Time to Win the War of Ideas--Finally

By Greg Anrig - May 2, 2008, 11:05AM

Since Paul Krugman's column today essentially makes the same argument as my Prospect Online article Wednesday, I'd like to echo back that all Democrats running for office -- not just the presidential candidates -- need to be assertively making the case that the conservative belief system and ideas have been an unqualified failure. The conservative movement's hostility toward government, and its agenda of ideas intended to weaken government, explains why Republicans in power have failed at governing.

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
May 2008

Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City.

[...]

As Rinehart would recall, the man began verbally attacking him, saying he had proof that Rinehart had planted Monsanto’s genetically modified (G.M.) soybeans in violation of the company’s patent. Better come clean and settle with Monsanto, Rinehart says the man told him—or face the consequences.

Rinehart was incredulous, listening to the words as puzzled customers and employees looked on. Like many others in rural America, Rinehart knew of Monsanto’s fierce reputation for enforcing its patents and suing anyone who allegedly violated them. But Rinehart wasn’t a farmer. He wasn’t a seed dealer. He hadn’t planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a small—a really small—country store in a town of 350 people. He was angry that somebody could just barge into the store and embarrass him in front of everyone. “It made me and my business look bad,” he says. Rinehart says he told the intruder, “You got the wrong guy.”

Paul Krugman: Party of Denial

During Barack Obama’s Sunday appearance on Fox News, the interviewer asked him for an example of “a hot-button issue where you would be willing to buck the Democratic Party line” and say that Republicans have the better idea.

Mr. Obama’s answer was puzzling because he gave credit where it isn’t due — and thereby undermined what could be a very effective Democratic line of argument.

In particular, Mr. Obama attributed to Republicans the idea that regulation can be flexible rather than a matter of “top-down command and control,” and in particular for the idea of controlling pollution with a system of tradable emission permits rather than rigid regulations.

Webb calls out McCain on GI Bill: ‘He’s so full of it’

By: Steve Benen on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 5:30 AM - PDT

A couple of weeks ago, John McCain talked about the importance of increasing the size of the U.S. military. To entice more volunteers, he said, the government should focus on incentives: “[O]ne of the things we ought to do is provide [the troops with] significant educational benefits in return for serving.”

A few days later, McCain announced that he’ll oppose a bipartisan measure to renew and expand the GI Bill for a new generation of veterans.

Is There an Army Cover-Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?

By Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042808A.shtml

The Department of Defense statistics are alarming - one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begin - before they are even recruited.

But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq and in the United States following rape. The military has characterized each death of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from "noncombat related injuries," and then added "suicide." Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of "noncombat related injuries," with several identified as "suicides."

Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Iran under the Gun

It's like old times in the Persian Gulf. As of this week, a second aircraft carrier battle task force is being sent in -- not long after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen highlighted planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran; just as the Bush administration's catechism of charges against the Iranians in Iraq reaches something like a fever pitch; at the moment when rumors of, leaks about, and denials of Pentagon back-to-the-drawing-board planning for new ways to attack Iran are zipping around ("Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq…"); and only days before the U.S. military in Iraq is supposed to conduct its latest media dog-and-pony show on Iranian support for Iraqi Shi'ite militias ("…including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate…"). On the dispatching of that second aircraft carrier, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the following comment: "I don't see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder."

How Fraud Fueled Mortgage Crisis

Brokers Pushed Borrowers to Lie, Lenders Misled and Ratings Agencies Looked the Other Way

By Mary Kane
05/01/2008

The debate over what caused the mortgage mess and how best to fix it is now taking a sharp turn, as new problems surrounding liar's loans and payment-option mortgages reveal the pervasive fraud, lying and deceit that permeated the market at its height.

As loans made to borrowers with decent credit begin to fail at a surprisingly rapid rate, it's becoming clear that widespread fraud helped support the entire mortgage system -- from borrowers who lied on their loans, to brokers who encouraged it, to lenders who misled some low income borrowers, to the many lenders, investors and ratings agencies that conveniently and deliberately looked the other way as profits rolled in.

Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys

Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys

05/01/2008 @ 1:39 am
Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna, Muriel Kane and Lindsay Beyerstein

The Permanent Republican Majority Part VI

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.

These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively. Typically burglars do not break-into an office or private residence only to rummage through documents, for example, as is the case with most of the burglaries in these two federal cases.

