Observations on current events

Corporate Animal Husbandry:

Mike Davis: The swine flu crisis lays bare the meat industry's monstrous power
"...In 1965, for instance, there were 53m US hogs on more than 1m farms; today, 65m hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities. This has been a transition from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells, containing tens of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems suffocating in heat and manure while exchanging pathogens at blinding velocity with their fellow inmates.
Last year a commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a report on 'industrial farm animal production' that underscored the acute danger that 'the continual cycling of viruses … in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human to human transmission.' The commission also warned that promiscuous antibiotic use in hog factories (cheaper than humane environments) was sponsoring the rise of resistant staph infections, while sewage spills were producing outbreaks of E coli and pfiesteria (the protozoan that has killed 1bn fish in Carolina estuaries and made ill dozens of fishermen)...
...This is a highly globalised industry with global political clout. Just as Bangkok-based chicken giant Charoen Pokphand was able to suppress enquiries into its role in the spread of bird flu in southeast Asia, so it is likely that the forensic epidemiology of the swine flu outbreak will pound its head against the corporate stonewall of the pork industry.
This is not to say that a smoking gun will never be found: there is already gossip in the Mexican press about an influenza epicentre around a huge Smithfield subsidiary in Veracruz state..."


Healthcare:

Analysis from the Bottom Up: The Data Model That Nearly Killed Me
"...During the last week of January 2009 a faulty electronic, networked, health information data model nearly killed me despite its vaunted status as a component of two state-of-the-art, health information systems at two of the world’s most advanced medical facilities. This will come as no surprise to healthcare IT experts because health information is inherently complex, medical science develops extraordinarily rapidly, patient interactions are intensely personal, and the number of data types and sheer volumes of healthcare data explode prodigiously with new tests, instruments, and treatments. (Prof. Anne Armstrong-Coben, M.D., entitled, “The Computer Will See You Now“, New York Times, March 5, 2009 describes one physicians concerns about computerized medicine.)
While President Obama’s vision of a national health information network appeals to many politicos and pundits, that vision may prove more fantastic than practical given the complexities involved in designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining such a complicated network, together with new inventions required for data models and software architecture..."


Economics:

Dean Baker: FTT: The Cost of Business on Wall Street
"To curb Wall Street excess, the US should tax financial transactions as the UK does..."


On Torture:

On how the Bush White House laywers green-lighted torture.

Katherine Eban: Rorschach and Awe
"America's coercive interrogation methods were reverse-engineered by two C.I.A. psychologists who had spent their careers training U.S. soldiers to endure Communist-style torture techniques. The spread of these tactics was fueled by a myth about a critical 'black site' operation..."


Beyond Torture: Murder.

Thomas Friedman: A Torturous Compromise
"...Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has testified to Congress that more than 100 detainees died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, with up to 27 of those declared homicides by the military. They were allegedly kicked to death, shot, suffocated or drowned. Look, our people killed detainees, and only a handful of those deaths have resulted in any punishment of U.S. officials..."

Influencing The Global Warming Debate:

NY Times: Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate
"For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.
'The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,' the coalition said in a scientific 'backgrounder' provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that 'scientists differ' on the issue.
But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted..."

Torture & The Selling Of A War Of Choice:

Steve Weissman: How Torture Worked to Sell the Iraq War
"...According to a former senior US intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist, the Bush administration wanted 'to find evidence of cooperation between al-Qaeda and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.'
'There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,' said the former official. 'The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there,'..."

Healthcare As A Business:

...versus the public's right to hear all opinions about a drug.

The Australian: Vioxx maker Merck and Co drew up doctor hit list
"An international drug company made a hit list of doctors who had to be 'neutralised' or discredited because they criticised the anti-arthritis drug the pharmaceutical giant produced..."

Wall St. Greed Killed The Fourth Estate:

Without great newspapers, society is much poorer. What this country could really use is teams of well-funded investigative journalists, to keep miscreants in our society honest. I have confidence the People are interested in fairness, and a press doing its job would show them who isn't playing by the rules.

