Thousands Rally Ahead of G-20

clipped from online.wsj.com Thousands of people marched through European cities Saturday to demand jobs, economic justice and environmental accountability, kicking off six days of protest and action planned in the run-up to the G-20 summit next week in London. In London, more than 150 groups threw their backing behind the ``Put People First" march. Police said around 35,000 attended the demonstration, snaking their way across the city toward Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. Protest organizers said they wanted leaders from the world's top 20 economies to adopt a more transparent and democratic economic recovery plan. If we can generate fabulous wealth, as we can, then surely we can learn how to distribute that wealth more fairly. If we can unleash a technological revolution then surely we can ensure that everyone on this planet gets the food, the shelter and the health care that they need There's a really good opportunity for governments to get together and invest in a sustainable future

It seems the free enterprise system is working too well for the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ are upset about it. What they’re really upset about is that those capitalist pigs are not sharing their wealth. Why should they? They worked hard for it therefore they are entitled to it, right?

Ah, but the true problem is that these same pigs take unfair advantage of their wealth to skirt tax laws while no one else can. That does present a distinct disadvantage to the rest of us. And who is in control of this system? The rich, of course.

The only way this system is going to change is if compassion towards the ‘have nots’ somehow miraculously takes hold and the rich stop using loopholes built into the system. Not likely to happen. The very idea of sharing wealth with those who did nothing do build it is completely foreign to those in power. This is why this system will never change.

And, as it always has, our protestations will fall on deaf ears once again.

States relent, take stimulus money

Dangle that carrot long enough and it will be taken.

I think it was disingenuous for states to refuse financial assistance citing good reason not to take it and then take it anyway. It undermines any remaining principles state leadership was trying to exhibit against federal influence over state matters.

I also think it is wrong for the federal government to force state policy changes as a condition for receiving so called assistance.

But such is the state of politics in America. The federal government exerts more and more control over states rights and money talks louder than principle.

clipped from money.cnn.com It's not that easy to turn down federal funds. Several governors who initially voiced concerns about expanding state unemployment benefits to qualify for federal stimulus funds have decided to accept the money Some were feeling the heat from jobless constituents, while others took comfort in learning recently from the federal Department of Labor that they could curtail eligibility later on. The benefits expansion is among the most controversial components of the stimulus package, and it comes at a time when millions of people across the nation are losing their jobs. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requires state legislatures to broaden the unemployment guidelines to allow more women, part-timers and low-wage workers to qualify. "This isn't about not being compassionate," said Adam Hasner, House Majority Leader in Florida, where unemployment is at 9.4%. "It's about not making a problem worse."

Parents fight child porn threats against 'sexting' teens

clipped from arstechnica.com As teen flirtation and sexual experimentation enter the digital age, dog-bites-man stories about adolescent exhibitionists being charged as kiddie pornographers may soon seem no more newsworthy than reports of cops breaking up a kegger But one group of Pennsylvania parents is pretty sure their daughters aren't sex offenders—and with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, they're suing to force a zealous county district attorney to back off. In what's becoming a familiar pattern, Tunkhannock School District officials confiscated a student's cell phone late last year, and discovered an array of photographs of local girls in various states of undress—photos that male students had apparently been trading and collecting more avidly than Pokémon cards. Duly horrified, Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick decided he had to protect these young women... by threatening to prosecute them for "sexual abuse of children."

This is going to lead to a more concise definition of pornography as opposed to 'risque' photography.

Is it right to label a thirteen year old a kiddie pornographer based on a photograph in which no sex act is involved?

Would you care more if your own child was involved?

Instead of Fighting Traffic Cameras, Start Driving Safely

clipped from online.wsj.com The village of Schaumburg, Ill., installed a camera at Woodfield Mall last November to film cars that were running red lights, then used the footage to issue citations. Results were astonishing. The town issued $1 million in fines in just three months. But drivers caught by the unforgiving enforcement -- which mainly snared those who didn't come to a full stop before turning right on red -- exploded in anger. Many vowed to stop shopping at the mall unless the camera was turned off. The village stopped monitoring right turns at the intersection in January. Once a rarity, traffic cameras are filming away across the country. And they're not just focusing their sights on red-light runners. The latest technology includes cameras that keep tabs on highways to catch speeders in the act and infrared license-plate readers that nab ticket and tax scofflaws.

People don’t like these cameras because they catch them breaking the law and present enforceable proof of it, and few people like to pay for breaking the law. Instead of fighting these cameras how about we all drive the speed limit and actually stop at red lights. Wow, what a concept. Thinking about safety on the road and not endangering everyone else.

