Wages versus Assets

by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

The latest "bipartisan" cockamamie scheme to re-inflate the housing market now apparently involves giving immigration visas to foreigners who buy houses valued at $500,000 a year. There is so much wrong with this idea that it's hard to know where to start: the threat of absentee landlords, the booting out of people faced with foreclosure, the lack of concomitant work visas to accompany the immigration visas, etc. Joan McCarter at DailyKos has a good rundown.

There can be little question at this point that American public policy is dedicated almost entirely to benefiting wealthy people and corporate "people" over regular Americans. But examples like this one show that it's not just corruption: there's a strong bipartisan ideological component that is driving this insanity as well that is based on very flawed economic assumptions.

The Iraq War Ain’t Over, No Matter What Obama Says

By Spencer Ackerman  |  October 21, 2011  |   2:05 pm

President Obama announced on Friday that all 41,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq will return home by December 31. “That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end,” he said. Don’t believe him.

Now: it’s a big deal that all U.S. troops are coming home. For much of the year, the military, fearful of Iranian influence, has sought a residual presence in Iraq of several thousand troops. But arduous negotiations with the Iraqi government about keeping a residual force stalled over the Iraqis’ reluctance to provide them with legal immunity.

But the fact is America’s military efforts in Iraq aren’t coming to an end. They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas.

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

19 October 2011 by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

Why Obama Needs to Take Immediate Control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Jared Bernstein
October 21, 2011 | 12:00 am

When historians look back at this benighted moment in time, they may find themselves puzzled by how we refused to take the necessary steps to improve our economic situation. Depending on what happens in coming months, they may find that the best solutions—aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus here in the United States, bank recapitalization and debt restructuring in the EU—were left on the table, while millions unnecessarily suffered.

A footnote in that history may be the decision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not to do more to help the housing market recover. Faced with a flailing market and an alarming amount of underwater mortgages, Fannie and Freddie have nonetheless refrained from implementing bold plans to help out homeowners, citing their fiduciary duty to taxpayers as the reason. But by encouraging more refinancing and principal reductions of the mortgages these institutions either hold directly or insure, our government-sponsored housing giants could simultaneously improve both housing security and the overall economy.

Herman Cain's Go-To Historian on the Muslim World: Destroy Islam

—By Tim Murphy  | Fri Oct. 21, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

  Now that Herman Cain is officially a front-runner for the Republican nomination, the vetting process has picked up in a hurry. The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf stumbled upon a treasure trove of syndicated columns the Atlanta businessman wrote between 2006 and 2009, which doesn't do much to shatter the perception of Cain as a loose cannon (he refers to Iraq war opponents as "Hezbocrats" and calls them "the enemy").

But I was drawn to a different piece: A 2006 column from Cain on Islam that copiously cites the work of Ohio televangelist Rod Parsley—the same pastor whose Islamophobic writings and sermons would later force Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to reject his endorsement. Parsley, as MoJo's David Corn first reported in 2008, argued that American Christians have an obligation to destroy Islam.

Paul Krugman: Party of Pollution

Last month President Obama finally unveiled a serious economic stimulus plan — far short of what I’d like to see, but a step in the right direction. Republicans, predictably, have blocked it. But the new plan, combined with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, seems to have shifted the national conversation. We are, suddenly, focused on what we should have been talking about all along: jobs.

So what is the G.O.P. jobs plan? The answer, in large part, is to allow more pollution. So what you need to know is that weakening environmental regulations would do little to create jobs and would make us both poorer and sicker. 

How the Austerity Class Rules Washington

Ari Berman

October 19, 2011


In September the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan deficit-hawk group based at the New America Foundation, held a high-profile symposium urging the Congressional “supercommittee” to “go big” and approve a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 trillion mandate. The hearing began with an alarming video of top policy-makers describing the national debt as “the most serious threat that this country has ever had” (Alan Simpson) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-government” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt continues to rise, predicted former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A looming fiscal crisis was portrayed as being just around the corner.

