time attorney to Tupac Shakur was elected Mayor of Jackson. He’s now in hot pursuit, not of big box stores or the next silver bullet solution to what ails the state’s capital city. He wants to create worker-owned cooperatives and small-scale green businesses and to invest in training and infrastructure. It’s the program of change he ran on in the election: local self-reliance.

Jackson’s population is 80 percent black, 18 percent white, and the rest largely immigrant, with heavy concentrations of Indians, Nigerians, and Brazilians.

There's an International Plan to Censor the Internet in the Works -- Let's Stop It in Its Tracks

By Thanh Lam

October 9, 2013  |  One month.

 

That’s the time left before the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could become a finalized agreement. For those who are drawing blank looks -- and understandably so -- the TPP is a highly secretive trade deal involving 12 nations around the Pacific Rim.

Described by experts Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy of Public Citizen as“one of the most significant international commercial agreements since the creation of WTO” [3], the TPP is more than a trade agreement - it’s an underhanded attempt by old industry interests to censor the Internet.

The lack of general awareness about the TPP is exactly what unelected trade officials and lobbyists hope for; the more covert the negotiations, the easier it is to usher in extreme new Internet censorship rules.

Making the Economy ‘Scream’

October 9, 2013

 

Exclusive: In the past when the CIA targeted a troublesome government, a key part of the strategy was to make the economy “scream” to get the people ready for regime change. This tactic now appears to have come home to roost in the Right’s efforts to destabilize President Obama’s government, writes Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

Americans who have studied CIA destabilization campaigns around the world may see some striking parallels to the strategy of Tea Party Republicans who have provoked a government shutdown and now are threatening a credit default. The idea is to make the country appear ungovernable and to make the economy “scream.”

This approach is similar to what CIA operatives do to get rid of disfavored political leaders in other countries, such as when President Richard Nixon ordered the spy agency to sabotage Chile’s economy and upset its political stability in the early 1970s.

Joseph Stiglitz: Five Years in Economic Limbo

When the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, triggering the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression, a broad consensus about what caused the crisis seemed to emerge.

A bloated and dysfunctional financial system had misallocated capital and, rather than managing risk, had actually created it. Financial deregulation – together with easy money – had contributed to excessive risk-taking. Monetary policy would be relatively ineffective in reviving the economy, even if still-easier money might prevent the financial system's total collapse. Thus, greater reliance on fiscal policy – increased government spending – would be necessary.

Five years later, while some are congratulating themselves on avoiding another depression, no one in Europe or the United States can claim that prosperity has returned. The European Union is just emerging from a double-dip (and in some countries a triple-dip) recession, and some member states are in depression. In many EU countries, GDP remains lower, or insignificantly above, pre-recession levels. Almost 27 million Europeans are unemployed.

The Flawed Narrative of Safe Red Seats as Excuse for Radical Republicans

By Eric Boehlert

October 9, 2013  |  According to press accounts, one of the universal truths about the current government shutdown is that more Republican members of the House have adopted increasingly brazen political strategies because they're elected from safe districts.

 

Due to the growing polarization of American politics and its voting patterns (along with gerrymandering), Tea Party-aligned Republicans from deeply red districts have embraced unorthodox behavior [2] and unprecedented strategies because local voters staunchly support them even if their agenda is unpopular nationwide. It's that electoral freedom that's produced a new breed of Republican congressmen and women, according to this press telling [3].

Are Utility Companies Out to Destroy Solar's 'Rooftop Revolution'?

In California, customers who install solar systems and battery arrays are finding themselves cut off from grid

- Jon Queally, staff writer 

 

In the nation's largest state, California, the major utility companies are trying to limit growth.

 

Of rooftop solar panels, that is.

According to reporting by Bloomberg, the state's three largest utilities—Edison International, PG&E Corp. and Sempra Energy—are "putting up hurdles" to homeowners who have installed sun-powered energy systems, especially those with "battery backups wired to solar panels," in order to slow the spread of what has become a threat to their dominant business model.
 

