Whopper Alert!!

In the ongoing anti-trust review of the AT&T / T-Mobile merger, AT&T has announced that they’ll hire 5000 new workers if the merger goes through.

You’d have to look awfully hard to find a merger of this scope where the workforce of the combined company actually increased post merger. One of the principle incentives for such mergers is to increase the per employee revenue. I’m sure with the focus on jobs being in the forefront of everything at the moment I guess AT&T figures this is a good strategy to apply pressure to the regulators considering the merger. AT&T knows they can say anything they want without obligation.

I’d bet my life this is a big whopper.

LINK

Morons Minding the Store

I’ve read any number of things worth commenting on today but the FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, gets the heads up for his ridiculous statement about the damage from hurricane Irene.

“The good news, based on these initial reports, is that there hasn’t been major damage to our communications infrastructure, except for damage along coastal regions hit hard by the storm,” he said in a statement.

How’s that? Everything is fine. Except where the hurricane hit. OK.
LINK

The extent of the damage wreaked on the East Coast’s communications infrastructure became more apparent on Monday as new reports trickled in to the Federal Communications Commission.

As of Monday afternoon, as the storm moved north, the commission reported that 44 percent of the cell tower sites in Vermont are out of service, more than a third are out in Connecticut, 31 percent are out in Rhode island, and a quarter are out of service in Virginia.

Meanwhile, the percentage of cell sites that are out of service in North Carolina declined slightly to 11 percent from 14 percent.

So far, Hurricane Irene has put 6,500 cell phone sites out of service, knocked out 210,700 landline phones, crippled two television stations, affected a million cable customers and taken 10 radio stations off line.

These numbers are larger than the ones reported Sunday afternoon by the commission, which at the time said 1,398 cell sites were not operational. That could be because many of the cell sites at the time were operating on back-up power.

But it also appears that the number of cable subscribers whose cable service has gone down has doubled from 500,000 on Sunday.

Nevertheless, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Sunday that in his opinion, the damage to the communications infrastructure wasn’t “major,” and that first responders were not impeded in their emergency communications.

“The good news, based on these initial reports, is that there hasn’t been major damage to our communications infrastructure, except for damage along coastal regions hit hard by the storm,” he said in a statement.

“The FCC remains on active watch around-the-clock to assess and respond to outages where necessary,” he said. “I have also spoken directly to the CEOs of wireless, telco and cable companies, and we are working to ensure continuation of service, and that service is restored quickly where needed.”

How Important is This?

The potential impact of Elizabeth Warren as a U.S Senator is incalculable to the progressive movement.

I’m not big on making campaign donations, I absolutely hate the system we have, but for this I think I could be convinced to contribute. I can’t speak for progressives in general but I think that maybe this feeling might be quite common and could in fact put Ms Warren in the senate.

This race will be pivotal in the upcoming election and may well set a record for political spending for a senate seat. What’ll make it interesting is the difference between Scott Brown and the republican mainstream. In these days of republican extremism, that there is even one moderate senate republican who wields any power at all is a notable exception. By current republican standards Brown more properly identifies with democrats than his own party. I’d have never thought there might be a heads up race of this nature in the state of Massachusetts or anywhere for that matter. Being Masachusetts is the very reason for this.

In the end though we have to have a democratic congress. Moderate repubs are nice but when push comes to shove they won’t vote for the majority middle class. On the really big issues repubs will make a sacrifice in order to pass crucial legislation and worry about the electoral consequences later.

LINK

Way Cool

Harriet Tubman conducted multiple missions as an Underground Railroad conductor, and she also participated in the Union Army’s Combahee River raid that freed more than 700 slaves.

Looking back on her career as a freedom fighter, Tubman noted, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

While awareness of the truth of corporatocracy oppression is by itself not sufficient to win freedom and justice, it is absolutely necessary.

