December 12, 2011

Presenting America’s Ten Greediest of 2011

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



.....(snip).....

10/ Paul Hoolahan: Skimming the Sugar

Greed has never been a stranger to professional sports. But this year’s most avaricious sports character works for a nonprofit. Meet Paul Hoolahan, the chief exec at the Sugar Bowl, one of four annual college football postseason games that rotate hosting the national collegiate championship.

The Sugar Bowl enjoys tax-exempt status and regularly touts its contributions to good causes. But Hoolahan’s favorite good cause may be his own. He took home just under $600,000 in 2009, the latest year with figures available, almost quadruple his $160,500 paycheck for the same job 13 years earlier.

.....(snip).....

2/ Don Blankenship: Prepping for a Comeback

This past May, West Virginia state investigators found Massey Energy directly to blame for the 2010 blast that left 29 miners dead at the company’s Upper Big Branch coal mine. Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s management team, probers charged, had nurtured a “culture bent on production at the expense of safety.”

Earlier this month, federal regulators agreed. They found “systematic, intentional, and aggressive efforts” to flout basic safety regulations. Under Blankenship, Massey managers kept two sets of books, one accurate for internal use and another fake for regulators. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/presenting-america%E2%80%99s-ten-greediest-of-2011/

December 12, 2011

My kind of Christmas tree !!!!

from www.failblog.org

December 12, 2011

Europe's Top Bank Regulator: 'The Crisis Has Reached a Systemic Level'

from Der Spiegel:



A stress test performed on European banks last week found a capital shortfall of some 115 billion euros. In a SPIEGEL interview, European Banking Authority head Andrea Enria defends the decision to perform the stress test and discusses the huge challenges facing the European banking sector.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Enria, the European Banking Authority was established with the aim of stabilizing the banking system. Has that plan worked out?

Andrea Enria: It is far too early to say. We started in January, in a very difficult market environment. It is like we are building our house and living in it, while outside there is a storm. But there are some very positive indications: One of the major shortcomings before the establishment of the EBA was the inability to decide and coordinate policy actions within the European Union. Already in the first months of its activity, the EBA has shown that this is different now.

SPIEGEL: At the moment it looks like the European banking system is more fragile than ever. What went wrong?

Enria: The banking sector has made major efforts to strengthen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But now the sovereign debt crisis is putting a lot of pressure on bank funding, especially in countries under stress. Since July, only a few banks have been able to finance their operations, and only at very high prices. If banks don't have funding, they don't lend, and this affects the real economy. We are locked in a vicious circle and we must try to break it. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,803127,00.html

December 12, 2011

Presenting America’s Ten Greediest of 2011

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



.....(snip).....

10/ Paul Hoolahan: Skimming the Sugar

Greed has never been a stranger to professional sports. But this year’s most avaricious sports character works for a nonprofit. Meet Paul Hoolahan, the chief exec at the Sugar Bowl, one of four annual college football postseason games that rotate hosting the national collegiate championship.

The Sugar Bowl enjoys tax-exempt status and regularly touts its contributions to good causes. But Hoolahan’s favorite good cause may be his own. He took home just under $600,000 in 2009, the latest year with figures available, almost quadruple his $160,500 paycheck for the same job 13 years earlier.

.....(snip).....

2/ Don Blankenship: Prepping for a Comeback

This past May, West Virginia state investigators found Massey Energy directly to blame for the 2010 blast that left 29 miners dead at the company’s Upper Big Branch coal mine. Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s management team, probers charged, had nurtured a “culture bent on production at the expense of safety.”

Earlier this month, federal regulators agreed. They found “systematic, intentional, and aggressive efforts” to flout basic safety regulations. Under Blankenship, Massey managers kept two sets of books, one accurate for internal use and another fake for regulators. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/presenting-america%E2%80%99s-ten-greediest-of-2011/

December 12, 2011

Another round of climate negotiations, another slow-motion step toward disaster.

via truthdig:



The Durban Deal Is No Deal
Posted on Dec 11, 2011


Another round of climate negotiations, another vague promise to commit to something in the distant future and another slow-motion step toward disaster for the world’s poor and vulnerable. The Durban deal puts the U.N.’s 194 nations on track to begin negotiating a legally binding pact by 2015, six years after we were told to expect such a treaty in Copenhagen.

After two days of deadlock, delegates salvaged the talks by changing the words “legal outcome” to the substantially more slippery “agreed outcome with legal force under the convention applicable to all parties.” That injection of hot air into a corpse of a deal was enough to bring Indian negotiator Jayanthi Natarajan back to the table to declare the process operable. The earlier language made her concerned that India would be legally bound to curtail its economic development.

Negotiators did not commit to renewing the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in December 2012, and instead called for an extension until 2017 or 2020. That leaves the “real” deciding for next year’s talks in Qatar. —ARK




http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_durban_deal_is_no_deal_20111211/

December 12, 2011

Bill Moyers: Why 'We The People' Must Triumph Over Corporate Power

Berrett-Koehler Publishers / By Bill Moyers

Moyers: Why 'We The People' Must Triumph Over Corporate Power
Bill Moyers reminds us that repairing American democracy begins with reasserting that corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as citizens.

December 11, 2011 |


(Editor's note: The following is the foreword to Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It, by Jeffrey Clements, a new book from Berrett-Koehler Publishers.)


Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five conservative members of the Supreme Court handed for-profit corporations the right to secretly flood political campaigns with tidal waves of cash on the eve of an election, they moved America closer to outright plutocracy, where political power derived from wealth is devoted to the protection of wealth. It is now official: Just as they have adorned our athletic stadiums and multiple places of public assembly with their logos, corporations can officially put their brand on the government of the United States as well as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the fifty states.

The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission giving “artificial entities” the same rights of “free speech” as living, breathing human beings will likely prove as infamous as the Dred Scott ruling of 1857 that opened the unsettled territories of the United States to slavery whether future inhabitants wanted it or not. It took a civil war and another hundred years of enforced segregation and deprivation before the effects of that ruling were finally exorcised from our laws. God spare us civil strife over the pernicious consequences of Citizens United, but unless citizens stand their ground, America will divide even more swiftly into winners and losers with little pity for the latter. Citizens United is but the latest battle in the class war waged for thirty years from the top down by the corporate and political right. Instead of creating a fair and level playing field for all, government would become the agent of the powerful and privileged. Public institutions, laws, and regulations, as well as the ideas, norms, and beliefs that aimed to protect the common good and helped create America’s iconic middle class, would become increasingly vulnerable. The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow succinctly summed up the results: “The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.” In the wake of Citizens United, popular resistance is all that can prevent the richest economic interests in the country from buying the democratic process lock, stock, and barrel.

America has a long record of conflict with corporations. Wealth acquired under capitalism is in and of itself no enemy to democracy, but wealth armed with political power — power to choke off opportunities for others to rise, power to subvert public purposes and deny public needs — is a proven danger to the “general welfare” proclaimed in the Preamble to the Constitution as one of the justifications for America’s existence. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/153349/moyers%3A_why_%27we_the_people%27_must_triumph_over_corporate_power/

December 12, 2011

Ryan Braun: I am not a juicehead

Milwaukee Brewers' star outfielder Ryan Braun's original test for performance-enhancing drugs as the playoffs were winding down in October was "insanely high, the highest ever for anyone who has ever taken a test, twice the level of the highest test ever taken," said a source familiar with the developing case in which Braun was reported to have tested positive for an elevated level of testosterone caused by a synthetic substance, triggering a possible 50-game suspension if the test results are upheld.

The never-before-seen ratio, according to the source, is one of several "highly unusual circumstances" Braun's camp has referred to when adamantly denying that the National League Most Valuable Player ingested a performance-enhancing drug that caused the positive test. His spokesman, Matthew Hiltzick said Saturday after ESPN reported that Braun had tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance: "There are highly unusual circumstances surrounding this case which will support Ryan's complete innocence and demonstrate there was absolutely no intentional violation of the program. ... we are confident he will ultimately be exonerated."

Braun's lawyer, David Cornwell, also said that the positive test was not the result of taking a performance-enhancing drug.

"He did not take performance-enhancing drugs," Cornwell told the Daily News Sunday, "and anyone who writes that is wrong." ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/ryan-braun-initial-ped-test-results-insanely-high-nl-mvp-lawyer-insists-client-peds-article-1.990020#ixzz1gHNundCI

December 12, 2011

Eight myths about socialism—and their answers

from the Party for Socialism and Liberation:






Myth #1: Socialists want to take away your property

This myth confuses private property with personal property. When socialists talk about the abolition of private property, they are referring to the socialization of the means of production—the resources and equipment that create wealth. Working people do not own this type of property—which is why we have to work to survive.

Right now, the wealth of the 1,000 billionaires is equal to that of the 3.5 billion poorest people on the planet. In order to provide everyone with more, that wealth must be commonly owned, and not the property of those few capitalists.

Socialists have no interest in taking away one’s home, car or individual items intended for personal use. In reality, as the foreclosure crisis has shown, under capitalism the banks own most of this property as well—and will take it away as they please.

Myth #2: Socialists are against democracy and for a dictatorship

The two-party “democratic” system under capitalism is in fact a dictatorship of the rich. Under it, working people create all the wealth, but capitalists—who own the corporations and banks—have all the economic power and use it to control politics. That fact never changes, even if we have the right to vote. We get to vote on who will oppress us next, while all the important decisions are made in executive boardrooms. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.pslweb.org/party/marxism-101/eight-myths-about-socialism.html

December 11, 2011

Did anyone else's journal posts suddenly vanish?

I just checked my journal and posts that were in there earlier today have gone Poof!

December 11, 2011

A bit of a warmup is in the forecast......