Paul Krugman: Gilded Once More

The New York Times
Friday 27 April 2007

One of the distinctive features of the modern American right has been nostalgia for the late 19th century, with its minimal taxation, absence of regulation and reliance on faith-based charity rather than government social programs. Conservatives from Milton Friedman to Grover Norquist have portrayed the Gilded Age as a golden age, dismissing talk of the era's injustice and cruelty as a left-wing myth.

Well, in at least one respect, everything old is new again. Income inequality — which began rising at the same time that modern conservatism began gaining political power — is now fully back to Gilded Age levels.

Bush Has Gone AWOL

by General William Odom

The following is a transcript of the Democratic Radio Address delivered by Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.) on Saturday April 28, 2007:

“Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, retired.

“I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked me.

“In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

Daily Kos: Feith-Based Intelligence (SUPER-SIZED)

by Devilstower

Fri Apr 27, 2007 at 09:49:15 AM PDT

Back in 2002, George W. Bush had a problem. He couldn't get the intelligence he wanted to justify going to war in Iraq. Oh, he could get lots of information, and some of it even suggested that Iraq was a danger. Only the information generated by intelligence agencies came with lots of caveats, possibilities, and alternatives. That wouldn't do.

Luckily, Cheney had the right man handy in Douglas Feith. Feith was the hardest of hardcore neocons, a protégé of Casper Weinberger who hated diplomacy, hated negotiation, hated every plan that didn't involve a series of loud explosions. Doug Feith was the one guy who could be counted on to never produce anything but black and white answers. In Feith's world, solutions were only generated in the crosshairs of a bomb sight. Negotiation and grey areas were for wimps.

Ocean's 'twilight zone' may be a key to understanding climate change

A major study sheds new light on the role of carbon dioxide once it's transported to the oceans' depths. The research indicates that instead of sinking, carbon dioxide is often consumed by animals and bacteria and recycled in the "twilight zone," a dimly lit area 100 to 1,000 meters below the surface.

Katha Pollitt: Regrets Only

[from the May 14, 2007 issue]

So now you know. It really does matter who's President and which party controls Congress. A Democratic-controlled Congress would never have passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which banned intact dilation and extraction abortions and, in flagrant violation of Roe v. Wade, lacked an exception to preserve the health of the woman. A Democratic President would never have signed such a bill. Nor would he have nominated the extremely conservative antichoicers John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, which on April 18 upheld, in Gonzales v. Carhart by a 5-to-4 vote (Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas--all GOP nominees), a ban essentially identical to one rejected 5 to 4 in Stenberg v. Carhart seven years ago, when Sandra Day O'Connor was on the bench.

So, NARAL Pro-Choice America--or whatever your latest bland, pandering brand name is--maybe, much too late, you'll rethink your policy of supporting prochoice Republicans, who made the majorities that set the agenda that led us to this very bad place. And maybe, Tom Frank and assorted liberal know-it-alls of the op-ed page and blogosphere who've been telling us to calm down because Republicans are all bark and no bite on abortion, you'll take a look at the real world. Sometimes politicians deliver on their promises. As for all you prochoicers with qualms out there--who think abortion is icky and "late term" abortion especially so, although you couldn't say exactly when that even is, and who wonder why women are so careless and shouldn't emergency contraception have taken care of this already?--maybe it's time to start defending the right you say you believe in, instead of cutting the ground out from under it.

Trickle Down Conservatism Infects America

Rick Perlstein
April 27, 2007

Rick Perlstein is a blogger for the Campaign for America's Future.

When your job is documenting how conservatism has failed America, the newspaper looks different. Take Wednesday's USA Today —specifically, that silly page no one reads with a tiny news item from every state. Fifty dots, ones never intended to be connected into a common tale, except the one entitled, "Here's Some Stuff that Happened on April 25, 2007."

