Friday, August 31, 2012
Economics:
NY Times: Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds
"While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project. The disappearance of midwage, midskill jobs is part of a longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of the work force, though it has probably been accelerated by government layoffs..."
Not Interested in the Rule of Law:
NY Times: No Charges Filed on Harsh Tactics Used by the C.I.A.
"Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003, eliminating the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the C.I.A. Mr. Holder had already ruled out any charges related to the use of waterboarding and other methods that most human rights experts consider to be torture. His announcement closes a contentious three-year investigation by the Justice Department and brings to an end years of dispute over whether line intelligence or military personnel or their superiors would be held accountable for the abuse of prisoners in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001... ...'It is hugely disappointing that with ample evidence of torture, and documented cases of some people actually being tortured to death, that the Justice Department has not been able to mount a successful prosecution and hold people responsible for these crimes,' said Elisa Massimino, president of Human Rights First. 'The American people need to know what was done in their name,'..."
The GOP's Vice Presidential Nominee's Problem with the Truth:
Slate: Dispatches From the Republican National Convention Entry 13: Here’s a list of some of the whoppers that Paul Ryan served up Wednesday night
"...The GM plant in Janesville. Ryan mentioned it in a pretty effective section on the Obama-induced pangs of his hometown. But as Matthew DeLuca explained two weeks ago, GM announced the closure during the Bush presidency. Ryan hustled to save it. He voted for the GM bailout, in another attempt to save it. You can call that proof of government's failure, sure, but Obama didn't force it on the city.
'The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.' That's extraordinarily hard to argue, and Ryan's office lobbied effectively for some stimulus grants that went to his district.
'$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.' Not really true, either. The Medicare spending 'cuts' are of the sort that Ryan defended when he was rising through the House—reductions in future reimbursement rates.
'A downgraded America.' S&P's rationale for downgrading the United States from AAA to AA+ 'assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place.' This was 'because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.' Ryan's promised to keep those tax cuts for now, then try and flatten the code into two low rates, and we don't know what the S&P Tiki Gods think of that.
The 'bipartisan debt commission' Ryan referred to was Simpson-Bowles. He served on it, and voted against the report, because it didn't tackle Medicare costs—which sort of brings us back to the '$716 billion funneling' issue..."
AP: FACT CHECK: Convention speakers stray from reality
Jonathan Bernstein: Paul Ryan fails -- the truth
"...the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people. Paul Ryan has had what I’ve long thought was an undeserved good reputation among many in the press and in Washington. It shouldn’t survive tonight’s speech."
Technology:
NY Times: Software Meant to Fight Crime Is Used to Spy on Dissidents
"Morgan Marquis-Boire works as a Google engineer and Bill Marczak is earning a Ph.D. in computer science. But this summer, the two men have been moonlighting as detectives, chasing an elusive surveillance tool from Bahrain across five continents. What they found was the widespread use of sophisticated, off-the-shelf computer espionage software by governments with questionable records on human rights. While the software is supposedly sold for use only in criminal investigations, the two came across evidence that it was being used to target political dissidents. The software proved to be the stuff of a spy film: it can grab images of computer screens, record Skype chats, turn on cameras and microphones and log keystrokes. The two men said they discovered mobile versions of the spyware customized for all major mobile phones. But what made the software especially sophisticated was how well it avoided detection. Its creators specifically engineered it to elude antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, F-Secure and others. The software has been identified as FinSpy, one of the more elusive spyware tools sold in the growing market of off-the-shelf computer surveillance technologies that give governments a sophisticated plug-in monitoring operation. Research now links it to servers in more than a dozen countries, including Turkmenistan, Brunei and Bahrain, although no government acknowledges using the software for surveillance purposes..."
NY Times: Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds
"While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project. The disappearance of midwage, midskill jobs is part of a longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of the work force, though it has probably been accelerated by government layoffs..."
Not Interested in the Rule of Law:
NY Times: No Charges Filed on Harsh Tactics Used by the C.I.A.
"Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003, eliminating the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the C.I.A. Mr. Holder had already ruled out any charges related to the use of waterboarding and other methods that most human rights experts consider to be torture. His announcement closes a contentious three-year investigation by the Justice Department and brings to an end years of dispute over whether line intelligence or military personnel or their superiors would be held accountable for the abuse of prisoners in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001... ...'It is hugely disappointing that with ample evidence of torture, and documented cases of some people actually being tortured to death, that the Justice Department has not been able to mount a successful prosecution and hold people responsible for these crimes,' said Elisa Massimino, president of Human Rights First. 'The American people need to know what was done in their name,'..."
