Report: Warren to be passed over as nominee to head Consumer Bureau

By Muriel Kane
Friday, July 15th, 2011 -- 9:29 pm

Bloomberg News is reporting as of Friday evening that President Obama has chosen somebody other than Elizabeth Warren to be nominated as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

According to the report, which is based on an anonymous source, an unidentified individual who already works at the agency will be nominated instead.

A Discreet Nonprofit Brings Together Politicians and Corporations to Write ‘Model Bills’

by Lois Beckett
ProPublica, July 15, 2011, 3:39 p.m.

This week, both the Los Angeles Times and The Nation put the spotlight on a little-known but influential conservative nonprofit that creates "model" state legislation that often make its way into law. The organization has helped craft some of the most controversial—and industry-friendly—legislation of recent years.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, crafted a model resolution for states calling the EPA's attempts to regulate greenhouse gasses a "trainwreck" and asking Congress to slow or stop the regulations, the Times reported. A press release on ALEC's site says that at least 13 other states have passed resolutions based on their model language.

Paul Krugman: Getting to Crazy

There aren’t many positive aspects to the looming possibility of a U.S. debt default. But there has been, I have to admit, an element of comic relief — of the black-humor variety — in the spectacle of so many people who have been in denial suddenly waking up and smelling the crazy.

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.

Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.

‘Entitlement’ Is a Republican Word

Posted on Jul 14, 2011

By Bill Boyarsky

At his news conference this week, President Barack Obama seized on a misleading Washington word—“entitlements”—to describe the badly needed aid programs that are likely to be cut because of his compromises with the Republicans.

“Entitlement” is a misleading word because it masks the ugly reality of reducing medical aid for the poor, the disabled and anyone over 65 as well as cutting Social Security. Calling such programs entitlements is much more comfortable than describing them as what they are—Medicare, Social Security and money for good schools, unemployment insurance, medical research and public works construction that would put many thousands to work.

It’s also a Republican word. It implies that those receiving government aid have a sense of entitlement, that they’re getting something for nothing. And now it’s an Obama word as he moves toward the center and away from the progressives who powered his 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination over centrist Hillary Clinton.

Historical Context Missing From Debt Ceiling Reporting

Chris Weigant
Political Writer and Blogger at ChrisWeigant.com
Posted: 7/14/11 11:55 AM ET

I've always been astounded at the near-complete lack of historical memory regularly exhibited by both Washington politicians and the "journalists" who purport to cover them. Nothing I've seen in the past few weeks has caused me to change this opinion, either, as the fight over raising the federal debt ceiling has played itself out.

While it's certainly understandable that subjects such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff or the Greenback Party would be considered so obscure and so removed from living memory as to be ignored, there is simply no excuse for ignoring a direct parallel to today's political news, which happened only two presidents ago. Because we've been here before with the debt ceiling. Well, not precisely where we find ourselves at in 2011, but close enough to the government shutdown in 1995-96 that multiple parallels can easily be drawn.

The Tea Party Wants What It Wants When It Wants It ... Or Else

By Terrance Heath
Created 07/15/2011 - 3:53pm

"I want what I want when I want it."

Those are Eric Cantor's words. No, they're not words he said recently, but words he chose years ago, for his high school yearbook quote [1]. And while it may seem unfair to bring them up now (After all, how many of us said or did things in high school that make us cringe now?), they're actually a perfect distillation of not just Eric Cantor's approach to the debt ceiling negotiations, but that of the tea party contingent he represents: They want what they want when they want it. Or else.

It doesn't matter that most of the rest of us don't want what they want. It doesn't matter that what they want would be disastrous for the economy, and millions of American families. It's what they want, and they want it now.

The Shady Ways People Are Losing Their Homes--Even If They Don't Have Mortgages

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on July 14, 2011, Printed on July 16, 2011

Millions of American homeowners owe more to their bankers than their properties are worth. With incomes stagnating and unemployment pushing higher, foreclosures are projected to hit a record high this year.

But some are learning the hard way that you don't have to stop paying your mortgage to lose your home. In fact, in some cases you don't need to have a mortgage in the first place – people are losing properties they own free and clear to the foreclosure process.

