Can the Neocons Jump to the Dems?

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Ivan Eland
May 4, 2009 - Consortiumnews

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Consortiumnews Editor's Note: Just a few years ago, the acolytes of George W. Bush were dreaming about transforming the United States into essentially a one-party state with the Republicans as the permanent majority, the neoconservatives as the party's intellectual core, and the Democrats kept around for show.

However, a series of policy disasters – many caused by the neocons, like the Iraq War – have left the Republicans foundering as a national party, which may mean the neocons will attempt to jump ship to the Democrats, as the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland notes:

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Neoconservatives used the Republican Party as a vehicle to promote and employ their policies of muscular nation-building overseas.

But like the parasite that eventually kills its host, the Republican Party's virtual collapse, in large part because of the failed nation-building adventure in Iraq, has left neoconservatives discredited and facing policy extinction. Unfortunately, neoconservatism will probably live on by changing hosts.

Throughout American history, the structure of the political systems has ensured that only two major parties would be viable at any one time. They haven't always been the Democrats and Republicans. They have always been the Democrats and one other party. First, it was the Federalists, then the Whigs, and finally, from just prior to the Civil War to the present, the Republicans.

The Republicans started out as a regional party of the Northeast. The only reason they ever took power away from the Democrats, the only true national party at the time of the Civil War, was because the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings over the slavery issue.

Thus, the Civil War was essentially caused by the fracture of the Democratic Party. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election with only 39.8 percent of the national popular vote, beating two Democrats and one minor party candidate. Southern states, fearing a Republican's potential policies on slavery, didn't even wait until Lincoln's inauguration before they began to secede from the union.

Ironically, today, the Republican Party, which once had hopes of becoming the majority party in the country, has followed George W. Bush over a cliff and has once again been reduced to largely a regional party of the old South and a few other conservative states.

As long as Democrats in more libertarian mountain states stand up for gun rights, most states in that entire region are ripe for permanent status in the Democratic column. The most telling moment in the 2008 election was when Arizona, the Republican nominee's home state, was too close to call. It would have gone Democratic had a native son not been running.

If the Republican Party doesn't now move to extinction like its Federalist and Whig predecessors, it is likely to remain only a regional party for a long while.
It's intolerant conservative social views scare most other Americans. More important, the one issue on which many Republican conservatives differed from President Bush — immigration — could be the death knell of the party.

When the party alienated Hispanics (including even some Cubans, who were previously one of the most loyal Republican constituencies), the fastest growing minority in the United States, with nativist diatribes on immigration, other minorities, such as Asians and Native Americans realized that they could be victimized too.

In the 1990s, Republican Governor Pete Wilson made California overwhelmingly Democratic with his immigration policies. The same has just happened at the national level. After the immigration debate in the late Bush years, it will be hard for the Republican Party to ever woo back Hispanics.
Does the long-term demise (and maybe extinction) of the GOP leave the neoconservatives up the creek without a paddle? Not necessarily.

The neoconservatives started out as liberals and socialists in the Democratic Party. They were never really that conservative on economic policy, only belligerent in foreign and defense policies. And in those two latter policy areas, the Democratic Party is still dominated by their close cousins, the liberal Wilsonian interventionists.

Although the liberal Wilsonians — such as Hillary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright — are less unilateralist than the neoconservatives and are much more in love with international organizations, they share the neoconservatives' passion for armed social work and nation-building.

Besides, when you're deep in the wilderness and your horse is dying, you can't be too concerned with pimples on your new steed.

The neoconservatives will probably eventually realize that the Republican Party is dying, and will seamlessly re-infest the Democratic mother ship to preserve themselves. And again, they will probably severely debilitate their host.

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Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

US Security Firm Blackwater Ends Iraq Operation

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May 07, 2009 - Agence France Presse

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US security firm Blackwater ended its operations in Iraq on Thursday closing a controversial era for the company whose guards shot dead 17 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

"The task order for security protection operations held by Blackwater comes to an end today in Baghdad," American embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said, adding that Triple Canopy will replace it.

Triple Canopy, a Virginia-based firm, was appointed at the end of March by the US State Deparment to take over the multi-million-dollar contract to protect US government personnel working in Iraq.

Linked agreements such as that for Presidential Airways, part of Blackwater that operates helicopter escorts throughout the country for secure air travel, will expire soon, Ziadeh added.

The State Department refused to renew annual contracts for Blackwater which renamed itself Xe after the Iraq government banned it in January over the killings in Baghdad's Nisur Square on September 16, 2007.

An Iraqi investigation found that 17 civilians died and 20 were wounded when Blackwater guards opened fire with automatic weapons while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through the square.

US prosecutors say 14 civilians were killed in the incident. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty at a federal court in Washington in January to manslaughter charges.

The shooting focused a spotlight on the shadowy and highly lucrative operations of private security operations. Blackwater guards were reported to earn as much as 1,000 dollars a day each in Iraq.

Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Xe, said the firm remains proud of its work in Iraq.

"When the US Government initially asked for our help to assist with an immediate need to protect Americans in Iraq, we answered that call and performed well," she said in comments emailed to AFP.

"We are honored to have provided this service for five years and are proud of our success - no one under our protection has been killed or even seriously injured."

"We always knew that, at some point, that work would come to a close."

Foreign security teams in Iraq have long operated in a legal grey area, but under a military accord signed with Washington last November, Iraq won a concession to lift the immunity to prosecution previously extended to US security contractors.

Blackwater first came under scrutiny on March 31, 2004, when four of its employees were killed by an angry mob in Fallujah, then a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold.

The crowd mutilated their bodies and strung them from a bridge, shocking images that were broadcast worldwide and led to a month-long assault on Fallujah that left 36 US soldiers, 200 insurgents and 600 civilians dead.

North Carolina-based Blackwater has been protecting US government personnel in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and has had around 1,000 staff in the violence-wracked country, making it among the largest security firms operating there.

In the wake of the scandal over civilian deaths in Iraq, its founder Erik Prince announced in March that he was stepping down as chief executive, but would stay on as chairman.

Michael Moore Takes On The "Beast" Of Capitalism

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Bill Gallagher
May 6, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Michael Moore, the Academy Award winning filmmaker and disturber of the peace for the powerful, is preparing a scathing assault on America's economic system with his new film set for release in October. As usual, Moore pulls no punches proclaiming the three things wrong with capitalism: "It's anti-Jesus, it's anti-democratic and it just doesn't work."

Moore previewed the themes in the film during a speech last Saturday at a Michigan Peace Team dinner and fundraiser. The MPT trains ordinary citizens in the creative use of nonviolent conflict interventions and the origination has built an admirable record working in troubled spots of the world such as Bosnia, Palestine and along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Father Peter Dougherty, a Catholic priest and a founder of MPT, is a long time friend of Moore's who introduced him as a man with "a passion for justice" and reminded the audience that the Flint, Michigan native - who is a lightning rod for right wing rage - is "very real" and "what you see is what you get."

I can vouch for that. I met Michael when he was poor and obscure and we've been friends for nearly 25 years. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Moore's first film, "Roger and Me." I had the privilege of helping to collect some of the video used in the film and made my silver screen debut in an excerpt from a news report where I stood in Flint describing the devastating impact General Motors' plant closings were having on the town where the giant corporation began.

"Roger and Me" was a seminal piece of filmmaking, revolutionizing the documentary genre. As Moore said in his remarks, the film was not really about Roger Smith, the late GM chairman who squandered billions of dollars in non-auto business fiascos, nor was it about Michael and his zany quest to confront the isolated and aloof executive. The film was about "an economic system that is unfair, unjust and not democratic," Moore said.

