Huge Job Losses Set Off Recession Alarms

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:09 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's no longer a question of recession or not. Now it's how deep and how long. Workers' pink slips stacked ever higher in March as jittery employers slashed 80,000 jobs, the most in five years, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 5.1 percent. Job losses are nearing the staggering level of a quarter-million this year in just three months.

For the third month in a row total U.S. employment rolls shrank -- often a telltale sign that the economy has jolted dangerously into reverse.

Petraeus Testimony Field Manual

By Spencer Ackerman 04/04/2008

On Tuesday, Gen. David H. Petraeus will update Congress on the status of the Iraq war. The general is so respected as a military officer that his September run through the Capitol Hill gauntlet effectively deflated political opposition to continuing the war and forestalled Democratic calls for withdrawal. The surge received a congressional reprieve after his testimony.

Now the surge is over -- the final additional brigades are just leaving Iraq -- and Petraeus' goal is different: halting troop reductions amid a rising tide of violence from terrorists, insurgents and militias.

The leading Democrats in Congress, well aware of the political potency of Petraeus' last round of testimony, are already sending the general the message that he'll face tougher questioning in this election year. But with all the talk about what questions Petraeus is likely to face next week, less attention has been paid to what the general's potential answers could be -- and what his comments could indicate about the war and the politics of continuing it.

Paul Krugman: Voodoo Health Economics

Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. John McCain has had cancer in the past. Last weekend, Mrs. Edwards bluntly pointed out that neither of them would be able to get insurance under Mr. McCain’s health care plan.

It’s about time someone said that and, more generally, made the case that Mr. McCain’s approach to health care is based on voodoo economics — not the supply-side voodoo that claims that cutting taxes increases revenues (though Mr. McCain says that, too), but the equally foolish claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone.

Freedom's Watch: Right-wing juggernaut, or another 'rootless organization'

Funded by wealthy Republican Party donors and former White House officials, the group may be accomplishing less than it claims

The hiring of Carl Forti, the former political director for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's failed presidential run and hardball flinging spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), appeared to signal that Freedom's Watch is getting ready to gear up for Election 2008. However, will recent defections from the group, and reported questions about the actual existence of the $250 million war chest that Freedom's Watch's leaders have boasted about, slow its operation down?

Peak Oil? Bring it on!

Solving the climate problem will solve the peak oil problem, too

Posted by Joseph Romm at 10:10 PM on 30 Mar 2008

I have a new article in Salon on perhaps the most misunderstood subject in energy: peak oil.

Here is the short version:

1. We are at or near the peak of cheap conventional oil production.
2. There is no realistic prospect that the conventional oil supply can keep up with current projected demand for much longer, if the industrialized countries don't take strong action to sharply reduce consumption, and if China and India don't take strong action to sharply reduce consumption growth.
3. Many people are expecting unconventional oil -- such as the tar sands and liquid coal -- to make up the supply shortage. That would be a climate catastrophe, and I (optimistically) believe humanity is wise enough not to let that happen. More supply is not the answer to either our oil or climate problem.
4. Nonetheless, contrary to popular belief, the peak oil problem will not "destroy suburbia" or the American way of life. Only unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases can do that.
5. We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity. The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions into the marketplace before it is too late to prevent a devastating oil shock or, for that matter, devastating climate change.

The Silent Side of Oil

Press needs to pump information on peak supply

By Katherine Bagley
Wed 2 Apr 2008 01:03 PM

Oil has always been a big story for obvious economic, environmental, political, and technological reasons. For decades, Americans have read about tanker spills, rising oil prices, shortages at the pumps, and delicate trade relations. More recently, the press has swarmed the story of prices topping $100 a barrel and OPEC’s refusal of President Bush’s request to increase production. But throughout the history of oil reporting, there has been one major aspect that the press has remained largely silent on: peak oil.

