Destroying What the UAW Built

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, December 17, 2008; A17

In 1949, a pamphlet was published that argued that the American auto industry should pursue a different direction. Titled "A Small Car Named Desire," the pamphlet suggested that Detroit not put all its bets on bigness, that a substantial share of American consumers would welcome smaller cars that cost less and burned fuel more efficiently.

The pamphlet's author was the research department of the United Auto Workers.

Secretary of Saving the World

Tim Geithner's daunting to-do list at the Treasury Department.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008, at 6:49 AM ET

U.S. Treasury Secretary nominee Tim GeithnerConfidential sources have passed on to me a January to-do list apparently penned by Timothy Geithner, the New York Fed chief tapped to serve as President-elect Barack Obama's treasury secretary:

1. Find new house in D.C.
2. Fix unholy mess that is Wall Street.
3. Ditto for Securities and Exchange Commission.
4. Restore faith in global finance system.
5. Housing?

Obey: U.S. falling into 'massive hole'

By DAVID ROGERS

As Democrats move closer to taking command in Washington, there is growing alarm and anger in the party over the economy Barack Obama will inherit and the huge cost incurred after months of stalemate between Congress and President Bush over how to respond.

Thursday night, the White House was hoping to announce — possibly as early as Friday — plans to stave off bankruptcies in the auto industry by using available Treasury funds, a decision favored by Democrats. But Congress and President Bush remain at loggerheads over any larger fiscal stimulus package — even after leading economists in both parties have urged action.

Schapiro Taking SEC’s Reins Shows Regulator Dodged Cox Critics

By Alison Fitzgerald and Jesse Westbrook

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Mary Schapiro has escaped the criticism that followed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox as subprime mortgage securities brought down investment banks and Bernard Madoff was charged with a $50 billion fraud buffeting investors around the world.

The 53-year-old head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, who was nominated yesterday by President-elect Barack Obama to succeed Cox, earned a reputation for political independence during almost three decades in public service, David Martin, co-head of the corporate and securities practice at Washington-based Covington & Burling, said in an interview.

Cox "Worked to Dismantle The SEC," Says Commission Vet

By Zachary Roth - December 19, 2008, 1:32PM

There's no longer much debate about the fact that the SEC badly slipped up by failing to catch Bernard Madoff's alleged "$50 billion ponzi scheme." Even commission chair Chris Cox lamented "multiple failures over at least a decade" in the matter. And yesterday President-elect Barack Obama declared that the commission had "dropped the ball."

But it's also becoming clear that the Madoff failures didn't arise out of nowhere. In recent years, particularly under Cox, a former California GOP congressman, the SEC has pursued a policy of de-emphasizing enforcement, part of the broader anti-regulatory philosophy of the Bush years -- helping to make Madoff, and perhaps others like him, possible.

Commentary: Bush makes a farewell tour. Good riddance

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

We've been treated to a real spectacle this week as President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney limped into the home stretch of their Magical History Tour, employing distortions, half-truths and untruths in a final, desperate attempt to pervert or somehow prevent history from judging them accurately.

The president journeyed to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., to try to polish his legacy with a rambling 15-minute speech that laid out his many glorious achievements of the last eight years for a captive military audience.

Media Matters Action Network acquires MediaTransparency.org from Cursor, Inc.

Today, Media Matters Action Network and Cursor, Inc. jointly announced the sale of Cursor, Inc.'s website MediaTansparency.org to Media Matters Action Network. Together they released the following statements:

“This sale is a win-win for both parties,” said Rob Levine, president of Cursor, Inc. “We've been trying for some time to institutionalize our organization and websites but have unfortunately been unable to raise the funds necessary to carry on our labor-intensive tasks. As the primary tool for tracking the funding of conservative organizations and their representatives who appear in the media, MediaTansparency.org is an excellent fit for Media Matters as they continue to expand their efforts to hold the media accountable.”

Bush's Legacy: Conservative Failure (2)

By Rick Perlstein

Created 12/19/2008 - 1:54pm

On Tuesday I wrote in the first part of this series on George Bush's conservative failure legacy [1] that it all follows from a single utterance, from Ronald Reagan upon his inauguration on January 20, 1981; "Government is not the solution; government is the problem."

Easy to see how the fallacy plays itself out the issues I reviewed earlier this week: rotting infrastructure and E. coli conservatism. It goes, however, much deeper than that: to issues of the soul. That's what I've been writing about here most of all these past twenty months.

The Fed and the Treasury Need to Come Clean About Where The Money Is Going

By Nomi Prins, The Nation
Posted on December 20, 2008, Printed on December 20, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/114326/

Three months ago, the country was galled by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's offhand request that taxpayers hand over billions to a tanking financial sector with no strings attached. Lawmakers keen on salvaging the bailout rushed to add amendments intended to ensure proper oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The bill that passed established a Congressional Oversight Panel, a tiny, underresourced but committed watchdog team that on December 10 issued its first report in the form of Questions About the $700 Billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Funds. The panel wrote, "We are here to ask the questions that we believe all Americans have a right to ask: who got the money, what have they done with it, how has it helped the country, and how has it helped ordinary people?"

No Justice for the African-Americans Targeted by White Vigilantes After the Katrina Flooding

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on December 20, 2008, Printed on December 20, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/114286/

In the days after Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana and Mississippi, the bodies of African American men began to turn up on the streets. But these weren't the bloated corpses of drowned Gulf residents whose images were beamed around the world. Instead, their nameless bodies contained bullet holes, slain at the hands of persons unknown.