I went right to the money quote from this article because I seriously doubt the idea can be better expressed.
LINK

There is far more in this particular piece than this so it’s worth a look. Lots of us here are broadly knowledgeable about the things referred to but it’s good to examine our own activities to gauge if what we’re doing can make a difference. Breaking down political action into these three categories or ideas is helpful.

This informs me that I need to start writing more again to my elected officials.

I noted an article at HuffPo today referencing the latest polling data showing congressional repubs having the worst polling numbers ever with the tea clowns doing equally as bad. They really screwed the pooch of late and have their backs against the wall. We need to capitalize on this by keeping up the pressure right through the fall of 2012. It’s entirely possible to flip the entire congress in a good way and keep Obama in office. Just as with Bush, the repub screwups have handed us a big opportunity. Now we have to make the most of it.

That Old Tyme Religion. Better Late Than Never.

The U.S. military is being overtaken by the religious right.

Here is another of those episodes that is a huge insult to deceased veterans and their families. It seems that certain groups are trying to force a christian burial service on members and their families. What really gets in my craw about this is the deceased members have given their lives to ensure religious freedom while at the same time persons of privilege, for political gain, who are unwilling to risk making a similar sacrifice want to take it away by scheming to promote a unique faith.

I have seen two articles on the topic of religion in the military of late. One is HERE discussing DOD taxpayer dollars being expended which explicitly supports christian faiths to the exclusion of other religions.

Did you know there is now a required Spiritual Fitness Test administered to all Army members. And you can fail it!! I guess for not being spiritual enough. And we have a $30,000,000 chapel at Fort Hood in Texas. Yes, that’s thirty million dollars. In the modern army smiting our enemies is truly a spiritual experience.

And this one today about burial ceremonies. LINK

Texas Legislators and Christian Groups Fight to Insert God Into Vets’ Funerals — Against Families’ Wishes
By Alex DiBranco, AlterNet
Posted on August 23, 2011, Printed on August 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152143/texas_legislators_and_christian_groups_fight_to_insert_god_into_vets%27_funerals_–_against_families%27_wishes

Shouldn’t veterans and their families have the right to decide whether religion — and what kind — is welcome at their own funerals? The Department of Veterans Affairs says yes. But three Texas Congressman and Christian military organizations want to strip away this basic right. Instead, they want to be allowed to impose unwanted Christian ceremonies on the military funerals of everybody who has served the red, white, and blue.

Following the Families’ Wishes

Three organizations — Veterans of Foreign Wars District 4, the American Legion Post 586, and the National Memorial Ladies — have filed a lawsuit against VA officials at the Houston National Cemetery for banning references to God in a recent service.

“It makes my skin crawl that liberals are attempting to drive prayer out of a funeral ceremony for our heroes,” Texas Rep. John Culberson told Fox News, which has given significant airtime to the controversy. “We’re going to fix this so that no Obama liberal bureaucrat will interfere with the funeral of a hero.” In addition to supporting the lawsuit, Culberson has threatened to stop the salary of the cemetery director who enforced the no-consent-no-God rule and to hold hearings in the fall investigating the VA’s anti-Christian stance.

Republican Texas reps. Culberson, Ted Poe and Michael McCaul portray the issue as denying American heroes the religious funerals they desire. In a post with the tongue-in-cheek headline “Texas Congressmen to force Christian prayer over my dead body,” American Atheists military director Justin Griffith accuses the trio of outright lying in order to use “military funerals for political gain.” The fantasy story they’re peddling certainly plays better than the truth: that they’re expending energy and resources fighting for the right to “use Christian themes, prayers, speeches without seeking consent in every single military veteran funeral statewide.”

While the VA couldn’t comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, it stated its support for the besieged cemetery director and provided an official statement slamming the broader accusations:

“The idea that invoking the name of God or Jesus is banned at VA national cemeteries is blatantly false. The truth is VA’s policy protects veterans’ families’ rights to pray however they choose at our national cemeteries. Put simply, VA policy puts the wishes of the veteran’s family above all else on the day it matters most — the day they pay their final respects to their loved one.”

If the VA has anything to say about it, it will continue to be up to veterans’ families whether or not to have a religious service — and whether the religion is Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or a multitude of other faiths. The VA further confirmed that the changes advocated would mean imposing religious prayer against the wishes of the family.

Meanwhile, the groups filing the lawsuit are playing the victim, claiming their religious rights are being violated and complaining about how difficult it is to be prohibited from imposing their God on unwilling veterans’ families. Marilyn Koepp, secretary of National Memorial Ladies, a volunteer group that attends veterans’ funerals, shares her woes with Fox News: “It’s very hard for me to be at the funeral of one of our veterans … and we just make that decision that we will say God bless you, and how can someone tell us, no you can’t.”

But the feelings of volunteers like herself, strangers to the deceased veteran and their families, don’t matter in this situation. It’s not a ceremony for their loved ones. They’re volunteering to attend and honor late veterans — and while this is a laudable act, it loses all of its positive impact if it involves ramming unwanted religious rhetoric down the throats of mourning family members.

Jason Torpy, president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF), puts the narrative back on track by pointing out that “the true victims in this situation are the families who have lost loved ones, not the volunteers who want a government platform for their religious beliefs.” Moreover, though the blame for restricting religious influence may be targeted at the VA and the Obama administration because they cut less sympathetic figures than grieving relatives, it’s really the family members who make the individual decisions about whether to have a religious burial. It’s their rights that would be taken away if the VA was forced to change its policy.

“Most people would agree that it is wrong for anyone to impose their religion on a veteran’s family without their consent, especially during a deeply personal burial service,” the VA’s response statement continues, in a pointed jab at these meddling Christian groups. “Similarly, it is wrong not to respect a family’s request for a religious service. VA’s policy is in place to protect families – whatever their choice. Out of respect for the families, VA’s policy exists to prevent anyone from disrespecting or interfering with a veteran’s private committal service.”

What’s Your God Doing in My Government?

The groups and congressmen fighting to force God on all military funerals not only disrespect atheist servicemembers, they also stomp all over separation of church and state. “As an atheist and as a soldier, I care deeply about our Constitution being subverted like this,” Justin Griffith writes at the American Atheist blog. “I am shocked that Texas’ U.S. Reps are attempting to ensure that my funeral is going to feature a state-sponsored Christian message.”

It shouldn’t be too surprising, though: Griffith points out that Rep. Culberson previously co-sponsored legislation to allow teacher- and coach-led prayer to indoctrinate students in public schools. So this is nothing out of character for the congressman from Texas.

The post concludes: “Some politicians want to sneak religion into government, and they want to do it at my funeral on your dime.”

Griffith could not be reached by phone for further comment because he’s currently deployed on active duty. But Kathleen Johnson, former military director and now vice president of American Atheists, did have something more to say.

Johnson, a veteran who works in Texas, laments that when the issue of imposing prayer on military funerals has come up, the “knee-jerk reaction” has been to side with the Christian groups. She credits their success in selling an utterly deceptive framing for this response. “These Texas congressmen are sort of leading this charge in the publicity effort to frame this as a religious discrimination issue in which Christians are being discriminated against,” Johnson commented, “when it’s actually a religious discrimination issue in which everybody else is being discriminated against.”

Both American Atheists and MAAF stated that they have no problem with religion being included in military funerals at the behest of the family. “Full freedom if the family asks,” says MAAF’s Jason Torpy. “That should be it, end of discussion.” In the absence of family preference, however, the government must not cross the line into promoting religion.

Torpy points out that while the default is always that government speech is secular, the congressmen and groups bringing the lawsuit want religious underpinnings to be the default for all official services. He also rejects the claim that banning unwanted religion violates the free speech rights of the Christian groups’ volunteers. The Constitutional principle in jeopardy is separation of church and state: Torpy argues that volunteers’ speech becomes government speech when they decide to participate in the official service, and as such is beholden to the restrictions thereof.

