November 21, 2012

Lloyd Blankfein: You 99 percent mofos need to work longer and harder

from huffpost:



Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein urged Congress and President Barack Obama to cut Social Security, arguing that the program cannot "afford" to keep funding longer modern retirements. He left out that Social Security currently has a $2.7 trillion surplus and could strengthen its financial footing further by simply taxing more of the income of wealthy executives like Blankfein himself.

During an interview with CBS News' Scott Pelley on Monday, Blankfein said that entitlement programs including Social Security "have to be slowed down and contained."

"Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career," Blankfein said. "So there will be things that, you know -- the retirement age has to be changed. Maybe some of the benefits have to be affected. Maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised."

In fact, people do not receive full Social Security benefits until age 67, and the average worker receives those benefits for 16.1 years. Raising the retirement age would disproportionately hurt low-income workers, who tend to live shorter lives than wealthier workers. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/fiscal-cliff-lloyd-blankfein-social-security_n_2166099.html

November 21, 2012

Guardian UK: Rupert Murdoch and the Jews (His Twitter slip about the 'Jewish-owned press' ....)

Rupert Murdoch and the Jews
His Twitter slip about the 'Jewish-owned press' was revealing – of prejudice, paranoia and neoconism – and none of it is pretty

Michael Wolff
guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 November 2012 10.25 EST





Whoops.

Rupert Murdoch's unchaperoned tweeting was bound to get him into trouble. On Saturday, he slipped into an antisemitic usage: "Why is Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?"

What Murdoch was doing was trying to channel the right wing's ardent support of Israel by challenging the left wing's more critical view of Israeli brinksmanship – particularly as Israel appears on the verge of another invasion of Gaza. In other words, or so Murdoch seemed to be close to saying, Jews are liberals, and so untrustworthy that they would even betray Israel.

From the biographer's point of view, this continues to be a curious and open-ended question: what does Murdoch really think about the Jews?

Murdoch's inopportune phrasing also goes to the larger question of the right's odd relationship to Israel, and its own feelings, more generally, about the Jews. Does being pro-Israel absolve you of your suspicion about Jews? Can you be an antisemite and still support Israel? (More provocatively: does Israel, in some sense, depend on the support of rightwing American antisemites?) .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/rupert-murdoch-jews-twitter

November 21, 2012

Where there is Bachmann, there is batcrappery

from Mother Jones:


Bachmann's Ed Allies Warned of Mind Control Scheme

—By Tim Murphy
| Tue Nov. 20, 2012 11:28 AM PST


Since we reported last week on Georgia GOPers' four-hour, closed-door briefing on a planned United Nations takeover of the Deep South, the event's organizer, Sen. Chip Rogers (R) has dropped his bid for another term as majority leader and distanced himself from the contents of the presentation. On Monday a spokesman told the Huffington Post that Rogers "probably sat politely if he was there, that is his style."

But the conspiracy in question—that liberals like President Barack Obama are using a mind-control technique called "Delphi" to push a one world government with the aim of foisting sustainable development on the world's citizens, as outlined in a decades-old UN agreement called "Agenda 21"—actually has much deeper roots. How deep? As Bluestem Prairie blogger Sally Jo Sorensen points out, the Delphi siren was sounded in 2002 by Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann's allies at the education watchdog, the Maple River Education Coalition. That year, when Bachmann was still speaking at group functions and pushing its policies at the state capitol, the MREC hawked a two-page instructional document titled, "Beware the Delphi Technique." It warned:



Delphi was framed as the vehicle by which central planners at the state and federal level would ultimately break down the walls of sovereignty and push a pantheistic global union. But all was not lost; there was an easy way out:


[font size="1"]Maple River Education Coalition[/font]

Bachmann, as far as I can tell, never discussed Delphi directly. But it was a pretty integral aspect of the MREC's push against the Profile of Learning, the Minnesota curriculum standard that launched Bachmann's career in public life. Beginning in 1998, she criss-crossed the state on behalf of the group and maintained close ties with the MREC during her time as a state Senator in St. Paul. In hearings as a state Senator Bachmann used her platform to push the Agenda 21 conspiracy in a fashion that would have fit in at the Georgia state capitol; she once questioned a panel of professors on whether they supported population controls or intended to ban humans from living in certain areas. She also fretted that the United Nations definition of sustainable development would lead to a moratorium on light bulb production. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/michele-bachmanns-ed-group-warned-mind-control-scheme-too

November 20, 2012

Another anti-gay Fundie caught in the act of being a hypocrite

Anti-Gay Christian Right Attorney Busted for Horrifying Sex Offenses
An attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is facing some very serious charges.

