The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Robert Naiman: Jane Hamsher's Call to Action Against the War/IMF Supplemental
- Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points [81] -- Where Are The Democrats On Healthcare Reform?!?
- Dr. Michael J. Breus: The Sounds and Sleeplessness in the ICU--Part I
- Over Two Days, Hannity Devotes One Sentence To Holocaust Museum Murder
- Mark Kirk Targeting Potent Marijuana, Wants Tougher Penalties
- Venezuela: Why We Banned Coke Zero
- Tasha Gordon-Solmon: Miss California: The Morality Paradox
- Bertha Lewis: Stopping the 13 Second Clock: ACORN and Leading Mayors Join Together in Fighting Foreclosures
- State GOP Leader: Quinn Acting Like Blagojevich Over Budget
- Rep. Louise Slaughter: A Victory for Democracy and Open Government
- Sheila Shayon: Can Volunteerism And Service Become Profitable?
- Bernard-Henri Lévy: Obama's Trip and the Parameters for Peace
- Broke Chicago: As Budget Hole Nears $300 Million City Could Lay Off 1,500 Workers, Tap Parking Meter Money
- Summers Defends Record, Warns Of Seeing "False Dawns" In Economic Crisis
- Netanyahu's Conditions For Supporting A Palestinian Statehood
- Adam Hanft: When the Goldman Sachs Boys Celebrate, My Fury Meter Goes Way Up
- Jonathan Alter: The Blackberry: Destroyer of Worlds -- And the New York Senate
- John Ridley: Never Mind the Race Haters, Remember Loving Day
- Memorial Fund Established For Slain Holocaust Museum Guard (And The Rest Of Your Scritti Politti)
- Key Senators Involved With Health Care Overhaul Have Industry Ties
- Obama's Books Crush McCain's In Terms Of Royalties
- Frank Pushing Bill To Legalize Medical Pot
- Gas Drilling Might Be Responsible For Series Of Earthquakes In Texas
| Robert Naiman: Jane Hamsher's Call to Action Against the War/IMF Supplemental | Top |
| Can Jane Hamsher's internet army teach Rahm Emmanuel and Timothy Geithner a lesson about accepting the input of progressive Democrats? That would be change I could believe in. Here she makes the case against progressive Democrats caving in to leadership pressure that they vote for the War/IMF Supplemental: Here's the lesson I want Rahm Emmanuel and Timothy Geithner to learn. To paraphrase another President from Illinois: you can piss on all of the progressive Democrats some of the time, and some of the progressive Democrats all of the time, but you cannot piss on all of the progressive Democrats, all of the time. What makes the present situation particularly outrageous is this: the White House and the House leadership now want progressive Democrats in the House to abandon their constituents, their commitments, and their principles and vote for the War/IMF supplemental. But when progressive Democrats tried to have input into the process earlier, they were locked out by the leadership, on orders from the White House and Treasury. Representative Jim McGovern tried to introduce an amendment on the war supplemental requiring the Pentagon to submit to Congress an exit strategy from Afghanistan. But McGovern's amendment was not even allowed to be considered. As a freestanding bill [ H.R.2404 ], McGovern's amendment has 85 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors. Representative Maxine Waters and forty other Democrats presented a package of commonsense reforms to U.S. policy at the International Monetary Fund. But they were not allowed by the House leadership to offer any amendments - that was the whole point of sneaking $108 billion for the IMF into the Senate version of the supplemental - to evade normal legislative process in the House. On Thursday, House-Senate conferees made their deal on the war supplemental. They agreed to include Treasury's request for $108 billion dollars for the International Monetary Fund, the bulk of which will almost certainly be used for full bail-outs of European banks from their risky bets in Eastern Europe. But in the conference report, the House-Senate conferees did not agree to any of the four demands for IMF reform put forward by 41 House Democrats, led by Representative Maxine Waters. On June 3, 40 other Democrats joined Waters in sending a letter to the House appropriators, asking for IMF reform language to be included in any IMF appropriation. Specifically, the 41 Democrats asked for: - language to ensure that the funds allocated by Congress for global stimulus are used for stimulatory, and not contractionary, purposes. [That is, the money should not be used as leverage to demand austerity policies such as government budget cuts and high interest rates.] - language requiring the U.S. Executive Director to the IMF to ensure that some of the revenue from the planned gold sales and/or other sources of income will be used to provide at least $5 billion in non-debt-creating assistance to the world's poorest countries - either via debt relief or grants. - language requiring the U.S. Executive Director to the IMF to ensure parliamentary approval of all IMF loans. [So that IMF agreements can't be used to undermine democratic process in recipient countries.] - language to ensure greater transparency and public availability of documents within a reasonable time period. [So that people can see what government officials - from developed as well as developing countries - are doing in IMF board meetings and in negotiating agreements mandating changes to government policy in recipient countries.] A summary of the conference report is here . The full conference report is here . Here's what the summary says about the IMF: International Monetary Fund (IMF) 1. To enable the IMF to respond to grave threats to the stability of the international monetary system, particularly in developing countries severely impacted by the financial crisis, the bill provides an increase in the U.S. quota in the IMF of roughly 5 billion in Special Drawing Rights valued at about $8 billion. The bill also provides for loans to the IMF, as requested, to enable the U.S. to increase its share of the New Arrangements to Borrow, which establishes a set of credit lines extended to the IMF, from approximately $10 billion (6.6 billion in SDRs) to the equivalent of $100 billion. 2. The bill authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to agree to the sale of nearly 13 million ounces of IMF gold which will finance an endowment the return on which will fund a portion of IMF administrative expenses and expand the IMF's investment authority. A portion of the sale of gold (at least $4 billion) would also be used to address the short-term financing needs of low-income countries. As you can see, there is no mention in the summary of policy reforms on ensuring that IMF funds go for stimulus rather than economic contraction, no mention of transparency, no mention of parliamentary approval. [There's no mention of these issues in the full conference report either - the IMF part starts on page 142.] Regarding low-income countries, the summary refers to "short-term financing," implying loans that would add to poor country debt, rather than debt relief and grants, as 41 Democrats called for in their June 3 letter. Moreover, even this figure is $4 billion, 20% less than called for in the June 3 letter. Thus, the demands 41 Democrats made on June 3 regarding the IMF appropriation have been ignored. If these Democrats want to be taken seriously by Treasury about IMF reform, they should vote no on the war supplemental with the IMF funding included. If they vote yes, they're communicating to the U.S. Treasury Department that they're not willing to fight for their demands. And that would validate Treasury's longstanding view that it can safely ignore progressive Democrats in Congress regarding U.S. policy at the IMF and the World Bank. If progressive Democrats vote no, and the IMF funding is defeated, then Treasury will have to go through normal Congressional process to get the money. And that would mean that the criticisms of the 41 Democrats would get a full airing, and they would have an opportunity to try to amend the legislation. Twenty-two of these 41 Democrats voted no on the war supplemental in May. Here's what we know about their positions now, thanks to FireDogLake : Tammy Baldwin: expected to vote no again. Yvette Clarke: expected to vote no again. John Conyers: expected to vote no again. Donna Edwards: expected to vote no again. Keith Ellison: current position uncertain. Sam Farr: expected to vote no again. Bob Filner: certain to vote no again; signed a Dear Colleague letter with Dennis Kucinich against IMF funding in the supplemental. Alan Grayson: expected to vote no again. Raul Grijalva: expected to vote no again. Luis Gutierrez: expected to vote no again. Michael Honda: current position uncertain. Jay Inslee: expected to vote no again. Dennis Kucinich: certain to vote no again; signed letters against war funding and IMF funding in the supplemental. Barbara Lee: expected to vote no again. John Lewis: expected to vote no again. James McGovern: certain to vote no again; told the Wall Street Journal he was voting no. Donald Payne: current position uncertain. Jan Schakowsky: current position uncertain. Maxine Waters: expected to vote no again. Diane Watson: expected to vote no again. Mel Watt: current position uncertain. Lynn Woolsey: certain to vote no again; signed a letter with Kucinich against the war funding. To summarize: Keith Ellison , Michael Honda , Donald Payne , Jan Schakowsky , and Mel Watt voted no on the war supplemental in May, and then signed a letter saying that money for the IMF should have IMF reforms attached. But with the House now scheduled to vote early next week on the same war supplemental with money for an unreformed IMF, they have yet to state that they will vote no. If you would like to ask them where they stand, you can use FDL's " Citizen Whip Tool ." Eighteen of the 41 Democrats who wrote against funding an unreformed IMF voted for the war supplemental in May (one of the 41 was a non-voting Member.) Here's what we know about their positions now: Robert Brady: expected to vote yes. Corinne Brown: current position uncertain. André Carson: current position uncertain. Danny Davis: current position uncertain. Chaka Fattah: current position uncertain. Marcia Fudge: expected to vote yes. Charles Gonzalez: current position uncertain. Al Green: current position uncertain. Phil Hare: current position uncertain. Alcee Hastings: expected to vote yes. Maurice Hinchey: current position uncertain. Jesse Jackson: expected to vote yes. Sheila Jackson-Lee: expected to vote yes. Carolyn Maloney: current position uncertain. Gwen Moore: current position uncertain. Charles Rangel: current position uncertain. Laura Richardson: current position uncertain. Robert Scott: current position uncertain. Disturbingly, not one of this second group of Members, who wrote in opposition to IMF funding without reform, has yet to say that they will back up that position with their vote. If you want to ask them about it, you can do so here . If you'd like to write a letter to your local newspaper against the War/IMF Supplemental, you can do that here . More on Afghanistan | |
| Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points [81] -- Where Are The Democrats On Healthcare Reform?!? | Top |
