Criminals use Facebook and Tumblr to push Chrome extensions that can access all your website data

TNW - The Next Web
19 December 2012


A Facebook user by the name of Philippe Harewood on Wednesday spotted a rather interesting scam that leverages Facebook, Tumblr, and Google Chrome to spy on its victims. The privacy-violating campaign was later detailed further by security firm Webroot.

The whole campaign is based on the hopes that Facebook users want to change the theme of the site to another color, such as red. It can be of course adjusted to target other users as well.

 Harewood explains how it works. A Facebook user is invited to a fake event on the social network. He or she then clicks on a Tumblr link, which redirects to another page (typically hosted on Amazon Web Services) that prompts the user to install a Chrome extension.

The extension then executes a JavaScript file (also hosted on Amazon) when it detects an open Facebook page, which creates a new Tumblr page and a new Facebook event. Finally, the script invites all your friends and pushes the Tumblr link, and the scam starts again.

As Webroot notes, the real danger is the malicious Chrome extension, which once installed, has access to all your data on all websites, as well as access to your tabs and browsing history. The Facebook event and Tumblr links are merely used to trick users into thinking the extension will do what they want; all the URLs in question look legitimate since they are hosted on the aforementioned sites.

Here’s the page that entices users into changing their Facebook color theme:

As you can see, there’s even an accompanying EULA and privacy policy, in an attempt to further improve the scam’s legitimacy. If the user chooses not to accept the agreements, the cybercriminals behind the campaign try to monetize the hijacked Facebook traffic by asking the victims to participate in surveys full of ads to generate revenue for them anyway.

Protecting yourself is very easy: don’t click on random links on Facebook, even if they are hosted on Tumblr. Being invited to a Facebook event does not suddenly make them safe.

Crazy Weather Sports

The infamous Mud Bowl




The even more infamous Fog Bowl




Hocky in the Snow-2008 Winter Classic




Foul Weather Football




1993 Dallas-Miami Thanksgiving Game

You Can Kiss Public Education (and the Middle Class) Goodbye

All around us, our public institutions are disintegrating, and the most important public institution of all – our public education system – will likely be the next to go.

December 14, 2012  |  Alternet  | By Thom Hartmann, Sam Sacks

Quick - when you hear "public housing," what picture jumps into your mind? Or "public hospital"?

All around us, our public institutions are disintegrating, and the most important public institution of all – our public education system – is the next to be ghettoized.

Despite several progressive victories this Election Day, there was one significant defeat in Georgia, as voters approved of Constitutional Amendment 1 [3], which changes Georgia’s Constitution to give Republicans in that state the power to create charter schools as part of Georgia’s public education system. The result will be crucial taxpayer dollars being funneled away from free public schools and directed toward brand new, sometimes for-profit, privately-run charter schools.

Even though studies show [4] that costly private schools don’t produce any better educational results than free public schools, for-profit schools have popped up all around the nation in recent years because of how valuable they are to corporate America. In fact, the historic Chicago Teachers Union strike earlier this year was largely in response to the city’s push to open up more charter schools to replace traditional public schools.

Education is a recession-proof industry that will always be in high demand. The corporate money-changers know if they can get their hands on this industry, "reform" it to replace decently-paid teachers and faculty with McTeachers, and then get taxpayers to foot the bill, quarterly profits and lavish bonuses for CEOs can explode. Even in so-called "non-profit" charter schools, management can make big bucks.

And that’s exactly what Georgia’s Constitutional Amendment 1 accomplishes. Expect similar amendments to pop up in other state elections in the near future.

This is a major shot in the multigenerational war on public education part of our commons.

Ultimately, as more states pass charter school amendments like Georgia, and money is sucked out of public schools, then public schools will meet the same fate as the rest of the ghettoized public institutions in America.

Public education will be just like public housing, which most Americans think of as low-income, crime-ridden neighborhoods. Or it will be like public hospitals, which most Americans see as disease-ridden institutions filled with impoverished, sick people. Because, in both cases, these institutions principally serve the very poor, there’s little sympathy for Americans stuck in public housing or public hospitals. Little sympathy also translates into little funding, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty and the disintegration of our public institutions.

But up until the Reagan "reforms," public education had avoided this same ghettoizing fate. Historically, our public education system was a marvel for the rest of the world, producing generations of scientists, doctors, and engineers from all races and socio-economic classes. Whether you came from a wealthy family or a poor family, the American public education system didn’t discriminate. As much as possible, it was a multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multi-class public institution that produced great results.

But as state governments embrace for-profit charter schools, traditional public schools will be neglected and see their funding cut until eventually they, too, will suffer the same fate that ghettoized public housing and public hospitals.

Even prominent Republicans are owning up to this. After passage of Georgia’s Constitutional Amendment 1, Lee Raudonis, the former executive director of the Georgia Republican Party, penned an op-ed [5] for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution warning that passage of the amendment was, “an endorsement for a drastically altering public education as most Americans define it.”

Raudonis foresees a future in which there’s a “new type of public school” as a result of this move toward charter schools. He describes this new public school as, “one for those children whose parents were not motivated enough to move them into a charter or private school or for whom there were none available.”

After all, there will be a lot of low-income parents who simply can't afford to pay a bit more for a private education for their child or whose low-income neighborhood wasn’t chosen for a new charter school location. And, tragically, there's no shortage of poor parents who are dysfunctional because of the poverty-associated diseases of drug addiction and mental illness. The kids of these parents will be forced to into cash-strapped, forgotten public schools. As Raudonis concludes, “public schools will come to be viewed similarly to public housing and public hospitals, as places for children whose parents, for whatever reasons, cannot find a better alternative.”

