Revisionism

The last thread filled up pretty fast.

toniD's Ya Think?

ROOSEVELT, N.Y. — Homelessness in rural and suburban America is straining shelters this winter as the economy founders and joblessness hovers near double digits – a "perfect storm of foreclosures, unemployment and a shortage of affordable housing," in one official's eyes.

"We are seeing many families that never before sought government help," said Greg Blass, commissioner of Social Services in Suffolk County on eastern Long Island.

"We see a spiral in food stamps, heating assistance applications; Medicaid is skyrocketing," Blass added. "It is truly reaching a stage of being alarming."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/suburban-homeless-rising-_n_464...

toniD's Ya Think?

Energy Sec Unaware That Nuclear Loans Have 50 Percent Risk of Default

— By Kate Sheppard
| Tue Feb. 16, 2010 11:08 AM PST

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a loan guarantee for the first new nuclear reactor to be built in the US in decades—part of a planned $54.5 billion program to kickstart a nuclear revival using government-backed loans. Yet Chu said he was not aware of a Congressional Budget Office study showing that the chances of default on these loans are "very high—well above 50 percent."

"I don't know of the CBO report," Chu told reporters during a conference call on Tuesday. "We don't believe the chance of default is 50 percent. We believe it's far less than that." The first loan guarantee, worth $8.33 billion, was awarded to two proposed reactors to be built by Southern Company at Plant Vogtle in Burke, Georgia.

As Mother Jones has reported, the proposal to encourage nuclear construction via massive federally backed loans represents a major risk for the US taxpayer. While the nuclear industry as recently as 2005 claimed the price tag for a reactor was $2 billion, independent estimates now put the cost as high as $12 billion.

In fact, the economics of the nuclear industry look so dicey that Wall Street banks—no strangers to high-risk investments—have for several years balked at financing new plants unless the government underwrites the deal. "There will be no nuclear renaissance beyond what the government is willing to underwrite," Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is now a professor at Vermont Law School, told Mariah Blake in a recent piece for Mother Jones. And the nuclear industry has not been shy about announcing its reliance on the taxpayer. "Without loan guarantees we will not build nuclear power plants," Michael J. Wallace, co-chief executive of UniStar Nuclear and vice president of Constellation Energy, told the New York Times in 2007. That means the government would assume almost all the risk.

"Even Wall Street traders say these reactors are too risky to invest in...

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/chu-not-aware-nuclear-default...

toniD's Ya Think?

Anti-Incumbent Fever Hits New High
A new CNN/Opinion Research poll finds that only 34% of Americans feel that current members of Congress deserve re-election -- the lowest number ever recorded in the survey -- with 63% saying no.

In addition, 51% feel their member of Congress should be re-elected -- also an all-time low -- while 44% say their representative doesn't deserve to be returned to office in November.

The anger is also bipartisan: 56% say that most Democrats in Congress do not deserve to be re-elected while 56% say that most congressional Republicans don't deserve re-election.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/16/cnn-poll-anti-incumbent-...

Now the time is ripe for a viable 3rd party.

toniD's Ya Think?

103 companies agreed to stop
running ads on Glenn Beck
103 companies have agreed to stop their ads from appearing on his program. Some of the latest defections include Allstate Insurance, Anheuser-Busch, Idaho Potato Commission, Marriott International, Volkswagen, and Western Union.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/16/beck-uk/

toniD's Ya Think?

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History

*
How fucked is the world if you cannot trust the History Channel...or if they are going to focus on sexual exploits instead of his actual work then they should state so...

President has 13 point lead
in latest approval rating
While progressives are angry with the President and right-wingers never liked him, the rest of the country seems to approve. Gallup gives Obama a 13 point lead in his approval rating, 53-40.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx

But some are praying he dies....

Baptist ministers praying
that President Obama dies
Some evangelical leaders devoted their President's Day praying for Barack Obama's death.

http://www.newser.com/story/80996/baptist-pastors-prayed-for-obama-death...

toniD's Ya Think?

My Aunt Helen, one of my favorite Aunts, died today, she was a sweet woman and a delight to be around. I hope her version of the afterlife is as good as she hoped it would be.

**********************************************************

the weather up here this winter has been better than california's.

a light rain the last few days and three days of sun coming up next. everything is budding so i dread a series of cold snaps. warm t-shirt weather outside today.

hard to believe this is the middle of February!

My aunt died last week also... I like thinking she's with my awesome Uncle Joe now....

What Bayh exit really says
about Obama's Washington
The current coatless Oval Office guy promised change to believe in, even though (a) he was employed in Washington, and (b) the real change he believed in was that he become the ringmaster of the very same civic circus.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/02/evan-bayh-.html

toniD's Ya Think?

the newspaper is selling the photos they took of the league...

http://uniondemocrat.mycapture.com/mycapture/enlarge.asp?image=28004289&...

They haven't put the Sports page story in their online version of the paper yet...they'd better...

Not me...not anyone I know...Such bullshit..

Sorry to hear about your Aunts, Sunny and Alice.

I just went to a wake for a man I worked with at the PD.

Sad news, but then again their worries are over.

toniD's Ya Think?

and when anything sexual or swear wordy comes up they are scratching into the cd ... That is so lame..

I get a little jealous when people die.

I wanna be a vapor of pure energy..

From what I've heard and understand tho...you don't leave everything behind...you really can't escape anything by being out of body..but who knows...

Dems bend on antitrust repeal
By: Patrick O'Connor
February 16, 2010 05:13 AM EST

Nothing comes easy in the health care debate.

Take an upcoming House vote to repeal the long-standing antitrust protections for the insurance industry. To most members of Congress, it seems like a no-brainer: Why should insurers be exempted from antitrust laws, anyway?

But Democrats look like they’ll scale back the legislation to protect insurance companies that offer malpractice coverage to doctors and other health care providers, bowing to industry pressure in the latest concession of the health care fight.

On Monday, Democratic aides in the House said the final bill likely won’t include controversial new restrictions on medical malpractice insurers. Its authors also appear inclined to strip new authority for the Federal Trade Commission because it sparked similar unease.

The concessions illustrate just how hard it’s been for the president and his congressional allies to overhaul a single sector of such an enormous segment of the economy.

The antitrust repeal was supposed to be an easy win — the first in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s dual-track health care strategy of passing smaller measures while she negotiates a broader bill. The bill targets the much-vilified insurance industry, while putting political pressure on Republicans for drawing a line against reform and giving her rank and file something to talk about when most of the health care headlines aren’t good.

Instead, the speaker’s attack on the insurance industry awakened lobbying giants that had been dormant for much of the health care debate: property and casualty insurers. By repealing the antitrust exemption for insurance companies that provide medical malpractice insurance, Democrats in the House sparked an uproar from the property-casualty industry, which led a lobbying campaign to overhaul — or defeat — the bill.

“Certainly, [the bill’s provision] should be narrowed,” said Ben McKay, a senior vice president of federal government relations for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. “It’s overly broad. There are consequences that reach far beyond just the health care industry into the property-casualty industry. This will have an impact on auto and home insurance.”

Top Democrats are making the malpractice change at the request of industry representatives.

The bill repeals the antitrust exemption for insurers established by Congress in 1945 after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had authority to regulate the industry. The law, known as McCarran-Ferguson, essentially gave states the sole authority to regulate the insurance industry.

The initial version of the House bill, introduced by two vulnerable freshman Democrats — Reps. Betsy Markey of Colorado and Thomas Perriello of Virginia — sought to grant the federal government more authority to oversee health insurers and companies that offer medical malpractice insurance.

Backers of the expanded provision argued it would increase competition by giving the federal government a greater ability to streamline the patchwork of state laws that currently govern the industry. more...

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=D3EF020A-18FE-70B2-A82008461...

toniD's Ya Think?

Wouldn't it be nice if we could have some influence after death? But then if evil people had the same influence we'd still be in the same boat without a paddle.

toniD's Ya Think?

go...I sometimes imagine "evil' people as people who choose to play the 'bad guy' in order to help facilitate a lesson for another person or people...Like the W.T. Stead book about the titanic...and groups encarnating to 'perform' mass events like that...for the benefit of the survivors...

Reminds me of the movie Ghost and how much energy it took for the dead person/spirit to kick the can....My grandma and I made a word to say to each other when she died...Scrabble...sometimes I hear that word out of "nowhere" and I think she is around....One thing I really believe is that "all thoughts are gotten"...

they teach and learn by being such..

...famiLIAR

Steve Kronish, the primary writer for "The Kennedys" and a co-executive producer of "24," told the Huffington Post …"Recognize also that this is not a documentary it is a dramatization," he said…As for instances in which the script clearly gets it wrong -- such as an assertion that John F. Kennedy was responsible for proposing the construction of the Berlin Wall -- changes will be made or already have been.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/kennedy-tv-series-causing_n_464...

Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception
Max Blumenthal
Senior Writer for The Daily Beast
Posted: September 8, 2006 06:15 PM
“…ABC was forced to concede that "The Path to 9/11" is "a dramatization, not a documentary." The film deceptively invents scenes to depict former President Bill Clinton's handling of the Al Qaeda threat…”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/discover-the-secret-right_b...

Pawlenty Budget Relies on Stimulus Money
Nearly one-third of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's (R) final budget proposal would rely on $387 million in federal stimulus money to balance the budget, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/84389002.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQ...

Pawlenty opposed passage of the economic stimulus legislation early last year telling Bloomberg it was "largely wasted" and "misdirected."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a8ofmsdY2HKs

toniD's Ya Think?

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000390513023&ref=ts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cv8WD9lNa4

can come and take photos for a story and then resell the images without getting any releases from the players, or contributing any to the non-profit arena.

...It's William Dickenson - not Dickerson.

alleged healthcare bill...I could have read to her from the blog the evolution of turning nothing into less than nothing...

Finish the job

To the editor:
We are incredibly close to passing real health care reform. I stand with President Obama in calling on Congress to finish the job.
My parents worked hard all their lives, and at 62 my dad had his first heart attack, when he had no health insurance and was too young for Medicare. He was almost forced into a convalescent home, deemed “custodial care.” I was able to find a way for him to get rehabilitation therapy that gave him and my mother another another seven years of quality independent living.
My adult daughter has just left her full time employment to pursue a graduate degree and is meanwhile uninsured. She has a pre-existing life threatening condition.
My brother-in-law has worked hard as an independent contractor his whole life and is now in Stage 4 prostate cancer at age 60. He was able to get a small amount of disability income, then the state where he lives determined that this makes him ineligible for health insurance. So what kind of quality of life can he look forward to in his remaining months?
This is not some kind of luxury hand-out to people who choose not to work for a living. It is a sad fact in our society that hardworking people cannot afford health insurance and can end up losing their lives needlessly or dying in unnecessary pain and suffering.
We’re so close; let’s get it done.

MY EX BOSS
Tuolumne

/ musicians:
..
From "Peace & Love" Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

CD Review: Juliana Hatfield, “Peace & Love”
by Michael Fortes

Let’s get one thing out of the way right from the start – Peace & Love, Juliana Hatfield’s tenth full-length solo album (not including live, compilation or archival releases – but who’s counting?), is the quietest and lowest-fi record she has ever made. If it were 1993 again (or even 2008, for that matter), a set of twelve acoustic Juliana Hatfield recordings such as these would be considered little more than a collection of demos.

Literally, Peace & Love is about 90% acoustic from top to bottom – acoustic guitar anchors every song, and...
popdose.com

bostonmagazine.com
Billboard via reuters
blurt-online.com
slantmagazine.com
bostonherald.com
latimes.com
Spin.com
expressnightout.com
Links provided by: andrewk
Over there

_ _ _
brr

It's funny how some of us glom onto an era of music and don't let go...it gets all emote-ey...

Before and let them know they have to replace if dammaged?

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

February 12, 2010
Zuckerman Is Said to Be Weighing Bid for Senate
By MICHAEL BARBARO and TIM ARANGO
Could another media mogul be looking to make a splash in New York politics?

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the real estate tycoon and publisher of The Daily News, is considering a bid for the Senate seat now held by Kirsten E. Gillibrand, according to two people told of the discussions.

Mr. Zuckerman regards Ms. Gillibrand as vulnerable to a challenge and is hoping that, at a time of economic tumult and political unrest, his background as an outsider to government, and his record as a business executive, will appeal to the state’s electorate, these people said.

He would be the latest boldface name to weigh a run for the seat this fall; a former Tennessee congressman, Harold E. Ford Jr., is mulling a primary run against Ms. Gillibrand, a fellow Democrat, and will make a decision in the next few weeks.

The discussions were preliminary, the two people cautioned, with many details of a possible candidacy yet to be worked out. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were meant to be private and Mr. Zuckerman had not made up his mind.

Mr. Zuckerman is considering whether to commission a poll to test the viability of a candidacy, one of the people said.

A Zuckerman spokesman, Ken Frydman, declined to address any discussions that Mr. Zuckerman might have had about a Senate run, or any plans to conduct a poll.

Mr. Frydman said Mr. Zuckerman was unavailable for comment on Friday afternoon, but he added in a statement that the publisher “is not interested in running for public office.”

Mr. Zuckerman, 72, has long sought a national platform. He has cut a wide swath through the media landscape, buying and selling magazines like The Atlantic and writing a regular column for U.S. News & World Report, which he owns.

Though not currently enrolled in a party, he is known as a Democrat. But if he ran for the Senate, it would very likely be as a Republican or independent so he could avoid a costly primary.

As a candidate, Mr. Zuckerman would be following the path of a close friend and fellow media executive, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican to run for office.

Mr. Zuckerman, whose fortune is estimated to be about $2 billion, owes most of his wealth to the real estate industry. He co-founded Boston Properties, which owns and manages office buildings in New York and elsewhere, in 1970, and is now chairman of the board. He bought The Daily News in 1993.

If he enters the race, Mr. Zuckerman would quite likely have to relinquish management of the newspaper, one of New York City’s three biggest dailies, much the way Mr. Bloomberg handed over day-to-day control of his company, Bloomberg L.P., when he ran for mayor in 2001.more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/nyregion/13mort.html

...another rich man in the Senate.

Hillary Clinton?

— By Stephanie Mencimer

Tue Feb. 16, 2010 2:30 AM PST

Ever since Barack Obama started running for the White House, he’s been plagued by lawsuits from detractors who claim that he is not a natural-born citizen, and thus is ineligible to serve as president. Now the devoted conspiracy theorists of the so-called "eligibility movement" have a fresh target: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And there’s a chance that the Supreme Court might hear their challenge.

In January 2009, a longtime foreign service officer named David C. Rodearmel sued Hillary Clinton in federal court in DC arguing that an obscure provision of the Constitution blocks her from serving in Obama's Cabinet because...

continued at motherjones.com
_ _ _
brr

.

Submitted by SEDER on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 8:53pm. The nose breather from 24 has a new mission

I heard someone who read the script say, "it doesn't just slam the Kennedy family. It insults everyone of Irish descent."

Jesus..

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

The artery walls of people living within 100 meters of a highway thicken more than twice as fast as the average person's, according to a report this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

Researchers from Spain, Switzerland, and the U.S. used ultrasound to measure the carotid artery wall thickness of 1,483 people living near freeways in the Los Angeles area. They took measurements once every six months for three years and correlated the numbers with estimates of outdoor particulate levels at each participant's home.

The artery wall thickness among those living within 100 meters (328 feet) of a highway increased by 5.5 micrometers (roughly 1/20th the thickness of a human hair) each year during the three-year study, which is more than twice the progression observed in participants who did not live within this distance of a highway.

The authors of the study report:

Atherosclerosis--or the stiffening and calcification of arteries--is the underlying cause of most cardiovascular disease and related deaths, which are the number one killer in the Western world. A few animal studies conducted in recent years have observed that the inhalation of ambient particulate matter from traffic and other sources accelerates atherosclerosis in rabbits, rats and mice.... So far, no study has ever investigated whether the slow but chronic process of the development of atherosclerosis would be affected by ambient air pollutants.

Study co-author Michael Jerrett, a University of California at Berkeley associate professor of environmental health sciences, says the team's findings could have extremely broad public health implications worldwide:
Read more here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10450159-247.html

Yes I agree, this info has had similar findings for YEARS! But why does it take sooo loooong for other folk TO GET IT? WHY? WTF? {Illogical...}

-

I follow racers on Tweet. Carmichael tweeted about Pink's show at the grammys and Pink's husband Cary Hart tweeted back he agreed about how hot his wife was.

He's right.

That was the best tweet I've read so far.

Pink is one of those women who isn't physically attractive to me but I find irresistibly sexy regardless.

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

Fox can fill dead air as a patch dries on Daytona for almost 2 hours without changing the programing but only minutes after an Obama speech before opting for anything else?

WHAT UP SEDERVILLE! Okay this isn't the most current chart, but it is what it is. And the Market isn't NOW but WAS. In 2005. RIGHT AFTER GWB wuz DECLARED pRezident.
At least we gold bugs are involved with a substance with a half life somewhat less than a BILLION YEARS!
(The mining of uranium is a bit more intense than mining of gold, which isn't very "green" either. See 1/4 "Blighted Homeland" - slideshow and READ Blighted Homeland - Part 2@ LAT -Ed.)

http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/a/gold.htm
AU Isotopes: There are 18 isotopes of gold. Gold-198, with a half-life of 2.7 days, has been used to treat cancer and other illnesses.

Uranium-238 Half-Life (in years) 4.46 billion
Uranium-235 Half-Life (in years) 704 million
Uranium-234 Half-Life (in years) 245,000

http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/uranium.html
Uranium-238, the most prevalent isotope in uranium ore, has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years; that is, half the atoms in any sample will decay in that amount of time. Uranium-238 decays by alpha emission into thorium-234, which itself decays by beta emission to protactinium-234, which decays by beta emission to uranium-234, and so on. The various decay products, (sometimes referred to as "progeny" or "daughters") form a series starting at uranium-238. After several more alpha and beta decays, the series ends with the stable isotope lead-206.

So some time near the end of time all the uranium will be lead.
Nice.

Now, who do you think started this RUN on Uranium? Hmmmmm?

Did your 401k invest in uranium?

More hmmmmmmmm (and some harumphs, no doubt)

;);(

/|\)0( :):(

more a good friend gone than a crushing loss, but she was a very good person to know, i was priveleged to be a small part of her family and she was wise and caring.

{I couldn't understand you...hahaha which dog won.}
It was The Scotty {terror} Toto Terrier that WON! :o
Westminster Best in Show &&& AKWhatever Best in Show also.

I am use to Wolves and Wolf Hybrids not a "wee" dog that barks... so I feel The Universe is "training me" to appreciate and love this darlin' "lil" dog. :D
{She lays under my office chair ... awwwwwwwwwwwwww:}

/|\)0( :):(

Bayh's Timing Infuriates Republicans
In the aftermath of Sen. Evan Bayh's (D-IN) announcement that he will not run for reelection, most of the focus has been on the reactions of Democrats.

But The Hill reports that "Republicans are livid about the timing" of Bayh's decision, arguing that "the Indiana Democratic Party will get to decide its nominee" while four Republican candidates battle it out in a primary.

Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has called on Bayh and Indiana Democrats to request an extension of the candidate filing

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/81281-republicans-furious-about-timin...

toniD's Ya Think?

thats an interesting twist. i was under the impression that there wouldn't be a democrat running.

China, rest of world back off of US debt
by Chris in Paris on 2/17/2010 05:17:00 AM
So who will buy America's debt next? China already has a substantial investment and from their perspective, it makes much more sense to diversify. The end result for the US could very well be selling debt at a much more expensive rate. Sooner or later this problem will have to be addressed and it probably means higher taxes.

The Treasury Department reported that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, surpassing the previous record of a $44.5 billion drop in April 2009.

The big drop in China's holdings meant that it lost the top spot in terms of foreign ownership of U.S. Treasuries, dropping to second place behind Japan.

Japan also reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries, cutting them by $11.5 billion to $768.8 billion in December, but that amount was still more than China's December total of $755.4 billion.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/35420831

toniD's Ya Think?

Qwest CEO: 'A 100 meg is just a dream'
by Chris in Paris on 2/17/2010 12:54:00 AM

Uh huh, unless you live in France, Japan, South Korea or numerous other countries outside of North America where it's existed for years. There's something seriously wrong when this is the response that a CEO provides when asked about internet speed comparable to what many other countries already offer. It's pathetic that lazy CEOs like this have accepted such antiquated technology for the US. The GOP did a great job destroying competition in American business and sorry excuses for leaders like this are precisely why the US is falling behind. Even in France - yes, socialist France - it's easy to locate a number of options for high speed internet. And of course, it's going to be cheaper than the backwards offerings that corporate America is happy to offer.

What ever happened to robust competition and giving the best to American consumers? The FCC is right to force corporate America to get off its collective duff and deliver. It's also no wonder why customers are dumping Qwest. How much can you really expect from a blockhead CEO like they have?

Genachowski offered few details on the plan and how the FCC would get providers to reach the minimum speeds.

One, Qwest Communications International Inc, said the goal was unrealistic.

"A 100 meg is just a dream," Qwest Chief Executive Edward Mueller told Reuters. "First, we don't think the customer wants that. Secondly, if (Google has) invented some technology, we'd love to partner with them."

The United States ranked 19th in broadband speed, lagging being Japan, Korea and France, according to a 2008 study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

http://www.americablog.com/2010/02/qwest-ceo-100-meg-is-just-dream.html

toniD's Ya Think?

What’s Wrong With Us?
By BOB HERBERT

Harrisburg, Pa.

Gov. Ed Rendell likes to tell a story that goes back to his days as mayor of Philadelphia.

As he recalled, the city had a long cold snap with about a month and a half of below-freezing temperatures. Then, abruptly, the mercury rose into the 60s, he said, “and 58 of our water mains broke, causing all sorts of havoc.”

The pipes were old. Some were ancient. “My water people told me that some had been laid in the 19th century,” said Mr. Rendell, “and they were laid shallow, without much protection. So with any radical changes in temperature, they were susceptible to breaking. We had a real emergency on our hands.”

Infrastructure, that least sexy of issues, is not just a significant interest of Ed Rendell’s; it’s more like a consuming passion. He can talk about it energetically and enthusiastically for hours and days at a time. He has tried to stop the hemorrhaging of Pennsylvania’s infrastructure, and he travels the country explaining how crucially important it is for the United States to rebuild a national infrastructure landscape that has deteriorated so badly that it is threatening the nation’s economic viability.

Two years ago, a bridge inspector who had stopped for lunch in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood happened to glance up at a viaduct that carries Interstate 95 over the neighborhood. He noticed a 6-foot crack in a 15-foot column that was supporting the highway. His sandwich was quickly forgotten. Two miles of the highway had to be closed for three days for emergency repairs to prevent a catastrophe from occurring.

These kinds of problems are not peculiar to Pennsylvania. New Orleans was lost for want of an adequate system of levees and floodwalls. Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, tells us that 75 percent of America’s public schools have structural deficiencies. The nation’s ports, inland waterways, drinking water and wastewater systems — you name it — are hurting to one degree or another.

Ignoring these problems imperils public safety, diminishes our economic competitiveness, is penny-wise and pound-foolish, and results in tremendous missed opportunities to create new jobs on a vast scale.

Competitors are leaving us behind when it comes to infrastructure investment. China is building a network of 42 high-speed rail lines, while the U.S. has yet to build its first. Other nations are well ahead of us in the deployment of broadband service and green energy technology. We spend scandalous amounts of time sitting in traffic jams or enduring the endless horrors of airline travel. Low-cost, high-speed Internet access is a science-fiction fantasy in many parts of the United States.

What’s wrong with us?

We’re so far behind in some areas that Governor Rendell has said that getting our infrastructure act together can feel like “sledding uphill.”

“When I took over as governor,” he said, “I was told that Pennsylvania led the nation in the number of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges. We had more than 5,600 of them. So I put a ton of money into bridge repair. We more than tripled the amount in the capital budget, from $200 million a year to $700 million a year. And I got a special appropriation from the Legislature to do $200 million a year extra for the next four years.”

The result? “Well, the good news is that we repaired a lot of bridges,” said Mr. Rendell. “The bad news is that by the end of my sixth year, the end of 2008, the number of deficient or structurally obsolete bridges had gone from 5,600 to more than 6,000.

“The reason is that we lead the nation in bridges 75 years or older, and the recommended lifespan for a bridge is 40 years. So every time we fixed two, three would bump onto the list.”

He said he hopes that by the end of this year the list will be pared to 4,300 bridges, which he described as “still way too high.”

It’s easy, especially in tough economic times, to push aside infrastructure initiatives, including basic maintenance and repair, in favor of issues that seem more pressing or more appealing. But this misses the point that infrastructure spending that is thoughtful and wise is an investment, a crucial investment in the nation’s future — and it’s a world-class source of high-value jobs.

The great danger right now is that we will do exactly the wrong thing, that we’ll turn away from our screaming infrastructure needs and let the deterioration continue. With infrastructure costs so high (the needs are enormous and enormously expensive) and with the eyes in Washington increasingly focused on deficit reduction, the absolutely essential modernizing of the American infrastructure may not take place. That would be worse than foolish. It would be tragic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/opinion/16herbert.html?partner=rssnyt&...

toniD's Ya Think?

Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — Senator Evan Bayh’s comments this week about a dysfunctional Congress reflected a complaint being directed at Washington with increasing frequency, and there is broad agreement among critics about Exhibit A: The unwillingness of the two parties to compromise to control a national debt that is rising to dangerous heights.

After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety-net programs.

Yet rarely has the political system seemed more polarized and less able to solve big problems that involve trust, tough choices and little short-term gain. The main urgency for both parties seems to be about pinning blame on the other, before November’s elections, for deficits now averaging $1 trillion a year, the largest since World War II relative to the size of the economy.

Mr. Bayh, the centrist Democrat from Indiana, lodged his complaint about excessive partisanship and Congressional gridlock on Monday by way of explaining his decision not to seek re-election. But he is hardly alone in sounding an alarm about the long-term budgetary outlook, which has Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security costs growing at unsustainable rates and an inefficient tax system that cannot keep up.

“I used to think it would take a global financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one,” said G. William Hoagland, who was a fiscal policy adviser to Senate Republican leaders and a witness to past bipartisan budget summits. “These days I wonder if this country is even governable.”

Sensing political advantage, Republicans are resisting President Obama’s call for a bipartisan commission to cut the debt, although recent studies have implicated the tax cuts and spending policies of the years after 2000 when they controlled Congress and the White House. Even seven Republican senators who had co-sponsored a bill to create a commission nonetheless voted against it recently.

The president is not giving up. On Thursday, administration officials say, he will sign an executive order establishing the 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. He also will name as co-chairmen Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican Senate leader from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, a moderate Democrat from North Carolina who, as President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, brokered a 1997 balanced budget agreement with Congressional Republicans.

“There isn’t a single sitting member of Congress — not one — that doesn’t know exactly where we’re headed,” Mr. Simpson said in a telephone interview Tuesday just before word of his role got out. “And to use the politics of fear and division and hate on each other — we are at a point right now where it doesn’t make a damn whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican if you’ve forgotten you’re an American.”

While he criticized some liberal Democrats’ refusal to reduce entitlement benefits, Mr. Simpson also dismissed Republicans’ antitax arguments that deficits could be controlled with spending cuts alone. “But they don’t cut spending,” he said, referring to the years Republicans governed with President George W. Bush.

Elected Republicans, however, are under intense pressure from their party’s conservative base to oppose any tax increases — a line in the sand that dims any prospects for bipartisan cooperation. Yet economists, including veterans of past Republican administrations, are vocal in insisting that the debt problem is too great to be solved without increasing revenues somehow and perhaps moving to a new consumption tax system like Europe’s.

The same economists also say a significant deficit-reduction plan is not possible unless Mr. Obama breaks his campaign promise not to raise taxes for households making less than $250,000. Last week, Mr. Obama said he would not impose that condition or any other on a fiscal commission.
more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17gridlock.html?partn...

Government could impose a temp tax increase but partner it with a price freeze on all goods and services. This way everyone, including businesses, will be sharing the hurt.

toniD's Ya Think?

Editorial

The NYT runs, on the front page, an editorial on the horrors of "entitlements" and the deficit on the front page, as a news story.

Wars, defense spending are not mentioned as candidates for reducing deficit spending, until the very last sentence:

Yet politicians’ failure to reduce deficits has long reflected voters’ opposition to the necessary steps. The poll also found that by a two-to-one ratio Americans oppose cutting health care and education; 51 percent oppose lower military spending.

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2010/02/editorial.html

toniD's Ya Think?

almost overnight a majority of my friends who have been democrats have dropped or intend to drop their party affiliation and have turned anti-incumbent.

its not that they are becoming republicans or stealth republicans like the teabaggers, but as a single voice they are sick of the way things are in washington.

===

the ideal resolution of this will be one of an emergent third party that carrys enough votes to be a factor to be dealt with or enough primary challenges that we can replace incumbent democrats with new democrats who get it. the downside, which is a real possibility is that the right wing kooks will sweep in and nail a stake thru the heart of whats left of america after 30 years of failed conservative governance.

Democrats Polling For Bayh's Replacement

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee doesn't have a preferred candidate to replace retiring Sen. Evan Bayh just yet. Democrats are in the field with a poll, right now, testing Democrats against likely Republican nominee Dan Coats. According to top Democrats, the hope is that either Reps. Baron Hill or Brad Ellsworth will (a) poll well enough to have a basis to stand for the seat and (b) would be open to the possibility of disrupting their lives for nine months in order to do so.

Ellsworth, a former sheriff, is a member of the Blue Dog caucus. He's also pro life. Hill, a basketball legend in the Hoosier state, is a well-respected longtime servant from his state. A third candidate, Tamyra d'Ippolito, is trying to gather the signatures necessary to force her way onto the ballot. One reason why Bayh retired to close to the deadline is that in doing so, he'd be able to give the state party the biggest say in picking his successor -- a small favor, to be sure, but one that they certainly appreciate.

If d'Ippolito becomes a darling of the Netroots, and if the White House backs another candidate, watch out. Already, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is blasting Democratic activist Jane Hamsher for using Survey USA to essentially poll-pressure Blue Dog Democrats into retirement.

Ironically, the Democrats' best chances for saving seats in the fall rests on the Republican Party's internal divisions. If Tea Party candidates field third party challengers -- like they're doing in Nevada -- and if they manage to muck up and hyperpolarize Republican primaries -- like they're doing in Kentucky, where Rand Paul leads the establishment Republican candidate in polls -- Democrats can capitalize on independents' inability to get excited about ultraconservative nominees -- or third party challengers splitting the conservative vote.

Bayh is an anomaly of sorts; he really grew to dislike the influence of liberal activists on his Senate colleagues. To him, these activists increased the cost of doing business. Reaching out to the other side became more risky than rallying around an ideological pole, even though that rallying around contributed to stasis. When it became clear to Bayh that the White House wasn't going to play his game -- wasn't going to sell out liberals at every turn -- Bayh decided he had had enough.

Overall, the scorecard remains mixed -- and though the path exists for Republicans to take over both house of Congress, it's absurdly early to give that possibility favorable odds. Republicans have to figure out what to do about their primaries and prevent third party challenges. They've got some vulnerable incumbents in states where Democrats have recently built electoral infrastructures. They're going to nominate, as Nate Silver says, "card-carrying members" of the GOP establishment in Missouri and Ohio. On the other hand, despite the protests and anxieties of their Tea Party wing, Republicans have so far managed to find good ideologically heterodox candidates to run in places like Illinois and Delaware -- and win in states like Massachusetts.

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/02/democrats_polling_for_bayhs_repl...

toniD's Ya Think?

heard it on steph yesterday.

i wonder if his farm aid populism would help him carry the state.

But I don't see anyone or any party growing to fill that void.

Everyone talks about Nader, but where is he? Where's his followers? Where's the passion?

I just don't understand people today. They seem to want to sit back and wait but complain at the same time. There's no passion to take to the streets! Are we so beaten by the Faux News phenomenon that we back down from becoming a movement?

It seems the anger is there but the will isn't!

toniD's Ya Think?

Campaign to pull Glenn Beck
off the air gains momentum
The movement to pressure Fox News into assessing the financial viability of Glenn Beck's controversial talk show is gaining steam -- particularly overseas.

http://www.alternet.org/media/145708/campaign_to_pull_glenn_beck_off_the...

toniD's Ya Think?

Bill Maher: 'Corporatist' Evan Bayh Is What's Wrong With Senate (VIDEO)

Evan Bayh is not a centrist, he's a corporatist, according to Bill Maher.

Maher appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360" Tuesday night to comment on the state of affairs in Washington, D.C. He argued that Evan Bayh, the retiring Senator from Indiana, is what's wrong with Congress. The Senate is "where legislation goes to die," Maher says, because "corporatist Democrats" like Bayh act like Republicans.

Maher told Cooper that politics are not polarized enough and that the U.S. lacks a real progressive party.

Video at link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/bill-maher-corporatist-ev_n_465...

toniD's Ya Think?

Judging Stimulus by Job Data Reveals Success
By DAVID LEONHARDT

WASHINGTON

Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

Let’s say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let’s also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs — employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.

If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?

Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren’t hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill.

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

Yet I’m guessing you don’t think of the stimulus bill as a big success. You’ve read columns (by me, for example) complaining that it should have spent money more quickly. Or you’ve heard about the phantom ZIP code scandal: the fact that a government Web site mistakenly reported money being spent in nonexistent ZIP codes.

And many of the criticisms are valid. The program has had its flaws. But the attention they have received is wildly disproportionate to their importance. To hark back to another big government program, it’s almost as if the lasting image of the lunar space program was Apollo 6, an unmanned 1968 mission that had engine problems, and not Apollo 11, the moon landing.

The reasons for the stimulus’s middling popularity aren’t a mystery. The unemployment rate remains near 10 percent, and many families are struggling. Saying that things could have been even worse doesn’t exactly inspire. Liberals don’t like the stimulus because they wish it were bigger. Republicans don’t like it because it’s a Democratic program. The Obama administration hurt the bill’s popularity by making too rosy an economic forecast upon taking office.

Moreover, the introduction of the most visible parts of the program — spending on roads, buildings and the like — has been a bit sluggish. Aid to states, unemployment benefits and some tax provisions have been more successful and account for far more of the bill. But their successes are not obvious.

Even if the conventional wisdom is understandable, however, it has consequences. Because the economy is still a long way from being healthy, members of Congress are now debating another, smaller stimulus bill. (They’re calling it a “jobs bill,” seeing stimulus as a dirty word.) The logical thing to do would be to examine what worked and what didn’t in last year’s bill.

But that’s not what is happening. Instead, the debate is largely disconnected from the huge stimulus experiment we just ran. Why? As Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the newest member of Congress, said, in a nice summary of the misperceptions, the stimulus might have saved some jobs, but it “didn’t create one new job.”

•

The case against the stimulus revolves around the idea that the economy would be no worse off without it. As a Wall Street Journal opinion piece put it last year, “The resilience of the private sector following the fall 2008 panic — not the fiscal stimulus program — deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the impressive growth improvement.” In a touch of unintended irony, two of article’s three authors were listed as working at a research institution named for Herbert Hoover.

Of course, no one can be certain about what would have happened in an alternate universe without a $787 billion stimulus. But there are two main reasons to think the hard-core skeptics are misguided — above and beyond those complicated, independent economic analyses.

The first is the basic narrative that the data offer. Pick just about any area of the economy and you come across the stimulus bill’s footprints.

In the early months of last year, spending by state and local governments was falling rapidly, as was tax revenue. In the spring, tax revenue continued to drop, yet spending jumped — during the very time when state and local officials were finding out roughly how much stimulus money they would be receiving. This is the money that has kept teachers, police officers, health care workers and firefighters employed.

Then there is corporate spending. It surged in the final months of last year. Mark Zandi of Economy.com (who has advised the McCain campaign and Congressional Democrats) says that the Dec. 31 expiration of a tax credit for corporate investment, which was part of the stimulus, is a big reason.

The story isn’t quite as clear-cut with consumer spending, as skeptics note. Its sharp plunge stopped before President Obama signed the stimulus into law exactly one year ago. But the billions of dollars in tax cuts, food stamps and jobless benefits in the stimulus have still made a difference. Since February, aggregate wages and salaries have fallen, while consumer spending has risen. The difference between the two — some $100 billion — has essentially come from stimulus checks.

The second argument in the bill’s favor is the history of financial crises. They have wreaked terrible damage on economies. Indeed, the damage tended to be even worse than what we have suffered.

Around the world over the last century, the typical financial crisis caused the jobless rate to rise for almost five years, according to work by the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. On that timeline, our rate would still be rising in early 2012. Even that may be optimistic, given that the recent crisis was so bad. As Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson (Republicans both) and many others warned in 2008, this recession had the potential to become a depression.

Yet the jobless rate is now expected to begin falling consistently by the end of this year.

For that, the stimulus package, flaws and all, deserves a big heaping of credit. “It prevented things from getting much worse than they otherwise would have been,” Nariman Behravesh, Global Insight’s chief economist, says. “I think everyone would have to acknowledge that’s a good thing.”

So what now?

The last year has shown — just as economists have long said — that aid to states and cities may be the single most effective form of stimulus. Unlike road- or bridge-building, it can happen in a matter of weeks. And unlike tax cuts, state and local aid never languishes in a household’s savings account.

The ideal follow-up stimulus would start with that aid. It would then add on extended jobless benefits, which also tend to be spent, as well as tax credits carefully drafted to get businesses to hire and households to spend, like the cash-for-clunkers program.

By this yardstick, the $154 billion bill that the House passed in December is decent. It includes $27 billion in state and local aid, $79 billion for jobless benefits and other safety nets, and $48 billion in infrastructure spending.

The smaller bills being considered by the Senate are worse. They may end up with no state aid at all, and their tax credits sound better — with promises to help the long-term unemployed and small businesses — than they are. “The economic impact of the Senate bill, at this point, is starting to look very small,” Mr. Behravesh says.

Given what people have been saying about a successful stimulus bill, just imagine what they’ll say about one that doesn’t accomplish much.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html?part...

toniD's Ya Think?

Here's another fun moment from Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) event on Friday with the North Dakota Republican Party: The Congresswoman joined in on a sing-along on the main stage, for a song that contained a Birther-themed lyric.

The event (for which we posted a general write-up yesterday) included entertainment by a country music cover group, the Johnny Holm Band. After the political speeches and comments from attendees were finished, the lights went out and the crowd got to enjoy a nice party, in the non-political sense of the term. Before the festivities really got rolling, however, Johnny Holm led the crowd in a sing-along to the tune of "The Battle of New Orleans, " with altered lyrics that he'd learned recently while traveling. He first taught the crowd the words.

The opening line: "In 1961, Obama came along / Born in Honolulu -- 'course I couldda got it wrong." Bachmann can be seen joining the musicians on stage, but it's unclear whether she sang that specific line (the audio on the stream cuts out at various points, including here), though she can be heard singing at least part of the song. And it's clear that she got on stage even after that lyric was out in the open.

Johnny Holm can be seen teaching the lyrics to the crowd, starting at the 21:10 mark. The sing-along begins a few minutes later, with Bachmann on stage: Video at link

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/bachmann-joins-sing-along-wit...

toniD's Ya Think?

Sympathy strikes. Unthinkable here.

French oil refineries hit by strike
Workers at all six Total oil refineries in France have begun a two-day walkout in support of colleagues at a plant near Dunkirk that has been idle since September and could be shut down permanently.

Hundreds of workers are occupying the plant near Dunkirk after stampeding onto the site on Tuesday and breaking into administrative offices to protest against the site's possible closure.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/02/2010217122242225171.htm...

The Case Against Corporate Speech
The Wall Street Journal Opinion, February 11, 2010
By Ralph Nader And Robert Weismann

...The disparities between individual contributions and available corporate
dollars mock any pretense of equal justice under the law. A total of
$5.2 billion from all sources was spent in the 2008 federal election
cycle (which includes 2007 and 2008), according to the Center for
Responsive Politics. For the same two-year period, ExxonMobil's profits
were $85 billion. The top-selling drug, Pfizer's Lipitor, grossed $27
billion in sales during that time...
http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2172-The-Case-Against-Corporate...

He's commenting on the issues every week. Nobody is listening. For example, his painless transaction tax suggestion is going nowhere.

I'm listening to myself on the radio.. *hee hee*

People wanted to take to the streets....certain people were soliciting for others who wanted to chain themselves naked to the white house fence...

For a MASSIVE unscheduled, unpermitted demonstration You must A. leave your job. B. Risk an arrest record. C. Afford to fly to wherever it is held.

Over time, having this demo's seemed more and more futile a gesture, by design, too much risk, no media air time etc...so now what's left generally are e-petitions, writing letters, and complaining...that's how I see it...

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/news_detail.php?ID=834197

February 17, 2010 06:00 am
Mark Truppner, MML Reporter

A new sports team in Tuolumne County will host their first bout this Saturday night.

Sweet Alyce was Thursday's KVML "Newsmaker of the Day".

Sweet Alyce is one of nearly thirty females who are a part of the Mountain Derby Girls - High Country Hellcats ladies roller derby team.

The debut bout this Saturday night, will be against the Central California Derby - Atomic Assault Team.

The evening kicks-off at 6:30 and the night will include bar-b-que tri tip sandwiches, a beer garden and music by local band, Wreckless. The official bout begins at 8pm.

The Halftime show will feature belly dancing by the Raks Arabica belly dancers.

High Country Sports Arena, just off Tuolumne Road in Sonora, is the home for the team. The inaugural season runs through August.

$10 adult tickets are available in advance or $12 at the door. For more information call (209) 588-0776.

More information can also be found at www.mountainderbygirls.org

Barack Obama to meet Dalai Lama at White House in private
President Barack Obama is expected to meet the Dalai Lama in private at the White House on Thursday, aides to the Tibetan spiritual leader said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7...

China in record US debt sell-off

China sold a record amount of its US Treasury holdings in December, ceding its place as the world's biggest foreign holder of US debt to Japan.

According to Treasury figures released on Tuesday, Beijing sold off more than $34bn of its holdings in the final month of 2009, cutting its holding of US debt by just over 4 per cent to $755.4bn.

Japan now holds almost $11bn more US debt than China, with a total of nearly $769bn.
http://english.aljazeera.net/business/2010/02/201021743521113498.html

I'm so glad he cut out the part where he asked about my injury...I swear man..I really think my team can win this bout...they looked really great last night...

Have to wait 37 more days. Only been three days since my enhancement pills came in the mail.

you go girl!

good luck!

37 days it is.. :)

*

Good Morning, SJ....thank you! I wish I could fly the whole blog here for Saturday night...it's going to be so fun...

http://blacklistednews.com/news-7450-0-20-20--.html

The following article is excerpted from A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship With Nature, available now from Henry Holt and Company.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/reenchanted_world

by Harvey Wasserman

As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss.

In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not---pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th Century's most expensive technological failure....

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reported that at least 27 of America's 104 licensed reactors are now leaking radioactive tritium. The worst case may be Entergy's Vermont Yankee, near the state's southeastern border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. High levels of contamination have been found in test wells around the reactor, and experts believe the Connecticut River is at serious risk.

A furious statewide grassroots campaign aims to shut the plant, whose license expires in 2012. A binding agreement between Entergy and the state gives the legislature the power to deny an extension. US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has demanded the plant close. The legislature may vote on it in a matter of days.

Obama has now driven a deep wedge between himself and the core of the environmental movement, which remains fiercely anti-nuclear. While reactor advocates paint the technology green, the opposition has been joined by fiscal conservatives like the National Taxpayer Institute, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Reactor backers hailing a "renaissance" in atomic energy studiously ignore France's catastrophic Olkiluoto project, now $3 billion over budget and 3 years behind schedule. Parallel problems have crippled another project at Flamanville, France, and are virtually certain to surface in the US...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/17-5

being a "newsmaker"...but no such luck... dammit...

Have a groovy day, Blog...

Published on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by The Wall Street Journal
Liberals Continue to Push for Financial Transaction Tax
by Ronald D. Orol

As policymakers in the U.S. and Europe contemplate mechanisms to ward off another economic near-collapse, one idea is gaining traction among liberals at the same time as it is infuriating conservatives: a financial transactions tax.

Democratic lawmakers and other advocates are pressing for the creation of a sales tax applied to stocks, derivatives and other financial instruments. The idea has been around for decades. In fact, there was just such a tax in the United States from 1914 to 1966. The U.K. raises more than $30 billion a year on a tax that applies only to stocks.

Backers of financial transaction tax -- including labor unions and liberal groups -- argue that even with the major decline in stock and derivatives transactions stemming from the tax -- some estimate as much as a 50% decline in volume of trades -- such a fee could raise more than $100 billion a year to fight the deficit, create jobs or other purposes...

(Of course):
White House not sold on the idea

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., introduced a financial transaction tax in December, which would impose a 0.25% fee on stock transactions. Derivatives swaps would be taxed at a rate of 0.02%, based on the bill, which has 27 supporters in the House. Sen. Tom Harkin, D- Iowa, is working on legislation in the Senate that would tax stock transactions to generate revenues to help reduce the deficit.

"We need something to damp down speculation and raise revenues," DeFazio said.

Nevertheless, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the Obama administration isn't on board with the efforts. Rather than back a transaction tax, the White House proposes taxing financial institutions with $50 billion or more in assets to cover the remaining cost of a financial rescue package.

In addition to Geithner, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who is an advisor to Obama, has expressed reservations about it.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/17-1

Weather
Washington, DC

Right Now - Cloudy - 33° F - Feels Like: 26° F

****

Feels like 26? No pills in the world are gonna help that, dude...bbrrr

As Mencia would say "Snausages!"

:)

Rattle Obama With Primary Challenger
by John R. MacArthur

So who is the best person to take on Obama? My first choice would be a rejuvenated Howard Dean, who might be the only hope left for the cause of liberal reform, at least in my lifetime. After scaring the wits out of the party’s Iraq-compromised establishment in 2004 with his anti-war and pro-small-donation crusade, Dean performed the thankless task of chairing the Democratic National Committee in some of its dark years. In that post, he compromised himself again and again in the interest of party unity and beating the Republicans in 2008. This involved the deeply unpleasant task of collaboration with the violent-tempered Emanuel, as well as with New York Sen. Charles Schumer (another anti-reform Democrat), who was chairman of the party’s Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Yet for all his hard work, Dean was rewarded by being passed over for the new Cabinet and was not invited to continue running the DNC. What’s more, in an ugly bit of symbolism, RahmObama named as press secretary Robert Gibbs, who was spokesman for the Democratic 527 committee whose sleazy advertising contributed to killing off Dean in the Iowa caucuses six years ago.

Already detested by Emanuel (our new Dick Cheney), Dean has more recently committed the cardinal sin of party disloyalty by openly denouncing Obama’s (and Max Baucus’s and Joe Lieberman’s) attempt to transfer huge amounts of taxpayer money to Wellpoint and other big insurance companies. So what’s he got to lose, except maybe an election? The country, on the other hand, might have much to gain...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/17-4

Hey People-

If you are in the LA area we are doing another live WTF taping with Mary Lynn Rajskub, Laurie Kilmartin, Jackie Kashian, Eddie Pepitone and Jim Earl at UCB LA at 8PM this Friday Feb 19th. These are always fun. I would love to see you there.

Call 323-908-8702 for reservations.
http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/

I will also be doing a show March 1st7:30 at:
Fields Piano Recital Hall
12121 W Pico (One door west of Bundy)
Free parking on level 2
For Reservations:
Jeannine@FrankEntertainment.com or (310) 476-6735

Then, Vegas! The Palms March 4th 5th and 6th
Go here for tickets:
http://www.ticketmaster.com/Playboy-Comedy-featuring-Marc-Maron-tickets/...

More later. See you somewhere. Thanks.

Maron

http://wtfpod.com
http://marcmaron.com

I'm gunna parlay political activism into an acting career.

It'll be spring in 37 days and the average high for DC then is almost sixty.

Democrats to Watch on Health Care
Mike Madden identifies the Democratic swing votes in the Senate if they try to pass health care reform through the budget reconciliation process which required just 50 votes -- assuming the Vice President breaks the tie.

The 11 Senate Democrats to watch: Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Tom Carper (D-DE), Jim Webb (D-VA) and Mark Begich (D-AK).

http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/news/featu...

toniD's Ya Think?

hahahahaha....

you owe me for one cup of coffee...

But I appreciate the nasal cleansing, so we'll just call it even...

Bush Brothers Weigh in on Florida Senate Race
Former President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush shared a stage last night and commented on Florida's Republican Senate primary between Marco Rubio (R) and Charlie Crist (R), WINK-TV reports.

Jeb Bush stated that he is "officially neutral" in the race, but is "disappointed in Crist's embrace of the stimulus bill."

Meanwhile, the former president joked, "Who the hell is Marco Rubio?"

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/02/17/bush_brothers_weigh_in_on_f...

toniD's Ya Think?

The Freshman is a 1990 motion picture comedy starring Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick,...Broderick's character, a first-year film student at New York University, is at one point tasked with delivering a Komodo Dragon for this purpose.

Today--
Endangered Species on the Grill: The Black Market in Illegal Meat Flourishes in the US
Millions of fork-twirling gourmands -- many of them in the U.S. -- are eating endangered wildlife trafficked by international criminal networks.

...All over the world, wild creatures are being poached and slaughtered by the millions -- to be eaten. Not in the meager kitchens of subsistence hunters, you understand, but by fork-twirling gluttons at the far ends of vast, criss-crossing, blood-encrusted international -- and criminal --networks. It happens because in Chicago and New York and Paris and nearly everywhere, some folks would rather eat baboon than beef. It happens because, somewhere, it's dinnertime -- and for some, only forbidden flesh will do....

"The United States is one of the world's largest, if not the largest, consuming nations for wildlife products. This includes wildlife used for food, whether for cultural reasons or luxury markets," says Leigh Henry, a senior policy officer for the World Wildlife Fund and the international wildlife-trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. "Since the demand continues, so does the trafficking."
http://www.alternet.org/food/145668/endangered_species_on_the_grill%3A_t...

Quote of the Day
"Washington, right now, is broken."

-- Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview with CBS News, noting that in more than 30 years he's "never seen it this dysfunctional."

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/17/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry...

toniD's Ya Think?

gratz, mon cher...sounds like you did the league proud...

awesome job, A. Best of Luck on the launch....

shoo, I'd pay the sawbuck just for the halftime show. :P

Vast Majority Oppose Supreme Court Ruling
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that Americans of both parties "overwhelmingly oppose" a Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations and unions to spend as much as they want on political campaigns.

Interestingly, the poll reveals relatively little difference of opinion on the issue among Democrats (85% opposed to the ruling), Republicans (76%) and independents (81%).

"The results suggest a strong reservoir of bipartisan support on the issue for President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are in the midst of crafting legislation aimed at limiting the impact of the high court's decision."

Meanwhile, Republican leaders "have praised the ruling as a victory for free speech and have signaled their intent to oppose any legislation intended to blunt the impact of the court's decision."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR201002...

toniD's Ya Think?

Four More Dem Senators Join Push For Vote On Public Option

Yesterday four Dem Senators made a big splash by signing a letter pushing Dem leaders to pass the public option via reconciliation, suggesting the provision may have a faint pulse.

Now four more Dem Senators have added their names to the list, their spokespeople tell me, doubling the number of signatories to eight and perhaps upping the volume of the public option’s pulse ever so slightly.

The new signatories: Al Franken, Pat Leahy, John Kerry, and Sheldon Whitehouse.

They join yesterday’s signers: Michael Bennet, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jeff Merkley, and Sherrod Brown.

The letter asks Harry Reid to stage a full Senate vote on the public option under budget reconciliation rules. It argues that there’s a history of using the technique for passing significant health care legislation and that a majority of Americans has consistently supported a public option.

The letter — the work of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America — also bears the signatures of over a hundred House Dems.

Despite the growing support for a reconciliation vote on the public option, it’s all but certain not to happen. The Senate and House leadership have shown no appetite for such a move. And the White House is not on board as it gears up for its high-stakes summit next week and the politically dicey health care endgame that will follow.

But the move by these eight Senators — and perhaps more to follow — is likely to gain them plaudits from liberals and health reformers for showing leadership on a provision that still enjoys the support of the American people even as the Congressional leadership has left it for dead.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/four-more-dem-senators-joi...

toniD's Ya Think?

well, apparently this "dysfunction" STILL has not snapped Obama out of his fantasy induced bipartisan coma...

one can not help but begin to wonder if this log jam is not by design....

Hopefully Biden is trumpeting a change in tactics.....I know Dean is...he sounded very "Presidential" on mojo this morning...

was written to protect the "Responsible People" from the masses.
In a real democracy, where the constitution reflects the needs of the vast majority, corporations as we know them would be illegal.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, told CNN in January that he thinks reconciliation will ultimately be necessary to pass a health care bill in the chamber. However, multiple Democratic aides have warned that using the controversial maneuver would take time and evoke criticism of relying on a procedural trick to pass a bill.

"It looks too partisan," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, a freshman Democrat from Virginia. Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota likened the move to "legislative trickery."

Proponents argue there is a precedent for using reconciliation, noting that it was recently used to pass measures such as an expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program.

A number of conservative Democrats are urging Obama to craft a more narrowly tailored health care bill -- excluding a public option -- that can win at least some bipartisan support. Increasingly frustrated liberals argue it is pointless to pursue negotiations with what they characterize as an ideologically rigid GOP minority determined to block every White House initiative for short-term political gain.

Read the whole article here:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/16/health.care.harry.reid/index.html

toniD's Ya Think?

filibustering of the US Government for their own gain and to the detriment of the entire country too...?

The word "Treason" comes to my mind....

Shocker of the day: Evan Bayh tells HuffPo he just may become a lobbyist when it’s all over.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/evan-bayh-wont-rule-out-b_n_464...

Shocking isn't it!?!

toniD's Ya Think?

Is There Life in Health Care Reform?
By Elizabeth Drew

In politics, as in life, there's often a very fine line between a fluke and an earthquake. They can even be mistaken for each other. In many ways, Scott Brown's upset victory over Martha Coakley on January 19 for the Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy, just as Congress was nearing agreement on the health care bill, was a fluke. The confluence of seemingly unrelated events had more impact than any of them would have had individually. Even the date of Kennedy's death last August had major consequences: if it had happened a month later, the President might already have signed a health care bill into law by the time the election was held. A senior Democratic House strategist told me, "Had we known that Massachusetts was in play, we'd have worked through the Christmas break and might well have been done before the election." The bills passed by the House on November 7 and by the Senate on the day before Christmas were quite similar. (Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and their aides, in consultation with the White House, had seen to that.)

As a result of intensive negotiations in early January, the bills were more than 95 percent alike by the time of the Massachusetts election. Two major issues remaining had to do, first—thirty-seven years after the Roe decision establishing abortion as a constitutional right—with Congress having adopted provisions in the health care bill that make it difficult (the Senate) or even impossible (the House) for women who received federal help to purchase abortion coverage with their own funds (really!); and, second, with excise taxes on the more expensive ("Cadillac") plans, which labor objects to.

Republicans had applied the theory that the longer a bill is delayed, the weaker it becomes. Their real goal was to kill it. They gave Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus just enough encouragement that he engaged in a months-long effort to get Republican backing for the bill. The idea, shared by the White House, was that a bill with bipartisan support would have more legitimacy with the public; but the negotiations kept going long after it was clear that the Republicans didn't want to help. (He got the vote in committee of Maine's Olympia Snowe, who made a big show of her reluctance to give it—the diva who wouldn't leave the stage—and then voted against the bill on the Senate floor.) Finally, even the White House gave up on Baucus and scheduled Obama's speech to Congress on health care on September 9, to encourage his committee to wrap it up. By the time the Senate finally passed its bill on Christmas Eve, Coakley was losing altitude, but no one seemed to notice.

An election outcome is usually caused by a number of factors, but national observers tend to look for national implications. In fact, Coakley broke a fundamental rule of running for office. Having swept the primary, she took the final election, five weeks later, for granted. As a Democratic senator said to me afterward: "There's a saying that there are only two ways to run: unopposed or skeered." He added, "She wasn't unopposed." Though she had run for the nomination on the fashionable demand for "change," the handsome, sly, and wily Brown beat her at her own game. Because no one realized in time that it was a real race, there were no exit polls, but a telephone survey by the highly respected Hart Research Associates on the night of the election called it "a working-class revolt," saying that the survey "reveals to Democrats [the cost]of not successfully addressing workers' economic concerns." Yet the survey also concluded that by a two-to-one majority, voters said they decided on the basis of the candidate, not because they were "sending a message to Washington." more...

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23691

toniD's Ya Think?

A senior Democratic aide tells Jay Newton-Small that Harry Reid was severly constrained on the jobs bill by the battle between Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer to succeed him as Majority Leader:

“Reid is hampered by Durbin and Schumer picking over his corpse right now — it’s really ugly.”

That will be a key dynamic to watch in other contexts, including the push for filibuster reform.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1964397,00.html

toniD's Ya Think?

Although the Democratic Party pretty much agrees with the Republicans when it comes to business rule, the modern Republicans are pathologically opposed to even lukewarm measures by the Democrats to benefit people. Wasn't always this way. People now call Nixon a liberal--for his creation of beneficial agencies like the EPA and for his funding of social safety net programs. Alexander Cockburn points out that it was because of the strong social movements active when Nixon was president. Currently, the needs of the "New Economy" override everything else.

What Will Bayh Do With $13 Million War Chest? No Decision Yet, Spox Says

With national Dems scrambling to figure out a way forward in the wake of Evan Bayh’s announced retirement, Dem party strategists are quietly beginning to ask a key question:

What will Bayh do with the $13 million in campaign cash he still has on hand? Will he turn all or some of it over to the Dem party committees, to help the eventual Dem candidate in Indiana and blunt the negative impact his retirement will have on the party’s fortunes?

A spokesman for Bayh tells me he’s made no decision what to do with the money. And it’s likely that he will come under pressure to turn that cash over to the party.

Bayh does have the option to do this. According to Judith Ingram, a spokesperson for the Federal Election Commission, Bayh can turn over unlimited amounts to the DSCC, the most likely recipient, or even to other national party committees, such as the DNC and the DCCC.

He can only turn over limited amounts to the eventual candidate, but cash given to the DSCC would blunt the damage to Dems. The DSCC would have to come up with less money to spend on the Indiana race and would conceivably have more resources to spend elsewhere.

Bayh, of course, can also merely keep the cash in his own account, or transfer it to a newly-created PAC. Or he can return it all to donors. Or give it to charity. Any money given to Bayh for use specifically in a general election would have to be returned to donors, the FEC says, but it’s uncertain whether that amounts to all that much.

Bayh spokesman Brian Weiss tells me Bayh has “made no decisions” on what to do with the money. “But you can expect him to be helpful to the nominee,” Weiss says.

The question now is whether Bayh will come under public and private pressure from high-level party officials to cough up the money as a way to offset the damage his retirement risks doing to the party.

********************************

Update: I’ve got some more for you. Bayh can also contribute an unlimited amount of his cash to the Indiana state Democratic Party, should he so choose. That money could be used either to finance the eventual Dem Senate candidate, or a gubernatorial run by Bayh himself, according to Indiana Secretary of State spokesman Jim Gavin.

This is key for two reasons. First, it gives Bayh yet another vehicle by which he can use his fat war chest to help the Dem nominee. And second, it means Bayh could alternatively use this cash to finance a possible gubernatorial run, should he so choose — setting up a potential choice between helping himself, and helping the party his retirement may damage.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/democratic-national-committee/what-wil...

toniD's Ya Think?

the Democratic Party on Rachel Maddow's show the other night. He seemed supremely confident that the his party's candidate would retain the senate seat. For one, the Republican candidates are very weak. The front-runner, who once held public office, had left Indiana for North Carolina to become a lobbyist. Some shake clients involved.

through my head...

Not a bad way to get through the work day...

...and I'm feelin' goood....

Pretzels....

Later.

What happens when 4 right wing hacks deny reality and facts? When they're put up against Ring of Fire's own Mike Papantonio, he let's them know what really is happening in the world, and how they are the ones who kept pushing the toxic trash that helped crash our economy. As you can see in this clip, they don't always enjoy being forced to live in reality.

toniD's Ya Think?

the Indiana Republican had.

the Indiana Republican had.

"A Military Strike at Iran Would Be a Colossal Mistake": An Interview with Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Vladimir Nazarov

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said last week that Iran's latest statements and actions were compelling the United States ". . . and other countries" to resort to stiff sanctions. Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Vladimir Nazarov said in his turn that Moscow might support sanctions but that they must be "adequate to the threat presented by the Iranian nuclear program" and must "not punish the Iranian people." Nazarov added that Russia is trying to persuade its Western partners to find a diplomatic solution to the problem instead of "driving Iran into a corner." This interview was conducted by Interfax correspondent Pavel Koryashkin for Kommersant.

Q: Previously, Russia supported Iran and opposed sanctions. These days, however, the impression is that Russia supports the West in its stand on the matter. What happened?

Vladimir Nazarov: We are concerned about conflicting signals from Iran, including the ones sent in response to the proposals of the Six-Party Group and the IAEA. We certainly believe that Iran should be more cooperative with the IAEA.

Iran is Russia's major strategic partner. Russia wants cooperation with Iran in a whole number of spheres. Iran is playing an important part in regional and global security. On the other hand, Russia regards the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons as unacceptable. That would have consequences in the region and the world in general. There will be a domino effect: many other countries in the region will make every effort to acquire nuclear weapons as well. That may trigger new crises and conflicts.

Q: Iran said it was enriching uranium on its own up to 20 percent. What is our estimate of the date by which Iran might develop nuclear weapons?

VN: We have some ideas on that score, and we regularly check them against the estimates made by our foreign partners who are also closely monitoring the situation. I cannot give you an exact date. All I can say is that the progress Iran has made in its nuclear program indicates that the hypothetical dates when it becomes possible for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as estimated by experts in different countries, are beginning to get closer.

Q: If it comes down to sanctions, will Russia vote for stiff or mild sanctions?

VN: Russia believes sanctions to be counterproductive. President Dmitry Medvedev, however, said that ". . . sanctions become unavoidable in certain situations." Sanctions must be consistent with the degree of threat. Any deviation can have negative consequences. If it is sanctions after all, it will be wrong to drive Iran into a corner with them. There are IAEA experts in Iran monitoring its nuclear facilities. Iran's greater cooperation with the IAEA and adherence to the additional protocol to the IAEA safeguards agreement would resolve all issues, restore the transparency of the nuclear program, and revive the international community's trust in it.

Q: Does it mean that Russia stands for mild sanctions?

VN: Let's do without labels, shall we? Sanctions should be adequate to the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program but should not punish the Iranian people. By the way, sanctions, as a rule, have very little effect on the target's policy, its military capabilities, or its defense capacity.

Q: How does the Russian Security Council evaluate chances of an American and Israeli strike at Iran?

VN: A military strike at Iran would be a colossal mistake. Problems associated with the Iranian nuclear program should be solved only by diplomatic means. Any military action against Iran will explode the situation. It will have thoroughly negative consequences for the whole world and for Russia, one of Iran's neighbors.

The Russian Security Council and its secretary never miss a chance to remind their foreign partners that a military option is extremely dangerous and should be avoided.

More...

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/nazarov160210.html

toniD's Ya Think?

was that the sound of 4 sphincters tightening at the same time?

you gotta love the look of pain on the guy on the right (cavuto???).

The Richest 1% Have Captured America's Wealth -- What's It Going to Take to Get It Back?
The United States already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis -- and it's gotten even worse since.

February 17, 2010 |

This is Part II of David DeGraw's report, "The Economic Elite vs. People of the USA." Click here for part I.

"The war against working people should be understood to be a real war.... Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class.... And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don't want anybody else to know about it." -- Noam Chomsky

As a record amount of US citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEO's are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening, how did we get to this point?

The Economic Elite have escalated their attack on US workers over the past few years, however, this attack began to build intensity in the 1970s. In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made. Due to technological advancements, production and profit levels exploded from 1970 - 2000. With the lion's share of increased profits going to the CEO's, this pay ratio dramatically rose to $90 for CEOs to $1 for the average worker.

As ridiculous as that seems, an in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that, including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1.

Paul Buchheit, from DePaul University, revealed, "From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation's total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%." Robert Freeman added, "Between 2002 and 2006, it was even worse: an astounding three-quarters of all the economy's growth was captured by the top 1%." .......(more)

http://www.alternet.org/economy/145705/the_richest_1%25_have_captured_am...

toniD's Ya Think?

By The Associated Press

February 16, 2010 "AP" -- Foreign demand drops by record amount; Japan now holds most Treasuries

WASHINGTON - The government said Tuesday that foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities fell by the largest amount on record in December with China reducing its holdings by $34.2 billion.

The reductions in holdings, if they continue, could force the government to make higher interest payments at a time that it is running record federal deficits.

The Treasury Department reported that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, surpassing the previous record of a $44.5 billion drop in April 2009.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24705.htm

Sorry if this is repost

I found out that I am good on the homestead exemption. Once you file, and qualify, you are good till you move.

Also, they are sending me another tax credit form.

Always good to check. Now you can help other people with the same problem.

toniD's Ya Think?

The OTHER Reason that the U.S. is Not Regulating Wall Street

Sure, American politicians have been bought and paid for by the Wall Street giants. See this, this and this.

And everyone knows that the White House and Congress - while talking about cracking down on Wall Street with strict regulation - have actually watered down some of the most important protections that were in place.

For example, Senator Cantwell says that the new derivatives legislation is weaker than the old regulation. And leading credit default swap expert Satyajit Das says that the new credit default swap regulations not only won't help stabilize the economy, they might actually help to destabilize it.

But the U.S. is not being sold out in a vacuum.

On March 1, 1999, countries accounting for more than 90 per cent of the global financial services market signed onto the World Trade Organization's Financial Services Agreement (FSA). By signing the FSA, they committed to deregulate their financial markets.

For example, by signing the FSA, the U.S. agreed not to break up too big to fails. The U.S. also promised to repeal Glass-Steagall, and did so 8 months after signing the FSA.

Indeed, in signing the FSA and other WTO agreements, the U.S. has legally bound itself as follows:

• No new regulation: The United States agreed to a “standstill provision” that requires that we not create new regulations (or reverse liberalization) for the list of financial services bound to comply with WTO rules. Given that the United States has made broad WTO financial services commitments – and thus is forbidden by this provision from imposing new regulations in these many areas – this provision seriously limits the policy [options] available to address the current crisis.

• Removal of regulation: The United States even agreed to try to even eliminate domestic financial service regulatory policies that meet GATS [i.e. General Agreement on Trade in Services] rules, but that may still “adversely affect the ability of financial service suppliers of any other (WTO) Member to operate, compete, or enter” the market.

• No bans on new financial service “products”: The United States is also bound to ensure that foreign financial service suppliers are permitted “to offer in its territory any new financial service,” a direct conflict with the various proposals to limit various risky investment instruments, such as certain types of derivatives.

• Certain forms of regulation banned outright: The United States agreed that it would not set limits on the size, corporate form or other characteristics of foreign firms in the broad array of financial services it signed up to WTO strictures ...

• Treating foreign and domestic firms alike is not sufficient: The GATS market-access limits on U.S. domestic regulation apply in absolute terms; that is to say, even if a policy applies to domestic and foreign firms alike, if it goes beyond what WTO rules permit, it is forbidden. And, forms of regulation not outright banned by the market-access requirements must not inadvertently “modify the conditions of competition in favor of services or service suppliers” of the United States, even if they apply identically to foreign and domestic firms.

In other words, the problem isn't just that Congress and the White House have sold out to the Wall Street giants.

The problem is also that the U.S. has signed WTO agreements that have given the keys to the too big to fails, and have neutered their regulators. Even if some politicians tried to stand up to Wall Street - or even if we "throw out all of the bums" currently in political roles - the U.S. would still be locked into the WTO's scheme for helping the financial giants to grow ever bigger and to take ever-bigger and ever-riskier gambles. more...

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/02/other-reason-that-us-is-no...

toniD's Ya Think?

Elders of Wall St. Favor More Regulation
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Put aside for a moment the populist pressure to regulate banking and trading. Ask the elder statesmen of these industries — giants like George Soros, Nicholas F. Brady, John S. Reed, William H. Donaldson and John C. Bogle — where they stand on regulation, and they will bowl you over with their populism.

They certainly don’t think of themselves as angry Main Streeters. They grew quite wealthy in finance, typically making their fortunes in the ’70s and ’80s when banks and securities firms were considerably more regulated. And now, parting company with the current chieftains, they want more rules.

While the younger generation, very visibly led by Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, lobbies Congress against such regulation, their spiritual elders support the reform proposed by Paul A. Volcker and, surprisingly, even more restrictions. “I am a believer that the system has gone badly awry and needs massive reform,” said Mr. Bogle, the 80-year-old founder and for many years chief executive of the Vanguard Group, the huge mutual fund company.

Mr. Volcker, 82, signed up the support of nearly a dozen peers whose average age is north of 70 and whose pedigrees on Wall Street and in banking are impeccable. But while Mr. Volcker focuses on a rule that would henceforth prohibit a bank that takes deposits from also buying and selling securities for its own account — risking losses in the process — most of his prominent supporters see that as a starting point in a broader return to regulation. And most do not hesitate to speak up in interviews.

Listen to Nicholas Brady, a Treasury secretary in the late 1980s and early 1990s and before that chairman of Dillon Read & Company, now extinct, but in its day a prestigious Wall Street house. “If you are a commercial bank,” he said, “and you wish the government to guarantee your deposits and bail you out if necessary, then you can’t be involved in speculative activity.”

Does that mean Mr. Brady, now 79, would tell commercial banks they could no longer trade securities for their customers? Mr. Volcker, who gained fame in the 1980s as chairman of the Federal Reserve, would permit this and so would President Obama, who has endorsed the Volcker restriction on proprietary trading, but not the broader ban on trading for customers. Mr. Brady just might take that extra step.

“I’d certainly look into it,” he said, arguing in effect that the current generation of bankers is so profit-oriented, it might well find a way to convert trading for a customer into surreptitiously trading for the bank itself, risking depositors’ money in the process.

“You draw a line that is too tight,” Mr. Brady said. “That does not bother me a bit.”

Nor does it bother John S. Reed, a former Citigroup co-chairman, who played a role in building Citi into a powerhouse that mingled commercial banking and all sorts of trading activities. That mix helped to precipitate the current credit crisis, requiring a costly federal bailout of Citigroup, among others, in 2008.

Mr. Reed, now 71, was long gone by then, and from retirement he has second thoughts. He even thinks about resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which prevented banks from engaging in any sort of trading activity involving stocks and bonds. (It was revoked in 1999, partly at the behest of Citigroup, then run by Sanford I. Weill.)

“I can be convinced that we should move back in the direction of Glass-Steagall,” Mr. Reed said, disagreeing on this point with Mr. Weill who, at 76, has not retracted his view that deregulation was the right course. Indeed, Mr. Weill has hanging on a wall of his retirement office, as a trophy, one of the pens that President Clinton used to sign the bill that revoked Glass-Steagall.

Mr. Reed, in contrast, wonders if a trading operation should even exist under the same roof as a standard commercial bank. The traders make more in salary and bonuses than the bank employees, and there are frictions. “The bank people say ‘if the capital market guys take big risks, why can’t we do so too and earn the same bucks?’ ” Mr. Reed said. “They start trying to do things that make them look good, like making risky commercial loans and driving for volume.” more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/17volcker.html?pagewanted=pri...

toniD's Ya Think?

It never sounded right.

Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about the Free Love movement.

This Harper's Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast warns against the allure of the Free Love movement advocated by Victoria Woodhull.

In 1872, Victoria Woodhull, the well-known advocate of Free Love and women’s rights, became the first woman to be nominated for president. She ran on the Equal Rights party ticket at a time when she and other women were not legally allowed to vote. She and her sister, Tennesse Claflin, published their own newspaper, The Woodhull & Claflin Weekly.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0217.html

"The weather pattern this year is typical during El Nino years - with good snow levels in the Southwest U.S. and below normal levels in the Pacific Northwest," said Ron Abramovich, water supply specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Boise.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/256/story/85794.html

Some worry how Starr appointment will affect

Monday's announcement of Kenneth Starr as Baylor's 14th president inspired a wide divergence of opinion among the school's faithful, with many critical of the appointment. But there was general agreement on one point: The choice of the one-time special prosecutor who became President Bill Clinton's legal nemesis was a surprise.

Posts on the Baylor Alumni Association's Facebook page were overwhelmingly negative, with many citing similar concerns about the political baggage that Starr carries. His investigation of the Whitewater land deal and the Monica Lewinsky scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in the U.S. House.

Yet the Baylor regents voted unanimously to hire Starr after he was strongly recommended by presidential search committees. Starr said Tuesday that his work as independent counsel investigating the Clinton White House was just one chapter in his life.
http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1973955.html

Conservatives To Sign 'Mount Vernon Statement': Principles For The Obama Era

A group of more than 80 conservative leaders plan to sign a document on Wednesday that signals a retrenchment to "founding principles."

The document will be called The Mount Vernon Statement in honor of the location of the signing ceremony. The signers include a who's who of conservative heavy weights -- names like Grover Norquist, Ed Meese, Richard Viguerie, Edwin Feulner and Alfred Regnery.

The proclamation, based on the Sharon statement -- a conservative declaration signed in 1960, that is credited with helping "launch and define the conservative movement that led to the recruitment, development and election of numerous conservative leaders" -- breaks down what the conservative activists see to be the primary responsibility of government.

"The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles," the statement reads. These founding principles, the drafters believe, can be broadly-defined as Constitutional conservatism. They then provide a short bulleted list of the way they believe these principles should apply to government.

* It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal. * It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life. * It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions. * It supports America's national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end. * It informs conservatism's firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.

The drafters describe their reasons for the timing of this new manifesto:

"In light of the challenges facing the country and the need for clarity in the age of Obama, The Mount Vernon Statement, modeled on the Sharon Statement issued on Sept. 11, 1960, is a defining statement of conservative beliefs, values and principles penned by a broad coalition of conservative leaders representing a wide spectrum of the movement including fiscal, social, cultural and national security conservatives."

Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, gave his reason for signing on to the statement in a piece written for Fox News:

What I find most interesting and attractive about the Mount Vernon statement is how simple, easy to understand and explain this commitment to individual liberty and limited government is. The truths we endorse once again have not changed since the American Revolution. They will not change in another 200 years.

Others, however, have criticized the Mount Vernon Declaration as vague, idealistic and nostalgia-filled document that doesn't actually say much.
Story continues below

Salon's Gabriel Winant offered his take on the declaration of principles:

The GOP activists can get away with wishing it was 1776 because they don't actually have to go home and face angry electorates after acting out an anachronistic fantasy. Congressional leaders like Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., can't afford to play pretend all the time. Back in 1776, nobody needed Medicare, because the average lifespan was around 35. In 2010, just citing "self-evident" truths ain't going to cut it.

But some Republicans may not agree with that assessment. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said on Wednesday that GOP leaders should sign on to the statement or "be replaced"."

"If our leaders cannot agree to the Mount Vernon Statement, they are part of the problem," DeMint tweeted.

The signing is set to take place Mount Vernon's Collingwood Library and Museum on Americanism on the 2:30 p.m. ET.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/conservative-to-sign-moun_n_465...

toniD's Ya Think?

Cluster munitions treaty to enter force this year

"The United States plans to ban the weapons from 2018."

An international treaty banning cluster munitions will come into force later this year after the number of countries to register their ratification reached 30 on Tuesday, the United Nations said.

The treaty is binding only on countries that have signed and ratified it. So far, 104 countries have signed the pact, according to advocacy group Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC).

Countries that have signed the convention include major European states France, Germany and Spain. Britain and Italy have signed but not ratified.

Those that have done neither include the United States, Russia, China and Israel.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN16248603._CH_.2400

PITTS INTRODUCES LEGISLATION TO REPLACE PAPER MONEY WITH GOLD, SILVER COINS

South Carolina will no longer recognize U.S. currency as legal tender, if State Rep. Mike Pitts has his way.

Pitts, a fourth-term Republican from Laurens, introduced legislation earlier this month that would ban what he calls “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.

If the bill were to become law, South Carolina would no longer accept or use anything other than silver and gold coins as a form of payment for any debt, meaning paper money would be out in the Palmetto State.

Pitts said the intent of the bill is to give South Carolina the ability to “function through gold and silver coinage” and give the state a “base of currency” in the event of a complete implosion of the U.S. economic system.

“I’m not one to cry ‘chicken little,’ but if our federal government keeps spending at the rate we’re spending I don’t see any other outcome than the collapse of the economic system,” Pitts said.

But one legal expert told The Palmetto Scoop that, even if it were passed, Pitts’ bill would quickly be ruled unconstitutional.

“It violates a perfectly legal and Constitutional federal law, enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, that federal reserve notes are legal tender for all debts public and private,” the expert said. “We settled this debate in the early 1800s. I appreciate the political sentiment but the law is blatantly unconstitutional.”

Pitts, however, dismissed that claim, saying that “adherence to the Constitution is a two-edged sword. The federal government has consistently violated the Constitution, especially the 10th Amendment and Commerce Clause.”

Constitutional issues aside, Pitts’ bill faces another hurdle. Critics point out that silver and gold coins can’t actually serve as a form of currency.

“You can’t put a set value on a pure silver or gold coin because it’s actual value fluctuates,” one expert said. “You can say a gold coin is worth $50 but it would actually be worth whatever the market says it’s worth, based on supply and demand. In reality, what you have is a bartering good, not a form of currency.”

Still, Pitts said, a system based around bartering is better than a currency-based economy.

“To me, something I can hold tangible in my hand I can put more value in, especially under the current rate of inflation,” Pitts said. “In the case of total economic collapse, a barter tool is going to be worth a whole lot more value than paper with ink on it.”

But Pitts admits it is unlikely the bill will be passed.

http://www.palmettoscoop.com/2010/02/17/bill-would-ban-federal-currency-...

toniD's Ya Think?

The Greed Olympics: Banks and Insurers Battle for the Gold

This week all eyes are on the winter Olympic games in Vancouver, but in the U.S. another competition -- the Greed Olympics -- is underway, with the Banking Lobby and the Insurance Industry vying for the most gold medals. The individual events include outrageous executive pay, despicable consumer abuse, shocking political influence-peddling, and obscene profit-mongering.

The Insurance Team last week took the gold medal in the Most Ill-Timed Price Hike competition. Anthem Blue Cross -- a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based WellPoint, the nation's second largest health insurance corporation -- announced double-digit rate hikes on its California customers. The increase, which would affect about 700,000 customers, averaged 25%, but some consumers will get hikes as high as 39%. The premium increases are as much as 10 times higher than the percentage increase in national health care costs.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, said "it remains difficult to understand" how premium increases of that size can be justified when WellPoint reported a $2.7 billion profit last quarter. It isn't difficult to understand, though, if you realize that the industry's greed knows no limits. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) got it right. He attacked "greedy insurance companies that care more about profits than people. They get rich while people who already can barely afford their coverage lose their coverage altogether." Wall Street, however, took it all in stride. WellPoint's stock actually increased the day after the announcement.

The news media pounced on WellPoint, providing examples of families who would be victimized by the company's huge rate hikes. The Obama administration and Democratic members of Congress used the hike as an example of why the nation needs long-delayed insurance reform. (Republicans were conspicuously silent).

"If we don't act, this is just a preview of coming attractions," Obama said at a White House briefing, using the Anthem miscue as an opportunity to push Congress to put a health care reform on his desk. "Premiums will continue to rise for folks with insurance, millions more will lose their coverage altogether, our deficits will continue to grow larger. And we have an obligation -- both parties -- to tackle this issue in a serious way."

Several members of Congress scheduled a Feb. 24 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to investigate the rate hike and asked WellPoint's $9.8 million-a-year CEO, Angela Braly, to testify. Faced with the furor, Anthem announced this week that it would postpone the increase from March 1 until May 1.

Although WellPoint sprinted out in front of the pack, the Insurance Lobby is still working as a team when it comes to profit-making, consumer abuse, and political maneuvering.

Last year the five largest health insurance companies racked up record profits of $12.2 billion - an increase of $4.4 billion (56%) over 2008 figures. The numbers, compiled by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a coalition of reform groups, come from the financial reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

HCAN examined the profits of WellPoint, United Health Group, Cigna, Aetna and Humana. According to HCAN, the five insurance giants increased their profits while providing coverage to 2.7 million fewer people than the year before. HCAN also found that three of the five companies slashed the amount of each premium dollar they spent on medical care for their customers, diverting more to salaries, administrative expenses and profits.

The five biggest insurance companies captured $232 billion of the roughly $809 billion Americans spent for private health insurance in 2009. As they've gobbled up other companies through mergers and acquisitions, the Big Five's share of the pie has steadily increased.

While the insurance industry was making record profits, it was also spending tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat comprehensive health reform legislation in Congress. Since 2008, the insurance industry has spent at least $77 million in campaign contributions and lobbying to kill reform, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics.

"Increasing your profits, while dropping people, is a specific corporate strategy," said HCAN's Richard Kirsch. "What the big health insurance companies do to please Wall Street denies affordable health insurance to millions of Americans every year." more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/the-greed-olympics-banks_b_46...

toniD's Ya Think?

@SamSeder will host his own show on www.theyoungturks.com again this Friday at 12Noon ET! It's great having Sam doing these shows on TYT.

"this machine kills fascists"

Submitted by toniD on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 2:36pm.
Conservatives To Sign 'Mount Vernon Statement': Principles For The Obama Era

The signing is set to take place Mount Vernon's Collingwood Library and Museum on Americanism on the 2:30 p.m. ET.

...because that is one signing I'd like to ahow up for and loudly protest against. Seeing how they can't get the event's press release elements (WHO-WHAT-WHERE-WHY-HOW) right, I'm guessin' the principles are not worth the paper they are written on; AND WE KNOW the signers are a worthless bunch.

Would it be wrong to go to:
http://www.themountvernonstatement.com/

and sign it with a fictional character like -

Yall R. Worthless
getoutofthecountry@yahoo.com

Can you tell how much I hate these creeps?

WellPoint directors make big gains on stocks
As health insurance giant takes heat for premium hikes, 3 board members cash in options netting more than $600K

Three WellPoint board members have collected a combined $625,517 in gains from stock options in the Indianapolis-based health insurance giant as the company has faced national media scrutiny and barbs from the Obama administration over premium increases.

Sheila Burke, a WellPoint director since 2004, had the largest single gain, $360,989, by cashing in 9,920 of her WellPoint options, according to a regulatory filing. Those options allowed her to buy the stock for $25.61 a share on Feb. 5. She sold those shares the same day at the then-market price of $62 a share.

Stock options, a common form of executive compensation, allow the holder to buy a company's shares for a set price over a set period of time. The options cashed in by Burke were due to expire in February 2012.

Burke, who was chief of staff to then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole from 1985 to 1996, did not respond to a request for comment left with her office at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where she is a faculty member.

WellPoint director William H.T. Bush gained $167,428 from exercising options to buy 3,056 WellPoint shares for $6.34 each Feb. 9 and selling that stock for prices ranging from $61.12 to $61.13 a share. The options exercised by Bush, brother of former President George H.W. Bush, were set to expire in July.

Bush did not respond to a request for comment left at Bush O'Donnell & Co., his St. Louis investment firm.

Donald Riegle, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Michigan, gained $97,100 from exercising 5,000 options, priced at $44.18 apiece, then selling that stock for $63.60 a share Feb. 4. Riegle did not respond to a request for comment left Monday at consultant APCO Worldwide.

WellPoint has been under scrutiny over premium increases for its individual insurance plans since a Feb. 5 story in the Los Angeles Times told of individual Anthem customers in California facing increases as high as 39 percent. In Indiana, Anthem policyholders have complained of hikes as high as 38 percent. more...

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100216/BUSINESS03/2160329/1278/BUSINES...

toniD's Ya Think?

f it's not in the article, I haven't got a clue. But it's a good idea to protest. They want us to go back 200 years.

Norquist was on MoJo this AM but didn't mention this Manifesto that I can remember anyway!

toniD's Ya Think?

Thanks!

"this machine kills fascists"

Sam's on again!

toniD's Ya Think?

The Barr Code

Pagan worship at Air Force Academy - Barr Report

"Don’t get me wrong, if someone “has little or no religion and delights in sensual pleasures and material goods,” which is the definition of a “pagan,” then I say live and let live." - Bob Barr

Microsoft, Dell Prepare to Fight Tax Increase in Obama’s Budget
Ryan J. Donmoyer Ryan J. Donmoyer Wed Feb 17, 12:00 am ET

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Software and computer companies such as Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. are gearing up to fight an Obama administration plan to curb offshore tax avoidance.

The $15.5 billion proposal in President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget targets what the Internal Revenue Service calls the growing problem of so-called transfer pricing. The technique allows companies to reduce their tax bills by transferring intangible property such as patents, trademarks and licenses to offshore subsidiaries.

The Business Software Alliance, a Washington-based trade group that represents technology companies, said it would “educate policy makers” on how the proposal would hurt U.S. companies, jobs and the economy.

“The transfer tax on intangibles, which regulates how expenses and profits from overseas subsidiaries are recognized and taxed, would unfairly punish American firms vis-à-vis their foreign competitors,” BSA Chairman Robert Holleyman said in a statement. “The U.S. software industry and many other U.S. businesses would pay a steep price in terms of global competiveness.”

While the proposal represents less than 4 percent of the $400 billion in business-tax increases in the budget plan, the debate signals that companies are likely to resist Obama’s efforts to raise their taxes to help narrow deficits the administration estimates will total $8.5 trillion over 10 years.

Fair Market Value

In the past, lawmakers have been willing to take on offshore tax-avoidance techniques, though Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, has said he would prefer to change such rules in the context of a broader tax-code overhaul.

Corporations engage in transfer pricing when they sell goods or services between subsidiaries. A globally accepted set of practices is meant to ensure that goods are priced so companies don’t inflate deductible expenses in high-tax countries and taxable income in low-tax ones.

Determining the fair market value of intellectual property is difficult, said John Samuels, the top tax lawyer for Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co., which gets more than half its sales from outside the U.S.

Transfer pricing “is the soft underbelly of the income tax,” Samuels said last month. “Nobody understands it.”

Coca-Cola, Merck

The Obama administration said this uncertainty creates opportunities for companies to shift their intangible assets to low-tax countries. The proposal in Obama’s budget may also affect companies such as Coca-Cola Co., and Merck & Co. Inc., which report tax burdens below the top 35 percent U.S. corporate rate through the use of intangible property and global operations.

“Any high-tech company that has international operations, which is almost all of them, they’ll be worried about this,” said Stewart Karlinsky, a professor emeritus at San Jose State University who advises technology companies on tax law.

The administration proposal would force companies to immediately pay U.S. tax when they receive “excessive returns” of more than 30 percent that are traced to intangible property owned by offshore subsidiaries operating in countries with effective tax rates of less than 10 percent, according to an administration official. The law allows companies to defer U.S. tax on those foreign profits until they are repatriated to the U.S. parent company.

10% Threshold

Karlinsky said the 10 percent threshold may be designed to exempt countries such as Ireland, which has a 12.5 corporate tax rate. Subsidiaries in countries without a corporate tax such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands and those in countries offering temporary tax holidays such as Malaysia or Indonesia are more likely to be affected, he said.

IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman has said his agency is investigating transactions involving intangible property. In December, he announced the creation of a unit to “strategically and systematically administer transfer-pricing issues.” more..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20100217/pl_bloomberg/axf8rhsf9im/prin...

toniD's Ya Think?

the comments are the funniest part of the article. we got us a cage fight between the fundies and the normal people.

Damn it. Wiccan's are running the war department
Submitted by Fernando on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 4:02pm.
----------------
Boeing Wins Broom Contract

Us Vs Japan. Curling Scores tied up and Japan slides the last stone down the ice. Team Japan must have had one of those Boeing prototype brooms to get that stone to steer straight into an American stone knocking us out.

Really thought there was going to be a broom fight. But alas, decorum set in. Unlike in some other places....

i did. i wonder if the japanese were swearing up a blue streak since the audience might not be able to understand them as compared to the fairly quiet american team.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell Rolls Back Non-Discrimination Protections For Gay State Workers
Christina Bellantoni | February 17, 2010, 3:22PM

Gay and lesbian state workers in Virginia are no longer specifically protected against discrimination, thanks to a little-noticed change made by new Gov. Bob McDonnell.

McDonnell (R) on Feb. 5 signed an executive order that prohibits discrimination "on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, religion, age, political affiliation, or against otherwise qualified persons with disabilities," as well as veterans.

It rescinds the order that Gov. Tim Kaine signed Jan. 14, 2006 as one of his first actions. After promising a "fair and inclusive" administration in his inaugural address, Kaine (D) added veterans to the non-discrimination policy - and sexual orientation.

McDonnell's office sent along this memo from his chief of staff that they have suggested to reporters prevents any and all discrimination. It reads, in part:

It shall be the policy of the office of the Governor to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, encourage excellence by rewarding achievement based on merit, and prohibit discrimination for any reason. Hiring, promotion, discipline and termination of employees shall be based on qualifications, performance and results.

But the LGBT trade press sees it as a "sad" development that strips state workers of protections that they had under the last administration.

Kaine declined to comment through spokesman Hari Sevugan, who said McDonnell should be "ashamed" for the new policy.

Sevugan said:

It says a lot about the Republican party that they would anoint as their 'rising star' someone who in 2010 is actually stripping away from Americans legal protections against discrimination. Bob McDonnell is proving his critics right. He said he'd focus on creating jobs, not social issues. But, one of his first acts as Governor was to make it easier for a fellow citizen to be denied a job and he did so as an adherent to a right-wing ideology that allows for such discriminatory behavior. McDonnell's decision is just plain wrong in any context, but especially so in this economic climate.

In another development, the Washington Post reported that a measure passed the Democratic-controlled state Senate that would protect state workers from discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. The bill is all-but-certain to fail in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/virginia-gov-bob-mcdonnell-ro...

toniD's Ya Think?

but I wouldn't mess with her. That tiny lady knows how to swing that big rock.

Lobby Firm Tells Clients How To Sway Elections While Avoiding 'Public Scrutiny'
Zachary Roth | February 17, 2010, 12:54PM

In the wake of last month's Citizens United ruling, a powerhouse Washington lobbying firm is informing its corporate clients on how they can use middlemen like the Chamber of Commerce to pour unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns, while maintaining "sufficient cover" to avoid "public scrutiny" and negative media coverage.

A "Public Policy and Law Alert" on the impact of the Supreme Court's ruling, prepared by two lawyers for K&LGates and posted on the firm's site last Friday, notes that, thanks to disclosure rules, corporations could alienate their customers by spending on political campaigns -- especially because they could become the target of negative media coverage.

So, what's a corporation looking to advance its political goals to do? According to the alert, written by K&L lawyers Tim Peckinpaugh and Stephen Roberts:

[G]roups of corporations within an industry may form coalitions or use existing trade associations to support candidates favorable to policy positions that affect the group as a whole. While corporations that contribute to these expenditures might still be disclosed, this indirect approach can provide sufficient cover such that no single contributing entity receives the bulk of public scrutiny.

In other words, just use lobby associations as handy pass-throughs, to obscure from the public your involvement in the race. Simple!

In fact, as we've reported, that's a tactic that corporations already routinely use, and that the Chamber of Commerce pioneered over the last decade. But the Citizens' United decision means these campaigns can now directly advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate -- and can do it right up to Election Day.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Peckinpaugh denied that the alert represents guidance to clients on how to make an end-run around disclosure rules. "We're just stating what the law indicates," he said.

Peckinpaugh characterized the alert as a Q&A that offers an "assessment" of the state of the law, rather than as legal or strategic advice for clients. "It's just stating the obvious," said Peckinpaugh. Indeed, a disclaimer makes clear that it does "not contain or convey legal advice."

Still, the alert is intended for the firm's corporate clients -- and it appears to give a strong hint as to how K&L is advising those clients behind closed doors.

Another section of the alert makes clear that U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations will now be able to spend unlimited amounts to sway elections -- a point that top Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell have tried to muddy.

Peckinpaugh and Roberts write:

Will U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations be exempt?
Yes. The definition of "foreign national" exempts any person that is "not an individual and is organized under or created by the laws of the United States or of any State or other place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and has its principal place of business within the United States." 22 U.S.C. § 611(b)(2). The Federal Election Commission ("FEC") has determined that this exemption includes a U.S. corporation that is a subsidiary of a foreign corporation, so long as the foreign parent does not finance U.S. political activities and no foreign national participates in any decision to make expenditures.

On the whole, though, Peckinpaugh and Roberts suggest caution. "Just because a corporation may make an independent direct advocacy expenditure doesn't mean that it should," they write.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/lobby_firm_tells_clien...

toniD's Ya Think?

from the wiki about the federal budget:

During FY 2009, the federal government collected approximately $2.1 trillion in tax revenue. Primary receipt categories included individual income taxes (43%), Social Security/Social Insurance taxes (42%), and corporate taxes (7%). Other types included excise, estate and gift taxes. Tax revenues have averaged approximately 18.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) over the past 40 years, generally ranging plus or minus 2% from that level.

clearly, there's a lot more room for corporations to pay their fair share as long as there is such a discrepecany between their highest and lowest pay levels.

Key Finding

Read this poll analysis from Public Policy Polling ...

The vast majority of opposition to health care and allowing gays to serve openly in the military is coming from people who already say there's no chance they'll vote Democratic this fall. That's an indication of minimal fallout for Congressional Democrats by acting on these issues.

37% of Americans say they will definitely not vote Democratic for Congress this year. 34% say they definitely will and that leaves roughly 30% of the country up for grabs.

Right now 50% of voters say they oppose President Obama's health care plan to just 39% in support. Digging a little deeper on those numbers though 64% of respondents planning or open to voting Democratic this fall support it with only 22% opposed. The overall numbers are negative only because of 94/1 opposition among folks who have said there is no way they'll vote Democratic this fall.

It's not surprising. But the data is startlingly clear. Painful to see it ignored.

--Josh Marshall

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/02/key_finding.php?ref=fp...

toniD's Ya Think?

The Nicole Sandler Show Live @ 5pm with Jackson Brown

http://radioornot.editedforcontent.com/site/?page_id=11

is what a waste of time and money it is.

Who doesn't already understand who the opponents of health care and civil rights progress are? We know those bone heads. That report isn't confirming anything that hasn't been confirmed a million times. There's nothing new in it.

NASA Space Telescope Captures New Images

more larger images here:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/images/gallery-nasawise2.jpg

toniD's Ya Think?

I think you are looking through the organic PAH gas.

I think Josh's point at the end of the article is that they may know it but ignore the findings.

"It's not surprising. But the data is startlingly clear. Painful to see it ignored."

The pollys are ignoring it, but they have ignored most of the polls. Just like they ignore our emails, calls and petitions.

toniD's Ya Think?

Submitted by toniD on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 4:40pm.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell Rolls Back Non-Discrimination Protections For Gay State Workers
Christina Bellantoni | February 17, 2010, 3:22PM

...after making public statements during his campaign that he intended to support then Gov. Kaine's plan to freeze the Composite Index as it currently exists, McDonnell is going with the projected CI in the next two years.

The impact of doing so will adversely affect education funding in school districts throughout the Commonweath including the poorest localities. Those districts likely to benefit are the Northern Virginia counties--Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun. Some think this is to "butter up" these voters for his future political ambitions (presidential race or U.S. senate seat.)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/02/mcdonnell_7.ht...

Sanders Signs Letter Calling For Public Option Through Reconciliation Process
Eric Kleefeld | February 17, 2010, 4:09PM

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has added his name to a letter from a group of progressive Senators, calling for the public option to be included in the health care bill through the reconciliation process.

"At a time when there is deep skepticism and mistrust of the private insurance industry, when just last month a major health insurer in California announced it would raise its premiums by a whopping 39 percent in one fell swoop, the American people have made it clear that they want the option to buy their insurance through a Medicare-type, government-run public insurance plan," Sanders said in a press release.

Eight other Senators have signed the letter so far. Its original signatories Michael Bennet (D-CO), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), released the letter yesterday. Four others -- Al Franken (D-MN), John Kerry (D-MA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) -- signed on earlier today.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/sanders-signs-letter-calling-...

toniD's Ya Think?

Released twenty years ago:
new
Submitted by ghettodefender on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 11:57am.

Submitted by Fernando on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 5:29pm.
I think you are looking through the organic PAH gas.
-----------
(She had brats and kraut for lunch.)

Are We There Yet? Health Care Summit Could Be Final Play Before A Merged Bill Passes
Christina Bellantoni | February 17, 2010, 2:26PM

Key House Democrats said today they think the White House health care summit will yield some sort of final agreement allowing Congress to pass a compromise reform measure and get it to President Obama's desk.

When and how remain large outstanding questions, but lawmakers stressed Obama's invitation to bipartisan members to the televised summit is among the last steps on the long road to reform.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) said on a conference call with reporters today they are "not starting from scratch" despite Republicans calls to do just that.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen said repeatedly the compromise is 90 percent done, and said Obama would put "all the facts on the table" and give Republicans another chance to present their ideas.

"The House and Senate are very close to reaching a final agreement," Van Hollen said.

Sanchez pointed out that several key GOP planks outlined on the Republican National Committee Web site already are part of the health care bills passed by the House and Senate.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said not passing a measure given the dire state of the health care system will mean that lawmakers "will pay a heavy price at the next election."

DeLauro offered "a strong and vigorous yes" that talks are continuing despite what seems to be a standstill on Capitol Hill since Republican Scott Brown won the Senate election in Massachusetts.

Even though the White House specifically said that Obama would post "online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package" before the summit next week, these Congressional leaders today repeatedly dodged saying they weren't sure if the president would present a plan orally or in written form. (White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday people should "stay tuned" and refused to offer any more details.)

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Senate Democratic leadership aides say reconciliation is still an option and that members want health care "off the agenda" quickly.

The Post also reports that most of the health care talks are about the tax on high-end plans and "the House leadership may sign on to the compromise even without a tweak to the Cadillac tax, according to a senior leadership aide."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/are-we-there-yet-health-care-...

toniD's Ya Think?

John Mellencamp for senator from Indiana
By Brent Budowsky - 02/17/10 12:28 PM ET

I first heard the idea of John Cougar Mellencamp running for the Senate in Indiana when Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation advocated this on MSNBC, and I wholeheartedly agree. This is a truly inspired idea. John Mellencamp would make an outstanding and even brilliant United States senator and represents exactly the spirit and soul the Democratic Party should stand for.

This is not the time or place for me to critique Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). I will say that when I first came to Washington I worked for his father, Sen. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), who I believe was one of the greatest senators who ever served. John Mellencamp is one of the great artists of our age. And John Mellemcamp is one of the great advocates of small-town America, of the kind of "square deal" for Americans that Teddy Roosevelt once championed. He is a voice for working people and a champion of farmers who puts his talent, his body and his money behind his words. Mellencamp has long been a great champion of the Farm Aid cause and concerts, along with the extraordinary leadership of his friend and a truly great American, Willie Nelson.

Indiana has many fine Democrats who would make good Senate candidates, but John Mellencamp is unique, one of a kind, a voice for the people who believes America needs a new brand of politics and new kind of leadership in the Senate.

I am not a Hoosier, but I have ties to the state going back to my years working with Birch Bayh. I believe John Mellencamp would electrify the campaign and electrify Democrats who want a fighter for working people, farmers, small businesses and small-town America to have a loud and clear voice in the Senate.

To those working to draft Mellencamp: You are fighting a good and worthy battle and I hope you succeed. America needs champions of justice and fairness and high principle in the Senate. John Mellencamp is exactly the kind of leader and voice our people need to lift the standards of our politics and the spirit of our nation.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/campaign/81513-john-mellencamp-for...

toniD's Ya Think?

by STEVE FRASER

February 12, 2010

(This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.)
On March 4, 1933, the day he took office, Franklin Roosevelt excoriated the "money changers" who "have fled from their high seats in the temples of our civilization [because...] they know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision and where there is no vision, the people perish."
Rhetoric, however, is only rhetoric. According to one skeptical Congressional observer of FDR's first inaugural address, "The President drove the money-changers out of the Capitol on March 4th--and they were all back on the 9th."
That was essentially true. It was what happened after that, in the midst of the Great Depression, which set the New Deal on a course that is the mirror image of the direction in which the Obama administration seems headed.
Buoyed by great expectations when he assumed office, Barack Obama has so far revealed himself to be an unfolding disappointment. On arrival, expectations were far lower for FDR, who was not considered extraordinary at all--until he actually did something extraordinary.
The great expectations of 2009 are, only a year later, beginning to smell like a pile of dead fish with new rhetoric--including populist-style attacks on villainous bankers that sound fake (or cynically pandering) when uttered by Obama's brainiacs--layered on top of the pile like deodorant. Meanwhile, the country is suffering through a recovery that isn't a recovery unless you happen to be a banker, and the administration stands by, too politically or intellectually inhibited or incapacitated to do much of anything about it. A year into "change we can believe in" and the new regime, once so flush with power and the promise of big doings, seems exhausted, vulnerable, and afraid. A year into the New Deal--indeed a mere 100 days into Roosevelt's era--change, whether you believed in it or not, clearly had the wind at its back...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/fraser?rel=emailNation

Three Men, Two Tons of Pot, and One Big Truck
Three California men are being held on $1 million bond for allegedly hauling a ton of marijuana across Illinois.
And that's not a figure of speech. We mean an actual ton. Two, actually.
"That's a record for me," said Douglas County State's Attorney Kevin Nolan, who has been in office six years, in a press release. "My previous big ones have been about 200 pounds."
On Monday night, Illinois State Police stopped a semitrailer truck on Interstate 57 in Tuscola, a town about 30 miles south of Champaign.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/Three-Men-Two-Tons-of-Pot-and-...

(waste of time & $ if u ask me.)

The War on Consumers and Labor Heats Up

Wall Street Moves in for the Kill

By MICHAEL HUDSON

Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, February 16 outlining how to put the U.S. economy on rations. Not in those words, of course. Just the opposite: If the government hadn’t bailed out Wall Street’s bad loans, he claims, “unemployment could have exceeded the 25 per cent level of the Great Depression.” Without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down.

The reality, of course, is that bailing out casino capitalist speculators on the winning side of A.I.G.’s debt swaps and CDO derivatives didn’t save a single job. It certainly hasn’t lowered the economy’s debt overhead. But matters will soon improve, if Congress will dispel the present cloud of “uncertainty” as to whether any agency less friendly than the Federal Reserve might regulate the banks.

Paulson spelled out in step-by-step detail the strategy of “doing God’s work,” as his Goldman Sachs colleague Larry Blankfein sanctimoniously explained Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Now that pro-financial free-market doctrine is achieving the status of religion, I wonder whether this proposal violates the separation of church and state. Neoliberal economics may be a travesty of religion, but it is the closest thing to a Church that Americans have these days, replete with its Inquisition operating out of the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Columbia.

If the salvation is to give Wall Street a free hand, anathema is the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency intended to deter predatory behavior by mortgage lenders and credit-card issuers. The same day that Paulson’s op-ed appeared, the Financial Times published a report explaining that “Republicans say they are unconvinced that any regulator can even define systemic risk. … the whole concept is too vague for an immediate introduction of sweeping powers. …” Republican Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee was willing to join with the Democrats “to ensure ‘there is not some new roaming regulator out there … putting companies unbeknownst to them under its regime.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson02172010.html

By STEPHANIE WESTBROOK

A "regional economic power." That's how ANIMA, the Euro-Mediterranean Network of Investment Promotion Agencies encompassing 70 governmental agencies and international networks, described Israel in its January 2010 Mediterranean Investment Map. The report analyzed the economies of the 27 European Union countries as well as 9 "partner countries."

And who can argue. Touting an annual GDP growth rate around 5% for the years 2004 to 2008, Israel was also ranked 27 out of 132 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report last fall. It ranked 9th for innovative capacity.

In the 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook by IMD, Israel comes in 2nd for the number of scientists and engineers in the workforce. No other country in the world spends more on research and development as a percentage of GDP than Israel. Since the year 2000 it has hovered around 4.5%, or twice the average of OECD member countries.

I am not an economist, but I have to wonder why US taxpayers are doling out $3 billion a year in direct military aid to a "regional economic power." In August 2007, a Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Israel was signed committing the US to give, not loan, $30 billion to Israel over 10 years. US taxpayers are directly funding close to 20% of Israel's annual defense budget. No wonder Israel is able to invest in R&D!

To help put these figures into perspective, a new web site was launched last week that illustrates how your state is contributing to the Israeli defense budget, and what could have instead been done with the money. At www.aidtoisrael.org I learned that my home state of Texas will give more than $2.5 billion over the ten year period. For the same amount, over 2 million people could have been provided with primary health care.
http://www.counterpunch.org/westbrook02152010.html

Iowa Pharmacy Board votes to Recommend Legalizing Medical Marijuana

"The Iowa Board of Pharmacy unanimously voted Wednesday to recommend to the legislature that it legalize marijuana for medical uses.

A state Senate subcommittee held a hearing last year on a bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Bolkcom of Iowa City that would have created the Medical Marijuana Act, allowing the possession and use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes. The bill, Senate File 293, never made it out of subcommittee."

"this machine kills fascists"

Submitted by toniD on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 10:25pm.
Chris Hedges: Democracy in America is a useful fiction

______________________________

I finally found time to view that.

Somehow Mr. Hedges needs to be on the M$M,
to teach a greator number
of people who have been asleep for 30 yrs.
_ _ _ _
brr

NH House rejects 2 anti-gay marriage measures

Source: Associated Press

New Hampshire's House has rejected a bill that would have repealed the state's 6-week-old gay marriage law.

The House voted 210-109 to kill the bill -- almost the same margin it defeated a proposed constitutional amendment about an hour earlier that would have defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

Supporters needed 60 percent of the House to place the amendment on the November ballot. Gay marriage opponents vowed voters will have their say in the fall election by changing the Statehouse back to Republican control. Supporters said they would not be politically blackmailed.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2010/02/17/nh_ho...

toniD's Ya Think?

February 17th, 2010 1:41 PM
US troops at lowest level since Iraq invasion
By Chelsea J. Carter / Associated Press

Read here:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/us-troops-lowest-level-ira...

That question on the last thread about 'how to define Pogressives, Liberals, and Democrats' really has kept me thinking and questioning, like--

What's the reason a new progressive movement/party is slow to form?

I don't think it has anything to do with things getting worse and worse and WORSE. But I do think the KEY to the lock on this conundrum is the REALITY that Obama the Corporatist outright STOLE the Progressive position (and sometime Liberal acceptence of) THE GOAL OF CHANGE; a real manipulation since Corporatists are not Progressive masters of change but power consolidators who pursue a strengthening of the reactionary return to the Economic Royalty of which FDR spoke.

Mike Malloy and Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes have been nibbling around the edges about what to do next, like Hartmann suggesting that that something is "infiltrating" and "taking back" the Democratic Party. But I don't think they are warm enough yet.

The REASON the current situation is so difficult for Progressives and Liberals to respond to -- via a group challenge to the Corporatists under the current circumstances -- is that such a challenge would not involve ACTUAL CHANGE but only a struggle to stave off the Corporatist-initiated collapse of previous Progressive gains. AND STAVING OFF THIS COLLAPSE OF OUR CUMULATIVE PROGRESSIVE CHANGES IS NOT CREATIVE CHANGE OR PROGRESS, BUT MERELY PRESERVING THE STATUS QUO OF A CRUMBLING REPUBLIC -- LIKE JUST BEING A FOOT WEDGED IN THE DOOR THAT IS CLOSING BEHIND THE CORPORATIST-LEGISLATORS AND THEIR CORPORATE SPONSORS.

This is NOT enough of a CREATIVE CHALLENGE for CREATIVE PROGRESSIVES! (Progressives aren't like the uncreative Conservatives who want the 'Traditional' and the status quo preserved forever, or the Regressives who want to go back to their nostalgic Dark Ages.)

Therefore, Progressives DEFINITELY must ENLARGE their concept of what constitutes progress for this country. And it has to be a BIGGER, AGGRESSIVE CHANGE than we've had in a long time:

1/ Major sweeping Election CHANGE
Not just an attempt to control private campaign contributions -- but a whole new system of FCC-mandated public airwaves usage for free airtime for campaign messaging, and no private funding for campaigns, and mandating SHORTER (just weeks of) primaries and elections

2/ Voting system overhaul
We must take away the voting system from the PRIVATEERS who have taken it from us, and create new laws and rules that work to make the balloting process INVIOLATE, accept new tools like 'instant-runoff voting', and encourage voting (even a mandatory day off for mandatory voting).

3/ Erase prejudice and elitist control of politics and government
This needs lots of creativity because we have locked out minority voices long enough, and we must change this even if it means a new Parliamentary style arrangement and Constitutional change

4/ A complete reversal of economic priorities
Corporations were conceived to SERVE The People, NOT rule The People. REVERSE the present status of the Corporate World. Doing this would take the unlimited profit/profiteering motive out of so many areas that are being broken: the healthcare system, the environment, public utilities (including energy resources of any kind -- it is time to NATIONALIZE THEM). As soon as the EXPLOITATIVE MIDDLE-MAN is removed from the equation, healing will be possible. Regulate business until it is manageable and OBEDIENT.

5/ Insist on localized solutions
Reducing transportation of goods and services by encouraging and creating self-sufficiency of communities through community agriculture, energy production, home/business rainwater conservation, even local manufacturing and professional services. These are not new ideas -- but creative solutions which have been shoved aside by the profiteers. The time for these ideas to be applied has come.

6/ Security of a PUBLIC Internet
The People MUST come first and the Internet must be not only The Information Commons, but one that respects, preserves, and provides a system for protecting creative/intellectual ownership of art and writing,innovations, etc., and this requires us to rethink and revamp the Internet.

7/ Reversal of priorities
People programs first, industrial give-aways secondary if at all(!) -- no more unlimited profiteering and subsidies/deregulation/tax-exemption through DOD, anti-trust-law-exempted OIL, Financial Industry bail outs, GMO impunity. We need education, living wages, cradle-to-grave healthcare, restoration of the commons (from the public air waves to public lands and coastlines, etc.)

8/ Wresting Culture and Civilization AWAY from Corporations and making these the People's domain

Restore and increase support for the Arts and Creativity, and ways/events to nuture, reward and increase them. No more Corporate propaganda and Industrial Marketing masquerading as Culture and Civilization.

We need a Revolution NOT of pitchforks, but of a New Party Platform that TRULY represents the kind of Change that will inspire and fire-up the heart and soul of our creative Progressives.

Until this happens Progressives at large will flounder because, apparently, the Progressives' temperament and interest levels are only useful when put to energizing and concretizing CREATIVE SOLUTIONS. Mere struggles -- merely being the foot in the door attempting to keep the door of representative government from slamming shut behind the corporations and their bought-and-paid-for Sentors and Reps and Supreme Court Justices and Executive Branch bureaucrats -- ARE NOT ENOUGH to create a Progressive movement.

Remember the movie "V"? There was something VERY impotent about that story. The character 'V' was haunted and insane and weak. He was NOT a cogent, systematic POLITICAL ROBIN HOOD, who takes rights from The Rich and gives them to The Poor. The character 'V' was a blip in the story, a blip with explosives. The movie portrayed a weak fantasy in the proces of Entropy in comparison to the magnificent power and beauty of a collective Progressive movement/party with GIGANTIC plans, intent on the Syntropy of ACTUAL Change!

http://cigarboxguitars.com/workshops/How_To_Build_A_CBG.php

So I went ahead and made me a guitar. I got me a cigar box, I cut me a round hole in the middle of it, take me a little piece of plank, nailed it onto that cigar box, and I got me some screen wire and I made me a bridge back there and raised it up high enough that it would sound inside that little box, and got me a tune out of it. I kept my tune and I played from then on.

-Lightnin' Hopkins

This Just In!
Submitted by 60th Street on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 3:39pm.
@SamSeder will host his own show on www.theyoungturks.com again this Friday at 12Noon ET! It's great having Sam doing these shows on TYT.

=======================

WHAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Lessons for Europe from California

The financial aftershocks being felt in Greece will show the EU what 'union' really means

Over a year ago, the world economy suffered a massive economic quake – and certain countries have been experiencing aftershocks ever since. Two such aftershocks have grabbed headlines, one recently in Greece and another last summer in California. A comparison of these two events reveals something about the respective features of the west's two leading capitalist economies, the US and Europe.

The Greek aftershock has roiled the financial markets in recent weeks. With some $25bn worth of loan payments coming due for which Greece will need to refinance, the bond markets became skittish that a Greek default may lead to a wave of other national defaults in Portugal and Spain, and drag down the euro itself (much like Lehman Brothers initiated the global financial industry's collapse).

But that seems unlikely. Greece's economy comprises only 2% of the overall European economy – about the same magnitude as Indiana's in the United States. Greece's deficit to GDP ratio, while high at about 12.5%, is not that much higher than that of both the US and Japan, around 10.5%. True, Greece has a sizable accumulated debt over many years, estimated at about 110 percent of its GDP, but even the US has a debt to GDP estimated at 94% and projected to break 100% by 2012. And Greece is embedded within the euro zone which actually has a fairly low deficit to GDP ratio by today's post-collapse standards, only 6%. So there is little doubt that Europe has the capacity to absorb Greece's troubles. This is a matter of investor confidence, not economic fundamentals.

But California by comparison makes up 14% of the US economy, about the same magnitude as Germany's economy in Europe, truly "too big to fail." Yet when California threatened to default on its loan obligations last summer and the governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, asked for a federal bailout, the Obama administration flatly rejected it. That caused California to have to issue IOUs as a way to pay its bills, and its bond rating plummeted.

California's situation in some ways is more worrisome than Greece's. Having a state that is one-seventh of the national economy in dire straits is a threat to the nation's economic recovery. It is analogous to having Germany struggling instead of Greece, striking at the heart of Europe. California has been shaken by widespread layoffs and furloughs – the city of Los Angeles just laid off 1,000 more workers – and core social programmes have been slashed. Millions of low income children have lost access to meal programmes, and community clinics have been closed. Almost 3 million low income adults have lost important benefits such as dental care, psychological services and mammograms.

In addition, while both California and Greece are in major belt tightening mode, at least in Greece all families and individuals still have access to healthcare and a long menu of other social supports that Europe is known for. In California, even before the crisis millions had no healthcare, and now more have lost their jobs and their health insurance. Unemployment compensation is miserly, as is the overall safety net, which impacts consumer spending and further weakens the economy. more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/feb/17/greece-ca...

toniD's Ya Think?

A "good" Republican NEVER breaks ranks.

Nice to see Mike put those loosers on
the Fox Propaganda Network in their place.
Now we need the F.C.C. to shut down the Network
completely for not broadcasting for the
good of the public.

Or force the network to take the word "News"
off of it's logo, for false advertising.
_ _ _

brr

Good to hear a caller on KAREL's show (KKGN960 3-6pm Pacific) say there must be an Obama Adm. response to the failure to stop the Foreclosure Avalanche.

Amnesty for Banksters, but no amnesty for the Bankster's victims. Unacceptable.

about Sam - - That makes me happy.
Can't wait

Senate Panel Announces Big Hearing on Blackwater’s Afghanistan Contract
By Spencer Ackerman 2/17/10 3:22 PM

All it took was a) shots fired at Afghan civilians on a Kabul road; b) bribes to foreign officials that amount to hush money; c) credible accounts of unlicensed weapons shipping; d) secret raids alongside the CIA on suspected insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan; and of course e) heavy collaboration with the Joint Special Operations Command to attract some real Senate scrutiny of Blackwater, the much-renamed private security firm that according to its founder is a CIA cutout. The Senate Armed Services Committee just announced a hearing on “contracting in a counterinsurgency: an examination of the Blackwater-Paravant contract and the need for oversight.” It gets underway next Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 9:30 a.m. (Paravant is a Blackwater subsidiary working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan.)

As far as I’m aware, this is the first Senate hearing exclusively devoted to Blackwater. The previous big Blackwater hearing came before the House oversight committee in 2007, and it mainly resulted in forcing the State Department’s conflict-of-interest-laden inspector-general, Cookie Krongard, to resign in disgrace after misrepresenting his ties to the company before the panel.

From the looks of the witness list, there may be some real disclosures: Paravant’s ex-program manager, John R. Walker, is slated to testify, as is its ex-vice president Brian C. McCracken. So are a host of retired military officials, including the former head of the effort to train Afghan security forces, retired Col. Bradley Wakefield. A former Blackwater vice president for contracts, Fred Roitz, has been invited, but it’s unclear whether he’ll appear.

It’s worth pointing out that to the best of my knowledge, there was no Senate hearing devoted to scrutinizing Blackwater’s multi-million dollar contracts with the government after its guards shot and killed 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in September 2007.

http://washingtonindependent.com/76855/senate-panel-announces-big-hearin...

toniD's Ya Think?

I liked them...
Is this our Alice? Is that where she lives now? Ya Go Girl ;)
http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/news_detail.php?ID=834197

*

..the rest of you kids just move along. There's nothing to see here.

Iraq to seize security contractors' heavy weapons
Waleed Ibrahim
BAGHDAD
Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:12am EST

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will seize heavy weapons from foreign security firms and expel within days ex-Blackwater contractors still in the country, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said on Wednesday.

The decision follows Iraqi government outrage at the dismissal by a U.S. court of charges against Blackwater Worldwide guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

It also comes ahead of a parliamentary election on March 7 in which Bolani is running at the head of his own coalition against a slate headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Bolani said he had "ordered that the heavy weapons used by some of the foreign security firms be collected." Speaking to Reuters at a campaign event, he gave no further details and did not clarify whether that included licensed weapons.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61G3DK20100217

toniD's Ya Think?

Obama's Atomic Blunder
Submitted by ghettodefender on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 11:04am.
by Harvey Wasserman

As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss.

In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not---pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th Century's most expensive technological failure....

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reported that at least 27 of America's 104 licensed reactors are now leaking radioactive tritium. The worst case may be Entergy's Vermont Yankee, near the state's southeastern border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. High levels of contamination have been found in test wells around the reactor, and experts believe the Connecticut River is at serious risk.

A furious statewide grassroots campaign aims to shut the plant, whose license expires in 2012. A binding agreement between Entergy and the state gives the legislature the power to deny an extension. US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has demanded the plant close. The legislature may vote on it in a matter of days.

Obama has now driven a deep wedge between himself and the core of the environmental movement, which remains fiercely anti-nuclear. While reactor advocates paint the technology green, the opposition has been joined by fiscal conservatives like the National Taxpayer Institute, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Reactor backers hailing a "renaissance" in atomic energy studiously ignore France's catastrophic Olkiluoto project, now $3 billion over budget and 3 years behind schedule. Parallel problems have crippled another project at Flamanville, France, and are virtually certain to surface in the US...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/17-5

»
-------------------------------

This "atomic blunder" is just Obama doing what he indicated he valued -- to have the formative effect of Ronald Reagan, another great blunderer who sabotaged the advent of a world using clean energy.

Somebody put a Ronnie pompadour wig on Obama so the transformation is crystal clear.

Sheesh.

John Mellencamp for senator.

I have most of his Albums/cd's from
"Scarecrow" to "Cuttin' Heads",
and agree with much of what he talks/sings
about.

_ _ _
brr

I have not EVER and I will never "put up" with being called a WHORE, which she called DEMS and SOS HILLARY Clinton IN MY STATE & IN MY CITY!

Tax Rates for Top 400 Earners Fall as Income Soars, IRS Data

David Cay Johnston* for Tax Analysts

The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low, newly disclosed tax data show.

In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from their average $263.3 million income in 2006, according to figures in a report that the IRS posted to its Web site without announcement that were discovered February 16. (For the report, see Tax Analysts Doc 2010-3372 .)

The figures came at the peak of the last economic cycle and show that widely published reports in major newspapers asserting that the richest Americans are losing relative ground and "becoming poorer" are not supported by the official income data.

The long-term data show that under current tax and economic rules, the incomes of the top earners rise when the economy expands and contract during recessions, only to rise again. Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006, the new data show. That rate is lower than the typical effective income tax rate paid by Americans with incomes in the low six figures, which is what each taxpayer in the top group earned in the first three hours of 2007.

Taxpayers on the 95th to 99th steps on the income ladder paid an effective income tax rate of 17.52 percent, according to calculations by the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group that favors less taxation and lower rates. Taxpayers in this category earned between $255,000 and $451,000 in 2007, compared with an average daily income of almost $945,000 for the top 400, who paid lower effective tax rates on average.

Payroll taxes did not add a significant burden to the top 400, not changing the rounding of rates by even one decimal. With payroll taxes taken into account, the effective tax rate of the top 400 would be 17.2 percent in 2006 and 16.6 percent in 2007, my analysis shows -- the same as not counting payroll taxes. As a point of comparison, about two-thirds of Americans pay more in Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes than in federal income taxes.

The top 400's share of all income grew from 1.31 cents out of every dollar earned by all Americans to 1.59 cents.

http://www.tax.com/taxcom/features.nsf/Articles/0DEC0EAA7E4D7A2B852576CD...

toniD's Ya Think?

You can have this pop stand, but you don't own Maria.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOCT5RDnJIY

..but Progressives are not permitted to view this video. Nothing personal, I know you understand.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/dianne-feinstein-signs-on_n_466...

The list of Senators currently signing the letter includes Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Michael Bennet (D-Col.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Roland Burris (D-Ill.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

Run-away foreclosures

http://www.newsweek.com/id/233715

There was an earlier post, dont recall whose, that mentioned the military had heavey influence in developing the internet. I recolect that the it was developed for usa universities to comunicate. Specifaclly the supercomputers. Not the military, not international banking, pure research

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

benefits.

Benefits? WHAT benefits?

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/business/story/1252310.html

[excerpt]

Union's protesters at Bank of America say guards lost their benefits

After the bank bought Merrill Lynch, N.Y. officers were moved to another security firm. Rates soared, they say.

By Rick Rothacker

Posted: Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010

Officers rally over lost jobs

New York security guards who contend they lost affordable health insurance after Bank of America Corp.'s purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. brought their protest to the Charlotte bank's headquarters on Tuesday.

In the merger transition, about 130 former Merrill Lynch security guards in December faced a steep increase in their health care benefits, leaving many unable to afford coverage, said Joe Eisman, organizing coordinator with a Service Employees International Union local. Another 30 lost their jobs. The changes came when guards were shifted to a security firm used by Bank of America, G4S Wackenhut, from a firm used by Merrill, Securitas.

More than a dozen SEIU representatives, mostly activists from Charlotte, held signs, chanted and called on new CEO Brian Moynihan to restore the guards' benefits.

Bank spokeswoman Nicole Nastacie said SEIU has "misrepresented" Bank of America's role. "The guards are not bank associates or participants in our benefit programs," she said.

In a statement, G4S Wackenhut said all officers were offered health benefits. The company said its family plan was more expensive than a union program but that its employee-only program was less expensive. Officers who lost their jobs either chose to leave on their own or didn't meet necessary qualifications, the company said.

Though the guards are employed by a third-party firm, Bank of America is responsible for the contract that ultimately funds the officers' salaries and benefits, Eisman contended.

The guard switch is one of many changes as the two companies have come together since Jan. 1, 2009. The number of workers involved is small compared to Bank of America's total workforce of more than 280,000.

SEIU has been a frequent critic of Bank of America in recent years, holding rallies in Charlotte to protest layoffs, executive pay practices and consumer banking fees. The national union in the past has expressed interest in organizing tellers and loan officers, but this protest was held by a local that represents security officers, janitors and doormen, Eisman said. Bank of America, according to its latest annual report, has no U.S. employees subject to collective bargaining agreements.

Eisman fired up the group by contrasting $11-per-hour security worker wages with the billions in bonuses doled out to bankers this year.
...
[end excerpt]

And the words end up who knows where

,,,,,,oh there it is above,,,,,

Its show time folks, long work day, have fun tonight alice, radio star.
~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

ARPA net

The History of the Internet:

http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.shtml

There was an earlier post,
new
Submitted by jbenet on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 9:05pm.
There was an earlier post, dont recall whose, that mentioned the military had heavey influence in developing the internet. I recolect that the it was developed for usa universities to comunicate. Specifaclly the supercomputers. Not the military, not international banking, pure research

...
===============================

Wasn't the development of the computers funded by the intelligence/military agencies? Weren't they part of intelligence agencies' DECODING enemy messages or something even during WWII? And an IBM cards system was used to catalog/track slave laborers in Nazi Germany, right? Why would there be a break in supercomputer development later if the Pentagon and friends still wanted to use the most advanced that technology can offer?

I like the idea of "pure research" because I like to embrace ideals, but is that possible considering all these things in our reality:

o The power of the National Security State

o Corporate dominance of science and higher education

o Political and/or Corporate nature of research funding direction and choices

And even in the world that some want to live in -- the "life is not fair" world, and "never will be fair" -- it seems "pure research" would be an ideal rather than a reality.

ah yes...

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." - Orwell

The Vice-President had a stalker approach him at the opening ceremonies in Vancouver. The stalker, a 48 year old man, is described as mentally unstable.

Even worse, he likes Biden. He wasn't armed. He didn't want to hurt his favorite VP.

So Biden's obsessed fan is a harmless lunatic who has never seen a picture of Lindsay Lohan. As stalkers go, Biden might have hoped for something more sinister and better read.

Two female Mounties (aren't they all?) working undercover in plainclothes nabbed the guy because he "looked out of place." No word on whether he was wearing ordinary clothing or a dog suit.

The Secret Service reportedly gave the Mounties an attagirl and said "remind us not to mess with you." Then they said "Female Mounties!" and started snickering.

Google "Biden Olympics" if you want to read any of several accounts of the incident.

"guess the Progressives better come out in the second half and make some, well, progress"

dayam...and they talk about my stupid blog wars...sheesh.

my 2 cents...progressives are the ones who let the right shame them in to changing their name.

"once you have stirred the pot, cover tightly, stand back and try not to get any on you"

minted in pure gold

And I meanthat literally at a univ.

Gotta go cue comes up

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

I wonder if he was trying to wipe that smudge off his forehead.

If I had 2 gold cents I'd buy the whole blog a beer....

...and not expect any CHANGE....

Obviously a Pessimists beer "glass"

Submitted by Fernando on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 10:23pm.
I wonder if he was trying to wipe that smudge off his forehead.
-------------
You pagan! Today is Ash Wednesday. The opening ceremonies were last Friday.

(Catholic trivia: They call it Ash Wednesday because it always falls on a Wednesday.)

The people here are all good people and even we can't get along most of the time.

then... just for a moment, we do

Special thanks to dr on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 8:58pm. for the map.

The breakthrough historical expose would just describe how ALL the various members of the Power Elite Class of the USA see their privileged lives and express them.

Dubya not even finishing his Vietnam escape hatch stint in the Texas Air National Guard and paying nothing for going AWOL-- now that's privilege.

At least the Kennedy clan was an anomaly, choosing to act on some sense of responsibility to society in their position of power, that old fashioned noblesse oblige.

The rightwing revisionists won't even allow that to remain.

Since I find I easily can play the role of ICONOCLAST, I understand what they are doing: It is no different than what subsequent Pharoahs did to the statues of previous Pharoahs -- chiseling away all the mention of them on the monuments of Egypt, chipping the noses off their statues. DESTROY THE ICON. Destroy the icon's legend, and its P.R./propaganda.

We are seeing this technique of ICONOCLASM being acted out (a new propaganda replacing the old) on the HISOTRY CHANNEL. WHAT IRONY!!! MAKING a propaganda shift, rather than REPORTING ON IT as an historical reality!!!!

INCREDIBLE. The HISTORY CHANNEL is an ICONOCLASTIC TOOL rather than a purveyor of historical information!

Who owns the History Channel?

I was raised Catholic. Don't f'n preach to me.

I know god damned well what fucking day it fucking is.

Giving Up.

Protest.net

No ti
me to read for a few.... The university process and profs. are liberal, these are intellegent people that understand what military funding is and does.
more... cues. .. be back.

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

HEATHEN RECOGNITION!

Submitted by Fernando on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 10:42pm.
I was raised Catholic...I know god damned well what fucking day it fucking is.
---------
Good point.

It's the Olympics opening ceremonies day you god damned well don't know what fucking day it is.

Watch My Fingers

was talkin to FishGrease on the phone tonite, got a few laughs going, he sends his love.

Top down, dont think do what you are told command structure. The nsa and all the alphabet soup security are not military.

When I suggest a university education I don't mean community college.

The univertisy experience is unique, if you have not been through it then you don't know. Yes there are secret orgs like skull and bones but thoes are not involved with origional thinking. Except maybe where perversity is concerned. I don't know your background and am making no specific comments on anybodies speficics.

More cues see you laterat home.

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

-

and so is continuing education.

I went to a community college. They are like stepping stones. Like any opportunity, your reward is how you use it.

Looks like the Senate finally got their email server fixed....

Cent, I apologize for questioning your couthiness.
It seems more than adequate.
__________________________

Where's the love?

My new BFF:
http://www.cleverbot.com/

User: How are you?
Cleverbot: I'm good. How are you?
User: Not bad. I would like a donut, please.
Cleverbot: Sorry, we are all out of food, would you like something else?
User: Yes.
Cleverbot: I like you.
User: That's sweet. You remind me of Fred Rogers.
Cleverbot: I think I'm in love with you.
_____________________________

Valentine's Day vendors weren't shown the love

A year ago, she made $3,000 peddling Valentine's Day gifts from a folding table in a Northridge parking lot. This year, she doubled her offerings, staked out three spots, and imagined dollar signs over every heart.

But on Sunday night, Miranda was pacing the sidewalk in front of her home, her melting candy, wilted roses and untouched pile of teddy bears crowding her tiny front lawn.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/15/local/la-me-banks16-2010feb16
_____________________________

Where did our love go? - The Supremes (YouTube)

Happy Loving Couples - Joe jackson (MP3 - 3MB)

Every day above ground is a good day.

Party Hard Daily.

And if you get caught, confess Venial sins

This PSA brought to you by GhostBusters.com

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/militaryuniversity.html

Wrestling the Military-Academic Complex
By Nicholas Turse, tomdispatch.com May 2, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18570

The reach of the military-academic complex goes far beyond schools like West Point and Annapolis; today almost 350 civilian universities conduct Pentagon-funded research.
Since 1961, thanks to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, we've all been cognizant of the "unwarranted influence" of the military-industrial complex in America. Later in that decade, Senator J. William Fulbright spoke out against the militarization of academia, warning that, "in lending itself too much to the purposes of government, a university fails its higher purposes," and called attention to the existence of what he termed the military-industrial-academic complex or what historian Stuart W. Leslie has termed the "golden triangle" of "military agencies, the high technology industry, and research universities."
While we might intuitively accept the existence of a military-academic complex in America, defining and understanding it has never been simple ­ both because of its ambiguous nature and its dual character. In actuality, the military-academic complex has two distinct arms. The first is the official, out-and-proud, but oft ignored, melding of the military and academia. Since 1802, when Thomas Jefferson signed legislation establishing the United States Military Academy, America has been formally melding higher education and the art of warfare. The second is the militarized civilian university ­ since World War II and the emergence of the national security state, civilian educational institutions have increasingly become engaged in the pursuit of enhanced war-making abilities.
In 1958, the Department of Defense spent an already impressive $91 million in support of "academic research." By 1964, the sum had reached $258 million and by 1970, in the midst of the Vietnam War, $266 million. By 2003, however, any of these numbers, or even their $615 million total, was dwarfed by the Pentagon's prime contract awards to just two schools, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University that, together, raked in a combined total of $842,437,294.
Read more here:
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/militaryuniversity.html

July 8, 2009, 02:47 PM ET
Defense Agency, Faulted For Scaling Back University Computer Research, Gets New Leader
The Pentagon’s research agency has historically maintained a tight relationship with the computing research community. Civilians may recognize some results: the Internet, personal computing, and high-performance computer graphics, says the University of Washington’s Edward D. Lazowska.
But that relationship “has become less close in recent years,” says Mr. Lazowska, the university’s Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering. The situation dominated a House hearing in 2005 after The New York Times reported that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa, had scaled back financing for basic computer-science research at universities and instead was increasing money for projects that are classified or that promise a more immediate payoff.
Now new leaders are taking over the agency. And Mr. Lazowska says “we’re looking forward to restoring” a relationship whose deterioration is “bad for the field, bad for the nation, and bad for the nation’s defense.”
Last week, the Department of Defense announced the appointment of Regina E. Dugan as director of Darpa, the Pentagon’s arm for bankrolling innovative research that could be important to the military but that is not yet ready to compete for money from the weapons-development bureaucracy. She succeeds Anthony J. Tether, who had been tapped by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2001.
A new Darpa director could be “pivotal,” says said Fred B. Schneider, a professor of computer science at Cornell University who is chief scientist for a cybersecurity center backed by the National Science Foundation. The “evidence” of the director’s power “is seen in how Tony Tether was able to radically change the portfolio of investments Darpa made as compared with his predecessor,” Mr. Schneider says.
“There was a time when Darpa was funding university research at a very high level,” Mr. Schneider says. “(Mr. Tether) deliberately ramped that funding down … stopped funding universities, started funding companies, stopped funding long-term work, started funding short-term work.”
Ms. Dugan, who had been president of a company that develops defenses against explosive threats, “has not telegraphed what she’s going to do,” Mr. Schneider says. “That’s going to be the next important move, to see whether she’s going to get interested in return to funding university work, and return to funding university work in cybersecurity,” a subject on which Mr. Schneider testified before Congress last month.
At the 2005 hearing, Mr. Tether insisted that the agency continued to support important basic research in computer science and other disciplines. He also said it was difficult to ascertain exactly how much money is going to computer-science projects because computer science may be an element of projects that are listed in other categories.—Marc Parry
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Defense-Agency-Faulted-For/7259/

Submitted by nora on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 10:43pm.
Who owns the HISTORY CHANNEL? ICONOCLASTS?
--------

The History Channel or the (McHistory Channel) as I like to call it, is owned by A & E Television Networks. These stations were once somewhat respectful. However, they have long went down the exploitative, trashy route.

Go fuck yourself Chris.

You can have this pop stand but you don't own Maria...

NOR LIBERAL NEITHER.

I don't even have time to try to understand the rest of this mishigas.

But I do understand that "Lucille" is just another name for whatever makes certain Little Richards uncomfortable.

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5663

great word... bubula

Lucille...yeah, that was low...even by my standards...

-

Read about these back in the 1990s: Pentagon research goals reached via NIS/NIH and PRIVATE Research Funding organizations and PRIVATE Corporations who make the research grants for different aspects of the research process -- compartmentalizing the process so that individual researchers don't even know what the overall direction or goal is since the grant their working on covers only one bit of the puzzle.

Did you know about these PRIVATE research funding institutions? Many of them are nothing but a non-profit shell with a board and grant maker. Really hard for an average citizen to get any annual reports or donor/endowment details from them, they are so private.

Then some gigantic universities with already legendary ties to the Military -- like UC -- conduct an amazing amount of research off campus completely in "institutes" using endowments and special grant programs. They are like research industries created by the university, with ties to the university but SEPARATE in some aspects from the university. (One of the results of this strategy was the ability to expand university lab research without going through local planning department disclosure process that might make a neighborhood ask "By the way, what are you working with in that lab anyway? Is it anything dangerous coming out of your exhaust system, waste stream in my neighborhood, next to the grade school or restaurant?" Read about these circumventing techniques while reviewing Environmental Impact Reports. Who knows how far thess circumventing techniques have evolved since the advent of Biotech and genetic research labs since the late 1980s.

ha...SWEET REDEMPTION!!!!

Got my couthosity upgrade in the mail just this morning...glad it shows...

Wall Street by Steve Fraser.

Finished the chapter on the Wall Street "Aristocrat".

The next chapter is about the Wall Street "Confidence Man".

Ciao.

cool and partly sunny in nyc today

just saying the university is a unique experience.
Maybe like climbing a given mountain. The only way to know about that particular mountain is to climb it.

and nora, to imply that the internet and computers, a result of individual and university research, were founded as military machines is just not so.

[fyi - my quoted post was written on my internet tablet and without a spell checker, the result is as you see]
=================
Regarding the ideal of 'pure research'...
Submitted by nora on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 9:32pm.

There was an earlier post,
new
Submitted by jbenet on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 9:05pm.
There was an earlier post, dont recall whose, that mentioned the military had heavey influence in developing the internet. I recolect that the it was developed for usa universities to comunicate. Specifaclly the supercomputers. Not the military, not international banking, pure research

...
===============================

Wasn't the development of the computers funded by the intelligence/military agencies? Weren't they part of intelligence agencies' DECODING enemy messages or something even during WWII? And an IBM cards system was used to catalog/track slave laborers in Nazi Germany, right? Why would there be a break in supercomputer development later if the Pentagon and friends still wanted to use the most advanced that technology can offer?

I like the idea of "pure research" because I like to embrace ideals, but is that possible considering all these things in our reality:

o The power of the National Security State

o Corporate dominance of science and higher education

o Political and/or Corporate nature of research funding direction and choices

And even in the world that some want to live in -- the "life is not fair" world, and "never will be fair" -- it seems "pure research" would be an ideal rather than a reality.
====================================

"Wasn't the development of the computers funded by the intelligence/military agencies?"

All I can say to that statement is BullShit and therefore everything that follows. Does not pass the smell test.

Robert Noyce and others- look them up.

Nora you say;"/b/Since I find I easily can play the role of ICONOCLAST, I say maybe too easily.

=========================================

and... nando if you really are looking up all those words, it can you better, nes ce pas?

===================================
again new thread http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5663

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

Before the wide spread of internetworking (802.1) that led to the Internet, most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the local network and the prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe computer model. Several research programs began to explore and articulate principles of networking between physically separate networks, leading to the development of the packet switching model of digital networking. These research efforts included those of the laboratories of Donald Davies (NPL), Paul Baran (RAND Corporation), and Leonard Kleinrock at MIT and at UCLA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
-------------------------------------
The RAND Corporation (Research ANd Development[2]) is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND
-------------------------------------
During World War II, as historian Roger Geiger has noted, educational institutions carrying out weapons development not surprisingly received the largest government research and development contracts. Six of them, in particular, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University, received the then-massive sums of more than $10 million each. Following the war, military entities such as the Office of Naval Research (ONR) sought to establish, strengthen and cultivate relationships with university researchers. By the time the ONR officially received legislative authorization to begin its work in August 1946, it had already entered into contracts for 602 academic projects employing over 4000 scientists and graduate students. Academia has never looked back.

For example, at the close of World War II, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the nation's largest academic defense contractor. By 1962, physicist Alvin Weinberg sarcastically remarked that it was becoming difficult to figure out if MIT was a university connected to a multitude of government research laboratories or "a cluster of government research laboratories with a very good educational institution attached to it." By 1968, a year after Fulbright coined the phrase "military-industrial-academic complex," MIT already ranked 54th among all U.S. defense contractors. In 1969, its prime military contracts topped $100 million for the first time. By 2003, that number had grown to $514,230,083, good enough to make the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the 48th largest defense contractor in the United States.
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/militaryuniversity.html
------------------------
Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. He is also credited (along with Jack Kilby) with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip.[1] While Kilby's invention was six months earlier, neither man rejected the title of co-inventor. Noyce was also a mentor and father-figure to an entire generation of entrepreneurs, including Steve Jobs at Apple, Inc.[2]

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in physics and mathematics from Grinnell College in 1949 and a Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953. He studied the first transistors, developed at Bell Laboratories, in a Grinnell College classroom

After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953, he took his first job as a research engineer at the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He left in 1956 for the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce
-----------------------
Philco Corporation
The History (1946-1961)
"After the Second World War, RCA was first to bring out a line of television sets while Philco concentrated on radios and home appliances. RCA became the leader in consumer electronics. Philco invested a lot of time, money and effort into expanding its product line, adding such things as ranges and freezers. In addition, they not only pursued military electronics, they also did a lot of research work on transistors and computers."
http://www.philcoradio.com/history/later.htm
...The bankrupt, Luscombe Engineering Co., was a subcontractor of two principal contractors, Chrysler Corporation and Philco Corporation, in the enterprise of manufacturing certain military equipment for the United States..." (1959)
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/268/268.F2d.683.12736.html
------------------------
Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation was a company founded by Sherman Fairchild. It was based on the East Coast of the United States, and provided research and development for flash photography equipment. The technology was primarily used for DOD spy satellites. The firm was known for its manufacture of semiconductors.[1]

Fairchild Camera and Instrument was incorporated in Delaware in 1927 as the Fairchild Aviation Corporation, which comprised seven aircraft businesses that were the outgrowth of Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation, which was incorporated in 1920. The merger made Fairchild Aviation the second-largest manufacturer of commercial airplanes and the fourth-largest aviation organization in the United States.

Fairchild Aerial Camera manufactured aerial cameras for military and commercial aerial mapping that were used in Russia, Poland, and throughout South America. They were the official cameras of the United States Army and Navy Air Services.

In 1944 Fairchild changed the company name from Fairchild Aviation to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Company. Its product portfolio expanded during World War II from aerial photography equipment to include machine gun cameras, x-ray cameras, radar cameras, gun synchronizers, and radio compasses.

After the war, military sales still represented a large portion of Fairchild's revenue. The company won a U.S. Air Force contract for the C-82 Packet cargo and troop-carrying airplanes and spare parts. The company then began to develop products for the commercial sector such as manufacturing x-ray equipment. In 1948, the company introduced the Fairchild Lithotype for the newspaper and publishing industry. It was described as “a revolutionary machine that types standard printers' type in a great variety of faces and sizes.”

During the 1950s, Fairchild invested heavily in research and development, and introduced new products that ranged from devices combining radar and photography for training pilots to automatic corrected color engraving machines. In 1958 it developed high-speed processing equipment for motion pictures that could develop 500 feet of film almost instantly.

In 1957, the company was approached by members of the Traitorous Eight to rescue the group from the authoritarian regime of William Shockley. Sherman Fairchild agreed to provide the venture capital for Fairchild Semiconductor, from which would spawn dozens of semiconductors and Silicon Valley.

In 1960 Fairchild merged with Allen B. DuMont Laboratories and acquired a large interest in Società Generale Semiconduttori, an Italian semiconductor producer. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s it acquired several companies in various industries: printing, sensors and magnetic heads, precision optical and photographic equipment, water quality monitoring equipment, and precision molding equipment.

Its corporate headquarters were in Syosset, New York, which were later moved to Mountain View, California when Lester Hogan assumed control of Fairchild Semiconductor.

In 1979, Fairchild Camera and Instrument (including Fairchild Semiconductor) became a subsidiary of Schlumberger Limited.

Fairchild Imaging is a successor Company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Camera_and_Instrument
------------------------------------
The Traitorous Eight, as they became known, are eight men who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to form Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. [1] More neutral terms include the "Fairchild Eight" and the "Shockley Eight." They have sometimes been called "Fairchildren," although this term has been also used to refer either to Fairchild alumni or to its spinoff companies.

The Eight are Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts.

History
According to authors Joseph Blasi, Douglas Kruse, and Aaron Bernstein, these eight men left because they did not agree with William Shockley's authoritarian managerial style and his practice of expecting a certain result instead of letting the research guide the process.[2] There is no record of Shockley ever using the term "traitorous eight," and his wife denied that he ever used it.[3]

The eight employees went to Arnold Beckman and asked him to replace Shockley. Beckman tried to find a new manager and left Shockley as a director with limited powers. As the search dragged on, it became apparent that Beckman could not find a replacement, so he restored Shockley's responsibilities. The eight men then resigned and signed a research contract with Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation to form Fairchild Semiconductor.

Their entrepreneurial desires did not end with Fairchild. Like many other Fairchild employees, seven of the eight went on to found various spinoff companies. These spinoffs and their founders are sometimes known as "Fairchildren". The most successful were Noyce and Moore, founders of Intel, and Kleiner, co-founder of the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm. Additionally, Roberts, Hoerni and Last founded what later became Teledyne, while Blank co-founded Xicor. Grinich became a professor at UC Berkeley and Stanford University

Fairchildren
The term "Fairchildren" refers to the seminal role that Fairchild Semiconductor played in spawning spin-off companies in Silicon Valley. It is a play on the words "Fairchild" and "children," the latter referring to the formation of (unofficial) spin-off companies from a parent company.

In research, reporting and popular lore related to Silicon Valley, the term "Fairchildren" has been variously used to refer to:

The spin-off companies created by former employees of Fairchild Semiconductor. This is the usage of historian Leslie Berlin (the acknowledged expert on Fairchild) in her 2001 journal article [4], in her 2001 doctoral dissertation[5], and in her biography of Robert Noyce[6].
The founders of such firms. This is the earliest usage, e.g. Tom Wolfe's 1983 profile of Noyce [7] or a 5,000-word profile of Silicon Valley [8] in 1999.
Former Fairchild Semiconductor employees, as in a 1988 New York Times article.[9]
The original founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, more commonly known as the "Traitorous Eight", "Fairchild Eight" or "Shockley Eight". This has been used by a PBS website and a book on stock options. [10]
Note that there is an overlap among the last three categories, as some of the Fairchild Eight (such as Noyce and Eugene Kleiner) left Fairchild to form other companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_Eight
-----------------------------------------------

and nora, to imply that the internet and computers, a result of individual and university research, were founded as military machines is just not so.
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5661#comment-396124

...the military shows up in all of the references. As I recollect, most of the protests and bombings on college campuses had to do with the militaristic research being done. The draft (remember deferments were issued to those who attended universities)was a side issue with draft card burning being diversionary drama for media-sake. After all, how many parents would pay tuition and potentially risk their child's life if they knew about some of the research going on.

But come on, why do you think a US president, also a retired general, would be warning us about the military industrial complex? For that matter, why is our current president freezing government spending with exception of the military?

Look on the bright side...despite the original intention to facilitate the university's military research programs, the funding used to create and maintain it allowed for liberal applications, such as informing and connecting US no matter where we are in the world. And that's a good thing.

Conservatives attend universities too, why they even run some of them (Ken Starr, Baylor's new president). Of course, they are going apply and fund education in accordance with their selfish perspective, as well as their desire for power and material gain.

Liberals use to recognize this about conservatives, let them spend the money while they controlled the development so as to benefit everyone.

Somewhere along the way, liberals lost their confidence or were overwhelmed by purpose and opted out or localized, or, let empathy get the best of them, renamed themselves progressives and let the conservatives take over. In any case, the ones who did let go are now the ones being used.

Well, that's my take on things. Just 'cause you don't like the message, don't shoot the messenger. Nora has a good heart,and I admire her most when she writes from it complemented with principle and conviction. She is just trying to get us to see the world warts and all, and, as exaggerated as it may be at times, in the hope liberals will act like and be liberals again.

Revisionism
Submitted by SEDER on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 8:53pm.
==
"In 1958 it developed high-speed processing equipment for motion pictures that could develop 500 feet of film almost instantly."

I'm splitting hairs I guess.

The "Military" is not a creative place. They co-opt creativity. Creative people need funding. Without the military funding the creativity would go on. I got a college deferment for 1970-71, does that mean I'm suspect?

[I was then, after the deferment lapsed when I left college not completing my first year because I couldn't pay for it, in the draft lottery and got a high number and wasn't selected. An interesting effect of the birthday draft lottery was that entire army units would all have the same b-day]

Because the military is mentioned in all the above it is like this Summary of My Kinsman, Major Molineux being equal to the actual Nathaniel Hawthorne short story.

The story happens to be one of my favorites and Melissa Howard saying that "Hawthorne never considered it one of his better stories and it was not included in either of his first two story collections" rings hollow to me. If Hawthorne did not say, in his own hand, "that it was not one of his better stories" I don't believe it.

A careful reading of My Kinsman, Major Molineux shows it to be a warp and weft of beautifully threaded symbols. The time of day and the position of the moon, where he pays the ferryman, the oak cudgel and the man with two faces. I think that people didn't get it and that's why he held it back.

The man with two faces, that is what made me recall this story in this context. Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, placed over the gates of Rome, held a key in one hand and a cudgel in the other. The city on one side and the temples of ARES, the god of war, on the outside.

The military has its place and it is not "within the walls" of the symbolic "city."

CeeCee do you know why I opened with that particular quote?
No? Oh well. [hint; the authors of all your refs. have a point of view and can't help but phrase their words to support it]

As I said in my first post, in response to the unreferenced military/internet post, I didn't know who posted it. Since nora responded I guess she was the poster.

As I look at it, read and contemplate, I'm seeing the scales tip and if anyone is "trying to get us to see the world warts and all." it's Crank Bait.
[a little LESS cowbell please bait]

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

Submitted by jbenet on Fri, 02/19/2010 - 10:34am.
...the authors of all your refs. have a point of view and can't help but phrase their words to support it...
---------
Well said.

(Needs more cowbell, though.)

...what you're objecting too?

Submitted by jbenet on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 9:05pm.
There was an earlier post, dont recall whose, that mentioned the military had heavey influence in developing the internet. I recolect that the it was developed for usa universities to comunicate. Specifaclly the supercomputers. Not the military, not international banking, pure research

Here you are relying on your recollection. Do you have a source to substantiate it?

My sources are not being referenced for a point of view. There referenced to show those persons, universities, corporations involved were affiliated with, and, by inference, funded by the military,as they were developing the ARPAnet, which later evolved into internet, or the hardware components for the same.

http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~lk/LK/Inet/birth.html
It all began with a comic book! At the age of 6, Leonard Kleinrock was reading a Superman comic at his apartment in Manhattan, when, in the centerfold, he found plans for building a crystal radio. To do so, he needed his father's used razor blade, a piece of pencil lead, an empty toilet paper roll, and some wire, all of which he had no trouble obtaining. In addition, he needed an earphone which he promptly appropriated from a public telephone booth. The one remaining part was something called a "variable capacitor". For this, he convinced his mother to take him on the subway down to Canal Street, the center for radio electronics. Upon arrival to one of the shops, he boldly walked up to the clerk and proudly asked to purchase a variable capacitor, whereupon the clerk replied with, "what size do you want?". This blew his cover, and he confessed that he not only had no idea what size, but he also had no idea what the part was for in the first place. After explaining why he wanted one, the clerk sold him just what he needed. Kleinrock built the crystal radio and was totally hooked when "free" music came through the earphones - no batteries, no power, all free! An engineer was born.

Leonard Kleinrock spent the next few years cannibalizing discarded radios as he sharpened his electronics skills. He went to the legendary Bronx High School of Science and appended his studies with courses in Radio Engineering. When the time came to go to college, he found he could not afford to attend, even at the tuition-free City College of New York (CCNY), and so he enrolled in their evening session program while working full time as an electronics technician/engineer and bringing a solid paycheck home to his family. He graduated first in his class after 5 1/2 years of intense work (and was elected student body president of the evening session). His work and college training were invaluable, and led to his winning a full graduate fellowship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Electrical Engineering Department.

At MIT, he found that the vast majority of his classmates were doing their Ph.D. research in the overpopulated area of Information Theory. This was not for him, and instead he chose to break new ground in the virtually unknown area of data networks. Indeed, in 1959, he submitted a Ph.D. proposal to study data networks, thus launching the technology which eventually led to the Internet. He completed his work in 1962 which was later published in 1964 by McGraw-Hill as an MIT book entitled "Communication Nets". In this work, he developed the basic principles of packet switching, thus providing the fundamental underpinnings for that technology. These principles (along with his subsequent research) continue to provide a basis for today's Internet technology. Kleinrock is arguably the world's leading authority and researcher in the field of computer network modeling, analysis and design and a father of the Internet.

But the commercial world was not ready for data networks and his work lay dormant for most of the 1960's as he continued to publish his results on networking technology while at the same time rising rapidly through the professorial ranks at UCLA where he had joined the faculty in 1963. In the mid-1960's, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) - which was created in 1958 as the United States' response to Sputnik - became interested in networks. ARPA had been supporting a number of computer scientists around the country and, as new researchers were brought in, they naturally asked ARPA to provide a computer on which they could do their research; however, ARPA reasoned that this community of scientists would be able to share a smaller number of computers if these computers were connected together by means of a data network. Because of his unique expertise in data networking, they called him to Washington to play a key role in preparing a functional specification for the ARPANET - a government-supported data network that would use the technology which by then had come to be known as "packet switching".

The specification for the ARPANET was prepared in 1968, and in January 1969, a Cambridge-based computer company, Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) won the contract to design, implement and deploy the ARPANET. It was their job to take the specification and develop a computer that could act as the switching node for the packet-switched ARPANET. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch.

Due to Kleinrock's fundamental role in establishing data networking technology over the preceding decade, ARPA decided that UCLA, under Kleinrock's leadership, would become the first node to join the ARPANET. This meant that the first switch (known as an Interface Message Processor - IMP) would arrive on the Labor Day weekend, 1969, and the UCLA team of 40 people that Kleinrock organized would have to provide the ability to connect the first (host) computer to the IMP. This was a challenging task since no such connection had ever been attempted. (This minicomputer had just been released in 1968 and Honeywell displayed it at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference where Kleinrock saw the machine suspended by its hooks at the conference; while running, there was this brute whacking it with a sledge hammer just to show it was robust. Kleinrock suspects that that particular machine is the one that was delivered by BBN to UCLA.) As it turns out, BBN was running two weeks late (much to Kleinrock's delight, since he and his team badly needed the extra development time); BBN, however, shipped the IMP on an airplane instead of on a truck, and it arrived on time. Aware of the pending arrival date, Kleinrock and his team worked around the clock to meet the schedule. On the day after the IMP arrived (the Tuesday after Labor Day), the circus began - everyone who had any imaginable excuse to be there, was there. Kleinrock and his team were there; BBN was there; Honeywell was there (the IMP was built out of a Honeywell minicomputer); Scientific Data Systems was there (the UCLA host machine was an SDS machine); AT&T long lines was there (we were attaching to their network); GTE was there (they were the local telephone company); ARPA was there; the UCLA Computer Science Dept. administration was there; the UCLA campus administration was there; plus an army of Computer Science graduate students was there. Expectations and anxieties were high because, everyone was concerned that their piece might fail. Fortunately, the team had done its job well and bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP that same day. By the next day they had messages moving between the machines. THUS WAS BORN THE ARPANET, AND THE COMMUNITY WHICH HAS NOW BECOME THE INTERNET!
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~lk/LK/Inet/birth.html

http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_darpa.htm
DARPA (later ARPA) is the innovative R&D organization that funded the development of the ARPANET.

In 1957, only twelve years after publication of Arthur C. Clarke's seminal paper describing the idea of satellites, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, beating the United States into space. This meant that the USSR could theoretically launch bombs into space and then drop them down anywhere on earth. The American military became highly alarmed.

In 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed MIT President James Killian as Presidential Assistant for Science and created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to jump-start U.S. technology and find safeguards against a space-based missile attack. The US military was particularly concerned about the effects of a nuclear attack on their communications infrastructure, because if they couldn't communicate, they wouldn't be able to regroup or respond, thereby making the threat of a first strike by the Soviet Union more likely.

To meet this need, ARPA established the IPTO in 1962 with a mandate to build a survivable computer network to interconnect the DoD's main computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and SAC HQ. As described in the following pages, this initiative led to the development of the ARPANET seven years later, and then to the NSFNET and the Internet we know today. ARPA also funded some of the early networking research done by Lawrence Roberts, who later became the ARPANET Program Manager.

ARPA had unique authorization and direction to make quantum jumps in technology using any means they believed appropriate. For example, they had the unusual mandate to use research before it had been peer-reviewed, since the peer-review process prevented mistakes but slowed down progress. It worked -- within 18 months of its creation ARPA developed and deployed the first US satellite.

From its inception ARPA significantly funded many US university research labs, and as early as 1968 had a close relationship with Carnegie-Mellon University, Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, UCB, UCLA, UCSB, University of Illinois, and the University of Utah, as well as leading industry labs including Bolt Beranek and Newman, Computer Corporation of America, Rand, SRI, and Systems Development Corporation. Most of these labs were connected to the ARPANET soon after it was created in order to enable cross-fertilization of research activity.
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_darpa.htm

More here:
http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/Intro_-_Van_Atta_200807180920581.pdf

http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/

Can't say exactly what everyone's intentions were for the "net." Likely the following purposes, among other peaceful and academic ones, could have been on the minds of some of those involved:

o The power of the National Security State
o Corporate dominance of science and higher education
o Political and/or Corporate nature of research funding direction and choices
http://samsedershow.com/node/5661#comment-396011

I don't suspect you of anything; and if you were involved in campus protests during that time, whatever your reason(s)that was your right. I certainly am not in favor of the draft, then or now, and am happy your number wasn't called. But some students did protest, and some violently and criminally, against military and corporate research programs on campus.
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-040/?action=more_essay

I am not sure why you refer to the following -
"Because the military is mentioned in all the above it is like this Summary of My Kinsman, Major Molineux being equal to the actual Nathaniel Hawthorne short story.

The military has its place and it is not "within the walls" of the symbolic "city.""

-- literature and poetry were always over my head. I am assuming that you might be inferring universities have a much higher and nobler purpose for their research other than how they obtain funding for it. Correct me if I am wrong.

"As I look at it, read and contemplate, I'm seeing the scales tip and if anyone is "trying to get us to see the world warts and all." it's Crank Bait."

I think they both have valid "points of view" that we all are free to ignore, consider and/or respond to. I respect Nora's and Crank Bait's opinions, and have gained a lot from reading them, as I do yours. I like to laugh so I enjoy, and am pleased I get Crank Bait's sense of humor most of the time.

I enjoyed your challenge...learned a lot. I hope the new references provide the "facts."

Crank, are you a percussionist?;)