mary gravitt's Open Salon Blog

THE US A PREDATOR NATION? PART 2

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:05:25 -0400

HEALTH CARE AT HOME AND ABROAD

Health Insurance Cutbacks Squeeze The Insured

by Rob Stein

May 23, 2012

Listen to the Story

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/05/23/153286726/health-insurance-cutbacks-squeeze-the-insured

Morning Edition

[4 min 52 sec]

Amber Cooper and her husband were doing OK. They had jobs, a healthy 5-year-old son, a house in Riverbank, Calif., and health insurance from her job in the accounting department of a small manufacturing company.

Then one day everything changed.

"We were in a conference room ... and I had heard rumors but didn't know if it was true, and I started crying in front of everyone and actually had to excuse myself to gather myself together and go back in. It was devastating for me," Cooper said.

Devastating because the rumors — her worst fears — had come true. She was in that conference room for a meeting about her health insurance.

Cooper had a liver transplant when she was 10. She takes a drug twice a day so her body won't reject her liver.

"Every year my company changes the insurance. And instead of giving us three different choices for insurance plans, they were changing to one, which was a high-deductible plan with no prescription coverage," she said.

Cooper was stunned. Her anti-rejection medicine costs way more than she could afford on her own — more than $1,000 a month.

Cooper, 30, started a frantic search for help. Finally, she found the HealthWell Foundation, which was willing to pay for her medication. But she still couldn't afford the $300 blood test she needs every month to make sure she's not rejecting her liver.

"It is scary because the only way to tell if you're going to go into rejection is by the blood work. Your numbers will be a little bit crazy, and then the doctors will be like, 'OK, you need to get in and we need to check you out and make sure you're OK.' So I really took a risk not getting that blood work done. But I couldn't afford to get it done. I really couldn't," she said.

What happened to Cooper is happening more and more these days.

Health insurance has been changing dramatically "beneath the surface," said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research group. "In plain language, it's becoming skimpier and skimpier and less and less comprehensive."

Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute says that is the trend nationally.

"Deductibles have gone up. Copays have gone up. You see cost-sharing for out-of-network services have gone up," Fronstin said. "It seems to have accelerated in the last few years. Health care is just continuing to take a bigger bite out of take-home pay."

So even people with insurance are paying thousands of dollars out of pocket before their insurance kicks in. And even when it does, insurance picks up less than it used to — often a lot less.

More than 1 in 5 Americans had a problem getting insurance to pay for a hospital, doctor or other health care in the past year, according to a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Altman says this comes as many families are struggling to get by.

"This affects not only how people seek health care — they're more reluctant to get it if they can put it off. But it also affects family budgets in a very real way, especially as we're still coming out of recession and families are still crunched by a weak economy," Altman said.

Cooper's family has stopped taking trips, eating out, fixing up their house or spending money on anything else they don't have to. Their son gets by with hand-me-downs, she said.

"He's 5 and growing out of everything. I haven't been able to buy him any clothes and shoes. Those are things I haven't been able to purchase because of the increase in the health care," she said.

And Fronstin says the weak economy is driving more and more companies to cut back on coverage because of simple math: It's the only way they can keep up with rising health care costs.

"Employers are trying to manage those costs. They're trying to keep those cost increases as close to inflation as possible. And they're doing everything they can to get their workers so that they think twice about the health care that they are using," Fronstin said.

Cooper is just grateful she's getting her drugs every month. And she started those monthly blood tests again when her company changed insurance again this year. But it's still not as good as it used to be. So she and her husband don't go to the doctor when they get sick if they can avoid it. The same goes for their son.

"There were a couple of times where he got sick where I just tried to do the best I could with what I had, whether it was children's ibuprofen or cooling him down with cool rags and that sort of thing," she said.

She can't help but worry about the next company meeting about her family's health plan.

"It changes every year, so I really have no clue what's going to happen next year and with them making that change, I really don't know what to expect every year," she said. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/05/23/153286726/health-insurance-cutbacks-squeeze-the-insured

BBC World Service TV & Radio Sites

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/tvandradiosites/health_care_in_the_united_states

BBC World Service - Business - US healthcare reform

… currently denied? It seems, at least, that the reform of health care in the United States really will happen. At the moment there are about forty-six…
BBC World Service - News - Obama's crucial healthcare speech

… his opponents in Congress to put aside partisan bickering and work with him to introduce a system of universal health care in the United States.

News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/health_care_in_the_united_states

6 March 2012
- Sandra Fluke dismisses Limbaugh apology
  
  6 March 2012
  Speaking on ABC's The View, Sandra Fluke has dismissed the apology of US radio host Rush Limbaugh, who had called the law student a "slut" and…
4 March 2010
- Obama urges vote on health reform
  
  Americas / 4 March 2010
  … cover uninsured Americans and lower premiums. "I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on healthcare reform,"
24 December 2009
- Comparing US healthcare costs with Europe
  
  Health / 24 December 2009
  As the health care debate in the US draws to a close, people from around the world share stories on how their health problems have been treated.
22 November 2009
- US Senate approves health debate
  
  Americas / 22 November 2009
  … reform legislation". "Tonight's historic vote brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiralling health care…

FATHER OF THE SINGLE PAYER NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE IN GREAT BRITAIN

William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge KCB (5 March 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British economist and social reformer. He is best known for his 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services (known as the Beveridge Report) which served as the basis for the post-World War II welfare state put in place by the Labour government elected in 1945.

The Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, known commonly as the Beveridge Report was an influential document in the founding of the Welfare State in the United Kingdom.^[1] It was chaired by William Beveridge, an economist, who identified five "Giant Evils" in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease, and went on to propose widespread reform to the system of social welfare to address these. Highly popular with the public, the report formed the basis for the post-war reforms known as the Welfare State, which include the expansion of National Insurance and the creation of the National Health Service.