"Roger and Me" was prescient and prophetic and, had General Motors and the other domestic automakers paid attention to its message instead of denouncing Moore as a grandstanding trouble maker, they might be in better shape today.

As Chrysler plunges into bankruptcy and General Motors could soon follow, Moore reminded us that GM "has brought about its own demise." He recited the corporate legacy where "They have fought everything good for the planet and good for people." At one time GM opposed rear view mirrors and turn signals and "dragged every step of the way to build safe and fuel efficient vehicles."

Moore blasted the years of planned obsolescence in U.S. auto making where the martini sippers who ran the companies decided, "Let's build a piece-of-shit vehicle that will last three years." In the short term, that strategy lined the pockets of the executives that forged it, but long term it perversely branded American products as poor in quality even when they had improved. That "arrogance and greed drove Detroit where we are," Moore sadly noted.

Moore's films are timely, poignant and pointed - made for people to understand what's really happening in the world rather than the bland, sanitized and ultimately distorted messages the mainstream media feeds to the uninformed.

"Bowling for Columbine" showed how a gun-worshiping society spawns promiscuous violence and human degradation. Moore's microphone was shut-off and he was booed off the stage as he used his Academy Award acceptance speech for "Bowling" to denounce the war in Iraq which began five days earlier. The blood still flows in Iraq six years later; the war is a recruitment gift for Islamic revolutionaries. Moore had the guts to speak the truth and those who booed him should feel shame today.

"The president lied to invade another country," Moore said. "Is there a greater crime than that?" He called the war a "black mark on the American soul" and asked, "What do we have to do to redeem ourselves?"

"Fahrenheit 911," Moore's brilliant film about George W. Bush, his exploitation of the Sept. 11th attacks, and the rush to war in Iraq, will become a standard in high school American History classes used to help students understand the madness that gripped this nation.

"Sicko" exposed the failures of a greed-driven health care system where even those with insurance suffer and are denied basic coverage. Moore dissected a failed system that costs twice as much as anywhere in the industrialized world while falling behind "Third World" nations in basic health measurements such as life expectancy and infant mortality rates.

Moore's newest film project pits him against American "banksters", the crooks in suits responsible for "The largest robbery in the history of the world." That's not hyperbole. Look at the numbers.

Moore calls the evolution of unbridled capitalism in America, "The beast." He sees these money-addicted bastards - with their indispensable allies in politics - coming up with trick after trick to lure and push working-class people into economic slavery locked in "the chains of debt."

The banks are the "new conquistadors", who brought slavery to the Western Hemisphere and committed genocide on many of the native peoples to accelerate a rapacious and bloody capitalism aimed at amassing unrivaled wealth. The methods are different, less openly brutal, but the enslavement is similar.

Moore argues that wildly expanded credit offered to those unable to afford it, usurious interest rates for credit cards, costly student loans that force recent graduates into low-paying jobs to pay back the banks, home equity loans, mortgage refinancing, and the whole sub-prime scam suck up the limited resources of working people and pump the proceeds into the pockets of the already filthy rich.

Moore sees the dream world of George W. Bush's "ownership" society - where Americans rely on 401 k accounts as a substitute for employer-employee supported fixed pension benefits - as a disaster, that would have been devastating had Bush succeeded in his mad quest to funnel Social Security payroll taxes into the stock market.

"Enough" is the dirtiest word among the rich capitalists who've been gaining a greater share of our total national wealth since 1980, when Ronald Reagan first came into office, while their tax burden has been reduced significantly. The debt-financed tax cuts were passed out to wage earners who accepted Reaganomics, as Moore contends, in a bizarre social contract where "the oppressed believe the oppressor is their friend."

Moore showed a snip of the trailer for his new film (rumor is it's titled "Bailout" but he's not saying) where he's looking into the camera wearing his signature baseball cap, making what sounds, at first, to be a sincere appeal to help those suffering in the economic melt-down.

He's holding a coffee can, asking for donations. Then - with a straight face - he pleads for money for Bank of America, Citi Group and the other suffering banks. The label on the can reads: "Save Our CEOs."

The film is being shot in Michigan and Michael is secretive about the project because, he said, "I want to live to finish it." He quipped the Bush people he took on were "pretty dumb" but the "banksters" are smarter, and even more ruthless than his earlier adversaries.

Reporter Amy Lange and her husband, photographer Michael Shore, are friends and colleagues and vigilant voices for the suffering in our society. Amy ably served as emcee for the packed crowd at MPT's "Evening with Michael Moore."

Amy and Mike are preparing a visual and narrative display for Marygrove College in Detroit called "Portraits in Social Justice," Michael Moore among them. Shore's compelling photographs of these committed people present faces etched in high purpose.

After his speech, we ushered Moore into an adjoining room where Shore had to shoot some photographs of him for the display. Moore already had a long day shooting his own interviews for his upcoming film.

As Shore got him to pose, he hoped for a serious expression and asked Moore to think of Dick Cheney. Moore obliged, looking somewhat severe, while never fully suppressing the ever-present twinkle in his eyes.

He is an extraordinarily creative communicator who breaks down complex issues into understandable human stories. He is an exceptional filmmaker and the most effective social critic of our times.

Like Mark Twain, his predecessor on this American stage, his wonderful wit usually wins the day. And also like Twain, my old friend Michael Moore's greatest gift is that he knows and shares the awful truth.

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Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News.

Justice Dept. Finds Many Flaws in FBI Terror Watch List

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Eric Lichtblau
May 6, 2009 - The New York Times

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has improperly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list based on outdated or sometimes irrelevant information, while it missed others with legitimate terror ties who should have been on the list, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday.

The report said the mistakes posed a risk to national security, because of the failure to flag actual suspected terrorists, as well as an unnecessary nuisance for non-suspects who may be questioned at a traffic stops or stopped from boarding an airplane.

By the beginning of 2009, the report said, the government's terrorist watch lists included about 400,000 people, listed as 1.1 million names and aliases, an exponential growth from the days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when it included fewer than two dozen people.

Intelligence officials say the watch lists have allowed different agencies to work together in an effort to prevent the type of breakdown that allowed two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to enter the United States even though they were known to the Central Intelligence Agencies for their terrorist ties.

The new Justice Department report provided the most authoritative statistical account to date of the problems connected with the watch lists and confirmed some assertions made by critics of the process. An earlier report by the inspector general, released in March 2008, looked mainly at flaws in the system.

The list has long been a target of public criticism, particularly after well-publicized incidents in which politicians including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative John Lewis of Georgia accidentally showed up on the lists. People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to remove their names from the list, and civil rights advocates charge that anti-war protesters, Muslim activists and others have been put on the lists and stopped at airports for political reasons.

The report, by the Justice Department inspector general's office, looked mainly at the F.B.I., which took the lead in 2004 for maintaining a consolidated terrorist watch list for all agencies throughout the federal government.

One of the biggest problems identified in the report was the use of outdated information, or material unconnected to terrorism, to keep people on the F.B.I.'s own terror watch list. The report examined nearly 69,000 watch lists referrals brought or processed by the F.B.I. and found that 35 percent of the people, both Americans and foreigners, remained on the list despite inadequate justification.

"Many of these watch-listed records were associated with outdated terrorism case classifications or case classifications unrelated to terrorism," the report said. In some cases, the people on the watch lists were the subjects of F.B.I. investigations that had been closed years earlier without action, yet their names had either never been removed, or not in a timely fashion.

Potentially even more problematic were the cases of people who were not on the watch lists despite evidence of terrorist ties.

The inspector general looked at a sampling of 216 F.B.I. terrorism investigations, and found that in 15 percent of those cases, a total of 35 subjects were not referred to the terror watch list even though they should have been.

In one case, for instance, a United States Army Special Forces soldier was investigated and ultimately convicted for stealing some 16,500 round of ammunition, C-4 explosives and other material from Afghanistan and shipping them to the United States in what investigators suspected might be the makings of a domestic terror plot. Yet the suspect was not placed on the watch list for nearly five months after the investigation was opened against him.

"We believe that the FBI's failure to consistently nominate subjects of international and domestic terrorism investigations to the terrorist watch list could pose a risk to national security," the inspector general said. The director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, Caroline Fredrickson, said her group's monitoring of the watch lists indicates that the problems identified at the F.B.I. are endemic to entire system.

"What this report really shows is that on both ends, the lists are really over-inclusive and under-inclusive," she said in an interview. "With 1.1 million names, there's all sorts of problems that have larded it up, and the whole thing just really needs to be torn down and start a new system."

The F.B.I. adopted all 16 of the inspector general's recommendations for improving watch list operations, including better training and faster processing of referrals. The agency said in a statement that "we remain committed to improving our watch list policy and practices to ensure the proper balance between national security protection and the need for accurate, efficient and streamlined watch-listing processes."

Young Americans Losing Their Religion

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New Research Finds Number Who Claim No Church Has Risen Sharply

Dan Harris
May 6, 2009 - ABC News

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New research shows young Americans are dramatically less likely to go to church -- or to participate in any form of organized religion -- than their parents and grandparents.

"It's a huge change," says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam, who conducted the research.

Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the "nones") has been very small -- hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. However, Putnam says the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans.

Putnam calls this a "stunning development." He gave reporters a first glimpse of his data Tuesday at a conference on religion organized by the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life.

The research will be included in a forthcoming book, called "American Grace."

US center names 25 lenders blamed for financial crisis

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Jitendra Joshi
May 6, 2009 - AFP

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US and foreign banks were not unwitting victims of circumstance but deliberately culpable in the financial meltdown that engulfed the United States last year, a campaign group said Wednesday.

The Center for Public Integrity named 25 "subprime" mortgage companies whose risky lending was blamed for the US property market collapse and the subsequent global economic crisis.

Many of the lenders were either controlled by US and European banks, or could not have indulged in their high-risk lending spree without the connivance of banks, the investigative journalism group said in a new study.

"The mega-banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves," the center's executive director Bill Buzenberg said.

"These banks were deliberate enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that's now threatening the financial system," he said.

The study was released as the US House of Representatives was set Wednesday to vote on a Senate-approved bill that would set up a 9/11-style commission of experts to probe the root causes of the financial crisis.

The purpose is not "to point fingers and place blame," Republican Representative Darrell Issa said, "but rather to identify mistakes" to prevent a future recurrence.

The Center for Public Integrity said it had forwarded its report to leading members of Congress.

Lead author John Dunbar said the study highlighted "a catastrophic regulatory failure" that had required trillions of taxpayer dollars to rescue the banking industry.

"There was nobody watching the store all the way through this process," he told reporters.

The center analyzed US government data on more than seven million subprime loans made from 2005 to 2007, when the real estate bubble was at its peak.

It said the "Subprime 25" accounted for nearly one trillion dollars or about 72 percent of industry-reported loans extended to risky borrowers who would not normally have qualified for a mortgage.

At least 21 of the 25 were financed by banks that received US government bailout money, and 11 of them have made hefty payments to settle prosecution claims of widespread lending abuses, it said.

Four of them have received bailout funds, including collapsed insurer American International Group and banking behemoth Citigroup.

Top of the list with at least 97.2 billion dollars in subprime loans was Countrywide Financial, which was bought by Bank of America last year to avert bankruptcy for the giant mortgage company.

Second with 80.6 billion dollars in loans was Ameriquest Mortgage, now part of the Citigroup family. Third with 75.9 billion was New Century Financial Corp, which went bust in 2007 and now faces a federal investigation.

"The center found that US and European investment banks invested enormous sums in subprime lending due to unceasing demand for high-yield, high-risk bonds backed by home mortgages," Dunbar said.

"The banks made huge profits while their executives collected handsome bonuses until the bottom fell out of the real estate market."

Two of the subprime lenders have been seized by the US government: Washington Mutual, owner of Long Beach Mortgage (fifth on the list), and IndyMac Bank (number 14).

The top foreign-owned lender at number nine was HSBC Finance, part of the British-based banking giant HSBC. EquiFirst (16th on the list) was shut down by its British owner Barclays Bank in February.

Others such as RBS Greenwich Capital Investments -- part of the Royal Bank of Scotland -- and Swiss bank Credit Suisse First Boston were major backers of subprime lenders, the study said.

There are no geniuses in the outhouse

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Joe Bageant
May 5, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Sometimes you overhear a remark so wonderfully prescient you wish you'd said it yourself. Especially if you are a writer. Sitting in back of the Troubadour Club, a West Virginia honky tonk high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I'm listening to Petie Yost, an auctioneer, talk to Bud Shanholtz, who lives on Social Security and drives a snowplow occasionally during the winter.

Now ole Petie uses exotic economic terms such as "investment return" and "percentage." He says things like, "I don't do household auctions 'cause there ain't no real percentage in it." Which makes him an economic expert in these beery circles. And right now he is telling Bud why our Social Security and the FDIC do not exist.

"Whadaya mean they don't exist?" asks Bud.

"Because they are both absolutely broke," replies Petie. "Tits up. Nada."
"How do ya mean?"

"Well, it's like this. If you only have $100, and no job, but you owe $15 on your phone bill, and $700 for your rent and $400 on your credit card, you're in deep shit. Right? You can't just pay one of those bills and figure you're OK. Right?"

"I'd say so" agrees Bud.

"Well, that's the fix the U.S. Government is in. If you ask if the government has enough money to fund the FDIC during a bank run, and sure as Nellie's goat eats cans there's gonna be one, the government says yes. And if you ask if the Social Security checks will keep coming and never bounce, it says yes. But it's one set of bills that comes out of one government pocket. Ain't no special safe in Fort Knox where they keep the Social Security money or the FDIC money. So the government pays the $15 light bill and hope people never ask for their bank savings to be covered by the FDIC. Lucky for them, ain't many people even got savings anyway."

Bud nods and Petie continues.

"Meanwhile, they pay out the Social Security money as it dribbles in from kids flippimg hamburgers, and pay the $15 light bill, and pray to hell the Ay-rabs keep loaning them some dough now and then, until they can pawn off the rest of the country and maybe break even in the long haul. That is, if the bailouts keep the bankers' shell game going long enough so nobody can figure out what's up. Of course the bankers ain't gonna squeal on the whole deal because they're the only ones getting richer in this thing. But still the government is working out of one pocket where the hundred bucks used to be."

Bud makes a sour face, and says, "Well, that stinks like a country outhouse in July, don't it?"

"Worse, I'd say. Nobody expects a whole country to be run out of a shithouse. But everybody figures the shithouse in Washington is full of geniuses."

I bought them both a round just for the pleasure of hearing some common sense for a change.

More than one in five homeowners underwater: Zillow

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May 6, 2009 - Reuters

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Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.

U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, resulting in a total 21.8 percent drop since the market peaked in 2006, according to Zillow's first-quarter Real Estate Market Reports, which encompass 161 metropolitan areas and cover the value changes in all homes, not just homes that have recently sold.

U.S. homes lost $704 billion in value during the first quarter and have depreciated $3.8 trillion in the past 12 months, according to analysis of the reports.

Declining home values left 21.9 percent of all American homeowners with negative equity by the end of the first quarter, Zillow said.

By comparison, 17.6 percent of all homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their property was worth in the fourth quarter of 2008, and 14.3 percent were underwater in the third quarter of last year, the reports showed.

Nine consecutive quarters of declines have left eight regions -- including the Modesto, California, Stockton, California, and Fort Myers, Florida regions -- with median value declines of more than 50 percent since those markets peaked.

In 85 of the 161 markets covered in the report, the annualized change over the past five years is negative or flat, the reports showed.

But in an early sign of improvement, 17 metropolitan areas across the country -- notably several hard-hit markets in California, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Modesto -- have seen two or more consecutive quarters of smaller year-over-year declines in home values, the reports showed.

Meanwhile, potential sellers appear to be holding back until evidence of an improved housing market. In a separate survey of homeowner sentiment, nearly one-third, or 31 percent, of homeowners said they would be at least somewhat likely to put their homes on the market in the next 12 months if they saw signs of a recovering real estate market, the reports showed.

"Slowing declines in select markets are a bright spot or, at least, what passes for one given current market conditions," Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics, said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, given the magnitude of the current rates of decline, we're still many months away from a bottom even as depreciation slows," he said. "Moreover, the additional information we have this quarter on 'shadow inventory,' with one-third of homeowners indicating they would like to put their home on the market if conditions improve, confirms our earlier fears that a bottom in home values could be quite protracted."

"By our calculations, this could translate into as many as 20 million homes that could seep into the market as prices stabilize, maintaining a constant stream of supply that far outpaces demand, thus keeping prices flat. I'm doubtful that we'll see the bottom until 2010, and thereafter it's increasingly clear that we're likely to have a long bottom before we see meaningful recovery in home values," Humphries said.

Of all transactions is the past 12 months, 20.4 percent were foreclosures, up slightly from 19.9 percent in the fourth quarter, while 11.9 percent of homes sold were short sales, also up slightly from 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter, the reports showed.

Falling Wage Syndrome

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Paul Krugman
May 3, 2009 - The New York Times

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Some of the wage cuts, like the givebacks by Chrysler workers, are the price of federal aid. Others, like the tentative agreement on a salary cut here at The Times, are the result of discussions between employers and their union employees. Still others reflect the brute fact of a weak labor market: workers don't dare protest when their wages are cut, because they don't think they can find other jobs.

Whatever the specifics, however, falling wages are a symptom of a sick economy. And they're a symptom that can make the economy even sicker.

First things first: anecdotes about falling wages are proliferating, but how broad is the phenomenon? The answer is, very.

It's true that many workers are still getting pay increases. But there are enough pay cuts out there that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cost of employing workers in the private sector rose only two-tenths of a percent in the first quarter of this year — the lowest increase on record. Since the job market is still getting worse, it wouldn't be at all surprising if overall wages started falling later this year.

But why is that a bad thing? After all, many workers are accepting pay cuts in order to save jobs. What's wrong with that?

The answer lies in one of those paradoxes that plague our economy right now. We're suffering from the paradox of thrift: saving is a virtue, but when everyone tries to sharply increase saving at the same time, the effect is a depressed economy. We're suffering from the paradox of deleveraging: reducing debt and cleaning up balance sheets is good, but when everyone tries to sell off assets and pay down debt at the same time, the result is a financial crisis.

And soon we may be facing the paradox of wages: workers at any one company can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment.

Here's how the paradox works. Suppose that workers at the XYZ Corporation accept a pay cut. That lets XYZ management cut prices, making its products more competitive. Sales rise, and more workers can keep their jobs. So you might think that wage cuts raise employment — which they do at the level of the individual employer.

But if everyone takes a pay cut, nobody gains a competitive advantage. So there's no benefit to the economy from lower wages. Meanwhile, the fall in wages can worsen the economy's problems on other fronts.

In particular, falling wages, and hence falling incomes, worsen the problem of excessive debt: your monthly mortgage payments don't go down with your paycheck. America came into this crisis with household debt as a percentage of income at its highest level since the 1930s. Families are trying to work that debt down by saving more than they have in a decade — but as wages fall, they're chasing a moving target. And the rising burden of debt will put downward pressure on consumer spending, keeping the economy depressed.

Things get even worse if businesses and consumers expect wages to fall further in the future. John Maynard Keynes put it clearly, more than 70 years ago: "The effect of an expectation that wages are going to sag by, say, 2 percent in the coming year will be roughly equivalent to the effect of a rise of 2 percent in the amount of interest payable for the same period." And a rise in the effective interest rate is the last thing this economy needs.

Concern about falling wages isn't just theory. Japan — where private-sector wages fell an average of more than 1 percent a year from 1997 to 2003 — is an object lesson in how wage deflation can contribute to economic stagnation.

So what should we conclude from the growing evidence of sagging wages in America? Mainly that stabilizing the economy isn't enough: we need a real recovery.

There has been a lot of talk lately about green shoots and all that, and there are indeed indications that the economic plunge that began last fall may be leveling off. The National Bureau of Economic Research might even declare the recession over later this year.

But the unemployment rate is almost certainly still rising. And all signs point to a terrible job market for many months if not years to come — which is a recipe for continuing wage cuts, which will in turn keep the economy weak.

To break that vicious circle, we basically need more: more stimulus, more decisive action on the banks, more job creation.

Credit where credit is due: President Obama and his economic advisers seem to have steered the economy away from the abyss. But the risk that America will turn into Japan — that we'll face years of deflation and stagnation — seems, if anything, to be rising.

Taliban prepare for U.S. surge

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Militants in Afghanistan say plans for Obama's new troops include more IED, suicide bombers and assassinations


Jessica Leeder
May 4, 2009 - Globe and Mail(Canada)

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KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Taliban fighters say they are planning a bloody summer campaign of buried bombs and staged ambushes in rural areas and a rash of multiple co-ordinated suicide bombings and assassinations in urban Kandahar.

Designed to spread terror across the most densely populated areas of this province, the militants' ramped-up battle plan is a response to the impending surge of U.S. troops and retrenching of other forces here.

After two weeks of interviews with Taliban, close observers and Afghan government officials from some of the province's most troubled districts, a picture emerges of what to expect from what may be the most intense fighting season in years – and places nervous civilians squarely in the crosshairs.

"We have new plans, new tactics," a Taliban logistics director based in the volatile Panjwai district says. He recently returned from high-level meetings with militant commanders in Quetta, Pakistan, and spoke about plans on condition his name remains unpublished.

"The new strategy of fighting is very important for us," he said. "It will be very dangerous for the government and for foreign troops."

Central to the summer strategy is a two-pronged terror campaign currently being mapped out by Taliban planners in a mountain refuge in northern Maywand district. The area links Afghanistan's Helmand and Kandahar provinces and is poised to become a focal point of the war when U.S. troops deploy there.

Their plan will be carried out by young fighters who, in recent weeks, have been trickling into the notorious rural areas west of Kandahar city, armed with new machine guns and sustained by villagers' donations of dry bread and watery yogurt.

When their commanders give the green light, these young militants, mainly between 18 and 30 years old, will instigate clashes on two fronts: the first will be across rural areas west of the city – the traditional summer battlefields for militants clashing with coalition troops. The second will be in urban Kandahar city, home to key provincial government offices and a hub for Canadian troops.

Out-powered in rural areas by military weaponry, fighters there will carry machine guns and attempt to sharpen the results of their ambushes, but they will rely more on land mines and improvised explosive devices, sources say.

Inside the city, insurgents plan to stage more frequent multi-bomber suicide attacks and targeted assassinations. Government officials and civilians who appear to be in favour of the current government regime will be hunted with new intensity.

"If a man or woman is working with the government, or they are supporters of the government or of the foreigners, we want to kill them," said one Taliban organizer speaking through a Pashto translator. "We want to put the pressure on Kandahar city. And we want to dissolve the government."

The militants' renewed focus on disrupting peace in Kandahar city comes at a time when Canadian troops are also setting their sights on the city. Under the command of Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance, Canada has for weeks been preparing to draw back from some of the remote outposts soldiers have been spread across – making room for the U.S. troop surge – and focus instead on securing urban Kandahar and the area immediately outside of it where the majority of the province's population resides.

This regrouping, which will take shape as U.S. troops make their way into the theatre over the course of the coming months, represents a transformation in Canada's approach aimed to allow troops to make headway on the nation building projects that ongoing security problems have stymied over the course of Canada's involvement in southern Afghanistan.

How locals respond to troops remains to be seen. In the city, confidence in both government and coalition forces has waned, and military officials acknowledge research confirms the forces' sunken popularity.

Their approval ratings have not been helped by a spike in large-scale violence over the course of the past month. Militants successfully carried out deadly bombings at the governor's mansion and the provincial council offices. Assassinations have become a daily occurrence, so much so that victims of the gruesome killings only make the news now if they are well-known figures.

In rural pockets, confidence in government and foreign military has also dropped. In some districts with a sparse military presence, landowners who were anti-Taliban last year say they've grown weary of ineffective government, corruption and poor security.

In Zhari and Panjwai districts, where military forces engage Taliban fighters regularly, villagers are fed up with the dangerous bombings that occur when ground troops call in air support. Residents worry the incidents, which occasionally claim civilian lives, will only increase as the U.S. troop presence builds.

All of that has made many long-time landowners wonder whether, if the Taliban cannot be beat, it's safer to simply join their cause.

"Last year, people were trying to convince the Taliban not to fight. Now people feel it is their obligation … to start fighting," said one middle-aged farmer from Maywand district, where militants say they maintain two fortified, armed positions. "People see the government as weak. They're not defending the common people. The government can't bring security," he said.

Mullah Masood, Maywand's district leader, said allegiances to militants will not change until foreign stakeholders invest properly in Afghanistan.

"My suggestion is for the foreigner to find work for the common people, the people who are poor," he said. "Find food for the children. Otherwise, this joining of the people with the Taliban will continue

The Greatest Cost

The greatest cost

Doug Noland
May 05, 2009 - Asia Times

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An astute analyst posed the following question last week: "The current debate is centered on whether the [US Federal Reserve] can take back the liquidity in time in order to prevent inflation. Suppose it can. Suppose they execute this perfectly. But if the Fed is able to flood the system with the liquidity (thus reducing the severity of the downturn) and take it back before it causes inflation, it seems there is a free lunch. We get something for nothing. So, assuming a perfectly executed game plan by the

Fed, is there a cost? Do they keep rates low for a time, only to raise them a lot a year down the road - is that the cost? Or is there another cost?"

I'm short on time today, so I'll attempt a brief response.

First of all, while it often appears otherwise, finance provides no free lunch. The mispricing of credit and misperceptions of risk in the marketplace have deleterious effects, although their true impact may remain unexposed for years. Indeed, the more immediate (and always seductive) consequences of loosened financial conditions tend to be reduced risk premiums, higher asset prices, and a boost to economic "output". Conventional analysis of monetary policymaking still focuses on "inflation" and "deflation" risks. I would strongly argue that our contemporary world has already validated the analysis that acute financial and economic fragility are major costs associated with market pricing distortions.

When the Federal Reserve collapsed interest rates following the bursting of the technology bubble, the results seemed constructive. Stock and real estate prices inflated; a robust economic recovery ensued. There was at the time some recognition of the potential for real estate excesses. But this was seen as such a small price to pay in the fight against the scourge of deflation. It was not until 2007 that the nature of the true costs of a massive "reflation" began to come to light.

Many would today argue that it was simply a case of the Fed's failure to take the punchbowl away in time. Such analysis misses a key facet of bubble dynamics. Once the mortgage finance bubble gained a foothold, there was absolutely no way policymakers were going to be willing to risk bursting such a consequential bubble.

I see ample support for my view that bubble dynamics have taken root throughout government finance. This unprecedented inflation includes Federal Reserve Credit, Treasury borrowings, agency debt, mortgage-backed securities issued by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as home-loan guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Federal Housing Administration and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insurance, massive pension and healthcare obligations, the myriad new market support programs, and so forth. This government finance bubble is domestic as well as global. Amazingly, the scope of the unfolding bubble dwarfs even the mortgage finance bubble. And, importantly, it is reasonable to presume that the Federal Reserve will find itself in the familiar position of being trapped by the risk of bursting a historic bubble.

So I see the probabilities as very low that the Fed will reverse course and impose tightened liquidity conditions upon the marketplace. Actually, reflationary pressures may force the Fed to increase its Treasury holdings in an effort to maintain artificially low interest rates. At the same time, I don't see higher inflation as the greatest cost associated with this predicament. Much greater risk lies with the acute systemic fragility that I believe is inherent to major bubbles.

Similar to mortgage finance 2002-2007, the marketplace is significantly mispricing the cost - and failing to recognize the risks - of a massive inflation of government finance. And while every bubble has its own dynamics and nuances, the unfolding government finance bubble has even more precarious Ponzi finance dynamics than the mortgage bubble.

The markets are on tract to accommodate US$2 trillion or so of Treasury issuance this year. This incredible amount of debt creation is in the range I would expect necessary to temporarily stabilize the US ("services") bubble economy. Importantly, this amount of new finance both plugs financial holes and works to stabilize inflated income levels. From last week's income data, one can see that personal income was up 0.3% year on year to $12.04 trillion. And while 0.3% is very meager growth, without massive government fiscal and monetary expansion (inflation) the economy would have suffered a destabilizing income contraction. Keep in mind that personal income has inflated 65% since 1998 and 33% from 2003.

I'll try to explain my belief that dangerous Ponzi finance dynamics are in play with the current course of policymaking. First, I view panicked policymakers as seeing no alternative than to try to sustain the current (deeply maladjusted) economic structure. A more natural course of economic adjustment - from finance and consumption-driven bubble economy to a more balanced system - was going to be much too painful to endure. So a massive government inflation was commenced in desperation - with the grandiose objective of revitalizing securities markets, housing prices, and the overall US economy. I just don't see how this reflation goes much beyond stoking a susceptible artificial recovery.

First and foremost, with government finance now completely dominating the credit system, I can't even begin to contemplate how this process might nurture an effective allocation of financial and real resources. Indeed, I see today's manifestations of credit bubble dynamics as an extension of similar mispricing, misperceptions, and over-issuance that led to last autumn's near financial collapse.

