The WAWG Blog

Stimulus Package Weakened – What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses? A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished. Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years. Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.

One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending. The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.
See what got cut.:

Stimulus Cut to the Point of Not Being Able to Weather the Storm – There’s a hurricane coming. Meteorologists aren’t sure what category it will be but know it will be the worst in generations. There’s a warehouse full of sandbags. What do you do? Some folks in town are arguing that using the entire warehouse would be wasteful and leave the next generation without any sandbags. Half the sandbags might be enough to stop the surging waters, they argue. Then again, half might not be enough.

“Use them all,” suggests economist James Galbraith. “If it turns out that you’ve used too many, then you’ve got extra sandbags. Big deal. If you use too few, they’re all destroyed.” Yet as the economic hurricane hits, President Obama and the U.S. Congress – driven by centrist senators from both parties – have decided to leave a few sandbags in the shed, hoping the waters won’t rise too high. The stimulus package scheduled to be voted on Tuesday, say contrarian economists, is simply too small to withstand the economic storm that’s coming.

Stimulus Cuts Could Be “Disastrous” According to Economists – The bill the Senate is expected to send to a conference committee as soon as Tuesday includes provisions — particularly the $69.8 billion one-year “patch” on the alternative minimum tax (AMT) — that key economists and budget specialists say are less likely to have the maximum anti-recessionary impact than direct spending provisions calling for substantial purchases by all levels of government. The Senate has compounded the weaknesses in the bill by sharply cutting what economists agree are essential ingredients of a stimulus bill, including $40 billion in aid to states and $16 billion for school construction.

The reaction to the changes adopted at the behest of a small but key group of “centrist” Senators was strong. “The compromise is worse than the original bill because it is smaller, and the changes appear to have reduced rather than increased the bang-for-buck effectiveness of the bill,” said Berkeley economist J. Bradford DeLong.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia — considered one of the world’s foremost economists and a leading advocate of “shock therapy” as applied to former Eastern bloc countries — said that “comparing the House and Senate versions, the Senate version is clearly worse: more tax cuts, less infrastructure, and less in transfers to state and local governments.”

University of Texas economist James Galbraith was more outspoken: “The behavior of the so-called bipartisan group has been outrageous. On the economics, they are pretending to know things they can’t possibly know: specifically, (a) how deep and serious the crisis actually is, and (b) what is ‘stimulus’ and what is not.

Menzie D. Chinn, professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin, said about the Senate bill, “I don’t understand the direction of the movement toward cutting spending. Cutting the transfers to the states seems particularly ill-advised, as we have a good feeling that the propensity to spend out these funds will be high and relatively quick.”

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also performed calculations to indicate what kind of new spending and tax cuts would be most effective. The changes in the Senate bill to bring Senators Collins, Specter, Snowe, and Nelson on board appear to directly contradict the CBO recommendations.

The CBO calculated the multiplier effect — “the cumulative impact on GDP [Gross Domestic Product] over several quarters” — of various types of spending and tax cuts. “For example, a one-time increase in federal purchases of goods and services of $1.00 in the second quarter of this year would raise GDP by [a low estimate of] $1.00 to [a high estimate of] $2.50 in total over several quarters.” In other words, the higher the multiplier, the better the stimulus effect.

Who’s Behind the Stupidity That’s Weaking the Stimulus? – Rush Limbaugh’s listening audience is relatively narrow — it is predominantly white, male and politically conservative — but highly motivated. Many of the 20 million or so who tune in each week are willing, even eager, to pummel their opponents with letters, phone calls and e-mails to make their voices heard. They can make a difference. Among their achievements, talk radio listeners helped kill President George W. Bush’s immigration reform effort. Recent polls suggest that, despite Obama’s high approval ratings, public support has declined for his stimulus bill since Limbaugh and his broadcast peers began railing against it.

Joe Scarborough Forgets the Recent Past – Paul Krugman debunks Joe Scarborough’s talking points on how the Republican party has actually governed as compared to their rhetoric. It would be nice if we had more progressives than just Paul Krugman who actually know something about economics allowed on our airwaves to shoot these guys down when they tell such obvious lies.

Scarborough: Let me just say though, George Bush over the past eight years had the most disastrous spending policy. They decided to cut taxes. They decided to increase the deficit. They decided to increase entitlement spending while they were fighting two wars. They made no tough decisions what so ever. You can’t say that that’s the traditional conservative approach to economics. It was a disaster and I think we can all agree with that can we not?

Krugman: You’ve got some mythical image of what a modern conservative is. Reagan increased spending while cutting taxes. Bush increased spending while cutting taxes… Who is your ideal here?

IRS Ruling Changed Tax Rules Just for Banks – Typically, businesses are limited in how much they can lower their tax liability when they acquire another company with built-in losses. But the IRS decision exempted banks, essentially providing no cap for how much a healthy bank could deduct from its taxes by realizing the losses that came with the troubled bank it acquired. Several lawmakers cried foul when they learned about the preferred tax treatment for banks, saying the IRS had no authority to overturn tax policies without congressional input. A measure that would do away with the preferential treatment for any bank deal announced after Jan. 16 of this year is in both the House and the Senate versions of the stimulus bill still being ironed out by Congress. Reversing the tax change could save the Treasury an estimated $4.34 billion between 2009 and 2013, according to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.

$3.9B in Approved Hurricane Aid Still Unspent – A massive effort to fix public works destroyed more than three years ago by the Gulf Coast hurricanes remains largely stalled, leaving more than $3.9 billion in federal aid unspent and key repairs far from complete. The scale of that job is enormous. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has promised $5.8 billion to repair everything from flooded libraries and schools to sewer systems and roads that were ruined when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita obliterated huge sections of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.

Republican National Committee Chairman Does Double Talk – Most state governors, including many Republicans, are strongly behind a stimulus bill that will fund government projects to put large number of people back to work and get the economy moving again.

