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Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday
11 hours ago
Friday, May 17, 2013
Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds
From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/16/climate-research-nearly-unanimous-humans-causes
• Dana Nuccitelli: how we reached the findings
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 May 2013
A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.
Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.
The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.
The study described the dissent as a "vanishingly small proportion" of published research.
"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary," said John Cook of the University of Queensland, who led the survey.
Public opinion continues to lag behind the science. Though a majority of Americans accept the climate is changing, just 42% believed human activity was the main driver, in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre last October.
"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception," Cook said in a statement.
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/16/climate-research-nearly-unanimous-humans-causes
Of more than 4,000 academic papers published over 20 years, 97.1% agreed that climate change is anthropogenic
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 May 2013
A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.
Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.
The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.
The study described the dissent as a "vanishingly small proportion" of published research.
"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary," said John Cook of the University of Queensland, who led the survey.
Public opinion continues to lag behind the science. Though a majority of Americans accept the climate is changing, just 42% believed human activity was the main driver, in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre last October.
"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception," Cook said in a statement.
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/16/climate-research-nearly-unanimous-humans-causes
It's Not Easy Being Green: Are Some of the Biggest Enviro Groups Giant Sell-Outs?
From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/environment/its-not-easy-being-green-are-some-biggest-enviro-groups-giant-sell-outs
As climate change worsens, the internal strains in the environmentalist movement are starting to show.
By Jason Mark
May 15, 2013
About a year ago, on March 26, 2012, Sandra Steingraber, an environmental writer and activist against natural-gas fracking, wrote a public letter titled “Breaking Up with the Sierra Club.” Breakups are never easy, and the letter, published on the website of the nature magazine Orion, was brutal from the start: “I’m through with you,” Steingraber began.
The proximate cause of the split was the revelation that between 2007 and 2010 the nation’s oldest environmental organization had clandestinely accepted $26 million from individuals or subsidiaries associated with Chesapeake Energy, a major gas firm that has been at the forefront of the fracking boom. “The largest, most venerable environmental organization in the United States secretly aligned with the very company that seeks to occupy our land, turn it inside out, blow it apart, fill it with poison,” Steingraber wrote. “It was as if, on the eve of D-day, the anti-Fascist partisans had discovered that Churchill was actually in cahoots with the Axis forces.”
In 2010, the club’s new executive director, Michael Brune, stopped taking Chesapeake Energy’s cash. Brune also made the decision to come clean with the revelation and express regret for his predecessor’s lack of better judgment. “We never should have taken this money,” Brune wrote in response to the breakup letter.
But to Steingraber and many others, the betrayal had been done.
“I call them gang-green,” says Maura Stephens, an activist based in Ithaca, New York, who spearheads several anti-fracking groups, including Frack Busters and the Coalition to Protect New York. “There are a lot of so-called environmental groups that were started with noble ideals—for example the ideals of John Muir—but who no longer live up to their mission. … They do good work on some level, but on this [fracking] they are selling us out.”
The eco-infighting over natural gas is just one example of internecine strains that appear to be intensifying in the green movement. When it comes to prescribing ways to address the planet’s ecological challenges, environmentalists increasingly find themselves at odds with each other. In a way, greens’ predicament is a measure of their own prescience. For at least 40 years, they have been warning about the consequences of overpopulation, the risks of industrial pollution, and the loss of wilderness and wildlife habitat due to human encroachment. Few heeded the warnings in time to halt the first effects of large-scale global pollution and resource depletion, and now the consequences of ignoring the warnings have come to pass. Many global fisheries are on the brink of collapse; nearly half of the planet’s land is dedicated to feeding a global population that will soon reach nine billion; freshwater scarcities in some regions are becoming acute; and, most frighteningly, we appear intent on wrecking the global atmosphere, the ecosystem on which all other ecosystems depend.
Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/its-not-easy-being-green-are-some-biggest-enviro-groups-giant-sell-outs
As climate change worsens, the internal strains in the environmentalist movement are starting to show.
By Jason Mark
May 15, 2013
About a year ago, on March 26, 2012, Sandra Steingraber, an environmental writer and activist against natural-gas fracking, wrote a public letter titled “Breaking Up with the Sierra Club.” Breakups are never easy, and the letter, published on the website of the nature magazine Orion, was brutal from the start: “I’m through with you,” Steingraber began.
The proximate cause of the split was the revelation that between 2007 and 2010 the nation’s oldest environmental organization had clandestinely accepted $26 million from individuals or subsidiaries associated with Chesapeake Energy, a major gas firm that has been at the forefront of the fracking boom. “The largest, most venerable environmental organization in the United States secretly aligned with the very company that seeks to occupy our land, turn it inside out, blow it apart, fill it with poison,” Steingraber wrote. “It was as if, on the eve of D-day, the anti-Fascist partisans had discovered that Churchill was actually in cahoots with the Axis forces.”
In 2010, the club’s new executive director, Michael Brune, stopped taking Chesapeake Energy’s cash. Brune also made the decision to come clean with the revelation and express regret for his predecessor’s lack of better judgment. “We never should have taken this money,” Brune wrote in response to the breakup letter.
But to Steingraber and many others, the betrayal had been done.
“I call them gang-green,” says Maura Stephens, an activist based in Ithaca, New York, who spearheads several anti-fracking groups, including Frack Busters and the Coalition to Protect New York. “There are a lot of so-called environmental groups that were started with noble ideals—for example the ideals of John Muir—but who no longer live up to their mission. … They do good work on some level, but on this [fracking] they are selling us out.”
The eco-infighting over natural gas is just one example of internecine strains that appear to be intensifying in the green movement. When it comes to prescribing ways to address the planet’s ecological challenges, environmentalists increasingly find themselves at odds with each other. In a way, greens’ predicament is a measure of their own prescience. For at least 40 years, they have been warning about the consequences of overpopulation, the risks of industrial pollution, and the loss of wilderness and wildlife habitat due to human encroachment. Few heeded the warnings in time to halt the first effects of large-scale global pollution and resource depletion, and now the consequences of ignoring the warnings have come to pass. Many global fisheries are on the brink of collapse; nearly half of the planet’s land is dedicated to feeding a global population that will soon reach nine billion; freshwater scarcities in some regions are becoming acute; and, most frighteningly, we appear intent on wrecking the global atmosphere, the ecosystem on which all other ecosystems depend.
Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/its-not-easy-being-green-are-some-biggest-enviro-groups-giant-sell-outs
As new CO2 milestone is reached, climate science and action grow inseparable
From Waging Non-Violence: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/as-new-co2-milestone-is-reached-climate-science-and-action-grow-inseperable/
Bryan Farrell
May 16, 2013
Standing atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii, with this gorgeous view in front of me, it was hard to imagine that the air I was breathing carried a deadly message. Then again, as the largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa is not exactly home to the most welcoming of climates. Ancient Hawaiians only went there to make offerings.
Tourists seldom visit. The only reason to drive away from the tropical beaches below, up a poorly maintained road that has potholes within potholes, through several climate zones each colder and less hospitable than the last, is to study, well, the climate.
Since the 1950s, scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory have been monitoring changes in the atmosphere — most prominently, the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas emitted by humans). When I was there in January 2012, CO2 was measured at 397 parts per million. That’s nearly 120 ppm above pre-industrial levels, about 80 ppm above the first measurement in 1958 and 47 ppm above what’s considered the safe upper limit.
Last week, for the first time in several million years, we reached the milestone figure of 400 ppm. As a result, this generally overlooked beacon of climate science, administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found itself in the news. But in many ways, the news can frequently be traced back to this remote peak in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. From extreme weather to political debate to massive protests like the ones against the Keystone XL pipeline, the research from Mauna Loa is one of the main reasons we talk about climate change and understand that it is the result of humans altering the composition of the atmosphere.
As someone who has been writing about climate change for the better part of a decade, I was primed to visit Mauna Loa when a family vacation led me to Hawaii (woah is my carbon footprint!). But I was also eager to find out what the scientists thought of their research fueling something like an actual climate movement. Station Chief John Barnes, however, was typically scientific in his response, saying, “If NOAA says this is what we predict for climate change, whether you want to do anything about it is a decision for society, not NOAA.”
Continue reading at: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/as-new-co2-milestone-is-reached-climate-science-and-action-grow-inseperable/
Bryan Farrell
May 16, 2013
Standing atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii, with this gorgeous view in front of me, it was hard to imagine that the air I was breathing carried a deadly message. Then again, as the largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa is not exactly home to the most welcoming of climates. Ancient Hawaiians only went there to make offerings.
Tourists seldom visit. The only reason to drive away from the tropical beaches below, up a poorly maintained road that has potholes within potholes, through several climate zones each colder and less hospitable than the last, is to study, well, the climate.
Since the 1950s, scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory have been monitoring changes in the atmosphere — most prominently, the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas emitted by humans). When I was there in January 2012, CO2 was measured at 397 parts per million. That’s nearly 120 ppm above pre-industrial levels, about 80 ppm above the first measurement in 1958 and 47 ppm above what’s considered the safe upper limit.
