Friday, October 31, 2008
Entrusting The Vote To Questionable Technology:
Democracy Now! - Lawsuits, Machine Malfunctions and Missing Absentee Ballots Among Voting Rights Issues Facing Jittery Election
"With the election less than a week away, the battle is on for voting rights. Early voters across the country are reporting long lines and problems with electronic voting machines. Republicans, meanwhile, continue to file lawsuits that could stop thousands from voting. We speak to Harvey Wasserman of Free Press and Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog..."
The Brad Blog: Vote-Flipping Diebold Machine Removed, Quarantined in CO
"A county clerk in Colorado has finally done the right thing for the voters by removing a touch-screen voting machine from service, and quarantining it, after it was discovered to be flipping votes from one candidate to another. The failed machine in this case was a Diebold Accu-Vote, a frequent flipper..."
Democracy Now! - Lawsuits, Machine Malfunctions and Missing Absentee Ballots Among Voting Rights Issues Facing Jittery Election
"With the election less than a week away, the battle is on for voting rights. Early voters across the country are reporting long lines and problems with electronic voting machines. Republicans, meanwhile, continue to file lawsuits that could stop thousands from voting. We speak to Harvey Wasserman of Free Press and Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog..."
The Brad Blog: Vote-Flipping Diebold Machine Removed, Quarantined in CO
"A county clerk in Colorado has finally done the right thing for the voters by removing a touch-screen voting machine from service, and quarantining it, after it was discovered to be flipping votes from one candidate to another. The failed machine in this case was a Diebold Accu-Vote, a frequent flipper..."
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Our (Fleeting) Civil Liberties:
ACLU.org - Surveillance Society Clock
"Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.
The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This ' Constitution-Free Zone' includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas."
IDG News Service: Researchers find problems with RFID passport cards
"RFID tags used in two new types of border-crossing documents in the U.S. are vulnerable to snooping and copying, a researcher said on Thursday.
United States Passport Cards issued by the U.S. Department of State and EDLs (enhanced driver's licenses) from the state of Washington contain RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags that can be scanned at border crossings without being handed over to agents. Both were introduced earlier this year for border crossings by land and water only, and can't be used for air travel. New York is the only other U.S. state with an EDL, though others are in the works.
The information in these tags could be copied on to another, off-the-shelf tag, which might be used to impersonate the legitimate holder of the card if a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents at the border didn't see the card itself, the researchers said. Another danger is that the tags can be read from as far as 150 feet away in some situations, so criminals could read them without being detected. Although the tags don't contain personal information, they could be used to track a person's movements through ongoing surveillance, they said...
Economics:
The Times Online (UK) - Nouriel Roubini: I fear the worst is yet to come
"As stock markets headed off a cliff again last week, closely followed by currencies, and as meltdown threatened entire countries such as Hungary and Iceland, one voice was in demand above all others to steer us through the gloom: that of Dr Doom.
For years Dr Doom toiled in relative obscurity as a New York University economics professor under his alias, Nouriel Roubini. But after making a series of uncannily accurate predictions about the global meltdown, Roubini has become the prophet of his age, jetting around the world dispensing his advice and latest prognostications to politicians and businessmen desperate to know what happens next – and for any answer to the crisis.
While the economic sun was shining, most other economists scoffed at Roubini and his predictions of imminent disaster. They dismissed his warnings that the sub-prime mortgage disaster would trigger a financial meltdown. They could not quite believe his view that the US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would collapse, and that the investment banks would be crushed as the world headed for a long recession.
Yet all these predictions and more came true. Few are laughing now.
What does Roubini think is going to happen next? Rather worryingly, in London last Thursday he predicted that hundreds of hedge funds will go bust and stock markets may soon have to shut – perhaps for as long as a week – in order to stem the panic selling now sweeping the world.
What happened? The next day trading was briefly stopped in New York and Moscow.
Dubbed Dr Doom for his gloomy views, this lugubrious disciple of the 'dismal science' is now the world’s most in-demand economist. He reckons he is getting about four hours’ sleep a night. Last week he was in Budapest, London, Madrid and New York. Next week he will address Congress in Washington. Do not expect any good news.
Contacted in Madrid on Friday, Roubini said the world economy was 'at a breaking point'. He believes the stock markets are now 'essentially in free fall' and 'we are reaching the point of sheer panic'.
For all his recent predictive success, his critics still urge calm. They charge he is a professional doom-monger who was banging on about recession for years as the economy boomed. Roubini is stung by such charges, dismissing them as 'pathetic'..."
Bill Moyers Journal: Transcript - October 24, 2008
"BILL MOYERS: ...Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson tried to assure us this week that, no fooling, there will be strings attached to the $700 billion dollars approved by Congress.
HENRY PAULSON: Institutions that sell shares to the government will accept restrictions on executive compensation, including a clawback provision and a ban on golden parachutes during the period the treasury holds equity issued through the program.
BILL MOYERS: Clawbacks stipulate the return of the more ill-gotten of executive gains, but, believe me, there are so many loopholes in the restrictions on compensation, you could fly a fleet of gulf stream corporate jets right through them. At least seven loopholes were identified by Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio.
REPRESENTATIVE PETER DEFAZIO: The golden parachutes, yeah, they were exchanged for camouflaged parachutes. The execs on Wall Street are still going to get millions. Look at the loopholes there.
BILL MOYERS: And take note: since the start of Fiscal 2004, the once mighty five of Wall Street - Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns - lost around $83 billion in stock market value. But they reported employee compensation of around $239 billion.
In other words, the financial engineers who dug this disastrous hole paid themselves almost three dollars for every dollar they lost.
And now this. The cost of all these bailouts to the taxpayer is more than two and half times what we forked over twenty years ago to pay for the Savings & Loan crisis - a whopping $8,750 per household. So while you may have seen your retirement savings or college tuition account destroyed or have been on of the 800,000 who have lost their jobs so far this year, the masters of the universe are doing just fine, thank you. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is looking out for them.
During his 32 years at Goldman Sachs, where he knew many of the players now floating to earth with taxpayer parachutes, Paulson accumulated $700 million. And now he says he's afraid that if he clamps down too harshly on compensation for his old friends, they might not be enthusiastic about participating in his plan to save our economy. I am not making this up.
Or this: the 30-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - or OECD - is out this week with a new report on global gaps between rich and poor. Guess which great industrial nation had the fourth highest inequality in incomes - behind Mexico, Turkey and Portugal? Right. Us.
Here's precisely what the report says: 'Rich households in America have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States.' Now there's some real spreading around of the wealth - in one direction: up..."
Campaign 2008:
Michael T Klare: Palin's Petropolitics
"In the clinical terminology of political science, Alaska is a classic 'petrostate.' That is, its political system is geared toward the maximization of oil 'rents'--royalties and other income derived from energy firms--to the neglect of all other economic activities. Such polities have an inherent tendency toward corruption because of the close ties that naturally develop between government officials and energy executives and because oil revenues replace taxation as a source of revenue (Alaska has no state income tax), insulating officials from the scrutiny of taxpayers. Ever since the discovery of oil in the North Slope, Alaska's GOP leadership has largely behaved in this fashion. And while Governor Sarah Palin has made some commendable efforts to dilute her party's ties to Big Oil, she is no less a practitioner of petrostate politics than her predecessors..."
ACLU.org - Surveillance Society Clock
"Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.
The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This ' Constitution-Free Zone' includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas."
IDG News Service: Researchers find problems with RFID passport cards
"RFID tags used in two new types of border-crossing documents in the U.S. are vulnerable to snooping and copying, a researcher said on Thursday.
United States Passport Cards issued by the U.S. Department of State and EDLs (enhanced driver's licenses) from the state of Washington contain RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags that can be scanned at border crossings without being handed over to agents. Both were introduced earlier this year for border crossings by land and water only, and can't be used for air travel. New York is the only other U.S. state with an EDL, though others are in the works.
The information in these tags could be copied on to another, off-the-shelf tag, which might be used to impersonate the legitimate holder of the card if a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents at the border didn't see the card itself, the researchers said. Another danger is that the tags can be read from as far as 150 feet away in some situations, so criminals could read them without being detected. Although the tags don't contain personal information, they could be used to track a person's movements through ongoing surveillance, they said...
Economics:
The Times Online (UK) - Nouriel Roubini: I fear the worst is yet to come
"As stock markets headed off a cliff again last week, closely followed by currencies, and as meltdown threatened entire countries such as Hungary and Iceland, one voice was in demand above all others to steer us through the gloom: that of Dr Doom.
