Friday, June 24, 2011
Economics:
Robert Scheer: Bill Clinton's Legacy of Denial
"Does Bill Clinton still not grasp that the current economic crisis is in large measure his legacy? Obviously that’s the case, or he wouldn’t have had the temerity to write a 14-point memo for Newsweek on how to fix the economy that never once refers to the home mortgage collapse and other manifestations of Wall Street greed that he enabled as president..."
Targeting Social Security:
The VT Senator exposes how the Koch Brothers fund think tanks who frequently appear in the media, creating an echo chamber of voices against the most popular American social insurance program.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: Counter the Koch Billions. Protect Social Security (short video)
"1. Social Security belongs to you—the workers who contribute to it—not the politicians in Washington.
2. Social Security will never go bankrupt. Its major source of income comes from the contributions of workers and employers; as long as there are workers, Social Security will have income. Closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals will increase the long term financial health of the program, and protect it for decades to come.
3. Raising the retirement age is a terrible idea and a large benefit cut. If you were claiming benefits as a 66 year-old retired worker and the full retirement age was changed from 66, where it is today, to 69 your benefits would be cut 20 percent. A typical benefit would drop from $14,000 a year to $11,200 a year.
4. Privatizing Social Security would be a disaster. Social Security is so valuable because it provides a guaranteed benefit. Privatizing Social Security would remove this guarantee and have people gamble their retirement savings in the casinos of Wall Street. If the recent financial crisis taught us anything, Wall Street is the last place where our money is safe."
The Environment:
Tavis Smiley interviews Robert Kennedy Jr. (video & transcript)
"...You know, Warren Harding in 1921 when there was union strikes in West Virginia, 10,000 union workers, he used the United States Air Force to drop bombs on them and poison gas and he was in the pocket of the coal industry. So that’s what happened. We completely lost our democracy then.
How did it get restored? A few really courageous journalists who do what you’re doing today, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, who started exposing these and informing the public and inspiring outrage and indignation. And you had a politician back then, a very tough politician, Teddy Roosevelt, who was willing to stand up to what he called the 'malefactors of great wealth' and the corporations.
You know, they passed the Sherman Antitrust Act. They put the bit into the mouths of corporate power. They passed the graduated income tax that forced corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share of operating our country. They passed union laws that allowed unions to organize which created a middle class in this country and created the prosperity and the stability that made American democracy the envy of the world.
They created, among other things, direct election of senators and they created, the most importantly, in 1907 a law they passed that forbade corporate contributions to federal political officeholders or federal political candidates. That law has been in place for 100 years. Now we have a Supreme Court that is the most – it’s not a right wing Supreme Court. There’s no coherent right wing philosophy to this Supreme Court.
The only coherent philosophy to Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Clarence Thomas, one thing, the corporations always win. If it’s government against an individual, the government wins. If it’s corporations against the individual, the corporation wins. If it’s corporations against the government, the corporation wins. Show me one exception to that in any decision written by that Supreme Court.
We have the Supreme Court and last year they repealed this 100-year-old law and made it legal for the first time in a century for corporations to flood our federal political campaigns with a tsunami of money and that is the beginning of the end.
H.L. Mencken used to say a journalist is someone who can’t tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the end of civilization. Well, that decision is the end of civilization in this country.
You know, we’ve been spending the last year talking about Charlie Sheen and Brittany Spears instead of talking about what’s really about to destroy our democracy, which is this huge flood of corporate money which is gonna put corporations in the driver’s seat..."
Japan Nuke Disaster:
Michio Kaku: Fukushima – They Lied From The Very First (CNN video)
Dahr Jamail: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,' Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
'Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed,' he said, 'You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.'
TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.
'The problem is how to keep it cool,' says Gundersen. 'They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?'
Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.
'The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor,' Gundersen added. 'TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.'
Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive 'hot spots' around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.
'We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl,' said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl..."
..."
The Media:
Raw Story: Jon Stewart: Chris Wallace gave away the Fox News game (video)
"On The Daily Show Monday night, Jon Stewart said that Fox News host Chris Wallace 'basically gives away the game' when he describes Fox News as a 'counterweight' to NBC News.
'Because as we know, news only comes in two sides,' Stewart joked.
He had appeared on Fox News Sunday the previous day, where Wallace questioned him about media bias.