A number of these killings took place in the community of Algiers Point, a small, isolated place west of the Mississippi and a "white enclave" in a largely African American area. Situated between the Lower Ninth Ward and the rescue point for so those who were trying to flee, a band of residents there responded to accounts of post-hurricane looting by arming themselves to the teeth and going out in search of criminals, lynch-mob style.

US military 'to defy' Iraqi pact

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - United States military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

The scheme to engage in chicanery in labeling US troops represents both open defiance of an agreement which the US military has never accepted and a way of blocking president-elect Barack Obama's proposed plan for withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.

Obama names Holdren, Lubchenco to science posts

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named Harvard physicist John Holdren and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to top science posts, signaling a change from Bush administration policies on global warming that were criticized for putting politics over science.

Both Holdren and Lubchenco are leading experts on climate change who have advocated forceful government response. Holdren will become Obama's science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Lubchenco will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees ocean and atmospheric studies and does much of the government's research on global warming.

Holdren also will direct the president's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Joining him as co-chairs will be Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Eric Lander, a specialist in human genome research.

Obama to financial sector: More regulation is coming

By Kevin G. Hall and Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled Thursday that he plans to put Wall Street on a tighter leash, saying that he'll soon unveil plans to intensify and perhaps restructure regulation of the financial sector.

"We have been asleep at the switch," Obama said at a news conference in Chicago, where he unveiled his selection of Mary Schapiro, a longtime regulator, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees finance.

Paul Krugman: The Madoff Economy

The revelation that Bernard Madoff - brilliant investor (or so almost everyone thought), philanthropist, pillar of the community - was a phony has shocked the world, and understandably so. The scale of his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme is hard to comprehend.

Yet surely I'm not the only person to ask the question: How different, really, is Madoff's tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?

The financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of America's income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And it's not just a matter of money: The vast riches achieved by those who managed other people's money have had a corrupting effect on our society as a whole.

Replicating Milgram: Researcher finds most will administer shocks when prodded by 'authority figure'

Nearly 50 years after one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a social psychologist has found that people are still just as willing to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks to others when urged on by an authority figure.

Abrupt Climate Shifts May Come Sooner, Not Later

Rising Seas, Severe Drought, Could Come in Decades, Says U.S. Report

San Francisco-- The United States could suffer the effects of abrupt climate changes within decades—sooner than some previously thought--says a new government report. It contends that seas could rise rapidly if melting of polar ice continues to outrun recent projections, and that an ongoing drought in the U.S. west could be the start of permanent drying for the region. Commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the report was authored by experts from the U.S. Geological Survey, Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and other leading institutions. It was released at this week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Glenn Greenwald: Demands for War Crimes Prosecutions Are Now Growing in The Mainstream

For obvious reasons, the most blindly loyal Bush followers of the last eight years are desperate to claim that nobody cares any longer about what happened during the Bush administration, that everyone other than the most fringe, vindictive Bush-haters is eager to put it all behind us, forget about it all and, instead, look to the harmonious, sunny future. That's natural. Those who cheer on shameful and despicable acts always want to encourage everyone to forget what they did, and those who commit crimes naturally seek to dismiss demands for investigations and punishment as nothing more than distractions and vendettas pushed by those who want to wallow in the past.

Surprisingly, though, demands that Bush officials be held accountable for their war crimes are becoming more common in mainstream political discourse, not less so. The mountain of conclusive evidence that has recently emerged directly linking top Bush officials to the worst abuses -- combined with Dick Cheney's brazen, defiant acknowledgment of his role in these crimes (which perfectly tracked Bush's equally defiant 2005 acknowledgment of his illegal eavesdropping programs and his brazen vow to continue them) -- is forcing even the reluctant among us to embrace the necessity of such accountability.

Bush's Legacy: Conservative Failure (1)

By Rick Perlstein

Created 12/16/2008 - 2:53pm

"History will treat me well," Winston Churchill, at the nadir of his public reputation, is said to have once confidently proclaimed. "How do you know?" his interlocutor came back. "Because," Churchill concluded, "I intend to write it."

Now, our president surely could not write his way out of a sopping wet paper bag, but that's not to say he doesn't grasp the Churchillian impulse. Rewriting history has been the substance of his presidency in recent weeks—and, with a major American Enterprise Institute address planned for Thursday on "Building a Foundation for the Future, with a specific focus on domestic policy initiatives," we can expect to hear more.

Glenn Greenwald: Committing war crimes for the "right reasons"

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat has a post today -- "Thinking About Torture" -- which, he acknowledges quite remarkably, is the first time he has "written anything substantial, ever, about America's treatment of detainees in the War on Terror." He's abstained until today due to what he calls "a desire to avoid taking on a fraught and desperately importantly (sic) subject without feeling extremely confident about my own views on the subject."

I don't want to purport to summarize what he's written. It's a somewhat meandering and at times even internally inconsistent statement. Douthat himself characterizes it as "rambling" -- befitting someone who appears to think that his own lack of moral certainty and borderline-disorientation on this subject may somehow be a more intellectually respectable posture than those who simplistically express "straightforward outrage."

The Torture Report

Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

Pension Funds Collapse: The End of Retirement?

