A Message for America's Ruling Class: We Told You So

By David Sirota, AlterNet
Posted on December 13, 2008, Printed on December 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112078/

Please, forgive me for saying it. I know it's a tad annoying, but it has to be said to America's ruling class in this humble column space. Because if it's not said here you can bet it won't be said anywhere else in the media, and it needs to be said somewhere on behalf of the millions of citizens who were right.

We told you so.

Chapter 11 Is the Right Road for US Carmakers

By Joseph Stiglitz, The Financial Times
Posted on December 13, 2008, Printed on December 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112456/

The debate about whether or not to bail out the Big Three carmakers has been mischaracterised. It has been described as a package to help the undeserving dinosaurs of Detroit. In fact, a plan to bail out the carmakers would benefit shareholders and bondholders as much as anybody else. These are not the people that need help right now. In fact they contributed to the problem.

Financial markets are supposed to allocate capital and monitor that it is used to good effect. They are supposed to be rewarded when they do that job well, but bear the consequences when they fail. The markets failed. Wall Street's focus on quarterly returns encouraged the short-sighted behaviour that contributed to their own demise and that of America's manufacturing, including the automotive industry. Today, they are asking to escape accountability. We should not allow it.

Frank Rich: GOP attempts to link Obama to Blagojevich 'won't work'

Although Republicans have been doing their best to implicate President-elect Barack Obama in the scandal involving Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's attempt to sell Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder, New York Times columnist Frank Rich believes Obama has nothing to worry about.

In an appearance Wednesday on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, Rich began by suggesting that the extravagantly obscene transcripts of Blagojevich's conversations are "going to be the gift that keeps on giving, I think, for quite a while ... but the attempts to link Obama to it are almost as laughable as the transcripts themselves."

Stimulus Is For Suckers

by James K. Galbraith

President Barack Obama (how sweet those words) has already transformed American politics. The GOP is in crack-up. Obama's coattails in Congress give him leverage, and his vast public support gives him power. There is an economic crisis and a demand for action to deal with it. More than at any time since Ronald Reagan in 1981, what the president wants, he will get.

So, what should he ask for? How big and far reaching should changes to the economy be? Nearly everyone in Obama's circle agrees that more public spending and tax cuts are needed: a "stimulus package." The cautious say $150 billion (about 1 percent of gdp), while the bold and the worried say $500 billion (or just more than 3 percent of gdp). Both focus attention on what is needed in 2009-as if the economic problem can be solved in a year.

That is almost certainly wrong.

Top Democrat Urges "Continuity" for CIA, DNI and Interrogation Policies

by Glenn Greenwald

I'm actually relieved that traveling burdens leave me with little time to write much about this story; then again, it essentially speaks for itself and requires minimal commentary (h/t Mad Dogs):

The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat [Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas] said Tuesday he has recommended that President-elect Barack Obama keep the country's current national intelligence director and CIA chief in place for some time to ensure continuity in U.S. intelligence programs during the transition to a new administration. . . .

In an interview, Reyes said he believes that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden should be kept in their posts. Reyes believes they should stay for at least six months, but said the time frame is ultimately a decision Obama must make.

Welcome, Conservatives!

By Rick Perlstein
December 9th, 2008 - 1:47pm ET

Ideology is a supple instrument, especially in the hands of conservatives. We know, all of us, in our bones, that the most bedrock principle in the conservative firmament is that low taxes are always and everywhere good. Except, you know, it was only invented as a bedrock principle the day before yesterday (before then the "principle" was that balance budgets are always and everywhere good; you should hear how the right squealed over JFK's tax cut proposal in 1963!). In England, Tory prime minister Stanley Baldwin responded to the Great Depression by immediately ordering up socialist-style nationalization of industries and capital controls, without a second thought; "small government" simply wasn't a principle baked into the tea cake of British "conservatism."

Who Is To Blame?

Some point to Alan Greenspan. But his hands-off approach to the economy originated with Ayn Rand.

Barrett Sheridan
Newsweek Web Exclusive

It's not easy being Alan Greenspan these days. As the former Federal Reserve chairman, he urged government regulators to take a light touch while banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers buried themselves—and the economy more generally—under a mountain of debt. Now that his reputation is plummeting faster than the stock market, he's been forced to admit a "flaw" in his hands-off ideology.

