Saturday, April 24, 2010

A Year of War Would Pay for Local Jobs Bill

by: Robert Naiman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed



Sometime between now and Memorial Day, the House is expected to consider $33 billion more for war in Afghanistan. This "war supplemental" is largely intended to plug the hole in Afghanistan war spending for the current fiscal year caused by the ongoing addition of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, whose purpose is largely to conduct a military offensive in Kandahar that 94 percent of the people there say they don't want, preferring peace negotiations with the Taliban instead.


Of course, by itself the number $33 billion is totally meaningless. To make it meaningful, we need to compare it to something - what else could we do with $33 billion?


A recent missive from the AFL-CIO gives a compelling answer: we could use $33 put America back to work:




If the Local Jobs for America Act (HR 4812) becomes law, it will create or save more than 675,000 local community jobs and more than 250,000 education jobs, according to the latest estimates from the House Education and Labor Committee.



According to the House Education and Labor Committee, the bill includes $75 billion over two years for local communities to hold off planned cuts or to hire back workers for local services who have been laid-off because of tight budgets. The bill also includes $24 billion, already approved by the House in December, to help states support 250,000 education jobs, put 5,500 law enforcement officers on the beat, and retain, rehire, and hire firefighters.


Let's therefore put the two year cost of the Local Jobs for America Act at $100 billion, or $50 billion a year.


Now, in order to compare apples and apples, we need to convert the $33 billion for war in Afghanistan to an annual figure - note that the $33 billion just pays for the Afghanistan war through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30. There's some debate about when the Pentagon will actually finish burning through the money it's already been given; let's start our count on June 1. In that case, $33 billion pays for four months of war in Afghanistan, for an annualized cost of $99 billion.


In other words, the cost of the Local Jobs for America Act is half of the cost of continuing the war in Afghanistan.


Or we could look at it this way: supposed we decided to pay the two-year cost of the Local Jobs for America Act by shortening the war in Afghanistan. By how much time would we have to shorten the war? We'd have to shorten it by at least a year.



Now, if only there were a bill in Congress that would likely shorten the war in Afghanistan by at least a year.


Fortunately, there is. Last week, Senator Russ Feingold [D-WI] and Representative Jim McGovern [D-MA] introduced companion legislation "to require a plan for the safe, orderly, and expeditious redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Afghanistan." This legislation requires the President to establish a timetable for military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since the current deadline for U.S. military withdrawal is nonexistent, I think it's fair to say that if this bill becomes law, the war is likely to be shortened by at least a year.


If you want your representatives in Congress to support the Local Jobs for America Act, and they say, "that's a great idea, but we have to pay for it," then encourage them to support the Feingold-McGovern bill.



http://www.truthout.org/robert-naiman-a-year-war-would-pay-local-jobs-bill58848

There Ain't No Escape From Collapse

By Joe Bageant

April 22, 2010 "Information Clearing House" --

Joe,

In response to a letter from a reader (Joe, why did you crap out on us?), you wrote: "Places like Ecuador, northern California -- all sorts of places -- creating little spots of sustainability as best as possible."

Since the US is the nexus of all the fraud, empire, control, and will thus be the center of the pain in the upcoming financial collapse (AND contains a huge percentage of "useless eaters", i.e. superfluous workers) have you given any thought as to where the best places/countries in the world will be to "hang out" while the Collective Madness and Economic Collapse take over?

Thanks,
Kevin

------

Kevin,

Well, I don't think it's possible to "hang out" until the collapse is over. For starters, it could take 50 years. Or it could take five years. If we knew, more people would probably get off their asses, even in America. But I don't think it will be all at once, or even recognizable at any given moment to techno-hybridized Americans on the ground. For example, most Americans STILL do not recognize the irreversible ecological collapse so well underway. More aware thinkers are calling this "denial," but it is not. They are simply experiencing the world they see before them, as honestly as their senses and experience permit. And that ain't much.

Thanks to technology and layers upon layers of mediation by TV, movies, the Internet, etc., gadgets and manufactured imagery, we all live many steps removed from reality. Collapse is symbolized to each of us in different ways. To some it would be the sustained malfunction and lack of access of the Internet, which is surely coming.

Incidentally, this will be capitalized upon by privatizing the net and selling access at a much higher price, just as with oil. Of course they will experience it as "the consumers" they have been reduced to. So they will see it as bad guys charging money for things that used to be free. Given that their consciousness is a product of technology and its false promise of solutions and endless plentitude, they can never understand that everything is a finite resource and that technology itself can reach such a point of complexity as to be unsustainable. Even your laptop and router is made of petroleum and both eat oil or coal.

Others might perceive collapse as banking failure, given their absolute belief that money is the blood of society -- a capitalist hallucination if ever there was one. My point is that many will not even understand that collapse is going on because capitalism will provide excuses and more fake solutions at ever higher prices -- mainly at the expense of the world's poor and defenseless of course -- until it can no longer extract from them through banking, military force, or other means. This slows down the inevitable and helps the western world maintain its disastrous belief systems. None of which answers your question, but I just had to say it.

There is really no "safe place" to run. For instance, the banking system may utterly fail; actually, it already has, yet no one is calling for an entirely new system. This shows you both the thoroughness of indoctrination of the American people, and the astuteness of the overlords who profit from the masses. Gasoline for cars can become nearly unavailable, and energy prices can become exorbitant, as they are becoming in the UK. And again, people will slowly learn to suck it up, and the system will roll on for a while longer. The more perceptive among them will dream, and are now dreaming, of escape.

Escape as they conceive it does not exist. The ongoing collapse manifests itself in the least developed world too, and even harsher terms: hunger, lack of water, warfare, government corruption, infrastructure collapse, crime. It's a planetary problem and no one escapes that. They just experience it in different ways.

The question is not so much where to do it as how to do it. The question is not "Where can I run to to escape?" It is "What sorts of problems can I best deal with?" To my mind, you cannot deal with them alone, despite the romantic imagery of being "off the grid" on some homestead growing your own food. Yes, there are people doing that successfully. But it has been my experience that they are people who've wanted to do that for a long time, and that they are the kind of people suited to deal with the problems that come with that life. I've done it and believe me, it's not for the average American, who is, quite frankly speaking, incompetent in the ways of the earth. It's a very long learning curve, even if you grew up on a farm. You don't just stick seeds in the ground and wait for your food. Every spot on the earth is unique and you have to come to understand the place you are, which takes time, error and dedication.

