Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
SAHIL KAPUR, - Talking Points Memo
Stephan: The movement to reduce social services, principally to the elderly and the very young is, in my view, immoral. You can assess the health of a culture by the way it treats its elderly and young, and we don't look very good through that prism.
A new Congressional Budget Office report details the likely impacts of gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, which President Obama privately offered to do last summer but has since backed away from.
Though the policy would save $148 billion from 2012 – 2021, the impacts on seniors illustrate why some progressives are happy that the President’s effort to reach a ‘grand bargain
No Comments
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
Stephan: These experiments showing neutrinos exceeding the speed of light seem to be holding up dmonstrating, once again, that we have much to learn, and many of our cherished assumptions as to how the world works may be subject to revision.
LONDON — A new experiment appears to provide further evidence that Einstein may have been wrong when he said nothing could go faster than the speed of light, a theory that underpins modern thinking on how the universe works.
The new evidence, challenging a dogma of science that has held since Albert Einstein laid out his theory of relativity in 1905, appeared to confirm a startling finding that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster.
The new experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory, using a neutrino beam from CERN in Switzerland, 720 km (450 miles) away, was held to check findings in September by a team of scientists which were greeted with some skepticism.
Scientists at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) said in a statement on Friday that their new tests aimed to exclude one potential systematic effect that may have affected the original measurement.
‘A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny,
No Comments
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
Stephan: The Congress did nothing; the Obama Justice Department did nothing, but it is possible that 38,000 farmers and some smart attorneys may finally compel some form of accountability over the corruption and greed that created the financial collapse. It will be messy and sub-optimal, but it will start what could become an avalanche of litigation. If the people who talk about tort reform and making it harder for ordinary citizens to sue had their way this attempt to demand accountability would not be possible.
Montana farmers have filed a class action suit against former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, charging that the failed financial firm run by Corzine stole millions from their accounts to pay off its spiraling debts, and that Corzine’s ‘single-minded obsession’ with making MF Global a big player on Wall Street led to the firm’s collapse.
MF Global’s clients included 38,000 wheat farmers, cattle ranchers and others who ‘hedged’ their crop prices by placing millions in MF Global accounts. Those accounts were supposed to be ‘segregated and secure,’ according to the federal suit, meaning MF Global could not draw on those funds.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of all 38,000 customers, alleges that when MF Global made a series of bad investments — notably in European debt — it began ‘siphoning funds withdrawn from segregated client accounts’ to cover its debts.
‘This is a suit by the real victims of MF Global,’ said plaintiff’s attorney Mark Baker of the law firm Anderson, Baker & Swanson. ‘The missing funds were not investments in MF Global, or loans to MF Global, but rather the customer’s own money as collateral to guaranty their contracts. They were not to be used by others – let alone their own […]
No Comments
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
DAHR JAMAIL, - Aljazeera (Qatar)
Stephan: Despite all the protestations of the Bush-Cheney war criminals this is what it was about then, and is still about --- oil. Does it surprise you that corporate media doesn't touch this story? It doesn't surprise me, although it leaves me feeling very sad. A strong independent media is a key to a healthy democracy.
Baghdad, Iraq – While the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain.
On November 27, 38 months after Royal Dutch Shell announced its pursuit of a massive gas deal in southern Iraq, the oil giant had its contract signed for a $17bn flared gas deal.
Three days later, the US-based energy firm Emerson submitted a bid for a contract to operate at Iraq’s giant Zubair oil field, which reportedly holds some eight million barrels of oil.
Earlier this year, Emerson was awarded a contract to provide crude oil metering systems and other technology for a new oil terminal in Basra, currently under construction in the Persian Gulf, and the company is installing control systems in the power stations in Hilla and Kerbala.
Iraq’s supergiant Rumaila oil field is already being developed by BP, and the other supergiant reserve, Majnoon oil field, is being developed by Royal Dutch Shell. Both fields are in southern Iraq.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq’s oil reserves of 112 billion barrels ranks second in the world, only behind Saudi Arabia. The EIA also estimates that up to 90 per cent of the country […]
No Comments
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
ANDY KROLL, Reporter - Mother Jones
Stephan: Here is another of the conservative uber-rich agents who are attempting to buy American democracy. These are the people who look at Citizens United as a ticket to dominance.
Republican strategist Carl Forti has been described, variously, as ‘Karl Rove’s Karl Rove’ (Politico), ‘one of the smartest people in politics you’ve never heard of’ (Karl Rove), and ‘the Alexander the Great of the Republican independent expenditure world’ (Republican operative Bradley Blakeman). You can add one more to the list: President Obama and the Democrats’ worst nightmare in 2012. A pioneer in the post-Citizens United world of super-PACs and dark money, Forti is one of the lead architects of the GOP’s outside-spending strategy and an operative who has for years tested the boundaries of campaign finance law.
Forti first waded into the outside-money wars while working for the National Republican Congressional Committee. During the 2006 election cycle, he managed an $82 million independent-expenditure campaign-the largest in the committee’s history. Through the Black Rock Group, the strategic communications firm he cofounded, Forti has gone on to advise an all-star roster of conservative outside-spending groups, including the 60 Plus Association (the ‘conservative AARP’) and Americans for Job Security. Forti is also the political director of American Crossroads and advocacy director of Crossroads GPS, the Rove-inspired outfits that reported spending nearly $39 million together during the midterms. The groups have already begun running ads […]
No Comments