Admittedly, the massive extension of government credit and obligations works wonders in stabilizing a devastatingly impaired system. Inflationism is always seductive; trillions of dollars worth is absurdly seductive. Yet this extra layer of debt does little to effect change to the underlying economic structure. Actually, a strong case can be made that it only delays and sidetracks the necessary adjustment process. And, importantly, this enormous additional layer of system debt exacerbates system vulnerability.

At the end of the day, a system is made or lost on the soundness of its underlying economic structure. I posit that a sound economic structure is reliant upon only moderate credit growth and risk intermediation. Our system requires massive credit expansion and intensive risk intermediation. I would also posit that there are no benefits - only escalating costs - to throwing massive credit inflation upon an unhealthy economic structure. And, returning to Ponzi dynamics, one of the major costs to such inflationism is a massive expansion of non-productive credit - obligations that are created without a corresponding increase in real economic wealth producing capacity. The debt can only be serviced by the creation of more debt obligations.

The danger is that markets too easily and for too long accommodate massive credit expansion during the boom. Federal Reserve policies are fundamental to this dynamic. But at some point and out of the Fed's control, as Wall Street learned, greed inevitably turns to fear and a reversal of speculative flows marks the onset of the bust. And it's the massive inflation of non-productive credit that ensures the unavoidable crisis of
confidence. Can the underlying economic structure service the mounting debt load or, instead, is it the massively inflating debt load that is sustaining a vulnerable economy? And it is in this vein that I fear the government finance bubble is on track to destroy the creditworthiness of the entire economy. And this Ponzi dynamic is the greatest cost to what I fear is a continuation of unsound policymaking.

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Doug Noland is a market strategist for the Prudent Bear Funds.

Libraries skeptical of Google books settlement

Diane Bartz
May 04, 2009 - Reuters

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Skeptical library groups asked on Monday for "rigorous oversight" of Google's agreement with authors and publishers that would allow it to put millions of books online.

The American Library Association and Association of Research Libraries said they were concerned that Google would not safeguard readers' privacy and that it would be the only digital source for many books and major academic journals.

Other groups have complained to the U.S. Justice Department about antitrust elements of the deal, and the department has made inquiries about it.

"This court can address the library associations' concerns through rigorous oversight of the implementation of the settlement," the groups said in their brief to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Google, which is seeking to create a digital library, reached an agreement last year with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers to pursue the project. It is awaiting a judge's approval.

"Major commercial publishers have been content with strategies that maximize profits by selling subscriptions to few customers at high cost. Typically, these customers are academic and research libraries," the libraries said in their comments on the settlement.

The library groups are concerned that a subscription to Google books may become indispensable to universities and that subscription rates could skyrocket, said Prue Adler of the ARL, citing the journal Brain Research, which costs $23,000 a year.

The settlement is unusual is that it essentially structures the digitized book search market while that market is in its infancy, said Bert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute.

"On the whole what they're trying to do is remarkably creative," he said. "But that doesn't mean that the process should avoid the type of public input that would be there in other circumstances."

NO PRIVACY PROTECTION IN SETTLEMENT

Libraries expressed concern that the settlement does not spell out what Google would do with information about users.

This, they said, was in "stark contrast" with steps spelled out in the settlement to secure the digitized books against unauthorized access.

"Evidently, in the settlement negotiations the class representatives insisted on these measures to protect the security of digital copies of their books; but no one demanded protection of user privacy," the filing said.

Adler said she would push Google to adopt stringent privacy policies.

Google said in a statement that it was "proud to partner with dozens of libraries around the world as part of our book search efforts."

"We have consistently maintained that, if approved by the court, our settlement agreement stands to unlock access to millions of books for users in the US," according to an emailed statement.

Philip Zane of the law firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz said the Justice Department could also decide that Google's offer to put Google books on one terminal per library -- no matter how large -- was inadequate.

"There may be other things that don't pass a reasonableness test," he said. "It would be an enormous concentration of power in one place, and it could really squeeze the libraries. ... I think it's going to be an extended investigation."

Attempts to reach the Association of American Publishers for comment were not immediately successful. The Authors Guild had no comment

Sons Setting in Iraq

Chris Floyd
May 04, 2009 - Empire Burlesque

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Surely no one could have predicted that the US would dump its dubious "allies" in the Iraq War once they had served their purpose: i.e., bringing the death count down during the "surge," so Washington's bipartisan political class could get the war off the front pages, and declare it a "success beyond our wildest dreams" and an "extraordinary achievement." No one, that is, except anyone who had even casually observed the imperial MO in action over the past several decades.

Yes, now that the war is practically "over" (except for the rising violence, the continuing chaos, and the ever-deepening entrenchment of tens of thousands of American troops in permanent bases, etc.), the Americans and their Iraqi clients are discarding the "Sons of Iraq," the Sunni militants and former insurgents who were paid to switch sides and quit killing Americans for awhile, on the promise of their future inclusion in a "sovereign" Iraqi government.

But now, they are being cast aside, cut off from funding, and arrested by the new "strongman" regime of Nouri al-Maliki, whose armed sectarian faction (once dubbed terrorists by Washington) have been put in charge of the country. The result: more violence on every side, as the government cracks down on the ousted "Sons," the "Sons" strike back, and sectarian blowback and revenge attacks escalate on every side -- "endangering" plans for the US "withdrawal".

Why, it's almost as if someone has given the client government in Baghdad a green light to take actions that are guaranteed to increase the level of violence and instability -- therefore "requiring" a longer, stronger US presence in the conquered land! Who would benefit from such an action? War profiteers, maybe? Fanatical militarists? Neocons and "liberal interventionists" committed to "projecting" American power (for the good of the world, of course)? Good thing we don't have anyone like that running loose in the corridors of power.

The Great Bank Robbery of 2009

Brent Budowsky
May 3, 2009 - DailyChimp

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This week America witnessed Black Thursday for workers and families as the Senate defeated a bankruptcy bill that would have protected distressed homeowners and the House passed a bill that encourages and guarantees banks will continue abuses the bill pretends to remedy for a full year.

Politically and financially, Americans will look back on these years, and judge what happens when a Democratic president and Democratic Congress use the government as an instrument of reform, change and problem-solving. To state my conclusion at the outset, I do not believe Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has carried this mantle well and what I see in current policy is little more than a gigantic transfer of wealth from taxpayers to banks, which is being abused and misused by most banks.

It will be a disaster if this becomes the historic, political and financial legacy of Democrats using government to solve problems, and I believe it is essential for Democrats and progressives to join a great debate on the side of workers and families and against the abuses that are front-page news and continue every hour of every day.

It is outrageous that banks take trillions of dollars of taxpayer money for the purpose of lending to Americans while they raise credit card rates, turn fixed rates to variable rates that guarantee huge additional rate increases when the Fed resumes raising its rates, while they raise banks fees, cut customer lines, and increase foreclosures when trillions of dollars were spent for them to do exactly the opposite.

On Black Thursday the Democratic House (many of whose members take enormous sums of money from banks, as do Republicans) passed a bill to allegedly protect consumers that will not take effect for at least a year. This means the House supports continuing every abusive action the bill claims to oppose for one full year, at least, in a stunning triumph for the banking lobby.

It is time to break ranks with an almost universal Washington consensus about how business is done in this town, a consensus that is leading our country to financial disaster.

My "epiphany" came when I glanced at the recent campaign finance report of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), which shows a stunning lack of support from home-state donors and a deluge of donations from companies doing business with his Senate Banking Committee.

Dodd is a good man in a corrupted system. Both parties profit from this crisis through massive campaign donations. Those who manage troubled institutions profit from it through massive bonuses and compensation.

While Wall Street pay is quickly moving back to bubble levels, the system of speculation for compensation (which creates perpetual bubbles) remains intact. Campaign money still flows like a mighty river in a legalized pay-for-play system that corrupts our financial and political systems alike.

The source of public anger is this: The core policy is fundamentally a multi-trillion-dollar transfer of money from taxpayers to banks, which borrow money from taxpayers at low interest, punish taxpayers by charging them higher interest and pay themselves a king's ransom for doing it.

The president speaks of transparency and accountability, but: Does anybody know exactly how much money the various government agencies have spent rescuing banks that still refuse to lend? Four trillion dollars? Seven trillion? Ten trillion?

What, exactly, have taxpayers received in return? These monies were provided to increase lending, but net lending is down.

When banks receive trillions of dollars to increase lending, they insult the intelligence of taxpayers and the integrity of government by increasing credit card interest rates, increasing bank fees, lowering credit limits, increasing home foreclosures and lowering net lending. Where's the accountability?

Meanwhile, Obama and McCain received huge amounts of money from banks, Wall Street firms, hedge funds and mortgage companies while congressional fundraisers continue ad nauseam.

While money is doled out to banks by Congress, money is doled out to Congress by banks.

It is a direct attack against economic recovery, a direct attack against economic stimulus and a direct attack against economic growth for interest rates to be hiked, credit limits to be cut, bank fees to be raised and lending to be lowered.

Have they no shame?

Taxpayers pay for the bailout, subsidize the lobbying, underwrite the campaign donations. Then they are taxed by banks through fees and rates that work as regressive taxes. They will be taxed again to pay for the deficit. They will be taxed again when the value of their money declines from the inflation these trillions of dollars will inevitably cause.

Does anybody understand exactly what the Federal Reserve money is used for, exactly who received it, exactly what taxpayers receive in return and exactly how much money has been spent?

Where's the transparency?

Can anyone justify the number of senior Treasury jobs that remain unfilled, or the pay-for-play schemes surrounding state pension funds?

Everyone should read the lengthy story in Monday's New York Times about the career of Mr. Geithner. Did he do his job well, or disastrously, at the New York Fed when he failed to regulate the firms while they were causing this crisis?

Mr. Geithner is without doubt a great power-networker, who spent much time at the N.Y. Fed in endless networking events with the financial powerbrokers who were creating the crisis that Geithner was failing to prevent.

Geithner was not reforming the system, protecting the customers or opposing the abuses that endanger our national solvency. He was cultivating the support of financial powerbrokers who were, and remain, his true constituency.

What does it tell credit card CEOs that the president's chief economic adviser falls asleep at a meeting where he should have been defending taxpayers and consumers like a lion?

The Republicans have virtually nothing to offer except hoping the president fails without serious ideas of their own. The Party of No has earned its 21 percent approval rating. But, as a matter of conscience and concern for my party and my country, I must break ranks.

What is happening is wrong. A whole generation will pay the price for what we do today. The cost will be enormous and incalculable. Both parties owe the next generation far better than either party offers today.

No bank should ever be too big to fail. Instead of taxpayers subsidizing mergers, regulators and legislators should break up any bank so large that its failure endangers the nation as a whole.

It is inexcusable and shameful for even a Democratic House to pass a bill to allegedly combat abuses against citizens, and make that bill effective a full year later, which means all of those abuses will continue for least 12 more months. To call this a consumer protection bill is an abuse of language and a fraud against consumers and voters who do not want these abuses continuing for another year, and supported by Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress for another year.

Banks given trillions of dollars to lend should lend. Those of either party who tolerate these abuses are betraying the largest financial trust ever given to public officials in the history of the nation, the world or any generation.

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Brent Budowsky served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management.

Russia to Build Floating Arctic Nuclear Stations

Environmentalists fear pollution risk as firms try to exploit ocean's untapped oil and gas reserves

John Vidal
May 3, 2009 - The Guardian/UK

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Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists.

A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.

The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years.

In addition, designers are known to have developed submarine nuclear-powered drilling rigs that could allow eight wells to be drilled at a time.

Bellona, a leading Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, yesterday condemned the idea of using nuclear power to open the Arctic to oil, gas and mineral production.

"It is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle," said Igor Kudrik, a spokesman.

Environmentalists also fear that if additional radioactive waste is produced, it will be dumped into the sea. Russia has a long record of polluting the Arctic with radioactive waste. Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.

The US Geological Survey believes the Arctic holds up to 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves, leading some experts to call the region the next Saudi Arabia. But sea ice, strong winds and temperatures that can dip to below -50C have made them technologically impossible to exploit.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the US have all claimed large areas of the Arctic in the past five years. Russian scientists used a mini-submarine to plant a flag below the North Pole in 2007 and have claimed that a nearby underwater ridge is part of its continental shelf.

Last week, ministers from many Arctic countries heard scientists and former US vice-president and Nobel prize winner Al Gore say that the Arctic could be free of ice in the summer within five years, with drastic consequences for the world's climate and human health.

But many countries bordering the Arctic see climate change as the chance to exploit areas that were once inaccessible and to open trade routes between the Pacific and Atlantic.

According to a new report by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum, Russia is considering other nuclear plants for power-hungry settlements. "The locations that have been discussed include 33 towns in the Russian far north and far east. Such plants could be also used to supply energy for oil and gas extraction," says the report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.

Advisor: ‘US Needs Strikes in to Call off Drone Pak’

May 3, 2009 - Asia News International

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The top adviser to the US army chief in Afghanistan, David Kilcullen, has observed that the US drone strikes in Pakistan are creating more enemies than eliminating them, and hence, needed to be "called off."

Responding to a congressman on what the US government should do in Pakistan, he said: "We need to call off the drones."

The Daily Times quoted Kilcullen, as saying that he has no objection to killing "bad guys" in Pakistan.

However, he added that the strikes were creating more enemies than they eliminate.

Kilcullen said that the drone strikes, which were "highly unpopular", gave rise to a feeling of anger that unites the population with the Taliban and could lead to "loss of Pakistani government control over its own population".

He said that insurgents used the drone strikes to stir up anti-Western and anti-government sentiment.

Another problem, Kilcullen noted, was "using robots from the air looks both cowardly and weak".

The Right Goes Insane

Evil overlords to flaccid clowns in the blink of Jesus' eye. Adorable!

Mark Morford
May 1, 2009 - The San Francisco Chronicle

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This much we know: Hand evil a big, sticky gob of power, and it quickly becomes a feral monster, dangerous and cruel and willing to sell its own shriveled heart and the heart of its very remorseful mother for a shot at everlasting infamy, even more power and maybe some fresh, raw kitten blood, intravenously, just for the hell of it.
Oh, but take that same vile leviathan and suddenly strip away all its power and influence and capacity for wickedness, and watch it deflate like a wheezing circus tent, quickly turning into a trembling caricature of its former self, a tiny, elfin thing small enough to fit into a shoebox of panic and pathos and residual Godspit.

Behold, this delightful rule in full effect with the once portentous, now pitiable Republican party. Watch in wonder as gaff follows gaff, astonishing pronouncement follows childish meltdown, ludicrous statement leads into pure comedy of errors followed by moderate 40-year veterans of the party splitting for bluer, less abusive pastures. What a scene.

