Weekend Economists Salute Our (Founding) Fathers June 14-16, 2013

[Demeter]

Sunday is Father's Day, and for those with fathers to honor, go forth and do so!

But if you don't have a suitable candidate, or if you want a bigger picture, consider our Founding Fathers, the men who stepped outside of the box they found themselves trapped in, envisioned and built a better deal for themselves and their neighbors and their future generations.

Their names are legendary, their legacies enduring. Franklin, Adams, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and so forth, men of conscience, men of learning, men who dealt with Reality and constructed a new world combining new ideas and ancient practices.

They didn't get everything right, they couldn't anticipate every eventuality, but their careful craftsmanship and their first principles still guide us.

In this 237th year since the Declaration of Independence passed the First Continental Congress, people have argued about what the Founders actually said, and what theyactually meant. This year, anybody can participate---their papers have gone on line for all to access.

No more pleading for permission, securing credentials, rooting in basements and file cabinets. Visit this site:

http://founders.archives.gov/

and expand your mind!

Correspondence and Other Writings of Six Major Shapers of the United States:

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Over 119,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative, federally funded Founding Fathers Papers projects....



The National Archives, through its National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), has entered into a cooperative agreement with The University of Virginia Press to create this site and make freely available online the historical documents of the Founders of the United States of America.

Through this website, you will be able to read and search through thousands of records from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison and see firsthand the growth of democracy and the birth of the Republic.

For the past 50 years, the NHPRC has invested in these detailed collections of all of the documents authored and received by, or related to, individual leaders of the period. Scholars have collected—from archives across the country and around the world—copies of the original 18th- and 19th-century documents, transcribed them, provided annotations, and produced hundreds of books. You can see a complete list of titles of these printed volumes along with links to the documents.

Founders Online also includes transcriptions of thousands of documents that have not yet appeared in the published volumes, provided via our Early Access program.

Now, for the first time, users can freely access the written record of the original thoughts, ideas, debates, and principles of our democracy. You will be able to search across the records of all six Founders and read first drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the spirited debate over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the very beginnings of American law, government, and our national story. You will be able to compare and contrast the thoughts and ideas of these six individuals and their correspondents as they discussed and debated through their letters and documents.

In its initial phase, Founders Online contains nearly 120,000 fully searchable documents. Soon we will be adding more documents drawn from the print editions and additional transcriptions of documents. As work continues on each of the ongoing publishing projects, newly annotated and edited records will be added. When it is complete, Founders Online will include approximately 175,000 documents in this living monument to America’s Founding Era.

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[Demeter]

1. No Banks Failed This Weekend

So some fathers get the time off...mothers too!

[Demeter]

2. It's very late, so I shall start serious posting in the morning

Between getting stuck in construction and Euchre night, the day ended before my work did.

I had the second lowest score tonight in euchre...given the cards I was dealt, it's a wonder I gained any points at all. It can't even be called gambling, given my record!

[xchrom]

3. IMF: US budget cuts 'ill-designed'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22911400


The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged the US to repeal the huge federal budget cuts introduced this year, denouncing them as "excessively rapid and ill-designed".

It said the deficit reduction programme would be a drag on growth this year.

It forecast growth of 1.9% for 2013, but said it could be as much as 1.75 percentage points higher without the rapid tightening of fiscal policy.

But the IMF added that the overall US economy was improving.

[Demeter]

9. AThey Weren't "Designed" for Anything Except Abuse of the Population

And any time the 1% squawked, because THEIR little lives were inconvenienced, that particular cut was restored.

The IMF pleading is a unique sight--enjoy it while it lasts!

[xchrom]

4. UN: India to be world's most populous country by 2028

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22907307


India looks set to overtake China as the world's most populous country from 2028, according to the United Nations.

At that point, both nations will number 1.45 billion people each. Subsequently India's population will continue to grow until the middle of the century, while China's slowly declines.

The UN also estimates that the current global population of 7.2 billion will reach 9.6 billion by 2050.

That is a faster rate of growth than previously estimated.

[xchrom]

5. France backs EU-U.S. trade talks after culture clash

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/15/uk-eu-us-trade-idUKBRE95D0S520130615

(Reuters) - France cleared the European Union to launch free-trade talks with the United States on Friday after fellow EU members accepted its demand to shield movies and online entertainment from the might of Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

After 12 hours of talks, EU officials announced that the 27 EU trade ministers had finally agreed a negotiating mandate towards what could be the world's most ambitious trade agreement.

The breakthrough came only after the ministers telephoned their leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, diplomats said.

Paris had refused to join the 26 other EU governments unless television, movies and developing online media were left out.

[westerebus]

23. and Oceania was formed..

giving rise to the Western Cannon of Orthodoxy in which humanity in all its forms is reduced in value in exchange for power.

[DemReadingDU]

6. PonziWorld: The Most Cynical Society In Human History

6/14/13 The Most Cynical Society In Human History

A society that openly accepts this level of greed, corruption, deception and mealfeasance can't be anything but totally surprised when it all leads to collapse...

For those keeping score at home, here are some of the most egregious openly-accepted deceptions in recent history:
.
.
Neoconned
The United States has been taken over by the Neocon movement. It's abundantly clear, that it no longer matters who is the elected President anymore, because whoever it is will be quickly assimilated by the Neocon borg. Any attempt to oppose the Neocon agenda is dealt with in the harshest of terms, always in the form of a barrage media attack of right-wing pseudo-patriotic sloganeering. Still, the masses at large really don't seem to mind. Since 9/11, the brain-washing has been constant and consistent, that anyone who opposes the Neocon agenda is some sort of seditious traitor. This latest whistleblower for the NSA, Edward Snowden is now being trashed and smeared by the establishment as being an opportunistic communist hell-bent on destroying his own country, when it's the exact opposite.

more...
http://www.ponziworld.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-most-cynical-society-in-human.html

[hamerfan]

34. Thanks for the link, DRDU!

The article sums up the way I feel quite nicely.

[xchrom]

7. Chrysler to freeze salaried employees’ pensions in effort to limit liability

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/chrysler-to-freeze-salaried-employees-pensions-in-effort-to-limit-liability/2013/06/14/e981b41e-d521-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html

Chrysler plans to freeze pensions for 8,000 salaried employees at the end of the year, the automaker announced Friday, joining a growing group of companies seeking to limit the amount of money they have to set aside now for future retirees.

The move means that salaried workers in the company’s pension plan, which pays retirees a fixed benefit for life, will stop accruing new benefits at the end of 2013. They remain entitled to the pension benefits they have earned so far, but instead of adding to the guaranteed payments they will receive at retirement, the workers will be offered 401(k) accounts, which shift the risk of saving for retirement from employers to employees.

Chrysler's decision comes after a similar one by General Motors, which last year froze pensions for 26,000 salaried workers in the United States, moving them to 401(k) plans.

Chrysler's move does not affect retirees or 27,000 hourly workers in the United States, whose retirement benefits are negotiated in contracts with the United Auto Workers union. Chrysler had already stopped offering traditional pensions to new salaried employees, who instead were offered 401(k)s, although salaried workers already with the company were allowed to remain in the pension plan.

[DemReadingDU]

8. Five Stonking Crashes by Ilargi at The Automatic Earth

6/14/13 Ilargi:
Little by little the realization is seeping through that, provided we can agree a recovery cannot be purchased outright, there is no such thing as a recovery anywhere in the western world. Mind you, I said seeping, and I could even have said trickling; it's a slow process. And that is a direct consequence of various vested interests in producing the illusion of recovery and growth which exist in the realms of politics, finance and media.
.
.
In the words of the Guardian:
Cheap credit has inflated the markets, and we could be in for a crash landing...

During the past four centuries, there have been five occasions when major credit bubbles have led to stonking crashes. Tulip mania in 17th-century Holland was the first; the South Sea bubble in the 18th century was the second; the US real estate crash of the 1830s was the third; the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression was the fourth. The sub-prime crisis that began in 2007 was the fifth.

No matter what happens next, the chance that central banks will be able to continue to manipulate down both bond yields and interest rates is getting slimmer by the day. Nonetheless, they'll keep on doubling down on their bets: the more they lose control (or the more it's obvious they never had any), the bigger the losses for the financial community will get, and the more they will clamor for more stimulus.
.
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It's a shame for the people in the street that it must come to this, because the costs for them will be many times higher than if they had made their voices heard earlier. But perhaps, given the entanglement of governments, central banks, the financial community and the media, this was unavoidable.

What's positive for those people is that it means the entire investor model of the economy as we know it is dead (though I don't think many are ready to accept this), once it's obvious it was only held standing up through ever larger injections of taxpayer funds. At least they won't have to worry so much about vultures picking at the carcasses of their lives, even as these lives will in most cases be pretty destitute.

http://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/five-stonking-crashes.html


6/8/13 The Guardian: Cheap credit has inflated the markets, and we could be in for a crash landing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/09/something-nasty-global-banking-no-plan

[bread_and_roses]

13. Finance/Consume/Finance/Consume = unsustainable

to my mind, the underlying problem is the demand for "growth" - we simply cannot keep "growing" in the conventional sense (more and more consumption of purely consumer goods - and most of it crap).

If "growth" meant putting our resources to sustainable energy, (real)food, essential infrastructure, education, health/child/elder care, environmental protection and restoration, and universal access to communication, we'd have millions of real jobs doing real work. As long as "growth" means more and more people buying more new cars and more new clothes and more new appliances we're well and truly on the path to collapse - financial, environmental, social/political.

I have no hope. I see no future.

[bread_and_roses]

10. Burr (1973), by Gore Vidal - hilarious on Geo Washington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr

Burr (1973), by Gore Vidal, is a historical novel challenging the traditional iconography[1] of United States history via narrative and a fictional memoir of Aaron Burr. Burr was variously the third US vice president, a US Army officer in and combat veteran of the Revolutionary War, a lawyer and a U.S. senator from New York. In an 1804 duel, while still vice president, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton, who had been the first US Treasury Secretary.

(my emphasis added)

It's been years since I read Burr, but I remember laughing out loud at the depiction of Geo Washington.

It's also apt for this weekend, as the theme of fathers and sons runs through the book.

A major plot thread involves Vice President (and presidential candidate) Martin Van Buren, who is rumored to be Burr's illegitimate son.

And if I remember rightly, the fictional narrator is also an illegitimate son of some character - I forget which one.

[Demeter]

11. The Two Centers of Unaccountable Power in America, and Their Consequences by Robert Reich

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/14-4

There are two great centers of unaccountable power in the American political-economic system today — places where decisions that significantly affect large numbers of Americans are made in secret, and are unchecked either by effective democratic oversight or by market competition.

(Photo: David Jackmanson/ Flickr)One goes by the name of the “intelligence community” and its epicenter is the National Security Agency within the Defense Department. If we trusted that it reasonably balanced its snooping on Americans with our nation’s security needs, and that our elected representatives effectively oversaw that balance, there would be little cause for concern. We would not worry that the information so gathered might be misused to harass individuals, thereby chilling free speech or democratic debate, or that some future government might use it to intimidate critics and opponents. We would feel confident, in other words, that despite the scale and secrecy of the operation, our privacy, civil liberties, and democracy were nonetheless adequately protected.

But the NSA has so much power, and oversight of it is so thin, that we have every reason to be concerned. The fact that its technological reach is vast, its resources almost limitless, and its operations are shrouded in secrecy, make it difficult for a handful of elected representatives to effectively monitor even a tiny fraction of what it does. And every new revelation of its clandestine “requests” for companies to hand over information about our personal lives and communications further undermines our trust. To the contrary, the NSA seems to be literally out of control.

The second center of unaccountable power goes by the name of Wall Street and is centered in the largest banks there. If we trusted that market forces kept them in check and that they did not exercise inordinate influence over Congress and the executive branch, we would have no basis for concern. We wouldn’t worry that the Street’s financial power would be misused to fix markets, profit from insider information, or make irresponsible bets that imperiled the rest of us. We could be confident that despite the size and scope of the giant banks, our economy and everyone who depends on it were nonetheless adequately protected.

But those banks are now so large (much larger than they were when they almost melted down five years ago), have such a monopolistic grip on our financial system, and exercise so much power over Washington, that we have cause for concern. The fact that not a single Wall Street executive has been held legally accountable for the excesses that almost brought the economy to its knees five years ago and continues to burden millions of Americans, that even the Attorney General confesses the biggest banks are “too big to jail,” that the big banks continue to make irresponsible bets (such as those resulting in JP Morgan Chase’s $6 billion “London Whale” loss), and that the Street has effectively eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank legislation intended to rein in its excesses and avoid another meltdown and bailout, all offer evidence that the Street is still dangerously out of control.

It is rare in these harshly partisan times for the political left and right to agree on much of anything. But the reason, I think, both are worried about the encroachments of the NSA on the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, as well as the depredations of “too big to fail or jail” Wall Street banks on our economy, is fundamentally the same: It is this toxic combination of inordinate power and lack of accountability that renders both of them dangerous, threatening our basic values and institutions.

That neither Republicans nor Democrats have done much of anything to effectively rein in these two centers of unaccountable power suggests that, if there is ever to be a viable third party in America, it will may borne of the ill-fated consequences.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

[Demeter]

12. The Next Crash And The Next Bailout Now By Charles P. Pierce

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/insurers-inflating-books-061313

Learning from the sweet -- and largely unprosecuted -- techniques of their pals in the financial-services industry, it appears that the moguls, poobahs, and panjandrums in the insurance industry are finding their own special ways to game the entire system into the poorhouse.

These complex private deals allow the companies to describe themselves as richer and stronger than they otherwise could in their communications with regulators, stockholders, the ratings agencies and customers, who often rely on ratings to buy insurance. Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York's superintendent of financial services, said that life insurers based in New York had alone burnished their books by $48 billion, using what he called "shadow insurance," according to an investigation conducted by his department. He issued a report about the investigation late Tuesday. The transactions are so opaque that Mr. Lawsky said it took his team of investigators nearly a year to follow the paper trail, even though they had the power to subpoena documents.

Here's a thought experiment. But on your best suit, shine up your best shoes, walk into your local neighborhood auto dealership and sign to buy a Turbo Porsche by describing yourself "as richer and stronger" than you could say otherwise to, say, the bank holding the mortgage on your condo. Tell you what. You can tell us what happened when you get out of the joint in seven to 10 years.

Mr. Lawsky said that because the transactions made companies look richer than they otherwise would, some were diverting reserves to other uses, like executive compensation or stockholder dividends. The most frequent use, he said, was to artificially increase companies' risk-based capital ratios, an important measurement of solvency that was instituted after a series of life-insurance failures and near misses in the 1980s.Mr. Lawsky said he was struck by similarities between what the life insurers were doing now and the issuing of structured mortgage securities in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008. "Those practices were used to water down capital buffers, as well as temporarily boost quarterly profits and stock prices," Mr. Lawsky said. "And ultimately, those practices left those very same companies on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in losses from risks hidden in the shadows, and led to a multitrillion-dollar taxpayer bailout."

You think any of these guys looked at what happened in 2008 and thought, "Boy, those guys really were crooks and bought the country a helluva catastrophe. We should learn from them and not do that ourselves." Nope, I guarantee you the first thoughts among the people who thought up this scam for the insurance companies was, "Holy crap, look at the dough those guys made!" And I guarantee you those same people all got raises. The upper levels of American capitalism is so rotten with amorality, so utterly devoid of any conventional sense of ethics, let alone social responsibility, that it hardly seems worth pointing it out any more. Congratulations to America's graduate schools of business. You have bred three generations of vampires to feed on the rest of us. It's as though every medical school in the country adopted the basic approach to thoracic surgery of Sweeney Todd and married it to the economic philosophy of Bialystock And Bloom.

[Demeter]

14. Calvin is poster child for the 1%

http://assets.amuniversal.com/6354cd30637201301a42001dd8b71c47

[Demeter]

15. Privacy and the Founding Fathers

The Bill of Rights was so important to the first Americans that they wouldn't accept the Constitution as written without it. The current explosive situation of government spying would have them up in arms--literally. A compendium of thought on this issue of the day/week/month/year/century/eternity:

Tell Me What Is Being Done In My Name By Charles P. Pierce

OK, let us persist in the notion that I am an American citizen. Let us persist in the notion that I am the citizen of a self-governing political commonwealth. Let us persist in the notion that I have a say -- and important and equal say -- in the operation of my government here and out in the world. Let us persist in the notion that, in America, the people rule. If we persist in these notions -- and, if we don't, what's the fking point, really? -- then there is only one question that I humbly ask of my government this week.

Please, if it's not too damn much trouble, can you tell me what's being done in my name?

That has been the essential plea of the citizen of a democratic political commonwealth for going on 70 years now, since the war powers and their attendant influence detached themselves from -- or were abandoned entirely by -- the constitutional authority in which they were supposed to reside. That was the plea that was answered, officially, by the incredibly brave Frank Church and his committee, and by the House Committee on Assassinations (the case of the murder of a president in broad daylight is still open, by the way). That was the plea that has been answered, unofficially, by Ron Ridenhour about My Lai, and by Sy Hersh about a lot of the things the Church committee opened up, and by those guys in Lebanon with the mimeograph machine concerning Iran-Contra, and by Bob Parry and so many others during the era of Reagan triumphalism, and by people like the invaluable Charlie Savage and Jane Mayer and others when the country lost its mind after 9/11, and, yes, by Jeremy Scahill and whoever he talks to, and, yes, by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, too....

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/A_Simple_Question

Greenwald Says ‘There’s A Lot More Coming,’ Argues NSA Revelations Don’t Harm Security

The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald on Monday defended the 29-year-old who served as the source of one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history, arguing that the revelations of the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance programs only harmed "those in power who want to conceal their actions and their wrongdoing" while also foreshadowing future bombshells.

During an appearance on MSNBC'S "Morning Joe," Greenwald said his bombshell reports — based on information provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton — were of "great public interest."

"The reality is that U.S. government officials for many decades now — and certainly over the last ten years — have been abusing their secrecy power to shield from the American public, not programs that are designed to keep America safe and not to prevent disclosures that would help the terrorists, but to conceal their own actions from the people to whom they're supposed to be democratically accountable," Greenwald said. "What we disclosed was of great public interest, of great importance in a democracy that the U.S. government is building this massive spying apparatus aimed at its own population, and it harms nobody. Anyone who wants to say that any of these stories or disclosures have harmed national security, I defy anybody to say anything that we've published that does that in any way. The only people who have been harmed are those in power who want to conceal their actions and their wrongdoing from the people to whom they're supposed to be accountable."

Greenwald also appeared to suggest that more disclosures are imminent...

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/suggesting-theres-lot-more-coming-greenwald-says-nsa?ref=fpa

Someone call Nixon’s plumbers. We need them again. Fabius Maximus

Marcus Ranum looks to our past — the government’s history of surveillance — to see the future which the government’s vast surveillance machinery makes possible, and perhaps will help bring into being.
We prepare the way for a Leader

We prepare the way for a Leader

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The NSA Doppleganger and Enemies

The Nation currently has an excellent piece on some of the history of surveillance in the US. Combine it with reading Tim Weiner’s latest book Enemies, and you have a picture of a government that has always illegally surveilled its citizens (also see Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power).

Occasionally, as today, we are brought to confront that fact, and it’s always instructive because you can tell from the backlash how badly it stung those who enjoy secret power and status. The rule of law is something that you criticize other countries for not following. This amounts to moving from “US Exceptionalism” to exceptionalism for the US power elites.

In the long-term it’s poor strategy because it amounts to building the weapons that will eventually be used against one faction when there’s a disagreement among elites. It’s laying the framework for an eventual takeover of the republic by centralized power. The more you centralize and aggregate power, the worse it is when your Stalin or Bonaparte comes along. As soon as one faction of the power elites realizes they can use the power of the police state to silence internal dissent among the elites, rather than simply controlling the lumpenproletariat, the republican experiment will be conclusively ended....

http://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/06/13/fascism-51325/

Lindsey Graham: ‘If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it’

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/lindsey-graham-thought-censoring-mail-necessary-suggest-182932835.html

Deputy CIA Director Morell to retire to ‘spend more time with family’

Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, in a surprise announcement on Wednesday, confirmed that after 33 years of service, including two stints as acting director, he will retire to "spend more time with family."

To head off speculation regarding that familiar Washington excuse for exiting office, Morell added, "Whenever someone involved in the rough-and-tumble of Washington decides to move on, there is speculation in various quarters about the 'real reason.' But when I say that it is time for my family, nothing could be more real than that."

"As much as I would selfishly like to keep Michael right where he is for as long as possible, he has decided to retire to spend more time with his family and to pursue other professional opportunities," CIA Director John Brennan said in his own statement...

YEAH, RIGHT! THIS DISCLAIMER IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED BY WHAT WAS REALLY GOING ON.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/deputy-cia-director-michael-morell-retire-replaced-white-200541735.html

This Isn’t How to Stop Hacking By JOE NOCERA

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/opinion/nocera-this-isnt-how-to-stop-hackers.html?_r=0

... The news about Edward Snowden had just broken, and it was much on our minds. To us, at least, it seemed to scream for a Chinese response. Snowden, a 29-year-old employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, had leaked information about a huge program conducted by the National Security Agency to obtain a record of every phone call made in the United States. He also leaked news of another program, Prism, that gathered information from Facebook, Apple and other tech companies about the cyberactivity of customers. The revelations were astonishing.

Now Snowden was hiding out somewhere in Hong Kong, popping up just long enough to grant the occasional interview. What would China do if, say, Snowden asked for asylum? And what did China have to say about all this spying by the U.S. government?

Not much, at least not at first. In one early meeting, the official answering our questions knew so little about l’affaire Snowden that he asked us to walk him through it. “It sounds like Hong Kong has quite a problem,” he grinned...

... After he had been in Hong Kong a few days, Snowden gave another interview in which he said that the United States had routinely hacked into Chinese computers. In addition to suddenly improving his chances of gaining asylum, Snowden had given the Chinese the ammunition they had been looking for. All over the country, a magic switch went on. Thousands of writers and editors who hadn’t dared touch the Snowden story on Tuesday couldn’t get enough of it on Wednesday.

“The U.S. Has Attacked Chinese Networks for 15 Years,” said a headline in The Yangtze Daily. “Snowden Leaks Information About Prism to Reveal the Hypocrisy of the U.S. Government,” added The Wuhan Evening News.

China Daily quoted a Chinese expert on American affairs saying, “For months, Washington has been accusing China of cyberespionage, but it turns out the biggest threat to the pursuit of individual freedom and privacy in the U.S. is the unbridled power of the government.”

I don’t know whether Prism and the other programs truly stop terrorists. I have my doubts. What I do know is that if you are going to lecture the world about right and wrong — and if you’re trying to stop bad behavior — perhaps you shouldn’t be engaging in a version of that behavior yourself....

MORE TO FOLLOW, OF THAT I HAVE NO DOUBT!

[Demeter]

16. The Other Side of the Story By GAIL COLLINS

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/opinion/collins-the-other-side-of-the-story.html

The deck is always stacked when we debate keeping the nation safe.

Recently, we discovered that the National Security Agency is keeping an enormous file of our phone calls. In the N.S.A.’s defense, its chief, Gen. Keith Alexander, said “dozens” of potential terrorist attacks had been thwarted by that kind of effort. The director of the F.B.I., Robert Mueller, suggested it might prevent “the next Boston.”

How do you argue with that? True, the N.S.A. program had been up and running for years without being able to prevent the first Boston. And Alexander declined to identify the thwarted attacks, arguing that might aid potential terrorists. But most Americans were sold. The words “terrorist attack” conjured up terrible, vivid pictures. On the other side was just a humongous computer bank full of numbers. If you didn’t do anything wrong, what was the problem?

Today, let’s try putting a face on it in the form of Brandon Mayfield.

A Kansas native, Mayfield went to college and law school, served in the Army, married, had three children and moved to Portland, Ore., to practice law. His story begins with — yes! — an enormous federal database, in this case the one that collected fingerprints of Americans who served in the military. In 2004, after terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid, Spanish officials found a suspicious fingerprint on a plastic bag at the scene. The F.B.I. ran it through its files and decided, erroneously, that it matched Mayfield’s. Further investigation revealed that Mayfield had married an Egyptian immigrant and converted to Islam — information the authorities apparently found far more compelling than the fact that he had never been to Spain.

Peculiar things then began to happen in the Mayfield house. His wife, Mona, returned home to find unlocked doors mysteriously bolted. Their daughter, Sharia, then 12, noticed that someone had been fooling around with her computer. “I had a desktop monitor, and it looked like some of the screws had been taken out and not put back in all the way,” she said in a phone interview. “And the hard drive was sticking out.” Later, the family would learn that agents had broken into their home and Mayfield’s law office repeatedly, taking DNA swabs from the bathroom, nail clippings and cigarette butts, along with images of all the computer hard drives.

“I became very paranoid that someone was going into my room,” said Sharia.

The snoopers had warrants from the court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA courts are supposed to keep investigators within the law while they’re secretly searching for terrorists. We have been hearing a lot about this recently, since the Obama administration keeps pointing out that the N.S.A.’s phone records project had the blessing of FISA judges. Last year, the feds made 1,856 requests to FISA judges and got 1,856 thumbs-up.

So there we are: Search of huge database produces a (wrong) name. Investigators get permission to search an American family’s house without their knowledge, from a secret court that does not seem to be superhard to convince. One day, F.B.I. agents walked into Mayfield’s office, handcuffed him and took him away. When Sharia left school, her brother met her and told her that their father had been arrested. She assumed it was a joke.

“I said something like, ‘Oh — good one, bro.’ Then my brother started to cry.”

For the next two weeks, Mayfield remained in jail, imagining a possible death penalty. His daughter recalls the family’s isolation, coupled with omnipresent radio and television reports about the alleged Madrid bomber. “School was a refuge in some ways from the reality of home, which was hell,” Sharia said.

Spain saved the day. The Spanish investigators were dubious from the beginning that the fingerprints at the bombing site were Mayfield’s; they had been hoping, perhaps, for a person who had set foot in Europe within the last decade. They found and arrested someone whose finger was a real match...Mayfield was released. The government eventually paid him $2 million in damages and, in a rare act of contrition, issued a formal apology to him and his family. A federal judge in Oregon also found that the Patriot Act’s authorization of secret searches against American citizens was unconstitutional — a ruling that was reversed on a technicality by a higher court.

That was nearly a decade ago. “But you never quite get over these things,” Mayfield said. “It was a harrowing ordeal. It was terrifying.” He and his daughter are working on a book about what happened. Sharia is also going to law school. “I want to do civil liberties,” she said.

So there we are. It’s just one story. But I suspect the national willingness to give government a blank check on national security matters comes to a screeching halt at about the point where the agents tiptoe into the daughter’s bedroom.

[Demeter]

17. And this is the point, ladies and gentlemen of the Weekend, where my stomach revolts

and I have to take a sanity break. I'll be back later...if I'm not dumped in Gitmo in the interim...or summarily droned.

[Hotler]

19. I will not let them take you without a fight......

If they take you they will have to take me also.

[Demeter]

25. Solidarity forever!

[bread_and_roses]

18. Yep. and yet all over this site are the apologists

For the single and only reason that it is a D in charge. Unbelievable. What is it about the simple equation that where there is power there is abuse of power that people can ignore? Always. From the police officer who shot the kittens to the war crimes committed by our troops to Gitmo.

[Demeter]

24. Email Communique from Alan Grayson

In George Orwell's novel 1984, "Big Brother" is the dictator of Oceania. No one knows whether Big Brother is a real person, or simply the personification of the dictatorship. Big Brother spies on every citizen through "telescreens." Everyone is reminded constantly, "Big Brother is Watching You."

Let's compare that to the recent revelations about the Orwellian-named National Security Agency (NSA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense. News reports in the Guardian and the Washington Post have uncovered a secret court order dated April 23, 2013, issued to Verizon. Verizon is the largest cell phone company in America. The court order requires Verizon to give to the NSA "all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. " "Call detail records" are records of who you called, when you called, and how long you spoke.

The court order in the news reports is classified, and it's marked "Declassify on: April 12, 2038."

There is no reason to think that the NSA singled out Verizon. So that implies that the NSA is collecting records of every telephone call that you and I make, even local telephone calls. In fact, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who worked at the NSA, told reporters that he could get the records for the calls from the President's own personal cell phone.

The NSA has not denied that it is collecting call records on every America. On the contrary, the NSA sees nothing wrong with it.

I see three fundamental problems with this:

1. This is worse than the proverbial "fishing expedition"; this is like putting the entire ocean through a sieve. It makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment's requirement that government searches be "particular."
   
2. This assumes not only that everyone is guilty until proven innocent, but that everyone is guilty. The Fourth Amendment limits searches to cases of "probable cause," meaning that a prudent and cautious person would reasonably believe that the search will yield evidence of a crime. Obviously, most phone records have absolutely nothing to do with the commission of any crime.
   
3. Providing this information to the Department of Defense violates the fundamental principle that our military does not operate on American soil, against American citizens. That principle has been embodied in law since the 1870s. From this perspective, providing this personal call record information to DoD is no different from providing it to the CIA - another agency that is not allowed to operate on US soil.

The news reports also reprinted five pages from an NSA PowerPoint presentation about the NSA's "Prism" program. According to that NSA presentation, the NSA collects information "directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.""What information?", you may wonder. This information, according to the NSA presentation: "E-mail, Chat-video, voice, Videos, Photos, Stored data, VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol, File transfers, Video Conferencing, Notifications of target activity - logins, etc., Online Social Networking details and Special Requests."

The PowerPoint presentation in the news reports is classified, and it's marked "Declassify On: 20360901" (Meaning Sept. 1, 2036.)

The plain meaning of this, in the context of the presentation, is that the NSA is pulling unlimited amounts of e-mails from Microsoft's hosted Hotmail accounts, e-mails from Google's hosted Gmail accounts, search records from Google's search servers, private "friend" communications from Facebook's servers, the content of telephone calls from Skype's VoIP service, etc., etc.

Regarding the Prism program, despite what the presentation specifically states, the NSA contends that it cannot actually collect information directly from the servers of all those internet service providers. The NSA also has put out that it collects such information (e-mails, photos, call content, etc.) only for foreigners not residing in the United States. Honestly, I don't know how the NSA could do that in any reliable manner, because Google, Microsoft, Facebook and all the others have no way of knowing your citizenship or your residence. But that's what the NSA is saying.

The bottom line is that the NSA evidently is getting call information on virtually every phone call by virtually every American, it is definitely getting the e-mails and call content of foreigners, and it may or may not be getting the e-mails and call content of Americans.

So is Uncle Sam actually Big Brother? I won't dwell on the convoluted intimate relations that would be necessary to make your uncle also your brother. Rather, as noted above, the essence of Big Brother was that "Big Brother is Watching You." Uncle Sam isn't physically observing you at all times - that much is true. But if Uncle Sam is receiving information about every phone call that you make (as the NSA concedes), and Uncle Sam has access every other electronic communication of yours, including your e-mails and web browsing and storing it all (which the NSA disputes), then yes, Big Brother is Watching You.

I think that it's wrong, and it has to end. As do the 13,000 people in 24 hours who signed the petition supporting our legislation at www.MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. Because we can't protect our freedom by destroying it.

I understand that there may be some people who see no problem in the Department of Defense monitoring their communications. I also understand that there are some people who have been so traumatized, so terrorized, by terrorism that they are willing to give up all of their freedom - all of everyone's freedom - for the promise of some safety.

I am not one of those people.

Click here for freedom: http://MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com/

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson


P.S. I'll say it again -- Please, please, please forward this to your friends, and urge them to sign the petition. Twitter, Facebook, everywhere.

[Hotler]

20. Our founding fathers would be proud of these folks. ......

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017125591
If only Americans had the will, courage and strength to rise up and fight back.
I have no. I see no future. God I need a hug.

[Demeter]

21. Me too

It's not just the big news, it's the little personal stuff, too. A hug for all reasons, Hotler!

[Demeter]

22. The future of the People and democracy may not be in the US

It's a definite possibility that we have to face, and plan for accordingly.

[Demeter]

26. Shall we try for some more topical, economic news, now?

Something not as cataclysmic as the No Such Agency reports?

[Demeter]

27. Here's What The Heck Is Happening In Japan by Joe Weisenthal

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-the-heck-is-happening-in-japan-2013-6#ixzz2W6iUHYYQ

The Japan market crash has finally broken through to the mainstream. Last night and this morning, several non-finance folks have been asking "What the heck is happening in Japan?" First, from an obvious market standpoint, it's crashing. Japan's main stock index, the Nikkei, fell 6.25% last night, to 12,445. Just a few weeks ago it was right around 16,000. That's a crash. Of course, Japan had been one of the hottest markets in the world, surging like crazy since last autumn. Here's a chart, via FinViz, of Nikkei futures going back several months.

Screen Shot 2013 06 13 at 7.38.19 AM

FinViz

The big runup that started in November coincided with the emergence of "Abenomics," the big economic strategy outlined by new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who supports eliminating the Japanese slump via a three-arrow combination of ultra-aggressive monetary policy, fiscal policy, and structural reforms. The monetary policy has been the easiest to implement because all it took was for the BOJ to just declare an aggressive inflation target and a lot of QE. The fiscal and structural parts are much more difficult. But for the purposes of rising asset prices, the monetary stimulus deserves a lot of the credit for the big Nikkei surge. So what's gone wrong? Basically, people are doubting the Bank of Japan's resolve. Matt Yglesias has a great post at Slate showing that the collapse of the Nikkei also corresponds with a recent decline in inflation expectations, and those declines in inflation expectations associate with hints that the Bank of Japan is not fully committed to stoking more inflation.



One of the arrows refers to comments from the Finance Minister concerning the rise in Japanese Bond Yields, which hinted that maybe the Bank of Japan was getting freaked out. And the other arrow concerns minutes from a Bank of Japan meeting, in which concern was expressed over rising yields, which also caused investors to question the bank's resolve. The bottom line is this: For a central bank to do its thing it needs to be aggressive and clear in its goals, and not worry about the bumps along the road. Paul Volcker was willing to crash the U.S. economy (well at least create a recession) in order to beat inflation. Ben Bernanke gets called a traitor by U.S. Presidential candidates, but is committed to his extraordinary monetary policy actions. The Bank of Japan already looks nervous. And the market is starting to bet against it.

DON'T KNOW WHAT JAPAN HAS TO BE NERVOUS ABOUT...THEY ARE A DEAD COUNTRY WALKING

[Demeter]

28. Why the Nikkei Has Fallen 20 Percent in Less Than a Month By Matthew Yglesias

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/06/13/nikkei_falls_inflation_expectations_down.html

...it seems that what Abenomics giveth, Abenomics also taketh away.

One longtime Abenomics skeptic wagged at me when the Nikkei closed that this shows you can't achieve prosperity via currency debasement. But I think Lars Christensen's chart of inflation expectations reposted above(SEE PREVIOUS POST) shows the opposite. As long as investors believed that Abe and the Bank of Japan were committed to inflation, investors also believed in shares of Japanese companies. But rising inflation expectations pushed nominal bond yields up (as indeed they would almost have to), which sparked some highly public hand-wringing, a fall in inflation expectations, and a stock market crash. Some will see this as evidence that expectations-based monetary policy doesn't work (see Cardiff Garcia's useful roundup of fiscalists versus monetarists), but I tend to think that we're actually seeing the power of expectations. If BoJ President Kuroda were to issue a strong statement taking note of the situation and reiterating his intention to push inflation expectations back up to 2 percent despite being fully aware that this will increase nominal yields on Japanese bonds, then I bet that we'd see all these trends reverse.

But whatever you make of that, let there be no mistake—the Nikkei rally corresponded with a decline in the yen and a rise in inflation expectations while the crash has corresponded with a stronger yen and lower inflation expectations. The variables all move together. The scenario in which the currency is debased and the real economy suffers has not yet been seen.

Meanwhile in light of the continued debate on this topic, let me once again urge legislators in major developed countries to pass laws designed to explicitly authorize joint fiscal-monetary operations (i.e., "helicopter drops&quot in which, rather than purchasing bonds, central banks will directly give cash to citizens. The bond purchasing channel is problematic in a number of ways, not least of which is that it invites precisely the confusion over the direction of interest rates that seems to have tripped Japan up. When large-scale asset purchases push asset prices down rather than up, people become confused. Direct cash injections explicitly designed to boost prices and real output are clearer, fairer, and more transparent.

NOT TO MENTION, MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE!

[Demeter]

32. Japan Is a Model, Not a Cautionary Tale By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/japan-is-a-model-not-a-cautionary-tale/

IN the five years since the financial crisis crippled the American economy, a favorite warning of those who have urged forceful government action, myself included, has been that the United States risked entering a long period of “Japanese-style malaise.” Japan’s two decades of anemic growth, which followed a crash in 1989, have been the quintessential cautionary tale about how not to respond to a financial crisis. Now, though, Japan is leading the way. The recently elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has embarked on a crash course of monetary easing, public works spending and promotion of entrepreneurship and foreign investment to reverse what he has called “a deep loss of confidence.” The new policies look to be a major boon for Japan. And what happens in Japan, which is the world’s third-largest economy and was once seen as America’s fiercest economic rival, will have a big impact in the United States and around the world. Of course, not everyone is convinced: though Japan reported a robust 3.5 percent annualized growth rate for the first quarter of this year, the stock market has dipped from a five-year high amid doubts about whether “Abenomics” will go far enough. But we shouldn’t read anything into short-term stock fluctuations. Abenomics is, without a doubt, a huge step in the right direction.

To really understand why things look good for Japan requires not only looking closely at Mr. Abe’s platform, but also re-examining the popular narrative of Japanese stagnation. The last two decades are hardly a one-sided story of failure. On the surface, it does look like there’s been sluggish growth. In the first decade of this century, Japan’s economy grew at a measly average annual rate of 0.78 percent from 2000 to 2011, compared with 1.8 percent for the United States. BUT Japan’s slow growth does not look so bad under close examination. Any serious student of economic performance needs to look not at overall growth, but at growth related to the size of the working age population. Japan’s working age population (ages 15 to 64) shrank 5.5 percent from 2001 to 2010, while the number of Americans of that age increased by 9.2 percent — so we should expect to see slower G.D.P. growth. But even before Abenomics, Japan’s real economic output, per member of the labor force, grew at a faster rate over the first decade of the century than that of the United States, Germany, Britain or Australia. Still, Japan’s growth is far lower than it was before its crisis, in 1989. From our own recent experience in America, we know the devastating effects of even a short (albeit much deeper) recession: in America, we’ve had soaring inequality (with the top 1 percent securing all of the gains of the “recovery,” and even more income), increased joblessness, and a middle that has been falling farther and farther behind. Japan’s example shows that full recovery doesn’t happen on its own. Luckily for Japan, its government took steps to ensure that the extremes in inequality that happened in the United States weren’t manifest there, and now is finally being proactive about its growth.

And if we broaden the range of metrics we consider, we see that even after two decades of “malaise,” Japan’s performance is far superior to that of the United States. Consider, for instance, the Gini coefficient, the standard measure of inequality. Zero represents perfect equality, and 1 stands for perfect inequality. While Japan’s Gini coefficient stands today at around 0.33, the number for the United States is 0.38, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (Other data sources put the United States’ level of inequality at even higher levels.) In the United States, the average income of the top 10 percent is 15.9 times that of the bottom 10 percent — compared with 10.7 times for Japan. The reasons for these differences are political choices, not economic inevitability. Also according to the O.E.C.D., the Gini coefficient before taxes and transfer payments is about the same in the two countries: 0.499 for the United States, and 0.488 for Japan. But the United States does only a little to modulate its inequality, bringing it down to .38. Japan does much more, reducing the Gini coefficient to 0.33.

............................

WITH his three-pronged approach — structural, monetary and fiscal policies — Mr. Abe, who took office last December, has done what America should have done long ago. Though the structural policies have not been fully fleshed out, they are likely to include measures aimed at increasing labor-force participation, especially among women, and hopefully by facilitating employment for the large number of healthy elderly. Some have suggested encouraging immigration as well. These are areas in which the United States has done well in the past, and are crucial for Japan to address, for the sake of both growth and inequality...AS the pieces of evidence fall into place, the pressing issue turns out to be not whether Abenomics is a good plan, but how the United States could achieve a similarly integrated plan, and what the consequences would be if it fails. The obstacle is not economic science but, as usual, America’s raging political battles. For example, despite austerity advocates’ dubious intellectual foundation, we have allowed public expenditures to slip in all sorts of areas, including those necessary for ensuring a future of shared prosperity. As a result, even as some states’ financial situations start to edge toward improvement, public employment is still some 500,000 lower than it was before the crisis; the decrease in jobs has occurred almost completely at the state and local level. To regain the pre-recession levels of employment and public services is a tremendous task, to say nothing of bringing them to where they would have been without a recession. (If the economy had been expanding normally, public employment would have increased significantly.) With inequality still high, the burdens are being felt, disproportionately, by our country’s most vulnerable....A major theme of my research has been that any country pays a high price for its inequality. Societies can have higher growth and more equality — the two are not mutually exclusive. Abenomics has already laid out some policies aimed to produce both. And one hopes that as further details are worked out, that there will be more policies that promote greater gender equality in the labor market will tap into one of that country’s underutilized resources. It will enhance growth, efficiency, and equality. Mr. Abe’s plan also reflects an understanding that monetary policy can only go so far. One needs to have coordinated monetary, fiscal and structural policies. Those who see Japan’s performance over the last decades as an unmitigated failure have too narrow a conception of economic success. Along many dimensions — greater income equality, longer life expectancy, lower unemployment, greater investments in children’s education and health, and even greater productivity relative to the size of the labor force — Japan has done better than the United States. It may have quite a lot to teach us. If Abenomics is even half as successful as its advocates hope, it will have still more to teach us.

ABENOMICS DIDN'T CREATE THOSE ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS...AND IT DOESN'T SEEK TO DISMANTLE THEM, LIKE THE SEQUESTER DOES...

[Demeter]

29. Corporations are Colonizing Us with Trade Deals, and Wall Street Wants In By Richard (RJ) Eskow

http://www.nationofchange.org/corporations-are-colonizing-us-trade-deals-and-wall-street-wants-1370613249

After 237 years, we’re becoming a colony again. Our nation’s losing the right to self-determination it fought so hard to win, and it’s happening on a scale unseen since the days of George III. As is so often the case these days, this wholesale loss of our rights is being underwritten by corporate interests. And, as usual, it’s being called “bipartisan” – by corporations who “buy” both Republican and Democratic “partisans.” (I THINK WE NEED A NEW TERM FOR THAT: BUY-PARTISAN!)

Terms of Surrender

Republicans cheered George W. Bush for saying, “I will never place U.S. troops under U.N. command.” Democrats cheered Barack Obama for saying, “I want us to control our own energy destiny.” But both leaders pushed trade agreements that surrender our sovereign rights to faceless bureaucrats in international bodies – bodies that are dominated by multinational corporations. Where are those cheering crowds now? Republicans backed a president who supported a agreements which put Americans’ rights – and their environment – “under the command” of foreign bodies. And unless something changes Democratic voters will soon see their president give up even more control of our economic destiny.

WTO Stands For “We’re Taking Over”

Public Citizen, which has been doing excellent work on this issue, reports on three U.S. laws that were nullified by the World Trade Organization (WTO): country-of-origin labels on meat, dolphin-safe labels on tuna, and the ban on sweet-flavored cigarettes designed to get kids addicted to the tobacco companies’ carcinogenic products. (What’s next: Cherry-flavored crack?) The WTO and the WTO “Appellate Body” – two bodies most Americans don’t even know exist – overruled these laws in a preemptory manner that would have outraged the Continental Congress. We didn’t elect them. We can’t communicate with them. But they’ve issued three decrees which we must obey:

1) We are not to know where the meat we’re eating comes from.

2) We must accept the fact that we may unknowingly wind up eating the flesh of dolphins, arguably the most intelligent nonhuman species on the planet. And,

3) We must continue to allow the distribution of products designed to addict our children to a deadly and habit-forming substance.

How’s that for “controlling our own destiny”?

The Next Front

The next stage of our war for economic independence is being determined in trade talks that are being conducted in deep secrecy by a president who once promised “the most transparent administration in history.” Laurel Sutherlin calls the Trans-Pacific Partnership “a worldwide corporate power grab of enormous proportions,” and that pretty accurately sums it up. (It’s hard to write about these deals without sounding hyperbolic, even if you’re only being descriptive.) As Sutherlin points out, the TPP “is among the largest and potentially most important ‘free trade’ agreements the world has ever seen …” And yet, as Sutherlin notes, “one can hardly be blamed for not being familiar with it yet. The corporate cabal behind it … has done an exceptional job of maintaining an almost total lack of transparency as they literally design the future we will all inhabit.” Although 600 corporate representatives have seen drafts of the agreement, access has been denied to even high-ranking members of Congress. Dave Johnson excerpts some provisions being considered in the secret talks, and they’re truly terrifying. In fact, as Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy point out in a must-read editorial, the treaty’s provisions are so unpopular that the last negotiator felt it could only be concluded in secret. And now sovereignty-killing provisions are being considered for a trade agreement with member nations of the European Union...

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! THE BANKSTERS WANT A PIECE OF THE ACTION! SEE LINK

[Demeter]

30. What We Need Now: A National Economic Strategy for Better Jobs By Robert Reich

http://www.nationofchange.org/what-we-need-now-national-economic-strategy-better-jobs-1371044128

Jobs are returning with depressing slowness, and most of the new jobs pay less than the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession. Economic determinists — fatalists, really — assume that globalization and technological change must now condemn a large portion of the American workforce to under-unemployment and stagnant wages, while rewarding those with the best educations and connections with ever higher wages and wealth. And therefore that the only way to get good jobs back and avoid widening inequality is to withdraw from the global economy and become neo-Luddites, destroying the new labor-saving technologies...That’s dead wrong. Economic isolationism and neo-Ludditism would reduce everyone’s living standards. Most importantly, there are many ways to create good jobs and reduce inequality. Other nations are doing it. Germany was generating higher real median wages until recently, before it was dragged down by austerity it imposed the European Union. Singapore and South Korea continue to do so. Chinese workers have been on a rapidly-rising tide of higher real wages for several decades. These nations are implementing national economic strategies to build good jobs and widespread prosperity. The United States is not.

Any why not? Both because we don’t have the political will to implement them, and we’re trapped in an ideological straightjacket that refuses to acknowledge the importance of such a strategy. The irony is we already have a national economic strategy but it’s been dictated largely by powerful global corporations and Wall Street. And, not surprisingly, rather than increase the jobs and wages of most Americans, that strategy has been increasing the global profits and stock prices of these giant corporations and Wall Street banks. If we had a strategy designed to increase jobs and wages, what would it look like? For starters, it would focus on raising the productivity of all Americans through better education — including early-childhood education and near-free higher education. That would require a revolution in how we finance public education. It’s insane that half of K-12 budgets still come from local property taxes, for example, especially given that we’re segregating geographically by income. And it makes no sense to pay for the higher education of young people from middle and lower-income families through student debt; that’s resulted in a mountain of debt that can’t or won’t be paid off, and it assumes that higher education is a private investment rather than a public good. It would also require greater accountability by all schools and universities for better outcomes — but not just better test results. The only sure thing standardized tests measure is the ability to take standardized tests. Yet the new economy demands problem-solving and original thinking, not standardized answers. Better education would just be a start. We would also unionize low-wage service workers in order to give them bargaining power to get better wages. Such workers — mostly in big-box retailers, fast-food chains, hospitals, and hotel chains — aren’t exposed to global competition or endangered by labor-substituting technologies, yet their wages and working conditions are among the worst in the nation. And they represent among the fastest-growing of all job categories.

We would raise the minimum wage to half the median wage and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. We’d also eliminate payroll taxes on the first $15,000 of income, making up the shortfall in Social Security by raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax. We’d also restructure the relationships between management and labor. We would require, for example, that companies give their workers shares of stock, and more voice in corporate decision making. And that companies spend at least 2% of their earnings upgrading the skills of their lower-wage workers. We’d also condition government largesse to corporations on their agreement to help create more and better jobs. For example, we’d require that companies receiving government R&D funding do their R&D in the U.S. We would prohibit companies from deducting the cost of executive compensation in excess of more than 100 times the median compensation of their employees or the employees of their contractors. And bar them from providing tax-free benefits to executives without providing such benefits to all their employees. And we would turn the financial system back into a means for investing the nation’s savings rather than a casino for placing huge and risky bets that, when they go wrong, impose huge costs on everyone else.

There’s no magic bullet for regaining good jobs and no precise contours to what such a national economic strategy might be, but at the very least we should be having a robust discussion about it. Instead, economic determinists seem to have joined up with the free-market ideologues in preventing such a conversation from even beginning.

[Demeter]

31. History Teaches That We Have the Power to Transform the Nation By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

http://truth-out.org/news/item/16934-history-teaches-that-we-have-the-power-to-transform-the-nation

We live in a time of great crises on many fronts. As the economy continues to fail and extraction methods for energy become more radical and harmful to people and the planet, momentum is building for a mass uprising. Turkey is the most recent illustration that the event which sparks popular unrest cannot be predicted. We can only suspect that it is coming. So, we must be prepared.

Times of crisis also offer opportunities for real change. We can create an economy and society that are more just and sustainable. Alternatively, we can continue down the same destructive path. What type of society emerges from this unrest will be determined in large part by our actions.

The question we hear frequently is: How do people build power and ultimately transform the nation and the world in a way that is lasting and based on our values? Many people in the United States feel the task is futile, the power structure too strong, so that working for real, transformational change of the economic and political system is unrealistic.

The fact is, United States and world histories show that an organized and mobilized populace is what has always caused transformational change. This history is not taught in our education system or emphasized in the heroes we idolize in our culture, but it is so significant that it cannot be hidden from view. The country could not operate if the people refused to participate in its corrupt systems. The ultimate power is with us, if we let go of fear and embrace it...

MUST READ! SEE LINK, ESP:

100 Years of Resistance Shows What Works

[kickysnana]

33. Economic observations from the top of the bottom

Our low income Senior Apartment Residents Group held their 5th annual tag sale today. A small village that became a second ring suburb. Good schools. When we moved in in 2006 over half the people here had been here since it opened in 1980. The turn over was heavy last year. The new people had mortgaged their houses for medical or family reasons found themselves with no assets when property values crashed.

The selection was way down this year. Only a few shelves for furniture. Hardly any housewares. Most things were $1 and under and you have to sell a lot of those to make money. Last year there were almost no toys. This year there were some but a lot of stuffed animals hoping to lure outsiders in. People can reclaim their donations and the rest is packed up and sent to Disabled American Veterans who have a wider base of buyers.There was only about half the clothing of other years. A lot of decorating items, crafts, books and lot VHS tapes and a few regifts. I bought a Harold Lloyd film CD collection for when they only broadcast 24/7 propaganda. I would be surprised if they made half of what they made the last few years. You would think there was a depression on.

Things we swap here weekly new and used books that were gifts, food, VHS/CDs, and clothes.

Lots of volunteers, fresh baked cookies and coffee for .50 at the "cafe".

[bread_and_roses]

35. "Economic crises are not exceptional; they are the standing operational mode"

The Hagiographical approach to our "Founding Fathers" has always confused me. Yes, they wrote a rather remarkable set of documents - and they also violated or disregarded it at their own convenience. And from a pretty early age I wondered if the sacred Revolutionary War" had really been necessary? I'd think, gee, what's so awful about Canada? (Although the Brits keeping their tiresome Royals around as decorative items is almost reason enough to revolt, had we not already.)

"Economic crises are not exceptional; they are the standing operational mode of the capitalist system."
Michael Parenti

I have just re-read Michael Parenti's "The Assassination of Julius Caesar." - a marvelous little book that I highly recommend. It punctures the notion that the ruling aristocrats of Rome had any great concern for "liberty" or "The Republic" and skewers historians for routinely accepting the world view and narrative of the ruling class in any era.

I wandered over to his Blog because the book left me wanting more. The current Blog post includes remarks on President Mellifluous that would get him banned here in a quick heartbeat.
http://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

The quote above is from this post: http://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-terrible-normality-by-michael-parenti.html

What is to be made of all this? First, we must not ascribe these aberrations to happenstance... Nor should we believe the usual rationales about spreading democracy, fighting terrorism, providing humanitarian rescue, protecting U.S. national interests and other such rallying cries promulgated by ruling elites and their mouthpieces.

... The dominant socio-economic system today is free-market capitalism (in all its variations). Along with its unrelenting imperial terrorism, free-market capitalism provides "normal abnormalities" from within its own dynamic, creating scarcity and maldistributed excess, filled with duplication, waste, overproduction, frightening environmental destruction, and varieties of financial crises, bringing swollen rewards to a select few and continual hardship to multitudes.

[Demeter]

44. The revolt was not so much about England, as it was about the East India Tea Co.

This NAFTA, etc. trade deals for global corporations' profiteering crap...this is where we came in last time.

The Company had a sweetheart deal ever since Elizabeth, and nobody in England gave a care that the people living here were being enslaved by the Company.

When George sent over the Hessians, Washington seduced them with land and farmer's daughters.

Things are seldom what them seem in the grade school history books.

And more often than not, it was the Southerners, children of English aristocracy, who violated the plans that the Northerners, children of the Enlightenment, put in place.


Free Market Capitalism is just Free-booting Piracy in fancy dress.

[xchrom]

36. China signals hunger for Arctic's mineral riches

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/04/china-arctics-mineral-riches

When China — along with Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, and Italy — was granted permanent observer status in the Arctic Council last month, it left many experts wondering whether a paradigm shift in geopolitics is taking place in the region.

Until recently, security issues, search and rescue protocols, indigenous rights, climate change, and other environmental priorities were the main concerns of the intergovernmental forum, which includes the eight voting states bordering the Arctic and several indigenous organizations that enjoy participant status. But the admission of China and other major Asian economic powers as observer states is yet another strong sign, experts say, that the economic development of an increasingly ice-free Arctic is becoming a top priority of nations in the region and beyond.

“Five or six years ago, most people would have reacted skeptically to the suggestion that China, for example, would become a major player in the Arctic,” says Rob Huebert, associate director of the Center for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary and a board member of Canada’s Polar Commission. “But in the past few years, China has been investing considerable resources to ensure it will be a major Arctic power. Like other countries now looking northward, it wants to exploit the emerging shipping opportunities and the largely unexploited energy and mineral resources in the region.”

Of those non-Arctic states admitted as observers to the council last month, China dwarfs the others in terms of its economic reach and its global track record of making deals for resource development from Asia, to Africa, to South America.

[xchrom]

37. Help us follow the dirty money, Guinea asks G8

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/10839835

LONDON (Reuters) - Guinea, one of Africa's poorest nations despite abundant natural resources, has urged the G8 to back its battle with corruption by helping trace shell companies used to hide crooked deals and track dirty money flows.

The resulting increased prosperity, President Alpha Conde said, would help stem growing radicalism in a region already threatened by unrest in Mali that has placed Guinea and its neighbours at risk of becoming conduits for drugs and guns.

Guinea has long been one of Africa's "geological scandals": the West African country has rich reserves of iron ore, gold, bauxite and other minerals, but little has been tapped and half its 10 million people live in poverty.

Speaking ahead of an annual G8 meeting expected to put the resources industry and transparency high on the agenda, Conde said Guinea needed logistical support from U.S., British and other governments and law enforcement agencies.


***a thing they ought to do for more than just guinea

[xchrom]

38. UK workers watch helplessly as inflation outstrips wage growth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/jun/12/uk-workers-inflation-wage-growth

Wednesday's jobs figures contained some encouraging signs for green-shoots watchers: employment growth resumed, with 24,000 more people in work, and unemployment declined, albeit by a marginal 5,000. That suggests the weaker period at the start of the year may have been a blip, instead of the start of a renewed downturn in the labour market.

But the broad picture in the UK remains of a workforce watching helplessly as wage growth is relentlessly outpaced by the increase in the cost of living. As thinktank the Resolution Foundation points out, earnings have now been failing to keep up with inflation for 40 straight months.

That's precisely the picture set out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in its latest research, of employees holding on to their jobs but continuing to accept declining real wages in exchange for not being chucked on the scrap heap.

Overall earnings growth actually picked up, rising by 1.3% a year in the three months to April. But that is likely to reflect bonuses being pushed into the new financial year, as the top rate of income tax was reduced from 50p to 45p. Without bonuses, pay growth remained painfully weak, at 0.9% – less than half the rate of inflation.

[xchrom]

39. No quick fix for corporate tax take as pressure to act builds

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/14/uk-g8-tax-europe-idUKLNE95D00720130614

(Reuters) - Europe's leaders are talking tough about making companies pay more tax but they are expected to take only baby steps for fear of alienating big business during an economic slump.

Schemes used by Starbucks (SBUX.O), Apple (AAPL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and others, operating within existing law to minimise taxes, have prompted British Prime Minister David Cameron to put the matter on the agenda when he hosts a meeting of leaders from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations on June 17/18.

The issue of aggressive tax 'planning' will then go to the Group of 20 global powers, including China, when a leading think tank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, outlines steps next month to tackle it.

Lawmakers and officials predict progress will be slow. Europe is torn between the demands of small countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland, fiercely resisting change to their low-tax regimes which attract foreign investment, and states such as Britain and Germany, wary of driving away big employers.

[xchrom]

40. G8 FACES UNCERTAIN RECOVERIES, TURBULENT MARKETS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/G8_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-06-16-08-00-51

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (AP) -- Europe is mired in debt and recession. Financial markets have hit violent ups and downs on fears that U.S. stimulus efforts may soon be scaled back. Japan is finally looking up after years of stagnation - but it remains an open question if the recovery will stick.

That's the global economy that will confront the heads of the Group of Eight leading economies as they gather Monday and Tuesday for their annual summit in Northern Ireland.

British Prime Minister David Cameron will serve as summit host for U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of Germany, Italy, Canada, France, Japan and Russia. At the top of the agenda: New cooperation to fight tax evasion and increase transparency among governments. Also on the table will be how much help to give to rebels in Syria, and a push for lower trade barriers between the United States and the European Union.

On the sidelines and over dinner, it's expected that the discussions will broaden to include the election results in Iran and data protection, following revelations about a U.S. counterterror surveillance program.

[xchrom]

41. Detroit Peddles Its Municipal Assets to Avoid Record Bankruptcy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/detroit-on-bankruptcy-s-brink-stops-paying-some-debts-orr-says.html

Detroit (9845MF) is suspending payments on $2 billion of unsecured debt, marketing parking garages and telling retirees to rely on President Barack Obama’s health-care law to avoid a record municipal bankruptcy.

Those are among proposed changes in a 128-page restructuring plan Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr offered yesterday at a meeting of creditors in Detroit. The moves, including spending $1.25 billion over 10 years to bolster safety and remove blight, will give an insolvent city a viable future, Orr said.

“We have to strike a balance between the legacy obligations to our creditors and our employees and retirees and the duty as a city to 700,000 residents for lights, police, fire, emergency management, cleaning the streets,” Orr told reporters after the meeting.

With a $39.7 million missed payment yesterday on debt issued to fund pensions, Detroit becomes the most populous U.S. city to default since Cleveland in 1978. Unsecured creditors may receive less than 10 cents on the dollar under a deal Orr offered to more than 100 creditors and union officials who met at a Detroit Metropolitan Airport hotel.

[xchrom]

42. FX Rates Said to Face Global Regulation in Libor Review

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/fx-rates-said-to-face-global-regulation-in-libor-review.html

Global regulators may start overseeing currency rates in a widening response to benchmark-rate setting scandals that began with revelations on the manipulation of Libor, two people familiar with the matter said.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions, a Madrid-based group known as Iosco that harmonizes market rules, may propose final guidelines improving transparency and oversight of benchmarks, including the WM/Reuters rates, as soon as next month, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks aren’t finalized.

The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, which oversees markets and prosecutes financial crime, is looking into potential manipulation in the $4.7 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market after being contacted by a whistle-blower in March. The regulator has sent requests for information to four banks, including Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and Citigroup Inc (C)., according to one of the people.

“All benchmarks share similar vulnerabilities so there is a need for a framework that applies to all benchmarks to ensure their integrity and restore market confidence,” Chantal Hughes, a spokeswoman for European Union Financial Services Commissioner Michel Barnier, said in an e-mailed statement. “We will also be making a proposal this summer on the framework for benchmarks.”

[xchrom]

43. How Britain's 157 Year-Old Burberry Brand Was Rescued From The Brink By An American Woman

http://www.businessinsider.com/burberry-rescued-from-disaster-american-woman



New Palestine, Indiana, (population 2,000) is as far removed from the runways of London, Paris, Milan or New York as it is possible to imagine. But it was here, in a house so crowded she carved out a refuge for herself in the cupboard under the stairs, that Angela Ahrendts first set her sights on a career in fashion. Now as chief executive of Burberry, she's one of the most powerful figures in the big-ticket world of luxury labels – and one of Britain's best paid bosses: taking home £17m in 2012 (more than any man working for a FTSE-100 blue-chip company that year) and another £7m this year.

"It was always fashion," she says. "If you read my high school yearbook, I was [someone] who at 16 knew exactly what I was going to do."

What she has done, in the past seven years, is turn Burberry from a label that had become associated with baseball caps worn in nightclubs to the biggest British high-fashion brand, which ranks alongside anything the ateliers of Paris and Milan have to offer. She has signed up actors such as Eddie Redmayne and Emma Watson as the faces of the brand – and scored a huge publicity coup when she put Romeo Beckham in one of Burberry's trademark trench coats for a series of glossy magazine adverts.

Ahrendts sells at eye-watering price points: Burberry sells £14,000 alligator bowling bags, animal-print trench coats in calfskin for £5,500 and £95-a-pair babies' booties to buyers all over the world – but especially in Asia – and as a business it is now worth £6.5bn – just a fraction less than Marks & Spencer.



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/16/angela-ahrendts-burberry-chav-image##ixzz2WOBnDxqI



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/16/angela-ahrendts-burberry-chav-image##ixzz2WOBd2Hyc

[Demeter]

45. I survived the paper route

It was raining like Noah when I left the house, but just as the truck pulled up, it stopped, so the papers could be transferred dry. And it stayed dry all the way to the end.

Now the Kid wants to run around yard-saling and such. I'll be back as soon as she lets me....

[Demeter]

46. Meanwhile, contemplate this truth