Corrupt

Your US tax dollars at work.

[Israeli Corruption 1] [Israeli Corruption 2] [Israeli Corruption 3]

We blindly support and fund this corrupt little country.

tnb

Disinformation

Brad Delong and Mark Thoma round up some of the disinformation circulating around the country.

[Delong Disinformation 1] [Delong Disinformation 2] [Mark Thoma Disinformation Discussion]

My take,... There's a lot of it around and a lot of it (most?) has the Propaganda Network's fingerprints all over it.

tnb

Slow day at the Fox News?

Obama Administration Eyeing Gun Control; Under the Radar; Groups Warn - FoxNews.com

This looks like one of those Fox News specialties, the "We create the News to fire up our supporters" piece. There's really nothing new here, no new gun laws, nothing new proposed, Obama hasn't really done anything, the article hints that he's indifferent.

...."That's just something we haven't heard the president say anything about," McCarthy spokesman Shams Tarek told FoxNews.com.

Tarek stressed that the magazine ban wouldn't exactly be treading new ground -- it would reinstate an expired ban. "There's a precedent there," he said. But Tarek said the Obama administration is "very, very much in listening mode," not revealing one way or the other which way it's leaning on gun control.....

So, basically this is just a rabble-rouser that puts "Obama" and "Under-the-radar" together a few times to plant, or keep, the "Obama's doing something sneaky" seed in the mind of the listener.

It must be a slow news day at The Propaganda Network.

tnb

They Hate us for our Freedoms - # 413

BBC News - Nato air strike 'kills 14 civilians' in Afghanistan

CNN - Afghans, NATO investigate airstrike that reportedly killed 12 children

Our freedoms,.. and that we drop bombs and kill them on a regular basis.

tnb

Treason?

Glenn Greenwald wonders why the US Congress treats a foreign leader better than it treats the US President.

Glenn Greenwald

I don't have any proof,...  but now that Bin-Laden's dead,... I'd guess that a global poll would put Netanyahu in the top three most dangerous persons on the planet. The person most likely to do something against international law, start a war, attack a neighbor, kill lots of people for no good reason, etc.. In that same poll, I think Israel would probably place in the top three among countries. With that in mind,....

why the fuck does our government treat him like a fucking king? And,.. why the fuck do we send billions of US taxpayer dollars to Israel every year?

just asking.

tnb

The End of the World.

PZ Meyers at Pharyngula is pissed but he nails it.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/_the_world_didnt_end.php

It's the very same rot, the poison of religion that twists minds away from reality and fastens them on hellish bogeymen. They're demented fuckwits, every one, and the big lie rests right on the fundamental beliefs of supernaturalism and deities, not on the ephemera of one crank's bizarre interpretations.

I wished I'd said that.

tnb

They Hate Us.

"They hate us for our freedoms" might be one of the stupidest things Bush ever said.

Here's a series of Al-Jazeera posts, all on the same day, that give a much better explanation of why "they hate us".

[AJ 1] [AJ 2] [AJ 3] [AJ 4] [AJ 5] [AJ 6]

They hate us because we are the primary backer of a regime that is stealing their land, killing their people, and refusing to to work honestly for peace.

Peace in the middle east is dead until we stop enabling Israel.

tnb

Juan Cole: The 1967 Borders

Juan Cole has a very good post on the "indefensible", 1967 borders here:

Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion: The 1967 Borders

Here are a couple cuts from the post.

The ’1967′ borders are actually those that obtained before Israel launched its 1967 ‘Six-Day War’ on Syria, Jordan and Egypt. (There is no doubt that Israel launched this war, and that its aggressiveness with Syria in the previous six months contributed mightily to the tensions that led to it.)

The reason Israel has to go back to 1967 borders is that the annexation of territory from a neighbor through warfare is illegal according to the United Nations Charter, which is a treaty to which Israel and the United States are both signatories. ‘Greater Israel’ apologists attempt to get out of this difficulty by saying that countries used to conquer land away from their neighbors all the time. This is a bogus argument, since countries used to do a lot of things, including sponsor the slave trade; Britain even insisted on China allowing the sale of opium in the early 19th century. The world changed when World War II ended and the countries of the world established the United Nations to forestall any recrudescence of Axis techniques of conquest and rule. If Israel does not believe in the UN Charter, it should renounce its UN membership.