By Shamus Cooke, Information Clearing House
Posted on December 19, 2008, Printed on December 19, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/113981/

Unless things change fast, human history will show that the phenomenon of "retirement" was limited to one generation. After World War II, when European and Japanese economies stood in tatters, American capitalism could fulfill "the American dream," since there was little foreign competition to speak of. For the first time ever, workers were promised that -- after working thirty or so years -- they would be able to securely retire. That was largely the case ... for one generation.

The second generation is having a devastating reality check. 2008 was supposed to be a watershed year for retirement: it was the first year that the baby-boomers turned 62, and the retirement frenzy was to begin (since people could begin to draw on their social security benefits). Early in the year, however, a study was conducted that found one-fourth of these boomers were delaying retirement (only the baby-boomers who were actually able to plan for retirement were studied). The economy has since nosedived, and many more retirements are being delayed. The unfortunate reality is that many who planned on retiring will work until the grave, joining the millions of other baby-boomers who never had such dreams.

Why such drastic action? The Fed is utterly petrified

After 18 months firing blanks, US policymakers have turned to printing money. Convention has gone out the window

Larry Elliott
The Guardian, Thursday 18 December 2008

During the decade leading up to the crash of 2007, some of us warned that excessive lending by reckless banks was an accident waiting to happen. We were told not to be so silly. The gods of the financial markets knew what they were doing.

When the global financial system seized up in August of that year, we said there was a risk of an economic pandemic that might plunge the world's economy into a dangerous tailspin. This was greeted with derision. The system was robust, we were told. Economies were well-placed to withstand any problems, we were told. The problem would be contained because policymakers had matters in hand, we were assured.

EPA should pursue cumulative risk assessment of phthalates and other chemicals

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should examine whether combined exposures to chemicals known as phthalates could cause adverse health effects in humans, says a new report from the National Research Council. In addition, this analysis, called a cumulative risk assessment, should consider other chemicals that could potentially cause the same health effects as phthalates, instead of focusing on chemicals that are similar in structure, which is EPA's current practice. Furthermore, EPA should consider using the recommended approach for future cumulative risk assessments on other kinds of chemicals.

Phthalates are used in a wide variety of consumer products, such as cosmetics, medical devices, children's toys, and building materials. In light of concerns, the European Union and the United States have passed legislation that restricts the concentrations of several phthalates in children's toys, and the European Union has also banned several phthalates from cosmetics. EPA asked the Research Council to recommend whether it should conduct a cumulative risk assessment for phthalates, and if so, how it should be framed. Accordingly, the National Research Council report is not a comprehensive profile on the health effects of phthalates.

The Top Ten Ethics Scandals of 2008

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released its year-end list of the "top" 10 ethics scandals of 2008. Why isn't the recent criminal complaint against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on the list? Well, for one, it's not a Washington-centered problem. But Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, adds that while the Blagojevich case may be the flavor of the week right now, she thinks the scandals on her administration's list will have more of an impact in the long run.

New ban imposed on regulating global warming gases

By DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 18, 7:32 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is trying to make sure in its final days that federal air pollution regulations will not be used to control the gases blamed for global warming.

In a memorandum sent Thursday, outgoing Environmental Protection Agency Administratorcarbon dioxide emissionscoal-fired power plants and other facilities. Stephen Johnson sets an agency-wide policy prohibiting controls on from being included in air pollution permits for

The decision could give the agency a legal basis for issuing permits that increase global warming pollution until the incoming Obama administration can change it, a process that would require a lengthy rulemaking process.

Patrick Fitzgerald's inconvenient truths of distraction

There is not now, nor has there been for some time, any public notion that Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is anything but a cretinous worm, besides, that is, a bumbling sociopath.

But it could also be that his archnemesis, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, has precipitously tried to break new legal ground in prosecuting the governor's durable human failings under the statutory guise of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud.

Because, as a growing number of news analyses have recently pointed out, in the United States it is not illegal to be a moron, not even a disgracefully undisguised moron in possession of a constitutional office of former -- very former -- public trust.

THE TANGLED US-IRAN KNOT, Part 5: Iran's power rooted in Shi'ite ties

By Gareth Porter

PART 1: Change or deja vu? Obama divides Iran
PART 2: Iran urges Obama to start talks - now
PART 3: Economy, ties with West key to polls
PART 4: Is a US-Iran deal on the Middle East possible?

TEHRAN - As president-elect Barack Obama's national security team assesses the challenge of Iran's role in the Middle East, it confronts a paradox: Iran is seen as having ambitions of regional hegemony, but it lacks the military power normally associated with such a role.

That paradox is explained by the fact that Iran's position in the Middle East depends to a significant degree on its cultural, spiritual and political ties with other Shi'ite populations and movements in the region. That characteristic of Iranian foreign policy, which Iranian officials and think-tank specialists emphasized in interviews with this writer, poses some unique problems for the United States in opposing Iranian influence in the region

Obama and the new Latin America

By Pepe Escobar

SAO PAULO - Even before its Lincolnesque inauguration, the Barack Obama presidency and Latin America already seem to be on a collision course.

This Tuesday, in a groundbreaking, wide-ranging, 33-country Latin American and Caribbean summit coordinated by the Brazilian government, Raul Castro - in his first trip abroad since taking over from Fidel in 2006 - saw Cuba accepted as the 23rd member of the Group of Rio political forum, a body created in 1986 to promote Latin American cooperation.