It's Funny How Funny Just the Facts Can Be

'Daily Show' Staffer Mines News for Laughs

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; C01

So here's Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq four years ago, describing the situation in a TV interview in September 2003: "We're not in a quagmire," he's saying confidently. "The progress is unbelievable."

So what about that progress, general? Because here's Sanchez, now retired, talking about Iraq in a video clip from last October: "There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. . . . There's no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight."

Crossing The Line: Religious Right Activists Plump For Politics In The Pulpi

The Family Research Council (FRC) has big plans for this election year - perhaps even legally questionable ones.

Kenyn Cureton, FRC's vice president for church ministries, appeared April 22 on Religious Right activist Janet Folger's "Faith2Action" radio program, discussing his organization's plans for mobilizing pastors this year. He may have been a little too frank.

During the discussion, Folger mentioned that members of her church were thinking of voting for U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The idea that another Christian might dare to disagree with Folger on politics was apparently too much for her to bear.

Glenn Greenwald: Brian Williams' "response" to the military analyst story

It has now been more than ten days since the New York Times exposed the Pentagon's domestic propaganda program involving retired generals and, still, not a single major news network has even mentioned the story to their viewers, let alone responded to the numerous questions surrounding their own behavior. This steadfast blackout occurs despite the fact that the Pentagon propaganda program almost certainly violates numerous federal laws; both Democratic presidential candidates sternly denounced the Pentagon's conduct; and Congressional inquiries are already underway, all of which forced the Pentagon to announce that it suspended its program.

Digby: A Member In Good Standing

Even before the Iraq invasion, I used to do a ton of writing about some of the wackier neocon loons like Laurie Mylroie. I had been aware of her even before 9/11. She was a Saddam obsessive who, like Chalabi, had gotten the attention of some very influential neocons and had been welcome in their innermost circles. Right after the attacks she was on PBS peddling the "Saddam masterminded 9/11" stuff. When they started beating the drums for the Iraq invasion, it was obvious that she was at the table.

How Europe avoided our mess

By Robert Kuttner | April 30, 2008

THE FEDERAL RESERVE is expected to decide today whether to cut interest rates yet again. But the Fed is about out of tricks, and leaks suggest that the rate cut will be small and the last one for some time.

Though the Fed has cut short-term rates from 5.25 percent last September to the current 2.25 percent, credit costs to long-term borrowers are higher than they were a year ago - because lenders fear increased inflation. Some of this is the Fed's own doing. Its cheap-money policy has weakened the dollar, raising prices of imported commodities.

Many credit markets are still frozen for lack of investor confidence - something that low interest rates cannot bring back. Losses continue to mount to the balance sheets of banks that made foolish speculative investments, causing credit to contract further.

None of this had to happen. The credit crisis, which is sapping America's economic strength, was the result of an almost religious belief in deregulation whose excesses are now coming home to roost.

Before Fossil Fuels, Earth's Minerals Kept Carbon Dioxide In Check

ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2008) — Over millions of years carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been moderated by a finely-tuned natural feedback system-- a system that human emissions have recently overwhelmed. A joint University of Hawaii / Carnegie Institution study published in the advance online edition of Nature Geoscience links the pre-human stability to connections between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the breakdown of minerals in the Earth's crust. While the process occurs far too slowly to have halted the historical buildup of carbon dioxide from human sources, the finding gives scientists new insights into the complexities of the carbon cycle.

Paul Krugman: McCain the destroyer

One of George W. Bush’s lesser but still important talents is his uncanny ability to destroy peoples’ reputations: from John DiIulio to Michael Mukasey, well-regarded figures have entered the Bush administration’s doors, only to reemerge soiled and diminished.

Early signs indicate that John McCain may have the same talent.

Cheney's Total Impunity

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; 1:20 PM

How far will Vice President Cheney go to shield himself and his office from public scrutiny?

Last spring, Cheney asserted that he wasn't subject to executive-branch rules about classified information because he wasn't actually part of the executive branch.

Now his office argues that he and his staff are completely immune from congressional oversight. That's right: Completely immune.

The RAND Corporation: America's University of Imperialism

By Chalmers Johnson, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 30, 2008, Printed on April 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/83910/

The RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California, was set up immediately after World War II by the U.S. Army Air Corps (soon to become the U.S. Air Force). The Air Force generals who had the idea were trying to perpetuate the wartime relationship that had developed between the scientific and intellectual communities and the American military, as exemplified by the Manhattan Project to develop and build the atomic bomb.