Of course, things look entirely different to members of "free-market advocacy groups," as they like to be called. One such group is the Ayn Rand Institute, named after the matriarch of the movement, whose antigovernment and anti-regulation views are embodied in her best-selling novels "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Indeed, Greenspan himself was a friend of Rand's, and a devotee of her extreme free-market philosophy, known as Objectivism. NEWSWEEK's Barrett Sheridan spoke with the head of the Ayn Rand Institute, Dr. Yaron Brook, about why he defends free markets while much of the rest of the world has turned away from them, and what he thinks of Greenspan today.

5 Disastrous Decisions That Got Us into This Economic Mess

By Joseph Stiglitz, Vanity Fair
Posted on December 11, 2008, Printed on December 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/111709/

There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history -- a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it's crucial to get the history straight.

What were the critical decisions that led to the crisis? Mistakes were made at every fork in the road -- we had what engineers call a "system failure," when not a single decision but a cascade of decisions produce a tragic result. Let's look at five key moments.

Watchdog group: Depth of Bush failures surprised even us

With the Bush administration about to leave office after reaching record-setting disapproval ratings, the nation might be in the mood for some New Year's resolutions pinpointing mistakes of the last eight years that it never, ever wants to make again.

For example, the country might want to do something about its massive backlogs in various essential government functions -- including 730,000 backlogged patent applications, 760,000 Social Security disability claims, and 806,000 Veterans Affairs disability claims.

Thomas Frank: Rent-a-Womb Is Where Market Logic Leads

Surrogate motherhood raises troubling issues.

By THOMAS FRANK

At long last, our national love affair with the rich is coming to a close. The moguls whose exploits we used to follow with such fascination, it now seems, plowed the country into the ground precisely because of the fabulous rewards that were showered on them.

Massive inequality, we have learned, isn't the best way to run an economy after all. And when you think about it, it's also profoundly ugly.

Some people haven't received the memo, though. Take Alex Kuczynski, author of the New York Times Magazine cover story for Nov. 30, which tells how she went about hiring another woman to bear her child.

US auto rescue - a society health check

By Julian Delasantellis

During the summer, a local car dealer, eschewing the standard offers by his ilk of "free balloons for the kiddies, and all the franks you can eat", offered those taking a test drive in one of the dealership's new cars shares of stock in either Ford or General Motors, as the ad put it, in "America's great car companies".

I wasn't looking at a car back then, and even if I had been, I think I would have gone to the dealers offering the barbecued hot dogs instead of the stock shares. Now, it doesn't really matter. Both the franks of summer and the stock shares currently share a similar fate, in that they have degenerated from being items of at least some value to now being absolute excreta.

The first 100 days - or the last 100

By Ira Chernus

Looking back on Barack Obama's first post-election interview with 60 Minutes, no one should be surprised that he admitted he's reading about Franklin D Roosevelt's first 100 days in office. In fact, the president-elect - evidently taking no chances - is reportedly reading two books: Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope and Jean Edward Smith's FDR. As he told 60 Minutes, his administration will emulate FDR's "willingness to try things and experiment … If something doesn't work, [we're] gonna try something else until [we] find something that does." That's one reason Obama, like FDR, has claimed that he wants advisors who will offer him a wide variety of viewpoints.

Not too wide, however. In his first 100 days, Roosevelt made it clear that he - like Obama - considered himself a reformer, but distinctly not a radical. He certainly didn't intend to use the economic crisis of 1932 to create a society of full economic equality and social justice. He just wanted to make sure that every American had at least a bare minimum of economic security.

Environment

5 Ways To Green Your Christmas Tree

By Lori Brown, Earth911
posted: 08 December 2008 08:46 am ET

For millions of people, the Christmas tree is an iconic image of the holidays. The smell of pine, the sight of twinkling lights and the colorful packages which lie at its base all conjure up images of warm memories from Christmases past. But unlike the days of yore, today's generations have many options to consider for their holiday tree. This year, make your Christmas tree eco-friendly with five simple tips from the elves at Earth911:

1. Replant or Donate

Want to enjoy the smell and look of a real pine tree without the guilt? This year, purchase a potted living tree from your local nursery that can be replanted after the holidays (climate allowing). A single tree can absorb more than one ton of CO2 over its lifetime. Imagine how much CO2 could be absorbed if we all replanted our trees!