The GOP's Vice Presidential Nominee's Problem with the Truth:
Slate: Dispatches From the Republican National Convention Entry 13: Here’s a list of some of the whoppers that Paul Ryan served up Wednesday night
"...The GM plant in Janesville. Ryan mentioned it in a pretty effective section on the Obama-induced pangs of his hometown. But as Matthew DeLuca explained two weeks ago, GM announced the closure during the Bush presidency. Ryan hustled to save it. He voted for the GM bailout, in another attempt to save it. You can call that proof of government's failure, sure, but Obama didn't force it on the city.
'The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.' That's extraordinarily hard to argue, and Ryan's office lobbied effectively for some stimulus grants that went to his district.
'$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.' Not really true, either. The Medicare spending 'cuts' are of the sort that Ryan defended when he was rising through the House—reductions in future reimbursement rates.
'A downgraded America.' S&P's rationale for downgrading the United States from AAA to AA+ 'assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place.' This was 'because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.' Ryan's promised to keep those tax cuts for now, then try and flatten the code into two low rates, and we don't know what the S&P Tiki Gods think of that.
The 'bipartisan debt commission' Ryan referred to was Simpson-Bowles. He served on it, and voted against the report, because it didn't tackle Medicare costs—which sort of brings us back to the '$716 billion funneling' issue..."
AP: FACT CHECK: Convention speakers stray from reality
Jonathan Bernstein: Paul Ryan fails -- the truth
"...the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people. Paul Ryan has had what I’ve long thought was an undeserved good reputation among many in the press and in Washington. It shouldn’t survive tonight’s speech."
Technology:
NY Times: Software Meant to Fight Crime Is Used to Spy on Dissidents
"Morgan Marquis-Boire works as a Google engineer and Bill Marczak is earning a Ph.D. in computer science. But this summer, the two men have been moonlighting as detectives, chasing an elusive surveillance tool from Bahrain across five continents. What they found was the widespread use of sophisticated, off-the-shelf computer espionage software by governments with questionable records on human rights. While the software is supposedly sold for use only in criminal investigations, the two came across evidence that it was being used to target political dissidents. The software proved to be the stuff of a spy film: it can grab images of computer screens, record Skype chats, turn on cameras and microphones and log keystrokes. The two men said they discovered mobile versions of the spyware customized for all major mobile phones. But what made the software especially sophisticated was how well it avoided detection. Its creators specifically engineered it to elude antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, F-Secure and others. The software has been identified as FinSpy, one of the more elusive spyware tools sold in the growing market of off-the-shelf computer surveillance technologies that give governments a sophisticated plug-in monitoring operation. Research now links it to servers in more than a dozen countries, including Turkmenistan, Brunei and Bahrain, although no government acknowledges using the software for surveillance purposes..."
Thursday, August 23, 2012
The Myth Of The Rugged Individual In Modern American Society:
Firman Debrabander: Deluded Individualism
"...I was reminded of Freud’s paradox by a poignant article in The Times a few months back, which described a Republican leaning district in Minnesota, and its constituents’ conflicted desire to be self-reliant ('Even Critics of the Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It', Feb. 11). The article cited a study from Dartmouth political science professor Dean Lacy, which revealed that, though Republicans call for deep cuts to the safety net, their districts rely more on government support than their Democratic counterparts. In Chicago County, Minn., The Times’s reporters spoke with residents who supported the Tea Party and its proposed cuts to federal spending, even while they admitted they could not get by without government support. Tea Party aficionados, and many on the extreme right of the Republican party for that matter, are typically characterized as self-sufficient middle class folk, angry about sustaining the idle poor with their tax dollars. Chisago County revealed a different aspect of this anger: economically struggling Americans professing a robust individualism and self-determination, frustrated with their failures to achieve that ideal.... ...These people, like many across the nation, rely on government assistance, but pretend they don’t. They even resent the government for their reliance. If they looked closely though, they’d see that we are all thoroughly saturated with government assistance in this country: farm subsidies that lower food prices for us all, mortgage interest deductions that disproportionately favor the rich, federal mortgage guarantees that keep interest rates low, a bloated Department of Defense that sustains entire sectors of the economy and puts hundreds of thousands of people to work. We can hardly fathom the depth of our dependence on government, and pretend we are bold individualists instead. As we are in an election year, the persistence of this delusion has manifested itself politically, particularly as a foundation in the Republican Party ideology — from Ron Paul’s insistence during the primaries that the government shouldn’t intervene to help the uninsured even when they are deathly ill, to Rick Santorum’s maligning of public schools, to Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate. There is no doubt that radical individualism will remain a central selling point of their campaign. Ryan’s signature work, his proposal for the federal budget, calls for drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Pell grants and job training programs, among others. To no surprise, as The New Yorker revealed in a recent profile of Ryan, the home district that supports him is boosted by considerable government largesse..."