And while it’s really Christianity Culberson and his ilk are fighting for, Torpy believes their rhetoric often uses non-denominational theist interjections in order to avoid drawing the attention of other religious individuals, who might also want to protect their own religious freedoms and loved ones’ burials against Christian encroachment. If it’s just atheists being discriminated against, Torpy says, “they feel they can get away with it.”

The Army’s Ambiguous Arlington Policy

While the VA is under fire for protecting the rights of atheist veterans to have an official military funeral free from religion, Arlington Cemetery, the only Army-run cemetery in the United States, is raising concerns for including religion in ceremonies against families’ express wishes.

MAAF president Jason Torpy recently presided over a ceremony at Arlington for decorated WWII pilot John Hormuth and his wife Mattie. With children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in attendance, the Hormuths wanted to be remembered in accordance with their beliefs. But even though the family was explicit about not wanting any religious components to their service, these wishes were not met. In particular, a volunteer from the Arlington Ladies blessed the mourning family and presented a religious card “on behalf of the chief of staff of the Army.”

The Army and the Arlington administration have yet to respond to the family’s demand for action to end unwanted religious intrusions or to MAAF’s request for comment. “The Chief of Staff of the Army should ensure that the Arlington Ladies are not praying on his behalf,” MAAF stated in response to this incident. “The Army should ensure that Arlington National Cemetery includes religious content only at the request of the family and only under the supervision of the chaplains. MAAF applauds the care and dedication of the Arlington Ladies and other similar groups, but their care must not come at the cost of government-sponsored religious speech that is against a family’s wishes.”

Unlike the VA, which appears to be doing the right thing by atheists, the Army has not released a statement defending the right of veterans’ families to have a service in accordance with their beliefs. While Arlington Cemetery does allow families to request a humanist speaker and no chaplain interaction, an inquiry about the policy on having a ceremony completely free of references to religion or God remained unanswered at the time this article was filed.

Atheists in Foxholes

The interference with military funerals represents a particularly egregious example of attempted discrimination against atheists and Christians trying to force their beliefs where they don’t belong. The insistence on dictating the terms of a veterans’ burial, superseding the families’ wishes, goes to a callous and disrespectful extreme, yet the problems atheists in the military face are hardly confined to funerals.

There’s also simple neglect or ignorance of atheists in the military. To dispel the myth, “there are no atheists in foxholes,” MAAF spotlights the service of over 200 open atheists on its website. MAAF also has a campaign to increase the number of military humanist chaplains and to certify lay leaders to support religious chaplains, to address a lack of counseling and morale-building services for non-theist servicemembers.

Unfortunately, the discrimination against atheists takes a far more active turn as well. Kathleen Johnson relates that during her military service, she was harassed for being an atheist by fellow servicemembers, emailed threats, and even told by an evangelical commander that anyone who didn’t subscribe to her Christian beliefs would be downgraded on their evaluation. Johnson said that in her 10 years as military director for American Atheists, she’s heard countless stories of ostracism and harassment, incidents which many atheists were afraid to report to authorities due to concerns about retaliation.

Then there’s the direct promotion of religion in other aspects of military life. Johnson pointed to the Army’s mandatory “Spiritual Fitness” test, part of a $125 million Soldier Fitness program, as an example. In a recent Talk to Action article, Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) discusses the results of the organization’s investigation into this program and other methods of diverting Department of Defense money toward supporting religion. Rodda writes: “Paid for with taxpayer dollars are a plethora of events, programs, and schemes that violate not only the Constitution, but, in many cases, the regulations on federal government contractors.” Military money is thus funneled toward evangelical concerts (with Bible readings between Jesus-loving songs), private Christian retreats, religious youth programs, and more.

With this kind of behavior in the military, it becomes less surprising that chapters of national veterans groups would attempt to impose Christianity on all of their fellow servicemembers, even in death.

