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Sacramento's City Manager is demanding city employees pay more for pensions Sacramento's City Manager, John Shirey, threatened that 100 city employees would be laid off, unless all city employees paid more money towards their pensions. Currently, most city employees pay four percent of their paycheck to their pension; Shirey wants that raised to seven percent. If Shirey's proposal is enacted it would save the city $14.2 million. Seems like a simple enough solution right?
But what Shirey is leaving out of the story is that raising pension contributions is another word for pay cuts. Years ago the city bargained with its employees to cover a portion of employee's pension contributions in exchange for receiving no pay increase. In essence, a pay raise would result from the city covering a portion of the employee's pension contribution. So to now go back on that promise, to force city employees to pay the full employee contribution, would be to reverse those pay raises. Reversing pay raises means city employee's pay will be cut. (Examiner)
Is internet access a human right? As family life migrates online and the web becomes the home of free expression, it's getting harder for courts to prevent individuals going online
A recent United Nations Human Rights Council report examined the important question of whether internet access is a human right.
While the Special Rapporteur's conclusions are nuanced in respect of blocking sites or providing limited access, he is clear that restricting access completely will always be a breach of article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to freedom of expression.
But not everyone agrees with the UN's conclusion. Vint Cerf, a so-called "father of the internet" and a vice-president at Google, argued in a New York Times editorial that internet access is not a human right:
The best way to characterise human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring internet access a human right, acknowledged that the internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. (London Guardian)
Librarians, Researchers Concerned as U.S. Terminates Only National Biodiversity Network The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) program and its website will be terminated on January 15. As a result, the United States will no longer have a single, integrated point of access to federal and non-federal biological and biodiversity information.
The NBII program is managed by the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Biological Informatics Office whose FY12 budget was zeroed out (down from $7 million in FY10 and $3.5 million in FY11).
The NBII integrates biological databases, analytic tools, and 259 applications via various partners in government agencies, academic institutions, non-government organizations and others. By 2010, the number of unique visitors to the NBII’s online sites exceeded 3 million, with users downloading an average of a terabyte of data per month on topics ranging from bald eagles to malformed amphibians and far more.
But the disposition of these resources and their future accessibility is now highly uncertain and a source of concern for researchers and librarians. (The Digital Shift)
NDAA Protests End In Ironic Swarm Of Arrests The absurdity of America today never ceases to amaze. In fact, it has become so elaborate that one might even suggest it has reached a kind of poetic symmetry. When a protest group is willing to stick their necks out to expose the horror of the National Defense Authorization Act and its open door strategy for unconstitutional arrest and indefinite detainment of American citizens, I have to stand up and applaud. This is the kind of protest we need to see all over the country. Of course, any establishment system which is willing to dissolve the inherent liberties of its citizens certainly isn't going to stand by quietly while they blatantly point out the injustice. The Grand Central Terminal action featured in the video below is a perfect example of the swift and immediate stifling of peaceful dissent by an increasingly totalitarian government:
Responses to the event vary. Most people who have actually been exposed to the facts on the NDAA have expressed utter disgust and fury. Rightly so. Some, however, have taken the old elitist mantra, perpetuated effectively by the Neo-Cons in their heyday, that if you are not for the system, then you are a danger to society. Not surprisingly, there are still plenty of useful idiots out there buzzing about like parasites in search of blood. (Alt Market)
Grading the Republican Presidential Candidates Anyone who's following presidential politics has a general sense that some Republicans are okay on the marijuana issue, and most Republicans are terrible.
But don't take our word for it, see for yourself in this video. MPP has compiled a collection of videos from the Republican presidential candidates' views on marijuana, and graded them accordingly. See which candidates pass the test, and which ones clearly have some work to do. (Marijuana Policy Project)
Tallahassee settles suit over informant Rachel Hoffman's death Tallahassee city commissioners approved a $2.6 million settlement Friday in the wrongful-death suit of a police informant who was fatally shot during a 2008 drug sting.
The parents of Rachel Hoffman, 23, sued after her death, claiming police were negligent in setting up the Florida State graduate as an undercover informant after she was caught with marijuana and pills without a prescription.
Jury selection for the lawsuit began this week and the trial was scheduled to begin Monday.
After a closed door session with attorneys Friday, commissioners voted 3-2 to approve the settlement, the first $200,000 of which will be paid by the city in the next few weeks, City Attorney Jim English said.