All Done In Our Name:
Chris Hedges: The War In The Shadows
"...Since the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)—which includes the Green Berets, the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs—has seen its budget quadrupled. There are now some 60,000 USSOCOM operatives, whom the president can dispatch to kill without seeking congressional approval or informing the public. Add to this the growth of intelligence operatives. As Dana Priest and William M. Arkin reported in The Washington Post, 'Twenty-four [new intelligence] organizations were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. In 2002, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction, collect threat tips, and coordinate the new focus on counterterrorism. That was followed the next year by 36 new organizations; and 26 after that; and 31 more; and 32 more; and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008, and 2009. In all, at least 263 organizations have been created or reorganized as a response to 9/11.' There are now many thousands of clandestine operatives, nearly all of them armed and equipped with a license to kidnap, torture and kill, working overseas or domestically with little or no oversight and virtually no transparency. We have created a state within a state. A staggering 40 percent of the defense budget is secret, as is the budget of every intelligence agency..."
2012 Campaign:
Dave Lindorff: Is Mitt Romney Trying to Avoid Having to Admit to Massive Tax Fraud?
"...The answer may well be that 2009 was the year that the Treasury Department decided to offer an amnesty from prosecution for tax fraud to any of the tens of thousands of millionaires who were known or suspected to have illegally hidden income abroad in the Cayman Islands or in Swiss banks -- a felony, but one that people thought they'd never be caught at. That year alone, some nearly 30,000 people, many of them no doubt prominent in society, politics and business, and customers of the finest accounting firms, reportedly voluntarily came forward to the IRS to admit that they had hidden some of the estimated $100 billion in income that crooked rich Americans have for years been secreting away in banks overseas. Under the terms of the program, they were able to just report their fraud, pay the taxes, penalties and interest on the money and then walk away scott free, with no charges and with their returns kept confidential by the agency..."
Business Leadership:
Glad I don't work for this person...
Joseph Walker: How Google's Marissa Mayer Manages Burnout
"Burnout isn't the result of too much work. It's the result of not getting what you want. So says Google Vice President Marissa Mayer, 36, the company's first female software engineer and its 20th employee when she joined the company in 1999. In her first five years at Google, she pulled at least one all-nighter a week. "It wasn't just me, it was everyone," she told an audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York last night. She also discussed her status as a woman in a male-dominated industry. 'Part of Google was it was the right time and we had a great technology, but the other part was we worked really, really hard,' she said. 'It was 130 hour weeks. People say, 'there's only 168 hours in a week, how can you do it?' Well, if you're strategic about when you shower and sleeping under your desk, it can be done.' Asked whether she still maintained such a crazy commitment to work, Mayer said that she did, and declined to pay lip service to the notion of work-life balance..."
Firman Debrabander: Deluded Individualism
"...I was reminded of Freud’s paradox by a poignant article in The Times a few months back, which described a Republican leaning district in Minnesota, and its constituents’ conflicted desire to be self-reliant ('Even Critics of the Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It', Feb. 11). The article cited a study from Dartmouth political science professor Dean Lacy, which revealed that, though Republicans call for deep cuts to the safety net, their districts rely more on government support than their Democratic counterparts. In Chicago County, Minn., The Times’s reporters spoke with residents who supported the Tea Party and its proposed cuts to federal spending, even while they admitted they could not get by without government support. Tea Party aficionados, and many on the extreme right of the Republican party for that matter, are typically characterized as self-sufficient middle class folk, angry about sustaining the idle poor with their tax dollars. Chisago County revealed a different aspect of this anger: economically struggling Americans professing a robust individualism and self-determination, frustrated with their failures to achieve that ideal.... ...These people, like many across the nation, rely on government assistance, but pretend they don’t. They even resent the government for their reliance. If they looked closely though, they’d see that we are all thoroughly saturated with government assistance in this country: farm subsidies that lower food prices for us all, mortgage interest deductions that disproportionately favor the rich, federal mortgage guarantees that keep interest rates low, a bloated Department of Defense that sustains entire sectors of the economy and puts hundreds of thousands of people to work. We can hardly fathom the depth of our dependence on government, and pretend we are bold individualists instead. As we are in an election year, the persistence of this delusion has manifested itself politically, particularly as a foundation in the Republican Party ideology — from Ron Paul’s insistence during the primaries that the government shouldn’t intervene to help the uninsured even when they are deathly ill, to Rick Santorum’s maligning of public schools, to Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate. There is no doubt that radical individualism will remain a central selling point of their campaign. Ryan’s signature work, his proposal for the federal budget, calls for drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Pell grants and job training programs, among others. To no surprise, as The New Yorker revealed in a recent profile of Ryan, the home district that supports him is boosted by considerable government largesse..."