Richard Eskow: Republicans Are Too Expensive – In Jobs and Dollars – For America

October 8, 2013

Journalists are understandably captivated by the government shutdown and the looming confrontation over the debt ceiling. Those are certainly dramatic stories. But another, quieter drama has been playing out for years in homes and communities across the country, as millions of jobs and trillions in wealth have been lost to Republican economic folly.

Now the Republicans are doing their best to make things even worse. Their budget stance offends many Americans’ sense of morality, since they’re asking poor and middle-class Americans to subsidize the luxuries of the wealthy and the profits of powerful corporations.

Dean Baker: Will Seniors Have to Pay for President Obama’s Victory on Budget Standoff?

It is widely reported that the Republicans are looking for a face-saving way to back down from the standoff they created on the budget and the debt ceiling. According to these news accounts, this route could involve another stab at the “grand bargain,” a deal that includes some tax increases and cuts to Social Security and Medicare. 

This prospect should inspire outrage beyond the fact that it would make the Republicans huge winners coming from a disastrous losing position. (Polls show that shutting down the government to keep people from getting health care is not a popular position.) That’s an issue for political junkies; the more important point is that millions of seniors who are already struggling would be asked to make further sacrifices for basically no reason whatsoever.

'Transition Towns': Building a Better World, One Block at a Time

by Stephen Leahy

NANTES, France - One evening in the small village of Ashton Hayes in Cheshire, England, someone started a conversation about climate change and energy at the local pub. It was 2005. Two years later, residents had cut their carbon dioxide emissions and energy costs by 20 percent.

Ashton Hayes now aims to be England’s first carbon-neutral community.

“People know major changes have to be made in the face of climate change and resource depletion,” said Rob Hopkins, one of founders of the Transition Town movement in which local people get together to find ways to make their streets and neighbourhoods more sustainable.

Dear WWII Vets, Forget About the Monument, They Are Gunning for Your Social Security

by Mary Bottari — October 9, 2013 - 7:55am

Apparently the only thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree on in Washington, DC, is that they can't deal with bad press involving Honor Flight vets.

This led to absurd images of Republicans -- who had shut down the federal government, including all monuments and museums -- rushing to "aid" veterans shut out by monument closures. In the most revolting display, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) publicly berated a National Park Service Ranger for a situation created entirely by Congress.

Enron billionaire expands craven plot to abuse workers

A billionaire's scheme to loot public workers' pensions now includes a shadowy front group -- and brand-new target

By David Sirota

A week after the simultaneous release of my Institute for America’s Future report and Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone investigation into John Arnold, huge news hit California: The Enron billionaire whose former company wrecked the Golden State’s economy appears to be using a shadowy Texas front group to now try to loot the Golden State’s public pension system. As the Sacramento Bee reports (emphasis added):

With the first deadline looming for a new public-pension proposal to make the November 2014 ballot, a Texas nonprofit has emerged in a behind-the-scenes battle poised to break into public view next year.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, a Democrat pushing a controversial idea to dial down government retirement benefits, asked a Houston-based group (called Action Now Initiative) to give $200,000 to his local chamber of commerce last summer for “policy analysis for statewide pension reform” according to a report Reed filed in August…

Paul Krugman: American Craziness and Class Warfare

Tuesday, 08 October 2013 10:52 

The economist Mark Thoma recently wrote an excellent column for the Fiscal Times linking the fight over the debt ceiling to the larger issue of extreme inequality. I'd like to suggest that the reality is even worse than Mr. Thoma suggests.

Here's how he put it: "Rising inequality and differential exposure to economic risk has caused one group to see themselves as the 'makers' in society who provide for the rest and pay most of the bills, and the other group as 'takers' who get all the benefits. The upper strata wonders, 'Why should we pay for social insurance when we get little or none of the benefits?' and this leads to an attack on these programs."

The Koch Brothers’ ‘Samson Option’

October 8, 2013

 

Exclusive: The fiscal crisis in Washington is not simply a threat to economic and government stability, as serious as that is. It is a premeditated scheme to carve out a new constitutional structure that gives the Koch Brothers and other right-wing billionaires the power to void the democratic process, writes Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

The Koch Brothers and other right-wing billionaires who provoked the government shutdown and now are angling for an even more devastating credit default see themselves as the people who deserve to rule the United States without interference from lesser citizens, especially those with darker-colored skin.