The rest will be paid after the Florida Legislature passes what is known as a "claims bill," which could take years. (Associated Press)
ACLU report card finds fault with Obama, rivals The American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its report card for presidential candidates on issues like surveillance, torture, gay rights and immigration. No one gets an A, including President Obama.
Obama, the only Democrat among the 10 candidates rated, got a perfect score
four "torches"
on only one issue, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, for his backing of the December 2010 law that repealed "don't ask, don't tell."
But he received lower marks on immigration, abortion rights and "closing Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention," where his one-torch rating was attributed to backtracking on a promise to shut the prison for suspected terrorists and his support for holding their trials in military commissions.
The highest overall rating went to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, who opposes the Patriot Act and
unlike Obama
supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Among the leading Republican candidates, libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul also got a higher score than Obama despite low ratings in several categories.
The ACLU gave the Texas congressman high marks for opposing the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, condemning waterboarding and voting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." But it criticized Paul's call for an end to "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal immigrants, his support of the law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and his opposition to abortion. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Public Eye: Dealing with Occupy protest costs Sacramento police $408,000 The city of Sacramento's laws against camping overnight and staying in parks after hours have been challenged on two fronts in recent months. Both have been costly to the city.
The city's most expensive endeavor has been the monitoring and arrests of Occupy Sacramento protesters at Cesar Chavez Plaza and on the front lawn of City Hall.
Dozens of officers have spent 6,577 hours on the Occupy protests, which represents a total payroll impact of about $408,000, said police spokesman Sgt. Andrew Pettit. Included in that figure is $52,200 in overtime paid to police officers.
Since the protests began, police have made about 110 arrests of those who violated park curfew laws. Protesters have asked the City Council for a special permit to allow them to stay in the park, but the council has declined. (Sacramento Bee)
The 'Occupy' movement lives Gina Glantz was most recently an adjunct lecturer at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
The hashtag #occupywallstreet inspired the most basic of organizing strategies: sit-ins. OWS sit-ins became encampments, many of which are now being dismantled by law enforcement and debilitated by weather. As the movement is increasingly out of the sight of pundits and the popular media, and criticized as leaderless and lacking a clear purpose, it has become fashionable to talk about OWS as inevitably failing. This is a mistake. Encampment “occupiers” come and go; hashtag followers live on in cyberspace, where OWS is spawning leaders and developing goals, just not in the way that most people are accustomed to.
Consider:
●The Occupy Wiki Research Group, of which I am a member, has a robust online dialogue among college professors, organizing practitioners and activists. Weekly phone calls refine their efforts.
●Occupytogether.org was started by two designers who couldn’t get to New York so tried to track, on their own, activities around the country. Overwhelmed by the volume, they recently incorporated MeetUp.com into their site.
●Maps depicting FourSquare locations using the Occupy Wall Street hashtag show thousands of check-ins across the country.
●Students at Boulder Digital Works at the University of Colorado built Occupationalist.org, which describes itself as “an impartial and real-time view of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Covering history as it unfolds. No filters. No delays.”
●An urban gardening advocate’s blog about how Occupy Wall Street can help communities seeking to take over empty lots is circulating on Facebook. (Washington Post)
'Obamacare' to the rescue (Op-Ed) A woman who felt President Obama had let the middle class down has changed her mind. I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.
I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.
We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment. (Los Angeles Times)
Carrier IQ: Researcher Trevor Eckhart Outs Creepy, Hidden App Installed On Smartphones (VIDEO) (UPDATE) A security researcher has posted a video detailing hidden software installed on smart phones that logs numerous details about users' activities.
In a 17-minute video posted Monday on YouTube, Trevor Eckhart shows how the software – known as Carrier IQ – logs every text message, Google search and phone number typed on a wide variety of smart phones
including HTC, Blackberry, Nokia* and others
and reports them to the mobile phone carrier.
