Undernews: July 5, 2011

The normalcy bubble
Sam Smith

I was driving along when one of those smugly assured network financial advisors began talking about how to prepare for one’s retirement. I reached my destination before I got her name but I sure got her message. Basically, it was not to count on having Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or a pension – all likely to be gone. The only thing that would work would be a house whose mortgage had been fully paid. Of course, you’d need to own a house, have its value equal to the mortgage and be able to pay it all off.

It wasn’t until sometime later that what she had said really struck home. As routine network advice, listeners were being told that some of the greatest social achievement s of the past three quarters of a century were gone for good. Don’t even think about them.

There was no suggestion that we should feel angry about this. There was no explanation. There was no one to blame. Just the way things are.

I realized that I had just heard perhaps the most stunning evidence of the collapse of the American republic – not the result of a war, an act of terror, or climate change. But a disaster of greed being described as normal.

At this moment – in large part because of the networks and other media – Americans are accepting the disintegration of their country as an inevitable matter that they’ll just have to learn to cope with. Even as the pay of the CEOs of the largest corporations rises 23%.

It has even been suggested that the American economy isn’t even about America anymore. Its corporations are so much invested in and dependent upon offshore income, markets and depositories that 9% American unemployment isn’t even important to those driving our economy. Our corporations have become the economic equivalent of a cheating spouse, betraying promises, denying responsibility, abandoning offspring, and then deserting their home as well as their family.

Many Americans haven’t discovered this. Others have but don’t know what to do about it. Others are mad but afraid. Others are confused. So a network financial advisor can blithely tell them to forget about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and pensions as though it was just the way it is. The housing bubble has been replaced with a normalcy bubble in which the normal just gets worse and worse.

One day, and it may not be too far away, this bubble will also burst. The passivity, the uncertainty, the confusion will morph into something far uglier and far more violent. And the feeling that we can just talk our way through all this will no longer hold and we will have to finally face the awful truth of what has been done to us. And by whom.

Unhappy stimulus math
Jeffrey Anderson, Weekly Standard - When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs ¬ whether private or public ¬ at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Obama didn’t catch Bin Laden after all

Sam Smith - It now turns out that Barack Obama didn’t capture and kill Bin Laden after all. Instead, it was a CIA operative who we only know as John and will probably never meet or get to vote for. Says one wire report, “Interviews with former and current U.S. intelligence officials reveal a story of quiet persistence and continuity that led to the greatest counterterrorism success in the history of the CIA.”

According to the comic book fantasy of the embedded media, it was all due to Obama’s bravery. In fact, it was ten years of failure that finally took a good turn. And no one in the media or the White House had produced the name of a single president who would not have reacted in much the same manner of Obama, albeit some might have followed international law and seized Bin Laden rather than killing him.

Democratic Leadership Council: Mission accomplished

Ben Smith, Politico - "The remnants of the once-powerful Democratic Leadership Council, which closed its doors earlier this year after a period of ideological and organizational decline, are being absorbed into the Clinton Foundation, founder Al From said in an email. From wrote this morning: 'The DLC has accomplished much of what we first set out to achieve.'"

Al From is quite correct. The mission of the DLC was to destroy the Democratic Party as a leader in social progress and turn it into a GOP Lite. Its leading agents were Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Sam Smith, Shadows of Hope, 1994 - Coming to matter has much less to do with traditional politics, especially local politics, than it once did. Today, other things count: the patronage of those who already matter, a blessing bestowed casually by one right person to another right person over lunch at the Metropolitan Club, a columnist's praise, a well-received speech before a well-placed organization, the assessment of a lobbyist as sure-eyed as a fight manager checking out new fists at the local gym. There are still machines in American politics; they just dress and talk better.

There is another rule. The public plays no part. The public is the audience; the audience does not write or cast the play. In 1988, the 1992 play was already being cast. Conservative Democrats were holding strategy meetings at the home of party fund-raiser Pamela Harriman. The meetings -- eventually nearly a hundred of them -- were aimed at ending years of populist insurrection within the party. They were regularly moderated by Clark Clifford and Robert Strauss, the Mr. Fixits of the Democratic mainstream. Democratic donors paid $1000 to take part in the sessions and by the time it was all over, Mrs. Harriman had raised about $12 million for her kind of Democrats.

The play was also being cast by a group that called itself the Democratic Leadership Council. Although lacking any official role in the Democratic Party (and often appearing more a Democratic Abandon Ship Council), the DLC claimed it was the voice of mainstream party thought. In fact, it was primarily a lobby for the views of southern and other conservative Democrats, yet so successful was its media manipulation that it managed with impunity to call its think tank the Progressive Policy Institute.