Not to be a smart ass or snide, but let me ask: How much do you love your fellow man? Or do you merely want to save your own ass? By now you must know the answer. From what I've seen, a person can be honest with himself on this matter, then pursue either route more effectively.

If you have the temperament and character to readily love other people around you, and the willingness to labor solely for sustenance, community and friendship, then there are countless options. Because that's what most of the rest of world's people do every day, if allowed to. So you could do that in any number of places on the planet, especially here in the New World south of the US. You can do it in literally thousands of places, some of which are in the US. I get emails from all over. But I don't give out contacts anymore because I learned the hard way in Belize that human chemistry is a complex thing. And most Americans do not come into approximately sustainable situations with either the social skills or the willingness to sacrifice for the group. Hell, some Americans starting up such communities don't have those qualities.

Yet, believe me, just being in a place where life is more fundamental and simple, if hard, goes a long way toward peace of mind and discovering human normalcy. It's the learning ground. And usually one learns that people who escape at least some of the ravages of our slow collapse, always seem to do it in cooperation with a community of some sort. Either an already existing one, or an intentional one they create between themselves.

There's nothing new in this, of course. Latin America and the world have countless communities hundreds of year old. Governments come and go, rivers dry up, but the people always have tortillas, one way or another. Americans and Europeans usually see these people as poor, thanks to our heavy social conditioning, industrialization and commoditized consciousness -- not to mention the denial of the effects of colonialism by Euro-American culture. We see no connection between our iPods, high speed wireless, and, say, the present condition of the Haitian or Dominican people.

Anyway, to me, this is the bottom line:

There is no escape in the sense Americans and European culture thinks of escape. Which is mainly running away to a place where you will get something for nothing in a new and different way -- in this case, security and safety from the storm -- and also keep some or most of the stuff and gadgetry and ease that has come to represent "quality of life."

Unless you are rich, this is impossible. And rich these days, including here in Mexico, means so fucking well heeled that even a 90% devaluation cannot hurt you. Oh, there are retirees still living down here on the last shreds of the glory days of the empire. They will tell you there is nothing wrong up there, because they are still getting their checks. But I'm not seeing many newcomers join their ranks. Not at that level. Beyond that, the empire never goes away. It always claims you as its "citizen," which is to say its property. And lately the empire has been extending its tentacles toward expats, in order to extract new money for its failed system.

The rest of us, the non-rich who would prefer to take a shot at some different life -- and just about anything will do in the dark of the night when it is gnawing at your guts -- must choose another way to cross the border (the "gringo wetbacks"). But always we run up against the same barrier, the same closed gateway to what we suspect is greater satisfaction and peace of mind, but increasingly cannot afford the price of admission, if we play the same old brainwashed money game.

I have come to think the price of admission anywhere in the world, (except in America and Europe, where enough dough will get your ass kissed in any circles) is service to others. We have been indoctrinated by an earth devouring capitalist system to believe otherwise. Believe that giving only depletes. And that mankind and civilization came about through kings and warriors and "great men." But the essential glue of man the social animal, and society has always been on cooperation and sharing. That an endless stream of elite thieves have always managed to steal the fruits of that cooperation does not matter. And the best that is in man still rests on the same fundamentals -- cooperation for the greater good of all.

So I would suggest that in planning for the future, you first spend many days pondering the question: How can I best go about giving up the world as I have known it -- which, after all, is the root of our pain and of our catastrophe -- and serve others every day and in as many ways large and small as possible. In other words, sacrifice. In truth, the sacrifice will not be sacrifice, but liberation, because Americans are buried under so much material shit and petty notions as to entitlement, that shedding such things is a blessing. A gift.

From that vantage point you can "watch the collapse" while you help put up a pole barn in Oregon or make love in a Patagonian mountain shack after a hard day of well digging, or smoke a joint in utter relaxation after rescuing orphans from the streets of Guadalajara. And chances are that the collapse of the empire will not much cross your mind.

There is no escape, but there is freedom. And if our fellow Americans long ago forgot that, well, one can still get there alone.

But its not for the faint of heart.

In art and labor,

Joe

About Joe

Born 1946 in Winchester VA, USA. US Navy Vietnam era veteran. After stint in Navy became anti-war hippie, ran off to the West Coast ... lived in communes, hippie school buses... started writing about holy men, countercultural figures, rock stars and the American scene in 1971 ... lived in Boulder Colorado until mid 1980s ... 14 years in all ... became a Marxist and a half-assed Buddhist ... Traveled to Central America to write about third World issues..

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25295.htm

The Failure Of The Liberal Class In The United States (Video)

The Weird Theology of Glenn Beck and His Cohorts

The New Christian Right and Christianity



By Robert Fantina




April 22, 2010 "Counterpunch" --
It is an unfortunate truth that organizations ranging from the mildly amusing to the extremely dangerous have all co-opted the term ‘Christian.’  Christian Right, Christian Coalition, etc., all use the term without, apparently, knowing what it means. It has reached a point where even Christians cringe when they hear the word in political commentary.

A few examples will suffice.



  • There is currently a case working its way to the Supreme Court involving the Christian Legal Society chapter at Hastings, a branch of the University of California. Hastings stopped funding this organization in 2004, when the society required its members to sign a statement of faith, and excluded all those who would not do so. Also excluded automatically are homosexuals. 

  • The Christian Coalition, on its website, has ‘Action Alerts,’ opportunities for its adherents to further the causes it espouses. As of April 19, 2010, two of the top three ‘Action Alerts’ pertain to opposing health care (‘Last Chance to Say ‘NO’ to Healthcare Takeover;’ ‘Critical House Vote Coming up on Obamacare’), and the third to discrimination against gays and lesbians (‘Help us Defend ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’).


  • Sarah Palin, the current darling of the Christian right, preaches abstinence as the most effective sex education, says that U.S. military “is a source for good throughout the world,” and, during her embarrassing campaign for vice-president, talked about how God blessed the U.S. with oil.

  • Glenn Beck, also wildly popular with the so-called Christian right, has said that people should leave their churches if those churches preach social justice. 


It might now be worthwhile to appeal to the Bible, to see, as closely as possible, how Jesus Christ, whom these worthies purport to follow, either did, or might have, responded in the areas mentioned above.


The Pharisees and Sadducees, learned religious and political leaders at the time of Christ, were shocked that he associated with ‘sinners’ and society’s outcasts. One such ‘sinner’ was the woman caught in adultery. Rather than accuse her, he accused her accusers. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8; v. 7). When her accusers slunk away in humiliation, he spoke tenderly to her, and offered his divine forgiveness. “Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8; vs. 10 -11).



Also outcast from society were lepers. They begged from afar, but were not permitted contact with family or friends; their entire community consisted only of other lepers. Jesus did not shun them, but healed them.” And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew 8; vs. 2 – 3).


 Other beggars, some blind from birth, some lame, deaf or mute, approached him, and were not rejected. He did not, like some right wing ‘Christians’ did during the health care debate, shout them down, or spit on them. Rather, he brought them to him, and healed them.


The christian right (the lower-case ‘c’ is not a typographical error; this writer is seeking some way of distinguishing those who demonstrate true Christian values from those who use the name but lack the values) is often angry; Mrs. Palin has recommended that they all reload, perhaps hoping for another ‘unifying’ event like the Kennedy assassination almost 50 years ago. During the 2008 presidential campaign, even the Republican presidential candidate, the elderly, doddering Senator John McCain, could not stop people at his rallies from venting their rage and racism, calling then candidate Senator Barack Obama a terrorist and a child-killer, and calling for his death.


When did Jesus get angry? There are few, but notable, recorded evidences of his anger in the Bible. One situation was when calling out the learned scribes and Pharisees, for their hypocrisy. “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation” (Matthew 23; vs. 13 – 14).



 Might he not have something to say about today’s hypocrites, among whom are right-wing politicians who are forever quoting the Bible, attending prayer breakfasts and disdaining all ‘sinners,’ at the same time that they are having extra-marital affairs? Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, telling the world that he was hiking down the Appalachian trail, when in actuality he was flying to his mistress’s bed in Argentina, and Senator John Ensign of Nevada, sleeping with his top aid’s wife, come to mind. And can one possibly forget Newt Gingrich? Mr. Gingrich was calling for the impeachment of Democrat Bill Clinton, wringing his righteous, family-values hands over the horror and sin of Mr. Clinton’s extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky, at the same time that Mr. Gingrich was sleeping in both his wife’s and his mistress’s beds.


Jesus Christ also became angry when finding merchants in the Temple; they had, he said, made his house a den of thieves. He forcefully and physically ejected those who had done so. “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves”  (Matthew 21; vs. 12 – 13).


Based on this, one might logically consider that Jesus Christ was not as enamored with the almighty dollar as his alleged followers today appear to be.  One of their more modern heroes, former President George Bush, provided huge tax breaks to the nation’s wealthiest citizens.  Without exception, today’s christian right opposes President Obama’s efforts to let those tax benefits expire.



And what of Mr. Beck, urging Christians to leave their churches if they encourage social justice? Mr. Beck is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (possibly the only thing he has in common with this writer). Two LDS scholars, quoted in the New York Times on March 11, weighed in on Mr. Beck’s bizarre remark:




    • Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, said this: “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. People endeavor with all of our frailties and shortcomings to love one another and to lift up other people. So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.” 

    • Philip Barlow, the Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, further stressed the point: “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice. It’s ubiquitous in the Book of Mormon to have the prophetic figures, much like in the Hebrew Bible, calling out those who are insensitive to injustices. A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.




Mr. Barlow also pointed out that just this year, the Church issued a new ‘Handbook of Instructions’ to Church leaders. A major revision was adding a fourth layer to the three-fold mission of the Church. That added mission is simply this: care for the poor.


One might say that minor, anecdotal evidence has been presented here. In response, this writer invites these christian zealots to show him where Jesus Christ ever opposed helping anyone in need. At what point did he disdain the lonely? Where in the Bible is it recorded that he held himself aloof from any common sinner? Where did he court the favor of the rich, and turn his back upon the poor? Yes, he harshly criticized the hypocrisy of the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, but while he condemned any sin, he was unfailingly warm and loving to the sinner.


And that, of course, brings up yet another problem with the christian right. In Luke 6: v. 37, Jesus is quoted thusly: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” That statement seems to imply strongly that judgment is left for someone other than the Sarah Palins of the world. For Christians, mankind’s role, it seems, is to follow the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and leave the determination of sin to him alone.



This writer understands, but also occasionally finds reason to resent, criticism of Christianity and Christians, when it is directed against all who proclaim to be Christians. There is nothing in the Bible to support Christianity as intolerant, judgmental, violent, fearful and paranoid. Rather, the example of the master teacher, revered by Christians as the Savior and Redeemer, shows only love, tolerance, gentleness and acceptance. There seems to be little support for the angry, hysterical ravings of the christian right to be found anywhere in the scriptures.


Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006. 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25299.htm

The Financial Terrorists Who Destroyed Our Economy Will Pay Zero in Taxes and Get $33 Billion in Refunds

You and I are working our asses off, paying 30% of our limited income in taxes. Not the banks that triggered the financial crisis.

By David DeGraw





Journalist David DeGraw has put together a devastating report detailing how Wall Street continues to pillage the economy with the government's help. "The staggering level of theft continues unabated," writes DeGraw. "Our future is going up in flames and our government isn’t even making the slightest effort to put out the fire. In fact, they are purposely pouring gasoline all over it." DeGraw's investigation is a follow up to his previous report The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America


April 19, 2010 "Amped Status" -- The first thing people need to understand is that the economic crash wasn’t a crash for the people who caused it. In fact, these financial terrorists are now doing better than ever. In a recent report, titled “Social Inequality in America: Widening Income Disparities,” more evidence of the unprecedented transfer of wealth was revealed:



“As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011, and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion…. Despite the crisis, the list of billionaires has grown by 218 people and their aggregate capital has expanded by 50%. This may seem paradoxical, but only at first glance. This result was predictable, if we recall how governments all over the world have dealt with the economic crisis.”