November 20, 2012 |


An attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is facing some very serious charges. ADF is a "Christian" consortium of attorneys dedicated to "transforming the legal system and advocating for religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family." They do this mostly by filing lawsuits to undermine any progress the LGBT community makes in the pursuit of equality.

From the New Hamphsire Concord Monitor:

November 20, 2012

The Fall of the American Empire (Writ Small)

from TomDispatch:



The Fall of the American Empire (Writ Small)
History, Farce, and David Petraeus

By Tom Engelhardt


History, it is said, arrives first as tragedy, then as farce. First as Karl Marx, then as the Marx Brothers. In the case of twenty-first century America, history arrived first as George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith and the Project for a New America -- a shadow government masquerading as a think tank -- and an assorted crew of ambitious neocons and neo-pundits); only later did David Petraeus make it onto the scene.

It couldn’t be clearer now that, from the shirtless FBI agent to the “embedded” biographer and the “other other woman,” the “fall” of David Petraeus is playing out as farce of the first order. What’s less obvious is that Petraeus, America’s military golden boy and Caesar of celebrity, was always smoke and mirrors, always the farce, even if the denizens of Washington didn’t know it.

Until recently, here was the open secret of Petraeus’s life: he may not have understood Iraqis or Afghans, but no military man in generations more intuitively grasped how to flatter and charm American reporters, pundits, and politicians into praising him. This was, after all, the general who got his first Newsweek cover (“Can This Man Save Iraq?”) in 2004 while he was making a mess of a training program for Iraqi security forces, and two more before that magazine, too, took the fall. In 2007, he was a runner-up to Vladimir Putin for TIME’s “Person of the Year.” And long before Paula Broadwell’s aptly named biography, All In, was published to hosannas from the usual elite crew, that was par for the course.

You didn’t need special insider’s access to know that Broadwell wasn’t the only one with whom the general did calisthenics. The FBI didn’t need to investigate. Even before she came on the scene, scads of columnists, pundits, reporters, and politicians were in bed with him. And weirdly enough, many of them still are. (Typical was NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams mournfully discussing the “painful” resignation of “Dave” -- “the most prominent and best known general of the modern era.”) Adoring media people treated him like the next military Messiah, a combination of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Ulysses S. Grant rolled into one fabulous piñata. It’s a safe bet that no general of our era, perhaps of any American era, has had so many glowing adjectives attached to his name. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175619/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_an_obit_for_the_general/

November 20, 2012

I've decided to spend Friday at Walmart.......

....... supporting their striking workers. I was going to go see "Skyfall", but this is too important.

November 20, 2012

Cities in the Red: Austerity Hits America

from Dissent magazine:


Cities in the Red: Austerity Hits America
By Ann Larson - November 16, 2012




The European debt crisis, and the ensuing austerity-fueled chaos, can seem to Americans like a distant battle that portends a dark future. Yet a closer look reveals that the future is already here. American austerity has largely taken the form of municipal budget crises precipitated by predatory Wall Street lending practices. The debt financing of U.S. cities and towns, a neoliberal economic model that long precedes the current recession, has inflicted deep and growing suffering on communities across the country.

In July 2012, Mayor Christopher Doherty of Scranton, Pennsylvania, reduced all city employees’ salaries to the minimum wage. With a stroke of his pen, wages for teachers, firefighters, police, and other municipal workers, many of whom had been on the job for decades, dropped to $7.25 per hour. The city, the mayor explained, simply could not pay them more. Ron Allen, who reported the story for NBC Nightly News, repeated this assessment. Cities like Scranton, he said, “just don’t have the money” to pay city employees more than the minimum wage. Officials blamed the crisis on a declining tax base, on reduced revenue from the state, and on public sector labor contracts that the city could no longer afford.

What does it mean to say that a former steel town in decline “just doesn’t have the money” to pay its bills? It means that it no longer has access to credit markets controlled by the big banks. For years, Scranton officials, like officials across the United States, have been selling municipal bonds to finance everything from basic services to development projects. Scranton’s problems careened out of control when they city’s parking authority threatened to default on its bonds. Wall Street responded aggressively by cutting off its credit line, and city workers paid a steep price. American-style austerity arrived in Scranton under the guise of budget cuts blamed on public employees, whose salaries and pensions had nothing to do with the economic crisis.

Scranton’s problems are hardly unique. Municipalities across the country are grappling with declining local tax revenue and reduced federal funding in an era when growth and development are equated with prosperity. This toxic mix has produced a $3.7 trillion municipal debt market, a revenue juggernaut for Wall Street. Municipal bonds are issued by virtually every city, county, and development agency in the United States. The number of taxpayer-backed bonds in circulation is five times higher than only ten years ago. This means that the world’s largest financial firms now hold the purse strings for everything from essential services like sewage treatment plants to large-scale developments such as sports arenas. Municipal bonds are extremely profitable for investors because they are tax-exempt and, like mortgages, can be packaged into securities. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/cities-in-the-red-austerity-hits-america

November 20, 2012

Godfather Murdoch got Chris Christie back in line......

from Salon.com:


Rupert Murdoch’s warning tweet — telling Chris Christie in the midst of Hurricane Sandy cleanup that the New Jersey governor needed to re-endorse Mitt Romney or be blamed for Obama’s re-election — got the governor’s attention.

The New York Times reports this morning that soon after the Fox News chief’s tweet, Christie called Murdoch to tell him New Jersey needed the federal government’s help. Murdoch, however, did not back down. The Times says he told Christie he “risked looking like a spoiler” unless he publicly backed Romney again.

The message got through — after several days of embracing and praising Obama, Christie made a point of saying the next day that he was still backing Mitt.

But Republican donors and Romney aides still blame Christie, in part, for a large number of undecideds breaking toward Obama in the days before the election. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.salon.com/2012/11/20/chris_christie_listened_to_rupert_murdochs_warning_re_backed_romney/

November 20, 2012

The 1 percent killed Twinkies

from Salon.com:


Vulture capitalism — not unions — killed Twinkies
Hedge funds took profits and piled on millions in debt at Hostess. They created this bankruptcy, not unions

By Jake Blumgart


As the final Twinkies, Sno-Balls and those glowing orange cupcakes were stuffed with cream and wrapped in cellophane on Friday, the business world and much of the news media knew who was to blame for this dying American icon. It was the unions.

The Wall Street Journal described the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union as “The union that brought the 85-year-old baker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread to its knees.” Over at RedState, a headline tried to mix anti-union sentiment with conservative humor: “The Demise of Twinkies? Yes, It’s True. Parasitic Unions Kill Their Hosts (or, in this case, Hostess).”

As Hostess moved to end its operations last week — a bankruptcy judge asked the company Monday to try mediation with its unions; those talks are scheduled to begin today — commentators were eager to blame the rigidity of unions.

But the story is far more complicated than that — and in some ways, the exact opposite of the tale pushed by those on the right. It’s the story of two bankruptcies, hundreds of millions of givebacks from Hostess unions and hundreds of millions of debt piled onto the company by venture capitalists. It’s a story of management that boosted its own salaries, while failing to make agreed payments into workers’ pension funds. And it’s a story of changing tastes and diets. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.salon.com/2012/11/20/vulture_capitalism_not_unions_killed_twinkies/

November 20, 2012

More Than Nutritious: Why Organics Are Still Healthier

from YES! Magazine:



More Than Nutritious: Why Organics Are Still Healthier
Two recent studies concluded that organic food is no more nutritious than non-organic food. But the value of organics involves health on multiple levels, from that of farmers to eaters to the planet itself.

by Robin Broad, John Cavanagh
posted Nov 19, 2012


We have seen many outrageous studies that reinforce the worldview of giant corporate agribusiness over the years, but two in the last three months really take the cake.

Before we tell you what they are, we ask you to take 10 seconds and answer this one-question survey:

My understanding is that those who buy organic do so because:
1) They want to avoid the pesticides used in non-organic produce.
2) They are looking for more nutritious food.

If you are like the American University students who took this survey, you correctly selected number one. No one who answered our survey chose number two on nutrition. Indeed, the main selling point for eating organic has long been that it is healthier because of the absence of chemicals in your food. Think, for example, of Rachel Carson, who exposed to the world the horrors of pesticide exposure 50 years ago in her classic Silent Spring.

Which brings us to two attention-grabbing studies: In early September, Stanford University researchers (publishing in the Annals of Internal Medicine) made headlines in mainstream media by claiming to have proven that organic food is no more nutritious than food grown with pesticides. On its heels, a second study—this one by the American Academy of Pediatrics—reached the same basic conclusion. Both studies were presented as harsh blows against organic farming, essentially telling parents that there was no nutrition-based reason to buy organics for their children. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/john-cavanagh-and-robin-broad/yes-on-organics-no-on-deceptive-headlines