The next best thing to oil

19:00 12 August 2010

by Helen Knight

A renewable carbon economy? Surely that's a pipe dream? Perhaps not, now that solar power facilities are cropping up in deserts across California, Spain and North Africa. The idea is to use the sun to power chemical plants able to split carbon dioxide. Combine the resulting carbon monoxide with hydrogen and you have the beginnings of a solar fuel that could one day replace oil.

Since 2008, a European consortium led by Athanasios Konstandopoulos at the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Thessaloníki, Greece, has been operating a 100-kilowatt pilot plant that generates hydrogen from a combination of sunlight and steam. The plant is sited at a concentrating solar power tower – the Plataforma Solar de Almería, in Almería, Spain – which houses a series of mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays onto solar panels beneath.

Countdown to Collapse: The Recovery is Not Recovering by Danny Schechter

Financial journalist Charles Gasparino whose career trajectory took him from Newsweek to CNBC to Fox News was on with Bill O' Reilly doing what the host of the factless Factor likes to do the most: promote Fox News. In the course of their self-promotional banter, Gasparino let sip an unverifiable story about a meeting of top CEOs speculating about whether President Obama really is a secret Socialist.

Stories like this, invented or not, freak a White House ever eager to reassure the business world of their loyalties. That is no doubt why Robert Gibbs, the President's Press Secretary took a whack at the "professional left," a statement he later said had been "inartful" but did not withdraw.

Writing on OpEd News, Kevin Gosztola was not surprised:

Data Show Stimulus Isn’t Reaching the Nation’s Neediest Counties and States

by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Yesterday, 10:52 a.m.

Around this time last year, we did an analysis of stimulus data and found that despite pledges from the Obama administration that stimulus money would go to the areas hardest hit by the recession [1], there had been no relationship [1] between where the money ended up and places with high unemployment and poverty rates.

A year later, that's still true [2], according to a report by PBS NewsHour’s Patchwork Nation. Patchwork Nation is a project that crunches demographic data and assigns counties to one of 12 community types, helping better characterize the county’s population in a way that goes beyond the red-blue binary [3]. (Take a look at the map to see where your county [4] falls.)

The BP Cover-Up

BP and the government say the spill is fast disappearing—but dramatic new science reveals that its worst effects may be yet to come.

— By Julia Whitty

Tue Aug. 10, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

WE'RE SWINGING ON ANCHOR this afternoon as powerful bursts of wind blow down through the Makua Valley and out to sea. The gales stop and start every 15 minutes, as abruptly as if a giant on the far side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu were switching a fan on and off. We sail at the gusts' mercy, listing hard to starboard, then snapping hard against the anchor chain before recoiling to port. The intermittent tempests make our work harder and colder. We shiver during the microbursts, sweat during the interludes, then shiver again from our own sweat.

I'm accompanying marine ecologist Kelly Benoit-Bird of Oregon State University, physical oceanographer Margaret McManus of the University of Hawaii-Manoa, and two research assistants aboard a 32-foot former sportfishing boat named Alyce C. On the tiny aft deck, where a marlin fisher might ordinarily strap into a fighting chair, Benoit-Bird and McManus are launching packages of instruments: echo sounders tuned to five frequencies; cameras; and a host of tools designed to measure temperature, salinity, current velocity, chlorophyll fluorescence, and zooplankton abundance, all feeding into computers lashed into the tiny forward cabin.

The Coming Tax War: How Letting the Bush Tax Cuts Expire Could End the Economic Crisis

Friday 13 August 2010

by: Anthony DiMaggio, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

The Democrats appear to be sitting on a golden ticket when it comes to ending the economic crisis. Furthermore, the solution to this country's economic woes wouldn't require them to do a thing, short of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire (as required by law) and appropriating the money for renewed stimulus and in aiding states to cover their budget deficits. Whether the party has the courage to resist Republican and conservative dogmas framing tax cuts as the solution to the crisis remains to be seen.

99ers Rally For Unemployment Extension

Advocates for the 1.5 Million Americans Who Have Exhausted Unemployment Insurance Benefits Press for Aid from Washington

By Annie Lowrey
8/13/10 7:50 AM

After 99 weeks, or more, of unemployment, traveling to a political rally is a luxury. Across the country, thousands of 99ers, Americans who have exhausted the maximum weeks of unemployment benefits, have written letters or called Congress advocating for legislation extending benefits or creating jobs programs. But the first 99ers rally, held on Wall Street this Thursday, proved a more modest affair.

