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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Anders Ydstedt & Dick Patten Posted on 03.18.10 by Steve Trinward “America sits at the same economic crossroads today that Sweden faced five years ago. Sweden’s experience in eliminating the death tax could help the United States save businesses and add jobs at a critical time. Once known as Europe’s socialist paradise, Sweden still has one of the world’s highest top income tax rates (57 percent). But like the US, it no longer has an inheritance tax, or what Americans commonly refer to as the estate or ‘death’ tax. The Swedish Parliament abolished its inheritance tax in late 2004. … The country’s entrepreneurs were moving offshore — and taking their companies with them. The death tax was only making a bad situation worse.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjodnsv Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Richard (RJ) Eskow Posted on 03.18.10 by Steve Trinward “When President Obama asked a group of senior executives for suggestions on streamlining government, it’s unlikely that any of them suggested layers of new bureaucracy, vague marching orders, or management by committee. Yet Sen. Dodd’s ‘compromise’ financial reform proposal does all these things. The likely result? Banks and other financial institutions will still be tightly-run, aggressive organizations that can develop and sell complicated and risky new products in a heartbeat. But the agencies tasked with their oversight will be complicated and slow, encumbered by hard-to-follow rules and divided lines of authority. … Banks shouldn’t be too big to fail, and bureaucracies shouldn’t be too big to succeed.” [editor’s note: if it is indeed a “bureaucracy” (rather than a tiny “steering group” of advisors?), it’s already by definition “too big to succeed” - SAT] (03/17/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yl3jgfw Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Matthew Yglesias Posted on 03.18.10 by Steve Trinward “Like a specter, the unpopularity of Congress’ reform proposals haunted the ultimate goal of universal health care all winter long. This issue weighed heavily on the minds of Democratic senators as they moved toward a final pre-Christmas vote on their version of reform; it became explosive after Scott Brown’s unexpected win in the Massachusetts special election. Brown’s victory needn’t have been a devastating blow to reform — there’s always been a clear legislative path forward — but the message it sent to Congress, rightly or wrongly, was that the bad poll numbers associated with health care could have real consequences on Election Day. And that’s made a big difference ever since. But a funny, though little noticed, thing happened as the wounded cause of reform limped toward the finish line: The polling started to turn around.” (03/18/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=breaking_unhealthy_habits Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The New Republic Author: Jonathan Chait Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The important claim here is not the stated argument that terrorist lawyers should be publicly revealed, or that they shouldn’t be working for the DOJ. It’s the assumption that they are representing terrorists. The assumption permeates conservative rhetoric on issues of torture and detainee rights. … Thiessen makes explicit the position that the rhetoric about ‘terrorist lawyers’ is meant to imply — namely, that terrorists should not have lawyers at all. The conclusion flows naturally when you begin by defining the defendants as ‘terrorists.’ The truth, though, is that a good number of these ‘terrorists’ are not terrorists at all.” (03/18/10) Link: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/lawyer-up Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “For almost a full year, scores of progressive House members vowed — publicly and unequivocally — that they would never support a health care bill without a robust public option. They collectively accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars based on this pledge. Up until a few weeks ago, many progressive opinion leaders — such as Moulitsas, Howard Dean, Keith Olbermann and many others — were insisting that the Senate bill was worse than the status quo and should be defeated. But now? All of those progressives House members are doing exactly what they swore they would never do — vote for a health care bill with no public option — and virtually every progressive opinion leader is not only now supportive of the bill, but vehemently so. In other words, exactly what Rahm said would happen — ignore the progressives, we don’t need to give them anything because they’ll get into line — is exactly what happened.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yj8a93p Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: Daniel Gross Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Does it make sense to buy insurance against, say, a nuclear attack on Washington — if all the insurance providers’ headquarters are inside the Beltway? Of course not. So why do investors buy insurance on U.S. government debt?” (03/17/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2247590/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: Stephanie Mencimer Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “During the Tea Party protests on Capitol Hill this week, conservative activists warned that if Congress manages to pass health care legislation, their movement would become more formidable than ever. Mark Meckler, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots — one of the larger and better-organized national groups — predicted that if the bill passes, ‘the tea party movement will double in size almost instantaneously.’ But far from fueling the tea partiers’ cause, a sweeping new health care law could suck the air right out of their movement. Many tea party activists have a lot to gain from reform — because their ranks are dominated by aging baby boomers.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yzpq5r5 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Patrick Cockburn Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “All votes have still not been counted from the election on March 7, but the political landscape of Iraq after the poll is beginning to become clearer. Maliki has done well, but possibly not well enough to hold his post, since the Sadrists, who may have as many as 40 seats in the new 325-member parliament, are insisting that he should not head the next government. Once his allies when he became Prime Minister in 2006, the Sadrists blame him for co-operating with an American drive against them in 2008. Maliki might look to split the INA and seek an alliance with ISCI, which appears to have polled badly.” (03/18/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/patrick03182010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: AlterNet Author: Andy Kroll Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Every great American boom and bust makes and breaks its share of crooks. The past decade — call it the Ponzi Era — has been no different, except for the gargantuan scale of white-collar crime. A vast wave of financial fraud swelled in the first years of the new century. Then, in 2008, with the subprime mortgage collapse, it crashed on the shore as a full-scale global economic meltdown. As that wave receded, it left hundreds of Ponzi and pyramid schemes, as well as other get-rich-quick rackets that helped fuel our recent economic frenzy, flopping on the beach.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ylpqohp Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “Washington’s ruling class must believe that, like 5-year-olds, if you cover your ears and repeat ‘I can’t hear you,’ all problems go away. On the one-year anniversary of the $787 billion stimulus scheme last month, Vice President Joe Biden said taxpayers had ‘gotten their money’s worth’ from the massive waste of tax dollars. Biden said the program, now a year old, was designed to be implemented in two stages, saying ‘we’ve only been halfway through the act.’ Or maybe we’ve driven off a cliff and are halfway to the bottom. Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, is also skeptical.” (03/16/10) Link: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/16/delusional/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Candace Clement Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “While channel-surfing the other day, I came across a fresh-faced, young reporter for a cable network aggressively following an important person around an airport and refusing to let up with his questions. The unwilling interviewee grew angry, suddenly snapping and shouting at the reporter to leave him alone. ‘Do you think you’re immune to questions?’ the reporter shouted back repeatedly. I was speechless. ‘Do you think you’re immune to questions?’ It was perfect — such a simple and powerful question. This would have been the most hopeful piece of journalism I had seen in years if it weren’t for one small detail: This was not a journalist from CNN or Fox or MSNBC. … The exchange was between an E! network reporter and a Hollywood celebrity. And that’s when it clicked. Could the news media learn something from the paparazzi?” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yccgp63 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Neve Gordon Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “Seven years ago today, Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9R Israeli bulldozer while nonviolently protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah, Gaza Strip, along with other members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Now her parents, sister and brother are suing the State of Israel and the defense minister, claiming wrongful death. The suit’s objective, according to Rachel’s mother, Cindy, ‘is to illustrate the need for accountability for thousands of lives lost, or indelibly injured, by [Israel’s] occupation. … We hope the trial will bring attention to the assault on nonviolent human rights activists (Palestinian, Israeli and international) and we hope it will underscore the fact that so many Palestinian families, harmed as deeply as ours or more, cannot access Israeli courts.’ The State’s attorneys have decided to use any and all ammunition to undermine Corrie’s suit.” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/gordon Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Jeff Robbins Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “When she was four, the daughter of friends would circle the dining room table during political discussions, waiting for one of the adults to use a word that her nursery school teacher had admonished the class never to use. When one of us inevitably used the offending word, she would wag her finger and scold: ‘Don’t say ’stupid!” Politeness notwithstanding, the announcement by an Israeli bureaucrat that additional housing had been approved in East Jerusalem, made while Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel and just after the Palestinian Authority had finally been persuaded to resume peace negotiations with Israel, however indirectly, was stupid and indefensible. And that is why the Israeli government made no pretense at defending it.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yhz5cmx Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Robert Borosage Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “Where will the jobs come from? President Obama wants to double America’s exports over five years to help generate good jobs. With Recovery Act spending coming to an end, states and localities laying off employees, banks still not making loans, and consumers reeling from unemployment, stagnant wages, and losses in home values and retirement plans, increasing exports is one ray of hope to generate jobs. And the U.S. can’t go back to the old economy where trade deficits reached 6 percent of gross domestic product, and we were borrowing over $2 billion a day from abroad to pay for goods made elsewhere. But if the U.S. is to sell more abroad and borrow less, countries with trade surpluses — notably Germany and China — will have to spend more, buy more, save less and export less. The G-20 governments, representing the leading economies in the world, agreed that is the only way to have the reductions essential to a secure recovery in the dangerous and unsustainable imbalances in the global system.” (03/17/10) Link: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010031117/showdown-chermany Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Tim Fernholz Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “In the prologue to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis explains that he envisioned his first and perhaps most famous work, Liar’s Poker, as a grim obituary for an industry that rewarded inexperience and greed. However, the byzantine banking industry continued to flourish, and young readers wrote Lewis to ask how they, too, could get into the game. His disappointment is palpable. In his new book, he may have replicated the mistake of glorifying a troubled industry. The premise of the book is simple: A few investors had the foresight to see that the sub-prime-mortgage loans at the heart of a vast bubble in the bond markets were destined to default and made fortunes betting against them. The Big Short, then, is the story of those counter-investors and in turn, an illustration of what was (and is) wrong on Wall Street.” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_short_game Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Mike Whitney Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Housing is still on the rocks and prices are headed lower. Master illusionist Ben Bernanke has managed to engineer a modest 7-month uptick in sales, but the fairydust is set to wear off later this month when the Fed stops purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS). When the program ends, long-term interest rates will creep higher and sales will begin to flag. The objective of Bernanke’s $1.25 trillion quantitative easing program was to transfer the banks’ toxic assets onto the Fed’s balance sheet. Having achieved that goal, Bernanke will now have to find a way to unload those same assets onto the public. Freddie and Fannie, which have already been used as a government-backed off-balance-sheet dumping ground, appear to be the most likely candidates.” (03/17/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/whitney03172010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Huffington Post Author: US Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Three years ago, when I met with Senator Barack Obama in his Chicago office and we contemplated his possible run for the presidency, I was enthusiastic. On that day, it was hard for me to imagine a time I would have to say no to Barack Obama when he asked me for support. But last week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus sat down with the president, and he asked us to vote for the health care reform bill — a bill that denies immigrants the opportunity to purchase health care with their own money. It was one more in a string of disappointments for the Hispanic community, and today, I no longer find myself able to confidently say ‘yes’ when President Obama asks me for his support.” (03/17/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yg38dmc Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: John Dickerson Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “For the moment, the public focus is on the House’s ’self-executing rule,’ an effort by House Democrats to get around voting on the unpopular Senate health care bill. Under that back-bend, members would vote on a 100-page House bill of popular fixes to the roughly 2,000-page Senate bill. Passage of this smaller bill would automatically ‘deem’ that the larger Senate bill had passed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is leaning toward this approach because no one would have to actually vote on a bill he or she doesn’t like (one of the impediments she faces as she tries to line up the 216 votes she needs to pass health care legislation). But House Democrats aren’t going through all this just out of cowardice. Part of what is requiring them to be so creative is the unpredictability of the coming reconciliation process in the Senate.” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2248032/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “[T]he bill recently introduced by Joe Lieberman and John McCain — the so-called ‘Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act’ — now has 9 co-sponsors, including the newly elected Scott Brown. It’s probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they ‘may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,’ which everyone expects to last decades, at least.” (03/17/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yhwsw9k Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The New Republic Author: Yossi Klein Halevi Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Astonishingly, Obama is repeating the key tactical mistake of his failed efforts to restart Middle East peace talks over the last year. Though Obama’s insistence on a settlement freeze to help restart negotiations was legitimate, he went a step too far by including building in East Jerusalem. Every Israeli government over the last four decades has built in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem; no government, let alone one headed by the Likud, could possibly agree to a freeze there. Obama made resumption of negotiations hostage to a demand that could not be met. The result was that Palestinian leaders were forced to adjust their demands accordingly. Obama is directly responsible for one of the most absurd turns in the history of Middle East negotiations.” (03/17/10) Link: http://www.tnr.com/article/world/the-crisis Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Micah Williams Posted on 03.16.10 by Steve Trinward “A specter is haunting post-racial America. As pundits trip over themselves to declare that racism is dead in the era of a black president, ever-increasing numbers of African Americans are imprisoned and condemned to second-class citizenship. In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press), legal scholar and former ACLU attorney Michelle Alexander examines the American criminal-justice system and its propensity for decimating black lives and communities. She argues that prisons — and the consequent stigmatizing of a permanent ‘criminal’ population — have created a ‘new racial caste system’ whose effects are stunningly similar to those of the Jim Crow era.” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5685/jim_crow_redux Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Dave Johnson Posted on 03.16.10 by Steve Trinward “China argues that some American companies will suffer if China stops subsidizing manufacturing and adjusts their currency to market levels. They’re right. The fight over Chinese violations of trade rules is also another story about Wall Street and big, monopolistic corporations vs Main Street and American workers. A China Daily story says China’s huge export surplus is being ‘misread.’ The Chinese government says that US companies — the ones who close US factories, lay off workers, devastate communities and throw the costs onto the government — are also beneficiaries of China’s government subsidies.” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010031116/chinas-american-enablers Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Paul Waldman Posted on 03.16.10 by Steve Trinward “As much as politicians like to imagine themselves men and women of action, what they mostly do is talk. They talk to the cameras, they talk to constituents, they talk to contributors, they talk to each other. It’s almost impossible to be a successful politician without the ability to lodge words and images in the public mind. The result is that a really adept politician has to be part linguist and part semiotician. This is particularly true when you’re out of power and there’s so little you can actually accomplish. As Republicans are faced with the possibility that this week, Democrats might actually succeed in passing their most critical domestic initiative, is their mastery of the symbolic really enough?” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=more_than_words Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Lawrence Harmon Posted on 03.16.10 by Steve Trinward “College acceptance and rejection letters will be arriving in the mail in the coming days, launching high school seniors into the joyous or consoling embrace of parents. But many prospective college students aren’t watching anxiously for the mail carrier. Instead, they are busy attending to the needs of their own children and workplaces. The traditional 18- to 22-year-old residing on campus is no longer the norm. Almost three-quarters of undergraduates fall into the ‘nontraditional’ category, according to a 2002 National Center for Education Statistics report, meaning they work full time, are financially independent, attend college part time, or didn’t go directly from high school to higher education. … College isn’t just for children anymore.” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yzze8jt Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Robert Dreyfuss Posted on 03.16.10 by Steve Trinward “The Israel lobby is mobilizing for what might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel since, well, the Suez War of 1956, when President Eisenhower told Israel — and its covert allies, the UK and France — to halt the unprovoked assault on Egypt. Since then, US-Israel conflicts have been relatively small and tied to side issues, such as the fight over President Reagan’s sale of AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s or President Bush’s showdown with Israel in the early 1990s, when the United States threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Israel after a right-wing Israeli government stone-walled the peace process. This time, if President Obama plays his cards right, he could bring down the extremist government of Bibi Netanyahu. But that depends on whether Obama displays the guts and gumption necessary for a full-frontal challenge to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies.” (03/15/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/541196/us_israel_showdown Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: James Ridgeway Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Certainly, solitary confinement constitutes abject cruelty for killer whales (or chimps, or elephants, or any wild animals), and might well drive them to erratic or destructive behavior. But it’s rare to hear such expressions of sympathy or absolution for the tens of thousands of human beings who live in solitary confinement in the United States. Like Tilikum, many of these human prisoners did not kill until they were incarcerated; many more have not killed at all, and are held in isolation for disciplinary infractions, because they are mentally ill, or because they need ‘protective’ custody. They can remain there for years or even decades. And the devastating psychological effects of long-term lockdown — which is deemed to be torture by virtually everyone who has experienced it — are well documented.” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ydc8wmj Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: Emily Bazelon Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Virginia Thomas has many ardent defenders. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t think that Ginni, as everyone calls the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has a perfect right to launch herself headlong into the Tea Party movement with the founding of her own group, Liberty Central Inc. As Thomas herself said, pointing out that the Supreme Court’s ethics office had approved her new endeavor, ‘I did not give up my First Amendment rights when my husband became a justice of the Supreme Court.’ In the end, this has turned into the kind of roll-out Thomas couldn’t have planned better. No one much noticed when Liberty Central opened shop in February. Now Thomas and her allies get lots of publicity as the champions of wife-activists who can righteously breathe fire at the left for hypocrisy.” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2248017/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “[T]he Obama White House — just as was true for the Bush White House, and using the same rationale — does not want any meaningful oversight (i.e., briefings beyond the absurd Gang of Eight sham) on whether it’s breaking the law in the conduct of its intelligence activities. One of the Intelligence Community’s most loyal Congressional servants — Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein — told The Post that she thinks a deal can be worked out with the White House, meaning that the bill needs to be diluted even further, to the point of virtual nothingness, in order for the White House to accept it. It’s critical to note that this is far from an abstract concern, because the Obama administration has almost certainly been hiding intelligence activities from the Intelligence Committees, thus ensuring it operates without oversight.” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yfkoq8d Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The New Republic Author: Lawrence Lessig Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “One need not be xenophobic to be troubled by the idea of foreign influence in American elections. Certainly the Framers were. The point is not that foreigners are evil. It is rather that elections are private. It is we — citizens — who are to select who is to govern us. And it is completely appropriate for us to protect the debate we have about that selection by limiting disproportionate spending by non-citizens. This insight gives a clue to perhaps the most sensible constitutional response to the Supreme Court’s decision. Not, as an angry gaggle of activists have proposed, through an amendment aimed at denying what Citizens United never asserted — that corporations are persons. But instead, through an amendment that recognizes what no one has ever asserted — that whether or not they are persons, corporations are not United States citizens.” (03/16/10) Link: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/citizens-unite Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Ray McGovern Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Initially I was shocked at the thought of the University of Virginia welcoming former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to the ‘Academical Village’ founded by Thomas Jefferson. There was something very wrong about that picture. Was it not Mr. Jefferson who condemned tyrannical acts — including ones that fell far short of waterboarding — in the Declaration of Independence? But I have come around to the view that Yoo’s visit on Friday could present a rich teaching moment for those of us Virginians who believe passionately in the highest ideals that Mr. Jefferson articulated so eloquently.” (03/16/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/mcgovern03162010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “Having an extra $250 pocket money to spend while jetting around the world’s capitals sounds pretty good to most people. But it’s chump change to some members of Congress. Taxpayers are the chumps. The $250 a day we give members is rarely spent on food, reports the Washington Times: ‘(S)chedules typically are jam-packed on foreign junkets, especially with meals and banquets sponsored by interests looking to curry favor with American VIPs. The fact is, our public servants rarely need their lavish street cash to get fed, so they blow taxpayer money on other things rather than return their leftover per diem.’ Congressional rules say they must return leftover cash to the government. They usually don’t, writes the Wall Street Journal. ‘(L)awmakers use the excess cash for shopping or to defray spouses’ travel expenses. Sometimes they give it away; sometimes they pocket it.’” (03/14/10) Link: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/14/chump-change/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Terrance Heath Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “The circus sideshow that was CPAC folded its tent and left Washington weeks ago. However, its apparent ringmaster and chief snake oil salesman still sweats, struts, and sobs across the ’stage’ of conservative media — that medicine show never stops rolling and never stops hawking its ’solutions’ to Americans in desperate need of something to ease their economic aches and pains, and heal their political maladies. And like the medicine shows of old, Glenn Beck — and others like him — peddle magical ‘miracle cures’ that either poison directly by filling the body politic with toxic bile, or indirectly by distracting us from actual solutions, and aren’t intended to ‘cure what ails us’ so much as to make us think that we feel better even as the illness progresses.” [editor’s note: Gee, sounds a lot like the Big Pharma methodology! - SAT] (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ygldy2t Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: staff Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “Although President Obama has yet to achieve much on jobs, healthcare, or energy, he is on track to transform America’s education. He has pushed many states to reform education laws by dangling $4.35 billion in incentive grants. Now he wants to alter the No Child Left Behind law by rewarding schools that do well and revamping those schools that don’t. … This middle way is necessary in a country that treats public schools as a largely local concern and that is wary of one-size-fits-all federal solutions. It helps, too, that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan once ran Chicago’s schools and saw firsthand how No Child went too far — and not far enough.” [editor’s note: This one bears watching; if a national standard for rating student (and teacher) achievement sets the bar reasonably, and then gets out of the way, it could be only a small hurdle foe states seeking to rise above it - SAT] (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ygf747y Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Edward Alden Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “The story of how the war on terrorism and the war on lawsuit abuse came together can easily look like a brilliant conspiracy hatched by conservative jurists and their corporate backers. After all, over the past decade, two of the biggest projects for conservative groups have been to increase the power and discretion of the executive branch in national-security matters and to decrease the exposure of corporations to ‘frivolous’ lawsuits. In the Iqbal ruling, the two goals were met in a way that seemed almost choreographed.” (03/15/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=unintended_precedents Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: James Carroll Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “Think of Niagara Falls. Think of the onrushing current as the river pours itself toward the massive cascade. Imagine a lone swimmer a hundred yards or so upstream, desperately stroking against the current to keep from being swept over the precipice. That swimmer is President Obama, the river is the world, and the falls is the threat of unchecked nuclear weapons. Henry James used the image of Niagara to describe the rush into World War I: ‘the tide that bore us along.’ Hannah Arendt defined the wars of the 20th century as events ‘cascading like a Niagara Falls of history. …’ But now the image has entered the lexicon of strategic experts who warn of a coming ‘cascade of proliferation,’ one nation following another into the deadly chasm of nuclear weapons unless present nuclear powers find a way to reverse the current.” (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykxj66v Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Eric M. Johnson Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “If you’re masochistic — or have a lot of Adderall — economist John Maynard Keynes’ 75-year-old opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, is full of gems that shine light on the modern pickle over regulatory reform and ideological direction. To wit: ‘The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones,’ Keynes wrote. That is an apt summary of the message that Nobel-laureate and New Keynesian economist Joseph Stiglitz is preaching as he tours the country with his new book, Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and The Sinking of the World Economy. The Obama stimulus bill, he argues, was neither big enough nor enacted fast enough.” [editor’s note: This is posted as useful information only; no endorsement of the ideas contained herein is implied or to be assumed - SAT] (03/15/10) Link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5683/mr._trust_buster Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Scott Saul Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “In the fall of 1964, with the Free Speech Movement roiling the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, 21-year-old Mario Savio felt, with some pride of ownership, that ‘this little place had become … one of the central places on the planet.’ Four years later, Savio was falling off the map — living a few miles from campus in the West Berkeley flats, working on the assembly line of an electrical parts firm and caring with his wife for their infant son, who’d been born with severe developmental problems. The man the New York Times had dubbed ‘the archangel of student revolt’ was finding shelter in quiet anonymity. Even the FBI, which named Savio one of fifteen ‘key activists’ in early 1968 and investigated his bank accounts, phone accounts and workplace, concluded in a report that maybe he wasn’t such a key activist anymore. … Robert Cohen dedicates much of Freedom’s Orator, his absorbing and even-keeled biography of Savio, to this very question, peeling back the layers of myth that have enveloped Savio and the Free Speech Movement while substantiating their achievement.