Wallace’s comment about Fox News being a 'counterweight' to the 'liberal' NBC News was not included in the edited version of the interview broadcast by the Fox News Channel.
Stewart suggested viewers watch the unedited version of the Fox News Sunday interview because in the edited version he looks like 'a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.'"
Robert Scheer: Bill Clinton's Legacy of Denial
"Does Bill Clinton still not grasp that the current economic crisis is in large measure his legacy? Obviously that’s the case, or he wouldn’t have had the temerity to write a 14-point memo for Newsweek on how to fix the economy that never once refers to the home mortgage collapse and other manifestations of Wall Street greed that he enabled as president..."
Targeting Social Security:
The VT Senator exposes how the Koch Brothers fund think tanks who frequently appear in the media, creating an echo chamber of voices against the most popular American social insurance program.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: Counter the Koch Billions. Protect Social Security (short video)
"1. Social Security belongs to you—the workers who contribute to it—not the politicians in Washington.
2. Social Security will never go bankrupt. Its major source of income comes from the contributions of workers and employers; as long as there are workers, Social Security will have income. Closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals will increase the long term financial health of the program, and protect it for decades to come.
3. Raising the retirement age is a terrible idea and a large benefit cut. If you were claiming benefits as a 66 year-old retired worker and the full retirement age was changed from 66, where it is today, to 69 your benefits would be cut 20 percent. A typical benefit would drop from $14,000 a year to $11,200 a year.
4. Privatizing Social Security would be a disaster. Social Security is so valuable because it provides a guaranteed benefit. Privatizing Social Security would remove this guarantee and have people gamble their retirement savings in the casinos of Wall Street. If the recent financial crisis taught us anything, Wall Street is the last place where our money is safe."
The Environment:
Tavis Smiley interviews Robert Kennedy Jr. (video & transcript)
"...You know, Warren Harding in 1921 when there was union strikes in West Virginia, 10,000 union workers, he used the United States Air Force to drop bombs on them and poison gas and he was in the pocket of the coal industry. So that’s what happened. We completely lost our democracy then.
How did it get restored? A few really courageous journalists who do what you’re doing today, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, who started exposing these and informing the public and inspiring outrage and indignation. And you had a politician back then, a very tough politician, Teddy Roosevelt, who was willing to stand up to what he called the 'malefactors of great wealth' and the corporations.
You know, they passed the Sherman Antitrust Act. They put the bit into the mouths of corporate power. They passed the graduated income tax that forced corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share of operating our country. They passed union laws that allowed unions to organize which created a middle class in this country and created the prosperity and the stability that made American democracy the envy of the world.
They created, among other things, direct election of senators and they created, the most importantly, in 1907 a law they passed that forbade corporate contributions to federal political officeholders or federal political candidates. That law has been in place for 100 years. Now we have a Supreme Court that is the most – it’s not a right wing Supreme Court. There’s no coherent right wing philosophy to this Supreme Court.
The only coherent philosophy to Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Clarence Thomas, one thing, the corporations always win. If it’s government against an individual, the government wins. If it’s corporations against the individual, the corporation wins. If it’s corporations against the government, the corporation wins. Show me one exception to that in any decision written by that Supreme Court.
We have the Supreme Court and last year they repealed this 100-year-old law and made it legal for the first time in a century for corporations to flood our federal political campaigns with a tsunami of money and that is the beginning of the end.
H.L. Mencken used to say a journalist is someone who can’t tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the end of civilization. Well, that decision is the end of civilization in this country.
You know, we’ve been spending the last year talking about Charlie Sheen and Brittany Spears instead of talking about what’s really about to destroy our democracy, which is this huge flood of corporate money which is gonna put corporations in the driver’s seat..."
Japan Nuke Disaster:
Michio Kaku: Fukushima – They Lied From The Very First (CNN video)
Dahr Jamail: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,' Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
'Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed,' he said, 'You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.'
TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.
'The problem is how to keep it cool,' says Gundersen. 'They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?'
Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.
'The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor,' Gundersen added. 'TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.'
Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive 'hot spots' around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.
'We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl,' said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl..."
..."
The Media:
Raw Story: Jon Stewart: Chris Wallace gave away the Fox News game (video)
"On The Daily Show Monday night, Jon Stewart said that Fox News host Chris Wallace 'basically gives away the game' when he describes Fox News as a 'counterweight' to NBC News.
