However, one thing that didn’t get talked about was why they made so much money.

Wells Fargo CFO Howard Atkins discusses the banks $3 billion reported first quarter 2009 earnings. Atkins hypes the impact of mortgages to the bottom line, due to low interest rates and foreclosure selling no doubt, but shockingly admits at the 7:45 mark that with the writedowns that would have been required by Mark to Market the bank actually lost money on the quarter.

To put it another way, Wells Fargo made money because the government allowed them to play “let’s pretend your assets are worth something”.

The reason why the government back-tracked on requiring banks to price their assets to market value was the premise that those assets are actually worth more than the market says they are. In other words, the banks are smarter than the investors.
That’s a pretty shaky premise to believe. It requires us to accept the idea that those trillions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities are actually worth something close to face value. For this premise to be true you have to believe that the housing market is about to bounce back. It has to bounce back to historic highs in the midst of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Does anyone really think that is going to happen?

“I refer to the American housing market as “the big slum.” A slum is where the market value has fallen below the replacement value. It doesn’t make sense to fix anything. You don’t fix it, you just let it go to hell. There’s no way to get your money back.”
– Eric Janszen

One person who has been consistently correct about the housing implosion, Mr. Mortgage, believes otherwise.

Are you ready to see the future? Ten’s of thousands of foreclosures are only 1-5 months away from hitting that will take total foreclosure counts back to all-time highs….
Foreclosure start (NOD) and Trustee Sale (NTS) notices are going out at levels not seen since mid 2008. Once an NTS goes out, the property is taken to the courthouse and auctioned within 21-45 days.

On September 2008, just as the subprime implosion was reaching its peak, the California legislature passed SB 1137. This law put a 90 day moratoria on many foreclosures in the state. That law has now expired. The law did nothing but buy time.

The numbers are hard to ignore. Credit Suisse says $1 Trillion in Alt-A and Option ARM mortgages will be resetting in the next 30 months. The subprime bust is mostly over, but the prime bust is only now starting.

If these resets and the resulting increased monthly payments send defaults soaring, and given other factors such as job losses and falling home prices there is every indication they will, the bank projects that foreclosures over the next four years could reach nine million or 18 percent of all mortgages.

An extremely large percentage of these Alt-A mortgages are commercial mortgages. Small businesses hold about 3.7 million of these mortgages and nearly 1.3 million of them are already delinquent.

Another factor weighing on the real estate market is the enormous “phantom supply” of bank owned homes.

Some of the top U.S. lenders own as many as 700,000 foreclosed homes they have yet to offer for sale, said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for marketing for RealtyTrac.

The banks may be waiting to see how U.S. government plans develop before selling the properties, Sharga said.

These homes aren’t even on the market and thus aren’t counted against homes for sale numbers. The real reason why the banks haven’t put these homes on the auction block is a debatable. But if I was to guess I would say that the reason is because once these homes are sold the mortgages behind them have to be marked-to-market.
If the banks were to do that to 700,000 mortgages you would suddenly see a bunch of banks become insolvent.

Thus you see a stand-off. The banks pretend that the real estate they own is worth something, and the government pretends that the banks are solvent. It’s the same situation that played out in Japan back in the 1990′s.

The Census released a report—migration in the US is off like 87 percent. It’s not like there’s some booming state someplace. Which is what’s unusual about this downturn compared to every other since World War II.

Also, this is the only downturn where there are fewer cars on the road. There’s all sorts of other obvious indicators that this is not just a recession.

What’s not reported is every recession was induced on purpose by the Fed, in order to cool down the economy. This recession was not created by the Fed. The implications of that are lost of a lot of people: They are absolutely not in control.
– Eric Janszen

You see, the Kansas legislature has bowed to pressure and passed a law that is intended to prevent dairy farmers who do not use growth hormones in their cows from letting the public have this information. In recent years the public has clearly voted against milk produced using Posilac / rBST / rBGH.

The Kansas legislature, in a tight vote, passed a law that requires not just a disclaimer that the FDA has found no difference between milk produced with or without rBST, but – and far more important – those who want to give the public this information must prove they do not use rBST. Proving a negative is always difficult – and in this case expensive enough – that many milk producers will decide the label is just not worth the time and money.

A nice gift to the producers of rBST who have been finding their sales plummeting as the public learns more.

So now the ball is in Gov. Sebelius court.

How does it look for the presumptive Secretary of Health and Human services to keep the public from knowing about what they ingest? About keeping information people want to have so they can take some control over their and their families’ health?

Many groups are signing on to a letter urging Gov. Sebelius to veto the legislation. The public is not being asked to sign on to this letter. Rather, Kansans who care about this issue are asked to contact Gov. Sebelius directly via letter or web email (no direct email, must go through http://www.governor.ks.gov/comments/comment.htm).