This will mark the beginning of the end for not just public education in America, but also for the American middle class itself, which is shrinking faster and faster each day. Public schools will be the new dumping ground for the poor and the working poor. And just as public housing provides the bare minimum for its inhabitants, and just as public hospitals provide the bare minimum for their patients, the new ghettoized public schools will provide a bare minimum of education for low-income students.

The public education system itself will no longer be America's great equalizer, churning out successful students from all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Instead, it will shackle the poor, keeping them from learning the essentials needed to find that great job for the 21st century and move up the economic ladder into the middle class – to achieve the American Dream.

America needs to "just say no" to public funding of private schools.

The Fiscal Cliff Is A Diversion

The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble

December 17, 2012 | Paul Craig Roberts

The “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.

The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes. In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is going to happen either way.
The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.
Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.

The fiscal cliff requires that the federal government cut spending by $1.3 trillion over ten years. The Guardian reports that means the federal deficit has to be reduced about $109 billion per year or 3 percent of the current budget. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/fiscal-cliff-explained-spending-cuts-tax-hikes

More simply, just divide $1.3 trillion by ten and it comes to $130 billion per year. This can be done by simply taking a three month vacation each year from Washington’s wars.
The Derivatives Tsunami and the bond and dollar bubbles are of a different magnitude.
Last June 5 in “Collapse At Hand” http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/06/05/collapse-at-hand/ I pointed out that according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s fourth quarter report for 2011, about 95% of the $230 trillion in US derivative exposure was held by four US financial institutions: JP Morgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs.
Prior to financial deregulation, essentially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the non-regulation of derivatives–a joint achievement of the Clinton administration and the Republican Party–Chase, Bank of America, and Citibank were commercial banks that took depositors’ deposits and made loans to businesses and consumers and purchased Treasury bonds with any extra reserves.

With the repeal of Glass-Steagall these honest commercial banks became gambling casinos, like the investment bank, Goldman Sachs, betting not only their own money but also depositors money on uncovered bets on interest rates, currency exchange rates, mortgages, and prices of commodities and equities.

These bets soon exceeded many times not only US GDP but world GDP. Indeed, the gambling bets of JP Morgan Chase Bank alone are equal to world Gross Domestic Product.

According to the first quarter 2012 report from the Comptroller of the Currency, total derivative exposure of US banks has fallen insignificantly from the previous quarter to $227 trillion. The exposure of the 4 US banks accounts for almost of all of the exposure and is many multiples of their assets or of their risk capital.

The Derivatives Tsunami is the result of the handful of fools and corrupt public officials who deregulated the US financial system. Today merely four US banks have derivative exposure equal to 3.3 times world Gross Domestic Product. When I was a US Treasury official, such a possibility would have been considered beyond science fiction.

Hopefully, much of the derivative exposure somehow nets out so that the net exposure, while still larger than many countries’ GDPs, is not in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. Still, the situation is so worrying to the Federal Reserve that after announcing a third round of quantitative easing, that is, printing money to buy bonds–both US Treasuries and the banks’ bad assets–the Fed has just announced that it is doubling its QE 3 purchases.

In other words, the entire economic policy of the United States is dedicated to saving four banks that are too large to fail. The banks are too large to fail only because deregulation permitted financial concentration, as if the Anti-Trust Act did not exist.

The purpose of QE is to keep the prices of debt, which supports the banks’ bets, high. The Federal Reserve claims that the purpose of its massive monetization of debt is to help the economy with low interest rates and increased home sales. But the Fed’s policy is hurting the economy by depriving savers, especially the retired, of interest income, forcing them to draw down their savings. Real interest rates paid on CDs, money market funds, and bonds are lower than the rate of inflation.

Moreover, the money that the Fed is creating in order to bail out the four banks is making holders of dollars, both at home and abroad, nervous. If investors desert the dollar and its exchange value falls, the price of the financial instruments that the Fed’s purchases are supporting will also fall, and interest rates will rise. The only way the Fed could support the dollar would be to raise interest rates. In that event, bond holders would be wiped out, and the interest charges on the government’s debt would explode.

With such a catastrophe following the previous stock and real estate collapses, the remains of people’s wealth would be wiped out. Investors have been deserting equities for “safe” US Treasuries. This is why the Fed can keep bond prices so high that the real interest rate is negative.

The hyped threat of the fiscal cliff is immaterial compared to the threat of the derivatives overhang and the threat to the US dollar and bond market of the Federal Reserve’s commitment to save four US banks.

Once again, the media and its master, the US government, hide the real issues behind a fake one. The fiscal cliff has become the way for the Republicans to save the country from bankruptcy by destroying the social safety net put in place during the 1930s, supplemented by Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” in the mid-1960s.

Now that there are no jobs, now that real family incomes have been stagnant or declining for decades, and now that wealth and income have been concentrated in few hands is the time, Republicans say, to destroy the social safety net so that we don’t fall over the fiscal cliff.

In human history, such a policy usually produces revolt and revolution, which is what the US so desperately needs.

Perhaps our stupid and corrupt policymakers are doing us a favor after all.

Depressing Statistics about Anti-Depressants

List of School Shootings Linked To Antidepressants

As of October 2015 the links in this story are dead. sorry.

List of school shootings linked to SSRI use.
What	Drug	Date	Where	Additional
School Shooting	Prozac WITHDRAWAL	2008-02-15	Illinois	** 6 Dead: 15 Wounded: Perpetrator Was in Withdrawal from Med & Acting Erratically
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant	2005-03-24	Minnesota	**10 Dead: 7 Wounded: Dosage Increased One Week before Rampage
School Shooting	Paxil [Seroxat] Antidepressant	2001-03-10	Pennsylvania	**14 Year Old GIRL Shoots & Wounds Classmate at Catholic School
School Shooting	Zoloft Antidepressant & ADHD Med	2011-07-11	Alabama	**14 Year Old Kills Fellow Middle School Student
School Shooting	Zoloft Antidepressant	1995-10-12	South Carolina	**15 Year Old Shoots Two Teachers, Killing One: Then Kills Himself
School Shooting	Med For Depression	2009-03-13	Germany	**16 Dead Including Shooter: Antidepressant Use: Shooter in Treatment For Depression
School Hostage Situation	Med For Depression	2010-12-15	France	**17 Year Old with Sword Holds 20 Children & Teacher Hostage
School Shooting Plot	Med For Depression WITHDRAWAL	2008-08-28	Texas	**18 Year Old Plots a Columbine School Attack
School Shooting	Anafranil Antidepressant	1988-05-20	Illinois	**29 Year Old WOMAN Kills One Child: Wounds Five: Kills Self
School Shooting	Luvox/Zoloft Antidepressants	1999-04-20	Colorado	**COLUMBINE: 15 Dead: 24 Wounded
School Stabbings	Antidepressants	2001-06-09	Japan	**Eight Dead: 15 Wounded: Assailant Had Taken 10 Times his Normal Dose of Depression Med
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant WITHDRAWAL	1998-05-21	Oregon	**Four Dead: Twenty Injured
School Stabbing	Med For Depression	2011-10-25	Washington	**Girl, 15, Stabs Two Girls in School Restroom: 1 Is In Critical Condition
School Shooting	Antidepressant	2006-09-30	Colorado	**Man Assaults Girls: Kills One & Self
School Machete Attack	Med for Depression	2001-09-26	Pennsylvania	**Man Attacks 11 Children & 3 Teachers at Elementary School
School Shooting Related	Luvox	1993-07-23	Florida	**Man Commits Murder During Clinical Trial for Luvox: Same Drug as in COLUMBINE: Never Reported
School Hostage Situation	Cymbalta Antidepressant WITHDRAWAL	2009-11-09	New York	**Man With Gun Inside School Holds Principal Hostage
School Shooting	Antidepressants	1992-09-20	Texas	**Man, Angry Over Daughter's Report Card, Shoots 14 Rounds inside Elementary School
School Shooting	SSRI	2010-02-19	Finland	**On Sept. 23, 2008 a Finnish Student Shot & Killed 9 Students Before Killing Himself
School Shooting Threat	Med for Depression*	2004-10-19	New Jersey	**Over-Medicated Teen Brings Loaded Handguns to School
School Shooting	Antidepressant?	2007-04-18	Virginia	**Possible SSRI Use: 33 Dead at Virginia Tech
School Shooting	Antidepressant?	2002-01-17	Virginia	**Possible SSRI Withdrawal Mania: 3 Dead at Law School
School Incident/Bizarre	Zoloft*	2010-08-22	Australia	**School Counselor Exhibits Bizarre Behavior: Became Manic On Zoloft
School/Assault	Antidepressant	2009-11-04	California	**School Custodian Assaults Student & Principal: Had Manic Reaction From Depression Med
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant	1992-01-30	Michigan	**School Teacher Shoots & Kills His Superintendent at School
School Shooting Threats	Celexa Antidepressant	2010-01-25	Virginia	**Senior in High School Theatens to Kill 4 Classmates: Facebook Involved: Bail Denied
School Violence/Murder	Antidepressants*	1998-05-04	New York	**Sheriff's Deputy Shoots his Wife in an Elementary School
School Knifing/Murder	Meds For Depression & ADHD	2010-04-28	Massachusetts	**Sixteen Year Old Kills 15 Year Old in High School Bathroom in Sept. 2009
School Stabbing	Wellbutrin	2006-12-04	Indiana	**Stabbing by 17 Year Old At High School: Charged with Attempted Murder
School Threat	Antidepressants	2007-04-23	Mississippi	**Student Arrested for Making School Threat Over Internet
School Suspension	Lexapro Antidepressant	2007-07-28	Arkansas	**Student Has 11 Incidents with Police During his 16 Months on Lexapro
School Shooting	Antidepressant WITHDRAWAL	2007-11-07	Finland	**Student Kills 8: Wounds 10: Kills Self: High School in Finland
School Shooting	Paxil [Seroxat] Antidepressant	2004-02-09	New York	**Student Shoots Teacher in Leg at School
School Threat	Prozac Antidepressant	2008-01-25	Washington	**Student Takes Loaded Shotgun & 3 Rifles to School Parking Lot: Plans Suicide
School Shooting Plot	Med For Depression	1998-12-01	Wisconsin	**Teen Accused of Plotting to Gun Down Students at School
School/Assault	Zoloft Antidepressant	2006-02-15	Tennessee	**Teen Attacks Teacher at School
School Shooting Threat	Antidepressant	1999-04-16	Idaho	**Teen Fires Gun in School
School Hostage Situation	Paxil & Effexor Antidepressants	2001-04-15	Washington	**Teen Holds Classmates Hostage with a Gun
School Hostage Situation	Antidepressant WITHDRAWAL	2006-11-28	North Carolina	**Teen Holds Teacher & Student Hostage with Gun
School Knife Attack	Med for Depression	2006-12-06	Indiana	**Teen Knife Attacks Fellow Student
School Massacre Plot	Prozac Withdrawal	2011-02-23	Virginia	**Teen Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison For Columbine Style Plot
School Shooting	Celexa & Effexor Antidepressants	2001-04-19	California	**Teen Shoots at Classmates in School
School Shooting	Celexa Antidepressant	2006-08-30	North Carolina	**Teen Shoots at Two Students: Kills his Father: Celexa Found Among his Personal Effects
School Shooting	Meds For Depression & ADHD	2011-03-18	South Carolina	**Teen Shoots School Official: Pipe Bombs Found in Backpack
School Shooting Threat	Antidepressant	2003-05-31	Michigan	**Teen Threatens School Shooting: Charge is Terrorism
School Stand-Off	Zoloft Antidepressant	1998-04-13	Idaho	**Teen [14 Years Old] in School Holds Police At Bay: Fires Shots
School Shooting	Antidepressant WITHDRAWAL	2007-10-12	Ohio	**Teen [14 Years Old] School Shooter Possibly on Antidepressants or In Withdrawal
School Threat	Antidepressants	2008-03-20	Indiana	**Teen [16 Years Old] Brings Gun to School: There Is a Lockdown
School Suicide/Lockdown	Med For Depression	2008-02-20	Idaho	**Teen [16 Years Old] Kills Self at High School: Lockdown by Police
School Threats	Prozac Antidepressant	1999-10-19	Florida	**Teen [16 Years Old] Threatens Classmates With Knife & Fake Explosives
School Stabbing	Med For Depression	2008-02-29	Texas	**Teen [17 Year Old GIRL] Stabs Friend & Principal at High School
School Hostage Situation	Prozac/ Paxil Antidepressants	2001-01-18	California	**Teen [17 Years Old] Takes Girl Hostage at School: He is Killed by Police
School Knife Attack	Treatment For Depression & Strattera	2009-03-10	Belgium	**Three Dead in School Day Care: Two Children & a Caregiver: Happened Jan 23, 2009
School Shooting Plot	Antidepressants	2009-09-22	England	**Two English School Boys Plot to Blow Up High School
School Arson Incidents	Paxil	2002-04-12	Michigan	**Unusual Personality Change on Paxil Caused 15 Year Old to Set Fires inside High School
School Bomb Threat	Med For Depression	2009-06-29	Australia	**Vexed Father Makes Bomb Threat Against Elementary School
School Violence	Antidepressant	2005-11-19	Arizona	**Violent 8 Year Old GIRL Handcuffed by Police at School
School Violence	Celexa Antidepressant	2002-01-23	Florida	**Violent 8 Year-Old Boy Arrested At School
School Threat/Lockdown	Lexapro*	2008-04-18	California	**Violent High School Student Shot to Death on Campus by Police
School / Child Endangerment	Antidepressants	2008-02-27	Canada	**Wacky School Bus Driver Goes Berserk: Also Involved Painkillers
School Violence	Paxil	2004-10-23	Washington DC	**Young Boy, 10 Year Old, Has Violent Incidents at School
School Threat	Wellbutrin Antidepressant	2007-04-24	Tennessee	**Young Boy, 12, Threatens to Shoot Others at School
School Hostage Situation	Med for Depression	2006-03-09	France	**Young Ex-Teacher Holds 21 Students Hostage
School Shooting/Suicide	Celexa	2002-10-07	Texas	**Young Girl [13 Years Old] Kills Self at School With a Gun
School Hostage Situation	Paxil	2001-10-12	North Carolina	**Young Man Holds Three People Hostage in Duke University President's Office
School Murder Attempt	Med For Depression	1995-03-04	California	**Young Woman Deliberately Hits 3 Kids with Her Car at Elementary School: Laughed During Attack

**	Indicates a school shooting or school incident.
*	Indicates a legal case won using SSRI defense.
--	Indicates an important journal article.
-	Indicates a highly publicized case.
num	An age < 25 covered by FDA black box for suicide.

Weekly Funnies, We need them...

Obama: 'Bigger Fish to Fry' Than Pot Smokers Gettin' High

Friday, December 14, 2012 by Common Dreams

President's statement does not make clear how federal agencies will deal with medical dispensaries or if he would support federal legalization efforts- Jon Queally, staff writer

Telling ABC News‘ Barbara Walters that “we’ve got bigger fish to fry,” President Obama broke his administration's silence on how it intends to deal with new marijuana legalization laws in both Washington state and Colorado.

Voters in both those states passed new laws in November that make recreational use and possession of certain amounts of pot legal, and the president's remarks seem to make it clear that federal enforcement agencies would not impose their authority on such infractions.

"It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal," Obama's said to Walters in an interview to air Friday, Dec 12, 2012 on ABC.

Despite what may appear clear to many supporters of legalization, the Drug Policy Alliance's Ethan Nadelmann said that a "parsing" of Obama's comments to Walters should be conducted. Citing four specific points that demand closer examination, Nadelmann writes:

• The first is that he responded in a serious and substantive tone, which contrasted with the jokingly dismissive ways in which he answered questions about marijuana legalization just a few years ago. The ballot initiative victories in Colorado and Washington gave him no choice this time. Marijuana legalization is now a political reality.  

• The second was his comment -- highlighted by ABC in its news release -- that recreational users of marijuana in states that have legalized the substance should not be a "top priority" of federal law enforcement officials prosecuting the war on drugs. "We've got bigger fish to fry," he said. That statement is not news. Federal law enforcement officials have never prioritized going after users of marijuana. Obama has said much the same regarding medical consumers of marijuana, but that begs the question of whether consumers will be able to make their purchases from legal or only illegal sources.  

• The third was when Obama told Walters he does not -- "at this point" -- support widespread legalization of marijuana. The caveat "at this point" sounds a lot like how he responded to questions about legalizing gay marriage - until he finally decided it was time to publicly support it. Obama cited shifting public opinion and essentially made clear that this is not an issue on which he wants to provide leadership so long as public opinion is split and Congress unlikely to do anything constructive.  

• The fourth, and most substantive, comment was the following: "This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law," Obama said. "I head up the executive branch; we're supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal?" What stands out here are the words about the "need to have... a conversation" and the fact that he is framing the conflict between federal and state law as a question to be resolved as opposed to one in which it is simply assumed that federal marijuana prohibition trumps all.

The national trend for support of marijuana legalization has been seen in recent polls, including a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted after November's election which showed that 64% of Americans think the federal government should not interfere with state laws determined by voters and a Quinnipiac poll which found that 51% of registered voters nationwide thought marijuana should be made legal at the federal level.

Monsanto Gets Its Way in Ag Bill

A New Level of Corporate Collusion with Government

by JIM GOODMAN


“The Farmers Assurance Provision” is the title of a rider, Section 733, inserted into the House of Representatives 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill. Somehow, as a farmer, I don’t feel the least bit assured.

The only assurance it provides is that Monsanto the devil and the rest of the agriculture biotech industry will have carte blanche to force the government to allow the planting of their biotech seeds.
In addition, the House Agriculture Committee’s 2012 farm bill draft includes three riders – Sections 1011, 10013 and 10014. These amendments would essentially destroy any oversight of new Genetically Modified (GMO) crops by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

If these riders had been in place during the review of GMO alfalfa, Monsanto the devil could have requested – no they could have compelled – the Secretary of Agriculture to allow continued planting of GMO alfalfa even though a federal court had ruled commercialization was illegal pending completion of an environmental impact study.

Essentially, the riders would prevent the federal courts from restricting, in any way, the planting of a GMO crop, regardless of environmental, health or economic concerns. USDA’s mandated review process would be, like court-ordered restrictions, meaningless. A request to USDA to allow planting of a GMO crop awaiting approval would have to be granted.

Wow, who’s next to get in on a deal like this, the drug companies?

Not only will the riders eviscerate the power of USDA and the authority of the courts, but it will also permanently dismiss any input from other agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Fish and Wildlife Service or Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Does Congress really believe it has the right to remove the court’s power of Congressional oversight? Doesn’t that violate the separation of powers guaranteed in the Constitution?

The trade group behind the riders, Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), insists that the riders do not, in any way, reduce regulatory requirements for new GMO crops. What? They only eliminate any oversight from the judicial branch – that’s sort of a big thing.

The approval process for new GMO crops is not without its perceived delays. As limited as it may be, review takes time but getting new GMO crops approved is a cakewalk.

StarLink corn and Liberty Link rice slipped through the approval process only to have major contamination and health issues after commercialization. Once a crop is in the USDA pipeline, approval is a near certainty.

BIO insists the riders are necessary to avoid delays in approval. Of course, delays cost them MONEY, which is obviously all they are concerned about. If they were concerned about environmental impacts, or food safety, wouldn’t they request input from EPA and FDA?

So, the “Farmer Assurance “ thing – using farmers as their poster children — is quite disingenuous. The biotech industry cares about farmers because farmers are their meal ticket.

Farmers are not stupid; we’ve learned that the promises of biotech were short lived at best and to various degrees, simply false. The new GMO crops are basically the old GMO crops, just redesigned to resist different, more toxic herbicides while having become less effective at killing insect pests.

No, the Farmer Assurance Provision and the Farm Bill riders – are not about farmers, nor are they about speeding needed crops to the waiting public. They’re about getting fast rubber stamp approval for new, profitable GMO crops.

These riders are an effort to end run Congress, the Courts and the Constitution.

Corporate collusion with government is not new, but this takes it to a new level. By allowing corporations to subvert the Constitution, Congress is saying that corporate influence and profits are more important than the best interests of the people.

Corporations are not people, my friends, despite the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

More Phony Employment Numbers

The fact that the U3 is the official unemployment figure used by the govt and press is bad enough since it's not even the most accurate number on Table A15 (where the figures are presented, see the U6 rate for a more accurate, yet still incomplete rate), but it's how they are able to consider so many people as "having stopped looking because they are discouraged" and don't count them as unemployed even though they need a job as badly as people who haven't stopped looking. I know people unemployed 4 yrs with no hope, yet they still look.--jef



December 8, 2012 |  paul craig roberts


Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.”

There are a number of ongoing problems with the released numbers. For example, the concurrent-seasonal factor adjustments are unstable. The birth-death model adds non-existent jobs each month that are then taken out in the annual downward benchmark revisions. Williams calculates that the job overstatement through November averages 45,000 monthly. In other words, employment gains during 2012 have been overstated by about 500,000 jobs. Another problem is that each month’s jobs number is boosted by downside revision of the previous month’s jobs number. Williams reports that the 146,000 new jobs reported for November “was after a significant downside revision to October’s reporting. Net of prior-period revisions, November’s seasonally-adjusted monthly gain was 97,000.”

Even if we believe the government that 146,000 new jobs materialized during November, that is the amount necessary to stay even with population growth and therefore could not be responsible for reducing the unemployment rate from 7.9% to 7.7%. The reduction is due to how the unemployed are counted.

The 7.7% rate is known as the “headline rate.” It is the rate you hear in the news. Its official designation is U.3.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has another official unemployment rate known as U.6.

The difference is that U.3 does not include discouraged workers who are not currently actively seeking a job. (A discouraged worker is a person who has given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found.) The U.6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year. The U.6 rate of unemployment is 14.4%, about double the headline rate.
The U.6 rate does not include long-term discouraged workers, those who have been discouraged for more than one year. John Williams estimates this rate and reports the actual rate of unemployment (known as SGS) in November to be 22.9%.

In other words, the headline rate of unemployment is one-third the actual rate.
The drop in the November headline rate of unemployment from 7.9 to 7.7 is due to a 20.4% increase in the number of short-term discouraged workers in November. In other words, unemployed people rolled out of the U.3 measure into the U.6 measure.

Similarly, a number of short-term discouraged workers roll out of the U.6 measure into John Williams’ measure that includes all of the unemployed. Williams reports that “with the continual rollover, the flow of headline workers continues into the short-term discouraged workers (U.6), and from U.6 into long term discouraged worker status (a ShadowStats.com measure), at what has been an accelerating pace. The aggregate November data show an increasing rate of individuals dropping out of the headline (U.3) labor force.” In other words, the headline rate of unemployment can drop even though the unemployed are having a harder time finding jobs.

The U.S. government simply lowers the unemployment rate by not counting all of the unemployed. We owe this innovation to the Clinton administration. In 1994 the Clinton administration redefined “discouraged workers” and limited this group to those who are discouraged for less than one year. Those discouraged for more than one year are no longer considered to be in the labor force and ceased to be counted as unemployed.

If the U.S. government will mislead the public about unemployment, it will also mislead about Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Russia, China, and 9/11. The government fits its story to its agenda.

A government that wants to cut the social safety net doesn’t want you to know that the unemployment rate is 22.9%. A government that wants to cut the social safety net when between one-fifth and one-fourth of the work force is out of work looks hard-hearted, mean-spirited, and foolish. But if the government reports only one-third of the unemployed and presents that rate as falling, then the government can present its cuts as prudent to avoid falling over a “fiscal cliff.”

If the “free and democratic” Americans cannot even find out what the unemployment rate is, how do they expect to find out about anything?

"Fuck You CNN": How the Press Got It Wrong on Newtown

By Adam Serwer - MotherJones  | Fri Dec. 14, 2012

In the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut the immediate question was who had gunned down nearly thirty people, most of them children, before taking his own life.

Early reports, citing Connecticut law enforcement sources, identified the shooter as a twentysomething from Newtown named Ryan Lanza. A Facebook profile fitting that description was easily accessible, and social media users—from professional reporters to online onlookers—immediately assumed they had discovered the Facebook profile of the gunman who had perpetrated the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. News outlets including BuzzFeed, Mediaite, Gawker, and Fox News speculated that the account belonged to the shooter. Journalists from Slate, Huffington Post, CNN, and other news organizations tweeted links to the Facebook profile.

But it was the wrong guy. Press reports are now identifying the shooter as Adam Lanza. Ryan Lanza, identified as Adam's brother, has reportedly been questioned by police. According to the Associated Press, "a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers' first names." The result was that, for a few brief hours in the middle of the day, based on press speculation about the suspect's identity, social media users brought out the digital equivalent of pitchforks and torches, vilifying the alleged shooter's brother and haranguing Ryan Lanzas all across the intertubes.

Political cartoonist Matt Bors, who was Facebook friends with Ryan Lanza but didn't actually know him personally, was inundated with Facebook messages and friend requests as a result. "I was getting messages from people saying, why are you friends with a monster?" Bors says. Looking at Lanza's page, he saw desperate messages posted denying any involvement in the shooting, and posted them to his Twitter feed. "Fuck you CNN it wasn't me," Lanza's post read. (CNN itself did not post or broadcast the profile, though one of their reporters did tweet it.)

Here's the screenshot from Bors:

Meanwhile, other people named Ryan Lanza with Twitter feeds were deluged by followers and tweets. Facebook exploded with pages devoted to Ryan Lanza with screenshots taken from his profile. Several of them were some variation of this:

Or this:

But these are far from the only ones:

Very far from the only ones:

Lanza appears to have taken down his Facebook page*.

This isn't the first, nor sadly will it be the last time, that journalists and the masses jump to conclusions in the aftermath of a tragedy based on personal details from social media profiles. Shortly after the shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July, ABC reporter Brian Ross speculated on air that the suspect in that shooting, was the same person who had a profile on a tea party website. It turned out they were two different people who merely shared a common name. Ross was pilloried by left and right alike, and eventually apologized for"disseminating that information before it was properly vetted." Then another mass shooting that captured the nation's attention occurred, and lots of other people made the same exact mistake. The temptation to break the news of the shooter's identity overwhelmed the need to make sure they had the right guy.

*It was down for a while and is now back up.

Why the Fed’s Jobs Program Will Fail

Robert Reich - Thursday, December 13, 2012


For the first time, the Federal Reserve has explicitly linked interest rates to unemployment.

Rates will remain near zero “at least as long” as unemployment remains above 6.5 percent and if inflation is projected to be no more than 2.5 percent, said the Federal Open Market Committee in a statement Wednesday.

Put to one side the question now obsessing stock and bond traders — whether the new standard means higher interest rates will kick in sooner than the middle of 2015, which had been the Fed’s previous position.

By linking interest rates directly to the rate of unemployment, Bernanke is explicitly acknowledging that the Federal Reserve Board has two mandates — not just price but also employment. “The conditions now prevailing in the job market represent an enormous waste of human and economic potential,” said Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

These are refreshing words at a time when Congress and the White House seem more concerned about reducing the federal budget deficit than generating more jobs.

But the sad fact is near-zero interest rates won’t do much for jobs because banks aren’t allowing many people to take advantage of them. If you’ve tried lately to refinance your home or get a home equity loan you know what I mean.

Banks don’t need to lend to homeowners. They can get a higher return on the almost-free money they borrow from the Fed by betting on derivatives in the vast casino called the global capital market.

Besides, they’ve still got a lot of junk mortgage loans on their books and don’t want to risk adding more.

Low interest rates also lower the cost of capital, which in theory should encourage companies to borrow for expansion and more hiring. But companies won’t expand or hire until they have more customers. And they won’t have more customers as long as most people don’t have additional money to spend.

And here we come to the crux of the problem. Consumers don’t have additional money. The median wage keeps dropping, adjusted for inflation. Most of the new jobs in the economy pay less than the jobs they replaced.

Corporate profits are taking a higher share of the total economy than they have since World War II, but wages are taking the smallest share since then (see graph).

PROFITS

(Business Insider, St. Louis Federal Reserve Board)

WAGES

(Business Insider, St. Louis Federal Reserve Board)

Globalization and technological changes continue to eat away at the American middle class. Yet we’ve done nothing to stop the erosion.

To the contrary, as in Michigan, we continue to undercut labor unions — which for three decades after World War II had been the principal bargaining agents for the working middle class.

Moreover, instead of creating easy paths for people to gain the skills they need for higher wages, we’re doing the opposite. We’re firing teachers and squeezing 30 kids into K-12 classrooms, defunding job training programs and reducing support for public higher education.

Instead of encouraging profit-sharing, we’re facilitating the Walmartization of America — the lowest possible wages along with the fattest possible corporate profits. (Walmart, which directly employs almost one percent of the entire workforce at near-poverty wages, made $27 billion in operating profits last year.)

Republicans want to make corporations and the wealthy even richer — demanding tax cuts and roll-backs of regulations on the pretense that companies and the wealthy are the “job creators.”

But the real job creators are America’s middle class and all those aspiring to join it, whose purchases propel the economy forward. And whose declining earnings are holding the economy back.

So two cheers for Ben Bernanke and the Fed. They’re doing what they can. The failure is in the rest of the government — at both the federal and state levels — still dominated by deficit hawks, supply-siders, and witting and unwitting lackeys of big corporations and the wealthy.

Imagine There's No Fracking...

Seasons Greetings from Spiderlegs

Friday’s Job Numbers Show Why Job-Creation Must Take Precedence Over Deficit Reduction

Friday, December 7, 2012 by RobertReich.com
by Robert Reich


Friday’s jobs report shows an economy that’s still moving in the right direction but way too slowly, which is why Washington’s continuing obsession with the federal budget deficit is insane. Jobs and growth must come first.

The cost of borrowing is so low — the yield on the ten-year Treasury is near historic lows — and the need for more jobs and better wages so high, and our infrastructure so neglected, that a reasonable government would borrow more to put more Americans to work rebuilding the nation.

Yes, unemployment is down slightly and 146,000 new jobs were created in November. That’s some progress. But don’t be overwhelmed by the hype coming out of Wall Street and the White House, both of which would like the public to believe things are going quite well.

The fact is some 350,000 more people stopped looking for jobs in November, and the percent of the working-age population currently employed continues to drop — now at 63.6%, almost the lowest in 30 years. Meanwhile, the average workweek is stuck at 34.4 hours.

The slowness of the jobs recovery isn’t because of Hurricane Sandy, which it turns out had very little impact on November’s job numbers (the hurricane’s negative effects were more than offset by a Thanksgiving earlier than normal, and an early start to the Christmas buying season). And it’s not because of any uncertainty over the looming “fiscal cliff.” Most consumers in November remained oblivious about any pending cliff.

The reason the economy is still under-performing is overall demand is inadequate. Businesses won’t create more jobs without enough customers. But consumers can’t and won’t spend because they don’t have the money. Unless or until the private sector — businesses and consumers — are able to boost the economy, government must be the spender of last resort.

But the nation has bought into the Republican frame of thinking that we have to “get our fiscal house in order” before the economy can get back on track. Although Barack Obama was reelected and Democrats gained seats in the House and Senate, that frame is still dominating debate.

And even though we’re near a fiscal cliff that illustrates how dangerous deficit reduction can be when so many people are still unemployed, the White House and the Democrats seem incapable of changing the frame of debate.

But remember: Jobs must come first. Job creation must be our first priority.

Older, Eager, and Unemployed: When Even Santa Can’t Get a Job

Friday, December 7, 2012 by The Nation

by Greg Kaufmann

 

In May 2012, Richard Crowe was laid off when the steel mill where he had worked for thirty-four years was shut down. He’d worked there since graduating from high school. New ownership filed for bankruptcy.

“The judge threw the workers’ contract out, the owners walked away with $20 million, and we got nothing,” says Crowe, who is 54, and lives in eastern Ohio.

Seven months later, Crowe is one of 5 million “long-term” unemployed workers in the US who have been looking for work for more than six months. They are disproportionately older (over 50), women, and minorities, and according to Friday’s jobs report, their employment prospects haven’t much improved.

If Congress doesn’t extend the unemployment insurance program by the end of this year, 2 million of these workers will lose their benefits between Christmas and New Years Day; another 1 million by April 2013; and over 5 million people will be without benefits by the end of 2013, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP). This would occur at a moment when there are still 12 million people unemployed, and there are approximately 3.4 unemployed applicants for every available job opening. (it's more than 12 million unemployed and more than 5 million long-term unemployed but his heart is in the right place--jef)

“The jobs are still not there,” says Edith Harrison, 59, who lives in Colorado Springs and was laid off from her job at a senior assisted living facility in August. “How can you cut unemployment benefits off, and blame someone for not being able to get a job, when they didn’t create the situation?”

“I worked all my life. I paid into unemployment, I paid into Social Security, I paid into everything. I want off this unemployment, I want a job.”

The antipoverty effect of unemployment insurance is significant and undeniable. In 2010, the program lifted 3.2 million people above the poverty line (less than $18,000 for a family of three). In 2011, it lifted 2.3 million people above the line, including 620,000 children. (The program had less of a poverty reducing effect last year in part because a provision in the Recovery Act that paid an additional $25 per week in benefits was allowed to expire.) The average benefit is just $291 per week and it covers approximately 40 percent of a typical family’s food, housing, and transportation costs.

What is most egregious to both Harrison and Crowe is the stereotype—voiced by people who want to cut the program or drug test benefit recipients—that unemployed people are lazy and would rather collect modest benefits than work.

“It’s funny, but it’s pathetic—a lot of people think you’re out here for a handout,” says Crowe. “I worked all my life. I paid into unemployment, I paid into Social Security, I paid into everything. I want off this unemployment, I want a job.”

In fact, Crowe has applied for 157 jobs. He and his wife are willing to relocate—they put their son through college and he is now living independently. Crowe has applied for jobs in Nevada and South Carolina—in the steel industry and in new lines of work.

“In the steel industry, companies are hiring 20 year olds that have never even been in a mill before, and passing on people like me—an experienced operator and maintenance technician,” says Crowe. “Then you go look at other jobs and they say ‘you don’t have no experience.’”

He recalls applying for a job delivering packages for UPS. The interviewer looked over his resume and asked, “Pretty much you worked in the mill all your life?”

“Yeah,” Richard told her.

“Have you ever had any experience delivering packages?”

“I felt like telling her, ‘Yeah, once a year, I play Santa Claus,’” he tells me, laughing. “This is the stuff you go through.”

Harrison says she gets up early every morning—“ just like I’m going to work”—drinks her coffee, and gets on the computer to search for jobs. (this is what nearly all unemployed people do. They want jobs so they treat their job search like a job--jef)

“Retail, restaurants and customer service—most of the jobs out there—they say they want people who are ‘high energy’ for a ‘fast-paced environment’,” she says. “I’m not saying I can’t do it, but I’m 59, and if they have a choice they’re going to take the person who’s younger.”

Crowe also thinks his age is making it difficult for him to land a new opportunity. He has applied for many jobs knowing that he’s overqualified, including warehouse work. Often, he doesn’t even receive a reply, and sees the jobs still being posted months later.

“It’s my age holding me back. I can’t prove that, but I’m getting that feeling after going through all this,” he says. “If they see a 5 or 6 in front of your age—I’m just visualizing when people look at that they just laugh and throw your application off to the side.”

Unemployment benefits are a lifeline for Harrison and Crowe. In 2002, Harrison was laid off from her job as a secretary for the local school district. (She had also previously worked as a secretary in Detroit Public Schools for nineteen years, and as a case manager and skills development specialist for Goodwill Industries.) She ended up homeless, and sleeping on couches in the homes of families and friends. She fears it could happen again.

“I don’t want to go through that again,” she says. “How can you find a job if you don’t have anyplace to stay? When you’re out there, your life is just all up in the air. It takes a long time to come back from that.”

Harrison says her $227 per week benefit helps her “keep the lights on” and pay the rent.

Crowe receives $382 per week and says it covers his utilities and his car payment. He and his wife are also using their retirement savings “just to survive.”

“If they don’t renew these benefits, I won’t have any income,” says Crowe. “I’ll lose my house, I’ll lose everything.”

Judy Conti, federal advocacy coordinator for NELP, says she is “cautiously optimistic” that unemployment insurance will be reauthorized for 2013—either as part of any “grand bargain” or a more limited package of cuts and revenues prior to January 1. She notes that the $30 billion program was included in President Obama’s initial offer to Republicans to avert the fiscal cliff. She also says NELP has had lengthy and productive conversations with Democratic leadership, staff members for most of the Democratic Senate Caucus, and many House members as well.

“All of them really do understand how important and crucial this program is right now,” says Conti.

On the other hand, conservatives continue to demand that any reauthorization of unemployment insurance must be paid for, but Conti says that that shouldn’t be difficult to achieve through any bill that includes significant cuts and savings.

“We’re not really seeing the same kind of pushback we have seen in previous years,” says Conti, “where Representatives have wanted to change the nature of the program, or beat up on the unemployed as lazy.”

It also can’t hurt that Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s, estimates that every $1 in unemployment benefits generates $1.61 in economic activity—since those benefits are spent so quickly. Also, the Congressional Budget Office found that reauthorizing the program for 2013 would create 300,000 jobs.

While she waits to see how this plays out in Congress, Harrison is doing her best to keep her spirits up.

“I used to stay on that computer from the beginning of the day to nighttime looking for work,” she said. “I would have a headache, wouldn’t even eat—had to make myself eat. Now I try to keep balance—get up early in the morning, get on that computer—and after so long and so many resumes, I stop. You don’t want to make yourself sick. I just stay prayerful.”

As for Crowe, he says the ordeal has taken a toll on his family—especially his wife, who he says “worries every day” as they try to cobble together enough money through unemployment benefits, her low-wage work, and their retirement savings.

“I’m doing everything in my power that I can, but I can’t make someone hire me,” he says.

Read more of this post, including relevant numbers and additional resources, here.