'Because as we know, news only comes in two sides,' Stewart joked.
He had appeared on Fox News Sunday the previous day, where Wallace questioned him about media bias.
Wallace’s comment about Fox News being a 'counterweight' to the 'liberal' NBC News was not included in the edited version of the interview broadcast by the Fox News Channel.
Stewart suggested viewers watch the unedited version of the Fox News Sunday interview because in the edited version he looks like 'a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.'"
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
The Best Nuke Power 'Regulation' Money Can Buy?
AP: US nuke regulators weaken safety rules
"Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.
The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety - and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.
Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed - up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards.
Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes - all of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in the AP's yearlong investigation. And all of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident..."
AP: Tritium leaks found at many nuke sites
"Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.
Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard — sometimes at hundreds of times the limit..."
Economics:
The pro-business crowd would like to have us believe that lowering the corporate tax rate to match Ireland's (or lower) will create jobs. Personally, I'd like to see corporations ID'd by US Uncut who pay NO TAX [Bank of America, Verizon, FedEx, GE, BP, Apple], after their accountants have navigated all the loopholes achieved by expensive lobbying, forced to pay what they actually should.
NY Times: U.S. Business Has High Tax Rates but Pays Less
"The United States may soon wind up with a distinction that makes business leaders cringe — the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
Topping out at 35 percent, America’s official corporate income tax rate trails that of only Japan, at 39.5 percent, which has said it plans to lower its rate. It is nearly triple Ireland’s and 10 percentage points higher than in Denmark, Austria or China. To help companies here stay competitive, many executives say, Congress should lower it.
But by taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less — often far less — than their competitors abroad and at home. A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied..."
AP: US nuke regulators weaken safety rules
"Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.
The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety - and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.
Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed - up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards.
Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes - all of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in the AP's yearlong investigation. And all of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident..."
AP: Tritium leaks found at many nuke sites
"Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.
Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard — sometimes at hundreds of times the limit..."
Economics:
The pro-business crowd would like to have us believe that lowering the corporate tax rate to match Ireland's (or lower) will create jobs. Personally, I'd like to see corporations ID'd by US Uncut who pay NO TAX [Bank of America, Verizon, FedEx, GE, BP, Apple], after their accountants have navigated all the loopholes achieved by expensive lobbying, forced to pay what they actually should.
NY Times: U.S. Business Has High Tax Rates but Pays Less
"The United States may soon wind up with a distinction that makes business leaders cringe — the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
Topping out at 35 percent, America’s official corporate income tax rate trails that of only Japan, at 39.5 percent, which has said it plans to lower its rate. It is nearly triple Ireland’s and 10 percentage points higher than in Denmark, Austria or China. To help companies here stay competitive, many executives say, Congress should lower it.
But by taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less — often far less — than their competitors abroad and at home. A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied..."
Friday, June 17, 2011
The National Security State:
Ellsberg: All the crimes Nixon committed against me are now legal
"Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg said Tuesday that disgraced former Republican President Richard M. Nixon would "admire [President Barack] Obama's boldness' in trying to stifle whistleblowers.
'Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life,' Ellsberg told CNN. 'And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.'
'He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me -- which forced his resignation facing impeachment -- are now legal,' he continued.
'That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to 'incapacitate me totally' (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971)... But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's executive orders. [T]hey have all become legal,'..."
The Failed War On Drugs:
40 years ago yesterday, Richard Nixon declared 'war' on drugs. Billions upon billions of taxpayer money have been unproductively spent arresting, prosecuting & incarcerating people - not just those dealers who profit, but individuals with substance abuse problems. Illegal drugs, however, are as available as ever. The drug war has led to the rise of the Private Prison Industrial Complex. Fueled by the black market status of drugs, criminal gangs have reigned violence and corruption upon Mexico and countries to the south. Society ought to be dealing with drug abuse as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one. Sadly, the Obama administration rejects this pragmatic view, even agreeing with the militarization of the drug war by Mexico's President.
Senate report: The Latin American war on drugs has ‘largely failed’
"A U.S. Senate subcommittee report this week called into question efforts to curb drug exports from Latin America, suggesting that billions in tax dollars had been wasted in no-bid contracts with no oversight on how the money was being spent or whether efforts were succeeding.
