Up-or-Down Votes

It's taken for granted that a bill may enjoy the support of a majority of the Senate, but it probably won't pass. For most of American history, 51 votes meant success. Slowly but surely, without any discussion or debate, the threshold became 60. Now, 41 senators can simply decide not to let the chamber vote on bills they don't like.

In the context of the health care debate, this is obviously of critical importance. An ambitious, progressive bill could get 51 votes, but that's been deemed inadequate. Republicans will filibuster reform, and the Democratic caucus has 59 votes, not 60. It's left Dems scrambling to figure out how to use the reconciliation process.

Sick and Wrong

How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it

MATT TAIBBI, Posted Sep 03, 2009 11:33 AM

Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

The Skyscraper That Ate a Billion Dollars

Boston's Hancock Tower and the coming commercial real estate crisis.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009, at 7:37 AM ET

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For most of its 34-year life, the Hancock Tower, which looms above its brick neighbors in Boston's Back Bay, has been the sort of place where money comes to be managed and protected. Its tenants include Ernst & Young and the investment firm Highfields Capital. The I.M. Pei-designed sliver of glass doesn't seem like a place where several hundred million dollars can vanish in a few months.

But that's exactly what happened at the 62-story building, now under its fourth owner in six years. In January, an aggressive young wheeler-dealer defaulted on a portion of the building's $1.3 billion mortgage just 24 months after buying it. In March, two firms that had purchased chunks of the tower's second mortgage for pennies on the dollar assumed control, essentially rendering up to $400 million of debt worthless. The Hancock's market value is now about $700 million—half what it appraised for less than two years ago.

Scott Lawlor, the entrepreneur who was forced to concede control of the Hancock Tower, could be called a "poster boy for everything that went wrong," as one well-placed real estate expert put it. But the trim, straightforward executive is more like a whipping boy. For the tale of the Hancock Tower isn't a morality play or an example of a bubble-era rise and fall. Rather, it's an omen. During the credit boom, the same forces that led to $600,000 subprime loans on tract houses in Modesto, Calif., spurred billions of dollars of reckless lending on urban office towers and suburban strip malls. As a result, the nation's offices, hotels, and malls now carry about $3.5 trillion in debt. Three years after the housing market peaked, falling rents and rising defaults—no surprise given the economy has lost 7 million jobs since December 2007—are posing a new threat to the still-fragile banking system and could inflict billions of dollars in fresh losses. The Hancock Tower was one of the first high-profile deals to go sour—but it won't be the last. The Blackstone Group, one of the nation's leading private-equity firms, has written down the value of its mammoth real estate portfolio by an average of 45 percent from the original cost. General Growth Properties, a pioneer of the shopping mall that carried $27 billion in debt, filed for Chapter 11 in April.

Obama expands workers' retirement savings options

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer – Sat Sep 5, 7:35 am ET

WASHINGTON – The government is trying to make it easier for Americans to save for retirement, President Barack Obama said Saturday, as he noted the toll the recession has taken on extra income and savings accounts.

One initiative will allow people to have their federal tax refunds sent as savings bonds. Others are meant to require workers to take action to stay out of an employer-run savings program rather than having to take action to join it.

Chalabi aide: I went from White House to secret U.S. prisoner

By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers

Add to the strange saga of the Bush administration's love-hate relationship with Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi the tale pf Ali Feisal al Lami, who once met with U.S. officials in the White House, then spent nearly a year in secret U.S. detention, accused of helping Iranian-backed militants kidnap and kill American and British soldiers and contractors. During his captivity, Lami claims to have been quizzed by Army Gen. David Petraeus, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

What is the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933?

The Glass-Steagall Act was introduced during the Great Depression by former Treasury Secretary Sen. Carter Glass (D-VA) and Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee Rep. Henry B. Steagall (D-AL).

As one of the first acts of FDR’s New Deal, the legislation segregated commercial banks from securities markets, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and enhanced the regulatory powers of the Federal Reserve over banks.