“Peak oil” is shorthand for the understanding that there is a finite amount of oil in the world and at some point we will hit a production peak, after which oil production will steadily decline until supplies are effectively exhausted. Present oil reserves took nearly 550 millions years to form and with current consumption rates, there is no possible way to replenish the resources before they are used up. However, the concept of peak oil is not only about the decrease of production, but also the end of cheap oil. As oil fields are depleted and the discovery of new fields decreases, oil becomes harder and thus more expensive to produce.

The Destructive Rise of Big Finance

By Kevin Phillips, Huffington Post
Posted on April 4, 2008, Printed on April 4, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81004/

Economic, financial and regulatory issues should dominate politics and government in the United States for the next two or three years, which is important enough. National discourse may also have a new and deserving bogeyman. Franklin D. Roosevelt had Big Business, Ronald Reagan had Big Labor, and my guess is that the new president inaugurated next January will have Big Finance.

True, finance has been whupped by presidents before. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, for example. But that was in the quill-pen era when the financial sector was a pup. Today's financial services sector, by contrast, is a grasping, gargantuan combination of banks, stockbrokers, insurance men, loan sharks, credit-card issuers, hedge fund speculators, securitization mavens and mortgage operators. Over the last five years, financial services has reached a swollen 20-21% of U.S. GDP -- the largest sector of the private economy.

Huge Job Losses Set Off Recession Alarms

Friday April 4, 4:42 pm ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer Biggest Job Loss in 5 Years Sets Off Recession Alarms; Nearly Quarter-Million Gone in 3 Months WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's no longer a question of recession or not. Now it's how deep and how long.

Workers' pink slips stacked ever higher in March as jittery employers slashed 80,000 jobs, the most in five years, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 5.1 percent. Job losses are nearing the staggering level of a quarter-million this year in just three months.

For the third month in a row total U.S. employment rolls shrank -- often a telltale sign that the economy has jolted dangerously into reverse.

Chesapeake Bay ecosystem health remains poor, but slightly improved in 2007

While better, report card's C-minus grade shows bay conditions far from optimal

An independent scientific analysis led by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science researchers gives the Chesapeake Bay a C-minus in 2007, indicating that Bay ecological conditions were slightly better than the previous year, but far below what is needed for a healthy Bay.

“The Chesapeake Bay Health Report Card shows conditions slightly improved last year, but there is nothing here from which we can take great comfort,” said University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science researcher and project leader Bill Dennison. “Data gathered from more than 150 monitoring sites throughout the Bay show us that the health of the Bay remains poor. We are not on the road to recovery.”

'No Sun link' to climate change

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity.

The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.

The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.

But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.

Movers and sheikhs

How the Bin Ladens became corporate giants while gaining wealth and favor from the Saudi royals

By Richard A. Clarke | March 30, 2008

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
By Steve Coll
Penguin, 671 pp., illustrated, $35

One of the many conspiracy theories surrounding Sept. 11, 2001, is some inchoate suspicion about the request the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., made to fly out Saudi citizens and members of the Bin Laden family in the days after the attack. That Osama Bin Laden's relatives were among those asking to leave and that the government let them go is seen as some sort of indicator of a hidden hand, of secrets, evil deeds. Who let them go?

I did. When the embassy request came to me as the White House crisis manager, it seemed understandable that these people might think themselves at risk after disclosures that almost all of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis. I had arranged evacuation flights for Americans from crisis zones many times when I thought they might be at risk. So I approved the request on condition that the FBI sign off on the Saudi flights and everyone on them. The FBI did not want to interview the passengers then and has not asked to interview them since. Why wouldn't the bureau want to investigate what the Bin Ladens were doing here?