U.N. Climate Change Conference considers ancient soil replenishment technique in battle against global warming

Writer: Terry Marie Hastings, 706/542-5941, thasting@uga.edu
Contact: Christoph Steiner, 706/542-3821, csteiner@engr.uga.edu

Dec 17, 2008, 09:57

Athens, Ga. - Former inhabitants of the Amazon Basin enriched their fields with charred organic materials-biochar-and transformed one of the earth's most infertile soils into one of the most productive. These early conservationists disappeared 500 years ago, but centuries later, their soil is still rich in organic matter and nutrients. Now, scientists, environmental groups and policymakers forging the next world climate agreement see biochar not only as an important tool for replenishing soils, but as a powerful tool for combating global warming.

Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering, was a major contributor to the biochar proposal that was submitted by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification last week at the United Nations Climate Change Conference meeting in Poland. The new climate change agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Glenn Greenwald: Prostitution v. War Crimes: The Real Moral Offense

In October, the extremely pro-war, neoconservative New York Sun ceased operations, and its journalists are now finding a warm and welcoming home, appropriately and revealingly enough, at The New Republic. Sun reporter Eli Lake was quickly hired as a TNR Contributing Editor (where he now "exposes" and excoriates "the Left" for its sinister "solidarity" with "Islamic supremacist insurgents" in Iraq, such as shoe-throwing reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi), and yesterday, TNR published a finger-wagging sermon by former Sun reporter Jacob Gershman, who vigorously objects that Eliot Spitzer is allowed to appear in public and even write a Slate column so soon after exposure of his grave and monumental sin of hiring adult prostitutes.

Gershman's column -- entitled: "Why Eliot Spitzer's attempt to be taken seriously again won't work--and doesn't deserve to" -- illustrates how warped our public morality has become. As a result of his minor, consensual, victimless, private crime (not because of his actual sin of hypocrisy as a former persecutor of prostitution rings), Spitzer was forced to resign as Governor, had intimate details of his sex life voyeuristically dissected by hordes of people driven by titillation masquerading as moral disgust, and was as humiliated and disgraced as a political figure can be. But apparently, that's not even close to enough.

MSNBC's Maddow: Did America Get Punked On the Bailout? Yes...Now Here's What to Do.

By David Sirota
December 17th, 2008 - 1:49pm ET

---

I appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show last night to discuss my latest newspaper column about the bailout. You can watch the clip here. Rachel's first question really is the question of our time: Did we get punked? As progressive bailout critics have been saying since the current Wall Street bailout was first proposed, the answer is yes.

As the Minneapolis Federal Reserve reports, the major claims about a credit crisis that justified Congress cutting a trillion-dollar blank check to Wall Street were demonstrably false. And new data and reports show they remain demonstrably false.

Bright Future: LEDs Revolutionize Lighting

By Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director

posted: 17 December 2008 11:11 am ET

LEDs (light emitting diodes) are similar to regular light bulbs but have no filament. Their light is generated by electrons moving through a semiconductor material. They produce more light, less heat, and consume less energy than other types of lighting. Credit: NIST

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LEDs (light emitting diodes) are similar to regular light bulbs but have no filament. Their light is generated by electrons moving through a semiconductor material. They produce more light, less heat, and consume less energy than other types of lighting. Credit: NIST

In The Water Cooler, Robert Roy Britt takes a daily look at what people are talking about in the world of science and beyond. [Water Cooler Archive]

You might have noticed energy-efficient LED lights replacing the traditional holiday bulb lights on many store shelves this year. They're not cheap, but the sales pitch is they save energy, cut the risk of fire and last practically forever.

By all accounts, LED lighting has a very bright future, and the future is arriving rapidly as utility companies tout the benefits of LEDs, and individuals and businesses make the switch both for environmental reasons and to save money.

Thomas Frank: Welcome to the Blagosphere

The governor practiced market-based management.

In little more than a month, the mainstream media tells us, the city of Chicago has plunged from the proud heights of victory to the depths of shame. Barack Obama, its favorite son, captured the presidency with high-minded talk of reform, only to have Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, turn the nation's stomach with foul-mouthed dreams -- as alleged in an FBI affidavit -- of selling off the president-elect's Senate seat.

So why are some of my liberal friends in Chicago giddy? Because they've always disliked Mr. Blagojevich, a man who owes his career partly to family connections and partly to being the lesser of two evils. Because they have no use for some of the other bright lights of local Democratic politics -- from patronage hacks to the family that managed to pass the presidency of the Cook County Board from father to son. Because they hope U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald goes right on indicting, even if the biggest trophies on his wall turn out to be local Democrats.

Are Power and Compassion Mutually Exclusive?

The fact that many cultures emphasize the concept of “noblesse oblige” (the idea that with great power and prestige come responsibilities) suggests that power may diminish a tendency to help others. Psychologist Gerben A. van Kleef (University of Amsterdam) and his colleagues from University of California, Berkeley, examined how power influences emotional reactions to the suffering of others.