The Psychology of the Right-Wing's Anti-Government 'Death-Panel' Delusions

By Michael Bader, AlterNet
Posted on September 5, 2009, Printed on September 5, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142439/

A lot of heavyweight thinkers have offered explanations of the irrationality of modern political behavior -- you know, behavior like Medicare recipients at town halls screaming about the evils of government-run health care, or otherwise-reasonable people likening President Barack Obama's plan to Nazi eugenics.

George Lakoff theorizes that conservatives interpret reality through metaphors and meta-narratives modeled after authoritarian family structures.

Drew Westen argues that they interpret facts according to emotional investments in conclusions they already hold, bypassing cortical centers of reason altogether.

These and other analyses are powerful and helpful. But they aren't satisfying to me because they aren't specific enough to account for both the passionate urgency and self-destructiveness of the right-wing rejection of a program that will obviously benefit them.

Rachel Maddow: Her Intelligence is Right

Rachel Maddow will not let former officials dodge responsibility for launching an unnecessary war in Iraq. Why do other journalists?

In her interview with former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on August 31, Maddow demonstrated why she is one of the top journalists in the country. Ridge gave what is now the standard dodge when she asked if he regretted pushing for war with Iraq. "The intelligence was wrong," he said. But Maddow wasn't buying it.

Paul Krugman: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

I. MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH

It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making.

Last year, everything came apart.

(check Krugman's comments on this article here--Dictynna)

Let Citizens United Speak!

Why the Supreme Court should abolish political speech limits on corporations and unions.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Friday, Sept. 4, 2009, at 5:57 PM ET

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When the ACLU and the NRA are on the same side of a Supreme Court case, opposing the majority of so-called "good government" groups, you know something odd is afoot. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to be argued on Sept. 9, two core principles that do not easily lend themselves to compromise run into each other head-on. One is the First Amendment, which has the advantage of constitutional enshrinement along with a huge base of absolutist supporters. The second is the well-reasoned effort to rein in the influence of money in politics, which has the support of editorial boards, civic groups, and those who aspire to a democracy where money does not determine whose political views are heard.

The "Hillary: The Movie Case"—as it's commonly known—poses the following question: During the days before an election, can the federal government prohibit Citizens United, a not-for-profit corporation that received minimal corporate donations, from airing advertisements for a movie that, while critical of Hillary Clinton, does not explicitly tell viewers to vote for or against her. At issue is Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the McCain-Feingold Act). That provision makes it a federal crime for corporations or unions to fund "electioneering communications," defined as broadcast, cable, or satellite communications aired 60 days before a general election or 30 days before a primary election that refer to a clearly identified federal officeholder or candidate.

The Real News About Jobs and Wages -- An Ode to Labor Day

September 4, 2009, 1:54PM

Why aren't we hearing more about the worst job and wage situation since the Great Depression?

The latest employment figures (released this morning) show job losses continuing to grow. According to the payroll survey, job losses are increasing more slowly than in previous months. According to the household survey, they're accelerating -- from 9.4 percent of the workforce in July to 9.7 percent in August. Bottom line: almost one out of six Americans who need a full-time job either can't find one or is working part-time. Meanwhile, wage growth among people who have jobs has just about stopped. The Economic Policy Institute reports that between 2006 and 2008, wages grew at an annualized rate of 4.0%; by contrast, over the past three months annual wage growth has plummeted to just 0.7%. At the same time, furloughs -- requiring workers to take unpaid vacations -- are on the rise: recent surveys show 17% of companies imposing them. More than 20% of companies have suspended their contributions to 401(k)s and similar pension plans.

Job market unlikely to recover until 2014

About 14.9 million people are out of work and looking for employment

Associated Press

updated 4:44 p.m. ET, Fri., Sept . 4, 2009

New unemployment data show why it will take years for the labor market to recover from one of its fastest and deepest declines since World War II, even if an economic recovery is around the corner.

The Department of Labor report released Friday showed job cuts in August were lower than they've been in recent months. But a deeper look at the data shows why it will take millions of new jobs to dig American workers out of this recession's deep pit.

What Is Finance, Really?