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/saul Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The New Republic Author: John B. Judis Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “From January 1982 to November 1982, the unemployment rate rose from 8.6 to 10.4 percent. On election eve, unemployment was higher than it had been since the Great Depression, and many voters expected the economy to continue to decline. No party had faced a similar kind of economic downfall since Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, and in that midterm election, the Democrats had lost 72 House seats and seven Senate seats. Using economic models, some political scientists predicted that Democrats would pick up as many as 50 House seats. The Democrats also hoped to win back the Senate, which they had lost in 1980. But when the votes were tallied, the Republicans lost 26 House seats and kept their 54 seats in the Senate. How did Reagan and the Republicans manage to contain their losses in this midterm election? That’s a question not simply of historical interest, but of direct relevance to Obama and the Democrats who are likely to face a similar, although perhaps not as severe, economic situation in November 2010.” (03/15/10) Link: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/how-stop-the-bleeding Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The rather extraordinary dust-up between the U.S. and Israel has, among other benefits, shined a light on two of the most taboo yet self-evidently true propositions: (1) our joined-at-the-hip relationship with Israel is a significant cause of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, fuels attacks on Americans, and entails a very high price for the U.S. on multiple levels; and (2) many American neoconservatives have their political beliefs shaped by allegiance to Israel.” (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yauec3d Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Town Hall Author: Paul Jacob Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “In the grand scheme of things — among all the wasteful, foolish, corrupting things engaged in by members of Congress — earmarks are one small item. We read about the latest insider deals in the morning paper, but earmarks certainly don’t capture the intense media attention that congressional groping and tickling do. Nor do earmarks account for much of the gross spending, relatively. In the last fiscal year budget, out of roughly a trillion dollars in discretionary federal spending, only $16 billion was blown via thousands of earmarks. So, why all the fuss? It’s not merely that a little corruption, unchecked, tends to lead to bigger corruption. It is also that a little corruption is still, well … corruption. And corruption of any size, shape or partisan color is wrong. Allowing individual congressmen to personally bestow chunks of federal money to various for-profit businesses or non-profit groups can only corrupt.” (03/14/10) Link: http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulJacob/2010/03/14/deaf_on_earmarks Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: In These Times Author: David Sirota Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “Is the Internet everywhere or is it nowhere? This question will strike many readers as a navel-gazing exercise in post-modern existential inquiry, prompting reflections on the 21st-century meaning of location and space. But thanks to Amazon.com, it’s become a question about more concrete and imminent issues like budget deficits and tax fairness. Following a 70 percent earnings increase last quarter, the company this week terminated its business relationships with its Colorado affiliates. The move was a response to new Colorado legislation compelling online retailers to either collect the sales taxes that every other business collects, or at least disclose that customers must pay the levy to the state themselves. … The company, you see, fears that most capitalist of principles: fair competition. It instead relies on a rigged market.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5673/the_tax_war_goes_online/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Sam Pizzigati Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “The Republican Party, critics like to quip, has become the ‘party of no.’ That tag no longer works. The GOP has now become, thanks to a sweeping new legislative proposal from the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, the ‘party of whoa’ (as in, ‘Whoa, they can’t be serious’). Rep. Paul Ryan could hardly be more serious. … In a nutshell: With one in ten Americans jobless and one in eight home mortgages delinquent, Rep. Ryan wants to raise taxes on the middle class and slash them on the rich, shove Social Security retirement savings onto Wall Street, and hand insurance companies even more control over the nation’s healthcare.” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yzoe2ss Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Patrik Jonsson Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “Emergence of the grass-roots ‘tea party’ movement as a major force on the American political right is having a quiet but fundamental effect on the Republican tribe: Social conservatives have been voted off the island. … Of course, many say tea-party rhetoric emphasizing a basic constitutional framework is code for a return to Christian values these activists see as enshrined in the Constitution by the Founders — a foundation that would seem to give them much in common with social conservatives. … But among grass-roots tea party leaders, social issues such as abortion, gay rights and marijuana legalization are held at arm’s length in favor of fiscal issues that can appeal to independents, Democrats and, most important, suburban conservatives.” (03/13/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykhwxdw Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Justin Charity Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “The question of whether transparency in foreign aid poses the same problems or actually yields greater accountability is as important as ever, with money continuing to pour into Haiti after the January earthquake. TAP asked Karin Christiansen, director of Publish What You Fund and former policy manager for the ONE Campaign, about her group’s push for better transparency in foreign-aid spending.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=an_eye_on_aid Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Mike Davis Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “The biggest hole in California, with the exception of the current state budget, is Rio Tinto’s huge open-pit mine at the town of Boron, near Edwards Air Force Base, eighty miles northeast of Los Angeles. Seen from Google Earth, it is easy to imagine that the 700-foot-deep crater was blasted out of the Mojave Desert by an errant asteroid or comet. From the vantage point of Highway 58, however, the landscape is enigmatic: a mile-long rampart of ochre earth and gray mudstone, terminating at what looks like a giant chemical refinery. At night, when a driver’s mind is most prone to legends of the desert, the complex’s intense illumination is startling, even slightly extraterrestrial, like the sinister off-world mining colony in Aliens.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/davis Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The New Republic Author: Andrew Rice Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “What happens when you find uUranium in your backyard? Bad things. Very bad things.