David Cay Johnston: A history of audit failures

The admission by Olympus Corp that it falsified financial reports for more than a decade should not shock anyone. The shock is that, for years, auditors failed to detect such massive fraud.

The failures of auditors to uncover cooked books, which run the gamut from Adelphia to Waste Management Inc, are a cancer on the accounting industry.

The failures go back years. How about Al Dunlap’s manufactured numbers at Sunbeam in 1998? Or teenage con man Barry Minkow’s ZZZZ Best, which turned out to be a Ponzi scheme and collapsed in 1987? Or Equity Funding, with its computer program to fabricate life insurance policies, in 1973? Or the National Student Marketing “pooling of interests” fraud in 1970, which gave birth to the Financial Accounting Standards Board? Or the 1938 McKesson & Robbins scandal, which gave us the first American audit standards? Or Ivar Kreuger’s 20 percent dividends Ponzi scheme in 1932?

The hidden toll of underemployment

COMMENTARY | November 11, 2011

Part-time work and jobs below a person’s skill level may not be as bad as having no job at all but they are serious societal problems in their own right, as Mike Alberti of Remapping Debate reports.

By Mike Alberti
RemappingDebate.org

When policy-makers and pundits (and reporters) talk about the dismal state of the labor market, they generally refer to the unemployment rate, which, by any accounting, remains appallingly high. But focusing exclusively on unemployment has meant that another critical issue has been largely ignored: the enormous increase during the recession in the number of people who are employed but who are forced to work part-time or to hold jobs that are below their skill level. These workers can be broadly thought of as the “underemployed.”

In Europe and many other countries, underemployment is treated as a social problem. In the United States, that is far less true. And most of the limited attention that has been paid to the problem has focused on the economic consequences. Since the recession, however, researchers have begun to take more of an interest in the social and psychological effects of underemployment, and a small body of literature is now growing. In The hidden toll of unemployment, I sought to explore those social and psychological effects. They can be profoundly negative, and not just for the short-term.

Repatriation Con Games

By Holly Sklar
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service, 11/3/11, Updated version distributed by American Forum, 11/8/11



Lobbyists are storming Capitol Hill, pushing a tax holiday that would give billions of dollars in tax breaks to less than 1 percent of American businesses – and stick the other 99 percent with the bill. But of course, they can’t say that. So tax holiday advocates are using a high-powered version of the email con known as the “Nigerian scam.”

You’re probably familiar with it: a prince, business executive or government official promises rich rewards for your urgently needed assistance to move “funds which are presently trapped in Nigeria” or some other country into the United States. “The con works by blinding the victim with promises of an unimaginable fortune,” the myth-busting Snopes.com explains. “He fails to realize during the sting that he’s never going to get the promised fortune.” He’s going to lose his shirt.

Yes, it is Wall Street’s fault

Bloomberg joins Republicans in claiming Congress "forced" banks to give bad loans. Don't buy the propaganda 

By Gene Lyons

So here’s my question: If the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 effectively caused the Wall Street meltdown of 2007 by forcing banks to make bad home loans to improvident poor people (and we all know exactly who I mean), how come it took 30 years for the housing bubble to burst?

Next question: If fuzzy-thinking Democratic do-gooders enacted such laws in defiance of common sense and sound economics, why didn’t Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush I or Bush II do something? Was Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., secretly running the country?

Super Collusion: Will Obama & Capitol Dems Betray the Middle Class, Seniors, and the Poor?

By Richard Eskow
Created 11/11/2011 - 8:53pm

Two new reports suggest that the President and Congressional Democrats are about to betray everything Democrats once stood for. Under pressure from Barack Obama, Democrats on the "Super Committee" have sketched out an appalling "compromise" proposal that would almost certainly doom both their 2012 electoral chances and his own.

They'd have it coming. Their draft plan that literally takes crutches away from poor people to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.

Unfortunately, middle class and impoverished Americans would suffer much more than they would. Career politicians can always look forward to comfortable sinecures from the wealthy interests who will benefit from their proposal. But the rest of us would once again be punished for the excesses of the rich, then left to the untender mercies of our new Republican leaders.