Normally, the unemployed suffer from political disenfranchisement, on top of the hardships of joblessness, including loss of income, poorer health outcomes and eroding skills. But a group of activists working online have founded list-servs and websites to connect hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers. And they have teamed up with major labor unions, like the AFL-CIO and the SEIU, to flex their political might. Up until now, their efforts have been virtual; at Thursday’s rally, the unemployed took to the streets for the first time.

DC Politicians Beware: Voters Want the Employment Crisis Fixed -- If You Mess with Social Security or Deficits, You're Toast

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on August 13, 2010, Printed on August 13, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147835/

Even while the politicians and pundits keep telling us that the federal deficit is a huge and pressing problem, a new public opinion survey finds that a majority of American voters have their own view of what deficits mean to our economy, and how best to deal with our economic woes. They favor progressive strategies for bringing the deficit beast to heel, and a healthy majority rejects the Right’s preferred course of balancing the budget on the backs of the elderly and infirm.

But the survey, conducted by the Dem-leaning polling firm Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner (GQR), also found that the Right's campaign to stoke anxiety about the deficit has had an effect. The researchers concluded that voters in their sample are concerned first and foremost with jobs, then with jobs, and they’re also worried about jobs -- but many Americans are anxious about the deficit, in the near-term, because they believe it "slows job growth.”

Paul Krugman: Paralysis at the Fed

Ten years ago, one of America’s leading economists delivered a stinging critique of the Bank of Japan, Japan’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve, titled “Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-Induced Paralysis?” With only a few changes in wording, the critique applies to the Fed today.

At the time, the Bank of Japan faced a situation broadly similar to that facing the Fed now. The economy was deeply depressed and showed few signs of improvement, and one might have expected the bank to take forceful action. But short-term interest rates — the usual tool of monetary policy — were near zero and could go no lower. And the Bank of Japan used that fact as an excuse to do no more.

That was malfeasance, declared the eminent U.S. economist: “Far from being powerless, the Bank of Japan could achieve a great deal if it were willing to abandon its excessive caution and its defensive response to criticism.” He rebuked officials hiding “behind minor institutional or technical difficulties in order to avoid taking action.”

Who was that tough-talking economist? Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Federal Reserve. So why is the Bernanke Fed being just as passive now as the Bank of Japan was a decade ago?

Evangelicals' Stealth Mission to Sneak Jesus into Our Public Schools

By Rob Boston, Church and State
Posted on August 13, 2010, Printed on August 13, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147794/

United Methodist minister David Jenkins was meeting with fellow clergy last year in the small Kansas community of Sharon Springs when one of the pastors made what sounded like a routine request.

The clergyman noted that the Todd Becker Foundation was coming to town, and the evangelical Christian organization, which purports to warn youngsters about the dangers of drunk driving, wanted to line up local religious leaders to help with its presentation.

What struck Jenkins as odd was the venue: It was to take place at Wallace County High School.

Furthermore, the Becker Foundation had a very specific set of duties in mind for the ministers. They would swing into action after students had been offered a chance to become “born again.”

How the US economy is being 'Japanised'

Federal Reserve policy is taking a worrying turn towards monetarism. This can only result in an American 'lost decade'

Chris Payne
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 August 2010 15.00 BST

In 1963, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote a seminal piece on the Great Depression (A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960), parts of which have become accepted wisdom in monetary policy and theory ever since. Friedman and Schwartz's argument is that what turned a recession into a depression in the 1930s (where output dropped by 30% and unemployment rose to 25%) was a collapse of the money supply, as banks were forced to call in their inter-bank loans, creating a domino effect of collapsed banks and lost savings.

Tuesday's policy announcement by the Federal Reserve can be understood as yet another nod to Friedman and Schwartz: "whatever happens, let's keep the money supply from falling." It is also, as I shall explain, yet more evidence that the US is going the way of Japan, meaning that it is entering into a protracted era of low economic growth.

Obama Puts Faith in Private-Sector, as Corporate America Goes on Investment Strike

by Roger Bybee

Each day, President Obama and his surrogates spread out across the land, singing the praises of the "private sector" job growth for which they desperately hope. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is even proclaiming that the "recovery" is actually advancing much more rapidly than the eye can see.