It is not just the UN Charter. The Hague Agreement of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid a power occupying enemy territory in war time from annexing it or in any way changing the life ways of its people.

and

.. Netanyahu’s argument for not going back to 1967 borders is that it is inconvenient. He says that the 1967 borders are indefensible. This assertion is a logical fallacy, known as special pleading. You can’t launch a war and annex your neighbor’s territory because you fear that your own presents security challenges. Lots of countries are unhappy with their borders. Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait in 1990 in part because he felt that the British had erred in not giving modern Iraq a deep water port, which made Iraq ‘indefensible’ and put it at an economic disadvantage. Pakistan believes that its failure to secure the headwaters of the Indus Valley rivers in Kashmir in 1947 puts it at a permanent disadvantage vis-a-vis India and makes the country overly vulnerable (‘indefensible’). Netanyahu’s immoral argument that a country just has to take by main force whatever it feels will make it more secure is astonishing and is a standing danger to world peace if it were taken seriously by other countries.

And the map

The US needs a history lesson on Israel-Palestine. I think most Americans see Israel as the biblical Israel and don't have a clue about the last 100 years.

tnb

The Onion: 1967 borders

A great piece from the Onion.

Government Official Who Makes Perfectly Valid, Well-Reasoned Point Against Israel Forced To Resign | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

.

Religious Cults and Kooks

A few links about the non-rapture and other religious crazies.

First, from my favorite Athiest Pharyngula

On the non-rapture: [Followers preparing for the end] and [Excuses, Excuses]

Believers, sheesh: [Forcing others to pray to your god] and [Forcing others to pay for your god]

No More Mister Nice on why a main-stream religious kook wouldn't make a specific rapture date prediction. [Rapture Fail]

Wy couldn't this (false rapture prediction) have happened to Pat Robertson or David Barton or John Hagee or any of several dozen prominent Christian rightists? I'd be thrilled to see those guys with egg on their faces. (Glenn Beck? What about him?)

But see, this would never happen to any of them, because however many kooky pronouncements those guys make, they never take their eyes off the terrestrial prize. Harold Camping, by contrast, really lost himself in this.

If someone died because of this crazy rapture prediction, Harold Camping and a few of his followers should go to jail.

tnb

Mitt Romney and the Conservative Crazy

[The Economist on Mitt Romney, Health care and rightward shift in conservative viewpoints]

It sounds like a wake-up call to conservative media and leadership to get their shit together and stop promoting the crazy.

tnb

Krugman

on [The origins of the Financial Crisis]

tnb

Brad Delong Speaks

A couple of good points from a [Brad Delong talk about the Financial Crisis]

First on the Financial crisis

As the foundations of this crisis were laid, there were always arguments against massive regulatory intervention to deal with it. Those arguments always sounded convincing. The stayed convincing even as the situation transformed itself from a justified boom in long duration assets driven by advances in diversification and by capital inflows pushing down interest rates, to froth, to irrational exuberance, to a full-fledged bubble.

The first argument was: "well it is their money." Countrywide probably knows what it is doing. There are major benefits from diversification and better access to credit. Even if it does not know what it is doing, it isn't the government's job to rescue the investors in Countrywide from the fact their risk controls are not what they ought to be.

Second, Alan Greenspan really is a Randite, really is a follower of Ayn Rand. He really does believe that it is a bad thing to infringe your freedom and protect you from yourself. He really is the kind of person who thinks that it is bad for you if the government keeps you from making stupid investments that cost you all your money. You can ask him--"do you think there should guardrails on the ledge of the Grand Canyon?"--and he might well say no--that there should be warnings, but if grown-ups wish to venture too close to the crumbling edge... they are grown ups, and should not be treated like children.

The third argument was: "who is going to get hurt?" Investors in Countrywide, but they are rich and risk-loving and if they want to build the rest of us houses we should probably say "thank you." And somebody buying a house east of Riverside California with a zero-down, a teaser rate, a pick-what-you-pay mortgage--what they are really doing from an asset-price perspective is renting a house at a below-market rent for three years and being given a free call option on the house. They will be sad if the house price doesn't go up and the call option is not worth exercising. But that is regret. That is not harm: they did still get to live in the house at a low rent for three years. So why should the government step in and keep people from getting these deals if Countrywide wants to provide them?

Fourth, and most important, it is a big political looser for regulators to go before Congress. The Democratic members would whack them: why aren’t
you letting my constituents buy the houses they want to buy? The Republican members would whack them: why aren’t you letting my contributors make the loans they want to make?" That’s a very unpleasant position for a regulator to be in--when both Republicans and Democrats agree that you are an ass.

Fifth, there was the fact that the old framework for lending locked lots of people out of the real estate asset class, and a belief that we should be experimenting with new ways to get money to people who want it to make investments--that we should be trying to broaden the access of the poorer half of Americans to high-return investment vehicles.

Most important, however, was the overall belief on the part of the regulators that they could handle it. Subprime was a small asset class in the global economy. The Federal Reserve was powerful. Whatever stupid things financial markets did, the Federal Reserve could clean up the mess afterwards and build firewalls between finance and the real economy so that we would not suffer from high unemployment and a deep recession. The Federal Reserve had handled it in 1987 with the stock market's Black Monday, had handled it in 1991 with the Savings and Loan crisis, had handled it 1995 with the Mexican crisis, in 1997 with Malaysian crisis, in 1998 with the triple crisis--the Korean crisis, the state bankruptcy of Russia as it became clear that just because you were a nuclear armed ex
superpower that did not mean the IMF thought you were too big to fail. the bankruptcy of the largest hedge fund in the world, LTCM. We had the 2001 collapse of the dot-com bubble. And in every single case we managed to handle it: contain systemic risk, stabilize the financial system, and avoid a deep recession.

And on the long run deficit problem

It is a fact that if congress simply goes home--doesn’t do anything for the next 10 years except keep the federal government on autopilot, or if it does do things if it pays for whatever increases in spending it enacts by raising taxes and pays for whatever tax cuts it enacts by cutting spending--that we do not have a long run deficit problem. If congress goes home for ten years our program spending is matched to our tax
revenues, which means a declining debt burden because the growth rate of the economy is larger than the interest rate on our debt.

Our belief that we have a long-run deficit problem is based upon the belief that congress will pass laws that increase spending and that cut taxes--that it will repeal the Independent Payment Authorization Board's authority to try to make Medicare more efficient, that it will repeal the Affordable Care Act's tax on high-cost health plans. Given that the fear is based on a belief that some future congress will bust the budget, it is hard to see how we can address this fear through any possible piece of legislation today--for no congress can bind its successors.

This is a problem.

tnb

Middle East Speech

Several posts on Obama's 1967 Middle east speech

A couple from the Booman Tribune

[Booman 1] [Booman 2] Including this..

Jeffrey Goldberg should have an unassailable pro-Israel reputation and he's saying that Obama didn't say anything new by insisting that the 1967 borders should be the basis for negotiations between Israel and Palestine. If you make an exception for the city of Jerusalem, I think it's indisputable that America has been consistent in saying that Israel must give up all the land they acquired in the 1967 and 1973 wars, and that any exceptions must be accounted for with equivalent and mutually-agreed upon swaps of land.
Now, recently Netanyahu has been saying that the 1967 borders are indefensible. I find that assertion odd. Israel defended those borders quite successfully in 1967. In the intervening years the main thing that has changed is that Israel has become hundreds of times more powerful relative to its neighbors. Israel is fully capable of defending itself. It can use nuclear weapons if it finds itself particularly hard-pressed.

The text of the speech [Obama's "1967-Borders" Middle east speech]

[Juan Cole's take]

From the Israeli paper Haaretz: [Haaretz 1]  [Haaretz 2 - What some Europeans think]

The most level headed response from [No More Mister Nice]

From the [BBC]

A good post from [Mondoweiss] including this..

Of course the 1967 lines have always been the starting point for discussion – they were in Barak’s “generous” 2000 offer at Camp David, the more promising Taba negotiations in 2001 that were cut short due to the impending Israeli election of the rejectionist Sharon, and in Olmert’s 2008 “even more generous” offer.

Why the uproar now? What was Obama supposed to say - that the starting point was complete Israeli control from the river to the sea, and that Israel could expect concessions for each square kilometer that it graciously yielded? Even in our poisoned political atmosphere, that would never fly. The 1967 lines are the only logical starting point. The devil has always been in the details, and Obama explicitly included those devilish details in his speech.

A couple from tnb....

It's amazing to see the US media treating Netanyahu and Israel better than the President.

I think the best response Obama could give would be something like "OK, we give up. Work out your own god-damned peace agreement. Oh, and we're cutting all aid to all sides". Netanyahu might change his priorities a little if he didn't have those billions in US aid coming in.

tnb

Locking up your people

An Interesting chart here: America is not the best at everything

I think the most amazing number here is the prison population. The US locks up 743 people per 100,000. Second on the list is Israel at 385. Most countries are under 100. WTF.

Why do we lock up about 3 to 7 times as many people as the rest of the developed world? Is it just our stupid drug laws or something else? I don't get it

tnb

The Deficit

Here are the arguments behind the chart below. Causing the deficit

tnb

Religious Kooks

People give away everything they have because some wacky preacher thinks a book can tell him when the world's gonna end. [The worlds gonna end]

So, Mitch Daniels, tell me again about all those evil athiests. [Mitch Daniels thinks athiests are evil]

Mellinger: Is there part of you that is bothered by the aggressive atheism of a [Sam] Harris, a [Christopher] Hitchens, a [Richard] Dawkins? And what I mean is... this atheism is a little different than atheism has been in the past because it does seek to convert people.

Daniels: I'm not sure it's all that new. People who reject the idea of a God -who think that we're just accidental protoplasm- have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications -which not all such folks have thought through- because really, if we are just accidental, if this life is all there is, if there is no eternal standard of right and wrong, then all that matters is power.

And atheism leads to brutality. All the horrific crimes of the last century were committed by atheists -Stalin and Hitler and Mao and so forth- because it flows very naturally from an idea that there is no judgment and there is nothing other than the brief time we spend on this Earth.

Everyone's certainly entitled in our country to equal treatment regardless of their opinion. But yes, I think that folks who believe they've come to that opinion ought to think very carefully, first of all, about how different it is from the American tradition; how it leads to a very different set of outcomes in the real world

tnb

Is 250,000$ a year rich?

Debunking the "$250,000 a year isn't really rich" myth.

The Propaganda Network

On Fox News...

Reporgramming

I watched a little Glenn Beck a couple of days ago. That dudes pretty crazy. He's not afraid to just make shit up. Lots of TV preacher/religious-show antics. Lots of scare tactics. Lots of borderline scam advertisers. Very little reality.

tnb

Trump, Republicans and Fox News

Found here: Balkinization

Fox News has become the stable for Republican presidential candidates, who flock there to stay in the public eye while deciding whether to run. One effect of this retreat-to-the-media strategy, however, is that the lifestyle it offers is so good, and allows prospective candidates so many different ways of making an excellent living, that when the race actually begins a few of the horses don't want to leave the stable.

tnb

More Lies

You just can't believe any politician

The Many Errors Of Fact In Speaker Boehners Wall Street Speech | Political Correction

tnb

Austrian Economics

A new powerhouse for ridiculous GOP economics - How the World Works - Salon.com

But the correctness of Austrian theory is beside the point. Because if it was ever applied in practice by actual politicians, the voting public would become more than just annoyed. If the response of the Bush and Obama administrations to the financial crisis of 2007-08 had been to allow every beleaguered financial institution to go bankrupt while simultaneously endeavoring to balance the budget while government revenues tanked and social welfare obligations spiked, the economic devastation would have been well nigh unthinkable. There simply would be no political future for politicians who simply abandoned the general public to the viciousness of the free market.

Economic crises and bank panics predated the creation of the central bank in the United States; indeed, to many observers, they seem to be endemic to capitalism and unregulated markets. And when markets run completely amok, the public expects its leaders to do something.

This touches on something I've never really understood. Economics is really just one of many factors that affect the overall well being of our society. What really matters to most of the people of this world is having the best, most efficient and fair society, not the best, most efficient and fair economy. It doesn't matter if Austrian, Keynesian, or Monetary policies make the an economy function more efficiently, if a slightly less efficient economy gives more benefits to more people, then those are the policies we should use.


tnb

Third Party

FireDogLake: People want a third party

I'd like to see a "none of the above". If "none of the above" gets above a certain percent of the vote, then all the parties have to put up new candidates for a another vote.

tnb

Income Inequality

Income Inequality - We have more of it and are doing less to fight it than most other developed countries.

OffTheChartsBlog

tnb

Oil Prices

noahpinionblog - Oil Speculation

But what happens when a bank/speculator/Goldman-Sachs accumulates oil futures then releases a statement or has a media outlet promote a story like "Goldman Sachs sees higher oil prices in the future" just to create a current profit for themselves. Wouldn't this drive oil prices higher unnecessarily?

tnb

Religion

Pharyngula: [He was a nice guy, he went to church and everything]

and Mitch Daniels thinks [Athiests are evil].

tnb

American Arrogance

A related update from Street Light Blog

------ original tnb post below

One huge problem the US faces today is an inability to admit we're not necessarily "The Best" at everything. A large percentage of Americans think that because the US is "The Greatest Country in the World" we can't learn anything from any other country or adopt any policy of any "lesser" nation.

I hear it every day, statements like "you mean you want health care like CANADA/England/France?", "cars like those European weenies drive", etc. Tea-baggers types are really bad, but the media, seniors, fundamentalists, really most Americans act like we're somehow better than everyone else on the planet.

This is American arrogance, plain and simple.

We're not going to fix our current problems or grow up as a society until we can admit that, 1. we are not "the best" at everything just because we're Americans and 2. we can learn from others in this world.

Take a look at some comparisons.

[America vs Europe 1]

[America vs Europe 2]

[America vs Europe 3]

[America vs The World 1]

tnb

Drugs

GinAndTaco's, one of my favorite sites, thinks the drug war is about getting the bottom 20% of society out of the way. Now, I agree that the drug laws in this country are stupid and that the bottom 20% are generally the most imprisoned group but the claim that drug laws exist as a way for the elite class to handle the bottom 20% seems pretty far out there to me.

I see our drug laws more as regulation left over from a more, puritan, innocent, less-educated time when people really thought drugs were bad and making them illegal would really benefit society. Sure, there were people who saw the laws as a path to power and money and pushed for them but generally, to the masses, I think drugs laws sounded like something that would work, solve a problem they could see.

Today, we see the effects of those laws. We see that the problems of prohibition, the organized crime, corruption, and violence on a global scale, are worse for society than the individual drug use itself. Yet the drug laws remain, kept in place by greed of the current players and the ineffectiveness of our national government. Law enforcement, state and local governments, the legal profession, the beer, wine, liquor, pharmaceutical industries, and the drug cartels themselves would lose billions if the drug laws were repealed so they all lobby, in their own way, to scare people to keep the laws in place.

I think we'll only change our approach to drug use when the understanding that "anti-drug laws are more dangerous than individual drug-use" comes to main street USA. That may be a while but we are getting closer, the fall of Mexico may be the tipping point.

A few Links:

The [GinAndTacos on Drugs] post. A great site, be sure to look around a little.

How much we're spending in the War-On_drugs [War on Drugs Clock]

States and law enforcement making money on drugs: [Indiana] [Indiana 2]

Mexico, failed state: [Mexico 1] [Mexico 2]

The United States of America has an incarceration rate of 743 per 100,000 of national population (as of 2009), the highest in the world.[3] In comparison, Russia has the second highest 577 per 100,000, Canada has 117 per 100,000, and China has 120 per 100,000.[3] While Americans only represent about 5 percent of the world’s population, one-quarter of the entire worlds inmates are incarcerated in the United States.[4] [Encarceration rate - Wikipedia]

tnb.

The Housing Market Still Sucks

From Crooks and Liars: The Black Hole at the Pit of the Economy | Crooks and Liars

1. The percentage of homeowners with underwater mortgages — where the value of a mortgage exceeds the value of the property — has now climbed to 28.4 percent. It has been at around a quarter of all (single-family) home mortgages, but is continuing to climb, edging closer to a third. This is a truly stunning number, especially when you consider how many homeowners are in their second or even third decade of paying off their mortgage.

2. Housing prices continue their decline, in fact scoring their biggest quarterly drop since the crash months in 2008. Home values have declined a net 29.5 percent since their peak in 2006, and after a modest increase after the 2008 crash, started declining again last fall and are now at their lowest level, making them equal to the bottom point of the crash. And analysts expect them to continue to fall for another year at least.

3. A new report out by National People’s Action shows that one out of ten homes in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cinncinnati will have received a foreclosure notice since the housing crisis began. Those are depression-level numbers, and I expect they parallel other hard hit states like MI, FL, and NV. Where the housing crisis is at its worst, we are seeing economic devastation on a massive scale.

All of this adds up to terrible news not just in the housing sector but in the rest of our economy as well. Homes represent the No. 1 source of wealth and equity for middle-class Americans, and their best chance for having some kind of decent retirement. Being secure in your home equity makes people far more likely to start a small business, and far more likely to have the confidence to buy the other consumer items that make the economy hum. And home prices are cyclical, in the sense that bad news for your neighbor in terms of a foreclosure usually means bad news for your home value.

Pakistan

Will the killing of Bin Laden kick-off a revolution in Pakistan? This could be a spark.

From Juan Cole: Secret Pakistani Deal with US on Bin Laden

The Guardian reports that a decade ago, then Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf made a deal with Washington acknowledging that US troops could come into Pakistan to strike at top al-Qaeda leaders whenever they liked. Aware that any such incursion would be unpopular, Musharraf warned his new American patrons that the Government of Pakistan would likely condemn it in public so as to assuage the population. The agreement was reaffirmed during the transition to civilian, parliamentary rule, in spring-summer of 2008, according to The Guardian

.... and .....

Ultimately, the key to the erratic behavior of the Pakistani government toward the US and its interests lies in a basic contradiction. The Pakistani elite is wedded to the $3 billion in aid that the US donated to them in 2010. That elite is also allied with the US against some of the Taliban factions. On the other hand, the Pakistani officer corps sees Afghanistan as their sphere of influence, and refuses to cede it to the US. Elements of the Inter-Services Intelligence seem to be allied with Jalaluddin Haqqani and his network, which fights the US and Karzai in Afghanistan and is based in North Waziristan.

These contradictions make it tough for the Pakistani political class to save face. But that is what Gilani and others were trying to do in his recent speech.

tnb

Why the Debt?

The Collapse of Fiscal Rationality In America - Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality with Both Hands

Police to focus on rural seat-belt use

Police to focus on rural seat-belt use | The Star Press

Randolph county is strong tea-bagger country. I'm guessing they'll all be out protesting this strong-arm government action.

tnb

2012, does it matter?

Gin and Tacos contemplating a Romney win over Obama in 2012Substitute Goods

Our dominant fiscal policy will still be cutting everyone's taxes. The wars will stagger on aimlessly and without an end in sight. Interest groups and major industries will continue to write all of the legislation that comes out of Congress. The Justice Department will sit around on its thumb. The regulatory and welfare state will continue to be dismantled. All of this is happening now.

I have to agree, regardless of the 2012 winner, I don't see much change in the general direction of the country. We just don't have decent choices in our elections. We like to promote our two-party system but as I've said before [link] [another link], the R's and Ds are really just two factions of the same party, The Corporate Owned elite.

tnb

Business vs The People

Business vs The People

... But as all businesses become more footloose, they have less incentive to support public spending on education, health, human services or social safety nets, including unemployment insurance.

Unneeded as workers, the unemployed also become superfluous as consumers and burdensome as citizens. Cutting unemployment benefits (as was just accomplished in Michigan and is well under way in Florida) becomes just another means of cutting losses. ...

This is what happens when you have a government that favors business over the people.

tnb

US Economy heading into a Lost Decade

For the US and UK economies, a lost decade looms | Dean Baker

If economic policy was driven by economic reality, then there would be a serious debate in Washington right now about possible routes for boosting demand. This would include calls for more fiscal stimulus, more aggressive monetary policy and a reduction in the value of the dollar in order to boost net exports.

Unfortunately, none of these items are on the table. The debate in Congress is over the best way to reduce the deficit – in other words, how much and how quickly we want to slow growth further. At his press conference last week, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke essentially swore off any further monetary stimulus and expressed his willingness to fight inflation that is not there. And no one in Washington seem seems to understand that amount we import is affected by the price of imports, so lowering the value of the dollar never enters the discussion.

This is a great recipe for continued slow growth and high unemployment. And few in Congress or the media seem to give a damn.

Mitch Daniels - Mark Lubbers - Clean Coal

Daniels pushed and pushed for clean coal plant

"Critics such as Olson are quick to point out the involvement of Mark Lubbers, Daniels' former Statehouse political director, who is working for Leucadia as its Indiana Gasification project manager.

In an interview with The Times, Lubbers said he already had left his Daniels administration post when he was first contacted about the Indiana Gasification project in early 2006. He said his wife, then a state senator, recused herself from voting on Indiana Gasification legislation in 2007 and after."

Mark Lubbers was in Mitch's administration and his wife was an Indiana Senator. Sounds like Indiana royalty to me.

tnb

The Fed's End?

Be Careful Wishing for the Fed’s End - NYTimes.com

Corruption

[The Global Economy’s Corporate Crime Wave by Jeffrey D. Sachs - Project Syndicate]

When government exists for the benefit of business, corruption seems to flourish.

tnb