All Done In Our Name:
Chris Hedges: The War In The Shadows
"...Since the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)—which includes the Green Berets, the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs—has seen its budget quadrupled. There are now some 60,000 USSOCOM operatives, whom the president can dispatch to kill without seeking congressional approval or informing the public. Add to this the growth of intelligence operatives. As Dana Priest and William M. Arkin reported in The Washington Post, 'Twenty-four [new intelligence] organizations were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. In 2002, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction, collect threat tips, and coordinate the new focus on counterterrorism. That was followed the next year by 36 new organizations; and 26 after that; and 31 more; and 32 more; and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008, and 2009. In all, at least 263 organizations have been created or reorganized as a response to 9/11.' There are now many thousands of clandestine operatives, nearly all of them armed and equipped with a license to kidnap, torture and kill, working overseas or domestically with little or no oversight and virtually no transparency. We have created a state within a state. A staggering 40 percent of the defense budget is secret, as is the budget of every intelligence agency..."
2012 Campaign:
Dave Lindorff: Is Mitt Romney Trying to Avoid Having to Admit to Massive Tax Fraud?
"...The answer may well be that 2009 was the year that the Treasury Department decided to offer an amnesty from prosecution for tax fraud to any of the tens of thousands of millionaires who were known or suspected to have illegally hidden income abroad in the Cayman Islands or in Swiss banks -- a felony, but one that people thought they'd never be caught at. That year alone, some nearly 30,000 people, many of them no doubt prominent in society, politics and business, and customers of the finest accounting firms, reportedly voluntarily came forward to the IRS to admit that they had hidden some of the estimated $100 billion in income that crooked rich Americans have for years been secreting away in banks overseas. Under the terms of the program, they were able to just report their fraud, pay the taxes, penalties and interest on the money and then walk away scott free, with no charges and with their returns kept confidential by the agency..."
Business Leadership:
Glad I don't work for this person...
Joseph Walker: How Google's Marissa Mayer Manages Burnout
"Burnout isn't the result of too much work. It's the result of not getting what you want. So says Google Vice President Marissa Mayer, 36, the company's first female software engineer and its 20th employee when she joined the company in 1999. In her first five years at Google, she pulled at least one all-nighter a week. "It wasn't just me, it was everyone," she told an audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York last night. She also discussed her status as a woman in a male-dominated industry. 'Part of Google was it was the right time and we had a great technology, but the other part was we worked really, really hard,' she said. 'It was 130 hour weeks. People say, 'there's only 168 hours in a week, how can you do it?' Well, if you're strategic about when you shower and sleeping under your desk, it can be done.' Asked whether she still maintained such a crazy commitment to work, Mayer said that she did, and declined to pay lip service to the notion of work-life balance..."
Friday, August 17, 2012
Labor vs. Management:
The Guardian (UK) - South African police shoot dead striking miners
"More than 30 people killed at Lonmin platinum mine where strike over pay has escalated into alleged turf war between unions..."
Health Care:
CBS News: Is a $5,000 salary too much for Medicaid?
"Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough. She makes about $15,000 a year, supporting her daughter and unemployed husband. She thought she'd be able to get health insurance after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama's health care law. Then she heard that her own governor won't agree to the federal plan to extend Medicaid coverage to people like her in two years. So she expects to remain uninsured, struggling to pay for her blood pressure medicine. 'You fall through the cracks and there's nothing you can do about it,' said the 52-year-old home health aide. 'It makes me feel like garbage, like the American dream, my dream in my homeland is not being accomplished.' Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don't qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That's especially true in states where conservative governors say they'll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama's health law. In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid..."
The Guardian (UK) - South African police shoot dead striking miners
"More than 30 people killed at Lonmin platinum mine where strike over pay has escalated into alleged turf war between unions..."
Health Care:
CBS News: Is a $5,000 salary too much for Medicaid?
"Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough. She makes about $15,000 a year, supporting her daughter and unemployed husband. She thought she'd be able to get health insurance after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama's health care law. Then she heard that her own governor won't agree to the federal plan to extend Medicaid coverage to people like her in two years. So she expects to remain uninsured, struggling to pay for her blood pressure medicine. 'You fall through the cracks and there's nothing you can do about it,' said the 52-year-old home health aide. 'It makes me feel like garbage, like the American dream, my dream in my homeland is not being accomplished.' Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don't qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That's especially true in states where conservative governors say they'll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama's health law. In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid..."
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Beating The Drums Of War:
Ray McGovern: Is Israel fixing the intelligence to justify an attack on Iran?
"Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's strong pro-Israel statements over the weekend, including his endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel's capital (a reversal of long-standing U.S. policy), increases the pressure on President Barack Obama to prove that he is an equally strong backer of Israel. The key question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will interpret the presidential campaign rhetoric as an open invitation to provoke hostilities with Iran, in the expectation that President Obama will feel forced to jump in with both feet in support of our 'ally' Israel. (Since there is no mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel, 'ally' actually is a misnomer — at least in a juridical sense.) As we saw 10 years ago with respect to Iraq, if one intends to whip up support for war, one needs to find a casus belli — however thin a pretext it might be. How about juxtaposing 'weapons of mass destruction' with terrorism. That worked to prepare for war on Iraq, and similar rhetorical groundwork for an attack on Iran is now being laid in Israel... ...So far the 'evidence' against Iran consists primarily of trust-me assertions by Mr. Netanyahu. On Fox News Sunday on July 22, Mr. Netanyahu claimed Israel has 'rock-solid evidence' tying Iran to the attack in Bulgaria. The same day onCBS's Face the Nation, Mr. Netanyahu said, 'We have unquestionable, fully substantiated intelligence that this [terrorist attack] was done by Hezbollah backed by Iran,' adding that Israel gives 'specific details to … responsible governments and agencies,'..."
2012 Campaign:
David Stockman: Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan
"Paul D. Ryan is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon. Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to 'job creators' (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse... ...The greatest regulatory problem — far more urgent that the environmental marginalia Mitt Romney has fumed about — is that the giant Wall Street banks remain dangerous quasi-wards of the state and are inexorably prone to speculative abuse of taxpayer-insured deposits and the Fed’s cheap money. Forget about 'too big to fail.' These banks are too big to exist — too big to manage internally and to regulate externally. They need to be broken up by regulatory decree. Instead, the Romney-Ryan ticket attacks the pointless Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, when what’s needed is a restoration of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial and investment banking... ...A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing... ...Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut... ...The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for 'job creators' — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station. In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices..."
NY Times: America’s Aversion to Taxes
"...Every developed country aspires to provide a better life for its people. The United States, among the richest of all, fails in important ways. It has the highest poverty and the highest infant mortality among developed nations. We provide among the least generous unemployment benefits in the industrial world. Not long ago one of the most educated countries in the world, the United States is slipping behind. The reason is not difficult to figure out: rich though we are, we can’t afford the policies needed to improve our record. The politicians in Washington all know that we face a long-term fiscal crisis. By 2020, 70 million Americans are expected to be on Social Security, up from 45 million in 2000. The ranks on Medicare will swell to 64 million, up from 40 million in 2000. Virtually every economist knows that just maintaining Medicare and Medicaid benefits will require raising taxes on the middle class. But though the nation’s fiscal challenge has taken center stage in the presidential election campaign, raising more taxes from American families remains stubbornly off the table... ...American policy makers justify our choice for low taxes with the claim that they foster economic growth. But the evidence is, at best, mixed. Since 1980, income per person has grown roughly the same across developed nations, about 300 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. It has grown a little faster in the United States than in the European Union and Canada, but slower than in higher tax countries like Japan, Norway and Sweden. To a large extent, this is because we have chosen a tax system that raises relatively little revenue and inflicts maximum economic harm. Every other industrial country has a national consumption tax, which can be used to raise a lot of money without distorting people’s economic incentives. The United States, by contrast, relies mostly on taxes on labor and capital that damp people’s drive to work and invest, putting a drag on economic growth. And the tax code is riddled with preferences and loopholes that further distort people’s economic behavior..."
The Banksters Who Wrecked The Economy:
Lie to regulators and keep your NY state banking license? Really?
NY Times: British Bank in $340 Million Settlement for Laundering
"Standard Chartered, the British bank, has agreed to pay New York’s top banking regulator $340 million to settle claims that it laundered hundreds of billions of dollars in tainted money for Iran and lied to regulators..."
Ray McGovern: Is Israel fixing the intelligence to justify an attack on Iran?
"Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's strong pro-Israel statements over the weekend, including his endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel's capital (a reversal of long-standing U.S. policy), increases the pressure on President Barack Obama to prove that he is an equally strong backer of Israel. The key question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will interpret the presidential campaign rhetoric as an open invitation to provoke hostilities with Iran, in the expectation that President Obama will feel forced to jump in with both feet in support of our 'ally' Israel. (Since there is no mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel, 'ally' actually is a misnomer — at least in a juridical sense.) As we saw 10 years ago with respect to Iraq, if one intends to whip up support for war, one needs to find a casus belli — however thin a pretext it might be. How about juxtaposing 'weapons of mass destruction' with terrorism. That worked to prepare for war on Iraq, and similar rhetorical groundwork for an attack on Iran is now being laid in Israel... ...So far the 'evidence' against Iran consists primarily of trust-me assertions by Mr. Netanyahu. On Fox News Sunday on July 22, Mr. Netanyahu claimed Israel has 'rock-solid evidence' tying Iran to the attack in Bulgaria. The same day onCBS's Face the Nation, Mr. Netanyahu said, 'We have unquestionable, fully substantiated intelligence that this [terrorist attack] was done by Hezbollah backed by Iran,' adding that Israel gives 'specific details to … responsible governments and agencies,'..."
