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North Carolina. March, 2012 by joanneleon
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News
Libor’s Dirty Laundry
Here in the early stages of the Libor scandal — and, yes, this thing is far from over — there are two big surprises.
The first is that the bankers, traders, executives and others involved would so openly and, in some cases, gleefully collude to manipulate this key interest rate for their own benefit. With all the seedy bank behavior that has been exposed since the financial crisis, it’s stunning that there’s still dirty laundry left to be aired. We’ve had predatory subprime lending, fraudulent ratings, excessive risk-taking and even clients being taken advantage of in order to unload toxic mortgages.
Yet even with these precedents, the Libor scandal still manages to shock. Libor — that’s the London interbank offered rate — represents a series of interest rates at which banks make unsecured loans to each other. More important, it is a benchmark that many financial instruments are pegged to. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which doggedly pursued the wrongdoing and brought the scandal to light, estimates that some $350 trillion worth of derivatives and $10 trillion worth of loans are based on Libor.
Is Union Busting to Blame for Power Outages in D.C.?
On Thursday, 15,091 Washington, D.C.-area residents were without power for the sixth day in a row, according to utility company Pepco spokesman Marcus Beal. As D.C. residents face record heat waves, many are upset and attribute the lack of power to incompetence on Pepco's end. However, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1900 members claim the failure to restore power outages is due to chronic understaffing and Pepco’s shift from hiring union utility workers to non-union temporary contractors.
“We have half the linemen we had 15 years ago,” says IBEW Local 1900 Business Agent Jim Griffin, whose union represents 1,150 Pepco workers. “We have been complaining for a very long time. They have relied for a long time on contractors. They are transients, they don’t know our system, and we typically have to go behind them to fix their mistakes. It’s very frustrating. We take ownership in our work, we make careers out of this.”
Federal Government Can Restore Full Employment – If Only it Wanted to Do So
As Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman aptly put it: “It’s like having a dead battery in a car, and while there may be a lot wrong with the car, you can get the car going remarkably easily, if you’re willing to accept that’s what the problem really is.”
Most economists are well aware what the problem really is, since it is so simple and basic. The economy lost about $1.3 trillion in private annual spending when the real estate bubble burst in 2007, and much of that has not recovered. State and local governments continue to tighten their budgets and lay off workers. If the federal government had simply funded these governments’ shortfalls, we would have another two million jobs today.
Kagan’s Medicaid vote
The Obama Court appointee once again sides with the right-wing faction in an important ruling
Kagan voted for portions of Chief Justice John Roberts’s controlling opinion declaring unconstitutional a major provision in President Barack Obama’s health care law, namely the Medicaid expansion.
While Roberts has been denounced by conservatives as an ideological heretic and turncoat for siding with liberals to uphold the individual mandate in the law, Kagan’s conclusion that the law’s Medicaid expansion was unconstitutionally coercive toward the states has triggered no similar wave of condemnation of her by liberals.
[ ... ]
Asked how likely he thought it was prior to Thursday’s ruling that Kagan would wind up taking such a stance, Outterson said: “Never in my wildest nightmares.”
July is National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month
About 25 percent of U.S. adults have a mental illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost two-thirds of those adults with a diagnosable mental illness do not seek treatment, and racial and ethnic minorities are even less likely to get help, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). July is National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, and Allsup, a nationwide provider of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) representation, is offering a free poster download to promote awareness and help dispel stigma associated with mental illness.
Thank you for killing my novel
The New York Times panned my book, then had to correct the review to fix all their errors. So why am I not angry?
Last Sunday night I spent a good five minutes lying facedown on my couch, my head pressed into the crack between our old tan cushions, my arms pinned awkwardly under my chest, emitting a sequence of guttural moaning noises as my wife silently read Janet Maslin’s newly posted New York Times review of my novel, “This Bright River,” and then – after some gasps and one very disconcerting, empathy-laden, “Oh no” – attempted to describe the review’s contents aloud. I’d only been able to read the headline.
“It’s not positive,” she began firmly, and I pressed my head deeper into the couch, trying to get to its springs and asphyxiate. [ ... ]
My wife said nothing. It was 90 degrees in our living room, and the fan oscillated gloomily. Our cat, pleased, sensing a complicated kind of emotional dissolution in the works, jumped onto my back and sat down.
Rep. John Lewis shares 'Life Lessons'
"It's really what I believe in," Lewis said. "When I was a student, I studied philosophy and religion. I talked about being patient. Some people say I was too hopeful, too optimistic, but you have to be optimistic just in keeping with the philosophy of non-violence. If you're not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up. You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you're consistent, you will succeed."
Lewis suggested that focus isn't present with today's activists, such as members of the Occupy movement, who should pick a goal and stick with it. That's what he and his cohorts did, he said.
"We were like trees," he said. "We were prepared to give it everything that we had. I say to people today, 'You must be prepared if you believe in something. If you believe in something, you have to go for it. As individuals, we may not live to see the end.' "
Occupy the Farm activists reoccupy UC Berkeley farm plot in Albany
ALBANY -- About 60 Occupy the Farm activists returned to the Gill Tract on Saturday morning to weed and harvest crops planted earlier this spring.
The activists broke a lock on a gate and entered the 10-acre plot of land around 9:40 a.m. and remained on the property until shortly after noon.
"We harvested over 50 pounds of cucumbers and more than 75 pounds of squash," said Anya Kamenskaya, a spokeswoman for the group.
The group included children and people of all ages. Four UC police officers looked on while the activists weeded and harvested, Kamenskaya said.
Straight from Spain, Summer's Coolest New Sustainable Sandals
Now conveniently available stateside--online and in New York, at Maryam Nassir Zadeh--these authentic summer kicks (I tried out a complimentary pair) are handmade by the third generation family-run Avarcas Riudavets with Spanish leather and100% recycled rubber tire sole.
Libya’s Unintended Consequences
But at the very least, the intimate connection between the two civil wars should complicate the Libya hawks’ easy moralism. If interventionists want to claim credit for saving lives in Benghazi, they need to acknowledge that their choices may have ended up costing lives in Timbuktu. If they want to point to the immediate consequences of the Libyan war as vindication for a “responsibility to protect” doctrine, they need to acknowledge the second-order consequences for people who will never have the benefits of our protection.
From a strategic perspective, too, toppling a dictator in one country looks rather less impressive if his fall helps give rise to a theocracy nearby. Mali may seem strategically inconsequential today, but so did Afghanistan when the Taliban first swept to power. And Mali is only one example of the spillover from Colonel Qaddafi’s ouster. As Nicolas Pelham wrote in the New York Review of Books last month, “Libya’s turmoil is acquiring continental significance,” influencing insurgencies from Chad to Sinai.
Patrick Cockburn: Libyans have voted, but will the new rulers be able to curb violent militias?
Last week Amnesty produced a devastating report – "Libya: Rule of law or rule of militias?" – based on meticulous and lengthy investigations, portraying Libya as a country where violent and predatory militia gangs have become the real power in the land. They jail, torture and kill individuals and persecute whole communities that oppose them now, did so in the past, or simply get in their way. A few actions by these out-of control militiamen have gained publicity, such as taking over Tripoli airport, shooting up the convoy of the British ambassador in Benghazi, and arresting staff members of the International Criminal Court.
Diana Eltahawy, the Amnesty researcher who carried out many of the interviews on which the report is based, says that "things are not getting better" and, what makes things worse, is that in May the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) passed a law giving immunity to the "thuwwar" for any act they carry out in defence of the 17 February Revolution last year. The NTC has also decreed that interrogations by militias, though these very often involve torture, should carry legal weight. Ms Eltahawy says there is "a climate of self-censorship" within the post-Gaddafi government about abuses.
Glenn Greenwald:
Various matters
Peter Bergen's drone propaganda; State Department admission on human rights; unpopularity of NATO's Libya war
(1) Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation think tank and CNN has become one of the most vocal cheerleaders for President Obama’s Terrorism policies, and has also been the recipient of highly lucrative, exclusive access to classified information granted by Obama’s administration. On July 4, Bergen, along with NAF’s Jennifer Rowland, published a CNN column lauding Obama’s escalated drone attacks, claiming they have “become more precise and discriminating” (even while acknowledging that the “strikes may also be fueling terrorism“). The top of the column features a colorful chart, assembled by the NAF, depicting civilians as a tiny portion of the deaths caused by those strikes; it actually claims that for 2012, 153 “militants” (whatever that means) have been killed by drones in Pakistan versus zero civilians.
CNN's Bogus Drone-Deaths Graphic
A column claims that zero innocents have been killed during strikes inside Pakistan this year -- information neither CNN nor anyone else can verify.
Americans ought to know that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism claims to have verified a minimum of three civilian casualties in 2012, that the U.S. government's definition of militants makes its claims unreliable, and that our method of identifying militants almost certainly isn't foolproof. Clive Stafford Smith, who has reported from Pakistan, wrote in The Guardian last month that "just as with Guantánamo Bay, the CIA is paying bounties to those who will identify 'terrorists'. Five thousand dollars is an enormous sum for a Waziri informant, translating to perhaps £250,000 in London terms. The informant has a calculation to make: is it safer to place a GPS tag on the car of a truly dangerous terrorist, or to call down death on a Nobody (with the beginnings of a beard), reporting that he is a militant? Too many 'militants' are just young men with stubble."
Latest US Drone Attack in Pakistan Another Possible War Crime
Triple drone attacks in Pakistan reportedly killed more than twelve people who were suspected of being “militants” or terror suspects. Nine were killed in an initial attack on a “militant compound” in Miranshah in North Waziristan. Three more were killed in a second attack while people were trying to “recover dead bodies.” A third strike killed at least one more, according to the Agence France Presse news agency.
Witnesses to War
“A lot of what we saw wasn’t making it into the press,” Mr. Kamber said. “Some images were blocked by the military or the embed process itself, others by the photographer’s conscience or by a lack of interest by some media organizations.”
[ ... ]
Mr. Kamber decided that someone had to gather all of his fellow photojournalists’ accounts and unpublished images in one place so there would be, in his words, “an accurate history.” So he took on the task himself and started formally recording his colleagues. He has collected 39 of these interviews in a book, “Photojournalists on War.”
The Universe In Four T-Shirts. on DailyKos by jpmassar
Have You Checked Your 'Puter for DNSChanger? on DailyKos by Crashing vor
Explaining Derechos Part II: Structure and "The Beak" on DailyKos by weatherdude
Failed Overseers Prepare to Legislate Away Successful Oversight
Good God these billionaires are twisted by Digby
Billionaire Intrigue, Political Deception and the Fight for the Soul of the Chicago Public Schools on truthout by Jackson Potter
Open Season on Pre-op Transwomen in Sweden on DailyKos by rserven
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