Their “masters of the universe” world view is that they or their daddies or their daddies’ daddies were the ones who “built America” and, thus, it’s their right to tear down the remarkable edifice of U.S. law, politics and economics created over the past two-plus centuries — if the country’s less-deserving inhabitants insist on raising taxes on the rich to fund programs benefiting the poor and the middle class.

Kings, Warlords and Theocrats Have No Place in America

Monday, 07 October 2013 14:55  
By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed 

We The People are supposed to have the power in America.

That was the idea of the Founders, but it has been taken from us.

Since the Reagan Revolution, we've become the land of kings, warlords and theocrats.

As Thomas Jefferson pointed out, from the founding of Samaria 7000 years ago until 1776, one of three types of people and groups ruled everyone else.

They were the hereditary kings, violent warlords or theocrats.

Renowned Farmer and Writer Wendell Berry: Confronting the Consequences of Runaway Capitalism

By Bill Moyers

October 7, 2013  |   BILL MOYERS: Welcome. In this broadcast you will meet an effervescent man who still believes we can make democracy work. Later we’ll talk about those people in Washington who refuse to let it work, but first Wendell Berry. A master of the written word, he rarely appears on television. For one thing, when he’s not writing, he’s farming—and that can keep a fellow busy from sunrise to sunset. But we met recently and after considerable persuasion he said “OK, bring your cameras with you.” This portrait is the result. Produced with the Schumann Media Center, which I head.

WENDELL BERRY: We don’t have a right to ask whether we’re going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what’s the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?

BILL MOYERS: For Wendell Berry, the defense of the Earth is a mission that admits no compromise. This quiet and modest man who lives and works far from the center of power on a farm in Kentucky where his family has lived for 200 years has become an outspoken, even angry advocate for a revolution in our treatment of the land.

The Supreme Court is poised to legalize corruption

By Dana Milbank,

There’s a certain irony in the Supreme Court remaining open while much of the federal government is shut, for the high court created much of the dysfunction that cripples Washington today.

The court has failed to undo the partisan redistricting that has left the House hopelessly polarized. It has furthered Americans’ cynicism toward politics with nakedly political rulings such as Bush v. Gore. And, above all, it has created a campaign-finance system that is directly responsible for the rise of uncompromising leaders on both sides of the Capitol.

6 Ways Neoliberal Education Reform May Be Destroying a College Near You

By Owen Davis

October 7, 2013  |  This past August at the State University of New York, Buffalo, President Obama made a familiar offer: “major new reforms,” this time in higher education, “that will shake up the current system.” The New York Times [3] described it as a plan “to shame universities into holding down prices.”

 

Obama’s remarks [4] were an overture to what will become a major campaign to transform higher education through three measures: instituting a ratings system and performance funding for federal student aid; encouraging technological innovation and competition; and mitigating student debt.

If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because they've played this tune before.

Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, Big Bro Wants You

Posted by Pratap Chatterjee at 8:04am, October 8, 2013.

The Data Hackers
Mining Your Information for Big Brother

By Pratap Chatterjee

Big Bro is watching you. Inside your mobile phone and hidden behind your web browser are little known software products marketed by contractors to the government that can follow you around anywhere. No longer the wide-eyed fantasies of conspiracy theorists, these technologies are routinely installed in all of our data devices by companies that sell them to Washington for a profit.

That’s not how they’re marketing them to us, of course. No, the message is much more seductive: Data, Silicon Valley is fond of saying, is the new oil. And the Valley’s message is clear enough: we can turn your digital information into fuel for pleasure and profits -- if you just give us access to your location, your correspondence, your history, and the entertainment that you like.