The application, which is labeled on Eckhart’s HTC smartphone as "HTC IQ Agent," also logs the URL of websites searched on the phone, even if the user intends to encrypt that data using a URL that begins with "HTTPS," Eckhart said. (Huffington Post)
US Cops Eye Drone Patrols: FAA preparing new rules to allow domestic use of drones Meet your science-fiction future. Drones may soon be deployed over your sky, courtesy of your local police force. The Federal Aviation Administration is in the process of paving the way for use of the terror-busting devices on domestic soil, reports the Los Angeles Times. And it's not only police, but farmers and utility companies that could soon be deploying drones. "It's going to happen," said Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association. "Now it's about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace." (Newser)
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Banks worldwide earned an estimated $13 billion by taking advantage of below-market rates on emergency U.S. Federal Reserve loans from August 2007 through April 2010. Roll over the bars below to explore details for each. To compare results with banks' net income or losses for the same timeframes, click the corresponding button. Worldwide total is the sum for 190 firms with available data; those banks lost a combined $21.6 billion.
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. (Bloomberg)
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy: The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk." (London Guardian)
with national attention focused today on the pepper spraying of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis
Gov. Jerry Brown has kept silent.
Unlike Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, who was "appalled at the apparent use of excessive force by the UC Davis police force at a peaceful student demonstration," or Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who called it "outrageous," Brown's office has issued no comment.
Nor would he address the Occupy movement when he was asked about it at a press conference last month. (Sacramento Bee)
Occupy UC Davis Nov 21 Rally & General Assembly: In Response To John Pike Pepper Spray Nov 21, noon, Day 5 of Occupy UC Davis.
Highlighted speakers and moments from the huge rally and general assembly in response to pepper spraying of peaceful protesters by Lt. John Pike on Nov 18. A resolution was passed with 1,729 votes recorded to have a general strike on Nov 28 in hopes of blocking the UC regents meeting on campus that day. (Wiki World Order)
UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to car amidst protesters After an hours-long impasse, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi leaves the Surge II building on the UC Davis campus, accompanied by her husband Spyros Tseregounis and campus minister Kristin Stoneking. Video by Anna Sturla, HUB reporter. For photos and continuing coverage, go to http://bluedevilhub.com/
Occupy UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident, Four Perspectives I was stunned and appalled by the UC Davis Police spraying protestors, and struck by how many brave, curious people recorded the events. I took the four clearest videos and synchronized them. Citizen journalism FTW. Sources below.
More Money Can Beat Big Money Nine senators introduced a resolution early this month that would amend the Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s decisions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) and Buckley v. Valeo (1976). These two cases had restricted Congress’s power to limit contributions to political campaigns and independent political expenditures, by both individuals and corporations. Under the amendment, Congress and the states would have the power to limit both contributions and independent expenditures.
“By limiting the influence of big money in politics,” said one of the senators, Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, “elections can be more about the voters and their voices, not big money donors and their deep pockets. We need to have a campaign finance structure that limits the influence of the special interests and restores confidence in our democracy.”
This proposal is just the latest verse in a very tired song. Once again, the answer to the problem of campaign finance is to “just say no.” Limit contributions. Limit independent expenditures. Limit soft money donations. No, no, no. (New York Times)
High IQ linked to drug use The "Just Say No" generation was often told by parents and teachers that intelligent people didn't use drugs. Turns out, the adults may have been wrong.
A new British study finds children with high IQs are more likely to use drugs as adults than people who score low on IQ tests as children. The data come from the 1970 British Cohort Study, which has been following thousands of people over decades. The kids' IQs were tested at the ages of 5, 10 and 16. The study also asked about drug use and looked at education and other socioeconomic factors. Then when participants turned 30, they were asked whether they had used drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the past year. (CNN)
New Book: Insider Trading Rampant in Congress: Members reap benefits of policy knowledge on Wall Street In Congress, it’s easy to do the kind of stock trading that “would send the rest of us to prison,” writes Peter Schweizer in a new book on the Hill’s upside-down ethics. Members of Congress are, of course, equipped with insider knowledge about upcoming policy, and they’re able to play the market based on that knowledge, Schweizer asserts. In Throw Them All Out, the author probes the trading activities of a handful of congressional leaders of both parties, and finds evidence of questionable dealings. (Newser)
Top 1% Nabs $30B a Year in Federal 'Welfare': Sen. Coburn investigates massive handouts They’re already in the top 1%, yet they’re getting government handouts worth more than NASA’s budget. American millionaires rake in $30 billion a year from the feds, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn finds in a new report. That’s three times the EPA’s yearly allotment, yet it’s going to people like Jon Bon Jovi, who got US cash to raise bees, and Scottie Pippen, who received hundreds of thousands in agriculture subsidies while he was a Chicago Bull. Even billionaires like Ted Turner are cashing in, Newsweek reports. (Newser)
Hawaiian singer surprises Obama summit with 'Occupy' song A popular Hawaiian recording artist turned a top-security dinner of Pacific Rim leaders hosted by President Barack Obama into a subtle protest with a song in support of the "Occupy" movement.