Soon enough, however, RAND became a key institutional building block of the Cold War American empire. As the premier think tank for the U.S.'s role as hegemon of the Western world, RAND was instrumental in giving that empire the militaristic cast it retains to this day and in hugely enlarging official demands for atomic bombs, nuclear submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers. Without RAND, our military-industrial complex, as well as our democracy, would look quite different.

The McCain Health Plan: Millions Lose Coverage, Health Costs Worsen, and Insurance and Drug Industries Win

By Roger Hickey
April 29th, 2008 - 9:24am ET

Today Arizona Sen. John McCain will deliver what his handlers are hyping as a major address on health care. McCain’s plan is a dangerous fraud.

He wants voters to think he is going after health care cost inflation. In reality, he wants to dismantle the employer-provided system that now covers over 60 percent (or about 158 million) of non-elderly Americans, forcing millions of us who now get fairly decent health insurance on the job to instead buy whatever they can find on the individual market controlled by unregulated and predatory insurance companies. And he would drive health care costs upward, not downward.

Drawing on Experience

Architect R.K. Stewart on building the future of sustainable design

By Sarah van Schagen
25 Apr 2008

If you build it, they will come. But if you build it green, you just may be able to save the planet.

Or so says a recent report, which suggests that green building could help cut North America's greenhouse-gas emissions more quickly and less expensively than any other measure. And word is getting out about the promise of this fast-growing field -- some have even called 2008 the official "Year of Green Building."

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz reveals true cost of war during Kellogg visit

Government accounting flaws, deception hide grim numbers associated with Iraq conflict, claims former World Bank economist

By Matt Golosinski

April 21, 2008 - The United States is bleeding money. That’s the alarm sounded by Joseph Stiglitz in his new book The Three Trillion Dollar War, a narrative that details what he and co-author Linda Bilmes, a Harvard professor of public finance, say are the staggering hidden costs of America’s current Iraq War. He brought his discussion to the Kellogg School on April 18, speaking to a capacity audience from Kellogg and the larger Northwestern University and Evanston communities.

To hear the former World Bank chief economist and senior vice president detail the economic circumstances associated with the conflict, now in its fifth year and costing U.S. taxpayers $12 billion each month, is to enter a realm that rivals the bleak, madcap world conjured by Joseph Heller’s classic satire Catch-22. For Stiglitz, a 2001 Nobel Prize winner, the tragedy of war is compounded by significant — and deliberate, he contends — flaws in how the Bush Administration has accounted for the war’s expenses.

As Election Nears, Supreme Court Upholds Repressive Voter ID Law

By Brennan Center for Justice, AlterNet
Posted on April 28, 2008, Printed on April 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/83785/

Today the Brennan Center for Justice criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold Indiana's voter identification law -- the strictest in the country -- but noted that the decision did not give other states a blank check to block eligible voters. The Brennan Center called on lawmakers across the country to reject similar laws and to pass affirmative legislation protecting the right to vote.

"This year, millions of new voters are surging into the political process. Lawmakers should be encouraging full participation by eligible citizens, not erecting new barriers to voting. This is precisely the wrong message for the Supreme Court to send in this critical year. We shouldn't give partisans an excuse to find ways to keep people from voting," said Michael Waldman, the Brennan Center's Executive Director.

We Must Imagine a Life Without Oil

By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation
Posted on April 29, 2008, Printed on April 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/83548/

It used to be that only environmentalists and paranoids warned about running out of oil. Not anymore. As climate change did over the past few years, peak oil seems poised to become the next big idea commanding the attention of governments, businesses and citizens the world over. The arrival of $119-a-barrel crude and $4-a-gallon gasoline this spring are but the most obvious signs that global oil production has or soon will peak. With global demand inexorably rising, a limited supply will bring higher, more volatile prices and eventually shortages that could provoke -- to quote the title of the must-see peak oil documentary -- the end of suburbia. If the era of cheap, abundant oil is indeed coming to a close, the world's economy and, paradoxically, the fight against climate change could be in deep trouble.