For years Dr Doom toiled in relative obscurity as a New York University economics professor under his alias, Nouriel Roubini. But after making a series of uncannily accurate predictions about the global meltdown, Roubini has become the prophet of his age, jetting around the world dispensing his advice and latest prognostications to politicians and businessmen desperate to know what happens next – and for any answer to the crisis.
While the economic sun was shining, most other economists scoffed at Roubini and his predictions of imminent disaster. They dismissed his warnings that the sub-prime mortgage disaster would trigger a financial meltdown. They could not quite believe his view that the US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would collapse, and that the investment banks would be crushed as the world headed for a long recession.
Yet all these predictions and more came true. Few are laughing now.
What does Roubini think is going to happen next? Rather worryingly, in London last Thursday he predicted that hundreds of hedge funds will go bust and stock markets may soon have to shut – perhaps for as long as a week – in order to stem the panic selling now sweeping the world.
What happened? The next day trading was briefly stopped in New York and Moscow.
Dubbed Dr Doom for his gloomy views, this lugubrious disciple of the 'dismal science' is now the world’s most in-demand economist. He reckons he is getting about four hours’ sleep a night. Last week he was in Budapest, London, Madrid and New York. Next week he will address Congress in Washington. Do not expect any good news.
Contacted in Madrid on Friday, Roubini said the world economy was 'at a breaking point'. He believes the stock markets are now 'essentially in free fall' and 'we are reaching the point of sheer panic'.
For all his recent predictive success, his critics still urge calm. They charge he is a professional doom-monger who was banging on about recession for years as the economy boomed. Roubini is stung by such charges, dismissing them as 'pathetic'..."
Bill Moyers Journal: Transcript - October 24, 2008
"BILL MOYERS: ...Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson tried to assure us this week that, no fooling, there will be strings attached to the $700 billion dollars approved by Congress.
HENRY PAULSON: Institutions that sell shares to the government will accept restrictions on executive compensation, including a clawback provision and a ban on golden parachutes during the period the treasury holds equity issued through the program.
BILL MOYERS: Clawbacks stipulate the return of the more ill-gotten of executive gains, but, believe me, there are so many loopholes in the restrictions on compensation, you could fly a fleet of gulf stream corporate jets right through them. At least seven loopholes were identified by Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio.
REPRESENTATIVE PETER DEFAZIO: The golden parachutes, yeah, they were exchanged for camouflaged parachutes. The execs on Wall Street are still going to get millions. Look at the loopholes there.
BILL MOYERS: And take note: since the start of Fiscal 2004, the once mighty five of Wall Street - Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns - lost around $83 billion in stock market value. But they reported employee compensation of around $239 billion.
In other words, the financial engineers who dug this disastrous hole paid themselves almost three dollars for every dollar they lost.
And now this. The cost of all these bailouts to the taxpayer is more than two and half times what we forked over twenty years ago to pay for the Savings & Loan crisis - a whopping $8,750 per household. So while you may have seen your retirement savings or college tuition account destroyed or have been on of the 800,000 who have lost their jobs so far this year, the masters of the universe are doing just fine, thank you. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is looking out for them.
During his 32 years at Goldman Sachs, where he knew many of the players now floating to earth with taxpayer parachutes, Paulson accumulated $700 million. And now he says he's afraid that if he clamps down too harshly on compensation for his old friends, they might not be enthusiastic about participating in his plan to save our economy. I am not making this up.
Or this: the 30-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - or OECD - is out this week with a new report on global gaps between rich and poor. Guess which great industrial nation had the fourth highest inequality in incomes - behind Mexico, Turkey and Portugal? Right. Us.
Here's precisely what the report says: 'Rich households in America have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States.' Now there's some real spreading around of the wealth - in one direction: up..."
Campaign 2008:
Michael T Klare: Palin's Petropolitics
"In the clinical terminology of political science, Alaska is a classic 'petrostate.' That is, its political system is geared toward the maximization of oil 'rents'--royalties and other income derived from energy firms--to the neglect of all other economic activities. Such polities have an inherent tendency toward corruption because of the close ties that naturally develop between government officials and energy executives and because oil revenues replace taxation as a source of revenue (Alaska has no state income tax), insulating officials from the scrutiny of taxpayers. Ever since the discovery of oil in the North Slope, Alaska's GOP leadership has largely behaved in this fashion. And while Governor Sarah Palin has made some commendable efforts to dilute her party's ties to Big Oil, she is no less a practitioner of petrostate politics than her predecessors..."
Friday, October 24, 2008
Campaign 2008:
McCain & the GOP must have nothing left, if they are reaching for the 'socialist' label. Obama has gotten so much money from Wall St. that these charges ring obviously hollow. Since 1912, tax rates have been progressive, so what is the Right talking about?
McClatchy Newspapers: Analyst: Obama plan isn't 'socialism,' it's traditional progressive taxation
"'Make no mistake,' Republican activist John Hancock told a John McCain rally in this St. Louis suburb, 'this campaign is a referendum on socialism.'
Republicans have been pounding that theme in recent days, even though Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama hardly fits the classic definition of a socialist.
Critics point to Obama's plan to raise the top two tax rates on the wealthy as clear evidence of his socialist bent. However, Len Burman, the director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said that while Obama 'would make the tax system more progressive overall, it would not be a radical shift...'"
Demcracy Now! - Early Voting Sees Reports of Voter Intimidation, Machine Malfunctions
"Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. We speak to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy..."
Guardian (UK) - Indiana judge rules against closing early voting sites
"A Lake county, Indiana, superior court judge yesterday ordered early voting sites in heavily Democratic cities Hammond, Gary and East Chicago to remain open in a decision that could affect the presidential election in the battleground state.
In her decision, Judge Diane Kavadias Schneider dismissed complaints from local Republican officials trying to block the sites on the grounds they violated local election rules and created a risk for voter fraud.
Since local Republicans first sought to close the sites two weeks ago, the case has drawn attention from the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and Barack Obama because Indiana is a swing state.
'This is one of a dozen-plus legal actions that our campaign is paying attention to,' said Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign. 'Most importantly, the goal of our campaign is to ensure that all eligible voters have an opportunity to vote, and their votes be counted. We obviously back early polling locations, as long as they are done according to state law. While we disagree with this decision, we will continue to monitor any further legal action that takes place,'..."
Freedom Of The Press:
Huffington Post: United States Ranked 36th In The World For Press Freedom
"The United States is ranked 36th in the world in terms of press freedom, up from 48th last year, according to a report released Wednesday by Reporters Sans Frontieres.
The US is tied with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan in the 36th spot. Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway are tied for first. Iran, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea are all featured among the ten lowest-ranked countries.
According to the survey, the index 'measures the state of press freedom in the world. It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom.'
The ranking examines 'every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). And it includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these press freedom violations,'..."
McCain & the GOP must have nothing left, if they are reaching for the 'socialist' label. Obama has gotten so much money from Wall St. that these charges ring obviously hollow. Since 1912, tax rates have been progressive, so what is the Right talking about?
McClatchy Newspapers: Analyst: Obama plan isn't 'socialism,' it's traditional progressive taxation
"'Make no mistake,' Republican activist John Hancock told a John McCain rally in this St. Louis suburb, 'this campaign is a referendum on socialism.'
Republicans have been pounding that theme in recent days, even though Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama hardly fits the classic definition of a socialist.
Critics point to Obama's plan to raise the top two tax rates on the wealthy as clear evidence of his socialist bent. However, Len Burman, the director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said that while Obama 'would make the tax system more progressive overall, it would not be a radical shift...'"
Demcracy Now! - Early Voting Sees Reports of Voter Intimidation, Machine Malfunctions
"Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. We speak to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy..."
Guardian (UK) - Indiana judge rules against closing early voting sites
"A Lake county, Indiana, superior court judge yesterday ordered early voting sites in heavily Democratic cities Hammond, Gary and East Chicago to remain open in a decision that could affect the presidential election in the battleground state.
In her decision, Judge Diane Kavadias Schneider dismissed complaints from local Republican officials trying to block the sites on the grounds they violated local election rules and created a risk for voter fraud.
Since local Republicans first sought to close the sites two weeks ago, the case has drawn attention from the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and Barack Obama because Indiana is a swing state.
'This is one of a dozen-plus legal actions that our campaign is paying attention to,' said Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign. 'Most importantly, the goal of our campaign is to ensure that all eligible voters have an opportunity to vote, and their votes be counted. We obviously back early polling locations, as long as they are done according to state law. While we disagree with this decision, we will continue to monitor any further legal action that takes place,'..."
Freedom Of The Press:
Huffington Post: United States Ranked 36th In The World For Press Freedom
"The United States is ranked 36th in the world in terms of press freedom, up from 48th last year, according to a report released Wednesday by Reporters Sans Frontieres.
The US is tied with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan in the 36th spot. Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway are tied for first. Iran, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea are all featured among the ten lowest-ranked countries.
According to the survey, the index 'measures the state of press freedom in the world. It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom.'
The ranking examines 'every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). And it includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these press freedom violations,'..."
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Journalism or Opinion?
Huffington Post: Judith Miller Joins Fox News, Fox Says 'She Has A Very Impressive Resume'
"The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports that disgraced New York Times reporter Judith Miller will be joining Fox News, in an announcement expected to be made today:
Fox News is expected to announce today the hiring of a new contributor, a veteran national security correspondent who has shared a Pulitzer Prize.
Miller will be an on-air analyst and will write for Fox's Web site. 'She has a very impressive resume,' says Senior Vice President John Moody. 'We've all had stories that didn't come out exactly as we had hoped. It's certainly something she's going to be associated with for all time, and there's not much anyone can do about that, but we want to make use of the tremendous expertise she brings on a lot of other issues. . . . She has explained herself and she has nothing to apologize for.'
Recently, Miller has written for Reader's Digest and taken a job with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative thinktank..."
A Divisive Campaign:
Keith Olberman: Special Comment: What is 'pro-America' Senator?
"Due to the ongoing hatred and vile nature of the McCarthy McCain/Palin campaign and Republican politicians and pundits, Keith Olbermann is moved yet again to another Special Comment. This time, Olbermann castigates the entire notion 'Us vs. Them' notion that the Republican Party mouthpieces have been perpetuating in their support for John McCain's candidacy. And worse, for someone who has made his ability to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan manner a mainstay of his campaign, John McCain's allowing his proxies to divide Americans into 'good' and 'bad' camps shows how far he has slid from his 'maverick' days..."
Whose Interests Shall The System Serve?
Our government will need to remember that the public interest matters in resolving the financial market problems.
Chris Hedges: The Idiots Who Rule America
"Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in 'the experts.' They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order..."
David Sirota: Treasury Blacks Out Key Parts of Private Bailout Contracts
"Remember how Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson promised full transparency in spending the $700 billion bailout money? And remember how bailout opponents predicted that the failure to mandate such transparency would allow all sorts of Halliburton-style shenanigans? From the looks of the first private contracts issued by the Treasury Department, it looks like the bailout opponents were correct.
As flagged by BailoutSleuth.com, Paulson is blacking out the sections of government contracts that spell out how much private firms will be paid for their services in administering taxpayer money. Here's a page from the compensation part of a contract with Bank of New York, which has been hired to do some of the bookkeeping (because, of course, the Bush administration is happy to privatize that function)...."
Energy:
TG Daily: New solar cell material achieves almost 100% efficiency, could solve world-wide energy problems
"Columbus (OH) - Researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally discovered a new solar cell material capable of absorbing all of the sun's visible light energy. The material is comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum and titanium. The team discovered it not only fluoresces (as most solar cells do), but also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where they can be 'siphoned off' as electricity over 7 million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. This combination of materials also utilizes the entire visible spectrum of light energy, translating into a theoretical potential of almost 100% efficiency. Commercial products are still years away, but this foundational work may well pave the way for a truly renewable form of clean, global energy..."
Huffington Post: Judith Miller Joins Fox News, Fox Says 'She Has A Very Impressive Resume'
"The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports that disgraced New York Times reporter Judith Miller will be joining Fox News, in an announcement expected to be made today:
Fox News is expected to announce today the hiring of a new contributor, a veteran national security correspondent who has shared a Pulitzer Prize.
Miller will be an on-air analyst and will write for Fox's Web site. 'She has a very impressive resume,' says Senior Vice President John Moody. 'We've all had stories that didn't come out exactly as we had hoped. It's certainly something she's going to be associated with for all time, and there's not much anyone can do about that, but we want to make use of the tremendous expertise she brings on a lot of other issues. . . . She has explained herself and she has nothing to apologize for.'
Recently, Miller has written for Reader's Digest and taken a job with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative thinktank..."
A Divisive Campaign:
Keith Olberman: Special Comment: What is 'pro-America' Senator?
"Due to the ongoing hatred and vile nature of the McCarthy McCain/Palin campaign and Republican politicians and pundits, Keith Olbermann is moved yet again to another Special Comment. This time, Olbermann castigates the entire notion 'Us vs. Them' notion that the Republican Party mouthpieces have been perpetuating in their support for John McCain's candidacy. And worse, for someone who has made his ability to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan manner a mainstay of his campaign, John McCain's allowing his proxies to divide Americans into 'good' and 'bad' camps shows how far he has slid from his 'maverick' days..."
Whose Interests Shall The System Serve?
Our government will need to remember that the public interest matters in resolving the financial market problems.
Chris Hedges: The Idiots Who Rule America
"Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in 'the experts.' They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order..."
David Sirota: Treasury Blacks Out Key Parts of Private Bailout Contracts
"Remember how Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson promised full transparency in spending the $700 billion bailout money? And remember how bailout opponents predicted that the failure to mandate such transparency would allow all sorts of Halliburton-style shenanigans? From the looks of the first private contracts issued by the Treasury Department, it looks like the bailout opponents were correct.
As flagged by BailoutSleuth.com, Paulson is blacking out the sections of government contracts that spell out how much private firms will be paid for their services in administering taxpayer money. Here's a page from the compensation part of a contract with Bank of New York, which has been hired to do some of the bookkeeping (because, of course, the Bush administration is happy to privatize that function)...."
Energy:
TG Daily: New solar cell material achieves almost 100% efficiency, could solve world-wide energy problems
"Columbus (OH) - Researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally discovered a new solar cell material capable of absorbing all of the sun's visible light energy. The material is comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum and titanium. The team discovered it not only fluoresces (as most solar cells do), but also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where they can be 'siphoned off' as electricity over 7 million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. This combination of materials also utilizes the entire visible spectrum of light energy, translating into a theoretical potential of almost 100% efficiency. Commercial products are still years away, but this foundational work may well pave the way for a truly renewable form of clean, global energy..."
Friday, October 17, 2008
Economics:
Uwe Reinhardt: Willem Buiter’s Maverecon | I HATE MOM! (and the government, too)
"Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department of Princeton University, has written the following lovely reflection on the role of the government in the US economy. Its applicability to current discourse in the financial markets throughout the North Atlantic area should be obvious..."
Uwe Reinhardt: Willem Buiter’s Maverecon | I HATE MOM! (and the government, too)
"Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department of Princeton University, has written the following lovely reflection on the role of the government in the US economy. Its applicability to current discourse in the financial markets throughout the North Atlantic area should be obvious..."
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Economics:
Dean Baker: The Fannie/Freddie Flat Earth Theory
"...In the Flat Earth version, the real villains in the story were the public/private mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Prominent Congressional Democrats like Senators Charles Schumer and Chris Dodd, and Representative Barney Frank, are cited as accomplices. According to the Flat-Earthers, the problem wasn't sleaze bag bankers pulling down tens of millions a year pushing predatory loans to people who didn't understand them; the real problem was Congressional Democrats, who wanted the government to help the poor and minorities buy homes.
Before addressing the Flat Earth argument, I should be very clear that I have long been a harsh critic of Fannie and Freddie. They committed a colossal mistake by failing to recognize the housing bubble. It is understandable that you could miss an $8 trillion housing bubble if you drive a bus or sell shoes for a living. It's a little harder to accept this sort of mistake from companies that own or guarantee trillions of dollars of mortgage debt.
I first warned that the collapse of the housing bubble would lead to serious problems for Fannie and Freddie in the fall of 2002 , before they began to move into the risky mortgages that were the immediate cause of their collapse...
...There is one basic problem with the Flat Earth story: Fannie and Freddie jumped into the junk mortgage market because they were trying to keep pace with the private issuers of mortgage-backed securities. Fannie and Freddie made a conscious decision to dive into the junk in order to protect their market share, which was being seriously eroded by the aggressive tactics of private giants like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch...
...Fannie and Freddie's conduct was despicable. Their decision to dive into the junk certainly contributed to the further expansion of the bubble and worsened the pain from its eventual collapse. However, they were followers, not leaders. They didn't cause the bubble and the subprime craziness. This train had already left the station. Fannie and Freddie's crime was going along for the ride..."
The 2008 Election:
Brad Friedman: The Republican voter fraud hoax
"Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.
The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of 'Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states' as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it...
...The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less...
...So what are the crimes that have caused all the Sturm und Drang on US television and talk radio, and in several otherwise respectable newspapers and even by the McCain campaign itself?
The only actual crime here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up...
...If you can't win it, steal it. If you can't steal it, claim the other guy stole it. If you can't claim the other guy stole it (yet), say they're about to and then kick up smoke that maybe someone will believe you. (Heckuva job, CNN.)
Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ('fraudulent', 'incomplete', et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming 'Acorn is committing fraud' know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes..."
Domestic Surveillance:
This is the sort of thing the CorpMedia routinely refuses to investigate and follow-up on aggressively.
Democacy Now! - James Bamford: 'The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America'
"The Bush administration’s wiretapping program has come under new scrutiny this week. Two influential congressional committees have opened probes into allegations US intelligence spied on the phone calls of American military personnel, journalists and aid workers in Iraq. We speak to James Bamford about the NSA’s spying on Americans, the agency’s failings pre-9/11 and the ties between NSA and the nation’s telecommunications companies..."
Dean Baker: The Fannie/Freddie Flat Earth Theory
"...In the Flat Earth version, the real villains in the story were the public/private mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Prominent Congressional Democrats like Senators Charles Schumer and Chris Dodd, and Representative Barney Frank, are cited as accomplices. According to the Flat-Earthers, the problem wasn't sleaze bag bankers pulling down tens of millions a year pushing predatory loans to people who didn't understand them; the real problem was Congressional Democrats, who wanted the government to help the poor and minorities buy homes.
Before addressing the Flat Earth argument, I should be very clear that I have long been a harsh critic of Fannie and Freddie. They committed a colossal mistake by failing to recognize the housing bubble. It is understandable that you could miss an $8 trillion housing bubble if you drive a bus or sell shoes for a living. It's a little harder to accept this sort of mistake from companies that own or guarantee trillions of dollars of mortgage debt.
I first warned that the collapse of the housing bubble would lead to serious problems for Fannie and Freddie in the fall of 2002 , before they began to move into the risky mortgages that were the immediate cause of their collapse...
...There is one basic problem with the Flat Earth story: Fannie and Freddie jumped into the junk mortgage market because they were trying to keep pace with the private issuers of mortgage-backed securities. Fannie and Freddie made a conscious decision to dive into the junk in order to protect their market share, which was being seriously eroded by the aggressive tactics of private giants like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch...
...Fannie and Freddie's conduct was despicable. Their decision to dive into the junk certainly contributed to the further expansion of the bubble and worsened the pain from its eventual collapse. However, they were followers, not leaders. They didn't cause the bubble and the subprime craziness. This train had already left the station. Fannie and Freddie's crime was going along for the ride..."
The 2008 Election:
Brad Friedman: The Republican voter fraud hoax
"Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.
The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of 'Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states' as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it...
...The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less...
...So what are the crimes that have caused all the Sturm und Drang on US television and talk radio, and in several otherwise respectable newspapers and even by the McCain campaign itself?
The only actual crime here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up...
...If you can't win it, steal it. If you can't steal it, claim the other guy stole it. If you can't claim the other guy stole it (yet), say they're about to and then kick up smoke that maybe someone will believe you. (Heckuva job, CNN.)
Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ('fraudulent', 'incomplete', et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming 'Acorn is committing fraud' know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes..."
Domestic Surveillance:
This is the sort of thing the CorpMedia routinely refuses to investigate and follow-up on aggressively.
Democacy Now! - James Bamford: 'The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America'
"The Bush administration’s wiretapping program has come under new scrutiny this week. Two influential congressional committees have opened probes into allegations US intelligence spied on the phone calls of American military personnel, journalists and aid workers in Iraq. We speak to James Bamford about the NSA’s spying on Americans, the agency’s failings pre-9/11 and the ties between NSA and the nation’s telecommunications companies..."
Monday, October 13, 2008
Domestic Surveillance:
The Raw Story: Military intelligence spied on Americans
"Spying on Americans isn't always about gathering information about terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda. Sometimes it's about other important matters of national security.
Like phone sex.
Two military linguists who listened to overseas phone calls for U.S. intelligence spoke out against their former profession this week, lamenting their eavesdropping on the personal conversations of Americans, the Associated Press reported..."
Campaign 2008:
It's hypocritical for Gov. Palin to criticize Obama's view of an imperfect America while she supports and promotes the agenda of Alaskan Neo-Cessessionists.
Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert: Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals
"Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin’s political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. 'Her door was open,' says Chryson — and still is..."
Frank Rich: The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
"If you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.
Some voters told reporters that they didn't want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history - in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
'I've got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,' Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.
Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of 'Treason!' and 'Terrorist!' and 'Kill him!' and 'Off with his head!' as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option..."
Bob Fitrakis/Harvey Wasserman: GOP Attacks on American Voters Turn Desperate, Ugly and Dangerous
"The GOP assault on American voters has hit full stride as John McCain and the economy tank in synch.
With just over three weeks until election day, the Republicans have mounted an all-out attack against newly registered voters and the organizations working to sign them up. As many as 75% of these new voters are expected to vote Democratic, but the attacks have also spread to long-established voters as well. Recent calculations show more than a million more newly registered Democrats in Ohio than Republicans.
The usual drumbeat claiming massive voter fraud has become ceaseless at Fox 'News' and other right wing media mouthpieces. As expected, the assault centers in Ohio, which once again could decide the presidency, but has manifested throughout the nation..." [12 examples follow]
Bruce Fein: Palin vs. Palin
"At the conclusion of the constitutional convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, 'Well Doctor, what have we got-a Republic or a Monarchy?' He sagely responded, 'A Republic, if you can keep it.'
In other words, the people are the stewards of the republic. If freedom is to flourish, they must be quick to rebuke government's propensity toward tyranny, though their votes, stinging criticisms or protest marches. The whole purpose of government, as the Declaration of Independence states, is to secure 'unalienable rights ... [to] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
In her Oct. 2 debate against Joe Biden, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin chirped, 'It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction.' That observation reinforced Benjamin Franklin's wisdom that a people who fail to repudiate monarch-like government from whatever source will lose their freedom. Echoing Reagan, Palin continued: 'We don't pass [freedom] to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it on to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the days when men and women were free.'
But if that tragic tale comes to pass, it will be because of the likes of Palin. On the basis of her comments in the debate, her campaign speeches and her interviews, it appears that she is undisturbed by presidential practices and theories of power that have crippled freedom..."
Economics:
Noam Chomsky: Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed
"Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people who created the banking crisis writes Noam Chomsky..."
Dean Baker: It's Time for Paulson to Cut the Crap and Do His Job
"Just about every economist who supports bailing out the banks thinks that taking an equity stake through a direct infusion of capital is the way to go. While Secretary Paulson had pushed for his buying bad assets approach, he is now playing Hamlet and flirting with the idea of going the equity route.
This is not the time for high school drama. Doesn't Paulson remember his comments from the last two weeks when he told us that the economy would collapse if Congress didn't act immediately? Those statements were not true, and obviously Paulson didn't believe them, since it has now been a week since he got his bill and we still don't have even the outlines of his plans for buying bad assets.
We could harp on the bad faith shown by the administration in using unwarranted fear to force Congress into hurriedly passing the bailout bill. We could also harp on the horrible media coverage on this issue, with the media acting almost as an appendage to the Bush administration in its efforts to increase public support for the bill.
But the immediate issue is to get the Treasury to actually do something to help the economy. That means using its $700 billion in the most effective way possible by directly injecting capital into the banking system. What will it take to get Paulson to move?"
Boston Globe Editorial: Subprime Scapegoats
"...The recent animosity over the Community Reinvestment Act, in short, simply can't be explained by the facts. Among the law's critics, there's more than a whiff of social Darwinism - the certainty that only a government policy aimed at helping losers could lead the whiz kids of Wall Street so far astray. Hogwash. The current financial crisis grows out of loose regulation that gave big investors plenty of freedom to make foolish bets, and then force their losses upon the taxpayers."
The Raw Story: Military intelligence spied on Americans
"Spying on Americans isn't always about gathering information about terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda. Sometimes it's about other important matters of national security.
Like phone sex.
Two military linguists who listened to overseas phone calls for U.S. intelligence spoke out against their former profession this week, lamenting their eavesdropping on the personal conversations of Americans, the Associated Press reported..."
Campaign 2008:
It's hypocritical for Gov. Palin to criticize Obama's view of an imperfect America while she supports and promotes the agenda of Alaskan Neo-Cessessionists.
Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert: Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals
"Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin’s political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. 'Her door was open,' says Chryson — and still is..."
Frank Rich: The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
"If you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.