Recommendations

The Report offered three guiding principles to its recommendations:

Proposals for the future should not be limited by "sectional interests" in learning from experience and that a "revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not for patching".
Social insurance is only one part of a "comprehensive policy of social progress". The five giants on the road to reconstruction were Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.
Policies of social security "must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual", with the state securing the service and contributions. The state "should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family".

Beveridge was opposed to "means-tested" benefits. His proposal was for a flat rate contribution rate for everyone and a flat rate benefit for everyone. Means-testing was intended to play a tiny part because it created high marginal tax rates for the poor (the "poverty trap").

Implementation

The Labour Party eventually also adopted the Beveridge proposals, and after their victory in the 1945 general election, they proceeded to implement many social policies, which became known as the Welfare State. These included the Family Allowances Act 1945 , National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1946, National Insurance Act 1946, National Health Service Act 1946, Pensions (Increase) Act 1947, Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act 1949, National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1948, National Insurance Act 1949.

America’s Lack of Social Safety Net

The Beveridge social benefits in various forms were once available in the United States, minus National Health Service, i.e. single payer, as part of the FDR’s New Deal—but beginning with the Reagan administration things began to fall apart as the Neocons ensconced themselves in the White House as advisers and speech writers.However, one must keep in mind that the US Treasury did not go broke by giving social benefits or installing generous safety nets for its people—but by its wars to prevent Communism and socialism from appealing to its citizens by stamping it out in the Third World.

BBC HEALTH SERVICE History

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/history/beveridge_report

BBC - History - William Beveridge

William Beveridge (1879 - 1963) William Beveridge, responsible for the 'Beveridge Report' which has since formed the basis for much social legislation…
BBC - History - World Wars: Why Churchill Lost in 1945

… climax in December 1942, with the publication of the Beveridge Report. The author of this, Sir William Beveridge, was an ambitious man, whose…

BBC WORLD SERVICE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00s0g05#synopsis

Health Check

23/05/2012

Media :

Listen now (18 minutes)

Availability:

Available to listen.

Last broadcast on Thursday, 11:32 on BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).

Next on:

Tomorrow, 07:32 on BBC World Service

Synopsis

SPANISH HEALTH REFORMS

In order to reduce Spain's budget deficit in line with European Union targets, Spain has recently announced health reforms which aim to cut $7 billion, or 10% of the government’s total spending on health. Currently health care in Spain is financed through general taxation and is free to everyone, but under new plans, controversial measures are being introduced. For example illegal immigrants will no longer be entitled to free health care except in emergencies and there is going to be a co-payment system, where patients are expected to contribute towards the cost of drugs.

Some critics believe the reforms put Spain on the road away from universal healthcare towards an insurance-based system. Others think that these measures are essential if Spain is to deal with the economic crisis. Claudia Hammond speaks to Professor Manel Peiro, Director of Health Care Management at ESADE Business School and Dr Hixinio Beiras, a cardiologist and member of the Spanish Federation of Associations for the Defence of Public Health.

HEALTH MYTH – EATING FOR TWO

This week’s medical myth is: Is it true that if you are pregnant you should eat more, because you are eating for two after all? Professor Patrick O’Brien, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at University College London Hospital, sets the record straight.

STREET THERAPY

Confusingly, there are many different types of therapy that exist, but it is usually very clear where, traditionally, any therapy takes place. It is generally in an office or a consulting room and lasts for 50 minutes to an hour. But four years ago, on a street in North London, a young clinical psychologist called Charlie Alcock approached a group of young people who were in gangs and committing all sorts of anti-social behaviour on the local social housing estate. She began giving them a completely new form of therapeutic delivery, called “street therapy”.

THE ECONOMY AT HOME AND ABROAD

CBO Report: U.S. Economy Could Slide Into Recession

by Jim Zarroli

May 23, 2012

Listen to the Story

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/23/153349679/cbo-report-u-s-economy-could-slide-into-recession

Morning Edition

[1 min 31 sec]

May 23, 2012

The Congressional Budget Office is warning the U.S. economy could fall back into a recession if Washington doesn't address the looming fiscal crisis. The Bush-era tax cuts are supposed to expire as is a temporary reduction in the payroll tax. Meanwhile, deep cuts in federal spending are supposed to take place if Congress and the White House can't agree on a debt-reduction plan. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/23/153349679/cbo-report-u-s-economy-could-slide-into-recession

Xerox CEO: 'If You Don't Transform, You're Stuck'

by NPR Staff

May 23, 2012

Listen to the Story

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/23/153302563/xerox-ceo-if-you-don-t-transform-you-re-stuck

Morning Edition

[7 min 31 sec]

Xerox CEO Ursula Burns began her career with the company in 1980 as a summer intern. In 2009, she became the first African-American woman to lead a Fortune 500 company.

May 23, 2012

Xerox is one of America's most venerable companies. Founded in 1906, its name is virtually synonymous with "photocopy."

But in recent years, in an era of email and paperless offices, Xerox has struggled to stay relevant. Today, the company is trying to turn itself around and thrive in the digital age.

Leading Xerox through that transformation is Ursula Burns, a woman who has undergone tremendous change in her own life. Burns, 53, grew up in New York City's Lower East Side, an area she has described as a tough, drug-infested ghetto.

Burns began her career at Xerox in 1980 as an intern, after completing her Master's degree in mechanical engineering. She rose through the ranks to become the company's CEO — and the first African-American woman to lead a Fortune 500 company — at a time when less than 20 percent of corporate executives are female.

Burns talks with NPR's Renee Montagne about her journey from young engineer to CEO and her efforts to transform Xerox from a manufacturing icon into a thriving international services provider.

