Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

War Plan Red: America's Planned War on Britain
Washington Post | Peter Carlson | 12/30/05 older

It sounds like a joke but it's not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with England. In the late 1920s, American military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). The Americans imagined a conflict between the United States (Blue) and England over international trade ... Read more

Michael Hayden 'Drifting' Toward Calling Edward Snowden A 'Traitor'
HP | Elise Foley | 12/30/13

"Revolving Door" Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, who now works for the Chertoff Group, said Sunday that he used to describe leaker Edward Snowden as a "defector," but is now "drifting in the direction of perhaps more harsh language ... such as 'traitor.'"

"I think there's an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it's treason," Hayden said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Snowden tore back the curtain on NSA programs that collect phone records en masse, among other things, and his revelations sparked outrage from those who feel the agency is going too far. ... Read more

Fear Pays: Chertoff, Ex-Security Officials Slammed For Cashing In On Government Experience
HP | Marcus Baram | 05/25/11

After last month's plot to send bombs from Yemen to the United States aboard a cargo plane, former U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff's whiskerless visage was ubiquitous on cable news. Solemnly warning that the nation needed stronger security procedures, Chertoff patiently repeated his talking points on ABC News's "World News Tonight", "Fox and Friends", CNBC's "Squawk Box" and Bloomberg TV.

Almost unmentioned in these appearances: Chertoff , and his company Chertoff Group, has a lot to gain financially if some of these measures are adopted. Between his private consulting firm, The Chertoff Group, and seats on the boards of giant defense and security firms, he sits at the heart of the giant security nexus created in the wake of 9/11, in effect creating a shadow homeland security agency. Chertoff launched his firm just days after President Barack Obama took office, eventually recruiting at least 11 top officials from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as former CIA director General Michael Hayden and other top military brass and security officials. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December 31 [13:28]

*War Plan Red: America's Planned War on Britain [45:03]

Number of bullets Homeland Security (DHS) has bought

*U.S. Army Predator Drone Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Tactical Pocket Guide
PublicIntelligence.net | author | 2011

This pocket guide provides information used by battle staffs involved in planning, coordinating, synchronizing or executing actions that support the effective employment of unmanned aircraft systems (uas) on the battlefield.
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U.S. Army Afghanistan Theater of Operations Evidence Collection Guide
PublicIntelligence.net | author | 2012

This Guide will assist Coalition Forces and Afghan units by providing practical means and methods to properly identify, collect, preserve, and provide evidence that will be recognized and accepted by the Afghan criminal justice system.
Read more

*Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
Der Spiegel | Staff | 12/30/13

The NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is targeting.

In 2005, the agency took over a former Sony computer chip plant in the western part of the city. A brisk pace of construction commenced inside this enormous compound. The acquisition of the former chip factory at Sony Place was part of a massive expansion the agency began after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

One of the two main buildings at the former plant has since housed a sophisticated NSA unit, one that has benefited the most from this expansion and has grown the fastest in recent years -- the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. This is the NSA's top operative unit -- something like a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked.

According to internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL, these on-call digital plumbers are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies. TAO's area of operations ranges from counterterrorism to cyber attacks to traditional espionage. The documents reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO's disposal have become -- and also how it exploits the technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its discreet and efficient attacks. ... Read more

*NSA's Secret Toolbox: Unit Offers Spy Gadgets for Every Need
Der Spiegel | Staff | 12/30/13

The NSA has a secret unit that produces special equipment ranging from spyware for computers and cell phones to listening posts and USB sticks that work as bugging devices. Here are some excerpts from the intelligence agency's own catalog.

When agents with the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division want to infiltrate a network or a computer, they turn to their technical experts. This particular unit of the United States intelligence service is known internally as ANT. The acronym presumably stands for Advanced Network Technology, because that's what the division produces -- tools for penetrating network equipment and monitoring mobile phones and computers. ANT's products help TAO agents infiltrate networks and divert or even modify data wherever the NSA's usual methods won't suffice. You can read more about the TAO division, its strengths and tricks in a SPIEGEL feature that was published in English on Sunday. ... Read more

*REVISIT | Who's Pulling the Strings?
Bill Moyers | staff | 10/11/13

A lot of press coverage has focused on the relatively small group of lawmakers, many of them tea party endorsed backbenchers, who pushed their leadership into shutting down the government in a desperate last-gasp effort to kill off Obamacare.

But how does that work? Why can a cabal of hard-right legislators tell their party's leadership what to do? Why doesn't the rest of the Republican caucus stop them? The answer is that in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision a well-funded network of conservative groups has arisen that has the ability to make the lives of Republicans who seek compromise very, very difficult.

Legislators are hesitant to cross these enforcers, fearing primary challengers from the right, or grassroots tea party activists flooding their offices with angry calls. Here's a look at some of the key players behind the scenes (above) and some of the key lawmakers in front of the cameras (below). Roll over the heads to learn more about each player. Read more

*REVISIT | Is Your State Legislator a Member of ALEC?
Bill Moyers | Theresa Riley | 10/28/13

Many of the laws that affect us most directly -- from taxes to marriage equality to voter ID -- are made at the state level. The idea that change begins with the states is one of the founding principles of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. In state houses around the country, hundreds of ALEC "model laws" are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers. ... Read more
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Is Your State Legislator an ALEC Member?

*REVISIT | The Day That TV News Died
Bill Moyers | Chris Hedges | 03/25/13

I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was gradual -- a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb. 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq. ... Read more

*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]

*Wealth Inequality in the World [3:51]

Military Sexual Assault Reports Jump By 50 Percent
HP | Lolita C. Baldor | 12/27/13

The number of reported sexual assaults across the military shot up by more than 50 percent this year, an increase that defense officials say may suggest that victims are becoming more willing to come forward after a tumultuous year of scandals that shined a spotlight on the crimes and put pressure on the military to take aggressive action. .... Read more

*Under the Antarctic Ice - Beauty of The Nature (04/22/13) [52:29]

Can't Touch This
MotherJones | David Gibson | 12/24/13

Until Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) rode to the rescue this week, Pentagon brass and their allies had been issuing dire warnings about the nation's military readiness: The armed services were being decimated, they said, by sequestration--the automatic budget cuts that were set to trim $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade. "It's one thing for the Pentagon to go on a diet. It's another for the Pentagon to wear a straitjacket while dieting," grumbled Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). The message got through: The House overwhelmingly approved the Ryan-Murray plan just two days after it was introduced.

But now, the Pentagon has once more gotten a reprieve from the budget ax: Under Murray and Ryan's congressional budget deal, the Pentagon will get an additional $32 billion, or 4.4 percent, in 2014, leaving its base budget at a higher level than in 2005 and 2006. (The Department of Defense expects its total 2014 budget, including supplemental war funding, to be more than $600 billion.) ...
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Some Interesting Facts

From Eggs to Explosives: The Pentagon's Long Shopping List
MotherJones | Dave Gilson | 12/23/13

Running the massively big, most powerful military in the world requires a lot of stuff, from tanks to toilet paper. The Pentagon handed out $361 billion to contractors in 2012. Some of the items on its long shopping list: ...
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*Want to Cut Government Spending? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 11/25/13

If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you hear about the taxpayer waste at the Defense Department.

Special Enterprise Reporter Scot Paltrow unearthed the "high cost of the Pentagon's bad bookkeeping" in a Reuters investigation. It amounts to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for. The year 1996 was the first that the Pentagon should have been audited under a law requiring audits of all government departments. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with this law. ... Read more
*Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
TYT | Shocking Government Waste at The Defense Department (11/30/13) [7:11]

The Black Budget
Washington Post | author | date

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Inside the 2013 U.S. intelligence 'black budget'
Washington Post | author | date

The pages in this document appear in the summary of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's multivolume FY 2013 Congressional Budget Justification -- the U.S. intelligence community's top-secret "black budget." It covers many of the high-profile agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, as well as lesser-known programs, including those within the Treasury, State and Energy Departments. ... Read more

*Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill (full) (11/03/13) [1:26:22]

Department of Homeland Security: FY2013 Appropriations
magazine | author | 10/01/12

McDonald's Takes Down Employee Help Site After Controversy
HP | Katie Little | 12/25/13

After yet another PR headache, McDonald's has taken down its employee resources website following what it deemed "unwarranted scrutiny and inappropriate commentary."   On Thursday, CNBC reported the McResource Line site included multiple posts bashing fast food, the industry that McDonald's has spent decades spreading throughout the world.

Several excerpts from the posts, which were created from a third-party vendor, warned against the negative effects of fast food, even going so far as labeling a cheeseburger and fries, core items on its menu, as an "unhealthy choice."   After news of these posts went viral, the fast-food giant told its vendor to remove the site, said Lisa McComb, a spokeswoman for McDonald's USA. The company will still offer employees help via phone. ... Read more

What America Would Look Like If Libertarians Got Their Way
AlterNet | RJ Eskow | 12/25/13

But it seems even clearer that a "libertarian" in today's political environment is almost always someone who ascribes to certain core philosophies: He abhors government, hates taxation, and is hostile to collective action on behalf of the less fortunate. Name any prominent modern libertarian -- Ayn Rand ...

Edward Snowden: 'Mission's Already Accomplished... I Already Won'
HP | author | 12/24/13

... Snowden told The Washington Post in an interview published online Monday night that he was satisfied because journalists have been able to tell the story of the government's collection of bulk Internet and phone records, an activity that has grown dramatically in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ...

... "As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated," Snowden told the Post. "Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself." ... Read more

Retail Traffic Plunges By "Staggering" 21% In Week Before Christmas
ZeroHedge | author | 12/24/13

That it has been one of the most lacklustre shopping seasons in recent years has already been repeatedly covered, with average holiday spending expected to decline for the first time since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, all this despite record promotions and an ever earlier start to Black Friday.

However, while the early start to shopping season has missed expectations, driven primarily by an unprecedented weakness in traditional bricks and mortar outlets, there was some hope that the last stretch into Christmas and the New Year would provide a much needed, last minute bump. Those hopes were dashed last night when Shopptertrack reported that retail traffic plummeted by an unprecedented 21% last week, and in-store sales decreased 3.1% from the year before, dashing retailers' hopes that the final stretch before Christmas would offset soft sales numbers earlier in the holiday shopping season. ... Read more

Study: Major Funders Of Climate Change Denial Identified
firedoglake.com | DSWright | 12/23/13

A study by Drexel University has identified the major sources of funding for climate change denial. Some of the names are all too familiar such as the Koch and Scaife families while some have done their best to remain obscure and have yet to get noticed.

TYT | Who Funds Climate Change Deniers? (12/23/13) [10:44]

John Beale's EPA
WSJ | author | 12/20/13

Last month we told you about John Beale, the Environmental Protection Agency employee who bilked taxpayers out of almost $900,000 by pretending to be a secret agent. Telling EPA colleagues that he was a CIA operative, Beale was paid for long absences while on imaginary missions for "Langley." Now there is a disturbing new question about John Beale that goes to the heart of the EPA's mission. What was he doing when he actually showed up for work?

In September, Beale pleaded guilty to theft of government property and agreed to pay $886,186 in restitution and to forfeit another $507,207. On Wednesday he was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison. ... Read more
TYT | A EPA Regulator's Astonishing Fraud (12/22/13) [6:56]

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December 24 [58:55]

TRNN | Gerald Epstein: Former Bank of Israel Chief Stanley Fischer will likely become the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, but his record shows consistent catering to Wall Street rather than bringing the country to full employment (12/24/13) [5:16]

TYT | Do You Trust The Clergy? Most Don't (12/23/13) [3:58]

*Jon Stewart | Former E.P.A. official John Beale admits to lying about his C.I.A. ties, contracting malaria and serving in Vietnam (12/18/13) [5:00]

Hypersonic: The Warp Speed of Today

'Duck Dynasty' Dad Risks $500 Million With Gay-Sin Remark
Bloomberg | Christopher Palmeri | 12/24/13

Robertson, the 67-year-old head of a Louisiana family that makes duck-hunting gear, was suspended indefinitely last week by A&E Television Networks LLC after telling GQ magazine that homosexuals were akin to adulterers, the greedy, drunkards and swindlers and would not "inherit the kingdom of God." A&E is co-owned by Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Corp.

His comments and suspension put at risk a show that has exploded in popularity since it first began airing in March 2012. "Duck Dynasty" has generated $400 million in merchandise sales, according to Forbes magazine. The show has produced almost $80 million in advertising sales for A&E this year through September, according to Kantar Media, a more than fourfold increase from a year earlier. ... Read more

The Taper, The Inflation, And The American People's Matrix Of Lies
ZeroHedge | Howard Kunstler | 12/23/13

Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke pulls one last dead rabbit out of his hat -- it suffocated while the head-fake taper percolated in Ben's brain lo these many months of jive talkin'. As the year turns, the central bank will supposedly monetize $10 billion less debt per month -- $75 billion down from $85 billion -- with $5 billion each deducted from the US Treasury stream and the rotten mortgage barrel. Was there a catch?