| That subtitle can be taken two different ways. To be absolutely clear, I meant it in both interpretations. In fact, it is so exasperating that I feel a rather longish rant coming on (relatively speaking -- which makes "longish" even more intimidating, coming as it is from me). Just to warn everyone, up front. But back to the subtitle. The first way it can be taken is, of course: " Where are the Democrats on healthcare reform?" And the second is: "Where are the Democrats on healthcare reform?" To put it another way (that is less dependent upon how readers personally interpret italics), the first point is: "Where the heck are the Democrats in the public debate about healthcare reform? I haven't been hearing much from them on the news, or the talk shows. Who is leading the effort? Who is supporting the effort? WHERE are all the Democrats out there talking about it in public?" And the second could be translated as: "What, exactly, are the Democrats ready to label a 'deal-breaker'? Where are the lines drawn in this battle? What is the basic, core Democratic position on how to effectively reform the healthcare industry?" Neither question, in my mind, has been answered adequately. Because of this dereliction of duty, the Republicans are dangerously close to dominating the entire debate -- even though they don't have any real plans or suggestions as to what to do. Or any power to do it with, even if they did have a clue in the first place! This is pathetic. And it has to end. Soon. Or the promise of real healthcare reform will be yet another lost opportunity in a long history of such which stretches back over seventy years in American history. What's really pathetic is that the public is solidly on the Democrats' side in this debate. They just need a champion to remind them of this, in the midst of the debate. So far, I have to say, we have not seen such a champion. And if we don't see one real soon now, the window of opportunity for change will have again slammed shut, perhaps for another generation. And that, truly, would be pathetic. President Obama seems to be leading this brigade of wussiness, I am sorry to say. Either that, or David Broder is misquoting his sources (which, knowing him, is always a possibility). In his most recent column , Broder reports: "The goal of the Obama White House is to come up with a health-care plan that can attract bipartisan support. The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48." Excuse me, but that is a stinking pile of manure. Here's a quick quiz: what the Hell is the purpose of healthcare reform? Answer: To improve things for the American healthcare consumer. So why is the president willing to sacrifice 15 percent of his goals just so he can look good politically while doing so? What the Hell is that all about? How many Republicans voted for Social Security when F.D.R. was pushing for it? Does anyone remember? Can you quote Roosevelt's vote count in the Senate today? How many Republicans voted for Medicare when it passed Congress? How many Republicans voted for Medicaid? You know why you don't know the answers to those questions? Because nobody cares! Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are all highly successful programs which stand on their own merits -- LONG after everyone has forgotten the political battles which took place when they were passed. So what, exactly, is the benefit to passing something that throws 15 percent of your ideals under a bus, just so you can look better politically? Will "History" record this fact? Or will it be buried in the mists of time? So what, exactly, is the point of the statements Broder reported from White House officials? Let's get this straight from the beginning of this battle royale -- the end result is what is important here. Helping Americans is the goal. And most decidedly not how many votes you get in the Senate while doing so. I've even helpfully written about what the core Democratic framing on the issue should be, which can be easily summed up as: "Democrats want to change the system so that nobody ever faces a bankruptcy judge from a hospital bed." You can read the whole column for more details, but that's it in a nutshell. Why oh why do Democrats always prepare for every legislative battle by tying one of their own hands (the left one) behind their back? It reminds me of the scene in Monty Python's Life Of Brian where Brian is taught how to haggle by a shopkeeper. "You've got to haggle!" the scandalized proprietor keeps insisting, while Brain keeps immediately agreeing to the outrages prices quoted. Read the whole scene in the original script , and then apply it to the Democratic healthcare battle: Republicans: "Well, how about we reform healthcare by doing absolutely nothing, by passing a bill with lots of flowery language that doesn't change anything?" Democrats: "OK, that sounds good to us, let's pass that!" Republicans: "No, no, no -- that's not the way to have a legislative battle. you've got to haggle!" Democrats: "But we just want to say we passed something. Do we really have to?" Republicans: "'Do we really have to?' -- you've got to be kidding. Let's try it again. Republicans are offering a window-dressing bill that does absolutely nothing to truly reform healthcare." Democrats: "Um, how about a regional co-op plan instead, with 'level playing field' provisions, and a trigger written by the insurance companies that will never be triggered?" Republicans: "No, no, you've got to do it properly. See, you're supposed to say 'We demand single-payer healthcare, and anything else is a deal breaker!'" Democrats: "OK, we demand single-payer!" Republicans: "What, and turn America into some socialism? You're crazy!" Democrats: "Yeah, you're right. Let's just do it your way." Republicans: "You almost had it there, but you've got to keep it up. See, now you go to: 'We are reluctantly giving up single-payer, for now, but our line in the sand is a strong public option where people -- if they choose -- can buy into Medicare if they want." Democrats: "Well, I don't know if all of us will keep to that line in the sand, maybe we better just let you guys write the whole thing, OK?" Republicans: [slap forehead in disgust] Is it just me, or does anyone else see this Pythonesque quality to the Democrats these days? Here is how this campaign could have gone: the farthest left members of Congress get first swing at the bat. They come out strongly for single-payer healthcare, and make their argument for a week in the news. They get beat up by a few Republicans, but they get people talking about the idea . Then more senior members of the congressional Democrats weigh in, offering a grand compromise of a public plan in addition to (rather than "instead of") the private market. They warn Republicans, respectfully, that they can pass a bill with only 50 (plus Biden) votes in the Senate, and tell the GOP that unless they want to see single-payer become a reality before Thanksgiving, that they better get on board this compromise, which will keep the private insurance market alive instead of making the whole industry irrelevant. They would calmly explain that, since every person got to choose, and since Republicans have believed for decades that nothing government does can ever be better or cheaper than what the free market does, that their philosophy will probably ultimately prevail; but that we've got to have this public plan option (which, according to them, will fail miserably in the marketplace, of course)... just to appease the left wing of the party. In a wink-wink-nudge-nudge sort of way (I seem to be in a Monty Python mood today), "serious" Democrats could have sold Republicans on the idea as a sop to the left which will, of course, fail in the end. In other words, no problem -- the marketplace will crush the government-run plan because everyone knows the government can't do anything right. How hard would this have been to arrange? Part of the problem is we're lacking the strong voices from the Democratic side so far. This has already led to an initial defeat. A few weeks ago, when I first tackled this subject, the term everyone (even Republicans) were using was "public plan" or "public option." Now (check a newspaper if you don't believe me) it is "government-run healthcare" or something similar with the word "government" in it. This is like throwing away your best weapon before the battle even begins. This is because Democrats have been so silent in the debate so far. There are a few reasons for this, I believe. The first is what happened to the Clinton healthcare plan. It was released too early (many think), and was picked to death before it had a chance in Congress. Because of this, Democrats now believe it is to their advantage to play their cards close to the vest and hammer something out between them before they start the big public push for it. This is wrong, in my opinion, because it is not what we were promised. We were promised a full discussion of the situation, with everyone getting a seat at the table. We are getting neither. Single-payer advocates actually were arrested trying to get heard in a hearing -- because they were denied a place at the table. The debate, so far, has been going on in the Democratic backrooms in Congress, and not in public. This has to change. Another reason, closely related to the first, is that Democrats do not want to appear divided on the issue, preferring instead to present a united front behind a single bill. This is a mistake, because squabbling is going to happen anyway -- it's inevitable. Better to start the squabbles now and get them over with, and be united at the end of the process. Part of the problem, too, is that Teddy Kennedy is supposed to be the point man on healthcare reform. And Teddy's not as young or healthy as the job may demand. To solve this, Democrats everywhere should use Kennedy's name liberally (pun intended), while Teddy himself anoints a surrogate champion to speak for him on the airwaves. There are plenty of media-savvy Democrats who could handle this job, and if Kennedy gave a news conference and announced his heir apparent on the issue, the spotlight would shift to the new spokesperson immediately. And lastly, part of the problem is President Obama. Obama has always been reluctant to be seen as championing this detail or that in his preferred legislation, because he knows it is much easier politically to let congressional Democrats fight it out, and then swoop in at the end and bless whatever they've come up with. That isn't going to be good enough on healthcare, though (see: the past few weeks). To Obama's credit, he has kicked off his personal advocacy tour for healthcare reform. He is saying nice things about the public plan. And he can perform at a town hall like nobody else can, at this point. All to the good. But it's not going to be enough. Obama, at some point, is going to have to draw those lines in the sand. He's going to have to say "I will veto a bill that does not have X in it," and mean it. This will give Democrats in Congress the political cover they crave to actually vote for something real. And this will shift the fight to a personal one -- Obama versus Republicans. Frank Luntz, a highly-paid GOP consultant, wrote in a leaked briefing book on healthcare for the Republicans the following (emphasis in original): If the dynamic becomes "President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it," then the battle is lost and every word in this document is useless. . . . The status quo is no longer acceptable. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe significant reform is needed - and they see Republicans (and the insurance companies) as the roadblock. If the dynamic becomes "President Obama and Congressional Democrats are on the side of reform and Republicans are against it," -- which is exactly what Obama has already started to promote -- the public will side with the Democrats and you will lose both the communication and the policy. . . . Your political opponents are the Democrats in Congress and the bureaucrats in Washington, not President Obama. Every time we test language that criticized the President by name, the response was negative - even among Republicans. Americans want solutions, not politics. . . . If you make this debate about Republicans vs. Obama, you lose. But if you make it about Americans vs. politicians, you win. That's clear enough, right? But if Obama doesn't start drawing lines in the sand, it won't work -- it'll just punt the ball back to "Congressional Democrats versus Republicans," which is nowhere near as good. And finally, before we get to this week's awards and the talking points, Democrats need to tap some populist rage. This is NOT hard to do. You don't have to look very far to find someone with a heart-breaking healthcare story that is tragic, crushing, and totally avoidable. Democrats need to get some of these people in front of some television cameras. Obama did a good job of this at his town hall yesterday, but how about some hearings from Congress? How about a parade of stories of people who had been screwed over by their health insurance company? Like I said, they are not hard to find. Hearing these stories is crucially important to this debate, because it refocuses everyone on the problem we are trying to solve. A few poster-patients on the issue is just what the doctor ordered. OK, I apologize for that last sentence, but I think you get my drift. Picture a Democratic politician saying "After hearing Mrs. Eileen Smith's tragic story, I vow that any piece of legislation which does not specifically address the inhumane situation she was faced with will not pass Congress and will not be signed by the president. Passing healthcare reform without fixing the problem Mr. Joe Shlabotnik faced is not real reform and is a waste of time. We will not allow any window-dressing bill to move forward unless it addresses these problems." How hard is that to do? So why haven't Democrats started doing it yet? Barack Obama can be Democrats' champion on healthcare reform. But he needs some other Democrats backing him up. Where (and who) is Teddy Kennedy's surrogate? Who will be the "designated lefty" in the public battle? Democrats can ignore Republicans legislatively (since all they need is a bare majority of votes in the Senate), but they cannot ignore them (or their arguments) publicly, or they will wind up losing the battle for public opinion. Speaking of public opinion, where is the public's face in all of this? Where are the endless horror stories of dealing with insurance companies? As Senator Jeff Merkley recently pointed out , Republicans are already using Frank Luntz' talking points on the floor of the Senate, so | |
| Dr. Michael J. Breus: The Sounds and Sleeplessness in the ICU--Part I | Top |
| Noise. Whether it's the blare of traffic and the hustling sounds of a city, or just your neighbor's barking dog and lawn mower cutting into your Sunday snooze, noise pollution is something we all have to deal with to some degree. But what about indoor disturbances--in a hospital when you're lying in the Intensive Care Unit? I know, it's not something we think about much, which is partly why there hasn't been extensive investigations into this arena. But a fresh study out of the U.K. sheds some fascinating light on this subject. As we all can attest from experience, noises can disturb sleep and make for rude awakenings when your body is trying to cycle through its motions to refresh and rejuvenate itself. But for people under compromised health conditions and enduring recoveries in ICUs, noises and their resulting sleep interruptions can be especially problematic. And most aren't in a position to complain or tell people in the room to tone it down. Most case studies show that the noise levels in hospitals are much higher than established guidelines, and the very nature of ICUs in particular make for off-the-charts excessive noise levels. How does this all affect a sleeping patient? Significantly. Here are just a few consequences highlighted by the recent study: Deeper delirium: --the state of mind typical of those suffering through a trauma or fever and who experience restlessness, illusions, and incoherent thoughts and speech. No doubt any drugs a patient will be on can make this state worse, but so can poor sleep brought on by something as simple as too much ambient noise. Delirium not only increases a person's length of stay in a hospital, but also the severity of their condition. Irregular circadian rhythms: ICU patients don't usually keep their normal sleep-wake patterns. Their physical condition can have them sleeping on and off during the day and night. Add to that intermittent loud noise and you've got a recipe for more erratic sleep patterns. Post-traumatic stress disorder: Not all patients experience post-traumatic stress disorder after a stay in the ICU, but for those who don't get the sleep they need to recover quickly and stave off episodes of delusional memories, the risk for post-traumatic stress disorder rises considerably. Lowered immune function: Just two days of sleep deprivation has been shown to impair the immune system. So imagine what this means for patients in need of their immune system the most at times like these. Cardiovascular and respiratory effects: Studies have shown how noises can lower the function of these critical systems, causing a speed-up of the heart and negatively dampening respiratory performance. Being in the ICU is hard enough to endure. Throw in sleeplessness caused by noise pollution and just about everything worsens. Sleep is essential in the recovery from illness or injury . Of all the places that should shelter sleep, the ICU has to be close to the top of the list. So what can we do about all this? I'll get to that in my next post, when I cover the study's examination of noise-reduction techniques in Part II. Do they work? And can you try them in your home? Sweet Dreams, Sweet Dreams, Michael J. Breus, PhD, FAASM The Sleep Doctor This article on sleep is also available at Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog . More on Health | |
| Over Two Days, Hannity Devotes One Sentence To Holocaust Museum Murder | Top |
| Fix News host Sean Hannity only devoted one sentence to discussing the shooting at the Holocaust Museum on his program this week, Media Matters reports . This comes after Hannity had criticized other networks for not giving significant coverage to the recent shooting at an Army recruiting center in Arkansas. Instead of discussing the shooting at the Holocaust museum, Hannity did, according to Media Matters, dedicate significant time on his show this week to "David Letterman's jokes about Sarah Palin, the firing of Miss California Carrie Prejean, and actor Craig T. Nelson's take on the proper role of government." More on Video | |
| Mark Kirk Targeting Potent Marijuana, Wants Tougher Penalties | Top |
| U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk will call for legislation Monday that would toughen drug trafficking laws regarding a highly-potent form of marijuana, with penalties of up to 25 years in prison for a 1st-time offense. | |
| Venezuela: Why We Banned Coke Zero | Top |
| CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela's Health Ministry said Friday it banned sales of Coca-Cola Zero because the company failed to declare that the no-calorie soft drink uses an artificial sweetener allegedly harmful to health. Health officials said tests show the cola contains sodium cyclamate. Coca-Cola Co. disputes that, saying the product sold in Venezuela uses different artificial sweeteners, Acesulfame-K and Aspartame. Cyclamate is not prohibited in Venezuela. But the ministry said the company failed to report sodium cyclamate as an ingredient in Coca-Cola Zero when it received its initial health permit to begin selling the drink in April. Coca-Cola is "failing to comply with sanitary norms," the ministry said in a statement published in the newspaper Ultimas Noticias. The ministry urged Venezuelans to refrain from trying the drink, saying it is "considered harmful to the health." The U.S. prohibits the use of cyclamates in human food because of health safety concerns. Sales of Coca-Cola Zero elsewhere in Latin America have met with resistance over the use of cyclamate. Rosy Alvarez, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Servicios de Venezuela, told The Associated Press on Thursday that "no ingredient of Coca-Cola Zero is harmful to peoples' health." But the company is complying with Venezuela's ban and has begun halting production, she said. Kerry Kerr, a spokeswoman at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, said Thursday that the company was in discussions with the Venezuelan government. Coca-Cola sells many other soft drinks in Venezuela, including Coca-Cola Classic, Chinoto, Frescolita and Hit. More on Venezuela | |
| Tasha Gordon-Solmon: Miss California: The Morality Paradox | Top |
| This whole Carrie Kerfuffle (if I may call it that) has got me thinking. Last month when Prejean defended herself by saying, "I'm a model, and a I'm a Christian", I didn't give it much thought. But now that she's been dethroned, I realize she was on to something. She is facing discrimination based on all sorts of aspects of her identity. The former Miss California has been widely criticized for publicly opposing gay marriage. She says that's intolerance on the part of the Left. I say it's more than that. She made those comments while holding the title of Miss California. California is a state that keeps voting for Proposition 8. So really, everyone is criticizing her for doing her job and worse, for being a Californian. And yes, she signed some statement for the Miss USA organization, attesting to the fact that she had always acted "in accordance with the highest ethical and moral standards." And yes, there is a specific clause that says she never took nude or semi-nude photos. So technically lingerie modeling would be cause for dethronement. But then how is wearing a bikini on national television kosher? (Don't let the misleading term "swimsuit competition" deceive you. They're not wearing full body wetsuits.) Is partial nudity only "ethical and moral" when the Miss USA Organization is making money off of it? And does that make Donald Trump a pimp? Oooh wait a minute... I get it! Beauty Pageants are a kind of legalized prostitution. And that's moral, but people of the same gender getting married isn't. There is no sexual discrimination of any kind going on here. The world makes sense again. Now I can get back to worrying about important things, like T he Bachelorette . Yes, people. Dirty.com has come out with yet another incriminating photo. All in favor of rescinding Michael Phelps' Olympic medals say aye! (The LATimes has confirmed that that is, indeed, Phelp's butt . His immoral behavior must be stopped.) More on Miss California | |
| Bertha Lewis: Stopping the 13 Second Clock: ACORN and Leading Mayors Join Together in Fighting Foreclosures | Top |
