No Austerity Has Helped Any Economy

Sunday, 03 February 2013
By Gaius Publius, America Blog | News Analysis

Paul Krugman’s recent column looks at the romance between the “austerians” — the promoters of austerity for economically troubled nations — and the need to inflict pain to get economic gain. His bottom line — no country that has tried austerity has seen a major economic benefit.

My bottom line — add “to its people” to the end of Krugman’s bottom line and you’ve got it exactly. There is an obvious economic benefit, but only for a few.

Let’s start with Krugman. He begins:

Looking for Mister Goodpain

Three years ago, a terrible thing happened to economic policy, both here and in Europe. Although the worst of the financial crisis was over, economies on both sides of the Atlantic remained deeply depressed, with very high unemployment. Yet the Western world’s policy elite somehow decided en masse that unemployment was no longer a crucial concern, and that reducing budget deficits should be the overriding priority.

That’s a familiar story, one we’ve detailed before. The answer to economic crisis is always budget cuts and austerity. Then he pivots to austerian attempts to find an example.

In recent columns, I’ve argued that worries about the deficit are, in fact, greatly exaggerated — and have documented the increasingly desperate efforts of the deficit scolds to keep fear alive. Today, however, I’d like to talk about a different but related kind of desperation: the frantic effort to find some example, somewhere, of austerity policies that succeeded. For the advocates of fiscal austerity — the austerians — made promises as well as threats: austerity, they claimed, would both avert crisis and lead to prosperity.

The column is interesting because it lays out that history. First the example was Ireland, which the head of the European Central Bank said in 2010 was “the role model for all of Europe’s debtor nations.” But events proved them wrong; Ireland is worse off today than it was back then. So then the U.K. became the touted model, until it wasn’t. Then little Latvia, which has recovered some, was pushed forward; but Latvia still has 14% unemployment. Hmm.

Krugman’s conclusion — nowhere in the world is there an example of austerity that works as the austerians said it would. The policy is “wrong on all fronts.” Yet they (Our Betters) still promote it.
 
“All your money are belong to us” — the song of the predator class

Krugman stops there, but I’ll continue with the obvious question. Why do they still promote it? Krugman’s answer, from elsewhere, is the Beltway Bubble and its international equivalent:

my side of the debate is actually paying attention both to the numbers and to the arguments of the other side, while the Very Serious People only listen to each other.

In other words, the poor darlings are just deluded, bubbled, sealed from understanding.

Those whom he calls Very Serious People, I call Our Betters. This difference in language (between his and mine) is indicative of the difference in analysis between Krugman and people like me. The language “Very Serious People” speaks to their role as pundits, opinion-generators and insider-echoists. “Our Betters” speaks about their power role — the role these people play in running our lives (at the Obama and Robert Rubin level) or in serving those who run our lives (at the David Gregory and Joe Scarborough level).

In other words, it’s certainly true that the baronial class and its servants and administrators listen only to each other, and thus reinforce in each other the comforting cover story that they’re only doing what’s in our ultimate good.

But the baronial class is also the predator class and they know precisely where the benefit (for them) always lies. This is the predator class in operation:

The Predator Class in action. If you added the Top .001% to this chart, it would have to be taller than you are.

If you added the Top .1%, the Top .01% and the Top .001% to that chart, you’d need a chart as tall as your room. What the chart calls the “Highest Fifth” includes what I call the “retainers” — administrators, enablers (that’s you, CNN producers) and professionals needed to keep the system working. Everyone else is workers, and look what their hard work got them.

All of the gains of worker productivity (the harder smarter computer-enabled work of the lowest four-fifths) have gone into the pockets of the highest fifth and especially the very top earners. Note that these are individual incomes, not corporate incomes; as I’ve argued elsewhere, the corporation is just the collection device, the force extender, for the CEO class that wholly controls it; shareholder-ownership is the comforting cover story.

This is what James Galbraith calls “the predatory state” — and he means that economically. The predatory state is a state that enables and is controlled by economic predators, extremely wealthy vampires who feed on their fellow citizens. Galbraith (my emphasis):

That the looming debt and deficit crisis is fake is something that, by now, even the most dim member of Congress must know. The combination of hysterical rhetoric, small armies of lobbyists and pundits, and the proliferation of billionaire-backed front groups with names like the “Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” is not a novelty in Washington. It happens whenever Big Money wants something badly enough.

Big Money has been gunning for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for decades – since the beginning of Social Security in 1935. The motives are partly financial: As one scholar once put it to me, the payroll tax is the “Mississippi of cash flows.” Anything that diverts part of it into private funds and insurance premiums is a meal ticket for the elite of the predator state.

By “elite” of the predator state, Galbraith means “owners” of the predator state, the top predators themselves. It’s that predatory feeding that produces policies, promises and pronouncements like these that Krugman describes:

Not only have we been ruled by fear of nonexistent threats, we’ve been promised rewards that haven’t arrived and never will.

They’ll say and do anything to get at more dollars; they’ll destroy the planet’s ability to support life itself, all for more dollars. Look again at the chart above. They’ve been looting the country, the government, the schools, the pension plans, your wages, the equity in your home, everything they can get their hands on since Reagan Days. Their only goal — All your money are belong to us. These are true monomaniacs, in the clinical sense.

So yes, they’re self-deluded. But like every feral beast, they also know where the food is. That food is us unless we stop them. And stopping them starts (in my most humble opinion) with naming them and shaming them.

An example of naming — does Obama serve the predators who finance his elections and his looming Legacy & Library Project or does he serve the people who elected him? Ask it loud and proud. The “debt ceiling–sequester” deal is his next chance to show us. As is Keystone, for those who are watching at home. But he can’t show us if we don’t ask him to, and in no uncertain terms.

My advice — dare to be bold, progressives. This game has a fourth quarter, and we’re in it. At some point, the predator will destroy all the prey and then die. Justice for the beast perhaps, but no fun for the already dead.

Unemployment Edges Up to 7.9 Percent as Economy Adds 157,000 Jobs

Friday, 01 February 2013
By Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research | Report

Fiscal cliff concerns appear to have no impact whatsoever on hiring.

The (U-3) unemployment rate edged up slightly to 7.9 percent in January as the economy added 157,000 jobs in the month. The unemployment rate has essentially been unchanged the last five months. The January job growth was pretty much in line with expectations, but growth for the prior two months was revised up by 127,000. This brings the average rate of job growth over the last three months to 200,000, considerably better than the average of 168,000 over the last year.

There were few noteworthy changes in the household data. There was a 0.4 percentage point rise in the unemployment rate for white men to 6.6 percent due to an influx of people looking for work. This could be a sign of the unemployed being more optimistic about their job prospects, but it may also just be an erratic fluctuation in the data. The participation rate for white men had fallen by 0.2 percentage points from October to December. The employment-population ratio for workers with just a high school degree fell by 0.3 percentage points to 54.0 percent, a new low for the downturn.

All the duration measures of unemployment fell sharply in January. The average duration of unemployment spells fell by 2.8 weeks, the largest drop ever. The median duration fell by 2 weeks and the share of long-term unemployed fell by 1.0 percentage points. This decline undoubtedly reflects the shortening of the period of extended benefits after the fiscal cliff deal. Since workers are required to look for jobs to get benefits, it appears that many of the unemployed stopped looking for work when their benefits expired and therefore are no longer counted as unemployed.