That, and not the fate of a President or a party, would be the real tragedy.

'Smog-eating' material breaking into the big time

By Jason Palmer 
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

What material can you find in toothpaste, sunscreen, solar cells, on the baseline at Wimbledon, in a Roman church, and along a tunnel in Brussels?

Full marks if you guessed titanium dioxide, a nearly ubiquitous but wholly unsung material.

Its brilliant white has made it a staple in pigments - hence Wimbledon - but its eco-credentials are still coming to the fore.

Paul Krugman: Legends of the Fall

This is the way the euro ends — not with a bang but with bunga bunga. Not long ago, European leaders were insisting that Greece could and should stay on the euro while paying its debts in full. Now, with Italy falling off a cliff, it’s hard to see how the euro can survive at all.

But what’s the meaning of the eurodebacle? As always happens when disaster strikes, there’s a rush by ideologues to claim that the disaster vindicates their views. So it’s time to start debunking.

First things first: The attempt to create a common European currency was one of those ideas that cut across the usual ideological lines. It was cheered on by American right-wingers, who saw it as the next best thing to a revived gold standard, and by Britain’s left, which saw it as a big step toward a social-democratic Europe. But it was opposed by British conservatives, who also saw it as a step toward a social-democratic Europe. And it was questioned by American liberals, who worried — rightly, I’d say (but then I would, wouldn’t I?) — about what would happen if countries couldn’t use monetary and fiscal policy to fight recessions.

Meet the Koch Brothers' Wealthy Right-Wing Grandfather: How His Pro-Corporate Agenda Is Echoed by the Kochs' Assault on Our Democracy

By Yasha Levine, Texas Observer
Posted on November 9, 2011, Printed on November 12, 2011

Charles and David Koch are the most powerful right-wing billionaires of our time. They have spent hundreds of millions bankrolling a broad attack against Social Security, organized labor, financial regulations, environmental protection and public education. The brothers plan to spend at least $200 million trying to elect right-wing, anti-government Republicans in 2012, according to Politico. They seem hell-bent on dragging America back to the dark days of unregulated capitalism. The history of their grandfather in Texas may help explain why.

Little has been written about Harry Koch. He's the least-known member of the Koch family, which has been marching under the same laissez-faire banner for the past three generations. Harry Koch emigrated to America in 1888, settled in a North Texas railroad town and became a newspaper publisher and aggressive corporate booster. He advocated for railroad and banking interests, amassing wealth and helping big business fight organized labor and squelch reforms.

3 Ways Elites Rig the System

By Michael Lind, Salon
Posted on November 9, 2011, Printed on November 12, 2011

A growing number of Americans suspect that the American economic system is rigged in favor of the rich and merely affluent. That growing number of Americans is right.

Here are three of the many ways that markets for compensation are rigged to benefit not only the top 1 percent but also the top 10 percent, a group that includes many well-paid professionals:

The Telecom Scam: 5 Behemoths That Strangle Innovation and Ensure You Pay Too Much for Bad Service

America’s communications system is in crisis, hijacked by a handful of giant companies coddled by the agencies that are supposed to regulate them. 

 

November 11, 2011  |  America’s communications system is in crisis and the longterm consequences will be profound. Most distressing, this issue is not on the political agenda for the 2012 electoral campaign.

The nation’s historic strength is embodied in the ongoing development of its communications infrastruture: the telegraph helped launch 19th-century modernity; the telephone fashionend the 20th-century business and consumer society; and broadband communications is shaping the 21st-century global marketplace.

Where regulators failed, citizens took action — testing their own air

Until 'bucket test' and insider tips, polluter said to underreport emissions for years


By Elizabeth Shogren, Kristen Lombardi and Sandra Bartlett
12:00 pm, November 10, 2011 Updated: 12:10 pm, November 10, 2011


TONAWANDA, N,Y. — For the past three decades, Jeani Thomson has been pleading with New York state officials to protect her and her neighbors from air pollution that regularly spreads into her yard from an industrial plant a mile away. Many mornings, a foul-smelling, thick fog settles around her modest house in Tonawanda, a working class town of 16,000 just outside Buffalo. The “toxic blue haze,” as Thomson calls it, smells like ammonia, sulfur and “an oily exhaust.”