The report comes just a week after a panel of formerly high-ranking officials -- including the former presidents of Switzerland, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, along with a former U.N. Secretary General, a former U.S. Secretary of State, the prime minister of Greece and the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights -- called for the drug war to shift its focus from enforcement and interdiction to medical treatment and harm-reduction policies.
'It's becoming increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government's use of contractors, have largely failed,' Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, said in a media advisory. 'Without adequate oversight and management we are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we're getting in return.'
McCaskill's report also comes after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found last month that the U.S. government has no centralized archive of contracts relating to the drug war and doesn't conduct studies to ensure those expenditures are appropriate or successful.
The McCaskill report indicates that U.S. taxpayers have shelled out over $3 billion for work and equipment related to the drug war in Latin America from 2005-2009, and most of that money went to private contractors...
...The Obama administration told reporters that they believed the report to be inaccurate, insisting that U.S.-led efforts are succeeding in curbing drug exports from Latin America."
David Lewis: High Times on the Silk Road: The Central Asian Paradox
Citing Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as...
"...examples from Central Asia suggest that, unlike Mexico, the bulk of drug trafficking is not carried out by violent, heavily armed, organized criminal gangs battling each other and an array of state agencies. Instead, it is conducted with the active connivance and support of state institutions, controlled by senior security officers, government officials, and parliamentarians who have effectively nationalized drug transit through the region..."
The Bankster Bailout:
Matt Taibbi: The 'Big Short' and Goldman's New Story
"...It is difficult to convey the full absurdity of Goldman’s Chief Financial Officer testifying that he was “not personally involved” in these short transactions, that he had 'no memory of any particular transactions,' and moreover that he wouldn’t have requested net short data 'in the ordinary course of business.'
The Levin report is literally crammed full of Viniar emails showing intimate involvement in the planning and execution of the mortgage shorts. In December of 2006, Viniar held a meeting in which he outlined a very specific strategy for reducing the bank’s mortgage exposure. Another Goldman exec came out of that Viniar meeting with a notes outlining a seven-step plan to get out from under mortgages, with entries like, 'Reduce exposure, sell more ABX outright… Distribute as much as possible on bonds created from new loan securitizations and clean previous positions… sell some more residuals…'
When asked later if these notes fairly summarized Viniar’s points, Viniar in writing says, 'Yes.'
But he wasn’t personally involved, according to him, and he doesn’t remember any of it. And, according to him, he wasn’t keeping track of net short data as part of the 'ordinary course of business.'
But all it takes is one look at the emails and you see that probably isn’t true. On July 24, 2007, for instance, the mortgage desk posted a profit of $83 million for the day, when the firm’s net revenue overall was only $74 million. Just a few days before, president Cohn had told Blankfein, 'There is a net short.' Viniar on that day, in an email entitled, 'Daily Estimate 07-24-07 – Net Revenues $74 M,' wrote to Blankfein, 'Mergers, overnight asia and especially short mortgages [emphasis mine] saved the day.'
But Viniar wasn’t keeping track of this stuff on a daily basis, according to him..."
Wikileaks & The (Not So Free) Energy Markets:
Matt Taibbi: Wikileaks: Speculators Helped Cause Oil Bubble
"When oil prices surged to a ridiculous $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008, conventional wisdom held that normal supply and demand issues were the cause. Both the Bush administration (in the form of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and most of Wall Street (through both media figures and market analysts) blamed such factors as increases in oil demand from the Chinese industrial machine, and the failure of Americans to conserve, for the surge in crude prices...
...Well, thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that when the Bush administration reached out to the Saudis in the summer of '08 to ask them to increase oil production to lower prices, the Saudis responded by saying they were having a hard time finding buyers for their oil as it was, and instead asked the Bush administration to rein in Wall Street speculators...
...The issue here, which I covered somewhat in Griftopia and in 'The Great American Bubble Machine,' revolves around the influx of speculative money into the commodities markets. Because of various changes to the way commodities were traded -- including a series of semi-secret exemptions handed out to commodities speculators, allowing companies like Goldman Sachs to popularize commodities speculation -- there was, by the summer of 2008, a cascade of investor money pouring into commodities, mostly all betting on a rise of commodity prices. Much of this might have been due to money flowing out of mortgages and into the 'safe' haven of commodities, with exploding energy prices being an unwelcome side effect. While there was less than $20 billion of speculative activity in commodities in the early 2000s, by 2008 that number had jumped up to well over $200 billion, with virtually all that money being 'long' money, i.e. bets on a rise in prices. All of that new money turned into a battering ram pushing prices through the roof. We are seeing the same phenomenon this year..."
