Geithner’s Gamble

Simon Johnson

2011-02-22

LOS ANGELES – In a recent interview, United States Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out his view of the nature of world economic growth and the role of the US financial sector. It is a deeply disturbing vision, one that amounts to a huge, uninformed gamble with the future of the American economy – and that suggests that Geithner remains the senior public official worldwide who is most in thrall to the self-serving ideology of big banks.

Geithner argues that the world will now experience a major “financial deepening,” owing to growing demand in emerging markets for financial products and services. He is thinking, of course, of “middle-income” countries like India, China, and Brazil. And he is right to emphasize that all have made terrific progress and now offer great opportunities for the rising middle class, which wants to accumulate savings, borrow more easily (for productive investment, home purchases, education, etc), and, more generally, smooth out consumption.

Fox News Chief, Roger Ailes, Urged Employee to Lie, Records Show

By RUSS BUETTNER
Published: February 24, 2011

It was an incendiary allegation — and a mystery of great intrigue in the media world: After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie two years earlier to federal investigators who were vetting Bernard B. Kerik for the job of homeland security secretary.

Defense Secretary Gates warns against more land wars in Asia

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, February 25th, 2011 -- 9:52 pm

WEST POINT MILITARY ACADEMY, New York — Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Friday against committing the US military to big land wars in Asia or the Middle East, saying anyone proposing otherwise "should have his head examined."

Gates offered the blunt advice -- hard won after a decade of bitter conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq -- in what he said would be his last speech to cadets at the US Army's premier school for training future officers.

Why We Kick Others When We're Down

by Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor
Date: 25 February 2011 Time: 02:21 PM ET

Just failed a test or screwed up a project at work? Chances are more likely you'll put down others who are different from you to try to lift yourself back up, a new study suggests.

"This is one of the oldest accounts of why people stereotype and have prejudice: It makes us feel better about ourselves," says Jeffrey Sherman of the University of California, Davis, who co-wrote the study. "When we feel bad about ourselves, we can denigrate other people, and that makes us feel better about ourselves."

Really Bad Reporting in Wisconsin: Who 'Contributes' to Public Workers' Pensions?

David Cay Johnston | Feb. 24, 2011 12:16 PM EST

When it comes to improving public understanding of tax policy, nothing has been more troubling than the deeply flawed coverage of the Wisconsin state employees' fight over collective bargaining.

Economic nonsense is being reported as fact in most of the news reports on the Wisconsin dispute, the product of a breakdown of skepticism among journalists multiplied by their lack of understanding of basic economic principles.

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.

Microcredit Critics Say Debt Doesn't Equal Emancipation

by Kanya D'Almeida

UNITED NATIONS - In response to a pelting critique from academics, economists and grassroots organizers worldwide, the 2011 State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report plans to address the controversies surrounding a development scheme that many believe to have failed.

The report, which is set to be released Mar. 7 in Washington D.C. to great fanfare, will be presented by the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, a man who has earned himself a reputation as either the Superman of poverty-alleviation or the Judas of social change, depending on who you talk to.

ANALYSIS — An Illuminating Expedition to the World of the Uninsured

By Wendell Potter | February 17, 2011

As Congressional Republicans seek ways to starve the new health care reform law of necessary funding — and Democrats try to keep that from happening — it’s easy to lose sight of the reasons why reform was pursued in the first place.

For a reminder, lawmakers might want to spend a few hours in Nashville this weekend. I’m betting they would behave differently when they got back to Washington on Monday.

Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling

by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2011, 6 a.m.

There are few things a family needs to survive more than fresh drinking water. And Louis Meeks, a burly, jowled Vietnam War hero who had long ago planted his roots on these sparse eastern Wyoming grasslands, was drilling a new well in search of it.

The drill bit spun, whining against the alluvial mud and rock that folds beneath the Wind River Range foothills. It ploughed to 160 feet, but the water that spurted to the surface smelled foul, like a parking lot puddle drenched in motor oil. It was no better — yet — than the water Meeks needed to replace.

Behind The Assault On Planned Parenthood

First Posted: 02/25/11 02:19 PM
Updated: 02/25/11 03:14 PM

WASHINGTON -- The House Republican move to strip federal funds from the nation's most well-known reproductive health care provider as part of its budget last week was the culmination of a multi-year effort that involved parallel action by top Republicans and conservative media operatives playing up the work of a California college student who has been creating surreptitious videos of Planned Parenthood employees for years.