The “War on Christmas” Playbook

“War on Christmas” is a phrase that has been used by the Religious Right to claim that their most sacred of holidays is being destroyed by immoral secular liberals, who outrageously demand that employees say “Seasons Greetings” rather than “Merry Christmas.” Come Christmas time, if you listen to Fox News, you can usually hear dramatic stories of cashiers whispering their illicit greeting to shoppers to evade the notice of their managers.

This coverage usually leaves out the fact that companies are simply being respectful toward consumers who don’t happen to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Note the framing parallels with the current situation of prayer at military funerals. Christian groups, talking heads, and politicians jump on the bandwagon, selling it as discrimination against them and infringement on their religious rights, without any consideration for non-Christian beliefs. There’s no acknowledgement that being asked not to promote religion on the job doesn’t impact their ability to celebrate Christmas however they want in their private life.

Military funerals are much more serious than holiday shopping, and as government services, the promotion of Christianity is especially egregious. But it’s useful to recognize that this isn’t a new tactic — it’s just being adapted to a new venue.

Christian groups that want to push a religious agenda have figured out that an effective way to do so is by pretending to be the victim and heading off non-Christians’ complaints of discrimination by capturing that narrative first. And as American Atheist VP Kathleen Johnson indicated — this works. Once people buy into the narrative and feel the knee-jerk reaction that Christians are being wronged, it makes it more difficult to bring them around to recognizing the true victims.

It’s a topsy-turvy situation — and a testament to the Religious Rights’ prowess at narrative manipulation — when the strangers imposing unwanted religious ceremonies succeed in presenting themselves as the wronged party.

Alex DiBranco is an editor at Change.org.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152143/

Getting Dumber

Every time I blink something dumber than what came before I blinked happens. Like damn magic.

Now the push is on for a four day school week to lessen the money crunch faced by strapped cities and states.
That there are people who think this is a remedy makes me want to drink this whole bottle of wine I’m working on. What keeps me from doing that is I recognize it isn’t a remedy either.

Schools Nationwide Cutting Down to 4 Days a Week, Because Wealthy Refuse to Pay Fair Share
By Sarah Seltzer, AlterNet

Posted on August 22, 2011, Printed on August 23, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152128/schools_nationwide_cutting_down_to_4_days_a_week%2C_because_wealthy_refuse_to_pay_fair_share

I doubt there’s any student in the world who would object to having Fridays off. But when it comes to policy, the increasing number of American schools moving to a four-day week is not necessarily news to jump for joy about. In fact, it’s potentially devastating for parents, school workers and students all left in the lurch by budget cuts. And it’s happening more and more, as state and local budgets shrink to tiny levels and raising taxes on the wealthy is somehow considered verboten.

This anti-school thinking is evidenced by the fact that a leading right-wing businessman wrote an op-ed yesterday in which he questioned his taxes going toward the existence of a Department of Education. “Do we really need an energy department or an education department at all?” the American Enterprise Institute’s Harvey Golub wrote in the Wall Street Journal, while arguing, contra Warren Buffet, that taxes for the ultra-rich not be raised.

We need more revenue for education, Harvey. Just ask the growing group of parents who are stuck with their young school-age children on Mondays or Fridays because the schools can’t even afford to open that day.

The Associated Press reports that the Irene-Wakonda School District in South Dakota is the latest to move to the four-day week, bringing the state close to having one-fourth of its districts on the reduced schedule.

“It got down to monetary reasons more than anything else,’’ Superintendent Larry Johnke said. The $50,000 savings will preserve a vocational education program that otherwise would have been scrapped.

The four-day school week is an increasingly visible example of the impact of state budget problems on rural education. This fall, fully one-fourth of South Dakota’s districts will have moved to some form of the abbreviated schedule. Only Colorado and Wyoming have a larger proportion of schools using a shortened week. According to one study, more than 120 school districts in 20 states, most in the west, now use four-day weeks.