Last week, for the first time in several million years, we reached the milestone figure of 400 ppm. As a result, this generally overlooked beacon of climate science, administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found itself in the news. But in many ways, the news can frequently be traced back to this remote peak in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. From extreme weather to political debate to massive protests like the ones against the Keystone XL pipeline, the research from Mauna Loa is one of the main reasons we talk about climate change and understand that it is the result of humans altering the composition of the atmosphere.
As someone who has been writing about climate change for the better part of a decade, I was primed to visit Mauna Loa when a family vacation led me to Hawaii (woah is my carbon footprint!). But I was also eager to find out what the scientists thought of their research fueling something like an actual climate movement. Station Chief John Barnes, however, was typically scientific in his response, saying, “If NOAA says this is what we predict for climate change, whether you want to do anything about it is a decision for society, not NOAA.”
Continue reading at: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/as-new-co2-milestone-is-reached-climate-science-and-action-grow-inseperable/
Will Climate Change Make You Homeless?
From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/13-7
Published on Monday, May 13, 2013 by Common Dreams
Climate change and weather-related disasters forced over 31 million people to flee their homes in 2012, according to a new report, offering a grim look at what the future holds as climate-related disasters are set to rise.
According to the assessment released Monday from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), disasters displaced 32.4 million people in 82 countries last year, with most—98%—being the result of weather- or climate-related disasters likes floods and wildfires.
Call them "IDPs" (internally displaced persons) or "refugees," and it's tempting for those who have as of yet been unscathed by such disasters to see displacement as a distant problem. But as the world reaps more and more of what the world's fossil fuel addiction has sown, the distance may be shrinking.
From the report:
And “in countries already facing the effects of conflict and food insecurity such as in Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Sudan, we observe a common theme,” Clare Spurrell, Chief Spokesperson for IDMC, said in a statement. “Here, vulnerability to disaster triggered by floods is frequently further compounded by hunger, poverty and violence; resulting in a ‘perfect storm’ of risk factors that lead to displacement.′′
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/13-7
New report: disasters displaced 32.4 million people in 2012, with most due to weather- or climate-related disasters
Andrea GermanosPublished on Monday, May 13, 2013 by Common Dreams
Climate change and weather-related disasters forced over 31 million people to flee their homes in 2012, according to a new report, offering a grim look at what the future holds as climate-related disasters are set to rise.
According to the assessment released Monday from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), disasters displaced 32.4 million people in 82 countries last year, with most—98%—being the result of weather- or climate-related disasters likes floods and wildfires.
Call them "IDPs" (internally displaced persons) or "refugees," and it's tempting for those who have as of yet been unscathed by such disasters to see displacement as a distant problem. But as the world reaps more and more of what the world's fossil fuel addiction has sown, the distance may be shrinking.
From the report:
In the longer term, human-induced climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of weather-related hazards, including floods, storms, wildfires and droughts which contribute to most disaster-induced displacementAs Hurricane Sandy showed, climate refugees aren't limited to the developing world. Over three-quarters of a million people in the U.S. were displaced in 2012 by "the costliest storm disaster" in the nation's history, the report states.
And “in countries already facing the effects of conflict and food insecurity such as in Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Sudan, we observe a common theme,” Clare Spurrell, Chief Spokesperson for IDMC, said in a statement. “Here, vulnerability to disaster triggered by floods is frequently further compounded by hunger, poverty and violence; resulting in a ‘perfect storm’ of risk factors that lead to displacement.′′
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/13-7
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Chris Hedges: The ‘Terrifying’ State Assault on Press Freedom
From Truth Dig: http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/chris_hedges_the_terrifying_state_assault_on_press_freedom_20130515/
Alexander Reed Kelly
May 15, 2013
“We are now in the last moments of an effort to, in essence, effectively extinguish press freedom,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges told “Democracy Now!” in a conversation Wednesday about revelations of the Justice Department’s seizure of work, home and cellphone records of up to 100 reporters and editors at The Associated Press.
Knowing that the United States and the world are on a course toward instability and chaos ensured by irreversible climate change and economic deterioration, the Obama administration and those who expect to inherit its role and powers “want the mechanisms by which they can criminalize any form of dissent,” Hedges continued. The attack on the press, which the AP phone records scandal exposes, is “an excuse to ferret out and destroy legitimate movements that challenge centers of power” by scaring potential whistle-blowers and dissidents into silence.
It works like this, Hedges said: “They pass … for instance, Section 1021 of the NDAA [which allows the government to detain indefinitely anyone suspected of being connected to terrorism]. They pass it in the name of the war on terror, but then they can use it. Anybody can become a terrorist.” This has already happened. In a lawsuit against the Obama administration, Hedges and his co-plaintiffs used leaked documents to show that government officials had attempted to link a group that was close to Occupy, U.S. Day of Rage, to the terrorist group al-Qaida.