Iran wins again

Gene Lyons
Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Maybe it’s too bad that Baghdad isn’t actually a part of the United States, like, say, New Orleans. Bush administration loyalists would be arguing that its make-believe “Green Zone” government had become the ultimate welfare state and needed to be cut loose of its dependency on U. S. dollars and military might lest it remain permanently crippled. What’s more, they’d be right. Instead, the al-Maliki government’s ill-advised attempt to overthrow its rivals’ control over the Iraqi port city of Basra saw American soldiers enlisted as partisan fighters in what is essentially a domestic quarrel. Why should we care which Iranian-backed Shiite political party prevails there ? With one crucial exception, the differences among the three main parties concern Iraqi civil and religious issues of no importance to Americans. How many Americans should die over whether or not Iraqi women are forced to wear veils ? Don’t look to our own peerless leader for an answer. As usual, President Bush limned the conflict in cartoonish goodguy-vs.-bad-guy terms. He described the fighting in Basra and elsewhere as “a bold decision” by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and predicted “a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.”

Algae could one day be major hydrogen fuel source

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 1, 2008) –As gas prices continue to soar to record highs, motorists are crying out for an alternative that won’t cramp their pocketbooks.

Scientists at U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are answering that call by working to chemically manipulate algae for production of the next generation of renewable fuels – hydrogen gas.

“We believe there is a fundamental advantage in looking at the production of hydrogen by photosynthesis as a renewable fuel,” senior chemist David Tiede said. “Right now, ethanol is being produced from corn, but generating ethanol from corn is a thermodynamically much more inefficient process.”

The Welfare King of the 21st Century

By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 31 March 2008

To help advance his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan invented the "welfare queen;" a woman who drove to pick up her check every month in a Cadillac. This mythical figure helped galvanize support among working class whites who felt that their tax dollars were being frittered away on people too lazy to work, most of whom they believed to be black.

There was little truth to the mythology of the welfare queen, the vast majority of welfare stints were always short and were usually the result of family breakups or job loss. Furthermore, welfare never amounted to more than a trivial item in the federal budget, coming in near one percent of total spending. And, most welfare beneficiaries were white. But the welfare queen mythology proved to be an effective political tool, propelling Reagan to an election victory and boosting Republican prospects over the next two decades.

States quietly buy, mine personal data -- including names of your associates and relatives

The government is rounding up your cell phone numbers, insurance claims, credit reports, financial records, and the names of your associates and relatives and sharing them with law enforcement officials nationwide.

They may even have your unlisted iPhone number.

Documents show Pentagon now using FBI to spy on Americans

ACLU obtains documents after suit over National Security Letters

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed outrage at the new revelations, based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena.

The Green Light

As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges.

by Phillippe Sands, May 2008

The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the “rendition” of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option. This is the story of how the torture at Guantánamo began, and how it spread.

Glenn Greenwald: John Yoo's war crimes

Yet again, the ACLU has performed the function which Congress and the media are intended to perform but do not. As the result of a FOIA lawsuit the ACLU filed and then prosecuted for several years, numerous documents relating to the Bush administration's torture regime that have long been baselessly kept secret were released yesterday, including an 81-page memorandum (.pdf) issued in 2003 by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo (currently a Berkeley Law Professor) which asserted that the President's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture:

If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.

Doubts Greet Treasury Plan on Regulation

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON — As Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. laid out an ambitious plan to overhaul the regulatory apparatus that oversees the nation’s financial system on Monday, lawmakers and lobbyists from an array of industries opposed to the plan predicted that most of it would be dead on arrival.

While the plan promotes a long-term goal of reducing an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies, in the shorter run it may actually do the opposite. One of the blueprint’s few short-term goals is the creation of a mortgage commission that would set new minimum standards for mortgage brokers and otherwise unregulated financial institutions that sell mortgages. The new commission could be formed only by Congress, and some lawmakers predicted it might be adopted this year.

GAO Blasts Weapons Budget

Cost Overruns Hit $295 Billion

By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2008; A01

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.

Embarrassed U.S. Starts to Disown Basra Operation

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Mar 31 (IPS) - As it became clear last week that the "Operation Knights Assault" in Basra was in serious trouble, the George W. Bush administration began to claim in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington.