Four Iron-Clad Demands for Occupy Wall Street: Michael Kinsley

By Michael Kinsley | Oct 20, 2011 7:00 PM ET

So I sat down to write up some demands for Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Washington and the related groups that have sprung up to terrify the political and financial establishments.

Not everyone thinks demands are a good idea. Could this disparate collection of malcontents actually agree on a platform? Would the attempt destroy the almost magical unity the protesters have achieved? Might a list of demands -- or, as they were called in the 1960s, “nonnegotiable demands” -- turn out to be embarrassingly anti-capitalist, offering grist to the Glenn Becks of this world and turning off many potential recruits? Or might it be the opposite: so banal and unambitious that the most devoted followers lose interest?

Paul Krugman: More People Who Can’t Handle The Truth

If you follow this blog regularly, you’ll know that whenever I present data — and I do present a lot of data — right-wingers will complain of “cherry-picking”. They never have a clear example of how I should do things differently — or if they do, it’s always obviously wrong. But what they really mean is that they won’t accept data that doesn’t tell them what they want to hear.

This stuff is a minor version of what goes on, on a far bigger and more important scale, with regard to climate change.

Why a Mortgage Cramdown Bill Is Still the Best Bet to Save the Economy

Alex Ulam

October 20, 2011

 

Many Americans believe that the financial crisis stems from the Bush administration’s running up the federal debt and out-of-control spending by the American consumer. But much of the blame for the country’s current economic woes lies with the Obama administration’s failure to forcefully tackle the biggest threat to the American economy today: the housing crisis. 

Corporate Front Group ALEC Pushing For Repeal Of Paid Sick Day Laws Nationwide

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 19, 2011 at 12:45 pm

Recently, a string of cities and states have passed new ordinances that would require paid sick days for employees at certain employers. Just last week, Philadelphia’s city council passed a second version of a paid sick leave bill after the mayor vetoed the earlier one. Earlier this year, Seattle approved paid sick days legislation, while Connecticut became the first state with a state-wide requirement.

Now, the Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch has published an expose of how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a corporate front group that farms out legislation to almost a third of state legislators nationwide — is drafting legislation on behalf of its wealthy conglomerate funders to repeal these ordinances.

But What Should the Fed Actually Do?

—By Kevin Drum  | Thu Oct. 20, 2011 10:23 AM PDT

What kind of monetary policy should the Fed follow? Scott Sumner has long argued that the Fed should set a target for nominal GDP—that is, GDP before corrections for inflation—and follow it come hell or high water. This has recently gotten some high-profile endorsements, including one recently from a Goldman Sachs team. And Paul Krugman recently gave the NGDP forces a boost on his blog: 

And one thing the market monetarists may have been right about is the usefulness of focusing on nominal GDP. As far as I can see, the underlying economics is about expected inflation; but stating the goal in terms of nominal GDP may nonetheless be a good idea, largely as a selling point, since it (a) is easier to make the case that we’ve fallen far below where we should be and (b) doesn’t sound so scary and anti-social.

One More SEC/Citigroup Sweetheart Deal - Five Reasons to Be Outraged

Friday 21 October 2011

by: Richard (RJ) Eskow, Campaign for America's Future | News Analysis 

 

The President says he understands the frustration behind the Occupy Wall Street movement. That's nice. But the anger will keep growing as long as the government keeps handing out free passes instead of perp walks to bankers at serial corporate criminals like Citigroup.

The Administration is finally talking the talk, but without criminal investigations it's not walking the walk. It's still not too late. While the SEC's latest deal should outrage you, the Administration can makes things right with two decisive actions.

Senators Have a Choice: Create Jobs Or Shield Wealthy From Tiny Tax Increase

It’s probably safe to assume the latest jobs bill will die in the Senate, today or tomorrow, following the latest in a never-ending series of Republican filibusters. But it’s worth clarifying the nature of the choice facing lawmakers.

On the table is a plan that would save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs through state aid, boosting teachers, police officers, and firefighters. It would be paid for, not through the kind of deficit financing Republicans pushed in the Bush era, but with a 0.5% surtax on millionaires and billionaires.

Global Warming Study Finds No Grounds for Climate Sceptics' Concerns

Independent investigation of the key issues sceptics claim can skew global warming figures reports that they have no real effect

by Ian Sample

Climate sceptics' criticisms of the evidence for global warming make no difference to the emerging picture of a warming world, according to the most comprehensive, independent review of historical temperature records to date.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, investigated several key issues that sceptics claim can skew global warming figures and found they had no meaningful effect on world temperature trends.

The boom was the illusion

Robert Skidelsky

Published 13 October 2011

The world economy is on the edge of a precipice. The best we can hope for now is a managed retreat from the wilder shores of globalisation. The alternative is the collapse of the euro, protectionism – and even war. 

Since its collapse in the autumn of 2008, the world economy has gone through three phases: a year or more of rapid decline; a bounce back in 2009-2010, which nevertheless did not amount to a full recovery; and a second, though so far much shallower, downturn this year.

The resulting damage over the past four years has been huge. The world economy contracted by 6 per cent between 2007 and 2009, and recovered 4 per cent. It is 10 per cent poorer than it would have been, had growth continued at the rate of 2007, and the pain is not yet over. Today, we are in the first stages of a second banking crisis. It may already be too late to avoid a "double dip", but it may still be possible to avoid a triple dip. For this we need a robust intellectual analysis of what is required to ensure durable recovery, and the collective political will to implement it.

Backdrop to the crisis

Economics is in a mess. With the shattering of the dominant Chicago School paradigm, whose rational expectations hypothesis ruled out, by assumption, the kind of collapse we have just experienced, two old masters, Friedrich von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, have risen from the dead to renew the battles of the 1930s, equipped this time with explanations for what has gone wrong. We can label these "money glut" and "saving glut".

'Retirement Heist' compiles evidence of plundered pensions

By Steve Weinberg, Special for USA TODAY

Sometimes the real crime consists of activities considered "legal," despite the damage they cause. That adage has never been more apt than when applied to the termination of pension funds by U.S. employers large, midsize and small. Over and over, loyal, deserving employees with modest incomes have watched their planned retirement savings disappear because of corporate managers and pension industry consultants.

Journalist Ellen Schultz has been writing about such shameful behavior for a long time, mostly in The Wall Street Journal. Now she has pulled together the copious, irrefutable evidence between the covers of a book. It is shocking, and demoralizing. But will members of Congress and federal agency regulators stop what Schultz calls "retirement heists"? Probably not, unless voters make it clear the incumbents will lose their jobs unless something changes. Unfortunately, voters are rarely if ever that organized, no matter how much they have been cheated by corporate chieftains.

Democrats and the Death of Keynesian Economics

Tuesday 18 October 2011

by: Michael Corcoran, Truthout | News Analysis 

 

Obama's dead-on-arrival jobs bill, which followed trillions in spending cuts that were made during the debt ceiling controversy, remind us that politicians have stopped seriously trying to save the economy through job creation and government spending. The protests on Wall Street show that the public recognizes that change will only come when the people take matters into their own hands.

It is quite remarkable, given the nature of the recent debate over economic policy in Washington, that a Wikipedia article exists today called, "2008-2009 Keynesian resurgence." Today, both political parties have had an obsession with "austerity measures" for at least last year or so - which includes putting Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block. Barack Obama's weak job bill, which was dead on arrival, only further demonstrates how twisted priorities are in Washington. So, it is actually hard to believe that, in the aftermath of the near-collapse of the economy in 2008, Maynard Keynes, who advocated government intervention in the economy to increase demand during downturns, was making a comeback.

 

Cantor's income disparity speech: 'How we make sure the people at the top stay there'

When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor backed off from his "mob" characterization of Occupy Wall Street last week, some might have thought that this savvy politician was catching a clue about the national zeitgeist.

Well, maybe, kinda, sorta.

Kleptocracy and the One-Party System

By Ed Harrison, Credit Writedowns
Posted on October 19, 2011, Printed on October 20, 2011

As a writer, Matt Taibbi is a lot more vitriolic than I am. He curses, makes some pretty over-the-top personal attacks, and divines a policymaker’s intent where I don’t think he can. But, this goes mostly to style.  Substantively speaking, he has a lot to say and we should take notice.

I wanted to highlight a piece he wrote yesterday called Fannie, Freddie, and the New Red and Blue. The crux of his argument is this: The partisan rhetoric is on full display in the dust-up over the unlimited liabilities coming from Fannie and Freddie thrust upon taxpayers on Christmas Eve. This rhetoric is not just beside the point, it is specifically designed to obscure the point, namely that both Democrats and Republicans, private industry and the government are culpable in the shambles our economic system has become.

BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit

By Bob Ivry, Hugh Son and Christine Harper - Oct 18, 2011 1:56 PM ET 

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

We Are Not Your Human Resources

by David Michael Green

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about Occupy Wall Street.  She said to me “This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life”.  I told her I feel exactly the same way.

The only difference is that she’s in her early twenties, and I’m in my early fifties.

Democracy Versus Bankers at the Fed


Dean Baker
Posted: 10/17/11 03:30 PM ET


The Federal Reserve Board has provided the basis for thousands of conspiracy theories in its near-100-year existence. These conspiracies have some basis in reality as can be seen by the Fed's recent moves on monetary policy. In the last two meetings of the Fed's Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Fed's key decision-making body, the members appointed through the political process unanimously supported stronger measures to spur growth and create jobs. By contrast, three of the five voting members appointed by the banking industry opposed further action.

This extraordinary split has not received the attention it deserves. It suggests that the financial industry is using its power at the Fed to try to block the course preferred by the appointees of democratically elected officials of both parties.

Millionaires and Corporations Are Using Tax Breaks to Help Sway Public Opinion

Rightwing thinktanks profess a love of freedom, but their refusal to reveal who funds them is deeply undemocratic

by George Monbiot

Since the late 19th century, the very rich have been paying people to demand less government. The work of Herbert Spencer, for example, was sponsored by Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison. Spencer believed that society changed according to evolutionary laws. Humans were evolving towards perfection, but this process was inhibited by interference from the state. By protecting people from the consequences of their own actions (or their own bad luck), it stopped the winnowing process that would otherwise result in the survival of the fittest.

Social security, publicly funded education, compulsory vaccination, laws enforcing safety at work all interrupted social evolution. But a self-regulated free market would swiftly ensure that those who were best adapted would survive and triumph. It's not hard to see why the millionaires loved him. They saw themselves as winners of the evolutionary race, taking their rightful place at the pinnacle of the social order. Any attempt to limit their freedoms would prevent society from achieving perfection.

Simplify Banks and Bank Regulation

Robert Kuttner

In January 2010, after Scott Brown's upset victory in the special Massachusetts Senate election, a panicky President Obama managed to sound like a populist for a couple of days. He called for a tax on banking profits and drafted Paul Volcker to appear at a quickie press conference so that the administration could call for something dubbed "The Volcker Rule." 

Report Faults Wall Street for High Energy Prices

By BEN PROTESS

A new report by Better Markets, a nonprofit group advocating constraints on speculative trading, blames Wall Street for inflating prices at the gas pump and the grocery store.

The study centered on commodity index funds, investments tied to the value of oil, wheat and other commodity futures contracts. The funds, according to the Better Markets review of more than 25 years in data, have historically caused an uptick in futures market prices as they periodically exit expiring contracts and roll into a new batch of deals.

US Hawks Behind Iraq War Rally for Strikes Against Iran

by Jim Lobe 

 

WASHINGTON - Key neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks who championed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq are calling for military strikes against Iran in retaliation for its purported murder-for-hire plot against the Saudi ambassador here.

Leading the charge is the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the ideological successor to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a critical role in mobilizing support for "regime change" in Iraq in the late 1990s and subsequently spearheaded the public campaign to invade the country after the 9/11 attacks. The group sent reporters appeals by two of its leaders for military action on its letterhead Monday.

Digby: The Backlash to Occupy Wall Street Is Going to Be Powerful-And Polarizing

I'm feeling like a Cassandra again, just as I did in 2008 when Obamamania was at its height and everyone was insisting that politics had been transformed for all time. I'm sure I'll be just as unpopular now as I was then, but here goes:

While I love Matt Taibbi and I think this piece is right on in many ways, I hope that people involved in Occupy Wall Street don't start to bullshit themselves into believing that there is not going to be a reaction to all this and that the reaction is likely to be powerful --- and polarizing. The people in power know very well how to push the buttons that need pushing.

The Greeks Are Being Unfairly Maligned by Global Financiers: The Truth Is Very Different

Beyond the anti-Greek media campaign lies the story of a weary people caught between a corrupt political system and rapacious financiers. Sound familiar?

October 17, 2011  |  Yiannis manages a small inn in Crete. The 50-year-old from Heraklion with salt-and-pepper hair and a hefty moustache has a son just graduating from college.

“We tell the young people to leave,” he says quietly. “There’s nothing for them here.” Protests and strikes are sweeping the nation, but Yiannis doesn’t like talking about the economy. I sense a feeling of pride holding him back. But he does offer this insight: “We know that it is the ordinary people, not the rich and the powerful, who pay for this.”

Perry Officials Censored Climate Change Report

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality doesn't want you to know that climate change is causing sea level rise in Galveston Bay.

—By Kate Sheppard

Wed Oct. 12, 2011 9:30 AM PDT

Rick Perry takes Texas pride in being a climate change denier—and his administration acts accordingly.
Top environmental officials under Perry have gutted a recent report on sea level rise in Galveston Bay, removing all mentions of climate change. For the past decade, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which is run by Perry political appointees, including famed global warming denier Bryan Shaw, has contracted with the Houston Advanced Research Center to produce regular reports on the state of the Bay. But when HARC submitted its most recent State of the Bay publication to the commission earlier this year, officials decided they couldn't accept a report that said climate change is caused by human activity and is causing the sea level to rise. Top officials at the commission proceeded to edit the paper to censor its references to human-induced climate change or future projections on how much the bay will rise.

Argentina Suffering From Default: Not on This Planet

Monday, 17 October 2011 15:41

NPR's Planet Money made its entry in the Stake Your Claim game show with a segment on Friday that claimed that Argentina is suffering horribly as a result of its decision to default at the end of 2001. It turns out that Argentina has actually been doing quite well since its 2001 default as the most recent data from the IMF show.

A Movement Too Big to Fail

Monday 17 October 2011

by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed 

 

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Decorated Marine lectures New York police: ‘There is no honor in this’

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, October 17, 2011

At the “Occupy Wall Street” protest in New York City over the weekend, a decorated Marine sergeant wearing military colors confronted a group of police officers and gave them a stern lecture at the top of his voice about how they should not be hurting peaceful American protesters.

“Stop hurting these people, man!” shouts Sgt. Shamar Thomas, of the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, in a video published to YouTube. “Why are ya’ll doing this to our people? I’ve been to Iraq 14 months, but my people, you come over and you hurt them! They don’t have guns!”

Just How Much Can the State Restrict a Peaceful Protest?

by Braden Goyette
ProPublica, Oct. 17, 2011, 12:42 p.m.

As protests supporting Occupy Wall Street have swelled in recent weeks, hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested across the U.S. This weekend, nearly 100 people were arrested in New York and 175 in Chicago. More than 100 protesters were arrested in Boston last week; a few weeks ago, 700 were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.

So, if the First Amendment guarantees the right to peaceable assembly, why do peaceful protestors keep getting arrested — and sometimes pepper-sprayed and beaten up?

Why We Need the Government to Create Not Just Jobs, but Good Jobs

Monday, 10/17/2011 - 12:21 pm by Richard Kirsch

A new book exhausts all the private sector possibilities, ultimately showing why the government has to ensure decent wages for all.