Digby: Following The Script

I wrote this back in the beginning of February:

Chris Matthews personally deplored Bill Clinton when he was president, loathed Al Gore in 2000, hated John Kerry in 2004 and right now despises Hillary Clinton. And there are huge hints of what's to come if Obama does get the nomination, particularly if McCain, the man who Matthews has already said "deserves to be president" becomes the Republican nominee. He has the narrative already primed:

One idea in the notebook was something a congressman had told Mr. Matthews years earlier. The congressman had said that every so often in life, the galloping horse of history comes by and you have to make a decision. “You have to jump on that horse or you miss your turn,” Mr. Matthews had said. “The country is facing that. Do I want to jump on the horse, or not? It’s too tricky. It’s too scary. It’s moving too fast. I’m not ready.”

Digby: Validating Voter Suppression

Following up on D-Day's post below about the Supreme Court's decision on voter ID in Indiana, and particularly his point that Obama is greatly expanding the pool of first time voters who might be affected by this ruling, I would just remind everyone of a couple of things.

First of all, let's not forget that this may be the biggest political land mine the Bush administration has set for Democrats. "Voter fraud" was, you'll remember, at the bottom of the US Attorney scandals and one of their main tools for suppressing the Democratic vote. This is the realization of a very long term plan to chip away at the Voting Rights Act. Republicans, like all aristocrats, know that if enough average people vote, they will lose. Period.

From the Folks Who Brought You the Subprime Mess in the First Place...

By Mary Kane 04/28/2008 09:15AM

The mortgage industry is fighting the Federal Reserve's attempts to put limits on lending following the meltdown of the subprime market, the New York Times reports today.

Keep in mind the industry put up the same kind of battle the last time the Fed tried to expand its powers under the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act, a tool it can use to restrict lending. The lenders won that time around a decade ago, and the Fed wound up applying that law to fewer than one percent of all mortgages, the Times noted.

Had the Fed been more forceful, consumer advocates say, much of the subprime lending abuses that took place and that have led to high default rates could have been avoided.

This time around, the mortgage industry -which apparently lacks any sense of irony - says that new rules on lending will make loans more expensive and restrict credit.

Vulture subprime buyers ramp up purchases

Mon Apr 28, 2008 8:27am EDT

By Jennifer Ablan and Al Yoon - Analysis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The allure of rotting mortgage bonds has grown so strong that Wall Street's vultures have begun picking over their carcasses -- a signal the credit crisis has entered a crucial stage in its vicious cycle.

In the past two months, these intrepid investors have begun betting billions of dollars on a hunch that mortgage security prices have fallen enough. It is a risk few have taken for a year or more as the credit crisis rooted in this very market wreaked havoc in financial markets around the world.

The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke

By Chalmers Johnson, Le Monde diplomatique
Posted on April 26, 2008, Printed on April 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/83555/

The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" -- the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.

As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.

Paul Krugman: Bush Made Permanent

As the designated political heir of a deeply unpopular president — according to Gallup, President Bush has the highest disapproval rating recorded in 70 years of polling — John McCain should have little hope of winning in November. In fact, however, current polls show him roughly tied with either Democrat.

In part this may reflect the Democrats’ problems. For the most part, however, it probably reflects the perception, eagerly propagated by Mr. McCain’s many admirers in the news media, that he’s very different from Mr. Bush — a responsible guy, a straight talker.

But is this perception at all true? During the 2000 campaign people said much the same thing about Mr. Bush; those of us who looked hard at his policy proposals, especially on taxes, saw the shape of things to come.

Frank Rich: How McCain Lost in Pennsylvania

IT’S a nightmare. It’s the Bataan Death March. It’s mutually assured Armageddon. “Both of them are already losing the general to John McCain,” declared a Newsweek columnist last month, predicting that the election “may already be over” by the time the Democrats anoint a nominee.

Not so fast. If we’ve learned any new rule in the 2008 campaign, it’s this: Once our news culture sets a story in stone, chances are it will crumble. But first it must be recycled louder and louder 24/7, as if sheer repetition will transmute conventional wisdom into reality.

When the Pennsylvania returns rained down Tuesday night, the narrative became clear fast. The Democrats’ exit polls spelled disaster: Some 25 percent of the primary voters said they would defect to Mr. McCain or not vote at all if Barack Obama were the nominee. How could the party possibly survive this bitter, perhaps race-based civil war?