On an international corporation's responsibility to American workers

"I think that Xerox, as an American company, has a responsibility to have jobs in the U.S. But we also have a huge business in the U.K.; I have a responsibility to have jobs in the U.K. I have a growing business in India; I have a responsibility to have jobs in India. I have a big business in Russia. ... So, I don't look at is as myopically or as single-focused as providing jobs in the U.S. only.

"I think that because we are here, I will bring back jobs, we do bring back jobs, we bring jobs into the United States, as long as the U.S. can continue to be competitive. And we can. We are an innovative group of people in the United States, and we can be competitive in both cost but also in quality and ... innovativeness." http://www.npr.org/2012/05/23/153302563/xerox-ceo-if-you-don-t-transform-you-re-stuck

U.S. Politicians See Opposite Messages In Euro Crisis

by David Welna

President Obama talks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande (upper left), NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (center) and other leaders during the official photo at Soldier Field in Chicago during the NATO summit Sunday.

May 23, 2012

European stock markets have rallied in anticipation of an informal summit of European Union leaders Wednesday in Brussels. A major policy pivot is expected to address the eurozone's debts and deficits crisis.

Up to now, European leaders have emphasized austerity, and that has cost some of them their jobs. The new approach is likely to focus on the same kind of growth President Obama has pursued in the United States — where Democrats and Republicans are drawing opposite conclusions from the euro crisis. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/23/153316112/u-s-politicians-see-opposite-messages-in-euro-crisis

BATTLE OF ECONOMIC IDEAS VS IDEOLOGY

ON POINT RADIO

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/05/29/is-the-401k-working

TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2012

Listen to this show Download

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 at 10:00 AM

Is The 401(k) Working?

Is the 401(k) working as a retirement plan for the American public? A lot of account balances say maybe not.

Photo Illustration (Alex Kingsbury/WBUR)

Back in the day, the 401(k) – if you had one – was just a supplement to a good old-fashioned pension. An optional way to juice up your retirement. Today, for most Americans, pensions are history and the 401(k) is the main event, after Social Security. And 401(k)s are failing.

Millions of Americans are barreling toward 65-plus with very little in the sugar bowl. The stock market has tanked and tanked again and looks shaky right now. Most human nature may not be cut out for sophisticated investing. Is there a better way?

This hour, On Point: Is the 401(k) a bust? And what would be a better way?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist and nationally-recognized expert in retirement security. She’s an economics professor at The New School.

David Wray, president of the Plan Sponsor Council of America, a national, non-profit association of companies that sponsor profit sharing and 401(k) plans.

From Tom’s Reading List

The New York Times “The only thing I haven’t dealt with on my to-do checklist is retirement planning. The reason is simple: I’m not planning to retire. More accurately, I can’t retire. My 401(k) plan, which was supposed to take care of my retirement, is in tatters.”

CBS News “The state of retirement savings in America is in big trouble. According to Fidelity Investments, the average 401(k) balance among its 11.8 million accounts increased to $74,600 at the end of the first quarter 2012, a 62 percent increase since the end of the first quarter 2009. While it’s good news that balances are up, the number of accounts is alarmingly low for such an industry giant.”

Time “One of the biggest flaws in most people’s retirement plan is something that previous generations rarely worried about: monthly income guaranteed for life. But the fix is in, and before long your 401(k) may look a lot more like your dad’s pension.”

MOVING HIGHER 'CAUSE WE'RE WINNERS

MEMORIAL DAY~A DAY OF REFLECTION ON NO-PEACE AND NO-WAR

Sat, 26 May 2012 15:05:40 -0400

"Here Rests
In Honored Glory
An American Soldier
Known But To God"

The Tomb of the Unknowns, near the center of the cemetery, is one of Arlington's most popular tourist sites.

The Tomb contains the remains of unknown American soldiers from World Wars I and II, the Korean Conflict and (until 1998) the Vietnam War.

Each was presented with the Medal of Honor at the time of interment and the medals, as well as the flags which covered their caskets, are on display inside the Memorial Amphitheater, directly to the rear of the Tomb.

The Tomb is guarded 24-hours-per-day and 365-days-per year by specially trained members of the 3rd United States Infantry (The Old Guard).

Caught between the push and pull of history. The subject position becomes a footnote that cannot be retrieved.

UNKNOWN

Unknown

Unknown to whom?

Not to me I knew you when

When I carried you

In my womb Knew you before--

You knew yourself

Now you lie--

Your Face a Looking Glass : Your Home a Public Hall

A Monument

To War

While I have no Peace

Unknown?

Perhaps--

IS THE US A PREDATOR NATION RAN BY A DICTATOR! PART#1

Tue, 29 May 2012 18:05:43 -0400

Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. . . .

John 18:40-41

WHAT DO THEY WANT: A PRESIDENT OR A DICTATOR

Federal Top Job Descriptions

The Constitution of the United States: Articles I, II, and III as to division of powers:

Article. I.Section. 1.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section. 7.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Section. 8.The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

Article. II.Section. 1.The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected….

Clause 8: Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Section. 2.The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section. 3.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Section. 4.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article III.Section. 1.The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the Supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section. 3.Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

The Bill of Rights as it relates to citizenship:

AMENDMENT XIV Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment.

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Criticism and Critics of President Obama

Both the critics and criticisms of President Obama do not extend to the Congress. However, I say that what the critics, on the Left and on the Right, offer as proof of Obama’s incompetence in office is only the fact that few have bothered to read the US Constitution as to its balance of powers. Under the Constitution, we have a balance of powers between the Congress, which is the most powerful branch of government; the Judiciary, which determines the Constitutionality of the acts, and laws that Congress passes; and the Office of the President, which is the weakest branch. Balance in the sense of the US Constitution does not mean equality between the branches of the federal government.