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.tnr.com/article/world/nuclear-standoff Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: Corbin Hiar Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “By sending UBS informant Bradley Birkenfeld to prison, did the Obama Justice Department discourage more financial insiders from exposing malfeasance?” [editor’s note: Helping people hide their stuff from thieves is not “malfeasance” - TLK] (03/12/10) Link: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/ubs-whistleblowers-tax-haven Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: Kelly Shackelford Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Everyone’s heard the advertisement that claims, ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ While that’s questionable, one thing that is not questionable is that what happens in the Texas education battle will not just stay in Texas. What your kids learn about historical figures like Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein most likely depends on what happens in Texas in the next two days. Texas is in the process of adopting its social studies standards, which only happens every ten years. The standards cover U.S. Government, American History, World History and more, and they affect how students in grades K–12 see America, its founding principles, and its heroes for the next decade. … [W]hat happens in Texas will impact the nation.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ylqxngs Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Richard L. Scott Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Which is better in war? Wipe out a nation completely and start fresh? Merely disarm the enemy through aggressive tactics? Or subdue through nonaggressive means altogether? Philosophers from Niccolo Machiavelli to Carl von Clausewitz to Sun Tzu have been debating the most effective means to approach warfare for centuries. Today, the United States has been actively fighting two wars with high casualty rates for both sides. It would be valuable for the commander in chief and senior military leaders to consider the merits of a nonlethal approach to warfare.” [editor’s note: It would be far more valuable if societies were to stop starting wars in the first place, but as long as the thirst for empire and “We’re Number One” continues, it’s unlikely to occur - SAT] (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yb6haas Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Tom Hayden Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “A plain reading of yesterday’s vote on the Kucinich war powers resolution is that an overwhelming majority of the House has authorized the Afghanistan war, including a majority of Democrats. The war now has greater legitimacy. The vote was 356-65-9. (If Rep. John Conyers had been present, the dissenting bloc would have been 66, including just five Republicans. Few members took the option of abstaining.) Strong Kucinich supporters will feel vindicated that their hero took a lonely stand and forced the House to a moment of choice. Critics will note that a dubious war has been legitimized, and that it will be more complicated for those who voted ‘aye’ to reverse course in the months ahead. The outcome will make the anti-war forces appear weaker for now than they are, and appearances do matter.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hayden2 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Adam Serwer Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “The sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine is a national disgrace. Both President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have called for it to be ended, and prominent Republicans like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn have indicated they’re sympathetic to the idea. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider the Fair Sentencing Act, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin’s proposal to eliminate the disparity entirely. ‘It is plainly unjust to hand down wildly disparate prison sentences for materially similar crimes,’ Holder said at a D.C. Court of Appeals Judicial Conference last summer. … Under current federal law, it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the same mandatory minimum sentence as 5 grams of crack cocaine.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y8vjc75 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Sabin Willett Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Last week in Washington, right-wingers rallied to a demand by Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley for the names of Justice Department attorneys who used to be with law firms representing Guantanamo detainees. Elizabeth Cheney’s Keep America Safe group released on YouTube a video denouncing the ‘Department of Jihad.’ Breathless announcers at Fox TV began publishing the names. The right has long asserted that the Obama administration is coddling detainees. Now they had an explanation. Lawyers were the enemy within. … So last week’s news was confusing. The much-maligned Justice Department lawyers are working against lawyers like me, Senator Grassley. If they are your enemy, they sure conceal it well.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjbbwre Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Idious Buguise Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Back then. way before all this bloodshed and carnage and butchery. When there were no sirens and riots and bombs, and the lipsticked, powdered, mascaraed and coiffed women sauntered down pavements on bright red stilettos and the men came up to me, grabbed my elbow and demanded to escort me across busy intersections, I wandered the avenues and alleys and cul de sacs and shopped in the souk and ate late cream- and sugar-heavy breakfasts with the civil servants in brightly lit, music-booming cafes and sat by the Tigris and watched young Iraqis flying kites and old Iraqis reading newspapers and discussing the local and national politics and listened to the ‘English TV News for Foreigners.’ Back then. Way before rape and kidnap and sniping were commonplace. Back in 1977 and the world was full of disco and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize and Jimmy Carter pardoned draft evaders and Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem. It was different.” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ybt6tcr Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: Matthew Power Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Anticipating hordes of black-masked, Starbucks-smashing anarchists, the Pittsburgh police and the Secret Service coordinated nearly 4,000 law enforcement officers, outfitting them with the latest in riot-dispersal technology. Crowds marching on the summit were met with pepper spray, stun grenades, and — for the first time on US soil — acoustic cannons that blast painful sounds as far as 1,000 feet. But the protesters had their own crowd-control methods, and that’s what had brought the state troopers to the CareFree Inn. What they found when they broke down the door were a couple of middle-aged housemates from Queens, New York. Elliott Madison sat at a desk with a laptop and a cell phone. A police scanner lay nearby. Michael Wallschlaeger was at the minifridge grabbing some hummus when the police rushed in. According to the criminal complaint filed against them, the two men had been ‘communicating with various protestors, and protest groups … [via] internet based communications, more commonly known as ‘Twitter.’” (03/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yd8womf Filed under: LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: Timothy Noah Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “As currently devised, the individual mandate, which would be phased in between 2014 and 2016, would impose a tax penalty on people who fail to acquire health insurance. Under the Obama proposal, it would be 2.5 percent of income or $695 (whichever is higher), with exemptions for people who either fall under the tax-filing threshold or who, if forced to purchase health insurance, would end up spending more than 8 percent of their annual income. The majority of those subject to the mandate would receive a government subsidy whose precise size is being worked out in House-Senate negotiations. The answer, then, to the question What happens to people who don’t buy health insurance? is simple: They have to pay a $695 fine. But as Jost points out, that begs the question, What happens to people who don’t pay the fine? Uh … nothing.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2247580/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Obviously — as support for the Iraq War crumbled and the public began doubting the GOP ’s national security approach — these strategists advised Democrats to exploit that change in public opinion (November, 2007: ‘For the first time in decades, national security has become a potentially winning issue for Democrats’). A child would have known to do that; that oh-so-bold advice proves nothing. But when it actually matters — back in 2002, as Bush was pushing for the invasion of Iraq, and now — James Carville and Stan Greenberg (along with chronic loser Bob Shrum), as part of Democracy Corps, did exactly what Sullivan described (and what Rosner astoundingly denies they ever did).” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ydjxypo Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Jane Lyn Stahl Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It’s not breaking news that the money we depend upon to be there in our retirement is invested by those corporations who hold it in trust for us just as it’s common knowledge that money deposited into bank accounts doesn’t sit there looking pretty until it’s withdrawn. But, what has changed is that corporations are now effectively ‘going to Las Vegas,’ as a Dallas investor recently told the New York Times, with our pensions. It’s no longer about buying stocks, but investing has now expanded into junk bonds, commodity futures, and foreign stocks, too. More importantly, companies may soon use public pension fund revenue that they’re exposing to increasing risk to rescue failing banks and with FDIC blessing.” (03/11/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/stahl03112010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “[T]his week I look at out of control state licensing requirements. The state of Louisiana now licenses 87 professions, including acupuncturist’s assistants, manicurists and even florists. You want to earn a living engaging in consensual trade with other adults? You must kiss the bureaucrats’ rings first. Fortunately, someone’s fighting back. My syndicated column this week features the efforts of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm that specializes in challenging such intrusions on freedom. (Who knew there were lawyers who weren’t evil?)” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y9yewbv Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Robert Borosage Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “Financial reform, as it is called, shouldn’t be all that complicated. Break up the banks deemed ‘too big to fail,’ since that offends any possibility of market discipline and puts taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts. Crack down on gambling with other peoples’ money in the financial casino. Give consumers a cop on the beat to protect them from the cons and frauds. Tax the big guys to get our money back. Outlaw compensation schemes that give million dollar incentives to make risky bets. But, of course, finance is its own world, with its own patois, ethos and interests. And banks and regulators have a strong interest in making this stuff complicated.” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yzhzn4z Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Daniel Levy & Amjad Atallah Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “About three years ago, it looked like the United States might be emerging from its long neoconservative night to play a constructive role in ending the Israeli-Palestinian and broader Israeli-Arab conflicts. … The Bush administration had long resisted that equation, influenced as it was by the neoconservatives and their often Likudist-inspired Middle East worldview. The conflict and the accumulating grievances that it has generated have a deeply corrosive effect on both America’s standing and ability to get anything done in the region and beyond. At about the same time, Barack Obama, then a young senator who was just launching his presidential campaign, seemed to get it.” (03/09/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_path_to_peace Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Orange County Register Blog Author: Alan Bock Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “I’m not sure yet what to make of the arrest of an owner-operator of a medical marijuana facility called 215 Agenda in Lake Forest, and two others. There certainly are operators of such facilities who operate outside the law, and the state law and guidelines issued by Attorney Gen. Jerry Brown, though they were developed in cooperation with patient advocates, have some ambiguities and shortcomings, IMO. On the other hand, given that it issued complaints against 35 facilities last year and has made it clear it wants to shut down all such operations in the city, it appears that Lake Forest is not all that interested in a good-faith effort to allow California’s medical marijuana law to operate without unnecessary hindrance. A particular example of bad faith is the city attorney’s invocation of federal law. The city is a subdivision of the state and its officials’ job is to uphold state law, not federal law.” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yldrle2 Filed under: LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: H.D.S. Greenway Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “It will take many weeks of coalition building after Sunday’s election before we know who rules Iraq, or whether the country will unite or splinter along sectarian fault lines, but for the United States it will mean success or failure. The outcome will shape Iraq’s post-America future. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group posed the vital, worst-case scenario question. ‘If you got back to a situation of chaos and of uncontrolled violence in Iraq, would that lead the administration to say we’ve done our best, it’s now up to the Iraqis, we’re leaving? Or, on the contrary,’ Malley asked on National Public Radio, ‘would it persuade the administration that it needs to stay a little bit longer, act a little bit more forcefully?’” (03/09/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjepage Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: John Nichols Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “Long before Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi began talking up health care reform as a top priority for the Democratic Party, Congress and America, Dennis Kucinich was doing so. Indeed, the former Cleveland mayor, Ohio legislator, two-time presidential candidate and now senior U.S. House members has across the past 35 years been one of the country’s steadiest proponents of real reform of our broken health-care system. So Kucinich’s questioning of the reform legislation being advanced by President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi is neither casual nor uninformed. The congressman from Ohio knows the intricacies of the healthcare debate as well as any key player in Washington. And he objects to the compromises contained in the measure the president and the speaker are whipping House Democrats to support.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjs89dl Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Marie Benilde Posted on 03.10.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Journalists are now in the same situation as steel workers in the1970s: they are destined to disappear, but they don’t know it. That was the assessment of a banker from BNP-Paribas at the French national press federation’s conference in Strasbourg in 2006. His words caused a sensation, but the statistics support him: having lost more than 2,300 jobs last year, the French press is going through a similar crisis to the United States, where more than 24,500 jobs were axed in 2009. Only 300,000 now work in newspapers in the US, compared to 415,000 a decade ago (according to Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, quoted by Market Watch. The Washington Post has closed its regional bureaus, and the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune have filed for bankruptcy protection. Every national daily in France, apart from the sports daily, L’Equipe, has lost money. The decline is not surprising.” (03/10/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/benilde03102010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: AlterNet Author: Michelle Alexander Posted on 03.10.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yfhhwvz Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: Nick Baumann Posted on 03.10.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Government investigators can’t find the Bush lawyer’s emails. His explanation makes about as much sense as his legal rationale for torture.” (03/10/10) Link: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/john-yoo-email-fail Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: Timothy Noah Posted on 03.10.