She believes it has made her sick. Ailments have transformed her, she said, from a fit mail carrier who walked a 13-mile route into a survivor of multiple illnesses who takes 22 medications and now moves with difficulty on stiff legs. Though only 57 years old, she has only one lung, and half a stomach. Her doctors have diagnosed her with a rare skin rash, as well as asthma and arthritis. Though she claims never to have had a cigarette, her voice has the raspy sound of a smoker. On bad days, she says, she inhales oxygen.

If We Don't Solve the Jobs Crisis We May End Up With Our Streets in Flames and Society Dysfunctional

Unless our policy makers can make job creation the top priority, the mass riots and burning streets of Europe may be coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

Employers added fewer jobs than was forecast in October, which has lots of folks scratching their heads over what to do about it.

In response to the latest unemployment figures, our nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, has again begun talking about additional stimulus measures, such as the purchases of mortgage backed securities (MBS) or a bond-buying program known as “QE3”. But neither of these measures worked before, so why should we expect more success this time?

The Fed’s policies are akin to putting a Band-Aid on a massive bleeding wound. Right now, the US economy is crushed by massive private indebtedness and sluggish job growth. What we really need are policies designed to promote job growth, so that people can service their debts and become open to spending again. Admittedly, the Fed isn’t the only problem. Our whole constellation of policy makers – the Fed, Congress, the Treasury and the White House – keep obsessing about the faux “costs” of the growing budget deficit, rather than the real costs of long term unemployment. And if they don’t give up this flawed economic thinking, then the burning streets and mass riots happening in Europe may soon be coming to a neighborhood near you.

Glenn Greenwald: Journalists have become servants to power

By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional rights attorney, said the media’s reaction to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement highlighted how mainstream media journalists had become part of the elite class.

“If you look at, say, a host on MSNBC, what you’re actually seeing is a very high ranking employee of what was General Electric and now is Comcast, who makes many millions of dollars a year and has a make-up artist sitting in front of their face for an hour applying all sorts of make-up and another person working on their hair.”

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent

by: Tim Dickinson

Party of the Rich

Matt Mahurin

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."


Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"


The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"

Mark Ames: Why Finance is Too Important to Leave to Larry Summers

By Mark Ames, author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine who writes regularly at The Exiled.

If you’ve been reading Naked Capitalism for any period of time without giving back in donations—and most of us have been hooked from the time we discovered Yves Smith’s powerful, sharp voice and brilliant mind—then you you’ve been getting away with murder. Naked Capitalism is that rare blog that makes you smarter. Smarter about a lot of things, but primarily about Yves’ area of expertise, finance.

By a quirk of historical bad luck, the American Left has gone two generations without understanding finance, or even caring to understand. It was the hippies who decided half a century ago that finance was beneath them, so they happily ceded the entire field—finance, business, economics, money—otherwise known as “political power”—to the other side. Walking away from the finance struggle was like that hitchhiker handing the gun back to the Manson Family.

Rove-founded group again blanketing airwaves with falsehoods, distortions, and sleaze

By Greg Sargent

During the 2010 elections, Crossroads GPS, the group co-founded by Karl Rove, spent millions and millions of dollars blanketing airwaves across the country with ads full of falsehoods and distortions that were widely debunked by independent fact checkers.

Now that’s happening again — only if anything, this time the distortions are even more brazen, and the sleaze factor is even higher.

Beyond the Banks: 3 More Ways to Move Your Money Away from Corporations

By Anna Lekas Miller, AlterNet
Posted on November 7, 2011, Printed on November 10, 2011

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country organized to move their money from predatory big banks to smaller local banks and credit unions. After 650,000 Americans joined credit unions during the month of October alone—more than in all of 2010 combined—even more people organized to make November 5 the beginning of a collective blow to the corporate financial institutions that crashed our economy.

Is there a move-your-money equivalent for corporate power? Can we organize to actively—and sustainably—move our money from the corporations that control our political systems to sustain their greed, and invest in more just and sustainable economies?

Yes.