The majority of critics have not taken into consideration that even when the Democrats held both branches of Congress, the House and the Senate, the Democrats had laid a built in trap for themselves because they had supported Blue Dogs, or extremely conservative Democrats, that voted with the Republicans against every Obama proposal that he made during his campaign. These Blue Dogs even included Gabrielle Gifford. Information on Congressional Members and their voting patterns is available in The Almanac of American Politics 2010, edited by Michael Barone, Richard E. Cohen, and Grant Ujfusa. However, I will leave that for another blog.

ON POINT RADIO

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/05/23/charles-ferguson

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012

Listen to this show Download

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 10:00 AM

Predator Nation

“Inside Job” director Charles Ferguson on Wall Street now, and the crisis still to be addressed.

Director Charles Ferguson poses for a portrait at the 63rd international film festival, in Cannes, southern France, Monday, May 17, 2010. (AP)

When the U.S. economy melted down in 2008, Charles Ferguson stepped up with a blistering documentary on the collapse called “Inside Job.” He named names and laid blame for the crash in a way that regulators and law enforcement were unwilling to do. “Inside Job” won the Academy Award for best documentary.

Now, Charles Ferguson is back with more. A deep, furious critique of American finance and politics today as fundamentally corrupt and corrupting. Dangerous. Predatory.

This hour, On Point: bare-knuckled critic Charles Ferguson and the “predator nation.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Ben Protess, a legal and regulatory correspondent for the New York Times.

Charles Ferguson, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and author of the new book Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America.

From Tom’s Reading List

Huffington Post “The most contentious issue in the debate about Wall Street reform involves fairness. Many bankers and Republicans complain that the Obama Administration has unjustly targeted the financial sector in imposing restrictions, and that the regulations themselves contradict free market principles. But while people bicker about fairness, they are forgetting one basic tenet of capitalism — if someone can make a lot of money doing something, even if that something could hurt others, they probably will.”

New York Times “The Dodd-Frank law was supposed to bring much-needed oversight to the multitrillion-dollar market for derivatives, including transparent trading, mandatory reporting and higher capital and collateral requirements. But banks, with help from lawmakers in both parties, have lobbied regulators to delay and weaken the rules.”

Politico “But now JPM’s hyper-aggressive trading has caused a loss somewhere north of $2 billion, and possibly as much as $5 billion. The episode not only confirms the wisdom of the “Volcker rule” prohibiting commercial banks from risking depositor money in speculative trading, it also raises more fundamental questions about the current role and conduct of the megabanks.”

Salon “For at least 30 years the United States has been headed on the wrong track, handing over more power and wealth to a tiny percent of the American population at the expense of everyone else. But Ferguson’s story isn’t just focused on the greed and recklessness of the elite.”

'Road To Freedom': Moral Debate For Free Enterprise

The Road To Freedom is a signification on F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. The Road to Serfdom has been adopted as the Bible and economic guidepost of Neoconservatism.

The Road to Serfdom is a book written by the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) between 1940–1943, in which he "warned of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning,"^[1] and in which he argues that the abandonment of individualism, classical liberalism, and freedom inevitably leads to socialist or fascist oppression and tyranny and the serfdom of the individual. Significantly, Hayek challenged the general view among British academics that fascism was a capitalist reaction against socialism, instead arguing that fascism and socialism had common roots in central economic planning and the power of the state over the individual.

The Road to Serfdom is among the most influential and popular expositions of market libertarianism and remains a popular and influential work in contemporary discourse, selling over two million copies, and remaining a best-seller.^[2][3]

Summary

Hayek argues that Western democracies, including the United Kingdom and the United States, have “progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.”^[9] Society has mistakenly tried to ensure continuing prosperity by centralized planning, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism. “We have in effect undertaken to dispense with the forces which produced unforeseen results and to replace the impersonal and anonymous mechanism of the market by collective and ‘conscious’ direction of all social forces to deliberately chosen goals.”^[10] Socialism, while presented as a means of assuring equality, does so through “restraint and servitude”, while “democracy seeks equality in liberty”.^[11] Planning, because coercive, is an inferior method of regulation, while the cooperation of a free market is superior “because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority”.^[12]

Critics of Hayek Economics

John Maynard Keynes said of it: "In my opinion it is a grand book...Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement."^[32] Having said that, Keynes did not think Hayek's philosophy was of practical use; this was explained later in the same letter, through the following comment: "What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them. Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States."^[33]

George Orwell responded with both praise and criticism, stating, "in the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of." Yet he also warned, "[A] return to 'free' competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the state."^[34]

Arthur C. Brooks and F.A. Hayek

May 22, 2012

Analysts expect this fall's election to turn on the economy. President of the American Enterprise Institute Arthur C. Brooks wants to deepen the debate on the economy by discussing which economic policies are morally right. Brooks talks to Steve Inskeep about his book, The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

The AEI & What It Means To/For the American Worker

What is the American Enterprise Institute? A Union of the bosses organized against the working class or just a benign organization to organize Americans to control world trade?

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is an American conservative^[2][3][4][5]think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate".^[6] AEI is an independent nonprofit organization supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Some AEI scholars are considered to be some of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy.^[7] More than twenty AEI scholars and fellows served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the governments many panels and commissions. Among the prominent former government officials now affiliated with AEI are former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, now an AEI senior fellow; former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities Lynne Cheney, a longtime AEI senior fellow; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, now an AEI senior fellow; former Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an AEI visiting fellow; and former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, now an AEI visiting scholar. Other prominent individuals affiliated with AEI include Kevin Hassett, Frederick W. Kagan, Leon Kass, Charles Murray, Michael Novak, Norman J. Ornstein, Richard Perle, Radek Sikorski, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Peter J. Wallison.^[8]

These “Other prominent individuals affiliated with AEI” you should remember from The Project for a New American Century 1997, and the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, when President George W. Bush, at the behest of his Neocons advisors, pulled the U.S. military out of Afghanistan in pursuit of Neoconservative ambitions for the modern equivalent of Manifest Destiny in Iraq.

NPR Interview

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Economic issues are shaping this year's presidential campaign, as we're hearing in this morning's news. Arthur C. Brooks, of the American Enterprise Institute, says that debate involves more than money. It's a question of which economic policies are morally right.

ARTHUR C. BROOKS: This is one of the greatest weaknesses of people on the political right and free enterprise advocates in America today; is this inability or unwillingness to make moral arguments. People who are not especially sympathetic to the free enterprise system have very successfully been making moral arguments. The leitmotif of the 2012 campaign, it turns out, is going to be fairness, and that's a moral argument.

INSKEEP: Brooks tries to counter that with a moral argument for free enterprise. His new book, "The Road to Freedom," contends that people are happier with less government, which leads to another big question of 2012 - how much less government?

Help me define, as you see it, the responsibility of government - because as people who read this book will know, you're not an advocate of no government. You see a place, it seems, for a social safety net and so forth. So what are the limits?

BROOKS: The government should be doing two things, basically. The first is providing a minimum basic safety net for the truly indigent. That means enough food, enough housing, enough medical care. Today, the safety net we have in this country reaches all the way up into the middle class.

INSKEEP: One of the things that I wondered as I read this article was what has happened to the American economy in the last few decades that the average hard-working guy who has a small business has to accept government benefits that he doesn't even like in order to stay in the middle class. He'd be a poor man without them or a poor woman.

BROOKS: One of the things that we don't know is whether or not that's true. In fact, there are so many more barriers to the success of that person because of the government itself: the regulatory barriers, the tax barriers, the labor market barriers, the environmental barriers. Who knows if we were to set him free or her free what we would need to do, what kind of incentives we would not need to give to that person.

INSKEEP: Do you feel like we're in a world where everyone agrees with you in the abstract, or almost everyone? Hardly anyone disagrees with the notion of free enterprise, of paying your own way, of keeping the government out of your affairs. And yet in practical terms, when it gets down to practicalities, you lose the argument with a lot of people.

BROOKS: Yeah, you do. And this is the biggest problem that we face, I believe. So there's a paradox, which is that, for example, 70 percent of Americans think that the free enterprise system is the best system for America's economy despite severe ups and downs. At the same time, something like 65 percent of Americans say that the government should pay for their health care. Now, you can't reconcile these two ideas.

So the paradox of government is basically that we say we want free enterprise in the abstract. We take more and more goodies in the specific from politicians, and this leads us down this road to serfdom. We know that's wrong. We need to do something differently, and really only an ethical argument is going to do the trick.

INSKEEP: Arthur C. Brooks is head of the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Road to Freedom." Thanks for coming by. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/22/153259424/road-to-freedom-moral-argument-for-free-enterprise

REGIME CHANGE USA

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-21/fawaz-gerges-obama-and-middle-east-end-americas-moment

Fawaz Gerges: "Obama and The Middle East: The End of America's Moment"

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-21/fawaz-gerges-obama-and-middle-east-end-americas-moment

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 11:06 a.m.

11:06 a.m. (ET) Fawaz Gerges: "Obama and The Middle East: The End of America's Moment"

President Barack Obama, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, and Jordan's King Abdullah II walk the Cross Hall towards the East Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010, before making statements on the resumption of negotiations for Middle East Peace.

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Fawaz Gerges: "Obama and The Middle East: The End of America's Moment"

Despite high hopes following the Arab Spring, the Middle East remains deeply troubled. Renowned Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges explains why he believes President Barack Obama has lost a historic opportunity to redefine America's role in the region.

NATO heads of state are meeting on Sunday and Monday in Chicago against a somber backdrop: American-led efforts to cajole Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to step down have failed. The prospect of a nuclear Iran looms large, and concerns are rising over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan amid the ongoing insurgency there. When Barack Obama was elected president, he promised not only to transform America’s domestic policies, but also its foreign policy. Yet the Middle East, in particular, remains as troubled as ever. Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges joins Diane to explain why he believes President Obama has lost a historic opportunity to redefine America’s role in the region.

Guests

Fawaz Gerges

chair of the Middle Eastern Center at the London School of Economics.

BBC World News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/12666923

8 March 2011
- Israel's West Bank settlements: The arguments explained
  
  8 March 2011
  Newsbeat's Duncan Crawford explains the conflict surrounding Israeli settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem

Israeli settler shoots Palestinian

By: Reuters | May 27, 2012 | 0

NABLUS - An Israeli settler shot and wounded a Palestinian man on Saturday in a clash that began when a group of settlers set fire to fields belonging to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, officials said. Residents said about 25 settlers, some of them carrying guns, set fire to wheat fields in the village of Orif, which is near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Some villagers came out to extinguish the fire and clashed with the settlers, said Nablus official Kassan Daglas. During the clash, an Israeli settler shot and wounded one Palestinian, an Israeli military spokesman said.

"The Israel Defense Forces regards this incident as severe and will thoroughly investigate it," the spokesman said.

The Palestinian man was shot in the stomach and taken to the hospital, medical officials said.