At one level and in most economics textbooks, this is an easy question with a rather encouraging answer. The financial sector connects savers and borrowers – providing “intermediation services”. You want to save for retirement and would obviously like your savings to earn a respectable rate of return. I have a business idea but not enough money to make it happen by myself. So you put your money in the bank and the bank makes me a loan. Or I issue securities – stocks and bonds – which you or your pension fund can buy.

In this view, finance is win-win for everyone involved. And financial flows of some kind are essential to any modern economy – at least since 1800, finance has played an important role in US economic development.

Unfortunately, two hundred years of experience with real world finance reveal that it also has at least three serious pathologies – features that can go seriously wrong and derail an economy.

Conservative Derangement Syndrome: What Are They Thinking?

By Sara Robinson

Created 09/04/2009 - 6:06pm

Over on the right wing, the conservatives are all a-Twitter because someone dug up a YouTube video from last February in which White House environmental staffer Van Jones calls Republicans "assholes." And then yesterday, Glenn Beck breathlessly revealed that back in 2004, Jones signed a petition calling for further inquiry into 9/11.

Let's not let ourselves get distracted by this, people. First off: the conservatives lost their right to get upset about public profanity the day Dick Cheney threw the F-bomb at Pat Leahy on the floor of the Senate. Even George W. Bush got caught on tape calling a New York Times reporter "a major league asshole." Thanks to their own legendary potty-mouths, there's not a shred of moral high ground left for the GOP to stand on here. Jones' apology is a hell of a lot more than Leahy got from Cheney -- so it should be more than enough here.

Same deal with the video. Any party that's got its top leaders running around selling the idea of non-existent health care "death panels" and telling us that Obama is the next Jim Jones (that's the new meme next week, by the way -- look for it) long ago since forfeited its right to call anybody out on conspiracy theories. Their credibility on the subject is even flimisier than their forgery of Obama's Kenyan birth certificate. So, y'no, STFU.

How on Earth Can We Feed 8 Billion People?

By Lester R. Brown, TreeHugger
Posted on August 28, 2009, Printed on September 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142293/

In April 2005, the World Food Programme and the Chinese government jointly announced that food aid shipments to China would stop at the end of the year. For a country where a generation ago hundreds of millions of people were chronically hungry, this was a landmark achievement. Not only has China ended its dependence on food aid, but almost overnight it has become the world's third largest food aid donor.

The key to China's success was the economic reforms in 1978 that dismantled its system of agricultural collectives, known as production teams, and replaced them with family farms. In each village, the land was allocated among families, giving them long-term leases on their piece of land. The move harnessed the energy and ingenuity of China's rural population, raising the grain harvest by half from 1977 to 1986. With its fast-expanding economy raising incomes, with population growth slowing, and with the grain harvest climbing, China eradicated most of its hunger in less than a decade—in fact, it eradicated more hunger in a shorter period of time than any country in history.

Eisenhower's Forgotten Warning and the Threat of Authoritarian Currents in Our Politics

By Max Blumenthal, The New York Times
Posted on September 3, 2009, Printed on September 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142404/

In this summer of town hall disruptions and birth-certificate controversies, a summer when it seemed as if the Republican Party had been captured by its extremist wing, it is worth recalling a now-obscure letter from President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Although Eisenhower is commonly remembered for a farewell address that raised concerns about the “military-industrial complex,” his letter offers an equally important — and relevant — warning: to beware the danger posed by those seeking freedom from the “mental stress and burden” of democracy.

Recovery difficult as jobless rate hits 9.7 pct

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER,
Ap Economics Writer – 2 hrs 9 mins ago

WASHINGTON – At least it's not all bad anymore.

The nation's unemployment rate climbed last month to 9.7 percent — the highest in nearly a generation — but the number of job losses was less than expected and the smallest monthly total in a year.

"It's good to see the rate of job losses slow down," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight. But with unemployment rising, "there isn't the underlying fuel there for strong consumer spending growth," which is vital for a strong recovery.