A group of undergraduates completed questionnaires about their personal sense of power, which identified them to the researchers as either being high-power or low-power. The students were then randomly paired up and had to tell their partner about an event which had caused them emotional suffering and pain. Their partners then rated their emotions after hearing the story. In addition, the researchers were interested in seeing if there were physical differences in the way high-power people and low-power people responded to others’ suffering; specifically they wanted to test if high-powered individuals would exhibit greater autonomic emotion regulation [or respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity]. When we are faced with psychological stress, our RSA reactivity increases, resulting in a lower heart rate and a calmed, relaxed feeling. To measure RSA reactivity and heart rates, all of the participants were connected to electrocardiogram (ECG) machines during the experiment.

Japan as ground zero for no-waste lifestyle

Three environmental models: Toyota's Prius factory, an electronics recycler, and a village that recycles 80 percent of its trash.

By Amelia Newcomb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 16, 2008 edition

Kamikatsu, Japan - Tucked almost imperceptibly into cedar-blanketed mountains an hour's winding drive from the nearest metropolis, Kamikatsu seems an unlikely spot for a revolution.

But try to throw even a candy wrapper away here, and it's quickly apparent that residents are radically reshaping their relationship to the environment.

THE TANGLED US-IRAN KNOT, Part 4: Is a US-Iran deal on the Middle East possible?

By Gareth Porter

PART 1: Change or deja vu? Obama divides Iran
PART 2: Iran urges Obama to start talks - now
PART 3: Economy, ties with West key to polls

TEHRAN - Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think-tank analysts is, "Yes, but ... "

The Iranian national security establishment has long salivated over the prospect of an agreement with Washington. But there's a big difference between Iranian and US ideas of what such an accord would look like.

THE ROVING EYE: The emperor gets the boot

By Pepe Escobar

In the end, President George W Bush ended up finding his weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Munthather al-Zaidi, the 28-year-old Baghdad correspondent for the independent, anti-occupation, anti-sectarian, Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya satellite channel who sent Bush a "goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people" in the form of a flying pair of size 10s and instantly achieved folk hero status all over the Arab nation and across "the Internets" (copyright Bush), with a simple, graphically impeccable gesture brought to a close not only Bush's ultra-secretive last stop in Iraq (a press conference with sometime US puppet Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki) but managed to sum up the whole Iraqi tragedy. No wonder he has been dubbed “the new Saladin” across the Arab world.

Stability is Destabilizing

By Randall Wray - December 16, 2008, 7:28PM

I do not think that Paul Krugman should apologize for recognizing the canary in the coal mine back in 1997-98. Hyman Minsky saw this coming as early as the late 1950s. To the extent that we really did have a "great moderation", it would have fueled the longer-run transition toward fragility that had been developing over the entire post-war period. Indeed, 1996 saw for the first time ever persistent private sector deficit spending (taken as a whole, American firms and households were spending more than their incomes). This continued without let-up through to 2008 (with a brief respite during the depths of the Bush recession). So I do think there was something to the claims about a "great moderation"--in that there was an absence of fear that helped to generate debt-fueled bubble after debt-fueled bubble--although those promulgating these claims never understood the true ramifications.

An Empire of Sentimentality

I think this kind of sentiment from Dave Dilegge at the COIN hotspot Small Wars Journal reflects some dangerous trends in American culture:

Ain’t this just dandy and a pisser to boot - those who have strived - and died - to ensure Iraq’s freedom and future place as a responsible partner on the world scene are brushed aside for the latest bash Bush melodrama and a ‘real hero’ is on the scene - Iraqi who threw shoes at George Bush hailed as hero via The Times. Plenty on this elsewhere, on the dailies and wires - most likely more tomorrow - meanwhile back in the real word… People care, they die or suffer serious wounds, and their contributions are tossed aside for this. A damn shame it is, indeed.

Foreign Auto Makers Won Billions in Government Subsidies

To hear Southern Republicans tell the story, the financial burdens facing Detroit’s automakers are self-made troubles to be settled by the laws of Adam-Smith capitalism.

“We don’t think it is the role of government to intervene,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told the Fox Business Network last week. “We need to let the market and the laws work the way they are already in place.”

Report: Bush masked cost of wars that could top $1.7 trillion

Even if Barack Obama draws down troops in Iraq like he's promised, a new report finds the US is on pace to have spent nearly $2 trillion on military operations including Iraq and Afghanistan over the next decade.

The nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found that the $687 billion spent so far on Iraq has cost the US more than every conflict aside from World War II. With the $184 billion in Afghanistan, the two main conflicts of the war on terror have proved to be 50 percent more expensive than Vietnam.

Is the Exxon Valdez spill site finally clean?

Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill - perhaps the most notorious human-caused environmental disaster in history.

But, according to the latest survey of Prince William Sound in Alaska - where the oil tanker foundered in 1989 - very little oil remains and most of what does is not in a form or location that can harm animals, plants or humans.

Tomgram: Nick Turse, Back to the Future with The Complex?

Once upon a time, Detroit was known as "the arsenal of Democracy" because the city's big three automakers converted so quickly from turning out civilian vehicles to producing the tanks and trucks that "helped win World War II" (and then "lent their technology to aircraft and ship manufacturing" as well). Now, the same three companies are simply beggars. Whether they are capable today of transforming themselves, as an Obama administration might wish, into an "arsenal for a green future" is certainly an open question. TomDispatch regular Nick Turse, author of the groundbreaking book The Complex on the militarization of American daily life, recalls a Cold War era in which many corporations producing the big-ticket items of the consumer economy turned themselves into literal arsenals, churning out weaponry of every sort. Now, with that consumer economy on the skids, he wonders whether civilian companies may again opt to become "arsenals" for the Pentagon. Tom

A Recipe For Corporate Success in Tough Times?

