Tuesday Reads

Posted: November 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Iran, Medicare, Middle East, morning reads, Social Security, The Bonus Class, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment | Tags: , , , , , | 23 Comments

Good Morning!

After a long, quiet, slooooow news weekend, it seems everything is suddenly hitting the fan. A mysterious explosion in Iran–was it nukes? Are the reports propaganda designed to start another war? Time will tell, I guess. Then there is Herman Cain’s campaign blowing up in his face.

There is lots more news than I can cover in one post.

Speaking of the dangers of nuclear power, Think Progress reports this ghastly news from Japan:

Japan’s science ministry says 8 per cent of the country’s surface area has been contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

It says more than 30,000 square kilometres of the country has been blanketed by radioactive cesium.

There’s a map of the contaminated areas at the link.

President Obama has promised to help out in the Eurozone mess.

As the European debt crisis continues to escalate, President Obama urged European Union leaders today to act quickly to resolve the eurozone crisis, saying that “the United States stands ready to do our part to help them resolve this issue.

“This is of huge importance to our own economy. If Europe is contracting or if Europe is having difficulties, then it’s much more difficult for us to create good jobs here at home because we send so many of our products and services to Europe; it is such an important trading partner for us,” the president said following an annual meeting between U.S. and EU officials. “We’ve got a stake in their success, and we will continue to work in a constructive way to try to resolve this issue in the near future.”

While Obama did not say what kind of assistance the U.S. would be willing to provide, earlier today the White House ruled out any financial contributions from U.S. taxpayers. “We do not in any way believe that additional resources are required from the United States or from American taxpayers,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

“This is a European issue, that Europe has the resources and capacity to deal with it and that they need to act decisively and conclusively to resolve this problem,” Carney said.

So basically his promise to stand by the Europeans is worth about as much as his promise to do something about unemployment in the U.S.

Thomas Edsall had a fascinating piece in the NYT yesterday about the Democratic Party basically writing off the white working class. I highly recommend reading it. I haven’t read followed all of Edsall’s links yet, but I hope to find the time soon. Here’s an excerpt:

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

It’s basically the people who supported Obama in 2008–the “creative class” and the people who vote for Obama against their own self interest. So where does that leave the unions and us older folks? Up sh*t creek, I guess. We need a third party then, because the Republicans don’t want us either. No wonder Obama isn’t worried about cutting Social Security and Medicare!

As a practical matter, the Obama campaign and, for the present, the Democratic Party, have laid to rest all consideration of reviving the coalition nurtured and cultivated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal Coalition — which included unions, city machines, blue-collar workers, farmers, blacks, people on relief, and generally non-affluent progressive intellectuals — had the advantage of economic coherence. It received support across the board from voters of all races and religions in the bottom half of the income distribution, the very coherence the current Democratic coalition lacks.

A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food. Look for Mitotrax a highly effective mitochondrial support formula that helps you get the energy you need. Visit this website ww.amazon.com for more details.

The better-off wing, in contrast, puts at the top of its political agenda a cluster of rights related to self-expression, the environment, demilitarization, and, importantly, freedom from repressive norms — governing both sexual behavior and women’s role in society — that are promoted by the conservative movement.

If you ask me, the Democrats aren’t doing much for either of those groups. We need another party!!

Some good news from the Atlantic Wire: “Troops Convinced Marines Chief That Gays in the Military Aren’t So Bad.”

Gen. James F. Amos, the head of the U.S. Marines who wasn’t too thrilled with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell being repealed in September, is thrilled today with how the lift on the ban of gays in the military has gone so far, reports the AP. Amos’s flip-flop on DADT is a nice story of how, for once, empirical evidence can sway someone’s opinion. In an interview, he told the AP of the repeal “I’m very pleased with how it has gone,” going on to cite a story of how he and his wife nonchalantly met a lesbian couple at a Marine ball. Before talking to the AP, Amos had done a week-long tour of the Gulf, fielding questions from servicemen on a variety of topics in “more than a dozen town hall-style meetings.” So how many times did gays in the military come up? Once:

On his final stop, in Bahrain on Sunday, one Marine broached the topic gently. He asked Amos whether he planned to change the Marines’ current policy of leaving it to the discretion of local commanders to determine how to handle complaints about derogatory “homosexual remarks or actions.” Amos said no.

An extremely minor procedural question. Not chest-thumping rancor Amos might have expected last December. According to the AP, he told Congress then:

Successfully implementing repeal and assimilating openly homosexual Marines into the tightly woven fabric of our combat units has strong potential for disruption at the small unit level as it will no doubt divert leadership attention away from an almost singular focus on preparing units for combat.

Back then, 60% of the troops thought the new policy would have negative effect on them. But after the fact that perception seems to have changed.

Finally, Stalin’s daughter died yesterday in Wisconsin at age 85.

At her birth, on Feb. 28, 1926, she was named Svetlana Stalina, the only daughter and last surviving child of the brutal Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin. After he died in 1953, she took her mother’s last name, Alliluyeva. In 1970, after her defection and an American marriage, she became and remained Lana Peters.

Ms. Peters died of colon cancer on Nov. 22 in Richland County, Wis., the county’s corporation counsel, Benjamin Southwick, said on Monday. She was 85.

Her death, like the last years of her life, occurred away from public view. There were hints of it online and in Richland Center, the Wisconsin town in which she lived, though a local funeral home said to be handling the burial would not confirm the death. A county official in Wisconsin thought she might have died several months ago. Phone calls seeking information from a surviving daughter, Olga Peters, who now goes by the name Chrese Evans, were rebuffed, as were efforts to speak to her in person in Portland, Ore., where she lives and works.

Ms. Peters’s initial prominence came only from being Stalin’s daughter, a distinction that fed public curiosity about her life across three continents and many decades. She said she hated her past and felt like a slave to extraordinary circumstances. Yet she drew on that past, and the infamous Stalin name, in writing two best-selling autobiographies.

I’ll stop here, but there’s lots more happening. What are you reading and blogging about today?

EuroZone Woes

Posted: November 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, financial institutions, Foreign Affairs, Global Financial Crisis | Tags: , | 8 Comments

There’s been a number of interesting things coming out of Europe this weekend that will undoubtedly impact US Financial Markets and probably the economy since they are a significant trading partner as well as investor in US businesses.  The adoption of the Euro and the expansion of the trade zone area has generally been shown to be a huge boon to the European Economy.  It’s really hard for me to imagine the collapse of the Euro since it has been so successful that a variety of countries through out the world are in the process of adopting their own versions.  There have been a lot of people against the arrangement primarily because they’re still in nationalist mode and dislike the idea of any kind of cooperation that looks like ‘collectivism’.  The astounding economic results have been difficult to rebut however.

There are two items that generally are considered problematic for some countries that join a monetary union.  The first is the loss of independent monetary policy including the ability to debase your currency as a means to stimulating your economy.  The offset to that is that if you’re a country like Greece that has had incredible issues with inflation stemming from politicized monetary policy, you pick up credibility when you outsource that function to a shared central bank.  That’s especially the case when you share your central bank with the Germans who have been inflation wary since the Weimar Republic. The Japanese central bank and the German central bank are well known for controlling inflation over just about any other economic priority.  The second problem is the potential need for cross country fiscal policy.  That has never been much of an issue in the EU until now.  That is why there is talk of an IMF rescue of countries like Greece.  Also, there’s some talk of hurrying fiscal integration or giving some entity the ability to float “eurobonds” specifically for countries that are in trouble right now like Italy.  The problem right now is that many of the weaker EU countries were allowed to borrow substantially and with a credit crisis and banking troubles that led to recession, the bonds from those countries (sovereign debt) have no lost their value.

There are some that think the Eurozone will fall apart.  I find that hard to accept given the substantial boost that the zone has been to many economies in the form of trade and direct financial investment.  This benefit has gone to all countries and is called the “Rose Effect”. I’ve spent the last three years of my life studying all of this in great detail.  I am as vested in any one in the outcome. Here’s a few items that have been going on as we watch Eurozone brinkmanship play out. Reuters reports that Germany and France are forming a “Stability Pact” and hoping to get the European Central Bank leaders will act more like Bernanke’s Fed.

Echoing a Reuters report on Friday from Brussels, the Sunday newspaper said the French and German leaders were prepared to back a deal with other euro countries that might induce the ECB to intervene more forcefully to calm the euro debt crisis.

The newspaper report quoted German government sources as saying that the crisis fighting plan could possibly be announced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the coming week.

In an advance release before publication, Welt am Sonntag said that because it would take too long to change existing European Union treaties, euro zone countries should just agree among themselves on a new Stability Pact to enforce budget discipline – possibly implemented at the start of 2012.

It could be similar to the Schengen Agreement which applies to EU countries that choose to take part and enables their citizens to enjoy uninhibited cross border travel. Among the countries in the Stability Pact, there would be a treaty spelling out strict deficit rules and control rights for national budgets.

Reports from AFP show that the IMF may be planning a 600 billion Euro rescue plan for Italy. Italy is the world’s 8th largest economy.  It’s the 4th largest in Europe.  Needless to say, this is highly irregular.

The IMF could bail out Italy with up to 600 billion euros ($794 billion), an Italian newspaper reported on Sunday, as Prime Minister Mario Monti came under pressure to speed up anti-crisis measures.

The money would give Monti a window of 12 to 18 months to implement urgent budget cuts and growth-boosting reforms “by removing the necessity of having to refinance the debt,” La Stampa reported, citing IMF officials in Washington.

The IMF would guarantee rates of 4.0 percent or 5.0 percent on the loan — far better than the borrowing costs on commercial debt markets, where the rate on two-year and five-year Italian government bonds has risen above 7.0 percent.

The size of the loan would make it difficult for the IMF to use its current resources so different options are being explored, including possible joint action with the European Central Bank in which the IMF would be guarantor.

“This scenario is because resistance from Berlin to a greater role for the ECB in helping states in difficulty — starting with Italy — could be overcome if the funds are given out under strict IMF surveillance,” the report said.

The European Union and the ECB have sent auditors to check Italy’s public accounts this month and the IMF is set to send experts soon under a special surveillance mechanism agreed at the G20 summit in France earlier this month.

The WSJ reports that a number of countries are pressuring ECB for concessions.  The worry is that these same economies that have always had weaker economies and lax fiscal constraint will continue on that path.  (These countries include Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy and Ireland which have been sarcastically  given the acronym PIIGS.)

While the ECB has so far said that it won’t beef up its limited bond buying, a growing number of governments are lobbying it to change its stance. A green light from Berlin for a bigger ECB role is seen by many euro-zone policy makers as a political necessity if the ECB is to act. Although the bank is politically independent, it has also paid close attention to the debate in Germany, where the government has so far rejected a bigger role for the central bank.

A new, binding fiscal regime would not be enough to justify the creation of collective euro-zone bonds, German officials say. But it might be enough to justify ECB action to stabilize bond markets that policy makers view as increasingly dysfunctional, some in Berlin say.

Other German officials remain skeptical about a greater ECB role—including Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, who sits on the ECB’s governing council. Germany’s central bankers have been outvoted by the ECB majority before, however, including this August, when Mr. Weidmann opposed the decision to make limited purchases of Italian and Spanish bonds.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week that she wants EU treaty changes to make the bloc’s fiscal rules legally enforceable by European authorities, in the same way that EU antitrust rules are.

European Council President is going to meet with Treasury Secretary Geithner on Monday at the US Treasury. Both Germany and Italy have had bond auction failures within the last week. This is causing the situation to look more dire. FT’s Wolfgang Munchau says the Eurozone has about 10 days before it collapses. His analysis borders on the sanguine.

Last week, the crisis reached a new qualitative stage. With the spectacular flop of the German bond auction and the alarming rise in short-term rates in Spain and Italy, the government bond market across the eurozone has ceased to function.

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The banking sector, too, is broken. Important parts of the eurozone economy are cut off from credit. The eurozone is now subject to a run by global investors, and a quiet bank run among its citizens.

This massive erosion of trust has also destroyed the main plank of the rescue strategy. The European Financial Stability Facility derives its firepower from the guarantees of its shareholders. As the crisis has spread to France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria, the EFSF itself is affected by the contagious spread of the disease. Unless something very drastic happens, the eurozone could break up very soon.

Technically, one can solve the problem even now, but the options are becoming more limited. The eurozone needs to take three decisions very shortly, with very little potential for the usual fudges.

All eyes and much money is on the European Central Bank right now. Watch the equity markets. They will probably represent the collective guess on the end of the world as we know it.

Well, isn’t this Awkward?

Posted: November 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Pakistan | Tags: , | 7 Comments

It seems NATO Air Strikes have killed about 28 Pakistani forces in Pakistan.  Isn’t that considered an act of war in most books? Either our air support technology isn’t what it is supposed to be or more than a few folks need better training. The press is saying that tensions are high between Pakistan and NATO right now.  I’d say that’s probably an understatement.

Pakistani officials said Saturday that NATO aircraft had killed at least 25 soldiers in strikes against two military posts at the northwestern border with Afghanistan, and the country’s supreme army commander called them unprovoked acts of aggression, in a new flash point between the United States and Pakistan.

The Pakistani government responded by ordering the C.I.A. to vacate the drone operations it runs from Shamsi Air Base, in northern Pakistan, within 15 days and by closing down the two main NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, including the one at Torkham. NATO forces receive roughly 40 percent of their supplies through that crossing, which runs through the Khyber Pass, and Pakistani officials gave no estimate for how long the routes might be closed.

In Washington, American officials were scrambling to assess what had happened and weigh the implications on a relationship that took a sharp turn for the worse after a United States military helicopter raid killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad in May, and that has deteriorated since then.

“It seems quite extraordinary that we’d just nail these posts the way they say we did,” said one senior American official who was in close touch with American and NATO officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan early Saturday. “Whether they were going after people or whether there was some firing from the Afghan side of the border, then the Pakistan side, we just don’t know. It’s real murky right now. Clearly, something went very wrong.”

The American ambassador in Islamabad, Cameron Munter, called an emergency meeting and expressed regret over the Pakistani casualties. And Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, offered condolences to families of the dead and promised an investigation. “This incident has my highest personal attention and my commitment to thoroughly investigate it to determine the facts,” he said in a statement.

According to The UK Guardian, NATO is claiming self-defense.

An attack by Nato aircraft on Pakistani troops that allegedly killed as many as 28 soldiers and looks set to further poison relations between the US and Pakistan was an act of self-defence, a senior western official has claimed.

According to the Kabul-based official, a joint US-Afghan force operating in the mountainous Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack in the early hours of Saturday morning, forcing them to return fire.

The high death toll from an incident between two supposed allies suggests Nato helicopters and jets strafed Pakistani positions with heavy weapons.

The deadliest friendly fire incident since the start of the decade-long war also prompted Pakistan to ban Nato supply trucks from crossing into Afghanistan and to issue an order demanding the US quit the remote Shamsi airbase, from which the US has operated some unmanned drone aircraft.

A spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was “highly likely” that aircraft which had been called into the area to provide “close air support” to troops on the ground was responsible for causing casualties among the Pakistani soldiers.

For their part, a statement by the Pakistani military claimed that it was they who were attacked first, forcing them to respond to Nato’s “aggression with all available weapons”.

According to Pakistani officials the 40 or so soldiers stationed at the outposts were asleep at the time of the attack. Government officials said the two border posts that were attacked had recently been established to try to stop insurgents who use bases in Afghanistan to attack Pakistan from crossing the border and launching attacks.

We’ve gotten a reputation for collateral damage in the area. This certainly isn’t going to help. It will be interesting to see how this plays on the Sunday Talk shows.

Pakistan has cut of supplies as retaliation so far.

Pakistan is a vital land route for nearly half of NATO supplies shipped overland to its troops in Afghanistan, a NATO spokesman said. Land shipments account for about two thirds of the alliance’s cargo shipments into Afghanistan.

Hours after the raid, NATO supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were stopped at Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar, officials said.

The border crossing at Chaman in southwestern Baluchistan province was also closed, Frontier Corps officials said.

A meeting of the cabinet’s defense committee convened by Gilani “decided to close with immediate effect NATO/ISAF logistics supply lines,” according to a statement issued by Gilani’s office.

The committee decided to ask the United States to vacate, within 15 days, the Shamsi Air Base, a remote installation in Baluchistan used by U.S. forces for drone strikes which has long been at the center of a dispute between Islamabad and Washington.

The last thing we need is major screw ups like this.  Bet Hillary’s on that 3 am phone call again.

Black Friday Reads

Posted: November 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Egypt, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, religious extremists, Syria, Yemen | Tags: , , , , | 14 Comments

Welcome to the traditional start of the National Crass Consumerism Season!

It’s that time of year when every trip to a store is an overwhelming assault on all of your senses in an attempt to get you to buy stuff!  It was hard to avoid all the commercials yesterday, wasn’t it?  Robert Scheer has a great piece up on Truth Dig that puts this time of year in perspective.

On this Thanksgiving we have been cheated of the bounty of that harvest as the stakes have been pulled up on 50 million Americans who have lost or soon will lose their homes. The housing crisis haunts a majority of Americans, even those who own their homes outright but have lost their jobs and must now sell in a downward-swirling housing market.

Good public education on every level, from preschool through college, is now a matter of inherited privilege reserved for those who can pick and choose affluent neighborhood settings for their children’s schools. And the prospect of affording one of those settings is dim for most parents in a country where securing a good job is beyond the reach of so many highly motivated people.

How many folks from my generation are honestly sanguine about the economic future of their children and grandchildren? What I have heard constantly, and just this week from a former top investment banker addressing a college class I teach, is that our offspring probably will face a decade of lost opportunity. I thought back to my college days and how shocked any of us, even those from the most impoverished of circumstances, would have been to hear such a prediction.

As The New York Times editorialized this Thanksgiving, “One in three Americans—100 million people—is either poor or perilously close to it.”

There’s a movement afoot called Occupy Black Friday.

Occupy Black Friday, which is among the groups calling for people to spend locally rather than at chain stores, could not be reached for comment.

The anti-consumption spirit of the various scheduled Occupy events has a precedent in Buy Nothing Day, the yearly undertaking — always scheduled to fall on Black Friday — in which participants refrain from spending any money.

Buy Nothing Day was created some 20 years ago by advocates associated with the Vancouver magazine Adbusters, which also issued the original call for the movement that would become Occupy Wall Street. While it remains a red-letter date on the calendars of many social activists, its effects on retail sales have traditionally been less than earthshattering.

“They’re fragmentary, they’re ephemeral,” said Richard Hastings, a macro and consumer strategist at Global Hunter Securities, of Buy Nothing Day and similar campaigns that have attempted to build commercial headwinds on Black Friday. “To really be quite poetic about it, they’re evanescent.”

Hastings said that “the Occupy movement in the U.S. can only have some impact if it starts to do boycotts” — but added that he does not expect the anti-Black Friday forces to change many minds this year.

Here’s a great suggestion for celebrating the day after Thanksgiving from the Daily Show!  Prior to Abraham Lincoln making Thanksgiving a National Holiday, New York used to recognize Evacuation Day.  Massachusetts celebrates the day on March 17th which has been co-opted by Saint Patrick’s Day.  The days were set aside in the colony to celebrate the day when the British evacuated that colony after the Revolution. They celebrate the end of the rule of an occupying army.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

There’s another great thing that happened on November 24, 1859.  That’s the publication date of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin.  Darwin’s epic release of his work changed our view of biology, botany, and creation myths. Scientists now accept this theory as a basis to the development of every living species even though many radical religionists still try to replace it with creation myths in classrooms in many states. Louisiana dingbat Governor Bobby Banana Republic Jindal gave religious myth equal footing with science this year in a case that’s law that’s bound to head to the supreme court.  He signed a “Louisiana Science Education Act” that sneaks religion into science classes. Scopes Monkey Trial any one?

Darwin had formulated his theory of natural selection by 1844, but he was wary to reveal his thesis to the public because it so obviously contradicted the biblical account of creation. In 1858, with Darwin still remaining silent about his findings, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace independently published a paper that essentially summarized his theory. Darwin and Wallace gave a joint lecture on evolution before the Linnean Society of London in July 1858, and Darwin prepared On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection for publication.

Published on November 24, 1859, Origin of Species sold out immediately. Most scientists quickly embraced the theory that solved so many puzzles of biological science, but orthodox Christians condemned the work as heresy. Controversy over Darwin’s ideas deepened with the publication of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), in which he presented evidence of man’s evolution from apes.

By the time of Darwin’s death in 1882, his theory of evolution was generally accepted. In honor of his scientific work, he was buried in Westminster Abbey beside kings, queens, and other illustrious figures from British history. Subsequent developments in genetics and molecular biology led to modifications in accepted evolutionary theory, but Darwin’s ideas remain central to the field.

There is an astounding amount of evidence from the fields of genetics and molecular biology to now support Darwin’s basic ideas.  PBS maintains an Evolution Library that’s full of links to some of the most astounding new evidence that has made the theory even more developed and iron clad.  Here’s a great paper from the National Academy of Science on Science and Creationism.  This elucidates the difference between Darwin’s work and the modern theory of Evolution.

Contrary to popular opinion, neither the term nor the idea of biological evolution began with Charles Darwin and his foremost work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). Many scholars from the ancient Greek philosophers on had inferred that similar species were descended from a common ancestor. The word “evolution” first appeared in the English language in 1647 in a nonbiological connection, and it became widely used in English for all sorts of progressions from simpler beginnings. The term Darwin most often used to refer to biological evolution was “descent with modification,” which remains a good brief definition of the process today.

Darwin proposed that evolution could be explained by the differential survival of organisms following their naturally occurring variation—a process he termed “natural selection.” According to this view, the offspring of organisms differ from one another and from their parents in ways that are heritable—that is, they can pass on the differences genetically to their own offspring. Furthermore, organisms in nature typically produce more offspring than can survive and reproduce given the constraints of food, space, and other environmental resources.

Darwin proposed that evolution could be explained by the differential survival of organisms following their naturally occurring variation—a process he termed “natural selection.” According to this view, the offspring of organisms differ from one another and from their parents in ways that are heritable—that is, they can pass on the differences genetically to their own offspring. Furthermore, organisms in nature typically produce more offspring than can survive and reproduce given the constraints of food, space, and other environmental resources. If a particular off-spring has traits that give it an advantage in a particular environment, that organism will be more likely to survive and pass on those traits. As differences accumulate over generations, populations of organisms diverge from their ancestors.

Darwin’s original hypothesis has undergone extensive modification and expansion, but the central concepts stand firm. Studies in genetics and molecular biology—fields unknown in Darwin’s time—have explained the occurrence of the hereditary variations that are essential to natural selection. Genetic variations result from changes, or mutations, in the nucleotide sequence of DNA, the molecule that genes are made from. Such changes in DNA now can be detected and described with great precision.

Today in 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act and named Tom Ridge it’s first Secretary.  The first two secretaries–Ridge and Michael Chertoff–have written books.  There’s an overview of each at the link above. Here’s some info on Ridge and the creation of the DHS.

Although Ridge was an early proponent of the creation of DHS, the White House initially was not supportive. As Ridge notes, President Bush’s focus was on strengthening the power of the executive branch that he felt over the years “had been improperly ceded to Congress” (p. 126). Hence, the White House wanted a strong cabinet around it. The real impetus for the creation of DHS came from Congress, which was increasingly frustrated by the lack of oversight of the billions of dollars over which Ridge had influence (but no real power). After the White House refused to allow Ridge to testify before Congress about his homeland security priorities, and after the legacy INS sent two visas to dead 9/11 hijackers to attend flight training school in Florida, DHS became a political inevitability. As Ridge recounts, Congress wanted him “unmuzzle[d]” and the White House realized “[i]t would be better for the administration to be the architect of the new department rather than allowing Congress to take the lead” (pp. 127, 129).
Although the White House eventually supported the creation of DHS – and asked him to lead it – Ridge describes how his vision of homeland security and that of the administration differed. As Ridge observes, “the silly prolonged debate with the White House over the design of the new department’s seal was as absurd as it was revealing” (p. 71). The Bush administration wanted an eagle emblem to hold arrows in both talons as if to say the key to victory over terrorism was through aggression, forward-leaning military, and counterterrorism action. Ridge countered: “We thought differently. There was far more to defeating the enemy than military action” (p. 71). To his credit, Ridge discusses in detail what else his vision of homeland security entailed, which can be summed up as creating an environment of trust and credibility with the public. As he explains: “Only disclosure and transparency would generate the confidence and trust needed by our government as it waged its war domestically” (p. 72).

There’s a few international stories that you probably should follow. First, Egypt is experiencing a huge amount of violence right before elections are to be held.
 There have been massive protests in Tahir square, arrests, and assaults on journalists by the police.

A capital city convulsed with violence just days before the first democratic elections in decades might not seem ideal. But some voters think the demonstrations will keep the transition from stalling.

Abdul Rahman Mansour, a graphic designer in the capital, says the people on Tahrir Square are making sure their rights are respected and the country moves ahead.

American University in Cairo professor Said Sadek agrees, saying the protests serve as a wake-up call for the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. “After the end of Mubarak rule SCAF has no legitimacy except obeying and meeting the demands of the revolution. This is revolutionary legitimacy. So they have to follow what is happening,” he said.

International condemnation of Syria’s dictator is turning into action. The Arab League has asked for harsher sanctions and a possible fly over zone with help from the UN if al-Assad does not stop his violence against peaceful protestors.

In a special meeting in Cairo, the Arab League called on Syria to agree by Friday to admit a mission of 500 civilian and military observers to monitor the human rights situation and oversee efforts to carry out a peace plan that Syria agreed to on Nov. 2.

The Arab League suspended Syria this month after it failed to comply with the plan, under which it had pledged to withdraw all military units from the streets, stop killing protesters and allow the monitors to enter the country.

The league said that if Syria refused to admit the monitors, it would meet again on Saturday to discuss sanctions that could include the suspension of all trade except for essential humanitarian goods, a ban on flights to Syria, a travel ban on Syrian officials, and the freezing of all transactions with the central bank and of all Arab economic projects under way in Syria.

If enacted, the new penalties would deal a stinging blow to an economy already suffering under sanctions from the European Union and the United States. Syria’s two most vital sectors, oil and tourism, which account for more than a third of the government’s revenues, have all but come to a halt.

While there was no official response from the leadership in Damascus, Syrian state television said that the government would reject the deal as an infringement on its sovereignty.


In other news from the Arab spring uprisings, Yeman’s president has resigned. However, protestors have problems with the succession.

A U.S.-backed deal for Yemen’s authoritarian president to step down fell far short of the demands of protesters who fought regime supporters on the streets of Sanaa Thursday in clashes that left five dead.

The agreement ending President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule provides for only the shallowest of changes at the top of the regime, something the U.S. administration likely favored to preserve a fragile alliance against one of the world’s most active al-Qaida branches based in Yemen.

The plan drawn up by Yemen’s oil-rich Gulf neighbors does not directly change the system Saleh put in place over three decades to serve his interests.

“It gives an opportunity for regime survival,” said Yemen expert Ibrahim Sharqieh at the Brookings Doha Center. “The only one we’ve seen changing here is the president, but the state institutions and everything else remain in place. Nothing else has changed.”

Saleh signed the agreement Wednesday in the Saudi capital Riyadh, transferring power to his vice president within 30 days. If it holds, he will be the fourth dictator pushed from power this year by the Arab Spring uprisings.

But the deal leaves much more of the old regime intact than the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya — something that will almost certainly translate into continued unrest. Protesters who have been in the millions for nearly 10 months were out again Thursday, rejecting a provision that gives Saleh immunity from prosecution.

Massive unrest around the world continues.  It is sad to see so much violence, but the spread of democracy into regions that have been ruled by harsh dictators and the fight to regain democracy in regions where corporatocracy has ruled is exciting in many ways.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Thursday Reads

Posted: November 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, China, Foreign Affairs, Global Financial Crisis, morning reads, Psychopaths in charge, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning!

You know the Occupy Movement is having an effect when the propaganda patrol starts trying to pin the “TERRORIST” label on them. From Politico:

If confirmed, this will likely be a much, much bigger image problem than the reports of crime in Occupy encampments:

Authorities suspect [Oscar Ramiro] Ortega-Hernandez] had been in the area for weeks, coming back and forth to the Washington Mall. Before the shooting, he was detained by local police at an abandoned house. U.S. Park Police say Ortega-Hernandez may have spent time with Occupy D.C. protesters.

Ooops! In an update, Politico has to take it back–it turns out authorities couldn’t find a connection. But you just know they’re going to keep trying. And ABC News reported it. Lots of people will take that as gospel and never hear that it wasn’t true.

However a GOP campus leader at the University of Texas Austin responded on Twitter to the news of shots fired at the White House.

Hours after Pennsylvania State Police arrested a 21-year-old Idaho man for allegedly firing a semi-automatic rifle at the White House, the top student official for the College Republicans at the University of Texas tweeted that the idea of assassinating President Obama was “tempting.”

At 2:29 p.m. ET, UT’s Lauren E. Pierce wrote: “Y’all as tempting as it may be, don’t shoot Obama. We need him to go down in history as the WORST president we’ve EVER had! #2012.”

Pierce, the president of the College Republicans at UT Austin, told ABC News the comment was a “joke” and that the “whole [shooting incident] was stupid.” Giggling, she said that an attempted assassination would “only make the situation worse.”

Tee hee hee… this is the future of the GOP?

Maxine Waters is still number one voice of reason in Washington DC. When the propaganda merchants tried to get her to say something disparaging about OWS, here’s how she handled it.

When asked to comment Wednesday about the deaths and crimes that have occurred around Occupy protests being held across the country, Rep. Maxine Waters said “that’s life and it happens.”

“That’s a distraction from the goals of the protesters,” Waters, who says she supports the Occupy movement, told CNSNews.com after an event at the Capitol sponsored by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

I love that woman!

“Let me just say this: Anytime you have a gathering, homeless people are going to show up,” said Waters. “They will find some comfort in having some other people out on the streets with them. They’re looking for food. Often times, the criminal element will invade. That’s life and it happens, whether it’s with protesters or other efforts that go on in this country.

“So I’m not deterred in my support for them because of these negative kinds of things,” said Waters. “I just want them to work at doing the best job that they can do to bring attention to this economic crisis and the unfairness of the system at this time.”

Way to go, Maxine!

In contrast, Republican ratf^^ker Karl Rove isn’t quite so mature. He really lost his cool on Tuesday night when he was targeted by Occupy protesters and ended up acting pretty childish.

Former Bush political adviser Karl Rove seemed a bit flustered Tuesday night after his speech to Johns Hopkins University was interrupted by a group of about 15 protesters connected to “Occupy Baltimore,” who got under his skin enough to get him cursing.

As he spoke about public debt and attempted to pin America’s economic pain on the Obama administration, a woman shouted out, “Mic check?”

A chorus of voices replied, “Mic check!”

“Karl Rove! Is the architect!” they shouted. “The architect of Occupy Iraq! The architect of Occupy Afghanistan!”

“Here’s the deal,” he replied. “If you believe in free speech then you had a chance to show it.”

“If you believe in right of the First Amendment to free speech then you demonstrate it by shutting up and waiting until the Q & A session right after,” Rove trailed off as supporters applauded.

“You can go ahead and stand in line and have the courage to ask any damn question you want, or you can continue to show that you are a buffoon…” he said, as the group of protesters descended into random shouting. One woman called him a “murderer, ” while others chanted, “We are the 99 percent!”

“No you’re not!” Rove replied, chanting it back at them. “No you’re not! No you’re not! No you’re not!”

Gee, that was fun to watch.

Not that any of the European elites will listen, but Brad Plummer at Wonkbook talked to a number of experts and came to the conclusion that the whole story about it not being legal for the ECB to rescue the European financial system is a bunch of hooey.

European officials keep insisting that the ECB isn’t legally allowed to play savior. On Tuesday, the head of Germany’s Bundesbank called it a violation of European law. The Wall Street Journal argued Wednesday that the European Union’s founding treaty would need to be revamped before the ECB could act as a lender of last resort to countries like Italy. So is this true? Could Europe really melt down because of a few legal niceties?

Not really, say experts. It’s true that the Treaty of Lisbon expressly forbids the European Central Bank from buying up debt instruments directly from countries like Italy and Spain. But, says Richard Portes of the London Business School, there’s nothing to prevent the central bank from buying up Italian and Spanish bonds on the secondary market from other investors.

“If that’s illegal, then officials should already be in jail,” says Portes. “Because they’ve been doing it sporadically since May of 2010.” The problem is that the bank’s current erratic purchases only seem to be creating more uncertainty in the market. “Right now,” says Portes, “nobody’s buying in that market except the ECB.”

Instead, what many experts want the European Central Bank to do is to pledge, loudly and clearly, that it will buy up bonds on the secondary market until, say, Italy’s borrowing costs come down to manageable levels. In theory, says Portes, the central bank wouldn’t even have to make many purchases after that, because expectations would shift and become self-fulfilling. In the near term, investors would stop worrying about whether they’d be repaid for loaning money to countries like Italy, and Italy’s borrowing costs would drop — giving it room to figure out its debt woes. (Granted, that latter step is a daunting task.)

But as Dakinikat wrote a couple of days ago, we’ll probably just have to wait and see what happens when the psychopaths in charge do exactly the opposite of what they should do.

The New York Times has a story this morning about Obama’s commitment of troops to Australia: U.S. Expands Military Ties to Australia, Irritating China.

CANBERRA, Australia — President Obama announced Wednesday that the United States planned to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia to shore up alliances in Asia, but the move prompted a sharp response from Beijing, which accused Mr. Obama of escalating military tensions in the region.

The agreement with Australia amounts to the first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War. It comes despite budget cuts facing the Pentagon and an increasingly worried reaction from Chinese leaders, who have argued that the United States is seeking to encircle China militarily and economically.

“It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,” Liu Weimin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in response to the announcement by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia.

Attention Nobel committee: Isn’t it about time to rescind that Peace Prize?

OK, that’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?

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