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Why aren’t Republicans livid about Obamacare’s proposed Medicare tax increase? As someone who believes in progressive taxation and would like to see Obamacare become law, I hesitate to bring this up. But I’m a long-standing observer of Homo Republicanus, and anthropological curiosity is getting the better of me. Obamacare would raise taxes on rich people. Why isn’t the GOP making a bigger stink?” (03/09/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2247374/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 03.10.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq. For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives. There’s no question — as this glorifying, propagandistic Newsweek cover story reflects — that it’s now official dogma that this was the right thing to do, or at least that we produced something great and wonderful for that country, as was our intent all along (leaving aside the what is actually happening in Iraq). It’s nothing short of nauseating to watch those responsible glorify what they did without weighing — or, in Friedman’s case, affirmatively dismissing as irrelevant — the extreme amounts of death and suffering that they caused, all based on false pretenses. But this is why Tom Friedman is the favorite propagandist of ‘Washington insiders’ — because he feeds them the justifications they need to feel good about themselves.” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykn8y95 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Michelle Alexander Posted on 03.09.10 by Steve Trinward “Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s ‘triumph over race.’ Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America. Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that ‘the land of the free’ has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. … Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.” [editor’s note: And Ms. Alexander correctly points directly to the cause, as it has been from its very inception … the Insane War on (Some) Drugs - SAT] (03/09/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/alexander Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Paul Starr Posted on 03.09.10 by Steve Trinward “I am not suggesting that Congress let individuals opt in and out of the new insurance system whenever they choose. If Congress were to do that while banning pre-existing-condition exclusions, many people would pay for coverage only when they were sick, and no health-insurance system can work on that basis. In light of these problems, my proposal has two components. The first is to let people opt out of the new insurance system if they sign a form on their tax return waiving their right to federal health-insurance subsidies for a fixed period — five years. The second part of the proposal is to raise the annual penalties for those of the uninsured who want to keep open the possibility of buying coverage at any time. People without coverage through a group or Medicaid would then have three choices when the law goes into effect: 1) buy insurance through the exchange: 2) take the five-year opt-out; or 3) pay higher year-to-year penalties and keep their options open.” (03/09/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_opt_out_compromise Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Robert Parry Posted on 03.09.10 by Steve Trinward “George W. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove claims ‘one of the biggest mistakes’ of that presidency was not aggressively challenging critics who charged that Bush ‘lied’ to the American people about the reasons for the Iraq War, an accusation that Rove insists was false and unfair. In his forthcoming book, Courage and Consequence, Rove calls the ‘lie’ charge ‘a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency’ and blames himself for ‘a weak response’ that underestimated ‘how damaging this assault was.’ But the problem with Rove’s account is that not only did Bush oversee the twisting of intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003 but he subsequently lied — repeatedly — about how Iraq had responded to United Nations inspection demands.” (03/09/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjwdzpn Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Sara Robinson Posted on 03.09.10 by Steve Trinward “So Rush Limbaugh has threatened to move to Costa Rica if healthcare reform passes. … [T]he irony of this is almost too rich to believe. Given Rush’s well-known proclivities, you have to wonder: Why Costa Rica? If he’s looking for beaches, palm trees, and warm weather, why not head off to Somalia — that free-market paradise that’s implemented every aspect of the conservative political agenda Rush promotes, and in the process given the whole world such a shining example of why there’s no government like no government? Rush would fit in so well there. No taxes, no pesky regulations, no government interference. He’d be free to set up his own roads, his own water supplies, even his own courts and currency — and hire his own private army to defend it all. … But Costa Rica? Really?” [editor’s note: Ms. Robinson apparently knows nothing of the libertarian presence in that land, although she’s correct in seeing the hypocrisy of a troglodyte thug like “comedian Rush Limbaugh” showing up there - SAT] (03/09/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yamz6y9 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Jamal Juma Posted on 03.09.10 by Steve Trinward “The Palestinian elected leadership is weak. And even with Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan this week, the renewed Middle East peace process appears to be little more than a charade. Israel has taken this opportunity to crack down on Palestinians who advocate nonviolent protests against the Israeli West Bank segregation barrier and charged them based on questionable or false evidence. I know: I was arrested for talking too much. All we Palestinians want is a life free from racial discrimination. … The US president’s support for nonviolent protest could go a long way. However, President Obama’s repeated failure to protect the very rights and peace he has called for is a heavy blow to Palestinians. Especially now that Israel has taken to crushing the grass-roots equivalent of Palestinian Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings.” (03/09/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yczr8bm Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: staff Posted on 03.09.10 by Steve Trinward “The Food and Drug Administration has done far too little to avoid conflicts of interest among those who serve on its scientific panels and advisory boards. The latest example came last Monday, when the agency appointed to a tobacco advisory committee two scientists who have financial ties to companies that sell smoking cessation products. One of the scientists, Jack Henningfield, makes most of his income from a consulting company that has GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Nicorette gum, as a client, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The other, Neil L. Benowitz, formerly worked as a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline and still consults for Pfizer, which makes the quit-smoking drug Chantix. It could be worse. The pair of scientists could have financial ties to cigarette makers — which would violate federal law since the two will vote on recommendations for how to regulate the tobacco industry. But no matter how honorable the individuals involved, there’s a clear danger when those who decide whether menthol cigarettes should be banned and whether smokeless tobacco products are safe also stand to profit from the sale of products that help people quit smoking.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y94zka5 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: Daniel Gross Posted on 03.09.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “There have been lots of absurdities in the debate — such as it is — about health care reform. There’s the hypocrisy of people dependent on government-run health care complaining about government-run health care. And now comes the Republican canard that the current health care reform proposal constitutes a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy.” (03/09/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2247393/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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