“It comes at a time when we need it,” Florida’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist, recently stated. “People need jobs. It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs.”

However, newly-elected Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele believes that government-funded jobs don’t count as real employment because “a job is something that a business owner creates.”

“What this administration is talking about is ‘making work.’ … It’s not a job,” Steele explained during a Sunday appearance on ABC’s This Week. “It ends at a certain point. … These road projects that we’re talking about have an endpoint. … There’s no guarantee that there’s going to be more work when you’re done that job.”

ABC host George Stephanopoulos objected, “We’ve seen millions and millions of jobs going away in the private sector, just in the last year.”

“They come back though,” Steele insisted. “That’s the point. They’ve gone away before and they’ve come back. And the point is, the small business owners take the risks. They’re the ones that are out there in the morning putting the second mortgage on the house … so that they can employ your kids.”

Describing the present once-in-a-generation economic crisis as merely “the downside” of a recent period of economic expansion, Steele told Stephanopoulos that all we really need is “tax credits and relief for small-business owners, incentives for people to get back into the credit markets, to deal with the mark-to-market rules that have stymied the banks and deal with the housing crisis.”

As Newsweek argues, however — responding to comments by Steele, among others — “Borrowing and spending are pretty much how the government has pulled itself out of every modern recession. … In a period when Americans are losing jobs at a furious clip, when the economy is shrinking rapidly, when monetary policy is near exhaustion, and when tax cuts aren’t likely to work as they do in ordinary times, the highest priority is simply to stop the downward spiral.”

Republican National Committee Chairman’s Campaign Monet Funny Business – Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors. The recent allegations outlined four specific transactions. In addition to the payment to Steele’s sister, Fabian said that the candidate used money from his state campaign improperly; that Steele paid $75,000 from the state campaign to a law firm for work that was never performed; and that he or an aide transferred more than $500,000 in campaign cash from one bank to another without authorization.

Texas Evangelicals Funded Effort to Kill Palin ‘Troopergate’ Probe – Gift records show that an evangelical group and two law firms working with it shelled out $185,000 to represent six Alaska legislators in an unsuccessful bid to quash the state legislature’s investigation into “troopergate.” The evangelical group — Liberty Legal Institute — is affiliated with Focus on the Family’s James Dobson [strict father promoter]. Liberty is the legal arm of the Free Market Foundation, which “lists its guiding principles as limited government and promotion of Judeo-Christian values,” according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Doctor Doctored Data in Autism Study According to Investigation – The doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found. Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The Ultimate Authoritarian – nI previously featured this guy in my Bad Deeds for his statement, “I believe there were no gas chambers … I think that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps … but none of them by gas chambers.” But there’s more…

[Bishop] Richard Nelson Williamson opposes women attending college or university, the wearing of trousers or shorts by women and has urged greater “manliness” in men. He is quoted as saying: “A woman can do a good imitation of handling ideas, but then she will not be thinking properly as a woman. Did this lawyeress check her hairdo before coming into court? If she did, she is a distracted lawyer. If she did not, she is one distorted woman.

In a 1997 letter to friends and benefactors of the SSPX seminary in Winona, Minnesota, Williamson denounced the film The Sound of Music as “soul-rotting slush” and stated that “by glorifying that romance which is essentially self-centered, (the film) puts selfishness in the place of selflessness between husband and wife, and by putting friendliness and fun in the place of authority and rules, it invites disorder between parents and children..”

Regards,

Jim

Republicans Trying to Mislead Us About the Stimulus Bill – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” fulminating about a provision he found in the proposed government stimulus package. The provision, he said, would provide $150 million for “honeybee insurance.” “This is nonsense,” he said, as if he took it personally. You had to think he got stung as a kid or maybe caught a local swarm in the act of recruiting aphids for Al Qaeda. It turns out that the Senate minority leader took his cue from Neil Cavuto of Fox News, who has been carrying on about the topic for more than a week. Their campaign was joined Tuesday by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who stood on the floor of the chamber challenging “any member to come and explain what that provision was.”

It is, in fact, a disaster insurance program for all livestock producers. Beekeepers obviously would be minor beneficiaries next to, say, cattle ranchers, so it’s a tad bit dishonest to label the whole program “honeybee insurance.” The provision simply continues a program enacted by Congress last year, overriding a veto by President Bush. In other words, the Senate voted on it twice in 2008 — once to enact and once to override. Connoisseurs of political comedy will see the punch line coming: McConnell and Vitter voted yea both times.

So it turns out that McConnell isn’t really against honeybees. He’s only using them to pretend that he’s got a principled objection to a stimulus plan aimed at pulling the country out of the most severe recession in decades.

The Republican Party is Trying to Push the Economy Over the Edge According to Nobel Prize Winning Economist – Nobel Prize Winning Economist Paul Krugman has the following observations about the economic situation:

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts. It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated. … The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

(Why would they want to do that? Remember that Rush Limbaugh is their spiritual leader and Rush said he wants Obama to fail.)

Republicans Out-of-Touch on Immigration; Still Want Racialist Extremism – Last week at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft. The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. The report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to double down on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out.

What was perhaps more notable than the report itself was the team that delivered it. It included Bay Buchanan, former adviser to Representative Tom Tancredo and sister of Pat, who founded the American Cause and wrote “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.” She was joined by James Pinkerton, an essayist and Fox News contributor who, as an aide to the first President Bush, took credit for the racist Willie Horton ads run against Michael Dukakis.

So far, so foul. But even more telling was the presence of Peter Brimelow, a former Forbes editor and founder of Vdare.com, an extremist anti-immigration Web site. It is named for Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, which tells you most of what you need to know. The site is worth a visit. There you can read Mr. Brimelow’s and Mr. Buchanan’s musings about racial dilution and the perils facing white people, and gems like this from Mr. Epstein: “Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

Fox News Chooses Big-Time Tax Delinquent Dick Morris To Criticize Tom Daschle’s Tax Problems – What other network would put on a tax delinquent to criticize someone else for not paying his taxes properly – twice? Not only that, while clearly relishing the tax problems of Tom Daschle, the “we report, you decide” network didn’t think it worth telling its viewers that its own expert, Dick Morris, has recently paid almost $2 million in back taxes.

Fox News Guest Says Barack Obama Was Elected Mostly By Black Racists And White Guilty People – During the 2/3/09 Sean Hannity show, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson announced, “I think we all agree that Barack Obama was elected by, mostly by black racists and white guilty people.” Although Hannity professed to be shocked by Peterson’s remarks, he has a long history of making such statements in Hannity’s presence. Also, Hannity is associated with Peterson’s organization, BOND, and gave no indication he would discontinue that association. Furthermore, Peterson is booked tomorrow on FOX & Friends. Will FOX News continue to welcome him? All indications are that they will.

Conservative Bernard Goldberg Suggests Beating Up New York Times Writer with a Baseball Bat – Bill O’Reilly may have become unhinged when he declared war against the New York Times, but author and FOX News regular Bernard Goldberg is ready to carry out violence. When O’Reilly asked tonight how he should respond to the Times’ recent editorial criticizing his racialist extremism toward immigrants, Goldberg responded, “I probably would have gotten a baseball bat and gone down to the New York Times with it and found the person that wrote the editorial, but that’s me.”

After Bush Chief Of Staff Slams Obama’s Informal Appearance in Oval Office, Photo Shows Bush in Oval Office Without Jacket – President Bush’s former Chief of Staff Andrew Card blasted President Obama for breaking the Bush dress code, which reportedly required that a jacket be worn by anyone entering the Oval Office. However, a photo shows a jacketless President Bush in the Oval Office. (Is that the sound of Card’s glass house shattering from the stones he threw?)

Wall Street CEOs, Investment Bankers Charged Prostitutes on Corporate Cards, Madam Says – Wall street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs and media executives often used corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, according to the madam who ran one of New York’s biggest and most expensive escort services until it was busted last year. But prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office chose not to pursue any of the corporate titans, says Kristin Davis, who pleaded guilty last year to charges.

Bush Administration Overpaid Banks in Bailout, Watchdog Says – The Bush administration overpaid tens of billions of dollars for stocks and other assets in its massive bailout last year of Wall Street banks and financial institutions, a new study by a government watchdog says. The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a report released Friday, said last year’s overpayments amounted to a taxpayer-financed $78 billion subsidy of the firms.

In a bright spot for the rescue program, the same banks that received capital infusions from Treasury have already paid $271 million in dividends to the federal government and are expected to pay $1.5 billion more in dividends by the end of this month. Wells Fargo, which received a $25 billion infusion, has already announced it would pay Treasury $371 million in dividends this month.

Dick Cheney Says If Anything Happens Now, It’s Not His Fault – Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave an interview to Politico where Cheney warned that there is a ‘high probability’ that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.” Get it? Since we already know that the Obama administration intends to change, has already begun changing, some of those policies, we’re supposed to conclude that if there’s a future attack, it’s entirely because those policies were changed.

And not, say, because George Bush and Dick Cheney left their successors (and the rest of us) a world laced with an even wider network of plotters, with the abuses of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, “black sites,” etc., giving potential enemies even greater incentive to do us harm, and with the mastermind of 9/11 still alive and still turning out inflammatory videos. A more dangerous world, in many ways. Yet Cheney wants us to believe that the next attack, if and when it comes, will be all Obama’s doing.

Here’s another interpretation (parody) of what Cheney said:

“Good luck, America,” said former Vice President Dick Cheney in a goodbye interview with Politico. “Without me, you’re nothing. Without me patrolling your shores, without me arguing for the right to torture Muslim people we think are terrorists, without me whispering instructions to your President, you’re all going to die. I don’t mean to scare you, but it’s just that simple.”

Regards,

Jim

To the tune of Paul Simon’s One Trick Pony with sincerest apologies to Paul Simon.

They’re a tax cut party
Tax cuts are all that they can do
They do tax cuts only
Its the principal source of their revenue
And when they step into the spotlight
You can feel the darkness of their heart
Come rising through.

The Republican Party is holding Obama’s stimulus package hostage because it doesn’t contain enough tax cuts. Well, according to Moody’s, a respected investment management firm, tax cuts aren’t a very good method of stimulating anything except the pocketbooks of the already wealthy.

I’ve got a news flash for the Republicans: it isn’t how much money is in the economy, it’s how much of it is moving around. Give a tax cut to the wealthy and they keep it because they already have everything they want. Think Warren Buffet would go out and buy something just because you gave him a tax refund? Since 1980 more and more of the nation’s wealth has been controlled by fewer and fewer people until now the top .1% of taxpayers control 50% of the country’s wealth. They don’t move money around much, they invest it and clip coupons.

Below is a chart representing research Moody’s did on immediate return on investment for various types of economic stimulus.

Return on government spending

For every $1 spent on food stamps or unemployment benefits $1.70 is returned to the economy. Why is that? Because every penny of that goes immediately back into the economy. They buy stuff. Which means the people they buy from have to replenish their supplies which means that the people they buy from have to build more stuff which means purchases of everything from raw material to delivery trucks goes up. It’s a well-documented phenomenon called the “multiplier effect”.

Infrastructure spending returns $1.59 because contracts let by the Federal Government result in new hires by the contractors. More people earning money, paying taxes and buying stuff. Aid to States does the same, only filtered through another government.

A Payroll tax holiday and a refunded tax rebate (one you don’t have to pay back) adds more cash flow to the economy because poor people feel the pinch of 7.25% Social Security much more than rich people do. That’s also why increasing the earned income tax credit works so well, because poor people spend more of their income on taxes than rich people do.