With the upward revisions to the November and December data, the picture in the establishment survey looks somewhat brighter. However, it is likely that these numbers are at least somewhat inflated due to unusually warm weather. There was a similar story last year with the winter months showing relatively good job growth. The result was that hiring was moved forward and the spring months then looked exceptionally weak. We may see the same story this year.

Retail trade, construction, and health care were the big job gainers in December, adding 32,000, 28,000, and 22,000 jobs, respectively. Retail has added an average of 37,000 jobs a month over the last three months. Health care has added an average of 31,000 jobs over this period.

Construction has added an average of 27,000 jobs a months since October. This rise is also in part attributable to unusually warm weather as well as repairs after Hurricane Sandy. However it may also be partly attributable to the bounce back in housing construction.

It is worth noting the divergence in construction employment as measured in the household survey and jobs as measured in the establishment survey. The former rose considerably more during the boom in the last decade and fell somewhat more in the downturn. This likely reflects undocumented workers in the industry who are likely working off the books.

Other sectors generally showed weak growth in January. Manufacturing added just 4,000 jobs. With downward revisions to the prior month’s data (the December report showed manufacturing adding 25,000 jobs), job growth in the sector has averaged just 6,000 since October. Temp sector employment fell by 8,000, almost completely reversing the gain in December. Restaurant employment rose by 17,000, roughly in line with its growth over the prior two months.

Government employment edged down by 9,000, roughly the same as its pace over the last year. Average weekly hours were unchanged in January, while average hours for production workers were down by 0.1 hours. Compared with year-ago levels, average hours for production workers are down by 0.2 hours, while average hours for all workers are down by 0.1 hour. Average hourly wage growth has picked up somewhat recently, rising at a 2.7 percent annual rate over the last three months. However, the data are sufficiently erratic, so this could be an aberration.

This report shows a picture of an economy that is growing slightly more rapidly than its potential. While this growth pace is consistent with modest declines in unemployment, that may not be true when the effects of deficit reduction are felt.

Do as We Say, Congress Says, Then Does What It Wants

Friday, 01 February 2013
By Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica | News Analysis


When CBS News reported in 2011 that members of Congress weren’t prohibited from insider trading, Congress moved swiftly. President Obama signed a law banning it within six months of the broadcast.

But Congress is still exempt from portions of a number of federal laws, including provisions that protect workers in the private sector but don’t apply to the legislative branch’s approximately 30,000 employees.

Here’s our rundown of measures Congress exempts itself from:

Whistleblower Protections: Congress passed the Whistleblower Protection Act in 1989, which protects workers in the executive branch from retaliation for reporting waste, mismanagement or lawbreaking. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act gives similar protections to private-sectors workers. But legislative-branch workers — a category that includes congressional staffers as well as employees of the Library of Congress, the Architect of the Capitol and other offices —don’t get the same protections. 

Subpoenas for Health and Safety Probes: The Occupational Health and Safety Act empowers the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate health and safety violations in private-sector workplaces. If an employer doesn’t cooperate, the agency can subpoena the records it needs. The Office of Compliance, the independent agency that investigates such violations in the legislative branch, doesn’t have the power to issue those subpoenas. 

Keeping Workplace Records: A number of workplace-rights laws — the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and others — require employers to retain personnel records for a certain period of time. But as a recent report on the congressional workplace notes, “Congress has exempted itself from all of these requirements.” Congress is also exempt from keeping records of injuries and illness the way private-sector employers are. 

Prosecution for Retaliating Against Employees: If a private-sector employer retaliates against a worker for reporting health or safety hazards, the Department of Labor can investigate and, if necessary, sue the employer. Congress’ Office of Compliance doesn’t have that power — legislative-branch employees must file suit personally and pay their own legal fees. 

Posting Notices of Workers’ Rights: Workplace-rights laws require employers to post notices of those rights, which often appear in office lunchrooms. Congress is exempt from this requirement, though this has little real-world impact. The Office of Compliance sends legislative employees the same information each year, formatted “in a manner suitable for posting.”

Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Retaliation Training: The No Fear Act requires agencies in the executive branch to provide such training to employees, but the legislative branch is exempt. 

The Freedom of Information Act: The public can request information from federal agencies, but Congress, the federal courts and some parts of the Executive Office of the President are exempt.

In addition to sparing itself from complying with measures it has made mandatory for others, Congress is violating of some of the laws that do apply to it, according to a recent report from the Office of Compliance. (The pint-sized agency, created by Congress in 1995, is responsible for enforcing a number of workplace-rights laws in the legislative branch.) The sidewalks surrounding the three House office buildings, the report noted, don’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Neither do the restrooms in the House and Senate office buildings and the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building.

The Office of Compliance cites certain congressional exemptions as particularly problematic. The agency’s inability to subpoena information regarding some legislative workers’ complaints about health and safety often means the office must negotiate with congressional offices to gather the facts it needs.

“It can tie our hands sometimes,” said Barbara J. Sapin, the office’s executive director.

The Office of Compliance has urged Congress to apply the laws listed above to itself — except the Freedom of Information Act — with little result. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting delegate who represents the District of Columbia, introduced a bill in 2011 to do this, but it died in committee.

The number of complaints of discrimination and harassment filed by legislative-branch workers with the Office of Compliance has nearly doubled in the last two years, from 102 in the 2009 fiscal year to 196 in the 2011 fiscal year. Workers’ complaints about retaliation or intimidation have risen even more sharply, from 36 in fiscal year 2009 to 108 in fiscal year 2011.

Even so, Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer who specializes in workplace-rights law, said some Capitol Hill employees might be holding back from filing complaints. House and Senate staffers, she said, are often reluctant to speak up about harassment or discrimination for fear of jeopardizing their careers.

“People are very loath to burn bridges by filing a complaint or going to the Office of Compliance,” she said. “They don’t want to go forward with bringing a claim, even when it’s covered under the law.”

The Jobs Report, and Why the Recovery Has Stalled

Saturday, 02 February 2013
 By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog | Op-Ed


We are in the most anemic recovery in modern history, yet our political leaders in Washington aren’t doing squat about it.

In fact, apart from the Fed – which continues to hold interest rates down in the quixotic hope that banks will begin lending again to average people – the government is heading in exactly the wrong direction: raising taxes on the middle class, and cutting spending.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that American employers added only 157,000 jobs in January (150,000 jobs just cover the amount of new workers entering the economy each month, so that's a net of only +7000 new jobs created--jef). That’s fewer than they added in December (196,000 jobs, as revised by the Bureau of Labor Statistics). The overall (U-3) unemployment rate remains stuck at 7.9 percent, just about where it’s been since September.

The share of people of working age either who are working or looking for jobs also remains dismal – close to a 30-year low. (Yes, older boomers are retiring, but the major cause for this near-record low is simply the lack of jobs.)

And the long-term unemployed, about 40 percent of all jobless workers, remain trapped. Most have few if any job prospects, and their unemployment benefits have run out, or will run out shortly.
 
20 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed.

It would be one thing if we didn’t know what to do about all this. But we do know. It’s not rocket science.

The only reason for employers to hire more workers is if they have more customers. But American employers have not had enough customers to justify much new hiring.