| Yesterday I was honored to be on a call with America's leading mayors and the US Conference of Mayors to talk about a huge problem affecting cities from coast to coast: the foreclosure crisis. I've been talking about how a family is losing their home every 13 seconds for awhile now and the recent failure by Congress to enact bankruptcy reform to protect homeowners because of industry pressure was a real blow to stopping that clock. But the failure in Washington isn't going to stand in the way of ACORN's push to address the crisis at the heart of the economic meltdown and teaming up with some of the leading mayors in the United States is a major way we're moving forward to help families stay in their homes. Let's set the record straight about one thing - mayors and ACORN tried to stop this crisis before it began, only to be preempted by federal regulators who did the industry's bidding, and now we are left to clean up the mess. It took the election of Barack Obama for the federal government to start helping families, but even his excellent Making Home Affordable program only aims to prevent 3 to 4 million foreclosures out of the expected 9 million over the next four years. So it's up to us - regular folks, community organizations, and local community leaders. We cannot sit on the sidelines while 5 to 6 million families lose their homes. Luckily there is a tremendously successful model already in existence in the city of Philadelphia. Called "mandatory mediation" it is based on one simple technique: having borrowers and lenders sit down and talk. The success rate is astounding. As we have shown in our recent report, " Road to Rescue: How the Philadelphia Model Can Reduce Foreclosures Across the Country ", fully 78 percent of homeowners who have participated in mediation are still in their homes today. 78 percent! Imagine if we could replicate that across the nation! The Philadelphia program works because it incorporates four pillars: (1) It is mandatory. (2) It involves extensive community outreach to struggling borrowers. (3) It has an easy threshold for participation. (4) It makes use of housing counselors to ensure affordability of workouts. On yesterday's call, we heard from Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter , whose office now coordinates this highly effective program. He has raised money from the private sector to join city funds, but he needs more help, including from the federal government, especially as the foreclosure crisis lays at the heart of our recession. President Obama himself understands this, and in his February speech laying out the foreclosure plan , said, "We are going to award $2 billion in competitive grants to communities that are bringing together stakeholders and testing new and innovative ways to prevent foreclosures. Communities have shown a lot of initiative, taking responsibility for this crisis when many others have not. Supporting these neighborhood efforts is exactly what we should be doing." Unfortunately, no such support for local foreclosure prevention yet exists. ACORN will join mayors in fighting to make sure the federal government does as President Obama promised and funds these initiatives. Despite a recent unanimous Senate vote on an amendment offered by Senators Casey and Gillibrand to open up some of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds for foreclosure prevention, rather than just buying properties after they're foreclosed, the amendment died in the House. Across the country, ACORN Housing counselors are waging daily battles just to get reasonable modifications and save homes , but the industry is still foreclosing on hundreds of thousands of families that could be helped but don't live in a city with a mediation program. The efforts of mayors and ACORN to facilitate more affordable loan modifications will be critical in halting the national housing and economic downfall. Mayor Bloomberg is joining us in pressuring Albany to improve the state's mediation law, Mayors Villaraigosa and Dellums are working with us to get needed changes out of Sacramento, and Mayors Slay (St. Louis) and Diaz (Miami) also committed to working with us locally, statewide, and nationally to help save homes. With millions more foreclosures staring us in the face, we have to act now to create sensible local solutions that will improve our communities, safeguard families, stabilize tax bases, and revive the economy. With leading mayors stepping up yesterday, we're starting to get the ball rolling. | |
| State GOP Leader: Quinn Acting Like Blagojevich Over Budget | Top |
| CHICAGO (AP) -- Illinois Republican leader Christine Radogno called it "morally unacceptable" for Gov. Pat Quinn to instill panic over threatened budget cuts in human services, accusing him Friday of acting like his predecessor, ousted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Quinn has been trying to persuade lawmakers to pass an income tax increase by talking to social service agencies about deep cuts he says are necessary under the budget legislators already passed. "He is trying to instill panic. I think that is cynical, I think it is morally unacceptable and it is very Rod Blagojevich like. It is wrong, wrong, wrong and it doesn't need to be happening," Radogno said during a taping of WBBM-AM's "At Issue" news program. Blagojevich, who was bounced out of office in January after being arrested on federal corruption charges, often tried unsuccessfully to shame lawmakers into going along with his proposals. The budget passed by the Democrat-controlled Legislature doesn't have enough money to pay for state government and some say it will force $7 billion in cuts, including as much as 50 percent reductions for agencies that provide services such as child care and food assistance. Radogno, a Lemont lawmaker and the top Republican in the state Senate, blamed Quinn and the Democrats for heaping the threatened cuts on human services, instead of spreading them across state government, to force a tax increase. Quinn spokesman Bob Reed did not comment directly on Radogno's statements but said the governor continued to work with lawmakers to come up with a "fair and balanced" budget. "The Legislature's 50% Budget is woefully inadequate and will cause great harm to Illinois' most vulnerable people, including children, the elderly, the disabled and many already disenfranchised citizens," Reed said in a statement. Quinn should veto the budget so lawmakers have to come up with a new one, Radogno said. Any new budget now would have to pass with a super majority, giving Republicans more say. Radogno and the state's three other legislative leaders have had a series of meetings with Quinn since lawmakers passed a budget and adjourned their spring session June 1. They are set to meet again June 17. Quinn is pushing lawmakers to come up with an alternative budget by July 1, when the new fiscal year starts. There's still a lot left to do. The entire budget needs to be examined for cost savings, work needs to be done on pension and Medicaid reform and the state must commit to not starting any new programs in the midst of this budget mess, Radogno said. All that needs to be done before lawmakers can consider asking residents for higher income taxes. "And if we do, perhaps it's not as much as what the Democrats are saying right now," Radogno said. Quinn wants a two-year temporary increase in the personal income tax rate from 3 percent to 4.5 percent. The Illinois Senate passed raising the rate to 5 percent permanently, but an income tax increase failed in the House. -ASSOCIATED PRESS More on Rod Blagojevich | |
| Rep. Louise Slaughter: A Victory for Democracy and Open Government | Top |
| Last night we learned that a provision banning the release of prisoner abuse photos was dropped from the supplemental war spending bill. At its core, this is a major victory for democracy and open government because it means that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) will be left intact. For the past weeks, I have been fighting to preserve FOIA. For me this was not about the photos but upholding one of the strongest pieces of legislation our government has ever passed to guard against abusive government secrecy. With specified exceptions, FOIA grants access to federal agency records and disputes over this access should be settled in court. Simply put, by granting access to government information, FOIA ensures transparency in our government. At the same time, if there is good reason for information not to be released publicly, then the Administration can win in court for the information to be withheld. What happened recently, however, is that there was a proposal to circumvent this process by attempting to insert a provision into a supplemental spending bill that would retroactively change FOIA by allowing the government to suppress any pictures taken between September 2001 and January 2009 relating to the treatment of war detainees. To suspend FOIA for this period of time could have far reaching implications and inhibit our ability to look into the conduct of the war. Over the past weeks, we have heard many reasons for why these pictures should not be released publicly. Under our law, it is up to the Administration to argue these reasons and for the courts to decide if they are valid. Regardless of what an individual legislator believes, myself included, about the release of these images, congressional intervention is inappropriate and undermines government transparency standards that have been in place for over 40 years. Let me be clear - I am immensely proud of our troops and have a long history of backing initiatives to protect them overseas and provide for them when they return home. But I also respect what they are fighting for - our country and our country's values. Resorting to extreme measures to get around the judicial process is a terrible precedent to set and not in line with the values we hold dear. | |
| Sheila Shayon: Can Volunteerism And Service Become Profitable? | Top |
| As noted in Arianna Huffington's recent blog post, All for Good: A New Craigslist for Service highlights the call for volunteerism. 'Cause-wired' online social activism is a reality, unleashing the potential of a golden age for causes. Innovative web tools, online story-telling and social media are coming of age. Gathering people online is easier and less costly than ever before, and the opportunity of digital citizen engagement to create social movements is unprecedented. "There are two trend lines heading for a collision in philanthropy and social change movements - on one hand, people are ever more conscious of philanthropy and its role in commerce and society; on the other, these people are talking to each other more so than ever before." Tom Watson, author, CauseWired. But what if volunteerism and service could become a profitable business? What if there were a hybrid investment model - a sort of stock market for charity, that combined: • Investment • Philanthropy • And a Green FUND Offering A proprietary search tool would aggregate companies, service organizations, non-profits, and goods and services, vet their authenticity, and offer them up as available investment choices -- an online green pages/equity exchange for social activism. There would be searchable editorial content across basic pillars of social activism: Green Building, Mortgage Refugees, Non Profits, Education, Natural Lifestyles, Alternative Energy, Alternative Transportation, and Eco-Tourism. Why now? Search, specifically Google, the first language of the Web, translates intention and inquiry into outcome. Social Networking (i.e., MySpace, Facebook, Twitter) the second language of the Web, enables social engagement and now rivals Google in impact. Site Networking, (i.e. Facebook Connect) the most extensive iteration of Web language, promotes the integration of information and action among web users...and creates a 'socialization of presence.' The amplification of all that social intention is spreading across the web... The conversation is evolving, from short bursts of declared intent inside a query bar, to ongoing, ambient declaration of social actions." John Battelle, CEO, Federated Media The collapse of business-as-usual, consumer demand for accountability, increasing citizen engagement, and the Obama administration's focus on personal impact and transparency are reshaping markets and ushering in a new era for sustainable companies and good business by doing well. " The greatest potential of social media lies in its ability to enable and encourage people to do social good." Joe Marchese, President, Social Vibe If volunteerism and being of service become a profitable business - the web will truly have found its heartbeat. Would you invest? More on The Giving Life | |