The appeal of Clinton to these matchmakers went beyond mere political calculations. Clinton was not only politically realistic, he was culturally comfortable. He projected the image of an outsider, yet had adapted to the ways of capital insiders. Official Washington -- including government, media and the lobbies -- functions in many ways like America's largest and most prestigious club, a sort of indoor, east coast Bohemian Grove in which members engage in endless rites of mutual affirmation combined with an intense but genteel competition that determines the city's tennis ladder of political and social power. What appears to the stranger as a major struggle is often only an intramural game between members of the same club, lending an aura of dynamism to what is in truth deeply stable.

The Yale law degree, the Rhodes scholarship, the familiarity with the rhetoric of the policy pushers all helped Clinton fit into the club. But perhaps most of all, Clinton knew when to stop thinking.

Just as the Soviets tolerated free thought only within the limits of "socialist dialogue," so debate in Washington is circumscribed by the limits of what might be called Beltway discourse. Ideas that adjust or advance the conventional wisdom are valued. Those that challenge it are ignored or treated with contempt.

Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report, 2008 - Back in 2003, when Obama was a candidate for the US Senate in the Illinois Democratic primary this reporter and Glen Ford challenged him on his affiliation with the Democratic Leadership Council. The right-wing, corporate-funded Trojan Horse inside the Democratic party had fervently embraced his political career, naming him one of its "100 to Watch" for 2003.

DLC endorsement is the gold standard of political reliability for Wall Street, Big Energy, Big Pharma, insurance, the airlines and more. Though candidates normally undergo extensive questioning and interviews before DLC endorsement, Obama insisted the blessing of these corporate special interests had been bestowed on him without these formalities and without his advance knowledge, and formally disassociated himself from the DLC. But like Hillary Clinton, and every front running Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988, Barack Obama's campaign has adopted the classic right wing DLC strategy.

In the DLC playbook, the road to winning elections is appealing to Republican-leaning white voters - demographic groups which pollsters and consultants in previous elections called "suburban soccer moms", NASCAR dads," and before that "Reagan Democrats." Candidates do this by decrying excessive partisanship, embracing "free trade" and "conservative" values, and displays of public piety. . .

If there was an actual mass-based progressive movement in the US, operating on the ground and independent of political parties and campaigns, it might have a prayer of holding Barack Obama accountable. But there isn't.

Audit of Massachusetts foreclosures finds massive bank fraud

Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds, Salem MA - Yesterday at the Annual Conference of The International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials and Treasurers , Register John O'Brien revealed the results of an independent audit of his registry. The audit, which is released as a legal affidavit was performed by McDonnell Property Analytics, examined assignments of mortgage recorded in the Essex Southern District Registry of Deeds issued to and from JPMorgan Chase Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, and Bank of America during 2010. In total, 565 assignments related to 473 unique mortgages were analyzed.

McDonnell's Report includes the following key findings:

- Only 16% of assignments of mortgage are valid

- 75% of assignments of mortgage are invalid.

- 9% of assignments of mortgage are questionable

- 27% of the invalid assignments are fraudulent, 35% are "robo-signed" and 10% violate the Massachusetts Mortgage Fraud Statute.

- The identity of financial institutions that are current owners of the mortgages could only be determined for 287 out of 473 (60%)

- There are 683 missing assignments for the 287 traced mortgages, representing approximately $180,000 in lost recording fees per 1,000 mortgages whose current ownership can be traced.

Marie McDonnell told O'Brien, "I have been auditing residential mortgage loans for the past twenty years on a one-by-one basis. In the process, I have been cataloging the ramp up in predatory lending and mortgage fraud for all of those years, but I was not prepared for the shocking results of my audit. What this means is that the degradation in standards of commerce by which the banks originated, sold and securitized these mortgages are so fatally flawed that the institutions, including many pension funds, that purchased these mortgages don't actually own them because the assignments of mortgage were never prepared, executed and delivered to them in the normal course of business at the time of the transaction. In a blatant attempt to engineer a 'fix' to the problem, the banks set up in-house document execution teams, or outsourced the preparation of their assignments to third parties who manufactured them out of thin air without researching who really owns the mortgage."

O'Brien asked McDonnell what this means for his constituents. "It is vitally important for your constituents to know that if they are in foreclosure now or if their homes have been foreclosed upon, they can stop the foreclosure from proceeding, or institute a court action to vacate a completed foreclosure. … I can tell you that every single assignment of mortgage that was recorded for the purpose of foreclosing the homeowner is invalid, overtly fraudulent, or criminally fraudulent. My findings also show that your constituents who are not in foreclosure, and have never been delinquent in their payments also have clouds on title due to the recording of defective and invalid discharges and assignments of mortgage."

Serious soil radiation found 40 miles from Fukushima

Agence France Presse - Soil radiation in a city 40 miles from Japan's stricken nuclear plant is above levels that prompted resettlement after the Chernobyl disaster, citizens' groups said.

The survey of four locations in Fukushima city, outside the nuclear evacuation zone, showed that all soil samples contained caesium exceeding Japan's legal limit of 10,000 becquerels per kilogram (4,500 per pound), they said.

The highest level was 46,540 becquerels per kilogram, and the three other readings were between 16,290 and 19,220 becquerels per kilogram, they said.

The citizens' groups -- the Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation and five other non-governmental organisations -- have called for the evacuation of pregnant women and children from the town.

The highest reading in the city of 290,000 people far exceeded the level that triggered compulsory resettlement ordered by Soviet authorities following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, they said.

Kobe University radiation expert professor Tomoya Yamauchi conducted the survey on June 26 following a request from the groups.

"Soil contamination is spreading in the city," Yamauchi said in a statement. "Children are playing with the soil, meaning they are playing with high levels of radioactive substances. Evacuation must be conducted as soon as possible."

Israel to attack Iran?

Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam - With specter of willing president looming, will new Defense Secretary Panetta abandon pragmatism of predecessor and support Iran attack?

A retired journalist who covered the intelligence beat, and with extensive senior intelligence sources, reports to me that Israel is planning to attack Iran before the September UN meeting at which Palestinian statehood will be discussed and possibly approved. He wrote to me some weeks ago:

…Some U.S. intelligence officials think that such a surprise [attack] on Iran could possibly take place in…September when [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] McMullen retires. It would [be] political war with its object to divert attention from Palestine.

…Senior US intelligence officials are saying that just recently a big US military force has been conducting large contingency planning drills in preparation for an intervention if Israel attacks Iran. Planning for a U.S. intervention is very far advanced.

…But perhaps the chief thing that counts here is that senior members of the US intelligence are resisting such notions with all the force that they can.

More recently, he sent this:

…The news is dismaying. Israel is planning a surgical strike against Iran. I’ve been talking to former senior agency officials and officials in military intelligence. Not only is [it] “very far along” in planning for a regional war, the Obama administration has signed off on it.

It will happen soon, before September…This is no drill.

If this is right, the timing of the attack couldn’t be more propitious for Israel, as it will certainly either derail entirely, or at the least delay the matter. It would also further reinforce the conviction of many that the Netanyahu government is using the issue of Iran as a pressure valve to deflect world attention from something that is a much higher priority for the current Israeli government: maintaining the Occupation.

To be fair, I find the statement that the U.S. is “planning for a regional war,” and that Obama has “signed off on it” to be overly alarmist. If the U.S. has signed off on an Israeli attack and possible U.S. support for it, I doubt we’re wishing or willing to instigate a regional war. Though on the other hand, just about every serious analyst warns that this is what will occur if Israel does attack.

Until yesterday, I also thought my source’s claim that Obama had signed off on it was exaggerated. That was when I spoke with a former military intelligence analyst who is one of my heroes of the Vietnam era. He told me in no uncertain terms he was certain Obama would approve such an attack were it presented to him. That brought me up short, since I have so much respect him. So I think I now have to change my view about Obama, and concede that given the resounding ‘success’ of, and approval generated by the Bin Laden assassination, it is likely Obama would support an Iran attack. I never believed this was possible till now.

A September attack could complicate the November elections, but if it was deemed successful it would further inoculate the Democrats and ensure success at the polls.

Race to the Bottom: US Airways

PIXIQ - A Miami photographer was escorted off a US Airways plane and deemed a “security risk” after she snapped a photo of an employee’s nametag at Philadelphia International Airport Friday.

Sandy DeWitt said the employee, whose name was Tonialla G., was being rude to several passengers in the boarding area of the flight to Miami.

So DeWitt snapped a photo of her nametag with her iPhone because she planned to complain about her in a letter to US Airways. But the photo didn’t come out because it was too dark.

However, once DeWitt was settled in her seat, preparing for take-off, Tonialla G. entered the plane and confronted her.

“She told me to delete the photo,” DeWitt said in an interview with Photography is Not a Crime Saturday morning.

DeWitt, who already had her phone turned off in preparation for take-off, turned the phone back on to show her that it didn’t come out, but deleted the photo anyway.

“I complied with her wishes but it’s not something I would normally do,” she said. “It just wasn’t usable.”

But Tonialla G. wouldn’t let the issue go. She then walked into the cockpit to inform the pilot that DeWitt was a “security risk.”

Next thing DeWitt knew, she was being escorted off the plane by two flight attendants. Her husband followed.

Pocket paradigms

The greatest power of the mass media is the power to ignore. The worst thing about this power is that you may not even know it's being used.. - Sam Smith

Word

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. -- Confucius

How corporations get employees to sign away their rights

Alternet - Jamie Leigh Jones claims she was drugged and gang-raped while working for military contractor KBR in Iraq (at the time, a division of Halliburton). Jones, now 26, was on her fourth day in post in Baghdad in 2005 when she says she was assaulted by seven contractors and held captive, under armed guard by two KBR police, in a shipping container.

When the criminal courts failed to act, her lawyers filed a civil suit, only to be met with Halliburton's response that all her claims were to be decided in arbitration – because she'd signed away her rights to bring the company to court when she signed her employment contract. As Leigh testified before Congress, in October 2009, "I had signed away my right to a jury trial at the age of 20 and without the advice of counsel." It was a matter of sign or resign. "I had no idea that the clause was part of the contract, what the clause actually meant," testified Jones.

When it comes to consumer claims, mandatory arbitration is the new normal. According to research by Public Citizen and others, corporations are inserting "forced arbitration" clauses into the fine print of contracts for work, for cell phone service, for credit cards, even nursing home contracts, requiring clients to give up their right to sue if they are harmed. Arbitration is a no-judge, no-jury, no-appeal world, where arbitrators are (often by contract) selected by the company and all decisions are private – and final.

Celebrating the 4th in Lexington KY

Wonkette: This is how serious the birth control situation is in Kentucky,
because broken condoms result in tragedies like this man. .

Income of CEOs of top corporations went up 28% during Great Recession
Equilar - After pay declines in 2008 and 2009, CEOs saw their total compensation rise 28.2% from 2009 to 2010, to a median of $9 million. A few other findings:
• Bonuses were the component of compensation that saw the most growth in 2010, with a 43.3% rise. The median bonus was $2.15 million. 85.1% of CEOs received an annual bonus payout in 2010, compared to 73.6% in 2009.
• Options are still the most common equity vehicle, but performance shares and restricted stock are on the rise.
• Both stock-based awards and bonus payouts became a larger part of the pay mix, at 38.2% and 27.2%, respectively, of total 2010 pay.

List of pay for top corporados

Corporate profits are 88% of growth in national income. . . wages and salaries about one percent

Center for Labor Market Studies - Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only 0.1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. The extraordinarily high share of national income (88%) received by corporate profits was by far the highest in the past five recoveries from national recessions.

Why clearn election funding works

York Journal Tribune - In Maine’s last election, 80 percent of successful legislative candidates used clean elections funding, and 94 percent of Republicans who ran for state Senate were Clean Election candidates.

Since Maine’s Clean Election Act was approved, more and more candidates have used public funding. Candidates have been able to compete on a level playing field due to the “trigger” mechanism, which allows the state to supply more campaign funding to a candidate who is being vastly outpaced by their opponent in campaign fundraising when a certain threshold is met.

While many have financial concerns in this economy, support for clean elections in Maine is strong. In three separate polls this spring, support for clean elections in Maine ranged from 70 to 85 percent of those polled, according to figures from Pan Atlantic SMS Group, Critical Insights and the Maine People’s Resource Center.

The Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, a non-partisan association of organizations and individuals that advocates for the Maine Clean Election Act, submitted an amicus brief in the Arizona case, rejecting claims that clean election matching funds chill First Amendment rights. The association’s brief stated, in part: “Full public financing has invigorated the electoral marketplace in Maine. Candidates across the political spectrum have opted into the public financing program in large numbers, reflecting strong and widespread public support for an electoral system that frees candidates from dependency on private donations ... The availability of full public financing has spurred electoral competition, dramatically reducing the number of uncontested elections and enhancing challengers’ ability to take on incumbents in competitive elections.”

The brief also points out that Maine’s law does not place any limit on what privately funded candidates may spend, but allows clean elections candidates to receive additional public funds under certain conditions so they may continue to compete in the race – and additional funds are subject to a limit.

In no way does this law “limit speech,” in fact, it expands the opportunities for candidates to run in the first place, thereby expanding speech, an individual’s access to office, and a voter’s opportunity for choice.

Budget crunch: NYC limiting toilet paper at Coney Island

The city is so hard up for cash that it's rationing toilet paper in women's public restrooms -- to the point where bathroom attendants are doling out a few measly squares per patron -- along the world-famous Coney Island boardwalk.