Live in an apartment or don't have a yard to replant a tree? Consider donating your potted tree to your local parks department, church, school or friend.

The Energy Debates: Solar Farms

By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience
posted: 08 December 2008 08:25 am ET

Editor's Note: "The Energy Debates" is a LiveScience series about the pros, cons, policy debates, myths and facts related to various alternative energy ideas. We invite you to join the debate by commenting directly on each article.

The Facts

The amount of energy from the sun that falls on Earth is staggering. Averaged over the entire surface of the planet, roughly each square yard collects nearly as much energy each year as you’d get from burning a barrel of oil. Solar farms seek to harness this energy for megawatts of power.

There are two ways solar power is used to generate electricity. Solar thermal plants — also known as concentrating solar power systems — focus sunlight with mirrors, heating water and producing steam that drives electric turbines, while photovoltaic cells directly convert sunlight to electricity.

Altogether, solar currently makes up less than 1 percent of U.S. energy, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. The nation now has just two large-scale solar thermal systems — one 354-megawatt set of facilities has run continuously in the Mojave Desert in California for about 20 years, and another 64-megawatt plant came online in Nevada last year. When it comes to solar photovoltaics, the largest system in the nation so far is the 14-megawatt plant at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Obama and the liberals

Should liberals be disappointed in Obama so far? Angry? Absurd. They should be thrilled

If it's true that nature abhors a vacuum, then that rather unnatural state of man known as cable television is positively repulsed by one. And so, during this lugubrious interregnum in which millions of us are still coming down from the months-long high of checking Nate Silver and Real Clear Politics nine times a day and dying inside because the polls out of Ohio contradict one another, the political class needs something to chatter about.

It has chosen, for more days running than I'd imagined necessary, the story of the liberal activists who already feel betrayed by Barack Obama. The Politico weighed in Monday with a piece noting that some liberals (actually, it didn't even qualify it with "some"; it just said "liberals") "are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices."

Surface-level ozone pollution set to reduce tree growth 10 percent by 2100

Meta-analysis of decades of experimental evidence highlights worrying trend

Modern day concentrations of ground level ozone pollution are decreasing the growth of trees in the northern and temperate mid-latitudes, as shown in a paper publishing today in Global Change Biology. Tree growth, measured in biomass, is already 7% less than the late 1800s, and this is set to increase to a 17% reduction by the end of the century.

Ozone pollution is four times greater now than prior to the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s; if modern dependence on fossil fuels continues at the current pace, future ozone concentrations will be at least double current levels by the end of this century with the capacity to further decrease the growth of trees.

The study is the first statistical summary of individual experimental measurements of how ozone will damage the productivity of trees, including data from 263 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Princeton-led team finds secret ingredient for the health of tropical rainforests

by Kitta MacPherson

A team of researchers led by Princeton University scientists has found for the first time that tropical rainforests, a vital part of the Earth's ecosystem, rely on the rare trace element molybdenum to capture the nitrogen fertilizer needed to support their wildly productive growth. Most of the nitrogen that supports the rapid, lush growth of rainforests comes from tiny bacteria that can turn nitrogen in the air into fertilizer in the soil.

Until now, scientists had thought that phosphorus was the key element supporting the prodigious expansion of rainforests, according to Lars Hedin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University who led the research. But an experiment testing the effects of various elements on test plots in lowland rainforests on the Gigante Peninsula in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument in Panama showed that areas treated with molybdenum withdrew more nitrogen from the atmosphere than other elements.

Climate change experts 'lose faith' in renewable technology

Specialists less optimistic that wind, solar and hydro power have 'high potential' to solve climate crisis, survey shows

• David Adam in Poznan
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday December 9 2008 15.00 GMT

Support for renewable energy technology to fight global warming is weakening in the face of worldwide economic problems and the true scale of the carbon reductions required, a survey published today has suggested.

Figures presented at the UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland, show that climate experts have less faith in alternative energy than they did 12 months ago.

The survey shows less support for wind energy, solar power, biofuels, biomass and hydrogen energy as technologies with "high potential" to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere over the next 25 years.