The inequality of wealth in the United States between the economic top 0.5% and the remaining 99.5% of the population is now at an all-time high. The economic top 1% of the population now controls a record 70% of all financial assets. The point here is that while the economic crisis has been devastating for 99% of America, the Wall Street elite are awash in record breaking profits. The most profitable firm in Wall Street history, Goldman Sachs, just had their most profitable quarter in their 140-year history and Wall Street firms issued an all-time record breaking amount in bonuses.


All of this is occurring after giving these firms $14 TRILLION in taxpayer support - that works out to be $46,662 of your hard-earned money. That’s $46,662 for every man, woman and child in this country. If you have a family of four, sorry, your future just got robbed and you and your children just lost $186,648!


So what are all these firms doing with these record-breaking profits? Are they returning them into the tax system in which they came from, the tax system that was looted just to keep their scam running?



No!


Let’s start with Wells Fargo. After being bailed out with our money in 2008, their top five executives DOUBLED their compensation and each one of them made over $11 million in 2009. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf made off with a cool $21.3 million last year.


And now comes news that Bank of America and Wells Fargo will pay zero, yes ZERO in federal taxes for 2009. Bank of America will net a $3.6 BILLION benefit from the federal government in 2009. Wells Fargo, after $8 BILLION in earnings for 2009, will net $4 BILLION from the federal government.


So you and I are working our asses off just to make ends meet, paying 30% of our limited income in taxes, and gizillionaire John Stumpf’s company is paying ZERO in taxes so that he can personally swipe another $21.3 million of tax payer funds.


Al Capone is a dime store thief compared to this guy!



Well, to be fair, Mr. Stumpf is just a small-timer himself in this all-time greatest heist.


JP Morgan Chase made $12 BILLION in profit in 2009, as a direct result of our tax money - yes, I need to keep repeating this fact. These are profits that would not exist if it weren’t for our tax dollars.


It’s also important to point out that this is just the level of theft that has already occurred. However, as I also can’t stress enough, the theft still continues without any let-up.


Now comes news that JP Morgan is on the verge of getting a $1.4 BILLION tax refund! Yes, you heard me right, a $1.4 BILLION TAX REFUND. But JP is not alone in this latest theft. In total, the financial terrorists are due to receive $33 BILLION IN TAX REFUNDS!


Do you comprehend how depraved it is to give these people another $33 billion in tax refunds? I assume that they’re thinking that after stealing $14 TRILLION, another $33 billion really isn’t all that much. After all, last year, Goldman Sachs, the most profitable firm Wall Street history, only paid 1% in taxes, so what’s another $33 billion kickback among friends?



Let’s be clear about this latest $33 billion of which the US tax system is being robbed. What could we do with $33 billion?


For one, we could put over one million unemployed people back to work and pay them the average national median wage for the next year. Add the record-breaking $150 billion in bonuses (our tax money) that Wall Street handed out this past year to the $33 billion and guess what? We can now put over six million people back to work making the average annual wage! Do you think that would stimulate the economy? Green shots galore.


But why do that? Jamie Dimon needs another new 40,000 square foot mansion and Goldman Sachs needs to upgrade their fleet of luxury jets filled with the finest wine, champagne, cigars and hot tubs.


Maybe we could use that $33 billion to save some of the hundreds of schools that are being forced to close this year due to devastating State budget deficits. Or maybe pay the thousands of teachers who just found out that their jobs have been cut. How about using that money to feed the 50% of US children who need to use food stamps during their childhood to eat? How about using it to give a raise to the 15 million US workers who work 40 hours or more a week and still fall below the poverty line.


Wait, I know, how about helping the millions of Americans who have been foreclosed upon due to JP Morgan’s predatory lending schemes and illegal subprime “liar’s loans.”



And don’t even get me started again on how we can better use the $14 TRILLION that Wall Street made off with.


People of the United States to Obama: Hello! This is happening on your watch!


Change We Can Believe In!


Oh, but wait… it gets even better. This just in from the Roosevelt Institute:



De facto bailout for Freddie and Frannie



Did the Fed and the Treasury orchestrate a de facto bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — at public expense and sans Congressional approval? John Hussman thinks so. He provides a detailed account of just how 1.5 trillion dollars got diverted to Freddie and Fannie — money that we can all kiss goodbye. American taxpayers, it seems, have gotten the middle finger once again.



And then in comes this little known, highly underreported news item: U.S. Taxpayers on Hook for $5 Trillion of Fannie, Freddie Debt



“After years of winks and nods, there’s no doubt that Fannie and Freddie now enjoy an explicit guarantee, according to most observers. The U.S. government placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship in September 2008: ‘This means that the U.S. Taxpayer now stands behind $5 trillion of GSE debt,’ according to the Congressional Research Service.”



Hank “Pentagon-Sachs” Paulson’s right-hand man Tim Geithner, now Obama’s hand-picked Treasury Secretary and point man for the continued looting, recently assured his friends on the Financial Services Committee: “We will do everything necessary to ensure these institutions have the capital they need to meet their commitments.” Geithner then acknowledged that US taxpayers will take “very substantial” losses on this bailout.



Yep, Obama’s Chief-of-Theft, Rahm “Freddie Mac Daddy” Emanuel’s former company now has unlimited ability to rob taxpayer money and is making off with $5 TRILLION. And I thought Cheney’s Halliburton was as bad as it could get.


Yes We Can… Get Robbed Even More!


But don’t worry, if you thought the past two years were bad, the history books will recall them as a walk in the park compared to what is coming our way. You don’t have trillions looted from the economy and continue to just keep going about your life business as usual. I wish I was wrong, and I wish this was just my opinion, but facts are facts and every societal and economic indicator says things are going to get worse, MUCH WORSE.


© 2010 Amped Status All rights reserved.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25253.htm

DOJ abandons warrantless attempt to read Yahoo e-mail

by Declan McCullagh

The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first.



In a two-page brief filed Friday, the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation. CNET was the first to report on the Denver case in an article on Tuesday.



Yahoo's efforts to fend off federal prosecutors' broad request attracted allies--in the form of Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation--who argued (PDF) that Americans who keep their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.




Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had pledged that, as president, he would "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." This dispute had the potential to test his administration's actual commitment to privacy, which recently became the subject of a legislative push supported by Silicon Valley firms and privacy advocates. The administration has taken a position at odds with that coalition in a second case in Philadelphia involving warrantless tracking of cell phones.



Much of the information about the case in federal court in Colorado remains unclear, including the nature of the possible crime being investigated, how many e-mail accounts are at issue, and whether it was the flurry of publicity in the last few days or something else that prompted the U.S. Attorney's office in Denver to back down.



The brief filed Friday says that Yahoo had turned over more information since March 3 and that "the government has concluded that further production of records and information by Yahoo would not be helpful to the government's investigation."




On December 3, 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ordered Yahoo to hand over to prosecutors certain records, including the contents of e-mail messages. Yahoo divulged some of the data but refused to turn over e-mail that had been previously viewed, accessed, or downloaded and was less than 181 days old.



Neither Yahoo nor Assistant U.S. Attorney Pegeen Rhyne were immediately available for comment on Friday. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Denver sent CNET an e-mail message saying: "Because this involves an ongoing investigation, I respectfully decline comment, other than to say the brief filed today speaks for itself."



A 17-page brief (PDF) that the Justice Department filed last month acknowledges that federal law requires search warrants for messages in "electronic storage" that are less than 181 days old. But, Rhyne had argued, the Yahoo Mail messages don't meet that definition.



"Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage,'" Rhyne had written. "This court should therefore require Yahoo to comply with the order and produce the specified communications in the targeted accounts." (The Justice Department says that what's known as a 2703(d) order--and is not as privacy-protective as the rules for search warrants--should let police read e-mail.)




A footnote to Friday's government brief says that the Justice Department "is aware that Yahoo and other various parties have now submitted briefs on various privacy issues in the context of the prior motion to compel. The government respectfully disagrees with positions taken in those briefs, but because the need for the motion to compel has been vitiated by Yahoo's further production, the government declines to litigate this matter in this moot context."



Update 12:23 p.m. PDT: Added more background.



Update 12:45 p.m. PDT: EFF Attorney Kevin Bankston just sent me a link to his post, which claims the Justice Department is "unwilling" to fight civil liberties groups in the courts. (Another explanation is that prosecutors are perfectly willing when the time is right, but didn't think this particular case offered the best chance for them to win.) Bankston writes: "While this is a great victory for that Yahoo subscriber, it's disappointing to those of us who wanted a clear ruling on the legality and constitutionality of the government's overreaching demand."




Update 2:08 p.m. PDT: Yahoo has sent a statement saying: "We are pleased with the decision and we continue to be committed to protecting the privacy of users." A spokesman has repeatedly declined to disclose what, if any, additional information the company has turned over. And EFF's Bankston adds, in e-mail, a thought that buttresses the DOJ-not-wanting-a-public-fight point: "This is an area where the government is very vulnerable, considering that two circuit courts have already disagreed with the gohttp://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002722-38.htmlvernment's reading of the statute on that point."

The Making of American Foreign Policy

It's all about domestic politics



by Justin Raimondo,
April 21, 2010

Writing on his Foreign Policy blog, Stephen Walt notes
the uptick in war hysteria directed at Iran, and, like a good realist, looks
at the US-Iranian military equation with a cold-eyed attention to facts and
figures. He lists the huge military and economic disparities in favor of the
US, bare numbers that speak truth to war propaganda, and then wonders aloud:



"The more one thinks about it, the odder our obsession with Iran appears.
It’s a pretty unlovable regime, to be sure, but given Iran’s actual capabilities,
why do U.S. leaders devote so much time and effort trying to corral support
for more economic sanctions (which aren’t going to work) or devising strategies
to ‘contain’ an Iran that shows no sign of being able to expand in any meaningful
way?"


In search of an answer to this puzzling question, Walt goes on to explore
the non-military aspects of the Middle Eastern conflict, averring that "simple
bean counts like the one presented above do not tell you everything about the
two countries, or the political challenges that Iran might pose to its neighbors."
Pointing to Iranian support for Hezbollah and influence in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Walt nevertheless urges us not to overstate the alleged Iranian "threat"
and allow ourselves to be stampeded into another unnecessary war. One couldn’t
agree more, and yet I can’t help but notice Walt failed to answer his own question:
why are our "leaders" devoting so much time and effort to
corral support for murderous sanctions (remember Iraq) and other acts of war?



The answer, of course, is contained in the pages of a book Walt co-authored,
with John Mearsheimer, that tells a good part of the story. The Israel Lobby
and US Foreign Policy
is invariably described as "controversial,"
or even "extremely
controversial
," but this is merely an indication of how tame our political
discourse has become in the Republic’s late senescence. In reality the book
merely demonstrates, at length and in great detail, a simple truism that everyone
already knows
and long ago learned to live with: the decisive influence of
Israel’s partisans in the formulation and conduct of US foreign policy.


This dominant position has been true since the Reagan years, and, what’s more,
it has been common knowledge: after all, it was Fortune magazine, not The National Socialist News, that rated the Israel lobby the second most
powerful in Washington. This lobby unites the broadest coalition in American
politics, ranging from the left wing of the Democratic party all the way to
the furthest reaches of the ultra-right, not to mention including the bipartisan
political establishment
in Washington.



A huge ongoing propaganda campaign is constantly churning out pro-Israel materials
directed at a wide variety of special interest groups: the lobby’s most well-known
success story is the Christian fundamentalist faction, which believes in the
key role played by Israel as a harbinger of the second coming of Christ. The
lobby has parlayed this into a powerful domestic constituency fanatically devoted to Israel’s cause – and not just the cause of the current Israeli government,
but of the most extremist and expansionist elements in the Israeli polity.


A less well-known triumph of niche marketing is the Israeli propaganda effort
directed at the gay community. The Israeli government has sponsored ads appearing
in San Francisco’s bus shelters extolling the IDF because it doesn’t discriminate
against gays, and a recent tour of Israel’s gay hot spots promises
a visit
with hunky IDF soldiers. Pat Robertson and the advocates of gay
liberation – together at last!



We’re an empire now, and it’s perfectly rational for every state actor in
the world who wants something from Uncle Sam to not only show up at the imperial
court in Washington and seek the favor of the most powerful ruler in world
history, but also to make an appeal to his subjects. Since Congress long ago ceded its war-making and oversight powers to the executive, an American president,
once in office, can wreak considerable havoc in the conduct of our foreign
affairs


Yet even Caesar operates under certain constraints: i.e. the vicissitudes
of domestic politics, which require him to hand out favors to his supporters
in order to remain in power beyond the next election. It is safe to say, with
certain rare exceptions, that every political leader acts purely out of his
own self-interest: that is, with an eye to either achieving political office
or else retaining that office once elected. This is merely a restatement of
a simple axiom: every ruling class acts to preserve its rule.