John H. Makin saying that the Fed's actual purchase of debt paper amounted to an average $94 billion a month through the year 2013, not $85 billion? I have averred often in this space to the Fed's ability to conduct back-door buying operations of all kinds of janky financial crapola -- and in a world where claims on promises to pay hugely exceed anyone's ability to pay or re-pay, there's as much of it out there as there are plastic grocery bags floating in the horse latitudes of the Pacific Ocean. The Fed can hose up bad paper all the live-long day and apparently get away with mis-reporting what it is doing, and is the country any the worse for it? ... Read more

How Goldman Quickly Found The Volcker Rule Loopholes
ZeroHedge | author | 12/23/13

The ink on the final Volcker Rule has not dried yet, and already the TBTF armies of lawyers have found all the loopholes in the rule they need to continue prop trading as if nothing has changed. Enter Goldman Sachs which as the WSJ reported, is raising a new fund, to which it will contribute 20% in capital, which will make investments in commercial real estate-backed loans including office buildings, hotels, and shopping centers. "Goldman has raised more than $1 billion for the new fund, according to people briefed on the matter. The fund aims to boost that total to $2 billion, and Goldman expects to invest "up to 20% of total equity commitments," according to September marketing documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal." Just how did Goldman get the green light to allocated up to $400 million for what is clearly a prop trading bet: "because regulators excluded many real-estate loans from the tough restrictions on investment funds, allowing Wall Street firms to continue making concentrated bets--sometimes risky ones--with their own capital." In other words, when it comes to reflating the precious real estate bubble, anything goes. ... Read more

Do We Have the NSA on the Run, or Is a Much Worse Surveillance State in the Making?
AlterNet | Zaid Jilani | 12/20/13

While it may look like the NSA and surveillance state are on the run -- it's too soon to break out the applause. The White House panel's recomendations also included the suggestion that data collected on individuals should be held by telecommunications providers or a private third party. There is a threat that this surveillance state may simply reconstitute itself into an increasingly privatized apparatus that the government can access through fees and subpoenas.

VICE's Megan Neal reports that so-called "data brokers" -- firms that spy on Americans' behavior and then sell that information to businesses looking to profit off of it -- have become a $156 billion industry. Neal notes that the Senate Commerce Committee recently published a report looking into how these data marketers spy on Americans -- the report shows how these firms label Americans under various categories depending on their financial security and other demographic categories, including "Ethnic Second-City Strugglers" and "X-tra Needy." ... Read more

TalkingStickTV | Ralph Nader | Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! (05/08/10) [1:14:16]

Fukushima Aftermath? 98 Percent Of Parts Of The Pacific Ocean Floor Covered By Dead Sea Creatures
thetruthwins.com |Michael Snyder | 12/15/13

National Geographic recently published a very interesting article about this study of the Pacific Ocean floor. The scientists running the study cannot really explain the very strange changes that they have observed since 2011… In March 2012, less than one percent of the seafloor beneath Station M was covered in dead sea salps. By July 1, more than 98 percent of it was covered in the decomposing organisms, according to the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

... "In the 24 years of this study, the past 2 years have been the biggest amounts of this detritus by far," said study leader Christine Huffard, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. ...

... Could this phenomenon possibly be related to what has been going on at Fukushima? ... Read more

You Should Never, Ever Leave Your Webcam Uncovered When You Aren't Using It
Slate | Tyler Lopez | 12/19/13

Is your webcam recording you right now? If that little green light is off, you'd probably think the camera is, too. But think again. Wednesday, the Washington Post highlighted an unnerving study published at Johns Hopkins University which found that a laptop webcam can function in relative secrecy -- a slightly subtler Eye of Sauron. ...

... The FBI has also publicly acknowledged its ability to employ such techniques when investigating criminal activity: Last year, a federal magistrate rejected the agency's request to secretly monitor a suspected criminal through his webcam. The Chinese government used a program called Ghostnet -- which involved remote access to webcams -- to spy directly on the Dalai Lama, though it is not known whether or not they first disabled the indicator light. But it isn't just governments who are co-opting webcams to do their surveillance work. ... Read more

Ron Paul Blasts "After 100 Years Of Failure, It's Time To End The Fed"
ZeroHedge | author | 12/20/13

A century ago, politicians failed to understand that the financial panics of the 19th century were caused by collusion between government and the banking sector. Today, however, we do know better. We know that the Federal Reserve continues to strengthen the collusion between banks and politicians. We know that the Fed's inflationary monetary policy continues to reap profits for Wall Street while impoverishing Main Street. And we know that the current monetary regime is teetering on a precipice. One hundred years is long enough. End the Fed. ... Read more

Meet Wall Street: Your New Landlord
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ZeroHedge | author | 12/20/13

Blackstone Group appears to be trying to oligopolize the business of renting single-family homes in the U.S.. As Bloomberg reports, after the housing crash left more than 7 million foreclosed homes in its wake, the investment firm has spent more than $7.8 billion purchasing about 41,000 single-family homes for rental conversion. The world's largest private equity firm has quickly become the largest landlord (of rental homes) in the U.S. and in October, Blackstone offered the first-ever "rental-home-backed" security on Wall Street. One has to wonder if this was the plan all along?

How Bad is the Corporate and Conservative Media?
AlterNet | author | 12/20/13

Actually both corporate and right-wing press are getting much worse. There are dozens of examples of journalistic failure every week. The right-wing media is often insane as we report on AlterNet in our super popular weekly series on Right-wing wackos. And, increasingly, mainstream media is about protecting the 1% and the media owner's financial interests. They too often miss the real story or mislead the reader.

It is no accident that the world's richest man -- Mexico's Carlos Slim, worth $73 billion -- is the second largest stockholder of the New York Times. Or that The Washington Post is now owned totally by one super rich person -- Jeff Bezos, the emperor of Amazon.   Bezos recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But, the Post's articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper's sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon. ... Read more

Grand Designs - Earthship - Brittany Groundhouse (10/31/12) [47:00]

Let Them Hear the Rumble! Invest in People, Not War
HP | Ralph Nader | 12/18/13

Earlier this month, a delegation of activists took to Capitol Hill to demand a decrease in the massive, out-of-control military budget. As millions of Americans struggle with inadequate health care, low wages, deteriorating public services and uncertainty about their futures as the wage gap between the wealthy elite and the working poor widens, billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars are pouring into the coffers of the Department of Defense every year. The Pentagon budget currently makes up half of the U.S. government's entire operating budget. Estimated to be around $716 billion in 2013, the U.S. defense budget is greater than the defense budgets of the next ten highest spending nations combined. ... Read more

*How Secret Currency Traders' Club Devised Biggest Market's Rates
Bloomberg | Liam Vaughan | 12/18/13

It's 20 minutes before 4 p.m. in London and currency traders' screens are blinking red and green. Some dealers have as many as 50 chat rooms crowded onto four monitors arrayed in front of them like shields. Messages from salespeople and clients appear, get pushed up by new ones and vanish from view. Orders are barked through squawk boxes.

This is the closing "fix," the thin slice of the day when foreign-exchange traders buy and sell billions of dollars of currency in the largely unregulated $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market, the biggest in the world by volume, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Their trades help set the benchmark WM/Reuters rates used to value more than $3.6 trillion of index funds held by pension holders, savers and money managers around the world.

Now regulators from Bern to Washington are examining evidence first reported by Bloomberg News in June that a small group of senior traders at big banks had something else on their screens: details of each other's client orders. Sharing that information may have helped dealers at firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup Inc. (C), UBS AG (UBSN) and Barclays Plc (BARC), manipulate prices to maximize their own profits, according to five people with knowledge of the probes. ... Read more

CFTC Announces It Is Undercounting Size Of Swaps Market By As Much As $55 Trillion
ZeroHedge | author | 12/19/13

What is $55 trillion between friends? Very little according to the CFTC. In perhaps the biggest under the radar news of the day - to be expected with every watercooler occupied by taper experts - the WSJ reports that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Wednesday that technical errors at two so-called swaps data repositories, which collect and supply regulators with transaction data, have led the CFTC to misreport the overall size of the swaps market by undercounting its size. Isn't it curious how all these "glitches" always work out in the favor of preserving market calm and confidence and away from spooking investors and speculators? Either way, a better question is how big was the so called undercounting? The answer: as large as $55 trillion! ... Read more

10 PHOTOS: 2013's Most Terrifying Weather Disasters
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 12/19/13

The year 2013 has seen no less than 39 weather-related disasters costing $1 billion or more in damage. That's far more than last year, when there were only 27, according to an analysis of disaster statistics by the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters--and very near the all time high of 40, in 2010.

After starting in late August, the enormous Yosemite Rim fire eventually grew to encompass more than 250,000 acres, gaining it a ranking of the third largest in California history. To put that in perspective, the Rim Fire grew almost as large as all the other 2013 California fires combined (thus far). ... Read more

Lurid Subprime Scams Unveiled in Long-Running Fraud Trial
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 12/12/13

... The evidence uncovered in the Household suit should put to lie once and for all the oft-repeated myth -- spread by many of America's most notable dumb people, from Rush Limbaugh to New York City Mayor-unelect Mike Bloomberg -- that the financial crisis was caused by the government "forcing" banks to lend to poor people.

In reality, of course, the subprime bubble exploded because financial companies and banks were in a mad rush to get as many iffy borrowers into loans as quickly as possible -- and not because they were forced to, but because they made assloads of money doing so. ... Read more

Land of the Free? America Has 25 Percent of the World's Prisoners
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 12/16/13

The United States has about five percent of the world's population and houses around 25 percent of its prisoners. In large part, that's the result of the "war on drugs" and long mandatory minimum sentences, but it also reflects America's tendency to criminalize acts that other countries view as civil violations.

In 2010, The Economist highlighted a case in which four Americans were arrested for importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than in cardboard boxes. That violated a Honduran law which that country no longer enforces, but because it's still on the books there its enforced here. "The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece." When the article was published 10 years later, two of them were still behind bars. ... Read more

Forgotten Soldiers (WWII)
WSJ | author | date

Roman Tritz's memories of the past six decades are blurred by age and delusion. But one thing he remembers clearly is the fight he put up the day the orderlies came for him.   "They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy," says Mr. Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot. "To hell with them."

The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans -- and likely hundreds more -- during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal. Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals. ... Read more

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
Wikipedia.org | author | on-going

The TPP is intended to be a "high-standard" agreement aimed at emerging trade issues in the 21st century.

On November 13, 2013, a complete draft of the treaty's Intellectual Property Rights chapter was published by WikiLeaks. This and other leaks have drawn increased criticism and protest of the negotiations from global health experts, internet freedom activists, environmentalists, organized labor, advocacy groups and elected officials, in large part due to the secrecy of the negotiations, the expansive scope of the agreement, and controversial clauses in the drafts leaked to the public. ... Read more

Mansfield, Ohio, air base's fate reflects a larger battle between active duty, Guard
Washington Post | Rajiv Chandrasekaran | 12/16/13

After spending almost $600 million to buy a tiny fleet of the planes over the past six years, stationing them in Mansfield, Ohio and at two other National Guard bases, the Air Force flew all of them to a junkyard earlier this year. Five more planes, which the Pentagon already has paid for, will be mothballed as soon as they are built. ... Read more

Land of the Free? America Has 25 Percent of the World's Prisoners
AlterNet | Joshua Holland | 12/17/13

The United States has about five percent of the world's population and houses around 25 percent of its prisoners. In large part, that's the result of the "war on drugs" and long mandatory minimum sentences, but it also reflects America's tendency to criminalize acts that other countries view as civil violations.

In 2010, The Economist highlighted a case in which four Americans were arrested for importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than in cardboard boxes. That violated a Honduran law which that country no longer enforces, but because it's still on the books there its enforced here. "The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece." When the article was published 10 years later, two of them were still behind bars. ... Read more

Judge: NSA's collecting of phone records is probably unconstitutional
WashingtonPost | Ellen Nakashima | 12/16/13

A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency's daily collection of virtually all Americans' phone records is almost certainly unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon found that a lawsuit by Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist, has "demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success" on the basis of Fourth Amendment privacy protections against unreasonable searches. ... Read more

Before and After: A Remarkable Year of Recovery from Hurricane Sandy
Time Magazine | author | 10/27/13

Hurricane Sandy made landfall on October 29, 2012, near Brigantine, New Jersey, cutting a vicious path through one of the most densely populated areas in the U.S. A year and $65 billion in damages later, the most hard-hit areas look nothing like they did in the aftermath of the storm. ... Read more
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Recovery from Superstorm Sandy

'Inequality is bad for everyone': Robert Reich fights against economic imbalance
PBS Newshour | author | 10/11/13

Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks to Robert Reich about "Inequality for All," a documentary about the former labor secretary's personal crusade to explain to Americans why everyone should care about the nation's growing economic disparity and divisiveness. ... Read more
'Inequality is bad for everyone': Robert Reich fights against economic imbalance (10/11/13) [6:40]

U.S. Drone Strike Kills Nearly a Dozen Civilians Traveling to Wedding in Yemen
AlterNet | Alyssa Figueroa | 12/13/13

On Thursday, a U.S. drone strike hit a convoy traveling to a wedding in Yemen, killing about a dozen civilians. The New York Times reports 11 deaths, while other reports state 17. A recent AFP report states that two of the victims were on the Yemeni government's list of wanted Al Qaeda suspects, while most of the others have been confirmed as civilians.

This reiterates the sentiment heard in villages throughout Yemen. Mohamed al-Qawli, the brother of an innocent drone victim in Yemen, told Reuters: "These (drone) strikes create more terrorism. In our area there was never anyone linked to al Qaeda. After the strike, everyone in the area started listening to al Qaeda types, exchanging videos on mobile phones." ... Read more

Bill Moyers: 'We Are This Close to Losing Our Democracy to the Mercenary Class'
AlterNet | Bill Moyers | 12/12/13

I met Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1987 when I was creating a series for public television called In Search of the Constitution, celebrating the bicentennial of our founding document. By then, he had served on the court longer than any of his colleagues and had written close to 500 majority opinions, many of them addressing fundamental questions of equality, voting rights, school segregation, and -- in New York Times v. Sullivan in particular -- the defense of a free press.

Those decisions brought a storm of protest from across the country. He claimed that he never took personally the resentment and anger directed at him. He did, however, subsequently reveal that his own mother told him she had always liked his opinions when he was on the New Jersey court, but wondered now that he was on the Supreme Court, "Why can't you do it the same way?" His answer: "We have to discharge our responsibility to enforce the rights in favor of minorities, whatever the majority reaction may be." ... Read more

Uruguay's President Rips Into U.N. Official Over Marijuana Law: 'Stop Lying'
HP | Roque Planas |12/13/13

José "Pepe" Mujica shot back on Friday at the president of the International Narcotics Control Board, a U.N. agency, for saying that his administration refused to meet with the agency's officials before legalizing marijuana this week.

Mujica batted down the criticism, insisting that his administration is open to discussing the law and accusing the INCB President Raymond Yans of applying a double standard by criticizing Uruguay, even as U.S. states pass laws to legalize recreational marijuana consumption. ... Read more

NSA Official: Snowden Has 'The Keys To The Kingdom'
HP | Ashley Alman | 12/16/13

However, the sentiment is not unanimous among high-ranking NSA officials. Rick Ledgett, the NSA official leading the task force to assess the damage done by Snowden's leaks, disagrees with Alexander.

"My personal view is, yes, it's worth having a conversation about," Ledgett told CBS. "I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part."

Ledgett said some of the most worrying documents in Snowden's possession are those that would provide a "roadmap" for other nations to protect themselves from U.S. surveillance efforts.   To an adversary, Ledgett said, "It is the keys to the kingdom." ... Read more

Is the 900-Page Volcker Rule Too Much and Too Late?
finance.yahoo.com | Michael Santoli | 12/10/13

Is the nearly 900-page stack of regulations prohibiting a litany of specific trading actions and dictating how traders are paid the best way to ensure a secure banking system?

This is the guiding hope behind the so-called Volcker rule, a measure meant to ban government-backed banks from speculative trading using their own money. The rule, which has been approved by three of five required government agencies, is a long-in-the-making piece of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law of 2010, which grew from the 2008 financial crisis.

Named for the former Federal Reserve chairman and Obama administration economic advisor Paul Volcker -- who famously said the last useful innovation from the banking industry was the automated teller machine -- the rule is aimed at making banking boring again. ... Read more
Is the 900-Page Volcker Rule Too Much and Too Late? (12/10/13) [4:00]

Budget Deal May Be Good News for Pentagon Boondoggles
MotherJones | Erika Eichelberger | 12/12/13

... Though the $22 billion in cuts to the Pentagon in 2014 were imperfect, says Ethan Rosenkranz, a national security analyst at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, they would have reined in unnecessary and wasteful spending. "Sequestration is a bad way of implementing spending reductions," he says. "However, it's an excellent way of forcing the Pentagon to make some tough budgetary decisions which they've been neglecting to make for the past 10 or 12 years."

Anticipating looming budget cuts, the Air Force was considering delaying the purchase of more F-35 fighter jets. That would have been a wise decision, Rosenkranz says, because the F-35 has not been fully tested yet, and the program is already billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. ... Read more

*How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown? 12/13/2013, roughly 33,273 people!
slate.com | Chris Kir | Update, June 19, 201

Using the most recent CDC estimates for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of today, 12/13/2013, roughly 33,273 people have died from guns in the U.S. since the Newtown shootings. Compare that number to the number of deaths reported in the news in our interactive below, and you can see how undertold the story of gun violence in America actually is.

Why Chris Arnade Quit His High-Paying Wall Street Job to Photograph Extreme Poverty and Addiction
finance.yahoo.com | Nicole Goodkind | 12/10/13

Chris Arnade was a trader on Wall Street for 20 years. He had a secure spot on a foreign exchange desk at one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. Yet after two decades on Wall Street he quit his job and began spending much of his time in an area of the South Bronx where the average household income is just $16,000 per year.

"I effectually became disillusioned with Wall Street following the financial crisis," says Arnade. "As a way to try to find something to fill in the gap I started walking around New York with my camera talking to [and photographing] people." ... Read more
Why Chris Arnade Quit His High-Paying Wall Street Job to Photograph Extreme Poverty and Addiction (12/10/13) [2:29]

RBS Wins 'Dumbest Bank of the Year' Award
Bloomberg | Jonathan Weil | 12/11/13

... According to a consent order released today by the New York State Department of Financial Services, RBS provided employees at its payment-processing centers in the U.K. with written instructions, containing "a step by step guide on how to create and route U.S. dollar payment messages involving sanctioned entities through the United States to avoid detection." The instructions included:

"IMPORTANT: FOR ALL US DOLLAR PAYMENTS TO A COUNTRY SUBJECT TO US SANCTIONS, A PAYMENT MESSAGE CANNOT CONTAIN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 1. The sanctioned country name. 2. Any name designated on the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) restricted list, which can encompass a bank name, remitter or beneficiary."

In other words, RBS explicitly told employees how to cover the bank's tracks. The consent order said the bank conducted $523 million of transactions from 2002 to 2011 through New York correspondent banks involving Sudanese and Iranian customers. It also said that RBS, to a lesser extent, processed U.S. dollar transactions for clients in Cuba, Burma and Libya. ... Read more

This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense
HP | Linda Tirado | 11/22/13

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of. ... Read more

Teen Avoids Prison Because He's Wealthy
HP | author | date

Ethan Couch Sentenced To Probation In Crash That Killed 4 After Defense Argued He Had 'Affluenza'

A 16-year-old avoided spending time in prison for killing four people in a car accident in June after the judge bought his lawyers' argument that he was the victim of wealth.

CBSDFW reports that Ethan Couch was sentenced to 10 years probation for the drunk driving crash that ended the lives of youth pastor, Brian Jennings; Hollie and Shelby Boyles; and Breanna Mitchell.   Prosecutors asked that Couch serve 20 years in prison. His blood alcohol level was .24, three times the legal limit for an adult.

Psychologist G. Dick Miller testified for the defense that Couch suffered from "affluenza," a condition in which "his family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no rational link between behavior and consequences," ... Read more

Want to Cut Government Spending? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 11/25/13

If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you hear about the taxpayer waste at the Defense Department.

Special Enterprise Reporter Scot Paltrow unearthed the "high cost of the Pentagon's bad bookkeeping" in a Reuters investigation. It amounts to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for. The year 1996 was the first that the Pentagon should have been audited under a law requiring audits of all government departments. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with this law. ... Read more
*Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
TYT | Shocking Government Waste at The Defense Department (11/30/13) [7:11]

Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Enough from Defense: Joseph Cirincione
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 12/12/13

If all goes according to the plan conceived by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the co-chairs of the bipartisan budget conference committee, Congress will approve their budget deal and the government won't shut down again like it did for 16 days in October.

"I agree with what Chuck Hagel said before he became defense secretary, which is that there's plenty of room to cut," says Cirincione. "We've doubled the defense budget since 9/11 and a lot of that was to fight wars that we're now ending. There's plenty of room to shrink the military without cutting away any of the muscle."

"Even if we don't agree to eliminate nuclear weapons, it's hard to imagine why we need 50 of them or 500 of them. We have 5,000 in our arsenal.....Why do we need so many around still around particularly for the cost that they're incurring for the military, for the economy."

"We're spending $55 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs...but the really bad news is that that number is about to explode," Cirincione tells The Daily Ticker.   He explains that the U.S. will be deciding over the over the next two or three years whether to replace its existing nuclear triad of missiles, bombers and submarines, which is estimated to cost $1 trillion over the next 40 years. ... Read more
*Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Enough from Defense: Joseph Cirincione (12/12/13) [4:40]

At Least 194 Children Have Been Shot to Death Since Newtown
MotherJones | Mark Follman | 12/10/13

A year after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mother Jones has analyzed the subsequent deaths of 194 children ages 12 and under who were reported in news accounts to have died in gun accidents, homicides, and suicides. They are spread across 43 states, from inner cities to tiny rural towns.

Following Sandy Hook, the National Rifle Association and its allies argued that arming more adults is the solution to protecting children, be it from deranged mass shooters or from home invaders. But the data we collected stands as a stark rejoinder to that view: ... Read more
The NRA says arming more adults will protect kids -- but most are killed at home, our investigation shows, often with unsecured guns.

Another Batch of Wall Street Villains Freed on Technicality
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 12/04/13

I love covering trials, which is one reason I've been a little sad since switching over to the Wall Street beat: Few of the bad guys in this world ever even get interviewed by the authorities, much less indicted, so trials are comically rare.

But we did have one last year, a big one, and though it was boring and jargon-laden enough on the surface that at least one juror fought sleep in its opening days, I thought it was fascinating. In a story about the Justice Department's Spring 2012 prosecution of a wide-raging municipal bond bid-rigging case, I called it the "first trial of the modern American mafia": ... Read more

*Pope Francis Is Time's Person Of The Year
HP | Catherine Taibi | 12/11/13

Time's managing editor Nancy Gibbs explained the magazine's choice on Wednesday, calling the Pope "a new voice of conscience."

"In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time, about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power," she said. "When he kisses the face of a disfigured man or washes the feet of a Muslim woman, the image resonates far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church." ... Read more

Two-Thirds Say American Dream Is Over
ZeroHedge | author | 12/11/13

A stunning 64% of American say the US no longer offers everyone an equal chance of 'getting ahead', according to a new poll by Bloomberg. The widening gap between rich and poor - as we have previously noted as wide as during the roaring 20s - has eroded faith in the American dream. The lack of faith, Bloomberg reports, is especially pronounced among those making less than $50,000 a year with 73% of those saying the economy is unfair. ... Read more
Click to zoom

The One Topic No One Is Discussing
ZeroHedge | author | 12/11/13

Earlier, Deutsche Bank's iconoclast Jim Reid dared to point out the painfully obvious: that something has drastically changed since the Great Financial Crisis (what that "something" is, is clear to all those whose year end bonus does is not contingent on never pointing out the printerphant in the room). This time around, instead of looking back, he looks forward, to the year 2014, and brings up the two questions nobody dares to ask: i) what happens if 2014 is the year when the recession can no longer be delayed, and ii) how will the Fed, already having doubled down on every last "bullet" in its arsenal, use monetary policy to provide a burst of growth when even $85 billion in flow per month is no longer enough...

From Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid Read more

Obama Faces Backlash Over New Corporate Powers In Secret Trade Deal (TPP = Trans-Pacific Partnership)
HP | Zach Carter | 12/08/13

The Obama administration appears to have almost no international support for controversial new trade standards that would grant radical new political powers to corporations, increase the cost of prescription medications and restrict bank regulation, according to two internal memos obtained by The Huffington Post.

The memos, which come from a government involved in the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade negotiations, detail continued disputes in the talks over the deal. The documents reveal broad disagreement over a host of key positions, and general skepticism that an agreement can be reached by year-end. ... Read more

World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games
propublica.org | Justin Elliott | 12/09/13

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels. ... Read more

Fukushima two years on: a dirty job with no end in sight
TheGuardian | Ian Sample | 12/03/13

Carefully, gently, one-by-one. The removal of nuclear fuel rod assemblies from a badly damaged building at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is finally under way. Months in the planning, the job is risky, complex, and crucial. Here begins the first major step in the toughest decommissioning project ever attempted.

Fukushima is home to six nuclear reactors, three of which were running when the giant tsunami swept across the site on 11 March 2011. The defuelling operation centres on the building for reactor four. Though the reactor was shut down for maintenance when the towering wave struck, all its radioactive fuel, and more from earlier runs, was held in a storage pool on an upper floor of the building. ... Read more

Fox News Paid Ousted Exec $8 Million In 'Hush Money': Gawker
HP | Jack Mirkinson | 12/09/13

We now know what it reportedly takes to keep a fired Fox News executive from spilling the beans on all the juicy inner workings at the network: about $8 million.

That's the figure that Gawker said Brian Lewis, the ousted former consigliere to Roger Ailes, was paid by Fox News in a recently uncovered settlement.   Gawker, which reported the figure on Monday, described the payment as "hush money." The site's report is just the latest in a long-running story of intrigue inside one of the most secretive and cutthroat companies in the media industry. ... Read more

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in Pictures by Daniel Beltra
TheGuardian | author | 12/09/13

Read more

Whose sarin?
London Review of Books | Seymour M. Hersh | 12/08/13

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded -- without assessing responsibility -- had been used in the rocket attack. ... Read more

A Superbug Outbreak at NIH
Click to zoom
PBS Frontline | Bill Rockwood | 10/22/13

One particularly dangerous bug, Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase, or KPC, has been found in American hospitals in 44 states so far. That's likely an underestimate, since there is no national reporting system to track outbreaks of drug-resistant bacteria at hospitals.

In 2011, KPC came to one of the nation's flagship research hospitals, the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, known as the NIH. What followed was an outbreak even they still can't fully explain. ... Read more

When We Lose Antibiotics, Here's Everything Else We'll Lose Too
Wired Magazine | Maryn McKenna | 11/20/13

This week, health authorities in New Zealand announced that the tightly quarantined island nation -- the only place I've ever been where you get x-rayed on the way into the country as well as leaving it -- has experienced its first case, and first death, from a strain of totally drug-resistant bacteria

He was flown to Wellington Hospital where tests found he was carrying the strain of bacterium known as KPC-Oxa 48 -- an organism that rejects every kind of antibiotic.   Wellington Hospital clinical microbiologist Mark Jones (said): "Nothing would touch it. Absolutely nothing. It's the first one that we've ever seen that is resistant to every single antibiotic known." ...

... "Post-antibiotic era" is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot these days, most of the time without people stopping to consider what it might really mean. A year ago, I started wondering what life would be like, if we really didn't have antibiotics any more. ... Read more

Award-winning science journalist Maryn McKenna shadows the first group to join the EIS after Sept. 11, 2001. She follows them across the United States and to Africa and Asia, revealing their exhaustion, frustration, occasional fear - and exhilaration when they solve a mystery in time to save lives.

Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future
Click to zoom
medium.com | Maryn McKenna | date

... Sir Alexander Fleming's prediction was correct. Penicillin-resistant staph emerged in 1940, while the drug was still being given to only a few patients. Tetracycline was introduced in 1950, and tetracycline-resistant Shigella emerged in 1959; erythromycin came on the market in 1953, and erythromycin-resistant strep appeared in 1968. As antibiotics became more affordable and their use increased, bacteria developed defenses more quickly. Methicillin arrived in 1960 and methicillin resistance in 1962; levofloxacin in 1996 and the first resistant cases the same year; linezolid in 2000 and resistance to it in 2001; daptomycin in 2003 and the first signs of resistance in 2004. ... Read more

Trans Fat "Ban" Not What It Appears
Alliance for Natural Health | author | 12/03/13

You may have already heard the news: the FDA has banned trans fats! Well, sort of.   Under the FDA's proposed rule, trans fat itself is not banned. Instead, the ban is on the major source of trans fats in processed food--partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs). PHOs are artificial trans fats, created via the process of adding hydrogen to vegetable oils in order to make them semi-solid. ...

... The timing and intent of the FDA's rule is suspect for two reasons. First, it was announced only after most companies had already eliminated trans fat--it's currently only in a handful of foods. Second, the ban will promote market demand for two new GMO soybeans by Monsanto and DuPont, which are engineered for trans fat free oils. ...

... Essentially, the FDA released the PHO ban at a politically perfect point: when it would no longer anger Big Food, but would be of tremendous benefit to Big Biotech's and Big Food's newly deregulated products. ... Read more

*Activist and peacemaker Nelson Mandela dead at 95
pbs.org | Larisa Epatko | 12/05/13

Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa credited with ending apartheid there, died Thursday in South Africa. He was 95 years old.   Mandela was revered worldwide for leading the anti-apartheid movement and not letting his nearly three decades in prison shake his determination. ... Read more
PBS | Remembering South African leader Nelson Mandela (12/05/13) [18:24]

Peak Smog: Shanghai Orders Cars Off Roads As Pollution Literally Off The Charts
ZeroHedge | author | 12/06/13

"It's horrible out there," notes one resident as an orange-level haze alert, the second highest, remained in effect broadly across China and, as Bloomberg reports, the heavy fog shrouding Shanghai caused widespread flight cancellations and sent the air quality index surging past 500 to the "beyond index" category.

The government has ordered 30% of government-used vehicles off the road and industrial companies to reduce or halt production. Read more

Jobs Added By Industry: Education, Transportation And Retail Winners; Information And Finance Losers
Click to zoom
ZeroHedge | author | 12/06/13

Elizabeth Warren Eyes Wall Street's Think Tank Ties
WSJ | Alan Zibel | 12/04/13

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) asked big Wall Street banks to disclose financial contributions to think tanks, a request that came several days after a centrist Democratic think tank blasted Ms. Warren's "economic populism" on issues including Social Security. ... Read more

The State of Work
prospect.org | Harold Meyerson | Editorial

The Forty Year Slump

Since 1947, Americans at all points on the economic spectrum had become a little better off with each passing year. The economy's rising tide, as President John F. Kennedy had famously said, was lifting all boats. Productivity had risen by 97 percent in the preceding quarter-century, and median wages had risen by 95 percent. As economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted in The Affluent Society, this newly middle-class nation had become more egalitarian. The poorest fifth had seen their incomes increase by 42 percent since the end of the war, while the wealthiest fifth had seen their incomes rise by just 8 percent. Economists have dubbed the period the "Great Compression." ... Read more

*Fast Food CEOs Rake in Taxpayer-Subsidized Pay
ips-dc.org | author | date

These CEO pay subsidies are the result of a loophole that allows firms to deduct unlimited amounts from their income taxes for the cost of stock options, certain stock grants, and other forms of so-called "performance pay" for top executives. Put simply: the more corporations pay their CEOs, the less they pay in federal taxes. And ordinary taxpayers wind up footing the bill.

During the past two years, the CEOs of the top six publicly held fast food chains pocketed more than $183 million in fully deductible "performance pay," lowering their companies' IRS bills by an estimated $64 million. ...

How a Shadowy Network of Corporate Front Groups Distorts the Marketplace of Ideas (Think ALEC)
Truth-out | Joshua Holland | 11/21/13

In 1971, Lewis Powell, who would become a Supreme Court justice the following year, penned a memo calling on the American business community to aggressively engage in shaping the country's political discourse and regulatory landscape. The "American economic system is under broad attack," he wrote. He said the time had come to fight back. "Business must learn . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination -- without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business." ... Read more

ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners in assault on clean energy
The Guardian | Suzanne Goldenberg | 12/04/13

An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels -- casting them as "freeriders" -- in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned

Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action. ... Read more

Climate Scientists Say the Current International Warming Target Is "Disastrous"
BillMoyers | Tim McDonnell | 12/05/13

Ever since the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, world leaders have agreed on 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) as the maximum acceptable global warming above preindustrial levels to avert the worst impacts of climate change (today we're at about 0.8 degrees C). But a new study, led by climatologist James Hansen of Columbia University, argues that pollution plans aimed at that target would still result in "disastrous consequences," from rampant sea level rise to widespread extinction. ... Read more

Americans Want Congress Members To Pee In Cups To Prove They're Not On Drugs
HP | Emily Swanson | 12/02/13

While most Americans like the idea of drug testing for welfare recipients, they LOVE the idea of drug testing for members of Congress.

According to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, 64 percent of Americans favor requiring welfare recipients to submit to random drug testing -- a measure pushed by Republican lawmakers in recent years -- while 18 percent oppose it. But an even stronger majority said they're in favor of random drug testing for members of Congress, by a 78 percent to 7 percent margin. Sixty-two percent said they "strongly" favor drug testing for congressional lawmakers, compared to only 51 percent who said the same of welfare recipients. ... Read more

EU Commission fines banks $2.3 billion for benchmark rigging
Reuters | Foo Yun Chee | 12/04/13

EU antitrust regulators vowed to keep investigating rate- rigging on Wednesday as they slapped a record 1.7 billion euro ($2.3 billion) penalty on six financial institutions including Deutsche Bank, RBS and JPMorgan.

The fines by the Commission, which along with authorities around the globe has been examining the manipulation of London interbank offered rate (Libor) and its euro equivalent Euribor, takes the tally of penalties related to the scandal to almost $6 billion. ... Read more

Now Is A Horrible Time To Cut Food Stamps, In 1 Depressing Chart
HP | Maxwell Strachan | 12/04/13

Congress effectively pulled money out of the hands of 47 million struggling Americans last month when it allowed massive cuts to the country's food stamp program to go through without a hitch.

Republicans have been supportive of such cuts. In a recent HuffPost/YouGov poll, 67 percent of Republican respondents said they approved of the cuts. Roughly 67 percent of Democrats opposed. ... Read more
Click to zoom

*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]

Want to Cut Government Spending? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 11/25/13

If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you hear about the taxpayer waste at the Defense Department.

Special Enterprise Reporter Scot Paltrow unearthed the "high cost of the Pentagon's bad bookkeeping" in a Reuters investigation. It amounts to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for. The year 1996 was the first that the Pentagon should have been audited under a law requiring audits of all government departments. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with this law. ... Read more
*Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
TYT | Shocking Government Waste at The Defense Department (11/30/13) [7:11]

Inside the Largest Fracked Oil Spill Ever
prn.fm | Steve Horn | 12/02/13

Tesoro Logistics -- the company whose pipeline spilled more than 800,000 gallons of fracked Bakken Shale oil in rural North Dakota in September -- has hired infamous contractor Witt O'Brien's to oversee its clean-up of the biggest fracked oil spill in U.S. history.

As revealed after ExxonMobil hired the same firm in the aftermath of a 210,000-gallon tar sands oil spill in April 2013, Witt O'Brien's -- formerly known as OOPS, Inc. -- is a firm with a history of oil spill cover-ups dating back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It also oversaw the spraying of toxic oil dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico during BP's summer 2010 mega-spill and a literal cover-up of Enbridge's massive "dilbit disaster" tar sands pipeline spill in Michigan. ... Read more

I Tried to See Where My T-Shirt Was Made, and the Factory Sent Thugs After Me
MotherJones | Dana Liebelson | 11/29/13

... If Aruna were one of my friends in DC, no one would be asking her why she isn't hitched yet. But in Aruna's home village, if you haven't secured a husband by your early 20s, you're in for a hard ride. "In India, a woman is auspicious because she is married," says Srimati Basu, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky who is an expert on the status of women in India. "Lack of marriage is horrible for the person, the family, and the community."

In order to get married, Tamil village girls like Aruna need at least three gold British sovereigns -- bullion is the preferred currency for dowries -- the equivalent of about $1,200. Together, Aruna's parents make a little less than $400 a year.

As a child, Aruna dreamed of going to college. But by the time she was 15, when her government-subsidized schooling ended, she understood that she was too poor. Then, a stranger promised to change her life. He offered her a job at a textile factory that has supplied companies including, until recently, UK-based maternity wear maker Mothercare. Her pay would be about $105 a month -- enough for food for her family, her further education, and most importantly, the chance to build a dowry. ... Read more

Debate: Should The U.S. Break Up Big Banks?
NPR | NPR Staff | 10/23/13

Too big to fail.   Those four words loomed large in 2008, as a crisis in the banking world threatened the global economy. Fears that the failure of large financial institutions would undermine the entire economic system led Congress to step in, passing a $700 billion bailout package. ...

Hanford Nuclear Site Clean-Up: The Mess Gets Worse
khq.com & NBCNews.com | author | 11/18/13

The government's multi-billion-dollar effort to clean up the nation's largest nuclear dump has become its own dysfunctional mess.   For more than two decades, the government has worked to dispose of 56 million gallons of nuclear and chemical waste in underground, leak-prone tanks at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington State.

The waste is a legacy of the Cold War, when the site housed nuclear reactors churning out radioactive plutonium for thousands of atomic bombs. To clean up the mess, the Department of Energy (DOE) started building a factory 12 years ago to encase the nuclear leftovers in stable glass for long-term storage.   But today, construction of the factory is only two-thirds complete after billions of dollars in spending, leaving partially constructed buildings and heavy machinery scattered across the 65-acre site, a short distance from the Columbia River. ... Read more

Wall Street Taught Me How to Cheat
AlterNet | Chris Arnade | 11/26/13

A new report finds 53% of financial services executives say ethical standards inhibit career progression.

My first year on Wall Street, 1993, I was paid 14 times more than I earned the prior year and three times more than my father's best year. For that money, I helped my company create financial products that were disguised to look simple, but which required complex math to properly understand. That first year I was roundly applauded by my bosses, who told me I was clever, and to my surprise they gave me $20,000 bonus beyond my salary.

The products were sold to many investors, many who didn't fully understand what they were buying, most of them what we called "clueless Japanese." The profits to my company were huge -- hundreds of millions of dollars huge. The main product that made my firm great money for close to five years was was called, in typically dense finance jargon, a YIF, or a Yield Indexed Forward. ... Read more

Want to Cut Government Waste? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 11/25/13

If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you hear about the taxpayer waste at the Defense Department.

Special Enterprise Reporter Scot Paltrow unearthed the "high cost of the Pentagon's bad bookkeeping" in a Reuters investigation. It amounts to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for. The year 1996 was the first that the Pentagon should have been audited under a law requiring audits of all government departments. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with this law. ... Read more
*Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For

Corporate Elites Are Witnessing a Growing Wave of Resistance to the 'Walmartization' of Our Economy
AlterNet | Kevin Zeese | 11/29/13

The struggle of working Americans took center stage as Black Friday protests covered the country. The struggle for wages that do not leave families impoverished is one that affects us all and highlights the unfair economy created by a class war waged by the wealthy for decades. The 'Walmartization' of the US economy has created a downward spiral in wages and destroyed small businesses and communities while heightening the wealth divide that is at the root of so many problems. The war on working people is a war on all but the wealthiest Americans.

... Noam Chomsky writes in his new book, Occupy: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, that the "business class" is always engaged in class warfare. They continually act to protect their interests, wealth and power. The class war manifests itself in every aspect of our lives from the attack on our public institutions and civil liberties to climate change and the global race to the bottom and racially unfair police enforcement and mass incarceration. It defines our foreign policy including trade agreements rigged for big business and wars for resources, cheap labor and the positioning of American Empire. ... Read more

7 Reasons Why It's Easier for Humans to Believe in God Than Evolution
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 11/26/13

... Yet even as creationists keep trying to undermine modern science, modern science is beginning to explain creationism scientifically. And it looks like evolution--the scientifically uncontested explanation for the diversity and interrelatedness of life on Earth, emphatically including human life--will be a major part of the story. Our brains are a stunning product of evolution; and yet ironically, they may naturally pre-dispose us against its acceptance.

"I don't think there's any question that a variety of our mental dispositions are ones that discourage us from taking evolutionary theory as seriously as it should be taken," explains Robert N. McCauley, director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University and author of the book Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not. ... Read more