And how to curb financial market speculative excesses...
Sarah Anderson: Cut Wall Street Down to Size With a Financial Speculation Tax
"If you want to transform the economy, you have to cut Wall Street down to its proper size. One way to do that is to tax the short-term speculative activities that dominate and distort financial markets.
For ordinary investors, the costs would be negligible, like a tiny insurance fee to protect against crashes caused by speculation. But for the highfliers who are most responsible for the financial crisis, the tax could raise the cost of highly leveraged derivatives trading and stock-flipping enough to discourage the most dangerous behavior.
Remember the 'flash crash' of May 6, 2010, when the Dow plummeted nearly 1,000 points? If a tax of only 0.25 percent on each transaction had been in place for just the twenty most frenzied minutes of that day, traders would’ve faced $142 million in fees.
And remember AIG’s credit default swaps? A financial speculation tax might not have stopped those greed-crazed fools, but at least Uncle Sam would’ve taken in about $1.1 billion on the deals.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research predicts that a tax on trades of stocks, derivatives and other financial instruments would curb excessive speculation while generating around $150 billion a year. That would be enough, for example, to fill projected Social Security shortfalls, with dough left over for other domestic and international needs..."
Ellsberg: All the crimes Nixon committed against me are now legal
"Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg said Tuesday that disgraced former Republican President Richard M. Nixon would "admire [President Barack] Obama's boldness' in trying to stifle whistleblowers.
'Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life,' Ellsberg told CNN. 'And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.'
'He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me -- which forced his resignation facing impeachment -- are now legal,' he continued.
'That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to 'incapacitate me totally' (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971)... But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's executive orders. [T]hey have all become legal,'..."
The Failed War On Drugs:
40 years ago yesterday, Richard Nixon declared 'war' on drugs. Billions upon billions of taxpayer money have been unproductively spent arresting, prosecuting & incarcerating people - not just those dealers who profit, but individuals with substance abuse problems. Illegal drugs, however, are as available as ever. The drug war has led to the rise of the Private Prison Industrial Complex. Fueled by the black market status of drugs, criminal gangs have reigned violence and corruption upon Mexico and countries to the south. Society ought to be dealing with drug abuse as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one. Sadly, the Obama administration rejects this pragmatic view, even agreeing with the militarization of the drug war by Mexico's President.
Senate report: The Latin American war on drugs has ‘largely failed’
"A U.S. Senate subcommittee report this week called into question efforts to curb drug exports from Latin America, suggesting that billions in tax dollars had been wasted in no-bid contracts with no oversight on how the money was being spent or whether efforts were succeeding.
The report comes just a week after a panel of formerly high-ranking officials -- including the former presidents of Switzerland, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, along with a former U.N. Secretary General, a former U.S. Secretary of State, the prime minister of Greece and the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights -- called for the drug war to shift its focus from enforcement and interdiction to medical treatment and harm-reduction policies.
'It's becoming increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government's use of contractors, have largely failed,' Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, said in a media advisory. 'Without adequate oversight and management we are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we're getting in return.'
McCaskill's report also comes after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found last month that the U.S. government has no centralized archive of contracts relating to the drug war and doesn't conduct studies to ensure those expenditures are appropriate or successful.
The McCaskill report indicates that U.S. taxpayers have shelled out over $3 billion for work and equipment related to the drug war in Latin America from 2005-2009, and most of that money went to private contractors...
...The Obama administration told reporters that they believed the report to be inaccurate, insisting that U.S.-led efforts are succeeding in curbing drug exports from Latin America."
David Lewis: High Times on the Silk Road: The Central Asian Paradox
Citing Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as...
"...examples from Central Asia suggest that, unlike Mexico, the bulk of drug trafficking is not carried out by violent, heavily armed, organized criminal gangs battling each other and an array of state agencies. Instead, it is conducted with the active connivance and support of state institutions, controlled by senior security officers, government officials, and parliamentarians who have effectively nationalized drug transit through the region..."
The Bankster Bailout:
Matt Taibbi: The 'Big Short' and Goldman's New Story
"...It is difficult to convey the full absurdity of Goldman’s Chief Financial Officer testifying that he was “not personally involved” in these short transactions, that he had 'no memory of any particular transactions,' and moreover that he wouldn’t have requested net short data 'in the ordinary course of business.'