Yes people, safety IS why these cameras are being installed. Because the general population cannot seem to control themselves, tax payer dollars have to be spent on these damn cameras.

The other reason for these cameras is because too many people think it is acceptable to drive their vehicles without paying for the privilege. License fees and property taxes are inevitable if you want to drive. We all have to pay. No one gets to drive for free.

Time to find corporate billions kept offshore

clipped from crooksandliars.com According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly all of America's top 100 corporations maintain subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens. As the GAO notes, there could be reasons other than avoiding the IRS to set up branches in places such as Singapore, Luxembourg and Switzerland, where taxes are light or nonexistent and keeping clients' illicit secrets is considered a matter of national pride. Goldman Sachs Group Countrywide Financial Wachovia Lehman Brothers Citigroup Morgan Stanley When the cost of these shenanigans was last estimated two years ago, the U.S. government's annual loss in revenue due to tax avoidance by major corporations and super-rich individuals was pegged at about $100 billion -- considerably more than a rounding error, even today. But of course that is only a rough assessment, as is the estimate of $12 trillion in untaxed assets hidden around the world. Nobody will know for certain until the books are opened and transparency is established.

Tax evasion is basically theft and can be secondarily considered treason.

The tax system is set up to benefit the general population through maintenance of infrastructure, paying the military, paying our politicians, etc.

American corporations making a profit from doing business in the U.S. and conducting their business through overseas subsidiaries to avoid U.S. tax laws are in effect stealing from the American public.

This leaves the bill for these government supported services to be footed by honest tax payers.

This is also an issue of morality and ethics. Corporations take and use all the benefits of living and working in America but don’t pay for the privilege.

These corporations need to step up and pay their fair share of being allowed to do business in America. Politicians will never force the issue because they are benefiting from these corporations doing business here.

We all need to raise our voices high and boycott those corporations that are stealing from

America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout

clipped from www.truthdig.com In decaying societies, politics become theater The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse. unless we grasp the “societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms” we will be cursed with a more ruthless form of corporate power, one that does away with artifice and the seduction of a consumer society and instead wields power through naked repression.

Moral nihilism. The author of this commentary, Chris Hedges, has been able to put into words the sentiment I have felt about this nation for a very long time.

Our educational system has gone to hell in favor of supplementing corporations and the military, instead of producing thinkers addressing the larger moral questions of meaning and purpose.

We give ourselves too easily to the influence of reality television, mass media, and cultural assumptions.

Our capacity to be affected by human rights issues has been relegated to the occasional financial gift because it makes us feel better, if we bother to give at all.

We turn a blind eye to American corporations involvement with environmental and wildlife destruction as long as we get the latest new product we think we must have.

We subjugate our dignity to the never-ending thirst for more money, things, and power.

Where has our value system gone? What has it been replaced with?

Moral nihilism.

China Takes Aim at Dollar

clipped from online.wsj.com China called for the creation of a new currency to eventually replace the dollar as the world's standard, proposing a sweeping overhaul of global finance that reflects developing nations' growing unhappiness with the U.S. role in the world economy The unusual proposal, made by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan in an essay released Monday in Beijing, is part of China's increasingly assertive approach to shaping the global response to the financial crisis. Mr. Zhou's proposal comes amid preparations for a summit of the world's industrial and developing nations, the Group of 20, in London next week. At past such meetings, developed nations have criticized China's economic and currency policies. This time, China is on the offensive, backed by other emerging economies such as Russia in making clear they want a global economic order less dominated by the U.S. and other wealthy nations.

See previous clip: Obama’s Toxic Advisors

China’s proposal may not affect the dollar in the short term, but introducing this issue now is a means of alerting the world this could become a reality.

From the article: “Central banks around the world hold more U.S. dollars and dollar securities than they do assets denominated in any other individual foreign currency”. So, we are almost at the point of one world currency already.

International leaders are beginning to see an advantage of having one world currency so that fluctuations in one market would not disrupt the rest of the world, as is the current situation.

Moving to a reserve currency that belongs to no individual nation would make it easier for all nations to manage their economies better, because it would give the reserve-currency nations more freedom to shift monetary policy and exchange rates. It could also be the basis for a more equitable way of financing the IMF.

Russia made a similar proposal just this month

Obama’s Toxic Advisors

clipped from www.truthdig.com Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who is independent in spirit as well as party label, has placed a hold on President Obama’s nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Sounds like a minor issue to get worked up about, but the senator is right. Like most Americans, I am eager for Barack Obama to succeed, but I see this appointment as further evidence that the president has entrusted his economic policy to the wrong people. Gensler helped create this financial crisis when he was in the Treasury Department back in the Clinton era Mr. Gensler worked with Senator Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of A.I.G. and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history Congress and the president want to give Wall Street whatever it wants to make the stock market go up

Read this article carefully.

Is Obama so eager to be surrounded with ‘experience’ in his cabinet that he is over looking what that particular experience cost us as a nation, or is there a hidden agenda?

Allow me to speculate: If someone in the 1990’s, or earlier, was to formulate a plan to create a ‘One World Order’, with either America at the head or a committee of international leaders, surely a major stepping stone in achieving this dream would be to control the world’s financial markets.

The best method to take over these markets would be to first crash them to the point that they would need help to become solvent again. A group of nations, say for example the G20, would step in to take over the markets, thereby “saving the world”, and appointing themselves as the de facto leaders in this “One World Order”.

Next step, would be to formulate a one world currency to make it easier to control.

Call me paranoid but too many signs are pointing in this direction.

You could be a terrorist if...

clipped from www.naplesnews.com You're probably a terrorist if you supported former presidential candidates like Ron Paul, Bob Barr, or Chuck Baldwin. The guy with the flip-charts doesn't count. Yet. You're probably a terrorist if you're against the New World Order, the North American Union, and those united numbskulls, the UN. Reading Tom Clancy novels doesn't help your case. You're probably a terrorist if you're against RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification) and universal service programs. You're probably a terrorist if you're for the US Constitution, for property rights, for national sovereignty, and for Christian ideologies. You're probably a terrorist if you stock up on things like water, baby formula, ammo, cigarettes, alcohol, denim jeans, and medicines. And for all you folks rushing out to buy guns and ammo out of fear that the current administration will enact severe gun restrictions, hey, you may have made the list as well.

If you are a puppet-on-a-string assiduously following every law to the letter, enthusiastically nodding in agreement to everything the government tells you, patriotically turning in your neighbors for every infraction of the law (both written and social), then you have nothing to worry about.

Many Americans, Republican and Democrat, have grown tired of the direction in which this country is headed. The once occasional lapse in ethics has become common place, greed and irresponsibility by our financial institutions are being rewarded in the form of ‘bailout’ tax dollars, citizens have to watch what we say and do and how we do it, self-interest has supplanted “doing what is right for this country”, special interest groups are favored over national security and welfare, food safety has been jeopardized in favor of profit.

Civil unrest is brewing and FEMA detention centers are sprouting up across the nation. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/FEMA-Concentration-Camps3sep04.htm

Stimulus? US to by Chines, ending Alabama jobs

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com At a time when the federal government is spending billions of stimulus dollars to stem the tide of U.S. layoffs, should that same government put even more Americans out of work by buying cheaper foreign products? In this case, Chinese condoms. That's the dilemma for the folks at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has distributed an estimated 10 billion U.S.-made AIDS-preventing condoms in poor countries around the world. But not anymore. In a move expected to cost 300 American jobs, the government is switching to cheaper off-shore condoms, including some made in China. The switch comes despite implied assurances over the years that the agency would continue to buy American whenever possible.

The reasons to buy Chinese instead of American included lower prices (2 cents versus more than 5 cents for U.S.-made condoms) and the fact that Congress dropped the “buy American language” in a recent appropriations bill.

Okay, the condoms are a bit cheaper in China, but did anyone ask the Alabama supplier if they negotiate the price to keep the jobs here?

And about that “buy American language”, do we Americans need to be legislated into buying American before we even think that it just might be better for the American economy if we did buy American? Do we really need to be forced to do this?

Hagel Takes on Cheney

clipped from www.rantrave.com Congrats to former GOP Senator Chuck Hagel for taking former Vice President Dick Cheney to task on his comments regarding his very jaded and biased opinions that President Obama is making the nation less safe. As widely reported, Chuck Hagel said this of the Cheney comments.... That’s ridiculous! It has no merit on fact or by any measurement. I mean come on, this guy hasn’t even been in office two months. The mess that the Bush administration left the Obama administration. I’m a Republican…we got America into two wars, we’ve done great damage to our economy, to our force structure, to our standing in the world. For a Vice President who participated in that, who led in that, to come on and say that this new administration has really put America in danger is just folly."

Somebody needs to stand up to this blustering buffoon.

Even some in his own party are tired of the BS Cheney spews.

This business of standing behind a party member regardless of what lies are told needs to end. Our constitution and what is best for the American people should come before either party.

Israeli Army T-Shirts Mock Gaza Killings

clipped from news.sky.com The Israeli army is at the centre of a second controversy over the moral conduct of its soldiers in as many days. The revelations centre on t-shirt designs made for soldiers that make light of shooting pregnant Palestinian mothers and children and include images of dead babies and destroyed mosques. The t-shirts were printed for Israeli soldiers at the end of periods of deployment or training courses and were discovered by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One, printed for a platoon of Israeli snipers depicts an armed Palestinian pregnant women caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, with the disturbing caption in English: "1 shot 2 kills". Another depicts a child carrying a gun also in the centre of a target. "The smaller, the harder," read the words on the t-shirt. According to a soldier interviewed by the newspaper, the message has a double meaning: "It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally and also the target is smaller."

This is truly reprehensible. The sentiment displayed on these shirts serves to perpetuate the animosity and hatred these two nations have for each other. Anyone who condones this type of behavior is undermining any chance to seek a peaceful resolution to their differences.

Having said that, and judging from past behavior between these two, I don’t believe for a minute that either side truly wants to find peace with each other but to so blatantly display and promote the killing of pregnant women and children is beneath contempt for human life. And there in lies a major problem this world needs to deal with.

How to Destroy the Government in Three Easy Steps

clipped from www.truthout.org In eight short years, conservatives have effectively bankrupted many state governments and left the fed in shambles And now citizens have to "make tough decisions" and share the suffering equally across the land (unless of course, you're part of that lucky 1 percent who co-opted the functions of government to serve their own ends ... they'll be cozy with their offshore bank accounts, golden parachutes and permanent tax holidays). Step 1: Blame the Individuals declare that "there's no such thing as society" and focus the entire debate on the faults of individuals Step 2: Cut Taxes     This one move is strategic. It does all the work for you. Step 3: Exploit Disaster     If you've managed to accomplish steps 1 and 2, people will be in a panic. And we all know that panicky people make rash decisions. Now is your chance to push that unpopular agenda through the cracks - disaster capitalism at its best!

Are you a teacher who educates our future citizens? Too bad. You've got to tighten your belt and let that job go.

Manual laborer? Sorry, but that job can earn more money for our shareholders if it's done in Micronesia.

Need a college degree? Prepare for indentured servitude because you'll be working to pay us off for most of your adult life.

Health care? Ha! That's just a Ponzi scheme dreamed up by a bunch of socialists.

I wouldn’t say the blame for our current financial debacle fails squarely on republicans, in truth it belongs to any lawmaker who supplied legal loopholes to allow corporations to make a profit, and corporations who sent jobs overseas to make a profit, anyone who produced sub-standard products to make a profit, anyone who laid off experienced workers to make a profit, and especially politicians who misused our tax dollars in favor of votes and abused the publics trust without regard to our well-being. You are in office to protect and serve US not yourselves

Republicans Whining Because Obama Is Working Around Thie Obstructions

Republicans are howling about the proposal to expand health coverage and tax greenhouse gas emissions without their input, warning that it could irrevocably damage relations with the new president.

"Warning that it could irrevocably damage relations with the new president." Right, those would be the relations where Obama bent over backwards, even offered the GOP 3 cabinet posts, and in return 3 of them - a whopping 3 - voted for the stimulus package. What "relations" are the Republicans talking about?

clipped from www.americablog.com The Republican whining about Obama and bipartisanship is getting tiresome. To work, bipartisanship has to be a two-way street. But, the Republicans have a roadblock on their side of the street -- and they bitch every time Obama tries to get around their obstructions: Obama went to the White House with a vow to change the way things are done. The Republicans are playing the same games. Obama vowed accomplishments for the American people. The Republicans on Capitol Hill are doing every thing they can to stop him. So, when Obama basically, says "Fine, I'll do it without you," the Republicans whine and run to the media. It's pathetic and it's gotten really old already. Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the GOP, has said repeatedly he wants Obama to fail. Most of the GOPers on the Hill are lemmings who follow (and fear) Rush That's what Obama is up against. Republicans want to kill Obama's agenda. It's good that the White House has figured that out

New Deal for Blackwater

clipped from www.commondreams.org Days after the Baghdad government decided it no longer wanted the company then known as Blackwater in Iraq, the State Department signed a $22.2 million deal in February to keep the embattled contractor working there through most of the summer, contract records show. The decision keeps Blackwater - since renamed Xe - in Iraq months longer than anyone has suggested publicly, while raising questions about why the U.S. would pay a contractor for work in Iraq if it may not be able to operate there legally. The State Department has been under pressure from Blackwater critics, including several in Congress, not to renew the company's contracts in Iraq. Much of the concern stems from a 2007 incident that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead and six former Blackwater guards facing manslaughter charges. One of the guards pleaded guilty, but the company was accused of no wrongdoing in the incident.

What a clever plan. The public doesn't want Blackwater working in Iraq so they changed their name.

Shhhh. No one will ever know.

US to Defoliate Rio Grande River Bank

clipped from www.allvoices.com In a major setback to the environment last night, the Laredo TX city council voted to allow the Border Patrol to aerially spray the US-Mexico border with the toxic herbicide Imazapyr, a substance which begins to kill all vegetation immediately upon application. Many residents at the meeting opposed this move, citing the environmental impact and potential health side effects, as well as the likelihood that the chemical could contaminate the water supply for Nuevo Laredo, their Mexican sister-city. The accompanying photo (above) shows the effects of an aerial spray conducted six months prior on a test site near Laredo. Federal officials considered the results "successful" in efforts to eradicate the invasive plant carrizo; however, the site now slated for defoliation contains 1000 living species, including four endangered species. This photo was taken on the Zachary Ranch in March 2008 by Dr. Jim Earhart of the Rio Grande International Study Center.

Environmentalist are up in arms over this plan but fail to take into consideration the fact that the carrizo cane is not native to this area and is adversely affecting farming on both sides of the river. It should be eradicated.

But, helping farmers is not the reason Homeland Security wants to destroy this desert ecosystem. The carrizo cane offers a cover for illegal immigrants trying to cross the border. And since we all know building a wall along the border is impossible the American government has decided to treat the carrizo cane as a terrorist threat, and they seek to eradicate it with herbicides.

The unfortunate side effect is it will poison the water table and act as neurotoxins that affect human central nervous system. But, hey, the Border Patrol figures if they can wipe out a few illegals along the way well it just makes their job easier.

Just another short-sighted plan to show action without considering long-term disastrous side-effects. Our tax dollars at work!

President's plan to charge wounded veterans for treatment

clipped from www.infowars.com The leader of the nation’s largest veterans organization says he is “deeply disappointed and concerned” after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it in testimony to both House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees The American Legion believes that the reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate that VA treat service-connected injuries and disabilities given that the United States government sends members of the armed forces into harm’s way private insurance premiums would be elevated to cover service-connected disabled veterans and their families

This plan to make the VA profitable is tapping the wrong group of people. Instead of charging veterans to pay for their medical care let's redirect money from self-serving special interest groups and frivolous earmarks to cover VA expenses. All of this money comes from one source: our tax dollars. I for one would much rather see my money go towards helping victims of governments’ obsession with war than to protect turtles during mating season.

Priorities have gotten so tweaked out of proportion with what is considered important in this country that there is more value placed on ‘things’ than on people.

Our veterans are the single most important 'special interest' group America has. Let’s not compound their injuries by making them pay for the wounds suffered because this country feels the need to flex its military muscle.

Hypocrisy and the Bailout Bill

clipped from politicalcrises.com Senator McCain’s lists of the top 10 biggest jokes in regards to pork in the bailout bill. $400,000 for copper wire theft prevention efforts $143,000 for Nevada Humanities to develop and expand an online encyclopedia $332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas $100,000 for the regional robotics training center in Union, SC $200,000 “tattoo removal violence outreach program to could help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past” Of the $7.7 billion in earmark spending that led Indiana Senator Evan Bayh to argue that the bill was inappropriate, $2.7 million went to Indiana Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell argued that there was simply too much spending in the bill - but that didn’t stop him from working to bring “home” $51 million in earmarks for his state. Republican Senator Jame Inhofe of Oklahoma who opposed the legislation because of its cost had more than 30 earmarks included - adding up to $53 million.

Aren't Republicans supposed to be the fiscal responsible ones?

I wonder if politicians ask for this money with a straight face. There must be a clause in these requests that says any excess money goes to the general fund.

Earmarks for “the design and construction of a school sidewalk”, “development of an online encyclopedia”, “tattoo removal”?!? This is blatant mis appropriation of funds.

The earmark system itself is not the problem. If earmarks are used to put citizens to work and to generate an income source for the benefit of the general population then I’m all for it.

What we need is a method of prioritizing earmarks so that frivolous projects don’t get funded. And the system needs to be manned and monitored by civilians immune to the reach of politicians.

An alternative solution would be to not tax us so much so there wouldn’t be all this excess money to support tattoo removal.