The Post witnessed stone-faced Parks Department employees leave toilet-paper dispensers empty last week and instead force astonished female beachgoers to form "ration lines" in the bathrooms.

Beachgoers also have been forced to line up for their paltry allotment of the city's cheap, single-ply toilet paper at the boardwalk's other women's restroom at Stillwell Avenue.

America’s current wars cost as much as World War II

Rupert Cornwall, Alternet - The total cost to America of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the related military operations in Pakistan, is set to exceed $4 trillion – more than three times the sum so far authorized by Congress in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.

Unlike most of America's previous conflicts moreover, Iraq and Afghanistan have been financed almost entirely by borrowed money that sooner or later must be repaid.

This staggering sum emerges from a new study by academics at the Ivy-league Brown University that reveals the $1.3 trillion officially appropriated on Capitol Hill is the tip of a spending iceberg.

The report concludes that in all, between 225,000 and 258,000 people have died as a result of the wars. Of that total, US soldiers killed on the battlefield represent a small fraction, some 6,100. The civilian death toll in Iraq is put at 125,000 (rather less than some other estimates) and at up to 14,000 in Afghanistan. For Pakistan, no reliable calculation can be made.

If the Brown study is correct, the wars that flowed from 9/11 will not only have been the longest in US history. At $4 trillion and counting, their combined cost is approaching that of the Second World War, put at some $4.1 trillion in today's prices by the Congressional Budget Office.

Chicago's war on public education

Ben Joravsky Chicago Reader - [Allison] Bates was a third-year science teacher at Austin Polytechnical high school on the [Chicago] west side. But earlier this year, she was fired and banned from working anywhere in CPS for the unforgivable sin of-hold on to your hats, folks-not putting her lesson plans in the red folder, as her principal told her.

Welcome to the bureaucratic nightmare of the Chicago Public Schools' do-not-hire designation, the latest chapter in the city's curious strategy of reforming the schools by making life miserable for the people who teach there.

In 2008 Bates, 35, received her master's degree in education from Dominican University in River Forest and went to work at Austin Polytech, one of three small schools housed in the old Austin high school. . .

She thought she was making progress. The principal who hired her, William Gerstein, rated her "excellent" in her evaluations.

But in the summer of 2010, Gerstein was promoted to a job with the central office. And CPS replaced him with Fabby Williams, an interim principal, who moved to Chicago from North Carolina to take the job.

In March, Williams evaluated Bates's performance as "unsatisfactory."

According to Williams's evaluation of Bates, her unsatisfactory rating had nothing to do with her ability to manage a classroom or teach science to her students, many of whom are reading on a fourth-grade level. In fact, the evaluation, which is based on Williams's observation of Bates for all of 30 minutes one day, makes no mention of her teaching abilities at all.

Instead, Williams notes that she had not followed his instructions to put printed-out copies of her lesson plans in the red folder that he instructed all teachers to leave in a box in their rooms.

Palin's Minnesota book signing bombs

City Pages - The rules set up by Mall of America officials for Sarah and Bristol Palin's book signing yesterday seemed to have been written in anticipation of an army of fans.

"'Camping out' is not allowed," the rules read. "Beginning at 5 a.m., guests will be allowed to line up."
But there was no teeming crowd of rabid Palinites at 5 a.m. And less than a half hour into the appearance of Bristol, Sarah, and Todd Palin, the crowd had dwindled to a trickle of latecomers.

By the time the Palins took the stage, one estimate put the number of autograph seekers at about 300 people, all lined up to be wanded and watched over by a phalanx of Bloominton cops before getting to the Palins' table.
That compares to roughly 1,000 who showed for Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" tour a few years ago -- a figure roughly half the size hyped by promoters.

U.S. sends hundreds of bombing raids in Libya "limited role"

U.S. forces are still flying hundreds of bombing raids over Libya even though the Obama administration claims that American armed forces are only playing a limited role in the conflict,

AFRICOM spokeswoman Nicole Dalrymple said: 'U.S. aircraft continue to fly support missions, as well as strike sorties under NATO tasking.

'Since 31 March, the U.S. has flown a total of 3,475 sorties...Of those, 801 were strike sorties, 132 of which actually dropped ordnance.'

Liberal clickavism rebrands itself

Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report - Last week's rollout of “Rebuilding the American Dream” with Van Jones as front man backed by MoveOn.Org was all that and a bag of blue organic corn chips. It had great production values, good music and a snazzy hi-tech web site. There were volleys of focus-group tested buzzwords... “rewarding hard work,” “redeeming the dream,” rekindling hope,” and “standing up for the middle class.” Spokesperson Van Jones threatened to sue Fox News and the NAACP deemed him “a treasure” Corporate media flogged it and Democrats blogged it. . .

