Observations on current events

Economics: 

Eric W. Dolan: Stiglitz: Price of inequality is a weakened economy and democracy (video)
"Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on Thursday said the American dream was 'a myth'.'While America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity, it is less so than any other advanced industrial country for which there is data — poorer opportunities than old ossified Europe,' he told Reuters. 'The life prospects of a kid is more dependent on the education and income of his parents than any of these other countries.'Stiglitz said the economic model of the United States was unlikely to change because of American politics...."

 ...a more detailed explanation is in this article from last year.
Joseph E. Stiglitz: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
"Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret..."

The Banksters Who Wrecked The Economy:

Matt Taibbi: How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy - until they were caught on tape
"Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that... "

Bill Moyers: Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith on the Banks - The Psychopathy of Wall Street
"Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith, creator of the finance and economics blog Naked Capitalism, join Bill to discuss the folly and corruption of both banks and government, and how that tag-team leaves deep wounds in our democracy.  Taibbi’s latest piece is “The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia.” Smith is the author of ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism."

Spencer Ackerman: NSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say if We Spied on You
"The surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won’t tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency as part of its sweeping new counterterrorism powers. The reason: it would violate your privacy to say so.That claim comes in a short letter sent Monday to civil libertarian Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. The two members of the Senate’s intelligence oversight committee asked the NSA a simple question last month: under the broad powers granted in 2008′s expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, how many persons inside the United States have been spied upon by the NSA? The query bounced around the intelligence bureaucracy until it reached I. Charles McCullough, the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the nominal head of the 16 U.S. spy agencies. In a letter acquired by Danger Room, McCullough told the senators that the NSA inspector general 'and NSA leadership agreed that an IG review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons,' McCullough wrote.'All that Senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law, and it is disappointing that the Inspectors General cannot provide it,' Wyden told Danger Room on Monday. 'If no one will even estimate how many Americans have had their communications collected under this law then it is all the more important that Congress act to close the ‘back door searches’ loophole, to keep the government from searching for Americans’ phone calls and emails without a warrant.'What’s more, McCullough argued, giving such a figure of how many Americans were spied on was 'beyond the capacity' of the NSA’s in-house watchdog — and to rectify it would require “imped[ing]” the very spy missions that concern Wyden and Udall. 'I defer to [the NSA inspector general's] conclusion that obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA’s mission,' McCullough wrote..."
The Environment:

Jo Confino: Rio+20: Greenpeace declares war on the finance sector
"Greenpeace aims to shut off the flow of capital to environmentally destructive businesses following two years of intense research into understanding the finance sector.."
Ellen Messmer:  Stuxnet cyberattack by US a 'destabilizing and dangerous' course of action, security expert Bruce Schneier says

Economics:


Raw Story: Krugman: Ireland ‘doing everything the right wants,’ and ‘it’s not working’
"In a conversation between New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Tuesday at the Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, D.C., they agreed that the right’s economic policies are actually running a “natural experiment” in Ireland, and it’s not working out so well.
The Nobel prize-winning economist responded, 'I actually have to say, as best we understand, the Romney prescription is fire lots of public employees and have low tax rates on corporations. Well, you’re describing Ireland, which has 14 percent unemployment and 30 percent youth unemployment,'..."

Nukes:

Matthew Daly: Appeals court rejects waste storage at nuke plants
" A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a rule that allows nuclear power plants to store radioactive waste at reactor sites for up to 60 years after a plant shuts down.
In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not fully evaluate the risks associated with long-term storage of nuclear waste. The court said on-site storage has been 'optimistically labeled' as temporary, but has stretched on for decades.
The decision puts the Obama administration in a bind, since the White House directed the Energy Department to rescind its application to build a final resting place for the nation's nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain and cut off funding two years ago. An alternative site has not yet been identified.
The ruling also adds a new wrinkle to an ongoing dispute that has confounded federal officials for more than 30 years: What to do with the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants?..."

...and a story that discusses one legacy of the Cold War:
Kari Lydersen: The Secret of Rocky Flats: The Never-Ending Story of a Cold War Plutonium Plant

Washington D.C.

Andrew Ferguson: Bubble On The Potomac
"...According to a 2007 report by the Tax Foundation, for every dollar in taxes Washington sends to the federal government, it receives five in return. [George Mason Univ. economist Stephen] Fuller says that over the past 30 years, the federal government has spent $860 billion in the D.C. region, two-thirds of that since 9/11. Why the boom? The size of the non-military, nonpostal federal workforce has stayed relatively stable since the 1960s. What has changed is not the government payroll but the number of contractors. It's estimated that, thanks to massive outsourcing over the past 20 years by the Clinton and Bush administrations, there are two government contractors for every worker directly employed by the government...
...Champions of the capital's Shangri-la economy like to brag of Washington's knowledge workers. Peter Corbett isn't so sure about the wisdom of D.C.'s version of the knowledge economy...
...He did a single project for the federal government and then swore off it for good. He describes his first meeting at the Pentagon. 'There were 12 people sitting around the table,' he says. 'I didn't know eight of them. I said 'Who are you?'
They say 'I'm with Booz Allen.'
'I'm with Lockheed.'
'I'm with CAIC.'
'But why are you here?' 'We're consultants on your project.' I said, 'You are?' They were charging the government $300 an hour, and I had no idea what they were doing, and neither did they. They were just there..."