Baby Fish in Polluted San Francisco Estuary Waters Are Stunted and Deformed

December 8, 2008

Striped bass in the San Francisco Estuary are contaminated before birth with a toxic mix of pesticides, industrial chemicals and flame retardants that their mothers acquire from estuary waters and food sources and pass on to their eggs, say UC Davis researchers.

Using new analytical techniques, the researchers found that offspring of estuary fish had underdeveloped brains, inadequate energy supplies and dysfunctional livers. They grew slower and were smaller than offspring of hatchery fish raised in clean water.

US faces deep problems, OECD says

By Steve Schifferes
Economics reporter, BBC News

The US economy is still facing "sharp downside risks" to growth, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The Paris-based organisation warns that the credit squeeze has been spreading to other forms of lending, and other financial firms could become insolvent.

It says that another fiscal stimulus could be needed if things get worse.

But it warns that longer term problems, including health care reform and the US budget deficit, must be tackled.

A Bad Auto Bailout Is Cheaper Than Any Bank Bailout

By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on December 9, 2008, Printed on December 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/111029/

Last week, as the clock was ticking on their bleeding books, it looked doubtful that the Senate would vote for the Detroit Three execs’ $34 billion (up from $25 billion two weeks ago) bailout request, or at least not without heavy strings attached. But, after November’s abysmal, 34-year high for monthly job losses' unemployment report on Friday, House Leader, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., threw an auto Hail Mary: a $15 billon bridge loan, extracted from a $25 billion fuel-efficient car program, she had previously vowed not to touch.

Not that this will last until March, as she indicated, but that aside, the remaining sticking point appears to be how an oversight committee, or "car czar" would be implemented. Details are being debated, but, given the scant oversight over the bank bailout process, and the fact that taxpayers are already racking up losses on bank stock purchases, breath-holding isn’t recommended.

Glenn Greenwald: The CIA and its reporter friends: Anatomy of a backlash

The backlash from the "intelligence community" over John Brennan's withdrawal -- which pro-Brennan sources are now claiming was actually forced on Brennan by the Obama team -- continues to intensify. Just marvel at how coordinated (and patently inaccurate) their messaging is, and -- more significantly -- how easily they can implant their message into establishment media outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished "intelligence sources" and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true and/or hearing any divergent views:

The Imperial Transition

44, The Prequel

by Tom Engelhardt

Did you know that the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosts a "Presidential Transition" blog; that the Council on Foreign Relations has its own "Transition Blog: The New Administration"; and that the American University School of Communication has a "Transition Tracker" website? The National Journal offers its online readers a comprehensive "Lost in Transition" site to help them "navigate the presidential handover," including a "short list," offering not only the president-elect's key recent appointments, but also a series of not-so-short lists of those still believed to be in contention for as-yet-unfilled jobs. Think of all this as Entertainment Weekly married to People Magazine for post-election political junkies.

Newsweek features "powering up" ("blogging the transition"); the policy-wonk website Politico.com offers Politico 44 ("a living diary of the Obama presidency"); and Public Citizen has "Becoming 44," with the usual lists of appointees, possible appointees, but -- for the junkie who wants everything -- "bundler transition team members" and "lobbyist and bundler appointees" as well. (For those who want to know, for instance, White House Social Secretary-designate Desiree Roberts bundled at least $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)

A Path to Economic Recovery

Last week’s horrendous jobs report actually understates the nastiness of the recession. Along with the 533,000 jobs lost in November, the government nearly doubled previous job-loss estimates for September and October, bringing total losses thus far in 2008 close to the 2 million mark. In short, we are well into what is shaping up as the worst recession of the postwar era.

Depressingly, the downturn is accelerating despite more than a year of extremely aggressive remedial actions by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, which together have pumped some $2.5 trillion of new liquidity into the financial system, with almost no visible result.

Why isn’t the reflation program more successful?

Recycling Goes From Boom to Bust as Economy Stalls

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 7, 2008

Filed at 8:25 p.m. ET

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Norm Steenstra's budgeting worries mount with each new load of cardboard, aluminum cans and plastics jugs dumped at West Virginia's largest county recycling center.