John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney: The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers
"...The place to begin crafting solutions is with the understanding that the economic downturn did not cause the crisis in journalism; nor did the Internet. The economic collapse and Internet have greatly accentuated and accelerated a process that can be traced back to the 1970s, when corporate ownership and consolidation of newspapers took off. It was then that managers began to balance their books and to satisfy the demand from investors for ever-increasing returns by cutting journalists and shutting news bureaus. Go back and read a daily newspaper published in a medium-size American city in the 1960s, and you will be awed by the rich mix of international, national and local news coverage and by the frequency with which 'outsiders'--civil rights campaigners, antiwar activists and consumer advocates like Ralph Nader--ended up on the front page...
...We are entering historically uncharted territory in America, a country that from its founding has valued the press not merely as a watchdog but as the essential nurturer of an informed citizenry. The collapse of journalism and the democratic infrastructure it sustains is not a development that anyone, except perhaps corrupt politicians and the interests they serve, looks forward to. Such a crisis demands solutions equal to the task..."

On Torture:

It almost comic that a proponent of excessive Executive secrecy, such as the former VP, would call for this. Does he really think the memos that incriminate him have all been shredded?

John Nichols: Cheneys Right: Release Everything
"Dick Cheney and I have had our differences.
I wrote a book suggesting that he was perhaps not the worthiest vice president in our nation's history. I wrote another book suggesting that he was perhaps the worthiest of targets for an impeachment inquiry.
I do not frequently suggest that the former vice president is right. But he is right to call for further disclosure of documents regarding interrogation policy under the Bush administration.
Yes, yes, let's get it all out.
Let's release all the memorandums, all the electronic files, all the loose papers relating to the plotting and implementation of the wide-ranging torture regimen that Cheney and President Bush appear to have implemented..."

Democracy Now! - Headlines for April 22, 2009
"Senate Report: Torture Planning Preceded Prisoners’ Capture, Legal Approval

An explosive congressional report has revealed new details about the Bush administration’s torture program on foreign prisoners. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, military and intelligence officials began developing the torture program in December 2001, well before any high-level al-Qaeda suspects had been caught. Bush administration officials have long maintained the so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were authorized only after standard questioning failed to yield intelligence. The report also shows the torture program was developed well before it received legal approval in the 2002 Justice Department memos declassified last week. The report singles out top Bush administration officials for the torture of US prisoners, saying they 'solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques' and 'redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality.'


Military Psychologist Proposed 'Exploitation Facility'

The report also documents the role of the military psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in developing the torture program. A memo written by Jessen in 2002 proposes creating what he calls an 'exploitation facility' where prisoners would be subjected to a number of prescribed abuses, including physical violence, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. Some of the techniques were based on torture used on American captives during the Korean War. Jessen proposed making the facility off-limits to outside observers, including the Red Cross. Soon after the memo, the suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was sent to a CIA prison, where he was subjected to intense torture. Zubaydah’s attorneys have long contended the Justice Department memos were written in part to retroactively authorize the techniques used against him. [Watch/Listen Democracy Now! segment on Mitchell & Jessen from 4/21/09]


Drive to Invade Iraq Compromised Interrogations, Led to Abuses

Several Army officials raised objections as the torture techniques were developed and taught. And in a development that traces back to the White House’s drive for invading Iraq, one Army major complained the interrogations were being compromised by an insistence on establishing a 'link between al-Qaeda and Iraq.'


Levin Calls for Probe of Bush Officials

In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Carl Levin said the new evidence provides a direct line from top Bush officials to abuses at prisons such as Abu Ghraib. Levin said, 'Senior officials sought out information on, were aware of training in, and authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques…[They] bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses.' Levin went on to call on Attorney General Eric Holder to establish a high-level commission to investigate high-level Bush officials..."

Is The Internet A Utility?

...that communities should be allowed to provide? Time Warner thinks it can insist on its right to profit.

DailyTech: Time Warner, Embarq Fight to Outlaw 100 Mbps Community Broadband in Wilson, NC
"Time Warner Inc., after finally dropping its plans for metered internet services for the time being, appears to be back to its old ways. This story begins in Wilson, North Carolina. Wilson is a small city of about 47,000 residents located in the middle of North Carolina, roughly 45 minutes east of Raleigh, the state's capital.
The city's residents, like many, long complained over high internet, cable, and telephone prices. So the city launched an ambitious $28M USD program to deliver these services basically at cost, at much lower rates than local service providers Time Warner Inc. and Embarq...
...Rather than admit defeat to the pesky local service and go quietly, Time Warner Inc. and Embarq decided to take the fight to the state government, lobbying for several years to get the state government to pass laws to try to destroy the local effort..."


Reliance on Technology:

Bruce Perens: A Cyber-Attack on an American City
"Just after midnight on Thursday, April 9, unidentified attackers climbed down four manholes serving the Northern California city of Morgan Hill and cut eight fiber cables in what appears to have been an organized attack on the electronic infrastructure of an American city. Its implications, though startling, have gone almost un-reported..."

CorpNews's Failure To Inform:

Glenn Greenwald: The Pulitzer-Winning Investigation That Dare Not Be Uttered on TV
"The New York Times' David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Bartow uncovered. Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow's exposés:

Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.

By whom were these 'ties to companies' undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as 'analysts'? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox -- the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers..."

Domestic Surveillance:

Democracy Now! - Justice Dept. Whistleblower Defends Decision to Leak Bush Domestic Surveillance Program & Calls for Prosecution of Gov&t Officials and Telecoms
"...GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the idea of sovereign immunity actually is one that comes from the British king. The idea was that the king is too important and too elevated, he’s the sovereign, and therefore is immune from being sued by his subjects. And when the Constitution was written, essentially the idea of sovereign immunity became the government can’t be dragged into court by citizens, unless it agrees in advance to waive its sovereign immunity.

And what the Congress has done in many, many cases was pass laws that essentially say that if government officials do certain things, the immunity is waived, and they can be sued. And in the wake of the eavesdropping abuses that were discovered and documented in the mid-1970s as a result of the Church Commission, the Congress passed numerous laws, that the president signed into law, that said exactly that. They passed FISA and the Wiretap Act and amendments to the Stored Communications Act, which explicitly said that if the government illegally engages in surveillance on Americans, they can be sued, that causes of action exist on the part of the victims of the illegal eavesdropping to sue the government officials who are responsible. And the laws say that as explicitly as possible.

And what the Obama administration is claiming is that there are provisions of the PATRIOT Act which secretly or implicitly repeal those laws and that the intent of the PATRIOT Act was to immunize government officials, to expand the sovereign immunity so that government officials can no longer be sued for illegal eavesdropping, notwithstanding these explicit laws that say that they can, in the absence of claims that they willfully disclose to the public what they learned. In other words, government officials, according to the Obama administration, can sit there and read your emails and listen in on your phone calls, even when doing so is illegal and even when they know that what they’re doing is illegal, and you can’t sue them unless they willfully disclose to the public what it is that they learn.

It is an extraordinarily extremist claim of government immunity that, as I said, not even the Bush administration espoused. And it’s designed to protect government officials, including Bush officials, from any consequences for having spied illegally on Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, I want to ask Thomas Tamm, do you think government officials, the telecoms, should be held accountable?

THOMAS TAMM: Absolutely. You know, when I was in OIPR, we worked every day with the telecommunications companies. They knew what was legal. They knew what they were authorized to do. They employed the best law firms in the country to advise them. And I really think that the only way we’re ultimately going to really learn what happened is through litigation, such as what Glenn was talking about and with regard to the immunity. I mean, to me, why don’t we find out what was done, and then you can make a discretionary decision as to whether you want to go forward in any other fashion or whether good faith is a valid defense? Personally, I think that the Bush administration officials should be held accountable. I’m actually learning something as I have in the past, from hearing Glenn talk or reading his blog, about this sovereign immunity. I was unaware of that. And that’s truly disappointing..."

On Torture:

Cheney is still trying to get people to believe that CIA methods like this, rather than FBI-methods of confidence-building, produce 'actionable intel.' Of course, the opposite is true.
Even the CIA's Inspector General agrees that it is not possible to tell when people are offering additional information (read: inventing 'facts') just to make the torture stop.

The people who ordered this in the name of the American people ought to be prosecuted for torture, so this never, ever, happens again.

NY Times: Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects
"C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported..."

Foreign Influence On Congress:

NY Times: Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists
"One of the leading House Democrats on intelligence matters was overheard on telephone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency agreeing to seek lenient treatment from the Bush administration for two pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage, current and former government officials say.
The lawmaker, Representative Jane Harman of California, became the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee after the 2002 election and had ambitions to be its chairwoman when the party gained control of the House in 2006. One official who has seen transcripts of several wiretapped calls said she appeared to agree to intercede in exchange for help in persuading party leaders to give her the powerful post..."