The effort to disclaim U.S. responsibility for the operation is an indication that it was viewed as a major embarrassment just as top commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are about to testify before Congress.

Glenn Greenwald: Michael Mukasey's tearful lies

Michael Mukasey has conclusively proven himself to be an exact replica of Alberto Gonzales -- slavishly loyal to every presidential whim and unbound by even the most minimal constraints of truth while serving those whims. Speaking in San Francisco this week, Mukasey demanded that the President be given new warrantless eavesdropping powers and that lawbreaking telecoms be granted amnesty. To make his case, Mukasey teared up while exploiting the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11 and said this:

Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."

Tomgram: Howard Zinn, The End of Empire?

In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe's "sole superpower" is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an "empire lite" has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster. The Iraq government's recent offensive in Basra is but the latest example with -- we can be sure -- more to come.

In the meantime, the fate of that empire, lite or otherwise, is the subject of Howard Zinn today at Tomdispatch, and of a new addition to his famed People's History of the United States. The new book represents a surprise breakthrough into cartoon format. It's a rollicking graphic history, illustrated by cartoonist Mike Konopacki, that takes us from the Indian Wars to the Iraqi "frontier" (with some striking autobiographical asides from Zinn's own life). It's called A People's History of American Empire. It's a gem and it's being published today.

Paul Krugman: About the Social Security trust fund

I see from comments on an earlier post, plus some of the incoming links, that the whole “there is no trust fund, so the system will be in crisis in 2017″ thing is still out there. So I’m just going to reprint what I wrote about this three years ago:

Social Security is a government program supported by a dedicated tax, like highway maintenance. Now you can say that assigning a particular tax to a particular program is merely a fiction, but in fact such assignments have both legal and political force. If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box - you might even call it a lockbox - from Reagan’s tax cuts.

Digby: Party Crashers

Apparently Jay Rosen was intrigued (and concerned) by Will Bunch's characterization of the liberal bloggers at Eschacon "declaring war" on the press. I find that interesting since, as far as I'm concerned, liberal bloggers declared war on the press many years ago. I'm not sure that this is even controversial. Pushing back on biased, anti-Democrat and pro-Republican lies and editorial judgment is supposed to be one of our primary raison d'etres.

The Obama Doctrine

Barack Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. But will voters buy it?

Spencer Ackerman | March 24, 2008

When Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama met in California for the Jan. 31 debate, their back-and-forth resembled their many previous encounters, with the Democratic presidential hopefuls scrambling for the small policy yardage between them. And then Obama said something about the Iraq War that wasn't incremental at all. "I don't want to just end the war," he said, "but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place."

Until this point in the primaries, Clinton and Obama had sounded very similar on this issue. Despite their differences in the past (Obama opposed the war, while Clinton voted for it), both were calling for major troop withdrawals, with some residual force left behind to hedge against catastrophe. But Obama's concise declaration of intent at the debate upended this assumption. Clinton stumbled to find a counterargument, eventually saying her vote in October 2002 "was not authority for a pre-emptive war." Then she questioned Obama's ability to lead, saying that the Democratic nominee must have "the necessary credentials and gravitas for commander in chief."

Survey: 59% of US doctors support universal health care

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.

The survey suggests that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002 and as the country debates serious changes to the health care system.

USA 2008: The Great Depression

Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisis

By David Usborne in New York
Tuesday, 1 April 2008

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.

Gore to recruit 10m-strong green army

· Huge drive for Congress action on global warming
· $300m TV campaign will focus on job opportunities

• Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
• The Guardian,
• Tuesday April 1 2008

Al Gore yesterday launched a drive to mobilise 10 million volunteers to force politicians to act on climate change - twice as many as the number who marched against the Vietnam war or in support of civil rights during the heyday of US activism in the 1960s.

During the next three years, his Alliance for Climate Protection plans to spend $300m (about £150m) on television advertising and online organising to make global warming among the most urgent issues for elected American leaders.

How Conservatives Have Duped Us in the Global Warming Fight

By Joe Brewer, The Rockridge Institute
Posted on April 1, 2008, Printed on April 1, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/80874/

The movie Field of Dreams had a wild idea -- that a person could build his dream in the corn field and others would come from miles around to take part. This attitude is not restricted to Hollywood: It is a common notion in government that if we build a good policy the people will come rally around it. But because most policy solutions are bureaucratic and technical, people are often uninterested. To get people to care and to rally around good policies, we need to advance the ideas from which the policies flow.

When it comes to the climate crisis, there's been plenty of talk about cap-and-trade, carbon offsets, taxes on fossil fuels, and investment plans for renewable energy. But there is hardly any talk about what all this means to everyday folks or why public understanding matters. What most people are missing is that the solution may well lie in the way people think about and understand the climate crisis.

Construction spending falls in February

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
Tue Apr 1, 10:32 AM ET

Construction spending fell again in February as home building tumbled for a record 24th straight month.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that overall construction activity dropped 0.3 percent in February, reflecting weakness not only in home building but also in nonresidential activity. Only government building projects showed a gain in February.

Residential construction fell by 0.9 percent in February. Residential activity has fallen every month since March 2006, a record period of declines that underscored the severe downturn going on in housing.

UBS in capital hike after huge loss, chairman quits

By Thomas Atkins
Tue Apr 1, 6:02 AM ET

UBS AG (UBSN.VX) doubled its writedowns from the subprime crisis on Tuesday, dumped its chairman and sought more emergency capital in a second attempt to reverse its fortunes.

Its shares climbed 7.5 percent as investors hoped the move marked a turning point for the firm that now leads the global list of banks hit hardest by the credit crisis.

UBS wrote down an additional $19 billion in ailing assets, bringing to $37 billion the damage wrought by the subprime crisis and causing a net loss of 12 billion Swiss francs ($12.03 billion) in the first quarter.

It pushes UBS, Switzerland's flagship bank and financial fortress for rich investors, past Merrill Lynch (MER.N) to the top of the league of writedown shame.

Paulson's regulation plan won't fix current economic crisis

Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: March 30, 2008 07:27:59 PM

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson makes public on Monday a new blueprint for regulation of the turbulent financial markets, one that has plenty to do with the future and little to fix what ails the economy right now.

The plan would merge some federal bank regulators, weaken the agency that regulates the stock market and broaden the shoulders of the Federal Reserve, which will become the chief regulator for the safety and soundness of financial markets.

It's the broadest reform of oversight in the financial markets since the aftermath of the Great Depression and is sure to touch off a frenzy by Gucci-shoed lobbyists in the months and years ahead.

Exclusive: 22-year-old Pentagon arms dealer also marketed to civilians

The 22-year-old Florida man who allegedly provided old, substandard Chinese-manufactured ammunition to troops in Afghanistan as part of a nearly $300 million Pentagon contract also started a private company that specialized in selling foreign munitions to civilian gun enthusiasts, according to public documents, a RAW STORY investigation reveals.

Efraim E. Diveroli, 22, could face federal fraud charges after he tried to pass off the Chinese ammo as manufactured in Hungary. His company, AEY Inc., was banned from doing future business with the Defense Department after the New York Times revealed the shady circumstances surrounding a $298 million contract he received in January 2007.

CNN: Iran helped broker ceasefire in Iraq

It was reported on Sunday that Iranian officials had helped broker a ceasefire agreement in the recent fighting between Iraq's government and radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iran has close ties to both al-Sadr's movement and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and representatives of two of the parties in Maliki's coalition traveled to Iran to finalize the talks.

Paul Krugman: The Dilbert Strategy

Anyone who has worked in a large organization — or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” — is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.

You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive.