The AP notes that while district officials are quick to tout the fact that there’s no recorded difference in standardized testing and so on for the schools with the four-day schedule, “parents aren’t convinced.”

Last year, the Wall Street Journal ran a big feature on the movement toward shorter school weeks as well, including a map showing at least 16 states where the policy is allowed, including Colorado, Wyoming, Georgia and South Dakota. The piece’s author found that no conclusive data could be pinpointed explaining where test scores go when Friday classes disappear.

But education advocates expressed grave concern, saying teachers had to fight to keep students focused during the newly longer days, and Randi Weingarten of the AFT noted that implementing reforms and new ideas was more difficult with the four-day week.

To be fair to energetic local educators, there are some advantages in a reduced-day schedule, particularly for older students in rural areas with long commutes, according to this 2010 piece in USA Today and this 2008 Time Magazine piece on the growing trend in rural districts from Maine to New York to Georgia to the Southwest, and even Hawaii. The practice can allow teachers more time to prepare and students more time to rest. Going to doctors’ appointments, helping out around the family farm, and other reasons to skip school may lessen in frequency. And the remaining school days will by necessity be longer and involve more tutoring and activities, which could motivate students.

But it certainly isn’t a cure-all for budget woes. Educators from other districts where the experiment has been tried have also said it was hard to keep up the pace of the curriculum and some have eventually abandoned the schedule, saying it wasn’t worth the money “saved.”

Many districts that have the shortened schedule say they’ve seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. But others say that not only did they not save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren’t in class enough and didn’t have enough contact with teachers.

The best conclusion that could be drawn from the small amount of research and reporting that’s been done on the matter is this: pedagogically, there’s no formula and each school and population will see different results from the shortened week. So the real question remains, why are schools even pushed to make this choice?

Regardless of what works academically for each school, the idea that many are being forced to shut down because of budget constraints is disturbing to say the least–and that’s indeed the case for many of these schools, as the WSJ article notes:

Some schools, meanwhile, say they are turning to the four-day schedule as a last resort. In North Branch, Minn., school Superintendent Deb Henton said her 3,500-student district, facing a $1.3 million deficit, is simply out of options.

“We’ve repeatedly asked our residents to pay higher taxes, cut some of our staff, and we may even close one of our schools,” she said. “What else can you really do?” Despite a “lot of opposition” from parents, she said, the district is set to adopt a four-day week for next school year.
Indeed, one of the groups hardest hit is working parents, who have to scramble for childcare on the extra day, an extra-tough task during the recession when many may need the time to work or look for work.

Another group hit hard? Bus drivers, cafeteria workers, maintenance staff and others whose smaller work-weeks may in fact be the main reason districts “save” money on the four-day week: they’re gaining extra pockets in their budgets by cutting these staff members salaries by up to a fifth. This is hardly a rejuvenating measure, and combined with the hit to parents this loss of employment could certainly put a dent in small communities’ financial well-being.

And presumably, for the day off to actually help schools academically, the facilities would still be open on the fifth day. If bus drivers and other staffers aren’t around that fifth day because of budget cuts, then how can students get to school for extra help, or activities? It completely undercuts the point.

This lost day is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to school budget cuts. But it underscores quite drastically the way budget cuts are decimating schools’ ability to make choices that will best help students; instead, they’re left playing defense. Texas, which has many districts with the four-day policy, is a particularly egregious example of the toll budget cuts have taken on education.

A local columnist explained how the 2011-’12 school year is going to begin for young Texans:

The massive cuts to public education approved last spring in Austin also will have long-lasting and devastating consequences for the children of our state. CPPP estimates that Texas schools must manage cuts, on average, of nearly $1,000 per student just when the needs of our students are increasing. Although earlier this month HISD restored some funding to schools that had been previously cut, the severity of the reductions mandated by the Legislature won’t come to fruition for another year or longer. It is clear that dark times are ahead for the hard-working employees and families of Texas schools.
Paul Krugman made a similar point earlier this year when addressing Texas budget cuts, noting that the right-wing push to de-fund schools and hurt children will result in economic pain in the future: “The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force?”

