What we don't talk about when we talk about jobs

COMMENTARY | July 05, 2011

The yawning chasm between the black and white employment rates is a problem that spans generations, goes remarkably unnoticed, and condemns millions of black Americans to a life of scraping by, writes Andy Kroll.

By Andy Kroll

Like the country it governs, Washington is a city of extremes. In a car, you can zip in bare moments from northwest District of Columbia, its streets lined with million-dollar homes and palatial embassies, its inhabitants sporting one of the nation's lowest jobless rates, to Anacostia, a mostly forgotten neighborhood in southeastern D.C. with one of the highest unemployment rates anywhere in America. Or, if you happen to be jobless, upset about it, and living in that neighborhood, on a crisp morning in March you could have joined an angry band of protesters marching on the nearby 11th Street Bridge.

From New Deal to Raw Deal: The Real Economics of Cutting Social Security

Thursday, 07/7/2011 - 5:17 pm by Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson

Contrary to the mainstream media and D.C. drumbeat, Social Security has little to do with the federal deficit. So why is there talk of cutting it?

This morning the Washington Post reported that the White House is offering to cut Social Security as part of a broader budget deal with the Republicans. At last we have the answer to the question everyone has been asking about the Democrats: How far can they go?

The financial collapse of 2008 has taught us to be skeptical of economic forecasts that simply spin trends out into an indefinite future. Most central bankers, economists, and business leaders failed not only to foresee, but even to imagine, the colossal dimensions of that catastrophe.

Ask the right questions before privatizing, not after

ASK THIS | July 08, 2011

Public officials are succumbing to the promise of easy money and privatizing services and infrastructure -- at great long-term cost to the public and to democracy. The head of a new resource center on privatization writes that if our leaders won't do it then it's up to the media to ask tough questions, before it's too late.

By Donald Cohen

Elected officials, conservative think tanks and industry consulting groups are proposing to privatize a wide range of public services and infrastructure in cities and states across the country. State and local officials scrambling to fill budget shortfalls are hoping to cut costs by outsourcing services. They are selling off major public assets such as parking lots, roads and government buildings for a quick infusion of cash – sometimes in the billions. Conservative politicians and think tanks describe privatization as an antidote to ineffective government. And private companies are looking for steady revenue streams that come along with long-term government contracts and leases.

Why the GOP Loves the Debt

Republicans portray themselves as champions of fiscal responsibility. But as Michael Tomasky argues, they need the debt to push through their radical and unpopular agenda.

Jul 1, 2011 10:47 AM EDT

Now Minnesota joins the list of states being gutted by the Republican Party. The government in the state famous for being nice has shut down, because Democratic Governor Mark Dayton wanted to impose a higher income tax on Minnesotans earning $1 million or more a year—a whopping 7,700 people in a state of 5.3 million. There are additional matters—a GOP insistence on a 15 percent reduction in state workers over the next four years, for example. And so the evidence mounts: In Saint Paul and Columbus and Tallahassee and Madison, as in Washington D.C., we are watching something that is no longer a political party in the normal sense, but a group of cynical highwaymen perpetuating a national crisis and then exploiting that very crisis to try to destroy the public sphere.

If Obama Cuts Social Security...

The president indicates that funding for the hallmark Democratic program is on the table. Is this the last straw?

by David Sirota

Wednesday night, the Washington Post reported that on top of the big cuts to Medicare he's already proposed, President Obama is now considering endorsing cuts to Social Security. In making this announcement (which formally embraces the concept of Social Security cuts first proposed by Obama's debt commission), the White House has lost all credibility in arguing that its 2012 political problems are the result of unfair expectations, particularly on the left. At the same time, the White House has finally exposed the strategy behind what so many of its apologists insisted was deft "three dimensional chess" on behalf of old-school liberalism -- and as we see, these tactics have nothing to do with liberalism and everything to do with Orwell-ism.

The Market Is Lying: Why We Must Tax Carbon, Not Subsidize It

Friday 8 July 2011

by: Rinaldo Brutoco and Madeleine Austin, Truthout | News Analysis

Remarkably diverse groups across the US political spectrum are calling for a high and rising price on carbon as part of their deficit-reduction strategies. Extremely conservative to very liberal groups are finding common cause. This is a potentially momentous development that could spark the end of the political logjam in the US over energy and climate change policy.