The military is investigating a similar incident from last week in which a video distributed by an anti-settlement group appeared to show a settler shooting and wounding a Palestinian during a confrontation with rock-throwing Palestinians, as soldiers stood by. http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/27-May-2012/israeli-settler-shoots-palestinian

WILL THE CIRCLE OF FREE ENTERPRISE SLAVERY BE UNBROKEN

Wed, 23 May 2012 16:05:02 -0400

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

James 1:19-20

Mumble

Grumble

Complain

Wallow

Hope

Despair

Worry

Vote

Just a reminder: the one on the bottom changes things a lot faster.

David K. Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America

A VOICE FROM THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

Ralph Ellison cautioned in Invisible Man that one should listen, not merely hear because there is always an embedded message. I am cautioning you in the same vain. Don’t just hear the rhetoric of Mitt Romney, but listen to what he is saying and promising the American body politic: "Arbeit macht frei".

"Arbeit macht frei" is a German phrase, literally "work makes (one) free," meaning "work sets you free" or "work liberates".^[1] The slogan is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust, including most infamously Auschwitz I, where it was made by prisoners with metalwork skills and erected by order of the Nazis in June 1940.

Harry B. Davis in What Happened in Heidelberg: From Heidelberg Man to the Present (1971, 1977) writes that in 1918 a National Assembly met in the city of Weimar and drew up a new constitution for Germany. That city gave its name to the new republic of Germany. With the Weimar Republic, Germany was at last a democracy. But never was a democracy so hard-pressed to keep aright. There was continued agitation from the radical left, which eventually drew reaction from the extreme right, including formation of Hitler’s National Socialist Party.

Like what is happening with Greece economic recovery at the present time (minus the war), the reparations demands under the terms of the peace treaty were far too high for the young republic struggling to recover from the war. Government after government toppled under pressure of these internal difficulties. Germany plummeted to an all-time low in 1930, when the Depression hit her already weakened economy.

The National Socialist Party now rose to new power. Promising to end Germany’s economic difficulties and restore the nation to its rightful position in the world, the Nazis (as their opponents called them—from National Sozialisten) increase their representation in the Reichstag in 1930 from 13 to 107 seats. The following year (as unemployment rose to five millions) they had 230 seats. In the same year, the communists, on the other end of the political spectrum, had 100 seats. For many Germans, National Socialism seemed to be the only alternative to communism. For many it meant order to replace chaos, and food to still hunger.

Election figures in Heidelberg provide a good barometer of the change in political climate. The city had long been a center of liberalism. As the Weimar Republic began, the Social Democrats were by far the strongest party; but in 1930 the Heidelberg electorate cast its vote for the Nazi Party. The question of how many of Hitler’s supporters knew what he really stood for is still being debated today. (85)

This is what should be debated among the Romney supporters in 2012. What does he mean by “I know how to create jobs!” And his interpretation of the values that built America. His plans for rebuilding the American economy are more in line with Herbert Hoover and Andrew Mellon’s and is definitely anti-Keynesian. Thomas Frank gives an example of this behavior in Pity the Billionaires:

The economic collapse of the thirties cleared the way for economic ideas that had been marginalized before. “The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success,” wrote the British economist John Maynard Keynes, a leader of the new school, in the awful year 1933. “It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous—and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it,” [even in 2012].

Americans, for their part, were willing to try almost anything. The Keynesian doctrine of countercyclical deficit spending began to overtake laissez-faire orthodoxy, and an amazing assortment of less memorable ideas enjoyed their brief moments of glory.

If the hard-times pattern is fixed, so are the moves it supposedly forbids. Here the lessons come not from the successful Roosevelt presidency [which Obama is emulating], but from the disastrous administration of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Never again, it has always been thought, would a hard-times president pine for balanced budgets in the Hoover manner [Mitt Romney proposes for his presidency], or chase the illusion of stability represented by the gold standard [as Ron Paul has encourages]. Nor would there be any audience for views like those of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who famously advised Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” [and as for Romney suggests, privatize all social service safety-nets as was attempted by George W. Bush].

Such actions, according to Mellon [and Romney’s philosophy], “will purge the [Obama] rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, [and] live a more moral life [as Rick Santorum proposes]. Values will be adjusted and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” Mellon’s ideas [like Romney’s social Darwinism] reflected the orthodoxy of the day [and Republican rhetoric of 2012]: let the downturn take its course, let the failures [like GM, Chrysler, and major investment banks] fail, let the weak [middle-class] be purged, and have confidence that the strong [.01% like Ed Conard] will emerge stronger than ever, [i.e. class warfare].

This is what Mellon proposed to fix the First Great Depression, and what Romney is pledging in his speech is how he intends, with the aid of his Heidelberg philosophy of “work making the American worker free” is his sole intent for fixing the Second Great Depression. Let those who have ears listen!

Frank goes on to write that Mellon’s idea was disastrous [for workers] where it was tried and politically poisonous where it was spoken. It rightly followed Mellon into political oblivion. From the enlightened heights of 1954, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, in a passage about Mellon’s famous advice, to declare that “a developing depression would not now be met with a fixed determination to make it worse,” [and Romney has pledged to do so with a little help from his GOP friends]. (19-20)

Davis writes that in any case, Hitler could not have risen to power without the financial support of the industrialist, who thought they could buy and use him and his party to check the rise of communism. (86)

COUNTER ATTACK

Biden Speech Part Of Coordinated Attack On Romney

by Scott Horsley

May 17, 2012

Listen to the Story

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152885405/biden-speech-part-of-coordinated-attack-on-romney

Morning Edition

[3 min 32 sec]

May 17, 2012

With a speech in Ohio Wednesday, Vice President Biden kept up the drum beat criticizing Mitt Romney for his work as a venture capitalist. The GOP presidential hopeful casts his business experience as a prime asset.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The Obama campaign has launched a coordinated attack on Mitt Romney's business record. Romney's success in the business world has been his main selling point in the White House race. President Obama and his allies are trying to undermine that, arguing that Romney made at least some of his fortune at the expense of American workers. The latest salvo came yesterday in a speech from Vice President Joe Biden. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: It had been in business since 1888, when Romney and his partners bought that company. Eight years later that company was in bankruptcy.

HORSLEY: By that time Romney had left Bain to oversee the Olympics. But he continued to share in the company's profits, even though 750 steelworkers ended up losing their jobs.

BIDEN: Romney made sure the guys on top got to play by a separate set of rules. He ran up massive debts and the middle class lost. And folks, he thinks that experience is going to help our economy.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: He doesn't seem to understand that maximizing profits by whatever means necessary, whether through layoffs or outsourcing or tax avoidance or union busting, might not always be good for the average American or for our economy.

HORSLEY: According to the Los Angeles Times, four of the top 10 companies that Bain Capital invested in while Romney was in charge ultimately went bankrupt, though Bain still made a profit on three of them. Romney spokesman Ryan Williams says that's the nature of free enterprise.

RYAN WILLIAMS: As somebody who spent his life in the private sector, he understands that there are successes and failures. And he obviously learned from both his successes and failures in the private sector.

HORSLEY: Romney appeared on a conservative podcast yesterday and repeated the claim that overall his investment firm helped companies add jobs. He ducked questions about the vice president's speech from the traveling press, though. Spokesman Williams says that's deliberate. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152885405/biden-speech-part-of-coordinated-attack-on-romney

ON POINT RADIO

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/05/14/the-one-percent-speaks

THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2012

Listen to this show Download

Monday, May 14, 2012 at 10:00 AM EDT

The 1 Percent Speaks

A former Bain Capital man and Romney supporter says income inequality shows our economy is working.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES (Portfolio Hardcover)

My guest today Ed Conard was a partner with Mitt Romney at Bain Capital -a partner and managing director at the private equity firm Romney helped start. Made – ballpark – hundreds of millions of dollars. Retired at 51, rich.

Now Ed Conard is a major Romney supporter, and he’s thinking and talking about the US economy. About growth and incentives and inequality. Inequality is not the problem, he says. Inequality is the answer. A sign of the riches – the incentives – that drive the economy forward.

Up next On Point: the “point-one” percent speaks. Ed Conard, American incentives, and inequality.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Edward Conard, former managing director and partner at Bain Capital. He worked there from 1993-2007, and worked side-by-side with Mitt Romney. He’s the author of Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong. You can find an excerpt here.

Timothy Noah, senior editor at The New Republic and author of The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do about It.

C-Segment: Romney at Liberty University

You can find a full transcript of Mitt Romney’s commencement address at Liberty University from May 12, 2012 here.

From Tom’s Reading List

The New York Times “Ever since the financial crisis started, we’ve heard plenty from the 1 percent. We’ve heard them giving defensive testimony in Congressional hearings or issuing anodyne statements flanked by lawyers and image consultants. They typically repeat platitudes about investment, risk-taking and job creation with the veiled contempt that the nation doesn’t understand their contribution. You get the sense that they’re afraid to say what they really believe. What do the superrich say when the cameras aren’t there? ”

The New Republic “Conard says that the more investment you have, the cheaper the stuff that the 99 percent buy will become. This argument (which I think of as the “Who Needs Good Jobs?” argument) presumes that Americans will consume even when they can’t actually afford to, and data on the current recovery provide some evidence that may be true.”

Slate “Conard’s more interesting claim is that inequality isn’t just the consequence of socially beneficial activities, it’s the cause of socially beneficial activities because inequality leads to investment”

ECONOMICS AND FOREIGN POLICY: LUKACS VS. KRUGMAN

Historian John Lukacs in Outgrowing Democracy: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century (1984) posits that in the 1920s capitalism was something much more typical of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth. In Europe it was shot full of holes during and after the First World War; in the United states it was not. None of the economists understood (not that they do even now) that the economic life of a people is not merely conditioned by mental habits but that national economics itself is a fiction, surely in the original Latin meaning of fictio—“mental construction” or, in other words, belief.

In Europe, capitalism was in trouble not merely because of the debts that the states of Europe had accumulted during the war but because the trust of peoples in the social order of liberal democracy and in the honesty and efficiency of parliamentary government were vanishing; in America they were not. It is amazing how in the United States the extraordinary growth of popular propsperity, of the volume of all kinds of purchases, and of personal consumption—in short, how the inflation of society during the twenties—left the value of the national currency largely unaffected.

The prices of stocks rose by leaps and bounds but the general price level rose hardly at all. The first condition reflected the unbroken American belief in the future of progress; the second reflected the strength of the belief in the unchanging solidity of the American system. Progressive practice and unchanging idealism: a duality that was typical of the Victorian mind during the nineteenth century and that was typical of America in the twenties, indeed for sometime thereafter.

This is why the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed was a curious development: a nineteenth-century delfation in a world which was, in almost every sense, inflationary. This was, too, why the Crash and the Depression, while involving much of the Europe it contributed to a ner-fatal weakening of politcal democracy; in the United States it eventually led to a solididication of politcal and of social democracy, through the New Deal, [the last of which Romney promises to dismantle his first day in office].

The First Great Depression

Lukacs declares that [unlike now] all through the Depression years the American people were surprisingly docile. It was almost as if they had felt faintly guilty for the excessive prodigality of the twenties. In any event, their resentments were [unlike the Tea Party’s] short-range and fairly parochial; their faith in the American system—and, more important, in American ideals—remained largely unbroken.

At the the deepest phase of the economic crisis, in 1932, in Germany nearly half of the electorate voted for extremist parties, Nazi and communist; in the United States it was almost nil for right wing extremist parties, [until 2010 when the Tea Party forced the Republican Party’s hand and and drove it into the extreme right].