Here is the group letter for more information. The letter is signed by the following groups located in and outside Kansas.

Kansas

Leslie Siebert,
Catalpa Grove Gardens, Pretty Prairie

Jeanie Wells, General Manager
Community Mercantile Consumer Coop, Lawrence

Henry Creek Four Mill, Peabody

Tim Iwig
Iwig Family Dairy, Tecumseh

Janzen Family Farms, Newton

Kansas City Food Circle

Steve and Betty Augustine
Kayala Emu Estates, Hesston

Daryl. Larson
Larson Acres, McPherson Co.

Little Red Hen Bakery, Newton

Norm’s Flour, Elbing

Craig Volland
Sierra Club, Kansas Chapter

Spring Creek Ranch, Willowdale

Wichitaw Food Coop, Wichitaw

Outside Kansas

Robyn O’Brien, Founder
AllergyKids

Barbara A. Brenner, Executive Director
Breast Cancer Action

Mark Kastel
The Cornucopia Institute

Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director
Organic Consumers Association

Charles Margulis
Center for Environmental Health

Heather Whitehead, Director True Food Network
Center for Food Safety

John Stauber, Executive Director
Center for Media and Democracy

John Kinsman, President
Family Farm Defenders

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director
Food and Water Watch

Miyun Park, Vice President, Farm Animal Welfare
The Humane Society of the United States

Jeffrey Smith, Executive Director
Institute for Responsible Technology

Katherine Ozer, Executive Director
National Family Farm Coalition

Rick North, Project Director, Campaign for Safe Food
Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

Mark Lipson, Senior Policy Analyst
Organic Farming Research Foundation

Laurel Hopwood, Genetic Engineering Action Team
Sierra Club

Nancy Hirschberg, VP Natural Resources
Stonyfield Farm, Inc.

Here is the letter on the same subject from Consumers Union to Governor Sebelius:

On April 8, 2009 Consumers Union sent a similar letter to Governor Sebelius, see below:

April 8, 2009

Governor Kathleen Sebelius
Office of the Governor
Capitol, 300 SW 10th Ave., Ste. 212S
Topeka, KS 66612-1590

Dear Governor Sebelius,

Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, is writing to ask you to veto HB 2121 that restricts labels on dairy products from cows not treated with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH), also called recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST). This law would require a disclaimer (“The FDA has determined that no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbGH-supplemented and non-rbGH-supplemented cows”) in similar font size and on the same panel as where a label states “from cows not treated with rbGH.”

We feel that HB 2121 puts unnecessary obstacles in the way of consumers getting the information they want, restricts free speech rights of dairies and processors, and interferes with the smooth functioning of free markets.

RbGH (or rbST) is an animal drug originally manufactured by Monsanto (and now made by Elanco) that some farmers inject into dairy cows to increase milk production. The latest USDA survey in 2007 estimated that only 15.2% of farmers in the US used rbGH(1) . Since that survey, dozens of processors and retailers, both small and large, have gone rbGH-free, so it’s estimated that far fewer are using it now. Most Kansan farmers contract with Dairy Farmers of America, which is rbGH-free.

We object to a section in this bill, which would make it more difficult for farmers to inform consumers that they are not using this hormone on their cows and require language that may mislead the consumer.

There are several reasons why we particularly oppose the section which requires the disclaimer in a similar font, style, case, size, color and location as the main label claim (e.g. “this milk is from cows not supplemented with rbST”).

First and foremost, we urge you not to require the disclaimer, which was developed in 1994, because there is significant evidence it is not accurate. There are, in fact, significant differences between milk from cows treated with rbGH and from cows not treated, some of which have emerged in the last decade as the science has developed. FDA’s own publications have demonstrated that milk from cows treated with rbGH show statistically significant increases of the hormone insulin-like growth factor 1(2) (IGF-1) (which more recently has been linked to breast(3) , colorectal (4), and prostate(5) cancer, although whether the increased IGF-1 levels due to rbGH in milk would affect health has not been established).

The milk of treated cows also shows increases in average somatic cell counts (indicative of mastitis infections in cows and an indication of the quality of the milk)(6). The additional antibiotic required to treat these infections can’t help but contribute to the overall problem of antibiotic resistance in humans, a major and increasingly critical national health problem.

The American Nurses Association, Center For Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, National Family Farm Coalition, Humane Society of the U.S. and many other organizations have all officially opposed the use of rbGH. Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports), has said that FDA should suspend approval of rbGH until new evidence (since approval in 1994) related to human safety can be evaluated. Codex Alimentarius, the U.N.’s main food safety body, has twice concluded there was no consensus that rbGH was safe for human consumption, and most of the industrialized nations of the world have not approved its use.