Geithner's carefully-crafted boast is a tone-deaf insult to the intelligence of American voters. Fully 20 percent of households have watched their family incomes drop by 25% or more since the beginning of the recession.

Situation Room Scaremongering

CNN's Social Security crisis

8/11/10

The August 5 reports from the Social Security and Medicare trustees declared Social Security's long-term financial outlook mostly unchanged from the previous year, and the projections for Medicare were greatly improved from previous forecasts. But on CNN's Situation Room, this news amounted to a crisis in Social Security and a threat to the country.

On the August 5 broadcast, host Wolf Blitzer announced: "Social Security reaches the final financial tipping point. The system is now paying out more than it's taking in. Will Washington do anything anytime soon to fix this problem?" Blitzer was referring to the fact that this year Social Security is paying out more in benefits than it receives in tax revenue--a mostly meaningless fact, given the system's $2.5 trillion long-term surplus (CEPR's Social Security Byte, 8/5/10). But Blitzer turned to a single guest, Beltway fixture and former presidential adviser David Gergen, to echo his alarmism.

How to Put a Stop to Corporate-Funded Government Before It Gets Totally Out of Hand

By , Think Progress
Posted on August 11, 2010, Printed on August 12, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147819/

Editor’s note: Sign the petition urging Congress to address the unlimited corporate campaign spending ushered in by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling here.

--

Think Progress article by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, Charlie Eisenhood, Tanya Somanader, and George Zornick

In an activist 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down a decades-long ban on the use of corporate money in elections with its ruling in the Citizens United case in January, opening the floodgates to unlimited, anonymous spending on political campaigns by corporations, unions, and advocacy organizations. Reactions were swift, as many voices joined the dissenting justices in expressing concern that the ruling "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation."

Tomgram: Stephan Salisbury, Extremism at Ground Zero (Again)

Posted by Stephan Salisbury at 9:27am, August 10, 2010.

Hand it to Muslim terrorists, at least when it comes to truly long-term planning and the Fourteenth Amendment -- according to Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert. On the floor of the House of Representatives, he recently offered the following explanation for his desire to change that amendment, which makes anyone born in this country a U.S. citizen:

“I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they were looking at were terrorist cells overseas who had figured out how to game our system. And it appeared they would have young women, who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby. They wouldn't even have to pay anything for the baby. And then they would turn back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists. And then one day, twenty... thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life. 'Cause they figured out how stupid we are being in this country to allow our enemies to game our system, hurt our economy, get setup in a position to destroy our way of life."

This may be mad, as well as a figment of Representative Gohmert’s feverish imagination.

Austerity fails policy test

By Henry CK Liu

There is an undisputed general law in public finance that sound fiscal policies must precede a sound currency. What is in dispute is what constitutes a sound fiscal policy. Neo-liberals deem recurring fiscal deficits as signs of unsound fiscal policy. Yet over the multi-year duration of most recession phases of business cycles in market economies, multi-year deficit financing to stimulate economic activities in a recession can be a very sound fiscal policy.

Under such circumstances, a balanced annual budget would be quite the opposite of a sound fiscal policy. Still, some recessions may take more than a decade to recover, even with persistent fiscal deficits if the funds are spent on wrong targets, as in the case of Japan after the Plaza Accord of 1985.

The Rubin Con Goes On

By Robert Scheer

The corruptions of journalism were on full display when CNN’s Fareed Zakaria turned to Robert Rubin this past Sunday for advice on how to fix the financial crisis that he, as much as anyone, caused. I was trapped on a treadmill in front of an overhead television and unable to turn the thing off in time to avoid this assault on my mental and physical health.

As a result I was forced to hear Rubin, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, insist that he always favored regulating toxic derivatives and is therefore not at all responsible for the ensuing economic meltdown. He was responding to the sole critical question from the CNN host, who quoted a question by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: “Did all the senior members of the [Obama] economics team have to be protégés of Robert Rubin, the apostle of financial deregulation?” Unfortunately, Zakaria just rolled over when his guest simply lied in response:

“First of all, I am not the apostle of financial deregulation. Quite the contrary. On derivatives … I developed a deep concern about the systemic problem that was created. When I was back at Goldman Sachs, it was a concern I had … a concern I had when I was in government. And in fact, when I wrote my book in 2003, I was so concerned about it that I actually included that discussion in there.”