“That’s precisely what happened,” Hedges confirmed. “When we allow this kind of thing to go forward, we essentially shut down any ability not only to ferret out what’s happening internally within the mechanisms of power, but to protest or carry out dissent.” Attorney General Eric Holder has defended the Justice Department’s invasion of press privacy by referring to a proposed national shield law that Obama publicly supported both as a senator and president.
Such a law would protect reporters from having to testify in court about information and sources obtained during the course of their investigations. But Holder’s “constant reference to a shield law is absurd,” Hedges said, “because they just violated the shield law by not going to court and informing AP of a subpoena but doing it secretly.”
Continue reading at: http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/chris_hedges_the_terrifying_state_assault_on_press_freedom_20130515/
Alexander Reed Kelly
May 15, 2013
“We are now in the last moments of an effort to, in essence, effectively extinguish press freedom,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges told “Democracy Now!” in a conversation Wednesday about revelations of the Justice Department’s seizure of work, home and cellphone records of up to 100 reporters and editors at The Associated Press.
Knowing that the United States and the world are on a course toward instability and chaos ensured by irreversible climate change and economic deterioration, the Obama administration and those who expect to inherit its role and powers “want the mechanisms by which they can criminalize any form of dissent,” Hedges continued. The attack on the press, which the AP phone records scandal exposes, is “an excuse to ferret out and destroy legitimate movements that challenge centers of power” by scaring potential whistle-blowers and dissidents into silence.
It works like this, Hedges said: “They pass … for instance, Section 1021 of the NDAA [which allows the government to detain indefinitely anyone suspected of being connected to terrorism]. They pass it in the name of the war on terror, but then they can use it. Anybody can become a terrorist.” This has already happened. In a lawsuit against the Obama administration, Hedges and his co-plaintiffs used leaked documents to show that government officials had attempted to link a group that was close to Occupy, U.S. Day of Rage, to the terrorist group al-Qaida.
“That’s precisely what happened,” Hedges confirmed. “When we allow this kind of thing to go forward, we essentially shut down any ability not only to ferret out what’s happening internally within the mechanisms of power, but to protest or carry out dissent.” Attorney General Eric Holder has defended the Justice Department’s invasion of press privacy by referring to a proposed national shield law that Obama publicly supported both as a senator and president.
Such a law would protect reporters from having to testify in court about information and sources obtained during the course of their investigations. But Holder’s “constant reference to a shield law is absurd,” Hedges said, “because they just violated the shield law by not going to court and informing AP of a subpoena but doing it secretly.”
Continue reading at: http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/chris_hedges_the_terrifying_state_assault_on_press_freedom_20130515/
Liberal group Progress Texas also received extra IRS scrutiny
From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/15/liberal-group-progress-texas-also-received-extra-irs-scrutiny/
By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
A liberal group on Wednesday said it had faced the same level of scrutiny from the IRS that was applied to tea party groups.
“Progress Texas and the Tea Party strongly disagree on the role of government,” the group’s executive director, Ed Espinoza, said in a statement. “Yet, when we applied for tax-exempt status, Progress Texas received the same type of additional scrutiny that Tea Party groups are complaining about. The similar treatment indicates the IRS was likely addressing a flood of 501c4 applications after Citizens United, and undermines the paranoid notion that Tea Party groups were singled out.”
An IRS letter (PDF) published by Progress Texas online Thursday showed the liberal group was given 22 days to respond to a list of 21 questions. Some of the questions included up to nine sub-questions.
The questions resembled the list of 35 questions (PDF) sent to the Liberty Township Tea Party, which has complained of IRS harassment.
Though the line of questioning was generally the same, there were some key differences between the lists of questions.
Continue reading at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/15/liberal-group-progress-texas-also-received-extra-irs-scrutiny/
By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
A liberal group on Wednesday said it had faced the same level of scrutiny from the IRS that was applied to tea party groups.
“Progress Texas and the Tea Party strongly disagree on the role of government,” the group’s executive director, Ed Espinoza, said in a statement. “Yet, when we applied for tax-exempt status, Progress Texas received the same type of additional scrutiny that Tea Party groups are complaining about. The similar treatment indicates the IRS was likely addressing a flood of 501c4 applications after Citizens United, and undermines the paranoid notion that Tea Party groups were singled out.”
An IRS letter (PDF) published by Progress Texas online Thursday showed the liberal group was given 22 days to respond to a list of 21 questions. Some of the questions included up to nine sub-questions.
The questions resembled the list of 35 questions (PDF) sent to the Liberty Township Tea Party, which has complained of IRS harassment.
Though the line of questioning was generally the same, there were some key differences between the lists of questions.
Continue reading at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/15/liberal-group-progress-texas-also-received-extra-irs-scrutiny/
Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Take the Banks to Court, Already!
From Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/elizabeth-warren-obama-put-bad-banks-trial
By Erika EichelbergerTue May. 14, 2013
On Tuesday, fierce consumer advocate and needler of banks Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called out Wall Street regulators for their habit of giving tepid punishments to misbehaving banks, and asked the agencies to justify their policy of settling with the wrongdoers out of court.
Warren sent a letter to the Justice Department, as well as to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve, asking them for evidence on how a settlement that doesn't require a bank to admit guilt would be better policy than taking the bad apple to trial. If regulators at least show that they are willing to play tough, she argued, it will help deter bad behavior and allow regulators to negotiate bigger fines in the event of a later settlement.
Here are a few snippets:
Continue reading at: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/elizabeth-warren-obama-put-bad-banks-trial
By Erika EichelbergerTue May. 14, 2013
On Tuesday, fierce consumer advocate and needler of banks Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called out Wall Street regulators for their habit of giving tepid punishments to misbehaving banks, and asked the agencies to justify their policy of settling with the wrongdoers out of court.
Warren sent a letter to the Justice Department, as well as to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve, asking them for evidence on how a settlement that doesn't require a bank to admit guilt would be better policy than taking the bad apple to trial. If regulators at least show that they are willing to play tough, she argued, it will help deter bad behavior and allow regulators to negotiate bigger fines in the event of a later settlement.
There is no question that settlements, fines, consent orders, and cease and desist orders are important enforcement tools, and that trials are expensive…But I believe strongly that if a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial…the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations and will be forced to settle on terms that are much more favorable to the wrongdoer…If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate million in profits, and if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law.Warren's letter follows a similar request she made to another banking regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, at a February Senate Banking Committee hearing. When agency officials couldn't answer Warren's question about the last time they took a financial institution to trial—some said it was unnecessary—she asked them to pony up any research it had on the trade-offs of settling versus going to trial. Last week, the OCC responded that it had no such research. So Warren decided to take the question to some of the other Wall Street regulators.
Continue reading at: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/elizabeth-warren-obama-put-bad-banks-trial
Cutting Social Security and Not Taxing Wall Street
From Truth Out: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16372-cutting-social-security-and-not-taxing-wall-street
By Dean Baker
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
As we move towards the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.
But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future.
Most people are now familiar with President’s Obama’s proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost of living adjustment. While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent.
Since Social Security benefits account for more than 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree, this cut is more than a 2.0 percent reduction in income. By comparison, a wealthy couple earning $500,000 a year would see a hit to their after-tax income of just 0.6 percent from the tax increase that President Obama put in place last year.
While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration his unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation.
If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn’t. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades.
The tax in the UK is 0.5 percent on stock trades (0.25 percent for both the buyer and the seller). It dates back more than 3 centuries. The country raises more than 0.2 percent of GDP ($32 billion in the United States) from the tax each year. The tax has not prevented the London stock exchange from being one of the largest in the world.
There are currently two bills in Congress for a similar tax in the United States. A bill by Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison would impose the same tax as the UK on stock trades and would apply a scaled rate to options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments. It could raise more than $150 billion annually or more than $2 trillion over the ten year budget window.
Continue reading at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16372-cutting-social-security-and-not-taxing-wall-street
By Dean Baker
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
As we move towards the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.
But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future.
Most people are now familiar with President’s Obama’s proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost of living adjustment. While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent.
Since Social Security benefits account for more than 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree, this cut is more than a 2.0 percent reduction in income. By comparison, a wealthy couple earning $500,000 a year would see a hit to their after-tax income of just 0.6 percent from the tax increase that President Obama put in place last year.
While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration his unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation.
If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn’t. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades.
The tax in the UK is 0.5 percent on stock trades (0.25 percent for both the buyer and the seller). It dates back more than 3 centuries. The country raises more than 0.2 percent of GDP ($32 billion in the United States) from the tax each year. The tax has not prevented the London stock exchange from being one of the largest in the world.
There are currently two bills in Congress for a similar tax in the United States. A bill by Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison would impose the same tax as the UK on stock trades and would apply a scaled rate to options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments. It could raise more than $150 billion annually or more than $2 trillion over the ten year budget window.
Continue reading at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16372-cutting-social-security-and-not-taxing-wall-street
Austerity Is Dead, So Drop the Chained CPI and Increase Social Security
From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/austerity-is-dead_b_3282634.html
Richard (RJ) Eskow
05/15/2013
Deficit projections have already decreased by $200 billion for this year alone, so why do Republicans keep lunging for ever-more radical spending cuts like they were corn dogs at a barbecue? That's more in deficit reduction than President Obama's proposed cut to Social Security would "save" in 10. So why hasn't he withdrawn the proposal?
It would make more sense to dial back on the sequester, which is the biggest driver of these revised deficit figures, and work on the fundamental weaknesses in our economy that are prolonging the recession. In the long run this approach would do more to reduce deficits, too.
Instead of cutting Social Security, they should be strengthening the country's social safety net. A good start would be the passage of Sen. Tom Harkin's bill to increase Social Security's benefits. (If I were you I'd contact our senators and representative and demand that they support it. I already have, by signing this petition.)
The Mother of All Crises
You wouldn't know it from listening to most politicians, but there's a crisis going on. In fact, there are a few of them going on -- including the crisis of un- and under-employment, the crisis of wage stagnation, and the crisis caused by lost social mobility.
Each of these unaddressed problems feed into the Mother of All Economic Crises, the one that our mothers and fathers are facing and we'll all confront ourselves someday: the retirement crisis. Sen. Tom Harkin has a bill that starts to address that crisis, in a bill that should be passed immediately.
Harkin's bill would increase the typical Social Security benefit by roughly $800 per year. Since most seniors depend on Social Security as their primary source of income, most of that money would be spent immediately. That means the Harkin bill will also have a modest but genuine stimulus effect. And by providing added protection for lower-income retirees, which would protect more seniors from falling into poverty while increasing the stimulus effect.
And it's all paid for. Harkin's bill would pay for this benefit increase and ensure Social Security's solvency by removing the tax cap which currently exempts income above a certain level (currently about $110,000) from taxation.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/austerity-is-dead_b_3282634.html
Richard (RJ) Eskow
05/15/2013
Deficit projections have already decreased by $200 billion for this year alone, so why do Republicans keep lunging for ever-more radical spending cuts like they were corn dogs at a barbecue? That's more in deficit reduction than President Obama's proposed cut to Social Security would "save" in 10. So why hasn't he withdrawn the proposal?
It would make more sense to dial back on the sequester, which is the biggest driver of these revised deficit figures, and work on the fundamental weaknesses in our economy that are prolonging the recession. In the long run this approach would do more to reduce deficits, too.
Instead of cutting Social Security, they should be strengthening the country's social safety net. A good start would be the passage of Sen. Tom Harkin's bill to increase Social Security's benefits. (If I were you I'd contact our senators and representative and demand that they support it. I already have, by signing this petition.)
The Mother of All Crises
You wouldn't know it from listening to most politicians, but there's a crisis going on. In fact, there are a few of them going on -- including the crisis of un- and under-employment, the crisis of wage stagnation, and the crisis caused by lost social mobility.
Each of these unaddressed problems feed into the Mother of All Economic Crises, the one that our mothers and fathers are facing and we'll all confront ourselves someday: the retirement crisis. Sen. Tom Harkin has a bill that starts to address that crisis, in a bill that should be passed immediately.
Harkin's bill would increase the typical Social Security benefit by roughly $800 per year. Since most seniors depend on Social Security as their primary source of income, most of that money would be spent immediately. That means the Harkin bill will also have a modest but genuine stimulus effect. And by providing added protection for lower-income retirees, which would protect more seniors from falling into poverty while increasing the stimulus effect.
And it's all paid for. Harkin's bill would pay for this benefit increase and ensure Social Security's solvency by removing the tax cap which currently exempts income above a certain level (currently about $110,000) from taxation.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/austerity-is-dead_b_3282634.html
US House set to approve cuts to food stamp programme with new farm bill
From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/15/house-of-representatives-food-stamps-cuts
Wednesday 15 May 2013
A House committee rebuffed Democratic efforts Wednesday to keep the $80bn-a-year food stamp programme whole, as debate on the farm bill turned into a theological discourse on helping the poor.
The House bill would cut about $2.5bn a year – or a little more than 3% – from the food stamp programme, which is used by 1 in 7 Americans.
The committee rejected an amendment by Democrats to strike the cuts 27-17, keeping them in the bill.
The legislation would achieve the cuts partly by eliminating an eligibility category that mandates automatic food stamp benefits when people sign up for certain other programmes. It would also save dollars by targeting states that give people who don't have heating bills very small amounts of heating assistance so they can automatically qualify for higher food stamp benefits.
Republicans argued that the cut is small relative to the size of the programme, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and that people who qualify for the aid could still sign up for it, they just wouldn't be automatically enrolled. They defended the cuts after representative Juan Vargas, a Democrat from California, quoted the Book of Matthew in opposing them: "When I was hungry you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink."
Several Republicans talked about their Christianity and said the Bible encourages people to help each other but doesn't dictate what the federal government should do. "We should be doing this as individuals, helping the poor," said Representative Doug LaMalfa, a Republican from California.
Representative Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, offered the amendment to do away with the cuts. He said taking the hunger assistance away from people will just make the poor "more vulnerable and more miserable".
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/15/house-of-representatives-food-stamps-cuts
Democrats to speak out against House bill would cut about $2.5bn a year from the food stamp programme
guardian.co.uk,Wednesday 15 May 2013
A House committee rebuffed Democratic efforts Wednesday to keep the $80bn-a-year food stamp programme whole, as debate on the farm bill turned into a theological discourse on helping the poor.
The House bill would cut about $2.5bn a year – or a little more than 3% – from the food stamp programme, which is used by 1 in 7 Americans.
The committee rejected an amendment by Democrats to strike the cuts 27-17, keeping them in the bill.
The legislation would achieve the cuts partly by eliminating an eligibility category that mandates automatic food stamp benefits when people sign up for certain other programmes. It would also save dollars by targeting states that give people who don't have heating bills very small amounts of heating assistance so they can automatically qualify for higher food stamp benefits.
Republicans argued that the cut is small relative to the size of the programme, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and that people who qualify for the aid could still sign up for it, they just wouldn't be automatically enrolled. They defended the cuts after representative Juan Vargas, a Democrat from California, quoted the Book of Matthew in opposing them: "When I was hungry you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink."
Several Republicans talked about their Christianity and said the Bible encourages people to help each other but doesn't dictate what the federal government should do. "We should be doing this as individuals, helping the poor," said Representative Doug LaMalfa, a Republican from California.
Representative Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, offered the amendment to do away with the cuts. He said taking the hunger assistance away from people will just make the poor "more vulnerable and more miserable".
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/15/house-of-representatives-food-stamps-cuts
How the US Turned Three Pacifists into Violent Terrorists
In America right wing Nazis who threaten the life of the President
and other elected officials as well as advocate the violent over
throwing of the government aren't terrorists. 8o year old pacifists,
environmental activists and the people of Occupy are
From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7
by Fran Quigley
Published on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 by Common Dreams
In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.
Here is how it happened.
In the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 2012, long-time peace activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and trespassed onto the property. Y-12, called the Fort Knox of the nuclear weapons industry, stores hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium and works on every single one of the thousands of nuclear weapons maintained by the U.S.
Describing themselves as the Transform Now Plowshares, the three came as non-violent protestors to symbolically disarm the weapons. They carried bibles, written statements, peace banners, spray paint, flower, candles, small baby bottles of blood, bread, hammers with biblical verses on them and wire cutters. Their intent was to follow the words of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Sr. Megan Rice has been a Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus for over sixty years. Greg Boertje-Obed, a married carpenter who has a college age daughter, is an Army veteran and lives at a Catholic Worker house in Duluth Minnesota. Michael Walli, a two-term Vietnam veteran turned peacemaker, lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington DC.
In the dark, the three activists cut through a boundary fence which had signs stating “No Trespassing.” The signs indicate that unauthorized entry, a misdemeanor, is punishable by up to 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
No security arrived to confront them.
So the three climbed up a hill through heavy brush, crossed a road, and kept going until they saw the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) surrounded by three fences, lit up by blazing lights.
Still no security.
So they cut through the three fences, hung up their peace banners, and spray-painted peace slogans on the HEUMF. Still no security arrived. They began praying and sang songs like “Down by the Riverside” and “Peace is Flowing Like a River.”
When security finally arrived at about 4:30 am, the three surrendered peacefully, were arrested, and jailed.
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7
From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7
by Fran Quigley
Published on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 by Common Dreams
In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.
Here is how it happened.
In the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 2012, long-time peace activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and trespassed onto the property. Y-12, called the Fort Knox of the nuclear weapons industry, stores hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium and works on every single one of the thousands of nuclear weapons maintained by the U.S.
Describing themselves as the Transform Now Plowshares, the three came as non-violent protestors to symbolically disarm the weapons. They carried bibles, written statements, peace banners, spray paint, flower, candles, small baby bottles of blood, bread, hammers with biblical verses on them and wire cutters. Their intent was to follow the words of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Sr. Megan Rice has been a Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus for over sixty years. Greg Boertje-Obed, a married carpenter who has a college age daughter, is an Army veteran and lives at a Catholic Worker house in Duluth Minnesota. Michael Walli, a two-term Vietnam veteran turned peacemaker, lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington DC.
In the dark, the three activists cut through a boundary fence which had signs stating “No Trespassing.” The signs indicate that unauthorized entry, a misdemeanor, is punishable by up to 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
No security arrived to confront them.
So the three climbed up a hill through heavy brush, crossed a road, and kept going until they saw the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) surrounded by three fences, lit up by blazing lights.
Still no security.
So they cut through the three fences, hung up their peace banners, and spray-painted peace slogans on the HEUMF. Still no security arrived. They began praying and sang songs like “Down by the Riverside” and “Peace is Flowing Like a River.”
When security finally arrived at about 4:30 am, the three surrendered peacefully, were arrested, and jailed.
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Psychiatry's New Diagnostic Manual: "Don't Buy It. Don't Use It. Don't Teach It."
From Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/psychiatry-allen-frances-saving-normal-dsm-5-controversy
Tue May. 14, 2013
I happen to know this guy who knows a lot about mental health policy. And, well, okay, he happens to be my father. So my ears perked up recently when my dad mentioned that the DSM-5, the latest in a series of diagnostic manuals soon to be published by the American Psychiatric Association, is something of a disaster.
Indeed, at the end of April, the National Institute of Mental Health (the branch of the NIH that funds mental-health research) took the drastic step of renouncing the latest DSM (short for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in advance of its publication—renouncing the whole DSM system, really—and replacing it with something called Research Domain Criteria.
"Basically, they said they would no longer use it as a main test in grant requests," explains psychiatrist Allen Frances, who chaired the task force that produced the prior version, DSM-IV (past editions used roman numerals) during the 1990s. "They made it sound like DSM-5 and all the DSMs were invalid, and that we should wait for the new discoveries that were going to come from scientific endeavors."
Frances considers the NIMH's move misguided, but he's no fan of the DSM either. That much is clear from his new book, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life. (The New York Times reviews it here.) Given the current upheaval in psychiatry, and the impending release of the new diagnostic manual, Frances seemed like the man to bring us up to speed on how the DSM got so bloated, and why so many Americans are popping uppers and antidepressants that we don't need.
Mother Jones: What you mean by "saving normal"?
Allen Frances: There's been a rapid diagnostic inflation over the course of the last 35 years, turning problems of everyday life into mental disorders resulting in excessive treatment with medication. Pretty soon everyone's going to have a mental disorder or two or three, and it's time we reconsider how we want to define this and whether the definitions should be in the hands of the drug companies, which is very much what's happened in recent years.
Continue reading at: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/psychiatry-allen-frances-saving-normal-dsm-5-controversy
That's what psychiatrist Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-IV task force, has to say about DSM-5.
By Michael MechanicTue May. 14, 2013
I happen to know this guy who knows a lot about mental health policy. And, well, okay, he happens to be my father. So my ears perked up recently when my dad mentioned that the DSM-5, the latest in a series of diagnostic manuals soon to be published by the American Psychiatric Association, is something of a disaster.
Indeed, at the end of April, the National Institute of Mental Health (the branch of the NIH that funds mental-health research) took the drastic step of renouncing the latest DSM (short for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in advance of its publication—renouncing the whole DSM system, really—and replacing it with something called Research Domain Criteria.
"Basically, they said they would no longer use it as a main test in grant requests," explains psychiatrist Allen Frances, who chaired the task force that produced the prior version, DSM-IV (past editions used roman numerals) during the 1990s. "They made it sound like DSM-5 and all the DSMs were invalid, and that we should wait for the new discoveries that were going to come from scientific endeavors."
Frances considers the NIMH's move misguided, but he's no fan of the DSM either. That much is clear from his new book, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life. (The New York Times reviews it here.) Given the current upheaval in psychiatry, and the impending release of the new diagnostic manual, Frances seemed like the man to bring us up to speed on how the DSM got so bloated, and why so many Americans are popping uppers and antidepressants that we don't need.
Mother Jones: What you mean by "saving normal"?
Allen Frances: There's been a rapid diagnostic inflation over the course of the last 35 years, turning problems of everyday life into mental disorders resulting in excessive treatment with medication. Pretty soon everyone's going to have a mental disorder or two or three, and it's time we reconsider how we want to define this and whether the definitions should be in the hands of the drug companies, which is very much what's happened in recent years.
Continue reading at: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/psychiatry-allen-frances-saving-normal-dsm-5-controversy
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