The American elite, however, is particularly ruthless, these days, in its
pursuit of naked self-interest: the old British idea of politics as a "public
service," a selfless act of noblesse oblige, went out with the first Bush
administration, and had been near extinct long before then. Today, it is a
veritable free-for-all, with various interest groups lunging at the loot, and
battling over it on the public stage, so that American politics often looks
like an episode of the Jerry Springer Show.


This vulgarity has carried over into the realm of foreign affairs, coinciding
with the rising influence of the neoconservatives. The neocons, whose unabashed
appetite
for foreign conquests, and open boasts that they were establishing
an "American empire," really defined the style and spirit of the
American "hegemon," whose supremacy they proclaim [.pdf] must be the underlying
objective of American foreign policy. The present administration, for all its
talk of "change," has continued to operate within the same paradigm
that assumes unchallenged American supremacy the world over.



With such an extremist philosophy, one would think the neocons would’ve had
a hard time pushing though their hard-line policies, especially given the much-lamented
"isolationism" of the American people, and yet their success hinged
on the interests of various interest groups that, together, hardly constitute
a majority of the American people, but certainly dominate the "higher
circles
" in government, in the business world, and in the media. Using
this leverage, the War Party’s coalition of ideological, business, and foreign
interests managed to whip up a storm of war hysteria against Iraq very similar to what is being whipped up today against Iran.


With one big difference: there is very little pretense being made as to whose
interests a war against Iran is designed to serve, unlike in the previous instance.
Here the power of the Israel lobby is rearing up to its full height, with Israeli
government officials openly calling on the nations of the world – i.e. the
United States – to commit acts of war against Iran: impose sanctions, set up
a blockade
, and effect "regime change" by whatever means. And Israel’s
amen corner
in the US is echoing this call, with the drumbeat for war getting
louder by the month. Only a war-weary public, presently embroiled in bitter
domestic internecine disputes, stands in the way of their success.



Our leaders are afraid of the public reaction if it should ever come to war,
and so the President and his administration are caught in a vise, pressed by
fear of the Lobby on one side, and fear of their own people on the other. On
the one hand, a war at the height of an economic depression might be just the
trick
for turning things around politically. On the other hand, the backlash
could be terrible, and politically fatal, like prematurely awakening a wild
animal from hibernation – there’s always the danger it will turn on you. Under
these circumstances, will they dare to go ahead with it?


In earnestly looking for some external reason for the drive to war – some
geopolitical dynamic that would explain the inordinate attention paid to a
weak adversary whose ability to hurt us is severely constrained – it’s no wonder
Professor Walt came up empty-handed. No such dynamic exists: what does exist,
however, is American politics, the course of which determines the policies
we pursue overseas. There is no disinterested determination of where our interests,
as a nation, lie, or what course would best protect the citizens of this country
from attack: what is being protected, here, is not the physical and economic
safety of the American people, but the particular interests of certain politicians
and their supporters.


Will we go to war with Iran? No one knows. But if it serves the interests
of a politically beleaguered, increasingly unpopular President or party to
divert public attention away from domestic problems by launching a campaign
of fear – The Iranians are coming! The Iranians are coming! – and creating
a "crisis," well then, war is hardly inconceivable. Indeed, it seems
more likely by the day.



http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/04/20/the-making-of-american-foreign-policy/

Sanctioning Iran Is an Act of War

by Rep. Ron Paul, April 23, 2010

Before the US House of Representatives, April 22, 2010, Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act.

I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one-trillion-dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These "drones" ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq, that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud?

We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to "work" – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2010/04/22/sanctions-on-iran-is-an-act-of-war/

E-mails show Goldman boasting as meltdown unfolds

By DAN STRUMPF, AP Business Writer Dan Strumpf, Ap Business Writer 7 mins ago

NEW YORK – E-mails released by a Senate committee investigating the financial crisis show top executives at Goldman Sachs Inc. boasting about money the firm was making as the housing market collapsed in 2007.

The documents suggest that Goldman benefited at least for a time from bets that subprime mortgage-backed securities would lose value. The e-mails appear to contradict previous statements by the investment bank that it lost money on such securities.

"Of course we didn't dodge the mortgage mess," CEO Lloyd Blankfein wrote in an e-mail dated Nov. 18, 2007, according to the documents released Saturday morning. "We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts."

Short positions, in contrast to long positions, are bets that a financial security will lose value. Goldman is also the target of a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which alleges that the firm misled investors about how a subprime mortgage-backed security was created. Goldman has denied the charges.

The e-mails were released by Sen. Carl Levin's office, who is presiding over an investigation into the financial crisis. Blankfein, along with other Goldman personnel, are scheduled to testify during a Senate hearing into the crisis on Tuesday.

In another e-mail, Goldman Chief Financial Officer David Viniar says that in one day the firm made more than $50 million on bets that the housing market would collapse, according to a statement from Levin's office.

"Tells you what might be happening to people who don't have the big short," Viniar writes in the message dated July 25, 2007. Viniar is also scheduled to testify on Tuesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100424/ap_on_bi_ge/us_goldman_sachs/print

Bill Maher Blasts Tea Baggers For Ignoring Defense Spending (VIDEO)

Commentary: Where was Tea Party's 'anger' during Bush years?

By Leonard Pitts Jr. | The Miami Herald

The numbers are in.

Thanks to a new CBS News/New York Times poll, we now have a statistical picture of the tea party movement. There are few surprises.

It turns out that not quite 20 percent of Americans are tea party supporters. They tend to be white, Republican, male, over 45 and wealthier than the rest of us. Fifty-seven percent hold a favorable opinion of George W. Bush. And where most Republicans describe themselves as "dissatisfied" with Washington, tea partiers are apt to use a different term. They say they're angry.

It is a telling word, especially in light of another survey, this one from the University of Washington's Institute For the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality. That poll offers strong evidence that, contrary to the denials of tea party enthusiasts, President Obama's race plays a big role in their outrage. Indeed, researchers found a significant correlation between racial resentment and tea party zeal.