The Levin report is literally crammed full of Viniar emails showing intimate involvement in the planning and execution of the mortgage shorts. In December of 2006, Viniar held a meeting in which he outlined a very specific strategy for reducing the bank’s mortgage exposure. Another Goldman exec came out of that Viniar meeting with a notes outlining a seven-step plan to get out from under mortgages, with entries like, 'Reduce exposure, sell more ABX outright… Distribute as much as possible on bonds created from new loan securitizations and clean previous positions… sell some more residuals…'
When asked later if these notes fairly summarized Viniar’s points, Viniar in writing says, 'Yes.'
But he wasn’t personally involved, according to him, and he doesn’t remember any of it. And, according to him, he wasn’t keeping track of net short data as part of the 'ordinary course of business.'
But all it takes is one look at the emails and you see that probably isn’t true. On July 24, 2007, for instance, the mortgage desk posted a profit of $83 million for the day, when the firm’s net revenue overall was only $74 million. Just a few days before, president Cohn had told Blankfein, 'There is a net short.' Viniar on that day, in an email entitled, 'Daily Estimate 07-24-07 – Net Revenues $74 M,' wrote to Blankfein, 'Mergers, overnight asia and especially short mortgages [emphasis mine] saved the day.'
But Viniar wasn’t keeping track of this stuff on a daily basis, according to him..."
Wikileaks & The (Not So Free) Energy Markets:
Matt Taibbi: Wikileaks: Speculators Helped Cause Oil Bubble
"When oil prices surged to a ridiculous $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008, conventional wisdom held that normal supply and demand issues were the cause. Both the Bush administration (in the form of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and most of Wall Street (through both media figures and market analysts) blamed such factors as increases in oil demand from the Chinese industrial machine, and the failure of Americans to conserve, for the surge in crude prices...
...Well, thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that when the Bush administration reached out to the Saudis in the summer of '08 to ask them to increase oil production to lower prices, the Saudis responded by saying they were having a hard time finding buyers for their oil as it was, and instead asked the Bush administration to rein in Wall Street speculators...
...The issue here, which I covered somewhat in Griftopia and in 'The Great American Bubble Machine,' revolves around the influx of speculative money into the commodities markets. Because of various changes to the way commodities were traded -- including a series of semi-secret exemptions handed out to commodities speculators, allowing companies like Goldman Sachs to popularize commodities speculation -- there was, by the summer of 2008, a cascade of investor money pouring into commodities, mostly all betting on a rise of commodity prices. Much of this might have been due to money flowing out of mortgages and into the 'safe' haven of commodities, with exploding energy prices being an unwelcome side effect. While there was less than $20 billion of speculative activity in commodities in the early 2000s, by 2008 that number had jumped up to well over $200 billion, with virtually all that money being 'long' money, i.e. bets on a rise in prices. All of that new money turned into a battering ram pushing prices through the roof. We are seeing the same phenomenon this year..."
And how to curb financial market speculative excesses...
Sarah Anderson: Cut Wall Street Down to Size With a Financial Speculation Tax
"If you want to transform the economy, you have to cut Wall Street down to its proper size. One way to do that is to tax the short-term speculative activities that dominate and distort financial markets.
For ordinary investors, the costs would be negligible, like a tiny insurance fee to protect against crashes caused by speculation. But for the highfliers who are most responsible for the financial crisis, the tax could raise the cost of highly leveraged derivatives trading and stock-flipping enough to discourage the most dangerous behavior.
Remember the 'flash crash' of May 6, 2010, when the Dow plummeted nearly 1,000 points? If a tax of only 0.25 percent on each transaction had been in place for just the twenty most frenzied minutes of that day, traders would’ve faced $142 million in fees.
And remember AIG’s credit default swaps? A financial speculation tax might not have stopped those greed-crazed fools, but at least Uncle Sam would’ve taken in about $1.1 billion on the deals.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research predicts that a tax on trades of stocks, derivatives and other financial instruments would curb excessive speculation while generating around $150 billion a year. That would be enough, for example, to fill projected Social Security shortfalls, with dough left over for other domestic and international needs..."
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Health:
I was intrigued to hear about vitamin C treatment on a local PBS program. I found a good summary on the same topic here: Cancer & IV Vitamin C.
