Wealthy lawmakers increased their riches as economy sputtered in '09

(So, when you wonder why the govt. isn't doing more to offset unemployment, lost wages, lost savings, and other fallout from the ongoing financial crisis which continues to be underreported by the corporate media, this is a good indicator of why? It's not hurting them, why should they have any sense of urgency whatsoever?--jef)

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By Kevin Bogardus and Barbra Kim - 08/31/10 06:00 AM ET

The wealthiest members of Congress grew richer in 2009 even as the economy struggled to recover from a deep recession.

The 50 wealthiest lawmakers were worth almost $1.4 billion in 2009, about $85.1 million more than 12 months earlier, according to The Hill’s annual review of lawmakers’ financial disclosure forms.


Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tops the list for the second year in a row. His minimum net worth was $188.6 million at the end of 2009, up by more than $20 million from 2008, according to his financial disclosure form.
While the economy struggled through a recession during much of 2009 and the nation’s unemployment rate soared to 10 percent, the stock market rebounded, helping lawmakers with large investments. The S&P 500 rose by about 28 percent in 2009.

Total assets for the 50 wealthiest lawmakers in 2009 was $1.5 billion — that’s actually a nearly $36 million drop from a year ago. But lawmakers reduced their liabilities by even more, cutting debts by $120 million last year.

There are various reasons why asset values dropped. Some lawmakers saw their real estate holdings fall as the housing crisis intensified. A handful of lawmakers also had other investments or businesses that turned sour.

The only newcomer to the Top 10 list is Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who came straight in at No. 5. He replaced Rep. Harry Teague (D-N.M.), the 10th wealthiest member in 2008. Teague fell off the top 50 list after the value of a company he has a stake in — Teaco Energy Services Inc. — fell in value from $39.6 million in 2008 to at the least $1 million in 2009.

There were a few other new faces in the Top 50, including Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), who received an inheritance after his late father, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), died in 2009.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.) also made the list.

Twenty-seven Democrats along with 23 Republicans make up the 50 richest in Congress; 30 House members and 20 senators are on the list.

The bulk of Kerry’s wealth is credited to his spouse, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars after her late husband, the ketchup heir Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.), died in a plane crash in 1991.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), with a net worth of $160.1 million, is the second-richest member of Congress under The Hill’s formula, even though his wealth declined by more than $4 million in 2009.

He is followed by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who saw her net wealth leap to $152.3 million, a jump of more than $40 million from a year ago.

The rest of the top 10 are Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), McCaul, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).


To calculate its rankings, The Hill used only the lawmakers’ financial disclosure forms that cover the 2009 calendar year.
Lawmakers are only required to report their finances in broad ranges. For example, a $2.5 million vacation home in Aspen, Colo., would be reported as being valued at between $1 and $5 million on a congressional financial disclosure form.

To come up with the most conservative estimate for each lawmaker’s wealth, researchers took the bottom number of each range reported. Then, to calculate the minimum net worth for each senator and member, the sum of liabilities was subtracted from the sum of assets.

As a result, the methodology used to find the Top 50 wealthiest in Congress can miss some of the richest lawmakers.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) is certainly one of the wealthiest lawmakers on Capitol Hill. As owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, Kohl has a $254 million asset on his hands, according to Forbes magazine.

But under The Hill’s methodology, his team ownership only counts for $50 million, the highest range reported on the congressional financial disclosure form. Because of high liabilities on his 2009 form, Kohl actually is listed as being more than $4.6 million in debt on the 2009 form.

Funnyman Harry Shearer Gets Serious with Katrina Documentary 'The Big Uneasy'

vidlink


by Mike Scott | Monday, August 30, 2010 by The Times-Picayune

Harry Schearer is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore.

And so, after five years of cringing whenever Hurricane Katrina is referred to as "a natural disaster," the multihyphenated entertainer (actor-humorist-commentator-musician-broadcaster-pretend rock star) and part-time New Orleanian is adding another hyphen to his job description: documentarian.

The result? The Big Uneasy,  landing tonight (Aug. 30) in 200-plus theaters nationwide. It's an unconventional release, to say the least -- opening on a Monday and, in most cases, playing for one night only -- but one timed to coincide with the storm's fifth anniversary.

The gist: Eh, you might want to keep that ax in your attic.

"As the authors of the Berkeley report say, this was not a natural disaster, " Shearer said, calling to discuss the movie recently after a screening in Washington. "This was a man-made disaster, and therefore it could have been prevented -- and therefore its repetition can be prevented. But it won't just happen by wishing."

What will help, Shearer hopes, is holding the Army Corps of Engineers' feet to the fire, and making sure it doesn't repeat the mistakes that experts say caused the flood in the first place.

That's what where "The Big Uneasy" comes in.

Shearer asked notable New Orleans celebrities, including Brad Pitt and Jennifer Coolidge, to help provide voiceover for his film, and John Goodman to host whimsical "Ask a New Orleanian" interstitials. But the real stars are two investigator-pariahs whose post-storm inquiries cast doubt on the Corps' ability to protect New Orleans.

Those two men -- former Louisiana State University Hurricane Center deputy director Ivor Van Heerden and University of California, Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea -- conducted in-depth investigations into what caused the 2005 levee breaches. Their results laid the blame squarely at the feet of the corps, which "The Big Uneasy" suggests still operates in the same dysfunctional manner as before the storm.

Their unwillingness to back off their findings upset the powers-that-be, taking a toll on their careers. (Van Heerden, for example, first was asked not to speak to the press and later was dismissed from LSU.) Shearer does his best to let Van Heerden and Bea have their say in "The Big Uneasy, " giving them an opportunity to walk viewers through their findings. It is dense stuff at times, given the science at work, but, for the most part, it's surprisingly accessible. Shearer said that's not by accident.

"In one way, I was kind of a good person to tell this story, because I don't know crap about engineering, " he said. "So if I can make it understandable to myself, I hope that I can turn around and then make it understandable to other people who don't know crap about engineering. Thank goodness both Bob Bea and Ivor van Heerden are, among other things, great teachers and can make it clear that this isn't rocket science. This is basic, kind of -- there's a lot of common sense in engineering.

"But I did try to do things to make it not an instructional film. ... I tried to make a film that can be compelling while really doing justice to the story."

It being a Harry Shearer project, "The Big Uneasy" naturally boasts a sprinkling of humor, although not the kind that fans of his work on "The Simpsons" and "This Is Spinal Tap" might expect.

"There's very little of me, but there's humor, " he said. "The laughs -- there are laughs in the film -- they come, I think, from people who aren't intending to be funny. Without tipping it one way or the other, they're there for their value as responses to other things that are said in the film -- because I'm being a responsible person and giving people a chance to answer accusations. And the answers sometimes are laugh-provoking."

Ironically, the screening that brought Shearer to Washington was at the Newseum, that celebration of all things journalism. After all, he said, the only reason he made "The Big Uneasy" in the first place is because the national news media have done such a poor job of telling the real story. "I think rather than me explain it, I'll let a prominent national anchor explain it in that person's own words: When I asked why, at a certain point well along in time, the viewers of that particular newscast still didn't know why New Orleans flooded, that anchor's answer was, 'We just feel the emotional stories are more compelling for our audience.' "

Because the exchange wasn't recorded, Shearer is reluctant to provide that anchor's name, although he says it's telling of how the news media have become far more Kent Brockman than Edward R. Murrow.