There are essentially two sources of customers: individual consumers, and the government. (Forget exports for now; Europe is contracting, Japan is a basket case, China is slowing, and the rest of the world is in economic limbo.)

American consumers – whose purchases constitute about 70 percent of all economic activity – still can’t buy much, and their purchasing power is declining. The median wage continues to drop, adjusted for inflation. Most can’t borrow because they don’t have a credit record sufficient to allow them to borrow much.

And now their Social Security taxes have increased, leaving the typical worker with about $1,000 less this year than last.

The Conference Board reported last Tuesday consumer confidence in January fell its lowest level in more than a year. The last time consumers were this glum was October 2011, when there was widespread talk of a double-dip recession.

The only people doing well are at the top – but they save a large part of what they earn instead of spending it.

Overall personal income soared by 8 percent in the final three months of 2012 compared to an increase of just over 2 percent in the third quarter, but this income didn’t go into the pockets of the middle class. It went into the pockets of people at the top.

Wages and salaries grew a measly six-tenths of one percent.

Most of the rise in personal income in the last quarter was from companies rushing to pay dividends before taxes were hiked in 2013, and from an upturn in personal interest income. Both these sources of income went mostly to the well-to-do.

This explains why consumer spending is dropping. The Commerce Department said Thursday consumers’ spending rose 0.2 percent last month. That’s slower than the 0.4 percent increase in November.

So if we can’t rely on consumers to stoke the economy, what about government? No chance. Government spending is dropping, too.

The major reason the economy contracted between the start of October and end of December 2012 was a major reduction in government spending in the fourth quarter.

Government spending has declined in nine of the last ten quarters, but it took a precipitous drop in the last quarter. This was mainly because military spending fell 22.2 percent. That’s the largest fall-off since 1972 (mainly due to reduced spending on the war in Afghanistan, and worries by military contractors about further pending cuts). State and local spending also continued to fall.

Personally, I’m glad we’re spending less on the military. It’s the most bloated part of the government. Major cuts are long overdue. But the military is America’s only major jobs program. Cutting the military without increasing spending on roads, bridges, schools, and everything else we need to do simply means fewer jobs.

What’s ahead? More of the same. So what possible reason do we have to suspect the recovery will pick up speed? None.

Don’t count on consumer spending. Wages and benefits continue to drop for most people, adjusted for inflation. States are hiking sales taxes, which will hit the middle class and the poor hardest. Deficit hawks in Washington are contemplating additional tax hikes on the middle class.

Housing prices are stabilizing, thankfully. But one out of five homeowners is still underwater, and the ranks of people renting rather than owning are rising. Health-care costs are also rising for most people in the form of higher co-payments, deductibles, and premiums.

Don’t count on government, either. Government spending continues to head downward. The White House has already agreed to major spending cuts, some to go into effect this year. Coming showdowns over the next fiscal cliff, appropriations to fund government operations, and the debt ceiling will likely result in more cuts.

More jobs and faster growth should be the most important objectives now. With them, everything else will be easier to achieve – protection against climate change, immigration reform, long-term budget reform. Without them, everything will be harder.
Yet we’re moving in the opposite direction — following Europe’s sorry example of failed austerity economics.

You Are a Computer Criminal! Yes, You!

(for the record, I'm a gun owner)

As Predicted, Austerity Policies Send US Economy Downward

Thursday, January 31, 2013 by Common Dreams
As if the lessons of recent European policies weren't enough or a century of proven economics, the US trudges towards stagnation and financial pain... by choice
- Jon Queally, staff writer


Progressives economists who spent much of the last four years warning against the implementation of austerity policies in the US did not share in the surprise expressed by many lawmakers and mainstream pundits when new GDP data released Wednesday showed Q4 growth trending the economy back towards official recession.
No amount of evidence, advice or warning seems capable of moving lawmakers, including President Obama, away from the economic madness of austerity. As warned by experts not cowed by the "deficit hawk" alarmists who dominate the national conversation on the economy, the dip in growth was not the result of "uncertainty" in the private sector or the future demands of public spending obligations, but rather on the contraction of public spending and the tax increases prematurely foisted on low-income and middle class workers in the form of a payroll tax increase that took effect on January 1.

As Washington Post policy analyst Ezra Klein writes:

"The government is hurting the recovery, and badly. But it’s not because it’s spending too much, or because of concerns over future policy. It’s because government, at all levels, is spending and investing too little."

And as Robert Borosage, from the Campaign for America's Future, told the Huffington Post: "Inflicting austerity on a weak economy is ruinous and is likely to drive us back into a recession."

"Those dismissing the downturn as due to an odd drop in government spending should consider that more of these are on the docket," Borosage continued, making reference to further government spending cuts, known as 'sequestration,' that will likely be implemented in March.

And, "It's certainly the case that the disappearance of the payroll tax holiday is a drag on the economy," said Chad Stone of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Meanwhile, Josh Bivens and Nicholas Finio—analysts at the progressive Economic Policy Institute—said the new GDP numbers were disappointing, but argued the economy wasn't likely to teeter back into full recession. The essential lesson, they said of the report, was an easy and long-established one: when government spending contracts, so does a struggling economy.

"When government spending drops, the economy suffers," they said. "The rest of the economy is simply not growing strong enough to make up for losses in demand due to government spending cuts."

"Wednesday's GDP report, while overstating the current weakness in the economy, clearly illustrates what economists have known since the 1930s: Government fiscal contraction during periods of excess capacity—particularly when interest rates are already near-zero—is exactly the wrong thing to do."

And the Huffington Post adds:

Congress is still driving headlong into the forced austerity known as sequestration, scheduled to take effect in March, which requires across-the-board spending cuts at the Pentagon and among domestic policy programs.

"Today's GDP numbers show the toll that political conflict over fiscal policy is taking on U.S. economic growth," said Adam Hersh, an economist at the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely allied with the Obama administration. "The 0.1 percent economic contraction puts the United States on the precipice of recession. Our economy would certainly have grown at a faster rate last quarter, were it not for political brinkmanship over the debt ceiling and the risk of sharp fiscal contraction in the form of automatic 'sequestration' budget cuts. That contraction is now unfolding."

Warnings about the dangers of austerity have been growing louder in recent months, even from sources that conventionally applaud austerity regimes. In October, the International Monetary Fund issued a report concluding that global policymakers had dramatically underestimated the significance of government spending during a recession. As a result, lawmakers expecting modest drags from austerity instead saw their economies plunge back into a devastating recession. The United Kingdom, where unemployment now stands at 7.7 percent, has experienced a triple-dip recession. In Spain and Greece, unemployment is over 25 percent, with savage humanitarian consequences: HIV infections in Greece are up by over 1,500 percent since the austerity campaign began in 2010.

And Klein concludes his analysis on the situation in the US this way:

So yes, the government is hurting the recovery. But it’s not because of deficits or uncertainty, or at least, it’s hard to find evidence for either theory. The real, provable damage the government has done to economic growth in recent years has been in cutting back on spending and investment since 2010.

Which Way Do We Go? ‘Obama Recession’ or Full Employment?

by Dr. MARGARET FLOWERS AND KEVIN ZEESE


There are lots of interesting economic stories in the last week, but we want to focus your attention on two topics. One shows the only path out of the economic collapse. The other shows the direction that will most assuredly take us into deeper collapse. So far, the bi-partisans in Washington, DC are on the path to an ‘Obama Recession.’

First, the wrong path: austerity. Great Britain has shown the world what austerity will bring – deeper recession. Britain may be going into its third economic collapse in four years with a 0.3% decline in its GDP in the last quarter and its worst year for manufacturing on record. David Cameron was elected on the promise of austerity and he delivered. The result is Britain has the worst economy on record dating back to 1830. That’s right, since the before the reign of Queen Victoria!

Our policy makers could learn the same thing from U.S. history. When FDR came to power, he put in place stimulus programs that directly created jobs. He built a lot of infrastructure that is still with us today employing people in useful work as government employees. In 1936, FDR and Congress thought they had gotten the economy going and started worrying about deficit spending. They decided to cut the funding of the New Deal to decrease the deficit. The result: the Roosevelt Recession of 1937 and 1938. Roosevelt realized his error and started stimulating the economy again and quickly the recession ended and growth returned. Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor the U.S. economy was on the mend.

Lesson to President Obama: Pursue the path of cutting the deficit with cuts to human needs and you are risking an “Obama Recession.” You will have squandered an immense opportunity to get the country on track.

Second, what is the solution to end the economic collapse?  There is one thing that has paralleled deficit spending for decades.  When deficit spending goes up, this is always is going up; and when deficit spending goes down, this has reversed.  As the chart below shows that one thing is unemployment.  If unemployment is high, deficit as a percent of GDP is high. If we reduce unemployment, the deficit shrinks.

Chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve shows the deficit as a percentage of GDP (red line) vs. the unemployment rate (blue line); for 60 years the pattern has held. When unemployment drops, the deficit as a percentage of GDP drops. When unemployment rises, the deficit rises.

Jobs.  Job creation is the one solution that has not been tried by government. Jobs are the solution to so many economic problems. The deficit, which the bi-partisans in Washington are fixated on, is directly related and the only path to reducing the deficit is moving toward full employment.  Full employment solves so many other problems: poverty and hunger, eviction and foreclosure, personal debt, retirement savings – all are ameliorated by full employment. But, when was the last time you heard any elected official utter the phrase “full employment”?

Other News
There is a lot of news for you to review in our news section which is updated daily: how Geithner left the banking system more concentrated with already too big to fail banks growing bigger and how the solution is public banks or turning banks into utilities; Obama’s appointment to the SEC brings Morgan Stanley’s lawyer through the DC revolving door; reports from Davos show complacency and denial; the continued, precipitous decline of unions while non-union workers organize; the energy mess of tar sands, fracking and worse signs for climate change while billionaires continue to mislead on climate; how single payer is becoming more essential than ever; details on how tax havens operate and how a resignation of a top DOJ official shows there never was any serious effort to investigate or prosecute bankers who collapsed the economy.

Finally, don’t miss two other articles we’ve written: Margaret Flowers wrote in Al Jazeera how top CEOs are planning to loot the economy; and Margaret and Kevin Zeese wrote a must read hidden history of cooperatives and community work and how they relate to social change for Truthout. This history provides lots of clues as to how we can be more effective today.

Fluoride Is Literally Toxic Waste from the Phosphate Mining Industry

V3Solar Spin Cell = 8 Cents/kWh?

January 24, 2013 Zachary Shahan

Quite frankly, if the company’s numbers are correct, this could be the biggest solar news of the decade, or even a greater timespan. (And CleanTechnica got the inside scoop — due to our sincere passion for helping the world, and probably also our status as the top cleantech or clean energy site in the world.)

As a quick refresher, we’ve covered V3Solar before, back when the name was Solarphasec. See: Solarphasec — Solar Power Meets Art (I think that includes a good intro of the tech, as well as an exclusive, real-world photo of an early version of a V3Solar cone or “Spin Cell.”)

But a simple intro of the tech isn’t the groundbreaking story of the day (that’s old news) — the story of the day is the tremendously low cost of the tech, and that’s what could change the world; that’s what could stimulate a more transformative distributed energy revolution than anything we’ve seen to date.

\\

 

Am I hopeful? Yes. In case you aren’t aware, the average cost of electricity in the US is about 12 cents per kWh. The average cost of electricity from solar PV in the US is now about 10-15 cents per kWh. The cost of V3Solar’s Spin Cell, as noted in the title (and based on tests that the company considers to actually be conservative — meaning the cost could actually be lower), was quoted to me as being 8 cents per kWh! Bill Rever, a very well qualified 3rd party solar specialist has apparently verified the cost projection. You can see his full technical review here.

When I received this information and was astounded at the low price, my source wrote: “Yes. We are excited. We think we can go below that, but we want to stay conservative.”

So, 8¢/kWh is two-thirds the price of retail electricity, and nearly half the price of current solar technology. If the cost projection is true, that’s astounding, and revolutionary. (Notes: the 8¢/kWh figure is LCOE; and the BOM cost is 59 cents/Wp, including racking, tracking, and the inverter.)

Here’s a chart showing how the Spin Cell would compete with other energy technologies:

Larger image via this link.

Am I cautious? Yes. Until a new technology is on the market, I’m always cautious. And I’m no solar scientist or engineer. A production prototype is still in development, and a low-volume production phase would follow that before advancing on to the mass-market production phase. A lot can change between the lab, the manufacturing floor, and the Home Depot shelf. I have no capability of saying if it will or not. But let’s not forget that we’ve put a man on the moon, we’ve now got a world of information in our computers and even on our phones, we can talk to people across the world via tiny microphones and can receives tweets from astronauts out in space, we can play video games with almost real-life visuals, and more. Changes happen. Technology advances. Every “breakthrough” doesn’t translate into a commercial product, but some do. We’ll simply have to wait to see if this is one of those technologies.

 

V3Solar’s Spin Cell

I shared a link above to a good overview of the technology, but if you’re not the type to click through on links, or simply want a bit more info, here’s another summary based on info from a “corporate overview” that was passed on to me:

Revolutionizing Solar

I think everyone can now picture a conventional solar panel. But a phone 20 years ago certainly didn’t look like a phone today. And solar technology today may look nothing like solar technology in 20 years. And if V3Solar’s technology is anything close to as cheap as presented above, there’s a good chance solar installations will soon look much different.

“V3Solar has invented, and is now in the process of commercializing, the first major change to flat panel PV technology in over 50 years – the V3 Spin Cell. For too long, the world believed solar was flat,” V3Solar writes.

“Using specialized lensing and a rotating, conical shape, the Spin Cell can concentrate the sunlight 30X onto one sun mono PV with no heat degradation. This increases the Power Density while lowering the Total Cost of Ownership and Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), which is estimated to be $.08/kWh for the Spin Cell (see spreadsheet).”

Here’s more on this in a bit simpler language and more detail:

1. Concentrated light reduces the amount of PV by a factor of the amount of concentration – 30X sun concentration requires 1/30th of the PV for the same power output.
2. Dynamic Spin cools the PV so that one sun mono PV can handle a concentration of more than 30X suns.
3. The dynamic spin increases the efficiency of the PV by 20%, effectively increasing 20% efficient PV to 24% efficiency.
4. Spinning the PV under multiple lenses creates “an additive” effect of sunlight.

“The Spin Cell does have additional BOM costs for the magnets, the power electronics and the form factor, but these costs are mitigated by the increased production through integrated tracking, inverter, and racking.
 Bottom line is the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). The company contracted with Bill Rever to complete a 3rd party technical analysis on the V3Solar technology and to verify all of the numbers for the LCOE.”

A second product based on the same technology, called CoolSpin, integrates with existing concentrated photovoltaics (CPV), but it lowers their material costs by 34%, because it addresses CPV’s key shortcoming.

“Being able to use the abundant and cheap one sun mono PV is a significant market advantage. Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) has been forced to rely on expensive, exotic, and scarce materials to handle the increased heat, costing up to 400X more.

Using less PV for the same power output is significant because the cost of the lensing material is 1/10th the cost of one sun mono PV.”

CoolSpin is a simpler product to design and manufacture and the company expects it will be in full production by the middle of 2013. You can read about Cool Spin on the V3Solar website.

Here are some more charts and tables on the above information:

Here is a slide from the company’s investment deck that explains how the automated manufacturing will work:

Preparing For Manufacturing & Mass Market

“The Spin Cell is currently undergoing refinement and cost analysis at NectarDesign.com, a Californian based industrial design house, as a precursor to commercial production. The Company is also engaged in negotiations with potential licensees in both the United States and abroad for high volume manufacturing of the Spin Cell.”


Through partnerships with manufacturers and major solar companies, and their specific licensing model, V3Solar is looking to get its Spin Cell to mass market quickly.

Notably, I also learned from my contact that V3Solar already has over 4 GW of requests for orders. To put that into perspective, the US currently has about 7 GW of installed solar power capacity. 4 GW is impressive! Again, we’ll see what happens after the prototype test, but it’s clear that a handful of big players are interested in this.

As one example of a potential order, a group specializing in military projects has signed a deal with V3Solar to develop 1000 Mobile Energy Production systems for the US Army, at $500K each. For this project, the Spin Cell would be integrated with the batteries of a major multi-national corporation (I can’t share the name, but they are huge). The batteries and Spin Cells will be held in shipping containers for transport, which will then open up like a flower upon arrival to cheaply produce clean energy. This will not only save money, but will also reduce supply-line casualties. A similar system is being developed for disaster relief.

The Mission

In a nutshell, here’s the company mission: “A new spin on solar to capture 3% of the energy market with a licensing model that eliminates CAPEX costs, mitigates risk, and diversifies production.”

Again, to put “3% of the energy market” into perspective, all solar power installed in the US to date currently accounts for about 0.5-1% of the energy market — V3Solar has some ambitious targets, and it plans to hit those through cooperation and partnerships that are good for the average citizen.

Spin Cell Benefits

In summary, here’s a list of the technology’s key benefits, according to the company:

• Dual axis tracking from conical design
• Increased Power Density
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership
• “Power Stair casing” — as the PV spins past multiple lenses, an additive effect of sunlight is created – a first for any solar device.
• Integrated racking and ease of installation

Through the concentration of sunlight, the Spin Cell uses only 5% of the amount of PV as flat panels to produce the same power, thus reducing the cost/watt.

“The Spin Cell does have additional BOM costs for the magnets, the power electronics and the form factor, but these costs are mitigated by the increased production through integrated tracking, inverter, and racking. Bottom line is the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE).”

There’s a lot more to write about the company and the technology, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now. 8¢ per kWh would be astounding, and combined with some progressive goals the company has, we may genuinely see it transform the energy industry.

All images via V3Solar

Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1yUBC)

GMO AGo-Go

Whatever Happened to “Good Jobs”?

Poverty on a Vast Scale
by CARL GINSBURG

It is hard to pinpoint the precise moment when “good jobs” disappeared from national discourse, ignored by our leaders and the media that cover their agenda. The phrase was invoked during President Obama’s campaign—that is, his first run for the presidency. But it soon disappeared in a West Wing dominated by Wall Street men. This time around it was altogether gone from campaign rhetoric, a vanishing act with the potential for catastrophic consequences for millions of Americans. “Good jobs” continues to be banished from national discourse, as if the censors of capital wished it away.

Corporations have nothing to say on the subject, intent to hold down wages and sit on vast amounts of capital – some $3.4 trillion, by last count. Over the next decade, 7 of 10 new jobs will be low wage, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate of corporate profit is at its highest level in more than a century, according to Bloomberg. That’s quite a record… Coolidge, Harding, Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II… all left in the dust.

Wall Street is thriving. The stock market S&P index shot up 13% in 2012, and JPMorgan Chase had its best year ever that same year, with Goldman Sachs close behind. Indeed, the 1% continues to accumulate vast wealth, as U.S. economic inequality becomes even more pronounced, while alarms go off at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere, sounding off that inequality undercuts growth with emphasis on the U.S.

In spite of it all, everyone knows this central truth: life is at a dead end in this country without a full-time job at a good wage and with decent benefits: a good payroll job.

Since the Inauguration earlier this month, official debate has focused on debt ceilings, women in combat roles and most recently on immigration. These are hardly irrelevant matters; but in the end they fill front pages and newscasts where we should see and hear the clamoring for good jobs.

The immediate goal of the Robin Hood Tax, whose profile has come up fast in just a year, is to put revenue into the many communities still reeling from the effects of the financial collapse of 2008. An estimated $350 billion can be raised annually from a small sales tax on Wall Street financial transactions, today embodied in The Inclusive Prosperity Act, sponsored by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN). He has 16 co-sponsors, to date. More than 125 organizations – labor, religious, consumer, health advocates and others – have endorsed the bill. Together these groups total millions in membership. They join financial transaction tax movements worldwide; 40 countries have such a tax in place today, as economists, even leading business executives, are raising their voices in support. The European Union moved forward this month towards implementation in 11 member countries, to start January 1, 2014.

Meanwhile, the corporate sector in this country staunchly refuses to invest in good jobs, making government action on jobs an essential step to move forward. Robin Hood tax revenue for good jobs in healthcare, in education, to provide a clean environment and to rebuild a deteriorating infrastructure would mark a significant turnaround.

Many millions need these jobs and communities need assistance without delay. There are a staggering 22 million adult Americans who are without full-time jobs today and for whom the hardship of enduring unemployment is taking a terrible toll. Some are recent college graduates, loaded down with debt from escalating school costs. A Rutgers University survey found that half the college grads in this country over the last six years do not have full-time employment. Robin Hood funds can help them get a start in life.

What we do not need are more of the low wage jobs being offered, as the numbers of working poor escalate each year to astonishing levels. According to the Census Bureau, one-third of adults who live in poverty are working but do not earn enough to support themselves and their families. A quarter of jobs in America pay below the federal poverty line for a family of four – $23,050. Close to half of food stamp allocation goes to households where an adult is working full-time- that’s taxpayer money paid to workers whose bosses won’t pay a living wage. Even with this critical food assistance, we have reached a point, the Department of Agriculture says, where nearly 1 in 4 young children in the U.S. lived with insufficient food in the last year.

Our government should join Rep. Ellison and his co-sponsors and embrace the Robin Hood tax and its call for good jobs in a real economy. Without it, and the yearly revenue it would provide for an enduring recovery, the legacy of our nation’s leaders will be poverty on a vast scale.

Why J.J. Abrams Is A Bad Choice To Direct Star Wars Episode VII

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jan 24, 2013
ThinkProgress


Because we really need our pop culture franchise to be dominated by an increasingly limited number of visions, Deadline and other outlets are reporting that J.J. Abrams will direct Star Wars Episode VII:

Star Trek director J.J. Abrams will be helming the next Star Wars movie. “It’s done deal with J.J.,” a source with knowledge of the situation told Deadline today. Argo director Ben Affleck was also up for the gig, the source says. Michael Arndt is writing the script for the first installment of the relaunch of George Lucas’ franchise by Disney.

There are two issues here: how well-suited Abrams is for Star Wars in particular, and the consolidation of big franchises under a very limited number of perspectives (especially since the perspectives are those of white dudes).

On the question of Abrams as a fit for Star Wars, I’m deeply ambivalent. I think the franchise has been at its weakest when it’s delving too deeply into the details of its mythology. In the initial trilogy George Lucas and his collaborators had the wisdom to retain the emotional power of the Force as a cinematic device by leaving it relatively mysterious. Once the movies started delving into midichlorians and the manifestations thereof, the Force started to seem clunky and silly, no longer something those of us at home could dream of accessing. Abrams and his collaborators have a weakness for focusing on mysteries and exploring them to death, be they Smoke Monsters, strings of numbers, or aliens rampaging around New York City. I do think there’s an extent to which Abrams will be protected from this tendency by Arndt’s script, and the larger plans of Disney, which will presumably will be thinking about projects like television shows and Zack Snyder’s rumored stand-alone Star Wars movie. But I do think that Abrams’ interests in mysteries are actually a relatively a poor match for the greatest strength of the Star Wars movies: using a mysterious concept to open up a larger world, rather than focusing obsessively on the mystery itself.

But really, the profound disappointment I felt on hearing this news is less about my specific feelings about Abrams as a director. It’s more that franchises like The Avengers, Star Trek, Justice League, and Star Wars are opportunities for writers and directors to exert enormous cultural influence, and to accrue the kind of capital and credibility that can become enormous springboards for their more personal projects. The Avengers, for example, gave Joss Whedon an opportunity to bring his unique spin on female characters to Black Widow, who’d been poorly served in Iron Man 2. And its success won him a long-running and one assumes extraordinarily lucrative position overseeing the franchise: his ideas about superheroism will play a major role in American moviegoing for as much as a decade to come, and the money he makes from it gives him the opportunity to pursue more passion projects like his adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. That is an extraordinarily precious thing, and it makes me terribly sad to see that power concentrated in one person, rather than spread out to a number of people with different interests and perspectives on the kinds of questions raised by our biggest franchises.

There should be debates about what it means to have extraordinarily powerful people emerge in our society, which is why I’m glad that Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel apparently is going to explore a much more ambivalent reaction to the rise of superheroes than either The Avengers or Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies ever contemplated. There should be arguments about what our future is going to look like, which is one of the reasons Abrams’ Star Trek, which was a dramatic retreat from the socially engaged tradition of the franchise, was a disappointment even as it was highly entertaining. And while Star Wars is a space opera, it’s also always been about totalitarianism, religious extremism, torture, and the moral value of political engagement, too. The source and meaning of mystery isn’t the only issue worth considering. And white, male geek gods aren’t the only people with profound investment in these franchises, and the way they express these questions.

Military Contracting: Our New Era of Corporate Mercenaries

Thursday, January 24, 2013 by The Guardian/UK
A niche business has become a huge industry – but murky as ever: privatizing conflict means bypassing democratic oversight
by Arjun Sethi


In early 1995, Sierra Leone was on the brink of collapse. A violent civil war had ravaged the country, leaving thousands dead and countless others wounded. The insurgent rebels, infamous for recruiting child soldiers, were just weeks from the beleaguered capital, Freetown, and appeared unassailable.

Several months later, however, the tide had turned: the government's authority was strengthened, rebel forces were repelled, and control over the country's major economic assets was restored. Executive Outcomes, a private military contractor armed with helicopters and state of the art artillery, helped change the course of the war.

Nearly every tool necessary to wage war can now be purchased: combat support, including the ability to conduct large-scale operations and surgical strikes; operational support, like training and intelligence gathering; and general support, like transportation services and paramedical assistance. The demand for these services, in turn, has ballooned: the gross revenue for the private military contractor industry is now in excess of $100bn a year.

The privatization of conflict is no longer a trend. It's the norm.

The United States relied so heavily on contractors during the recent Iraq war that no one knows with certainty how many were on the ground. In late 2010, the United Arab Emirates, fearful that the Arab uprisings might spread to the Gulf, paid Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, $529m to create an elite force to safeguard the emirate. And today, Russia is openly considering forming a cadre of private military contractors to further its interests abroad.

Yet, the laws that govern this industry tell a different story. Instead of a transnational system with meaningful collaboration, we have a patchwork of state laws that allow companies to forum-shop and circumvent regulations. Contractors can likewise relocate, as they typically rent the equipment necessary to complete their contracts; their primary source of capital is human, not physical.

In addition to closing loopholes, states must monitor contractors, and prosecute them when they commit crimes. To this day, not a single contractor has been successfully prosecuted for its role in the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities or the Nisour Square massacre, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.

Contractors claim that their services are market- and self-regulated. They contend that wanton violence would stop governments from seeking their assistance. Yet, the theatre of war often obscures their activities.

In its final report to the US Congress, the Commission on Wartime Contracting found that the US government lost more than $30bn to contractor waste and fraud in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Also, corporations can rename and rebrand, thereby mitigating reputational harm. Consider Blackwater USA, which changed its name to Xe Services LLC, and then to Academi – all in the last four years.

The UN working group on the use of mercenaries has suggested that certain military functions, like combat services and interrogation, not be outsourced to private contractors. Its guidelines should be followed. Outsourcing foreign policy goals undermines democratic oversight because contractor activities, including casualties, typically escape public scrutiny. It can also allow states to evade legislative oversight.(It also does more to further the agenda of the corporate ownership of the contractor than the political/military entity by who hired them--As long as war is considered profitable and a money-making, corporate kingmaking enterprise, there will never be peace in our world again. This should go a long way at dramatically illustrating that the idea of "privatizing war" is one of the most evil concepts ever given by mankind.--jef)
The greatest check against war is the horror of war itself. Yet, as the physical distance between warring states grows, so does the temptation to loosen our moral compass. Violence that lacks immediacy is easier to ignore. Permitting third parties to wage war for profit risks a world in which war is not the last resort but an economic transaction in which the victims are faceless and nameless.

And so, we return to Sierra Leone. Although the intervention by Executive Outcomes is sometimes touted as illustrating the viability of military contractors, history suggests otherwise. The contractor was later accused of interfering in domestic politics to pursue financial gain, and an associated firm received payment through diamond mine concessions, which compromised the country's economic future.

Moreover, violence resumed after Executive Outcomes left Sierra Leone. It became clear that the government had over-relied on the contractor and undercut its own institutions.

The fog of war is hazy enough. We don't need additional, unregulated cloud cover.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 And how about a song that hammers the point home?

The Return of COINTELPRO?

Time to Target the Real Terrorists
by TOM MCNAMARA

“Democracies die behind closed doors” – Judge Damon J. Keith

For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens. Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.

The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.

The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public exposure.

Or did it?

In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat. This despite the FBI’s own acknowledgement that the OWS organizers themselves planned on engaging in peaceful and popular protest and did not “condone the use of violence.”

The documents, while heavily redacted, give a clear picture of how the FBI was using its offices and agents across the country as early as August 2011 to engage in a massive surveillance scheme against OWS. This was almost a month before any actual protests took place or encampments were set up (the most famous being the one in New York City’s Zuccotti Park).

The FBI’s documents show a government agency at its most paranoid. It considered all planned protests, and the individuals involved, as potential threats. Most disturbing of all, there is talk (p. 61) of the government being ready to “engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary” and perhaps needing to formulate a plan “to kill the leadership [of the protest groups] via suppressed sniper rifles.”

Furthermore, the documents reveal a close and intricate partnership between the federal government on one side and banks and private businesses on the other.

On August 19, 2011, the FBI met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange in order to discuss OWS protests that wouldn’t happen for another four weeks. In September of that year, even before OWS got into full swing, the FBI was notifying local businesses that they might be affected by protests. It is not clear if, while on Wall Street, the FBI investigated the criminal and irresponsible behavior engaged in by some of the largest banks on the planet, behavior which led directly to the financial crisis of 2008.

We are also introduced to a creature named the “Domestic Security Alliance Council” which, according to the federal government, is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector.” A DSAC report tells us that any information shared between US intelligence agencies and their corporate partners should not be released to “the media, the general public or other personnel.”

In a curious coincidence, nine days after the PCJF’s embarrassing release of FBI documents, the New York Post ran a story about how a 27 year old woman and her “Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street” boyfriend, Aaron Greene, were arrested by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after an alleged cache of weapons and bomb making explosives were found in their Greenwich Village apartment.

And what exactly led the police to this apartment? Was it credible actionable intelligence gathered from the FBI’s massive domestic surveillance program? Did some agent acquire this information by bravely infiltrating the potential domestic terrorist group known as OWS? Hardly. The NYPD was simply executing a routine search warrant related to a credit card-theft case.

But in a story about the exact same event that appeared in the New York Times, it was reported that “police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements” and that no “evidence of a planned terrorist attack” had been found . Furthermore, police hadn’t “made a connection to any known plot or any connection to any known terrorists.” No mention was made of the suspect’s alleged ties to the OWS movement, an item that had been prominently reported in the New York Post’s version of events.

Oddly, a more recent New York Post story stated that Mr. Greene was now a “Nazi-loving Harvard grad” and a reported “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.” No mention was made of his suspected ties to OWS. This author made several attempts to contact the New York Post, and the writers of the 2 articles, in an effort to find out how they knew that Mr. Greene was an OWS member and activist. Attempts were also made to try to find out if the New York Post still believed that Mr. Greene was an active OWS member, or if they now simply thought that he was just an “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.”

As of the writing of this article, no response has been received from the New York Post.

The FBI’s stated mission regarding America’s security is to “develop a comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us.”

The American people would be far better served by their government if, instead of wasting millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours harassing peaceful protesters, it spent a fraction of that time and money investigating, and bringing to justice, the people responsible for the engineered destruction of the American economy, and by extension, American society.

You know. The real terrorists.

Sources

“COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens” Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 23, 1976. Accessed at:
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
“COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story”, by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn. Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus attending the conference: Donna Christianson, John Conyers, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Diane Watson, September 1, 2001. Accessed at:
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/coinwcar3.htm
“FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring” The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), December 22, 2012. Accessed at: http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html
“Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources” by Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci and Matt McNulty, December 31, 2012, The New York Post.   Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN
“Manhattan Couple Stored Bomb-Making Items, Police Say” by Wendy Ruderman, December 31, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/nyregion/manhattan-couple-stored-bomb-making-items-police-say.html?_r=2&%29&
“More About FBI Spying” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), June 25, 2010. Accessed at:
http://www.aclu.org/spy-files/more-about-fbi-spying
“NYC couple arrested after explosive substance find” December 31, 2012, CBS/AP. Accessed at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57561371/nyc-couple-arrested-after-explosive-substance-find/
“Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy” by Naomi Wolf, December 29, 2012, The Guardian. Accessed at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation – Mission” The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accessed at:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/intelligence/mission
“Village ‘bomber’ planned to blow up Washington Sq. Arch with high-grade explosives: cops” by Jamie Schram and Jessica Simeone, January 10, 2013, The New York Post. Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/village_bomber_planned_grade_blow_seiuSwWLlcAPyGvfDkPwDM

The Untouchables: How the Obama Administration Protected Wall Street from Prosecutions

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 by The Guardian/UK
A new PBS Frontline report examines a profound failure of justice that should be causing serious social unrest
by Glenn Greenwald


PBS' Frontline program on Tuesday night broadcast a new one-hour report on one of the greatest and most shameful failings of the Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable.

What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with impunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.

Worst of all, Obama justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs (who, just by the way, overwhelmingly supported Obama's 2008 presidential campaign) as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial transgressions. As Harvard law professor Larry Lessig put it two weeks ago when expressing anger over the DOJ's persecution of Aaron Swartz: "we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House." (Indeed, as "The Untouchables" put it: while no senior Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, "many small mortgage brokers, loan appraisers and even home buyers" have been).

As I documented at length in my 2011 book on America's two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some, the evidence that felonies were committed by Wall Street is overwhelming. That evidence directly negates the primary excuse by Breuer (previously offered by Obama himself) that the bad acts of Wall Street were not criminal.

Numerous documents prove that executives at leading banks, credit agencies, and mortgage brokers were falsely touting assets as sound that knew were junk: the very definition of fraud. As former Wall Street analyst Yves Smith wrote in her book ECONned: "What went on at Lehman and AIG, as well as the chicanery in the CDO [collateralized debt obligation] business, by any sensible standard is criminal." Even lifelong Wall Street defender Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chair, said in Congressional testimony that "a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud."

A New York Times editorial in August explained that the DOJ's excuse for failing to prosecute Wall Street executives - that it was too hard to obtain convictions - "has always defied common sense - and all the more so now that a fuller picture is emerging of the range of banks' reckless and lawless activities, including interest-rate rigging, money laundering, securities fraud and excessive speculation." The Frontline program interviewed former prosecutors, Senate staffers and regulators who unequivocally said the same: it is inconceivable that the DOJ could not have successfully prosecuted at least some high-level Wall Street executives - had they tried.

What's most remarkable about all of this is not even Wall Street had the audacity to expect the generosity of largesse they ended up receiving. "The Untouchables" begins by recounting the massive financial devastation the 2008 crisis wrought - "the economy was in ruins and bankers were being blamed" - and recounts:

"In 2009, Wall Street bankers were on the defensive, worried they could be held criminally liable for fraud. With a new administration, bankers and their attorneys expected investigations and at least some prosecutions."

Indeed, the show recalls that both in Washington and the country generally, "there was broad support for prosecuting Wall Street." Nonetheless: "four years later, there have been no arrests of any senior Wall Street executives."

In response to the DOJ's excuse-making that these criminal cases are too hard to win, numerous experts - Senators, top Hill staffers, former DOJ prosecutors - emphasized the key point: Obama officials never even tried. One of the heroes of "The Untouchables", former Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman, worked tirelessly to provide the DOJ with all the funds it needed to ensure probing criminal investigations and even to pressure and compel them to do so. Yet when he and his staff would meet with Breuer and other top DOJ officials, they would proudly tout the small mortgage brokers they were pursuing, in response to which Kafuman and his staff said: "No. Don't show me small-time mortgage guys in California. This is totally about what went on in Wall Street. . . . We are talking about investigating senior level Wall Street executives, even at the Board level". (The same Lanny Breuer was recently seen announcing that the banking giant HSBC would face no criminal prosecution for its money laundering of funds for designated terrorist groups and drug networks on the ground that the bank was too big to risk prosecuting).

As Kaufman and his staffers make clear, Obama officials were plainly uninterested in pursuing criminal accountability for Wall Street. One former staffer to both Biden and Kaufman, Jeff Connaughton, wrote a book in 2011 - "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins" - devoted to alerting the nation that the Obama DOJ refused even to try to find criminal culprits on Wall Street. In the book, this career-Democratic-aide-turned-whistleblower details how the levers of Washington power are used to shield and protect high-level Wall Street executives, many of whom have close ties to the leaders of both parties and themselves are former high-level government officials. This is a system, he makes clear, that is constituted to ensure that those executives never face real accountability even for their most egregious and destructive crimes.

The reason there have been no efforts made to criminally investigate is obvious. Former banking regulator and current securities Professor Bill Black told Bill Moyers in 2009 that "Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong." In the documentary "Inside Job", the economist Nouriel Roubini, when asked why there have been no such investigations, replied: "Because then you'd find the culprits." Underlying all of that is what the Senate's second-highest ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin, admitted in 2009: the banks "frankly own the place".
The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites. Just as was true for the protection of torturers and illegal eavesdroppers, it ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future. It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person's treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige. And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation's most powerful with the merciless and brutal punishment meted out to its most marginalized.

The real mystery from all of this is that it has not led to greater social unrest. To some extent, both the early version of the Tea Party and the Occupy movements were spurred by the government's protection of Wall Street at the expense of everyone else. Still, Americans continue to be plagued by massive unemployment, foreclosures, the threat of austerity and economic insecurity while those who caused those problems have more power and profit than ever. And they watch millions of their fellow citizens be put in cages for relatively minor offenses while the most powerful are free to commit far more serious crimes with complete impunity. Far less injustice than this has spurred serious unrest in other societies.

[The one-hour Frontline program can be viewed in its entirety here.]

Chemicals Most Countries Ban Still Permitted in US Foods

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 by Common Dreams
Recent investigations highlight industry preference in FDA, expose frequent use of cheap and dangerous additives
- Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Spawned by a petition calling on Gatorade to remove a flame retardant from their sports drink, the Chicago Tribune released an investigation into the chemical ingredients that the United States and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are permitting despite frequent bans elsewhere.

Mississippi 15-year-old, Sarah Kavanagh, launched the Change.org petition after learning that Gatorade contains an emulsifier, brominated vegetable oil (or BVO), which is illegal to use as a food additive in the European Union, India, Nepal, Canada, Brazil and Japan because of its connection to reproductive and behavior problems.

"In the U.S. money rules and industry wields a lot of influence and that's how it has been for a while," said Michael Hansen, senior scientist at the Consumers Union, "but in Europe they take into serious consideration what their population wants, too. And why shouldn't the population be concerned about new things being put into food?"

Whereas other international authorities tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to evaluating food additives, in the US new food products "simply need an OK from experts hired by the manufacturers" giving the FDA the option to investigate later "if health issues emerge."

Though the FDA's mission is purportedly "to protect public health by ensuring that foods are safe and properly labeled," a second examination released Wednesday by the non-profit food watchdog, the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), revealed that the amount of food fraud and mislabeled ingredients is up by 60 percent this year.

In comparison to their initial Food Fraud Database published in April 2012, the group found a surge in adulterated ingredients in common household products.

ABC News reports:

Among the most popular targets for unscrupulous food suppliers? Pomegranate juice, which is often diluted with grape or pear juice…additional sugar, or just water and sugar.

[Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards at an independent lab] added that there have also been reports of completely "synthetic pomegranate juice" that didn't contain any traces of the real juice.

USP tells ABC News that liquids and ground foods in general are the easiest to tamper with:

• Olive oil: often diluted with cheaper oils
• Lemon juice: cheapened with water and sugar
• Tea: diluted with fillers like lawn grass or fern leaves
• Spices: like paprika or saffron adulterated with dangerous food colorings that mimic the colors

Milk, honey, coffee and syrup are also listed by the USP as being highly adulterated products.

Also high on the list: seafood. The number one fake being escolar, an oily fish that can cause stomach problems, being mislabeled as white tuna or albacore, frequently found on sushi menus.

Kavanagh, whose personal dismay launched the Gatorade petition and subsequent investigation, said it "shows greed" when companies use chemical additives and cheaper ingredients that could cause health problems.

"It shows that they care less about consumers than about how much money they spend and make," she added.

Gatorade has stated that no changes are planned to its US drink formulation despite the over 200,000 signatures gathered calling for the ban.

New Labor Stats Show GOP Assault on Public Unions Is Working

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 by Common Dreams
Numbers 'reflect concerted attack on organized labor'
- Jon Queally, staff writer

 

As the Washington Post's Jim Tankersley points out and new data from the US Department of Labor released on Wednesday confirms, the Republican push to destroy public sector unions in the last several years is having its desired effect.

 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' new figures on unionization, the percentage of organized workers in the US took a sharp—and 'unusual'—decline last year, dropping from 11.8 percent in 2011 to 11.3 percent in 2012.

Moreover, as the New York Times highlights, the largest dip came not from the typical source of private union attrition caused by offshoring or factory closings, but from job losses in the public sector, which caused overall public sector union rates to drop more than full point in one year—from 37 percent to 35.9 percent.

Private sector unions—long in decline due to outsourcing linked to corporate globalization policies—now currently have about 7 million members, whereas public employee unions have roughly 7.3 million members.

The curious trend that Tankersley points out is the role that government-pushed austerity has played in union attrition. He writes:

The big culprit for last year’s drop doesn’t appear to be outsourcing (though union factory employment has fallen since the recession, while non-union employment has risen). The issue was austerity.

Specifically, state and local governments laid off a lot of workers last year to help balance their budgets. That means they let a lot of union members go. The Labor Department reports that more than half of all U.S. union members work in the public sector; government is nearly 36 percent unionized, while the private-sector union membership rate is less than 7 percent. (Last year’s stats suggest that some Republican governors’ efforts to reduce unionization in their state public sectors is working – Wisconsin posted a 2.1 percentage point drop in union membership from 2011 to 2012.)

Asking labor leaders to respond to the statistics on membership, Tankersley said they 'roundly' agreed that the drop in rates "reflected a concerted attack on organized labor and an austerity hit to the economy that affects everyone, not just folks with a union card."

“The economic crisis—and the politicians who took advantage of it for their own anti-worker purposes—had a negative impact,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told Tankersley.

And Richard Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s main union federation, added: “Working women and men urgently need a voice on the job today, but the sad truth is that it has become more difficult for them to have one, as today’s figures on union membership demonstrate.”