Some Americans are losing their homes to screw-ups on the part of banks and loan servicers. In March, an exhaustive investigation by the Federal Reserve was, incredibly, unable to come up with a single example of a "wrongful foreclosure." According to the Huffington Post, consumer advocates “criticized the central bank's examiners for narrowly defining what constitutes a 'wrongful foreclosure,'” and warned that “the public would not take the Fed's findings of improper practices seriously.”

Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide

by Matt Taibbi

Courtesy of good friend and Supreme Court of Assholedom justice David Sirota comes this revolting list of Marie Antoinettoid moments from recent years, in an article called "The New 'Let Them Eat Cake!'"

Some of the moments on the list are easily recalled – Berkshire Hathaway gazillionaire Charlie Munger's famous "suck it up and cope" quote, coming from a guy whose company was heavily invested in bailed-out banks, was an obvious inclusion – but others are quite shocking.

For instance, I was completely floored by the New York Times' pseudo-ironic take on the government's response to the financial crisis, a piece entitled "You Try to Live on $500K in This Town."

How AEI Kneecapped the Financial Crisis Commission

GOP commissioners leaked confidential information, pushed transparently bogus theories, and undermined the investigation of the causes of the financial crisis, according to a new report.

— By Andy Kroll

hu Jul. 14, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

When it came time for the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to unveil its final report on the causes of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, the commission's 11 members were bitterly divided. In the end, the FCIC's Republicans refused to put their names on the commission's final report. Instead, they released their own questionable narrative of what caused the crisis. Then there was Republican commissioner Peter Wallison, who broke with both Democrats and Republicans and published a solo report that, despite bundles of evidence to the contrary, pointed to government housing policy and fallen housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the major causes of the financial crisis.

On the front page of his dissent Wallison listed his employer: the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential conservative think tank in Washington, DC, where he's a fellow in financial policy.

Where was Moody's board when top-rated bonds blew up?

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — As the bottom fell out of the housing market and complex mortgage-backed securities began tanking in 2007, a strange thing happened at Moody's Investors Service, one of the largest firms that rate bonds for the risks they pose to investors.

Moody's blue-ribbon board of directors stopped receiving key information from an internal committee that was supposed to keep the board informed of risks to the company, a McClatchy investigation has found.

ALEC Exposed

John Nichols

July 12, 2011 | This article appeared in the August 1-8, 2011 edition of The Nation.

“Never has the time been so right,” Louisiana State Representative Noble Ellington told conservative legislators gathered in Washington to plan the radical remaking of policies in the states. It was one month after the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans had grabbed 680 legislative seats and secured a power trifecta—control of both legislative chambers and the governorship—in twenty-one states. Ellington was speaking for hundreds of attendees at a “States and Nation Policy Summit,” featuring GOP stars like Texas Governor Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Representative Moran (and 25 others): Conned by the Concord Coalition

By Eric Lotke

Created 07/13/2011 - 8:53am

Yesterday evening I attended an event sponsored by my U.S. Representative, Jim Moran (D-VA). I accepted an invitation I received from his email list to a community forum called "Principles & Priorities [1]: How would you balance the budget?"

I'm no dummy and I was expecting political theater, but I thought at least the theater would be staged by Representative Moran, a centrist Democrat who generally votes the party line, though he sometimes surprises and delights like his 2002 vote against the Iraq war resolution.

Meet The Indonesian Workers Who Make Your Nikes: 50 Cent Hourly Wages, Beatings, And Humiliation

By Zaid Jilani on Jul 13, 2011 at 9:40 am

More than a decade ago, shoe giant Nike came under fire for its use of sweatshop labor in the production of its products. Most of the criticism focused on its Indonesian workforce, where workers, largely young women, were forced to labor under harsh conditions and abusive supervisors. In 1997, filmmaker Michael Moore made Nike’s abuses a subject of his film “The Big One,” and met with Nike CEO Phil Knight. Knight explained that the reason his company was using low-wage labor in Indonesia is because “Americans don’t want to make shoes.”

And for His Next Trick

Mitch McConnell offers a debt-ceiling plan that is all smoke and mirrors.

David Dayen | July 13, 2011

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has concocted an elaborate scheme that would allow President Barack Obama a clean shot at raising the debt limit, in three installments, over the next year and a half. Unlike his fellow Republicans, McConnell will not use the debt-ceiling fight to force cuts in discretionary spending or safety-net programs. Instead, he focuses on his chief preoccupation: winning elections for the GOP.

The terrorist threat we're ignoring

How the high-tech software we import from China is setting us up for potential cyberattacks

By David Sirota

According to the U.S. government, the list of known boogeymen working to compromise American national security is long and getting longer by the day. By my back of the envelope count, we have shoe bombers, underwear bombers, train bombers, cargo bombers, dirty bombers, car bombers and, never to be forgotten, box-cutter hijackers. Now, as of last week, we are told to fear the brand new "implant bomber" -- the terrorist who will surgically stitch explosives to his innards for the purposes of a suicide attack.

All of these threats are, indeed, scary -- and the last one, which sounds like something out of "Saw" movie, is especially creepy. But the fear of individual terrorist acts has diverted attention from a more systemic threat that is taking the implant idea to a much bigger platform. I'm talking about the threat of terrorists or foreign governments exploiting our economy's penchant for job outsourcing/offshoring. How? By using our corresponding reliance on imports to secretly stitch security-compromising technology into our society's central IT nervous system.

Joe Lieberman and his Medicare Gift

The press needs to untie the bow—and quickly

By Trudy Lieberman

Leave it to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman to speed along the process of making seniors on Medicare pay more for their care—the cost control method of choice at the moment, since it doesn’t disturb the profits of major stakeholders. After all, it was Lieberman who sealed the death warrant for the public option during the health reform debate. So the legislation he has proposed along with Senator Tom Coburn is consistent with his political MO. Lieberman’s proposal along with others like it may well slip into the bill, authorizing an increase in the debt ceiling with nary a word from the seniors who depend on the program. It would be grand if they knew what was afoot.

The plan is deceptively referred to as “Medicare benefit simplification,” says Joe Baker, who heads the Medicare Rights Center, a New York City advocacy group. “What they are proposing is not simplifying the benefit to help consumers but to save the federal government money, and they do that by increasing costs to consumers and providing a disincentive to use medical services.” Lieberman et al want to create a single deductible of $550 for all Medicare services, replacing the separate hospital deductible—this year $1132—and the separate medical deductible of $162. They also want to cap out-of-pocket spending for people with low to middling incomes at $7500.

Rise In Risk Inequality Helps Explain Polarized U.S. Voters

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study of political polarization in the United States suggests that changes in the labor market since the 1970s has helped create more Republican and Democratic partisans and fewer independents.

The growth in partisanship has to do with people’s current income and – importantly – their expectations of job security, said Philipp Rehm, author of the study and assistant professor of political science at Ohio State University.

At one time, many voters were “cross-pressured” – when looking at what they earned now and their risks of losing that income, they felt torn between Republican and Democratic policies. The result is that they were natural independents, Rehm said.

Inside the October Surprise Cover-up

Special Report: The George H.W. Bush Library in Texas has just released thousands of pages of documents on the October Surprise mystery, revealing how Bush’s inner circle handled allegations that the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 struck a treacherous deal with Iran. It was a textbook case of controlling the narrative, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

July 12, 2011

In 1991-92, when President George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign was threatened by interlocking national security scandals, his White House staff and Republicans in Congress went into partisan battle mode determined to discredit – not investigate – allegations of wrongdoing, newly released documents from Bush’s presidential library reveal.

The documents show that GOP anger boiled over in 1991 when the long-running Iran-Contra scandal opened another front with allegations that secret Republican contacts with Iran extended back to 1980 when Ronald Reagan was seeking to unseat Democratic President Jimmy Carter – and Bush was Reagan’s vice presidential running mate.

In Retreat, Murdoch Drops TV Takeover

By JOHN F. BURNS AND ALAN COWELL

LONDON — In a stunning setback after days of building scandal surrounding its British newspaper operations, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation announced on Wednesday that it was withdrawing a $12 billion bid to take over the shares it does not already own in Britain’s main satellite television broadcaster.

The withdrawal from the bid for complete control of British Sky Broadcasting, also known as BSkyB, represented the most severe damage inflicted so far on Mr. Murdoch’s corporate ambitions by the scandal. Only a week ago, Mr. Murdoch hoped to contain the damage by shutting down his 168-year-old tabloid, The News of the World, which had admitted to ordering the hacking of the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered in 2002.

Since then, virtually every day has brought dizzying new disclosure and developments, culminating in News Corporation’s announcement on Wednesday.

Manufacturing deficit fear

Pursuing a plan to kill social security, politicians are relying on a credulous public and compliant media to ramp up debt panic

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 July 2011 15.09 BST

The conventional wisdom among the current generation of school reformers is that bad teachers are to blame for the failure of many of our children to learn. Applying this logic to the current debates over the budget and the economy, we should be pointing a big finger of blame at the media.

As survey after survey shows, the vast majority of the public are incredibly ignorant of the most basic facts about the budget and the economy. If we treated their teachers in the media the way the educational reformers treat public school teachers, few economics and budget reporters would have jobs.

Feds Report That Massey Hid Mine Violations Through Two Sets of Safety Records

Tuesday 12 July 2011

by: Roger Bybee, Working In These Times

The federal government has just released its report on the Massey Energy mine explosion, which killed 29 West Virginia miners in April 2010. The key revelation is shocking even for those familiar with Massey’s willingness to endanger miners’ lives whenever greater profits could be attained by ignoring risks.

The feds' explosive finding: Massey kept two sets of safety records in order to prevent federal inspectors from learning about the severe hazards in the Upper Big Branch mine that Massey officials already knew about. For its own needs, Massey had to keep a record of safety problems, malfunctioning equipment, maintenance needs and other operational details in the mine.

Did Sheila Bair Save the US From Complete Financial Meltdown?

When a moderate (meaning anachronistic) Republican proves to be a more tough minded regulator than Democrats, it serves as yet another proof of how far the county has moved to the right. Bair, in a long “exit interview” with Joe Nocera, says a number of things that would have been regarded as commonsensical and obvious in the 1980s, yet have a whiff of radicalism about them in our era of finance uber alles. For instance: Bear should have been allowed to fail, TBTF banks are a menace (well, she doesn’t say that, but makes it clear she regards them as repugnant), bank bondholders should take their lumps.

Bair was alert to the dangers of subprime, having recognized how dangerous it could be in the early 2000s (when a smaller version of the market blew up, taking homeowners along with it), and was not a believer of the Paulson/Bernanke party line that subprime would be “contained”.

The Story of a New Economy

We're in the midst of a contest of competing stories—one fabricated to serve the interests of Empire; the other an authentic story born of the experience and aspirations of ordinary people.

by David Korten

Some years ago the Filipino activist-philosopher Nicanor Perlas shared an insight with me that has since been a foundation of my work. Each of the three institutional sectors—business, government, and civil society—has its distinctive power competence. Business commands the power of money. Government commands the coercive power of the police and military. Civil society commands the power of authentic moral values communicated through authentic cultural stories. Moral authority ultimately trumps the power of money and guns. Therefore, civil society holds the ultimate power advantage.

Super-PACs and Dark Money: ProPublica’s Guide to the New World of Campaign Finance

by Kim Barker and Marian Wang
ProPublica, July 11, 2011, 1:38 p.m.

The nation is gearing up for yet another "most expensive election in history," the quadrennial exercise in which mind-numbing amounts of money pour into the political system. But this year promises more than just record spending—more money will be flowing from more players with more opportunities to hide the source.

Emboldened by recent court decisions, groups such as Crossroads GPS (formed by Republican strategist Karl Rove), Priorities USA (formed by former aides to President Obama) and Americans for Prosperity (formed by libertarian billionaire David Koch) have been busy raising huge sums from wealthy donors freed from old contribution limits.

More Proof That Obama is Herbert Hoover

Not only is Obama assuring that he will go down as one of the worst Presidents in history, but for those who have any doubts, he is also making it clear that his only allegiance is to the capitalist classes and their knowledge worker arms and legs.

You don’t need to go further than the first page of today’s New York Times for proof. The Grey Lady has realized rather late in the game that automatic stabliizers and emergency programs have been propping up the economy, and the fact that they are soon to disappear will be more than a bit of a downer.

House Republicans Look To Push Lower Capital Standards For Banks In Through The Back Door

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 11, 2011 at 6:45 pm

Congressional Republicans have been doing their best to undermine the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. They’ve tried to gut the budgets of the regulators charged with implementing the law, push back the date for when certain provisions take effect, and obstructed nominees for key regulatory positions. And legislation examined by House Republicans on Friday, if enacted into law, would be one more volley in this assault.

Tea Parties Aren't Cheap

— By Stephanie Mencimer | Mon Jul. 11, 2011 3:24 PM PDT

For about nine months now, Mother Jones has been trying to get a sense of just how much money might be behind parts of the tea party movement. Specifically, I asked one of the largest umbrella groups, the Tea Party Patriots, for a copy of its federal 990 forms. As a 501 (c)(4), the group is required by law to file the form each year with the IRS and make it public. TPP did not respond to some initial requests. Finally, in January, a spokesman for the group explained that the reason we hadn't been able to get the form is because the organization hadn't filed a return, despite being in existence for almost two years.

Hawk Nation: A Guide to the Catastrophic Debt Ceiling Debate

Monday, 07/11/2011 - 2:13 pm by James K. Galbraith

President Obama’s proposed debt ceiling deal is a disastrous solution to an imaginary fiscal crisis, but the pain it causes will be all too real.

News reports hold that President Obama scored a political victory by agreeing to put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block to achieve a “go-big” $4 trillion deficit reduction. Speaker Boehner had to concede that Republicans won’t vote for any package that includes tax increases – and the deal died. So the gambit worked and the President emerged with a solid image as the alpha deficit hawk.

To which one can only say: how nice for him.

Budget Blowhards: Why the Budget Debate Is Destined to Become Ever More Painful

Monday 11 July 2011
by: Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis

There are few exercises more entertaining than ridiculing the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of leaders in Washington. The great part is that this is completely bipartisan. Neither party has a monopoly on solemnly stated absurdities. And, of course, we never have to worry about running out of material.

The winner in last week's contest was John Kasich, the former Republican chair of the House Budget Committee and the current governor of Ohio. National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed Kasich in the context of a piece on the state of the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling.

The Strange Silencing of Liberal America

Monday 11 July 2011

by: John Pilger, Truthout | Op-Ed

How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film, "Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia," was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. But what? "Year Zero" had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant's rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.

Six months later, a PBS official told me, "This wasn't censorship. We're into difficult political days in Washington. Your film would have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry."

Obama Doesn't Want a Progressive Deficit Deal

POSTED: July 11, 11:31 AM ET

One expects the debt-ceiling mess to involve a lot of ostentatious chest-pounding on both sides, for despite the fact that this is a deadly serious issue – the fact that we're even considering incurring an intentional catastrophe via a default is incredible, a testament to the bottomless stupidity inherent in our political climate – this whole debate is primarily an exercise in political posturing.

That Republicans are holding up what should be a routine, if unpleasant, decision to raise the debt ceiling in order to portray themselves as the uncompromising defenders of the budget-balancing faith (a howling idiocy in itself, given what went on during the Bush years) is obvious to most rational observers. It's the obvious play for the lame-duck party entering an election year, and they're playing it, with the requisite hysteria.

Paul Krugman: No, We Can’t? Or Won’t?

If you were shocked by Friday’s job report, if you thought we were doing well and were taken aback by the bad news, you haven’t been paying attention. The fact is, the United States economy has been stuck in a rut for a year and a half.

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. Turn on your TV and you’ll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy’s short-run problems (reminder: this “short run” is now in its fourth year), that we should focus on the long run instead.

This gets things exactly wrong. The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. Yes, there are huge political obstacles to action — notably, the fact that the House is controlled by a party that benefits from the economy’s weakness. But political gridlock should not be conflated with economic reality.

The next, worse financial crisis

Commentary: Ten reasons we are doomed to repeat 2008

By Brett Arends, MarketWatch

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The last financial crisis isn’t over, but we might as well start getting ready for the next one.

Sorry to be gloomy, but there it is.

Why? Here are 10 reasons.

Job Bleeding: Voters Must Apply Pressure

By Dave Johnson

Created 07/10/2011 - 1:11pm

It seems that I begin a post every month by writing, “Another terrible jobs report.” And it seems I end that post each month asking why our leaders are ignoring the problem. Our country is in a jobs emergency, and our government is not doing its part to fill the gap and create jobs. In fact, now they are talking about cuts that will just make it worse. The instructions for treating a wound are: apply pressure to stop the bleeding. That’s the lesson We, the People need to learn from this crisis.

“One of the most negative employment reports since the recovery began.”

Dean Baker on Friday's jobs report [1]:

On the whole, this is one of the most negative employment reports since the recovery began. It indicates that the economy has made no progress whatsoever in re-employing the people who lost their jobs in the downturn. Even more discouraging is the fact that there is no reason to expect anything to change for the better any time soon. The pace of job loss in the public sector is likely to accelerate, with no evidence of an offsetting pickup in the private sector.

Reagan Mythology is Leading US Off a Cliff

During Reagan's presidency, the US went from a creditor to debtor nation and marked a take-off for financial inequality.

by Paul Rosenberg

As things stand today, the US is hurtling toward a budget showdown in less than a month. Either President Obama will once again capitulate to extreme Republican budget-slashing demands, making Democrats seem as much of a threat to Medicare as Republicans, and virtually ensuring a GOP electoral sweep in 2012, or the US will default on its debt for the first time in its history, most likely plunging the world economy back into another five-continent recession, also costing Democrats the 2012 elections. These are the options left for a president and a political class completely divorced both from reality, and its own history of how one of the three greatest US presidents of all time steered the country from the brink of collapse eight decades ago

How the For-Profit Prison Industry Locks Up More People Each Year

By Willam Fisher, TruthOut.org
Posted on July 6, 2011, Printed on July 10, 2011

Seventeen-year-old Hillary Transue did what lots of 17-year-olds do: Got into mischief. Hillary's mischief was composing a MySpace page poking fun at the assistant principal of the high school she attended in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Hillary was an honor student who'd never had any trouble with the law before. And her MySpace page stated clearly that the page was a joke. But despite all that, Hilary found herself charged with harassment. She stood before a judge and heard him sentence her to three months in a juvenile detention facility.

What she expected was perhaps a stern lecture. What she got was a perp walk - being led away in handcuffs as her stunned parents stood by helplessly. Hillary told The New York Times, "I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare. All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing."

It wasn't until two years later that she found out why. In Scranton, Pennsylvania, two judges pleaded guilty to operating a kickback scheme involving juvenile offenders. The judges, Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, took more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from a private prison company to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. Since 2003, Ciaverella had sentenced an estimated 5,000 juveniles. Conahan was accused of setting up the contracts. Many of the youngsters shipped off to the detention centers were first-time offenders.

The great generational threat

By Glenn Greenwald

In just the past two months alone (all subsequent to the killing of Osama bin Laden), the U.S. Government has taken the following steps in the name of battling the Terrorist menace: extended the Patriot Act by four years without a single reform; begun a new CIA drone attack campaign in Yemen; launched drone attacks in Somalia; slaughtered more civilians in Pakistan; attempted to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki far from any battlefield and without a whiff of due process; invoked secrecy doctrines to conceal legal memos setting forth its views of its own domestic warrantless surveillance powers; announced a "withdrawal"plan for Afghanistan that entails double the number of troops in that country as were there when Obama was inaugurated; and invoked a very expansive view of its detention powers under the 2001 AUMF by detaining an alleged member of al-Shabab on a floating prison, without charges, Miranda warnings, or access to a lawyer. That's all independent of a whole slew of drastically expanded surveillance powers seized over the past two years in the name of the same threat.

Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

GRIM number of the week: 14,087,000.

Fourteen million, in round numbers — that is how many Americans are now officially out of work.

Word came Friday from the Labor Department that, despite all the optimistic talk of an economic recovery, unemployment is going up, not down. The jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in June.

What gives? And where, if anywhere, is the outrage?

How the Bubble Destroyed the Middle Class

by Rex Nutting
Friday, July 8, 2011

Commentary: Sluggish growth is no mystery: No one has any money

A lot of people say they are deeply puzzled by the slow recovery in the U.S. economy. They look at the 9+% unemployment rate and the mediocre growth in national output, and they scratch their heads and wonder: Where is the boom that inevitably follows a deep bust, such as we experienced in 2008 and 2009?

But there is no mystery. What other result would you expect from the financial ruin of the once-great American middle class?

Imported Fish with Banned Chemicals Reaching U.S. Consumers

Tests show some mislabeled seafood tainted with carcinogens

By Laurie Udesky, 8:00 am, July 5, 2011

In March 2010, a team of reporters from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists set out to document the plundering of one of the ocean’s most awe-inspiring creatures — the giant Eastern Atlantic Bluefin Tuna. Favored for its soft red flesh, bluefin tuna is prized by sushi lovers around the world. For seven months, ICIJ deployed 12 journalists to investigate the bluefin trade, a trail that led from major fishing fleets and tuna ranches in the Mediterranean and North Africa, through ministry offices, to some of the world’s largest buyers in Japan. ICIJ’s team uncovered a supply chain that at every step was riddled with fraud, negligence, and criminal misconduct.

Tons of imported fish laced with chemicals banned from the U.S. food supply, including carcinogens, are routinely showing up in this country and, state officials say, winding up on American dinner plates.

Within the last two months, three American fish importers pleaded guilty in Mobile, Ala., to federal felony charges of mislabeling fish and seafood. Their illegal haul included more than 120,000 pounds of imported fish, brought in to Mobile and Seattle, that tested positive for the suspected human carcinogen malachite green and for another antibiotic that U.S. authorities also prohibit for use on fish that people consume.

Murdoch Named PATRIOT Act Architect to Mop Up Paper's Eavesdropping Scandal; 'News of the World' to Close

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on July 7, 2011, Printed on July 10, 2011

UPDATE: Since this story first published, Rupert Murdoch's News International announced that it will close the doors on its scandal-plagued paper, News of the World, publishing its final issue on Sunday, July 10. The announcement was made by James Murdoch, Rupert's son and deputy chief operating officer of parent company News Corporation, and chairman of the U.K.-based News International. The Guardian, whose dogged reporting blew the lid off the scandal, has the full text of James Murdoch's statement. This updated version of the story includes new information, as well, in the body of the piece.

A scandal involving phone-hacking by a right-wing newspaper tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is threatening the administration of British Prime Minister David Cameron. So deep, apparently, does the scandal run in the culture of the News of the World -- a 168-year-old publication with the largest English-language readership in the world, according to its publisher -- that News Corporation executives announced their intention to shutter the paper for good on Sunday, July 10. Now the scandal is boomeranging back to New York, engulfing the top executive at the largest-circulation newspaper in the United States, the Wall Street Journal.

Will The United States Default?

By Simon Johnson

There are three views on whether the US will default on its government debts. The first is: Hopefully yes, and this August offers a good opportunity. The second is: Possibly yes, but this would be bad – so we need some form of fiscal austerity. The third is: Under no circumstances, and any talk of a need for austerity is a hoax.

The first view is mistaken. The second view hides a dangerous contradiction. And the third view borders on complacency. How can we find our way to fiscal responsibility? We need tax reform.

Study: US Seventh Most Innovative Country In The World

Graham Webster | July 8, 2011, 9:35AM

The United States is the seventh most innovative country in the world, according to a new study.

The Global Innovation Index, published by the international business school INSEAD, rates the United States behind Switzerland (first place,) Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland and Denmark.

Measuring innovation is no simple task, said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. But one thing is clear: "The U.S. is not number one," Atkinson said.