| Bernard-Henri Lévy: Obama's Trip and the Parameters for Peace | Top |
| I met Barack Obama exactly five years ago. It was the evening of the official nomination of his predecessor, John Kerry, at the Democratic National Convention. All of the party heavyweights had spoken. The party loyalists were audience to fiery speeches by both Clintons, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Tom Daschle, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. And at 11 o'clock on the dot, as the large auditorium of the Fleet Center in Boston started to empty, while the remaining delegates expected nothing else special from a drawn out evening -- an evening so long that no one bothered any longer to pace things in synch with the commercial breaks on CNN -- a young unknown, light on his feet, and with an unpronounceable name, bounded on stage and electrified the remaining party loyalists. I see him again the next day. I spend the morning in a hotel dining room, interrogating him about his beautiful "Brown American" story, the son of a Kenyan and a white mother from Kansas. And I am so impressed by this meeting, so struck both by what he says to me and the tone, at once consensual and forthright, soothing and unflinching, which we now know would be from that point on his signature -- I am so profoundly seduced by his message as much as his rhetoric that I write a profile of him called "A Black Kennedy" -- that is, before the editors of the American magazine I am writing for tell me gently but firmly: you can make all the predictions you want; you are free to make a fool of yourself in proclaiming a perfect stranger the future president of the United States; but please, do not sully the icon; hands off the sainted patronymic of Kennedy. And because of this, I indeed change my title from "A Black Kennedy" to "A Black Clinton." I have never completely forgiven myself for it... Because from that day forth, in my opinion, everything was already settled. This man had the makings not only of a president, but of a reformer of the highest degree. This thoroughly brilliant intellectual belonged to a tradition which, in the great debate that has always divided America -- whether it had invented a new, sui generis civilization, or whether it remains fundamentally and spiritually European, pleading the case for Europe, an anchoring in the European tradition, the loyalty of the new world to the old world and its values. That day, this son of a Muslim father told me how the image of the Israeli people returning to its land after centuries of exile and suffering is what, in his childhood, and particularly under the influence of an exceptionally charismatic camp counselor, had forged his character, his soul, and his ideology as a young emulator of Martin Luther King. He was the only one of all the American leaders that I met who was capable of meeting the unsolvable problem posed by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict head on and then of crafting an equitable solution. And if there was indeed finally someone who, because he belonged to one of the minority groups that as a whole make up the majority of the American people, was capable of addressing a message of fraternity and hope to the planet, it was always Obama -- all the more so because being neither the son nor the descendant of slaves, being the first black or mixed-race leader who was not the living incarnation of the memory of slavery and, thus, of the irremediable guilt of the country, he was able to do that without reigniting even in the United States itself the racial and culture wars. This was the existential and political equation of the one who became, in the meantime, the 44th president of the United States. Given that anti-Americanism is the sacramental utterance of the religion of modern times from one end of the earth to the other, I saw only him, Obama, as able to lead the way for the counterattack. Five years later, we are indeed at that point. I am not talking about the closing of Guantanamo, a promise kept -- and which, with the disclosure of the CIA's classified files on torture, is one of the forceful messages the world was waiting for. I am not talking about the colossal error that was the Iraq War, which he and very few others condemned from the very beginning, and which he has without delay started to scale down. Will it take 16 or 19 months to bring home all the troops? And will all of them, without exception, be brought home -- down to the very last one? The symbol is there, in any case; and, for this president-symbol, for this man who speaks in symbols like he speaks in other signs, concepts, and images, that is, of course, the essential. I am not even talking about the Pakistani question. He questioned me extensively about it that morning five years ago (I had just published my investigation into the death of Daniel Pearl). We agreed that it was the most pressing of the issues that would confront the next American administration (I find in my notes, a joke that this very young Obama made about the "Pakistani" reversal of the famous Leninist saying -- no longer "the Soviets plus electricity" but "the jihad plus nuclear weapons"): he immediately took this question into account -- accurately gathering the unrelenting hate of all constitutive branches of Al Qaeda. Most impressive was the way that, in a matter of months, and in just a few words, he put an end, that Saturday in front of the 9,387 small white crosses of the American cemetery in Colleville sur Mer, to the misunderstanding that had poisoned America's relations with Europe, and in particular with France, for the past eight years. The most spectacular event was the 55-minute speech he gave on June 4, in the highly symbolic confines of the University of Cairo, which put an end to the contempt toward Islam proffered, whatever one says, at least since September 11th, with what he called -- a monumental, stupefying first in the mouth of a Western head of state -- the "Holy Koran." And then finally there was Buchenwald where, under the watchful eye of Elie Wiesel, he said the words that we had been waiting for the day after this first speech of praise to the Muslim world: for balance? No, of course not; not for balance in the banal and banally political sense of the word; because if there really was a willingness that struck me right away at our first encounter, it is the willingness to break with this idiocy, this nastiness, this leprosy of hearts and souls that is the competition among victims and thus the balancing of memories, and therefore, in the best case scenario, the obligation that we impose on ourselves to give to this one an equal -- exactly equal -- dose of compassion that we gave to that one. Nothing of the sort with Obama; nothing like that in his speech at Buchenwald; nothing that resembles this apothecary concern to measure out, weigh, and equally distribute the quantity of compassion and tears that we are supposed to shed. The truth; only the truth; and, on his way out, the invitation extended to Ahmadinejad, the world's guru of Holocaust deniers, to make the trip to Buchenwald -- it was the closing line and it was perfect. We can, of course, debate this or that point. We can -- and it's true for me -- not only discuss but regret what was said in Cairo about women wearing the veil in the western world: Obama, in refusing to allow a democratic government "dictate the clothing" (sic) that a woman "must wear," stands in opposition to the laws and principles of French laïcité. He disappoints women who, beyond France's borders, and at the peril of their lives, fight for equal opportunities and rights; and it is a pity that he is retreating on his position on Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantaoui, imam of the Al Azhar mosque and high if not spiritual, at least moral authority of Sunni Islam. But there are three reasons we can and must be happy about this diplomatic tour. The restoration of the transatlantic axis and, ultimately, of the Franco-American bond that had been greatly undermined by both sides during the Bush and Chirac years: he did it in true Obama style -- a cool, truly cool style, simultaneously elegant and relaxed, without smugness but without grandiloquence either -- a cold reconciliation, without lyricism, without sentimentality, avoiding the addition of pathos in the psychology and dramatization of personal relations between leaders. What a relief! Burying the hatchet on what Samuel Huntington called the clash of civilizations: there is only one clash, Obama substantively said, and it is the clash within Islam that opposes Islam to itself -- the Islam of murderers, dictators and fanatics on one hand; and on the other hand, the Islam of all who fight for human rights, democracy, enlightenment and fight for it within the Islamic world in the same fashion, relatively speaking, as the dissidents of communism. Finally! And then the fact that this man who never compromised and who, in my opinion, will not compromise the imperatives of Israel's security, but also will not ease his efforts in aiding in the creation of a second State, a Palestinian one, for which we have waited 60 years, and which many of us think is the only true guarantee of long-term security for the Jewish State. Strictly speaking, he is not saying anything new on the subject; if we stick just to the words, they are not fundamentally different from those spoken by his predecessors -- except that the tone is new, and the enthusiasm of his good will, and the feeling that he will not wait, like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, until the last year of his second term to remember his good intentions. Barack Obama set forth, in four days, the parameters of a peace that has never seemed so close and yet so far. And for the peoples, all the peoples of the region, there is good news, a source of hope, and perhaps the beginning of a new era. I weigh my words. I am, more than anyone, in support of the cause of Israel and, also more than anyone, worried about its solitude, not to say its vulnerability -- so much so that, yes, I weigh my words and do not write them, these very words, without a slight tremble in my hand. And yet. I profoundly believe that the two State solution is, for both peoples, the lesser of two evils. And what I know about Obama, what I know about his personal biography and his track record on the question, what I know or can guess about those who surround him, what I know about David Axelrod who wore an Obama button, written in Hebrew, during the campaign, what I know, finally, of the promises made June 4, 2008, before the representatives of the powerful AIPAC, the great American support organization for Israel--all of that to say I have confidence in the good will and honesty of the president. Perhaps the day will come when the historical alliance of the United States and Israel will be weakened or questioned. Perhaps the moment will come where the anti-Zionist faction, which, contrary to rumor, is just as strong in the United States as in Europe, will drown out both the Jewish and non-Jewish defenders of the fragile Israeli democracy. But we aren't at that point yet. We are far, very far, from that point. And that day, if it ever comes, will not happen on Obama's watch. Translated from French by Sara Phenix. More on Israel | |
| Broke Chicago: As Budget Hole Nears $300 Million City Could Lay Off 1,500 Workers, Tap Parking Meter Money | Top |
| Chicago is facing a budget deficit close to $300 million and city officials say they will need to lay off nearly 1,500 city workers unless union officials agree to contract reductions. But the threatened cuts won't come close to plugging the growing budget shortfall, as Greg Hinz notes on his Crain's blog : But the real news is that those 1,500 layoffs will fill only about 10% of a hole in the city budget that's now approaching a stunning $300 million. So, where's the city going to get that kind of cash? Hinz says the city will draw on its $320 million reserve fund created from the parking meter lease deal, but is "unlikely" to tap too much. The AP has more details on the threatened layoffs: CHICAGO (AP) -- Chicago officials say they must resort to laying off 1,500 workers because union leaders haven't agreed to proposed cost-saving measures. According to a news release Friday, the city has begun sending out 1,504 layoff notices to city employees. City officials say they're still open to negotiations. The city has proposed that union workers agree to unpaid furlough days and that compensatory time be taken for overtime instead of cash. Labor leaders boycotted a scheduled meeting with Mayor Richard Daley earlier this week. The layoffs would become effective July 15 and save $34 million this year. Phone messages left for labor officials were not immediately returned Friday. Union leaders have said they wanted a two-year, no-layoff guarantee in exchange for accepting the furlough plan. | |
| Summers Defends Record, Warns Of Seeing "False Dawns" In Economic Crisis | Top |
| WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's economic adviser on Friday defended the administration's efforts to rescue banks, insurance companies and car makers, saying the actions were taken out of "necessity, not choice." Lawrence Summers' remarks come after government bailouts of insurance giant American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other banks, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC have put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk, and in some cases provoked public outrage. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Summers said the government has intervened to avoid further damage to the economy and financial markets. "We act only when necessary to avert unacceptable _ and in some cases dire _ outcomes," the director of the White House National Economic Council said. The president "did not run ... to manage banks, insurance companies or car manufacturers. The actions we take are those of necessity, not choice." The focus is to ensure that such intervention is temporary, based on market principles and "minimally intrusive," Summers said. On the economy, Summers used slowing job losses and rising consumer and business sentiment to suggest that the worst of the recession has passed. "While we still have a long way to go, the sense of free-fall that surrounded any reading of economic statistics a few months ago is no longer present," he said. While crediting the president's stimulus package of increased government spending and tax cuts for contributing to the economic improvements, Summers warned that policymakers can't be complacent. "There have already been several false dawns during this crisis," he said. Summers made a pitch for revamping the nation's regulatory structure to better guard against future financial crises. Reiterating the administration's stated plan, he called for a regulator to police big, globally interconnected financial companies whose failure would endanger the economy and a system to safely wind down such firms on the verge of collapse. More on Larry Summers | |
| Netanyahu's Conditions For Supporting A Palestinian Statehood | Top |
| The Washington Times's Eli Lake reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will say in his speech this weekend that he is prepared to accept Palestinian statehood under the following conditions: More on Israel | |
| Adam Hanft: When the Goldman Sachs Boys Celebrate, My Fury Meter Goes Way Up | Top |
| Here's what Eric Dash of the "New York Times: wrote this week about the payment that Geithner permitted Goldman Sachs to make, thus liberating themselves from the cold and clammy hand of TARP: "None of the banks' executives crowed publicly, but some of their employees celebrated Tuesday night. At an outdoor cafe on Stone Street, near Goldman's headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Goldman employees toasted their freedom." "This one's on me," one called out from his table. "Yeah, as long as it's not on the government," a colleague replied." Those dudes are too smart for public crowing. But their private crowing is the problem. There is something fundamentally wrong going on here. When Goldman and the rest of the manipulators showed up destitute at the door of the Treasury, and when Treasury agreed to open the discount window to a non-bank (the first time since the Great Depression), and to inject billions of cash into their coffers, it was an extraordinary moment. I mean, let's get real. The people who run these institutions privately mock the bureaucrats who work for the government. And what do these institutions spend most of their waking hours doing? Figuring out how to get around the government. How to thread the needle of regulation; how to push to the seductive, beckoning edge of legality; how to three-card-monte billions around the world to get the most favorable tax treatments (which, in effect, steals from the very government upon whose largesse Goldman et. al. relied upon last fall.) Weren't they supposed to use those funds to lend, to put liquidity back into the system, not to crawl back to sufficient capital requirements that now allow them to "toast their freedom?" Don't you think there's something massively wrong with these Masters of Arrogance paying off their debt with a little bit of interest, puffing out their chests to their former levels of self-inflation, and re-commencing their old ways, albeit with a bit less recklessness? The bailout was unprecedented. We had all the chips; Goldman and JPMorgan had none. We could and should have set very specific metrics for the use of these funds: how much had to go to small business lending, for example. Or to student lending. Or to reducing mortgages for those in or near foreclosure risk. We live in the most technologically advanced society in history; surely if you can track the moment-by-moment movements of your fresh lobster on the Fedex website, these geniuses at Goldman who were able to create complex instruments that defied comprehensibility are able to track the movements of the fresh supply of capital that was delivered to them courtesy of you, me, and the Fedex driver. I'd also like to see how much of our money they are spending on lobbyists and PR flaks. I'm not saying that the Treasury Department should micromanage Goldman and others who got bailout money. But there's a space as big as a 15 room, $25 million dollar Park Avenue apartment between micromanaging and sending them back to their old tricks, rapacious and ungrateful as ever. Surely there were some modest quid pro quos that the government could have extracted when it had its foot on Blankfein's throat. It would be easier to dial-back my anger if their hubris wasn't worn with the flash of one of their favored Franck Muller watches. You see, I'm not asking for much. I just want to be able to log onto Goldman's website and see where the money went. But I can't do that. In fact, I can't even go to the Goldman website and find a word of thanks to us - the American taxpayer - for lending them money when they needed it most. All I find is the same self-serving crap that was there during the worst of the Period of Grand Excess. Goldman's management lacks the decency and sensitivity to make a simple statement acknowledging the TARP payback, recognizing that the American system came through for them at a precarious moment, and humbly accepting the new level of social responsibility that places upon them. Even the French understand the power of "thank you." It might be merely ceremonial, but at least they had the public decency on Sunday, at the 65th anniversary of D-Day, to recall the sacrifices that we made on that brutal June day in 1945. A few days later, the Goldman version of thanks was to write a check and party. We have no reason to believe, absolutely no reason, that - other than for a few regulatory niceties - it won't be business as usual for Goldman. I'm not conspiracy-minded, but with their cross-party alumni armada - Rubin, Paulson, Kashkari - and now with Arthur Levitt, former head of the SEC as an advisor - they won't be back in their gross, unimpeded glory. The dodgy dealings of one Goldman board member, Stephen Friedman, speak for themselves. (This is from BusinessInsider.com ) "New York Fed and Goldman Sachs board member Stephen Friedman purchased 37,300 shares of Goldman Sachs stock in December at the same time as Goldman received permission to convert to a bank holding company regulated by the Federal Reserve. Friedman at the time was also overseeing the selection of a New York Federal Reserve President to replace Tim Geithner, and the New York Fed ended up hiring another alumni from Goldman Sachs." The young studs at Goldman "toasted their freedom" this week. Were they also toasting their liberators, like the French did? I don't think so. | |
| Jonathan Alter: The Blackberry: Destroyer of Worlds -- And the New York Senate | Top |