2012 Campaign:
David Stockman: Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan
"Paul D. Ryan is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon. Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to 'job creators' (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse... ...The greatest regulatory problem — far more urgent that the environmental marginalia Mitt Romney has fumed about — is that the giant Wall Street banks remain dangerous quasi-wards of the state and are inexorably prone to speculative abuse of taxpayer-insured deposits and the Fed’s cheap money. Forget about 'too big to fail.' These banks are too big to exist — too big to manage internally and to regulate externally. They need to be broken up by regulatory decree. Instead, the Romney-Ryan ticket attacks the pointless Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, when what’s needed is a restoration of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial and investment banking... ...A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing... ...Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut... ...The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for 'job creators' — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station. In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices..."
NY Times: America’s Aversion to Taxes
"...Every developed country aspires to provide a better life for its people. The United States, among the richest of all, fails in important ways. It has the highest poverty and the highest infant mortality among developed nations. We provide among the least generous unemployment benefits in the industrial world. Not long ago one of the most educated countries in the world, the United States is slipping behind. The reason is not difficult to figure out: rich though we are, we can’t afford the policies needed to improve our record. The politicians in Washington all know that we face a long-term fiscal crisis. By 2020, 70 million Americans are expected to be on Social Security, up from 45 million in 2000. The ranks on Medicare will swell to 64 million, up from 40 million in 2000. Virtually every economist knows that just maintaining Medicare and Medicaid benefits will require raising taxes on the middle class. But though the nation’s fiscal challenge has taken center stage in the presidential election campaign, raising more taxes from American families remains stubbornly off the table... ...American policy makers justify our choice for low taxes with the claim that they foster economic growth. But the evidence is, at best, mixed. Since 1980, income per person has grown roughly the same across developed nations, about 300 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. It has grown a little faster in the United States than in the European Union and Canada, but slower than in higher tax countries like Japan, Norway and Sweden. To a large extent, this is because we have chosen a tax system that raises relatively little revenue and inflicts maximum economic harm. Every other industrial country has a national consumption tax, which can be used to raise a lot of money without distorting people’s economic incentives. The United States, by contrast, relies mostly on taxes on labor and capital that damp people’s drive to work and invest, putting a drag on economic growth. And the tax code is riddled with preferences and loopholes that further distort people’s economic behavior..."
The Banksters Who Wrecked The Economy:
Lie to regulators and keep your NY state banking license? Really?
NY Times: British Bank in $340 Million Settlement for Laundering
"Standard Chartered, the British bank, has agreed to pay New York’s top banking regulator $340 million to settle claims that it laundered hundreds of billions of dollars in tainted money for Iran and lied to regulators..."
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Politics:
Dave Lindorff: America Is A Democracy? Really? "...Forget that only half of eligible voters typically vote in quadrennial presidential elections (less than 30% in so-called 'off-year' elections for members of the House and a third of the Senate, and less than 25% in municipal and state elections). Forget that the government is increasingly trampling on the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, with a burgeoning surveillance program and a growing militarization of the police. The US government doesn’t even do what the majority of the citizens want. In fact, these days it flat out ignores what we the people want. Consider the polls, and what they show public sentiment to be on key issues, and then look at what the government, composed of supposedly elected representatives and an elected president, actually does..."
...on Military Spending, Healthcare, Social security and Medicare programs for the elderly, Higher taxes on the wealthy, Action to combat climate change, the war in Afghanistan, and Invading Iran. Of course, those that control the media set the agenda of what shall and what shall never be discussed. When was the last time Noam Chomsky or Bill Moyers were on any of the Sunday morning political analysis TV programs?
Mother Jones: The Texas GOP Just Nominated a Gay-Hating Conspiracy Theorist for US Senate
"On Tuesday, former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz walloped the state's lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, to ice the GOP nomination to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. In a place where Democrats haven't won a statewide election since the 1990s, that all but guarantees Cruz will join the world's most deliberative body next January. The Washington Post's Sean Sullivan calls it 'a victory for the tea party and national conservatives who lined up behind Cruz even when a surprise win appeared unlikely.' This is mostly true, but there's something else that's worth noting about the GOP's fresh young face: For someone with a reputation as an 'intellectual force,' he holds some pretty out-there views..."
Energy:
EurekaAlert.org - Breaking the barriers for low-cost energy storage
"A team of researchers has developed a cheap, rechargeable and eco-friendly battery that could be used to store energy at solar power plants for a rainy day. Led by Sri Narayan, professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the team developed an air-breathing battery that uses the chemical energy generated by the oxidation of iron plates that are exposed to the oxygen in the air – a process similar to rusting. 'Iron is cheap and air is free,' Narayan said. 'It's the future.' Details about the battery will be published July 20 in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society. As currently developed, Narayan's batteries have the capacity to store between eight and 24 hours' worth of energy. His patent is pending, and both the federal government and California utilities have expressed interest in the project. Iron-air batteries have been around for decades – they saw a surge in interest during the 1970s energy crisis, but suffered from a crippling problem: a competing chemical reaction of hydrogen generation that takes place inside the battery (known as hydrolysis) sucked away about 50 percent of the battery's energy, making it too inefficient to be useful. Narayan and his team managed to reduce the energy loss down to 4 percent – making iron-air batteries that are about 10 times more efficient than their predecessors. The team did it by adding very small amount of bismuth sulfide into the battery. Bismuth (which happens to be part of the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol and helps give the pink remedy its name) shuts down the wasteful hydrogen generation..."