Respondents were read loaded statements such as this: "It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites." Among those skeptical of the tea party, only 33 percent agreed with that statement. Among whites in general, 56 percent did. But among the tea party's most rabid followers,the number spikes to 73 percent.

As Dr. Christopher Parker, who led the study, observed via e-mail: "[I]f one believes that blacks don't try hard enough, use slavery as an excuse, and . . . have received more than they deserve (racial resentment), they are 37 percent more likely than those who don't believe this . . . to support the tea party."

Yes, he says, ideology plays a part. Yes, politics does, too. But as he put it in a follow-up conversation by phone, "once you control for partisanship, party identification and ideology, there's still a significant, robust effect for race."

Some of us needed no polling data to know this. Some of us needed only to observe the timing of the tea party's rise.

After all, if the tea partiers were truly only concerned about so-called "tyranny," they'd have started howling when President Bush claimed he need not be bound by laws with which he disagreed.

If they were truly only worried about a "socialist" takeover of private industry, they'd have yelped when he took over troubled financial institutions.

If they were truly only anxious about the budget, they've have hollered when he spent a $128 billion surplus into a $407 billion deficit.

If they were truly outraged over their income taxes, they'd have screamed at Bush first, given that their taxes are the same as when he was in office.

It is telling that they "discovered" their burning concern over these things shortly after Barack Obama came to power.

And contrary to what some in the movement would argue, it is not the case that any criticism of Obama brings charges of racism. Columnist George F. Will accuses Obama of timidity, columnist Charles Krauthammer calls certain of his policies "terminally naive," columnist Jonah Goldberg charges him with dirty politics. Yet there's been no national hue and cry accusing those conservatives of racial bias.

The reason is simple. Unlike certain tea partiers, they did not claim Obama favors white slavery. Or depict him as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose.

Or cry, "I want my country back."

For those of us trying to build a country that does not fear difference, a country where access to opportunity is not a function of skin color; for those of us seeking an America that will finally live out the true meaning of its creed, that battle cry of the tea partiers says all that need be said about the differences between them and the rest of us.

They are looking for the America that was.

We're searching for the one that ought to be.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla. 33132. Readers may write to him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com. He chats with readers every Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT at Ask Leonard.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/23/92604/commentary-where-was-tea-partys.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz0lwPWwD00

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/23/92604/commentary-where-was-tea-partys.html#storylink=omni_popular

Saturday, April 17, 2010

"Eaarth": Earth is over

Friday, Apr 16, 2010 12:40 EDT

A climate pioneer declares the planet -- with its rising humidity and hot oceans -- dead



According to Bill McKibben, the respected environmentalist and author of the pioneering "End of Nature," the planet Earth, as we know it, is already dead. Over a million square miles of the Arctic ice cap have melted, the oceans have risen and warmed, and the tropics have expanded 2 degrees north and south. Global warming has caused such pervasive and irreversible changes, he argues, that we now live on a new planet with a new set of environmental and climatic realities — and, as such, it deserves a new name: Goodbye, Earth. Hello, "Eaarth."


McKibben’s hair-raising new book, "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," is a scrupulous and impassioned account of the severely compromised globe on which we now live. He lays out the myriad ways in which climate change has remade our world, but he also goes much further, chronicling its current and future human toll. He explains how droughts in Australia helped precipitate the 2008 food crisis and put 40 million people at risk of hunger, and how the rapidly melting glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas may soon threaten the water supply of billions. Our only hope of survival, McKibben suggests, is a reversion to small-scale, local ways of life. "We simply can’t live on the new earth as if it were the old earth," he writes. "We’ve foreclosed that option."


Salon spoke with McKibben over the phone about the meaning of "Eaarth," our grim future, and what Tom Friedman got wrong about global warming.



What is "Eaarth"?


The meaning behind the title is that we really have created a new planet. Not entirely new. It looks more or less like the one we were born into; the same physical laws operate it. But it’s substantially different. There’s 5 percent more moisture in the atmosphere than there was 50 years ago, much less ice at the top of the Earth, et cetera. Calling it "Eaarth," an admittedly weird word, is a way of calling people’s attention to the fact that the changes that have already happened are large enough that if you were visiting our planet in a spaceship, this place would look really different from the outside than it did just decades ago.



What’s the biggest observable difference?


The most visible change is what’s happening to ice around the world. But probably the most important is what’s happening to liquid water. Warm air holds a lot more water vapor than cold, so you get a lot more evaporation in dry areas, and hence more drought. Even easier to measure, and more troubling, is the fact that what goes up must come down, and what’s coming down are these intense precipitation events.


In the book, I describe the rainfalls in my small town in Vermont — record floods that cut us off from the rest of the world. But that’s happening around the world almost every day now. The 100-year storm comes three times a decade in a lot of places. Stuff like that is sobering, not only because it demonstrates how out of balance things are, but also because the consequences of a world run amuck are not to be taken lightly.



What consequences are we talking about?


India, for example, is constructing this massive wall to protect it from Bangladesh. Not because it represents a military threat, but because there’s 150 or 160 million people there who are increasingly squeezed by a rising ocean. As best we can tell, the failure of the monsoon across Africa is climatically related, and that’s clearly played a big role in what’s been happening in the wars in Sudan and Somalia. It’s not that there’s an out-and-out war about climate change; it’s that all the stresses that already plague the planet get harder and harder to deal with. If you’re already short of water, say, now you’re shorter.



Forty-four percent of Americans still don’t believe global warming is manmade. What’s the best way to convince them?


Most accounts terrifically underplay what’s actually going on already. But in my life as an organizer, we’ve been very successful without trying to scare people. Last fall, my organization 350.org organized 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries, what CNN called "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history."


And people were organizing around a pretty obscure scientific data point, a parts-per-million concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The lesson we took is that people are capable of understanding the science. It’s not harder than understanding that if your cholesterol gets too high, you’re going to have a heart attack. If the doctor says your cholesterol is too high, your first instinct isn’t to demand a rundown of how the lipid system works. You say, "OK, what do we do?"