Once you get down to the Across the Board tax cuts the return on investment is negligible and everything past that is a net loss of cash flow.

The old BS about tax cuts generating revenue is just that, BS.

Ronald Reagan had it wrong. Bush 41 had it right; it’s Voo Doo economics. It’s smoke blown up our collective @ss. Reagan’s two terms gave us a recession. Bush 43’s two terms gave us a depression. Yet still the Republicans repeat the mantra of tax cuts.

Ya’ think they’d learn.

Amendment to Stimulus Bill Attempts to Waive America’s Core Environmental Law – If it passes, the Barrasso amendment would waive America’s core environmental law, the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), for all projects funded by the economic stimulus. NEPA is the law that ensures that individuals and communities that may be harmed by major federal actions have advance notice of the project, an opportunity to comment, and information about the impacts of the proposed project and alternatives to it.

The vote could come any moment.

Please act now to oppose the Barrasso amendment to the stimulus bill.

Republicans [conservatives without conscience] Are Out of Touch – An October 24, 2008, poll conducted by the Democratic research firm Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner shows that Republicans are disconnected from the reality seen by voters as a whole. For example, Republicans see the GOP as not conservative enough; but all voters say too they are too conservative. Also, three-fourths of Republicans say Palin was a good choice, but the majority of voters say she was not good. And while Republicans blame the media for their loss; all voters blame Palin and McCain wanting to contimue Bush’s policy. The poll shows that Republicans love Rush Limbaugh, but Limbaugh has a public-approval rating of just 21 percent among all likely voters, while 58 percent have “cold” feelings toward the right-wing radio-talk-show host.

Regards,

Jim

Income of 400 Richest Americans Doubled During Bush Era – The 21st century Gilded Age party really got going before the U.S. economy went bust. It was a party disproportionately enjoyed by high-income Americans, the 400 wealthiest of which actually doubled their share of all U.S. income between 1996 and 2006, new statistics released by the Internal Revenue Service show.

During the first six years of George W. Bush’s presidency, the average income of those 400 people actually doubled to $263.3 million, according to the data. Between 2005 and 2006, those 400 Americans saw their income rise nearly 23 percent, and through the first six years of the Bush administration their average tax rate fall by a third, to 17.2 percent. That 17.2 percent tax rate was the lowest the group has paid on average since the IRS began keeping track of the country’s 400 biggest taxpayers in 1992, the agency’s data shows.

Border Fence Not Doing Its Job – Drug smugglers and illegal immigrants continue to breach the U. S. – Mexico border fencing that is up, forcing Border Patrol agents and contractors to return again and again for repairs. The smugglers build ramps to drive over fencing, dig tunnels under it, or use blow torches to slice through. They cut down metal posts used as vehicle barriers and replace them with dummy posts, made from cardboard.

Projects to Help Americans Called Wasteful by Republicans – On Monday, Congressional Republican leaders put out a list of what they call wasteful provisions in the Senate version of the nearly $900 billion stimulus bill that is being debated:

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees. (Who needs to lower emissions and save fuel?)
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s. (Who needs to prevent disease?)
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs. (Who needs to dispose of waste in the country?)
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system. (Who needs to dispose of waste in the city?)
• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI. (Who needs the FBI? Terrorism anyone?)
• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River. (Who needs to prevent floods?)
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas. (Who needs to prevent floods in cities?)
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings. (Who needs to save energy?)
• $500 million for state and local fire stations. (Who needs fire protection?)
• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands. (Who needs fire protection?)
• $412 million for Center for Disease Control buildings and property. (Who needs to prevent disease?)
• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland. (Who needs health?)
• $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration. (Who needs to save energy?)
• $850 million for Amtrak. (Who needs mass transit and to save energy?)
• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint. (Who needs health?)
• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations. (Who needs to lower emissions and save fuel?)

(Notice that “tax breaks for the rich” are not on the Republican list of wasteful spending.)

Conservatives Call $40 Billion Increase for Military a Budget ‘Cut’ – Conservatives howled, when word leaked that the Obama White House might be looking to “cut” the Pentagon’s budget request for the next fiscal year. But it’s only under the odd rules of Beltway bizarroland that this can be considered in any way a trim. Team Obama wants an eight percent, $40 billion increase in the Defense Department budget — from $487.7 billion in 2009 to $527.7 billion in 2010. But this uptick is only about half the size as the one the Joint Chiefs originally requested, in a $584 bill. The $527 billion figure is “what the Bush people thought was the right number last February and that’s the number we’re going with,” an Office of Management and Budget official tells Rogin. “The Joint Chiefs did that to lay down a marker for the incoming administration that was unrealistic. It’s more of a wish list than anything else.”

Palin Pushes for Road to Nome(where) – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to the dismay of some state legislators, is making a push for what could be a $2 billion road to Nome. Palin highlighted the project in her State of the State speech 10 days ago, declaring that she’s pursuing a road to Nome, while in the same speech acknowledging a potential budget shortfall of more than a billion dollars. Some lawmakers are scratching their heads. (But that’s what most people do when they hear her speak.)

Palin Pulls a McCain – When House Republicans planned their annual winter retreat, they extended an invitation to Alaska Gov. Sara Palin, hoping the party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee would give a morale-building speech to the more than 130 Republican members of Congress gathered this weekend in Hot Springs, Va.

Retreat organizers tell ABC News that Palin politely declined, giving a perfectly understandable reason. According to the Congressional Institute, which hosted the conference, Palin said she simply could not make it to the retreat because pressing state business made it impossible for her to leave Alaska last weekend. So where was Palin last weekend? She was in Washington, D.C., attending the super-elite Alfalfa Dinner.