Dave Lindorff: America Is A Democracy? Really? "...Forget that only half of eligible voters typically vote in quadrennial presidential elections (less than 30% in so-called 'off-year' elections for members of the House and a third of the Senate, and less than 25% in municipal and state elections). Forget that the government is increasingly trampling on the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, with a burgeoning surveillance program and a growing militarization of the police. The US government doesn’t even do what the majority of the citizens want. In fact, these days it flat out ignores what we the people want. Consider the polls, and what they show public sentiment to be on key issues, and then look at what the government, composed of supposedly elected representatives and an elected president, actually does..."
...on Military Spending, Healthcare, Social security and Medicare programs for the elderly, Higher taxes on the wealthy, Action to combat climate change, the war in Afghanistan, and Invading Iran. Of course, those that control the media set the agenda of what shall and what shall never be discussed. When was the last time Noam Chomsky or Bill Moyers were on any of the Sunday morning political analysis TV programs?
Mother Jones: The Texas GOP Just Nominated a Gay-Hating Conspiracy Theorist for US Senate
"On Tuesday, former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz walloped the state's lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, to ice the GOP nomination to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. In a place where Democrats haven't won a statewide election since the 1990s, that all but guarantees Cruz will join the world's most deliberative body next January. The Washington Post's Sean Sullivan calls it 'a victory for the tea party and national conservatives who lined up behind Cruz even when a surprise win appeared unlikely.' This is mostly true, but there's something else that's worth noting about the GOP's fresh young face: For someone with a reputation as an 'intellectual force,' he holds some pretty out-there views..."
Energy:
EurekaAlert.org - Breaking the barriers for low-cost energy storage
"A team of researchers has developed a cheap, rechargeable and eco-friendly battery that could be used to store energy at solar power plants for a rainy day. Led by Sri Narayan, professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the team developed an air-breathing battery that uses the chemical energy generated by the oxidation of iron plates that are exposed to the oxygen in the air – a process similar to rusting. 'Iron is cheap and air is free,' Narayan said. 'It's the future.' Details about the battery will be published July 20 in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society. As currently developed, Narayan's batteries have the capacity to store between eight and 24 hours' worth of energy. His patent is pending, and both the federal government and California utilities have expressed interest in the project. Iron-air batteries have been around for decades – they saw a surge in interest during the 1970s energy crisis, but suffered from a crippling problem: a competing chemical reaction of hydrogen generation that takes place inside the battery (known as hydrolysis) sucked away about 50 percent of the battery's energy, making it too inefficient to be useful. Narayan and his team managed to reduce the energy loss down to 4 percent – making iron-air batteries that are about 10 times more efficient than their predecessors. The team did it by adding very small amount of bismuth sulfide into the battery. Bismuth (which happens to be part of the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol and helps give the pink remedy its name) shuts down the wasteful hydrogen generation..."
Thursday, August 02, 2012
How The Military Industrial Complex Openly Buys Loyalty In Congress:
Zach Toombs: Top Defense Oversight Staffer Received $1.6 Million Payout From Lockheed Martin
"A former executive for the Pentagon’s top defense contractor collected $1.66 million in salary, consulting fees and retirement pay from two top defense contractors last year before becoming the Republican chief of staff for the Senate Armed Services Committee in February. The appointment is the second by a Republican member of either the House or Senate Armed Services committee to provoke criticism from independent groups that consider it a conflict of interest. Ann Elise Sauer, who was appointed to her present job by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., worked for more than a decade as a vice president and lobbyist for Lockheed Martin before leaving in Jan. 2011, according to a financial disclosure she made to the Secretary of the Senate in April. In 2011, she was paid a salary and bonus totaling $660,390, deferred compensation of $769,574, and $232,872 labeled as 'retired pay' on the financial disclosure form. Lockheed is the Defense Department’s largest corporate contractor, earning $28.3 billion, or 61 percent, of its sales from the department in 2011, according to the company’s annual report. Sauer then worked as a consultant and analyst for BAE Systems, earning $55,000 from the firm, according to her financial disclosure form. BAE is the Pentagon’s ninth largest contractor. The Project on Government Oversight’s Ben Freeman said Thursday that Sauer’s appointment to the principal Senate committee tasked with overseeing all military spending and contracting creates a huge conflict of interest. '$1.6 million — that gives a lot of reasons to remember your former employer,' said Freeman, who specializes in defense contracting issues for POGO. 'When you’ve been working for a company for 10 years and then just last year you got $1.6 million, I have to think that affects your decision making,'...”
Automated Market Trading:
Nathaniel Popper: Flood of Errant Trades Is a Black Eye for Wall Street
"An automated stock trading program suddenly flooded the market with millions of trades Wednesday morning, spreading turmoil across Wall Street and drawing renewed attention to the fragility and instability of the nation’s stock markets. While the broad stock indexes quickly recovered and ended the day slightly down, it was the latest black eye for the financial markets. The runaway trading suggests that regulators have not been able to keep up with electronic programs that increasingly dominate the supercharged market and have helped undermine investor confidence in stocks. Traders on Wednesday said that a rogue algorithm repeatedly bought and sold millions of shares of companies like RadioShack, Best Buy, Bank of America and American Airlines, sending trading volume surging. While the trading firm involved blamed a 'technology issue,' the company and regulators were still trying to understand what went wrong. The debacle comes after the botched Facebook initial public offering on the Nasdaq exchange in May and the aborted effort in March by another exchange, BATS Global Markets, to bring its own stock public. The episodes, along with the flash crash of 2010 when the market lost trillions of dollars of value in minutes, have stoked suspicions that stocks are safe only for specialists, and sometimes not even for them... ...High-speed [trading] firms use the algorithms to make money from small changes in stock prices and now account for more than half of all stock trading. But the changes have also introduced instability into the system, which was made clear in the flash crash. After that event, the Securities and Exchange Commission set out to add safety valves to the system. But the turbulence on Wednesday reinforced the belief that regulators had not been able to keep up with the growing sophistication and speed of the market they were overseeing..."
Zach Toombs: Top Defense Oversight Staffer Received $1.6 Million Payout From Lockheed Martin
"A former executive for the Pentagon’s top defense contractor collected $1.66 million in salary, consulting fees and retirement pay from two top defense contractors last year before becoming the Republican chief of staff for the Senate Armed Services Committee in February. The appointment is the second by a Republican member of either the House or Senate Armed Services committee to provoke criticism from independent groups that consider it a conflict of interest. Ann Elise Sauer, who was appointed to her present job by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., worked for more than a decade as a vice president and lobbyist for Lockheed Martin before leaving in Jan. 2011, according to a financial disclosure she made to the Secretary of the Senate in April. In 2011, she was paid a salary and bonus totaling $660,390, deferred compensation of $769,574, and $232,872 labeled as 'retired pay' on the financial disclosure form. Lockheed is the Defense Department’s largest corporate contractor, earning $28.3 billion, or 61 percent, of its sales from the department in 2011, according to the company’s annual report. Sauer then worked as a consultant and analyst for BAE Systems, earning $55,000 from the firm, according to her financial disclosure form. BAE is the Pentagon’s ninth largest contractor. The Project on Government Oversight’s Ben Freeman said Thursday that Sauer’s appointment to the principal Senate committee tasked with overseeing all military spending and contracting creates a huge conflict of interest. '$1.6 million — that gives a lot of reasons to remember your former employer,' said Freeman, who specializes in defense contracting issues for POGO. 'When you’ve been working for a company for 10 years and then just last year you got $1.6 million, I have to think that affects your decision making,'...”
Automated Market Trading:
Nathaniel Popper: Flood of Errant Trades Is a Black Eye for Wall Street
"An automated stock trading program suddenly flooded the market with millions of trades Wednesday morning, spreading turmoil across Wall Street and drawing renewed attention to the fragility and instability of the nation’s stock markets. While the broad stock indexes quickly recovered and ended the day slightly down, it was the latest black eye for the financial markets. The runaway trading suggests that regulators have not been able to keep up with electronic programs that increasingly dominate the supercharged market and have helped undermine investor confidence in stocks. Traders on Wednesday said that a rogue algorithm repeatedly bought and sold millions of shares of companies like RadioShack, Best Buy, Bank of America and American Airlines, sending trading volume surging. While the trading firm involved blamed a 'technology issue,' the company and regulators were still trying to understand what went wrong. The debacle comes after the botched Facebook initial public offering on the Nasdaq exchange in May and the aborted effort in March by another exchange, BATS Global Markets, to bring its own stock public. The episodes, along with the flash crash of 2010 when the market lost trillions of dollars of value in minutes, have stoked suspicions that stocks are safe only for specialists, and sometimes not even for them... ...High-speed [trading] firms use the algorithms to make money from small changes in stock prices and now account for more than half of all stock trading. But the changes have also introduced instability into the system, which was made clear in the flash crash. After that event, the Securities and Exchange Commission set out to add safety valves to the system. But the turbulence on Wednesday reinforced the belief that regulators had not been able to keep up with the growing sophistication and speed of the market they were overseeing..."