Some voters told reporters that they didn't want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history - in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
'I've got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,' Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.
Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of 'Treason!' and 'Terrorist!' and 'Kill him!' and 'Off with his head!' as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option..."
Bob Fitrakis/Harvey Wasserman: GOP Attacks on American Voters Turn Desperate, Ugly and Dangerous
"The GOP assault on American voters has hit full stride as John McCain and the economy tank in synch.
With just over three weeks until election day, the Republicans have mounted an all-out attack against newly registered voters and the organizations working to sign them up. As many as 75% of these new voters are expected to vote Democratic, but the attacks have also spread to long-established voters as well. Recent calculations show more than a million more newly registered Democrats in Ohio than Republicans.
The usual drumbeat claiming massive voter fraud has become ceaseless at Fox 'News' and other right wing media mouthpieces. As expected, the assault centers in Ohio, which once again could decide the presidency, but has manifested throughout the nation..." [12 examples follow]
Bruce Fein: Palin vs. Palin
"At the conclusion of the constitutional convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, 'Well Doctor, what have we got-a Republic or a Monarchy?' He sagely responded, 'A Republic, if you can keep it.'
In other words, the people are the stewards of the republic. If freedom is to flourish, they must be quick to rebuke government's propensity toward tyranny, though their votes, stinging criticisms or protest marches. The whole purpose of government, as the Declaration of Independence states, is to secure 'unalienable rights ... [to] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
In her Oct. 2 debate against Joe Biden, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin chirped, 'It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction.' That observation reinforced Benjamin Franklin's wisdom that a people who fail to repudiate monarch-like government from whatever source will lose their freedom. Echoing Reagan, Palin continued: 'We don't pass [freedom] to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it on to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the days when men and women were free.'
But if that tragic tale comes to pass, it will be because of the likes of Palin. On the basis of her comments in the debate, her campaign speeches and her interviews, it appears that she is undisturbed by presidential practices and theories of power that have crippled freedom..."
Economics:
Noam Chomsky: Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed
"Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people who created the banking crisis writes Noam Chomsky..."
Dean Baker: It's Time for Paulson to Cut the Crap and Do His Job
"Just about every economist who supports bailing out the banks thinks that taking an equity stake through a direct infusion of capital is the way to go. While Secretary Paulson had pushed for his buying bad assets approach, he is now playing Hamlet and flirting with the idea of going the equity route.
This is not the time for high school drama. Doesn't Paulson remember his comments from the last two weeks when he told us that the economy would collapse if Congress didn't act immediately? Those statements were not true, and obviously Paulson didn't believe them, since it has now been a week since he got his bill and we still don't have even the outlines of his plans for buying bad assets.
We could harp on the bad faith shown by the administration in using unwarranted fear to force Congress into hurriedly passing the bailout bill. We could also harp on the horrible media coverage on this issue, with the media acting almost as an appendage to the Bush administration in its efforts to increase public support for the bill.
But the immediate issue is to get the Treasury to actually do something to help the economy. That means using its $700 billion in the most effective way possible by directly injecting capital into the banking system. What will it take to get Paulson to move?"
Boston Globe Editorial: Subprime Scapegoats
"...The recent animosity over the Community Reinvestment Act, in short, simply can't be explained by the facts. Among the law's critics, there's more than a whiff of social Darwinism - the certainty that only a government policy aimed at helping losers could lead the whiz kids of Wall Street so far astray. Hogwash. The current financial crisis grows out of loose regulation that gave big investors plenty of freedom to make foolish bets, and then force their losses upon the taxpayers."
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Rule of Law:
Naomi Wolf: Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out 'Crowd Control'
"Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing 'unruly individuals,' and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.
George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also legally established that in the 'War on Terror,' the U.S. is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the U.S. is also a battlefield.
He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined 'insurrection' or many other 'conditions' he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus -- habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial -- in the event of an 'insurrection.' With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters 'insurgents' staging an 'insurrection' is strengthened.
U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill:
If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat. And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes is to put teeth into such a threat..."
Naomi Wolf: Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out 'Crowd Control'
"Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing 'unruly individuals,' and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.
George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also legally established that in the 'War on Terror,' the U.S. is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the U.S. is also a battlefield.
He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined 'insurrection' or many other 'conditions' he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus -- habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial -- in the event of an 'insurrection.' With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters 'insurgents' staging an 'insurrection' is strengthened.
U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill:
'The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. … Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.'
If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat. And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes is to put teeth into such a threat..."
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Campaign 2008:
Bob Herbert: The Mask Slips
"...The G.O.P. has done a great job masking the terrible consequences of much that it has stood for over the decades. Now the mask has slipped. As we survey the wreckage of the American economy and the real-life suffering associated with the financial crackup of 2008, it would be well for voters to draw upon the lessons of history and think more seriously about the consequences of the ballots they may cast in the future."
Bob Herbert: The Mask Slips
"...The G.O.P. has done a great job masking the terrible consequences of much that it has stood for over the decades. Now the mask has slipped. As we survey the wreckage of the American economy and the real-life suffering associated with the financial crackup of 2008, it would be well for voters to draw upon the lessons of history and think more seriously about the consequences of the ballots they may cast in the future."
Thursday, October 09, 2008
The Right To Vote:
It is imperative that all voters check their registration status. Look for Greg Palast & RFK Jr.'s article in an upcoming Rolling Stone magazine.
AP: Report: Voter purges in 6 states may violate law - Yahoo! News
"Tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states, and the voters' exclusion appears to violate federal law, according to a published report.
The New York Times based its findings on reviews of state records and Social Security data.
The Times said voters appear to have been purged by mistake and not because of any intentional violations by election officials or coordinated efforts by any party.
States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by removing the names of voters who should no longer be listed. But for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.
The newspaper said it identified apparent problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina. It says some states are improperly using Social Security data to verify new voters' registration applications, and others may have broken rules that govern removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election..."
Publicly-Funded Propaganda:
Editor & Publisher: FCC to Probe Defense Department's 'Propaganda' Program
"The Federal Communications Commission has announced that it will investigate a Department of Defense propaganda program to determine whether news networks or military analysts violated the Communications Act of 1934 and FCC rules.
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that a Department of Defense program had ex-military officers presenting the Bush administration’s position on the War on Terror as objective analysis on major television news programs and 24-hour cable news networks. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and Congressman John Dingell wrote to the FCC to investigate allegations that the news networks and the analysts failed to disclose the ex-military officers’ ties to the Pentagon -- and if that violated sponsorship identification requirements in the Communications Act..."
Campaign 2008:
In criticizing Obama's 'association with Ayers' before the press, Ms. Palin demonstrates a her obvious unfamiliarity with the English language & syntax...
LA Times Blog: High-flying Sarah Palin gives her first news conference, then delivers boffo debate review for John McCain
"...Palin's reply embodied the circumlocution-with-a-punch that has become her verbal trademark:
'Americans are caring about the problems in the economy, of course, and wanting to know what those long-term solutions are that our ticket can provide and what the other ticket is proposing, so when you talk though about what it is that we are proposing and what it is that Barack Obama is proposing, again it is relevant to connect that association that he has with Ayers -- not so much he as a person Ayers, but the whole situation and the truthfulness and the judgment there that you must question if again he’s not being forthright in all of his answers as to how did you know him, when did you know him, why would you continue to be associated with him?
It makes you wonder about the forthrightedness, the truthfulness of the plans that he is telling America in regards to the economic recovery because that is first and foremost on Americans’ minds,'..."
It is imperative that all voters check their registration status. Look for Greg Palast & RFK Jr.'s article in an upcoming Rolling Stone magazine.
AP: Report: Voter purges in 6 states may violate law - Yahoo! News
"Tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states, and the voters' exclusion appears to violate federal law, according to a published report.
The New York Times based its findings on reviews of state records and Social Security data.
The Times said voters appear to have been purged by mistake and not because of any intentional violations by election officials or coordinated efforts by any party.
States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by removing the names of voters who should no longer be listed. But for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.
The newspaper said it identified apparent problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina. It says some states are improperly using Social Security data to verify new voters' registration applications, and others may have broken rules that govern removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election..."
Publicly-Funded Propaganda:
Editor & Publisher: FCC to Probe Defense Department's 'Propaganda' Program
"The Federal Communications Commission has announced that it will investigate a Department of Defense propaganda program to determine whether news networks or military analysts violated the Communications Act of 1934 and FCC rules.
