June 15, 2011

By DEAN BAKER

http://counterpunch.org/baker06142011.html

Sometimes it can be fun to get inside a crazy worldview to ask how they deal with contradictory evidence. For example, how do creationists reconcile their view that all plants and animals were created in their current form around 10,000 years ago with fossil evidence of life forms dating back hundreds of millions of years?

In this vein, it’s worth asking how the proponents of deficit-reduction think that lower deficits will lead to increased growth and job creation in an economy mired in a severe slump. There is not an easy answer.

There is a standard econ 101 story about how reducing deficits can boost the economy. The theory goes that if the government reduces its deficit, and therefore borrows less, it will reduce interest rates. Lower interest rates will in turn give firms incentive to invest more.

Lower interest rates should also cause the dollar to decline, since it will make U.S. government bonds and other dollar assets less attractive to foreign investors. If the dollar falls in value then our goods will be more competitive on world markets. This will cause us to import less and export more, thereby creating jobs.

However is this what the deficit hawks believe will happen now?

By DEAN BAKER

http://counterpunch.org/baker06142011.html

Sometimes it can be fun to get inside a crazy worldview to ask how they deal with contradictory evidence. For example, how do creationists reconcile their view that all plants and animals were created in their current form around 10,000 years ago with fossil evidence of life forms dating back hundreds of millions of years?

In this vein, it’s worth asking how the proponents of deficit-reduction think that lower deficits will lead to increased growth and job creation in an economy mired in a severe slump. There is not an easy answer.

There is a standard econ 101 story about how reducing deficits can boost the economy. The theory goes that if the government reduces its deficit, and therefore borrows less, it will reduce interest rates. Lower interest rates will in turn give firms incentive to invest more.

Lower interest rates should also cause the dollar to decline, since it will make U.S. government bonds and other dollar assets less attractive to foreign investors. If the dollar falls in value then our goods will be more competitive on world markets. This will cause us to import less and export more, thereby creating jobs.

However is this what the deficit hawks believe will happen now?

Published on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/15-3

by Rania Khalek

“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,” were the words of GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in front of about 200 people at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.  The former Massachusetts Governor went on to say, “It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”

Romney’s statement wasn’t radical or controversial in least bit.  So why did the right freak out and declare Romney’s statement to be “political suicide“?  

This reminds me of a situation back in April when all but one of the Republican members of the US House of Representatives rejected a Democratic amendment that would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause.  The following day the GOP-led House voted 255 to 172 to strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases.  It is remarkable that in 2011,  a majority of Republicans in Congress reject the indisputable,  scientific consensus that human activity is altering the climate.

Why are conservatives, despite the mounting evidence, so unwilling to accept that climate change is a serious threat caused by greenhouse emissions?  

Published on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 by Miller-McCune

http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/confessions-of-a-nuclear-power-safety-expert-32220/

by John Perlin

When Italy decided in the mid-’70s to add nuclear power to its power portfolio, young mechanical and nuclear engineer Cesare Silvi was among those attracted to the opportunities it presented. His work centered on nuclear safety issues — in particular, what might happen if something unexpected struck a power plant.

Corners he saw cut there eventually soured Silvi on that endeavor. His next position — at the Italian Commission on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Sources, which included work on nuclear disarmament — eventually soured him on nuclear energy itself.

“[If we] continue with nuclear power, there will definitely be worse accidents,” he argued in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Over the weekend, Italian voters agreed and overwhelming rejected restarting nuclear power in their country.

“Why not consider Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima as warnings of greater catastrophes to come and avoid the inevitable by shutting them down, much like changing your diet and/or lifestyle after finding out that your cholesterol or blood pressure is elevated, rather than continuing down the same path until a heart attack or stroke strikes?”

In the meantime, he suggests that wrangling existing power plants requires a global response toward the dangers he predicts.

“Instead of a Kyoto accord,” he says, “we will have to have some kind of multilateral nuclear agreement to deal with such threats.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/seven_republican_dwarfs_20110615/

Posted on Jun 15, 2011

By Robert Scheer

They assumed the stance of the Seven Dwarfs, not as a matter of physical but rather intellectual stature. Not one of the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination who debated Monday night rose to a point of seriousness in addressing the nation’s grievous problems. Instead, they ever so playfully thumbed their collective noses at any possible meaningful government reaction to the mess that we are in. It was Herbert Hoover warmed over, leaving Barack Obama secure in the mantle of FDR whether he deserves that tribute or not.

Obama, who has been inconsistent and weak in reining in the Wall Street greed that got us into this deep economic morass, is now under no pressure from the opposition to improve his performance. The Republican knee-jerk reaction—government bad, big business great, and don’t dare say that the Wall Street scoundrels who created this crisis need a timeout—gets Obama off the hook from legitimate criticism he needs to hear. As The Wall Street Journal headlined the non-debate: “Candidates Run Against Regulation.”

It’s as if the sound government regulation of the financial industry implemented in response to the Great Depression—not its polar opposite, the radical deregulation fueled by Republican free market zealots—was the source of our banking meltdown. 

Posted on June 14, 2011

 http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/weaponized-e-coli-used-to-destroy-organic-foods-a-detective-starts-a-%E2%80%98food-safety%E2%80%99-investigation/

By Agatha Crispy

The deadly E. coli in Europe was blamed on fresh organic vegetables.  Warnings issued everywhere: “Don’t eat your vegetables!”  This was followed with rather unseemly rapidity by food safety “experts” calling for the irradiation of fresh food, for more funding for the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), and for a global food safety agency.

A detective steps in.  Pondering begins.

1.  Irradiation of food.  Hmm.  Odd.

Doesn’t irradiation of food turn even safe food dangerous?

2.  More funding for FSMA.  Hmm.  Odd.

Aren’t farming and natural health groups across the country trying to “defund” FSMA because it is in the hands of a rather (is “detested” too strong a word?) Monsanto executive who, in the name of “food safety” is ordering armed raids against organic farms, co-ops and food producers and under FSMA can do the same to natural health people and products?

3.  A global food safety agency.  Hmm.  Odd.

Wouldn’t that turn all food in the world over to global corporate interests backing “food safety” in the US?  Aren’t they (The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the DOE, USAID, the US Department of State, the USDA, the World Bank, the FAO, SYSCO and the Tides Foundation [and Monsanto]) invested in GMOs?  Aren’t GMOs not organic, even bad for organic?  Aren’t some of these groups connected to Pharma and opposed to natural supplements, too?

More questions arise.

Posted on June 14, 2011

 http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/weaponized-e-coli-used-to-destroy-organic-foods-a-detective-starts-a-%E2%80%98food-safety%E2%80%99-investigation/

By Agatha Crispy

The deadly E. coli in Europe was blamed on fresh organic vegetables.  Warnings issued everywhere: “Don’t eat your vegetables!”  This was followed with rather unseemly rapidity by food safety “experts” calling for the irradiation of fresh food, for more funding for the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), and for a global food safety agency.

A detective steps in.  Pondering begins.

1.  Irradiation of food.  Hmm.  Odd.

Doesn’t irradiation of food turn even safe food dangerous?

2.  More funding for FSMA.  Hmm.  Odd.

Aren’t farming and natural health groups across the country trying to “defund” FSMA because it is in the hands of a rather (is “detested” too strong a word?) Monsanto executive who, in the name of “food safety” is ordering armed raids against organic farms, co-ops and food producers and under FSMA can do the same to natural health people and products?

3.  A global food safety agency.  Hmm.  Odd.

Wouldn’t that turn all food in the world over to global corporate interests backing “food safety” in the US?  Aren’t they (The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the DOE, USAID, the US Department of State, the USDA, the World Bank, the FAO, SYSCO and the Tides Foundation [and Monsanto]) invested in GMOs?  Aren’t GMOs not organic, even bad for organic?  Aren’t some of these groups connected to Pharma and opposed to natural supplements, too?

More questions arise.

By Ed Silverman // June 14th, 2011 // 8:11 am

http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/06/will-drugmakers-abandon-facebook-some-might/

Last month, Facebook alerted the pharmaceutical industry to a big change in its rules. The famed social media site will no longer allow drugmakers to disable comments posted on newly created pages. And existing pages will no longer be able to do so as of August 15. This means that pharma Facebook pages will soon have a dialogue resembling the rest of the Internet, which is the goal.

Of course, this is problematic for drugmakers, which are uncomfortable – to put it mildly – to allow comments or videos to suddenly appear on their sites due to legal and regulatory concerns. As you know, if someone mentions a side effect or off-label use, a report to the FDA soon follows. In-house lawyers do not like this prospect, although such fears also keep some gainfully employed, yes?

There will be an exception – branded pages solely dedicated to a prescription drug may continue to have commenting functionality removed (back story). Nonetheless, the rule change is causing a great deal of soul searching among drugmakers that insist they want to embrace social media but continue to live in fear of the FDA and what might occur if they are unable to control Facebook content.