SaladShooters, Adult Diapers, and Tactical Ammo
By Nick Turse

Is it possible that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite business model for our tough economic times: one division that specializes in crock-pots, another in adult diapers, and a third in medium caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter, a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the bottom?

Goldman Sachs reports huge loss

Goldman Sachs has reported a $2.12bn (£1.41bn) quarterly loss, its first since going public in 1999.

The US banking giant's loss for the three months to the end of November was still smaller than had been expected and its shares rose 4% in New York.

During the same period in 2007, Goldman Sachs reported net income of $3.22bn.

Goldman Sachs and rival Morgan Stanley are the only two of Wall Street's original five investment banks still in independent existence.

In September, they changed their status to become bank holding companies, allowing them to take deposits from investors.

The Tangled US-Iran Knot, Part 3: Economy, ties with West key to polls

By Gareth Porter

PART 1: Change or deja vu? Obama divides Iran

PART 2: Iran urges Obama to start talks - now

TEHRAN - The main issue in Iran's June 2009 presidential election is certain to be the country's economic woes, but both candidates will be linking the economy to the issue of relations between Iran and the West, according to Iranian politicians and political analysts.

Based on the bitter internal Iranian politics of the past three years, both President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and whomever is chosen as his opponent are expected to try to pin responsibility for Western financial sanctions on each other. The challenger - expected to emerge from the more moderate camp - will charge that Ahmadinejad has exposed Iran to economic turmoil by mismanaging Iranian relations with Europe, while Ahmadinejad will accuse his foe of conspiring with the West to step up economic sanctions against Iran.

Corrente: Warrantless surveillance "Stellar Wind" data took down Eliot Spitzer. And very nicely timed that was, too...

Mon, 12/15/2008 - 10:51am — lambert

[Nobody seems to have noticed this, so I'll sticky it. I think the "Stellar Wind" story is interesting for many reasons, one of which is that it merges two stories we've followed for some time: warrantless surveillance and The Big Shit Storm. -- lambert]

A throwaway paragraph in Spiky's scoop:

[Under the secret and illegal "Stellar Wind" program of domestic warrantless surveillance,] NSA was also able to access, for the first time, massive volumes of personal financial records—such as credit-card transactions, wire transfers and bank withdrawals—that were being reported to the Treasury Department by financial institutions. These included millions of "suspicious-activity reports," or SARS, according to two former Treasury officials who declined to be identified talking about sensitive programs. (It was one such report that tipped FBI agents to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes.) These records were fed into NSA supercomputers for the purpose of "data mining"—looking for links or patterns that might (or might not) suggest terrorist activity.

Now, that's very, very interesting, isn't it?

The Seven Deadly Deficits

by Mother Jones

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

When president George W. Bush assumed office, most of those disgruntled about the stolen election contented themselves with this thought: Given our system of checks and balances, given the gridlock in Washington, how much damage could be done? Now we know: far more than the worst pessimists could have imagined. From the war in Iraq to the collapse of the credit markets, the financial losses are difficult to fathom. And behind those losses lie even greater missed opportunities.

Put it all together-the money squandered on the war, the money wasted on a housing pyramid scheme that impoverished the nation and enriched a few, and the money lost because of the recession-and the gap between what we could have produced and what we did produce will easily exceed $1.5 trillion. Think what that kind of money could have done to provide health care for the uninsured, to improve our education system, to build green technology...The list is endless.

Glenn Greenwald: Senate Report Links Bush to Detainee Homicides; Media Yawns

The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report issued on Thursday -- which documents that "former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" and "that Rumsfeld's actions were 'a direct cause of detainee abuse' at Guantanamo and 'influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq'" -- raises an obvious and glaring question: how can it possibly be justified that the low-level Army personnel carrying out these policies at Abu Ghraib have been charged, convicted and imprisoned, while the high-level political officials and lawyers who directed and authorized these same policies remain free of any risk of prosecution? The culpability which the Report assigns for these war crimes is vast in scope and unambiguous:

The executive summary also traces the erosion of detainee treatment standards to a Feb,. 7, 2002, memorandum signed by President George W. Bush stating that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the U.S. war with al Qaeda and that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or legal protections.

"The president's order closed off application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment," the summary said.

We Can't Afford a School Privatizer in Obama's Cabinet

By Alfie Kohn, The Nation
Posted on December 15, 2008, Printed on December 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112759/

If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet. -- Linda Darling-Hammond Progressives are in short supply on the president-elect's list of cabinet nominees. When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he'll choose someone who is educationally progressive?

In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month. The thrust of the articles, using eerily similar language, is that we must reject the "forces of the status quo" which are "allied with the teachers' unions" and choose someone who represents "serious education reform."

Racial Extremists Are Infiltrating the Military for the Chance to 'Kill a Brown'

By David Holthouse, Intelligence Report
Posted on December 15, 2008, Printed on December 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112770/

The racist skinhead logged on with exciting news: He'd just enlisted in the United States Army.

"Sieg Heil, I will do us proud," he wrote. It was a June 3 post to AryanWear Forum 14, a neo-Nazi online forum to which "Sobibor's SS," who identified himself as a skinhead living in Plantersville, Ala., had belonged since early 2004. (Sobibor was a Nazi death camp in Poland during World War II).

Let the Banks Fail: Why a Few of the Financial Giants Should Crash

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on December 15, 2008, Printed on December 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112166/

So far, much of Washington’s ad hoc, ham-fisted response to the economic crisis has been based on the dictum that the financial institutions must be prevented from taking their losses.

That should come as no surprise. Big finance’s lobbyists have been all over the "bailout" (it should be bailouts, plural) from the very start, Wall Street pumped piles of cash into the elections — AIG, recipient of tens of billions in taxpayer largesse, ponied up $750,000 for both the Democratic and Republican conventions — and the whole thing’s been designed by "free-market" ideologues who came to Washington directly from Wall Street.

Home values seen losing over $2 trillion during 2008

Mon Dec 15, 7:19 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Homes in the United States have lost trillions of dollars in value during 2008, with nearly 11.7 million American households now owing more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Monday.

U.S. homes are set to lose well over $2 trillion in value during 2008, according to an analysis of recent Zillow Real Estate Market Reports.

Home values declined 8.4 percent year-over-year during the first three quarters of this year, compared to the same period in 2007, the reports showed.

The Pragmatist

By Christopher Hayes
December 10, 2008

In case you haven't heard, Barack Obama is a pragmatist. Everybody agrees on this. Joe Biden, accepting Obama's nod as VP at his unveiling event in Springfield, Illinois, called him a "clear-eyed pragmatist." Describing Obama's rise through Chicago politics, the New York Times stressed his "pragmatic politics," while the Washington Post's David Ignatius refers to "The Pragmatic Obama," and one of Obama's most trusted confidantes, Valerie Jarrett, told USA Today, soon after his election-day victory, "I'm not sure people understand how pragmatic he is. He's a pragmatist. He really wants to get things done."

Obama is clear on this point as well, touting his national security team as "shar[ing] my pragmatism about the use of power" and telling Steve Kroft during his recent 60 Minutes interview that when it comes to economic policy, he doesn't want to "get bottled up in a lot of ideology and 'Is this conservative or liberal?' My interest is finding something that works."

Fair enough. We get it. He's a pragmatist. But just what does that mean? It can't simply be that he's comfortable with compromise, willing to maneuver in the world as it is. That goes without saying. The man was just elected president of the United States. Head-in-the-clouds idealists do not, as a rule, come to control the American nuclear arsenal.

A Better Car-Bailout Plan

The Big Three would bid against one another for bailout money, and only two would get it.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Friday, Dec. 12, 2008, at 12:46 PM ET

---

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. This moment of decision about the auto bailout should be when we summon the courage to reject broken policies, not just to throw more capital at them; use market forces to drive restructuring, not just provide bridge loans; and put in place true market-based pressures, not a veneer of government oversight that will substitute poorly for tough decision-making.

The unfortunate reality is that we are straying further from market-driven principles and moving to an economy that relies on government as benefactor. We have nationalized the financial-services sector and are on the cusp of nationalizing the automotive sector, yet we have failed to demand anything nearly adequate in the form of genuine competition, rule changes, or transparency from the affected firms.

Bill Moyers Journal: Interview with Glenn Greenwald

December 12, 2008

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

For a fellow who's still supposed to be in charge of a country in deep crisis, President Bush has been spending an extraordinary amount of his little remaining time mounting a last-ditch courtship of the media. He's eager to tell us how he would like to be remembered.

[...]

BILL MOYERS: For all the questions put to him about his legacy, however, the press seems strangely uninterested in his controversial treatment of the Constitution and the Rule of Law: torture, surveillance without a warrant, or prisoners of war, the Geneva Convention and the claims the president has made for expanding the power of his office. That unlimited view of authority may well be the centerpiece of his legacy.

So there are plenty of tough questions to be asked about it, and Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer, has been asking them. Visitors to the blogosphere will recognize the name immediately. His blog on Salon.com, "Unclaimed Territory," is one of the most widely read on the internet. His loyal readers describe him as "A blogosphere superstar," and "One of the smartest and most important new voices in politics." And, I would add, journalism.

The new media is his stage. But he's also written two best-sellers: HOW WOULD A PATRIOT ACT? about President Bush and executive power, and this one, A TRAGIC LEGACY, an analysis of the president's record. His most recent is GREAT AMERICAN HYPOCRITES.

Glenn Greenwald, welcome to the JOURNAL.

GLENN GREENWALD: Great to be here, Bill.

Does Obama Understand His Biggest Foreign-Policy Challenge?

The president-elect wants to work with the Pakistani government to "stamp out" terror. It's not nearly that simple.

by Juan Cole

A consensus is emerging among intelligence analysts and pundits that Pakistan may be President-elect Barack Obama's greatest policy challenge. A base for terrorist groups, the country has a fragile new civilian government and a long history of military coups. The dramatic attack on Mumbai by members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Tayiba, the continued Taliban insurgency on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the frailty of the new civilian government, and the country's status as a nuclear-armed state have all put Islamabad on the incoming administration's front burner.

But does Obama understand what he's getting into? In his "Meet the Press" interview with Tom Brokaw on Sunday, Obama said, "We need a strategic partnership with all the parties in the region -- Pakistan and India and the Afghan government -- to stamp out the kind of militant, violent, terrorist extremists that have set up base camps and that are operating in ways that threaten the security of everybody in the international community." Obama's scenario assumes that the Pakistani government is a single, undifferentiated thing, and that all parts of the government would be willing to "stamp out" terrorists. Both of those assumptions are incorrect.