Agreeing to Disagree

Scientific truth does not depend on what the majority chooses to believe - not today and not in 1633 when Galileo was convicted of heresy for saying that the earth revolves around the sun. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest, but the earth continued in its orbit.

How Dracula Hedge Funds Are Sucking Us Dry

What notion of economics or ethics justifies the fact that it would take the average family more than 35,000 years to earn as much as the top hedge fund managers earn in one year?

By Les Leopold, AlterNet

The official June unemployment rate is 9.2 percent. The real rate is 18.5 percent (which includes involuntary part-time workers and the unemployed who haven’t looked for jobs in the past 4 weeks.) Nearly 30 million Americans are unemployed and we need more than 21 million jobs to get back to full-employment (defined as 5 percent).

Meanwhile, the top 10 hedge fund elites make on average nearly $1 million an HOUR. We’ll never find the resources to solve the unemployment crisis until we redistribute some of this obscene wealth.

It starts by putting to rest the notion that hedge fund elites are just like any other. They are not. They make more money than everyone else, including our top movie stars and athletes...and they pay lower taxes.

Just 18,000 New Jobs in June Leads to Another Rise in Unemployment

by: Dean Baker, The Center for Economic and Policy Research | News Analysis

Even if job growth were to improve through the rest of 2011, it would not be enough to reduce the unemployment rate.

The Labor Department reported that the economy created just 18,000 jobs in June. It also revised down the previous two months' numbers, bringing the average rate of job growth over this period to 87,000 jobs a month. The slow job growth led to another rise in the unemployment rate, which edged up to 9.2 percent. The employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio fell to 58.2 percent, the low hit in December of 2009 and again in November in 2010. This means that the job growth thus far in the recovery has been just sufficient to keep pace with the growth of the labor force.

Chesapeake Bay Pesticides: Some Diminish, Some Persist

By Ann Perry
July 7, 2011

Scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are identifying factors that influence pesticide levels in the Chesapeake Bay airshed, including traces of "legacy" pesticides that still linger even though they are no longer being used.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) chemists Laura McConnell and Cathleen Hapeman obtained weekly air samples and rain samples for precipitation events from 2000 to 2003 at three sites in Maryland and Delaware. Both scientists work at the ARS Environmental Management and Byproduct Utilization Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency.

Why the Republicans Resist Compromise

By NATE SILVER

The chart that I’m going to show you is one of the more important ones that we’ve presented at FiveThirtyEight in some time. It helps explain a lot of what’s going on in American politics today, from the negotiations over the federal debt ceiling to the Republican presidential primaries. And it’s pretty simple, really, although it took me some time to track down the data.

Here’s what the chart will show: The Republican Party is dependent, to an extent unprecedented in recent political history, on a single ideological group. That group, of course, is conservatives. It isn’t a bad thing to be in favor with conservatives: by some definitions they make up about 40 percent of voters. But the terms ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ are growing closer and closer to being synonyms; fewer and fewer nonconservatives vote Republican, and fewer and fewer Republican voters are not conservative.

‘Some Will Call Me a Torturer’: CIA Man Reveals Secret Jail

By Spencer Ackerman
July 1, 2011 | 2:43 pm

Admitting that “some will call me a torturer” is a surefire way to cut yourself off from anyone’s sympathy. But Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative, isn’t sure whether he’s the hero or the villain of his own story.

Distilled, that story, told in Carle’s new memoir The Interrogator, is this: In the months after 9/11, the CIA kidnaps a suspected senior member of al-Qaida and takes him to a Mideast country for interrogation. It assigns Carle — like nearly all his colleagues then, an inexperienced interrogator — to pry information out of him. Uneasy with the CIA’s new, relaxed rules for questioning, which allow him to torture, Carle instead tries to build a rapport with the man he calls CAPTUS.

But CAPTUS doesn’t divulge the al-Qaida plans the CIA suspects him of knowing. So the agency sends him to “Hotel California” — an unacknowledged prison, beyond the reach of the Red Cross or international law.

Breaking Point: Obama and the Death of the Democratic Party

by Jane Hamsher

According to both the Washington Post and the New York Times, Obama is proposing cuts to Social Security in exchange for GOP support for tax hikes. Lori Montgomery in the Post:

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action. As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal.