The Punishers Want To Run The Country or We Are All Tipped Waitstaff Now

We've seen a lot of weird reactions on the right wing to the Government Shut down. These range from "it doesn't matter" to "its terrible" but one thing that really strikes me is the rage and antipathy that has been displayed towards Federal Workers themselves.  It doesn't strike me as unusual, but it does strike me as significant.  Yesterday's on air rant by Stuart Varney makes it pretty explicit: Federal Workers and, indeed, the entire Government are failing Stuart Varney. They cost too much and they do too little.  In fact: they are so awful they don't even deserve to be paid for the work they have already done. Contracts, agreements, and labor be damned. If Stuart Varney isn't happy then they deserve to be fired. Here's the quote if you haven't seen it:

HOWELL: Do you think that federal workers, when this ends, are deserving of their back pay or not?

VARNEY: That is a loaded question isn't it? You want my opinion? This is President Obama's shutdown. He is responsible for shutting this thing down; he's taken an entirely political decision here. No, I don't think they should get their back pay, frankly, I really don't. I'm sick and tired of a massive, bloated federal bureaucracy living on our backs, and taking money out of us, a lot more money than most of us earn in the private sector, then getting a furlough, and then getting their money back at the end of it. Sorry, I'm not for that. I want to punish these people. Sorry to say that, but that's what I want to do.

The Radical Christian Right and the War on Government

Monday, 07 October 2013 09:10
Chris Hedges

There is a desire felt by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment, radically diminish the role of government to create a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and force a recalcitrant world to bend to the will of an imperial and “Christian” America. Its public face is on display in the House of Representatives. This ideology, which is the driving force behind the shutdown of the government, calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The “deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant” schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled. “Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.

Paul Krugman: The Boehner Bunglers

The federal government is shut down, we’re about to hit the debt ceiling (with disastrous economic
consequences), and no resolution is in sight. How did this happen?

The main answer, which only the most pathologically “balanced” reporting can deny, is the
radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it last year in
their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become “an insurgent outlier —
ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful
of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and
dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

The Income Tax Turns 100 — Who Pays What?

by Joshua Holland

Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the federal income tax. That is, the income tax that we have today – the first US tax raised on earned incomes was a temporary one imposed to help pay for the War of 1812. Another helped pay for the Civil War, but was allowed to expire in 1872.

One of the most simplistic statements one can utter is, “taxes are too damn high.” The US has a complex tax system — there are many, many different taxes — so a more salient question than whether taxes are “too high” or “too low” is: who pays what?

Former Representative Brad Miller: Naked Capitalism – My Hot Sheet on Finance

By Brad Miller, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2013 and is now Of Counsel to the law firm of Grais & Ellsworth LLP

Matt Taibbi described in “How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform” the many ways “the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law,” including the effort by House Republicans after the 2010 election to “pass a gazillion loopholes.”
“You might wonder,” Taibbi wrote, “how a bunch of lunkhead Republican Congressmen would even know how to write a coordinated series of ‘technical fixes’ to derivatives legislation, a universe so complicated that it has become hard to find anyone on the Hill who truly understands the subject. (One Congressman who sits on the Financial Services Committee laughingly admitted that when the crash of 2008 happened, he had to look up ‘credit default swaps’ on Wikipedia.)”

The Debt Ceiling Dates Back to Founding Fathers

Sunday, 06 October 2013 10:47  
By Kevin G Hall, McClatchy Newspapers | Report 

Washington - Wondering who to thank for the bizarre rules that allow Congress to approve spending, then later slam the door on new borrowing to pay the bills? Thank the Founding Fathers.

Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the exclusive powers to legislate and the power of the purse. In fact, Section 8 of the first article deals specifically with paying debts.

Secret Ballot Initiative Would Slash Retirement Benefits for Public Employees

By Gary Cohn

September 26, 2013  |  In a move to slash the retirement benefits of public employees in California, a group of mostly conservative policy advocates has been working behind the scenes on a possible 2014 ballot initiative. A copy of the still-secret draft initiative, which could dramatically impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians and send a signal nationwide, has been obtained by Frying Pan News. (See the document’s text following this article or click here [3].)

 

If enacted, the proposed law would allow the state and local governments to cut back retirement benefits for current employees for the years of work they perform after the changes go into effect. Previous efforts to curb retirement benefits for public employees have largely focused on newly hired workers, but the initiative would shrink pensions for workers who are currently on the job.

