TGIFriday Reads

Posted: February 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: collective bargaining, morning reads, The Media SUCKS, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , | 19 Comments

Good Morning!!!

Well, I didn’t make it to the Gulf Coast because I got stuck editing an intro for a journal at the last minute.  I’ll have to try again.  It just seems like so many things just keep springing up all over the place these days.

David Cay Johnston of Tax.com has a real eye opener up today on who actually contributes to the pension plans of state workers in Wisconsin. Here’s a death knell for a meme. The question is this however.  Will any one bother to hear it?

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

How can that be? Because the “contributions” consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.

Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply “contribute more” to Wisconsin’ s retirement system (or as the argument goes, “pay their fair share” of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin’ s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin.

The labor agreements show that the pension plan money is part of the total negotiated compensation. The key phrase, in those agreements I read (emphasis added), is: “The Employer shall contribute on behalf of the employee.” This shows that this is just divvying up the total compensation package, so much for cash wages, so much for paid vacations, so much for retirement, etc.

The collective bargaining agreements for prosecutors, cops and scientists are all on-line.

Reporters should sit down, get a cup of coffee and read them. And then they could take what they learn, and what the state website says about fringe benefits, to Gov. Walker and challenge his assumptions.

Here’s one time I’m going to agree with Goldman Sachs. If we cut federal spending the way Boehner and his cronies want to cut it, we’re going to shrink the economy.  Recession any one?

Spending cuts approved by House Republicans would act as a drag on the U.S. economy, according to a Wall Street analysis that put new pressure on the political debate in Washington.

The report by the investment firm Goldman Sachs said the cuts would reduce the growth in gross domestic product by up to 2 percentage points this year, essentially cutting in half the nation’s projected economic growth for 2011.

The analysis, prepared for the firm’s clients, represents the first independent economic assessment of the congressional budget fight, which could lead to a government shutdown as early as next week.

Nonetheless, Republicans are unlikely to easily retreat from their insistence on more than $60 billion in reductions in federal spending as a condition of continuing funding for the government through the rest of the year.

A spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said the Goldman Sachs report represented “the same outdated Washington mind-set,” comparing it to the thinking behind the 2009 Recovery Act that released federal funds to counter the effects of the recession.

Republicans live in their own private Washington, I swear.  I’ve never seen a bunch of people so clueless about so many things.  Here’s a good poll showing why they get away with what they get away with … seems like about 1/4 of our population is pretty damned stupid.

I am seldom surprised by our poll findings, but this month’s tracking poll produced a doozy.  Twenty-two percent of the American people think the Affordable Care Act has been repealed, and another 26 percent aren’t sure.  Those are surprisingly large numbers even with the 52 percent who still know it is the law of the land.

How could a repeal “vote” in the House — however dramatic but still, only symbolic — be misunderstood as an actual repeal by so many Americans?

First, people are very busy just getting through the day and they don’t have a lot of time to sort through news reports about the policy making process.  They see the word “repeal” in the local paper or hear it on TV and think the law has been repealed.  Second, there may be some partisan wishful thinking going on; 30 percent of Republicans think the law has been repealed while only 12 percent of Democrats do.  But overall, it is obvious that the knowledge of basic civics is pretty low.  Maybe it’s because “Schoolhouse Rock” is no longer airing on Saturday morning TV explaining how government works.

If they’re misinformed, they likely get their news from Fox and Roger Ailes.  There was more on the make up the news as you go along cable network in the NYT today:  “Fox News Chief, Roger Ailes, Urged Employee to Lie, Records Show”.  That’s quite a headline.  But, the headline appears justifiable since it’s been revealed there’s a tape of Ailes saying just that to Judith Regan.  Read the entire article. It’s tawdry and full of intrigue.  I can’t wait to see the movie.

Now, court documents filed in a lawsuit make clear whom Ms. Regan was accusing of urging her to lie: Roger E. Ailes, the powerful chairman of Fox News and a longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani. What is more, the documents say that Ms. Regan taped the telephone call from Mr. Ailes in which Mr. Ailes discussed her relationship with Mr. Kerik.

It is unclear whether the existence of the tape played a role in News Corporation’s decision to move quickly to settle a wrongful termination suit filed by Ms. Regan, paying her $10.75 million in a confidential settlement reached two months after she filed it in 2007.

Depending on the specifics, the taped conversation could possibly rise to the level of conspiring to lie to federal officials, a federal crime, but prosecutors rarely pursue such cases, said Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia University law professor and a former federal prosecutor.

If you’re like me and you’re still trying to dissect the last financial sector crisis, you should check out “Four Fallacies of the Crisis” over at Project Syndicate by Jagdish Bhagwati.  This was my personal favorite.

Some critics of Obama’s Keynesian stimulus spending, among them the economist Jeffrey Sachs, claim that what the US needs is “long-term” productivity-enhancing spending. But this is a non sequitur. As a Keynesian, I believe that the state paying people to dig holes and then fill them up would increase aggregate demand and produce more income. But Keynes was no fool. He understood that the government could eventually get huge returns if the money was spent on productivity-enhancing investments rather than on “directly wasteful” expenditure-increasing activities.

The question, then, is simple: which investments offer the greatest economic payoffs? But it is also fraught: when your bridges are collapsing, your school buildings are in disrepair, teachers are underpaid and have no incentive to be efficient, and much else needs money, it is not easy to decide where scarce money should be spent.

But one “structural” consideration is not well understood. Given the need to cut the deficit in the future and the need to increase it now in order to revive the economy, the problem facing Obama is how to shift smoothly from top gear into reverse. Clearly, the lesson is that governments need to attach less weight to spending that cannot one day be cut.

This was brought home to me when I saw an unfinished high-rise building in Osaka. A relic of the bust that

This is Yokohama's Tower of Bubble ... there's quite a few of them dotting the Japanese skylines.

followed Japan’s real-estate boom two decades ago, it became known as the Tower of Bubble.

Nothing like the visual of  a Tower of Bubble to bring on the urge for another cup of coffee.

So, this is interesting.  Remember when reporters asked for the White House visitors log to figure out which lobbyists were coming and going?  Now, it seems, the meetings are being held offsite and therefore, off the list.

Caught between their boss’ anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the reality of governing, President Barack Obama’s aides often steer meetings with lobbyists to a complex just off the White House grounds — and several of the lobbyists involved say they believe the choice of venue is no accident.

It allows the Obama administration to keep these lobbyist meetings shielded from public view — and out of Secret Service logs kept on visitors to the White House and later released to the public.

Well, isn’t that special?

So, what’s you your reading and blogging list today?

Thursday Reads

Posted: February 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, abortion rights, Foreign Affairs, Libya, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 61 Comments

Good Morning!!

Some of us have been watching Al Jazeera live on-line a lot lately. Suddenly Comcast wants to get into the act, so they are holding talks with the Arab network about putting them on U.S. cable TV.

Al Jazeera confirmed in a press release earlier this week it was meeting with Comcast on Tuesday about adding the 24/7 Al Jazeera English news network to Comcast’s cable lineup.

In 2006, the English-language version of Al Jazeera pushed hard get on Comcast’s lineup up but lost that battle.

Al Jazeera says it can also be seen in local markets in Vermont, Ohio and Washington, D.C. A deal with Comcast would give it a huge national imprint, and force Comcast’s competitors to follow suit.

Al-Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara made his own plea on Tuesday in Time magazine.

“The hope is that after what people have been able to see on Al Jazeera in its coverage of Egypt, that cable companies may not just see the material benefits of having Al Jazeera available, but also the wisdom,” he told Time in an interview.

Wouldn’t it be great if the channel *replaced* Fox News? Anyway, that’s my good news story for today.

Yesterday, Dakinikat posted audio of a prank phone call made to Wisconsin’s wacky governor, Scott Walker by a gonzo blogger from upstate NY who pretended to be David Koch of the notorious Koch brothers.

Now Horrible John Hinderaker at Powerline is fighting back (warning: right wing blog). The left is waging “war” against the Koch Brothers and Hineraker has set himself up as their defender.

The most extraordinary story in the news these days is the all-out assault that the Left is mounting against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Enterprises. A day doesn’t go buy–hardly an hour goes by–without some new attack being launched against these two lonely libertarians.

Why? Simply because they are rich–their company is one of the best-run and most successful in the world–and conservative. The Left is trying to drive them out of politics and, more important, to deter any other people of means from daring to support conservative politicians or causes.

Awwwww….those poor, poor babies.

According to the Washington Post, Walker himself is “urging others to take stands against unions.” I guess he doesn’t want to be out on that limb by himself, and he doesn’t realize that the more governors are out there with him, the sooner the limb will break off and send them all crashing to the ground. Oh, by the way, he did the urging during the aforsaid prank phone call in which he believed he was speaking to David Koch. ROFLOL! From the WaPo:

He said he communicates regularly with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and has spoken with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. And Walker has suggested that his counterparts in Michigan and Florida seek to address their budget problems in part by demanding major concessions from public workers.

“There’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big,” Walker said this week. “This is our moment.”

His comments about his GOP brethren came in an unusual forum: a recorded telephone conversation with a liberal blogger purporting to be conservative financier David Koch.

Oh man, Scott Walker will forever be a joke. And speaking of jokes, did you hear that Rick Santorum spoke out on the Wisconsin protests?

All-but-declared presidential candidate Rick Santorum is stirring the pot when it comes to government entitlements, comparing the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin to drug addicts in withdrawal.

“They are acting like their drug is being taken away from them,” Santorum told a small gathering of South Carolina Republicans Monday night, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.

The comments came the same day thousands of protesters rallied outside the Wisconsin state capitol for the second week, upset with Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to limit collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees. Walker says the plan is necessary to stem the state’s budget crisis while pro-union groups say the governor is trying to curb long-held labor rights under a guise of fiscal responsibility.

Meanwhile, Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who is widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination, added he thinks those who support government entitlements – including the recent health care law – are “no better than a drug dealer.”

“They give you a subtle narcotic to make you feel better as you do worse,” said Santorum.

Gee, why do I think Santorum’s White House bid is going nowhere fast?

Speaking of wingnuts (and we have been), Georgia legislator Bobby Franklin is waging an all-out war on women.

There’s a new bill on the block that may have reached the apex (I hope) of woman-hating craziness. Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence “victims” into “accusers”—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any “prenatal murder” in the words of the bill, including “human involvement” in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Basically, it’s everything an “pro-life” activist could want aside from making all women who’ve had abortions wear big red “A”s on their chests.

Could that really pass–even in Georgia?

In more serious news, the carnage in Libya continues.

“It’s a massacre, you can never imagine what’s going on here,” says the man, who is in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

Protests in Libya have been met with violent and brutal opposition by supporters of leader Moamar Gaddafi….

‘Amairr’ says that Libya is not a state and that Gadafi’s regime is ‘not a government’.

“It’s a militia, it’s a gang,” he says.

He says Gaddafi has brought in militias from Africa who are ‘shooting anyone who stands’.

He says the Libyan nation says it feels betrayed by other countries who are concentrating on getting their citizens out rather than helping Libyans.

Some are even calling it a potential genocide.

ISLAMABAD: “We are in the midst of a massacre here” a witness told Reuters. According to Franco Frattini, Italy’s Foreign Minister, “as many as 1,000 people have likely been killed in Libya as leader Muammar Qaddafi cracks down on protests against his rule.”

The Libyan army, air force and navy have completely fractured and there has been a de facto secession of the eastern half of the country. Al-Jazeera is reporting that some air force fighters loyal to Gaddafi have “opened fire on crowds of protestors.”

The Libyan Navy is reportedly firing on residential targets onshore and senior army officers still loyal to Qaddafi have been ordered to execute soldiers refusing to fire on unarmed protestors.

Qaddafi, the longest serving dictator on the face of the planet, continues to hold fort in Tripoli scheming to kill a million if need be to save his crumbling dictatorship. Anti-Qaddafi elements have already taken over Benghazi, Sirte, Tobruk, Misurata, Khoms, Tarhunah, Zentan, al-Zawiya and Zouara but most of these elements are unarmed and thus at risk of being slaughtered by heavily armed pro-Qaddafi forces.

The response from the West has been anemic at best. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “condemned” Libyan dictator

Muammar Gaddafi for ignoring his call to stop violence against protestors, which the UN chief stressed to the Libyan leader during a 40 minute conversation this week. “What he (Gaddafi) has d one is totally unacceptable,” Ban told journalists on Wednesday.

“After such long and extensive discussions and my strong urging, and even appeal to him, he has not heeded,” he added. “This is not acceptable.”

Ban warned that the volatile situation in the North African nation could take several directions—many of them dangerous.

“The situation is developing rapidly towards a very dangerous situation,” he said. “Therefore we need to very carefully monitor the situation.”

Um…how about actually doing something? Like maybe enforcing a no-fly zone or sending in UN peacekeeping troops as the Libyan’s have been pleading for you to do?

Reuters informs us that “the world grapples for a response.”

Yet, there seemed little cohesion and urgency in a global response, even as Washington and Brussels spoke of possible sanctions against a man whose 41 years in power have been marked by idiosyncratic defiance of the West.

“It is imperative that the nations and peoples of the world speak with one voice,” Obama said. “The suffering and bloodshed is outrageous.”

The oil exports which Gaddafi used to help end his isolation in the past decade have given him means to resist the fate of his immediate neighbors, the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, who were brought down by popular unrest in the past few weeks.

It’s always about oil, isn’t it? Talk about people acting like drug addicts….

Anyway, I’ll keep my eye out for updates on the rapidly changing situation in Libya.


What are you reading and blogging about today?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: February 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: collective bargaining, Food, Gulf Oil Spill, hunger, income inequality, morning reads, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , | 26 Comments

Good Morning!!!

By the time you start reading this, I’ll be headed back down to Grand Isle to check on the new ‘old’ oil that just surfaced and hit Grand Isle and Elmer’s Island.  The Federal Government and BP are about to leave us since they consider the beaches clean.  Too bad they’re not cleaning up the marshes and the bottom of the Gulf too. I thought I’d start with some of the latest Gulf Gusher news this morning.  This one is from the BBC.  It’s on the impact on animals living at the bottom of the Gulf.

In places the layer of oil and dead animals is 10cm thick

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill “devastated” life on and near the seafloor, a marine scientist has said.

Studies using a submersible found a layer, as much as 10cm thick in places, of dead animals and oil, said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia.

Knocking these animals out of the food chain will, in time, affect species relevant to fisheries.

She disputed an assessment by BP’s compensation fund that the Gulf of Mexico will recover by the end of 2012.

Millions of barrels of oil spewed into the sea after a BP deepwater well ruptured in April 2010.

Professor Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington that it may be a decade before the full effects on the Gulf are apparent.

She said they concluded the layers had been deposited between June and September 2010 after it was discovered that no sign of sealife from samples taken in May remained.

Professor Joye and her colleagues used the Alvin submersible to explore the bottom-most layer of the water around the well head, known as the benthos.

“The impact on the benthos was devastating,” she told BBC News.

Meanwhile, the BP oil spill claim process has been nearly as devastating to people whose livelihoods depend on the Gulf.  The number of complaints has been tremendous. Another set of ‘final rules’ for damage reimbursement has come out.   Head of the process, Obama appointee Kenneth Feinberg, asked for input from every one for the final criteria.

The final rules also promise to give claimants more data about the status of their claims, including how any payments were calculated and why.

They’ll be bad news to local boat operators who helped with clean-up efforts, though; the final rules say boats used as part of a “Vessels of Opportunity” program can’t get paid for any resulting property damage via the claims facility.

Under the new rules, oyster processors will now be eligible for four times their 2010 documented losses as a lump-sum payment. In earlier versions, only oyster harvesters could get that much.

Although the Facility’s experts predict that the region will fully recover from the spill in 2012 (so claimants in most other fields are being offered a one-time check for double their documented 2010 losses), they estimate it will take oyster beds longer to return to normal.

The final methodology also offers to pay “reasonable costs” of claimants who work with an independent accountant on their claims, and to treat them as part of their losses. That offer should help claimants submit proper documentation to back up their claims; less than 17% had submitted completed 2010 documentation as of Friday, the GCCF said.

…

BP, for one, submitted a 24-page letter saying that the proposed methodology overstates the region’s losses and that payments were too generous.

More and more information is coming to the surface about the connections between Tea Party politicians, organizers and the John Birch Society.  I’m not sure how many people were aware of  their new governors’ associations and campaign contributors when they voted for him but they should have some awareness now.  You always have to follow the money. No where is this more true than in Wisconsin.

Much of Walker’s critical political support can be credited to a network of right-wing fronts and astroturf groups in Wisconsin supported largely by a single foundation in Milwaukee: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a $460 million conservative honey pot dedicated to crushing the labor movement.

Walker has deeply entwined his administration with the Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation’s CEO, former state GOP chairman Michele Grebe, chaired Walker’s campaign and headed his transition. But more importantly, the organizations lining up to support Walker are financed by Bradley cash:

– The MacIver Institute is a conservative nonprofit that has provided rapid-response attacks on those opposed to Walker’s power grab. MacIver staffers produced a series of videos attacking anti-Walker protesters, including one mocking children. Naturally, the videos have become grist for Fox News and conservative bloggers. In addition, MacIver created studies claiming that Wisconsin teachers and nurses are paid too “generously” and other reports claiming that collective bargaining rights hurt taxpayers. The Bradley Foundation has supported MacIver with over $300,000 in grantsover the last three years alone.

– The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is a major conservative think tank helping Walker win support from the media. The Institute has funded polls to bolster Walker’s position, and like MacIver, produced a flurry of attack videos against Walker’s political adversaries and a series of pieces supporting his drive against the state’s labor movement. Over the weekend, the Institute secured a pro-Walker item in the New York Times. The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is supported with over $10 million in grantsfrom the Bradley Foundation.

– As ThinkProgress has reported, the powerful astroturf group Americans for Prosperity not only helped to elect Walker, but bused in Tea Party supporters to hold a pro-Walker demonstration on Saturday. In 2005, the Bradley Foundation earmarked funds to help Koch Industries establish the Americans for Prosperity office in Wisconsin. From 2005-2009, the Bradley Foundation has givenabout$300,000 to Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin (also called Fight Back Wisconsin).

It should be no surprise that Walker’s radicalism is boosted by Bradley money. Today, the Bradley Foundation is controlled by a group of establishment Republicans, along with Washington Post columnist George Will.

I’m not sure if you’ve gotten a chance to check out Yves’ excellent analysis of public vs. private pay scales in Wisconsin from Sunday, but if you haven’t,  you’ll see that the private sector clearly pays more.  One thing that the right wing frequently does when it explores this issue is to throw all public sector and all private sector employees into an average.  This is comparing apples to oranges because public sector jobs frequently take higher levels of education than the overall economy.  Think scientists, teachers, engineers, etc.  Yve’s also point out the roll of the Koch brothers PAC in Walker’s campaign.

First, let’s debunk a couple of issues thrown out by Wisconsin governor Walker’s camp before turning to the real culprit in state budget’s supposed tsuris. The state budget is not in any kind of real peril. The Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated that the state would end fiscal year 2011 with a gross positive balance of $121. 4 million and a net balance (after mandated reserves) of $56.4 million. Walker asserts there is actually a $137 million deficit. But where did that change come from? Lee Sheppard of Forbes estimated that Walker’s tax cuts for businesses would cost at the bare minimum $100 million over the state’s biennial budget cycle. Other sources put a firmer stake in the ground and estimate the costs at at $140 million. Viola! Being nice to your best buddies means you need to go after someone else.

The second major canard is that Wisconsin state employees are overpaid. If any are, it sure isn’t the teachers, nurses, or white collar worker.

There’s a nifty chart there via Menzie Chin at Econbrowser that breaks it down nicely.I’m really getting tired of hearing distorted stories from the right wing on this.  Wisconsin right winger Congressman Paul Ryan is among the seriously confused.  He’s supposed to be the Republican bright bulb on economics too.  You can also add an article at the rather conservative The Economist to those with data showing how public sector employees do not receive better than private sector wages and benefits with an article called  ‘Don’t join the government to get rich’.

But  the Economic Policy Institute tells us that, in Wisconsin, public-sector workers are not in fact paid more than their private-sector counterparts. They’re paid less. You can only make it appear that public-sector workers earn more by ignoring the fact that “both nationally and within Wisconsin, public sector workers are significantly more educated than their private sector counterparts.”

Nationally, 54% of full-time state and local public sector workers hold at least a four-year college degree, compared with 35% of full-time private sector workers. In Wisconsin, the difference is even greater: 59% of full-time Wisconsin public sector workers hold at least a four-year college degree, compared with 30% of full-time private sector workers.

…Public employees receive substantially lower wages, but much better benefits than their private sector counterparts. Wisconsin state and local governments pay public employees 14.2% lower annual wages than comparable private sector employees. On an hourly basis, they earn 10.7% less in wages. College-educated employees earn on average 28% less in wages and 25% less in total compensation in the public sector than in the private sector.

The EPI study does find there’s a class of public-sector workers who earn a bit more than their private-sector counterparts: those without high-school degrees. In other words, district attorneys earn less than corporate lawyers, but janitors at the district attorney’s office may earn more than janitors at a corporate law office—provided the government hasn’t outsourced its facilities staff to the same private company the law office uses, which it may have, since governments have been targeting low-skilled workers for outsourcing precisely because that’s how they can save money.

The article also talks about Republican efforts to let state’s escape their pension obligations through bankruptcy.  I can only imagine how many elderly workers would be impacted by this.  Interestingly enough, Wall Street is against this too since many firms make money managing huge state pension plans and any state bankruptcy would impact bonds issued by states.  It’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds.

It turns out, however, that state governments won’t have the money to pay a lot of those pensions. They’re likely to renege on their promises, and Republicans in Congress want to allow them to declare bankruptcy in order to do so. (Funnily enough, this may be the one area in which labour unions and Wall Street are in alliance: neither one wants states to be allowed to declare bankruptcy.) In other words, as Ezra Klein points out, the public-sector employees got rooked: they accepted lower pay in exchange for retirement benefits, and now the retirement benefits look unlikely to come through.

Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization has written an article at Project Syndicate indicating that high food prices might be due to protectionist trade policies and a relative small amount of global trade in wheat and other grains. Can the world work together to stop food insecurity?

Export restrictions, for example, play a direct role in aggravating food crises. Indeed, some analysts believe that such restrictions were a principal cause of food-price rises in 2008. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, they were the single most important reason behind the skyrocketing price of rice in 2008, when international trade in rice declined by about 7% (to two million tons) from its record 2007. Similarly, the 2010-2011 price rise for cereals is closely linked to the export restrictions imposed by Russia and Ukraine after both countries were hit by severe drought.

Most people are surprised to learn how shallow international grain markets truly are. Only 7% of global rice production is traded internationally, while only 18% of wheat production and 13% of maize is exported. Additional restraints on trade are a serious threat to net-food-importing countries, where governments worry that such measures could lead to starvation.

Those who impose these restrictions follow a shared logic: they do not wish to see their own populations starve. So the question is: which alternative policies could allow them to meet this goal? The answer to that question consists in more food production globally, more and stronger social safety nets, more food aid, and, possibly, larger food reserves.

A conclusion to the Doha Round of global trade negotiations could constitute part of the medium- to long-term response to food-price crises, by removing many of the restrictions and distortions that have muddied the supply-side picture. A Doha agreement would greatly reduce rich-world subsidies, which have stymied the developing world’s production capacity, and have pushed developing-country producers completely out of the market for certain commodities. The worst kind of subsidies – export subsidies – would be eliminated.

I didn’t cover any of the major international news items today since we’ve been trying to keep live blogs of the global protest contagion.   I’ll try to come back with some pictures and information on the oil in the marshes here in Louisiana so you can see exactly what our government is letting BP get away with.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Presidents’ Day Reads

Posted: February 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bahrain, Diplomacy Nightmares, Drone Warfare, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, income inequality, Libya, morning reads, Psychopaths in charge, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, worker rights, Yemen | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

Good Morning! It’s “Presidents’ Day.” Talk about a generic holiday. We used to mark two presidents’ birthdays in February–Washington’s birthday on the 22nd and Lincoln’s birthday on the 12th–but now we just have a Monday in February when everything goes on sale, and pictures of Washington and Lincoln are used to sell cars and mattresses. At least some of us get the day off work.

There’s an awful lot of news happening, and I’m guessing there could be a even more happening Libya by the time you start reading this. The latest is that protesters are in Tripoli, and the family of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is vowing to fight the protesters “to the last man standing,” according to Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam in a really monotonous, rambling speech yesterday.

Anti-government protesters rallied in Tripoli’s streets, tribal leaders spoke out against Gaddafi, and army units defected to the opposition as oil exporter Libya endured one of the bloodiest revolts to convulse the Arab world.

Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi appeared on national television in an attempt to both threaten and calm people, saying the army would enforce security at any price.

“Our spirits are high and the leader Muammar Gaddafi is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are behind him as is the Libyan army,” he said.

“We will keep fighting until the last man standing, even to the last woman standing…We will not leave Libya to the Italians or the Turks.”

He also warned of “rivers of blood.” But those may be famous last words. From the Guardian UK:

In fast-moving developments after midnight, demonstrators were reported to be in Tripoli’s Green Square and preparing to march on Gaddafi’s compound as rumours spread that the leader had fled to Venezuela. Other reports described protesters in the streets of Tripoli throwing stones at billboards of Muammar Gaddafi while police used teargas to try to disperse them.

“People are in the street chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) and throwing stones at photos of Gaddafi,”an expatriate worker told Reuters by telephone from Tripoli. “The police are firing teargas everywhere, it’s even getting into the houses.”

There was also plenty of protesting going on in other Middle Eastern countries:

Libya’s extraordinary day overshadowed drama elsewhere in the region. Tensions eased in Bahrain after troops withdrew from a square in Manama occupied by Shia protesters. Thousands of security personnel were also deployed in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to forestall an opposition rally. Elsewhere in the region unrest hit Yemen, Morocco, Oman, Kuwait and Algeria.

At Asia Times Online, Pepe Escobar wrote a couple of days ago that the protests in Bahrain could soon spread to Saudi Arabia. That is one fascinating article.

In Wisconsin, protesters say they aren’t going anywhere.

“We’ll be here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday — as long as it takes,” Gary Lonzo, a union organizer and former Wisconsin corrections officer, said Sunday as he watched protesters banging drums and waving signs here for a sixth day in a row. “We’re not going anywhere.”

As the protests went on through falling sleet and snow, some lawmakers suggested that a compromise might yet be possible over the cuts that Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has proposed. A spokesman for Dale Schultz, a moderate Republican senator, said that Mr. Schultz supported Mr. Walker, particularly in his assessment that the state budget situation was dire, but that Mr. Schultz also hoped to work to preserve collective bargaining rights.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Democratic State Senators are staying in Illinois until further notice.

“This is not a stunt, it’s not a prank,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the Democrats who drove away from Madison early Thursday, hours before a planned vote, and would say only that he was in Chicago. “This is not an option I can ever see us doing again, but in this case, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. What they want to do is not the will of the people.”

Either I missed this story completely, or the US corporate media ignored it. An exiled religious leader, Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has returned to Egypt after 50 years and may be trying to “stealing the revolution,” according to a retweet from Mona Eltahawy (h/t, Wonk the Vote). Quaradawi made a speech to more than a million people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday. During the rally,

Google executive Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a leading voice in Egypt’s uprising, was barred from the stage in Tahrir Square on Friday by security guards, an AFP photographer said. Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.

Ghonim, who was angered by the episode, then left the square with his face hidden by an Egyptian flag.

Uh oh….

Remember Raymond Davis, who was arrested in Pakistan for shooting two Pakistani men on the street? He was more or less outed as a CIA agent during his trial. The U.S. has been trying to save him from murder charges by claiming he had diplomatic immunity. But the trial has gone on anyway, and now it’s definite that he’s CIA.

Raymond Davis has been the subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January.

Pakistani authorities charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an “administrative and technical official” attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity.

Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. “It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. The revelation may complicate American efforts to free Davis, who insists he was acting in self-defence against a pair of suspected robbers, who were both carrying guns.

[….]

The Pakistani government is aware of Davis’s CIA status yet has kept quiet in the face of immense American pressure to free him under the Vienna convention. Last week President Barack Obama described Davis as “our diplomat” and dispatched his chief diplomatic troubleshooter, Senator John Kerry, to Islamabad. Kerry returned home empty-handed.

Many Pakistanis are outraged at the idea of an armed American rampaging through their second-largest city. Analysts have warned of Egyptian-style protests if Davis is released.

Oh dear, another diplomatic nightmare for our indecisive President to deal with. BTW, has he said anything about the bloody massacres in Libya yet?

The New York Post has a nasty takedown of Mitt Romney by Josh Kosman, author of a book on how private equity firms could cause the next economic crisis.

…the former private equity firm chief’s fortune — which has funded his political ambitions from the Massachusetts statehouse to his unsuccessful run for the White House in 2008 — was made on the backs of companies that ultimately collapsed, putting thousands of ordinary Americans out on the street. That truth if it becomes widely known could become costly to Romney, who, while making the media rounds recently, told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work,” implying he was that person.

Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts.

Romney in 2007 told the New York Times he had nothing to do with taking dividends from two companies that later went bankrupt, and that one should not take a distribution from a business that put the company at risk.

Yet Geoffrey Rehnert, who helped start Bain Capital and is now co-CEO of the private equity firm The Audax Group, told me for my Penguin book, “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy,” that Romney owned a controlling stake in Bain Capital between approximately 1992 and 2001. The firm under his watch took such risks, time and time again.

I’m going to leave you with this video from The Ed Show live in Madison, Wisconsin.

What are you reading and blogging about today?

Saturday Reads: State-by-State, in Solidarity

Posted: February 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | 45 Comments

Aaron Foster, Reclaimed License Plate Map. Click to view at uncommongoods.com

Good morning, news junkies! This will just be a quick rundown of a few domestic headlines I’m following. There’s a lot of other news breaking inside and outside of the US these days. So as always, please use the comments to share whatever stories you’re tracking this Saturday.

TEXAS: I miss Ann Richards and Molly Ivins every day of politics, and every day I wake up to the ongoing nightmare of Rick Perry. But, the way our state demographics are trending, I can’t help but dream of a day when I can say I live in a blue state. Or, at least a really, really purple one! Here’s the big bold headline that the Houston Chronicle led with in its print edition yesterday:

5,946,800*

*Population of the 10-county Houston metropolitan area, according to the new census figures

The byline that ran underneath (and the title of the article as it appears online): “Trends show state increasingly urban and Latino.”

The Chronicle reports that, “Texas’ largest cities grew larger and more diverse, as did many suburban counties, part of what Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg calls ‘this accelerating demographic revolution.’“ According to Steve Murdock–another sociologist from Rice, as well as a former director of the Census Bureau–“the idea of predominantly white suburbs” no longer holds true.

Do you hear that noise? It sounds like Glenn Beckistan weeping in its sleep.

WISCONSIN: This is the state where I was born, with a deep progressive tradition that I’ve always felt personally drawn toward — a tradition that is now rising up to challenge the social darwinism of the tea party. Here are the two reads I recommend on the developments out of WI:

This next one is a headline out of Eau Claire, WI, attached to an AP report…

  • Leader-Telegram: “Jesse Jackson, Feingold rally protesters in Madison” Apparently the protesters broke into chants of “Feingold for Governor.” Oh how I love the sound of that.
  • Amanda Terkel has more on Feingold’s efforts over at Huffpo. From the link: “‘I just feel enormous pride in the people of Wisconsin who are coming together — whether union or anti-union — for the rights of workers,’ Feingold said in an interview with The Huffington Post. ‘This state is one of the originators of many of the workers’ rights and protections on child labor, unemployment compensation, and almost all kinds of workers’ rights. The fact that our governor is trying to destroy those rights is something worth fighting against. And I, of course, as a citizen of Wisconsin, somebody who knows the state very well, was proud to just show up and keep my support.’ While President Obama has criticized Walker’s proposal, which would strip away the collective bargaining rights of public employees, he has yet to make an appearance. Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl, the state’s one remaining Democratic U.S. senator, has put out a short statement on the protests but has not taken a visible role. […] Feingold said he believed any politician who purports to be pro-labor should be out in Madison. ‘I can’t imagine somebody who has supported labor and has the support of working people in the state wouldn’t want to at least appear at some point,’ said Feingold. ‘It’s a very meaningful and very difficult effort against one of the most mean-spirited things I’ve seen in a long time. I know people are busy, but to me it was gratifying to see everyone working this hard against something that’s really terribly wrong. It’s very inspiring.'”

Wisconsin’s progressives aren’t your johnny-come-lately career progressives like Arianna or Kos either. Wisconsin’s progressives are the real deal, with a history that goes way back.

In solidarity with them, I’m turning to one of my all time favorite quotes about politics and policy:

“In legislation no bread is often better than half a loaf.”

“Half a loaf, as a rule, dulls the appetite and destroys the keenness of interest in attaining the full loaf. A halfway measure never fairly tests the principle and may utterly discredit it. It is certain to weaken, disappoint, and dissipate public interest. Concession and compromise are almost always necessary in legislation, but they call for the most thorough and complete mastery of the principles involved, in order to fix the limit beyond which not one hair’s breadth can be yielded.” –-the late Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator

You guys from Wisconsin fighting the good fight–don’t yield one hair’s breadth beyond that limit. Ordinary Americans are behind you every step of the way. Your fight is our fight.

From Wisconsin to Texas, and from Texas to Wisconsin…

OHIO: And, from Wisconsin to Ohio. Is the Speaker crying yet?

I’ll let the headlines do the talking…

WASHINGTON, DC: As usual, our DC gang is up to shenanigans… a possible government shutdown, more of the K-Street/C-Street armageddon on women’s civil rights as a means to avoid doing anything substantive for ordinary people struggling in this economy, but at least activists in the area are pushing back and showing up at Boehner’s doorstep….

  • From Thursday in DC, via Wapo DC Wire: “DC Vote activists protest outside Boehner’s house…Members of the group DC Vote have gone to the Ohio Republican’s office before to complain about GOP bills. But with the House now considering a spending bill that would cut roughly $80 million in federal payments to the District and prohibit the city from using its own money for abortions or needle-exchange programs, the activist group decided to raise the stakes. ‘Speaker Boehner is coming to our home telling us how to spend our money,’ said DC Vote head Ilir Zherka. ‘We decided to come to his house to tell him to leave D.C. alone.'”
  • From Friday, via Raw Story: “House votes to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood… Authored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), the amendment would eliminate all $327 million in funding for Title X, a family planning program that began 40 years ago under President Richard Nixon. And while Planned Parenthood receives millions of dollars from the program, Title X funds cannot be used for abortion services. Instead, the money is to be used for noncontroversial family planning services such as contraceptives, reproductive health counseling and cancer screenings, mostly for low-income families. Pence said he supports the use of Title X funds for those purposes, but insisted the government must not fund any organization that provides or promotes abortions. The Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to approve the controversial measure.“

The Onion News Network had a report earlier this month that was downright prescient — “Congress Forgets How to Pass a Law” (youtube to the right):

FLORIDA: Of course, there’s that deeply flawed Romney-Obama Care that “Democrats” did manage to pass and that wingnuts want to see undone by hook or crook for all the wrong reasons. We live in perplexing times to say the least. A quick link on the HCR lawsuit front…

POTUS: Commenter paperdoll left a pithy observation about Obama at my blog the other week that I wanted to share with you as well, and this seems like as good a place as any to highlight it:

Obama is currently hell bent to prove his truly heartless GOP creds to the upper crust so they will install him in 2012. But that’s the one thing he doesn’t have to put on an act about….his heartlessness . …no ” um” ..” er” …” well let me be perfectly clear” …groping for buzz words there…just sub zero temps

Whether you think Obama is heartless or not, Obama has never had trouble telling any of us that his political heart belongs to the zombie daddy of the GOP, Ronald Reagan.

Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report had this to say on Wednesday: “Obamaland: Where Right meets Center-Right […] From community block grants to Section 8 housing vouchers to child care to Pell Grants to home heating oil for the poor, Obama has preemptively savaged all that decent people hold dear in the social safety net, and is in enthusiastic, principled agreement with the Republicans that the big cuts are still to come, in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Obama has arrived in his element, and he has nothing to be ashamed about. Way back on the campaign trail, he told everyone willing to listen how much he admired President Reagan. So, why be surprised when you get a Reagan-type budget? No, the shame is not Obama’s. The people who should be scandalized by the president’s budget are the enablers on the Left who abrogated their political responsibility to the people – and to Truth – by inventing an Obama that did not exist, back in 2007 and 2008.”

Politico ran this silly headline on Friday night: “Obama’s Wisconsin remarks ease labor’s doubts.” But, remember, Obama hasn’t shown in Madison, and Feingold says anyone who is a friend of working people should be there. I’d further that and say anyone who is a friend of working people would already be there in spirit, if not in the flesh. Whether Obama has truly “eased” labor’s doubts or not, whether he drags his heels on over to Madison eventually or not, those kinds of questions have all become increasingly moot. Obama continues to prove himself a laissez-faire leader that may or may not “show up” at the 11th hour, depending on whether his permanent campaign permits his doing so. He’ll never be at the frontlines fighting with or for us — on any issue. He’s not a champion of the middle or working class. Whether it’s in the Mideast or the American Midwest, the wheels of authentic hope and change are moving in spite of Obama, not because of him.

Obama is not the “liberal” version of Reagan. He is the version of Reagan that could only exist once the left in this country was rendered (selectively) mute. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the showdown happening in Wisconsin is paving the way for the American left to regain its voice and political relevance.

Sept. 2010: Hillary at the UN attending the "Every Woman, Every Child" event.

This Saturday in Women’s and Children’s Health headlines

Propaganda alert! This is what page four of Friday’s main section in the Houston Chronicle looked like:

Is it just me or does the above read something like, ‘It doesn’t take a village or a nanny state, it only takes mommy, who should stay at home and breastfeed her babies. In her free time, mommy should also shop for items to beautify her house at Macy’s with the allowance her honey gives her or with her Monopoly money, since she can’t work unless she wants her kids to end up sick in the hospital.’ (That’s dripping with sarcasm, btw. For the snark-impaired.)

I really felt like I was trapped in the 1950s or something reading that page. It all seems to go against the concept of “Every Woman, Every Child.”

In Beijing, 1995, a wise woman spoke these words:

What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well. That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on this planet does have a stake in the discussion that takes place here.

This Day in Women’s History (February 19th)

In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminist Mystique. Two good reads:

Bollywood flick I’m watching tonight: No One Killed Jessica (trailer to the left), based on the murder of Jessica Lall. The movie’s two big stars are two fabulous women–Rani Mukerji, as reporter, and Vidya Balan in the role of Jessica’s sister. I’ll leave you with a review of the movie on Counterpunch from Charles R. Larson: “Bollywood Noir?”

THE END!

What’s going on where you are and what’s on your blogging list today?

[originally posted at Let Them Listen; crossposted at Taylor Marsh and Liberal Rapture]

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