On Accountability For Torture:

Keith Olbermann: US Must 'Move Forward' with Torture Accountability Now
"Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on why a better future for the United States must begin with a criminal investigation into who is responsible for the Bush administration torture memos."

The Environment:

AP: Tons of released drugs taint US water
"...As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.
The data don't show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.
To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what's being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.
But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.
'It doesn't pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they're creating,' said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.
Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.
Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland's Prince George's and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans..."

The Failed Drug War:

Highly recommended. Video and transcript links.

Bill Moyers Journal: Interview with David Simon

Surveillance Nation:

Eric Lichtblau & James Risen: N.S.A.’s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by Congress
"The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.
Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in 'overcollection' of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional..."

Economics:

Robert Reich: Why We're Not at the Beginning of the End
"...Of course mortage rates are declining, mortgage orginations are surging, and people and companies are borrowing more. So much money is sloshing around the economy that its price is bound to drop. And cheap money is bound to induce some borrowing. The real question is whether this means an economic turnaround. The answer is it doesn't.
Cheap money, you may remember, got us into this mess. Six years ago, the Fed (Alan Greenspan et al) lowered interest rates to 1 percent. Adjusted for inflation, this made money essentially free to large lenders. The large lenders did exactly what they could be expected to do with free money - get as much of it as possible and then lent it out to anyone who could stand up straight (and many who couldn't). With no regulators looking over their shoulders, they got away with the financial equivalent of murder.
The only economic fundamental that's changed since then is that so many people got so badly burned that the trust necessary for consumers, investors, and businesses to repeat what they did then has vanished...
...Some of the big banks will claim to be profitable, but don't bank on it. Neither they nor anyone else knows what their assets are really worth. Besides, the big banks are sitting on over $500 billion over taxpayer equity and loans. Who knows how they're calculating profits? Most importantly, there's still a yawning gap between the economy's productive capacity and what it's now producing, and absolutely nothing will turn the economy around until that gap begins to close..."

Economics:

Marc Ash: This Isn't Working
"...What we're seeing here is a reinvestment in, not a divestment from, Reaganomics. The cost is staggering and the ramifications are long-term. In the opinion of Obama administration economists, the nation's, and for that matter the world's, financial structures revolve around Wall Street. Geithner and Summers appear to be determined to restore Wall Street, no matter what the cost. But what if restoring Wall Street doesn't fix the problem? What if Wall Street is the problem? Geithner and Summers have missed the most fundamental component in this equation; the American Worker does not depend on Wall Street; Wall Street depends on the American worker. Destroying the American worker to save the investment banker truly defeats the system.
Regulation is a critical missing element in any meaningful attempt to an economic reform. But regulation means nothing without law enforcement. Unless ultimately there is a jail cell waiting for those who break the law, then regulation is theater and nothing more. Law enforcement - in earnest - ceased to exist on a federal governmental level during the Bush years. Anyone who would, or even potentially could, bring a criminal action against Bush administration officials was removed or intimidated into silence. It was the era of lawlessness for America's elite, and for some of the nation's most powerful financiers it continues. For the better part of a decade, the message has been clear: 'if you are powerful and connected you will never face meaningful prosecution'. You are above the law..."

The Roots of Right Wing Radio:

This practice sounds like dumping, an anti-competitive practice that should disturb those who favor 'free' markets.

Bill Mann: Limbaugh's Dirty Little Secret of Radio 'Success'
"Ever wonder why Rush 'Boss' Limbaugh's syndicated radio show is all over the place like the proverbial cheap suit?..."

On Piracy:

Again, this morning, even NPR refused to ask questions about 'why' of piracy. Instead, they were playing the Fear Card, wondering what could happen if pirates were to team up with 'terrorists.'

Johann Hari: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
"...The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: 'What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.' In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to 'dispose' of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: 'Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.'
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: 'If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters.'
This is the context in which the men we are calling 'pirates' have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was 'to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.' William Scott would understand those words..."

Somali Pirates:

Only brief, if any, mention is made by the CropMedia of the foreign intervention that breeds desperation...