Playing Chicken with Food Safety

October 5, 2013

 

The U.S. Constitution empowers the federal government to “provide for the … general Welfare,” but free-market ideologues have distorted the Founding document’s plain language to fit their desires, including their new demands that food-safety rules be gutted, as Michael Winship explains.


By Michael Winship

The other day there was this guy in a chicken suit on Pennsylvania Avenue protesting outside the White House. Silly, but the reason the chicken and other demonstrators had crossed the avenue was to deliver a petition of more than half a million names, speaking out against new rules the U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to put into effect – bad rules that would transfer much of the work inspecting pork and chicken and turkey meat from trained government inspectors to the processing companies themselves.

Talk about putting the fox in the henhouse! The revised regulations also call for a substantial speeding up of the disassembly line along which workers use sharp knives and often painful, repetitive hand motions to cut up and clean carcasses of dirt, blood and other contaminants that can cause infection and sickness.

Beginning of the end for major health insurers

Obamacare will unleash innovation in insurance market, expose irrelevance of the big firms 

By Wendell Potter

I’ve often said that the Affordable Care Act is the end of the beginning of reform. Starting tomorrow, October 1, 2014, that law will signify the beginning of the end of the health insurance industry as we know it.

As I’ve noted previously, my former CEO at Cigna said at a leadership retreat that what kept him up at night was the fear that big health insurance corporations might someday be viewed as unnecessary middlemen, that their “value proposition” would come under scrutiny and found to be wanting. That insurance companies would, to use his term, be disintermediated.

That day has arrived.

Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent

A stunning 35 to 40 percent of everything we buy goes to interest. As Ellen Brown reported, “That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street.” In her report, Brown cited the work of Margrit Kennedy, PhD, whose research in Germany documents interest charges ranging from 12 percent for garbage collection, to 38 percent for drinking water, and 77 percent for rent in public housing. 

For Pennsylvania's Doctors, a Gag Order on Fracking Chemicals

A new provision could forbid the state’s doctors from sharing information with patients exposed to toxic fracking solutions.

—By Kate Sheppard | Fri Mar. 23, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction—but they won't be able to share it with their patients.* A provision buried in a law passed last month is drawing scrutiny from the public health and environmental community, who argue that it will "gag" doctors who want to raise concerns related to oil and gas extraction with the people they treat and the general public.

Pennsylvania is at the forefront in the debate over "fracking," the process by which a high-pressure mixture of chemicals, sand, and water are blasted into rock to tap into the gas. Recent discoveries of great reserves in the Marcellus Shale region of the state prompted a rush to development, as have advancements in fracking technologies. But with those changes have come a number of concerns from citizens about potential environmental and health impacts from natural gas drilling.

Paul Krugman: Reform Turns Real

At this point, the crisis in American governance has taken on a life of its own. Some Republicans
are now saying openly that they want concessions in return for reopening the government and
avoiding default, not because they have any specific policy goals in mind, but simply because they
don’t want to feel “disrespected.” And no endgame is in sight.

But this confrontation did start with a real issue: Republican efforts to stop Obamacare from going
into effect. It’s long been clear that the great fear of the Republican Party was not that health
reform would fail, but that it would succeed. And developments since Tuesday, when the
exchanges on which individuals will buy health insurance opened for business, strongly suggest
that their worst fears will indeed be realized: This thing is going to work.

Diesel exhaust stops honeybees from finding the flowers they want to forage

Exposure to common air pollutants found in diesel exhaust pollution can affect the ability of honeybees to recognise floral odours, new University of Southampton research shows.

Honeybees use floral odours to help locate, identify and recognise the flowers from which they forage.

The Southampton team, led by Dr Tracey Newman and Professor Guy Poppy, found that diesel exhaust fumes change the profile of flora odour. They say that these changes may affect honeybees' foraging efficiency and, ultimately, could affect pollination and thus global food security.

There Is No Such Thing as the Tea Party; There Is Only a Collection of Billionaires

Wednesday, 02 October 2013 15:17

By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as the Tea Party. There is only a collection of individual billionaires.

Back in 2009 and 2010, during the debate about Obamacare and during the mid-term elections that swept Republicans into power in the House of Representatives, Americans first caught a glimpse of a monster. That monster has now taken over the halls of Congress and shut down the government that George Washington had three horses shot out from under from him to create.

Improving water security with blue, green, and gray water

Agriculture is one of the most insatiable consumers of dwindling water resources around the world. And food production will need to increase by about 70% over the next 35 years to meet the needs of a growing population. Crops aren't creating the only demands; agriculture will face competition for water from cities, industries, and recreation.

With limited water and the increasing number of people depending on it, water security is tenuous. But integrated water management plans using "blue," "green," and "gray" water can increase water security. What do these colors mean and why are these waters vital?

Mysterious Study Backs Financial Adviser Thieves Who Want To Keep Bilking Small Investors

By David Dayen, a lapsed blogger, now a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @ddayen

At the risk of self-promotion, allow me to point you in the direction of a piece by me running today in The New Republic. It’s about a proposed update to the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, and how the financial services industry, along with members of both parties, are working to stop it. An excerpt:

The Labor Department proposal, known as the “fiduciary rule,” would change the ethical standards by which employer-based retirement products like 401(k)’s and IRAs are marketed and sold. The rule has not been updated since 1975, before 401(k)’s and IRAs even existed. The Labor Department wants to broaden the definition of a “fiduciary” to cover all financial advisers who offer individual investment advice for a fee. Under the rule, they would be legally required to work in the best interest of their clients. For example, a fiduciary would not be able to push investment products on customers in which they have a financial stake…

Paul Krugman: No Triumph for Austerity

It was, I suppose, predictable that Europe's austerians would claim vindication at the first hint of an economic upturn. Still, an op-ed by the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, in the Financial Times, in which he claims complete vindication because Europe has had one, count it, one quarter of growth, is pretty awesome even relative to expectations.

It takes quite a lot of chutzpah — do they have that word in German? — to claim that this is a record of successful preparation for structural transformation. What about all the livelihoods, and in some cases lives, destroyed? What about the millions of young Europeans who still have no hope of getting a decent job?

The Cult of the Selfish

When did America lose sight of the common good?

BY Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers President

Last week, in an example of what makes America beautiful, several strangers rushed to the aid of a New York City construction worker trapped in a burning fifth-floor apartment. The rescuers hoisted a ladder up a fire escape and extended it to the smoky windowsill where the victim clung.

One of the rookie rescuers risked his life clambering across the ladder-bridge four stories high and grabbing the victim as he dropped from the window.

Financial Media Cheering Banksters Will Speed the Next Crisis

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

September 30, 2013  |  If you take a tour through the pre-crisis world of the financial media, you will be greeted with eye-popping examples of journalism gone wrong. Over and over, the American public was told that the doomsayers were wrong about the economy, that the titans of Wall Street were national heroes, and that everything would be fine if we just let Mr. Market do his magical thing. (There were notable exceptions [3], and those bold journalists deserve our thanks). In that upside-down world, exotic financial products were the best thing since sliced bread and subprime mortgages were no biggie.

 

In the years leading up to 2008, the financial media was so far up the butt of Wall Street that not only was it unable to warn the public about the impending crisis, it arguably helped bring on the disaster.

Wall Street, we know, has learned almost nothing from the crisis, and continues its crime spree, from money laundering and market manipulation to reckless speculation and bogus fees.

Are Republicans So Frantic to Stop Obamacare Because They Fear It Will Work?

By Kurt Eichenwald

What is it about Obamacare that compels seemingly intelligent people to explode in bubbling spasms of stupid? Are they misinformed? Unable to see past the rage-fueled partisan sweat dripping into their eyes? Or just plain dishonest?

No matter. At this point, it has become obvious that history will look back on the four-year war on Obamacare as one of the saddest, most bizarre, and most dishonestly embarrassing episodes of our time. I have given up trying to understand the vehement opposition of so many who cannot offer up truthful reasons for their objections, and instead fuel the hatred and fears of the uninformed with the most illogical, mendacious, and fundamentally bizarre arguments that have ever been marshaled. By comparison, Joe McCarthy’s McCarthyistic McCarthyism was an exercise in reason.