Deciding that a documentary was the best way to tell that untold story (but realizing that nobody else was going to do it), Shearer decided in January to make "The Big Uneasy." Documentary filmmaking is a new discipline for him (not counting the faux documentary "This Is Spinal Tap"), but he's never been one to shy from work.

"For better or for worse, " Shearer said, "I was kind of devoted to being the un-Michael Moore and having a much more traditional idea of a documentary in mind, which is, a large story, too large to be told in a three-minute news piece, but that needs to be told, and told through the eyes and the words of people who actually know what they're talking about."

And if it all makes you feel a little uneasy? Well -- good night, and good luck -- Shearer has done his job.

"The Corps of Engineers makes very reassuring statements about the size and the expense of the work that they're doing right now, " he said. "And if you look at that at face value, it's meant to reassure us, meant to make us feel, 'Hey, we're OK. We're protected. Everything's fine.' And people with short memories might feel good about it. But people with long memories will recall those were the same kinds of statements the corps was making about the old system before 2005. We believed them then, and we were reassured by them then -- and look what it got us."

Eyewear Industry Is a Ripoff, But There Are Alternatives

What makes glasses so expensive? Oblong plastic lenses? Plastic and metal frames? We're getting screwed.
By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet
Posted on August 31, 2010

Those of us who need prescription eyewear need prescription eyewear. Are you wearing yours to read this? Imagine if you weren't. Imagine life without your glasses for a year, a week, an hour. Yet many health insurance plans, especially for the unemployed or self-employed, don't cover them.

Mine doesn't.

Last year, I went shopping for no-line progressive bifocals in small oval metal frames. Name brands mean nothing to me. Price does. My high astigmatism and need for bifocals disqualify me from those buy-one-get-one-free deals, which almost always involve only single-vision specs.

In store after store, megachains and optical boutiques alike, small oval metal frames fitted with lenses matching my prescription started at $300*. One popular shop quoted me $582 for the lenses alone.

I bought a pair of no-line progressive bifocals in small oval metal frames for $44 online. I'm wearing them right now.

Perhaps because prescription glasses are where medicine meets fashion, they're among the world's most overpriced merchandise. Imperfect eyesight isn't your fault: You can't make yourself nearsighted by eating too much fudge. Yet if your health plan excludes vision care, you've spent years at the mercy of a $64 billion industry characterized by 500-percent markups.

This has begun to change over the last few years. A knowledge-is-power, power-to-the-people, Web-driven DIY wave is rocking the optical industry's very foundations. Dozens of companies now sell prescription glasses online, frames and lenses included, for as little as $7.95.

It works like this: Google "cheap glasses" to find a frame you like at a price you like at a site you like. (Among the most popular are 39DollarGlasses, ZenniOptical — where I bought mine — and Goggles4U.) Use the virtual fitting mechanism to "try it on." Type in your prescription (obtained from an actual eye doctor), pupillary distance (aka PD, derived by measuring the space between your pupils with a ruler), address and payment information. Send.

It's a virtual myopian/hyperopian/presbyopian Tea Party, led largely by Minnesota software engineer Ira Mitchell, who launched his revolutionary GlassyEyes blog (its motto is "Saving the World from Overpriced Glasses!") in 2006. Packed with forums, product reviews, discount deals, and tips for buying specs online, it's the vision-impaired version of Yelp.

"There is no appreciable functional or material difference" between prescription eyewear bought online and bought in brick-and-mortar stores, Mitchell tells me, but in stores "the cost to the consumer is anywhere from four to ten times more. It turns out that they’re making ridiculous margins on the frames, the lenses and the coatings."

Complete with antiscratch coatings and other pluses, his own glasses cost between $30 and $60 per pair online. Over the last three years, he’s bought around 40 pair — because, at that price, he can.

Mitchell was appalled when he first began researching wholesale prices for optical merchandise and realized that opticians acquire lenses for as little as $3 each. "I've easily paid twenty times that when I didn't know any better," he says.

Granted, these glass, plastic, polycarbonate or polymer blanks must be ground to fit frames and prescriptions, and this takes work, but it's not rocket science. Typically, lens grinding is done by optical laboratory technicians. According to PayScale.com, OLTs in the United States earn between $9.73 and $14.40 per hour. Most learn on the job, and have only a high-school diploma or a GED. No specific certification is required.

The fleecing, Mitchell says, is just as bad on frames.

"A consumer-level frame costs significantly less than $10 to manufacture. The rest is operations, licensing and profit. Think about that the next time you pick up an average $150 frame. These aren't markedly different or superior to the $30 glasses available from reputable online dealers — and those include lenses, probably the same ones you were just about to pay $200 for in the store."

A key to the industry-standard overpricing is the fact that a single corporation — Luxottica, the world's largest eyewear firm — owns many retail eyewear chains and many popular eyewear brands. Based in Milan, Italy, Luxottica owns and operates LensCrafters, Sears Optical, Target Optical, Pearle Vision, Sunglass Hut, Ilori, and other chains in the United States, along with yet more chains throughout Asia, Europe, Africa, India, the Antipodes and the Middle East.

Luxottica owns Ray-Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Vogue, and other brands, and makes glasses under license for over a dozen designer labels including Versace, Prada, Bulgari, DKNY, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Tiffany, and more. As if that isn't enough, Luxottica is also the parent company of a vision-care benefits program, EyeMed.

Eyewear prices in brick-and-mortar stores stay artificially high, Mitchell says, due to "the lack of real competition, inasmuch as Luxottica owns massive manufacturing, licensing, retailing and insurance interests" — albeit EyeMed is "not so much insurance as a marketing ploy to get people to buy from their stores at a discount and to force the remaining independent stores to buy Luxottica controlled frames. But, again, most people are unaware of this."

Because one company holds a near-monopoly on brick-and-mortar eyewear stores, "pricing models are somewhat static across the lot of them. They also have a knack for using the mattress sale model ... constantly running sales that seem too good to pass up when in reality they're still making enormous profits."

"Semi-Annual 50% Off Sales Event," reads a current LensCrafters ad. But the frames in question range from around $100 to around $300, and that's without lenses.

"People pay what the brick-and-mortars are asking, primarily because the vast majority don't know there are better, cheaper options," Mitchell says.

As with any purchase — in fact more than with most purchases, as this involves eyesight — it pays to research each company's delivery and return policies, Better Business Bureau status, and accessibility. Does its Web site list a phone number? If not, why not? If so, call it. Can you reach live people? Are they knowledgeable about your prescription? Does the company have its own in-house optometrists? It should. If you care about brand names, can you ascertain that the logo-bearing frames sold by any given company aren't counterfeits? Factories churn out fakes.