Health Care Without Harm, a coalition of over 460 organizations in 53 nations promoting safe and healthy practices in hospitals, adopted an official position statement in 2006 opposing the use of rbGH based on human and animal health concerns (7). To date, over 160 hospitals all over the country have pledged to discontinue serving rbGH dairy products. The past president of the American Medical Association concurred, asking AMA members not to serve rbGH milk in hospitals(8).

Any state that requires a specific statement on a label has an obligation to ensure that statement is true. It is obvious from a significant body of science and the positions of numerous respected organizations that there are serious questions whether this statement is true. With this level of uncertainty, it is simply not right for Kansas to require it and give Kansans the false impression that there is a consensus that milk from rbGH-treated cows is not “significantly different” from milk from untreated cows.

Second, the disclaimer is not necessary as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has explicitly said that it is not required. In a July 27, 1994 letter to the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets, FDA stated “the bottom line is that a contextual statement is not required, that in many instances a statement like “from cows not treated with rbST” would not be misleading, and in no instance is the specific statement “No significant difference . . .” required by FDA.” (9)

Third, we know of no federal agency that requires such a disclaimer to be in a similar font, style, case, size and location as the main label claim, nor is their any such requirement in 49 out of 50 states. This constitutes undue interference with the exercise of free markets and is not necessary to inform the consumer. To have such a detailed requirement will interfere with interstate commerce since adjoining states may have different requirements. Thus, a label that is legal in Missouri could be illegal in Kansas and could mean that that product would not be marketed in Kansas. Also, companies that sell products nationally, such as Ben & Jerry’s ice cream or Tillamook cheese, would either have to not market products in Kansas or change labels on all their products to comply with the regulation.(10) A likely scenario is that, faced with a myriad of state labeling regulations, national companies would stop any kind of rBGH-free labeling at all. This would deprive them of a very valuable marketing tool, since more and more consumers are looking for these labels. The net effect is that consumers would know less about what’s in their food at the same time they are expressing a desire to know more.

HR 2121 will mandate misleading label language and negatively impact Kansan consumers’ ability to make informed decisions about the dairy products they buy. It interferes with farmers and dairies’ rights to free speech. In this era of increased concern about what’s in our food and how it is produced, Kansas should be making more information available, not less.

Thank you for your consideration of this serious issue, and we urge a veto of HB 2121.

Yours,

Michael Hansen
Senior Scientist
Consumers Union
________________________________

(1) United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). 2007. Pg. 79 in Dairy
2007 Part 1: Reference of Dairy Cattle Health and Management Practices in the
United States, 2007. Veterinary Services, Animal Plant Health Inspection
Service, USDA. October 2007
(2) Freedom of Information Summary POSILAC (sterile sometribove zinc suspension), November 5, 1993 At: http://www.fda.gov/cvm/4390.htm#bst6j
(3) Hankinson, S.E., Willett, W.C., Colditz, G.A.. Hunter, D.J., Michaud, D.S., Deroo, B., Rosner, B. Speizer, F.E. and M. Pollack. 1998. Circulating concentrations of insulin-like growth factor-1 and risk of breast cancer. Lancet, 351(9113): 1393-1396.
(4) Giovannucci, E., Pollack, M.N., Platz, E.A., Willett, W.C., Stampfer, M.J., Majeed, N., Colditz, G.A., Speizer, F.E. and S.E. Hankinson. 2000. A prospective study of plasma insulin-like growth factor-1 and binding protein-3 and risk of colorectal neoplasia in women. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 9: 345-349.
(5) Chan, J.M., Stampfer, M.J., Giovannucci, E., Gann, P.H., Ma, J., Wilkinson, P., Hennekens, C.H. and M. Pollack. 1998a. Plasma insulin-like growth factor-I and prostate cancer risk: a prospective study. Science, 279: 563-566.
(6) Millstone, E, Brunner, E and I White. 1994. Plagiarism or protecting public health? Nature, 371: 647-648
(7) http://www.noharm.org/details.cfm?ID=1104&type=document
(8) Davis, R. 2008. Making Health Care Greener, AMA eVoice, April 24, 2008
(9) Letter dated July 27, 1994 from Jerold Mande, Executive Assistant to the Commissioner of FDA, to Harold Rudnick, Director, Division of Milk Control, New York Department of Agriculture and Markets
(10) International Dairy Foods Association Files Suit to Stop Ohio’s Labeling Law. At: http://www.rffretailer.com/CDA/Articles/Industry_News/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000370285

Link – scroll down

Incidentally, and before getting into its projects, the O’Neill Institute has announcement of jobs and fellowships. Something to do while waiting out the economic storm . . . and to further health care.

Its projects include:

For select high-priority issues, the O’Neill Institute is organizing reflective problem-solving initiatives through which the Institute seeks to bridge the gap between key policy makers in the public and private sectors and civil society and the intellectual talent and knowledge that resides in academia.

While each of these initiatives will be somewhat unique, the O’Neill Institute’s ambition is to organize the best thinking and research on particular subjects and craft timely recommendations which are usable for key decision-makers.

Global Health Law
* Global Tobacco Control Litigation
* World Health Organization Task Force on Ethics and Tuberculosis
* Collaboration with the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic
* World Health Organization-O’Neill Institute Health and Human Rights Database

Disease Prevention and Health Outcomes
* Personalized Medicine
* Global Health Governance
* District of Columbia Healthcare Facilities Emergency Care Coalition
* Academic Centers of Public Health Preparedness Program
* Expert Meeting on Privacy and Confidentiality in Syndromic Surveillance

Health Regulation and Governance
* Modernizing and Rationalizing Food Safety Regulations

Health Financing and Organization
* No current projects. See archive of past projects.

Federal and State Health Coverage
* Legal Solutions in Health Reform

U.S. Public Health Law
* Assessing the Impact of Federal and State Law on Public Health Preparedness

Disadvantaged Populations and Communities
* No current projects. See archive of past projects.

O’Neill Institute Courses
* National and Global Health Law: An O’Neill Institute Colloquium
* Global Health Law: An Intensive, Problem-Based Exploration

The center also has links to a wide range of health resources here and links publications here.

And on a related note, reports at this site related to Massachusetts healthcare may interest you.

Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy’s annual report, Employers Who Had Fifty or More Employees Using MassHealth, Commonwealth Care, or the Uncompensated Care Pool/Health Safety Net in State FY2008.

This was a strike that provided and still provides a window into who we were as a people and what we value. It still does. Twenty years after the strike began is time to re-examine the portrait of us as a people.

Today, coal is once again in the news, and controversial. Today’s controversy focuses only on the environmental impact of burning and mining coal. It largely ignores the danger and the impact on the workers who extract that coal.

But the conditions under with US miners have worked and lived have been among the worst in this country. In the last couple years we have again seen death in the mines as a result of the neglect of the Bush Administration and its gutting of the agency charged with protecting miners. link

And occasionally the workers decide it is time to improve their conditions.

On April 5, 1989 the United Mine Workers (UMW) called a strike against the Pittston Coal Group for unfair labor practices. Miners had worked 14 months without a contract before the UMW called the strike. Among the practices cited by UMW were the discontinuing of medical benefits for pensioners, widows, and the disabled; refusal to contribute to a benefit trust established in 1950 for miners who retired before 1974; and refusing to bargain in good faith. Miners in Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia struck against Pittston. The miners and their families engaged in a civil disobedience campaign against the company. The strike led to violence between strikers and company representatives; state troopers were called out to arrest striking miners. The strike ended on February 20, 1990 when miners voted to ratify a contract with Pittston.

The 1989-1990 Pittston strike was an event full of irony.

US news coverage was almost uniformly negative about the Pittston strikers, while, at the same time, they were praising a strike by Russian coal miners that was in many respects indistinguishable. Both strikes saw harsh police repression. The only explanation for the difference was that the Russian strikers were portrayed as fighting for freedom and fair treatment, while the US miners, who were seeking similar improvements in working and living conditions, were portrayed as violent law breakers.

Another irony was the role that law enforcers played – or refused to play – in suppressing the strikers.

Some prosecutors and judges basically refused to participate in suppressing the strike; other judges actively and enthusiastically punished the strikers. What political factors may have influenced these decisions, and to what extent were the findings of contempt completely discretionary?

. . . The US Supreme Court’s ruling in BAGWELL mandating that the question of quelling union resistance be appropriately handled through criminal rather than civil contempt is a major protection for strikers. Cynics might note that well-heeled corporations can always hire legal talent to frame strikers’ acts as violent and unlawful. Still, forcing such cases to be heard by juries both insulates strikers from neoliberal judges’ free exercise of discretion and opens up space for the radical identification of the jury with workers and their underlying conceptions of justice and fair contract.

link

Even though conditions in the mines were horrific, the region was mired in such poverty that Pittston was easily able to hire strikebreakers.

In April 1989, 1,700 miners went on strike, in February 1995 only 470 of those worked for Pittston. The Pittston corporation continues mining coal. The “replacement workers” whose voices and experiences are represented in the film bring us to question the justice of a system in which a worker earning five dollars an hour could not make enough money on which to live and in order to feed his family was convinced to take a striker’s job. By expanding ideas about what justice is, the film shakes loose the regional stereotypes and comfortable class complacency in which we often live. The ambiguity of the strike’s results and the meagerness of social justice to which it testifies implicate us all . In Appalachia, in the South, in workplaces everywhere, there is still dark trouble, still deep suffering, still “plenty of law but little justice.”

Pittston refused to bargain about the issues that concerned the coal miners, actions that frustrated the miners and pushed them to take stronger action.

Ultimately, some strikers convinced themselves that lawbreaking in the form of damaging vehicles with rocks and tire puncturing devices, blocking roads, and threatening replacement workers and other Pittston employees was not only justified but was the only way to win the struggle. While the UMWA distanced itself from these acts, and many strikers claimed that reports were exaggerated or outright fabricated, the legal system saw this phase as utter defiance of the orderly operation of society. Strikers were held in contempt of court and millions of dollars of fines were imposed against individuals and the UMWA, which was held responsible for these acts. Brisbin sees this as almost an inevitable dynamic, given the law’s coercive operation on only one side of the dispute. Pittston could not be pressured legally to bargain or to cease functioning with replacement workers and thus was difficult to move. Individual strikers could break the law often without being punished and saw lawbreaking as a way to increase the costs for Pittston to an unsustainable level. These postures, however, made agreement on ending the strike almost impossible to reach.

“Justice in the Coalfields” tells the story from the miners’ perspective.

Lewis’ [film, Justice in the Coalfields] draws in sharp relief the conflict in the American consciousness between middle class individualism and values of collectivity. With extended excerpts from interviews with Martin Fox, director of public affairs of the National Right To Work Committee, and Bradley McKenzie, a local miner and organizer of the student resistance during the strike, Justice lays bare the economic and political interests that are at the heart of the rhetoric of economic individualism. Fox describes strikers’ activities as “goon behavior,” and belies the Right To Work Committee’s hidden agenda by refusing to “see workers in the plural, only in the singular.” The Fox excerpts clearly show the deep interconnection between right-to-work laws, an ideology of individualism, and the self-interests of multinational corporations. Against Fox’s politics, a youthful looking McKenzie indicts not just the policies of the Pittston Company, but the ideologies, injustices, greed, and inconsistencies of an entire global economic system. McKenzie gives voice to a resilient, placed collectivity: “You stick up for me, I’ll stick up for you, . . . we have the right to fight, . . . the community has rights …” In Justice in the Coalfields, Bradley McKenzie becomes an organic intellectual who enables us to see ourselves and society in new ways, making possible new understandings of collectivity and new struggles for justice.

Though largely forgotten now, women played a key role in supporting the coal miners.

The Daughters of Mother Jones were initially involved in the strike because of their husbands. They went into action immediately, forming an informational picket line during the 14-month period before the strike that the miners worked without contract. Had it not been for the efforts of the Daughters, an early picket line would not have been possible as the men were still working.

The story of the Pittston strike is complex, too complex to summarize here, but it is certainly time to remember the strike and what it shows us about Americans and work.

Justice in the Coalfields reminds us of the complicated events and how the forces that led to the strike and increased its length and the level of struggle continue today.

I’m old enough to clearly remember their lies. Their promise to us was that we would “think” while others would “sweat”.

It sounded too good to be true, and like anything that sounds too good to be true, it was a lie.

The pro-globalization, pro-free trade crowd was very clear. If we lowered our trade barriers to cheap foreign imports, while we retrained our workforce, other nations would do the hard, manual work of producing goods while we would do the do the mental stuff of high-tech goods and services.

It was an appeal to our egos. They tried to manipulate us with false pride, and it worked to some extent.

What was sowed was hubris. We are now reaping that false promise.

With enough abandoned lots to fill the city of San Francisco, Motown is 138 square miles divided between expanses of decay and emptiness and tracts of still-functioning communities and commercial areas. Close to six barren acres of an estimated 17,000 have already been turned into 500 “mini- farms,” demonstrating the lengths to which planners will go to make land productive.

The city, like the automakers, has to shrink to match what’s left, said June Thomas, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“The issue is how,” she said. “There’s no vision.”

“People are moving out of the city, trying to find work,” said David Martin of Wayne State University’s Urban Safety Program. Those who stay “can’t afford to move out.”

There is no example more poetic of a failed policy than a major city turning back into farmland. America is returning to the one thing that can’t be exported by the globalists at a profit – dirt.

We were supposed to keep the “thinking” jobs, and the American workers did their part. All major advances in computers were pioneered by American workers.

But it turned out that “thinking” jobs were exportable too. Our computers are now made overseas, as are our call centers. It didn’t matter what our thinking could invent. The only thing that mattered was that the work could be done cheaper overseas.

The hollowing out of our industrial base is so complete that once large, vibrant cities like Flint are literally looking at abandoning whole sections of the city.

Property abandonment is getting so bad in Flint that some in government are talking about an extreme measure that was once unthinkable — shutting down portions of the city, officially abandoning them and cutting off police and fire service.
…
[Mayor] Brown said that as more people abandon homes, eating away at the city’s tax base and creating more blight, the city might need to examine “shutting down quadrants of the city where we (wouldn’t) provide services.”

He did not define what that could mean — bulldozing abandoned areas, simply leaving the vacant homes to rot or some other idea entirely.

Abandoned cities never looked like progress to me. Yet that appears to be America’s future, not just Michigan’s. It’s true in Youngstown, Ohio, as well.

Under the initiative, dubbed Plan 2010, city officials are also monitoring thinly-populated blocks. When only one or two occupied homes remain, the city offers incentives – up to $50,000 in grants – for those home owners to move, so that the entire area can be razed. The city will save by cutting back on services like garbage pick-ups and street lighting in deserted areas.
…
“Abandoned houses here are like rainfall in the spring,” said Mayor Jay Williams, “That has gone on for decades.”

When the good paying factory jobs left the local tax base was gutted. Inevitably that meant that the money for the local school was gutted as well. Even if their lies were true, and all we needed was to just train our kids for the “thinking” jobs, how was that going to happen when our schools were falling apart?

The free-market fundamentalist crowd told us that globalization was inevitable, there was no stopping it. If that was true then why did we need to pass NAFTA and CAFTA and China’s MFN status? Why did globalization have to be helped along if nothing was going to stop it anyway?

Was it just another lie?

The fact that the gutting of our industrial base happened right around the time of massive deregulation and free trade agreements point to “yes”.

The theory of the pro-globalization, pro-free trade crowd was that the people in these towns would migrate into jobs in new industries. Those industries never came.

So the hardworking people that lived in these cities left for new cities in the sunbelt, where everything was supposed to be better…except that it wasn’t.

Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes.

Estimates predict that by 2025 the nation will suffer a surplus of 22 million large-lot, suburban homes. Instead of the sunbelt poor taking over the centers of our cities, they will be pushed to the fringes by economics, out of sight and out of mind.

If that sounds vaguely familiar to you, it should. Just look at the cities where our jobs went. Anyone familiar with Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta and other cities like it will recognize that the wealthy live near the city centers while the slums of the working poor are on the edges.

We have a lot more in common with those third-world countries than just the structure of our cities. From a non-American perspective, our political system looks very third-world.

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again).
…
But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

The center of free-market fundamentalism, the leading advocate of deregulation, free-trade agreements, and the exporting of good-paying jobs, has always been Wall Street.

Make no mistake, when you send your hard-earned money to your 401k you are also sending money to the same people that want to export your job. You are empowering the people who most threaten your job security and financial well-being.

These people on Wall Street didn’t just create the current economic crisis, they also bought your government. These banksters aren’t just an enemy of your economic way of life, they are also an enemy of your democracy.

The best way to protect everything you hold dear, the most patriotic act you can make for your country, is to stop contributing to your 401k and IRA. If you really do love your country you would move your life savings into a local credit union or regional bank. You would take the money out of the stock market and away from the oligarchs that have done so much damage to our nation.

In order to deal with this persistent problem, DOD, State, and USAID entered into a memorandum of understanding in July 2008 to track contractor information. The program is called the Synchronized Pre-Deployment and Operational Tracker database (SPOT) and is intended to track required information on contractors.

Here are GAO’s findings on how they see SPOT is doing.

Given DOD, State, and USAID’s extensive reliance on contractors to support and carry out their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the need for accurate and complete information on contracts and contractor personnel to inform decisions and oversee contractors is critical. We have reported extensively on the management and oversight challenges related to the use of contractors in support of contingency operations and the need for decision makers to have accurate, complete, and timely information as a starting point for addressing those challenges. Although much of our prior work has focused on DOD, the lessons learned can be applied to other agencies relying on contractors to help carry out their missions. The agencies’ lack of complete and accurate information on contractors supporting contingency operations inhibits officials and commanders from developing a complete picture of the extent to which they rely on contractors, the tasks contractors are performing, and the government’s spending on contractors. These limitations may inhibit planning, increase costs, and introduce unnecessary risk, as illustrated in the following examples:

• Limited visibility over contractors obscures the extent to which agencies rely on contractors to support operations and help carry out missions. In our 2006 review of DOD contractors supporting deployed forces, we reported that a battalion commander in Iraq was unable to determine the number of contractor-provided interpreters available to support his unit. Such a lack of visibility can create challenges for planning and carrying out missions. Further, knowledge of who is on their installation, including contractor personnel, helps commanders make informed decisions regarding force protection and account for all individuals in the event of hostile action.

• A lack of accurate financial information on contracts impedes agencies’ ability to create realistic budgets. As we reported in July 2005, despite the significant role played by private security providers in enabling Iraqi reconstruction efforts, neither State, DOD, nor USAID had complete data on the costs associated with using private security providers. As a result, agency officials acknowledged that security costs had diverted planned reconstruction resources and led to a reduction in scope or cancellation of certain reconstruction projects, including a USAID power generation-related contract in which the agency cut $15 million from two projects to cover security costs at another.

• Lack of insight into the contract services being performed increases the risk of paying for duplicative services. In the Balkans, where billions of dollars were spent for contractor support, we found in 2002 that DOD did not have an overview of all contracts awarded in support operations. Until an overview of all contractor activity was obtained, no one in DOD knew what the contractors had been contracted to do and whether there was duplication of effort among the contracts that had been awarded.

• Costs can increase due to a lack of visibility over where contractors are deployed and what government support they are entitled to. In our December 2006 review of DOD’s use of contractors in Iraq, an Army official estimated that about $43 million was lost each year to free meals provided to contractor employees at deployed locations who also received a per diem food allowance.

And so it goes.

See SPOT run! Run SPOT Run! Or don’t.

But reproductive rights advocates aren’t cheering Roughrider State lawmakers just yet.

Senators voted 29-16, without debate, to kill the anti-abortion bill which passed the North Dakota House Feb. 17.

Opponents counter that contraception, in-vitro fertilization and stem-cell research would be threatened, and miscarriages could be prosecuted if legal recognition of fertilized eggs were upheld.

The controversial bill was backed by Personhood USA, which dubs itself “missionaries to the preborn.” The duo behind the nascent national movement to push due-process rights for fertilized eggs got their start carpetbagging in Colorado on the Amendment 48 campaign.

Keith Mason, from Wichita, Kan., and Cal Zastrow of Kawkawlin, Mich., have turned anti-abortion activism into a personal cottage industry — providing one more example of how Colorado’s broken ballot system has become an incubator for ideologically-driven political causes.

Though the measure failed miserably by a 3-to-1 margin, the group is taking its lessons learned on the road. Thus far, Personhood USA has been thwarted in Montana and now North Dakota, which has been ground zero for anti-abortion activism.

Meanwhile, the state lawmakers in Bismark approved two anti-abortion bills — that also attempt to advance the personification of fetuses — to send to Republican Gov. John Hoeven that are quite likely to be challenged in court, each for their own stark Fourth Amendment violation against unreasonable search and seizures, notwithstanding the thorny ethical dilemma.

One proposed law requires abortion clinics to offer a fetal ultrasound to women considering abortion. The second requires health care providers to tell women seeking an abortion that terminating her pregnancy would end a human life.

Barack Obama’s plan to name yet another Goldman Sachs alum to his economic team is proving too much for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sanders put a hold on the nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, effectively stopping the nomination process in its tracks. Sanders says Gensler, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and then joined the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, played too big a role in deregulating derivatives in the 90s’ to be trusted to reregulate the market now.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), however, has told ANP that he plans “move forward” with Gensler’s nomination despite Sanders’ hold. To Christopher Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation Magazine, the Majority Leader’s defense of Gensler and Goldman is a disturbing indication that it may be business as usual on the Hill when it comes to meaningful regulation on Wall Street.

For several months, the media has been pushing the fairy tale that the United States moved beyond racism with the election of President Obama. As untrue as that is, there are people who started acting on their post-racial fantasies years ago, eight years in fact, as the Bush Administration used that excuse to essentially stop enforcing the civil rights laws we already have. President Obama and his administration have the opportunity to take dramatic steps towards dismantling institutional racism and inequality by simply enforcing the laws that are already on the books. Rather than blindness or silence, taking this action requires us to live in reality so that we can change that reality.

On November 5th, 2008, we woke up in a nation where people of color are nearly twice as likely as Whites to live near toxic waste dumps. We woke up in a nation where healthcare inequities mean that a Black child is more than twice as likely as a White child to die before age one. We woke up in a nation where Black and Latino students are more than 20 percent less likely to graduate from school than their White classmates and more than twice as likely to be arrested when they are at school. All of these disparities exist with government support or permission.

Despite these glaring inequalities, for the past eight years the federal government did nothing, living in the comfort of the post-racial fairytale. Thus, our government largely pursued a “hear no evil, see no evil” approach to structural racism and injustice. The Supreme Court has refused to “hear” the evil of discrimination through decades of narrowing discrimination protections and taking away citizens’ rights to bring their complaints to the ears of the courts. In complicity with the Court, the Bush Administration willfully refused to “see” the discrimination around the country. Although the executive branch has broad power to intervene against structural racism and injustice, it turned a blind eye and stood idly as though nothing were wrong.

There is hope, however. As the Obama Administration opens its eyes and ears, we have a chance to reverse some of these terrible trends by enforcing laws we already have on the books. Let’s start with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorizes federal agencies to prevent discrimination by recipients of federal funding. That discrimination can be proven either by pointing to bad intentions or by revealing disparate outcomes.

This potent statute laid dormant for eight long years during which the Environmental Protection Agency could have stopped the disproportionate placement of toxic waste dumps in communities of color or construction of major highways through these communities. The Department of Education could have ended the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects children of color through racially discriminatory school discipline policies or discredited the academic tracking that puts youth of color on the road to dropping out rather than to college. The Department of Health and Human Services could have done its part to end health disparities by halting the closure of hospitals that serve communities of color. The list could go on for pages.

We didn’t achieve this new direction in the last decade for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court stripped citizens of the right to enforce this law, leaving it to the federal government to do the job. In turn, the Bush Administration shirked the federal government’s obligation to weed out such discrimination. Thus, significant structural racism did not stand a chance of being eradicated. President Obama has a chance to restore public faith in the government, and he can take no stronger step in that direction than by eliminating racial inequities and barriers to opportunity through enforcement of existing civil rights laws and regulations.

Simply enforcing the law will no more end racism than the election did. However, it can put us on a path toward eliminating structures that perpetuate mass inequities that contradict America’s promise. Just as Title VI would have prohibited funding of racially segregated schools and public swimming pools with our tax dollars decades ago, it should be used to weed out today’s federally-funded injustices. In 1970, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote that the enforcement of “Title VI had failed to match the law’s promise.” The time has come to write a new script. President Obama can initiate another chapter of history by vigorously enforcing Title VI and ensuring that government is no longer part of the disease but rather part of the cure. We have come too far to stop our progress toward equality for all.

The evangelical pollster The Barna Group reveals this and other rather obvious conclusions at CitizenLink.com, the lobbying arm of the Colorado Springs-based ministry and publishing empire. Grab the smelling salts and read on.

The survey of 3,012 adults was overwhelmingly weighted toward self-defined social/political conservatives (992) vs. liberals (511) but is entertaining nonetheless for its “Seinfeld”-esque capacity to rationalize any predicament and make something out of nothing.

Survey Shows How Liberals and Conservatives Differ on Matters of Faith

The Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches
Liberals 27%
Conservatives 63%

Believe that Satan is real
Liberals 17%
Conservatives 36%

Contend that they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs with others
Liberals 23%
Conservatives 48%

Religious faith is very important in their life
Liberals 54%
Conservatives 82%

The primary purpose in life is to love God with all their heart, mind, strength and soul
Liberals 43%
Conservatives 76%

Jesus Christ did not commit sins during His time on Earth
Liberals 33%
Conservatives 55%

These results hinge on some serious skewing of the poll subjects’ political ideologies:

• 94% of conservatives call themselves Christians, while just 74% of liberals do so
• 2% of conservatives and 11% of liberals were atheist or agnostic
•15% of conservatives and 2% of liberals were Christian evangelicals
• conservatives were twice as likely as liberals to be categorized as born again, based on their theological views about salvation (63% vs. 32%)
• 21% of conservatives were associated with the Catholic church, compared to 30% among the liberals.

These figures vastly distort the ideological faith demographics for both groups, according to the more trusted Pew Forum on Religion and Politics.

George Barna then applies his powers of persuasion and analysis to how these beliefs are reflected in political impact:

“Liberals appear to place a greater emphasis upon self-reliance and what they personally accomplish than upon faith alone or intense participation in a community of faith. They also seem less inclined to trust the Bible as a moral authority or source of truth, and have less involvement in some type of personal relationship with their god.”

“Conservatives are more active in a wide range of religious behaviors, both individual and corporate. They are also more connected to their deity, seeing God as more personal, interactive and involved in their lives than do liberals.”

[...]

“Every person’s central choices in life are driven by their worldview, and everyone’s worldview is greatly influenced by their spiritual inclinations. The social and political preferences of people are closely tied to their spiritual beliefs and practices. One of the great challenges to our nation’s leaders is to help people of different spiritual and ideological perspectives maintain dialogue and an appreciation of each other’s innate value despite those divergent points of view.”

Get this man a job at Vandalay Industries!