There's nothing direct or democratic about Van Jones' marriage to MoveOn.Org, the other big name behind Rebuilding The Dream. “...He's joining forces with an email fundraising scheme.” said economist Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer. “They're strictly a one-way operation - you get emails, send them money, they decide the issues. How do they decide what (issues) to concentrate on? It's not an organization, really.”

Actually MoveOn.Org is a pretty well-oiled organization, just a profoundly undemocratic one that prefers to focus exclusively on Republican wrongdoing while it ignores Democrats engaging in the same criminal acts. When MoveOn.Org helped bring thousands to Washington for a week of lobbying Congress during the Bush administration, it pointedly summoned crowds only to the offices of targeted Repubicans, while ignoring and absolutely refusing to confront powerful and senior Senate and House Democrats who supported Bush's war.

Rebuilding the Dream seems set to follow in MoveOn's footsteps. Jones has lots to say about budget cuts at home, but nothing to say about ending the $3 billion a week drain caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, and less than nothing about the bombing of black civilians in Libya and Somalia or brown ones in Pakistan. When Bush invaded Iraq, Van Jones condemned it. But like good career-minded Democrats everywhere Jones is silent as the black president mercilessly bombs Africans in Libya and claims it isn't a war. Van Jones can rattle on and on about confronting and answering the Tea Party, or the oil industry. But when President Obama allowed Democratic control of the House pass at the end of 2010, the year of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, without introducing a single piece of legislation to restrict or effectively regulate offshore drilling, Van Jones was silent. . .

Democratic leaning media like The Nation, in lockstep with the direction of Rebuilding The Dream, are breathlessly asking Van Jones what the next step in confronting or building what they call “a liberal alternative” to the Tea Party will be. That's the fight Van Jones wants to pick --- his brand against theirs, diveting attention away from the results we have a fundamental right to expect from our elected officials.

It's not a movement strategy. It's a marketing campaign.

Police blotter: DSK

This is from an article Wayne Madsen wrote in late May

Wayne Madsen - As with so many modern-day neo-cons, Strauss-Kahn was once a leftist. The erstwhile French Communist helped man the barricades during the Paris student and worker riots of 1968. Strauss-Kahn eventually traded in his Molotov cocktails and Marxist hymn book for the limousines and expensive champagne. Strauss-Kahn helped to transform the French Socialist Party into a party that walked in lockstep with the global bankers and elites, a fate that also befell the British Labor Party, the Canadian Liberal Party, and America's Democratic Party. The wealthy elites merely "bought" the leftist and pro-union parties of the West and Strauss-Kahn, like Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Ignatieff, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, was there to eagerly cash the checks and IOUs. . .

Strauss-Kahn's defense team includes former CIA and U.S. Foreign Service officials working for the Washington, DC-based public relations firm, TD International. It was the same firm Strauss-Kahn hired in 2007 to lobby for his appointment to the IMF's top job. TD International appears to favor the sleaziest of politicians. It's client list includes former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the darling of the neocons who stands accused of corruption. TD International's officers include W. Ross Newland III, the CIA's station chief in Bucharest in the late 1980s during the anti-Ceausescu uprising, as well as in Havana and Buenos Aires. TD International also includes its boss, CIA Operations Directorate veteran William Green, as well as former U.S. diplomats Steve Fleishmann and Ron Slimp. The head of TD International's Houston office is Fred Enochs, a former CIA officer who managed operations in over 70 countries.

TD International has worked with two sub-contractors, Glover Park Group and Dezenhall Resources. In 2005, it was disclosed that GPG had a relationship with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to disrupt Nielsen ratings operations to benefit News Corp., which owns Fox Television and Fox News. GPG has also represented the governments of Turkey, Taiwan, the Republic of Georgia, and Colombia, Europe's Airbus in its U.S. Air Force tanker proposal -- which ultimately went to Boeing -- Dubai Aerospace, and the City of London in the UK. GPG's partners have included James Steinberg, the current Deputy Secretary of State; former Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart, a founding partner; Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign's communications director; and Susan Brophy and Joel Johnson, both senior aides to President Clinton.

The links of the Clinton-linked GPG to Strauss-Kahn's defense does not bode well for the prosecution of Strauss-Kahn. Bill Clinton approved an eleventh hour pardon for a successful escapee from American justice -- Marc Rich -- the multi-billionaire dual Israeli-U.S. citizen whose pardon was arranged by his defense attorney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was, himself, later convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in the investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

Dezenhall Resources Ltd. of Washington is a crisis management firm. Last year. Greenpeace sued two chemical companies, Dow and Sasol, and Dezenhall. Dezenhall and another firm, Ketchum, were accused of hiring off-duty cops to spy on Greenpeace. . .

Strauss-Kahn's use of Guidepost Solutions of New York, an international private investigation firm, poses even greater risks for the prosecution team and the Guinean assault victim. The unfolding strategy for the defense, according to press accounts, will be to portray sex between Strauss-Kahn and the chambermaid as "consensual," . . .

Guidepost was formed in 2010 by Bart Schwartz and former IBM security director Joe Rosetti. Schwartz is a former prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Rosetti formed the SafirRosetti firm in 2002 with former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir. . . .

Rather than see a Madoff-style conviction and prison sentence, Strauss-Kahn appears to be waltzing himself into a situation where he will be described as the "victim" of a conspiracy.

Pocket paradigms

The point of a democracy is not to prohibit crooks or demagogues from running for public office, but to defeat them. Similarly, the First Amendment says nothing about objectivity, professional standards, national news councils, blind quotes, deep backgrounders, or how much publicity to give a trial. Its authors understood far better than many contemporary editors and journalistic commentators that the pursuit of truth can not be codified and that circumscribing the nature of the search will limit the potential of its success. Nor can there be an institutionalization of the search for the truth; it always comes back to the will and ability of individuals. - Sam Smith

Word
I've decided to skip 'holistic.' I don't know what it means, and I don't want to know. That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward 'Gestalt' and the Twist, and lived to tell the tale. - Calvin Trillan

This just in from Onion. . .

Onion - In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.

"From now on, the streets, forests, plains, and rivers of Kansas will be safe from the godless practice of evolution, and species will be able to procreate without deviating from God's intended design," said Bob Bethell, a member of the state House of Representatives. "This is about protecting the integrity of all creation."

The sweeping new law prohibits all living beings within state borders from being born with random genetic mutations that could make them better suited to evade predators, secure a mate, or, adapt to a changing environment. In addition, it bars any sexual reproduction, battles for survival, or instances of pure happenstance that might lead, after several generations, to a more well-adapted species or subspecies.

Violators of the new law may face punishments that include jail time, stiff fines, and rehabilitative education and training to rid organisms suspected of evolutionary tendencies. Repeat offenders could face chemical sterilization.

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Mississippi wants to condemn woman to life imprisonment for still born baby

Guardian, UK - Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

Obama administration argues in court that DOMA is unconstitutional

Fire Dog Lake - Well the Obama Administration slid some pretty big news into the holiday weekend trash dump, and for once it is very good news. In a late filing in the Northern District of California case of Golinski v. US Department of Personnel Management, the Department of Justice has formally stated that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional:

Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, 1 U.S.C. 7 (“DOMA”), unconstitutionally discriminates. It treats same-sex couples who are legally married under their states’ laws differently than similarly situated opposite-sex couples, denying them the status, recognition, and significant federal benefits otherwise available to married persons. Under well-established factors set forth by the Supreme Court, discrimination based on sexual orientation is subject to heightened scrutiny. Under that standard of review, Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional.

12,000 prisoners to be released in recognition of unfair drug policy

Think Progress - The U.S. Sentencing Commission unanimously voted to retroactively apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, enabling 12,000 prisoners who were convicted under a previous law that applied harsh sentences to minor crack offenders to be released:

“In passing the Fair Sentencing Act, Congress recognized the fundamental unfairness of federal cocaine sentencing policy and ameliorated it through bipartisan legislation,” noted Commission chair, Judge Patti B. Saris. “Today’s action by the Commission ensures that the longstanding injustice recognized by Congress is remedied, and that federal crack cocaine offenders who meet certain criteria established by the Commission and considered by the courts may have their sentences reduced to a level consistent with the Fair Sentencing Act

Word

The whole problem with the world is that fools & fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

Pocket paradigms

The media is purportedly our surrogate priest, parent, and teacher, but is, in fact, gangs of burglars breaking and entering our brains and stealing time and space from us in a way not even our parents experienced. What was once extraordinary became merely unusual and finally universal as we moved from manuscript to microphone to camera and cable. With each step, context, environment, and points of reference became ever more distant and external. With each step, we became ever more dependent on things and people we would most likely never see in their unprojected, unfilmed, unrecorded nature. - Sam Smith

Portugal's non-punitive drug law is working

France 24 - Health experts in Portugal said that Portugal's decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.