Sarah Seltzer is an associate editor at AlterNet, a staff writer at RH Reality Check and a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has been published in Jezebel.com and on the websites of the Nation, the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. Find her at sarahmseltzer.com.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152128/

Embracing Violence

We need to take a clue from Rick Perry and note that he endorses citizenship for aliens who serve in our military.

Disposable citizens is what this feels like to me. No more than a cynical means to pursue the goals of the religious right. This is repulsive.

More Pitchfork News Courtesy of Matt Taibbi and Rolling Stone

In spite of some very enlightening investigative work by Matt Taibbi in recent years, little has happened on the law enforcement side of the apparent financial fraud that has laid our economy and indeed the economy of the whole world low.

Matt is apparently unfazed, for he continues to forge ahead with his examinations of the financial industry, of Wall Street and of our government. As always, he provides a convincing argument that unquestionably reveals a serious pattern of corruption with a very high probability that illegal conduct did in fact occur. At the very minimum we should have learned by now how seriously flawed is the structure of our financial regulatory system.

I’m a firm believer that if every citizen of this country either read all of Matt’s work or had it read to them they would be appalled and no factory in the universe could keep up with the demand for pitchforks.
Link

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
A whistle-blower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals.

By Matt Taibbi
August 17, 2011 8:00 AM ET

Pete Gardner/Getty
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – “Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?” No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.

That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – “18,000 … including Madoff,” as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.

Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency’s records – “including case files relating to preliminary investigations” – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term “Orwellian,” devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or “Matters Under Inquiry” – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission’s internal website. “After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation,” the site advised staffers, “you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI.”

Don’t Look Now but It’s Pretty Near Past Time for Pitchforks.

It’s really unbelieveable how seriously and egregiously our government has lied to us over the years. It boggles the mind that this has gotten as bad as it has and still the general public is braindead to the phenomenon.

There is absolutely not a thing that isn’t a total crock in all of this. The base ideas right through the minute details are a pile of lies sold to unwary Americans. This mimics perfectly what major businesses and corporations do. And there is no fixing this. It has grown too complex for the average citizen to comprehend. All we can do is wait for the whole dam thing to come crashing down. Actually, that isn’t quite true. It can be fixed. But that requires those in power, the very ones who have so screwed it up, to do something different which doesn’t serve their interests. As far as I’m aware, in the course of history, that hasn’t ever happened.

I guess at this point the truth is so unbelieveably ugly nobody dare speak it.

Debt, Debt, Debt: 90% of Americans Experience Income Decline As Wealth Gets Sucked Back Into Top .1% — Debt Explodes As We Try to Make Ends Meet
By David DeGraw, Amped Status
Posted on August 14, 2011, Printed on August 18, 2011
LINK

The cuts in taxes for the mega-wealthy have led to record wealth inequality and resulted in a huge national deficit. Meanwhile, to make up for the deficit created in part by tax giveaways to one-tenth of one percent of the population, Democrats and Republicans are committed to making draconian budget cuts to vital social services, which target the poor, middle class, elderly and sick, while handing out billions more in corporate welfare annually. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity)

Just as the government has done, to make up for tax revenue lost to the mega-wealthy, Americans have made up for the decline in income by taking on large amounts of debt as well. (Inequality = Debt)

In a severely unequal society, massive debt will always be created, thus forming a vicious cycle of increasing inequality and increasing debt, until the fragmentation of society reaches a breaking point when those in debt cannot afford to pay back their debts without starving to death. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest)

The Indebted Citizen

As for statistics on Americans being buried in financial debt: As mentioned before, from 1990 – 2010 costs of living have increased 67%, while wages have stagnated and declined. As the national debt has reached a record $14.6 trillion, total personal debt is now over $16 trillion. Consumer debt is $2.5 trillion. Credit card debt is $805 billion and student debt now exceeds $1 trillion.