The financial events of the last seven months, and especially the past few weeks, have convinced all but a few diehards that the U.S. financial system needs major reform. Otherwise, we’ll lurch from crisis to crisis — and the crises will get bigger and bigger.

Revamp Proposed for Financial Regulators

Monday March 31, 6:56 pm ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer Proposed Financial Overhaul Puts Fed in Charge of Market Stability; No Fix for Present Woes WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's a Herculean task: revamping a financial regulatory system dating back to the Civil War to deal with 21st century crises imperiling the country.

Under an ambitious Bush administration plan, the Federal Reserve would take on the unwieldy role of uber cop in charge of financial market stability. Other regulatory agencies could see their influence diminished.

The proposal won't fix the host of economic and financial problems that threatens to plunge the United States into a deep recession, but it might help guard against future troubles. It would take years and a lot of political wrangling -- in Congress, on Wall Street, in statehouses and elsewhere -- to implement all the changes envisioned.

Commentary: Shame on them and shame on us

Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: March 26, 2008 12:31:38 PM

This week, the Iraq war claimed its 4,000th American killed in action, but that sad and tragic milestone came as the war seems to have slipped off the evening news, off the front pages and from the minds of the American people.

I suppose this benign neglect of so important and damaging an event is combat fatigue on the part of the public. No doubt the White House is happy to see Iraq shoved to a back burner, just as all three presidential candidates are relieved to talk about something else, anything else, but their half-baked ideas about the war.

Shame on them, and shame on us, for such callous indifference to the service, sacrifice and suffering of the families of the dead, wounded and injured troops who've given so much for so little in return.

The Decriminalization of Corporate Crime

Posted on Mar 29, 2008
By Stanley Kutler

With our economic and financial crises deepening, government insiders reportedly are debating whether we need to restore some regulation—or not. Given the state of things, we can expect further woes and no regulation.

Why have regulation when JPMorgan can gobble up Bear Stearns for peanuts, with the backstage encouragement and acquiescence of the Federal Reserve Board? The Fed’s concern for the big investors is no surprise, and it needed no cue from John McCain to reject any thoughts of helping the victims of the banks’ sting operations. Meanwhile, JPMorgan has offered bonuses to Bears Stearns’ top brokers to stay on, though many of them are probably responsible for the subprime loans Bear Stearns so aggressively pursued.

Time to honour America’s debt to the retired

By John Shilling

Published: March 27 2008 19:09 | Last updated: March 27 2008 19:09

The first American baby boomers have now become eligible to retire and start drawing on Social Security, the government pension programme. Many politicians are telling us that the resulting rise in Social Security “entitlement” payments will break the budget, so we have to cut benefits to retired people. But the politicians do not want to mention that the Social Security system has been compiling a huge surplus. Why? Because they have been using that surplus for years to hide the real size of the current federal budget deficit, allowing them to spend more and justify tax cuts for the wealthy.

US Office of Management and Budget data show that while government’s reported deficit averaged about $300bn a year from 2002 to 2006 – roughly $4,000 per household – the real current deficit was actually more than 50 per cent bigger. The government just “borrowed” about $165bn from the Social Security Trust Fund every year – under the table.

The Degeneration of American Education

The high-stakes testing mania in general and No Child Left Behind in particular have reduced too much of public education to a system to be games. Some people play the game sincerely and seriously. The teachers and principal in Linda Perlstein's Tested are such players. They have doubts about the value of the state test, but they strive mightily to get their impoverished students over that barrier. After the test is given in late spring, they start acting like real teachers in a real school -- they take the kids to museums and aquariums and to watch the Blue Angels perform. They make art and write poetry. But only in the short time between the state test and the end of the school year.

Some people play it cynically, doing whatever it takes to get children close to the passing score -- the bubble kids -- off the bubble and into the magic kingdom of "proficient." The "sure things" and "hopeless cases" are ignored. Or emphasizing the increasing passing rates on a required test as students enter their senior year, not taking into account the massive dropouts that have occurred along the way. Or establishing "leaver codes" in sufficient number that a school can have over 1000 9th-graders, fewer than 300 12th-graders and zero dropouts.