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that a Department of Defense program had ex-military officers presenting the Bush administration’s position on the War on Terror as objective analysis on major television news programs and 24-hour cable news networks. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and Congressman John Dingell wrote to the FCC to investigate allegations that the news networks and the analysts failed to disclose the ex-military officers’ ties to the Pentagon -- and if that violated sponsorship identification requirements in the Communications Act..."
Campaign 2008:
In criticizing Obama's 'association with Ayers' before the press, Ms. Palin demonstrates a her obvious unfamiliarity with the English language & syntax...
LA Times Blog: High-flying Sarah Palin gives her first news conference, then delivers boffo debate review for John McCain
"...Palin's reply embodied the circumlocution-with-a-punch that has become her verbal trademark:
'Americans are caring about the problems in the economy, of course, and wanting to know what those long-term solutions are that our ticket can provide and what the other ticket is proposing, so when you talk though about what it is that we are proposing and what it is that Barack Obama is proposing, again it is relevant to connect that association that he has with Ayers -- not so much he as a person Ayers, but the whole situation and the truthfulness and the judgment there that you must question if again he’s not being forthright in all of his answers as to how did you know him, when did you know him, why would you continue to be associated with him?
It makes you wonder about the forthrightedness, the truthfulness of the plans that he is telling America in regards to the economic recovery because that is first and foremost on Americans’ minds,'..."
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Campaign 2008:
Tim Dickinson: Make-Believe Maverick
"A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty..."
The Economy:
CBS News: A Look At Wall Street's Shadow Market
"...What most people outside of Wall Street and Washington don't know is that a lot of people who bought these risky mortgage securities also went out and bought even more arcane investments that Wall Street was peddling called 'credit default swaps.' And they have turned out to be a much bigger problem.
They are private and largely undisclosed contracts that mortgage investors entered into to protect themselves against losses if the investments went bad. And they are part of a huge unregulated market that has already helped bring down three of the largest firms on Wall Street, and still threaten the ones that are left.
Before your eyes glaze over, Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former director of trading and markets for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, says they are much simpler than they sound. 'A credit default swap is a contract between two people, one of whom is giving insurance to the other that he will be paid in the event that a financial institution, or a financial instrument, fails,' he explains.
'It is an insurance contract, but they've been very careful not to call it that because if it were insurance, it would be regulated. So they use a magic substitute word called a 'swap,' which by virtue of federal law is deregulated,' Greenberger adds.
'So anybody who was nervous about buying these mortgage-backed securities, these CDOs, they would be sold a credit default swap as sort of an insurance policy?' Kroft asks.
'A credit default swap was available to them, marketed to them as a risk-saving device for buying a risky financial instrument,' Greenberger says.
But he says there was a big problem. 'The problem was that if it were insurance, or called what it really is, the person who sold the policy would have to have capital reserves to be able to pay in the case the insurance was called upon or triggered. But because it was a swap, and not insurance, there was no requirement that adequate capital reserves be put to the side,'...
...How big is the market for credit default swaps?
Says Partnoy, 'Well, we really don't know. There's this voluntary survey that claims that the market is in the range of 50 to 60 or so trillion dollars. It's sort of alarming that, in a market that big, we don't even know how big it is to within, say, $10 trillion.'
'Sixty trillion dollars. I know it seems incredible. It's four times the size of the U.S. debt. But that's the size of the market according to these voluntary reports,' says Partnoy.
He says this market is almost entirely unregulated.
The result is a huge shadow market that may control our financial destiny, and yet the details of these private insurance contracts are hidden from the public, from stockholders and federal regulators. No one knows what they cover, who owns them, and whether or not they have the money to pay them off.
One of the few sources of information is the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), a trade organization made up the largest financial institutions in the world. Many of them are the very same companies that created the vast shadow market, lobbied to keep it unregulated, and are now drowning because of unanticipated risks..."
Investigators For Hire Investigating Warriors For Hire?
ABC News: Govt. Uses Contractors to Probe Iraq Contractors
"In an apparent violation of federal regulations, the State Department has outsourced to private contractors the responsibility to investigate possible crimes committed by security contractors in Iraq.
Earlier this year, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security hired the private firm U.S. Investigations Services (USIS) to fill positions in the newly created Force Investigation Unit (FIU) that investigates potential misuses of force against civilians by U.S. security contractors. The contract investigators have been in Iraq since this summer.
The FIU was created in the wake of last year's deadly shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, when 17 Iraqi civilians allegedly were killed by security personnel employed by Blackwater Worldwide who were guarding a State Department convoy. The case sparked widespread outrage and prompted calls for greater oversight of security contractors in Iraq.
According to a contract obtained by ABC News, the company was hired to supplement Diplomatic Security personnel. However, the eight USIS contractors hired for the team represent the majority of the full-time team, an apparent violation of federal regulations that prohibit such work by contractors.
According to Federal Acquisition Regulation part 7.5, it is not permissible to hire contractors for jobs 'considered to be inherently governmental functions' including 'the direct conduct of criminal investigations.'
The State Department did not respond to a list of questions submitted seeking comment, including the status of the contract and whether such a contract might possibly be illegal..."
Tim Dickinson: Make-Believe Maverick
"A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty..."
The Economy:
CBS News: A Look At Wall Street's Shadow Market
"...What most people outside of Wall Street and Washington don't know is that a lot of people who bought these risky mortgage securities also went out and bought even more arcane investments that Wall Street was peddling called 'credit default swaps.' And they have turned out to be a much bigger problem.
They are private and largely undisclosed contracts that mortgage investors entered into to protect themselves against losses if the investments went bad. And they are part of a huge unregulated market that has already helped bring down three of the largest firms on Wall Street, and still threaten the ones that are left.
Before your eyes glaze over, Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former director of trading and markets for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, says they are much simpler than they sound. 'A credit default swap is a contract between two people, one of whom is giving insurance to the other that he will be paid in the event that a financial institution, or a financial instrument, fails,' he explains.
'It is an insurance contract, but they've been very careful not to call it that because if it were insurance, it would be regulated. So they use a magic substitute word called a 'swap,' which by virtue of federal law is deregulated,' Greenberger adds.
'So anybody who was nervous about buying these mortgage-backed securities, these CDOs, they would be sold a credit default swap as sort of an insurance policy?' Kroft asks.
'A credit default swap was available to them, marketed to them as a risk-saving device for buying a risky financial instrument,' Greenberger says.
But he says there was a big problem. 'The problem was that if it were insurance, or called what it really is, the person who sold the policy would have to have capital reserves to be able to pay in the case the insurance was called upon or triggered. But because it was a swap, and not insurance, there was no requirement that adequate capital reserves be put to the side,'...
...How big is the market for credit default swaps?
Says Partnoy, 'Well, we really don't know. There's this voluntary survey that claims that the market is in the range of 50 to 60 or so trillion dollars. It's sort of alarming that, in a market that big, we don't even know how big it is to within, say, $10 trillion.'
'Sixty trillion dollars. I know it seems incredible. It's four times the size of the U.S. debt. But that's the size of the market according to these voluntary reports,' says Partnoy.
He says this market is almost entirely unregulated.
The result is a huge shadow market that may control our financial destiny, and yet the details of these private insurance contracts are hidden from the public, from stockholders and federal regulators. No one knows what they cover, who owns them, and whether or not they have the money to pay them off.
One of the few sources of information is the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), a trade organization made up the largest financial institutions in the world. Many of them are the very same companies that created the vast shadow market, lobbied to keep it unregulated, and are now drowning because of unanticipated risks..."
Investigators For Hire Investigating Warriors For Hire?
ABC News: Govt. Uses Contractors to Probe Iraq Contractors
"In an apparent violation of federal regulations, the State Department has outsourced to private contractors the responsibility to investigate possible crimes committed by security contractors in Iraq.
Earlier this year, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security hired the private firm U.S. Investigations Services (USIS) to fill positions in the newly created Force Investigation Unit (FIU) that investigates potential misuses of force against civilians by U.S. security contractors. The contract investigators have been in Iraq since this summer.
The FIU was created in the wake of last year's deadly shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, when 17 Iraqi civilians allegedly were killed by security personnel employed by Blackwater Worldwide who were guarding a State Department convoy. The case sparked widespread outrage and prompted calls for greater oversight of security contractors in Iraq.
According to a contract obtained by ABC News, the company was hired to supplement Diplomatic Security personnel. However, the eight USIS contractors hired for the team represent the majority of the full-time team, an apparent violation of federal regulations that prohibit such work by contractors.
According to Federal Acquisition Regulation part 7.5, it is not permissible to hire contractors for jobs 'considered to be inherently governmental functions' including 'the direct conduct of criminal investigations.'
The State Department did not respond to a list of questions submitted seeking comment, including the status of the contract and whether such a contract might possibly be illegal..."