The student, Lila Rose, is the president of an organization called Live Action that pays actors to walk into Planned Parenthood offices with hidden cameras, much as James O'Keefe did to undermine the community-organizing group ACORN. The Live Action stars pretend to be a pimp and a prostitute engaged in human trafficking and looking for birth control, STD testing and abortions. The videos that the organization puts out can be convincing and disturbing -- and in at least two cases were found by Planned Parenthood to be legitimate cause for dismissals -- but thorough, frame-by-frame reviews of the full-length videos show that what is posted on YouTube often bears little relation to what happened in reality, due to heavy editing that alters the meaning of conversations.

Only the Wealthiest Americans Favor Stripping Workers' Collective Bargaining Rights

A poll conducted by Gallup earlier this week found that Americans opposed stripping public employees' of their right to negotiate with their employers by a margin of 2 to 1. It got a lot of play (as did Fox News reversing the results and reporting that 61 percent of the public favored the GOP's union-busting).

Money to the People

Delivering foreign aid directly to the world's poor by electronic transfer would cut waste and reduce corruption.

By Henry Jackelen and Jamie Zimmerman
Posted Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, at 7:05 AM ET

Earlier this year, the $21.7 billion Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria was forced to retract or suspend millions of dollars in aid after rampant corruption was discovered. An audit of a modest portion of selected programs found staggering percentages of money misspent or unaccounted for: 67 percent in Mauritania; 36 percent in Mali; and 30 percent in Djibouti. There were also serious concerns involving millions of dollars sent to Zambia. Even more remarkable, though, was the fund's response to the resulting criticism.

Gunrunning scandal uncovered at the ATF

Program aimed at stopping the flow of weapons from the US to Mexico may have allegedly had the opposite effect

By Sharyl Attkisson
(CBSNews)

WASHINGTON - Keeping American weapons from getting into the hands of Mexican gangs is the goal of a program called "Project Gunrunner." But critics say it's doing exactly the opposite. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports on what she found.

December 14, 2010. The place: a dangerous smuggling route in Arizona not far from the border. A special tactical border squad was on patrol when gunfire broke out and agent Brian Terry was killed.

Senator vows to reform the PATRIOT Act

By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 -- 10:37 pm

A Democratic senator from Oregon said Tuesday that Congress must use the three month extension of the PATRIOT Act to amend the legislation so that it does not violate American's civil liberties.

"Americans deserve laws that strike the best possible balance between fighting terrorism ferociously and protecting the rights and freedoms of law-abiding American citizens," Senator Ron Wyden, a senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.

Little historical evidence to support cutting global health aid during recessions

Boston, MA – The World Bank and World Health Organization have voiced fears that policymakers will break their commitments to support desperately needed global health services in low- and middle-income countries because of the ongoing global economic downturn. Yet, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health, there is surprisingly little historical evidence to justify reversing these commitments.

"In order to achieve a sustainable economic recovery, governments must first take care of people's most basic health needs," said David Stuckler, assistant professor of political economy at HSPH and lead author of the study. "Our findings remind us that there are alternative ways to finance recovery than by cutting vital health services to the world's poorest and most vulnerable groups."

The study appears February 25, 2011, in an advance online edition of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

Despicable: Tea Partier Asks "Who's Going to Shoot President Obama?" Gets Laughs

Rep. Paul Broun (R) of Georgia, one of Congress' most right-wing members, hosted a town-hall event in his district this week. This wouldn't be especially noteworthy were it not for one of the questions he received from a constituent: "Who is going to shoot President Obama?"

The exact wording of the question is not clear because, the Athens Banner-Herald reports, there was a lot of noise at the event. Perhaps more significant than the question was the response of the crowd and Broun, who is a member of the Tea Party Caucus and one of the most right-wing members of Congress.

Corporate-Funded Online 'Astroturfing' Is More Advanced and More Automated Than You Might Think

By George Monbiot, The Guardian
Posted on February 24, 2011, Printed on February 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150049/

Every month more evidence piles up, suggesting that online comment threads and forums are being hijacked by people who aren’t what they seem to be. The anonymity of the web gives companies and governments golden opportunities to run astroturf operations: fake grassroots campaigns, which create the impression that large numbers of people are demanding or opposing particular policies. This deception is most likely to occur where the interests of companies or governments come into conflict with the interests of the public. For example, there’s a long history of tobacco companies creating astroturf groups to fight attempts to regulate them.

Paul Krugman: Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

Here’s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn’t Cairo after all. Maybe it’s Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular — in a bad way. Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war, those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision. Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy, told a Washington Post reporter that one of his top priorities was to “corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises” — Mr. Bremer’s words, not the reporter’s — and to “wean people from the idea the state supports everything.”