10 days That Changed Capitalism

By Robert Borosage
March 28th, 2008 - 12:31pm ET

By Rob Johnson and Robert Borosage

The world has changed. The market fundamentalism that has dominated our economics over last three decades has been unmasked as a sham, deemed useless by the guardian of the integrity of finance itself, the Federal Reserve.

Without a vote of the Congress or a public debate, the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve have made government the guarantor of the shadow banking system – the unregulated, unhinged hedge funds and investment houses whose compulsive excesses now threaten the global economy. They say necessity is the mother of invention, but we seen only a part of the new machine, not surprisingly, the part that buttresses Wall Street. They have scrambled to put this together in an emergency, behind closed doors, without a hint of the necessary regulatory changes that must rationally accompany such guarantees. That is what the fight in the coming months will surely be about.

Girls Will Be Girls. Or Not.

Why aren't more powerful public women caught up in sex scandals?

By Julia Baird | NEWSWEEK
Mar 31, 2008 Issue | Updated: 1:04 p.m. ET Mar 22, 2008

Catherine the Great was a woman with an extravagant, exacting sexual appetite. During the 34 years of her reign, she had a host of young, well-trained lovers—many of them soldiers—who were paid handsomely for sating her, and were often rewarded with plum positions on her court, or gifts of property or serfs. Her libido was so legendary that when she died of a stroke in 1796, rumor spread quickly that she had been crushed under the weight of a stallion she was attempting to have sex with. It's a myth that has endured, and serves as a reminder of our fascination with powerful, sexual women: will they stop at nothing?

The question is, as another round of public sex scandals unfolds, where are these women today? The confessions of Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson (the man who, on the same day he replaced Spitzer, admitted to past affairs) and, more recently, the allegations against Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, pale when compared with tales of the Russian empress. Yet while there has been a spate of men caught with their pants around their ankles in recent years, political scientists scratch their heads when asked to come up with a female equivalent for the men--Spitzer, former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey--the New York tabs have dubbed "Luv Guvs."

A Case of the Blues

By BENJAMIN WALLACE-WELLS

Published: March 30, 2008

Correction Appended

The Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole is 58 years old, but he has never been famous before, and after this year, he will most likely never be famous again. Even this kind of fame, brief and slight, is uncomfortable on him. Cole is a party man, a lifelong Republican consultant, campaign worker and politician whose career, like that of a typical European Social Democrat, has recognized only a fluid and fungible line between political operative and elected official. It sometimes seems an accident he’s in Congress at all. He is tall and slightly formal, and slightly awkward; people who meet him casually describe him as cordial or gentlemanly. The Republican Party, in its current uncertainty, might have chosen an ideologue to fill Cole’s post or, as is its habit, a money man. Its choice of Cole, an operative, was the establishment insisting that its own learned habits were enough to save itself. “Right now, with where we are,” Ken Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told me, “Tom Cole is the perfect leader.”

Rich Men Behaving Badly

Meet the super-rich, the dysfunctional class threatening American values.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Saturday, March 29, 2008, at 7:08 AM ET

For decades, social scientists, policy wonks, and politicians have studied and debated what's come to be known as the "culture of poverty." The consensus: A group of Americans is set apart from the mainstream by geography, class, and income. Its members adhere to norms that don't apply to the rest of society and engage in self-destructive behavior that imposes significant costs on the nation at large. The culture of poverty has made for potent politics (remember Ronald Reagan's fictitious welfare queen?) and spawned best-selling polemics from the right (Charles Murray) to the left (Jonathan Kozol).

We don't hear as much about the culture of poverty these days. Perhaps it's because the market turmoil is making us all feel a little poorer. Or perhaps it's because a highly visible group is now exhibiting all the outward appearances of the underclass: the overclass. Forget welfare queens and the culture of poverty. Think Wall Street kings and the culture of affluence.

Struggling homeowners find little hope in federal program

WASHINGTON — In the nearly four months since Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson challenged mortgage lenders to modify distressed home loans voluntarily to ease record numbers of foreclosures, it remains difficult to gauge the program's success.

McClatchy followed several homeowners as they worked with — and sometimes battled — lenders and loan collectors during the mortgage modification process, called Hope Now.

These homeowners got their loan problems fixed, either temporarily or permanently, but the process was arduous and varied. Some got stays from foreclosure, while others merely saw the threat pushed into the future. For many, the total values of their loans didn't drop and remained larger than the current values of their homes.

Those who control oil and water will control the world

New superpowers are competing for diminishing resources as Britain becomes a bit-player. The outcome could be deadly

• John Gray
• The Observer,
• Sunday March 30 2008

This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday March 30 2008 on p33 of the Comment section. It was last updated at 00:03 on March 30 2008.

History may not repeat itself, but, as Mark Twain observed, it can sometimes rhyme. The crises and conflicts of the past recur, recognisably similar even when altered by new conditions. At present, a race for the world's resources is underway that resembles the Great Game that was played in the decades leading up to the First World War. Now, as then, the most coveted prize is oil and the risk is that as the contest heats up it will not always be peaceful. But this is no simple rerun of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, there are powerful new players and it is not only oil that is at stake.

It was Rudyard Kipling who brought the idea of the Great Game into the public mind in Kim, his cloak-and-dagger novel of espionage and imperial geopolitics in the time of the Raj. Then, the main players were Britain and Russia and the object of the game was control of central Asia's oil. Now, Britain hardly matters and India and China, which were subjugated countries during the last round of the game, have emerged as key players. The struggle is no longer focused mainly on central Asian oil. It stretches from the Persian Gulf to Africa, Latin America, even the polar caps, and it is also a struggle for water and depleting supplies of vital minerals. Above all, global warming is increasing the scarcity of natural resources. The Great Game that is afoot today is more intractable and more dangerous than the last.

Frank Rich: Hillary’s St. Patrick’s Day Massacre

MOST politicians lie. Most people over 50, as I know all too well, misremember things. So here is the one compelling mystery still unresolved about Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia fairy tale: Why did she keep repeating this whopper for nearly three months, well after it had been publicly debunked by journalists and eyewitnesses?

In January, after Senator Clinton first inserted the threat of “sniper fire” into her stump speech, Elizabeth Sullivan of The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the story couldn’t be true because by the time of the first lady’s visit in March 1996, “the war was over.” Meredith Vieira asked Mrs. Clinton on the “Today” show why, if she was on the front lines, she took along a U.S.O. performer like Sinbad. Earlier this month, a week before Mrs. Clinton fatefully rearmed those snipers one time too many, Sinbad himself spoke up to The Washington Post: “I think the only ‘red phone’ moment was: Do we eat here or at the next place?”

The Wright Controversy Revealed America's Deeply Insecure SideBy Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on March 27, 2008, Printed on March 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/80577/

The word "squeeb" is a crude mix of squid and dweeb, and by inventing it I mean no disrespect to the squid, which in most respects is an excellent and admirable animal. In the ocean there's almost nothing you'd rather be than a squid, one of nature's most perfect predators -- fast, resilient, ruthless, more intelligent by leaps and bounds than your average fish, and able to squeeze into impossibly tiny cracks. In the ocean, there is no hiding from a squid, I tell you.

But on land, a squid is about as useless as it gets. It's a spineless, squishy little hunk of seafood that wouldn't stand a chance in a cage match with a baby squirrel. It has no heart, and its first instinct when trouble comes is to hide in a cloud of its own excretions. This is why a squiddy word like squeeb seems to me to be a good way to describe the American voter during a presidential election season.