How the American Healthcare System Got That Way

by Tim Costello, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

As Americans respond to President-elect Obama call for town hall meetings on reform the American health care system, an understanding of how that system came to be the way it is can be crucial for figuring out how to fix it.

The American health care system is unique because for most of us it is tied to our jobs rather than to our government. For many Americans the system seems natural, but few know that it originated, not as a well thought out plan to provide for Americans' health, but as a way to circumvent a quirk in wartime wage regulations that had nothing to do with health.

As far back as the 1920s, a few big employers had offered health insurance plans to some of their workers. But only a few: By 1935, only about two million people were covered by private health insurance, and on the eve of World War II there were only 48 job-based health plans in the entire country.

Auto workers union head questions VW subsidies

Why are Republicans Providing a Half a Billion Dollars in Tax Breaks to a Foreign Car Manufacturer in Tennessee But Refusing to Assist American Workers and American Industry? Republican Senators Betray America and Sell Out to Foreign Companies.--BUZZFLASH

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said today that U.S. automobile companies are being put at a disadvantage by government in competing against Volkswagen’s new auto assembly plant in Chattanooga.

The union leader questioned why government leaders in Tennessee are willing to provide assistance to the German-based Volkswagen while the state’s U.S. senators declined to back a federal loan to help the Big Three U.S. car makers.

GOP: 'Action Alert - Auto Bailout'

Posted: Friday, December 12, 2008 8:00 PM by Countdown

Countdown has obtained a memo entitled "Action Alert - Auto Bailout," and sent Wednesday at 9:12am, to Senate Republicans. The names of the sender(s) and recipient(s) have been redacted in the copy Countdown obtained. The Los Angeles Times reported that it was circulated among Senate Republicans. The brief memo outlines internal political strategy on the bailout, including the view that defeating the bailout represents a "first shot against organized labor." Senate Republicans blocked passage of the bailout late Thursday night, over its insistence on an immediate union pay cut. See the entire memo after the jump.

Exclusive: Pentagon Pro-Troop Group Misspent Millions, Report Says

By Noah Shachtman
December 12, 2008 | 4:12:00 PM

A Defense Department project, supposedly designed to support U.S. troops, was used instead to channel millions of dollars to personal friends and allies of its chief. The "America Supports You," or ASY, program was led in a "questionable and unregulated manner," according to a Department of Defense Inspector General report, obtained by Danger Room. At least $9.2 million was "inappropriately transferred" by the project's managers. Much of that money served only to further promote ASY, instead of assisting servicemembers.

In 2004, the office of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set up ASY as a six-month effort to showcase the U.S. public's backing for the troops and their families. "If you're serving overseas, and you watch the mainstream media coverage, sometimes you can't tell if America knows you're there," one official overseeing the program says. America Supports You was seen as a way to counteract that sense.

Economic Crisis Offers Hints of Executive Style

By JACKIE CALMES

CHICAGO — He will not formally take power for almost six weeks, but President-elect Barack Obama is already showing some glimpses of how he will wield it.

Despite his professed resolve to stay at arms length from governance during the transition, the economic crisis has forced him to play a more active role — nowhere more so than in Washington’s scramble to avert the collapse of the Big Three automakers with a federal lifeline.

From here at what an aide called his “mini-White House,” Mr. Obama has been pulling on the levers of power far more than any president-elect in memory, using his new stature to influence events in Congress and the real White House of President Bush and yet limited in his ability — as the collapse of the auto bailout legislation in the Senate showed — to control them.

Fed Could Remake Credit Card Regulations

New Rules Would Ban Retroactive Rate Hikes

By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 14, 2008; F01

The Federal Reserve on Thursday will vote on sweeping reform of the credit card industry that would ban practices such as retroactively increasing interest rates at will and charging late fees when consumers are not given a reasonable amount of time to make payments.

The Fed, which has been considering the proposed changes since May, declined this week to release details of the final draft regulations. But banking officials and consumer advocates said that they do not expect substantial changes before the vote, especially since members of Congress have pressured the Fed not to water down the rules.

Frank Rich: Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich

ROD BLAGOJEVICH is the perfect holiday treat for a country fighting off depression. He gift-wraps the ugliness of corruption in the mirthful garb of farce. From a safe distance outside Illinois, it’s hard not to laugh at the “culture of Chicago,” where even the president-elect’s Senate seat is just another commodity to be bought and sold.

But the entertainment is escapist only up to a point. What went down in the Land of Lincoln is just the reductio ad absurdum of an American era where both entitlement and corruption have been the calling cards of power. Blagojevich’s alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

Bush sneaks through host of laws to undermine Obama

The lame-duck Republican team is rushing through radical measures, from coal waste dumping to power stations in national parks, that will take months to overturn, reports Paul Harris in New York

Paul Harris
The Observer,
Sunday 14 December 2008

After spending eight years at the helm of one of the most ideologically driven administrations in American history, George W. Bush is ending his presidency in characteristically aggressive fashion, with a swath of controversial measures designed to reward supporters and enrage opponents.

By the time he vacates the White House, he will have issued a record number of so-called 'midnight regulations' - so called because of the stealthy way they appear on the rule books - to undermine the administration of Barack Obama, many of which could take years to undo.

Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders

By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.