Monday, October 06, 2008
Economics:
Corbett Report: (YouTube Video) Does The Bail Out Have A Chance To Work?
Some figures to ponder:
* $700 Billion Bailout
* $1.57 Trillion printed by the Fed. to prop up banks
* $2.3 Trillion 'missing' from the Pentagon (announced Sept. 2001)
* $1 Quadrillion Derivative Bubble
Campaign 2008:
Sydney H. Schanberg: McCain and the POW Cover-up
"Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain's military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.
The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that 'men were left behind.' This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the US prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain..."
The Nation: Foreign Policy Myths Debunked
"...As the election draws near, a new set of myths and fallacies as misleading as those that led the Senate to support George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq have become embedded in our foreign policy discourse. Many of them are being perpetuated by the very same political forces that peddled the myth of mushroom clouds coming from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Others are the product of muddled thinking on the part of both Republicans and Democrats. If left unchallenged, these myths and fallacies could influence the outcome of the election and shape policy in the next administration. In this special feature, put together by Nation editors with Sherle Schwenninger, a frequent Nation contributor and director of the Global Economic Policy Program at the New America Foundation, we dissect ten of them and offer what we believe is a more accurate depiction of what is at stake for the United States and the world..."
The Unitary Executive:
NY Times Editorial: Dick Cheney, Role Model
"...In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that 'we have a lot of flexibility in there' under the Constitution. And she declared that she was 'thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.'
It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.
Mr. Cheney has shown what can happen when a vice president — a position that is easy to lampoon and overlook — is given free rein by the president and does not care about trampling on the Constitution.
Mr. Cheney has long taken the bizarre view that the lesson of Watergate was that Congress was too powerful and the president not powerful enough. He dedicated himself to expanding President Bush’s authority and arrogating to himself executive, legislative and legal powers that are nowhere in the Constitution...
...The Constitution does not state or imply any flexibility in the office of vice president. It gives the vice president no legislative responsibilities other than casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when needed and no executive powers at all. The vice president’s constitutional role is to be ready to serve if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.
Any president deserves a vice president who will be a sound adviser and trustworthy supporter. But the American people also deserve and need a vice president who understands and respects the balance of power — and the limits of his or her own power. That is fundamental to our democracy.
So far, Ms. Palin has it exactly, frighteningly wrong."
Prohibition:
Everyone, except those in the Prison Industrial Complex and their supporters on the Right, seems to understand that criminalizing this behavior in adults is staggeringly counterproductive for society.
The Guardian (UK) Report urges regulated market for cannabis to replace prohibition
"A report on cannabis prepared for next year's UN drug policy review will suggest that a 'regulated market' would cause less harm than the current international prohibition. The report, which is likely to reopen the debate about cannabis laws, suggests that controls such as taxation, minimum age requirements and labelling could be explored.
The Global Cannabis Commission report, which will be launched today at a conference in the House of Lords, has reached conclusions which its authors suggest 'challenge the received wisdom concerning cannabis'. It was carried out for the Beckley foundation, a UN-accredited NGO, for the 2009 UN strategic drug policy review.
The Global Cannabis Commission report, which will be launched today at a conference in the House of Lords, has reached conclusions which its authors suggest 'challenge the received wisdom concerning cannabis'. It was carried out for the Beckley foundation, a UN-accredited NGO, for the 2009 UN strategic drug policy review.
There are, according to the report, now more than 160 million users of the drug worldwide. 'Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco,' according to the report. 'Historically, there have only been two deaths worldwide attributed to cannabis, whereas alcohol and tobacco together are responsible for an estimated 150,000 deaths per annum in the UK alone.'
The report, compiled by a group of scientists, academics and drug policy experts, suggests that much of the harm associated with cannabis use is 'the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment.' Policies that control cannabis, whether draconian or liberal, appear to have little impact on the prevalence of consumption, it concluded..."
Corbett Report: (YouTube Video) Does The Bail Out Have A Chance To Work?
Some figures to ponder:
* $700 Billion Bailout
* $1.57 Trillion printed by the Fed. to prop up banks
* $2.3 Trillion 'missing' from the Pentagon (announced Sept. 2001)
* $1 Quadrillion Derivative Bubble
Campaign 2008:
Sydney H. Schanberg: McCain and the POW Cover-up
"Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain's military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.
The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that 'men were left behind.' This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the US prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain..."
The Nation: Foreign Policy Myths Debunked
"...As the election draws near, a new set of myths and fallacies as misleading as those that led the Senate to support George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq have become embedded in our foreign policy discourse. Many of them are being perpetuated by the very same political forces that peddled the myth of mushroom clouds coming from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Others are the product of muddled thinking on the part of both Republicans and Democrats. If left unchallenged, these myths and fallacies could influence the outcome of the election and shape policy in the next administration. In this special feature, put together by Nation editors with Sherle Schwenninger, a frequent Nation contributor and director of the Global Economic Policy Program at the New America Foundation, we dissect ten of them and offer what we believe is a more accurate depiction of what is at stake for the United States and the world..."
The Unitary Executive:
NY Times Editorial: Dick Cheney, Role Model
"...In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that 'we have a lot of flexibility in there' under the Constitution. And she declared that she was 'thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.'
It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.
Mr. Cheney has shown what can happen when a vice president — a position that is easy to lampoon and overlook — is given free rein by the president and does not care about trampling on the Constitution.
Mr. Cheney has long taken the bizarre view that the lesson of Watergate was that Congress was too powerful and the president not powerful enough. He dedicated himself to expanding President Bush’s authority and arrogating to himself executive, legislative and legal powers that are nowhere in the Constitution...
...The Constitution does not state or imply any flexibility in the office of vice president. It gives the vice president no legislative responsibilities other than casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when needed and no executive powers at all. The vice president’s constitutional role is to be ready to serve if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.
Any president deserves a vice president who will be a sound adviser and trustworthy supporter. But the American people also deserve and need a vice president who understands and respects the balance of power — and the limits of his or her own power. That is fundamental to our democracy.
So far, Ms. Palin has it exactly, frighteningly wrong."
Prohibition:
Everyone, except those in the Prison Industrial Complex and their supporters on the Right, seems to understand that criminalizing this behavior in adults is staggeringly counterproductive for society.
The Guardian (UK) Report urges regulated market for cannabis to replace prohibition
"A report on cannabis prepared for next year's UN drug policy review will suggest that a 'regulated market' would cause less harm than the current international prohibition. The report, which is likely to reopen the debate about cannabis laws, suggests that controls such as taxation, minimum age requirements and labelling could be explored.
The Global Cannabis Commission report, which will be launched today at a conference in the House of Lords, has reached conclusions which its authors suggest 'challenge the received wisdom concerning cannabis'. It was carried out for the Beckley foundation, a UN-accredited NGO, for the 2009 UN strategic drug policy review.
The Global Cannabis Commission report, which will be launched today at a conference in the House of Lords, has reached conclusions which its authors suggest 'challenge the received wisdom concerning cannabis'. It was carried out for the Beckley foundation, a UN-accredited NGO, for the 2009 UN strategic drug policy review.
There are, according to the report, now more than 160 million users of the drug worldwide. 'Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco,' according to the report. 'Historically, there have only been two deaths worldwide attributed to cannabis, whereas alcohol and tobacco together are responsible for an estimated 150,000 deaths per annum in the UK alone.'
The report, compiled by a group of scientists, academics and drug policy experts, suggests that much of the harm associated with cannabis use is 'the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment.' Policies that control cannabis, whether draconian or liberal, appear to have little impact on the prevalence of consumption, it concluded..."
Friday, October 03, 2008
Technology:
John Dvorak: Privacy 2.0: No Privacy at All
"When Google said it would limit the length of time it kept records on people, privacy advocates thought this was a step in the right direction. That the public puts up with any tracking whatsoever amazes me.
In the news this week, AT&T and Verizon said they won't track users unless users want to be tracked. I found this paragraph in this Washington Post article to be the best summary, and also quite revealing:
Companies have built an array of techniques to record the actions of users as they move across the Internet—namely tracking 'cookies,' 'beacons,' and 'deep packet inspection,' which essentially looks at every packet of information delivered on an Internet line. Those tactics allow companies to record what Web sites customers visit, what products they purchase, even what newspaper articles they read. Advertisers use this information to determine what ads to deliver to that person's computer.
And of course, this information would be quite useful in a police state or to merely curb dissent. The potential for abuse alone should have the public up in arms.
But we know what this information is actually used for—selling crap—and it seems as if the docile public is happy with this sort of thing. I say that because the marketing folks who dream up these schemes are also members of the public and seem content to be tracked like a dog..."