Faced with a dramatic slump in the recycling market, the director of the Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority has cut 20 of his 24 employees' work week to four days from five, shuttered six of the authority's drop-off stations and is urging residents to hoard their recyclables after informing municipalities with curbside recycling programs that the center will accept only paper until further notice.

A Democratic insider's call for a new presidential secrecy power

Matt Miller, a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress (CAP) and former official in the Clinton OMB, has an Op-Ed in The Washington Post decrying the "kiss-and-tell" books written by top presidential aides once they leave the White House, and he singles out as examples the "tell-all" books written by George Stephanopoulos and Scott McClellan (whose name is repeatedly misspelled throughout the Op-Ed). Miller doesn't merely want former officials who write such books to be stigmatized and scorned, though he does want that

Bush insiders reflect on president's legacy

By Ken Herman
WASHINGTON BUREAU
Sunday, December 07, 2008

WASHINGTON — On a sofa on the second floor of the comfortable Washington home that George W. Bush's career helped put him in, Karl Rove reflects on an administration that didn't turn out as anticipated.

"No. It all turns out different," he said. Not bad, he insists, just different. "We were all smarter before we showed up here."

Much of Washington, Rove said, never accepted Bush as a legitimate president and "acted accordingly."

Obama: Economy to get worse before it improves

Obama says economy to get worse before it gets better; priority is on recovery plan

DAVID ESPO
AP News

Dec 07, 2008 10:15 EST

President-elect Barack Obama said the economy seems destined to get worse before it gets better and he pledged a recovery plan "that is equal to the task ahead."

Obama also said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the survival of the domestic car-making capacity is important, yet any bailout must be "conditioned on an auto industry emerging at the end of the process that actually works."

Scientist says ancient technique cuts greenhouse gas

By Gerard Wynn

POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - An ancient technique of plowing charred plants into the ground to revive soil may also trap greenhouse gases for thousands of years and forestall global warming, scientists said on Friday.

Heating plants such as farm waste or wood in airtight conditions produces a high-carbon substance called biochar, which can store the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and enhance nutrients in the soil.

Banking spins destruction myth: Hoocoodanode?

Just as every society has a creation myth, banking is now busily writing a destruction myth that seeks to explain and soothe in a world torn to its foundations.

The myth, as expounded by regulators, bankers and their various service providers, is that we were hit by a perfect storm, a 1,000-year flood so unpredictable that we can’t possibly be held accountable for it. An act of god, rather than the folly of man.

Or as the excellent financial blog Calculated Risk puts it: “Hoocoodanode?”

Berlusconi plans to use G8 presidency to 'regulate the internet'

Forza Italia?

By Chris Williams
3rd December 2008 16:59 GMT

Italian president and media baron Silvio Berlusconi said today that he would use his country's imminent presidency of the G8 group to push for an international agreement to "regulate the internet".

Speaking to Italian postal workers, Reuters reports Berlusconi said: "The G8 has as its task the regulation of financial markets... I think the next G8 can bring to the table a proposal for a regulation of the internet."

Frank Rich: The Brightest Are Not Always the Best

IN 1992, David Halberstam wrote a new introduction for the 20th-anniversary edition of “The Best and the Brightest,” his classic history of the hubristic J.F.K. team that would ultimately mire America in Vietnam. He noted that the book’s title had entered the language, but not quite as he had hoped. “It is often misused,” he wrote, “failing to carry the tone or irony that the original intended.”

Halberstam died last year, but were he still around, I suspect he would be speaking up, loudly, right about now. As Barack Obama rolls out his cabinet, “the best and the brightest” has become the accolade du jour from Democrats (Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri), Republicans (Senator John Warner of Virginia) and the press (George Stephanopoulos). Few seem to recall that the phrase, in its original coinage, was meant to strike a sardonic, not a flattering, note. Perhaps even Doris Kearns Goodwin would agree that it’s time for Beltway reading groups to move on from “Team of Rivals” to Halberstam.

Obama to Name Eric Shinseki to Head Veterans Affairs

By Julianna Goldman

Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama will name former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki to head the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“General Shinseki is exactly the right person who is going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home,” Obama said during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” parts of which aired tonight ahead of tomorrow’s broadcast.

Shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Shinseki told Congress it would take several hundred thousand troops to stabilize postwar Iraq, more than then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had estimated.