Makana, who goes by one name, was enlisted to play a luau, or Hawaiian feast, Saturday night for leaders assembled in Obama’s birthplace Honolulu for an annual summit that is formulating plans for a Pacific free-trade pact.
But in the midst of the dinner on the resort strip Waikiki Beach, he pulled open his jacket to reveal a T-shirt that read "Occupy with Aloha," using the Hawaiian word whose various meanings include love and peace. He then sang a marathon version of his new song "We Are The Many." (Agence France-Presse)
The New Progressive Movement (Opinion) OCCUPY WALL STREET and its allied movements around the country are more than a walk in the park. They are most likely the start of a new era in America. Historians have noted that American politics moves in long swings. We are at the end of the 30-year Reagan era, a period that has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. The overarching challenge of the coming years is to restore prosperity and power for the 99 percent.
Thirty years ago, a newly elected Ronald Reagan made a fateful judgment: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Taxes for the rich were slashed, as were outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income. Only the military and a few big transfer programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits were exempted from the squeeze.
Reagan’s was a fateful misdiagnosis. He completely overlooked the real issue — the rise of global competition in the information age — and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time. (New York Times)
The Inequality Map Foreign tourists are coming up to me on the streets and asking, “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”
Foreign tourists are coming up to me on the streets and asking, “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”
This is an excellent question. I will provide you with a guide to the American inequality map to help you avoid embarrassment.
Academic inequality is socially acceptable. It is perfectly fine to demonstrate that you are in the academic top 1 percent by wearing a Princeton, Harvard or Stanford sweatshirt.
Ancestor inequality is not socially acceptable. It is not permissible to go around bragging that your family came over on the Mayflower and that you are descended from generations of Throgmorton-Winthrops who bequeathed a legacy of good breeding and fine manners. (New York Times)
Occupy Oakland Deposits $20K at ... Wells Fargo: But don't worry, it's only for a little while! So much for Bank Transfer Day and, you know, railing against Wall Street: Occupy Oakland took its $20,000 straight to Wells Fargo, the fourth-largest bank holding company in the US. The group’s general assembly agreed—just about unanimously—to temporarily put the large donation from Occupy Wall Street into the big bank Monday, the San Francisco Examiner reports. Not surprisingly, the 162-8 vote (16 abstained) led to outrage on Twitter.
(Newser)
Citizens United Going Down? Democrats Introduce Constitutional Amendment To Overturn Ruling The Supreme Court may treat corporations like people who can spend whatever they want on elections, but the American people don't have to accept it, said Democratic senators who proposed a constitutional amendment Tuesday to retake control of campaign spending.
The amendment, introduced by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), doesn't directly address the justices' legal finding that corporations have a right to free speech that was curtailed by election law. Instead, it would add to the Constitution language that says Congress and the states can regulate campaign contributions and expenditures.
The amendment would effectively reverse two landmark Supreme Court decisions -- the 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, which said spending money in elections is a form of speech, and the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ruled it unconstitutional to regulate the money spent to influence elections by corporations and unions. (Huffington Post)
The Road Ahead for Occupy Wall Street To the Editor: Bill Keller misses the point of the Occupy Wall Street movement. An amalgam of issues motivates the millions of people throughout the country who have identified with the effort.
Their number includes students in debt for educations that do not lead to employment, homeowners whose property is underwater, individuals whose retirement savings are suddenly at risk, voters who see that those they elect tend to the needs of a constituency of which they are not a part, and people who see that the financial “experts” whose machinations brought down the economy are not held accountable.
These are Americans who deserve better than to be piously mocked for their lack of leadership and a constrained agenda. The incestuous liaison between financial power and elected politicians is the issue. Those who are a part of that partnership should take note that if elections don’t count and demonstrations are ignored, the Occupy movement may include civil disobedience or worse. (New York Times)
50 arrested at Occupy San Diego camp About 50 people were arrested Friday morning as San Diego police in riot gear moved to clear the civic plaza behind City Hall of both the Occupy San Diego protesters and their tents and other property.
As the sweep began about 2 a.m., an officer using a bullhorn warned protesters "to disperse immediately or you will be arrested." The protesters presence in the plaza been declared "an illegal gathering," he said.
Police had repeatedly warned the protesters that while they could stay, their tents, tarps, chairs, tables and other property had to be removed. But when the sweep began, protesters were told to move and their belongings were confiscated. (Los Angeles Times)
How women defused population bomb This week the world will reach 7 billion people. Understandably that raises concern about a soaring world population. But there is a good news story from the demographic data that is not often told. We -- or rather the poor women of the world -- are defusing the population bomb.
Women today are having half as many children as their mothers and grandmothers. The global average is now down to 2.5 children per woman, and it continues to fall.
This is not just a rich-world phenomenon. Much of Asia now has fertility rates below two, from Japan and Korea to China, with its one-child policy, through Taiwan, Vietnam, Burma, Singapore and much of southern India and parts of the Middle East. Behind the veil, the women of Iran have cut their fertility from eight to less than two in a generation.
According to Stephen Pacala, the director of the Princeton Environmental Institute, the world's richest half billion people -- that's about 7 % of the global population -- are responsible for half the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the primary cause of man-made climate change. Meanwhile the poorest 50 % of the world are responsible for just 7 % of emissions. So there is no way halting population growth in the poor world today would have more than a very marginal effect on climate change.
It is the world's consumption patterns we need to fix, not its reproductive habits. Every time we talk about too many babies in Africa or India, we are denying this fact. (CNN)
TSA officer faces dismissal over 'get your freak on, girl' note in luggage An airplane baggage screener faces dismissal for leaving a note in a passenger's bag that said "Get Your Freak On, Girl" after discovering a vibrator.
The Transportation Security Administration "has initiated action to remove the individual from federal service," an agency spokesperson said. "Like all federal employees, this individual is entitled to due process and protected by the Privacy Act. During the removal action process, the employee will not perform any screening duties."
The agency randomly selects checked baggage for screening on flights originating in the United States. Lawyer and writer Jill Filipovic tweeted a picture of the note Monday and later blogged about it on Feministe.
"This is what TSA will do when they inspect a bag you checked and find a, um, 'personal item,' " she wrote. "Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not OK, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room." (CNN)
DA won't prosecute Occupy Sacramento protesters Occupy Sacramento protesters' push to continue their amorphous yet spirited around-the-clock campaign against economic inequalities got a powerful assist Monday from an unexpected source.
District Attorney Jan Scully announced Monday afternoon that her office would not file state charges against protesters arrested for refusing to disperse from an unlawful assembly after being ordered to do so by law enforcement.
Scully's position – that no unlawful assembly occurred – has her office ostensibly siding with the protesters and in direct conflict with the Sacramento Police Department.
"They are still in violation and we will continue to make the arrests," said Laura Peck, a police spokeswoman, in response to questions about continued arrests under the state law. (Sacramento Bee)
Reckless Endangerment: Totally Corrupt America Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi’s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis. http://www.vdare.com/print/13156 Taibbi shows that the US “superpower” can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. I would not be surprised if Taibbi’s book motivated the more aware participants of Occupy Wall Street.
Taibbi’s Griftopia was published last year. This year Henry Holt publishers have provided us with Gretchen Morgenson and Joshur Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment.
Morgenson and Rosner tell the story again, but with less drama and provocation. Possibly, it might be more acceptable to those gullible Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and refuse to believe that their country could ever knowingly do anything that is wrong.
I am not suggesting that Morgenson and Rosner pull their punches. To the contrary, the authors deliver enough knockouts to be contenders with Taibbi as world champions in exposing the reckless fraud that the US financial sector and its regulators now epitomize. (Paul Craig Roberts)
New York cops defy order to arrest hundreds of 'Occupy Albany' protesters Occupy Albany protesters in New York’s capital city received an unexpected ally over the week: The state and local authorities.
According to the Albany Times Union, New York state troopers and Albany police did not adhere to a curfew crackdown on protesters urged by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Albany mayor Gerald Jennings.
Mass arrests seemed to be in the cards once Jennings directed officers to enforce the curfew on roughly 700 protesters occupying the city owned park. But as state police joined the local cops, protesters moved past the property line dividing city and state land. (The Raw Story)
Occupy Sacramento sues the city over First Amendment violations Occupy Sacramento is filing a lawsuit against the city of Sacramento for violating occupier's First Amendment rights. At a news conference this morning at 10:30 am, lawyers helping Occupy Sacramento announced that they were filing a lawsuit alleging that the city of Sacramento's anti-camping ordinance is violating the First Amendment right to peacefully assemble.
Today is day 19 of the occupation that began on October 6th, and so far there have been 75 arrests made simply for remaining in the public park after 11 pm. There have been no arrests for violence, and police have even stated in city council sessions that the occupiers are overwhelmingly peaceful. Thus, it stands to reason that if the occupiers are assembling peacefully, then they have constitutional protections over that assembly. No other law should infringe on this right to assemble. (Examiner.com)
Revealed: the capitalist network that runs the world AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.
The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs). (New Scientist)
keywords: Affiliated Managers Group, Allianz Se, Aviva, Axa, Bank Of America, Bank Of New York Mellon, Barclays, Bnp Paribas, Brandes Investment Partners, California, Capital Group Companies, Capital Group International, China Petrochemical Group Company, Cnce, Credit Suisse, Deposit Insurance Corporation Of Japan, Deutsche Bank, Dodge & Cox, Fmr Corporation, Franklin Resources Inc, George Sugihara, Goldman Sachs, Ing Groep NV, Invesco, James Glattfelder, John Driffill, Jpmorgan Chase, LA Jolla, Legal & General Group, Legg Mason, Lehman Brothers, Lloyds Tsb Group, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Mitsubishi Ufj Financial Group, Morgan Stanley, Natixis, New England Complex Systems Institute, New Scientist, Nomura Holdings, Northern Trust Corporation, Occupy Wall Street, Old Mutual Public Limited Company, Plos One, Resona Holdings, Schroders, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, Société Générale, Standard Life, State Street Corporation, Sun Life Financial, Swiss Federal Institute Of Technology, Switzerland, T Rowe Price Group, The Depository Trust Company, Tiaa, Ubs, Unicredito Italiano Spa, United States, University Of London, Vanguard Group, Vereniging Aegon, Walton Enterprises, Wellington Management CO, Yaneer Bar-yam, Zurich
10/23/2011
Scientific case for man-made global warming fears is dead (Op Ed) Many of the proponents of man-made global warming are now claiming that climate change is worse than they predicted. According to an Oct. 18, 2011, Daily Climate article, global warming activists claim that the "evidence builds that scientists underplay climate impacts," and "if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested."
But a forthcoming Climate Depot A-Z Climate Reality Check report on the failure of the science behind man-made global warming theory will shatter any such illusions that the climate is "worse than we thought." Recent scientific data and developments reveal that Mother Nature is playing a cruel joke on the promoters of man-made climate fears.
The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim, the scientific case for man-made climate fears has collapsed. The only thing "worse than we thought" is the shoddy journalism of the mainstream media, which parrots global warming activists' baseless talking points. (Washington Examiner)
Occupy-apalooza Strikes a Chord Thursday night I spoke to a young woman in Brooklyn who was having dinner and planning the next day. Between a morning boot camp workout at the local Y.M.C.A. and an evening meeting with friends for drinks, she was planning her first trek to Zuccotti Park to take part in the Occupy Wall Street protests.
“Why?” I asked. “What specifically are you protesting?” I was curious. I hoped that she’d respond with some variation of the umbrella arguments about income inequality, the evils of corporate greed and corruption or removing corporate money from politics.
She didn’t. “I don’t know. It’s just cool,” she said. She went on to tell me about how she felt that this was a movement of people with whom she felt some kinship, banding together and making history, and that she wanted to be a part of that in the same way that people from previous generations were part of the civil rights, women’s liberation and antiwar movements. (New York Times)
50 percent of Americans favor legal marijuana, poll finds Slowly but surely Americans seem to be making peace with the pot pipe.
According to a new poll released by Gallup on Monday, 50 percent of Americans say marijuana use should be legal
up from 46 percent last year. This year, 46 percent said it should be illegal.
Those numbers mean that, for the first time in the poll's 42-year-history, Americans who say that marijuana should be legal outnumber those who say it should be illegal.
Societal acceptance of marijuana has come a long way since 1969, when Gallup first posed the question "Should marijuana use be legal?" Back then, only 12 percent of Americans favored legalization of the drug. From the '70s through the mid-'90s, support remained in the 20s, but it has been climbing steadily since 2002. (Sacramento Bee)
Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right (Matt Taibbi) I was surprised, amused and annoyed all at once when I found out yesterday that some moron-provocateur linked to notorious right-wing cybergoon Andrew Breitbart had infiltrated
a series of private e-mail lists – including one that I have been participating in – and was using them to run an exposé on the supposed behind-the-scenes marionetting of the OWS movement by the liberal media.
According to various web reports, what happened was that a private "cyber-security researcher" named Thomas Ryan somehow accessed a series of email threads between various individuals and dumped them all on BigGovernment.com, Breitbart's site. Gawker is also reporting that Ryan forwarded some of these emails to the FBI and the NYPD.
I have no idea whether those email exchanges are the same as the ones I was involved with. But what is clear is that some private email exchanges between myself and a number of other people – mostly financial journalists and activists who know each other from having covered the crisis from the same angle in the last three years, people like Barry Ritholz, Dylan Ratigan, former regulator William Black, Glenn Greenwald and myself – ended up being made public. (Rolling Stone)
In Protest, the Power of Place THE ever expanding Occupy Wall Street movement, with encampments now not only in Lower Manhattan but also in Washington, London and other cities, proves among other things that no matter how instrumental new media have become in spreading protest these days, nothing replaces people taking to the streets.
Another reminder came late last week when the landlord of Zuccotti Park, where the demonstrators in New York City have settled, at the last minute withdrew a request for police assistance in cleaning up the park. This, at least temporarily, averted a confrontation in front of the global media over what protesters regarded as just a pretext to evict them.
We tend to underestimate the political power of physical places. Then Tahrir Square comes along. Now it’s Zuccotti Park, until four weeks ago an utterly obscure city-block-size downtown plaza with a few trees and concrete benches, around the corner from ground zero and two blocks north of Wall Street on Broadway. A few hundred people with ponchos and sleeping bags have put it on the map.
Kent State, Tiananmen Square, the Berlin Wall: we clearly use locales, edifices, architecture to house our memories and political energy. Politics troubles our consciences. But places haunt our imaginations. (New York Times)
Officials concede gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iran plot Iran's supreme leader and the shadowy Quds Force covert operations unit were likely aware of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, but hard evidence of that is scant, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The United States does not have solid information about "exactly how high it goes," one official said.
The Obama administration has publicly and directly blamed Iran's government for seeking to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, and has warned Tehran it will face consequences. The accusation has heightened tensions in the volatile, oil-rich Gulf.
Tehran has called the accusation a fabrication designed to sow discord in the region.
The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their confidence that at least some Iranian leaders were aware of the alleged plot was based largely on analyses and their understanding of how the Quds Force operates. (Reuters)
How politicians can kick the Wall Street habit So, protesters are occupying Wall Street and downtown banking districts in scores of other cities. Many Democratic politicos have endorsed the movement’s spirit and goals.
Now what?
The pols are in no position to enact any further left-populist reforms — laws that create, say, a financial transaction tax, or that make it easier for employees to form unions — so long as Republicans control the House and have veto power in the Senate. For that matter, the Democrats couldn’t even get those bills enacted when they controlled both houses of Congress. So what, besides affirming their solidarity with the demonstrators, can they do? (Washington Post)
The federal government is cracking down on medical marijuana California's four U.S. Attorneys, including Sacramento's US Attorney Benjamin Wagner, held a press conference Friday to announce the federal government's intention to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries. The federal government has sent out letters to dispensaries and their landlords in San Francisco, San Diego, and Marin County. The letters state that the dispensaries are in violation of federal law, which supersedes state law, and that landlords should evict their dispensary tenants and dispensaries should close up shop within 45 days otherwise both the dispensary owners and the landlords will be arrested and prosecuted.
The four U.S. Attorneys say they aren't aiming to close every dispensary in the state; just those that are "clearly profiteering" from the medical marijuana industry. But the letters come after the news that the IRS is trying to make Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the largest medical marijuana provider, pay $2.4 million in tax penalties for trafficking in illegal drugs. The federal government is sending a message loud and clear "we are no longer going to respect state medical marijuana laws". After Obama was elected he promised to respect state laws legalizing medical marijuana. He directed U.S. prosecutors to leave the sick with medical cards alone. Obama has broken that promise. By attacking the medical marijuana dispensaries the federal government is cutting off the sick from their medicine, and thus in effect attacking the sick with medical cards and ignoring state laws.
And while the Obama administration begins the assault on medical marijuana; there is a scandal growing that has gotten little attention. In December of 2010 a border patrol agent, Brian Terry, was found killed by drug cartels in Mexico. Then in March 2011 an agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), a federal agency, named John Dodson blew the whistle on a program called "Fast and Furious". "Fast and Furious" is a program by the ATF to sell thousands of guns to traffickers and drug cartels in Mexico; allegedly so the federal government can build a legal case. Two guns found at the scene of Brian Terry's death were linked to the "Fast and Furious" program. Since March the Obama administration has been distancing itself from the program. (Examiner)
Wartime Contracting Set To Spike Despite Rampant Fraud And Abuse Despite recent warnings about unchecked fraud and abuse associated with wartime contracting, the number of private contractors and the costs associated with them are set to dramatically increase in the coming transition from the military to the State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, estimated that the State Department is set to increase its manpower in Iraq and Afghanistan from 8,000 to 17,000 — the great majority of whom will be contractors for security, medical, maintenance, aviation, and other functions.
The surge of wartime contractors comes after the Commission on Wartime Contracting issued its final report in late August that estimated that some $31 billion to $60 billion has been lost to contract waste and fraud.
“The waste and fraud associated with these expenditures is mind numbing,” Issa said Tuesday during a hearing to examine the Commission’s findings. “The State Department is building a virtual private army of security contractors in Iraq.” (Talking Points Memo)
ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010 New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.
On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."
Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious. (CBS)
The ReFund California Pledge The growing Occupy Wall Street movement has shown that there is another alternative. Corporate profits and taxes on the super-rich, including those who sit on our schools and universities’ boards, could pay for refunding public education. This is why organizations representing millions of students and educators around the state have joined together in calling for a week of action from November 9th through 16th to ReFund Public Education, and are calling upon the UC Regents, the CSU Trustees and other political and corporate leaders to sign the Refund California Pledge. (ReFund California Coalition)
Millions of Bees Mysteriously Die in Florida Florida officials are abuzz as to how millions of honey bees were killed in Brevard County.
Several beekeepers in the county have reported lost colonies this week. Charles Smith of Smith Family Honey Company told Stuart News Thursday he lost 400 beehives. He says the bees appeared to have been poisoned.
“I’ll never get completely compensated for this unless someone handed me 400 beehives,” Smith told Stuart News. “I lost the bees, the ability to make honey and the ability to sell the bees.”
Smith told Florida Today that he lost $150,000 from the incident.
State officials are testing the bees to determine what type of chemicals contributed to their deaths. (CBS)
Occupy Wall Street: Let the co-opting begin As an assortment of unions voice support and celebrities pop up to cheer them on, the “Occupiers” think themselves to be gaining in a groundswell. Hardly . . . they’re about to be drowned.
Since I kvetched about the Occupy Wall Street “disorganizers” ten days ago, much has changed! Yet so much remains the same.
Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, and other left-of-left celebrities have come out to cheer them on. Earlier, the best they could manage was Roseanne Barr!
A group of labor unions will be joining in and lending their full support.
MoveOn.org, the Coalition for the Homeless, and the Working Families Party are all getting excited.
Needless to say, the protesters are pleased. Look at all the attention their cause is getting! And their message is being heard!
“Great, they have a message now?” (Secular News Daily)
A protester who was held in police cells for six hours during a crackdown on street protests during the royal wedding has received £5,000 compensation and an official apology from the Metropolitan police.
Republican, Adam Moniz, 30, was arrested by 10 officers and kept locked up in custody for the duration of the wedding while attempting to make his way to a council-approved demonstration nearly a mile away from Buckingham Palace that morning.
His detention was part of dozens of other "pre-crime" arrests that took place around the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William on 29 April. The arrests were later condemned by activists and lawyers as "Orwellian" and potentially illegal.
Moniz, who was travelling alone by train from his home in Southampton had been planning to join other republicans in Red Lion square, Holborn, at an event registered by Camden council called Not the Royal Wedding. (London Guardian)
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