While many online outfits sell real and bogus designer frames, the least expensive frames available online are unapologetically nameless generics: current and classic styles, sans logo. As is true with most consumer products, they're not necessarily worse than their name-brand counterparts. After a year-plus of daily use, my $44 generics still look new. (That being said, I should have paid a few dollars more for higher-quality polycarbonate lenses and I should have sought bifocals with a wider middle-vision band, but these errors were my own, not the company's.)

"Very high-priced frames may have somewhat better materials," Mitchell says, "but from my experience, the no-names have been very well made." Having owned dozens of generic pairs, he's experienced "no more issues with them than with the name brands from LensCrafters. I think they're pretty much on par."

These days, he notes, "there are a lot more online retailers now than at the end of 2006. There aren't a whole lot more reputable ones, however. I've shopped at over a dozen, and narrowed things down to about three or four that I feel comfortable recommending to others. As this is a fully custom market, mistakes can enter the process anywhere from the initial customer entering prescription information to the production process. I've found that a few of the sites do a better job than others at fixing mistakes. Some do better at this than the traditional stores.

"Prices haven't dropped at all in the traditional brick-and-mortars, but downward price pressure from Wal-Mart will undoubtedly start to make an impact in certain parts of the country. I saw a sign in a Wal-Mart recently for $38 glasses. The selection was tiny, but we're starting to see a price intersection."

The first online eyeglasses company was Houston-based FramesDirect. In 1992, optometrists Dhavid Cooper and Guy Hodgson closed their several Texas brick-and-mortar shops, then pondered their future.

"We knew that we wanted to sell eyewear in all fifty states 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," Hodgson says. "We had no idea how to do this." Renting a small office, they installed computers.

"When you talked about the Internet in those days, no one knew what you meant. Search engines were in their absolute infancy. We thought a 56k modem was blisteringly fast."

Cooper had won a Surgeon General’s Commendation Award in his native South Africa for creating a program providing the poor with recycled glasses for free. Hodgson specialized in treating the nearly blind. Barely fluent in email, the pair created a basic Web site, offering designer glasses at low prices because, unlike brick-and-mortar opticians, they needed to pay neither storefront rent nor employees' salaries, nor did they need to keep large quantities of merchandise in stock.

"Everyone around us thought we were completely mad: Eye doctors, giving up their lucrative practices to go into this weird thing," Hodgson laughs. But once orders started pouring in, "The whole optical industry completely shunned us. They said we were ruining them."

At eyewear conventions, he and Cooper wore their nametags backward to avoid verbal abuse. Since then, dozens of imitators have emerged, many based overseas and most able to offer even lower prices because they sell generics. Buying prescription eyewear is like buying prescription drugs: It's cheaper online. It's cheaper when it comes from outside the U.S. GlassesUnlimited, for instance, can afford to sell hundreds of different stylish frames fitted with prescription lenses for only $9.99 because its entire operation is based in Thailand.

"We don't have big margins here. That's how we are serving our clientele. That's why we're getting hundreds of orders on a daily basis, 70 percent of which come from the U.S. and Canada," GU manager Sam Davis tells me. "We have virtually no expenses. We have our own home brand and do our own production. We don't outsource anything."

Based in the U.S., FramesDirect still undercuts retail-store prices for guaranteed designer goods.

"What we sell and what the brick-and-mortar stores sell are the exact same products," Guy Hodgson says. "How can they afford to charge the prices they charge?"

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*(me too--jef)

Why Is an Epidemic of Blood-Sucking Bed Bugs Sweeping the Nation?

It's confirmed: bed bugs are back. Here's what you can do about them.
By Katherine Butler, EcoSalon
Posted on August 30, 2010, Printed on August 31, 2010

This story originally appeared on EcoSalon.

There’s a plague sweeping across the United States, and this one has nothing to do with sparkly vampires. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just confirmed – bed bugs are back!

Bed bugs are small insects that feed on sleeping animals – namely, us. They are expert hiders and tend to live within eight feet of where people sleep. The intrepid little suckers are making a comeback and it is leading to heightened levels of scratching and anxiety.

The blood-sucking insects were more common in the mid-twentieth century and were mostly eradicated by the end of the century. But experts think world travel and the lack of effective pesticides have led to their resurgence. DDT and its cancer-causing agents were credited with the initial demise of bed bugs. But DDT was banned in 1972, and so the bugs have returned.

Bed bugs are showing up across the country, but they have received the most attention for their appearances in New York City. From movie theaters to Upper East Side penthouses, bed bugs are carrying both their eggs and stigma all over the city. As the New York Times reports, “In the most recent fiscal year, which ended on June 30, the city’s 311 help line recorded 12,768 bedbug complaints, 16% more than the previous year and 39% above the year before.”

In 2009, one in fifteen New Yorkers had bed bugs. And the numbers are probably higher now. As one woman told the NY Times, “It’s like terrorism, you just cross your fingers and keep going.”

They are really difficult to stop. Bed bugs ride around in luggage, clothing seams, overnight bags, bedding, furniture, and basically anywhere else. They do not transmit disease, but they do leave nasty, itchy red welts all over you.

So yes, bed bugs bite the big one. But what’s to be done? Are there any viable eco-friendly solutions - that is, treatments not involving pesticides that will make you grow a third ear? The CDC has a few recommendations. You can use a monitoring device – in NYC, many are turning to dogs to sniff out the pesky pests. The CDC also suggests removing as much clutter as possible to cut down on the bug’s hiding spaces. Vacuuming, steam cleaning, sealing cracks, and heat treatments may work. Some are even putting sticky-side-up masking tape around their beds in hopes to trap the insects.

Another natural remedy is sprinkling diatomaceous earth around corners and beds. Diatomaceous earth is “made from soil that is composed of little tiny fossils of single-celled algae. These have jagged edges that will cut an insect, causing them to gradually bleed to death if they crawl across it. They are too small to hurt a mammal, however, and they are non-toxic (it’s basically just dirt).” Okay, sure, it doesn’t sound like the most pleasant way to get rid of bed bugs. But remember, these critters survive by feasting on your blood.

The Bed Bugs Guide labels lavender oil and bleach as duds in terms of killing the insects. They also do not suggest trying to freeze or burn the animals out of your home by fiddling with the thermostat. It takes 120 Fahrenheit smoke them out, or 32 Fahrenheit to kill them with cold – for a couple of weeks.

And in the meantime? Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!

University of Phoenix, DeVry, ITT: Scams That Leave You "Dumber" and Poorer

By Makaiya Brown, The Loop 21 

on August 30, 2010

For-profit college target the poor and minorities, and students who enroll end up with debt that far outweighs that of their nonprofit and public school peers.

If you’ve spent any length of time in an urban community in the U.S., I’m sure you’ve seen the ads on public transportation or heard the television commercials from schools where you can train to be a medical assistant or a computer technician. But before you or someone you know signs up for a “promising career” at one of those for-profit colleges, take heed!

For-profit colleges have been around for years. The University of Phoenix, Sanford Brown, DeVry University, and ITT Technical Institute are just a few of the more popular ones. It appears that these schools target minorities, low income individuals and anyone dumb enough to believe their ads. The most memorable are the commercials from ITT Technical Institute: Because you can’t get the jobs of tomorrow until you get the skills today. Start by calling ITT Technical Institute.