Obviously, the more severe your debts are, the more you have to cut back in spending and the less money you have to buy new items. (Debt = Austerity)

Meanwhile, a perfect storm circles overhead as society breaks down and falls into an economic death spiral – health care, food and gas costs are skyrocketing, while income and home values are plummeting. (Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)

Given these conditions, it is not surprising that over 250 million Americans, another record-breaking number, are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to make ends meet.

The following charts, from Adviser Perspectives, show the increase in costs of living since 2000:

As you can see, the price of basic necessities are consistently increasing; only clothing (apparel) has declined. The second chart highlights the crucial skyrocketing cost of energy:

The third chart highlights the pernicious skyrocketing cost of education:

The cost of education essentially buries young people in debt they will spend a significant portion of their lives attempting to get out of. Given the increasing costs of living, and the decreasing ability to make an expected income from such an expensive level of education, this young demographic will most likely live an entire life locked into spiraling levels of debt.
Propaganda Inflation

When reporting on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has twice, since 1980, revised its methodology to mask the severity of inflation, similar to how it masks the severity of unemployment. In its Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation, it has heavily discounted the measurement weight of energy, food and education – three of the most significant costs for most American households.

To understand the significance of its revised methodology, current “official” CPI is at a 3.6 percent annual rate. However, if calculated the way it was before former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan altered it in 1980, it would be 11.1 percent, three times worse than officially stated.

So while the government and the Federal Reserve claim that inflation is low, at 3.6 percent over the past year, food prices have increased 39 percent and US gas prices have increased 34 percent over the same time frame.

The increase in gas cost over the past year masks the severity of total gas price inflation, which is currently 125 percent more expensive since December 2008, increasing from $1.67 per gallon to $3.75.

Stagflation

As 90 percent of Americans experience income declines, and the value of the dollar declines, the price of necessities are rising, while the one major asset many Americans have, a house, is also declining in value. Already, thanks to declining home values, 28 percent of US homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their home is currently worth. With 10.4 million American families having lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007, Amherst Securities, a leading broker/dealer focused on mortgage-related investments, estimates that another 10.8 million homes are at risk of default over the next six years. This will obviously continue downward pressure on home values.

Deliberate Systemic Attacks

The dramatic increase in economic inequality and poverty, along with the unprecedented rise in wealth within the top one-tenth of one percent of the population has not happened by mistake. It is the designed result of deliberate governmental and economic policy. It is the result of the richest people in the world, and the “too big to fail” banks, using the campaign finance and lobbying system to buy off politicians who implement policies designed to exploit 99.9 percent of the population for their financial gain. To call what is happening a “financial terrorist attack” on the United States is not using hyperbole; it is the technical term for what is currently occurring.

As Che Guevara, a man who took on the global financial elite, said, “The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”

The rich have never been richer, while their paid-off politicians make budget cuts for the poor and middle class, and cause the cost of basic necessities to skyrocket.

The unfortunate reality of this crisis is that an economic war has been launched against us.

As a wise old friend once said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

This post is an adapted excerpt from David DeGraw’s new report on the financial destruction of the United States. The full report can be read here: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America.

© 2011 Amped Status All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152016/

We Continue to Find Ways to Get Better at Killing People

We are a sick society. No doubt.

Our government research labs have devised a new material, LINK, to encase bombs etc that in some way make the explosive force multiply by xx amount and therefore adds significantly to the lethality of the weapon. We’ve been in a headlong rush to develop weapons of war and quite obviously have established that as a priority over other more pressing issues which are of much more direct importance to each of us.

Why is it we can’t figure out how to feed Americans, provide medical care, provide affordable energy efficient housing or educate the populace? There is irrefutable evidence that we have seriously regressed on these things.

As they say, it isn’t rocket science to know this recipe is doomed to failure. However we’ve evolved the societal measuring stick we’re using, we’ve gotten it horribly wrong.