Study: More evidence Arctic's rapid warming isn't natural

By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Arctic was cooling for 1,900 years because of a natural change in Earth's orbit until greenhouse gas accumulation from the use of fossil fuels reversed the trend in recent decades, according to a study published Thursday in Science magazine.

Scientists reconstructed the temperature record of the past 2,000 years using evidence from tree rings, ice cores and lake sediment, and found a steady cooling trend in Arctic summer temperatures of about 0.5 degrees Celsius — 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit — during the first 1,900 years. The cooling was caused by a slow natural cycle in Earth orbit that continues in this century.

* Business * Lehman Brothers Lehman downfall triggered by mix-up between London and Washington

• Communication breakdown revealed in first-hand accounts of bank collapse
• Blame game goes on as G20 ministers prepare for crucial London talks

• Larry Elliott and Jill Treanor
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 18.17 BST

A breakdown in communications at the highest level between the US and the UK led to the shock collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in September last year, a Guardian/Observer investigation has revealed.

The downfall of Lehman, which triggered the biggest banking crisis since the Great Depression, came after a rescue bid by the high street bank Barclays failed to materialise.

In London, the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority all believed that the US government would step in with a financial guarantee for the troubled Wall Street bank. The tripartite authorities insist that they always made it clear to the Americans that a possible bid from Barclays could go ahead only if sweetened by US money.

Glenn Greenwald: The Looming Political War Over Afghanistan

There was a time, not all that long ago, when the U.S. pretended that it viewed war only as a "last resort," something to be used only when absolutely necessary to defend the country against imminent threats. In reality, at least since the creation of the National Security State [1] in the wake of World War II, war for the U.S. has been everything but a "last resort." Constant war has been the normal state of affairs. In the 64 years since the end of WWII, we have started and fought far more wars [2] and invaded and bombed more countries [3] than any other nation in the world -- not even counting the numerous wars fought by our clients and proxies [4]. Those are just facts. History will have no choice but to view the U.S. -- particularly in its late imperial stages -- as a war-fighting state.

But at least we paid lip service to (even while often violating) the notion that wars should be waged only when absolutely imperative to defending the nation against imminent threats. We largely don't even bother to do that any more.

White House to Propose Big Reserves at Banks

By ERIC DASH

Many banks are finally back on their feet. The question now is how to keep them there for good.

So after propping up lenders with billions of taxpayer dollars, the Obama administration is contemplating long-term measures aimed at preventing, or at least minimizing, any future financial crisis.

The thrust of the plan is to have banks, particularly those deemed too big to fail, maintain larger capital cushions — a move bankers have traditionally opposed because it eats into their profits. The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, is expected to outline the administration’s proposals Thursday in a letter to the finance ministers of the Group of 20 industrial and emerging nations, who are scheduled to meet in London this week.

‘Young Workers: A Lost Decade’

Something bad happened in the past 10 years to young workers in this country: Since 1999, more of them now have lower-paying jobs, if they can get a job at all; health care is a rare luxury and retirement security is something for their parents, not them. In fact, many—younger than 35—still live at home with their parents because they can’t afford to be on their own.

These are the findings of a new report, “Young Workers: A Lost Decade.” Conducted in July 2009 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, the nationwide survey of 1,156 people follows up on a similar survey the AFL-CIO conducted in 1999. The deterioration of young workers’ economic situation in those 10 years is alarming.

Glenn Greenwald: Deleting the Bush Personality Cult from history

National Review's Jay Nordlinger -- and others at that magazine -- are upset that a school is showing a year-old video in which various celebrities spout feel-good platitudes about public service, and -- for a fleeting second -- Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher vow to "be of service to the President." This sentiment -- a desire to serve the President -- is something conservatives would never adopt, apparently:

When I read about that celebrity video where they say, “I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama,” I thought that the people do not deserve to be American citizens, because they have no idea what America or a liberal republic is. . . . Also, it strikes me that "I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama" is the product of a thoroughly secular mind, which is another marker of contemporary America. . . . Did conservatives ever say “I pledge to be of service to Ronald Reagan”? I never heard it -- and the notion is preposterous.