Does Academia Discriminate Against Conservatives? Unlikely

Thursday 24 February 2011

by: Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed

Ideas are not equivalent to race. Yet now and then you hear stories in the United States that treat ideological divides as being somehow comparable to racial discrimination.

At a Jan. 27 gathering in Texas of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the topic of underrepresentation of conservatives in academics came up during a speech given by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia. According to an article by John Tierney for The New York Times, Dr. Haidt noted that polls conducted in the United States show that 40 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservative and 20 percent as liberal. An on-the-spot poll showed that about 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the room identified themselves as liberal.

How Quickly They Forget

Following the recall of millions of toys from China because of lead paint and other hazards, Congress got its act together in 2008 and passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Bipartisan majorities rallied around the idea that the government should ensure that products — whether they’re made abroad or here — won’t sicken or maim American consumers or their children.

The new Republican-led House seems determined to roll back those protections. As part of their slash-and-burn continuing resolution, they cut all the financing — some $3 million this year — for a core provision of the safety bill: a database where consumers could report product hazards and the public could check products before buying them.

Does The U.S. Really Have A Fiscal Crisis?

By Simon Johnson

The United States faces some serious medium-term fiscal issues, but by any standard measure it does not face an immediate fiscal crisis. Overindebted countries typically have a hard time financing themselves when the world becomes riskier – yet turmoil in the Middle East is pushing down the interest rates on US government debt. We are still seen as a safe haven.

Yet leading commentators and politicians today repeat the line “we’re broke” and argue there is no alternative other than immediate spending cuts at the national and state level.

Which view is correct? And what does this tell us about where our political system is heading?

Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis

By David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Internet 'kill switch' bill gets a makeover

by Declan McCullagh

A Senate proposal that has become known as the Internet "kill switch" bill was reintroduced this week, with a tweak its backers say eliminates the possibility of an Egypt-style disconnection happening in the United States.

As CNET reported last month, the 221-page bill hands Homeland Security the power to issue decrees to certain privately owned computer systems after the president declares a "national cyberemergency." A section in the new bill notes that does not include "the authority to shut down the Internet," and the name of the bill has been changed to include the phrase "Internet freedom."

Troops or Private Contractors: Who Does Better in Supplying Our Troops During War?

Charles M. Smith | Wednesday 23 February 2011

We continue our series on the Department of Defense (DoD) with another solution from Charles Smith. As I mentioned last week, Mr. Smith was a career procurement officer whose career was cut short when he was the chief of the Field Support Contracting Division of the Army Field Support Command and tried to get control of the costs and use of the infamous Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) contract with KBR to supply the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. More about his brave fight against the company and intransient Army bureaucracy can be found in this New York Times article.

For this column, he tackles the longtime argument from the DoD, especially the Army, that contractors can do the job supporting the troops cheaper than Army military and civilian personnel (organic support units in DoD speak). This is a subject that is personal for me; for years, I have been championing for change. While Mr. Smith was fighting the internal Army politics over their KBR LOGCAP contracts during the beginning of these wars, I was researching and writing a book on how using contractors can be disastrous for the troops and should not become a permanent solution. The book, "Betraying Our Troops: the Destructive Results of Privatizing War," paralleled many of the problems that Mr. Smith has found with the heavy use of private contractors on the battlefield.

Rick Santorum: The Crusades Get A Bad Rap!

Jillian Rayfield | February 23, 2011, 3:34PM

If you were worried there wouldn't be a 2012 candidate touting the pro-Crusades platform, then today is your lucky day!

"The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical," former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told a South Carolina audience yesterday. "And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom."

Five Reasons to Hate the Continuing Resolution

There are plenty of reasons to hate the continuing resolution the House passed Friday. Here are but a few.

Adam Serwer | February 22, 2011

Last Friday, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through the end of the year. In it, they slash funding for key liberal priorities while blocking Obama administration efforts to enforce key regulations. The funding bill has yet to go through the Democratic-controlled Senate, where a legislative impasse between the two parties could lead to a government shutdown. But there's already plenty to be frustrated about.

Rachel on Wisconsin: Will Democrats defend unions or let them die?

by Gaius Publius 2/22/2011 01:40:00 PM

This starts out as a story about the wickedness in Wisconsin — new wingnut governor Scott Walker and his "fierce advocacy" (hmm) of union-busting — and ends up as a story about us.

So let's start. In the following Rachel Maddow Show clip, Rachel discusses how the blot in Wisconsin's milkbowl isn't a fight about money, but about something else — Republicans who are willing to go to the mat for their misguided (there's a kind word) principles; and Democrats who maybe aren't.