“She lied to us,” said a Republican at the retreat. (Hey, if McCain can do it to Letterman, …)

Norm Coleman Lawyer Was at Center of 2004 Swift Boat Vets Scandal – Norm Coleman’s efforts to force a reconsideration of the recount that showed him losing his Minnesota Senate seat to Democratic challenger Al Franken are being led by attorney Ben Ginsberg, who has a long history of involvement in questionable Republican campaign activities.

Not only was Ginsberg one of the senior lawyers in the Bush v. Gore recount case in 2000, but in 2004 he was at the center of a Republican scandal when he was found to be advising both the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign.

Regards,

Jim

Peanut Plant Knew Product was Tainted with Salmonella; Took No Action – The maker of peanut butter linked to a nationwide outbreak of salmonella shipped tainted product it knew had tested positive for the bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The FDA report said the Peanut Corporation of America’s own testing program found strains of salmonella 12 times in 2007 and 2008 at its Blakely, Georgia, plant. The problem does not appear to have been resolved. According to the inspection report, posted on the FDA’s Web site, the “firm’s own internal microbiological testing” found salmonella in peanut paste, peanut butter, peanut meal, peanut granules and oil-roasted, salted peanuts.

However, it added, “After the firm retested the product and received a negative status, the product was shipped.” That’s not the way it ought to have been handled, according to one expert. “They were lab shopping,” said Tommy Irvin, Georgia’s agriculture commissioner. “They were trying to find a way to clear their product, so they can ship their product out,” he told CNN.

[This is what happens when government’s moral responsibility to protect its citizens is left to the free market – death and no accountability to we the people.]

Halliburton Firm Responsible for 231 Electrical Shocks of Troops in Iraq in Two Years – U.S. troops in Iraq suffered electrical shocks about every three days in a two-year period — or 231 incidents in all, from a single company, the former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, according to an internal Defense Contract Management Agency report. Texas-based military contractor KBR Inc. failed to properly ground and bond its electrical systems. The report comes just a day after Halliburton was fined more than $500 million for bribery in Nigeria.

[Profiteering puts profit above citizen safety.]

Bill O’Reilly Thinks He’s Smarter Than Actress; Then He Proves Himself to be Dumber – BillO was obviously still smarting last week after Jessica Alba called him an a-hole. So he followed up on his Jan. 21 show by calling her a “pinhead” and painting her as just another one of those airheaded Hollywood elites. His reasoning? Well, when Alba was again cornered by one of Fox’s ambush-squad camera crews, she turned the tables by getting out her camera and asking questions of her inquisitor. When he refused to answer because he’s a “journalist” (note: this is a fake excuse) she asked, “Why not? Be neutral. Be Sweden about it.”

O’Reilly: “Be Sweden about it? Ah, that’s Switzerland, Jessica. Sweden is a very nice country but Switzerland is the land of neutrality.”

Ah, that’s also Sweden, BillO.

As Alba put it at her MySpace page:

I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately. I find it depressing that in the midst of perhaps the most salient time in our country’s history, individuals are taking it upon themselves to encourage negativity and stupidity. Last week, Mr. Bill O’Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people…it’s so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!

As MSNBC’s Courtney Hazlett notes: “Although Switzerland is more frequently cited as an example of neutrality, Sweden did indeed follow a policy of neutrality during World War II. History point to Alba.” If Alba’s an airhead/pinhead, what does that make O’Reilly?

Bill O’Reilly Spreads Caroline Kennedy Rumors O’Reilly insists that he wouldn’t report on rumors about Caroline Kennedy, then he talks about rumors about Caroline Kennedy. What a hypocrite!

Bailout Recipients Urged to Send Money to Republican Candidates – Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Trade Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

…Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued…”If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs,” Marcus declared.

The Republicans Voted Against America Yesterday – The Republicans voted against their country yesterday. Their fellow citizens needed them to act on their behalf and instead they chose to abandon them. The American Society of Civil Engineers released a report today documenting the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The GOP agenda of starving the public sector while spending lavishly on war and corporate welfare has allowed the nation’s bridges, roads, and levees to reach this sorry state. Here’s a little of what the report from the American Society of Civil Engineers had to say:

Crumbling infrastructure has a direct impact on our personal and economic health, and the nation’s infrastructure crisis is endangering our future prosperity. Our leaders are looking for solutions to the nation’s current economic crisis. Not only could investment in these critical foundations have a positive impact, but if done responsibly, it would also provide tangible benefits to the American people, such as reduced traffic congestion, improved air quality, clean and abundant water supplies and protection against natural hazards.

These Retro-Hooverites want to block President Barack Obama from undoing part of the damage thirty years of failed Republican economic policies has produced. If Republican economics worked we wouldn’t be in this predicament.

El Paso’s Resolution Asking for Honest, Open Debate Gets Nixed by the Feds – The drug-related violence in Juarez, Mexico has reached epic proportions, so in a show of solidarity with their sister city, the El Paso City Council voted in favor of a resolution that included “an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics.” Never mind that the resolution also called for clamping down on gun running and money laundering. It was the desire to debate, and perhaps focus less on incarceration for drug offenses that made the resolution go over like a lead Zeppelin. The Mayor vetoed it, and the council members started getting pressure from as high as the US Congress to shut up.

The standard means of the federal government to squash an open, honest debate about drugs and the laws which apply to them is to threaten state and local governments with withholding federal funds. El Paso was told, in no uncertain terms, that continuing with their call for debate jeopardized their slice of the bailout pie. The city council buckled and did not overturn the mayor’s veto of the resolution.

Bush’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Says Bush Okayed Torture to Outwit Defense Lawyers – John Yoo, the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, explained that the Bush administration’s torture programs, for which he co-authored the legal justifications, were initially designed to outwit crafty defense attorneys.

Cable News Has Republican Lawmakers On Air Twice as Much as Democratic Lawmakers In Stimulus Debate – On Sunday, conservatives began an all-out assault on President Obama’s economic recovery plan. The media have been aiding their efforts. In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that the five cable news networks — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC — have hosted more Republican lawmakers to discuss the plan than Democrats by a 2 to 1 ratio this week.

Regards,

FBI Saw Mortgage Fraud Early; Took No Action – The FBI was aware for years of “pervasive and growing” fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America’s financial meltdown, but did not take definitive action to stop it.

“It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes,” said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002.

The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities.

“We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt,” the first of the retired FBI officials told the Seattle P-I. “Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism.”

PBS: NSA Had Information to Prevent 9/11 Hijackings; Took No Action – The National Security Agency (NSA) had been closely monitoring the 9/11 hijackers as they moved freely around the United States and communicated with Osama bin Laden’s operations center in Yemen. The NSA had even tapped bin Laden’s satellite phone, starting in 1996. “The NSA never alerted any other agency that the terrorists were in the United States and moving across the country towards Washington,” James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory told PBS.

In a review of Bamford’s book, former senator and 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey wrote, “As the 9/11 Commission later established, U.S. intelligence officials knew that al-Qaeda had held a planning meeting in Malaysia, found out the names of two recruits who had been present — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — and suspected that one and maybe both of them had flown to Los Angeles. Bamford reveals that the NSA had been eavesdropping for months on their calls to Yemen, yet the agency ‘never made the effort’ to trace where the calls originated. ‘At any time, had the FBI been notified, they could have found Hazmi in a matter of seconds.'”

The Spy Factory will be shown over most PBS stations on February 3, 2009 at 7 pm CST.

U.S. Infrastructure Identified as Poor in 2005; Administration Took No Action – U.S. roads, airports, schools, levees, dams, and other infrastructure are in overall poor shape and require a $2.2 trillion investment to bring them up to par, an engineering group said on Wednesday. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave infrastructure a grade of “D” as U.S. President Barack Obama seeks $825 billion in extra government spending and tax cuts to ease the economic crisis. Infrastructure earned the same dismal grade in 2005, but the group’s estimated five-year price tag to fix it rose by $600 billion to $2.2 trillion. Earlier this month, the engineers estimated that the president’s stimulus package contained some $90 billion in infrastructure spending. It called that amount a down payment that was long overdue.

FDA Was Informed of Mercury in Much U.S. Corn Syrup; Took No Action – Many common foods made using commercial high fructose corn syrup contain mercury as well, researchers reported, while another study suggested the corn syrup itself is contaminated. Former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples. Dufault said in a statement that she told the FDA about her findings but the agency did not follow up.

Donald Rumsfeld Authorized Torture Despite Warnings From Legal Council of the Navy – Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld clearly authorized torture methods and he was told at that time by Alberto Mora, the legal council of the Navy, ‘Mr. Secretary, what you are actual ordering here amounts to torture.’ A bipartisan Senate report released last month found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody. The coercive measures were based on a document signed by Bush in February, 2002.

Black Church Burned as Payback for the Election of the Country’s First African-American President – Just hours after Barack Obama was elected president last November, three men set ablaze a predominantly African-American church in Massachusetts to “interfere” with the civil rights of its congregants, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday. Macedonia Church of God in Christ was burned to the ground in the early hours of Nov. 5th as payback for the election of the country’s first African-American president, the department’s indictment alleges.

Appeals Court Rules That Schools Can Expel Students That Seem Gay – (The following is another reason why conservatives want privatization of public schools.) A California appeals court ruled Monday that a Christian high school can expel students perceived to be lesbians, upholding a 2008 lower court ruling that there were “no triable” elements to the case. The two 16-year-old girls sued the school for expelling them on the basis of a “bond of intimacy” “characteristic of a lesbian relationship,” under a California discrimination law. “It is almost like it could roll back 20 to 30 years of progress we have made in this area,” Kirk Hanson, said the girls’ attorney. “Basically, this decision gives private schools the license to discriminate.”

Two Judges Make Money by Sending Children to Detention Facilities – (The following is another reason why conservatives want privatization of everything.) Federal authorities say President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan were involved in a $2.6 million scheme to place juvenile offenders into facilities in which the judges had a financial interest. Court documents state that in some cases, Ciavarella ordered children into detention even when juvenile probation officers did not recommend it.

Republican Leadership Opposing Stimulus Plan That Most Economists Say Should Work – Economists think the stimulus plan that the House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday, while far from perfect, will help stimulate the moribund U.S. economy. There’s no panacea for what ails the economy. A stimulus plan will work only in combination with other actions, such as more aid to the banking system to spark lending and boost consumer confidence, and the implementation of any plan will be as important as what’s in it. However, most leading economists who are experienced in public policy generally favor the stimulus plan that the House is considering because through it the government will step up spending at a time when private-sector spending has fallen off sharply. “I think it’s a reasonably well-designed package,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist for forecaster Moody’s Economy.com and a former adviser to the presidential campaign of Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain. The key to the plan’s success won’t be its design, but its implementation, he cautioned, particularly the public works spending on roads, schools, ports and military bases.

Car Companies Take Bailout Money And Sue Government To Prevent Stricter Fuel-Efficiency Standards
It might be hard to find a better example of biting the hand that feeds you. American automakers, the subject of much attention and beneficiaries of a major financial bailout, are suing the federal government to prevent stricter fuel standards. In a telephone interview, Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which is a party to two of the lawsuits now in federal court, said that the association had no intention of altering its strategy just because some of its members had recently received billions in public money.

Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill – Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority. Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill. Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse. “This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus.

Bill O’Reilly Says Officials Not Guilty of Torture Because It’s Not in a Book – According to Bill O’Reilly, there is now a tell-all-book standard for determining whether or not political officials should be investigated. If it’s not in the tell-all books available, it’s not there. And according to Tammy Bruce, “enhanced interrogation” is really not much different than a bad shopping day in West Hollywood.

Discussing the “far left” push to look into potential prosecutions of Bush administration officials for war crimes and various other misdeeds, O’Reilly argued that the absence of any evidence of criminal wrongdoing in books by Scott McLellan and Bob Woodward about insiders’ views of the White House pretty much means there isn’t any evidence to be had.

Border Cameras Allocated $2 Million, Only $625 Thousand Spent, Results: 3 Arrests – A virtual border surveillance program Gov. Rick Perry has committed millions of taxpayer dollars to fell far short of expectations during the first six months of operation. The Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, who Perry gave $2 million to line the Texas-Mexico border with hundreds of Web cameras, installed only about a dozen and made just three arrests as a result of tips from online viewers. In the first six months of the grant period, the coalition spent $625,000 to get the cameras running.

Of some 4,500 suspected immigration violations they expected to report to U.S. Border Patrol in the year, the first six months produced only six. The plan originally called for 200 cameras, the equivalent of one camera for every six miles of the Texas-Mexico border. Now, they will likely install about 15 cameras for public viewing, the equivalent of one camera every 80 miles. A previous month-long test with 21 cameras in November 2006 resulted in the apprehension of 10 undocumented immigrants, one drug bust and interruption of one smuggling route.

The El Paso Times states, “A good part of that failure might be due to the lackluster participation of the Border Sheriffs Coalition. … The theory of a virtual border fence has a lot of merit, but it must be given a chance to work. There must be long-term testing involving more than a couple of cameras here and there. Cameras are not nearly as obtrusive as a towering, ugly, rusting border fence — or wall.” Virtual border surveillance program ineffective, cost millions

John Cornyn Makes Unethical Demands to Protect the Bush Administration – Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) tried to muscle Atty. Gen.-designate Eric H. Holder Jr. into promising not to conduct “witch hunts”– code language for criminal prosecutions — of intelligence operatives who engaged in torture during the Bush administration. It’s an outrageous demand, and it would be unethical for Holder to accede to it. Cornyn is free to endorse torture and to vote against Holder’s confirmation in the Judiciary Committee (which is expected to vote today) or in the full Senate. But asking that a prospective attorney general commit in advance to prosecute — or not prosecute — potential defendants crosses an ethical line. Cornyn, a former state Supreme Court justice, should know that. No less than a nominee for the federal courts, a prospective attorney general shouldn’t put himself in the position of prejudging cases in exchange for Senate confirmation.

Judge OKs Continued Holding of Taliban Cook At Guantanamo After Seven Years in Confinement – A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who says he merely cooked meals for Taliban forces and never fired a shot in battle lost his petition to be released Wednesday after being held for more than seven years. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said that Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani’s work as an assistant cook with Taliban fighters made him an enemy combatant of the United States, nevertheless, and is reason enough for the U.S. military to continue holding him.

Former Taliban Kitchen Slave Also Held at Guantanamo – The United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps in Cuba contains a dozen or more American prisoners who were also Taliban prisoners. Some examples:

Ilkham Turdbyavich Batayev – Used as a kitchen slave by the Taliban.
Adil Uqla Hassan Al Nusayri – A Saudi police officer, who visited Afghanistan shortly before 9-11, was thrown into prison by the Taliban, only to be sold, for a bounty, by the Taliban to the Americans.

Jamal Udeen Al-Harith – Paid a driver to take him from Pakistan to Iran, without realizing that his driver would take him near the Afghanistan border, where the Taliban seized him as an American spy, based on his British passport. Went directly from custody in a Taliban jail to US custody.
Etc., etc.

Regards,

Jim

Disgraced Rove Aide Named Top Lobbyist for Focus on the Family – Tim Goeglein has been named the top Washington, D.C., lobbyist for Focus on the Family. Goeglein was personally recruited in 2001 by political mastermind Karl Rove to work in the Bush White House as chief liaison to conservative religious groups. There Goeglein rubbed elbows with some of the most powerful men in the evangelical movement — Focus on the Family’s James Dobson [strict father evangilist], Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson who runs Prison Fellowships Ministries and then-president of the National Association of Evangelicals Ted Haggard. He had plagiarized 20 of 38 columns and cited the works of such luminaries as the Dartmouth Review, Nixon speechwriter-cum-game show host Ben Stein and the Pope without credit. Goeglein resigned his position with the White House by that afternoon and has apparently been kicking around the nation’s capital until his political rebirth as Focus’ primo lobbyist.

Conservative Pundits Distort Comments by Obama’s Economic Transition Advisory Board – Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote an open letter to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin in response to their distortion of his comments about including minorities in the stimulus package. Reich wrote: “In a time like this, when tempers are riding high and many Americans are close to panic about their jobs and finances, you have a special responsibility to consider the accuracy of what you say and the consequences of inflammatory and erroneous statements. In the last few days, manifestly distorting my words and pulling them out of context, you have accused me of wanting to exclude white males from jobs generated by the stimulus package. Anyone who takes a moment to examine what I actually said and wrote knows this to be an absurd misrepresentation of my position (see this). My goal is and has always been to create as many opportunities for as wide a group as possible, and not exclude anyone from access. There is and has never been any ambiguity about this. The hate mail I have received since your broadcast suggests that the mischievous consequences of your demagoguery are potentially dangerous, in addition to being destructive of rational and constructive political discourse. I urge you to take responsibility for your words. Words and ideas have real world consequences, and you have demonstrated a cavalier disregard for both.” Details of the distortions

Rush Limbaugh Says Obama is ‘frightened of me’ – Radio host Rush Limbaugh said Monday that President Obama is “frightened of me.” “He’s obviously more frightened of me than he is [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s more frightened of me, then he is of say, [House Minority Leader] John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.” Limbaugh’s comments followed reports Obama warned GOP congressional leaders last week that they should stop listening to the conservative talker, who had said on air he wanted the new president to fail.