Global study: World not ready for aging population

Sep 30, 11:04 PM (ET)By KRISTEN GELINEAU


The world is aging so fast that most countries are not prepared to support their swelling numbers of elderly people, according to a global study being issued Tuesday by the United Nations and an elder rights group.

The report ranks the social and economic well-being of elders in 91 countries, with Sweden coming out on top and Afghanistan at the bottom. It reflects what advocates for the old have been warning, with increasing urgency, for years: Nations are simply not working quickly enough to cope with a population graying faster than ever before. By the year 2050, for the first time in history, seniors older than 60 will outnumber children younger than 15.
 

Dean Baker: Debt Default: The Only Way to Get to Full Employment?

All the usual suspects are giving us all the usual warnings about the disaster that would ensue if the government defaults on its debt. Much of what they say is undoubtedly true; it would create a huge amount of fear and uncertainty in financial markets.

 

Look for stock and bond prices to tumble and interest rates to soar. The viability of many banks and other financial institutions may be called into question if even government debt cannot be viewed as entirely safe and highly liquid asset. This is not the sort of thing that an economy still struggling to recover from the recession needs right now.

Paul Krugman: Rebels Without A Clue

This may be the way the world ends — not with a bang but with a temper tantrum.

O.K., a temporary government shutdown — which became almost inevitable after Sunday’s House vote to provide government funding only on unacceptable conditions — wouldn’t be the end of the world. But a U.S. government default, which will happen unless Congress raises the debt ceiling soon, might cause financial catastrophe. Unfortunately, many Republicans either don’t understand this or don’t care.

Let’s talk first about the economics.

Taibbi on How Wall Street is Looting Public Pension Funds

You must go, pronto, and read Matt Taibbi’s latest expose, on how hedge funds are plundering public pension funds, meaning pension funds managed on behalf of government employees like policemen, sanitation workers, and teachers. Taibbi describes how a concerted PR campaign has made workers the scapegoats for large pension shortfalls when in fact public officials and unscrupulous financiers (both through their machinations with these funds and via damage done by the global financial crisis) are the real perps.

We're Not Lovin' It

Wednesday, 25 September 2013 12:12  
By Nicole Aschoff, Dollars & Sense | News Analysis 

There’s a line in Johnny Paycheck’s 1977 hit song that goes “I’d give the shirt right off my back, if I had the guts to say ... Take this job and shove it, I ain’t working here no more.” In the past year, fast-food, retail, and warehouse workers have shown they do have the guts—but instead of quitting, they’re fighting back. From New York to California they’re taking to the streets. They’re fighting for a living wage, for respect from their bosses, and in some cases, for the right to form a union.

Back in June 2012, eight immigrant workers peeling crawfish under sweatshop conditions for C.J.’s Seafood (then a Walmart supplier) went on strike in Louisiana. They stayed out for weeks, demanding an end to forced labor, wage theft, and other unfair labor practices—and they won. Following up on the C.J.’s workers’ successful action, Walmart warehouse workers in California and Illinois walked out in September, calling for improved workplace safety and a fair wage. A month later, Walmart associates walked out at 28 stores in twelve cities. The strikes marked the first time in history that Walmart retail workers had ever gone on strike, and were quickly followed by more strikes and demonstrations on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year.

Paul Krugman: What's It All About Then

Simon Wren-Lewis writes with feeling about the “austerity deception“; what sets him off is a post that characterizes the whole austerity debate as being about “big-state” versus “small-state” people.

Wren-Lewis’s point is that only one side of the debate saw it that way. Opponents of austerity in a depressed economy opposed it because they believed that this would worsen the depression — and they were right.

Report Exposes The Right-Wing Tag Team Plotting Against Pensions

Isaiah J. Poole

News stories around the country have trumpeted a public pension “crisis” in various states, featuring elected officials who insist that these crises justify slashing the retirement benefits of public employees.

What these stories usually don’t say is that conservative activists are manufacturing the perception of a public pension crisis in order to both slash modest retiree benefits and preserve expensive corporate subsidies and tax breaks.