Here’s How U.S. Spies Will Find You Through Your Pics

By Richard Wheeler - WIRED
July 29, 2011

Iarpa, the intelligence community’s way-out research shop, wants to know where you took that vacation picture over the Fourth of July. It wants to know where you took that snapshot with your friends when you were at that New Year’s Eve party. Oh yeah, and if you happen to be a terrorist and you took a photo with some of your buddies while prepping for a raid, the agency definitely wants to know where you took that picture — and it’s looking for ideas to help figure it out.

In an announcement for its new “Finder” program, the agency says that it is looking for ways to geolocate (a fancy word for “locate” that implies having coordinates for a place) images by extracting data from the images themselves and using this to make guesses about where they were taken.

More and more digital cameras today don’t just take pictures but also capture what is called metadata — often referred to as data about data — that can include everything from when the picture was taken to what kind of camera was used to where the it was taken. This metadata, often stored in a format called EXIF, can be used by different programs to understand different aspects of the image — and also by intelligence analysts to understand different aspects of the user who took it, and the people who are in it. Like who they are, what they are doing, and where and when they did it.

Sounds great! But there are a few small problems.

First, not all images are digital. Those old pictures of your parents that you scanned? No metadata. Also, not all digital image formats support metadata. That BMP file you’ve got from 1996? No metadata there, either. Next, even if the image format supports metadata, not all digital images are captured with it. Or they are, but they aren’t captured with a full set. That picture from your old-model Flip phone? No metadata there, or not enough metadata. Also, many popular websites — for example Facebook — strip EXIF tags. So it’s not possible to get the metadata unless you can somehow get access to the source file — which means hacking.

All that means that there are a lot of images out there with no metadata and/or with metadata that you can’t get to very easily. But these images might still have visual information within the image, or other clues, that could enable a system — either completely automated or using automated and human processes together — to make a guess about where the image was taken. The best case for intelligence analysts would be a fully automated system. This way they could suck in images from a terrorist website, download them off of captured cameras or cell phones, or scan them from hard copy, and feed all this through the system and get locations of where the images were taken. With more and more images being created in our world every day this automated approach is going to be crucial.

You can already see a little bit of this happening with the new Google Image Search. The new Google Image Search has a “reverse image search” capability that enables you to search for other instances of the same image on the web. In most cases, this is limited to the exact same image. For example, open up Google Image Search into a second browser window and drag in this image:

No matches. So is this helicopter flying over Khost Province in Afghanistan or flying over the back side of the Hollywood sign? Hard to tell from the image itself. And if you test out typing both “Khost Province” and “Hollywood” into the search bar, you’ll get results that point in both directions. Even for a trained human analyst, this might prove too hard to crack (although the lack of rocket pods on this helicopter makes a good case for this not being an MH-6 Little Bird, which points to Hollywood over Khost).

But for some places that have been photographed over and over again, Google can guess where the image was taken. Drag this into Image Search:

If you didn’t guess already, or if you’re still figuring out Image Search, or if you’re impatient, or if you’re just lazy, here’s a hint: It’s the Grand Canyon. Not too hard for Google to guess because so many people have shot it. When it works like this, Google Image Search is almost like a biometrics program for places.

There is also a middle ground where there will probably still be a place for the human, probably with the images that also have some text data associated with them, where skills of not just pattern matching but intuition will be useful.

The caption for this image reads “An Mi-17 helicopter flies to Kabul, coming back from a humanitarian assistance mission in Baharak, Badakhshan province, Afghanistan.” If you didn’t know it was Afghanistan you might think you were looking at the Sierras, but once you know it’s Afghanistan, and Badakshan province, and near Baharak, and taken on a flight from Baharak to Kabul, and you take a look at the big peak in the background and the distinctive runoff pattern in the foothill at the bottom of the frame, a trained analyst might be able to poke around in a 3D visualization program like GoogleEarth and say that the picture was taken around here:

 

Iarpa will probably look for combinations of both of these approaches, but on an industrial scale. It’s a hard problem, but even now we are starting to see the beginnings of the solution even in the commercial world. And you better believe that it’s not just spooks who want to know where images were taken. Google, Facebook, Apple and all the other internet and social media giants are probably looking to do the same thing so that they can better understand where their users are and what they are doing there.

So before long your Facebook or Google+ account will be automatically tagging who is in your pictures and where they were taken…

…and spooks might be, too.

Photos: 55th Combat Camera, U.S. Army; Richard Wheeler; Jonathan Zander/CC; 438th Air Expeditionary Wing, USAF; Google, Cnes/Spot, DigitalGlobe, Europa Technologies; Google, Digital Globe, Cnes/Spot, GeoEye

White House admits marijuana has ‘some’ medical value

By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Monday, July 11th, 2011

Just days after the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) insisted that there is no medical value to marijuana, the White House appeared to contradict the position, saying in a report that there may actually be "some" medical value to "individual components of the cannabis plant" after all.

The statement was just a small part of the Office on National Drug Control Policy's yearly update on the progress of the drug war and its goals moving forward. Overall, the document only serves to affirm the federal prohibition of marijuana and what it calls "'medical' marijuana," which it still views as illegitimate.

But a single passage, under their "facts about marijuana," seems to loosen a bit from the generation-old line that there is no value to cannabis whatsoever.

"While there may be medical value for some of the individual components of the cannabis plant, the fact remains that smoking marijuana is an inefficient and harmful method for delivering the constituent elements that have or may have medicinal value," the report says.

Still, today's medical marijuana patients and proprietors don't have much to cheer in the report, as it goes on to insist that smoking the marijuana plant itself is harmful and dangerous, especially for teens, and perpetuates the largely discredited "gateway drug" theory.

Critics are likely to see the passage as offering a bit of wiggle room for major pharmesutical producers looking to grow marijuana to extract its psychoactive ingredient, THC, or other cannabinoid compounds that have been demonstrated to help abate symptoms of some chronic diseases, like wasting syndrome in AIDS patients or nausea in cancer patients.

In 2007, GW Pharmaceuticals announced that it partnered with Otsuka to bring "Sativex" -- or liquefied marijuana -- to the U.S. The companies recently completed Phase II efficacy and safety trials testing and began discussion with the FDA for Phase III testing. Phase III is generally thought to be the final step before the drug can be marketed in the U.S.

Sativex is the brand name for a drug derived from cannabis sativa. It's an extract from the whole plant cannabis, not a synthetic compound. Even GW defines the drug (.pdf) as marijuana.
Yet as the FDA is poised to approve the drug for Big Pharma, state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries that provide relief for thousands of Americans are under attack by other federal agencies.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has warned just as much, claiming that federal authorities may be looking to shift policy slightly, if only to legalize marijuana-based medicines for Big Pharma only, which could step in and  potentially eradicate the medical marijuana market.

The Obama administration said in a recent memo that it fully intends to enforce the federal ban on marijuana, regardless of whether individual states have legalized its use for medical purposes.

It added that a 2009 memo, which seemed to take the pressure off state-authorized medical marijuana clinics and patients, was merely a guidance on the best uses of federal funds and not actually a change in policy.

An ABC News poll found last year that eight in 10 Americans favor legalizing medical marijuana.

Obama's Whistleblower War Suffers Two Defeats

Saturday, July 30, 2011 by Salon

by Glenn Greenwald

 

The Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers suffered two serious and well-deserved defeats.  The first occurred in the prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was accused of multiple acts of espionage, only for the DOJ to drop virtually all of the charges right before the trial was to begin and enter into a plea agreement for one minor misdemeanor.  Today, The Washington Post -- under the headline "Judge blasts prosecution of alleged NSA leaker" -- reports that the federal judge presiding over the case "harshly criticized U.S. prosecutors’ treatment of a former spy agency official accused of leaking classified material."

As the transcript of Drake's sentencing hearing published by Secrecy News reflects, Judge Richard Bennett of the U.S. District Court for Maryland was infuriated by two aspects of the DOJ's conduct: (1) after the Bush DOJ executed a search warrant of Drake's home in 2007, the Obama DOJ -- 2 1/2 years later -- finally indicted him, meaning he had to live with that cloud of criminal uncertainty over his head for that outrageously lengthy period of time; and (2) despite dropping all of the serious charges right before the trial was about to begin, the DOJ demanded that Drake be forced to pay a $50,000 fine as "a deterrent" (on top of the tens of thousands of dollars he spent in legal fees until he had no money left and had to use public defenders, as well as the fact that he was five years away from earning a federal pension when he was fired and ended up working at an Apple Computer store to support his family); to justify the requested fine, the prosecutor cited a $10,000 whistleblowing prize Drake was awarded earlier this year.

As for the first issue, the court condemned what it called the "extraordinary position taken by the government, probably unprecedented in this courthouse" of dropping the whole case on the eve of trial after "an extraordinary period of delay."  Judge Bennett added:  "I find that unconscionable.  Unconscionable.  It is at the very root of what this country was founded on against general warrants of the British."  As for the second issue, the court reviewed the difficult circumstances of Drake's childhood (he was raised in poverty and sent himself to school with risky military service), his complete lack of any prior criminal record, and -- most of all -- the multiple ways in which the failed prosecution destroyed his life ("the financial devastation wrought upon this defendant"), and flatly refused to impose any fine at all, explaining:  "I'm not going to add to that in any way."

What is most notable about this hearing is that the prosecutor candidly described not only his reasons for wanting a substantial fine imposed on Drake, but (without his saying so) also the motive for the Obama DOJ's broader war on whistleblowers: namely, an attempt to send a "message" of intimidation to future would-be whistleblowers (click on image to enlarge):

Yet Judge Bennett -- who, as a Bush 43 appointee, is presumably not overly sympathetic either to criminal defendants generally or national security leaks in particular -- was having none of that.  He first explained that he had never seen prosecutorial delays as extreme as the one in this case (accounted for by the fact that the Bush DOJ had apparently decided not to prosecute Drake, but the Obama DOJ then proceeded):

Judge Bennett then eloquently explained that the DOJ already destroyed Drake's life, even though it ended up convicting him of nothing other than a minor misdemeanor:

That, of course, is the real point here.  Drake's leak involved no conceivable harm to national security, but did expose serious waste, corruption and possible illegality.  When Drake was indicted back in April, 2010, I wrote at the time: "the more I think about this, the more I think this might actually be one of the worst steps the Obama administration has taken yet, if not the single worst step -- and that's obviously saying a lot."  The effect of prosecuting Drake with multiple "espionage" counts, threatening him with decades in prison, and financially ruining him is clear: to frighten future whistleblowers into silence, and thus enable the government and the National Security State to do whatever it wants free of one of the only true checks it has.  That's what makes Obama's War on Whistleblowing so pernicious.

The second defeat Obama's whistleblower war suffered occurred in the prosecution of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who -- like Drake -- allegedly leaked information that exposed serious ineptitude but entailed no national security harm.  As I wrote about several times, the Obama DOJ was seeking to force New York Timees reporter James Risen (to whom Sterling is accused of leaking) to testify about his source.  But yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema quashed the DOJ's subpoena, ruling in a decision (not yet public because it's now undergoing a classification review) that Risen need only testify to affirm the accuracy of what he wrote (which he had long ago offered to do).

These events demonstrate how legally baseless are the Obama DOJ's intimidation efforts, yet their rejection in court does not mean they have not succeeded.  As I wrote about in the context of the Risen subpoena:

But for anyone who is engaged in meaningful dissent from and challenge to government officials -- the Jim Risens and other real investigative reporters, the Thomas Drakes and other whistleblowers, the WikiLeaks supporters, the Midwest peace activists -- these prosecutions and these ever-expanding surveillance, detention and even assassination powers are inevitably intimidating. Regardless of how those powers are used or even whether they are, they will, as Risen put it, have "a chilling effect" on the exercise of core freedoms.

Despite being largely vindicated, Thomas Drake's life was all but destroyed, while Jim Risen spent years facing the prospect that he'd have to go to prison in order not to reveal his source.  That climate of fear aimed at those who expose government wrongdoing is the prime outcome, if not the prime goal, of the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers.

* * * * *

Here is an issue that needs a lot more scrutiny: Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to the U.N., and Justin Raimondo, both superbly examine the potential help received by accused Oslo attacker Anders Behring Breivik from the network of Muslim-hating far-right activists. 

I summarized one aspect of their excellent arguments here (Geller's deletion of the reference to "stockpiling weapons" in Norway described there occurred this month, apparently in the last 24 hours).  In an age where Muslims are swept into intense law enforcement investigations and even prosecutions for even the most tenuous links to those who commit violence, the seemingly pervasive indifference to Breivik's possible support network is revealing indeed.

UPDATE: Risen emailed me the following this morning about his sweeping victory:

This is an important victory for the First Amendment, and for the freedom of the press in the United States. Some people don't seem to understand the connection between the ability of journalists to protect their confidential sources and a free press. But if whistleblowers in government, in corporations, and elsewhere in society can be hounded and persecuted, and if the Justice Department is able to use its power to turn reporters into informants, then investigative journalism in America will surely wither and die. The First Amendment will have lost its meaning.

That seems to be not a bug, but a feature -- the primary one -- of the Obama war on whistleblowers.

Recovery for Wall Street and Wealthy, Austerity for Workers and Poor

Friday, July 29, 2011 by The Guardian/UK
The plain fact is that corporate profits are the only area of the US economy to recover since 2009. Any other claim is a lie

by Richard Wolff

 

The so-called economic "recovery" since mid-2009 was chiefly hype, a veneer of good news to disguise and minimise the awful underlying economic realities. The few (large corporations and the rich) who bear much of the responsibility for the crisis made sure that the government they finance used massive amounts of public money to support a recovery for them. The mass of the population was excluded from the government-financed recovery for the few. We now have the summary official statistics to expose this grotesque injustice.

In economics, as in other fields, pictures and graphs are sometimes worth more than a thousand words. So it is with a summary graph prepared recently by a group of economists at Northeastern University in Boston. Their short report (pdf) exposes the basic lie in claims by politicians, media spokespersons, business leaders and others that the US economy has been in an economic "recovery" since early 2009.

What did recover in the US, partly or wholly, were only corporate profits (especially those of banks) and the stock markets. The report's chart 14 shows three vertical bars indicating the size of profit and stock recoveries from the second quarter of 2009 through the first quarter of 2011.

 

Chart 14, from The 'Jobless and Wageless' Recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-2009 (pdf). Source: Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts; May 2011

What did not recover by the first quarter of 2011 – and has not recovered to this day – is shown by the five remaining bars in the chart. Those tiny bars show what happened to payrolls and to employment. From the depths of the crisis in early 2009 until now, there has been absolutely no recovery whatsoever in wages or jobs for US workers.

The crisis of the capitalist system in the US that began in 2007 plunged millions into acute economic pain and suffering. The "recovery" that began in early 2009 benefited only the minority that was most responsible for the crisis: banks, large corporations and the rich who own the bulk of stocks. That so-called recovery never "trickled down" to the US majority: working people dependent on jobs and wages.

The countless claims of "recovery" as if it were a general economic event spread across the entire US economy were, and are, lies. They hide the tragic truth of ongoing economic crisis for the many.

Why the American People Are Angry

Friday, July 29, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on the US Senate Floor

EPA Proposes New Rules on Emissions Released by Fracking

Friday, July 29, 2011 by ProPublica

by Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica 

Prohibited from regulating hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act, yesterday the EPA took to the air, proposing federal regulations to reduce smog-forming pollutants released by the fast-spreading approach to gas drilling.

If approved as currently written, the rules would amount to the first national standards for fracking of any kind, the EPA said. The agency sets guidelines when companies inject fluids underground for various purposes, but in 2005 Congress prohibited the EPA from doing so for fracking. Regulation has been left to the states, some of which compel companies to report what chemicals they use and have imposed tougher well-design standards.


The new EPA proposal would limit emissions released during many stages of natural gas production and development, but explicitly targets the volatile organic compounds released in large quantities when wells are fracked. Drillers would have to use equipment that captures these gases, reducing emissions by nearly 95 percent, the EPA said.

Environmentalists said the proposed rules represent an important step by federal regulators amid a growing controversy over fracking's safety.

"The EPA has a terrific opportunity here to provide the public with some assurance that the industry has to meet certain performance standards that are protective of public health," said Ramon Alvarez, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund in Texas.

The American Petroleum Institute, the country's main oil and gas lobbying group, has requested that the EPA delay finalizing the rules for at least six months beyond the current Feb. 2012 deadline. Asked to comment on the proposal's likely effects, API spokesman Reid Porter said only that the organization was reviewing it.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a group representing gas drillers in the Northeast, issued a statement criticizing the proposed regulations, saying they would "undercut" gas production.

The EPA contends that the measure would actually be a moneymaker for drilling companies. Though it might compel them to invest in new equipment, this equipment would allow them to capture methane gas currently lost in the drilling process, which they could then sell.

The EPA proposal is the result of a successful 2009 lawsuit brought against the agency by WildEarth Guardians and another advocacy group alleging that the agency had not updated air-quality rules as required. The EPA is supposed to review such rules at least every eight years, but in some cases had not done so for 10 years or more.

While the rules affect the oil and gas industry as a whole, growing awareness about environmental and health risks associated with fracking seems to have played a role in their formulation.

During an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson called natural gas a critical bridge fuel to a lower carbon future, but acknowledged that drilling had led to poor air quality in some areas. Smog was worsening in rural communities where drilling had increased sharply, she said, and the agency was concerned that without better regulation those problems would grow.

"People's health will be affected," Jackson said, adding that the EPA was developing rules -- the ones announced yesterday -- to address this issue.

Hydraulic fracturing is a major source of emissions because when fluids used to frack a well return to the surface, they carry gases that can be vented into the air, said Jeremy Nichols, the climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians.

"Just imagine opening a bottle of soda," he said.

Instead of carbon dioxide, in fracking's case the soda can contain methane, volatile organic compounds and toxic chemicals such as benzene, which generally spray into the environment. Some areas in the West, where emissions from drilling are particularly high, no longer meet federal air quality standards.

The EPA proposal also calls for reducing emissions of toxic chemicals, such as cancer-causing benzene, produced by processing, transmitting and storing natural gas. An exemption in the Clean Air Act prohibits the EPA from requiring similar reductions for fracking. Nevertheless, the agency said that a byproduct of new limits on volatile organic compounds produced by fracking would be reductions in other emissions.

Some environmentalists said they were disappointed that the proposed rules do not target methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is also the primary ingredient of natural gas. The oil and gas sector accounts for nearly 40 percent of all methane emissions nationwide, according to the EPA.

While the EPA said such emissions would be reduced by one-quarter as a result of new limits on the release of other gases, Alvarez said greater cuts would have been possible if methane reductions had been mandated.

The EPA issued its emissions reduction proposal soon after saying it would not meet a July 29 deadline for tougher national ozone standards.

Doing one without the other may not be enough to improve air quality in busy drilling areas such as Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin, Nichols said.

"That's a hard realization that's going to sink in," he said. "We're definitely going to be able to take a bite out of it through some of the standards that are coming on line, but we're going to reach a point where something else needs to be done."

GE CEO Immelt--Obama's Jobs Council Head--Offshoring Jobs to China at Blistering Pace

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, The Head Of Obama’s Jobs Council, Is Moving Jobs And Economic Infrastructure To China At A Blistering Pace

 

Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama's highly touted "Jobs Council", is moving even more GE infrastructure to China.  GE makes more medical-imaging machines than anyone else in the world, and now GE has announced that it "is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing". 

Apparently, this is all part of a "plan to invest about $2 billion across China" over the next few years.  But moving core pieces of its business overseas is nothing new for GE.  Under Immelt, GE has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States.  Perhaps GE should change its slogan to "Imagination At Work (In China)".  If the very people that have been entrusted with solving the unemployment crisis are shipping jobs out of the country, what hope is there that things are going to turn around any time soon?

Earlier this month, Immelt made the following statement to a jobs summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce....

"There's no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution."

Apparently Immelt's idea of being part of the solution is to ship as many jobs overseas as he possibly can.

A recent article on the Huffington Post documented how GE has been sending tens of thousands of good jobs out of the country....

As the administration struggles to prod businesses to create jobs at home, GE has been busy sending them abroad. Since Immelt took over in 2001, GE has shed 34,000 jobs in the U.S., according to its most recent annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But it's added 25,000 jobs overseas.
At the end of 2009, GE employed 36,000 more people abroad than it did in the U.S. In 2000, it was nearly the opposite.

GE is supposed to be creating the "jobs of tomorrow", but it seems that most of the "jobs of tomorrow" will not be located inside the United States.

The last GE factory in the U.S. that made light bulbs closed last September.  The transition to the new CFL light bulbs was supposed to create a whole bunch of those "green jobs" that Barack Obama keeps talking about, but as an article in the Washington Post noted, that simply is not happening....

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

But GE is far from alone in shipping jobs and economic infrastructure out of the United States.  For example, big automakers such as Ford are being very aggressive in China.  Ford is currently "building three factories in Chongqing as part of $1.6 billion investment that also includes another plant in Nanchang".

Today, China accounts for approximately one out of every four vehicles sold worldwide.  The big automakers consider the future to be in China.

Just a few decades ago, China was an economic joke and the U.S. economy was absolutely unparalleled.

But disastrous trade policies have opened up the door for a mammoth transfer of jobs, factories and wealth from the United States to China.

China has become an absolute powerhouse and America is rapidly declining.

Beautiful new infrastructure is going up all over China even as U.S. infrastructure rots and decays right in front of our eyes.

You can see some amazing pictures of the stunning economic development that has been going on in China here, here, here and here.

America is being deindustrialized at lightning speed and very few of our politicians seem to care.

Back in 1979, there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Today, there are 11.6 million.

That represents a decline of 40 percent during a time period when our overall population experienced tremendous growth.

We used to have the greatest manufacturing cities on the entire globe.  The rest of the world was in awe of us.

Today, most of those formerly great manufacturing cities are decaying, rotting hellholes.
The following is what one reporter from the UK saw during his visit to Detroit....

As you pass the city limits a blanket of gloom, neglect and cheapness descends. The buildings are shabbier, the paint is faded. The businesses, where they exist, are thrift shops and pawn shops or wretched groceries where the goods are old and tired. Finding somewhere to have breakfast, normally easy in any American city, involves a long hunt. ‘God bless Detroit’, says one billboard, just beside another offering the alternative solution: liquor.

You can see some really shocking images of the decline of Detroit right here.

Our politicians insisted that globalism would not result in a "giant sucking sound" as millions of jobs left America.

But that is exactly what has happened.

Sadly, most American families still don't understand what has happened.  Most of them are still waiting for things to get back to "normal".

Millions of unemployed Americans are dealing with incredible amounts of stress right now as they wait for jobs to start opening up again.  But the jobs that have been shipped overseas are not coming back.  In a globalized economy, it doesn't make sense to hire American workers when you can legally pay workers slave labor wages on the other side of the globe.

Millions of good middle class jobs have been replaced by low paying service jobs.  Today there are huge numbers of Americans that are cutting hair or flipping burgers because that is all they can get right now.

Many others are only able to survive because of the safety net.  One reader named David recently left a comment in which he shared his story.  David did everything that the system asked him to do, but the promised rewards never materialized.  Now David is broke, unemployed and he feels deeply frustrated....

A year ago I had a job, we were struggling, but bills were getting paid, and somehow we were getting by. Then I made the mistake of getting sick, one day before my company insurance kicked in. An auto-immune illness almost killed me, if it weren’t for the amazing efforts of my physicians and an emergency spleenectomy, I would not be here.

My wife would have been a single mother,raising two young sons, one of which is autistic. Instead, I pulled through. The disease damaged my liver, leaving me with a chronic condition, and even after a year, it is hard to get up and go some days. My “employer” dumped me as soon as I left the hospital, and I haven’t worked since. It isn’t for lack of looking. There just isn’t anything.

Oh, I get my government cheese money. Here I am college educated, unable to find something that can pay the bills better than the money that we get from the government. It sickens me to be this dependent on the system like this. But the system de-incentivizes work, and makes living on the dole make a perverse economic sense.

I used to have dreams, but I have given up on them. My wife and I have no savings, we have no life raft and if it weren’t for the generosity of her parents and mine, things would have ground to a halt a long time ago.

I believed every thing adults told me. Work hard, I did. Get an education, I did. Find a nice girl and settle down, I did. Two cars, a dog, a cat and couple of kids, a nice townhouse…the american dream. Yep.

I love my country. My heart is broken, broken because I have been betrayed. I did what you asked, I played by the rules. I did what you said to do; I submitted, I conformed, I stopped dreaming. Now what?

I am willing to pay for my faults and transgressions; my failures are my own, I get that. My children should not have to suffer for my failures, they did not do anything wrong. My youngest boy is autistic, we hope he will be able to integrate into society, but the fact is we may have to take care of him for the rest of his life. How do I do this with nothing, and no opportunity in the foreseeable future?
Depression, stress…yep, I’ve got all that. I used to be hopeful and optimistic about the future. Now all I am is afraid.

As the United States continues to bleed good jobs, stories like the one you just read are going to become much more common.

So what are our politicians doing about all of this?

They tell us that we need even more "free trade"!

Barack Obama says that we need more free trade.

The Republicans say that we need more free trade.

In Washington D.C. our politicians do not agree on much, but one thing they do agree on is that we need to keep shipping jobs out of the country.

Until the American people wake up and start demanding an end to the globalization of the U.S. economy, the job losses are just going to continue to get worse.

The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.  If this trend continues, millions more Americans will soon be surviving on food stamps or living in tent cities.

The American people are deeply concerned about the economy, but they still have not connected the dots on these issues.  The mainstream media and most of our politicians keep telling them that the globalization of the economy is a wonderful thing.

It is so sad that people just do not understand what is going on right in front of their eyes.
Whether you are a conservative or a liberal or a libertarian, you should be against the deindustrialization of America.

Allowing our industrial base to be raped is not a good thing.

Allowing big corporations and foreign governments to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe making things that will be sold inside the United States is not a good thing.

Allowing the destruction of our industrial capacity to threaten our national security is not a good thing.

Allowing millions of precious jobs to leave the country is not a good thing.

The biggest corporations are making some extra profits by exploiting cheap labor on the other side of the globe.  Corporate executives love to shower themselves with larger and larger bonuses.

But our current trade policies are not working for American workers.

We need "fair trade", not "free trade".

The United States is being taken advantage of, and the Democrats and the Republicans are both laying down like doormats and letting it happen.

If you want to know where all the good jobs went, it is not a big mystery.

They have been shipped out of the country and they are not coming back.

Unless fundamental changes are made, things are going to get worse and worse and worse for American workers.

So what is going to happen next?

It is up to you America.

Labeling GMO Foods

Monsanto the devil's Achilles Heel
By RONNIE CUMMINS

"If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."
- Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto the devil, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994

After two decades of biotech bullying and force-feeding unlabeled and hazardous genetically engineered (GE) foods to animals and humans—aided and abetted by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations—it's time to move beyond defensive measures and go on the offensive. With organic farming, climate stability, and public health under the gun of the gene engineers and their partners in crime, it's time to do more than complain. With over 1/3 of U.S. cropland already contaminated with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), with mounting scientific evidence that GMOs cause cancer, birth defects, and serious food allergies and with new biotech mutants like alfalfa, lawn grass, ethanol-ready corn, 2,4 D-resistant crops, and genetically engineered trees and animals in the pipeline time is running out.

Living in Monsanto the devil Nation there can be no such thing as "coexistence." It is impossible to coexist with a reckless industry that endangers public health, bribes public officials, corrupts scientists, manipulates the media, destroys biodiversity, kills the soil, pollutes the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically enslaves the world's 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers. It's time to take down the Biotech Behemoth, before the living web of biodiversity is terminated. 

But, to bring down Goliath and build an organic future, we need to be strategic, as well as bold. We must take the time to carefully analyze our strengths and weaknesses and critique our previous efforts. Then we must prepare to concentrate our forces where our adversary is weak, like a chess master, moving the field of battle from Monsanto the devil's currently impregnable territory into more favorable terrain. Given the near-dictatorial control of Monsanto the devil, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association over the Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies, and state legislators, we have no choice in the present moment but to revert to "asymmetrical" guerrilla tactics, to seek out the Achilles heel or fundamental weakness of the biotech industry.

Monsanto the devil's Achilles Heel

The Achilles heel of Monsanto the devil and the biotech industry is consumers' right to know. If GE-tainted foods are labeled in supermarkets and natural food stores, a massive rejection of chemical and GMO foods will take place, transforming the marketplace and supercharging the organic and local foods revolution. The biotech industry has been aware of their tremendous vulnerability in the United States ever since Monsanto the devil forced their controversial recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone on the market in February 1994. In the wake of nationwide "Frankenfood" protests and milk dumps, industry made sure that no federal labeling or safety testing would be required. As the biotechnocrats understand full well, mandatory GE food labels will cripple the industry: consumers will not buy gene-altered foods, farmers will not plant them, restaurants and food processors will avoid them, and grocery stores will not sell them. How can we be certain about this? By looking at the experience of the European Union, the largest agricultural market in the world. In the EU there are almost no genetically engineered crops under cultivation or GE consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Not because GE crops are automatically banned in Europe. But rather because under EU law, all foods containing genetically engineered ingredients must be labeled. 

European consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GE foods; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as these gene-altered are safety-tested and labeled. Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by the Monsanto the devil executive quoted above: "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

The biotech and food industry are acutely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don't want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto the devil, Dow, or DuPont--the same people who brought you toxic pesticides and industrial chemicals, Agent Orange, carcinogenic food additives, PCBs, and now global warming. Industry leaders are definitely aware of the fact that every poll over the last 20 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on genetically engineered foods. Why do consumers want labels? So that we can avoid buying these mutant foods, gene-spliced with viruses, bacteria, antibiotic- resistant marker genes and foreign DNA. Gene-altered foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto the devil and their friends in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from ever getting a public discussion, much less coming to a vote, in Congress. 

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) perennially introduces a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GE foods, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called "Citizens United" case gave big corporations, millionaires, and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto the devil and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. 

Perfectly dramatizing the "Revolving Door" between Monsanto the devil and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto the devil, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto the devil and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress.

With biotech and industrial agriculture's big money controlling Congress, the White House, and the corporate mass media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and our campaigning to more favorable terrain: the state level and the marketplace. 

Besides boycotting non-organic foods likely containing GMOs (even those marketed as "natural") and demanding that natural food stores adopt truth-in-labeling practices, we've got to push for mandatory GE food labeling laws in the legislatures of those few remaining states like Vermont where Monsanto the devil and corporate agribusiness do not yet have total control. Of the 18 states where GE food labeling legislation has been introduced over the past two years, only in Vermont does our side seem to have the votes to push labeling through, as well as a Governor who will not cave in to Monsanto the devil.

State Ballot Initiatives

Although passing a mandatory GE foods labeling law in Vermont is a distinct possibility, and something we should all support, the most promising strategy for restoring consumers' right to know lies in utilizing one of the most important remaining tools of direct citizen democracy, state ballot initiatives. A state ballot initiative is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can bring about a public vote on a proposed statute or constitutional amendment, in our case a law requiring mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. Ballot initiatives are also called, depending on the state, "popular initiatives," "voter initiatives," "citizen initiatives" or just "initiatives."

Twenty-four states, mainly west of the Mississippi, allow ballot initiatives. Each state has its own requirements for how many signatures are required, how many days can be spent collecting the signatures, and when petitions must be turned in. States also vary on the average amount of money spent by initiative committees to support or oppose ballot measures. 

The essential advantage of state ballot initiatives is that they enable the grassroots (in our case the 85-95% of consumers who want labels on GE-tainted foods) to bypass corrupt politicians, industry lobbyists, and special interest legislative practices. In addition, the very strategic point to keep in mind is that it will not be necessary to pass GMO labeling ballot initiatives in all 24 of these states. In fact passage in just one large state, for example California, where there is tremendous opposition to GE foods as well as a multi-billion dollar organic food industry, will likely have the same impact as a national labeling law. 

If Vermont passes a state labeling law though its legislature in 2011, or California voters put a GMO labeling initiative on the ballot in 2012 and pass it, the biotech and food industry will face an intractable dilemma. Will they dare put labels on their branded food products in just one or two states, admitting these products contain genetically engineered ingredients, while still withholding label information in the other states? The answer is very likely no. Withholding important and controversial information in some states, while providing it to consumers in other states, would be a public relations disaster. 

A clear precedent for this situation was established in California in 1986 when voters passed, over the strenuous opposition of industry, a ballot initiative called Proposition 65, which required consumer products with potential cancer-causing ingredient to bear warning labels. Rather than label their products sold in California as likely carcinogenic, most companies reformulated their product ingredients so as to avoid warning labels altogether, and they did this on a national scale, not just in California. 

This same scenario will likely unfold if California voters pass a ballot initiative in 2012 requiring labels on food containing genetically engineered ingredients. Can you imagine Kellogg's selling Corn Flakes breakfast cereal in California with a label that admits it contains genetically engineered corn? Or labeling their corn flakes as GE in California, but not divulging this same fact to consumers in the other 49 states or Canada? Of course not. How about Kraft Boca Burgers admitting that their soybean ingredients are genetically modified? How about the entire non-organic food industry (including many so-called "natural" brands) admitting that 75% of their products are GE-tainted?

Once food manufacturers and supermarkets are forced to come clean and label genetically engineered products, they will likely remove all GE ingredients, to avoid the "skull and crossbones" effect, just like the food industry in the EU has done. In the wake of this development American farmers will convert millions of acres of GE crops to non-GMO or organic varieties.

The biotechnocrats and their allies have indeed used their vast resources to buy off Congress, the White House, and most state legislatures with campaign contributions. Monsanto the devil, DuPont, and other corporate giants have used their enormous clout to send their lawyers and scientists through the revolving door into jobs as government regulators. Biotech's financial power has polluted state and federal governments, along with trade associations, universities, research institutions, philanthropic organizations, and media outlets.

But there are two things Monsanot the devil's money can't buy: Our trust, and our votes.

Polls Show Consumers Overwhelmingly Support GE Food Labels

Poll after poll has shown that most consumers want to know whether their food includes engineered ingredients. 

The results of a recent MSNBC poll that posed the question, "Do you believe genetically modified foods should be labeled?" indicate that nearly all Americans believe that foods made with genetically modified organisms should indeed be labeled. 

Of the more than 45,000 people who participated in the poll, over 96% answered "Yes. It's an ethical issue -- consumers should be informed so they can make a choice."

It's not news that most Americans support labeling of GMO foods. Since genetically modified foods were first introduced in mid-1990s, scores of public opinion polls have shown that the vast majority of consumers want mandatory labeling of all genetically modified foods. These include recent polls by CBS News/New York Times, NPR/Thomson Reuters and the Consumers Union. Unfortunately Congress and the White House have ignored these polls, accepting instead the claims of lobbyists and indentured scientists that genetically engineered foods are perfectly safe, and that uninformed and scientifically illiterate Americans must not be given the choice to buy or not to not GMOs, because they will reject them.

Monsanto the devil spent more than $1 million on the 2010 election cycle, splitting its contributions evenly between state and federal candidates. It spends much more on lobbying -- more than $8 million in each of the last three years. Monsanto the devil's money has bought it influence and allowed it to move its lawyers and scientists through the revolving door into roles within the regulatory agencies. The USDA, FDA and State Department are full of appointees with connections to Monsanto the devil. Monsanto the devil's efforts have successfully stifled attempts in Congress and state legislatures to pass GMO labeling legislation.

The Slingshot that Can Bring Down Goliath

The most important advantage or weapon in a ballot initiative (or in a grassroots legislative lobbying campaign) is to have the overwhelming support of the people, especially registered voters. As poll after poll has shown, 85-95% of Americans support mandatory GE food labels. No matter how much money Monsanto the devil and their allies spend to defeat a ballot initiative, it is very difficult to turn back overwhelming public sentiment. Monsanto the devil has become one of the most hated corporations on earth.

The second requirement for a successful ballot initiative is to have the active support of a massive grassroots movement, like the growing anti-GE food movement and OCA's Millions Against Monsanto the devil campaign. This grassroots movement can gather petition signatures, mobilize public opinion, and get out the vote. No matter how much money Monsanto the devil and their allies spend, it will be very difficult to defeat a volunteer grassroots army of organic consumers who enjoy the massive support of the public.

The third prerequisite for victory is to have the ability to raise significant sums of money. Not only do we have millions of organic consumers in the U.S. who are passionately opposed to GMOs, and willing to donate to a labeling campaign, but we also have a rapidly growing $30 billion organic food industry that depends upon keeping GMO contamination out of the organic sector. We probably won't be able to raise enough money to outspend Monsanto the devil the devil, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, but we can raise enough money to defend our popular position and maintain majority support.

Just like everything in U.S. politics, ballot initiatives have a price tag.

According to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center:

• "The chances of victory are directly correlated with the amount of money raised and are almost always proportional to the amount of money the opposition spends."
• "People power is equally important to factor in. Particularly for Citizen-based ballot initiative efforts, it is imperative to have people on the ground across the state that are connected and invested in the initiative."

Biotechnology or BioDemocracy?

Restoring consumers' right to know and driving genetically engineered foods off supermarket shelves are not going to solve all of the life and death issues that are currently staring us in the face: the climate crisis, endless wars, economic depression, corporate control over government, and the health crisis. But cutting Monsanto the devil and the biotechnocrats down to size and restoring consumer choice are a good first step to move us toward sustainability and a healthy food and farming system. Just as important, in political terms, by defeating the Biotech Bullies and indentured politicians we can begin to restore the tattered self-confidence of the American body politic. A resounding victory by the organic community and OCA's Millions Against Monsanto the devil campaign will prove to ourselves and the currently demoralized public that we can indeed take back control over the institutions and public policies that determine our daily lives. Now is the time to move forward.

To support or join up with the Millions Against Monsanto the devil Campaign, go to: http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/

The Weird Battle Over the Debt Ceiling

The Price of the Housing Bubble
By DEAN BAKER

Policy debates in Washington are moving ever further from reality as a small elite is moving to strip benefits that the vast majority need and support. The battle over raising the debt ceiling is playing a central role in this effort.

The United States is currently running extraordinarily large budget deficits. The size of the annual deficit peaked at 10 percent of GDP in 2009, but it is still running at close to 9.0 percent of GDP in 2011. The reason for the large deficits is almost entirely the downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. This can be easily seen by looking at the projections for these years from the beginning of 2008, before government agencies recognized the housing bubble and understood the impact that its collapse would have on the economy.

At the beginning of 2008 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the country's most respected official forecasting agency, projected that the budget deficit in 2009 would be just 1.4 percent of GDP. The reason that the deficit exploded from 1.4 percent of GDP to 10.0 percent had nothing to do with wild new spending programs or excessive tax cuts. This enormous increase in the size of the deficit was entirely the result of the fallout from the housing bubble.

Remarkably, both Republicans in Congress and President Obama have sought to conceal this simple reality. The Republicans like to tell a story of out-of-control government spending. This is supposed to be a long-standing problem (in spite of the fact that Republicans have mostly controlled the government for the last two decades) that requires a major overhaul of the budget and the budgetary process. They are now pushing, as they have in the past, for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

It might be expected that President Obama would be anxious to correct the misconception about the budget, but this would not fit his agenda either. President Obama is relying on substantial campaign contributions from the business community to finance his re-election campaign. Many business people are anxious to see the major government social programs (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) rolled back. They see the crisis created around the raising of the debt ceiling as a unique opportunity to accomplish this goal.

In order to advance their agenda, President Obama also has an interest in promoting the idea of the deficit as being a chronic problem. Plus, it gives him an opportunity to blame the deficit on the fiscal choices of his predecessor, President Bush. Therefore, in his address to the country on July 25, he told the public that as a result of President Bush's tax cuts, his wars, and his Medicare prescription drug benefit, the deficit was on a track to be more than $1 trillion in 2009.

This is more than five times as large as the actual figure projected by CBO. However, President Obama's distortion preserved the idea of the deficit as a chronic problem, while also getting in an attack on the Republicans. It also allows him to avoid talking about the housing bubble. This is a topic that he seems anxious to avoid, since many large contributors to his re-election and to the Democratic Party profited enormously from the bubble.

The claim that the deficit is a chronic problem and not primarily the result of a severe cyclical downturn also opens the door for cuts to the country's major social welfare programs. These cuts are hugely unpopular. All three major programs enjoy overwhelming support among people in all demographic groups, including conservative Republicans. There is no way that an ambitious politician would ever suggest major cuts to these programs apart from a crisis.

In this respect, the crisis over the debt ceiling is the answer to the prayers of many people in the business community. They desperately want to roll back the size of the country's welfare state, but they know that there is almost no political support for this position. The crisis over the debt ceiling gives them an opportunity to impose cutbacks in the welfare state by getting the leadership of both political parties to sign on to the deal, leaving the opponents of cuts with no plausible political options.

To advance this agenda they will do everything in their power to advance the perception of crisis. This includes having the bond-rating agencies threaten to downgrade U.S. debt if there is not an agreement on major cuts to the welfare state.

In principle, the bond-rating agencies are only supposed to assess the likelihood that debt will be repaid. However, they showed an extraordinary willingness to allow profit to affect their ratings when they gave investment grade ratings to hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities during the housing bubble. Given their track record, there is every reason in the world to assume that the bond-rating agencies would use downgrades or the threat of downgrades for political purposes.

 

This means that the battle over the debt ceiling is an elaborate charade that is threatening the country's most important social welfare programs. There is no real issue of the country's creditworthiness of its ability to finance its debt and deficits any time in the foreseeable future. Rather, this is about the business community in general, and the finance sector in particular, taking advantage of a crisis that they themselves created to scale back the country's social welfare system. They may well succeed.

New Drugs, Same Mistakes

Congress Chooses Criminalization Over Regulation
By GRANT SMITH
Partisan bitterness has become a familiar feature of Capitol Hill politics. But given the recent debt debacle, it was little surprise that two committee rooms full of congressional lawmakers were giddy at the chance to sing bipartisan praises and wave through legislation that criminalizes possession and sale of "K2," "spice," "bath salts," and other synthetic drugs.

Despite growing consensus that there is an urgent need for a new direction in our nation's drug policies, and recognition from the Global Commission on Drug Policy and others that the 40 year old war on drugs is a resounding failure, many lawmakers are still shy to question the wisdom of proposals to criminalize more people and the drugs they use.

Synthetic drugs that imitate the effects of marijuana and other illegal drugs have been sensationalized since they first appeared on store shelves. Many people are attracted to these products because the drugs do not show up in drug tests and it was not a crime to use or sell them until recently.

Much controversy has centered on the marketing of these drugs as incense or other household products even though they are often consumed. Rather than step in to regulate synthetic drugs, impose age restrictions and product labeling requirements, the government did nothing until several tragic events involving young people received extensive media coverage.

State and federal lawmakers have forged ahead with proposals to ban synthetic drugs before scientists could better understand and evaluate the products for health risks and benefits. Empirical evidence has yet to surface that shows synthetic drugs pose a threat to public health that warrants criminalization.

Lawmakers have a long track record of passing ineffective laws, and its unwavering support for the war on drugs is no exception. Enforcement of marijuana prohibition, in particular, has wasted billions of dollars subjecting millions of American citizens to arrest for nonviolent drug law violations. Marijuana law violations make up half of all drug arrests annually.

And just as we have seen with marijuana, criminalizing synthetic drugs will cede control of the drugs to the criminal market. Our policy should enable the government to enforce strict regulations and controls on a legal market for synthetic drugs that monitors production, minimizes public harm and generates tax revenue.

Congress continues to vigorously fund and escalate the drug war even as Washington seeks to reduce federal spending. Enforcing a federal ban on synthetic drugs won't be cheap. Moreover, organizations such as the Heritage Foundation have cautioned against creating unnecessary federal crimes that inappropriately expand the reach of the federal government into local affairs. Since the vast majority of drug enforcement is carried out by state and local agencies, Congress is essentially passing the costs of this legislation on to them.

Commenting on synthetic drugs during a committee session this week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) remarked that "we are in a new era of drugs."

A new era calls for a new approach, and Congress has an opportunity here to provide for comprehensive drug education, rigorous scientific study to better understand what is in synthetic drugs, and a robust system of regulation and control of the synthetic drug market. Lawmakers need not look far for a successful model. The federal government's approach to dealing with tobacco has been enormously successful at reducing youth and adult tobacco use in recent decades and millions of people didn't have to be arrested and branded with criminal convictions to achieve success.

Lawmakers must put the brakes on this failed approach to drug policy, stop wasting taxpayer dollars and destroying people's lives.

Age of Greed

When the Super-Rich Cry, "Class Warfare!"
By MICHAEL WINSHIP

I ran into my friend Jeff Madrick a few weeks ago. Like a rabbit out of a hat, or so it seemed, he whipped from his coat a copy of his new book, Age of Greed.

He gave the book to me and I'm grateful. It's a compelling and worthy read. Jeff's an able journalist; an excellent and cogent storyteller in a field that often defies the straightforward plot or easy explanation -- economics.

The book's subtitle says it all: "The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present;" an ongoing saga of avarice told through profiles of the men who confidently strode forth and marched us smack into the middle of our current fiscal nightmare.

Milton Friedman, Richard Nixon, Ivan Boesky, Ronald Reagan, Michael Milken, Alan Greenspan, Ken Lay, Walter Wriston of Citicorp and Sandy Weill of Citigroup, Lehman Brothers' Richard Fuld -- they're all here and more, presidents and economists, CEO's and masters of the universe, a veritable Murderers' Row of the rich and frequently reckless.

As Jeff writes in the introduction, the first part of Age of Greed "is mostly a story of business pioneers who fought government regulation or, through innovation, escaped government oversight," building on fear from punishing inflation in the seventies and a new post-Watergate distrust of government, "all the while diminishing the power of government and reinforcing the changing national attitudes."

In the second part, "Once government was no longer a counterweight and a new political ideology cleared their path, financiers led the way... Debts more than innovation and technological progress became the economy's driving force. Financial businesses doubled in size compared to the economy and profits grew still faster. Hundreds of billions of precious American savings were wasted."

I thought of all this last week when I read a report headlined "Fly on the Wall," on the website Politico.com:

"Fifty of the most prized donors in national politics, including several hedge-fund billionaires who are among the richest people in the world, schlepped to a Manhattan office or hovered around speakerphones Tuesday afternoon as their host, venture capitalist Ken Langone, a co-founder of The Home Depot, implored New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to reconsider and seek the GOP presidential nomination."

Yikes. That prospect alone is enough to make sensible men and women weep. But wait, there's more.

Among those in attendance were at least three worthy of inclusion on Forbes' list of richest Americans -- Paul Tudor Jones (hedge funds; $3.3 billion), Stan Druckenmiller (hedge funds; $2.5 billion) and Bernie Marcus (Home Depot; $1.9 billion). According to Politico, "Several of them said: I'm Republican but I voted for President Obama, because I couldn't live with Sarah Palin. Many said they were severely disappointed in the president. The biggest complaint was what several called 'class warfare.' They said they didn't understand what they had done to deserve that: If you want to have a conversation about taxation, have a conversation. But a president shouldn't attack his constituents -- he's not the president of some people, he's president of all the people. Someone mentioned Huey Long populism."

Huey Long populism? Give me a break. Barack Obama's about as much like Huey Long as I am Huey Newton of the Black Panthers (or Huey Lewis and the News, come to that). And as for class warfare, give me a double break. Who the hell started it? "There's class warfare, all right," Warren Buffett told The New York Times two years before the 2008 crash, "but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

I'll say. Which makes the whining of the moneyed -- in addition to the winning -- all the more annoying. Especially after the Obama White House has bent over backwards for them -- simply remember the concessions on health care and financial reform, for two -- and all too often has vassaled itself to the knights of the Fortune 500, kowtowing all the way to the bank where they keep the big campaign contributions.

But I suppose in comparison to the Republicans' even lower groveling for the corporate table leavings, it's conceivable the President and his associates might seem to some of those residing in the economic stratosphere like wild-eyed populists. For one, that National Labor Relations Board of his is being too, too terribly annoying.

The NLRB has gone after Boeing, alleging that the aerospace giant decided to move an aircraft plant to South Carolina in retaliation against strikes by workers at its Puget Sound factory outside Seattle. And now the Teamsters have filed a charge with the labor board that the car company BMW of North America has failed to bargain in good faith, replacing union members by outsourcing a parts distribution center in Ontario, California. (The usual full disclosure: I'm president of a union affiliated with the AFL-CIO.)

In forty years of union representation, there has never been a labor stoppage at the center; in fact, its employers have received gold medals from BMW for efficiency. Average seniority is twenty years; five workers have been there thirty years or more.

As Michael Hiltzik wrote in the July 3 Los Angeles Times, "These employees exemplified the best qualities of the American worker. They devoted their working lives to BMW, at a time when it was building and solidifying its US beachhead. Their wages, with benefits, paid for a reasonable middle-class lifestyle if they managed it carefully. Throw in the job security they were encouraged to expect, and they had the confidence to make sacrifices and investments that contributed to the economy for the long term, like college education for the kids, an addition on the house, a new baby. Then one day they were handed a mass pink slip, effective in a matter of weeks."

You can argue that BMW, world's largest manufacturer of luxury cars, has the legal right to outsource. Yet by the same token, Hiltzik noted, "American taxpayers had a perfect legal right to tell BMW to drop dead when the firm's credit arm asked the Federal Reserve for a low-interest $3.6-billion loan during the 2008 financial crisis. BMW got the money then because US policymakers saw a larger issue at stake: saving the economy from going over a cliff. Just as there's a larger issue involved at Ontario, which is saving the American middle class from going over the same cliff."

Last year, BMW posted profits of $4.7 billion and bumped up shareholder dividends by $950 million. This year, they're predicting a ten percent increase in revenues. Will they be sharing with their American workers? Don't bet on it. Will they come running to the government for help next time they're in trouble? Count on it.

And as if Congress hasn't done corporate America enough favors, next week House Republicans will try to pass an anti-NLRB bill that will, in the words of California Democratic Congressman George Miller, "eviscerate the rights of workers, help ship more jobs overseas, undermine job creation in this country and kill opportunity for people who are working hard and playing by the rules."

HR 2587 takes away the NLRB's authority, says AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bill Samuel "to restore workers to their jobs when companies simply eliminate work in order to eliminate workers who are pro-union or when companies eliminate work in order to avoid their legal obligation to bargain.

"[The bill] will have dire unintended consequences as well. It will make it easier to ship jobs overseas because it legalizes the most despicable form of outsourcing -- the illegal kind -- by keeping the NLRB from being able to stop it. The bill will remove one of the only tools preventing work from leaving the US."

And still big business will whine and complain, as per Politico, not understanding what they have done to deserve approbation. Yet all the while, as Jeff Madrick writes in Age of Greed, they take our economy "along an unfortunate, tragic path for their own purposes from which it may not be possible to turn back."

Wall Street's Code of Silence

Getting Away With Murder
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER

Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner were at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. this week for a discussion about their book – Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.

During the question period, Blair Ruble, who heads the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, stood up to speak.

Blair Ruble told a story about when he was at a conference in Elagua, Tartarstan.

"I was pulled out of the conference, and was told the Minister of Economics was coming from the capital of Kazan to see me."

The country had apparently invested some of its oil wealth with the U.S. government and the Minister was concerned about the lack of accountability after the collapse of the housing bubble.

"They had this oil revenue and they didn't trust the Russian government," Ruble said. "I was the first American he could find. We had lunch. After realizing I couldn't help him he said to me – 'When did you Americans become Russians?"

"I'm going to prove to you that you really are nothing but Russians," the Minister of Economics told Ruble.

"Five years from now, mark my words – none of the people responsible for this – not only not be held accountable – they will be in more important positions – that is what would happen in Russia."

Rosner pretty much agreed.

"My father was a federal prosecutor and my mother was a criminologist, and her speciality was Soviet criminology," Rosner said. "As she read our book – she kept saying – Jesus, this sounds like the way it is done there. Every piece of it. You have an entrenched bureaucracy without accountability."

Rosner said a "code of silence" protects those complicit in the recent collapse.

"All of the parties central to this crisis are unwilling to point fingers, recognizing that their power base comes from the silence," Rosner said. "As long as everyone keeps silent, each one will recognize that they rise to the next level. You see that throughout our government at this point."

Case in point: former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

Rosner said that the Orszag case is "one that I find most offensive."

"It's not on the level of Timothy Geithner or Hank Paulson, but it's troubling."

"Peter Orszag was co-author of a study paid for by Fannie Mae back in 2000 or 2001," Rosner said. "It argued that Fannie and Freddie are incredibly safe and sound, that the stress test that was going to be employed by the regulator insured their safety and soundness. And that there was something like a one in 500,000 chance that they would end up imperiled. And even if that happened, the cost to the taxpayers would be a few million dollars. That's pretty much what the paper said.

"Orszag ends up as the head of OMB. And when the government takes Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship, he says – there is about a five percent chance that the government could be on the hook for more than $100 billion. Wrong again. No one calls him out.

"Orszag is now the vice chairman at Citibank. I noticed the other day he put out an op-ed on Bloomberg which was clearly positioned to support his current institution. And nowhere does it say that he had anything to do with the government, the GSEs. And that's just the way Washington works.

"He obviously was in that position to add three zeros to his income on the other side. It's not about public service. It's about self service."

Morgenson lamented the lack of criminal prosecution:

"I know proving criminal intent is exceedingly hard. But if we don't get some scalps, you will have left most people with the idea that you can get away with murder as long as it's involving not a gun but a pen and a financial institution. That's the wrong message we should send. It's pernicious and damaging.

"In the savings and loan crisis there were 839 criminal prosecutions that resulted in jail time," Morgenson said. "And these were not just low level people. These were CEOs in some cases, CFOs – very high level people. We have had very few this time around. And the people who were on the scene (during the S&L crisis) tell me that because of the regulatory failure during the mania, we are now seeing very few prosecutions.

"It's bad enough that the regulators allowed the bad behavior and practices to proliferate. But now it's going to result in very few prosecutions.

"This feeds into the idea that there are two sets of rules in America. There is one set of rules for people like you and me. And there is another set of rules for people who are powerful, who are politically connected, who have very high level jobs, who know the right people."