I'm always amazed -- even though I know I shouldn't be -- at people's capacity simply to block out events, literally refuse to acknowledge them, when they are inconsistent with their desire to believe things.

Low-Wage Workers Are Often Cheated, Study Says

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week.

Sibel Edmonds' Deposition Disclosures: Congressional Bribery, Blackmail and Espionage

Breaking down the formerly-gagged FBI whistleblower's sworn testimony...

It has now been over a week since the video tape and transcript from the remarkable 8/8/09 deposition of former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was publicly released. Previously, the Bush Administration invoked the so-called "state secrets privilege" in order to gag Edmonds, in attempting to keep such information from becoming public.

The under-oath, detailed allegations include bribery, blackmail, espionage and infiltration of the U.S. government of, and by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials and agents of the government of Turkey. The broad criminal conspiracy is said to have resulted in, among other things, the sale of nuclear weapons technology to black market interests including Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Libya and others.

The Nature of Modern Finance

Is modern finance more like electricity or junk food? This is, of course, the big question of the day.

If most of finance as currently organized is a form of electricity, then we obviously cannot run our globalized economy without it. We may worry about adverse consequences and potential network disruptions from operating this technology, but this is the cost of living in the modern world.

On the other hand, there is growing evidence that the vast majority of what happens in and around modern financial markets is much more like junk food – little nutritional value, bad for your health, and a hard habit to kick.

Assessing RNC Police Tactics, Part 1 of 2

By G.W. Schulz | MinnPost.com | September 1, 2009

The spying began late in the summer of 2007, after police in St. Paul discovered an amateur video online. It showed youths dressed in black, their faces covered with dark bandanas, tossing home-made fire bombs and seeming to prepare for an assault.

The group called itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee."

Conservatives on Obama's stay-in-school speech: "Indoctrination," "brainwashing," Communist China, Hitler Youth

September 02, 2009 12:05 pm ET — 206 Comments

Numerous conservatives have claimed that President Obama's upcoming September 8 speech about "persisting and succeeding in school," along with classroom activities about the "importance of education," will "indoctrinate" and "brainwash" schoolchildren. Conservatives have compared Obama's address to Chinese communism and the Hitler Youth, while also calling for parents to "keep your kids home" from the "fascist in chief."

For the long-term unemployed, recovery talk rings hollow

By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — As America prepares to salute its working people this Labor Day weekend, Matthew McCaffery is in no mood to celebrate.

In better times, McCaffery served prime rib to three U.S. presidents, brought cocktails to congressmen and senators and found private booths for Supreme Court justices wary of the public eye.

Hydrogen Storage Gets New Hope

Economical hydrogen-based vehicles could result from rechargeable ‘chemical fuel tank’

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, September 1, 2009—A new method for “recycling” hydrogen-containing fuel materials could open the door to economically viable hydrogen-based vehicles.

In an article appearing today in Angewandte Chemie, Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Alabama researchers working within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Chemical Hydrogen Storage Center of Excellence describe a significant advance in hydrogen storage science.

Humans causing erosion comparable to world’s largest rivers and glaciers

A new study finds that large-scale farming projects can erode the Earth's surface at rates comparable to those of the world's largest rivers and glaciers.

Published online in the journal Nature Geoscience, the research offers stark evidence of how humans are reshaping the planet. It also finds that - contrary to previous scholarship - rivers are as powerful as glaciers at eroding landscapes.

Diesel Exhaust Is Linked To Cancer Development Via New Blood Vessel Growth

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists here are the first to demonstrate that the link between diesel fume exposure and cancer lies in the ability of diesel exhaust to induce the growth of new blood vessels that serve as a food supply for solid tumors.

The researchers found that in both healthy and diseased animals, more new blood vessels sprouted in mice exposed to diesel exhaust than did in mice exposed to clean, filtered air. This suggests that previous illness isn’t required to make humans susceptible to the damaging effects of the diesel exhaust.

Look who's behind ad blaming Obama/Dems for economy

By GottaLaff

Check out the group (at the end of this post) that is behind the ad that's getting complaints from readers:

A newspaper advertisement blaming President Barack Obama and Democrats for wrecking the economy is receiving complaints from some area readers and raising questions about the organization behind it.

"Barack Obama and the Democrats did not inherit the bad economy; they caused it and made it worse," read the full-page ad, which ran Monday in The Gainesville Sun and last week in the Ocala Star-Banner. The ad also has run in other newspapers nationwide, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Salt Lake Tribune.

The Wing-Nut Code: What Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin Are Really Saying to Their Followers

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on September 2, 2009, Printed on September 2, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142333/

When Glenn Beck offers an odd-looking icon for his 9-12 Project, or Sarah Palin says something about her native state that sounds a bit to off-kilter to the ears of those in the lower 48, it's tempting to think, well, they're just nuts.

Perhaps they are, but that's beside the point. The point is that when Beck throws up a graphic of a segmented snake as his project's mascot, or Palin speaks of her native land as the "sovereign" state of Alaska, they're blowing a kind of dog-whistle for the armed and paranoid who make up the right-wing, neo-militia "Patriot" movement and the broader "Tea Party" coalition.

Beltway Culture, Checks on Journalists and Secrecy Obligations

by Glenn Greenwald

I'm ambivalent about whether even to acknowledge this obviously disturbed, Cheneyite rant from Joe Klein [1]. On the one hand, I don't want to be dragged down into what is, for him, quite clearly a deeply emotional and personal matter (having its roots in things like this [2], this [3] and this [4]); I don't think very many people care about petty feuds and engaging them isn't the purpose of what I do here. Moreover, Klein's commenters [1] (as usual) have done a thorough and masterful job of demolishing what he wrote, as have [5] several [6] others [7]. On the other hand, when someone like Klein -- first in a secret club composed of several hundred journalists, editors, bloggers and other peers and colleagues [8], and then using a megaphone like Time -- repeatedly calls you a military-hating, unpatriotic, ignorant, Limbaugh-like, "mean-spirited, dishonorable, graceless, bully" who doesn't care if America Stays Safe, and that then is "reported" [9] in various places [10], it's probably prudent to say something. So I'll just make a couple of general points illustrated by all of this that I think are worth making:

(1) Establishment journalists have a very significant impact on the world. They enthusiastically believe that to be true when it comes time to building their egos and establishing their own importance, but they instantly and emphatically deny it when it comes time to holding them accountable for what they do (don't you have anything better to do than criticize the media?). Their influence, thankfully, has eroded and continues to erode by the minute, but it's still substantial. That's why entire industries exist, and vast resources are expended by the powerful and wealthy, to manage, manipulate and control what they say.

Health Care's Lowest Foes

The most reprehensible critics of reform are not the ignorant or deluded, but the conspirators who lie knowingly about what's at stake.

Paul Waldman | September 1, 2009

H.L. Mencken famously observed that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Were he alive today and watching our debate over health-care reform, he would nod his head knowingly and say, "See? I told you so." And he would no doubt have more than a few things to say about those whose seeds of deception have found such fruitful soil in the fears and prejudices of so many of our fellow citizens.

Reform's fate will be uncertain until the last possible moment, and if the legislation does succeed, it will be by the skin of its teeth. Perhaps the success of reform will be enough to wipe away the bitter taste the last few months have left in the mouth of anyone who cares about American democracy. But ask yourself this: In your lifetime, can you recall a debate in which lie was piled so high upon lie, in which one side operated so cynically, in which fear was so gleefully wielded, in which ignorance and misconception and plain old stupidity so thoroughly determined the course of events?

Matt Taibbi: Bailout Propaganda Begins

It was inevitable that the same people who pushed through the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street would come out later on and tell us what a great idea theirs turned out to be, in retrospect and under the light of evidentiary examination. And we’re getting that now, with a pair of reports, the above one in the New York Times and another in the Financial Times, telling us the bailout is working because the government has made some money on TARP. They came to this conclusion by quoting Fed officials, who apparently calculated how much interest the Fed earned on TARP investments above what it would have earned on T-bills. The amount so far, according to these worthy gentlemen: $14 billion.

Following Wash. Post article, conservative media advance falsehood that CIA documents prove interrogation techniques worked

August 31, 2009 4:44 pm ET

Citing a misleading Washington Post article that stated that alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed became cooperative after being subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other interrogation techniques, conservative media have advanced the falsehood that three recently released 2004 CIA documents prove that these enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) were necessary to gain valuable intelligence. In fact, two CIA memos on the value of intelligence obtained from detainees do not discuss interrogation techniques, and a CIA inspector general's (IG) report of the CIA's interrogation program stated that "[t]he effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained cannot be easily measured."

Special interest groups bipartisan in Congress, MSU scholar finds

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Contrary to common perception, special interest groups are not responsible for the partisan division in Congress – and often join bipartisan coalitions to support legislation, according to a Michigan State University political scientist.

The same groups that line up on two sides in elections come together afterward to advance the same bills, said Matt Grossmann, assistant professor of political science.

Grossmann cited the current debate over national health care as an example. “Pharmaceutical companies, unions and doctors have all come out in support of President Obama’s plan,” he said. “It is the public and legislators that are closely divided, not interest groups.”

Engineering Earth 'is feasible'

By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

A UK Royal Society study has concluded that many engineering proposals to reduce the impact of climate change are "technically possible".

Such approaches could be effective, the authors said in their report.

But they also stressed that the potential of geo-engineering should not divert governments away from their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Suggestions range from having giant mirrors in space to erecting giant CO2 scrubbers that would "clean" the air.

Climate Trouble May Be Bubbling Up in Far North

by Associated Press

MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, Northwest Territories — Only a squawk from a sandhill crane broke the Arctic silence — and a low gurgle of bubbles, a watery whisper of trouble repeated in countless spots around the polar world.

"On a calm day, you can see 20 or more `seeps' out across this lake," said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber boat up beside one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze.

"It's essentially pure methane."

Reverse Bank Robbery

No wonder America's banks are making profits again: the US government is bribing them to borrow its own money

by Dean Baker

Most of us work for a living, the rest are bankers. These days the news is filled with great tales [1] about how America's banks are coming back.

Even that giant corpse Citigroup [2] is showing signs of life. Its stock is now selling for more than five times the lows it hit earlier this year. Its market capitalization is up near $57bn, a bit more than the $45 billion that the government lent them through the Troubled Assets Relief Programme [3], or Tarp. Some are even expecting that the government will make a profit on its Citigroup [4] investment.

These hopes are probably somewhat premature. Citigroup still has many bad assets on its books which it has not yet written down. Furthermore, the government is directly on the hook for $300bn of these bad assets, having offered a guarantee as part of its "December Citigroup Rescue Special".

The Secret Government

By Christopher Hayes

This article appeared in the September 14, 2009 edition of The Nation.

August 26, 2009

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered.

Though these words echo his famous endorsement of working "the dark side" in order to triumph in the "war on terror," they were not, in fact, written by Dick Cheney. They come from the Doolittle Report, which was commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1954 to craft an intelligence strategy for winning the cold war. From a strategic perspective, the threat posed by global communism, headquartered in a massive, nuclear-armed superpower with almost 6 million men under arms, and Al Qaeda, a networked, globally distributed group of thousands of nonstate actors, could not be more different. But the national security state's understanding of each as an existential threat was, and continues to be, nearly identical. The enemy is ingenious, relentless and unencumbered by the procedural and moral niceties that hamstring the bureaucrats of a liberal democracy. Victory--indeed, survival--requires us to become more like them.

And so: the CIA contracted a Mafia boss to murder Fidel Castro, sent biotoxins to the Republic of Congo with orders to poison Patrice Lumumba and tested LSD on unsuspecting citizens (one of whom jumped out of a window to his death). It fomented coups and bloodshed against democratically elected governments, while the National Security Agency, in coordination with the major telegram companies, read every single telegram coming in or going out of the country for three decades. The FBI infiltrated peaceful antiwar groups, breaking up marriages of activists with forged evidence of infidelity, while surveilling civil rights leaders with an assortment of bugs and break-ins. It even attempted to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into committing suicide, shipping him tapes of him midcoitus with a mistress and a note that said, "There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

Powerful Ideas: Bacteria Clean Sewage and Create Electricity

By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience

posted: 31 August 2009 09:34 am ET

Editor's Note: This occasional series looks at powerful ideas — some existing, some futuristic — for fueling and electrifying modern life.

Batteries made with microbes could help generate power by cleaning up organic waste at the same time.

Sewage is loaded with energy-rich sugars that researchers have struggled for years to convert into useful power. To do so, investigators have experimented with nature's experts on breaking down waste — bacteria.

Paul Krugman: Missing Richard Nixon

Many of the retrospectives on Ted Kennedy’s life mention his regret that he didn’t accept Richard Nixon’s offer of a bipartisan health care deal. The moral some commentators take from that regret is that today’s health care reformers should do what Mr. Kennedy balked at doing back then, and reach out to the other side.

But it’s a bad analogy, because today’s political scene is nothing like that of the early 1970s. In fact, surveying current politics, I find myself missing Richard Nixon.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Nixon was surely the worst person other than Dick Cheney ever to control the executive branch.

But the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.

Glenn Beck's Crazy Lies About Van Jones

By Eva Paterson, Equal Justice Society
Posted on August 31, 2009, Printed on August 31, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142310/

After smearing White House special advisor Van Jones for days on his show, Glenn Beck said on August 27, 2009: "I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts -- they just attack me personally."

Well, the White House is wise to stay above the fray but someone has to set the record straight. And as the person who first hired Van Jones, initially as a legal intern and later as a legal fellow, I am in a unique position to know the truth.

And the truth is: Beck is fabricating his facts.

Trial by Fire

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

David Grann
September 7, 2009

The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in a working-class neighborhood of Corsicana, in northeast Texas. Flames spread along the walls, bursting through doorways, blistering paint and tiles and furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, then banked downward, seeping into each room and through crevices in the windows, staining the morning sky.

Buffie Barbee, who was eleven years old and lived two houses down, was playing in her back yard when she smelled the smoke. She ran inside and told her mother, Diane, and they hurried up the street; that’s when they saw the smoldering house and Cameron Todd Willingham standing on the front porch, wearing only a pair of jeans, his chest blackened with soot, his hair and eyelids singed. He was screaming, “My babies are burning up!” His children—Karmon and Kameron, who were one-year-old twin girls, and two-year-old Amber—were trapped inside.

Malpractice Lawsuits Are ‘Red Herring’ in Obama Plan

By Alex Nussbaum

June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Protecting doctors from lawsuits may do more to gain political cover for President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul than to rein in medical costs.

While Obama vowed to address physicians’ malpractice worries in a speech yesterday, annual jury awards and legal settlements involving doctors amounts to “a drop in the bucket” in a country that spends $2.3 trillion annually on health care, said Amitabh Chandra, a Harvard University economist. Chandra estimated the cost at $12 per person in the U.S., or about $3.6 billion, in a 2005 study. Insurer WellPoint Inc. said last month that liability wasn’t driving premiums.

Lockerbie Part of a Bigger Story

by Eric Margolis

Libya's Moammar Khadaffy, once branded "the mad dog of the Middle East" by Ronald Reagan, is celebrating 40 years in power in spite of a score of attempts by western powers and his Arab "brothers" to kill him.

In 1987, I was invited to interview Khadaffy. We spent an evening together in his Bedouin tent. He led me by the hand through the ruins of his personal quarters, bombed a year earlier by the U.S. in an attempt to assassinate him. Khadaffy showed me where his two-year old daughter had been killed by a 1,000-pound bomb.

"Why are the Americans trying to kill me, Mister Eric?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

I told him because Libya was harbouring all sorts of anti-western revolutionary groups, from Palestinian firebrands to IRA bombers and Nelson Mandela's ANC. To the naive Libyans, they were all legitimate "freedom fighters."