Big Pharma Profits vs Public Health Costs

Peter Baker: Obama Was Pushed by Drug Industry, E-Mails Suggest
"After weeks of talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. To cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure that President Obama would stop a proposal intended to bring down medicine prices. On June 3, 2009, one of the lobbyists e-mailed Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s health care adviser. Ms. DeParle reassured the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had 'made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation' on a different proposal. Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff signaled a willingness to put aside support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and by doing so solidified a compact with an industry the president had vilified on the campaign trail..."

Economics

Paul Krugman: Reagan Was a Keynsian
"...if you want to see government responding to economic hard times with the 'tax and spend' policies conservatives always denounce, you should look to the Reagan era — not the Obama years...
...Reagan may have preached small government, but in practice he presided over a lot of spending growth — and right now that’s exactly what America needs."

The Investment Bankers Who Wrecked The Economy

Matt Taibbi: Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'
"It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public. The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks. Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed..."

...and a candidate who wants to wreck it some more with still more irresponsible trickle-down policy.

Stephen C. Webster: Nobel-winning economist predicts Romney recession
"Economist Joseph Stiglitz is hitting the media circuit to promote his new book. And as with any good book tour, he’s also throwing out a few political bombshells. Primary example: Speaking to reporters in New York on Monday, the Nobel Prize-winner and former World Bank chief claimed that if former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) is elected president in 2012, the risk of another recession will go up 'significantly.' 'The Romney plan is going to slow down the economy, worsen the jobs deficit and significantly increase the likelihood of a recession,' he said, according to Bloomberg News..."

Energy

While this is old news, it offers a great summary...

Valerie Schloredt: Boulder Votes to Free Its Electric Company
"The city of Boulder, Colo., has won the right to take its power supply—and carbon emissions—away from corporate control. The change for Boulder came in November when voters passed two ballot measures that allow the city to begin the process of forming its own municipal power utility. The city’s current electricity supplier, Xcel Energy, is a large corporation that sources more than 60 percent of its power from coal. Colorado climate activists tried for years to persuade Xcel to transition from coal to renewables, arguing that the state’s plains, mountains, and 300 days of annual sunshine give it abundant potential for the development of wind and solar power. But they found Xcel’s take-up of renewables was frustratingly slow. Xcel is investing $400 million in its coal-powered plants, and its plans for renewables stops at just 30 percent in 2020, with no further increase until 2028... ...The ballot measures passed by a whisker—a major victory given that the corporation outspent the grassroots campaign 10-to-1. Ken Regelson, a leader in the campaign, thinks that community organizing tipped the balance. Personal contacts with voters, he says, 'are worth more than a utility can spend.' Municipal utilities aren’t the untested experiments Xcel’s 'vote no' campaign made them out to be—there are more than 2,000 public utilities serving 46 million customers in the United States. While some of these utilities are in small or rural markets, Boulder is a big, growing market—it generates at least $100 million in annual revenue for Xcel. The revolutionary potential of Boulder’s ballots is that producing renewable energy for a municipal utility could keep millions of dollars in the local economy instead of exporting them to the headquarters of an investor-held company..."


Given the solar opportunities in the U.S. that far exceed Germany's, one can only wonder at the power of the U.S. fossil fuel lobby...

The Guardian (UK) - Solar power generation world record set in Germany
"Plants produced 22 gigawatts at midday hours on Friday and Saturday, meeting half country's electricity needs on second day..."

Domestic Surveillance:

How sad is it that an administration headed by a Constitutional Law expert, one who swore an oath to protect the constitution no less, is willing to make a mockery of FISA and the Bill Of Rights?

WIRED Magazine: Feds Want Warrantless Spying Loss Overturned, Saying the Law Can’t Touch Them
"The Obama administration is set to argue to a federal appeals court Friday that the government may breach, with impunity, domestic spying laws adopted in the wake of President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal..."


Executive Assassination:
Once again, we have affirmation that in the White House human rights are secondary and that the policies responsible for people turning to violence against the U.S. are simply never discussed. Middle East policy, in general, and blind support for Israel's actions, in particular, are what legitimize violent actions in the eyes of many of the world's 1 billion Muslims. A failure to change course will mean persistence of anti-U.S. actions by violent extremists. One has to wonder if Permanent War is what policymakers in the U.S really want. 'Terrorism' (a tactic, not an ideology, it should be remembered) is a terribly convenient replacement for Communism as a raison d'etre for the Military Industrial Complex and its enormously expensive suckling at the taxpayer tit. Every drone strike that assassinates a target while killing innocents creates more terrorists...

NY Times: Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will
"...Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be. Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list,' poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre 'baseball cards' of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation..."


Medicine & Harm Reduction:
Truthout - Mainstream Media Misses the Boat, Again, on the Medical Utility of Marijuana
"Clinical data published last week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal once again affirmed the safety and efficacy of cannabis as a therapeutic agent - a conclusion that directly conflicts with present US policy. Nonetheless, the mainstream media coverage of this event was predictably underwhelming..."