BSN: Somalia: Western Toxic Dumping And Piracy
"...Tons of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals drifted onto the beaches after the giant wave dislodged them from the sea bed off Somalia. Tens of thousands of Somalis fell ill after coming into contact with this cocktail. They complained to the United Nations (UN), which began an investigation. 'There are reports from villagers of a wide range of medical problems such as mouth bleeds, abdominal hemorrhages, unusual skin disorders and breathing difficulties,' the UN noted.
Some 300 people are believed to have died from the poisonous chemicals. Many European, US and Asian shipping firms – notably Switzerland’s Achair Partners and Italy’s Progresso – signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with Somalia’s politicians and militia leaders.
This meant they could use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became widespread as the country descended into civil war. Nick Nuttall of the UN Environment Program said, 'European companies found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste.
'It cost as little as £1.70 a ton, whereas waste disposal costs in Europe was something like £670 a ton. 'And the waste is of many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it.'
But despite the evidence uncovered by the tsunami, an investigation into the practice of toxic dumping was dropped. There was no compensation and no clean up. In 2006 Somali fishermen complained to the UN that foreign fishing fleets were using the breakdown of the state to plunder their fish stocks. These foreign fleets often recruited Somali militias to intimidate local fishermen..."

Illegal Domestic Surveillance:

EFF.org - In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ's New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush's
"We had hoped this would go differently.
Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration's made two deeply troubling arguments.
First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue 'would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.' As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.
It's an especially disappointing argument to hear from the Obama Administration. As a candidate, Senator Obama lamented that the Bush Administration 'invoked a legal tool known as the 'state secrets' privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court.' He was right then, and we're dismayed that he and his team seem to have forgotten..."


Pushing The Worst Mortgage Deals (For Consumers):

...was what the Bankers incentivised willing brokers to do.

Jeff Merkley: Fixing the damage to the American dream - OregonLive.com
"...Amortizing loans set a fixed interest rate and payment schedule for home mortgages, in most cases for 30 years. But recently we've allowed tricky mortgages to replace amortizing loans and undermine the integrity of the system. These lending tricks, such as teaser loans whose low initial rates explode into unaffordable payments, began driving the nation into economic turmoil. We then deepened the crisis by making a second mistake: allowing brokers to receive huge bonus payments for steering unsuspecting homeowners into these tricky, more expensive mortgages. In fact, a study for The Wall Street Journal found that 61 percent of the subprime loans originated in 2006 went to families who qualified for prime loans..."

Food Safety:

Nobody can argue with the public interest in a safe food supply, however the way HR 875 is written, it could have consequences for organic farmers and backyard gardeners (yes, they would be considered food producers, even if they do not sell food to others). Details here

If the lack of clarity in this legislation surrounding organic farming and backyard gardening disturbs you, please contact your Congressional Rep. and tell them so.

Economics:

American Retail is in dire straights.

Alexander Cockburn: The Parable of the Shopping Mall
"...General Growth – the second largest mall owner in the U.S. - whose stock trades now for 55 cents, down from $44 last May...
...Across the past 40 years some 200 cities built pedestrian malls. Today, only 30 remain. Drive around any town and one can see strip malls in similar decline, their parking lots nearly empty, boarded stores in the retail frontage like a mouth losing its teeth, as the lights of Circuit City go out and Linen ‘n Things, Zales, Ann Taylor and Sharper Image retrench or collapse entirely.
Out of crisis comes opportunity, one that’s been discussed for some years by movements such as the New Urbanists and crusaders for the refashioning of the American urban landscape such as James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere. A mall can be razed to the ground, like the Belle Promenade, on the west bank of the Mississippi in New Orleans. Eureka’s too poor a town to do that. But a mall can be refashioned into a more congenial quartier, one blessed with easier parking.
In the same way that coastal cities like Boston finally realized the asset of nineteenth-century quaysides with their warehouses and customs depots, today’s failed or failing malls can be reconfigured, converted to mixed use, with residential housing, public spaces and constructive social uses...
...Opportunity is there, to be seized from the jaws of capitalism’s shattering reverses. This is a chance richer than the opportunity offered and annulled in the mid-70s. Circumstances will in all likelihood push Obama’s government to the left, just as they did FDR when orthodoxy failed. The left should not be shy about pressing the challenge out of some misguided notion of preserving a polite progressive consensus..."


The Rule of Law:

Glenn Greenwald: New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ
"When Congress immunized telecoms last August for their illegal participation in Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, Senate Democratic apologists for telecom immunity repeatedly justified that action by pointing out that Bush officials who broke the law were not immunized -- only the telecoms...
...Taking them at their word, EFF -- which was the lead counsel in the lawsuits against the telecoms -- thereafter filed suit, in October, 2008, against the Bush administration and various Bush officials for illegally spying on the communications of Americans. They were seeking to make good on the promise made by Congressional Democrats: namely, that even though lawsuits against telecoms for illegal spying will not be allowed any longer, government officials who broke the law can still be held accountable.
But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government's first response to EFF's lawsuit (.pdf), the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush's NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the 'state secrets' privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new 'sovereign immunity' claim of breathtaking scope -- never before advanced even by the Bush administration -- that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is 'willful disclosure' of the illegally intercepted communications.
In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad 'state secrets' privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and -- even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal -- you are barred from suing them unless they 'willfully disclose' to the public what they have learned..."

Reality Check:

Michael Winship: Miss Universe's Excellent Adventure
"...if you needed further proof that the Earth is off its axis, spinning toward the sun, there came the news that another crowned head, Miss Universe, had paid a visit to Guantanamo Bay. Yes, courtesy of the USO, Venezuela's Dyanna Mendoza hit the beach for her personal remake of 'Baywatch,' visiting the no-doubt-startled troops there and touring the Gitmo facilities.
Because there apparently is a higher power with a sardonic sense of humor - thank you! - Ms. Mendoza kept an Internet diary in which she told the world about boat rides and a trip to a beach covered with bits of colored glass.

'It was a loooot of fun!' she wrote. 'We ... met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills ... We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how they recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, book ... I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.'

OK, Miss Universe, no doubt a more permanent stay could be arranged, your innocence notwithstanding. But you just might have to give up the swimwear competition two-piece for something in an orange jumpsuit.
I wish I were making this up. So does the Miss Universe organization, owned by General Electric's NBC Universal and Miss Congeniality himself, Donald Trump. They quickly took down Mendoza's blog entry and replaced it with an official statement supporting our armed forces..."

The Revolving Door:

Glenn Greenwald: Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's ownership of government
"...UPDATE: Just to get a sense for how propagandistic, sycophantic and fact-free are the most extreme Obama worshippers in our 'journalist' class, consider this recent article from The New Republic's Noam Scheiber in which he urged the White House to 'free its economic oracle' -- Summers -- and defended and praised Summers on the ground that 'his exposure to Wall Street over the years has been limited.' As Jonathan Schwarz asks, citing the massive compensation on which Summers engorged himself by feeding at the Wall Street trough last year: 'I wonder what would have constituted 'significant' exposure to Wall Street? Maybe if he'd worked for D.E. Shaw full time? (Amazingly, Summers was paid $5.2 million for a part-time position.)'"

Economic Policy:

No qui pro quo here, naturally. Summers was influential under President Clinton, when de-regulatory overzealousness helped to create the mess we're in today.

AP: Obama Adviser Paid Millions as Hedge Fund Director
"Lawrence Summers, President Barack Obama's top economic adviser, earned millions over the past year as managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group and through speaking fees, some from financial institutions now at the center of the government's rescue program.
Financial disclosure reports released by the White House show that Summers received $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw. He also reported payments for appearances before institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.
Overall, Summers was paid $2.7 million for more than 40 appearances before different organizations and companies, including financial institutions..."

Economics:

Matt Renner: Merrill Lynch Bonus Payments Dwarf A.I.G.
"The political firestorm over the $165 million bonuses to executives at the failed American International Group (A.I.G.) that ripped through Washington, DC, in mid-March could be reignited by further attention on failing financial companies who were given taxpayer dollars then turned around and spent the cash on bonuses...
...A larger and potentially far more explosive powder keg of bonus payments - this time to top executives at now defunct Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. - may be about to blow.
Ongoing investigations at the New York attorney general's office and at the office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) into this previously revealed, but mostly ignored, story may add new details about who in the Bush administration, in the financial sector and at the Federal Reserve knew about these much larger bonuses and the suspicious circumstances surrounding them.
In its last days as an independent company, Merrill gave performance-based bonuses exclusively to employees earning $300,000 a year or more and holding a rank of vice president or higher, according to their financial statements. $3.62 billion was handed out to these executives - a sum equal to 36.2 percent of the $10 billion in taxpayer funds that were allocated to Merrill as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) before the bonuses were paid..."