| I finally understood this week that my wife was right--that the Blackberry is the tool of Satan. It is Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. The way I came to understand this was itself a sign of the sickness that this instrument brings. Please ponder the case of one Malcolm Smith, who until a few days ago was the majority leader of the New York State Senate. Smith received a visit from a New York billionaire named Tom Golisano, who has spent a good chunk of his fortune in recent years running quixotic campaigns for governor, bankrolling some of Bill Clinton's activities and otherwise trying to let the world know that a man named Tom Golisano once strode the earth. He had bankrolled Smith and other Democrats to help them take control of the state senate in January for the first time in 43 years. It was natural, then, for Golisano to expect that he would have Smith's full attention when he went to see him in Albany. But Golisano had the same experience that millions of other people have millions of time a day. Instead of having a real conversation with Smith, he had the equivalent of a conversation with one tenth of Smith's brain. The other nine tenths were going over his email, as if a jokey message from a friend, or a press release from some marginally relevant organization, or an RSS feed from a stupid website were more important than his political patron. "I said, I'm talking to the wall here," Golisano told the New York Times . The wall did not apologize or answer appropriately and so Golisano decided to put his efforts behind two turncoat Democrats ready to switch parties and return the Republicans to power. One of the senators, Hiram Monseratte, had been indicted for stabbing his wife with broken glass. The other, Pedro Espada, had been fined for flagrant campaign spending abuses. But because neither of those offenses compared to Smith's Crackberry jones, the GOP is back in power in Albany. I can't get inside Smith's head to know why he threw it all away for some cheap emails. All I know is that his head, if it's like mine, is awfully crowded with awfully fractionalized relationships with people, or more properly, with the digitized, disembodied version of people that exists online. Blackberry use has nearly doubled in the last year and is up ten fold in four years. More than 25 million have been sold, which means there must be something deeply human about their appeal. Some have compared the phenomenon to a "Skinner's box," a reference to the psychologist B.F. Skinner's experiments with how certain stimuli work on the brain. My wife has a simpler analogy for people who diddle all day. Masturbation. But without the release. It's not like there's a fabulous climactic email that makes thumbing the monkey all worthwhile. How do you know you have a problem? Judith Martin, aka "Miss Manners," told me a couple of years ago that it's rude to use a Blackberry in the presence of other people. Period. Using it in front of your children, as I do on occasion, is, in her book, just one step up from criminal neglect. But instead of reforming my behavior to stop being impolite or to be more present for my wife and kids, I was only brought up short when I realized through the sad case of Senator Smith that the Blackberry could be the agent of career harm. The final rationalization--that it saves time and helps me do my job better--now lay in tatters, too. Instead of winning friends online, I may be losing them in person, in that moment when they see me with my head down, concentrating on someone else. I wish I could tell you that I'm now ready to give up my Blackberry. That would give this tale an uplifting end. But I can't and I won't. I'm hooked. I'm like a drug abuser who looks at some junkie in an alley, a needle in his vein, and says, 'That's not me.' Except it is. Written on a blackberry wireless handheld device. | |
| John Ridley: Never Mind the Race Haters, Remember Loving Day | Top |
| Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them race baiting is a joke, as "humorist" Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans "stupid." Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a "racialist" which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist. Or they are just merely reporting the "facts" when they repeatedly call an abortion doctor "the killer." Then, right wingers go nuts and start "Second Amendment-ing" innocent people, and for the life of them conservatives can't imagine how such things happen. I could connect the dots for them, but there are plenty of other folks out there trying to do that. Instead I'd like to focus your attention on something else this June 12th. Love. Or Loving, as in Loving Day. As I've written previously: June 12th, Loving Day, is not named for the emotion of loving, but, fittingly, for Richard Loving and his wife Mildred. Richard was white, and Mildred was black, and when they were married in 1958, their home state of Virginia was one of 16 that still considered interracial marriage to be literally criminal. Hard as it may be to believe now, interracial marriage -- miscegenation is the pejorative -- was once a severely odious concept. In 1912, Congressman Seaborn Roddenbery of Georgia tried to introduce an amendment to the Constitution banning such unions. To his colleagues in Congress he lectured: It is contrary and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is contrary and averse to the very principles of a pure Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. ... No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society and moral status than the one which welcomes or recognizes everywhere the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America. Then, as now, a particular ilk of politician tried to make bank using relationships between consenting adults as a wedge issue. Substitute "Africa and America" in the previous with "same sex couples" and you get my drift. The Lovings spent time in jail for the high crime of being married to each other and were forced to move from Virginia. Then, on June 12 of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Lovings' criminal convictions and struck down all laws against interracial marriage. Now there's something like 4.3 million mixed-marriage couples in the United States. And the son of one such union is our president. It's easy to get discouraged -- if not downright fearful -- when the race baiters dial their spew up to "11," and their reactionary puppets respond with violence. But take a moment on this June 12th to look at where our nation once was and where we are now, and take solace in knowing that we are headed in a better direction. For more perspective, please visit That Minority Thing.com More on Sonia Sotomayor | |
| Memorial Fund Established For Slain Holocaust Museum Guard (And The Rest Of Your Scritti Politti) | Top |
| Just so everyone knows: The American Jewish Committee's Washington DC chapter has established a memorial fund for Stephen Tyrone Johns, who was killed in the line of duty at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. You can give online by clicking here . According to Capital J, 100% of the funds will go to the Johns family . Time For The Obama White House To Stop Extending The Closed Fist : Via Americablog, the Obama Justice Department, after calling DOMA "abhorrent," defended the law in court today, invoked the usual incest and pedophilia argument , and then lied to a reporter about it . With McCain saying he'd at least have been willing to revisit the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, the Obama White House are in serious need of getting their heads checked on the gay rights issue. Bring The Paine : CJR writes : "If Thomas Paine were alive today, there's little doubt you would find him blogging from www.commonsense.org, challenging concentrated power, conspicuous wealth, and a culture amusing itself to death. Paine would likely have cherished the chance to engage his readers in debate, and spur them to direct action for better government and a more equitable economy." I hear people all the time suggest that so-and-so or whosit would have been history's first blogger, but Paine really does fit the bill. No disrespect to the Common Sense Composers Collective , who I am sure are using that web domain in a way we can all enjoy. Portrait of The Doocy As A Young Man : Wonkette came along today with another uncomfortable reminder that Steve Doocy used to be a local newsman here in Washington, DC , working the Questionable Sweater and Tuber Interest Beat for NBC News. Blame YouTube for preventing this clip from being brutally murdered in today's analog-to-digital teevee conversion. Here's How I Fight Hate Speech : With Rancid, on The Tonight Show: [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Barack Obama | |
| Key Senators Involved With Health Care Overhaul Have Industry Ties | Top |
| WASHINGTON — Influential senators working to overhaul the nation's health care system have investments and family ties with some of the biggest names in the industry. The wife of Sen. Chris Dodd, the lawmaker in charge of writing the Senate's bill, sits on the boards of four health care companies. Members of both parties have industry connections, including Democrats Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin, in addition to Dodd, and Republicans Tom Coburn, Judd Gregg, John Kyl and Orrin Hatch, financial reports showed Friday. . Jackie Clegg Dodd, wife of the Connecticut Democrat, is on the boards of Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc., Cardiome Pharma Corp., Brookdale Senior Living and Pear Tree Pharmaceuticals. Dodd is filling in for ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will soon start work on a health care bill. Other publicly available documents show Mrs. Dodd last year was one of the most highly compensated non-employee members of the Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc. board, on which she has served since 2004. She earned $32,000 in fees and $109,587 in stock option awards last year, according to the company's SEC filings. Mrs. Dodd earned $79,063 in fees from Cardiome in its last fiscal year, while Brookdale Senior Living gave her $122,231 in stock awards in 2008, their SEC filings show. She earned no income from her post as a director for Pear Tree Pharmaceuticals but holds up to $15,000 in stock in Pear Tree, which describes itself as a development-stage pharmaceutical company focused on the needs of aging women. The annual financial disclosure reports for members of Congress are less precise. They only require that assets and liabilities be listed in ranges of values. Dodd was granted a 90-day extension to file his report covering last year, but released it to The Associated Press. Bryan DeAngelis, Dodd's spokesman, said, "Jackie Clegg Dodd's career is her own; absolutely independent of Senator Dodd, as it was when they married 10 years ago. The senator has worked to reform our health care system for decades, and nothing about his wife's career is relevant at all to his leadership of that effort." DeAngelis said that Mrs. Dodd has hired a personal ethics lawyer to avoid any conflicts of interest and is not a lobbyist. Other reports showed: _ Rockefeller, D-W.Va., reported $15,001 to $50,000 in capital gains for his wife from the sale of a stake in Athenahealth Inc., a business services company that helps medical providers with billing and clinical operations. Rockefeller is honorary chairman of the Alliance for Health Reform, a Washington nonprofit whose board includes representatives from the UnitedHealth Group health insurance company; AFL-CIO labor union; the AARP, which sells health insurance; St. John Health, a nonprofit health system that includes seven hospitals and 125 medical facilities in southeast Michigan; CIGNA Corp., an employer-sponsored benefits company; and the United Hospital Fund of New York. _ Coburn, R-Okla., is a practicing physician. He reported