And Jay Carney’s carefully chosen weasel-words today do not contradict this:

“There is no news here – the President has always said that while social security is not a major driver of the deficit, we do need to strengthen the program and the President said in the State of the Union Address that he wanted to work with both parties to do so in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn’t slash benefits.”

Nobody ever says they want to “cut” Social Security or Medicare. They want to “save” it. Just ask Pete Peterson, he wants to “save” it. Likewise AARP. They don’t want reduced benefits for senior citizens, they want to “preserve” it for future generations. If they have an enormous customer base they can market private “add-on” accounts and other retirement products to when Social Security goes bye-bye, I guess that’s just a happy coincidence.

High-speed trading algorithms place markets at risk

Jacob Aron, technology reporter

Computers that buy and sell shares in a fraction of a second are in danger of destabilising stock markets around the world says Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England. Speaking last night at the International Economic Association in Beijing, China, Haldane said that High Frequency Trading (HFT) firms were in a "race to zero" that could increase market volatility.

HFT algorithms can execute an order in just a few hundred microseconds, rapidly trading shares back and forth in order to quickly eke out profits from minor differences on the various exchanges.

Today's Job Report Is Much Worse Than You Think

By Charles McMillion

Created 07/08/2011 - 2:51pm

Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for June suggests the economy is again nearing even officially-defined recession and weakening further as state, local and federal government cuts to jobs and contracts to private employers begin to take a serious toll. Conditions could get far worse. My updated, detailed data tables and graphics are available [1].

In a reprise of earlier self-interested but economically incompetent hysteria over the current (awful) federal budget deficit, it is vital to understand that the private sector today employs 1,999,000 (1.8 percent) FEWER Americans than 11 years ago in June 2000 – when the U.S. had almost 30 million fewer people. The sustained, 11-year plunge in U.S. jobs is the first since 1927-1938, when the Depression-era job gains of 1933-1936 were sharply reversed in a devastating deficit-reduction effort.

Paul Krugman: What Obama Wants

On Thursday, President Obama met with Republicans to discuss a debt deal. We don’t know exactly what was proposed, but news reports before the meeting suggested that Mr. Obama is offering huge spending cuts, possibly including cuts to Social Security and an end to Medicare’s status as a program available in full to all Americans, regardless of income.

Obviously, the details matter a lot, but progressives, and Democrats in general, are understandably very worried. Should they be? In a word, yes.

Now, this might just be theater: Mr. Obama may be pulling an anti-Corleone, making Republicans an offer they can’t accept. The reports say that the Obama plan also involves significant new revenues, a notion that remains anathema to the Republican base. So the goal may be to paint the G.O.P. into a corner, making Republicans look like intransigent extremists — which they are.

Pelosi: Medicare, Social Security Benefit Cuts Are Line In The Sand On Debt Limit Bill

Brian Beutler | July 7, 2011, 4:10PM

After a contentious White House meeting with President Obama and other Congressional leaders, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) returned to the Capitol and drew an important red line: Members of her caucus won't vote for a grand bargain to raise the debt limit and reduce future deficits if the final deal includes cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits -- and that means it probably won't pass.

"You [asked], 'could the changes compromise the vote?'" Pelosi said at a Thursday afternoon briefing near the House chamber. "I said yes."

The Great Recession, Part II

The world could be headed for another economic disaster if we continue to listen to free-market ideologues.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz
Posted Wednesday, July 6, 2011, at 3:38 PM ET

Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology—the belief in free and unfettered markets—brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its heyday, from the early 1980s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest of the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology's 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate.

Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of U.S. national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.

Debt Ceiling Hypocrisy

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns

President Obama is not the only debt ceiling flip-flopper. During the Bush administration, when a budget surplus tuned to deficit and debt piled up, Republican leaders in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling 5 times, increasing the limit nearly $4 trillion. We’re talking about Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl. Combined, they voted 19 times for a debt ceiling increase without complaint or conditions.

June 2002: Congress approves a $450 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $6.4 trillion. McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor vote “yea”, Kyl votes “nay.”

May 2003: Congress approves a $900 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $7.384 trillion. All four approve.

In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts

By Lori Montgomery, Published: July 6

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.