Why Monsanto Always Wins

Mike Ludwig | Tuesday 22 February 2011

The recent approval of Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa is one of most divisive controversies in American agriculture, but in 2003, it was simply the topic at hand in a string of emails between the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Monsanto. In the emails, federal regulators and Monsanto officials shared edits to a list of the USDA's questions about Monsanto's original petition to fully legalize the alfalfa. Later emails show a USDA regulator accepted Monsanto's help with drafting the initial environmental assessment (EA) of the alfalfa and planned to "cut and paste" parts of Monsanto's revised petition right into the government's assessment.

 It's unclear if such internal cooperation continues under the current administration, but regulators still openly rely on data and research provided by the biotech industry when approving GE technology.

Oscar-Nominated 'Gasland' Director Calls Latest Attack on His Film 'Outlandish' and Tells Why the Industry Is Getting Desperate

Josh Fox talks about why the gas industry is losing control of the message and how it has underestimated the power of citizens affected by gas drilling.

February 22, 2011 | Editor's Note: Read the letter Josh Fox wrote in response to the gas industry's attacks on his film.

When the gas industry sent an open letter this month to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences demanding it revoke its best documentary nomination for the gas-drilling exposé Gasland, many seemed surprised by this brazen missive.

Gasland director Josh Fox wasn't one of those people.

The Less Discussed Part of Walker’s Wisconsin Plan: No-Bid Energy Assets Firesales.

Posted in Uncategorized by Mike on February 21, 2011

Have you heard about 16.896?

The fight in Wisconsin is over Governor Walker’s 144-page Budget Repair Bill. The parts everyone is focusing on have to do with the right to collectively bargain being stripped from public sector unions (except for the unions that supported Walker running for Governor). Focusing on this misses a large part of what the bill would do. Check out this language, from the same bill (my bold):

16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer Sat Feb 19, 8:53 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

How the Democrats Killed Roosevelt’s Dream of the Affordable Home

Posted on Feb 17, 2011
By Robert Scheer

It’s the same the whole world over
It’s the poor what gets the blame
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure
Ain’t it all a bloomin’ shame?

That chorus of the nineteenth-century Cockney ditty “She Was Poor But She Was Honest,” detailing the travails of a poor lass whose life is ruined by the deflowering advances of a rich man, best captures the mainstream Republican response to the banking meltdown. Their defense has been to blame “bleeding-heart” liberals concerned for the poor for a debacle that occurred unmistakably on their watch, and in response to their antiregulatory ideology, but for which they shuddered to take responsibility.

The effort to shift blame from Wall Street moguls to the poor who took loans they could not afford, while illogical given the frenzy with which those loans were marketed, is also understandable as an act of political desperation. Blame those being swindled rather than the swindlers has been the mantra of America’s right wing bereft of any other explanation for the debacle that will allow them to continue their ways.

Dems Closed Much Larger Budget Shortfall In Wisconsin Without Destroying Worker Rights

Brian Beutler | February 18, 2011, 4:09PM

We know that Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker is framing his bid to roll back public sector worker rights as a necessary measure of fiscal austerity. And we know that's basically bogus. But how bogus? And how accurate are the dire warnings of fiscal crisis? And how standard are the tools Walker's using to address it?

The answers in order: very, overblown, and unconventional.

Flash crash panel calls for market overhaul

By Reuters
Friday, February 18th, 2011 -- 12:22 pm

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. regulators should stem the growing tide of anonymous stock-trading and consider charging high-frequency traders fees for the disproportionate amount of orders they send into the marketplace, said a panel of experts advising how to avoid another "flash crash."

The report laying out 14 recommendations for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission contains some fresh ideas.

Taken together they would significantly overhaul the high-speed market that has gone almost completely electronic in the last decade.

Frank Rich: The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder

Six weeks after that horrific day in Tucson, America has half-forgotten its violent debate over the power of violent speech to incite violence. It’s Gabrielle Giffords’s own power of speech that rightly concerns us now. But all those arguments over political language did leave a discernible legacy. In the aftermath of President Obama’s Tucson sermon, civility has had a mini-restoration in Washington. And some of the most combative national figures in our politics have been losing altitude ever since, much as they did after Bill Clinton’s oratorical response to the inferno of Oklahoma City.

Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

How we manage water resources has a direct impact on our health, says Canada Research Chair

For Margot Parkes, Canada Research Chair in Health, Ecosystems and Society at the University of Northern British Columbia, watersheds are living systems that are essential for healthy communities.