The Newest Addition to the Bill of Rights: The Conservative Hissy Fit Exception – An additional amendment has been added to the Bill of Rights. It’s called The Republican Hissy Fit Exception.

No matter what harm has been caused by the Republican party to our country and applies especially when they have been voted out of office because of that harm, any piece of Democratic legislation being discussed may be attacked with the intent of watering it down or destroying it completely (voided) at any time as long as one conservative in Congress has a hissy fit.

The traditional media must immediately validate their hissy fit by repeating said hissy fit talking points over and over again in print, on the Internets, on radio and on TV as many times as necessary to accomplish said goal of compromising the legislation that the hissy fit is applicable to.

False information is also allowed to be transmitted by the hissy fitter and the media in an effort to implement the Conservative Hissy Fit exception. An alternative name that may be used is the Republican Hissy Fit exception.

Regards,

Jim

Sarah Palin Opposes Protection for Beluga Whales – Last week, the state of Alaska announced it plans to mount a legal challenge to the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whale under the Endangered Species Act. At the heart of Palin’s objections are concerns that additional safeguards will interfere with oil and gas development, among other lucrative projects. Similar fears led Palin’s administration to launch a legal challenge in August to the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. (And it was no surprise when a host of business groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, followed her lead. Objecting to ESA protections on economic grounds is one thing, but Palin’s team has in the past sought to cast doubt on the science underlying the listings. Fighting back against efforts to list the polar bear, for instance, her administration cited the work of global warming skeptics, one of whom acknowledged receiving funding from the American Petroleum Institute and ExxonMobil for his work. (She not pro-life, she’s pro-profit. – JLV)

Ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers Transferred Ownership of his $13.75 Million Mansion to his Wife for $100 – The disgraced ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers transferred ownership of his $13.75 million Jupiter Island mansion to his wife, Kathy, on November 10th. Could Fuld be worried about the flurry of lawsuits from incensed shareholders and creditors? Possibly! According to Martin County, Florida property records, the home was previously owned by the couple jointly. Until, that is, Fuld transferred it to his wife for the princely sum of $100 on November 10, less than two months after the firm went under.

Access to Medical Care in the Some Parts of the U.S. Worse Than in the Amazon Jungle – In rural Kentucky, where people have driven within a 200-mile radius to wait in line in the early morning for a spot in line to see a volunteer doctor thanks to the efforts of Remote Access Medical, who originally set out to help people in the Amazon jungle, but now focus 60% of their time on Americans. “The need is enormous,” said the organization’s founder Stan Brock. “We discovered…there are people here that need help just as much as they do in Guatemala or in the Amazon and all these other places we go to.”

Medical Insurance is Way More Costly Than Comparable Medicare – By almost every measure, private insurance plans are costlier and less effective than Medicare , according to government and academic research. Medicare spends 2% on overhead; private insurers typically spend 25% to 27% for overhead and profit. A recent Congressional Budget Office report comparing healthcare reform options found that allowing Americans to buy into Medicare before turning 65 would lead to more people with coverage at lower costs. The CBO estimated that a Medicare buy-in for those between 62 and 64 years old would cost $7,600 a year, including drug coverage. A comparable policy on the private market at that age costs $10,000 and up — way up — in combined premiums and deductibles, and is, unlike Medicare, available only to the healthiest seniors. A UC Berkeley study last month found that a public option like Medicare could result in $1 trillion in national savings over 10 years by driving down costs, improving efficiencies and fostering innovation. Studies by AARP and the Commonwealth Fund also show that Medicare patients are more satisfied with every aspect of their care than patients with private plans.

Citigroup Gets $45 Billion in Government Bailout; Purchases $50 Million Luxury Jet – Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in government bailout funds, is about to upgrade to a new $50 million, twelve-seat corporate jet. The plane, the Dassault Falcon 7X, is a luxurious jet with a range of 5,950 nautical miles (meaning it can fly from New York to all of Europe and South America, as far east as Riyadh, and as far west as Honolulu or Petropavlovsk, Russia). It has “plush interior with leather seats, sofas and a customizable entertainment center.

Twenty-Five People at the Heart of the Economic Meltdown, and Six Who Warned it Was Coming – The article at the link lists 25 people who have led us into the current crisis: Republicans, Democrats, CEOs, and others. And at the bottom of the article are six people who got it right and tried to warn the others of what was coming. Road to Ruin series.

Study on Stimulus Package Cited by Republicans and Libertarians Does Not Exist – Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package won’t be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending. Funny thing is, there is no such report. “We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study,” a CBO aide said.

Regards,

Jim

The following was originally posted on The Citizens Briefing Book:

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Iraq. Referring to the Iraq War is absurd!

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Afghanistan.

We need to refer to our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as an occupation. Using the occupation frame eliminates the fear of losing, enables our departure, reduces the chances of bankrupting our nation, and supports our troops by bring them home.

——–

Terror is a state of mind. We can’t win a “War on Terror.” We will never defeat terrorism with just military action. We are only creating more terrorists with our military actions. Worse yet, we elevate these criminals to warrior status in a jihad. We give them far more credit than they are due and enable recruitment. We must treat them as lowly “common criminals.”

As Colin Powell said on September 13, 2001 in an interview with Jim Lehrer, “We are asking all the nations to join together to use political action, diplomatic action, economic action, legal action, law enforcement action, and if necessary, join with us as appropriate and if necessary in military action when we have identified the perpetrators and decided what military action might be appropriate. And so there is a lot that we can do. And the point I also want to make is that no country is safe from this kind of attack. It crosses every geographic boundary, social boundary, religious boundary, cultural boundary. And we must see it in those terms and respond in a unified way.”

We have many tools to use against these [common criminals]. Using only the military, we will never never succeed!