As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.

CHART OF THE DAY: The Stealth Social Security Cut In Debt Talks

Brian Beutler | July 6, 2011, 9:55AM

For months, the high-stakes stand-off over raising the debt ceiling and cutting the deficit has proceeded from two basic premises -- that Republicans would take their toys and go home the minute Democrats proposed significant new tax revenues, and that Social Security's long-term shortfall would not be on the table in this round of negotiating.

Two weeks ago, that first assumption proved true: Democrats proposed a few hundred billion in new tax revenues (a small fraction of the trillions of dollars in spending cuts Republicans are demanding) so GOP principals threw up their hands and abandoned the discussions. But the second assumption isn't built on bedrock. And in recent weeks, congressional aides, strategists, and advocates have been floating, or warning of, a stealth change to the Social Security benefit structure that has quietly been placed on the negotiating table.

Lawyers: Protect IP Act would align U.S. Internet policy with ‘repressive regimes’

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 -- 10:49 am

A group of Internet and intellectual property law professors have penned a letter to congressional lawmakers in opposition to the Protect IP Act, which would give the government sweeping new powers to take websites offline, censor search engines and sue Internet publishers accused of infringing activities.

In the letter, they warn that the act would "undermine" U.S. leadership on freedom of speech issues, cautioning that provisions within the legislation are more closely aligned with "repressive regimes" than the traditional American stance on Internet freedom.

Socioeconomic status as child dictates response to stress as adult

Exposure to danger leads those who grew up poor to gamble for immediate rewards

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (07/06/2011) —When faced with threat, people who grew up poor are more likely to make risky financial choices in search of a quick windfall, according to new research from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “The Influence of Mortality and Socioeconomic Status on Risk and Delayed Rewards: A Life History Approach” by Carlson School assistant professor of marketing Vladas Griskevicius found that people respond to feeling threatened differently depending on whether people grew up in relatively resource-scarce or resource-plentiful environments.

Paul Krugman: For a Struggling Economy, Fatalism May Be Deadly

Our current economic discourse in the United States is pervaded by fatalism. Leave aside the people who insist that somehow President Obama has destroyed capitalist incentives by passing Mitt Romney’s health care plan and threatening to raise tax rates to Clinton-era levels. Even among people who should be sensible, you hear many assertions that run something like this: historically, recovery from financial crisis is usually slow, so we have to accept a slow recovery this time around too.

Actually, that’s more or less what Mr. Obama has been saying.

The Debt Deal: "Operation Conditional Surrender"

By Terrance Heath

Created 07/06/2011 - 11:25am

So, just when it looked like President Obama was finally calling the GOP's bluff debt ceiling negotiations [1], it turns out he was preparing to fold [2].

Obama administration officials are offering to cut tens of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid in negotiations to reduce the federal budget deficit, but the depth of the cuts depends on whether Republicans are willing to accept any increases in tax revenues.

Administration officials and Republican negotiators say the money can be taken from health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes without directly imposing new costs on needy beneficiaries or radically restructuring either program.

A Cosmic Visitor's Take on Tax

David Cay Johnston | Jul. 5, 2011 12:31 PM EDT

It is a human tendency to assume the world we are born into is as it should be -- a Panglossian assumption that colors our understanding of the abstract, like tax policy.

To get grounded in what is, without assuming it is natural, let's try a thought experiment. Imagine you are a researcher from a distant planet, part of a team sent to stealthily observe and report your findings. Telemetry has revealed the watery and volcanic nature of our planet, so you focus on the organized activities of Earth's top sentients. Your protocol requires you to identify the biggest common enterprises first and then work your way down.

The worst idea in Washington

By Ezra Klein

Bruce Bartlett takes a look at the Balanced Budget Amendment all 47 Republicans signed their names to and pronounces it “quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin.”

Ron Paul’s Surprisingly Lucid Solution to the Debt Ceiling Impasse

Dean Baker

July 2, 2011 | 12:00 am

Representative Ron Paul has hit upon a remarkably creative way to deal with the impasse over the debt ceiling: have the Federal Reserve Board destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds it now holds. While at first blush this idea may seem crazy, on more careful thought it is actually a very reasonable way to deal with the crisis. Furthermore, it provides a way to have lasting savings to the budget.

The basic story is that the Fed has bought roughly $1.6 trillion in government bonds through its various quantitative easing programs over the last two and a half years. This money is part of the $14.3 trillion debt that is subject to the debt ceiling. However, the Fed is an agency of the government. Its assets are in fact assets of the government. Each year, the Fed refunds the interest earned on its assets in excess of the money needed to cover its operating expenses. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion to the Treasury. In this sense, the bonds held by the Fed are literally money that the government owes to itself.

Contrary To GOP Claims, U.S. Has Second Lowest Corporate Taxes In The Developed World

During negotiations regarding raising the nation’s debt limit, congressional Republicans have defended tax loopholes for corporations, claiming that America has a high corporate tax rate that is stifling economic growth and job creation. But the Center for Tax Justice (CTJ) has crunched the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Office of Management and Budget, and the Census Bureau, and finds that “the U.S. is already one of the least taxed countries for corporations in the developed world.”

As a share of GDP, the U.S. had the second lowest tax rate, behind only Iceland. This statistic flips on its head the often-repeated Republican charge that America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world (which is only true on paper). In 2009, U.S. corporate taxes had fallen to only 1.3 percent of GDP, from 4 percent in 1965.

Clinton Pimps Some More for His Bank and Corporate Benefactors

Of the many low points of the Clinton presidency, one was its questionable money dealings. Remember how Hillary managed to turn $1000 into $100,000 via successful commodities trading? 70% of retail commodities traders lose money. Boy, for a newbie trader, the First Lady was clearly a natural!

A former contact of mine, low profile but with a serious reputation among professional traders, was asked to review Hillary’s trading records by some Congressmen (they apparently asked two other market professionals). Of course, it was clearly bogus, impossible even for an expert. Among other telltale signs: her trades were almost always executed at the best price of the day.

Keep Social Security Safe from Politicians who Want to Save it

Dean Baker
The Des Moines Register, July 3, 2011

See article on original website

As a result of the collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting economic downturn, Social Security is more important than ever. Already, two thirds of people age 65 rely on it for more than half their income. With traditional pensions disappearing and many near retirees losing much or all of the equity in their home, and also seeing 401(k) assets plummet, the next generation is likely to be even more dependent on Social Security.

Fortunately, the program is fundamentally solid. While you can sound really smart in Washington by saying that Social Security is going bankrupt, the facts say the opposite. According to the Social Security trustees' report, if we did absolutely nothing the program could pay every penny of scheduled benefits through the year 2036.

Summer Rerun – The Empire Continues to Strike Back: Team Obama Propaganda Campaign Reaches Fever Pitch

Readers new to this site may be unfamiliar with our summer reruns, in which we reprise vintage NC posts that we think have stood the test of time pretty well.

We’ve done these more or less in chronological order (our last one was our post on the unveiling of the TARP), but we decided to skip ahead to one in 2010 because it focuses on a crucial bit of history that is too often overlooked, and were were reminded of it by a very good Frank Rich piece in New York Magazine on Obama’s failure to bring bankers to account.

Even Rich’s solid piece treats Obama more kindly that he should be. He depicts the President as too easily won over by “the best and the brightest) in the guise of folks like Robert Rubin and his protege Timothy Geithner.

Air pollution linked to learning and memory problems, depression

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to physical changes in the brain, as well as learning and memory problems and even depression, new research in mice suggests.

While other studies have shown the damaging effects of polluted air on the heart and lungs, this is one of the first long-term studies to show the negative impact on the brain, said Laura Fonken, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in neuroscience at Ohio State University.

"The results suggest prolonged exposure to polluted air can have visible, negative effects on the brain, which can lead to a variety of health problems," Fonken said.

"This could have important and troubling implications for people who live and work in polluted urban areas around the world."

Universal Health Care: Can We Afford Anything Less?

Why only a single-payer system can solve America’s health-care mess.

By Gerald Friedman

America’s broken health-care system suffers from what appear to be two separate problems. From the right, a chorus warns of the dangers of rising costs; we on the left focus on the growing number of people going without health care because they lack adequate insurance. This division of labor allows the right to dismiss attempts to extend coverage while crying crocodile tears for the 40 million uninsured. But the division between the problem of cost and the problem of coverage is misguided. It is founded on the assumption, common among neoclassical economists, that the current market system is efficient. Instead, however, the current system is inherently inefficient; it is the very source of the rising cost pressures. In fact, the only way we can control health-care costs and avoid fiscal and economic catastrophe is to establish a single-payer system with universal coverage.

The rising cost of health care threatens the U.S. economy. For decades, the cost of health insurance has been rising at over twice the general rate of inflation; the share of American income going to pay for health care has more than doubled since 1970 from 7% to 17%. By driving up costs for employees, retirees, the needy, the young, and the old, rising health-care costs have become a major problem for governments at every level. Health costs are squeezing public spending needed for education and infrastructure. Rising costs threaten all Americans by squeezing the income available for other activities. Indeed, if current trends continued, the entire economy would be absorbed by health care by the 2050s.

Which States Do the Worst (and Best) Job of Educating Kids Regardless of Class?

By Sharona Coutts and Jennifer LaFleur, ProPublica
Posted on July 4, 2011, Printed on July 5, 2011

Florida is a state of stark contrasts. Travel a few miles from the opulent mansions of Miami Beach and you reach desperately poor neighborhoods. There’s the grinding poverty of sugar cane country and the growing middle class of Jacksonville. All told, half the public-school students in Florida qualify for subsidized lunches. Many are the first in their families to speak English or contemplate attending college.

In many states, those economic differences are reflected in the classroom, with students in wealthy schools taking many more advanced courses.

What's really at stake in Libya

By Pepe Escobar

Way beyond the impenetrable fog of war, the ongoing tragedy in Libya is morphing into a war of acronyms that graphically depicts the tortuous "birth pangs" of a possibly new world order.

On one side there's NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and AL (the Arab League; on the other side, the African Union (AU) and the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Alternatively, this may be seen as the Atlanticist West and its counter-revolutionary Arab allies, against Africa and the emerging global economic powers.

Frank Rich: Obama's Original Sin

The president’s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second.

by Frank Rich

After 9/11, Rudy Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again. But Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. And so, as we stumble through the second year of the official “recovery,” it’s been an improvisational return to high-end carousing in Manhattan.

A case in point was the late-May celebration of the centennial rededication of the New York Public Library. Surely no civic institution could be a more unimpeachable beard for a blowout. The dress code—no black tie—was egalitarian. The Abyssinian Baptist Church Gospel Choir, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, and that cute chorus from P.S. 22 in Staten Island—Glee diversity on steroids—were in the house along with some 900 invited guests, marquee names included (Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen). Bloomberg delivered a pre-dinner benediction from an altarlike perch on the main reading room’s balcony. “Free and open access to information may be the single most important component of any democratic society,” he said.

John Nichols: What began in 1776 is not finished Read more: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/article_c4bc016c-3588-537c-82

JOHN NICHOLS | Posted: Sunday, July 3, 2011 5:30 am

It was 235 years ago this summer that patriots gathered in Philadelphia to plot revolution not just against a British king but against an old order that would allow a tyrant to impose his will via all branches of government.

The American Revolution of 1776 was best explained by Thomas Jefferson in his last letter on the subject.

Paul Krugman: Corporate Cash Con

Watching the evolution of economic discussion in Washington over the past couple of years has been a disheartening experience. Month by month, the discourse has gotten more primitive; with stunning speed, the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis have been forgotten, and the very ideas that got us into the crisis — regulation is always bad, what’s good for the bankers is good for America, tax cuts are the universal elixir — have regained their hold.

And now trickle-down economics — specifically, the idea that anything that increases corporate profits is good for the economy — is making a comeback.

On the face of it, this seems bizarre. Over the last two years profits have soared while unemployment has remained disastrously high. Why should anyone believe that handing even more money to corporations, no strings attached, would lead to faster job creation?

GOP-engineered crisis shuts down Minnesota government in battle over taxes for millionaires

by Gaius Publius on 7/03/2011 04:01:00 PM

From Friday's Last Word program, a good summary of what's happening in Minnesota.

What's happening in Minnesota? The Republican-controlled legislature and the Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, are in a state budget stalemate. The governor wants Minnesota millionaires to pay more taxes — something that will affect fewer than 8000 people.

The Republicans say "No way; that would mean the death of the Republic." Then they added, "But wait, maybe if you agree to gut abortion, we'll give you the death of the Republic after all."

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans

Saturday 2 July 2011

by: Dr. Cynthia Boaz, Truthout | News Analysis

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

School "Reform" Ignores Glaring Problem: Outdated Curriculum

Sunday 3 July 2011

by: Marion Brady, Information Age Publishing | Book Excerpt

From "What's Worth Learning?"
Information Age Publishing,
Charlotte, North Carolina, 2011

American education isn't up to the challenge. The evidence is inescapable. Millions of kids walk away from school long before they're scheduled to graduate. Millions more stay but disengage. Half of those entering the teaching profession soon abandon it. Administrators play musical chairs. Barbed wire surrounds many schools, and police patrol hallways. School bond levies usually fail. Superficial fads - old ideas resurrected with new names - come and go with depressing regularity. Think tanks crank out millions of words of ignored advice, and foundations spend billions to promote seemingly sound ideas that make little or no difference. About half a trillion dollars a year are invested in education, but most adults remember little and make practical use of even less of what they once learned in thousands of hours of instruction.

Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages

By Guest Blogger on Jun 30, 2011 at 3:15 pm

After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations.

The Freedom of Information Act on its 45th anniversary

COMMENTARY | July 01, 2011

Lyndon Johnson opposed FOIA — said it was a plot against his administration — but a tenacious backbencher from California, John Moss, had pursued it for 12 years and LBJ finally relented, signing the legislation on July 4th, 1966. Here Michael Lemov, author of a new book on Moss and FOIA, recounts events leading to the enactment.

By Michael R. Lemov
lemovlaw@verizon.net

July 4th marks the forty-fifth birthday of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Passed by Congress in 1966, and reluctantly signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on the last day before it would have been pocket-vetoed, FOIA has revolutionized public access to government documents and records. It was used last year more than 590,000 times, by news organizations, citizens and businesses. They mostly succeeded in obtaining the government information they sought.

But at age 45 FOIA faces a new world and new challenges. Decades of terrorism have induced government agencies to over-classify millions of alleged national security items as secret. Extensive delays, sometimes for years, may face those requesting information. And the Internet, with its worldwide impact, has given birth to Wikileaks and its fallout, which could threaten the use of the disclosure process established by FOIA and induce more reliance on leaked government data.

What Michele Bachmann and Her Teapot 'Patriots' Do Not Know About America

by John Nichols

The unsettling thing about Michele Bachmann’s failed discussion of the founders and slavery is not that the Tea Party “Patriot” knew so little about the birth of the American experiment that she made John Quincy Adams—the son of a somewhat disappointing founder (John) and the cousin of one of the true revolutionaries (Sam)—into something he was not.

Bachmann has for some time peddled the notion that the nation’s founding fathers worked “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” She is simply wrong about this. The last of the revolutionaries generally recognized by historians as the founders—signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and their chief political and military comrades—passed in 1836, with the death of James Madison. That was twenty-seven years before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and twenty-nine years before the finish of the Civil War.

China's a Lion. Is the United States a Gazelle?

What a week in the Serengeti taught me about America's role in the world.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Friday, July 1, 2011, at 12:41 PM ET

The cheetah lunged and clamped its jaws around the neck of a fleeing gazelle—the quick resolution of a 15-second chase at 50 miles per hour—and bought the limp victim back to her six cubs for lunch. Watching from 30 feet away, I was reminded of the brutality of the law of the jungle, and the fact that nature doesn't leave much room for second place. Despite the Serengeti's Garden of Eden quality, there is a clear and brutal hierarchy that dictates survival. Within a pride of lions or a herd of elephants, new leaders are chosen on a regular basis. Predictable measures of strength determine who rules: speed, power, ability to provide food, even popularity.

And so what does this have to do with geopolitics, you ask?

In conversations with an array of folks in Kenya and Tanzania, a major concern was China's increasing role in funding, buying, developing, building, and usurping. Who was funding the infrastructure project in downtown Nairobi? China. Who was entering long-term contracts to buy natural resources throughout Kenya and Tanzania? China. Who was funding the luxury resort on the coast of Zanzibar? China. The Chinese were ubiquitous—or, at least, their money was.