I was intrigued to hear about vitamin C treatment on a local PBS program. I found a good summary on the same topic here: Cancer & IV Vitamin C.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
On The Road Toward More Permanent War - Targeting Iran
Democracy Now ! - Seymour Hersh: Despite Intelligence Rejecting Iran as Nuclear Threat, U.S. Could Be Headed for Iraq Redux
"In his latest article for The New Yorker magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says the United States might attack Iran based on distorted estimates of Iran’s nuclear and military threat—just like it did with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Hersh reveals that despite using Iranian informants and cutting-edge surveillance technology, U.S. officials have been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, very simply, it’s—you know, you could argue it’s 2003 all over again. Remember WMD, mushroom clouds. There’s just no serious evidence inside that Iran is actually doing anything to make a nuclear weapon. You know, making a weapon is a big deal. You have to have fabrication facilities. You have to convert a very toxic gas into a metal and then mold it into a core. It’s big stuff, and there’s no sign of any of it.
We’ve been looking—Cheney was convinced, Dick Cheney, the former vice president, there was a secret facility à la what we probably saw in the movie Bananas. Remember Woody Allen’s movie, the little robots running underground? He was convinced there was an underground facility somewhere. And we had special forces units in there since '04, really, perhaps as late as—early as ’05, maybe, looking. We've been paying off people—the Kurds, the Azeris, the opposition groups. We’ve been giving a lot of money to various defectors. We’ve been looking with satellites for telltale signs, air holes, air vents, somewhere in the desert or somewhere in an arid area. And we’ve found nothing, not for lack of trying. We looked very hard. And there’s just no evidence on the inside.
And it’s not only here, it’s known in Europe. It’s a much easier situation, at least for a journalist, to go to Europe, because the European intelligence officials are much more open about it. 'Yes, we are very skeptical,' they will say, 'but we’ve found nothing.' So, the fact is, we have a—the evidence is pretty strong—I mean, very strong—that we have a sanctions program that’s designed to prevent the Iranians from building weapons systems they’re not building..."
The National Security State:
Tom Engelhardt: Welcome to Post-Legal America - Post-Legal America and the National Security Complex
"...When it comes to any act of the National Security Complex, it’s obviously inapplicable in a land where the rule of law no longer applies to everyone. If you are a ordinary citizen, of course, it applies to you, but not if you are part of the state apparatus that officially protects you. The institutional momentum behind this development is simple enough to demonstrate: it hardly mattered that, after George W. Bush took off those gloves, the next president elected was a former constitutional law professor...
...Theoretically, the National Security Complex exists only to protect you. Its every act is done in the name of making you safer, even if the idea of safety and protection doesn’t extend to your job, your foreclosed home, or aid in disastrous times.
Welcome to post-legal America. It's time to stop wondering whether its acts are illegal and start asking: Do you really want to be this 'safe'?"
Economics:
Rick Ungar: How Our Largest Corporations Made $170 Billion During Great Recession And Paid No Taxes
"...Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.
The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo.
Here are the bullet points presented by the report:
According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate..."
Robert Scheer: Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves
"What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn’t an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent.
One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner’s deceitful performance at the New York Fed when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant of this particular giveaway, as were key members of Congress. 'I wasn’t aware of this program until now,' Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitted in referring to Geithner’s 'single-tranche open-market operations' program. And there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.
It was merely one small part of that reckless policy of throwing mad money at the banks while ignoring the plight of homeowners whom the banks had swindled, a plan pursued by both the Bush and the Obama administrations that set the stage for the current slide into a double-dip recession..."
Energy:
Suzanne Goldenberg: Canada Tries to Hide Alberta Tar Sands Carbon Emissions
"Barely a day goes by it seems when someone from Stephen Harper's government is not touting the benefits of the Alberta tar sands.
But when it came to counting up the carbon emissions produced by the tar sands - big and growing bigger - a strange amnesia seems to have taken hold.
The Canadian government admitted this week that it deliberately left out data indicating a 20% rise in emissions from the Alberta tar sands when it submitted its annual inventory to the United Nations.
The deliberate exclusion does not amount to an attempt to deceive the UN about Canada's total emissions. Emissions from the tar sands were incorporated in the overall tally in the report. But it does suggest that the government is anxious to obscure the source of its fastest-growing source of climate pollution: the Alberta tar sands..."
Democracy Now ! - Seymour Hersh: Despite Intelligence Rejecting Iran as Nuclear Threat, U.S. Could Be Headed for Iraq Redux
"In his latest article for The New Yorker magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says the United States might attack Iran based on distorted estimates of Iran’s nuclear and military threat—just like it did with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Hersh reveals that despite using Iranian informants and cutting-edge surveillance technology, U.S. officials have been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, very simply, it’s—you know, you could argue it’s 2003 all over again. Remember WMD, mushroom clouds. There’s just no serious evidence inside that Iran is actually doing anything to make a nuclear weapon. You know, making a weapon is a big deal. You have to have fabrication facilities. You have to convert a very toxic gas into a metal and then mold it into a core. It’s big stuff, and there’s no sign of any of it.
We’ve been looking—Cheney was convinced, Dick Cheney, the former vice president, there was a secret facility à la what we probably saw in the movie Bananas. Remember Woody Allen’s movie, the little robots running underground? He was convinced there was an underground facility somewhere. And we had special forces units in there since '04, really, perhaps as late as—early as ’05, maybe, looking. We've been paying off people—the Kurds, the Azeris, the opposition groups. We’ve been giving a lot of money to various defectors. We’ve been looking with satellites for telltale signs, air holes, air vents, somewhere in the desert or somewhere in an arid area. And we’ve found nothing, not for lack of trying. We looked very hard. And there’s just no evidence on the inside.
And it’s not only here, it’s known in Europe. It’s a much easier situation, at least for a journalist, to go to Europe, because the European intelligence officials are much more open about it. 'Yes, we are very skeptical,' they will say, 'but we’ve found nothing.' So, the fact is, we have a—the evidence is pretty strong—I mean, very strong—that we have a sanctions program that’s designed to prevent the Iranians from building weapons systems they’re not building..."
The National Security State:
Tom Engelhardt: Welcome to Post-Legal America - Post-Legal America and the National Security Complex
"...When it comes to any act of the National Security Complex, it’s obviously inapplicable in a land where the rule of law no longer applies to everyone. If you are a ordinary citizen, of course, it applies to you, but not if you are part of the state apparatus that officially protects you. The institutional momentum behind this development is simple enough to demonstrate: it hardly mattered that, after George W. Bush took off those gloves, the next president elected was a former constitutional law professor...
...Theoretically, the National Security Complex exists only to protect you. Its every act is done in the name of making you safer, even if the idea of safety and protection doesn’t extend to your job, your foreclosed home, or aid in disastrous times.
Welcome to post-legal America. It's time to stop wondering whether its acts are illegal and start asking: Do you really want to be this 'safe'?"
Economics:
Rick Ungar: How Our Largest Corporations Made $170 Billion During Great Recession And Paid No Taxes
"...Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.
The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo.
Here are the bullet points presented by the report:
From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion.
All but two of the dozen companies enjoyed at least one no-tax year over the 2008-10 period, despite reporting substantial pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years.
Eight of the twelve companies reported net tax benefits over the full three-year period.
According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate..."
Robert Scheer: Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves
"What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn’t an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent.
One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner’s deceitful performance at the New York Fed when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant of this particular giveaway, as were key members of Congress. 'I wasn’t aware of this program until now,' Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitted in referring to Geithner’s 'single-tranche open-market operations' program. And there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.
It was merely one small part of that reckless policy of throwing mad money at the banks while ignoring the plight of homeowners whom the banks had swindled, a plan pursued by both the Bush and the Obama administrations that set the stage for the current slide into a double-dip recession..."
Energy:
Suzanne Goldenberg: Canada Tries to Hide Alberta Tar Sands Carbon Emissions
"Barely a day goes by it seems when someone from Stephen Harper's government is not touting the benefits of the Alberta tar sands.
But when it came to counting up the carbon emissions produced by the tar sands - big and growing bigger - a strange amnesia seems to have taken hold.
The Canadian government admitted this week that it deliberately left out data indicating a 20% rise in emissions from the Alberta tar sands when it submitted its annual inventory to the United Nations.
The deliberate exclusion does not amount to an attempt to deceive the UN about Canada's total emissions. Emissions from the tar sands were incorporated in the overall tally in the report. But it does suggest that the government is anxious to obscure the source of its fastest-growing source of climate pollution: the Alberta tar sands..."