But I’m here to tell you these schools are not the answer to a promising career! I think schools like ITT are a money sucking scam! With record unemployment in the U.S. and African Americans making up a large percentage of the unemployed, I fear that more African Americans may be lured into the trap of dishonest for-profit schools only to find themselves with a degree or certificate that they cannot use and loads of debt that they cannot pay.

According to data provided by U.S. Department of Education, students who enroll in for-profit colleges end up with debt that far outweighs that of their nonprofit and public school peers. The data showed that last year 350,000 University of Phoenix students were responsible for repaying almost $5 billion in outstanding loans, yet only 44 percent of them had the financial means to repay their loans. Don’t get me wrong, students who attend public universities can graduate with large amounts of debt as well. However, all of my friends who’ve gone to 4-year accredited public or nonprofit universities have gained skills and jobs that have allowed them to pay off their loans. I can’t say the same for friends who’ve enrolled in schools like ITT Technical Institute or the University of Phoenix.

A federal investigation found that several for-profit colleges are involved in fraudulent acts and questionable marketing practices to attract students. The investigation unveiled that many of the colleges harass prospective students with repetitive recruiting phone calls after students request school information on websites. Several of the schools also encouraged students to falsify financial aid forms in order to get federal funds. By law up to 90 percent of the revenue of for-profit colleges can be derived from federal student aid. That’s billions of federal dollars that is wasted in some cases by students who either don’t finish the programs or default on the loans due to misguidance by representatives from these colleges.

Luckily the Obama Administration has been gearing up to tackle for-profit school regulation.

In order to qualify for federal aid, for-profit schools must prepare students for gainful employment. The DOE’ s proposed regulations would cut federal aid to these schools if students don’t find gainful employment or if too many of their students default on their loans. The DOE plans to rule on the regulations by November of this year. In the meantime I urge prospective students to consider traditional 4-year universities and reputable community colleges rather than for-profit schools and certificate programs. Do your research and don’t sign anything that you don’t understand, otherwise you might end up dumb and broke.

Things the Corporate Media and Government Don't Want You to Know About Marijuana

News outlets continue to ignore research that belies government anti-pot propaganda.
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Posted on August 29, 2010

Last September I penned an essay for Alternet entitled Five Things the Corporate Media Don’t Want You to Know About Cannabis. In it I proposed, “[N]ews outlets continue to, at best, underreport the publication of scientific studies that undermine the federal government's longstanding pot propaganda and, at worst, ignore them all together.” Nearly one year later little has changed.

Here are five additional stories the mainstream media doesn't want you to know about cannabis.

1. Long-term marijuana use is associated with lower risks of certain cancers, including head and neck cancer.

The moderate long-term use of marijuana is associated with a reduced risk of head and neck cancers, according to the results of a population-based case-control study conducted by investigators at Rhode Island's Brown University and published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

Authors of the study reported, "After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma” compared to subjects who never used pot.

Researchers further reported that subjects who smoked marijuana and consumed alcohol and tobacco (two conclusive high risk factors for head and neck cancers) also experienced a reduced cancer risk compared to non-cannabis users. “[W]e observed that marijuana use modified the interaction between alcohol and cigarette smoking, resulting in a decreased (cancer) risk among moderate smokers and light drinkers, and attenuated risk among the heaviest smokers and drinkers.

"Our study suggests that moderate marijuana use is associated with reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma,” investigators concluded.

Similarly, a 2006 UCLA study of more than 2,200 subjects reported that marijuana smoking was not positively associated with cancers of the lung or upper aerodigestive tract – even among individuals who reported smoking more than 22,000 joints during their lifetime. Researchers further noted that among some users of the drug, cannabis smoking appeared to have a cancer preventive effect.

Nevertheless, mainstream U.S. media outlets exhibited little-to-no interest in reporting on the Brown University findings, which failed to even garner a mention locally in the Providence Journal. One month following the study’s publication, international media wire service Reuters did devote some half-hearted coverage, which it published under the overtly skeptical headline “Could smoking pot cut risk of head, neck cancer?”

2. Most Americans acknowledge that pot is safer than booze.

Despite over 70 years of government propaganda alleging that cannabis is far more dangerous than alcohol, the reality is that few Americans believe it. Nor should they.

According to an August 2010 national Rasmussen poll, fewer than one in five Americans believe that consuming pot is more dangerous than drinking alcohol. By contrast, fifty percent of respondents, including the majority of those who said that they drank alcohol, rated the use of marijuana to be less dangerous than booze.

By all objective measures the majority is correct. According to a 2009 report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (which, not surprisingly, also went unreported by the mainstream press), health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers than they are for those who use cannabis, and are more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers. It stated, "In terms of (health-related) costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user."

A previous analysis commissioned by The World Health Organization agreed, stating, “On existing patterns of use, cannabis poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies." So then why is the federal government still insisting on arresting and criminally prosecuting adults who consume pot in the privacy of their own homes? And why hasn’t the corporate media ever demanded that our elected leaders answer this question?

3. The enforcement of marijuana laws is racially discriminatory.

Minorities, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, disproportionately bear the brunt of marijuana arrests despite using cannabis at rates similar to – or in some cases, less frequently – than whites.

For example, an August 2010 study (PDF) commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance reported that African Americans are arrested for marijuana possession offenses in California at more than twice the rate of Caucasians. Authors determined: "Young blacks use marijuana at lower rates than young whites. Yet from 2004 through 2008, in every one of the 25 largest counties in California, blacks were arrested for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites, typically at double, triple or even quadruple the rate of whites.”

The study concluded, "[B]acks were arrested for simple marijuana possession far out of proportion to their percentage in the total population of the counties. In the 25 largest counties as a whole, blacks are 7% of the population but 20% of the people arrested for possessing marijuana.”

Arrest figures from New York City, the marijuana arrest capitol of the world, tell a similar tale. In 2009, New York City police made 46,400 lowest level marijuana possession arrests (NY State Penal Law 221.10) involving cases where cannabis was either used or, more often than not, possessed in public. Of those arrested, 54 percent were African American, 33 percent were Hispanic, and only ten percent were Caucasian. (Blacks and Hispanics together comprise approximately half of the city's population.)

Nationally, the black arrest rate for marijuana offenses is 2.5 times the arrest rate for whites, according to a NORML commissioned study from 2000. Yet it wasn’t until this year that civil rights organizations like the California chapter of the NAACP and the Latino Voters League finally began talking about the racially motivated nature of marijuana law enforcement. For the most part, editors and reporters for the MSM have still yet to notice.

4. Marijuana may be helpful, not harmful, to people with schizophrenia.

For years now the mainstream media has run rampant with reports that smoking cannabis causes or exacerbates mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. Yet several overlooked studies published earlier this year indicate that pot may actually be helpful to some patients with the disease. For example, in May a team of researchers writing in the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research reported male schizophrenic subjects consumed marijuana "as a means of satisfying the schizophrenia-related need for relaxation, sense of self-worth, and distraction." (Survey data published in 2008 in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing also reported that many schizophrenic patients obtain relief from cannabis, finding that subjects consumed cannabis to reduce anxiety, mitigate memories of childhood trauma, enhance cognition, and "improve their mental state.")

A separate assessment of schizophrenic patients published in June in the journal Schizophrenia Research found that subjects with a history of cannabis use demonstrate higher levels of cognitive performance compared to patients who had never used the drug.

Investigators at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, the Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Princeton University compared the neurocognitive skills of 175 schizophrenics with a history of cannabis use with 280 subjects with no history of illegal drug use. Researchers reported that cannabis users demonstrated "significantly better performance" compared to nonusers on measures of processing speed, verbal fluency, verbal learning, and memory. Marijuana use was also associated with better over all GAF (Global Assessment Functioning) scores.

Authors concluded: "The results of the present analysis suggest that (cannabis use) in patients with SZ (schizophrenia) is associated with better performance on measures of processing speed and verbal skills. These data are consistent with prior reports indicating that SZ patients with a history of (cannabis use) have less severe cognitive deficits than SZ patients without comorbid (cannabis use). ... The present findings also suggest that cannabis use in patients with SZ may not differentially affect the severity of illness as measured by clinical symptomatology."

A second study published in 2010 by this same research team also questioned the media’s often repeated claim that pot use is a root cause of the illness, finding that cannabis use is not independently associated with the onset of psychosis in first-episode schizophrenia patients. The researchers concluded: "Although cannabis use precedes the onset of illness in most patients, there was no significant association between onset of illness and (cannabis use) that was not accounted for by demographic and clinical variables. ... Previous studies implicating cannabis use disorders in schizophrenia may need to more comprehensively assess the relationship between cannabis use disorders and schizophrenia."

Other than this single story by Time Magazine’s Maia Szalavitz, no other media outlets made mention of any of the above studies, and most continue to promote the federal government’s specious allegation that pot use causes depression, schizophrenia, and suicide.

5. Workplace drug testing programs don’t identify impaired employees or reduce on-the-job accidents.

Workplace urine testing programs are an inadequate method for identifying employees who are under the influence, and do not significantly reduce job accident rates, according to a completely ignored study published this past March in the scientific journal Addiction.

Investigators at the University of Victoria in British Columbia reviewed 20 years of published literature pertaining to the efficacy of workplace drug testing, with a special emphasis on marijuana – the most commonly detected drug. Researchers found: "[I]t is not clear that heavy cannabis users represent a meaningful job safety risk unless using before work or on the job; urine tests have poor validity and low sensitivity to detect employees who represent a safety risk; drug testing is related to reductions in the prevalence of cannabis positive tests among employees, but this might not translate into fewer cannabis users; and urinalysis has not been shown to have a meaningful impact on job injury/accident rates."

Authors concluded, "Urinalysis testing is not recommended as a diagnostic tool to identify employees who represent a job safety risk from cannabis use."

Not recommended but prevalent nonetheless. Many public employees in the United States are now mandated to submit to drug testing under federal workplace guidelines. And many private companies are no better. According to a 2006 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, 84 percent of employers required new hires to pass drug screenings, and 39 percent randomly tested employees after they were hired.

Apparently corporate America, much like the corporate media, just hasn’t heard the news.

Factory Farms Make You Sick, Let Us Count the Ways

24 Corporate Crime Reporter 33
WASHINGTON, D.C., AUGUST 27, 2010
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER

Factory farms makes you sick.

Let us count the ways.

Just last week, more than half a billion eggs recalled.

Why?

Salmonella poisoning.

More than 1,300 people sick.

Just last week, a recall of more than 380,000 pounds of deli meat products distributed nationwide to Wal-Mart stores.

Why?

Possible contamination with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes.

The bacteria can cause listeriosis – a rare but potentially deadly disease.

Move over Animal Farm.

Here comes "Animal Factory."

And the animal factories are dominating the agricultural landscape.

Making us sick and poisoning the environment.

The Obama administration, which ran on a platform to confront factory farming, has done little to confront the problem.

“They don’t have the stomach to take on the factory farms,” David Kirby, author of the book Animal Factory (St. Martin’s Press, 2010), told Corporate Crime Reporter last week. “They are gun shy. I’m disappointed.”

While the Justice Department and the Department of Agriculture are holding hearings on concentration in agribusiness, Kirby see the exercise as a glorified listening tour.

He doesn’t anticipate federal intervention to prevent a disaster.

But he says what needs to be done is clear – move from factory farms to family farms.

How?

Ban non-therapeutic antibiotic use in animals.

Bust up the processing cartels.

“There are so few processing plants now and they are so centralized and big they want to process only factory farm animals,” Kirby says.

Cut the billions in subsidies to agribusiness.

“And by the way, why aren’t the tea partiers out there screaming about the billions of dollars we give away every year to these massive farms?” Kirby asks.

“And then take some of those subsidies and give them to small independent farmers who can really use it to compete.”

He says that the Obama administration ran on a platform to do some of these things.

But it refuses to take on big agribusiness.

Kirby says it will take a disaster to change the system.

“You can pass all the laws you want, organize all the boycotts,” Kirby said. “But ultimately when you cram thousands of animals into a single confined space without access to fresh air, outdoor sunlight, pasture, natural animal behaviors – you are asking for problems in the form of diseases that attack people.”

“Mother nature will have the last word. Mad cow disease was a warning. Swine flu was a warning. MRSA was a warning. The egg recall was a warning.”

“But we haven’t hit the big one yet.”

“Things are changing. Consumers are waking up.”

“I understand that there are lines around the block at farmers markets where eggs sell out by noon.”

“Demand for sustainably grown eggs right now is huge. That will make companies sit up and take notice.”

“Things are changing. But for a massive shift away from factory farming, it will probably take some new super-virus combining the killer bird flu and some killer swine flu.”

“And that could happen. These chicken farms in Iowa are just down the road from the hog farms.”

“And birds and rodents and insects are moving in and out of these places.”

That disaster would force public action. But what about preventable public action by the Obama administration.

“It won’t be enough to have a serious impact on the structure of the factory farms,” Kirby says. “We are awash in apathy in this country.”

Pierce the Housing Bubble

A Pointless Waste of Money
By DEAN BAKER

Virtually the entire economics profession insisted on ignoring the housing bubble as it expanded to ever more dangerous levels. Remarkably, even after the bursting of this bubble wrecked the economy and has given us the worst downturn in 70 years, most economists are still determined to ignore the bubble.

The basic story is very simple. For a hundred years, from 1896 to 1996, nationwide house prices just tracked the overall rate of inflation. This is a very long period in a very big market. If we see a trend like this persist for a hundred years it is reasonable to expect it to continue into the future, unless something big in the fundamentals changes. And, no one has produced any evidence that passes the laugh test that anything in the fundamentals of the housing market has changed.

This means that we should expect house prices to continue to fall, with nationwide prices dropping another 15 to 20 percent to complete the process of deflating the bubble. This price decline is inevitable and in many ways desirable. I don’t know why any of us would be happy if our kids had to pay more to buy their first house.

Trying to delay this adjustment process with schemes like the homebuyers’ tax credit were a pointless waste of money. Our government got millions more people to buy homes at bubble-inflated prices, ensuring that many will lose money when they sell. That is not good policy. Trying to sustain a bubble in the housing market is like having an agricultural price support program, except it is far more costly with far less benefit.

The housing bubble did support the economy prior to the recession. We will have to find alternative sources of demand to replace the demand generated by over-valued housing.

It is actually easy for economists to think of ways to generate demand. We can have public jobs programs, we can rebuild the country’s infrastructure, we can have tax cuts oriented towards low- and middle-income people who will spend the money quickly.

We can also have the Fed be more aggressive with its monetary policy, targeting an inflation rate in the 3-4 percent range. We should also push down the value of the dollar to get our trade deficit down to a more reasonable size.

Unfortunately, all of these policies face serious political obstacles in Washington. However, the job of economists should be to explain the problem to policymakers and the public and to berate those who seek nonsense solutions like re-inflating a housing bubble.

The Backward Slide Into Recession

The Recovery is Dead
By MIKE WHITNEY

The economy is sliding backwards into recession. Ongoing deleveraging has slowed personal consumption and trimmed 2nd quarter GDP to a revised 1.6 per cent. As Obama's fiscal stimulus dries up and the private sector slashes spending, demand will continue to collapse pushing more businesses and households into default. The economy is now caught in a reinforcing downward cycle in which dwindling fiscal and monetary support is shrinking the money supply triggering a slowdown in activity in the broader economy.

Far right policymakers have shrugged off increasingly ominous economic data, choosing to pursue their political aims through obstructionism. Their goal is to block countercyclical measures that will boost activity, lower unemployment and narrow the output gap. By torpedoing the recovery, GOP leaders hope to take advantage of anti-incumbent sentiment and engineer a landslide victory in the midterm elections. But the timing could not be worse. The economy is in greater peril than most realize and badly in need of government intervention. As the current account deficit continues to widen, the global system inches closer to a major currency crisis. Ballooning trade imbalances signal that a disorderly unwinding of the dollar is becoming more probable. If the dollar drops precipitously, US demand for foreign exports will fall and the world will plunge into another deep slump.

The Fed ended its bond purchasing program (quantitative easing) at the end of March, but has promised to reinvest the proceeds from maturing bonds into mortgage-backed securities to keep its balance sheet from shrinking. But the Fed's action does not increase the money supply or reverse disinflation which is progressively edging towards outright deflation. The Central Bank is committed to providing additional resources to support the markets, but the Fed's primary policy tool--short-term interest rates---is already stuck at zero making the task more difficult. Without additional monetary stimulus, asset prices will tumble leading to another round of debt-liquidation and defaults. The housing market is already in full retreat. New and existing home sales have fallen to record levels, clearing the way for steep price declines. Housing cannot recover without an uptick in employment which means that businesses need to see strong demand for their products. But product demand will remain weak until wages grow and struggling consumers dig their way out of the red. With personal consumption and business investment faltering, the government must step up its spending to avoid a return to recession.

The banks are not prepared for another wave of defaults, foreclosures and write-downs. Bank lending continues to shrink and the system is still fragile. A sudden turnaround in the equities markets would expose the banks to severe losses and force the Fed to provide emergency liquidity for wobbly financial institutions. The solvency of the banking system is largely public relations hype. The fake stress tests merely obfuscated critical details about the true, mark-to-market value of their assets. The nation's biggest banks are still wards of the state.

Much of the rot at the heart of the financial system remains hidden from view. Accounting sleight-of-hand, gigantic liquidity injections, and regulatory forbearance have all helped to perpetuate the fraud. The Fed continues to divert capital into zombie institutions which provide no tangible public benefit. Low interest rates, government guarantees on bonds, interest payments on reserves, the Fed's discount window, and the myriad lending facilities are some of the perks, subsidies, inducements and corporate welfare given to the banks at taxpayer expense. In return, the banks provide nothing; not even sufficient credit to generate another expansion. In its current configuration, the banking system is a net loss to society and a significant drag on growth.

Last week, 2nd quarter GDP was revised down to 1.6 per cent. First quarter GDP was twice the size at 3.7 per cent, while 4th quarter 2009 was higher still at 5 per cent. The underlying trend is reasserting itself as growth turns to stagnation.

The Fed does not have the tools to fix the ailing economy. Quantitative easing can lower rates and keep asset prices inflated, but it cannot increase demand, reduce the output gap or lower unemployment. Only fiscal stimulus can do that and policymakers have rejected that option. The US is now facing a protracted period of high unemployment and subpar economic performance punctuated by infrequent stock market rallies and predictable bursts of optimism. The recovery is over.

Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

Andy Greenberg | Aug. 24 2010  | Forbes

As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

Here’s a video of the vans in action.



The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.

It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)

“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

AS&E’s Reiss counters privacy critics by pointing out that the ZBV scans don’t capture nearly as much detail of human bodies as their airport counterparts. The company’s marketing materials say that its “primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents,” and that “the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person.”

Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.

But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”

The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images. Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment. Reiss says AS&E has customers on “all continents except Antarctica.”

Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”

The Secret of Oz

vidlink

Interesting documentary about monetary reform.

BP Investigation Blocked By Senate

vidlink

Today's weather...

Today's weather...

Ron Paul’s Unexpected Message To The Tea Party

Posted on August 28, 2010

Ron Paul has some surprising news for the Tea Party: You’re being taken for a ride.

At least this is what many libertarians like Ron Paul believe when they see someone like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin trying to lead the Tea Party at the “restoring honor” rally this weekend. In fact, Ron Paul believes, if you’re looking for real freedom, you should really go back to the core of the constitution and the bill of rights, which Beck and Palin do not fully endorse when you really look at their beliefs. Whether it be Palin’s support for starting more wars or Beck’s beliefs on paying the private Federal Reserve MORE interest on our money by means of a VAT tax.

Ron Paul believes in neither of the above.

Here was Ron Paul’s message to the Tea Party via The New York Times just the other day:

“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”

While the Tea Party will be out supporting Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin this weekend, you wonder how many of them will be in full support of more wars and paying more interest to a group of untouchable and unauditable private bankers otherwise known as the FED? This is precisely what Ron Paul is asking the American public to consider when looking at the Tea Party leaders and see if they really stand for what they believe in.

Ron Paul believes the Tea Party is not about “left” or “right” like a lot of political pundits make it out to be. It’s about the constitution, and limited government.

Cops Don't Need Warrants to Plant GPS on Cars, Federal Court Says

by Caleb Johnson on August 28, 2010

A federal judge in California recently ruled that police can place a GPS on a person's car without his or her knowledge without seeking a warrant. CNN reports that Juan Pineda-Moreno's appeal was rejected for the third time in early August by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers nine West Coast states. Pineda-Moreno claimed that Oregon DEA agents had violated his privacy by sneaking onto his property and placing a GPS tracker on his Jeep, due to their suspicions that he was growing marijuana. To support their case against Pineda-Moreno, prosecutors used data culled by the device, such as the latitude and longitude of where the Jeep had been driving and how long it had stayed at those coordinates.

While Pineda-Moreno will continue serving his 51-month sentence, not everybody agrees with the court's ruling. "The vast majority of the 60 million people living in the Ninth Circuit will see their privacy materially diminished by the panel's ruling," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in his dissent of the case. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told CNN that the ruling was "Orwellian."

This comes less than a month after a D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that police should attain a warrant before engaging in GPS tracking. The opposing Ninth Circuit ruling suggests the constitutionality of warrentless GPS tracking will be tested in the Supreme Court. In some ways, using a GPS to track somebody isn't much different than parking down the street and tailing them. The notion of remote monitoring doesn't make this "Orwellian," but the ease with which the system could be abused definitely crosses into dangerous Big Brother territory.

NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Two Planets Transiting the Same Star

Worlds on the Edge
08.26.10

This artist’s concept illustrates the two Saturn-sized planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. The star system is oriented edge-on, as seen by Kepler, such that both planets cross in front, or transit, their star, named Kepler-9. This is the first star system found to have multiple transiting planets.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star.

The transit signatures of two distinct planets were seen in the data for the sun-like star designated Kepler-9. The planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The discovery incorporates seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars as part of an ongoing search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. The findings will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

Kepler's ultra-precise camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet transits them. The size of the planet can be derived from these temporary dips.

The distance of the planet from the star can be calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Small variations in the regularity of these dips can be used to determine the masses of planets and detect other non-transiting planets in the system.

In June, mission scientists submitted findings for peer review that identified more than 700 planet candidates in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The data included five additional candidate systems that appear to exhibit more than one transiting planet. The Kepler team recently identified a sixth target exhibiting multiple transits and accumulated enough follow-up data to confirm this multi-planet system.

"Kepler's high quality data and round-the-clock coverage of transiting objects enable a whole host of unique measurements to be made of the parent stars and their planetary systems," said Doug Hudgins, the Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists refined the estimates of the masses of the planets using observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations show Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets, and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9b lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9c has an orbit of about 38 days. By observing several transits by each planet over the seven months of data, the time between successive transits could be analyzed.

"This discovery is the first clear detection of significant changes in the intervals from one planetary transit to the next, what we call transit timing variations," said Matthew Holman, a Kepler mission scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is evidence of the gravitational interaction between the two planets as seen by the Kepler spacecraft."

In addition to the two confirmed giant planets, Kepler scientists also have identified what appears to be a third, much smaller transit signature in the observations of Kepler-9. That signature is consistent with the transits of a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in a scorching, near-sun 1.6 day-orbit. Additional observations are required to determine whether this signal is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

By FRANK RICH | August 28, 2010

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.

All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.

Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). Even the sources of their fortunes remain fairly constant. Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont’s portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well. The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.” That rant could be delivered as is at any Tea Party rally today.

Last week the Kochs were shoved unwillingly into the spotlight by the most comprehensive journalistic portrait of them yet, written by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. Her article caused a stir among those in Manhattan’s liberal elite who didn’t know that David Koch, widely celebrated for his cultural philanthropy, is not merely another rich conservative Republican but the founder of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which, as Mayer writes with some understatement, “has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception.” To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet, it’s startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation’s political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama “cokehead in chief.”

The other major sponsor of the Tea Party movement is Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, which, like Americans for Prosperity, is promoting events in Washington this weekend. Under its original name, Citizens for a Sound Economy, FreedomWorks received $12 million of its own from Koch family foundations. Using tax records, Mayer found that Koch-controlled foundations gave out $196 million from 1998 to 2008, much of it to conservative causes and institutions. That figure doesn’t include $50 million in Koch Industries lobbying and $4.8 million in campaign contributions by its political action committee, putting it first among energy company peers like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Since tax law permits anonymous personal donations to nonprofit political groups, these figures may understate the case. The Kochs surely match the in-kind donations the Tea Party receives in free promotion 24/7 from Murdoch’s Fox News, where both Beck and Palin are on the payroll.

The New Yorker article stirred up the right, too. Some of Mayer’s blogging detractors unwittingly upheld the premise of her article (titled “Covert Operations”) by conceding that they have been Koch grantees. None of them found any factual errors in her 10,000 words. Many of them tried to change the subject to George Soros, the billionaire backer of liberal causes. But Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money. And like many liberals — selflessly or foolishly, depending on your point of view — he supports causes that are unrelated to his business interests and that, if anything, raise his taxes.

This is hardly true of the Kochs. When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn’t changed. As Mayer details, Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial — a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries’ vast fossil fuel business. While Koch foundations donate to cancer hospitals like Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Koch Industries has been lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying another product important to its bottom line, formaldehyde, as a “known carcinogen” in humans (which it is).

Tea Partiers may share the Kochs’ detestation of taxes, big government and Obama. But there’s a difference between mainstream conservatism and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business, whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.

Yet inexorably the Koch agenda is morphing into the G.O.P. agenda, as articulated by current Republican members of Congress, including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block, Alaska’s anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin protégé, Joe Miller. Their program opposes a federal deficit, but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the superrich; apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a “slush fund”; opposes the extension of unemployment benefits; and calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even egg industries (among others) have been outrageous.

The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests. And surely Murdoch is snickering at those protesting the “ground zero mosque.” Last week on “Fox and Friends,” the Bush administration flacks Dan Senor and Dana Perino attacked a supposedly terrorism-tainted Saudi prince whose foundation might contribute to the Islamic center. But as “The Daily Show” keeps pointing out, these Fox bloviators never acknowledge that the evil prince they’re bashing, Walid bin Talal, is not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News’s parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corporation) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox.

No less a Murdoch factotum than Neil Cavuto slobbered over bin Talal in a Fox Business Channel interview as recently as January, with nary a question about his supposed terrorist ties. Instead, bin Talal praised Obama’s stance on terrorism and even endorsed the Democrats’ goal of universal health insurance. Do any of the Fox-watching protestors at the “ground zero mosque” know that Fox’s profits are flowing to a Obama-sympathizing Saudi billionaire in bed with Murdoch? As Jon Stewart summed it up, the protestors who want “to cut off funding to the ‘terror mosque’ ” are aiding that funding by watching Fox and enhancing bin Talal’s News Corp. holdings.

When wolves of Murdoch’s ingenuity and the Kochs’ stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely. Franklin Roosevelt’s triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to “squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail.” When John Kennedy’s patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their “crusades of suspicion.”

And Obama? So far, sadly, this question answers itself.

Income Inequality and Financial Crises

By LOUISE STORY | August 21, 2010

David A. Moss, an economic and policy historian at the Harvard Business School, has spent years studying income inequality. While he has long believed that the growing disparity between the rich and poor was harmful to the people on the bottom, he says he hadn’t seen the risks to the world of finance, where many of the richest earn their great fortunes.

Now, as he studies the financial crisis of 2008, Mr. Moss says that even Wall Street may have something serious to fear from inequality — namely, another crisis.

The possible connection between economic inequality and financial crises came to Mr. Moss about a year ago, when he was at his research center in Cambridge, Mass. A colleague suggested that he overlay two different graphs — one plotting financial regulation and bank failures, and the other charting trends in income inequality.

Mr. Moss says he was surprised by what he saw. The timelines danced in sync with each other. Income disparities between rich and poor widened as government regulations eased and bank failures rose.

“I could hardly believe how tight the fit was — it was a stunning correlation,” he said. “And it began to raise the question of whether there are causal links between financial deregulation, economic inequality and instability in the financial sector. Are all of these things connected?”

Professor Moss is among a small group of economists, sociologists and legal scholars who are now trying to discover if income inequality contributes to financial crises. They have a new data point, of course, in the recent banking crisis, but there is only one parallel in the United States — the 1929 market crash.

Income disparities before that crisis and before the recent one were the greatest in approximately the last 100 years. In 1928, the top 10 percent of earners received 49.29 percent of total income. In 2007, the top 10 percent earned a strikingly similar percentage: 49.74 percent. In 1928, the top 1 percent received 23.94 percent of income. In 2007, those earners received 23.5 percent. Mr. Moss and his colleagues want to know if huge gaps in income create perverse incentives that put the financial system at risk. If so, their findings could become an argument for tax and social policies aimed at closing the income gap and for greater regulation of Wall Street.

This inquiry is one that some conservative economists are already dismissing.

R. Glenn Hubbard, for instance, who was the top economic advisor to former President George W. Bush, said income inequality was not the culprit in the most recent crisis.

“Cars go faster every year, and G.D.P. rises every year, but that doesn’t mean speed causes G.D.P.,” said Mr. Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Business School and co-author of the coming book “Seeds of Destruction: Why the Path to Economic Ruin Runs Through Washington, and How to Reclaim American Prosperity.”

Even scholars who support the inquiry say they aren’t sure that researchers will be able to prove the connection. Richard B. Freeman, an economist at Harvard, is comparing about 125 financial crises around the globe that occurred over the last 30 years. He said inequality soared before many of these crises. But, Mr. Freeman added, the data from different nations is difficult to compare. And Professor Freeman says he has found some places, like the Scandinavian countries, where there were crises without much inequality, suggesting that other factors, like deregulation, may be the best explanations.

For his part, Mr. Moss said that income inequality might have complicated links to financial crises. For instance, inequality, by putting too much power in the hands of Wall Street titans, enables them to promote policies that benefit them — like deregulation — that could put the system in jeopardy.

Inequality may also push people at the bottom of the ladder toward choices that put the financial system at risk, he said. And low-income homeowners could have better afforded their mortgages if not for the earnings gap.

(Mr. Hubbard has a different take: He says many lower-income homeowners should not have had mortgages in the first place. The latest crisis, he says, was caused by policymakers who decided to “democratize credit” by expanding home ownership. Their actions were driven by a desire to address inequality, but those policymakers were misguided and should have improved education instead, he adds.)

Scholars who study inequality often focus on people at the bottom. But, Mr. Moss said, the incentives of people at the top also deserve more scrutiny.

He pointed to the recent work of Margaret M. Blair, who teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and is active with the Tobin Project, the nonprofit organization Mr. Moss founded a few years ago to study issues like economic inequality. She is researching whether financial workers promote bubbles and highly leveraged systems, even unconsciously. Ms. Blair said that because financial bubbles often lead to higher returns, financial workers have the potential to make more, and this pattern can influence their trading strategies and the policies they promote. Those decisions, in turn, drive even greater income inequality, she said.

After the 1929 crash, the income gap narrowed dramatically and remained low for decades, because of the huge wealth lost by people at the top and the sweeping financial reforms introduced in the 1930s that reined in Wall Street.

So far, the results are not as dramatic in the wake of the recent financial crisis. The income gap narrowed slightly in 2008, according to the most recent data available, but it remains unclear if it will continue shrinking.

This time, after all, the system did not collapse as it did in 1929. The status quo on income inequality looks like it was essentially maintained. Mr. Moss said he supported the government intervention in 2008, though he noted, "Financial elites made off rather well."

The most detailed photo of a Sun Spot to date captured by the Big Bear Solar Observatory

Thu, Aug 26, 2010

Now, that’s not Sauron’s eye. Pictured above is the most highly detailed photo of a sunspot ever taken at present date, captured and recently released by the Big Bear Solar Observatory, CA. The whole event was captured by Big Bear’s New Solar Telescope (NST), which has a resolution covering about 50 miles on the Sun’s surface.

“This photo of a sunspot is now the most detailed ever obtained in visible light,” according to Ciel et l’Espace. In September, the popular astronomy magazine will publish several more photos of the Sun taken with BBSO’s new adaptive optics system.

Scientists believe magnetic structures, like sunspots hold an important key to understanding space weather. Space weather, which originates in the Sun, can have dire consequences on Earth’s climate and environment. A bad storm can disrupt power grids and communication, destroy satellites and even expose airline pilots, crew and passengers to radiation. The NST data will be fundamental for future research in the field.

Overdose - The Next Financial Crisis

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Double meteorite strike 'caused dinosaur extinction'

Double trouble for dinosaurs: Did more than one meteorite strike cause their demise?
By Howard Falcon-Lang | Aug. 27, 2010 | Science reporter, BBC News

The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago by at least two meteorite impacts, rather than a single strike, a new study suggests.

Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.

Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.

This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of meteorites.

The new findings are published in the journal Geology by a team lead by Professor David Jolley of Aberdeen University.

When first proposed in 1980, the idea that a meteorite impact had killed the dinosaurs proved hugely controversial. Later, the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico, US, was hailed as "the smoking gun" that confirmed the theory.

Double trouble

The discovery of a second impact crater suggests that the dinosaurs were driven to extinction by a "double whammy" rather than a single strike.

The Boltysh Crater in Ukraine was first reported in 2002. However, until now it was uncertain exactly how the timing of this event related to the Chicxulub impact.

In the current study, scientists examined the "pollen and spores" of fossil plants in the layers of mud that infilled the crater. They found that immediately after the impact, ferns quickly colonised the devastated landscape.

Ferns have an amazing ability to bounce back after catastrophe. Layers full of fern spores - dubbed "fern spikes" - are considered to be a good "markers" of past impact events.

However, there was an unexpected discovery in store for the scientists.

They located a second "fern spike" in a layer one metre above the first, suggesting another later impact event.

Professor Simon Kelley of the Open University, who was co-author on the study, said: "We interpret this second layer as the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact."

This shows that the Boltysh and Chicxulub impacts did not happen at exactly the same time. They struck several thousand years apart, the length of time between the two "fern spikes".

Uncertain cause

Professor Kelley continued: "It is quite possible that in the future we will find evidence for more impact events."

Rather than being wiped out by a single hit, the researchers think that dinosaurs may have fallen victim to a meteorite shower raining down over thousands of years.

What might have caused this bombardment is highly uncertain.

Professor Monica Grady, a meteorite expert at the Open University who was not involved in the current study, said: "One possibility might be the collison of Near Earth Objects."

Recently, Nasa launched a program dubbed "Spaceguard". It aims to monitor such Near Earth Objects as an early warning system of possible future collisons.

A scale model of the Solar System in your browser

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/