Religion and government must not mix in America, experts say

By Shahid Ali Panhwer and Maha Mussadaq | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The separation of church and state in American public life is essential to ensure that U.S. citizens retain their civil liberties and that the nation retains its exceptionalism in the world, a group of experts told a forum Tuesday at the National Press Club.

As the 2012 election season heats up, the experts voiced concern over the view held by some that the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, allows religion to be mixed with governance, which they said is incorrect. They said that American exceptionalism stems in no small part from religious liberty.

Saving the Democratic Internet

by Tim Karr

 

Opponents of the open Internet like to portray its guiding rule, Net Neutrality, as "a government takeover of the Internet."

They argue that from the day of its inception the Internet has existed free of regulation — a perfect expression of the marketplace at work.

What they don’t understand is that the Internet is a far better expression of democracy, and as such needs rules like Net Neutrality to ensure all users have equal access to online content.

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen


Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011 15.30 EST

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Looming Crisis of Climate Chaos

November 7, 2011

Amid the anti-science fervor on the American Right, Republican presidential contenders either shy from the worsening crisis of global warming or deny the problem exists. But the crisis of climate chaos is already spreading across the earth, warns Richard Lee Dechert.


By Richard Lee Dechert

On June 21, I had six hours of surgery for renal cell cancer. At age 79, I’m devoting my remaining time and energy to the vital issue of climate chaos and dedicating this piece to Luc, my first grandchild, who was born on Aug. 31 as an innocent, unaware member of what researcher and writer Mark Hertsgaard calls “Generation Hot” — “the two billion young people worldwide who will spend the rest of their lives coping with mounting climate disruption.”

Since the First Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1730s and the Second Industrial Revolution began in the U.S. in the 1860s, global atmospheric CO2 has exponentially increased from a stable level of about 280 parts per million (ppm) to a record 394.97 ppm in May 2011.

Audio and Video Documenting the Demonization of Others in TheCall Detroit Preparations

Rachel Tabachnick
Tue Nov 08, 2011 at 01:13:38 PM EST

Following are three list of links: 1) audio and video documenting the preparations for the upcoming TheCall Detroit on 11/11/11, 2) links to video of TheCall events in past years in locations around the U.S. and the world, and 3) links to other videos of Lou Engle and members of TheCall Detroit's national leadership team.  Leadership preparing for TheCall Detroit have used the jargon of racial reconciliation while literally demonizing homosexuality, Islam, Freemasonry, Mormonism, Judaism, and other faiths. While it may be tempting to dismiss the outlandish-sounding rituals in the audio below and the talk about demonic principalities as the cause of societal problems, this is part of a very sophisticated and successful brand of religo-political community organizing that is taking place across the nation.

Extreme Poverty Is Now at Record Levels -- 19 Statistics About the Poor That Will Absolutely Astound You

By Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse
Posted on November 8, 2011, Printed on November 10, 2011

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than they have ever measured before.  In 2010, we were told that the economy was recovering, but the truth is that the number of the "very poor" soared to heights never seen previously.  Back in 1993 and back in 2009, the rate of extreme poverty was just over 6 percent, and that represented the worst numbers on record.  But in 2010, the rate of extreme poverty hit a whopping 6.7 percent.  That means that one out of every 15 Americans is now considered to be "very poor".  For many people, this is all very confusing because their guts are telling them that things are getting worse and yet the mainstream media keeps telling them that everything is just fine.  Hopefully this article will help people realize that the plight of the poorest of the poor continues to deteriorate all across the United States.  In addition, hopefully this article will inspire many of you to lend a hand to those that are truly in need.

Should You Transfer Your Money to a Credit Union?

The feel-good movement to punish corporate banks, and why it will probably increase bank profits.

By Will Oremus | Posted Monday, Nov. 7, 2011, at 5:26 PM ET

It’s a noble-sounding idea: Pull your money out of one of the big, risk-taking, profit-driven corporate banks whose speculation helped ruin our economy, and put it in a nonprofit, community-minded credit union. No outrageous debit fees. No sneaky other fees inserted insidiously into the fine print. And you’re not just a customer at a credit union, you’re the owner.

Kristen Christian, a 27-year-old Los Angeles art gallery owner, touched off a national movement in October when, fed up with Bank of America in the wake of its announcement that it would charge a $5-per-month debit card fee, she went on Facebook to encourage friends to make the switch to credit unions. They told friends, who told friends. More than 80,000 people RSVP’d to Christian’s “National Bank Transfer Day” Facebook event page, proposing to leave their banks on or by Nov. 5.

Both sexism and racism are similar mental processes

Prejudiced attitudes are based on generalised suppositions about certain social groups and could well be a personality trait. Researchers at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) have confirmed the link between two types of discriminatory behaviour: sexism and racism. They also advise of the need for education in encouraging equality.

Maite Garaigordobil, professor of Psychological Testing at the UPV, is the co-author of this study which explores the link that sexism has with racism and other variables. She explains that "people who are highly sexist, whether they be hostile (seeing women as the inferior sex) or benevolent (believing that women are the weaker sex and need to be protected and cared for), also have racist tendencies".

The Reckoning Begins

By Michael Moran | Posted Monday, Nov. 7, 2011, at 1:21 PM ET

America’s insularity knows no bounds. This is a paradoxical statement, of course, but it’s an apt way to describe America’s current debate about “our future,” and not a bad way to view Washington’s strained efforts to grapple with an economy wounded by two decades of economic Puritanism. As grand as the rhetoric may be, politicians in the United States remain incapable of looking beyond the next election—this goes for the haughty Democrat in the White House and goes double for the Republican opposition. The fact is, airy-fairy optimism still sells on the campaign trail, particularly when the day-to-day reality of the average American is so difficult. Christian, agnostic, Jew, Muslim, or otherwise, we’re a country of people constantly seeking redemption, and we’re suckers for a smooth-talking messiah.

Not this time. At the risk of breaking the hearts that throb for Rick Perry, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, they cannot deliver us from the future. Thanks to a catastrophic series of decisions by presidents of both parties that radically deregulated our financial system and arrogantly dismissed the “lessons of Vietnam” as dusty, irrelevant history, the United States has shortened the period during which it will remain the dominant power in the 21^st century. I know, I know, all the presidential candidates say we’re still the best! And so we are, in almost every economic and military measure. But measurements of power are like the altimeter of an aircraft: It’s not the altitude that matters, it’s the trajectory, and by now most Americans finally understand that Captain America is trending downward.

Seniors block busy Chicago street to protest cuts to social programs

By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, November 7, 2011

Chicago police on Monday issued citations to 43 senior citizens and their supporters who linked arms to block an intersection near the city’s financial district.

The action was part of a protest against proposed cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other benefits.

Black, Asian teens less likely than whites to abuse drugs, Duke study concludes

By Jay Price | McClatchy Newspapers

DURHAM, N.C. — Black and Asian adolescents are much less likely than their white peers to abuse or become dependent on drugs and alcohol, according to a Duke University-led study based on an unusually large sample from all 50 states.

"There is certainly still a myth out there that black kids are more likely to have problems with drugs than white kids, and this documents as clearly as any study we're aware of that the rate of . . . substance-related disorders among African American youths is significantly lower," said Dr. Dan Blazer of Duke's Department of Psychiatry, a senior author of the study.

Using Biochar to Boost Soil Moisture

By Ann Perry
November 8, 2011
 
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are leading the way in learning more about "biochar," the charred biomass created from wood, other plant material, and manure.

The studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at laboratories across the country support the USDA priorities of promoting international food security and responding to global climate change. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency.

Greece, home of democracy, deprived of a vote

Armed by Papandreou with a referendum, the Greek people had clout. Now, they're powerless before the troika's austerity plan

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 November 2011 07.30 EST

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou touched off a firestorm last week when he proposed putting the austerity package designed by the "troika" (the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Union) up for a popular vote. The idea that the Greek people might directly be able to decide their future terrified leaders across Europe and around the world. Financial markets panicked, sending stocks plummeting and bond yields soaring.

However, by the end of the week, things were back under control. The leaders of France and Germany apparently laid down the law to Papandreou and he backed off plans for the referendum. While the government is in the process of collapsing in Greece, the world can now rest assured that the Greek people will not have an opportunity to vote on their future.