The millions of underemployed Americans today, working part-time or in jobs significantly beneath their skill level, underline a persistent feature of our workforce, starting long before the Great Recession: one out of four jobs pay sub-standard wages. Good Jobs America, a new book written by Paul Osterman and conceived with co-author Beth Shulman before her death, tackles this other half of the jobs crisis: the need to create more good jobs, with wages that can support a family.

A great strength of the book is the authors’ creation of new data on low-wage jobs, bringing to light how little so many of us bring home from our work. The authors are exquisitely cognizant of the current policy and political climate that looks skeptically on the ability of government to intervene in the “power and correctness of the market.”

Steve Rattner, Card Carrying Member of Top 1%, Tells Us We Should Lie Back and Enjoy Much Lower Wages Resulting From Globalization

A corollary to Upton Sinclair’s famous saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it” is “People promote ideas that help them secure or preserve a privileged position on the totem pole.”

A glaring example of these observations came in an op ed in the Sunday New York Times by Steve Rattner, former Lazard mergers & acquisition partner, later head of the private equity firm, Quadrangle Partners. He is best known as the chief negotiator in the auto bailouts (and he was criticized for not involving any auto industry experts). He paid $10 million to settle a kickbacks investigation and agreed not to work for a public pension fund in any role for five years. I happened to see Rattner on a panel at a Financial Times conference earlier this week and he elaborated on some of the themes in this piece, “Let’s Admit It: Globalization Has Losers,” which reader Brett asked me to debunk line by line. I’ll spare you and focus just on the most critical and bald-facedly dishonest bits.

US rivers and streams saturated with carbon

New Haven, Conn.— Rivers and streams in the United States are releasing enough carbon into the atmosphere to fuel 3.4 million car trips to the moon, according to Yale researchers in Nature Geoscience. Their findings could change the way scientists model the movement of carbon between land, water and the atmosphere.

"These rivers breathe a lot of carbon," said David Butman, a doctoral student and co-author of a study with Pete Raymond, professor of ecosystem ecology, both at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. "They are a source of CO₂, just like we breathe CO₂ and like smokestacks emit CO₂, and this has never been systematically estimated from a region as large as the United States."

America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases

Its Full Extent Revealed for the First Time

by Nick Turse

They increasingly dot the planet.  There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about.
And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide.  Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous -- until now.

It’s NAFTA x3 as Free Trade Deals Sweep Through Congress

One day in September, Isidro Rivera Barrera, a contract worker and labor organizer who was campaigning at an Ecopetrol refining facility in Barrancabermeja, Colombia, was reportedly gunned down outside his home. His death was met with the usual silence—just business as usual in a country with one of the world’s worst human rights records for attacks on trade unionists. But now, the hushed suffering of Colombian workers reverberates in the U.S. Capitol, which has just passed a deal to bring even more business-as-usual to Colombia.

Solar is getting cheap fast—pay attention, Very Serious People

by David Roberts
13 Oct 2011 1:34 PM

I hope everyone has read Kees Van Der Leun's post about the rapidly falling cost of solar PV. I want to draw out one quick point that Kees leaves implicit.

He argues that PV will be the cheapest source of electricity for most of the world some time around 2018, and for the rest of the world soon after. That could be off by a few years in either direction. It depends on whether the cost curve for silicon solar cells continues as it has the past and, as Alan says in his comment, whether the cost curve for "balance of system" costs (steel, glass, installation, etc.) declines as well. Let's say it could be off by five years either way. Let's just assume it's 2023 before solar PV crosses grid parity and becomes cheaper than coal.
 

Robert Gates on the GOP's Breakdown and Failure at "The Basic Functions of Government"

By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on October 15, 2011, Printed on October 16, 2011

Robert Gates, a respected elder statesman of the political establishment, recently delivered some provocative remarks on the health, of lack thereof, of the American political system. Brian Beutler had a good item on this the other day, noting the increasing frequency with which prominent voices, not prone to hyperbole or alarmism, are raising awkward questions.

The GOP’s hyper-partisan turn after Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 meant 112th Congress was destined to test the limits of dysfunctional governance. But it also happened to coincide with a moment in history when the country needed the government to do better than the bare minimum. Instead, it’s done less. And that’s shaken people who’ve spent their careers steering the ship of state.

10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement

There are many things you can do to be part of this growing movement—and only some of them involve sleeping outside.

by Sarah van Gelder

The #OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.

Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement.

Republicans score another symbolic defeat for EPA — this time over toxic coal ash

By Alexandra Duszak
4:46 pm, October 14, 2011 Updated: 8:10 pm, October 15, 2011

House Republicans on Friday succeeded in championing legislation that would wrest regulation of coal ash from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to the states, who will have the authority to regulate the often hazardous residue at power plants as if it were municipal garbage.

The Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News has examined the lack of federal oversight of coal ash and its dangers. As iWatch News reported, coal ash is full of neurotoxins like lead and mercury and the carcinogens such as arsenic.

Liam Fox resignation exposes Tory links to US radical right

Labour and Lib Dem politicians have stepped up demands for the PM to explain ministers' involvement with Atlantic Bridge

Toby Helm and Jamie Doward
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 15 October 2011 16.30 EDT 

David Cameron has been accused of allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party, as fallout from the resignation of Liam Fox exposed its close links with a US network of lobbyists, climate change deniers and defence hawks.

In a sign that Fox's decision to fall on his sword will not mark the end of the furore engulfing the Tories, both Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians stepped up their demands for the prime minister to explain why several senior members of his cabinet were involved in an Anglo-American organisation apparently at odds with his party's environmental commitments and pledge to defend free healthcare.

No Confidence

John B. Judis
October 13, 2011 | 12:00 am

Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

by Ron Suskind

JOHN B. JUDIS on RON SUSKIND'S WHITE HOUSE PORTRAIT 

 

RON SUSKIND’S NEW book has already aroused intense controversy. The former investment banker Steven Rattner, who advised the Obama administration on the auto bailout, described Confidence Men as “a drive-by shooting of a president and his key economic advisers who deserve encomiums, not unfounded second guessing and inaccurate revisionist history.” Jacob Weisberg, the chairman of Slate and Robert Rubin’s co-autobiographer, in a scathing review entitled “Don’t Believe Ron Suskind,” accused the author of being a disreputable journalist that readers should no longer trust.

Before turning to the substance of Confidence Men, I want to comment on these charges against this author. I think the book is filled with minor errors–the former Citicorp CEO was Walter Wriston, not Walter Wristen–and the initial third of the book rehashes material that readers could find in earlier books about the Obama campaign and the financial crisis. But I would argue that the errors and the inflated narrative reflect the current practices of some large American publishers, who spend little time or money on copy-editing or fact-checking and rush books out without much editorial pressure. As far as I can tell, Suskind’s errors are not discrediting—no more than was Weisberg’s and Slate’s error in publishing, along with Weisberg’s review, a photograph of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill labeled as Suskind.

Hey! Supercommittee! Here's the Smart Plan to Save $7 Trillion, Create Jobs, Save Social Security

by John Nichols

America is not broke. But America does have broken priorities.

Americans are waking up to this reality. That’s why they are occupying Wall Street, that’s why they are protesting in Madison, Columbus, Lansing and other state capitals, that’s why thousands marched Saturday in Washington and other cities on behalf of “Jobs and Justice.”

“We are in the midst of a major economic crisis. Millions of Americans are jobless, our schools and infrastructure are under-resourced, our kids are being denied real educational opportunities and their futures are at risk. It’s no wonder that people are frustrated,” says American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, a featured speaker at the Washington rally that honored the social and economic justice legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while highlighting the ongoing nature of the civil rights icon’s struggle. “The march and rally are about hitting the streets and taking concrete action to change our nation to once again become the place where everyone has a shot at the American dream.”

The truly farcical ‘Jobs Through Growth Act’
By Steve Benen

I suppose Senate Republicans deserve at least some credit for making an effort. The congressional GOP has largely ignored the jobs crisis, so the fact that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have put together the “Jobs Through Growth Act,” is at least marginally constructive.

The problem is with the “plan” itself.