There is much good news to be found in the ongoing GOP implosion; their obsession with Ôwedge issues' like abortion and gay marriage, along with hilarious claims of socialism and fascism are proving to be the absolute best news for the nation as a whole. Because as the GOP wallows in juvenile spectacle, Obama and the Dems are leaping headlong into one of the most ambitious, invigorating, nation-altering agendas in American history.

Of course, it ain't all flowers and candy. This much unfettered movement for any party, left or right, can also be just insanely dangerous, could theoretically result in a blowback for the Dems exactly as destructive and apocalyptic as the horrendous Bush Era proved to be for the once-temperate Repubs.

Is it already heading that way? Will it happen? Not a chance.

But before we see why, let us enjoy a bit of the comedy. Because really, who could've guessed that, for example, former drug addict and all around bulbous, cigar-chomping radio jackal Rush Limbaugh would turn into the most influential conservative in the country, more powerful than, say, the GOP's own chairman, Michael Steele, who was recently found kneeling to kiss Rush's fat, sweaty ring?

Ah, but even Rush can't match the genuine lump of crazy that is the latest bearded lady to step onstage at the Fox News freakshow, Glenn Beck, a truly insane hunk of weirdness who's fun to watch not for any attempt at genuine insight or O'Reilly-esque pseudo-intelligence, but because of how he endears himself to viewers by acting exactly like your crazy uncle Ernie, the one who eats Miracle Whip straight from the jar and hears voices in his armpits and stares just a bit too long at any 10-year-old within range. Weep on, Glenn!

But weep not for Miss California, who's happy as a Prozac clam to take on the title as the new face of Republican hetero marriage. Isn't she lovely? A skinny, fake-breasted blonde mouthful of air who does exactly as she's told and never questions her scary Bible and doesn't really like sex and you want to stick that thing where? Ewww! She's perfect.

What, too trifling? I understand.

Let's get serious. Let's talk about the economy. Let's take a look at the Republican's counter-proposal to Obama's stunning, comprehensive $3.5 trillion budget.

Did you see it? Their little blue pamphlet, all 18 pages of it, which contained not a single dollar figure and was filled with bizarre little diagrams and wacky clip art circa 1988, and looked like it was photocopied at a 24-hour Kinko's by a very stoned senator's aide, because it was? When the "Republican Road to Recovery" was passed around, reporters actually laughed out loud, thought it must be some sort of gag written by the guys over at The Onion. It wasn't.

Speaking of serious, what of those 17 Republican congressmen who seriously proposed a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the "Democratic Socialist Party?" So cute! Of course, the name they really wanted, "The Boogerbrained Party of Doodylicking Stupidheads," was nixed after they all rode their skateboards to John Boehner's' house and played Resident Evil V until their eyes bled and Boehner's mom made them some sugar cookies and they totally forgot.

But for sheer freakshow fun, nothing tops Fox News furiously masturbating itself raw over the biggest imitation news story it could possibly invent this year: the Great Tea Bag Uproar of 2009, featuring a few thousand very confused taxpayers protesting, well, they weren't exactly sure what, waving tea bags in the air and threatening to secede and then talking hotly about "teabagging" the president. Delightful.

The list, as they say, goes on. Witness every utterance of Michele Bachmann, see the new GOP promotional video featuring a burning Pentagon and Obama touching Hugo Chavez, or tremble in fear at a special Fox News report on how the Super Devil is currently terrorizing Christian children with adulterous marmalade. I am so not kidding.

Ah, but we must acknowledge the potential downside. Because it wasn't that long ago that the Dems were much like the Repubs are now, the meek, humiliated party of desperation and pathos, begging for scraps from the freakishly empowered GOP of 1998. Remember?

Of course, you might (rightly) understate that the current Obamafied agenda is just slightly different than the toxic plan the GOP vomited up under Bush back then, which was perhaps the most abusive, insular, self-serving hunk of political devastation in our short history, and therefore the GOP fully deserved to go from all-consuming, unstoppable force to adorable punch line in the blink of a Kansas creationist's eye.

But that's not really the key difference. No, this time the Dems just so happen to be blessed beyond human comprehension with something very unique indeed, a true golden ticket, a magic death-ray force field of intellectual virtuosity even they don't seem to fully comprehend or know how to keep up with. They have Barack Obama himself.

Truly, the man outpaces and outshines even his own party. At nearly every turn, Obama often seems to be merely tolerating the whole two-party system, the whole D.C. dance he's forced to waltz, all of it merely a distraction to getting things done. It's as though he's an entirely new political mechanism, and the Dems just happen to be lucky enough to be the party that's most aligned with it. Meanwhile, it's all apparently driving the opposition party -- quite literally -- insane.

And really, isn't that just that the most delightful thing to watch?

Mission to Break up Pacific Island of Rubbish Twice the Size of Texas

Frank Pope
May 2, 2009 - The Times/UK

.....

A high-seas mission departs from San Francisco next month to map and explore a sinister and shifting 21st-century continent: one twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.
Scientists and conservationists on the expedition will begin attempts to retrieve and recycle a monument to throwaway living in the middle of the North Pacific.

The toxic soup of refuse was discovered in 1997 when Charles Moore, an oceanographer, decided to travel through the centre of the North Pacific gyre (a vortex or circular ocean current). Navigators usually avoid oceanic gyres because persistent high-pressure systems — also known as the doldrums — lack the winds and currents to benefit sailors.

Mr Moore found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Worn down by sunlight and waves, discarded plastic disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent, but in subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one.

The damage caused by these tiny fragments is more insidious than strangulation, entrapment and choking by larger plastic refuse. The fragments act as sponges for heavy metals and pollutants until mistaken for food by small fish. The toxins then become more concentrated as they move up the food chain through larger fish, birds and marine mammals.

"You can buy certified organic farm produce, but no fishmonger on earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish. This is our legacy," said Mr Moore.

Because of their tiny size and the scale of the problem, he believes that nothing can be solved at sea. "Trying to clean up the Pacific gyre would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went."

In June the 151ft brigantine Kaisei (Japanese for Planet Ocean) will unfurl its sails in San Francisco to try to prove Mr Moore wrong. Project Kaisei's flagship will be joined by a decommissioned fishing trawler armed with specialised nets.

"The trick is collecting the plastic while minimising the catch of sea life. We can't catch the tiny pieces. But the net benefit of getting the rest out is very likely to be better than leaving it in," says Doug Woodring, the leader of the project.

With a crew of 30, the expedition, supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company, will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to map the extent and depth of the plastic continent while collecting 40 tonnes of the refuse for trial recycling.

"We have a few technologies that can turn thin plastics into diesel fuel. Other technologies are much more hardcore, to deal with the hard plastics," says Mr Woodring, who hopes to run his vessels on the recycled fuel.

Plastics bags, food wrappers and containers are the second and third most common items in marine debris around the world, according to the Ocean Conservancy, which is based in Washington. The proportion of tiny fragments, known as mermaid's tears, are less easily quantified.

The UN's environmental programme estimates that 18,000 pieces of plastic have ended up in every square kilometre of the sea, totalling more than 100 million tonnes. The North Pacific gyre — officially called the northern subtropical convergence zone — is thought to contain the biggest concentration. Ideal conditions for shifting slicks of plastic also exist in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the North and South Atlantic, but no research vessel has investigated those areas. If this exploratory mission is successful, a bigger fleet will depart in 2010.

Mr Woodring admits that Project Kaisei has limitations. "We won't be able to clean up the entire ocean. The solution really lies on land. We have to treat plastics in a totally different way, and stop them ever reaching the ocean."