Connect them, however, as data points in the consequences of the national experiment of giving conservatives the keys to all three branches to our government, and something more coherent emerges.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Columbia - State lawmakers have started debating two spending plans that could shave pennies off grocery bills or trim income taxes for wealthier residents. The grocery tax cut would save shoppers $1 for each $100 spent and eliminate the tax in the future. Gov. Sanford contends that reducing the state's income tax for top earners would spur the economy.

The bottom line, in other words: Save a couple of bucks a week on groceries if you're an ordinary Joe or Jane. Save tens of thousands a year on income taxes if you're a "top earner." Madness. But entirely consistent with conservative "philosophy," which claims that helping ordinary people might make them lazy and indolent, but that "reducing the top marginal rate," something that effects only rich people, makes the world a better place—the "trickle down" theory that one of its very architects, Reagan budget director David Stockman, admitted actually created "fiscal catastrophe."

Hillary Clinton shines in Democratic candidates' debate

Ewen MacAskill in Orangeburg
Friday April 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Hillary Clinton emerged as the clear winner from the first debate between the Democratic candidates in the 2008 presidential race - ahead of her main rival Barack Obama - according to those present in the audience.

She appeared to be the most comfortable of the eight runners in the 90-minute televised debate from the South Carolina university campus as she dealt with a series of questions ranging from how she would handle another terrorist attack on the US to her vote in 2002 backing the invasion of Iraq.

Plants do not emit methane

Scientists disprove a recent study that suggests plants emit the potent greenhouse gas methane

A recent study in Nature¹ suggested that terrestrial plants may be a global source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, making plants substantial contributors to the annual global methane budget. This controversial finding and the resulting commotion triggered a consortium² of Dutch scientists to re-examine this in an independent study. Reporting in New Phytologist, Tom Dueck and colleagues present their results and conclude that methane emissions from plants are negligible and do not contribute to global climate change.

The consortium brings together a unique combination of expertise and facilities enabling the design and execution of a novel experiment. Plants were grown in a facility containing atmospheric carbon dioxide almost exclusively with a heavy form of carbon (¹³C). This makes the carbon released from the plants relatively easy to detect. Thus, if plants are able to emit methane, it will contain the heavy carbon isotope and can be detected against the background of lighter carbon molecules in the air.

The Establishment Rethinks Globalization

by WILLIAM GREIDER

[from the April 30, 2007 issue]

The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther. An unlikely dissenter has come forward with a revised understanding of globalization that argues for thorough reformation. This man knows the global trading system from the inside because he is a respected veteran of multinational business. His ideas contain an explosive message: that what established authorities teach Americans about global trade is simply wrong--disastrously wrong for the United States.

Martin Luther was a rebellious priest challenging the dictates of a corrupt church hierarchy. Ralph Gomory, on the other hand, is a gentle-spoken technologist, trained as a mathematician and largely apolitical. He does not set out to overthrow the establishment but to correct its deeper fallacies. For many years Gomory was a senior vice president at IBM. He helped manage IBM's expanding global presence as jobs and high-tech production were being dispersed around the world.

After Moyers Iraq Documentary, DC Reporters in Damage-Control Mode

By David Sirota, WorkingForChange.com
Posted on April 27, 2007, Printed on April 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/51110/

In the lead up to and wake of Bill Moyers' much-anticipated mega-dunk on the Washington press corps this week, we are seeing the ugliest side of Beltway culture -- the meltdown, damage-control freak out. Only what's new is that instead of politicians melting down, it's reporters themselves. And never underestimate the desperation that comes when Establishment Washington unifies to try to defend itself.

Over here we have professional power-worshiper Chris "It Doesn't Matter Where Political Money Comes From" Cillizza attempting to defend Tim Russert, and in the process insulting the recently deceased journalistic hero David Halberstam.

America Since 1980: A Right Turn Leading to a Dead End

By Dean Baker, AlterNet
Posted on April 27, 2007, Printed on April 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/51086/

Editor's note: this is adapted from Dean Baker's new book, The United States since 1980 (The World Since 1980).

U.S. politics took a sharp turn to the right in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Domestically, Reagan touted an agenda that would lead to a sharp upward redistribution of income. Internationally, Reagan explicitly rejected the "détente" framework for engaging the Soviet Union that had been accepted by the leadership of both major parties since the beginning of the Cold War. In its place, Reagan put forward a doctrine of U.S. unilateralism in which the United States basically claimed the right to do whatever it wanted, unconstrained by allies or international institutions.

Today's Must Read

By Paul Kiel - April 26, 2007, 9:30 AM

The entire scheme has been laid out before us. The question now is whether Karl Rove will get away with it.

Here's the scheme, as revealed over the past month: Rove and his deputies traveled to various agencies throughout the government, lecturing management there about Republicans' political prospects. Which House and Senate members were in trouble? Which Democratic seats were vulnerable? What were the major issues in the election?

But there was a line to be drawn: no commands were to be given -- because such a directive would be a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, which forbids the use of government resources for political ends.

Government Keeps a Secret After Studying Spy Agencies

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, April 25 — Concerned about the growing dependence of the nation’s spy agencies on private contractors, top intelligence officials have spent months determining just how many contractors work at the C.I.A., D.I.A., F.B.I., N.S.A. and the rest of the spook alphabet soup.

Now they have an answer. But they cannot reveal it, they say, because America’s enemies might be listening.

Ronald P. Sanders, chief human capital officer for the director of national intelligence, said that because personnel numbers and agency budgets were classified, he could not reveal the contractor count.

Court Asked to Limit Lawyers at Guantánamo

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to impose tighter restrictions on the hundreds of lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the request has become a central issue in a new legal battle over the administration’s detention policies.

Saying that visits by civilian lawyers and attorney-client mail have caused “intractable problems and threats to security at Guantánamo,” a Justice Department filing proposes new limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases that would replace more expansive rules that have governed them since they began visiting Guantánamo detainees in large numbers in 2004.

The filing says the lawyers have caused unrest among the detainees and have improperly served as a conduit to the news media, assertions that have drawn angry responses from some of the lawyers.

Bill Moyers: On Journalism And Democracy

April 25, 2007

Bill Moyers is chairman of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and an independent journalist with his own production company. He is launching a new weekly series on PBS in April, and his documentary "Buying the War," about the press and the buildup to the war in Iraq, airs tonight on PBS.This interview first appeared in The Christian Century.

You were part of the Johnson administration during its escalation of the Vietnam War. What perspective does that experience give you on the current administration and the war in Iraq?

Both Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush made the mistake of embracing a totalistic policy for a concrete reality that requires instead a more pragmatic response. You shouldn't go to war for a Grand Theory on a hunch, yet both men plunged into complex local quarrels only to discover that they were treading on quicksand. And they learned too late that American exceptionalism doesn't mean we can work our will anywhere we please. While freedom may be a universal yearning, democracy is not, alas, a universal solution—there are too many extenuating circumstances.

Only mother nature knows how to fertilize the ocean

Natural input of nutrients works ten times better than manmade injections.

Quirin Schiermeier

Blooms of algae created by pumping nutrients into the ocean can suck up at least ten times more carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere than was previously thought. But the findings lend no support to controversial schemes to encourage such blooms in order to reduce global warming, the authors warn.

$4 a gallon gas? Not as unlikely as you might think

By Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The last time gasoline prices approached $3 a gallon nationwide, hurricanes had ripped apart the Gulf Coast oil infrastructure and world oil supplies were stressed. Today, oil supplies aren't pinched, but rusty U.S. refineries aren't producing enough gasoline to meet demand, which is driving up pump prices ahead of summer's peak driving season, and some fear $4 a gallon gas looms soon.

Wade Horn cashes out

Former Department of Health and Human services official signs on as a consultant with Deloitte Consulting LLP after questions are raised about federal government grants and abstinence-only sex education programs

While it's difficult to really know exactly what Wade Horn was thinking in the days prior to his resignation from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), perhaps he didn't relish the thought of having to defend his pouring of millions of dollars in taxpayer money into abstinence-only sex education programs that have been thoroughly discredited. Perhaps he was worried about being brought in front of a congressional committee and asked to account for some of his other grant-making decisions.

Right-Wing Meltdown

Right Embarks on Smear Campaign Against Media Matters; Baseless Attacks Make the Case for Group's Mission

Washington, DC - In recent days, Media Matters for America has become the target of an unprecedented stream of attacks from right-wing media and political figures intent on silencing the media watchdog's criticism. This recent barrage of false, baseless, and sometimes comical attacks, complete with flowcharts, from the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Tom DeLay, Neal Boortz, Matt Drudge, and Michael Savage, just to name a few, ironically underscores the need for an organization like Media Matters to monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the media.

Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted April 25, 2007.

The Bush administration is helping multinationals buy U.S. municipal water systems, putting our most important resource in the hands of corporations with no public accountability.

All across the United States, municipal water systems are being bought up by multinational corporations, turning one of our last remaining public commons and our most vital resource into a commodity.

The road to privatization is being paved by our own government. The Bush administration is actively working to loosen the hold that cities and towns have over public water, enabling corporations to own the very thing we depend on for survival.

Plunge in Existing-Home Sales Is Steepest Since ’89

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sales of existing homes plunged in March by the largest amount in nearly two decades, reflecting bad weather and increasing problems in the subprime mortgage market, a real estate trade group reported today.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes fell by 8.4 percent in March, compared with February. It was the biggest one-month decline since a 12.6 percent drop in January 1989, another period of recession conditions in housing. The drop left sales in March at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.12 million units, the slowest pace since June 2003.

The steep sales decline was accompanied by an eighth straight fall in median home prices, the longest such period of falling prices on record. The median price fell to $217,000, a drop of 0.3 percent from the price a year ago.

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007
The Guardian

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

Don't Bet on Offsets

by A. C. THOMPSON & DUANE MOLES

[from the May 7, 2007 issue]

This story is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting's multimedia climate change investigation, which includes the documentary Hot Politics, airing on PBS's Frontline April 24, and at pbs.org/frontline

Tom Arnold, a self-described "environmental nerd from San Francisco," had a pair of gifts for many of the Hollywood celebrities at February's seventy-ninth Academy Awards show: a crystal raindrop tchotchke crafted by a Vermont glassblower, and with it a certificate for 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide reductions.

Arnold runs TerraPass, a web-based startup company that bills itself as "a leading retailer of carbon offsets"--the latest trend in green marketing, aimed at affluent, eco-sensitive consumers eager to fight global warming. Criticism of the extravagant gift bags offered to Academy stars in years past--the free jewelry, high-end cosmetics and other expensive goodies created unexpected tax liabilities and unflattering press coverage--led to discontinuing the practice, until Arnold suggested a gift enabling those who are among our highest energy users to lighten their "carbon footprint."

A Convenient Untruth

For the obligatory "opposing view" on climate change, the media often turn to Myron Ebell, policy analyst, sound-bite artist, and oil-industry mouthpiece. While mainstream experts see global warming as a major crisis, the hotter it gets, the better Ebell likes it.

by Michael Shnayerson | May 2007

Al Gore says global-warming skeptics are a group diminishing almost as rapidly as the mountain glaciers.

Myron Ebell begs to differ.

Hurricanes, heat waves, flooding, and droughts—sure, they've stirred some fears. And some corporate allies that used to mock global warming—such as Detroit's Big Three automakers and oil giant Texaco—have, like the glaciers, melted away from the fight. But, for the hardest of the hard core, these are glorious days.

The Economist: Iraq's economy

Apr 20th 2007
From the Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire

Oil's not well in Iraq

The announcement of a study that suggests that Iraq's oil reserves could be almost as large as those of Saudi Arabia, the world's leader, has come amid fresh evidence of the monumental difficulty of realising that potential, as bombs in Baghdad left 200 people dead in a single day and Iraqi MPs wrangled over the details of new oil legislation.

