Weekend Economists (Heart) the 4th Estate February 22-24, 2014

[Demeter]

Last edited Sat Feb 22, 2014, 10:00 AM - Edit history (2)

For lack of a better idea, and to commemorate the new venture that pulls Greenwald, Poitras, and Taibbi together, we salute and explore the wide world of Journalism.

The Fourth Estate (or fourth estate) is a societal or political force or institution whose influence is not consistently or officially recognized. "Fourth Estate" most commonly refers to the news media; especially print journalism or "the press". Thomas Carlyle attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain. Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British queens consort (acting as a free agent, independent of the king), and to the proletariat. The term makes implicit reference to the earlier division of the three Estates of the Realm....widipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

The 4th Estate by definition is a product of technology. Outside of the town crier, the Sunday sermon and the gossip, how could news be broadcast without a printing press?

Dr. Debora B. Schwartz
English Department, California Polytechnic State University

The Three Estates

... The idea of the "estates" is important to the social structure of the Middle Ages. Feudal society was traditionally divided into three "estates" (roughly equivalent to social classes). The "First Estate" was the Church (clergy = those who prayed). The "Second Estate" was the Nobility (those who fought = knights). It was common for aristocrats to enter the Church and thus shift from the second to the first estate. The "Third Estate" was the Peasantry (everyone else, at least under feudalism: those who produced the food which supported those who prayed and those who fought, the members of the First and Second Estates). Note that the categories defined by these traditional "estates" are gender specific: they are defined by what a man does for a living as much as by the social class into which he was born.

Women were classified differently. Like men, medieval women were born into the second or third estate, and might eventually become members of the first (by entering the Church, willingly or not). But women were also categorized according to three specifically "feminine estates": virgin, wife and widow. It is interesting to note that a woman's estate was determined not by her profession but by her sexual activity: she is defined in relationship to the men with whom she sleeps, used to sleep, or never has slept.

The rigid division of society into the three traditional "estates" begins to break down in the later Middle Ages. By the time of Chaucer (mid-fourteenth century), we see the rise of a mercantile class (mercantile = merchants) in the cities, i.e. an urban middle-class, as well as a new subdivision of the clergy: intellectuals trained in literature and writing (and thus "clerics" like Chaucer's Clerk), but who were not destined to a professional career within the Church. Chaucer arguably belonged to both of these new categories...

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl430/estates.html

For the longest time, news was the proprietary interest of the 1st Estate: the Church in the form of clerics writing the official history and biography and science, or what passed for science on parchment, as directed by the power structure. Controlling the skill of reading and writing controlled the news; "news" was the way to control the people and their behaviors, and Mother Church was very much into control....until Martin Luther, the printing press, the Gutenberg bible and use of the vernacular blew that business model to smithereens. Literacy spread, and people grew up in a wider, undetermined world of varied opinions. It was the Age of Enlightenment...the greatest flowering of all the arts and sciences known to humanity in the Western Hemisphere. Earlier flowerings were resurrected from long-hoarded texts that the Church "protected", and geniuses like Newton, Bacon, Franklin built upon these.

The 4th Estate grew exceedingly more powerful for centuries, making or unmaking leaders in politics, art, and other fields, and as technology developed, the 4th Estate branched out into radio, television, film, magazines, newsletters by subscription, etc.

The 2nd Estate, the Obscenely Wealthy, as I like to call them, would try to subvert journalism with propaganda, stuff that looked like news but was either a complete lie or merely advertising. They would produce their own form of journalism, to compete with less-biased presses. It took the end of the Laws against Monopoly (thank you, Ronald Reagan, for all the poison you force-fed the political process) for the Obscenely Wealthy to simply buy up and subvert the 4th Estate. Which brings us to today.

If not for the Internet, we would be in the feudal state of "news", but Technology, somehow, beat the Obscenely Wealthy just as the prize was within their gasp.

The story continues, AT POST 28....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=s8Wp_KLrLgo

[Demeter]

1. No Bank Failures, Yet.

Check back later, this spot.

Meanwhile, I have to make supper. Be back soon!

[Fuddnik]

2. Break up the media cartels.

Our future depends on independent, truthful journalism and whistle-blowers.

Greenwalds group should merge with Truthdig, and you'd have a progressive powerhouse under one roof.

[DemReadingDU]

3. Great topic!

Greenwald, Scahill, Poitras, and now Taibbi

The Intercept, the first of First Look's digital magazines, is founded and led by award-winning journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill. Its initial focus will be new reporting involving the disclosures made to them by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Over time, the site will broaden its reporting to a wide range of issues involving government and corporate accountability.
https://firstlook.org/#/home

Blog
https://firstlook.org/#/blog


bookmark for future reading!

[Fuddnik]

4. Bookmarked!

Looks like some great reading, which I now have some time to do.

[Demeter]

5. Does the White House Really Think People Are That Stupid?

THIS IS WHAT IS KNOWN AS A RHETORICAL QUESTION, A COMMON JOURNALISTIC DEVICE:

A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked in order to make a point. The question, a rhetorical device, is posed not to elicit a specific answer, but rather to encourage the listener to consider a message or viewpoint. Though classically stated as a proper question, such a device may be posed declaratively but implying a question, and therefore may not always require a question mark when written. Though a rhetorical question does not require a direct answer, in many cases it may be intended to start a discussion or at least draw an acknowledgement that the listener understands the intended message.

A common example is the question "Can't you do anything right?". This question, when posed, is intended not to ask about the listener's abilities, but rather to insinuate a lack of the listener's abilities.

Although sometimes amusing and even humorous, rhetorical questions are rarely meant for pure, comedic effect. A carefully crafted question can, if delivered well, persuade an audience to believe in the position(s) of the speaker.

In simple terms, it is a question asked more to produce an effect than to summon an answer...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question

http://www.workinglife.org/2014/02/19/does-the-white-house-really-think-people-are-that-stupid/#sthash.EM8STsW3.dpuf

C’mon, seriously, has it gotten to the point of such desperation to pass middle-class crushing, poverty-enhancing trade deals that drive inequality that the White House treats its allies, members of Congress and activists as if they are idiots? That’s a rhetorical question.

This is a head-slapping, WTF moment:

Michael B. Froman, the president’s trade representative, tried to reassure Democrats on Tuesday that the administration would be sensitive to their concerns about workplace and environmental standards in putting together the new trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. He noted that as a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta.“And that’s exactly what we’re doing in TPP, upgrading our trading relationships not only with Mexico and Canada but with nine other countries as well,” Mr. Froman said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group in Washington.

That assertion drew scorn from critics. “I don’t think that expanding on the Nafta model and extending it to nine more nations was what the unions, environmental groups or Democratic Party activists had in mind when Obama said he would renegotiate Nafta,” said Lori Wallach, a trade expert at Public Citizen, a liberal advocacy group.[emphasis added]

Uh, well, first, in case Mr. Forman and the White House cannot add, candidate Obama existed roughly six years ago. I think that campaign ended already, no? In the period since, the president has done nothing, zilch, nada to renegotiate NAFTA.The opposite: he continues to press for trade deals that as Lori Wallach points out above are precisely in the NAFTA-mold, including the TPP whose passage he so badly wants that he is willing to sacrifice the environment, which is precisely NAFTA-like.

And the Orwellian speak of Froman promising “upgrading our trading relationships” via the TPP is the exact opposite of renegotiating NAFTA.

It’s locking in that very model.

Stop lying.

Stop treating people–in theory, your own base, your supporters, the middle class, workers–like idiots.

[Demeter]

6. The Revolution is Here to Stay By Eva Golinger

http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-revolution-is-here-to-stay/

For those of you unfamiliar with Venezuelan issues, don’t let the title of this article fool you. The revolution referred to is not what most media outlets are showing taking place today in Caracas, with protestors calling for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The revolution that is here to stay is the Bolivarian Revolution, which began in 1998 when Hugo Chavez was first elected president and has subsequently transformed the mega oil producing nation into a socially-focused, progressive country with a grassroots government. Demonstrations taking place over the past few days in Venezuela are attempts to undermine and destroy that transformation in order to return power to the hands of the elite who ruled the nation previously for over 40 years.

Those protesting do not represent Venezuela’s vast working class majority that struggled to overcome the oppressive exclusion they were subjected to during administrations before Chavez. The youth taking to the streets today in Caracas and other cities throughout the country, hiding their faces behind masks and balaclavas, destroying public buildings, vehicles, burning garbage, violently blocking transit and throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at security forces are being driven by extremist right-wing interests from Venezuela’s wealthiest sector. Led by hardline neoconservatives, Leopoldo Lopez, Henrique Capriles and Maria Corina Machado – who come from three of the wealthiest families in Venezuela, the 1% of the 1% – the protesters seek not to revindicate their basic fundamental rights, or gain access to free healthcare or education, all of which are guaranteed by the state, thanks to Chavez, but rather are attempting to spiral the country into a state of ungovernability that would justify an international intervention leading to regime change.

Before Chavez was elected in 1998, Venezuela was in a very dark, difficult period with a dangerously eroded democracy. During the early 1990s, poverty swelled at around 80%, the economy was in a sinkhole, the nation’s vast middle class was disappearing with millions falling into economic dispair, constitutional rights were suspended, a national curfew was imposed and corruption was rampant. Those who protested the actions of the government were brutally repressed and often killed. In fact, during the period of so-called “representative democracy” in Venezuela from 1958-1998, before the nation’s transformation into a participatory democracy under Chavez, thousands of Venezuelans were disappeared, tortured, persecuted and assassinated by state security forces. None of their rights were guaranteed and no one, except the majority excluded poor, seemed to care. International Human Rights organizations showed little interest in Venezuela during that time, despite clear and systematic violations taking place against the people....Those in power during that period, also referred to in Venezuela as the “Fourth Republic”, represented an elite minority – families that held the nation’s wealth and profited heavily from the lucrative oil reserves. Millions of dollars from oil profits belonging to the state (oil was nationalized in Venezuela in 1976) were embezzled out of the country into the bloated bank accounts of wealthy Venezuelans and corrupt public officials who had homes in Miami, New York and the Dominican Republic and lived the high life off the backs of an impoverished majority.

Hugo Chavez’s electoral victory in 1998 shattered the opulent banquet the Venezuelan elite had enjoyed for decades, while they ran the country into the ground. He was elected precisely to break the hold on power those groups had harnessed for so many years, and Chavez’s promise was revolution – complete transformation of the economic, social and political system in the country. His electoral victories were solid, year after year, each time rising in popularity as more and more Venezuelans became motivated to participate in their governance and the construction of a new, inclusive, nation with social justice as its banner. Chavez’s election was a huge blow to Washington and the powerful interests in the United States that wanted control over Venezuela’s oil reserves – the largest on the planet. In April 2002, the Bush administration backed a coup d’etat to overthrow Chavez, led by the very same elite that had been in power before. The coup involved mass marches in the streets of Caracas, composed of the wealthy and middle classes, calling for Chavez’s ouster. Snipers were used to shoot on those in the marches, creating violence and chaos that was immediately blamed on Chavez. Television, radio and newspapers in Venezuela all joined in the coup efforts, manipulating images and distorting facts to justify Chavez’s overthrow. He became the villian, the evil dictator, the brutal murderer in the eyes of international media, though in reality those overthrowing him and their backers in Washington were responsible for the death and destruction caused. After Chavez was kidnapped on April 11, 2002 and set to be assassinated, the wealthy businessmen behind the coup took power and imposed a dictatorship. All democratic institutions were dissolved, including the legistature and the supreme court.

The majority who had voted for Chavez and had finally become protagonists in their own governance were determined to defend their democracy and took to the streets demanding return of their president. Forty-eight hours later, Chavez was rescued by millions of supporters and loyal armed forces. The coup was defeated and the revolution survived, but the threats continued....


MORE OF OUR FUTURE HISTORY AT LINK....IF WE ARE LUCKY, THAT IS. WE ARE ALMOST TOTALLY INTO THE "4TH REPUBLIC" SCENARIO IN THE US...

[Demeter]

7. Don't Cry for the Shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-02-17/dont-cry-shareholders-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac

"There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress." Mark Twain

Update 1: Yesterday in The New York Times, columnist Gretchen Morgenson confirmed that the US Treasury has no intention of returning the mounting profits of the federally chartered housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to shareholders. In her fine comment, “The Untouchable Profits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” she reveals that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner approved a policy that ensures that the “existing common equity holders will not have access to any positive earnings from the G.S.E.’s in the future.”

http://t.co/C6g5Xo5pIz

A number of people have expressed shock and outrage at this shabby treatment of the common shareholders of Fannie and Freddie. In a post on Twitter in response to a tweet from your humble blogger, former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair noted: “No sympathy for GSE shareholders here, but this is punitive compared to how AIG, Citi shareholders were treated.” And of course Chairman Bair is right. The common shareholders of AIG and Citigroup were not wiped out when these organizations received government bailouts under the doctrine of “too big to fail.” Our friend Nom de Plumber, who formerly worked at the Fed of New York and now makes a living in the risk management world, is similarly outraged:

“If Treasury was so uncertain of GSE future, as it just stated, why did it need to seize surreptitiously such unforeseeable earnings, especially with zero public policy governance and disclosure? Either liquidate under receivership, or conserve for debt and equity claimants under conservatorship. Treasury did half and half, skimming the earnings but keeping the liabilities off the US balance sheet. It was a revenue grab, violating the Constitution… The core issue is following the asset conservation and shareholder disclosure rules which you set for others to meet. Because the GSE are public shareholder companies, their governance is not exempt from federal investor-protection laws.”

Morgenson notes that the public disclosure from Fannie does not mention the Treasury’s intention to retain the earnings of the GSEs for the benefit of the US taxpayer indefinitely. Freddie, on the other hand, does disclose that Treasury “has indicated that it remains committed to protecting taxpayers and ensuring that our future positive earnings are returned to taxpayers as compensation for their investment.” There are now a raft of lawsuits pending against the US Treasury, both by common shareholders and investors in the preferred securities of Fannie and Freddie. All follow the logic of Nom de Plumber and Morgenson, who see the actions of the Treasury as somehow unfair. The lawsuits seek restoration of earnings and damages. But while you may be able to justly criticize the Treasury for hypocrisy and inconsistency when it comes to federal securities laws applicable to private corporations, I am not sure that such arguments can be successfully made against agencies of the federal government.

First let’s consider why Secretary Geithner chose to support a policy of confiscation of the earnings of the GSEs. First and foremost, Geithner wanted to cripple Fannie and Freddie financially in order to prevent them from being restored to their former status in Washington. For those who have not read Morgenson’s 2011 book which she co-authored with my friend Josh Rosner, Reckless Endangerment, the GSEs were the tail that wagged the dog of official policy on housing in Washington for years. By putting in place the tough agreement whereby the US Treasury injected preferred capital into the GSEs and in return has the right to confiscate all earnings of Fannie and Freddie indefinitely, Geithner sought to cripple these institutions as a political matter. I rather agree with his judgment, but wish that he had put the two GSEs into receivership during the crisis. With the higher fees put in place under the conservatorship, Fannie and Freddie look really profitable, at least in a nominal sense. But if those profits are adjusted for the risk the GSEs take on housing, there are no profits.

Geithner told Congress in 2011: “The Administration is committed to a system in which the private market – subject to strong oversight and strong consumer and investor protections – is the primary source of mortgage credit.”

But the reality is that the U.S. government is the only entity that is willing and able to truly underwrite the risk of the multi-trillion dollar housing market. As we saw during the housing boom of the 2000s, when for a brief couple of years private investors did support a large chunk of the mortgage finance market, as soon as the true risks were revealed the private capital ran for the door. Even commercial banks are unwilling to support more than a tiny fraction of the housing sector’s overall risk with their own capital. In his book The Death of Liberalism, R. Emmett Tyrrell notes that during the chaos following the 2008 subprime market collapse; “Some institutions went down in flames, and the government backed institutions, Fannie and Freddie, went hat in hand to the taxpayer.” Chairman Bair is right when she notes that the shareholders of AIG and Citigroup were treated better than are the shareholders of Fannie and Freddie, at least insofar as their ability to benefit from the financial recovery of these firms. But the key point to take away from that comparison is that the GSEs are not private corporations chartered under state law.

In the United States, the roots of the subprime crisis of 2008 and the political reaction thereto stretch back to the founding of the republic. In a legal sense, the power of the federal government to regulate finance begins with the 1819 Supreme Court decision establishing supremacy of federal law over conflicting state law. In McCulloch v. Maryland, the Supreme Court settled a dispute that arose when Maryland sought to tax The Second Bank of the United States, which that was seen as endangering Maryland’s state banks during the depression of 1818. The landmark Supreme Court decision confirmed that the Government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action. The Court said that federal laws, when made in pursuance of the Constitution, form the supreme law of the land. As a practical matter, the power of the US Treasury and ultimately Congress over the GSEs is absolute. The terms imposed by Treasury in return for the bailout are harsh and perhaps even unfair in a narrow sense, but it is far from clear that private shareholders have any power to object or seek redress. If, for example, Congress passed legislation tomorrow extinguishing the GSEs without any compensation to the private “shareholders” whatsoever, it is clear that there would be no legal basis for objecting to this action. Likewise, if Treasury were to put the GSEs into receivership, the private stakes could be wiped out and Fannie and Freddie would emerge as they existed when first chartered by Congress. In a moral sense this would be wrong, but in a legal sense there seems little basis for private citizens to object. This whole thing gets even more complicated for the common when one considers the "preferred" shareholders that Hank Paulson announced were being wiped out by conservatorship (to prevent a repeat of the Bear bankruptcy threat that got them $10 per share from JPM). By the Deep Rock decision (equitable subordination) the common is stuck until the preferred (to which the Gov. has largely succeeded as banks went broke) is repaid...

[westerebus]

58. This may or may not apply.

Every time the debt ceiling is about to be breached, the Treasury pulls money out of the pension funds of federal employees/military personnel.

Like it was a money market account with a stock and bond fund attached to it.

It has to be repaid.

Anyone attempting to cook those books would find themselves, what's a good way to put this, Ah!, droned in due course.

.02

[Demeter]

8. There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-whales-alive-today-who-were-born-before-moby-dick-was-written-660944/

FASCINATING READ!

[Demeter]

9. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[hamerfan]

10. Musical Interlude

Dirty Laundry by Don Henley:

[Demeter]

22. Week after week, I don't know how you do it

That was absolutely perfect! Thank you Hamerfan!

[hamerfan]

38. Thank you, Demeter.

But I must say that (most of the time) you make it very easy to pick some music thanks to the great topics you come up with each week.

[xchrom]

11. CREDIT SUISSE TO PAY $196M TO SETTLE SEC CHARGES

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SEC_CREDIT_SUISSE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-21-16-30-48

Credit Suisse Group AG will pay $196 million to settle charges that it violated federal securities law by providing cross-border financial services for U.S. clients without registering with regulators.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission say the Swiss bank provided these services to thousands of U.S. clients over a seven-year period. Regulators say the bank began to curb this practice in 2008 after a civil and criminal investigation into similar conduct by Swiss-based UBS.

Following a U.S. Department of Justice criminal tax investigation, UBS had formally announced in 2008 that it would cease providing banking services to U.S. clients through its non-U.S. regulated entities. In 2009, U.S. authorities fined UBS $780 million for helping U.S. citizens avoid paying taxes.

The SEC said that Credit Suisse began to take steps in October 2008 to exit the business of providing cross-border advisory and brokerage services to U.S. clients but it took until 2013 to completely exit the business.

[xchrom]

12. TRANSCRIPTS SHOW FED AT TIMES SLOW TO GRASP CRISIS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FED_2008_TRANSCRIPTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-21-18-12-15

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve agonized in 2008 over how far to go to stop a financial crisis that threatened to cause a recession and at times struggled to recognize its speed and magnitude.

"We're crossing certain lines. We're doing things we haven't done before," Chairman Ben Bernanke said as Fed officials met in an emergency session March 10 and launched never-before-taken steps to lend to teetering Wall Street firms, among a series of unorthodox moves that year to calm investors and aid the economy.

"On the other hand, this financial crisis is now in its eighth month, and the economic outlook has worsened quite significantly."

The Fed on Friday released hundreds of pages of transcripts covering its 14 meetings during 2008 - eight regularly scheduled meetings and six emergency sessions. The Fed releases full transcripts of each year's policy meetings after a five-year lag.

[Demeter]

23. Light dawns on Marblehead

or, the Fed confesses, 5 years later, that they didn't have a clue what they were doing, so they did what their "clientele" wanted, and here we are...

[xchrom]

13. MEXICO TO TRUMP JAPAN AS NO. 2 CAR EXPORTER TO US

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_MEXICO_CAR_BOOM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-21-19-56-09

CELAYA, Mexico (AP) -- Mexico is on track to become the United States' No. 1 source of imported cars by the end of next year, overtaking Japan and Canada in a manufacturing boom that's turning the auto industry into a bigger source of dollars than money sent home by migrants.

The boom is raising hopes that Mexico can create enough new jobs to pull millions out of poverty as northbound migration slows sharply, but critics caution that most of the new car jobs are low-skill and pay too little. Mexico's low and stagnant wages have kept the poverty rate between 40 and 50 percent since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement two decades ago.

An $800 million Honda plant that opened Friday in the central state of Guanajuato will produce more than 200,000 Fit hatchbacks and compact sport-utility vehicles a year, helping push total Mexican car exports to the U.S. to 1.7 million in 2014, roughly 200,000 more than Japan, consulting firm IHS Automotive says. And with another big plant starting next week, Mexico is expected to surpass Canada for the top spot by the end of 2015.

"It's a safe bet," said Eduardo Solis, president of the Mexican Automotive Industry Association. "Mexico is now one of the major global players in car manufacturing."

[xchrom]

14. AIDE: UKRAINE'S TYMOSHENKO RELEASED FROM PRISON

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_UKRAINE_PROTESTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-22-07-14-54

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A spokeswoman for Yulia Tymoshenko says the former Ukrainian prime minister and opposition icon has been released from prison.

Natasha Lysova told The Associated Press that Tymoshenko was released from her prison in Kharkiv on Saturday. She did not have further details.

Tymoshenko is the arch-rival of President Viktor Yanukovych and her arrest in 2011 and conviction on charges of abuse of office were widely seen as a case of political revenge.

The claim of her release comes one day after the Ukrainian parliament voted to decriminalize the charge on which she was convicted.

[Demeter]

24. Ukraine protesters take Kiev without a shot

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-kiev-opposition-20140222,0,2157062.story

Ukraine's capital fell into the hands of the protesters Saturday morning.

Without a shot fired, opposition units surrounded and took control of parliament, the Council of Ministers building and most important, the Presidential Administration building, when they discovered early in the morning that the riot police who had been guarding the sites were gone, an opposition leader said.

“The opposition] today controls all of Kiev as we have taken control of all government quarters,” Andriy Parubiy, commander of the opposition forces, told thousands of people in Independence Square. “We told those of the police] who are decent and honest that they may join us.”

Parubiy advised policemen wishing to switch sides to put blue and yellow ribbons on their uniforms, the symbol of the opposition...

AMAZING NEWS!

[Demeter]

34. A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests US Was Plotting Coup

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22014-a-new-cold-war-ukraine-violence-escalates-leaked-tape-suggests-us-was-plotting-coup

...While President Obama has vowed to "continue to engage all sides," a recently leaked audio recording between two top U.S. officials reveal the Obama administration has been secretly plotting with the opposition...

The Obama administration stepped up pressure on the Ukrainian government Wednesday by announcing a visa ban on 20 members of the Ukrainian government. The U.S. is also threatening to place sanctions on the Ukrainian government.

The protests began in late November after President Yanukovych reversed his decision to sign a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union, or EU, to forge stronger ties with Russia instead.

... we are watching history being made, but history of the worst kind. That’s what I’m telling my grandchildren: Watch this. What’s happening there, let’s take the big picture, then we can go to the small picture. The big picture is, people are dying in the streets every day. The number 50 is certainly too few. They’re still finding bodies. Ukraine is splitting apart down the middle, because Ukraine is not one country, contrary to what the American media, which speaks about the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. Historically, ethnically, religiously, culturally, politically, economically, it’s two countries. One half wants to stay close to Russia; the other wants to go West. We now have reliable reports that the anti-government forces in the streets—and there are some very nasty people among them—are seizing weapons in western Ukrainian military bases. So we have clearly the possibility of a civil war.

And the longer-term outcome may be—and I want to emphasize this, because nobody in the United States seems to want to pay attention to it—the outcome may be the construction, the emergence of a new Cold War divide between West and East, not this time, as it was for our generation, in faraway Berlin, but right on the borders of Russia, right through the heart of Slavic civilization. And if that happens, if that’s the new Cold War divide, it’s permanent instability and permanent potential for real war for decades to come. That’s what’s at stake...

MORE AT LINK, VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT

[xchrom]

15. EAST UKRAINE LEADERS: REGIONS SHOULD TAKE CONTROL

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/aide-yanukovych-wont-leave-country

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Regional lawmakers in Ukraine's pro-Russian east are questioning the authority of the national parliament, amid concerns that the nation may be splitting in two.

A gathering of governors, provincial officials and legislators in Kharkiv approved a statement Saturday calling on regional authorities to take full responsibility for constitutional order on their territory.

Some called for forming volunteer units to protect against force by protesters from pro-European western regions. The assembly urged the army units deployed on their territories to maintain neutrality and protect ammunition depots.

The moves came after protesters took control of Ukraine's capital and parliament sought to oust the president and form a new government.

[xchrom]

16. MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PLANS MAY FACE CUTS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MEDICARE_ADVANTAGE_PLANS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-02-22-03-52-55

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cuts are on the table next year for Medicare Advantage plans, the Obama administration says. The politically dicey move affecting a private insurance alternative highly popular with seniors immediately touched off an election-year fight.

The announcement gave new ammunition to Republican critics of President Barack Obama's health care law, while disappointing some Democratic senators who had called on the administration to hold rates steady. Insurers are still hoping to whittle back the cuts or dodge them altogether.

Late Friday after financial markets closed, Medicare issued a 148-page assessment of cost factors for the private plans next year. It included multiple variables, some moving in different directions, but analyst Matthew Eyles of Avalere Health estimated it would translate to a cut of 1.9 percent for 2015, a figure also cited by congressional staffers briefed on the proposal.

"There's nothing to like here if you're one of the plans," said Eyles.

[xchrom]

17. Detroit Bankruptcy Funding Hinges on Creditor Settlement

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-21/detroit-files-plan-to-resolve-18-billion-bankruptcy.html

Detroit’s plan to end its $18 billion bankruptcy assumes bondholders offered 20 cents on the dollar will eventually swallow a deal that guarantees police and firefighters collect 90 percent of their pensions.

The city’s debt-adjustment plan, filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit, is built on $820 million in contributions from private foundations and the state. Those groups say no money will flow without a settlement that protects the city’s valuable art collection from liquidation by bondholders and other creditors.

Within hours of the plan being filed, the creditors that city officials must win over rejected the proposal, even as they continue talking behind closed doors. Unions and bond insurers both registered their displeasure.

“While we understand that favoring pensioners and discriminating against bondholders and other creditors might be politically popular, we believe this is contrary to bankruptcy law and will result in costly litigation that will hamper the city’s emergence from bankruptcy,” Steve Spencer, a financial adviser for bond insurer FGIC Corp., said in an e-mailed statement.

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18. European Banks Are Cooking Up a Nice Regulatory Arbitrage

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-21/european-banks-are-cooking-up-a-nice-regulatory-arbitrage.html

I don't have much to add to this International Financing Review article titled "Banks target DTAs to boost capital," but it brought tears of joy to my eye, and I'll pass it along because at least some of my readers share at least some of my aesthetic sensibilities. That's probably a minority, even of my readers. Honestly this is some kinky stuff. But if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

The story is that regulators require banks to have a certain amount of capital. Capital is -- and everything I say here is very approximate and schematic, just go with it -- but the way you figure out capital is that you add up all the bank's assets, then you subtract its liabilities, and what's left over is capital. And regulators want you to have more of that. One way to get more of that is to go sell stock, but that is expensive. Banks would prefer to get more capital using magic, because magic tends to be cheap.

Now "add up the assets and subtract the liabilities" is roughly how you calculate capital, but it's not quite that simple. In particular, some assets don't count. Most of the obvious assets -- stocks, bonds, buildings, whatever -- count, but various intangible things don't count. For instance, deferred tax assets don't count. DTAs are the present value of future tax deductions due to past losses. So if you lost a lot of money in the past, you get to carry forward those losses to reduce your taxes in the future, and -- for accounting purposes -- you get to treat that reduction as an asset now.

Unlike the accounting rules, capital rules don't treat DTAs as an asset for calculating capital. Not just because they sound weird, but because there's no guarantee that the DTA will actually provide economic benefits. If the bank stops being profitable in the future, there will be no taxable profits to be reduced by the past losses, so the DTAs will end up worthless. And since capital regulation is designed to keep banks sound even when they run into rough patches, counting DTAs in capital computations would actually be counterproductive. These are exactly the sorts of assets that won't protect you if things go wrong.

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19. Iceland Memo Reveals Central Bank Governor May Be Replaced

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-21/iceland-explores-shift-at-central-bank-amid-debt-relief-dispute.html

Iceland advertised the position of central bank governor after the current incumbent Mar Gudmundssonquestioned the government’s intention to push through the world’s biggest household debt relief program.

The plan was revealed in a memorandum on the central bank law, which also showed Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson will appoint a working group to look into the division of labor at the financial regulator and the central bank.

“It has been decided to advertise the position of the governor as open for applications,” the ministry said. “That is done to give authorities greater flexibility in relation to possible changes to the laws on the central bank.”

The memo follows speculation in Icelandic media that the government is trying to replace Gudmundsson, or reduce his influence by making him one of three governors. Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson said in November the bank was playing “politics” by criticizing his debt relief plans, and this month in an interview with broadcaster RUV suggested that the bank could use more voices in its decision making.

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20. Business Wire Halts Direct Feeds to High-Speed Traders

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-20/business-wire-halts-direct-feeds-to-high-speed-traders-1-.html


Business Wire, the distributor of press releases owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), will stop letting high-speed trading firms purchase direct access to its service.

After consulting with Buffett, a billionaire known for holding onto investments for decades, Business Wire decided to avoid the reputational hit from an association with high-frequency traders, who often enter and exit positions in less than a second.

“There was nothing wrong in Business Wire serving these handful of HFTs directly,” Chief Executive Officer Cathy Baron Tamraz said yesterday in a statement. A Wall Street Journal article this month highlighted the access Business Wire granted some traders. “The article may have caused some misperceptions, and that was of deep concern to us,” she said. “Our most important assets are our reputation and the trust we have earned from our clients and other market participants for more than a half century.”

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21. Citigroup Awards CEO Corbat $14.4 Million for 2013

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-20/citigroup-awards-corbat-14-4-million-for-2013.html

Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest U.S. bank, boosted Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat’s compensation 25 percent to about $14.4 million for 2013, his first full year running the company.

He got 78,528 deferred shares valued at $3.88 million, based on the closing price Feb. 18, according to a filing yesterday to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He received about $5.17 million in a cash bonus, $3.88 million of performance share units and a $1.5 million salary, based on the bank’s description of his compensation plan last year.

Citigroup’s profit jumped 84 percent to $13.9 billion last year as Corbat, 53, boosted revenue and cut costs. The CEO’s package compares with $20 million for JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon and $14 million for Bank of America Corp.’s Brian T. Moynihan. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. gave Lloyd C. Blankfein $23 million, and hasn’t said yet whether he will get a long-term incentive granted in past years.

Corbat, who was named CEO in October 2012 after running the bank’s European operations, collected $11.5 million in total compensation for that year when the New York-based firm’s stock price rose 50 percent. Because of his split duties that period, his pay for 2013 may not be directly comparable to the earlier figures.

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25. GET THIS! FCC Won't Ask Journalists To Explain Themselves After All

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2014/02/21/280884883/fcc-wont-ask-journalists-to-explain-themselves-after-all?ft=1&f=1001

It may not be in full retreat, but the Federal Communications Commission certainly seemed to be in a major strategic withdrawal from a plan that has caused a political firestorm: a study that would have asked journalists and media owners how they decide what is and isn't news.

Conservative lawmakers, talk-show hosts and bloggers had attacked the study as a threat to freedom-of-the-press rights in the First Amendment. That the FCC was starting small, with a pilot project in Columbia, S.C., hardly mattered...Opponents raised the specter of Big Brother regulators posing intrusive questions in newsrooms. There was apparently plenty of outrage to spare after the Internal Revenue Service fiasco involving that agency's misbegotten review of political groups that sought tax-exempt status. But it wasn't just conservatives who expressed doubts. You could even find raised eyebrows at a progressive publication like The Atlantic.

The FCC attempted to reassure Congress and others that it was merely trying to gather information for a report it owes Congress on how easy or hard it is for small businesses and entrepreneurs to take on established media companies. But the "trust us" approach almost never works in Washington. So the FCC decided to punt.

"Last week, FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler informed lawmakers that the commission has no intention of regulating political or other speech of journalists or broadcasters and would be modifying the draft study," said FCC spokesperson Shannon Gilson in a statement. "Yesterday, the chairman directed that those questions be removed entirely.

"To be clear, media owners and journalists will no longer be asked to participate in the Columbia, S.C. pilot study. The pilot will not be undertaken until a new study design is final," Gilson's statement said.

What Gilson didn't say, but what is very likely, is that given the controversy there's likely to be much more vetting with the political powers-that-be of whatever new study the FCC comes up with.

[Demeter]

26. U.S. government seeks to cut Medicare payments to insurers

http://news.yahoo.com/u-government-seeks-cut-medicare-payments-insurers-005343551--sector.html

The U.S. government on Friday proposed a cut in payments to private health insurers for 2015 Medicare Advantage plans, a move Republican lawmakers said would hurt benefits for the elderly and disabled.

The proposal, released in a document by a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, appeared to cut payments by more than the 6 to 7 percent the insurance industry had expected, one Wall Street analyst said.

"Now the lobbying begins: can the plans get Congress to help make the cut less severe?" CRT Capital analyst Sheryl Skolnick said, adding that her assessment of the hundreds of pages of information was preliminary.

Friday's notice of proposed rates opens a window for negotiations on the final ruling, due April 7.

MORE SCRAMBLING AT LINK

[Demeter]

27. FUNNIE PAPERS!

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28. "THE PRESS" AS THE 4TH ESTATE

In current use the term is applied to the press, with the earliest use in this sense described by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship:

"Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all."

In Burke's 1787 coining he would have been making reference to the traditional three estates of Parliament: The Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons. If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, the remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837) that

"A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable."

In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General: the church, the nobility and the townsmen. Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight, writing in 1858, observes that Burke was merely a teller at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate". If Burke is excluded, other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824 and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing Hallam's Constitutional History: "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm." By 1835, when William Hazlitt (another editor of Michel de Montaigne—see below) applied the term to an individual journalist, William Cobbett, the phrase was well established.

Oscar Wilde wrote:

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.

In United States English, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government", a term that originated because no direct equivalents to the estates of the realm exist in the United States. The "fourth estate" is used to emphasize the independence of the press, while the "fourth branch" suggests that the press is not independent of the government.

WIKIPEDIA, CONTINUED

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29. i'll just leave this here...

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33. A perfect example of the modern Op-Ed piece

and absolutely true!

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30. MODERN TIMES: The networked Fourth Estate

WIKIPEDIA CONTINUES...


Yochai Benkler, author of the 2006 book The Wealth of Networks, described the "Networked Fourth Estate" in a May 2011 paper published in the Harvard Civil Liberties Review. He explains the growth of non-traditional journalistic media on the Internet and how it affects the traditional press using Wikileaks as an example. When Benkler was asked to testify in the United States vs. PFC Bradley E. Manning trial, in his statement to the morning July 10, 2013 session of the trial he described the Networked Fourth Estate as the set of practices, organizing models, and technologies that are associated with the free press and provide a public check on the branches of government. It differs from the traditional press and the traditional fourth estate in that it has a diverse set of actors instead of a small number of major presses. These actors include small for-profit media organizations, non-profit media organizations, academic centers, and distributed networks of individuals participating in the media process with the larger traditional organizations.

http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Benkler.pdf

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31. The Zombie Numbers That Rule the U.S. Economy

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/the-zombie-numbers-that-rule-the-us-economy/283949/

This Thursday the Conference Board, a global business association, released its monthly index of “leading economic indicators.” Like the unemployment and inflation, housing starts, G.D.P. changes and other figures, these numbers arrive in metronomic waves. Financial services like Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Reuters blast them out the moment they’re released. Stock markets will often respond within seconds. Commentators and policy makers attribute to them a near-cosmic significance.

We act as if they are markers from time immemorial, but in fact they were invented for modern industrial nations after the Depression and World War II and are now seriously outdated.

Take gross domestic product. Derived from formulas set down by the economist Simon Kuznets and others in the 1930s, its limitations have long been recognized, none more eloquently than by Robert F. Kennedy in a famous speech in 1968 when he declared that it measured everything except that which is worth measuring.

GDP treats all output as a positive. When you buy LED lights that obviate the need to spend on incandescent bulbs and reduce energy consumption, GDP goes down and what should be an unmitigated good becomes a statistical negative. If a coal company pollutes a river, the cleanup costs are positive for GDP, as are any health care costs for those harmed.

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32. A (Brief) History of USA Print Journalism, Profession Intertwined Nation's History By Tony Rogers

http://journalism.about.com/od/ethicsprofessionalism/a/printhistory.htm

The Printing Press

When it comes to the history of journalism, everything starts with the invention of the movable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. However, while Bibles and other books were among the first things produced by Gutenberg's press, it wasn't until the 17th century that the first newspapers were distributed in Europe. The first regularly published paper came out twice a week in England, as did the first daily, The Daily Courant.

A New Profession in a Fledgling Nation

In America, the history of journalism is inextricably intertwined with the history of the country itself. The first newspaper in the American colonies - Benjamin Harris's Publick Occurrences both Foreighn and Domestick - was published in 1690 but immediately shut down for not having a required license. Interestingly, Harris' newspaper employed an early form of reader participation. The paper was printed on three sheets of stationery-size paper and the fourth page was left blank so that readers could add their own news, then pass it on to someone else.

Many newspapers of the time were not objective or neutral in tone like the papers we know today. Rather, they were fiercely partisan publications that editorialized against the tyranny of the British government, which in turn did its best to crack down on the press.

An Important Case

In 1735, Peter Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, was arrested and put on trial for allegedly printing libelous things about the British government. But his lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that the articles in question could not be libelous because they were based on fact. Zenger was found not guilty, and the case established the precedent that a statement, even if negative, cannot be libelous if it is true. This landmark case helped establish the foundation of a free press in the then-fledgling nation.

The 1800s

There were already several hundred newspapers in the U.S. by 1800, and that number would grow dramatically as the century wore on. Early on, papers were still very political and partisan in tone, but gradually they started to become more than simply mouthpieces for their publishers. Newspapers were also growing as an industry. In 1833 Benjamin Day opened the New York Sun and created the "Penny Press." Day's cheap papers, filled with sensational content and aimed at a working class audience, were a huge hit. With huge increases in circulation and larger printing presses to meet the demand, newspapers became a mass medium. This period also saw the establishment of more prestigious newspapers that had begun to incorporate the kinds of journalistic standards that we know today. One such paper, started in 1851 by George Jones and Henry Raymond, made a point of featuring quality reporting and writing. The name of the paper? The New York Daily Times, which later became The New York Times.

The Civil War

The Civil War era brought technical advances like photography to the nation's great papers. And the advent of the telegraph enabled Civil War correspondents to transmit stories back to their newspapers' home offices with unprecedented speed. But the telegraph lines often went down, so reporters learned to put the most important information in their stories into the first few lines of the transmission. This led to the development of the tight, inverted-pyramid style of writing that we associate with newspapers today...This period also saw the formation of The Associated Press wire service, which started as a cooperative venture between several large newspapers wanting to share news that arrived by telegraph from Europe. Today the AP is the world's oldest and largest news agency.

Hearst, Pulitzer & Yellow Journalism

The 1890s saw the rise of publishing moguls William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Both owned papers in New York and elsewhere, and both employed a sensationalistic kind of journalism designed to lure as many readers as possible. The term "yellow journalism" dates from this era; it comes from the name of a comic strip - "The Yellow Kid" - published by Pulitzer.

The 20th Century - And Beyond

Newspapers thrived into the mid-20th century but with the advent of radio and then television, newspaper circulation began a slow but steady decline. That decline has only been hastened by the advent of the internet, and the early years of the 21st century have seen the newspaper industry enter a kind of death spiral, with layoffs, bankruptcies and even the total shutdown of some publications being seen nationwide. Still, even in an age of 24/7 cable news and thousands of websites, newspapers maintain their status as the best source for in-depth and investigative news coverage.

The value of newspaper journalism is perhaps best demonstrated by the Watergate scandal, in which two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, did a series of investigative articles about corruption and nefarious doings in the Nixon White House. Their stories, along with ones done by other publications, led to Nixon's resignation.


FOR A MORE DETAILED TIMELINE, SEE: http://www2.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/Courses/ResourcesForCourses/JournalismHistory.html

AND: http://history.journalism.ku.edu/ IS AN ONLINE COURSE FROM KANSAS

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35. Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone? Lee Fang / The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/article/178460/shadow-lobbying-complex?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20-%2020140220&newsletter=email_nation_thursday



On paper, the influence-peddling business is drying up. But lobbying money is flooding Washington, DC like never before. What’s going on?




THE USUAL...DETAILS AT LINK.

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36. Secret Plans and Clever Tricks: How Information About Public Contracting Is Hidden From the Public

http://truth-out.org/news/item/21991-secret-plans-and-clever-tricks-how-information-about-public-contracting-and-privatization-is-hidden-from-the-public


...Shahrzad Habibi, research and policy director of In the Public Interest, a Washington, DC-based resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, told Truthout that "when public assets are privatized, there is a loss of transparency and a lot of information that is no longer public. States have sunshine, or open-records, laws. This means that when a service or asset is publicly run, a lot of information needs to be publicly disclosed. For example, you can get financial information, information about the number of employees and how much these employees are being paid. You can also see public documents about meetings, schedules and what was discussed so that taxpayers can know why their kids' school is requiring this or that or why the Department of Health and Human Services is adopting a new policy."

Once a private company takes over a formerly public function, Habibi said, it becomes much harder to obtain this data. "A private company can say that particular information is proprietary, pertaining to their business, so that it is exempt from public records' laws," she said. "Private entities tend to interpret the concept of proprietary interest extremely broadly, as if every bit of information about company policy is a trade secret."

This means that reporters, elected officials, community activists, public-interest lawyers and other concerned individuals and organizations often hit a brick wall when they attempt to unravel privatization plans. "There is not any quantitative data on the amount of money that is currently going to private contracts at the state or local level," Habibi said. "We know anecdotally that this is going on in every state and at every level of government - private firms are running health and human services, prisons and core public services like roads, bridges, highways and parking meters - but we have no big-picture data."

Nonetheless, the many anecdotes that have been collected paint a disturbing picture of what happens when government pushes for businesses to be in charge. As one privatization opponent put it - he asked not to be identified by name - "It's rare that you get direct, blatant discrimination against opponents. Instead, critical voices are typically marginalized or are not invited to weigh in. More typically, the microphone is controlled by the contractors, politicians or companies that stand to gain. The bottom line is that there is no objective discussion of privatization, and it's close to impossible to find out when something is going to be discussed, when it will be voted on or even when the deadline for bids is."....

MORE AT LINK--MUST READ AND PASS AROUND

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37. The Case for Corruption

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-case-for-corruption/357568/

The government shutdown last fall wasted billions of dollars, upset innumerable plans, and besmirched both political parties. But it did have one constructive effect. Surveying the wreckage, grown-ups in both parties realized that the politics of public confrontation is a lot better at closing the government than running it. So, to avoid a repeat, they decided to try something old. Something very old. In a healthy return to machine politics, they handed budget negotiations over to political hacks cutting deals behind closed doors.

Once upon a time, the budget process was reasonably regular. In fact, it was conducted under what was called regular order. The budget-committee chairmen would do some horse trading to build a consensus within each chamber, the House and Senate would then pass those budgets without too much ado, and the two chambers would work out their differences in a conference committee. Then the appropriations committees would do more or less the same thing, making sure to spread around enough pork-barrel goodies to get their friends paid off and the budget passed. The president and the congressional leaders would be involved throughout the process, every now and then calling a budget summit, but most of the real work would go on behind the scenes.

In the past few years, by contrast, regular order has been replaced by regular chaos. Public ultimatums supplanted private negotiations, games of chicken replaced mutual back-scratching, and bumptious Republican House members took to dictating terms to their putative leadership. Last fall, after one tantrum too many, Congress seemed exhausted. As part of a deal to reopen the government, it returned the task of setting the next fiscal year’s budget to the budget and appropriations committees, sending them off to a smoke-free smoke-filled room to cut a deal. The result, a trillion-dollar spending bill loaded with incentives for each side, sailed through Congress in January.

How often backroom deal making will work in today’s age of hyper-partisanship remains to be seen, but Congress’s recourse to it represents a welcome rediscovery of a home truth. Politics needs good leaders, but it needs good followers even more, and they don’t come cheap. Loyalty gets you only so far, and ideology is divisive. Political machines need to exist, and they need to work. No one understood this better than the street-smart political sage George Washington Plunkitt, who articulated the concept of honest graft.

[kickysnana]

39. Online shopping is a challenge

My Aunt found that some soft deck shoes that Kmart carries are the only thing that will work with her swollen feet so I was going to get her a a couple new pair but they have upped the free shipping to $50 but my granddaughter requested doll clothes for her birthday next week and I found some. I then started down my list of staples to make up the difference and none of them were available online so emptied the cart and left. When my Aunt returned from the bake sale downstairs I asked if we should pay for the shipping and she said "yes" so I went back filled up the cart and went to check out. Suddenly I have free shipping. I was afraid if I went shopping for other items again they would take it away so I just checked out. Total time about 1 hour.

[Demeter]

40. Droning On---A COMPENDIUM OF RECENT THOUGHT AND FACT

Why Drone Strikes Harm America By L Michael Hager

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21985-why-drone-strikes-harm-america

Drone strikes.(Image: drsmith7383 / Flickr; Edited: JR / Truthout)The disclosure last week that Obama administration officials are "debating whether to authorize a lethal strike against an American citizen living in Pakistan" makes it more urgent than ever for citizens to ask themselves whether such attacks - in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere - are in America's interest.

Clearly, the drones offer an easy out for military and intelligence agencies. No boots on the ground, no thorny logistic constraints and, if secrecy is maintained, no public outcry. Our Game Boy soldiers can remain safely out of harm's way.

Yet the case against armed drones is overwhelming. Here are three huge reasons why Americans should strongly oppose drone strikes.

1. They violate international and domestic law. In no way do the drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen qualify for the self-defense exception to non-aggression. Article 51 of the UN Charter, incorporated into US law by Senate ratification in 1945, authorizes military action only when a country is responding to an "armed attack." Further, US drone strikes run afoul several provisions of the international humanitarian law. When the United States openly violates international law, it lowers the standard for other countries. The targeting of Americans denies them of their constitutionally-protected due process. Are we ready to abandon our commitment to the rule of law?

2. They kill and otherwise harm innocent civilians. Although the Obama administration would have us believe that the "collateral damage" from drones has been minimal, independent observers have documented more than 2,500 killed in Pakistan alone. Moreover, drones that hover over remote communities 24/7 terrorize the villagers, causing fear and mental distress. Imagine how it would be to live under such a constant threat? What would we think about a country that inflicted such undeserved punishment? To put the question another way: Is resorting to terrorist tactics a morally just way to fight terrorism?

3. They don't work. Only 2 percent of those killed by the drones have been senior members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The short-term successes of the drone strikes (i.e. the taking out a high-profile militant) are far outweighed by the program's long-term liabilities. We know from first-hand reports of drone survivors that the attacks engender a deep hatred of America. At a Senate hearing in April 2013, Farea Al-Muslimi described a drone attack on his village in Yemen. "The drone strikes," he said, "are the face of America to many Yemenis." The September 2012 "Living Under Drones" study by a team from Stanford and New York University law schools concluded that drone attacks help terrorist groups attract new recruits.

MORE BLOW-BACK AT LINK

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41. Complaint at World Court Alleges NATO Members Complicit in War Crimes By Candice Bernd

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22025-nato-members-complicit-in-drone-strikes-world-court-complaint-alleges

Lawyers with the British human rights organization Reprieve filed a legal complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) Wednesday documenting the experiences of Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan and other drone strike victims and accusing NATO allied states of war crimes by helping to facilitate the United States’ covert drone program in Pakistan.

Khan was abducted from his home in Rawalpindi this month by a group of about 20 armed men, but was later released after a massive outcry from anti-drone activists internationally. Khan said he was blindfolded and handcuffed for eight days in a basement, where he was tortured with physical beatings and mental abuse in what he and his lawyers said was an attempt to silence him for speaking out about the reality of drone strikes.

Khan said one of his abductors hung him upside down and hit the soles of his feet continuously with a leather strap to avoid leaving a mark. Khan has been an outspoken critic of the US covert drone program since his 18-year-old son and his brother were killed in a US drone strike in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan in December 2009....

MORE HORRORS AT LINK

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42. "Sky Raper": Drones Are Tools of the Patriarchy

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/22019-sky-raper-drones-are-tools-of-the-patriarchy

Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald posted a disturbing report at their new site The Intercept about the NSA’s secret role in the U.S. assassination program. It’s a fascinating read, and I recommend you read it in its entirety,* but I wanted to explore a very specific passage in the report—an interview with a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA.

The former drone operator explains that remotely piloted Reaper and Predator vehicles are often given cute little nicknames. For example, those used in Afghanistan were called “Lightning” and “Sky Raider.”

Badass!

But then the source candidly reveals there’s a subset of nicknames. The “Sky Raider” was also referred to as “Sky Raper” because “it killed a lot of people.”

Badas—Wait, whaaaat.

When operators were assigned to “Sky Raper,” he adds, it meant that “somebody was going to die. It was always set to the most high-priority missions.”



* https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/

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43. Documenting Darkness: How a Thug State Operates By Tom Engelhardt

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21990-documenting-darkness-how-a-thug-state-operates

Here, at least, is a place to start: intelligence officials have weighed in with an estimate of just how many secret files National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden took with him when he headed for Hong Kong last June. Brace yourself: 1.7 million. At least they claim that as the number he or his web crawler accessed before he left town. Let’s assume for a moment that it’s accurate and add a caveat. Whatever he had with him on those thumb drives when he left the agency, Edward Snowden did not take all the NSA’s classified documents. Not by a long shot. He only downloaded a portion of them. We don’t have any idea what percentage, but assumedly millions of NSA secret documents did not get the Snowden treatment.

Such figures should stagger us and what he did take will undoubtedly occupy journalists for months or years more (and historians long after that). Keep this in mind, however: the NSA is only one of 17 intelligence outfits in what is called the U.S. Intelligence Community. Some of the others are as large and well funded, and all of them generate their own troves of secret documents, undoubtedly stretching into the many millions.

And keep something else in mind: that’s just intelligence agencies. If you’re thinking about the full sweep of our national security state (NSS), you also have to include places like the Department of Homeland Security, the Energy Department (responsible for the U.S. nuclear arsenal), and the Pentagon. In other words, we’re talking about the kind of secret documentation that an army of journalists, researchers, and historians wouldn’t have a hope of getting through, not in a century.

MORE INFINITIES AT LINK

[westerebus]

59. Finished the book about the Chechen war.

Last edited Mon Feb 24, 2014, 01:31 AM - Edit history (1)

the Constellation of Vital phenomena by Anthony Marra about a week ago.

Very interesting, not for the faint of heart.

the important part:

Q: Why do they want to kill the child? She's just a child. She had no part in anything.

A: Policy.

Q: Policy? To kill children?

A: Family members of known terrorists are what they are after. If the terrorists know their family will be targeted, they don't join in the fight.

S: That's crazy.

A: Recruitment is down.

that is paraphrased, but correct as a transcription.

Think about it.

Drones hit what most often?

Wedding parties.

[Demeter]

44. After five banker deaths in January, a sixth: J.P. Morgan exec jumps in Hong Kong

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/19/after-five-banker-deaths-in-january-a-sixth-jp-morgan-exec-jumps-in-hong-kong/

...In the latest of a series of fatal falls, a 33-year-old J.P. Morgan employee leapt from the roof of J.P. Morgan’s Hong Kong headquarters on Tuesday, above, plunging thirty stories to his death.

The employee’s role at the bank was unknown. Witnesses say police tried to stop the man from jumping to no avail. The employee’s death is just the latest in a string of seeming suicides that have wreaked havoc in the moneyed class over the past months...

[Demeter]

45. Local Resistance to the NDAA Amps Up, Spans Political Spectrum

http://truth-out.org/news/item/21965-local-resistance-to-the-ndaa-amps-up-spans-political-spectrum





...On February 10, 2014, The Associated Press reported that the Obama administration was considering a drone strike against an American citizen, who - officials say - is a terrorism threat to the United States. This story has brought the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and its legal implications back into the limelight.

Author and activist David Swanson recently raised the question of the difference between "legality" and "policy": "Under the US Constitution, the laws of the nations in which drone murders take place, treaties to which the US is party, international law and US statutory law, murdering people remains illegal, despite being policy, just as it was illegal under the less strict policy of some months back."

Last May, Obama changed his overseas drone policy to shift control of the weapons from the CIA to the Department of Defense. This means that American citizens suspected of posing a terror threat can be bombed by the military only and not the CIA, which puts the onus on the DOJ to prove the person can be classified an "enemy combatant."

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, says there is an administrative procedure to decide whether someone is an enemy combatant. Once someone is designated as such, he or she can file a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court to prove he or she is innocent of any terrorist connections and that court could release the individual. "But this rarely happens," she said...

GEE, I WONDER WHY...

[Demeter]

46. The Limits of Non-Cooperation as a Strategy for Social Change

http://truth-out.org/news/item/21992-the-limits-of-non-cooperation-as-a-strategy-for-social-change

...The application of basic human stubbornness - the capacity to refuse or withhold obedience when faced by a pressing moral choice - is the most widely-researched topic in the field of nonviolence, from explorations of proven methods of civil resistance to the stories of people who have said ‘no’ to taxes or conscription, torture or betrayal.

As Hannah Arendt concluded when trying to understand the horrors of the 20th century, the bureaucratic pressure to ‘just follow orders’ can be extremely compelling, regardless of the human consequences. Against this background, it makes sense to emphasize non-cooperation with such demands as the key to transformation.

But non-cooperation clearly has its limits in terms of creating social change. As Gene Sharp points out, people’s capacity for this form of action is embedded in human nature, but it is insufficient to achieve the long-term goals of peace and social justice.

We have learned how to topple dictators, but not how to replace dysfunctional political systems so that tyranny does not return. We know how to launch new social movements like Occupy and those of the Arab Spring, but not how to sustain their gains by transforming society at large. So what provides the missing link between individual acts of moral courage on the one hand, and mutual cooperation to change the systems of society on the other?

The answer is to recognize and activate our sense of shared humanity as a continuous and conscious choice...

[xchrom]

47. Ukraine Leader’s Flight Blocked as Opponents Take Power

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-22/ukraine-leader-s-flight-blocked-as-opponents-take-power.html

Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko returned to the political stage after leaving prison as Viktor Yanukovych was stopped from fleeing the country following the nation’s bloodiest week since World War II.

Ex-Premier Tymoshenko, who led the overturning of a 2004 Yanukovych election victory in the Orange Revolution, pledged to immediately return to politics, capping a day in which protesters took control of central Kiev and flooded into Yanukovych’s luxury estate. Border guards stopped Yanukovych’s plane from leaving the country in the eastern region of Donetsk after he was stripped of his presidency. He escaped detention.

“Today a dictatorship fell,” Tymoshenko, looking frail as she spoke from a wheelchair after being released from a prison hospital, told protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square. “A new epoch has started -- an epoch of free people, of a free European Ukraine.”

With Yanukovych denouncing events from eastern Ukraine as a “coup d’etat,” opposition parties must quickly establish a new government and shore up an economy in need of outside financial aid. Facing public anger in Kiev and western Ukraine at Yanukovych’s decision last year to pull out of a trade deal with the European Union, they may encounter political wrangling as Tymoshenko’s return complicates plans to share power ahead of an early presidential election scheduled for May 25.

[xchrom]

48. Venezuela Opposition Agrees to Talks With Maduro as Unrest Grows

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-23/venezuela-opposition-agrees-to-talks-with-maduro-as-unrest-grows.html

Venezuela’s opposition agreed to meet tomorrow with President Nicolas Maduro as anti-government protesters and security forces clashed in Caracas for an 11th straight night.

Governor Henrique Capriles, standing alongside the wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, said at a rally yesterday he would agree to hold talks with Maduro at the presidential palace on Feb. 24. The two-time presidential hopeful two days prior said he wouldn’t be forced into dialog after Maduro warned there would be legal consequences to missing the meeting.

“We don’t want confrontation, we want solutions,” Capriles, who lost to Maduro in April elections by the narrowest margin in 45 years, said at the rally in Caracas. “The government of Nicolas Maduro that we are seeing is a historic error, but we can’t get out of this mistake by making another one.”

Anti-government demonstrations are in their second week after Lopez’s Voluntad Popular party on Feb. 12 organized marches to speak out against rising crime, the world’s fastest inflation and shortages of everything from milk to medicine. The protests have turned violent on a nightly basis as police clash with students, resulting in at least eight deaths.

[xchrom]

49. Recent Yuan Declines ‘Within Normal Range,’ China’s Lou Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-23/recent-yuan-declines-within-normal-range-china-s-lou-says.html

Recent weakness in China’s currency is within the normal range and doesn’t signal a change in economic fundamentals, according to Finance Minister Lou Jiwei.

The offshore yuan fell 1 percent to 6.0933 per dollar in the five days through Feb. 21, a decline unseen since September 2011. A Chinese manufacturing index fell to the lowest level in seven months, according to a preliminary purchasing managers’ index released on Feb. 20. Economists predict gross domestic product will climb this year at the slowest pace since 1990.

“There will be ups and downs” and recent moves are “within normal range,” Lou told Bloomberg News in Sydney, where he is attending a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers. “You can’t say that the yuan is starting to depreciate just because of a small volatility.”

Asian currencies had their worst weekly loss in six months as signs of a deeper economic slowdown in China and the Federal Reserve’s support for tapering bond purchases weighed on emerging market currencies from the yuan to South Korea’s won and Thailand’s baht.

[xchrom]

50. Europe Advancing as Weather Chills U.S. Growth: Global Economy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-22/europe-advancing-as-weather-chills-u-s-growth-global-economy.html

Steadily improving economies in Germany and the U.K. stand in contrast to a slowdown in China, while Mother Nature thwarts further progress in the U.S., data this week are projected to show.

German business confidence is forecast to hold in February close to the highest level since mid-2011, while growth in the U.K. last year was probably the strongest since 2007. Manufacturing in China stalled this month, according to a Bloomberg survey.

In the U.S., new-home sales and factory orders for durable goods probably cooled last month, adding to evidence of the toll on the economy from winter storms east of the Mississippi River.

The data will provide the latest read on the world’s largest economy as Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen prepares to deliver a second round of testimony on monetary policy to lawmakers Feb. 27 on Capitol Hill. The hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, originally slated for Feb. 13, was postponed by a snowstorm that closed government offices in Washington.

[xchrom]

51. #LaSalida? Venezuela at a Crossroads

http://www.thenation.com/article/178496/lasalida-venezuela-crossroads

Ukraine. Bosnia. Venezuela.

Tear gas. Masks. Water cannons.

Ours is an age of riots and rebellions, of radical self-creation in the heady streets: Spain’s indignados, the Occupy movement, Mexico’s Yo Soy 132, and of course the Arab Spring. We are understandably excited when we see people in the streets, and our pulse may even rise at the sight of masks, broken glass and flames, because for so long such images have represented the shards of the old world through which we can catch the perceptible glint of the new. Recent protests in Venezuela against the government of Chávez successor Nicolás Maduro might therefore seem to be simply the latest act in an upsurge of world-historic proportions.

Not so fast.

Despite hashtags like #SOSVenezuela and #PrayForVenezuela and retweets from @Cher and @Madonna, these protests have far more to do with returning economic and political elites to power than with their downfall.

Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution” leapt forth from the historical collision of radical social movements against a repressive, neoliberal state. Fifteen years ago, Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela amid the collapsing rubble of the old two-party system, but the “revolution” over which he would preside has far deeper roots. For decades, armed guerrillas, peasants and workers, women, Afro- and indigenous Venezuelans, students and the urban poor struggled against a system that—while formally democratic—was far from it in practice. These revolutionary grassroots movements, which I document in We Created Chávez, blew a hole in what Walter Benjamin would call the continuum of history in a massive anti-neoliberal riot that began on February 27, 1989.

[xchrom]

52. UAW Challenges Republican Political Interference in VW Vote

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178497/uaw-challenges-republican-political-interference-vw-vote

If a United States senator claims that a key manufacturing facility in his home state would lose a new product line if workers were to vote for a union, might the workers be less inclined to vote for the union?

If legislative leaders in that state threaten to withhold tax incentives for future expansion of the manufacturing facility if a pro-union vote was recorded, might that influence the election?

It would be absurd try to deny the influence that top elected officials, with powerful connections and control of treasuries and tax policies, could have were they to intervene in this way.

It would be equally absurd for the union to simply walk away from such a blatant assault on not just the rights of workers but the rule of law.

[xchrom]

53. G20 meeting targets an additional 2% economic growth

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26312338


Financial leaders from the 20 biggest economies have set a goal of generating $2 trillion (£1.2 trillion) in extra output over the next five years.

During that period they aim to boost the gross domestic product of G20 countries by 2% above the levels currently expected.

It is hoped the move will create tens of million of new jobs.

The goal was announced at the Group of 20 weekend meeting in Sydney. The main G20 meeting is in Brisbane in November.

[Demeter]

56. Nice work (if you can get it)

[xchrom]

54. Ukraine credit rating cut by S&P as violence continues

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26285792

One of the world's leading credit rating agencies has downgraded Ukraine in light of political uncertainty and violent clashes in the capital Kiev.

Standard & Poor's said the downgrade reflected "our view that the political situation has deteriorated substantially".

It downgraded the economy by one notch, from CCC+ to CCC.

Ukrainians are protesting about the government's plans to forge closer ties with Russia rather than with Europe.

[xchrom]

55. Ukraine’s Freed Ex-Leader Yulia Tymoshenko Can't Shake Enrichment Suspicions

http://www.businessinsider.com/yulia-tymoshenko-scandals-2014-2

Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's ex-premier freed Saturday as the tide turned against her nemesis President Viktor Yanukovych, is a steely and telegenic figure hailed by the opposition -- but also a polarising one dogged by suspicions of personal enrichment and opportunism.

After Ukraine's parliament on Saturday abandoned Yanukovych and ordered her release from a seven-year sentence for "abuse of power" she had been serving since 2011, Tymoshenko made it clear she would remain Yanukovych's arch-foe in word and deed, hounding him as she rode the opposition's triumph.

"The dictatorship has fallen," she said in a statement upon her release.

Her many supporters see her as an alternative to Yanukovych, rallying to her prominent pro-European stance in a country torn between rival allegiances to Moscow and the West.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/yulia-tymoshenko-scandals-2014-2#ixzz2uA16I2T9

[Demeter]

57. Should I share this with my fellow board members, WEEkenders?

I wouldn't actually identify the "idiot"...

[westerebus]

60. The path of enlightenment.

Q: Mistress it is said one may attain enlightenment by climbing the mountain.

Is that true?

A: They may nay constantly. Yet, not all have the fortitude of goats.

For this reason it remains obscure.

[Fuddnik]

61. He could be a Congressman.

Or a Cabinet Member.