slight business income, $268, from the Muskogee Allergy Clinic last year; $3,000 to $45,000 in stock in Affymetrix Inc., a biotechnology company and pioneer in genetic analysis; $1,000 to $15,000 in stock in Pfizer Inc., a pharmaceutical company; and a $1,000 to $15,000 interest in Thomas A. Coburn, MD, Inc. Under Senate ethics rules, Coburn can't accept money from his patients. _ Gregg, R-N.H., disclosed $250,001 to $500,000 in drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. stock and $1,000 to $15,000 each in stock in pharmaceutical companies Merck & Co. and Pfizer, the Johnson & Johnson health care products company and Agilent Technologies, which is involved in the biomedical industry. _ Kyl, R-Ariz., the Senate minority whip, reported $15,001 to $50,000 in stock in Amgen Inc., which develops medical therapeutics. Kyl's retirement account held stakes in several health care businesses, including the Wyeth, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and AstraZeneca pharmaceutical companies; medical provider Tenet Healthcare Corp.; CVS Caremark prescription and health services company; Genentech, a biotherapeutics manufacturer; and insurer MetLife Inc. _ Harkin, D-Iowa, has a joint ownership stake in health-related stocks. Harkin and his wife, Ruth Raduenz, own shares of drug makers Amgen and Genentech, Inc., each stake valued at $1,001 to $15,000; Their largest health care holding, Johnson & Johnson, was valued at $50,001 to $100,000. _ Hatch, R-Utah, a member of the Finance and Health committees, reported owning between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of stock in drug maker Pfizer Inc. He spoke to two pharmaceutical industry conferences last year. Sponsors of the conferences donated $3,500 to charities instead of speaking fees, as required by Senate rules. Like millions of Americans, several senators took a financial hit in 2008. A sampling: _Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., lost some $100,000 in equity in his home in Springfield and $35,000 in his Chicago condominium. Durbin, who released his tax returns, reported losing $32,259 in various investments last year, including more than $10,400 in Berkshire Hathaway and $5,535 in Fidelity stock. _Kennedy in 2007 had four trusts each valued between $5,000,001-$25 million. In 2008, only one trust was still in that category while the rest had slipped in value to $1,000,001-$5 million. _Hatch's investments suffered from the banking crisis. In 2007, he reported assets of between $2,002 and $30,000 in Countrywide Credit Industries Inc. stock. His 2008 financial disclosure lists the value at less than $1,000. One of Dodd's investments showed a vast improvement. A new appraisal more than doubled the value of his vacation cottage in Ireland, which has been subject of a Senate ethics complaint filed by a conservative group questioning if the undervalued property was really a gift. The property is valued at 470,000 euros, or about $660,000, on Dodd's disclosure report. The previous year's report valued the seaside home, located in County Galway, at between $100,001 and $250,000. DeAngelis, the spokesman, said Dodd and his wife decided to have the property appraised because they felt it was time to update the information. | |
| Obama's Books Crush McCain's In Terms Of Royalties | Top |
| Barack Obama not only beat John McCain at the ballot box last year, he also crushed him in the bookstores. More on Barack Obama | |
| Frank Pushing Bill To Legalize Medical Pot | Top |
| Rep. Barney Frank, the powerful House Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a bill Thursday to allow states to make their own medical marijuana laws free of federal interference. The bill would also move marijuana from the FDA's Schedule I to Schedule II. Its current designation indicates that it has no medical value, a high risk of abuse and is extremely harmful. By keeping marijuana in Schedule I, the federal government makes research into its medical benefits nearly impossible. Moving marijuana to Schedule II would recognize its medical value, make access to it for research purposes easier and would facilitate the creation of a regulatory framework for the FDA to begin a drug approval process for marijuana. The bill is HR 2835. Frank's legislation would also explicitly protect patients from federal arrest in state's where medical marijuana is legal. (Rhode Island's governor vetoed on Friday a state bill that would have allowed medical marijuana sales by state-run dispensaries, despite the fact that Rhode Island already permits possession and use of medical pot.) Charles C. Lynch could have used that protection. On Wednesday, the Moro Bay, Calif. medical marijuana shop owner was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison despite the fact that medical pot is legal in California and despite President Obama's earlier assurance that he would not interfere with the law. Unfortunately, Lynch was arrested during the Bush administration era. "Years from now, Mr. Lynch may well be remembered as the last American to go to federal prison for a mistake, the final victim of an already repudiated policy well on its way to the ash heap of history, but whose mean-spirited effects still linger," said Marijuana Policy Project head Rob Kampia. "This sentence is a cruel and pointless miscarriage of justice," Kampia said. The sentence handed down by federal District Court Judge George H. Wu could have been worse. The Obama Justice Department wanted the mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years. The Justice Department declined to comment on the sentencing. The lack of clarity from the Obama administration on medical marijuana prompted Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) to introduce language Tuesday attached to a Commerce, Justice and Science Departments Appropriations bill seeking clarification on the policy. "It's imperative that the federal government respect states' rights and stay out of the way of patients with debilitating diseases such as cancer who are using medical marijuana in accordance with state law to alleviate their pain," said Hinchey. Ryan Grim is the author of the just-released book This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! | |
| Gas Drilling Might Be Responsible For Series Of Earthquakes In Texas | Top |
| CLEBURNE, Texas — The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town's 140-year history _ but not the last. There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving. The council's solution was to hire a geology consultant to try to answer the question on everyone's mind: Is natural gas drilling _ which began in earnest here in 2001 and has brought great prosperity to Cleburne and other towns across North Texas _ causing the quakes? "I think John Q. Public thinks there is a correlation with drilling," Mayor Ted Reynolds said. "We haven't had a quake in recorded history, and all the sudden you drill and there are earthquakes." At issue is a drilling practice called "fracking," in which water is injected into the ground at high pressure to fracture the layers of shale and release natural gas trapped in the rock. There is no consensus among scientists about whether the practice is contributing to the quakes. But such seismic activity was once rare in Texas and seems to be increasing lately, lending support to the theory that drilling is having a destabilizing effect. On May 16, three small quakes shook Bedford, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth. Two small earthquakes hit nearby Grand Prairie and Irving on Oct. 31, and again on Nov. 1. The towns sit upon the Barnett Shale, a geologic formation that is perhaps the nation's richest natural gas field. The area is estimated to have 30 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas and provides about 7 percent of the country's supply. The drilling's economic impact has been significant, because gas companies pay signing bonuses and royalties to property owners for the right to drill beneath their land. Signing bonuses climbed to around $25,000 an acre at the boom's peak. Cleburne agreed to lease the mineral rights in the earliest stages of the frenzy, receiving a modest $55 an acre for 3,500 acres of city land. There are about 200 drilling sites in Cleburne, and it is not unusual to see cattle chewing grass in the shadow of gas pipes. Cleburne has collected between $20 million and $25 million in royalties since 2001, about $6 million in 2008 alone, Reynolds said. Such riches have allowed the building of parks and sports complexes in the city of 30,000, about 30 miles south of Fort Worth. "That's a lot of libraries and police cars," the mayor said proudly. "It's enabled us to escape the worst part of the recession, enables us to keep tax rates low and lowered unemployment." Landowners are also getting theirs. Locals call it "mailbox money," occasional royalty checks that arrive from the gas companies. The mayor, a contractor who owns three quarters of an acre, said his most recent check, for three months' worth of royalties, was nearly $850. "It's better than a poke in the eye," he said. Although many residents never felt the quakes, those who did have described them in different ways. When the first few hit, some ran outside to see if a house had exploded. The city manager said he thought his wife was closing the garage door. Picture frames and windows rattled. None of the quakes caused any damage or injuries, though city officials said they are keeping a close eye on the earthen dam at Lake Pat Cleburne. There seems to be little fear around town of any catastrophic damage, but the ground shaking is unnerving nonetheless. Townspeople want to find out at least what is causing it, even if it is unclear whether anything can be done about it. The gas is extracted through a process known as horizontal drilling. A company will drill roughly 5,000 feet to 7,000 feet down and then go horizontally for as much as 4,000 feet or so. Then the fracking begins. A spokeswoman for Chesapeake Energy, which owns most of the mineral rights leases in the Cleburne area, said the company is "eager to get to the facts" and is working with the government and local researchers to determine whether there is a link. "Drilling has occurred for more than a hundred years," Julie Wilson said in an e-mail. "Tens of thousands of wells have been drilled with no nearby earthquakes at all; hundreds of earthquakes have occurred with no drilling nearby." Cliff Frohlich, a scientist at the University of Texas and author of "Texas Earthquakes," said he believes more than 20 Texas earthquakes in the past 100 years are related to drilling for petroleum and gas. But he added: "I would be surprised if a seriously damaging earthquake came out of this." John Breyer, a petroleum geologist and professor at Texas Christian University, said drilling is absolutely not causing the earthquakes. "It's like the Great Wall of China," he said. "If you pull a brick out of the wall every half-mile, you are not going to affect the stability of the structure." The mayor said he is open to any answer the city's geologist brings him. "We are going to find out what's causing them and if it is something that we can deal with, I promise we will deal with it," Reynolds said. "But it's like the dog that chases the car and catches the car: I don't know what you do then." | |
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