And so we asked a few drugmakers about their plans. No, this was not a survey nor was there a large sample size. And in general, Facebook remains a desirable tool. But two big drugmakers – Sanofi and AstraZeneca – acknowledged that, if they cannot overcome any concerns posed by the new rules, walking away from Facebook is an option. Here is what we were told…

Published on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 by The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/blog/161378/around-globe-us-military-bases-generate-resentment-not-security

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

As we debate an exit from Afghanistan, it’s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave.  

This is an issue that demands a hard look not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but around the globe—where the US has a veritable empire of bases.

According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad—over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included.  The cost?  $102 billion annually—and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases.

In a must-read article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases “constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory.”  He notes a “bloated and anachronistic” Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany.

“It makes as much sense for the Pentagon to hold onto 227 military bases in Germany as it would for the post office to maintain a fleet of horses and buggies,” writes Gusterson.

By William J. Astore

Posted on June 14, 2011, Printed on June 14, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175404/

I have a fairy tale for you.  Once upon a time, a representative democracy was established with a constitution that distilled the wisdom of the ages.  Its foundational principles included civilian control of the military and a system of checks and balances that encouraged vigorous public debate as a basis for effective policy-making. 

In this fabled land, the role of civilian leaders was, in part, to serve as a check on military ambition and endless wars.  They were to prove cautious, too, in committing their citizen-soldiers to battle, and when they did, they would issue Congressional declarations of war so that everyone could grasp the nature of the national emergency at hand and the necessity of military action.  In waging war, they would rely on shared sacrifice and even raise taxes.  When necessary, it was their job to rein in or even remove military leaders who acted like Caesar (read: General Douglas MacArthur) rather than Cincinnatus (read: General George Washington).

Yes, you’ve guessed it: it’s not a fairy tale, or at least not completely.  It’s the United States — an older America that, despite a decidedly checkered and often imperial past, was nevertheless proud of its reluctance to fight, but steadfast in its commitment to win once it decided that battle was the course of action.  Even then, this America remained resolute in its reluctance to embrace a military ethos or bow down before military gods, committed as it was to civilian primacy and the avoidance of a large standing army.

Colorado Independent | 06.14.11 | 8:09 am

http://coloradoindependent.com/90967/water-shortages-in-the-west-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet

An extraordinary set of circumstances produced the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The question now is whether the compact and other laws and treaties collectively called the Law of the River are sufficiently resilient to prevent teeth-barring among the seven states of the basin in circumstances that during the 21st century may be even more extraordinary.

For the most part, speakers at a recent conference sponsored by the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center agreed that there’s no need to start over even if future circumstances will require states of the Southwest to “bend the hell out of it,” in the words of law professor Douglas Kenney.

Kenney, director of the law school’s Western Water Policy Program, last winter released the first part of a several-tiered study of challenges to administration of the river. Obscured by drought that had left Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, reduced to its lowest level since 1938, demand had quietly crept up and overtaken supply during the last decade, he said.

Despite occasional wet years such as the current one, climate-change projections foresee significantly hotter temperatures and perhaps a 9 percent decline in water volume during coming decades

Colorado Independent | 06.14.11 | 8:09 am

http://coloradoindependent.com/90967/water-shortages-in-the-west-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet

An extraordinary set of circumstances produced the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The question now is whether the compact and other laws and treaties collectively called the Law of the River are sufficiently resilient to prevent teeth-barring among the seven states of the basin in circumstances that during the 21st century may be even more extraordinary.

For the most part, speakers at a recent conference sponsored by the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center agreed that there’s no need to start over even if future circumstances will require states of the Southwest to “bend the hell out of it,” in the words of law professor Douglas Kenney.

Kenney, director of the law school’s Western Water Policy Program, last winter released the first part of a several-tiered study of challenges to administration of the river. Obscured by drought that had left Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, reduced to its lowest level since 1938, demand had quietly crept up and overtaken supply during the last decade, he said.

Despite occasional wet years such as the current one, climate-change projections foresee significantly hotter temperatures and perhaps a 9 percent decline in water volume during coming decades

Tuesday 14 June 2011

http://www.truth-out.org/time-challenge-convention-imf/1308071780

I suspect that an endorsement from me may be the kiss of death — but, anyway, Stan Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel, really would be the best choice to head the International Monetary Fund.

The obvious disclosure: Mr. Fischer was my teacher and my colleague for many years, so of course I’m not objective. But personal ties aren’t the issue.

The point, instead, is that we’re living in times that require creative, independent thinking. An I.M.F. managing director who serves as the front man or woman for the usual suspects, for conventional wisdom in unconventional times, is not what we need.