The Fourth Estate:
...as cheer-leaders for the regulation-averse Banksters (who insist on making The People cough up money).
Josh Silver: How the Media Sold Their Souls to Wall Street
"If you are like me, the pundits, and 99.9% of the American public, you really don't know much about economics. And despite Monday's refreshing moment of rebellion in the Congress, in all likelihood the House and Senate will pass a modified version of the $700 billion handout this week to fat cat Wall Street financiers.
The likely result, according to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz: 'The unemployment rate will still increase, growth will remain anemic, house prices will continue to fall, the number of houses in foreclosure will continue to rise, credit will be harder to get, states and localities will remain in a fiscal crisis, and there will be cutbacks in basic public services. .... Our living standards in the future will be lower than they otherwise would have been.'
Here's the problem: None of us really know that the hell is going on, and what the largest financial bailout in the history of our nation would actually achieve. Based on McCain and Obama's hasty support of the bailout, it would seem they are both too far under the thumb of Wall Street to look at viable alternatives to an unprecedented handout to the same reckless bankers who got us into this mess.
And like they did in the run-up to war in Iraq and the passage of the Patriot Act, the media are compounding the problem rather than helping it. While TV devotes 24/7 coverage to pretending that mudslinging Democrats and Republicans represent the full range of debate, while right-wing radio hosts scream socialism, and while pundits like Thomas Friedman implore Congress "to give them the capital and the flexibility to put out this fire," the American people are getting virtually no hard economic analysis about what the bailout would achieve or what the range of options are.
Why aren't Luc Laeven and Fabian Valencia on television right now? They just submitted a comprehensive report to the International Monetary Fund after studying 42 banking crises over the past 37 years. Their conclusion: Bailouts often do not work, they often result in more bad practices, and they distort economies by transferring wealth from taxpayers to bankers and their customers..."
John Dvorak: Privacy 2.0: No Privacy at All
"When Google said it would limit the length of time it kept records on people, privacy advocates thought this was a step in the right direction. That the public puts up with any tracking whatsoever amazes me.
In the news this week, AT&T and Verizon said they won't track users unless users want to be tracked. I found this paragraph in this Washington Post article to be the best summary, and also quite revealing:
Companies have built an array of techniques to record the actions of users as they move across the Internet—namely tracking 'cookies,' 'beacons,' and 'deep packet inspection,' which essentially looks at every packet of information delivered on an Internet line. Those tactics allow companies to record what Web sites customers visit, what products they purchase, even what newspaper articles they read. Advertisers use this information to determine what ads to deliver to that person's computer.
And of course, this information would be quite useful in a police state or to merely curb dissent. The potential for abuse alone should have the public up in arms.
But we know what this information is actually used for—selling crap—and it seems as if the docile public is happy with this sort of thing. I say that because the marketing folks who dream up these schemes are also members of the public and seem content to be tracked like a dog..."
The Fourth Estate:
...as cheer-leaders for the regulation-averse Banksters (who insist on making The People cough up money).
Josh Silver: How the Media Sold Their Souls to Wall Street
"If you are like me, the pundits, and 99.9% of the American public, you really don't know much about economics. And despite Monday's refreshing moment of rebellion in the Congress, in all likelihood the House and Senate will pass a modified version of the $700 billion handout this week to fat cat Wall Street financiers.
The likely result, according to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz: 'The unemployment rate will still increase, growth will remain anemic, house prices will continue to fall, the number of houses in foreclosure will continue to rise, credit will be harder to get, states and localities will remain in a fiscal crisis, and there will be cutbacks in basic public services. .... Our living standards in the future will be lower than they otherwise would have been.'
Here's the problem: None of us really know that the hell is going on, and what the largest financial bailout in the history of our nation would actually achieve. Based on McCain and Obama's hasty support of the bailout, it would seem they are both too far under the thumb of Wall Street to look at viable alternatives to an unprecedented handout to the same reckless bankers who got us into this mess.
And like they did in the run-up to war in Iraq and the passage of the Patriot Act, the media are compounding the problem rather than helping it. While TV devotes 24/7 coverage to pretending that mudslinging Democrats and Republicans represent the full range of debate, while right-wing radio hosts scream socialism, and while pundits like Thomas Friedman implore Congress "to give them the capital and the flexibility to put out this fire," the American people are getting virtually no hard economic analysis about what the bailout would achieve or what the range of options are.
Why aren't Luc Laeven and Fabian Valencia on television right now? They just submitted a comprehensive report to the International Monetary Fund after studying 42 banking crises over the past 37 years. Their conclusion: Bailouts often do not work, they often result in more bad practices, and they distort economies by transferring wealth from taxpayers to bankers and their customers..."
Thursday, October 02, 2008
The Afghan Trap:
Why does the US think it can do what other imperial invaders of Afghanistan could not?
The Times (UK) - British envoy says mission in Afghanistan is doomed, according to leaked memo
"Britain’s Ambassador to Afghanistan has stoked opposition to the allied operation there by reportedly saying that the campaign against the Taleban insurgents would fail and that the best hope was to install an acceptable dictator in Kabul.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a Foreign Office heavyweight with a reputation for blunt speaking, delivered his bleak assessment of the seven-year Nato campaign in Afghanistan in a briefing with a French diplomat, according to French leaks. However sources in Whitehall said the account was a parody of the British Ambassador’s remarks.
François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador to Kabul, told President Sarkozy’s office and the Foreign Ministry in a coded cable that Sir Sherard believed that 'the current situation is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the Government has lost all trust'.
According to Mr Fitou, Sir Sherard told him on September 2 that the Nato-led military operation was making things worse. 'The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them . . . They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic,' the Ambassador was quoted as saying..."
Why does the US think it can do what other imperial invaders of Afghanistan could not?
The Times (UK) - British envoy says mission in Afghanistan is doomed, according to leaked memo
"Britain’s Ambassador to Afghanistan has stoked opposition to the allied operation there by reportedly saying that the campaign against the Taleban insurgents would fail and that the best hope was to install an acceptable dictator in Kabul.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a Foreign Office heavyweight with a reputation for blunt speaking, delivered his bleak assessment of the seven-year Nato campaign in Afghanistan in a briefing with a French diplomat, according to French leaks. However sources in Whitehall said the account was a parody of the British Ambassador’s remarks.
François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador to Kabul, told President Sarkozy’s office and the Foreign Ministry in a coded cable that Sir Sherard believed that 'the current situation is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the Government has lost all trust'.
According to Mr Fitou, Sir Sherard told him on September 2 that the Nato-led military operation was making things worse. 'The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them . . . They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic,' the Ambassador was quoted as saying..."
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
The Election:
CBS News: Red Flag On Purging Voter Rolls, CBS Evening News Investigates Little-Known, Problem-Ridden Process That Could Endanger Your Vote
"With Election Day rapidly approaching, a new report, obtained exclusively by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian, raises serious questions and exposes flaws in the way states maintain their voter registration rolls.
States and counties regularly update their voter registration rolls for accuracy, removing people who have moved, died, or committed a felony. It is known as 'voter purging.'
But, the new report by the non-partisan public policy and law institute, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law provides troubling new insight into the process. There are no national standards and as a result, the cleaning up of voter rolls is not as precise as it should be and eligible voters are often wrongly removed.
The Brennan report calls the nationwide process 'chaotic,' 'shrouded in secrecy', 'riddled with inaccuracies', 'prone to error' and 'vulnerable to manipulation.'
'What's wrong with the process is it's happening in secret. It's happening with no accountability,' Michael Waldman, the center’s executive director, told CBS News..."
CBS News: Red Flag On Purging Voter Rolls, CBS Evening News Investigates Little-Known, Problem-Ridden Process That Could Endanger Your Vote
"With Election Day rapidly approaching, a new report, obtained exclusively by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian, raises serious questions and exposes flaws in the way states maintain their voter registration rolls.
States and counties regularly update their voter registration rolls for accuracy, removing people who have moved, died, or committed a felony. It is known as 'voter purging.'
But, the new report by the non-partisan public policy and law institute, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law provides troubling new insight into the process. There are no national standards and as a result, the cleaning up of voter rolls is not as precise as it should be and eligible voters are often wrongly removed.
The Brennan report calls the nationwide process 'chaotic,' 'shrouded in secrecy', 'riddled with inaccuracies', 'prone to error' and 'vulnerable to manipulation.'
'What's wrong with the process is it's happening in secret. It's happening with no accountability,' Michael Waldman, the center’s executive director, told CBS News..."