"My research focuses on the relationships between ecosystems and health," says Parkes, who presents her work at the THINK CANADA Press Breakfast panel discussion today at AAAS. Originally trained as a medical doctor, Parkes says it is important to take a holistic view of the issue.

The Education Reform Fig Leaf Is Finally Stripped Away

by Jim Horn

I worked as a Tennessee teacher for almost 20 year before coming to higher education, where I have taught for the past dozen years or so. Never would I have imagined when I left Tennessee schools in 1996 that 15 years later I would be watching a full frontal attack waged to eliminate or neutralize collective bargaining, job security, due process, and the last shreds of academic freedom of Tennessee teachers. But then, it’s not just in Tennessee or just teachers, for this war is being waged on workers in the public or private sectors in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, and elsewhere. This crusade is inspired, funded, and directed by a handful of billionaires who are guided neither by political allegiance nor moral compass. These oligarchs, rather, see workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain as the final stumbling block to the creation of a corporate state that is unimpeded in its aspirations for social control and unrestrained greed and, thus, unchecked by either labor laws or considerations or workers' rights.

Pitted now against this billionaires’ campaign on teachers in Tennessee is the tepid and weak-kneed Tennessee Education Association. This is the same TEA that I remember from my time as a Tennessee teacher, the professional organization that we joined for the liability insurance coverage, not any anything significant they did for teaching. As easy as TEA was to roll in those days, the big difference now is that TEA is even friendlier to “education reform” than it was in the 80s and 90s. Back then, at least there was some modest and low-key protestation when Governor Lamar Alexander installed the Career Ladder Program, which left teacher salaries so low that I and many of my Career Level III colleagues back then worked part-time in the evenings so that we could afford to buy a house or take our families on a vacation.

The real reason for public finance crisis

If you want to know why we have budget deficits all over, look no further than the roaring success of corporate tax avoidance

Richard Wolff
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 19 February 2011 20.00 GMT

Nothing better shows corporate control over the government than Washington's basic response to the current economic crisis. First, we had "the rescue", then "the recovery". Trillions in public money flowed to the biggest US banks, insurance companies, etc. That "bailed" them out (is it just me or is there a suggestion of criminality in that phrase?), while we waited for benefits to "trickle down" to the rest of us.

As usual, the "trickle-down" part has not happened. Large corporations and their investors kept the government's money for themselves; their profits and stock market "recovered" nicely. We get unemployment, home-foreclosures, job benefit cuts and growing job insecurity. As the crisis hits states and cities, politicians avoid raising corporate taxes in favour of cutting government services and jobs – witness Wisconsin, etc.

Cutting $100 Billion?... Easy

If Only Washington Had a Brain
By Tom Engelhardt

Here’s the latest news from Congress, in case you’ve been in Afghanistan for the last couple of weeks. A debate about slashing the federal budget is now upon us, while fears of a possible government shutdown as spring approaches are on the rise. The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives originally picked $40 billion as its target figure for cuts to the as-yet-not-enacted 2011 budget. That was the gauntlet it threw down to the Obama administration, only to find its own proposal slashed to bits by the freshman class of that body's conservative majority.

They insisted on adhering to a Republican Pledge to America vow to cut $100 billion from the budget. With that figure back on the table, Democrats are gasping, while pundits are predicting widespread pain in the land, including the possible loss of at least 70,000 jobs “as government aid to cops, teachers, and research is slashed.”

Report: Public employees make less, including benefits, than private workers

Gov. Scott Walker argues that public employees can sacrifice more of their paychecks for health insurance and retirement because they pay so little for those benefits compared to workers at private companies.

Walker is correct about the disparity, but a new report by the liberal Economic Policy Institute suggests that looking at benefits alone is misleading.

The study looks at total compensation - pay and benefits together - and found that public workers earn 4.8 percent less than private sector employees with the same qualifications and traits doing similar jobs.

Why Are Some Pundits and Politicans Hell-Bent on Underminig Social Security, in Spite of Its Success and Strength?

By Joe Conason, AlterNet
Posted on February 17, 2011, Printed on February 20, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149967/

Among the mysteries of modern politics in America is why so many of our leading pundits and politicians persistently seek to undermine Social Security, that enduring and successful emblem of active government. In the current atmosphere of budgetary panic, self-proclaimed "centrists" are joining with ideologues of the right in yet another campaign against the program -- and yet again they are misinforming the public about its purposes, costs and prospects.

Among the puzzling aspects of the crusade against Social Security is the zeal that animates its enemies, as if the present and future recipients of those monthly checks were somehow fattening themselves at the expense of future generations. Whatever drives these well-fed but poorly informed commentators, it isn't the facts.