"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added.

"This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies."

Portugal's holistic approach had also led to a "spectacular" reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added.

Under Bush, GOP let deficit grow by $4 trillion

Think Progress - After pushing the government to brink of shutdown last week, Republican Congressional leaders are now preparing to push America to the edge of default by refusing to increase the nation’s debt limit without first getting Democrats to concede to large spending cuts.

But while the four Republicans in Congressional leadership positions are attempting to hold the increase hostage now, they combined to vote for a debt limit increase 19 times during the presidency of George W. Bush. In doing so, they increased the debt limit by nearly $4 trillion

Reagan didn't mind tax increases

Politico - A Politico review of Reagan’s own budget documents shows that the Republican president repeatedly signed deficit-reduction legislation in the 1980’s that melded annual tax increases with spending cuts just as President Barack Obama is now asking Congress to consider.

The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 is the most famous, because of its historic size and timing, a dramatic course correction that quickly followed Reagan’s signature income tax cuts in 1981. But in the six years after were four more deficit-reduction acts, which combined to almost double TEFRA’s revenue impact on an annual basis.

Translated into current dollars, the total revenue increases for the five bills would then be equal to about $190 billion a year. That’s far in excess of anything that has been proposed by the White House in recent deficit talks led by Vice President Joseph Biden, yet most of these increases were approved when Republicans controlled the Senate in the 1980’s.

Roger Ailes planned Fox News back in the Nixon days

John Cook, Gawker ¬ Republican media strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a "fair and balanced" counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the "prejudices of network news" and deliver "pro-administration" stories to heartland television viewers.

The memo¬called, simply enough, "A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News"¬ is included in a 318-page cache of documents detailing Ailes' work for both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations that we obtained from the Nixon and Bush presidential libraries. Through his firms REA Productions and Ailes Communications, Inc., Ailes served as paid consultant to both presidents in the 1970s and 1990s, offering detailed and shrewd advice ranging from what ties to wear to how to keep the pressure up on Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the first Gulf War.

California high speed rail faces deficits and failures

California Watch - The agency spearheading California’s efforts to build a bullet train through the center of the state is plunging forward despite repeated warnings that it may be tens of billions of dollars short of the money needed to build and operate the system, records and interviews show.

The project lacks “a disciplined business plan that makes any sense,” says state Treasurer Bill Lockyer. He fears Wall Street won’t invest anywhere near the $12 billion in private capital needed to build the system.

The appointed officials who make up California’s High-Speed Rail Authoritysay they will rely on $19 billion in federal aid to pay for the 800-mile system. But the legislative analyst says federal funding may amount to less than $4 billion – a $15 billion shortfall. The rail authority’s $45 billion construction estimate may be $22 billion too low, the legislative analyst says. Cost overruns of the sort that have afflicted other big U.S. projects could even drive the actual price above $200 billion, according to a critical study by a Stanford University professor. The bullet train’s prospects for turning big profits are founded on ridership forecasts that are deeply flawed, two studies claim. Rather than making billions in profits, high-speed rail might actually “incur significant revenue shortfalls,” a UC Berkeley study found.

Greece and the end of social democracy

Alexander Cockburn, Truthout - The supposed leftist Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is ramming through a program of national economic suicide, so German and French banks won't be inconvenienced by bad loans to Greece. The Greek people are scheduled to pay a fearful price.

The confidence vote took place against the furious protests and resistance of the Greek people. Around 28 billion euro of the total is to be raised through spending cuts and increased revenue, while 50 billion euro will be raised through the privatization of state enterprises, including ports, telecommunications concerns, real estate and stakes in the public power corporation.

Across the next five years, more than two billion euros, or $2.9 billion, are scheduled in cuts to the health sector through 2015 by reducing regulated prices for drugs and increasing taxes on heating oil and the self-employed. Public employment will be slashed. Greece has already cut the wages of its 800,000 public workers -- a quarter of the work force -- by more than 10 percent.

Papandreou had other options: Simply to refuse to blink in the face of blackmail from Euro-bankers and be prepared to return to its own national currency and restore a measure of sovereignty in the conduct of its economic affairs. . .

British government conspired with nuke industry to play down Fukushima

Guardian, UK - British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

Just a few other things. . .
Obama plans to prosecute medical marijuana growers & sellers...

12,000 prisoners to be released in recognition of unfair drug policy

The fight to end corporate personhood

Judges halt GOP assault on abortion
South Dakota
Kanssas

Nearly half of Congress are millionaires....

Glycerin Prevents Windows and Mirrors from Fogging Up

Americans support higher taxes

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