At Copenhagen, we managed to get 117 nations to sign on to the 350-parts-per-million target, which NASA believes to be the safe percentage. They were the wrong 117 nations, of course. But in 18 months, with little money, we’ve had some real effects.



Then why was Copenhagen such a failure?


Simple: The countries that are most powerful and most addicted to fossil fuel aren’t ready to come to terms with it. You can’t really have an AA meeting while everyone’s still in denial. In each of the last three years, Exxon Mobil made more than any company in the history of money. That may give them enough political power to keep the U.S. in denial for years to come.



Thomas Friedman and others recommend a technologically advanced “green growth” project — big windmills throughout the Midwest, solar arrays in the Arizona desert, hybrid cars — to kick our addiction to fossil fuel. Won’t that work?


We eventually run into limits to further growth on the planet. All the things Tom Friedman would like to do are good things. They just cost an immense amount of money and an immense amount of resources. We can do some of them. We’d be very smart to think less about grand, continent-spanning schemes, and wise to think more about localized and somewhat humble versions of these same things. Nuclear power plants, for example, are off-the-charts expensive, because they’re highly centralized and dangerous. They’re the engineering example of too big to fail. By contrast, if the solar panel on my roof fails, I have to fix it, but it doesn’t destroy the electric grid, or release dangerous solar particles into the atmosphere.



Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic advisor, said that "putting limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error." Is he wrong?


He’s wrong, but for an interesting reason. Economists, and many of us to some extent, have come to believe that the economy is more real than the physical world. Think about the incredible regard we have for the economy. "It’s healing," we say. "It’s going through a rough patch." We talk about it like it’s our aging mother. Whereas with the Earth, we say, "Oh well, it’s going through its natural cycles, don’t worry." Which is slightly crazy, because clearly the economy is a subset of the natural world, not the other way around. We lavish intense worry and affection and brainpower on the economy, but not so much on the environment. Summers is the perfect exemplar of that attitude: an incredibly smart guy whose context is so narrow it ends up making him very dumb indeed.



So what’s the best way to proceed?


First we need to reach an agreement capping our carbon emissions, and then help finance the developing world to skip the fossil fuel step and develop in different ways. Places like South Africa and Bangladesh haven’t yet gone through the development cycle that makes them rich, and they’re being told, "That’s not on offer anymore." At the moment, solar panels are more expensive than coal and will be for a while. Still, we’re going to have to provide these countries with a better alternative, and the resources to follow it, if we want to act in a way that could be described as moral.


As for the nuts-and-bolts engineering, over the long run, I’d recommend a combination of conservation; harnessing wind and sun, from both distant and nearby sources; and lifestyle changes. There's no good reason the Jersey Turnpike should be crowded with cars, not in a dense area easily served by better transit. In the transition, we'll be using a lot of natural gas to make electricity, would be my guess.



In the book you use Vermont, where you live, as an example of an environmentally forward-thinking state.


Vermont hasn’t gotten everything right. Its energy system isn’t very good. But it’s been ahead of the rest of the nation in experimenting with local food, for example, which is the easiest commodity to get back under control. Vermont is also important because of its political history (it declared its independence from New York in 1777 and was its own republic before becoming a state), and its ongoing campaigns against federal subsidies for big agriculture. Its attitude of self- determination is a reminder that small-scale activities — things like town meetings, farmers’ markets, composting — can work quite well.


But lately, in the U.S. as a whole, local and regional action has reached more than a level of experimentation. The number of farms across the country is growing for the first time in a century and a quarter, with 300,000 new farms this decade. The one business that boomed in the last two years was seeds — Burpee Seeds was up 40 percent or something. There’s an awful lot of land in American suburbs currently devoted to growing grass, often with lavish infusions of fertilizer and chemicals. Turn some of that energy and resources toward growing vegetables, and you’re getting somewhere.


http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/16/bill_mckibben_eaarth_interview_ext2010

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Video catches Maryland police beating unarmed student, unprovoked

By David Edwards and John Byrne

Officers caught beating student on video had blamed injuries on their horses

Three Maryland police officers were caught beating an unarmed student following post-basketball game revelry in a videotape released Monday.

The incident, recorded in part by another student Mar. 3 following a Maryland basketball victory, shows several officers in riot gear beating the student with batons. The officers deliver roughly a dozen blows as the student crumples to the ground.

John McKenna, 21, was subsequently charged with "felonies on suspicion of assaulting officers on horseback and their mounts," but prosecutors dropped charges Monday as the video was released.

"The video shows the charging documents were nothing more than a cover, a fairy tale they made up to cover for the officers' misconduct," Christopher A. Griffiths, a lawyer for the student, told the Washington Post. "The video shows gratuitous violence against a defenseless individual."


The Post notes that the beating "occurred March 3 near the university's College Park campus after the Maryland men's basketball team defeated Duke. After the game, students took to the streets to celebrate. Twenty-eight people were arrested or cited, sparking a debate between police and students over how and when it is appropriate to break up a group of revelers."

The video shows McKenna on the sidewalk as he skips and throws his arms in the air. He stops about five feet from an officer on horseback, the video shows. In the video, McKenna's arms appear to be in front of him, but he does not appear to touch the officer or the horse. His hands are empty.

McKenna backs up, then two county police riot officers rush toward him from the street, the video shows. The officers slam McKenna against a wall and beat him with their batons. McKenna crumples to the ground.

As McKenna falls, a third county police riot officer strikes his legs and torso with his baton. The video shows the officers striking an unresisting McKenna about the head, torso and legs -- more than a dozen blows in all.

Other riot police officers on horseback who are captured on tape don't intervene as the student is beaten to the ground.

In charging the student, police initially said McKenna and another student "provoked the beating" by attacking the mounted officers. The Post reports that the charging documents asserted that the horses, rather than the officers, had injured McKenna -- a claim impossible to defend once the video of the incident went public.

An ABC News affiliate reported Tuesday that one of the officers has been suspended and several others could be fired.

"Some of these characters ought to go to jail," McKenna's family said in a statement to ABC. "Some ought to merely be booted off the force, and the remainder should be properly trained to discover that force is not always necessary, and brutality is always wrong."

The Post has more details here.

This video is from The Washington Post, broadcast April 12, 2010.


EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been altered from its original version. It was expanded to provide more detail about the incident.



http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0413/video-catches-maryland-police-beating-student/