An All-American Nightmare

This Is What Defeat Looks Like

By Tom Engelhardt

How about a moment of silence for the passing of the American Dream?  M.R.I.C.  (May it rest in carnage.)

No, I’m not talking about the old dream of opportunity that involved homeownership, a better job than your parents had, a decent pension, and all the rest of the package that’s so yesterday, so underwater, so OWS.  I’m talking about a far more recent dream, a truly audacious one that’s similarly gone with the wind.

I’m talking about George W. Bush’s American Dream.  If people here remember the invasion of Iraq -- and most Americans would undoubtedly prefer to forget it -- what’s recalled is kited intelligence, Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent nuclear arsenal, dumb and even dumber decisions, a bloody civil war, dead Americans, crony corporations, a trillion or more taxpayer dollars flushed down the toilet... well, you know the story.  What few care to remember was that original dream -- call it The Dream -- and boy, was it a beaut!

"The Story of Broke"

by: Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff Project

TRANSCRIPT

These last few years, I’ve had to get a lot more careful about how I spend my paycheck. Everyone has. Like I’m eating out less often, holding back on expenses I don’t really need, saving for my kid’s college.

I’m getting more responsible, taking control of how I spend.

But one thing I can’t control is that every month a big chunk of my paycheck goes off to the government.

It’s not the most fun part of my budget, but I believe in paying taxes.

Not just because it’s the law but because that’s how I invest in a better future that I can’t afford to build on my own.

Why The Super Committee Is Heading For Super Catastrophe

Brian Beutler November 8, 2011, 5:48 AM 

  As of Tuesday morning, betting on the Super Committee to succeed would be playing the odds.

A key member of the Senate Democratic leadership team has openly predicted the panel will gridlock and fail, and placed the blame squarely on Republicans.

As GOP committee members met privately, Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen — a Democrat on the panel — told Bloomberg, “You need to close some of these tax loopholes and you need to generate additional revenue. And so that balance is going to be important. We saw the dueling letters just last week. We had a bipartisan group in the House that said, ‘Look, everything is on the table including revenues - tax revenues.’ And within 24 hours you had 33 [Republican] Senators say, ‘no new net tax revenues.’”

Appeals court backs Obama healthcare law

By Jeremy Pelofsky and Lisa Lambert | Reuters – 7 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law got a boost on Tuesday when an appeals court agreed with a lower court that dismissed a challenge and found the law's minimum coverage requirement was constitutional.

The Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that had found it constitutional to require Americans to buy healthcare insurance coverage by early 2014 or face a penalty and had dismissed a lawsuit challenging it.

Killer frog fungus 'spread by trade'

By Richard Black  
Environment correspondent, BBC News

The fungus killing frogs around the world comes in several forms, and has almost certainly been distributed by trade in amphibians, research shows.

Scientists led from Imperial College London found three distinct lineages of the chytrid fungus in various nations.

The most widespread and lethal form was probably created by a crossing of two prior forms, they report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Secretive right-wing groups pour millions into Ohio's Issue 2 fight

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

In Ohio's Issue 2 fight, as in so many elections these days, it's hard to take the classic advice "follow the money." On one side we know: Unions and grassroots donors have made sure that the fight to reject Issue 2 is well-funded. On the other side, it's a lot more mysterious. That's because so many of the anti-worker groups pushing to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers by passing Issue 2 are allowed to keep their operations secret. 

Paul Krugman: A Brave New World Wide Web of Economics

Ryan Avent, the economics writer at The Economist, and I have been corresponding about the role of the economics blogosphere, for the Christmas issue of the magazine.

I don’t know what parts of our conversation will actually show up there, but having assembled my thoughts I might as well put some of them here.

Federal Workers Are Underpaid Compared To Their Private Sector Counterparts, Despite GOP’s Assertions

By Travis Waldron on Nov 7, 2011 at 2:10 pm

To hear Republican presidential primary candidates tell it, the federal workforce under President Obama has experienced ballooning job growth and huge wage increases. Such claims are a staple of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) stump speeches, and for months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has promised to bring the rest of the workers’ pay into line with comparable employees in the private sector.


Speaking at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity annual summit Friday, Romney repeated this pledge, saying the pay gap between public and private workers “must be corrected.” “Public servants shouldn’t get a better deal than the taxpayers they work for,” Romney added.

New Charter School Study More Bad News for Corporate Ed Reform

by Jim Horn

The first national charter school study was conducted in 2009 by CREDO at Stanford, and the co-funders of the study (the Walton Foundation and Pearson) were not enamored by the results. So bad were they for charter school fans that the study, though given skimpy coverage by the LA Times, was never reported by WaPo or the NYTimes, and received minimal coverage from one news magazine, U. S. News and World Report, which obviously did not get the memo:

June 17, 2009 12:58 PM ET | Zach Miners | Permanent Link | Print

On average, charter schools are not performing as well as their traditional public-school peers, according to a new study that is being called the first national assessment of these school-choice options. The study, conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University,

Gates Foundation funds novel Third World sanitation proposal

DURHAM, N.C. – For less than $100 and a day's work, a single family in an undeveloped country can construct a solid waste disposal system that not only processes the waste, but requires no electricity or additional energy while destroying harmful pathogens.

So argues a Duke University environmental engineer who envisions a simple system that can be constructed from everyday items designed specifically for Third World countries, where the disposal of solid human waste and the corresponding spread of disease is a leading health concern.

Marc Deshusses, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, has plans to develop a novel sewage digestion system with capture of the methane gas produced during the breakdown of the waste to produce enough heat to kill the bacteria and viruses most commonly associated with human waste.

What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.

By Barry Ritholtz, Published: November 5

I have a fairly simple approach to investing: Start with data and objective evidence to determine the dominant elements driving the market action right now. Figure out what objective reality is beneath all of the noise. Use that information to try to make intelligent investing decisions.

But then, I’m an investor focused on preserving capital and managing risk. I’m not out to win the next election or drive the debate. For those who are, facts and data matter much less than a narrative that supports their interests.

One group has been especially vocal about shaping a new narrative of the credit crisis and economic collapse: those whose bad judgment and failed philosophy helped cause the crisis.

Middle Class Pays for Financial Market Mistakes

By Simon Johnson
Nov 6, 2011 7:15 PM ET

At one level, all financial crises are the same. A relatively small group of people, typically bankers, find the opportunity to take very big risks. For a while, financiers show high profits, justifying rising stock prices for their companies and large bonuses for their top executives. But these profits are never properly adjusted for what will actually materialize over five to 10 years, meaning that they understate risk and overstate true earnings.

Greater short-term returns are often available if you take more risk; just look at the Icelandic banking system after 2003. Three banks were allowed to develop very large offshore businesses, building up a combined balance sheet that was 10 times the size of Iceland’s gross domestic product, mostly based on short-term funding. Iceland’s political leaders thought they had found a new road to prosperity. In October 2008 they discovered a perennial truth: Giant profits involve giant risks. Iceland’s banks collapsed, plunging the economy into a deep recession.

The War Against the Poor

by: Frances Fox Piven, TomDispatch | Op-Ed

 

Occupy Wall Street and the politics of financial morality

We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home.  Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news.  Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed -- until now.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics.  Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.

Paul Krugman: Here Comes the Sun
For decades the story of technology has been dominated, in the popular mind and to a large extent in reality, by computing and the things you can do with it. Moore’s Law — in which the price of computing power falls roughly 50 percent every 18 months — has powered an ever-expanding range of applications, from faxes to Facebook.

Our mastery of the material world, on the other hand, has advanced much more slowly. The sources of energy, the way we move stuff around, are much the same as they were a generation ago.

But that may be about to change. We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That’s right, solar power.

Far Right on Rise in Europe, Says Report

Study by Demos thinktank reveals thousands of self-declared followers of hardline nationalist parties and groups

 

by Peter Walker and Matthew Taylor 

 

The far right is on the rise across Europe as discontent with the fallout from globalisation reverberates across the continent, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to discuss the rapid spread of hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups.

The report, by the British thinktank Demos, attempts for the first time to examine attitudes among supporters of the far right online. Using advertisements on Facebook group pages, they persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires.