Friday Reads

Posted: August 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, Foreign Affairs, income inequality, morning reads, Somalia, Syria | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Good Morning!

At least there’s some good news this morning.  Senator Harry Reid has found a deal to end FAA furloughs so that lots of people can return to work and those monies go to the government and not into the pockets of the airline industry.

Under a deal Reid made with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Senate will pass the House bill that includes cuts to rural flight service to airports in Nevada, West Virginia and Montana. But Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will use his authority to waive the airports from the cuts, ending a 13-day impasse that left 4,000 FAA employees and about 70,000 construction employees out of work.

Reid said the deal did not solve the issues that led to the partial shutdown of the FAA, but he said those can be dealt with another day.

“I am pleased to announce that we have been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the House and the Senate to put 74,000 transportation and construction workers back to work,” Reid said in a statement released by his office. “This agreement does not resolve the important differences that still remain. But I believe we should keep Americans working while Congress settles its differences, and this agreement will do exactly that.”

NASA’s funding may be on the chopping block, but the agency continues to do first class science.  It has announced that it has found evidence of liquid water on Mars.

Pictures taken by the powerful HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) showed fingers of dark material running down rocky slopes facing the equator during spring and summer months. Scientists believe that this represents a significant sign that briny water is flowing on the surface of the red plant.

The dark stripes, approximately 0.5 yards wide and hundreds of yards long, appear during the warm months and then disappear again in cold months. The salty surface of Mars means that liquid water would be salty as well, making it less likely to freeze at the observed tempratures.

“These dark lineations are different from other types of features on Martian slopes,” MRO project scientist Richard Zurek said in a press advisory. “Repeated observations show they extend even farther downhill with time during the warm season.”

In my Monday Reads I mentioned the horrible famine taking place in Somalia.  SOS Hillary Clinton has made an appeal to al-Shabaab to focus on feeding hungry people and letting world aid groups do their jobs.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday appealed to al-Shabaab militants in Somalia to give unfettered access to relief workers trying to aid thousands of people threatened by famine.  Clinton said a high-level U.S. team will lead a fact-finding mission to neighboring Kenya to review relief efforts.

The United States lists al-Shabaab, which has ties to al-Qaida, as a terrorist organization and has actively helped Somalia’s U.N.-supported transitional government try to resist a takeover by the Islamic militants.

But in an unusual direct appeal to al-Shabaab, Clinton urged the group to drop what she said was its deliberate effort to block food deliveries in south-central Somalia and in parts of the capital, Mogadishu, under its direct or indirect control.

“It is particularly tragic that during the holy month of Ramadan, al-Shabaab are preventing assistance to the most vulnerable populations in Somalia – namely children, including infants, and girls and women who are attempting to bring themselves and those children to safety and  the potential of being fed before more deaths occur,” said Clinton. “I call on al-Shabaab to allow assistance to be delivered in an absolutely unfettered way throughout the area that they currently control.”

Al-Shabaab, which dominates the southern part of Somalia, maintains there is no famine and has barred the entry of aid groups other than the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Creepy old polygamist leader–Warren Jeffs– has been convicted of child sex abuse despite his self representation in criminal court.  He mostly hid under the mantle of The Book of Mormon and his right to practice his religion as he saw fit.

Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, has been convicted on child sexual assault charges.

His case stems from his relationship with two young followers he took as brides in what the FLDS church calls “spiritual marriages.”

Jeffs has acted as his own attorney during the trial after firing his attorneys on July 28.

In 2008, authorities raided the YFZ ranch near Eldorado, and seized about 400 children.

Jeffs faces up to life in prison.

A forensic analyst testified that Jeffs was an almost certain DNA match to the child of a 15-year-old mother.

Jeffs also was accused of assaulting a 12-year-old girl.

At least 2000 Syrians that oppose the dictator there have been killed.  The latest slaughter–which is taking place during the Islamic holiday of Ramadan–includes tanks in Hama.  SOS Hillary Clinton has said the current government of Syria has lost all legitimacy.

“The sound of tank shelling and their heavy machineguns echoed in Hama all day. We fear many more martyrs. Most people in my neighborhood have fled,” said one resident in Sabounia district, a small business owner who did not want to be named.

“The shabbiha (militiamen loyal to Assad) are cleaning the streets near the university campus to stage a pro-Assad march tomorrow as if nothing is happening in Hama,” he told Reuters by satellite phone.

Electricity and communications have been cut off and as many as 130 people have been killed in a five-day military assault since Assad, from Syria’s minority Alawite sect, sent troops into the city on Sunday, residents and activists said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington believed Assad’s forces were responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 Syrians in their attacks on peaceful protesters during the five-month uprising.

Clinton repeated that the United States believed Assad had lost legitimacy in Syria and said Washington and its allies were working on strategies to apply more pressure beyond new sanctions announced earlier on Thursday.

Meanwhile, happy times are here again if you’re stinking, filthy rich.

Nordstrom has a waiting list for a Chanel sequined tweed coat with a $9,010 price. Neiman Marcus has sold out in almost every size of Christian Louboutin “Bianca” platform pumps, at $775 a pair. Mercedes-Benz said it sold more cars last month in the United States than it had in any July in five years.

Even with the economy in a funk and many Americans pulling back on spending, the rich are again buying designer clothing, luxury cars and about anything that catches their fancy. Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering — they are zooming. Many high-end businesses are even able to mark up, rather than discount, items to attract customers who equate quality with price.

“If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?” said Arnold Aronson, managing director of retail strategies at the consulting firm Kurt Salmon, and the former chairman and chief executive of Saks.

The rich do not spend quite as they did in the free-wheeling period before the recession, but they are closer to that level.

The luxury category has posted 10 consecutive months of sales increases compared with the year earlier, even as overall consumer spending on categories like furniture and electronics has been tepid, according to the research service MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. In July, the luxury segment had an 11.6 percent increase, the biggest monthly gain in more than a year.

I’d say that trend might end given that equities markets are crashing and crashing extraordinarily big time.  Yesterday was the worst day for the market since 2008.  That’s what happens when the confidence fairy runs off with the high priest of voodoo economics. Poof!  Don’t say I didn’t tell you to bail a few months ago!

Stocks plunged Thursday in their single worst day since the 2008 financial crisis.

The Dow tumbled 512 points — its ninth deepest point drop ever — as fear about the global economy spooked investors.

“The conventional wisdom on Wall Street was that the economy was growing — that the worst was behind us,” said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. “Now what people are realizing is the stimulus didn’t work, and we may be headed back to recession.”

Also, don’t tell me I didn’t tell you that the stimulus wasn’t going to be enough to jump start the economy either.  I think we all saw it.  Too bad they never listen to us?  Hmmmm? So, I’ll continue to watch this.

The disaster at Fukushima nuclear power plant continues. Radiation levels inside the crippled was said to be at levels that went beyond measurement capabilities.  Folks, this is so scary. I can’t imagine the bravery of the workers trying to deal with this.  It sounds like going near the place is a death sentence.

Radiation dosages of 5 sieverts per hour were detected indoors on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Tuesday, the highest figure yet indoors, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The figure was detected in front of a pipe in an air-conditioning machine room, the utility said, adding the dosage may be larger than the measured amount as it exceeds the capacity of measuring equipment.

Radioactive substances are considered to be staying in the pipe after they entered there when pressure in the reactor’s containment vessel was lowered on March 12, according to Tokyo Electric known as TEPCO.

The company has made the area off-limits.

TEPCO also said radiation doses of more than 10 sieverts, or 10,000 millisieverts, per hour were detected outdoors again Tuesday at the plant.

If exposed to such a high-level dosage of radiation in a short period of time, almost all people exposed would die, radiation experts said.

On Monday, Tokyo Electric said radiation doses of as high as 10 sieverts per hour were detected outside the buildings for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: August 2, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, children, Crime, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Psychopaths in charge, Syria, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

Good Morning!! I have a few interesting reads for you today, and they aren’t all about the idiotic debt ceiling debate. I’m going to lead off with a few excellent blog posts about that idiocy, and then I’ll move on to something else.

First up, Scarecrow compares the movie Cowboys and Aliens to the events in DC: In Cowboys and Aliens, Humans Win; In Washington’s Zombies Vs. Pods, They Lose. In the movie, Scarecrow writes:

humans of all types realize they have to join together to defeat the rapacious creatures who are looting the planet and turning humans into zombies and pod people. There’s hope for our species!

Back in Washington, D.C. there are no heroes and no upbeat ending. Instead, the looting, muggings and beatings will continue until morale improves.

In our “real” world, there is a radical extremist group driven by zombies and zombie beliefs who successfully blackmail the nation into strangling its own economy. The supposedly “sane” group that is supposed to stop this madness has become cowardly and turned into mindless pod people, who assure the nation that the gutting of American government and essential services and safety nets won’t occur in one step but in several, whose outcome is locked in by an undemocratic Super Congress and the next debt limit blackmail in 2013.

It’s a terrific post.

On a more serious note, Emptywheel asks, Is Mark Warner the Designated Social Security Killer? It’s all about what may happen if the so-called “Super Congress” comes to be. Read it and weep.

At the New Yorker, John Cassidy argues that the debt ceiling bill is all smoke and mirrors.

In removing the immediate threat of a debt default, the agreement…signals that the U.S. government still satisfies the minimum standard of financial functionality: it pays its bills on time. That should be enough to head off an immediate downgrade in the nation’s credit rating, and it explains why Wall Street bounced at Monday’s opening bell.

Beyond that it is hard to see anything very positive about a deal in which President Obama finally persuaded the Republicans to accept a Republican plan. Putting on my ethicist cap, I agree with Bernie Sanders that the deal is wrongheaded and immoral. To be sure, America has a long-term fiscal challenge that needs to be confronted. But at a time when fourteen million Americans are unemployed, and many millions more have been forced to work just part-time, the government should be focussing on job growth rather than cutting the budget….

As I’ve said before, headlines such as “Democrats and Republicans agree on $2.4 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years” are virtually meaningless. The United States, like every other country, budgets on an annual basis. What really matters for the economy, and for the unemployed, is how much cash the federal government will spend in the remaining months of the 2011 fiscal year and in fiscal 2012, which begins October 1st. A pledge to cut spending in 2016, say, is just that: a pledge. Between now and then, we will have another bipartisan spending review (that’s also part of the deal), a Presidential election, and who knows how many budget battles. The actual 2016 spending outcome will almost certainly bear little relation to the figures in this agreement.

Also at the New Yorker, Hendrick Hertzberg has a funny piece about Louie Gohmert, looney Texas Republican Congressman quoting Communist Leon Trotsky. I don’t want to ruin it for you by pulling out a quote. It’s not long, so go read the whole thing.

Susie Madrak has a great post at Crooks and Liars: This Year We’ve Broken Or Tied 2,676 Heat Records – So Far. Think We Could Talk About Climate Change Yet? Be sure to check it out.

Do you realize how many people go missing in the U.S.? A lot. And most of them seem to be women and children. Here is a slide show of 64 people from the FBI’s kidnapped and missing persons list.

The little girl whose photo comes first is 11-year-old Celina Cass, from West Stewartstown, NH. Her body was found today in a river near her family home. Sadly, when a child disappears, a family is often responsible. In this case, I have a feeling her stepfather had something to do with Celina’s death. I hope I’m wrong. At least she was found fairly quickly.

Many missing people aren’t found for years, if at all. Indiana University student Lauren Spierer disappeared from Bloomington, Indiana on June 3. Despite intense searches by hundreds of volunteers and a large reward offered by her parents and IU, she has not been found. It looks like people whom Lauren thought were “friends” may have had something to do with her disappearance, because just about everyone who was with her before she went missing has lawyered up and isn’t talking to police.

A Denver woman, Amy Ahonen, disappeared without a trace a few weeks ago. Her car was found parked unlocked along the highway with her purse, ids, cell phone, and keys inside. What happened to her? No one knows and the police have stopped looking. It so happens that a budding serial killer was on the loose in the area at the time of her disappearance, but the police don’t seem to be making that connection.

There are many more stories like this breaking every day in this country. Why do we accept that women and children will disappear daily and in most cases, they will be found murdered and often raped?

Speaking of missing people, a legendary missing person has resurfaced in the news. From the LA Times: D.B. Cooper hijacking mystery is revived with ‘promising lead’

D.B. Cooper, the infamous airplane hijacker who vaulted into urban mythology by parachuting out of a jetliner over the Pacific Northwest with a $200,000 ransom, is back on the FBI’s radar screen.

Cooper, whose case remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in U.S. history, became the stuff of legend on the night of Nov. 24, 1971, when he jumped from a Boeing 727 into the skies between Portland, Ore., and Seattle. He disappeared with the ransom he extorted — 10,000 $20 bills.

The case has remained open, but the trail has been cold despite hundreds of tips, thousands of theories and dozens of breakthroughs in scientific investigation. Now the FBI, which has previously said that Cooper is likely dead, is looking at fresh evidence, according to weekend reports in the media in Seattle, the epicenter of the story that seemingly can never die.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The man investigated as a suspect in the D.B. Cooper case – the nation’s only unsolved commercial airplane hijacking – has been dead for about 10 years, and a forensic check didn’t find fingerprints on an item that belonged him, an FBI spokesman told seattlepi.com Monday.

“There are also other leads we’re pursuing,” agent Fred Gutt said. “Some of the other names have been out in the public, some of the names have not come out.”

The name of a man not previously investigated was given to the FBI nearly a year ago by a law enforcement colleague, and an item that belongs to him was sent for fingerprint work at the agency’s Quantico, Va., forensic lab, agents told seattlepi.com.

“The nature of the material was not good for prints,” Gutt said.

He added agents are obtaining other items that may have the suspect’s fingerprints in hopes of matching them with prints taken from the Northwest Orient plane after Cooper jumped the night of Nov. 24, 1971.

The situation in Syria is escalating. There has been a great deal of violence there for some time, and it is not getting the same attention that Egypt, Iran, and Libya have gotten. But now the UN Security Council plans to take up the issue.

Reacting to new bloodshed in Syria, European powers relaunched a dormant draft U.N. resolution to condemn Damascus for its crackdown on protesters, circulating a revised text to the Security Council at a meeting on Monday.

Following the hour-long closed-door meeting, several diplomats said that after months of deadlock over Syria in the council, the fresh violence appeared to be pushing the divided members towards some form of reaction.

But envoys disagreed over whether the 15-nation body should adopt the Western-backed draft resolution or negotiate a less binding statement.

Germany requested the meeting after human rights groups said Syrian troops killed 80 people on Sunday when they stormed the city of Hama to crush protests amid a five-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

More than 1600 people have been killed during the Syrian uprising.

From the Daily Beast:

You have to wonder if President Barack Obama ever rereads his speeches.

At the State Department last May, the president spoke at length of democratization in the Middle East. He chose his words carefully, dropping caveats and provisos. But Obama also bluntly declared that, “it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.” He justified the intervention in Libya by recalling that “we saw the prospect of imminent massacre … Had we not acted along with our NATO allies and regional coalition partners, thousands would have been killed.”

Yet precisely such sordid outcomes have come to pass, not in Libya but during the four-month uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Around 1,600 people are believed to have been killed, not mentioning some 3,000 disappeared, many of them presumed dead. Massacres have proliferated, and on Sunday, the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, the Syrian army entered the city of Hama, which had effectively escaped from government writ weeks ago.

Throughout, the White House has painstakingly avoided demanding that Assad step down, saying only that he must lead a transition to democracy or get out of the way. The Syrian dictator has, of course, done neither.

I’ll end with just one more link on the debt deal that Dakinikat sent me.

Reuters analysis – Debt deal unlikely to boost investor confidence

Rather than a relief rally, U.S. stocks ended modestly lower on Monday as ugly economic data and some lingering concerns about whether the deal would get through Congress dominated trading. But even when the House of Representatives voted to pass the plan late in the day there was little reaction from U.S. stock index futures.

The deal agreed to by Republican and Democratic leaders will raise the government’s borrowing ceiling while cutting spending by at least $2.1 trillion over 10 years. All of the burden could fall on spending cuts with no guarantee of steps to lift tax revenues.

Rather than perceiving it as a meaningful effort at tackling the United States’ huge debt problem, investors worried about the impact of austerity on an economy already hit by souring business and consumer confidence.

Plans for such a significant fiscal retrenchment, even though most of the impact will be in the latter years of the program, come at a vulnerable time for the world economy. Recession risks are rising in the United States, the European economy remains entwined in its own debt crisis, and China’s supercharged economy could slow.

“Risk markets may rally temporarily, but until economic growth and job creation is addressed, there can be no sustained rally,” Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of PIMCO, which manages more than $1.2 trillion, said in an interview.

Will Washington ever wake up to reality? I’m afraid they (and we) will have to hit bottom first. They are like alcoholics, except they are drunk on greed and power. So on that note, what are you reading and blogging about today?

Monday Reads

Posted: June 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican presidential politics, Syria | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 39 Comments

Good Morning!

I’ve been following a few stories recently.  Of course, one is about my favorite blood sport: politics.  One interesting recent announcement is that the two Mormons contending for the Republican Presidential slot are skipping Iowa.  Most of the speculation has to do with the role of religionists in the Iowa Republican party.  Law professor Ann Althouse has some interesting observations on what appears to be the unwillingness of evangelical Christians to vote for Mormons.

It’s distressing to see this conflation of conservatism and prejudice. It’s one thing if Iowan Republicans tend to go for someone with a stronger message of social conservatism, quite another if they are hostile to Mormons. Plenty of Mormons are social conservatives, and it just happens that the 2 Mormons in the race are not social conservatives. Can we get some serious research on this point? It’s a dangerous thing to allow insinuations of religious bigotry to seep into the public consciousness. I can’t tell if the Times is really against bigotry or not. If you portray Iowan religious conservatives as anti-Mormon, in one way, it seems anti-bigotry. But it’s also inviting us to feel hostility toward the Iowan evangelicals.

Althouses’ comments are based on this NYT article which states that Iowa may have an ‘ebbing influence’ on national elections.

But there are signs that its influence on the nominating process could be ebbing and that the nature of the voters who tend to turn out for the Republican caucuses — a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians and ideological conservatives overlaid with parochial interests — is discouraging some candidates from competing there.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, announced Thursday that he would skip the state’s Republican straw poll this summer, saving his resources — and lowering expectations — for the state’s caucuses next year.

Earlier in the week, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, conceded that he was likely to skip the Iowa caucuses altogether, noting that his opposition to ethanol subsidies makes him unpopular in a state where support for the corn-based fuel is all but demanded.

“I’m not competing in Iowa for a reason,” he told The Associated Press. In addition to his stand on ethanol, Mr. Huntsman, who served in the Obama administration as ambassador to China, says he believes in global warming and has not embraced the Tea Party movement like some of his rivals. And like Mr. Romney, Mr. Huntsman is a Mormon, a religion viewed with wariness by some conservative Christians.

Repercussions from the Arab Spring are continuing through Summer. Syria appears to be the latest country where members of the military are having second thoughts about cracking down on civil unrest in the general population.

The escalating military offensive in northwest Syria began after what corroborating accounts said was a shoot-out between members of the military secret police in Jisr al-Shughur, some of whom refused to open fire on unarmed protesters.

A growing number of first-hand testimonies from defected soldiers give a rare but dramatic insight into the cracks apparently emerging in Syria’s security forces as the unrelenting assault on unarmed protesters continues.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Turkey, having crossed the border on Friday night, an activist based in Jisr al-Shughur and trusted by experienced local reporters described how a funeral on June 4 for a man shot dead by plain-clothes security a day earlier grew into a large anti-government protest.

“As the demonstration passed the headquarters of the military secret police they opened fire right away and killed eight people,” the activist, who was among the crowd, said. “But some of the secret police refused to open fire and there were clashes between them. It was complete chaos.”

There continues to be a mounting human crisis as Syrians fleeing violence pour into nearby Turkey.

As Syrian security forces move in to the besieged town of Jisr al-Shughour, thousands of refugees are fleeing across the Turkish border.  More camps are being set up to house the new arrivals.  Many of the refugees are in desperate need of medical help.

The emergency ward at Antakya hospital is about to receive its latest casualty from Syria.  It is a young girl who has fallen sick and was brought to the Turkish border by her desperate mother, who is also pregnant. The ambulance driver says the violence in Syria means hospitals there are either full with the injured, or the journey is too hazardous.

The clashes in and around the northern Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour have forced thousands to flee.  Many of them have recorded the horrifying scenes on cellphones and cameras. In the border village of Harabjoz, people have set up tents as they wait to cross into Turkey.  One refugee, who did not give his name, described the conditions they are facing. “There is no milk for the children,” he says.  “We bought some but we have run out.  They are targeting homes and yesterday gunmen targeted us.  All these people will not survive because they burned all their crops,” he says. “Now it’s become sectarian for sure,” he said.

A spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency, Metin Corabatir, has warned of a growing crisis.  “The latest figures UNHCR received from the border is 5051 who fled from Syria because of violence and persecution in this country,” he said.

Witnesses believe the true figure could be double that number – including those who have crossed undetected.

The Economist believes Obama is beatable in 2012 but seems dismayed at the Republican field of candidates.  This was my Saturday night bath read and I found it interesting so I thought I’d pass it along.  They biggest question is that how does a candidate that ran as a change agent and outsider run as ‘Goliath’ this time?

In 2008 Mr Obama represented change. This time he will have to fend off charges that he is to blame for the achingly slow recovery by arguing that it would have been worse without his actions, such as his $800 billion stimulus package and the takeover of GM and Chrysler. That may be true but it is not easy to sell a counterfactual on the stump (as the first President Bush learned). And there are other holes in Mr Obama’s record. What happened to his promises to do something about the environment or immigration or Guantánamo? Why should any businessman support a chief executive who has let his friends in the labour movement run amok and who let his health-care bill be written by Democrats in Congress? Above all, why has he never produced a credible plan to tackle the budget deficit, currently close to 10% of GDP?

Asking these questions will surely give any Republican a perch in this race. But to beat the president, the Republicans need both a credible candidate and credible policies.

I may have to change my opinion of Larry Summers a little bit.  In this FT Op-Ed, Summers tries to fight the austerity agenda and a US “lost decade”.  Wow.

Beyond the lack of jobs and incomes, an economy producing below its potential for a prolonged interval sacrifices its future. To an extent once unimaginable, new college graduates are moving back in with their parents. Strapped school districts across the country are cutting out advanced courses in maths and science. Reduced income and tax collections are the most critical cause of unacceptable budget deficits now and in the future.

You cannot prescribe for a malady unless you diagnose it accurately and understand its causes. That the problem in a period of high unemployment, as now, is a lack of business demand for employees not any lack of desire to work is all but self-evident, as shown by three points: the propensity of workers to quit jobs and the level of job openings are at near-record low; rises in non-employment have taken place among all demographic groups; rising rates of profit and falling rates of wage growth suggest employers, not workers, have the power in almost every market.

A sick economy constrained by demand works very differently from a normal one. Measures that usually promote growth and job creation can have little effect, or backfire. When demand is constraining an economy, there is little to be gained from increasing potential supply. In a recession, if more people seek to borrow less or save more there is reduced demand, hence fewer jobs. Training programmes or measures to increase work incentives for those with high and low incomes may affect who gets the jobs, but in a demand-constrained economy will not affect the total number of jobs. Measures that increase productivity and efficiency, if they do not also translate into increased demand, may actually reduce the number of people working as the level of total output remains demand-constrained.

I’m beginning to feel like part of a chorus these days.  Nearly all economists are telling whatever news source they can that this is your basic demand problem.  Now if the TV media would hire some one other than lawyers and political consultants we might get some traction here on getting a conversation about policy solutions.

I’ve got one more interesting link given to me by our resident psychologist, Bostonboomer. TNR has an interesting article up on why poor people can’t escape poverty easily.

In a paper in April 2010, Harvard behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan (for whom, full disclosure, I once worked) and MIT’s Abhijit Banerjee applied this same notion to decisions requiring self-control. If a doughnut costs twenty-five cents, they wrote, then that “$0.25 will be far more costly to someone living on $2 a day than to someone living on $30 a day. In other words, the same self-control problem is more consequential for the poor.” And so, in addition to all the structural barriers that prevent even determined poor people from escaping poverty, there may be another, deeper, and considerably more disturbing barrier: Poverty may reduce free will, making it even harder for the poor to escape their circumstances.

All of this suggests that we need to rethink our approaches to poverty reduction. Many of our current anti-poverty efforts focus on access to health, educational, agricultural, and financial services. Now, it seems, we need to start treating willpower as a scarce and important resource as well.

Okay, so what’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?

Thursday Reads

Posted: May 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bahrain, Egypt, Environment, Farming, Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Iran, Israel, Libya, MENA, Pakistan, Psychopaths in charge, religion, Syria, Team Obama, Tunisia, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 41 Comments

Good Morning!! Does anyone have a remedy for the sleepies? I recently finished a semester of teaching, and the last couple of days I’ve been extremely groggy. Yesterday I even slept until 10:30AM! It doesn’t help that we haven’t seen the sun in the Boston area for at least a week–it’s dark, dank, and raw out there. It seems a lot more like November than late May. On top of all that my Spring allergies are the worst I’ve ever experienced. So please forgive me if this post makes no sense. On to the news of the day.

Disgraced IMF honcho Dominque Strauss-Kahn’s accuser testified before a New York grand jury today. Immediately following her testimony, Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys announced their determination to spring their client from his cell at Rikers Island Jail.

His lawyers initially proposed a $1 million bail package that was rejected by the court.

Today a new offer that was said to add a private monitoring firm, an electronic bracelet and a guard to the package was put together. The cash component of the bail package remained at $1 million dollars, but the deal now included a guarantee that Strauss-Kahn would remain confined in New York City and not leave his residence except for visits to his doctor or lawyers. His passports and travel documents have already been taken from him.

According to ABC News, police are testing body fluids found in Strauss-Kahn’s hotel room for DNA.

ABC News has confirmed that police cut a swath of carpet to test for DNA and swabbed one of the suite’s sinks under a black light that indicated there was potential DNA evidence there.

Apparently Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys plan to claim that their client’s sexual encounter with a hotel maid was “consensual,” but there is a serious problem with that theory in addition to the maid’s testimony.

Investigators also say information downloaded from the suite door’s electronic card reader indicates the maid entered the room and never closed the door. The hotel policy requires maids to leave the door open when cleaning. The open door, they say, is proof that the women entered the room to work, not to engage in consensual sex.

I won’t dwell on this sordid story much longer, but I did want to call your attention to this piece in Time Magazine, which details a number of previous accusations against Strauss-Kahn–along with rumors –gossip about his abusive behavior toward women–that were hushed up until now. How predictable these guys are!

Joseph Cannon’s latest post is a must-read, along with the New Yorker article by Jane Mayer on which the Cannon comments. It’s about the domestic spying by the NSA that went on under Bush and the Obama administration’s heavy handed prosecution of whistleblowers while at the same time protecting the Bush administration criminals. (Minkoff Minx also mentioned Mayer’s article in her morning post yesterday.) Here’s an introduction to the piece by Cannon:

This humble blog spent a lot of time talking about NSA overreach during the controversies over Russell Tice and FISA. Meyer’s piece confirms a long-held suspicion that the real problem wasn’t eavesdropping on telephone calls but automated data-mining of all forms of electronic communication.

Two competing computer systems were designed to take us into this brave new world: ThinThread and Trailblazer. (The system in place now is called Turbulence. Someone at NSA has a strange affection for the letter T — which is also the first letter in totalitarian.) Trailblazer turned out to be a costly boondoggle. ThinThread worked. Originally, it had provisions built in to protect the privacy of American citizens; NSA Director Haybed tossed out those barriers.

Meyer focuses on an NSA whistleblower named Thomas Drake, who tried to blow the whistle on the Trailblazer fiasco — and on the abuses of privacy — to a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee. Unfortunately, the Committee was headed, at the time, by Porter Goss — and by Nancy Pelosi. They both seemed deaf to what Drake had to say.

Why is Obama so obsessed with prosecuting whistleblowers–even to the point of dusting off the Espionage Act? Jane Mayer writes:

When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.”

Mayer asked Drake about it:

Sitting at a Formica table at the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Drake—who is a registered Republican—groaned and thrust his head into his hands. “I actually had hopes for Obama,” he said. He had not only expected the President to roll back the prosecutions launched by the Bush Administration; he had thought that Bush Administration officials would be investigated for overstepping the law in the “war on terror.”

“But power is incredibly destructive,” Drake said. “It’s a weird, pathological thing. I also think the intelligence community coöpted Obama, because he’s rather naïve about national security. He’s accepted the fear and secrecy. We’re in a scary space in this country.”

Check out her article if you can. She’s one of the best investigative reporters we have.

You may have missed Dakinikat’s late night post on Tuesday–the one about exploding watermelons. I thought this story deserved a little more emphasis, because it shows what can happen when there are no government regulations on agriculture–and industry in general (and that is what the Republicans would love to make happen). From Raw Story:

A bizarre wave of exploding watermelons — possibly due to farmers’ abuse of a growth-boosting chemical — has once again spotlighted safety fears plaguing China’s poorly regulated food sector.

State media has said nearly 50 hectares (120 acres) of watermelon crops in the eastern city of Danyang have been ruined by the phenomenon this month after some growers doused them with the growth accelerator forchlorfenuron.

“On May 7, I came out and counted 80 (exploded watermelons), but by the afternoon it was 100,” farmer Liu Mingsuo told state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) in a report that aired Tuesday. He said he had sprayed them with the chemical just a day before.

Remind me to never buy any food produce in China!!

Have you heard that the Obama campaign is selling T-shirts and coffee cups that mock the “birthers?”

President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign today started selling “Made in the USA” t-shirts featuring images of both President Obama and the long-form birth certificate he released copies of last month.

Wear your support for this campaign with an official Made in the USA T-shirt,” his website advertises. Donate $25 or more today and we’ll send you your limited-edition shirt.

Coffee-mugs are also available.

“Remember ‘fight the smears’ from the 2008 campaign?” asked campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt. “This is the mobile version of it.”

Quite frankly, I think this is a little bit tacky….but that’s just me. And speaking of tasteless behavior, the Catholic Church is attempting to blame the ’60s counterculture for the behavior pedophile priests. From the Guardian UK:

The investigation commissioned by Catholic bishops said that the peak incidence of sexual abuse by priests in the 1960s and 70s reflected the increased level of other deviant behaviours in American society in the period, including “drug use and crime, as well as social changes, such as an increase in premarital sex and divorce.”

Researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said most of the abusive priests were ordained in the 1940s and 50s and were not properly trained to confront the social upheavals of the 1960s.

David O’Brien, a historian of American Catholicism at the University of Dayton, said the report, Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010, was dangerous because it seemed to exonerate bishops.

The study also ignores the long history of sexual abuse of children by the Catholic clergy. Methinks these “researchers” told the Catholic Bishops what they wanted to hear rather than do any serious research.

Finally, President Obama plans to give another “most amazing speech evah” tomorrow. This one is on the Middle East and North Africa. According to Voice of America:

The speech will be broad in scope, as Mr. Obama focuses on the peaceful democratic movements for change that have swept the region, discusses implications for U.S. policy, and offers what administration officials call some concrete policy proposals.

He will give his assessment of the impact of popular uprisings that have led to political changes in Egypt and Tunisia, and which continue in places like Syria, Libya and Yemen.

Senior administration officials say Mr. Obama will speak of a moment of opportunity, after a decade of great tensions and divisions, in which people of the region and U.S. policy can begin to turn the page toward a more positive and hopeful future.

The stalemated Israel-Palestinian peace process will be an important element. However, Mr. Obama is expected to frame it as part of a wider picture and say that leaders on both sides of that conflict should seize an opportunity for peace.

Whatever….I think I’ll arrange to be busy while he’s speechifying. Anyway, what are you reading and blogging about today?

Friday Reads

Posted: May 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, Foreign Affairs, Iran, Libya, morning reads, Syria | Tags: , , , , , , , | 32 Comments

Good Morning!

President Obama was on the road yesterday as well as making TV appearances. Suppose that means the campaign days are here again. CBS news reported an exchange between a laid off government worker and the President.

In one of the more personal exchanges from CBS News’ town hall with President Obama, one audience member, a pregnant woman who recently found out she was being laid off from her government job, asked the president for some earnest advice: “What would you do, if you were me?”

Karin Gallo, who jokingly described her job at the National Zoo as “non-essential employee number seven,” said she had taken a job in government “thinking it was a secure job” – but that now, she feared for her family’s future.

“I am seven months pregnant in a high-risk pregnancy, my first pregnancy,” Gallo told Mr. Obama. “My husband and I are in the middle of building a house. We’re not sure if we’re gonna be completely approved. I’m not exactly in a position to waltz right in and do great on interviews, based on my timing with the birth.”

“And so, I’m stressed, I’m worried,” she continued. “I’m scared about what my future holds. I definitely need a job. And, I just wonder what would you do, if you were me?”

More information is coming out on the Republican contenders for President.  This shows yet another Republican that has thrived taking funds and hand-outs from the government.  Who is it?  It’s our  reality star, self-promoting, egoist Donald Trump as reported by the LA Times.

From his first high-profile project in New York City in the 1970s to his recent campaigns to reduce taxes on property he owns around the country, Trump has displayed a consistent pattern. He courted public officials, sought their backing for government tax breaks under extraordinarily beneficial terms and fought any resistance to deals he negotiated.

He has boasted of manipulating government agencies, misleading officials in one case into believing he had an exclusive agreement to develop a property and then retroactively changing the development’s accounting practices to shrink his tax bill. In New York, Trump was the first developer to receive a public subsidy for commercial projects under programs initially reserved for improving slum neighborhoods. Such incentives have now become the norm in the powerful New York real estate community.

Karen Burstein, a former auditor general of New York City, reviewed a major Trump project in the 1980s and concluded he had “cheated” the city out of nearly $2.9 million. Decades later, Burstein said she was still appalled at the way Trump operated.

“It’s extraordinary to me that we elevated someone to this position of public importance who has openly admitted that he has used government’s incompetence as a wedge to increase his private fortune,” she said in a recent interview.

It seems that  al-Jazeera’s Dorothy Parvaz was deportated from Syria to Iran this week after being missing last week.  Her father is reported to be quite worried about her.

Her father, Fred Parvaz, who lives in Vancouver, told the Guardian: “I haven’t heard anything of late. We are in the dark. Syrian officials have made a statement that Dorothy was sent to Tehran on 1 May. But I have yet to receive confirmation from any authority in Iran that this is the case.”

“I am gravely concerned. I have not heard from her for two weeks. No word, no contact, nothing. We are a very close family so this really breaks my heart,” he said.

Parvaz, a 68-year-old physics and computer studies teacher, said al-Jazeera was trying to approach Iranian officials to get confirmation that she was in the country and was also attempting to create a line of communication with her.

Parvaz, who migrated from Tabriz in north-west Iran and has lived in Canada for 26 years, also said that the Canadian foreign ministry was making interventions on his daughter’s behalf. “But all these efforts so far have been fruitless,” he said.

The Guardian also reports that the EU is expected to sanction Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

The EU is expected to agree on personal sanctions against the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and other members of the regime over the continuing killing of protesters, sources said.

The US Senate has also called for the president to be directly targeted but few observers believe the measures will be enough to change the government’s “security first” strategy, which involves suppressing protests and only then opening a “dialogue” with opposition figures.

The regime was on Thursday preparing to quash any upsurge in demonstrations following Friday prayers tomorrow. Tanks have been deployed across the south, particularly in towns around Deraa, the epicentre of the pro-democracy demonstrations.

The US State Department condemned  the Ugandan anti-gay bill as “odious”.

The State Department Thursday condemned a proposed bill in the Ugandan parliament that could make engaging in homosexual acts a capital offense punishable by death. The bill may be debated Friday by the Ugandan parliament.

“No amendments, no changes, would justify the passage of this odious bill,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. “Both (President Barack Obama) and (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) publicly said it is inconsistent with universal human rights standards and obligations.”

The State Department, he said, is joining Uganda’s own human rights commissions in calling for the bill’s rejection.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! CBS reports that ‘SEAL helmet cams recorded entire bin Laden raid’. It really looked like they were watching TV in that sit room pic didn’t it?

A new picture emerged Thursday of what really happened the night the Navy SEALs swooped in on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports the 40 minutes it took to kill bin Laden and scoop his archives into garbage bags were all recorded by tiny helmet cameras worn by each of the 25 SEALs.

Officials reviewing those videos are still reconstructing a more accurate version of what happened. We now know that the only firefight took place in the guest house, where one of bin Laden’s couriers opened fire and was quickly gunned down. No one in the main building got off a shot or was even armed, although there were weapons nearby.

Kadafi appeared on TV and was swiftly attacked by NATO jets shortly thereafter.

News services reported that NATO warplanes struck Kadafi’s fortified complex and several other sites in the capital, the second aerial bombardment of Tripoli in a 48-hour period. Reports from the scene indicated that the target could have been an underground bunker.

A North Atlantic Treaty Organization official said the site was a “disguised” command center for the Libyan military, one of a number of such facilities that Kadafi has tried to conceal amid a punishing aerial assault.

“He’s forced to hide whatever remains of his severely damaged command-and-control network,” said the NATO official, who could not be named under alliance guidelines.

The strikes in Tripoli came after Kadafi appeared on state television for the first time in almost two weeks.

Most of the fighting in the country is centered around Misurata which is now thought to be under rebel control.  There’s some speculation that Kadafi’s days in office may be numbered

Rebel advances in Misurata have opened up the port for renewed deliveries of humanitarian aid and other supplies, officials said, bringing some relief to a city that has come to epitomize resistance to Kadafi’s rule. Rebels seized control of Misurata’s airport this week in a step hailed as a major opposition triumph after weeks of street fighting in Libya’s third-most-populous city.

But it was unclear how much further the opposition could push out from the enclave of Misurata against Kadafi’s superior forces on the city’s eastern and western edges. Experts have also not ruled out the possibility of a government counterattack on Misurata, the only western coastal city that remains in rebel hands.

Nonetheless, the rebel advances in Misurata, combined with the aerial strikes in the capital, have been seized on by the opposition as a sign that Kadafi’s regime is tottering under mounting pressure.

There have also been widely reported accounts of unrest in Tripoli, where the embargo against Kadafi’s regime has led to fuel and food shortages. The opposition has also alleged escalating defections and desertions from Kadafi’s ranks, though the reports remain unconfirmed.

Well, that’s some of the news that’s fit to print.  There’s probably lots more out there!  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →