Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Scheming to steal workers' pensions
looks behind the hype about how public-sector workers get "exorbitant" pensions--and finds a cabal of right-wing politicians and CEOs out to bash unions.
Public-sector retirees protest an attack on their pension benefits (Christine Stuart | CTNewsjunkie.com)
ACCORDING TO the business press and crusading politicians, the unfettered greed of some in our society is threatening to bankrupt city and state governments, and cause public services to be hollowed out.
Who are these selfish criminals? Wall Street bankers? Defense contractors? Tax-dodging corporate executives?
No, the culprits, according to the latest media hype, are public employees.
The problem, we're told, is that public-sector workers have the nerve to collect "fixed" or "defined benefit" pensions--meaning that their pensions are negotiated according to pay and years of service, as opposed to "fixed contribution" pensions such as 401(k)s that are based on the values of stocks and investments (and which therefore can be worthless if you have bad luck).
A recent cover story in the investors' magazine Barron's by Jonathan Laing--headlined "The $2 Trillion Hole"--touts a recent Pew study which found that the shortfall between what's owed to public-sector workers for their pensions and the funds that have been set aside to pay them is now valued at up to $2 trillion. (The exact dollar amount of the gap is greatly disputed but lies somewhere between $1 and $3 billion).
Laing finds it outrageous that public employees usually retire with a guaranteed pension. His article, and similar one in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, consciously whip up anti-union and anti-public sector vitriol.
Of course, it's not surprising that the wealthy would bemoan decent compensation for working people. But their intention with the current hype is to generate a backlash from private-sector workers against their brothers and sisters in the public sector. This, they hope, will provide the political space for further attacking public-sector unions.
http://socialistworker.org/2010/04/12/scheming-to-steal-pensions
Is the Fed Helping the Big Banks to Cook the Books?
By Mike Whitney
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal revealed details of a cover up by the nations largest banks that have been engaged in potentially-criminal accounting activities to conceal the amount of debt on their balance sheets. The SEC has been notified of the allegations and has launched a probe to determine whether further action is needed. Among the banks implicated, are Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup. According to the WSJ:
"Major banks have masked their risk levels in the past five quarters by temporarily lowering their debt just before reporting it to the public, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A group of 18 banks....understated the debt levels used to fund securities trades by lowering them an average of 42% at the end of each of the past five quarterly periods, the data show. The banks, which publicly release debt data each quarter, then boosted the debt levels in the middle of successive quarters." ("Big Banks Mask Risk Levels", Kate Kelly, Tom McGinty, Dan Fitzpatrick, Wall Street Journal)
The article, titled "Big Banks Mask Risk Levels", has set off alarm bells on Wall Street because of the similarity between Lehman Bros. "repo 105" transactions and these new signs of obfuscation by other large banks. "Repo 105" is an arcane accounting device that Lehman used to hide $50 billion in debt off its balance sheet in an attempt to mislead investors about the true condition of its financial health. The WSJ story suggests that the practice may be more widespread than originally thought. The "repo 105" scandal is further complicated by suspicions that Lehman was assisted in its effort by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which, at the time, was headed by Timothy Geithner. Here is a short recap of what transpired between the Geithner's NY Fed and Lehman according to ex-regulator William Black and former NY governor Eliot Spitzer from an article on Huffington Post:
"The FRBNY knew that Lehman was engaged in smoke and mirrors designed to overstate its liquidity and, therefore, was unwilling to lend as much money to Lehman. The FRBNY did not, however, inform the SEC, the public, or the OTS (which regulated an S&L that Lehman owned) of what should have been viewed by all as ongoing misrepresentations.
The Fed's behavior made it clear that officials didn't believe they needed to do more with this information. The FRBNY remained willing to lend to an institution with misleading accounting and neither remedied the accounting nor notified other regulators who may have had the opportunity to do so...... We now know from Valukas and from former Treasury Secretary Paulson that the Treasury and the Fed knew that Lehman was massively overstating its on-book asset values." (Time for the Truth" William Black and Eliot Spitzer, Huffington Post)
So the question is whether the NY Fed helped other banks conceal important financial information from investors, too. And--if that's the case--then how can the public be confident that the biggest banks in the country are truly solvent?