The reminder of the scale of Iraq's unrealised oil wealth has come in the form of a report by IHS, an industry consultant, providing details of existing oil reserves and of more than 400 undrilled prospects and undeveloped discoveries. The Iraq Atlas estimates that Iraq has proven reserves of 116bn barrels (slightly higher than the standard industry figure), which could be supplemented by a further 100bn barrels in the barely explored desert region to the west of Baghdad. Saudi Arabia's reserves are put at 264bn barrels, with Iran occupying second place in the world ranking with 138bn barrels.

Frank Rich: Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac

--The New York Times, April 22, 2007

President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he'll take six weeks to show his face - and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

But he couldn't inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the "surge" was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg's. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.

Paul Krugman: A Hostage Situation

There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met.

If this were a normal political dispute, Democrats in Congress would clearly hold the upper hand: by a huge margin, Americans say they want a timetable for withdrawal, and by a large margin they also say they trust Congress, not Mr. Bush, to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq.

A Challenger to the Church of Free Trade

By William Greider, The Nation. Posted April 23, 2007.

An unlikely dissident from the Ivy League's economic establishment has come forward with a proposal to reform globalization.

The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther. An unlikely dissenter has come forward with a revised understanding of globalization that argues for thorough reformation. This man knows the global trading system from the inside because he is a respected veteran of multinational business. His ideas contain an explosive message: that what established authorities teach Americans about global trade is simply wrong -- disastrously wrong for the United States.

Martin Luther was a rebellious priest challenging the dictates of a corrupt church hierarchy. Ralph Gomory, on the other hand, is a gentle-spoken technologist, trained as a mathematician and largely apolitical. He does not set out to overthrow the establishment but to correct its deeper fallacies. For many years Gomory was a senior vice president at IBM. He helped manage IBM's expanding global presence as jobs and high-tech production were being dispersed around the world.

The "Silent" Ninth Amendment Gives Americans Rights They Don't Know They Have

By Daniel A. Farber, Basic Books. Posted April 23, 2007.

The first Amendment right of free speech and the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination are well known, but the Ninth Amendment is ignored. Pity, because it bears directly on abortion, the right to die, and gay rights.

The following is an excerpt from Daniel A. Farber's forthcoming "Retained by the People: The 'Silent' Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have" (Perseus Books, 2007), available April 30.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. --The Ninth Amendment

Everyone knows about the First Amendment right of free speech and the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. Even the once-forgotten Second Amendment, with its "right to bear arms," has reemerged in public debate. But few people know about the Ninth Amendment, which reaffirms in broad terms rights "retained by the people." Indeed, the Ninth flies so far under the radar that it has rarely been mentioned even by the Supreme Court.

Bush Poised to Veto Long-Sought Labor Reform

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted April 23, 2007.

For years, companies have been keeping workers from exercising their legal rights to organize and exacerbating America's income and wealth inequality. A new bill could help reverse that trend, but does it stand a chance against Bush's veto pen?

One of the most important bills for working Americans of the last 10 years is likely to go down in defeat, even though Democrats control Congress. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is an anti-union-busting measure that would restore the right to form unions, a right working people have enjoyed mostly on paper since the "Reagan revolution" stacked the deck against workers trying to organize. The House passed the bill last month, but it's widely expected to be defeated in the Senate, and if it does survive, it will almost certainly fall to George Bush's veto pen.

If EFCA is defeated, it will carry little or no political cost, largely because America's corporatocracy has done a bang-up job of framing the debate. A coalition of big business groups conducted a wildly misleading poll, one that gave respondents the (false) idea that the bill will diminish rather than protect workers' rights -- specifically, their right to a fair vote about whether to unionize. They've taken that spin and synchronized it across the whole of the conservative communications infrastructure -- from business-funded think tanks to right-wing blogs, to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to lawmakers walking the halls of Congress.