Robert Rubin Is Still Wrong And Joseph Stiglitz Is Still Right

By Zach Carter

Created 08/11/2010 - 11:46am

Must Read:

An Economy for All

Robert Rubin and Joseph Stiglitz are going public on jobs and the deficit, in what looks very much like a re-run of a major policy debate during the Clinton era. The dispute is simple—should the government focus on putting people back to work, or should it try to cut the deficit? Stiglitz wants to see more jobs [1], Rubin wants to shrink the deficit [2]. Policymakers should listen to Stiglitz.

Rubin is the Democratic Party's Alan Greenspan. In the 1990s, he was heralded as a genius for making policy calls that ultimately wrecked the economy. Rubin pushed for deficit reduction instead of a jobs policy in the Clinton years, and was the driving force in the Clinton administration's devastating moves to deregulate Wall Street. For several years, Rubin's policies looked good. Despite the focus on the deficit instead of jobs, the Clinton years saw a huge boom in employment. Wall Street profits were through the roof, and the economy was roaring.

But at the end of Clinton's second term, it was clear that all of these good times had been fueled not by sound economic policy, but by a reckless and unsustainable Wall Street bubble. Banks were backing every dot-com business plan brought their way, and when everybody figured out that Pets.com was not going to be the next Home Depot, things fell apart. The economy slipped into a mild recession, which would have been devastating had policymakers not inflated a housing bubble to "rescue" the economy from the dot-com fallout.

Why the GOP really wants to alter the 14th Amendment

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, August 11, 2010; A17

As Lindsey Graham and his fellow Republicans explain it, their sudden turn against conferring citizenship on anyone born in the United States was prompted by the mortal threat of "anchor babies" -- the children of foreigners who scurry to the States just in time to give birth to U.S. citizens.

The Republican war on the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause is indeed directed at a mortal threat -- but not to the American nation. It is the threat that Latino voting poses to the Republican Party.

By proposing to revoke the citizenship of the estimated 4 million U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants -- and, presumably, the children's children and so on down the line -- Republicans are calling for more than the creation of a permanent noncitizen caste. They are endeavoring to solve what is probably their most crippling long-term political dilemma: the racial diversification of the electorate. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are trying to preserve their political prospects as a white folks' party in an increasingly multicolored land.

Has The Washington Post Gone Mad?

By Dean Baker

Created 08/11/2010 - 1:46pm

The following was originally published at Beat The Press [1]

Confused readers may wonder based on its lead editorial [2] complaining that supporters of Social Security: "pursue a maddening strategy of minimizing the existence of any problem and accusing those who seek solutions of trying to destroy Social Security (emphasis added)."

The piece begins by telling readers that: "THIS YEAR, for the first time since 1983, Social Security will pay out more in benefits [3] than it receives from payroll taxes -- $41 billion. This development is not an emergency, but it is a warning sign (emphasis in original)." It certainly is a warning sign. The falloff in Social Security tax revenue is a warning that the economy is seriously depressed due to the collapse of the housing bubble. Double digit unemployment leads to all sorts of problems, including the strains that it places on pension funds like Social Security.

In a sane newspaper the next sentence would be pointing out the urgent need to get back to full employment. Instead the Post tells readers:

Too soon, this year's anomaly will become the norm. By 2037, all the Social Security reserves will have been drained and the income flowing into the program will only be enough to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits. If that sounds tolerable, consider that two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security as their main source of income. The average annual benefit [4] is $14,000. Those who care most about avoiding such painful cuts ought to be working on ways to bolster the program's finances -- and soon, when the necessary changes will be less drastic than if action is postponed.

Who's funding Newt Gingrich?

By Justin Elliott

Newt Gingrich's ex-wife told Esquire that the former speaker cares more about getting rich than running for president. So we decided to take a closer look at who is funding Gingrich's primary political committee, a 527 group called American Solutions for Winning the Future. A significant chunk of its funding comes from oil and gas and coal companies and wealthy real estate evelopers, with the rest raised in $100 and $200 increments from conservatives around the country, according to the group's IRS filings.

American Solutions doesn't appear to pay Gingrich a direct salary, but it has spent millions on private jets to ferry him and his staff around the country and generally allow him to promote his books and movies. (There are other groups, like Gingrich's for-profit Center for Health Transformation, that may be paying Gingrich directly, but such information is private.) So far this election cycle, American Solutions has taken in over $20 million, and poured much of it back into fundraising expenses.

World markets drop on US economy fears

World stock markets have tumbled as investors worry about the health of the US economy after the Federal Reserve warned that the recovery was likely to be "more modest" in the short term.

The Dow Jones finished 265 points lower while European markets closed down 2%.

On Tuesday, the Fed said it would keep up its efforts to try to bolster the economy amid signs the recovery was weaker than expected.

The Internet Kill-Switch Debate: Aims of Bill Unclear

By ADAM COHEN
1 hr 15 mins ago

Here's an idea: How about creating an Internet kill switch, so the government can shut off the Internet when it decides it is necessary?

That may sound absurd, but a lot of people are convinced this is already in the works. How many? Google the words "Internet kill switch" and you will soon find out.

What has them worried is the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, sponsored by independent Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware. The bill aims to make it easier for the government to respond to Internet-based attacks that threaten national security.

Charcoal takes some heat off global warming

Biochar can offset 1.8 billion metric tons of carbon emissions annually

RICHLAND, Wash. -- As much as 12 percent of the world’s human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sustainably offset by producing biochar, a charcoal-like substance made from plants and other organic materials. That’s more than what could be offset if the same plants and materials were burned to generate energy, concludes a study published today in the journal Nature Communications.

“These calculations show that biochar can play a significant role in the solution for the planet’s climate change challenge,” said study co-author Jim Amonette, a soil chemist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “Biochar offers one of the few ways we can create power while decreasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And it improves food production in the world’s poorest regions by increasing soil fertility. It’s an amazing tool.”

Higher education funding may need decade or longer to recover, scholar says

8/10/10 | Phil Ciciora, Education Editor | 217-333-2177; pciciora@illinois.edu

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — With the economy mired in a deep funk, and with state budgets around the country blood red, a University of Illinois expert in higher education policy says the timeline for restoring funding for higher education to pre-recessionary levels will inevitably lengthen, or in the worst-case scenario, the funds may simply never reappear.

Jennifer A. Delaney, a professor of educational organization and leadership, says that in every decade since the 1980s, it has taken progressively longer for state appropriations for higher education to recover from previous cuts.

Elizabeth Warren Uncovered What the Govt. Did to 'Rescue' AIG, and It Ain't Pretty

By William Greider, The Nation
Posted on August 9, 2010, Printed on August 10, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147788/

The government’s $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG’s collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand—moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public.

Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.

The Ministry of Oil Defense

It's not polite to say so, but if Americans understood just how many trillions their military was really spending on protecting oil, they wouldn't stand for it.

BY PETER MAASS | AUGUST 5, 2010

Shortly after the Marines rolled into Baghdad and tore down a statue of Saddam Hussein, I visited the Ministry of Oil. American troops surrounded the sand-colored building, protecting it like a strategic jewel. But not far away, looters were relieving the National Museum of its actual jewels. Baghdad had become a carnival of looting. A few dozen Iraqis who worked at the Oil Ministry were gathered outside the American cordon, and one of them, noting the protection afforded his workplace and the lack of protection everywhere else, remarked to me, "It is all about oil."

Jobless and Staying That Way

Americans have almost always taken growth for granted. Recessions kick in, financial crises erupt, yet these events have generally been thought of as the exception, a temporary departure from an otherwise steady upward progression.

But as expectations for the recovery diminish daily and joblessness shows no sign of easing — as the jobs report on Friday showed — a different view is taking hold. And with it, comes implications for policymaking.

The “new normal,” as it has come to be called on Wall Street, academia and CNBC, envisions an economy in which growth is too slow to bring down the unemployment rate, while the government is forced to intervene ever more forcefully in a struggling private sector. Stocks and bonds yield paltry returns, with better opportunities available for investors overseas.

If that sounds like the last three years, it should. Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian, who run the world’s largest bond fund, Pimco, and coined the phrase in this context, think the new normal has already begun and will last at least another three to five years.

Paul Krugman: America Goes Dark

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

The New Aristocrats of Finance Pose a Serious Threat to Our Democratic Way of Life

By Joe Costello, Archein
Posted on August 8, 2010, Printed on August 9, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147775/

Let's face it, what a America needs is good clean fight. A fight that brings in everyone, redefines categories and alliances, cleanses our putrid politics, and establishes a healthy politics for the 21st century. At this point, there's just no way around it. Our politics is so defiled, our economy so completely in the clutches of a rabidly greedy few, and our government wallows in incompetence to the point of criminality, that the only cure is for the American people in unison to stand up, take responsibility, and claim what is rightfully ours. History shows this is never done without a fight.

I've always hated the term "American exceptionalism", more for how it was defined, than the concept itself. In the last decades, American exceptionalism has too often been defined as industrial capitalism, ribald consumerism, and militarism. But if we've learned anything in the last decades, these traits were easily transferred across the globe. However, what was not so easily transferred, and what historically is truly exceptional is this republic. In recorded history, the existence of republics, of self-government, has been the exception, and this republic with all its faults has indeed been exceptional. Here the masses of Europe, who for millenia tore each other apart, united under the banner of universal equality, intermixed, intermarried, and thrived. Over the centuries, fitfully and in small steps, and with still a ways to go, people from every other part of the world have slowly in some cases, and more rapidly in other, been brought into the mix.

Religious Right Pushes Churches to Openly Defy the Law and Campaign for Tea Party and Other Conservative Candidates

By Rob Boston, Church & State Magazine
Posted on August 8, 2010, Printed on August 9, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147771/

When South Dakota gubernatorial hopeful Gordon Howie put out a call for pastors to endorse him from the pulpit, the Rev. H. Wayne Williams was quick to respond.

Williams, pastor of Liberty Baptist Tabernacle in Rapid City, endorsed the Republican candidate during a church service on May 16.

An ecstatic Howie, the self-professed “Tea Party” favorite, quickly issued a press release praising the action.

“Last week, Howie challenged South Dakota churches and their pastors to become more politically active in the stretch run to the June 8th primary election, urging pastors to endorse candidates and advocate specific issues from the pulpit,” read the Howie media statement. “Reverend H. Wayne Williams, Pastor of Liberty Baptist Tabernacle in Rapid City, became one of the first to accept the challenge, adding an official endorsement of Gordon Howie for Governor to a message delivered during his Sunday night services.”

Stimulus bill helped some far more than others

By Graydon Gordian, Kelsey Snell and Michael Beller | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — In February 2009, the United States had fallen into what many economists called the deepest economic slowdown since the Great Depression. The housing bubble had burst, unemployment was nearing its highest level in almost three decades and the once-freewheeling banking sector had turned tightfisted.

At the urging of President Barack Obama, Congress passed a $787 billion economic stimulus bill on Feb. 10, 2009, to get federal dollars flowing into the U.S. economy.

On moral hazard and unemployment

Michael Paarlberg
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 August 2010 20.00 BST

First, the bad news: Friday's jobless report from the Department of Labor shows the unemployment rate hovering at 9.5%. More worrying still is that the figure is inflated by fresh layoffs: 479,000 newly out-of-work Americans filed for jobless benefits last week, the highest number since April. In other words, we haven't hit rock bottom yet.

Unemployment insurance (UI) doesn't normally command front-page headlines, but lately it's been creating a big stir. In July, Senate Republicans attempted to block a bill to extend jobless benefits for 2.5m people who were about to see theirs run out. The bill narrowly passed on a party line vote, with newly sworn-in Senator Carte Goodwin casting the deciding vote to break the filibuster.

For Republicans, the filibuster was an enormous gamble. Threatening to cut jobless benefits in the midst of a recession puts the GOP somewhere to the right of Ming the Merciless on the compassion scale. But Republicans pointed to the bill's $34bn price tag, betting that deficit spending will resonate more with their base.

The book that has the Tories running scared

Last week, a group of academics decided that because of the debt he pumped into the economy and the poison he pumped into the Labour party, Gordon Brown was the third-worst British prime minister since 1945. To which the response from all sane onlookers was: "What, only the third?"

The charge list against him is long enough for a judge to send Labour to a dark cell for years. It would have been grossly negligent for any government to boast that its "light-touch" regulation had "abolished boom and bust", while failing to notice that it was helping push the banking system towards the edge of a cliff. For a Labour government to set aside social democracy's well-merited suspicion of finance capital was truly criminal. The Conservatives and Liberals can now use Brown's failure as a plausible justification for spending cuts and tax rises. The party he left behind is torn by fratricidal strife – real fratricidal strife in the case of the Miliband family.

Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.

In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.

In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.

In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.

At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.

In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.