33 states out of money to fund jobless benefits
From police horses to fireworks to wrangling stray chickens, these cash-strapped cities are eliminating all kinds of services.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- With unemployment still at a severe high, a majority of states have drained their jobless benefit funds, forcing them to borrow billions from the federal government to help out-of-work Americans.
A total of 33 states and the Virgin Islands have depleted their funds and borrowed more than $38.7 billion to provide a safety net, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project. Four others are at the brink of insolvency.
Debt-challenged California has borrowed the most, totaling more than $8.4 billion, followed by Michigan and New York, which have loans worth more than $3 billion. Nine other states have borrowed at least $1 billion from the federal government.
"The nation's financing system for jobless benefits is under unprecedented stress," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the New York-based advocacy group for the unemployed. "While the recession has certainly made things worse, this funding crisis has been developing for years."
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/08/news/economy/state_funds_jobless_benefits/
11 quirky budget cuts: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1003/gallery.city_state_budget_cuts/index.html
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Read 'Em If You Got 'Em
According to Tank Books, the flip-top cigarette pack is one of the most successful pieces of packaging design in history. The publisher pays homage to this iconic form by launching a series of books designed to resemble cigarette packs. The books are the same size as a pack of smokes, packaged in flip-top cartons with silver foil wrapping and sealed in cellophane.
The titles are by famous authors such as Kafka, Robert Louis Stevenson and Kipling.
Each story is complete and unabridged with a type size that's easy to read. Individual books cost £8.67and the complete set comes in a striking tin priced at £47.19. You can order this unique conversation piece HERE.
Turkey to Challenge Israel, Support Hamas
by Maayana Miskin
Turkey is planning a gesture that will challenge Israel and provide support to Gaza's Hamas leaders next month. A flotilla of ships funded by Turkey will approach Gaza in May, in an attempt to challenge Israeli control at sea - or, as organizers put it, "break Israel's illegal blockade on Gaza."
While residents of Gaza have access to the sea, the Israel Navy prevents travel by sea between Gaza and surrounding countries, in an attempt to prevent weapons smuggling. Gaza terrorists have previously used incoming ships to smuggle arms, and have used the sea to transport bombs to the coast of southern Israel.
The ships are sponsored by the Turkish group IHH (Insani Yardim Vakfi), which receives government support. IHH also held a massive fundraiser to collect the more than $2 million it spent on the boats.
The IHH group will be joined by ships from Britain, Greece, and Ireland in the attempt to break Israel's control at sea. The delegation will include members of parliament and journalists, organizers said.
The flotilla follows previous such missions in challenging Israel's ban on international travel to and from Gaza, as part of a campaign dubbed "Free Gaza" by its organizers. The latest group of ships will bring several hundred passengers and 5,000 tons of cargo, including humanitarian supplies, cement, and building materials.
The decision to bring cement is another challenge to Israeli policy in Gaza. Israel allows humanitarian aid through its border with Gaza, but allows cement and metal pipes to enter the area only for use in specific projects, in coordination with international aid groups. Israeli defense experts worry that if Hamas were allowed to import cement and pipes freely, it would use them to build bunkers and rockets as it has done in the past.
A spokesman for the government-backed IHH said the project would serve to "wake the world's consciousness about the crimes committed against Palestinians."
Israel has nearly 300 nuclear weapons
 Mr. Netanyahu dropped out by announcing at a press conference that he wanted to highlight Israel's opposition to a nuclear Iran. It is known in political circles that he also decided not to attend because some Muslim delegates were planning to raise the issue of Israel's assumed arsenal of hundreds of weapons. Over the weekend, Jane's Defence Weekly, which deals with military information, estimated that the State of Israel has up to 300 nuclear warheads, with a power similar to that of Britain. |
What Jesus reads when he's drunk.
 | |
 Ten years in simmering gestation. Well over a year of howling labor pains, far longer than it was supposed to take. Born in San Francisco under a full, neo-pagan moon during a semi-eclipse of the Dog Star alongside a drunken meteor shower whilst Shakti was doing to Shiva that thing with her tongue that drives him absolutely wild. Made of: wood pulp and ink, sweat and blood, tears and coffee, scotch and sake, spit and come, laughter and bliss. Weight similar to: small ferret/large avocado/your left thigh bone. Smells like: lavender/leather/spurious desire. More than 85 million people have died since I took the first real step toward this thing's creation, back in August of '08. 126 million more were born. People had sex an estimated 71 billion times, globally speaking. I contributed a relatively paltry 217 incidents to this fine number. You do what you can. But it's finally here. It has arrived. I have a wild new book, called "The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism." It's shipping right now from my printing house, also pre-orderable via Amazon(though they won't have actual stock for a week or two), available everywhere else very soon. I'd simply love it if you'd grab a copy, or three. Will you?  Some details: I call TDSa "mega-compendium." It's a glorious collection of my wildest, weirdest and most popular columns from the Chronicle and SFGate, spanning nearly 10 years but focusing mostly on the more recent stuff, because I prefer to keep it reasonably fresh, my writing has improved tremendously over the years, and some of the really old stuff is downright embarrassing. The book includes more than 90 columns, with commentary. There's a whole bunch of horrifying hate mail, hundreds of photos, all sorts of messy rock 'n' roll design goodness. I'm happy to say, looks and reads like nothing else out there. I'll be doing readings, signings, prayings, hurlings, bake sales, yoga demos, whatever else I can think of, soon, to the point where you will likely be quite sick of hearing about it. I apologize for that in advance. But what can I do. I'm a writer. It's a livelihood. And it's a damn cool book, if I do say so myself.  Did I mention it's self-published? That it's a grand and weird experiment, that, by purchasing a copy, you're taking an active stake in my livelihood? And my rent? And my sake budget? Because you are. Full details at daringspectacle.com. And yes, for the record, it helps me much more if you buy it at full price through AtlasBooksright now, sted of Amazon. But I begrudge no one wishing to order it anywhere, at any time, for any reason whatsoever. In fact, I'd simply love it if you'd ask your fave local bookstore order some stock as well. The ISBN is 978-0-9842997-0-6, if that helps, which is sometimes does. Upcoming newsletters will list out my appearances and readings and such. By the way, if you're a bookstore owner in a largish city and want to host a reading/signing, let me know. We could have much fun. There is my humble plea. I hope you enjoy the book. I hope you love it like sunshine loves chocolate, all sticky and melty and good. Go forth and purchase. | |
Young People Consuming More News
By paulgillin
McKinsey Quarterly has some good news for newspapers. It's been looking at readership trends in the UK and sees growing interest in news from under 35-readers. In fact, daily time spent consuming news in the critical 25-to-34 age category is up 37% from three years ago (you have to register to read the report or you can download a PDF here). People in that age group prefer to consume the news on the Internet rather than in print, but the good news is that they trust newspapers more than any other source: "66 percent describe newspaper advertising as 'informative and confidence inspiring,' compared with only 44 percent for TV and 12 percent for the Web," the report says.
In our view, this is news organizations' best shot. As the volume of online information grows by leaps and bounds, the need for trusted sources grows with it. Publishers need to discard their not-invented-here thinking and look for ways to aggregate information in ways that command a premium value. We also really like the transaction fee idea. We've been pushing that one for about a year.
http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/young-people-consuming-more-news.html
Monday, April 12, 2010
The Wellington Declaration
What is ACTA?
ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA) is a controversial international treaty being negotiated in a series of secret meetings.
ACTA is proposed as a plurilateral trade agreement for establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. It is being negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, the negotiations have extended beyond trade and physical counterfeiting to potentially cover non-commercial infringement of copyright material by ordinary citizens and issues of digital rights management.
What is PublicACTA?
PublicACTA has been organised by InternetNZ so that the public can critique the known and likely content of ACTA proposals.
Preamble
The participants at the PublicACTA Conference of 10 April 2010 respectfully submit this, the Wellington Declaration, to the parties negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), for their consideration during the Wellington round of negotiations.
Consistent with the European Parliament's Resolution of 10 March 2010 on the Transparency and State of Play of the ACTA Negotiations (P7_TA(2010)0058), ACTA should be limited to an Agreement regarding enforcement against counterfeiting (the large scale commercial production of illicit physical goods).
The first part of the Declaration deals with general matters and principles.
The second part of the Declaration deals with some of the specific points under discussion in Wellington.
Part One: General Matters and Principles
Preserving the Internet
We recognise that the Internet has enabled creativity and innovation, the sharing of knowledge, citizen engagement and democracy, and is an engine of economic growth and opportunity. This is the result of certain attributes of the Internet: its open protocols and its generativity; the fact that anyone can connect and anyone can build new applications, and find new uses without discrimination. ACTA should preserve these attributes.
Go here to read and sign the Wellington Declaration
Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
By JOHN TIERNEY
As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried.
"It was a whole personality shift for me. I wasn't any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people."
Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms.
Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs' potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness.
After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe.
"All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating," he recalled. "Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water's gone. And then you're gone."
Today, more than a year later, Dr. Martin credits that six-hour experience with helping him overcome his depression and profoundly transforming his relationships with his daughter and friends. He ranks it among the most meaningful events of his life, which makes him a fairly typical member of a growing club of experimental subjects.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html?src=me&ref=general
As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried.
"It was a whole personality shift for me. I wasn't any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people."
Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms.
Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs' potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness.
After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe.
"All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating," he recalled. "Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water's gone. And then you're gone."
Today, more than a year later, Dr. Martin credits that six-hour experience with helping him overcome his depression and profoundly transforming his relationships with his daughter and friends. He ranks it among the most meaningful events of his life, which makes him a fairly typical member of a growing club of experimental subjects.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html?src=me&ref=general
In West Virginia, Coal Miners' Slaughter
BY MICHAEL WINSHIP
The high cost of energy in America was paid in human lives this week, with the deaths of more than two dozen miners in a massive explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia. It's the worst mine disaster in a quarter of a century.
Upper Big Branch is owned by Massey Energy Company, which operates 47 mines in central Appalachia. According to the Los Angeles Times, it employs nearly 6,000 and in 2009 reported revenues of $2.3 billion, with a net income of $104.4 million.
At the center of this week's catastrophe is Massey's president and CEO Don Blankenship, a man so reviled nowadays he had to be escorted away by police when he and other company officials tried to address a group of distraught family and friends outside the Upper Big Branch mine in the early morning hours after the explosion. The crowd hurled invective -- and a chair.
Blankenship hates unions (Upper Big Branch is a non-union mine), thinks global warming is a figment of our imaginations and that those who do believe in climate change are crazy; supports destructive mountaintop-removal mining; serves on the board of the conservative, free market U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now, lucky us, shares his pearls of right-wing wisdom via Twitter. "America doesn't need Green jobs," he tweeted pithily last month, "but Red, White, & Blue ones."
David Roberts of the environmental magazine Grist described him as "the scariest polluter in the U.S. ...The guy is evil and I don't use that word lightly."
The Cover-Ups That Exploded
by Alexander Cockburn
The Pentagon is reeling after two lethal episodes uncovered by diligent journalism show trigger-happy U.S. Army helicopter pilots and U.S. Special Forces slaughtering civilians, then seeking to cover up their crimes.
The World Wide Web was transfixed Monday when Wikileaks put up on YouTube a 38-minute video, along with a 17-minute edited version, taken from a U.S. Army Apache helicopter, one of two firing on a group of Iraqis in Baghdad at a street corner in July 2007. Twelve civilians died, including a Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a Reuters driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.
At a press conference in Washington, D.C., Wikileaks said it had got the footage from whistle-blowers in the military and had been able to break the encryption code. The Pentagon has confirmed the video is genuine.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. military has finally admitted that Special Forces troops killed two pregnant Afghan women and a girl in a February 2010, raid, in which two Afghan government officials were also killed. Brilliant reporting by Jerome Starkey of The Times of London has blown apart the U.S. military's cover-up story that the women were killed by knife wounds administered several hours before the raid.
It now appears that the knife wounds may have been inflicted by the Special Forces troops retrieving their bullets from the dead or dying women's bodies. Starkey's story last Sunday in The Times reported that "Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also 'dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath" and then "washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened."
The 17-minute video recording the U.S. military's massacre from the air in Baghdad is utterly damning. The visual and audio record reveal the two Apache helicopter pilots and the U.S. Army intelligence personnel monitoring the real-time footage falling over themselves to make the snap judgment that the civilians roughly a thousand feet below are armed insurgents and that one of them, peeking round a corner, was carrying an RPG — that is, a rocket-propelled antitank grenade launcher.
The dialogue is particularly chilling, revealing gleeful pilots gloating over the effect of their initial machine-gun salvoes. "Look at those dead bastards," one pilot says. "Nice," answers the other. Then, as a wounded man painfully writhes toward the curb, the pilots eagerly wait for an excuse to finish him off. "All you gotta do is pick up a weapon," one pilot says yearningly.
Then suddenly, a civilian van, seeing the carnage, pulls up. A man jumps out and starts dragging the wounded man around to load him in. The pilots implore the intelligence monitors to give them the go-ahead to strafe the van, about which they have made the instant, fatally erroneous judgment that this is an insurgent rescue squad. A few moments later, the intelligence monitors, with zero visual evidence underpinning their judgment, give the go-ahead.
http://www.creators.com/liberal/alexander-cockburn/the-cover-ups-that-exploded.html
Ratzinger is the perfect pope
by Richard Dawkins
"Should Pope Benedict XVI be held responsible for the escalating scandals over clerical sexual abuse in Europe?"
Yes he should, and it's going to escalate a lot further, as more and more victims break through the guilt of their childhood indoctrination and come forward.
"Should he be investigated for how cases of abuse were handled under his watch as archbishop of Munich or as the Vatican's chief doctrinal enforcer?"
Yes, of course he should. This former head of the Inquisition should be arrested the moment he dares to set foot outside his tinpot fiefdom of the Vatican, and he should be tried in an appropriate civil - not ecclesiastical - court. That's what should happen. Sadly, we all know our faith-befuddled governments will be too craven to do it.
"Should the pope resign?"
No. As the College of Cardinals must have recognized when they elected him, he is perfectly - ideally - qualified to lead the Roman Catholic Church. A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part; a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence: in short, exactly the right man for the job. He should not resign, moreover, because he is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization whose character he fits like a glove, and of which he is the absolute and historically appropriate monarch.
Palin: America does not need ‘this snake oil science stuff’
Up yours, scientists.
That's essentially the message sent by former politician Sarah Palin during a recent speech to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where she disparaged the work of thousands of the world's top minds to the delight of a large crowd that laughed, clapped and cheered her on the whole way.
She was addressing the increasingly urgent matter of global climate change when Palin whipped out a gem of a quote, telling the conference-goers that American does not need "this snake oil science stuff" and calling climate science "Gore-gate."
The former half-term governor was attempting to make a reference to the so-called "Climate-gate" affair that was orchestrated over a set of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia, providing the world with insight to an internal dispute between teams of scientists. The whole "scandal" is better known to MSNBC host Rachael Maddow as "total bull-pucky": fictional claims blown so out of proportion by right-wing media that the masses at least partially accept it.
In the midst of describing what she thinks America really needs, Palin belted out a truly amazing run-on sentence: "We should create a competitive climate for investment and for renewables and alternatives that are economical and doable and none of this snake oil science stuff that is based on this global warming, Gore-gate stuff that came down where there was revelation that the scientists, some of these scientists were playing political games."
"Nothing about the supposed 'bombshell' climate-gate scandal at all challenges the scientific consensus that global warming is happening, that it is induced by human activity," Maddow scoffed during an April 2 broadcast.
Maddow called the alleged scandal, like the falsified claims that ultimately brought down ACORN, the "un-mooring of politics from fact," calling out a least two dozen other Republican-created media narratives that are complete "bull."
For Palin to play off a fictional theme is expected at this point, as she once fashioned a popular campaign meme off the laughable invention that President Obama "pals around with terrorists." In spite of this, it is perhaps her insistence that the United States does not need "this snake oil science stuff" that best highlights the place from which her beliefs spring.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0410/palin-this-snake-oil-science-stuff/
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