Monday, March 26, 2012
Distorting The Argument:
Lisa Graves: 'Social Security is Broke' and Other Corporate Scare Tactics
"For years, corporations have been peddling myths to rally us behind their interests. Here are three things everyone 'knows,' and why they’re wrong..."
Food:
Anthony Gucciardi: Judge to FDA: Remove Superbug-Breeding Antibiotics from Animal Feed
"A federal judge has stepped up to the plate and is now ordering FDA regulators to start proceedings to revoke the approval for the use of common antibiotics in animal feed, stating that the excessive overuse of antibiotics is threatening public health through breeding drug-resistant superbugs..."
Energy:
Zachary Shahan: World's First 6-MW Wind Turbine Constructed Offshore
"The world’s first 6-MW offshore wind turbine went up in the North Sea this week. Wind company REpower and C- Power NV, a Belgian offshore development company, installed the wind turbine, the first of 48 for the Thornton Bank II wind farm, which is being constructed approximately 28 kilometers off the Belgian coast..."
Lisa Graves: 'Social Security is Broke' and Other Corporate Scare Tactics
"For years, corporations have been peddling myths to rally us behind their interests. Here are three things everyone 'knows,' and why they’re wrong..."
Food:
Anthony Gucciardi: Judge to FDA: Remove Superbug-Breeding Antibiotics from Animal Feed
"A federal judge has stepped up to the plate and is now ordering FDA regulators to start proceedings to revoke the approval for the use of common antibiotics in animal feed, stating that the excessive overuse of antibiotics is threatening public health through breeding drug-resistant superbugs..."
Energy:
Zachary Shahan: World's First 6-MW Wind Turbine Constructed Offshore
"The world’s first 6-MW offshore wind turbine went up in the North Sea this week. Wind company REpower and C- Power NV, a Belgian offshore development company, installed the wind turbine, the first of 48 for the Thornton Bank II wind farm, which is being constructed approximately 28 kilometers off the Belgian coast..."
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Renewable Energy:
I wonder what strategic discussions the fossil-fuel giants must be having trying to come up with a way to discredit this technology.
Sounds like a winner for any sun-soaked region (much of the Southwestern US, someday a nuclear-free Middle East).
AFP: Solar power station in Spain works at night
"A unique thermosolar power station in southern Spain can shrug off cloudy days: energy stored when the sun shines lets it produce electricity even during the night.
The Gemasolar station, up and running since last May, stands out in the plains of Andalusia.
From the road between Seville and Cordoba, one can see its central tower lit up like a beacon by 2,600 solar mirrors, each 120 square metres (1,290 square feet), that surround it in an immense 195-hectare (480-acre) circle.
'It is the first station in the world that works 24 hours a day, a solar power station that works day and night!' said Santago Arias, technical director of Torresol Energy, which runs the station.
The mechanism is 'very easy to explain,' he said: the panels reflect the suns rays on to the tower, transmitting energy at an intensity 1,000 times higher than that of the sun's rays reaching the earth.
Energy is stored in a vat filled with molten salts at a temperature of more than 500 degrees C (930 F). Those salts are used to produce steam to turn the turbines and produce electricity..."
I Preferred Banks When Their Business Was Boring:
Matt Taibbi: On Goldman Executive Greg Smith's Brave Departure
"Wall Street is buzzing this morning about a resignation – a historic one. Greg Smith, the executive director and head of Goldman Sachs’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, not only decided to quit Goldman, he decided to do it in the New York Times, eloquently deconstructing the firm’s moral slide in a lengthy op-ed piece.
The essence of Smith’s piece is devastating. He points to one simple, specific problem in the company: the fact that Goldman routinely screws its own clients..."
Matt Taibbi: Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail
"At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard..."
Greed Is Here To Stay:
As a friend commented, 'pay for performance' is only for plebes and suckers. CEOs, even when their company performs poorly, by and large receive spectacularly large payouts. How, again, does this reward good behavior, or at least behavior that creates shareholder value?
ThinkProgress: USA TODAY publisher Gannett Gives CEO $32 Million Severance Package After Laying Off 20,000 Workers In Six Years
"When Craig Dubow resigned as CEO of the nation’s largest newspaper conglomerate amid health problems last year, he ended a six-year stint that 'was, by most accounts, a disaster.' Gannett, the parent company of the USA Today and 80 other American newspapers, had seen its revenue plummet $1.7 billion and its stock price fall 86 percent, from $72 a share to just over $10.
To counter those losses, Gannett shed jobs, and a lot of them. Industry estimates say the company has laid off at least 20,000 workers since 2005, reducing its workforce from 52,000 to roughly 32,000. Despite those losses, Gannett awarded Dubow a severance package worth $32 million, NPR reports:
The Thin Blue Line:
Let the sun shine on what the MPD has sought to hide...
Justice Online: General and Special Orders of the MPD
"The Court has ordered the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to release to the PCJF documents the MPD has sought to conceal from the public for years. Superior Court Judge Judith N. Macaluso called police officials' affidavits, which were sworn under penalty of perjury and submitted to the Court in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the lawsuit, 'transparently false.'
This litigation has resulted in the largest and most comprehensive release of D.C. police documents in the history of D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act. The PCJF has forced the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. (MPD) to disclose nearly all of its General Orders and Special Orders and related directives that dictate how officers are to exercise their authority.
The public can now review what the MPD internal policy dictates regarding police-resident contacts, stops and frisks, restrictions on MPD high speed vehicular pursuits, use of closed circuit television cameras, handling of property, obligations to release persons through the citation release program, electronic recording of interrogations, use of canines, traffic safety compliance checkpoints and a range of other issues that span the full scope of police authority.
The MPD has long refused efforts from civil rights and civil liberties and community based organizations for this disclosure, but the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund went to court to get the documents..."
Domestic Surveillance:
WIRED: New Yorker Sheds New Light on NSA’s Warrantless Wiretapping and Data Mining
"New details about the NSA’s post–Sept. 11 domestic surveillance programs have emerged in a stunning New Yorker article about NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who faces trial next month for allegedly leaking information about waste and mismanagement at the agency.
The article provides new insight into the warrantless surveillance program exposed by The New York Times in December 2005, including how top officials at the intelligence agency viewed the program. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden, in 2002, reportedly urged a congressional staffer who was concerned about the legality of the program to keep quiet about it, telling her that she could 'yell and scream' about the program once the inevitable leaks about it occurred.
Asked why the NSA didn’t employ privacy protections in its program, Hayden reportedly told the staffer, 'We didn’t need them. We had the power,' and admitted the government was not getting warrants for the domestic surveillance..."
WIRED: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
"...Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter.' It is, in some measure, the realization of the 'total information awareness' program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy..."
I wonder what strategic discussions the fossil-fuel giants must be having trying to come up with a way to discredit this technology.
Sounds like a winner for any sun-soaked region (much of the Southwestern US, someday a nuclear-free Middle East).
AFP: Solar power station in Spain works at night
"A unique thermosolar power station in southern Spain can shrug off cloudy days: energy stored when the sun shines lets it produce electricity even during the night.
The Gemasolar station, up and running since last May, stands out in the plains of Andalusia.
From the road between Seville and Cordoba, one can see its central tower lit up like a beacon by 2,600 solar mirrors, each 120 square metres (1,290 square feet), that surround it in an immense 195-hectare (480-acre) circle.
'It is the first station in the world that works 24 hours a day, a solar power station that works day and night!' said Santago Arias, technical director of Torresol Energy, which runs the station.
The mechanism is 'very easy to explain,' he said: the panels reflect the suns rays on to the tower, transmitting energy at an intensity 1,000 times higher than that of the sun's rays reaching the earth.
Energy is stored in a vat filled with molten salts at a temperature of more than 500 degrees C (930 F). Those salts are used to produce steam to turn the turbines and produce electricity..."
I Preferred Banks When Their Business Was Boring:
Matt Taibbi: On Goldman Executive Greg Smith's Brave Departure
"Wall Street is buzzing this morning about a resignation – a historic one. Greg Smith, the executive director and head of Goldman Sachs’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, not only decided to quit Goldman, he decided to do it in the New York Times, eloquently deconstructing the firm’s moral slide in a lengthy op-ed piece.
The essence of Smith’s piece is devastating. He points to one simple, specific problem in the company: the fact that Goldman routinely screws its own clients..."
Matt Taibbi: Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail
"At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard..."
Greed Is Here To Stay:
As a friend commented, 'pay for performance' is only for plebes and suckers. CEOs, even when their company performs poorly, by and large receive spectacularly large payouts. How, again, does this reward good behavior, or at least behavior that creates shareholder value?
ThinkProgress: USA TODAY publisher Gannett Gives CEO $32 Million Severance Package After Laying Off 20,000 Workers In Six Years
"When Craig Dubow resigned as CEO of the nation’s largest newspaper conglomerate amid health problems last year, he ended a six-year stint that 'was, by most accounts, a disaster.' Gannett, the parent company of the USA Today and 80 other American newspapers, had seen its revenue plummet $1.7 billion and its stock price fall 86 percent, from $72 a share to just over $10.
To counter those losses, Gannett shed jobs, and a lot of them. Industry estimates say the company has laid off at least 20,000 workers since 2005, reducing its workforce from 52,000 to roughly 32,000. Despite those losses, Gannett awarded Dubow a severance package worth $32 million, NPR reports:
Dubow’s final compensation package includes $12.8 million in retirement benefits, $6.2 million in disability benefits and a $5.9 million severance payment, according to the filing. Gannett stock options and restricted stock, which Dubow had accrued during his years of employment with the company, were also part of the package. Those stock awards are valued at nearly $7 million...."
Separately, Gannett will pay $25,000 to $50,000 annually for a $6.2 million life insurance policy covering Dubow and another $70,000 annually for benefits such as health insurance, home computer and secretarial assistance and financial counseling. He will receive most of these benefits for three years unless he goes to work for a competitor, according to the filing
The Thin Blue Line:
Let the sun shine on what the MPD has sought to hide...
Justice Online: General and Special Orders of the MPD
"The Court has ordered the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to release to the PCJF documents the MPD has sought to conceal from the public for years. Superior Court Judge Judith N. Macaluso called police officials' affidavits, which were sworn under penalty of perjury and submitted to the Court in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the lawsuit, 'transparently false.'
This litigation has resulted in the largest and most comprehensive release of D.C. police documents in the history of D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act. The PCJF has forced the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. (MPD) to disclose nearly all of its General Orders and Special Orders and related directives that dictate how officers are to exercise their authority.
The public can now review what the MPD internal policy dictates regarding police-resident contacts, stops and frisks, restrictions on MPD high speed vehicular pursuits, use of closed circuit television cameras, handling of property, obligations to release persons through the citation release program, electronic recording of interrogations, use of canines, traffic safety compliance checkpoints and a range of other issues that span the full scope of police authority.
The MPD has long refused efforts from civil rights and civil liberties and community based organizations for this disclosure, but the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund went to court to get the documents..."
Domestic Surveillance:
WIRED: New Yorker Sheds New Light on NSA’s Warrantless Wiretapping and Data Mining
"New details about the NSA’s post–Sept. 11 domestic surveillance programs have emerged in a stunning New Yorker article about NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who faces trial next month for allegedly leaking information about waste and mismanagement at the agency.
The article provides new insight into the warrantless surveillance program exposed by The New York Times in December 2005, including how top officials at the intelligence agency viewed the program. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden, in 2002, reportedly urged a congressional staffer who was concerned about the legality of the program to keep quiet about it, telling her that she could 'yell and scream' about the program once the inevitable leaks about it occurred.
Asked why the NSA didn’t employ privacy protections in its program, Hayden reportedly told the staffer, 'We didn’t need them. We had the power,' and admitted the government was not getting warrants for the domestic surveillance..."
WIRED: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
"...Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter.' It is, in some measure, the realization of the 'total information awareness' program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy..."
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The War Machine:
John Sifton: A Brief History of Drones
"It was ten years ago this month, on February 4, 2002, that the CIA first used an unmanned Predator drone in a targeted killing. The strike was in Paktia province in Afghanistan, near the city of Khost. The intended target was Osama bin Laden, or at least someone in the CIA had thought so. Donald Rumsfeld later explained, using the passive voice of government: 'A decision was made to fire the Hellfire missile. It was fired.' The incident occurred during a brief period when the military, which assisted the CIA’s drone program by providing active service personnel as operators, still acknowledged the program’s existence. Within days of the strike, journalists on the ground were collecting accounts from local Afghans that the dead men were civilians gathering scrap metal. The Pentagon media pool began asking questions, and so the long decade of the drone began...
...Outright assassinations were illegal under a presidential executive order in the wake of CIA scandals from the Nixon period, and the laws of armed conflict contained complicated provisions on the circumstances in which civilian personnel—CIA officers not in uniform—could use lethal force.
So government attorneys worried back in 2001. Ten years later, the CIA works side by side with the military, launching kinetic strikes from Pakistan to Somalia. Few concerns are raised anymore, except by a handful of academics and activists who worry that the CIA is less accountable than the military for its targetting (and, as we saw in Zhawar Kili, for its mistakes). Still, many people seem to be leery of drones in the abstract—whether they are used in armed conflict or in targeted killings...
...But the real issue is the context of how drones kill. The curious characteristic of drones—and the names reinforce this—is that they are used primarily to target individual humans, not places or military forces as such. Yet they simultaneously obscure the human role in perpetrating the violence. Unlike a missile strike, in which a physical or geographic target is chosen beforehand, drones linger, looking precisely for a target—a human target. And yet, at the same time, the perpetrator of the violence is not physically present. Observers are drawn toward thinking that it is the Predator that kills Anwar al-Awlaki, or its Hellfire missiles, not the CIA officers who order the weapons’ engagement. On the one hand, we have the most intimate form of violence—the targeted killing of a specific person, which in some contexts is called assassination—while on the other hand, the least intimate of weapons..."
John Sifton: A Brief History of Drones
"It was ten years ago this month, on February 4, 2002, that the CIA first used an unmanned Predator drone in a targeted killing. The strike was in Paktia province in Afghanistan, near the city of Khost. The intended target was Osama bin Laden, or at least someone in the CIA had thought so. Donald Rumsfeld later explained, using the passive voice of government: 'A decision was made to fire the Hellfire missile. It was fired.' The incident occurred during a brief period when the military, which assisted the CIA’s drone program by providing active service personnel as operators, still acknowledged the program’s existence. Within days of the strike, journalists on the ground were collecting accounts from local Afghans that the dead men were civilians gathering scrap metal. The Pentagon media pool began asking questions, and so the long decade of the drone began...
...Outright assassinations were illegal under a presidential executive order in the wake of CIA scandals from the Nixon period, and the laws of armed conflict contained complicated provisions on the circumstances in which civilian personnel—CIA officers not in uniform—could use lethal force.
So government attorneys worried back in 2001. Ten years later, the CIA works side by side with the military, launching kinetic strikes from Pakistan to Somalia. Few concerns are raised anymore, except by a handful of academics and activists who worry that the CIA is less accountable than the military for its targetting (and, as we saw in Zhawar Kili, for its mistakes). Still, many people seem to be leery of drones in the abstract—whether they are used in armed conflict or in targeted killings...
...But the real issue is the context of how drones kill. The curious characteristic of drones—and the names reinforce this—is that they are used primarily to target individual humans, not places or military forces as such. Yet they simultaneously obscure the human role in perpetrating the violence. Unlike a missile strike, in which a physical or geographic target is chosen beforehand, drones linger, looking precisely for a target—a human target. And yet, at the same time, the perpetrator of the violence is not physically present. Observers are drawn toward thinking that it is the Predator that kills Anwar al-Awlaki, or its Hellfire missiles, not the CIA officers who order the weapons’ engagement. On the one hand, we have the most intimate form of violence—the targeted killing of a specific person, which in some contexts is called assassination—while on the other hand, the least intimate of weapons..."
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Energy:
Raw Story: Ohio stiffens regulations after concluding that fracking caused earthquakes
"Ohio state regulators announced tough new regulations on Friday after concluding that the injection of wastewater underground as part of the controversial gas-drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking' had almost certainly caused a dozen earthquakes near one well.
The regulations will require well operators to supply extensive geological data before requesting a new drill site, avoid certain rock formations, and keep track of pressure, volume, and the chemical makeup of all drilling water using state-of-the-art technology.
Investigators pointed to 'a number of coincidental circumstances' connecting the quakes in northeast Ohio, which began in March 2011 and continued to the end of the year, with a well which had begun operation three months earlier. They also noted the presence of a fault in the rocks that was identified only after drilling began.
The quakes clustered around the city of Youngstown and ranged from magnitude 2.1 to 4.0, with the largest one, on December 31, causing Ohio Governor John Kasich to place a moratorium on drilling at certain locations..."
Political Corruption:
Bill Moyers: Reagan budget director discusses ‘crony capitalism’ with Bill Moyers
"Former Reagan budget director David Stockman joined Bill Moyers Friday evening for a lengthy and candid discussion on the symbiotic relationship between Wall Street and the White House..."
Raw Story: Ohio stiffens regulations after concluding that fracking caused earthquakes
"Ohio state regulators announced tough new regulations on Friday after concluding that the injection of wastewater underground as part of the controversial gas-drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking' had almost certainly caused a dozen earthquakes near one well.
The regulations will require well operators to supply extensive geological data before requesting a new drill site, avoid certain rock formations, and keep track of pressure, volume, and the chemical makeup of all drilling water using state-of-the-art technology.
Investigators pointed to 'a number of coincidental circumstances' connecting the quakes in northeast Ohio, which began in March 2011 and continued to the end of the year, with a well which had begun operation three months earlier. They also noted the presence of a fault in the rocks that was identified only after drilling began.
The quakes clustered around the city of Youngstown and ranged from magnitude 2.1 to 4.0, with the largest one, on December 31, causing Ohio Governor John Kasich to place a moratorium on drilling at certain locations..."
Political Corruption:
Bill Moyers: Reagan budget director discusses ‘crony capitalism’ with Bill Moyers
"Former Reagan budget director David Stockman joined Bill Moyers Friday evening for a lengthy and candid discussion on the symbiotic relationship between Wall Street and the White House..."
Friday, March 09, 2012
Taxes:
Paul Buchheit: The Best Reason for the Very Rich to be Paying A LOT More in Taxes
"...The super-rich like to believe their own initiative and creativity have been the primary drivers of growth in technology and science and business and medicine. Some innovative business leaders deserve credit for putting the pieces together on specific initiatives. But the pieces themselves were put together over many years by thousands of less conspicuous people. As Elizabeth Warren said, 'There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.'
Consider just a simple communications device. The pieces were put together by a procession of chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production-line workers, market analysts, testers, troubleshooters, etc., etc. They, in turn, couldn't have succeeded without another layer of people providing sustenance and medical support and security and administrative assistance and transportation and office maintenance for the technologists. ALL of them contributed to the final product.
You say a lot of them DID get paid? Well, then, something's wrong, because few of the profits over the last 30 years went to this 'middle class' of people to keep them financially secure, and to keep them educated in all the new technologies that are replacing their jobs.
The long-term dependency on the supporting members of society is the best reason for the most fortunate among us to care about everyone else. Sadly, research suggests that wealthy people have less empathy for people unlike themselves, because they no longer have reason to associate with them..."
AutoBlog: Financial police targeting European supercar owners due to Euro crisis?
"...In December 2011, the police noted the license plates of roughly 150 Lamborghinis, Ferraris and other high-dollar cars at the Cortina d'Ampezzo ski resort and gave the registration info to the tax office. The tax office checked on the declared incomes, and in nearly 60 cases found owners that claimed to be making less than €40,000 per year – this in a country where the base price of a BMW M3 is €70,700. In an especially bad case, one business owner owned a Mercedes-Benz but had no tax records and a wife on public assistance.
The focus on owners of expensive cars has since spread to other hotspots for the rich like Rome, Milan, Portofino and Florence, and owners have responded by selling their cars at massive discounts. There have been reports of owners so worried about getting stopped by the police that they won't even drive them to the dealer to be traded in, but want the dealer to come pick them up. Entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe and South America are taking advantage of the clearance sales.
Tax cheats are estimated to cost Italy €120 billion per year..."
Paul Buchheit: The Best Reason for the Very Rich to be Paying A LOT More in Taxes
"...The super-rich like to believe their own initiative and creativity have been the primary drivers of growth in technology and science and business and medicine. Some innovative business leaders deserve credit for putting the pieces together on specific initiatives. But the pieces themselves were put together over many years by thousands of less conspicuous people. As Elizabeth Warren said, 'There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.'
Consider just a simple communications device. The pieces were put together by a procession of chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production-line workers, market analysts, testers, troubleshooters, etc., etc. They, in turn, couldn't have succeeded without another layer of people providing sustenance and medical support and security and administrative assistance and transportation and office maintenance for the technologists. ALL of them contributed to the final product.
You say a lot of them DID get paid? Well, then, something's wrong, because few of the profits over the last 30 years went to this 'middle class' of people to keep them financially secure, and to keep them educated in all the new technologies that are replacing their jobs.
The long-term dependency on the supporting members of society is the best reason for the most fortunate among us to care about everyone else. Sadly, research suggests that wealthy people have less empathy for people unlike themselves, because they no longer have reason to associate with them..."
AutoBlog: Financial police targeting European supercar owners due to Euro crisis?
"...In December 2011, the police noted the license plates of roughly 150 Lamborghinis, Ferraris and other high-dollar cars at the Cortina d'Ampezzo ski resort and gave the registration info to the tax office. The tax office checked on the declared incomes, and in nearly 60 cases found owners that claimed to be making less than €40,000 per year – this in a country where the base price of a BMW M3 is €70,700. In an especially bad case, one business owner owned a Mercedes-Benz but had no tax records and a wife on public assistance.
The focus on owners of expensive cars has since spread to other hotspots for the rich like Rome, Milan, Portofino and Florence, and owners have responded by selling their cars at massive discounts. There have been reports of owners so worried about getting stopped by the police that they won't even drive them to the dealer to be traded in, but want the dealer to come pick them up. Entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe and South America are taking advantage of the clearance sales.
Tax cheats are estimated to cost Italy €120 billion per year..."
Monday, March 05, 2012
Energy:
One of the reasons oil speculation is costing consumers more this pre-Iran-war season is a new rule that the investment banks got as a gift from the CFTC last September.
It still makes no sense that I should be able to bid on futures for a commodity that I am not equipped & licensed to take delivery of.
NY Times:Speculators Get a Break in New Rule
"...Congress told federal regulators to write rules that would ensure that Dodd-Frank does what it’s supposed to do, which includes protecting consumers. But the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has proposed rules that critics say might actually encourage speculation in the commodities markets, rather than reduce it..."
Targeting Iran:
Bush's WMD misadventure in Iraq implies support for a nuke-free Middle East, unless the US wants to sound like to a total hypocrite. The spoiler may be that Barak Obama 'has Israel's back,' as he told AIPAC yesterday...
Noam Chomsky: What Are Iran's Intentions
"...Support is overwhelming for a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East; this zone would include Iran, Israel and preferably the other two nuclear powers that have refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: India and Pakistan, who, along with Israel, developed their programs with U.S. aid.
Support for this policy at the NPT Review Conference in May 2010 was so strong that Washington was forced to agree formally, but with conditions: The zone could not take effect until a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbors was in place; Israel’s nuclear weapons programs must be exempted from international inspection; and no country (meaning the U.S.) must be obliged to provide information about 'Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.'
The 2010 conference called for a session in May 2012 to move toward establishing a WMDFZ in the Middle East.
With all the furor about Iran, however, there is scant attention to that option, which would be the most constructive way of dealing with the nuclear threats in the region: for the 'international community,' the threat that Iran might gain nuclear capability; for most of the world, the threat posed by the only state in the region with nuclear weapons and a long record of aggression, and its superpower patron.
One can find no mention at all of the fact that the U.S. and Britain have a unique responsibility to dedicate their efforts to this goal. In seeking to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of Iraq, they invoked U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which they claimed Iraq was violating by developing WMD.
We may ignore the claim, but not the fact that the resolution explicitly commits signers to establishing a WMDFZ in the Middle East..."
One of the reasons oil speculation is costing consumers more this pre-Iran-war season is a new rule that the investment banks got as a gift from the CFTC last September.
It still makes no sense that I should be able to bid on futures for a commodity that I am not equipped & licensed to take delivery of.
NY Times:Speculators Get a Break in New Rule
"...Congress told federal regulators to write rules that would ensure that Dodd-Frank does what it’s supposed to do, which includes protecting consumers. But the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has proposed rules that critics say might actually encourage speculation in the commodities markets, rather than reduce it..."
Targeting Iran:
Bush's WMD misadventure in Iraq implies support for a nuke-free Middle East, unless the US wants to sound like to a total hypocrite. The spoiler may be that Barak Obama 'has Israel's back,' as he told AIPAC yesterday...
Noam Chomsky: What Are Iran's Intentions
"...Support is overwhelming for a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East; this zone would include Iran, Israel and preferably the other two nuclear powers that have refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: India and Pakistan, who, along with Israel, developed their programs with U.S. aid.
Support for this policy at the NPT Review Conference in May 2010 was so strong that Washington was forced to agree formally, but with conditions: The zone could not take effect until a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbors was in place; Israel’s nuclear weapons programs must be exempted from international inspection; and no country (meaning the U.S.) must be obliged to provide information about 'Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.'
The 2010 conference called for a session in May 2012 to move toward establishing a WMDFZ in the Middle East.
With all the furor about Iran, however, there is scant attention to that option, which would be the most constructive way of dealing with the nuclear threats in the region: for the 'international community,' the threat that Iran might gain nuclear capability; for most of the world, the threat posed by the only state in the region with nuclear weapons and a long record of aggression, and its superpower patron.
One can find no mention at all of the fact that the U.S. and Britain have a unique responsibility to dedicate their efforts to this goal. In seeking to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of Iraq, they invoked U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which they claimed Iraq was violating by developing WMD.
We may ignore the claim, but not the fact that the resolution explicitly commits signers to establishing a WMDFZ in the Middle East..."
Saturday, March 03, 2012
GMOs:
Anthony Gucciardi: Sorry Gates: GMO Crops Proven to be Ineffective at Fighting World Hunger
"Monsanto shareholder Bill Gates has argued that GMOs are the solution to world hunger, going as far as to say that they are actually needed to fight worldwide starvation. Unfortunately for Gates, who back in 2010 bought 500,000 shares of the company he is now promoting in mainstream media as the solution to the world’s problems, a team of 900 scientists have found that GMO crops are actually not effective at fighting world hunger. In fact, the massive team found that Monsanto’s seeds, which have lead to thousands of farmer suicides due to excessive costs and failure to yield crops, were outperformed by traditional 'agro-ecological' farming practices.
Funded by the World Bank and United Nations, an organization was created known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Consisting of 900 scientists and researchers, they set out to examine the complex issue of world hunger. While the issue of world hunger may be quite complex, their results were not. Quite plainly, the group found that genetically modified crops were not a meaningful solution to the problem. In other words, the expert team showed through rigorous analysis and repeated study that the claims made by Bill Gates are completely inaccurate..."
The 2012 Race (Toward The Biggest Campaign Fund)
Ariel Wittenberg: Super Donors: Our Reading Guide to the Top 10 Super PAC Givers
"The coming election cycle will likely be the most expensive in history. Thanks to Citizens United and other recent court decisions, individuals, corporations and unions can make unlimited donations to so-called super PACs that support a candidate. The money is flowing in. So, exactly who is donating, and what do they want?..."
...and the Koch brothers' role in shaping public opinion...
Steve Horn: Kochtopus: Koch Cash Influence
"It is nearly impossible to discuss the vast climate change denial echo chamber and not mention the Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, and what some have called the Koch Empire.
Perhaps unsurpisingly then, the origins of the Heartland Institute — whose internal documents were recently leaked to DeSmogBlog — have a direct historical link to the rise of the Kochtopus's wide-reaching climate change denial machine...
...Heartland and its affiliates are a small, but vocal part of the deeply-intertwined, well-funded machine undermining democracy and delaying action to address an ever-worsening climate change crisis.
And at the center of it all, lo and behold, is the Kochtopus Empire.
Explore this Prezi infographic created by the International Forum on Globalization to learn more.."
Anthony Gucciardi: Sorry Gates: GMO Crops Proven to be Ineffective at Fighting World Hunger
"Monsanto shareholder Bill Gates has argued that GMOs are the solution to world hunger, going as far as to say that they are actually needed to fight worldwide starvation. Unfortunately for Gates, who back in 2010 bought 500,000 shares of the company he is now promoting in mainstream media as the solution to the world’s problems, a team of 900 scientists have found that GMO crops are actually not effective at fighting world hunger. In fact, the massive team found that Monsanto’s seeds, which have lead to thousands of farmer suicides due to excessive costs and failure to yield crops, were outperformed by traditional 'agro-ecological' farming practices.
Funded by the World Bank and United Nations, an organization was created known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Consisting of 900 scientists and researchers, they set out to examine the complex issue of world hunger. While the issue of world hunger may be quite complex, their results were not. Quite plainly, the group found that genetically modified crops were not a meaningful solution to the problem. In other words, the expert team showed through rigorous analysis and repeated study that the claims made by Bill Gates are completely inaccurate..."
The 2012 Race (Toward The Biggest Campaign Fund)
Ariel Wittenberg: Super Donors: Our Reading Guide to the Top 10 Super PAC Givers
"The coming election cycle will likely be the most expensive in history. Thanks to Citizens United and other recent court decisions, individuals, corporations and unions can make unlimited donations to so-called super PACs that support a candidate. The money is flowing in. So, exactly who is donating, and what do they want?..."
...and the Koch brothers' role in shaping public opinion...
Steve Horn: Kochtopus: Koch Cash Influence
"It is nearly impossible to discuss the vast climate change denial echo chamber and not mention the Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, and what some have called the Koch Empire.
Perhaps unsurpisingly then, the origins of the Heartland Institute — whose internal documents were recently leaked to DeSmogBlog — have a direct historical link to the rise of the Kochtopus's wide-reaching climate change denial machine...
...Heartland and its affiliates are a small, but vocal part of the deeply-intertwined, well-funded machine undermining democracy and delaying action to address an ever-worsening climate change crisis.
And at the center of it all, lo and behold, is the Kochtopus Empire.
Explore this Prezi infographic created by the International Forum on Globalization to learn more.."