Perhaps the history of the Depression years is yet another indication of the slowness of American reactions. In the United States the effects of the stock-market collapse accumulated more slowly than in other countries; so did the resentments and impatience of the people. The Depression, besides, strengthened American family life; it brought families closer together. It may even be argued that both in the rhetoric and in the expectations of people there was less cynicism and more naivete in 1932 than say, in 1924. This naivete—lapsing at times into politcal puerilism—is detectatable beneath, and sometimes within, the blackest and bleakest description of the American scene by radical and leftist writers in the thirties. (40)

American Crisis of Confidence

Lukacs writes that the First Great Depression, at its worst, amounted to a crisis of confidence in the financial instituions of the nation. It did not amount to a crisis of confidence in the politcal instituions of the Republic. Yet the strain on the social fabric of the American people was becoming considerable. The selection of Franklin Roosevelt [as was Barack Obama who patterns his administration on FDR’s] was a blessing for them at the time, [yet unappreciated by the Right at that time, as well as today].

“A second-rate mind with a first-rate temperment” Oliver Wendell Holmes was supposed to have said about Roosevelt, [Romney prefers to call Obama a good and loyal American but a failure as a president who cannot clean up 30 years of financal problems in 3 years in office]. Whatever the qualities of the mind, the temperment now counted formost.

Roosevelt invigorated the confidence of the people, including their financial institutions [but was dogged by the equivalent of the Tea Party without its conscious and unconscious racism, as Obama has]. The recognition that Roosevelt with his New Deal—which, in many ways, amounted to the definitive establishment of the American Provider (or Welfare) State—was, in reality, the rescuer of American capitalism is not a perverse or a paradoxical statement. At any rate, American socialism will always have a strong capitalistic element within it, just as American capitalism is often socialistic in its methods and even in some of its aims.

This meant that the kind of social reforms and the kind of government intervention that the New Deal brought about were American and national, not international. It is at this point that—at least to my mind—a world political (or, rather, historical) excursion is in order. In the 1920s [for the last time in the 20^th century] the destinies of America and Europe seemed to be separated, in more than one way. In the 1930s the politcal effects of the Depression in Germany and in America were very different—but not in every way. In a very important sense what was happening in Europe was happening in the United States, too: the rise of a new Right—radical, populist, and nationalist, [only to be repeated in the 2000s]. (41)

KLUGRMAN’S REPLY TO LUKACS

Economist Paul Krugman brings Luckacs up to date in End This Depression Now! (2012) writes about what it will take to end the Second Great Depression. He writes that as it was in 1936, so it is today. Now, as then, our society is blighted by mass unemployment. Now, as then, the lack of jobs represents a failure of a system that was hugely unequal and unjust even in “good times.”

Should the fact that we’ve been here before be a source of despair or of hope? I vte for hope. After all, we did eventually cure the problems that caused the Great Depression, and created a much more equal society too. You may lament that the fix didn’t last forever, but then nothing does (except red wine stains on a white couch). The fact is that we had almost two generations of more or less adequate employment and tolerable levels of inequality after World War II, and we can do it again. (208)

Narrowing income gaps will be a difficult task, and will probaly have to be a long-term project. It’s true that the last time around income inequality was reduced very quickly, in the so-called “great compression” of the war yeaers; but since we aren’t about to have a war economy with all the controls that implies—or at least I hope we aren’t—it’s probably unrealistic to expect a quick solution.

The problem of unemployment, however, is not a hard one in purely economic terms, norneed the cure take a long time. Between 1939 and 1941—that is, before the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s actual entry into war—a burst of federal spending caused a 7 percent rise in the total number of jobs in Amrica, the equivalent of adding more than ten million jobs today.

You may say that this time is different, but one of the main messages of this book is that it isn’t; there is no good reason why we could not repeat that achievement if only we had the intellectual clarity and political will. Every time you hear some talking head declare that we have a long-term problem that can’t be solved with short-term fixes, you should know that while he may think he sounds wise, he’s actually being both cruel and foolish. This depression could and should be ened very quickly. (209)

The Fed

Ben Bernanke pointed out that there was a substantial body of economic analysis and evidence for the proposition that each of these policies would have a real positive effect on growth and employment. (The inflation-target idea actually came from a paper I published in 1998) He also argued that the details probly weren’t all that important, that what was really needed was “Rooseveltian resolve,” a “willingness to be agressie and experiment—in short, to do whatever was necessary to get the country moving again.” (217)

Krugman writes that Unfortunately, Chairman Bernanke hasn’t followed his own advice that he gave in the classroom. To be fair, the Fed has moved to some extent on “quantitve easing,” it has bought both long-term government debt and mortgage-backed securities. But there has been no hint of Rooseveltian resolve to do whatever is necessary: rather than being aggressive and experimental, the Fed has tiptoed up to quantitive easing, doing it now and then when the economy looks especially weak, but quickly ending its efforts whenever the news picks up a bit.

Why has the Fed been so timid? One anwer may be that it has been intimadated by politcal pressure: Republicans in Congress went wild over quanitative easing, accusing Bernanke of “debasing the dollar”; Rick Perry, [another Obama basher], the governor of Texas, famiuly warned that something “ugly might happen to Bernanke if he visited the Lone Star State.

However, Krugman says that perhaps Bernanke is suffering from Fed Borg, the pressures of groupthink and the lure of camaraderie pushed by time into a position that gave higher priority to keeping the Fed’s goals of modest, thereby making life easier for the instituion, than to helping the economy by any means necessary. The sad irony is that back in 2000 Bernake criticized the Bank of Japan for essentially having the same attitude, of being unwilling to “try anything that isn’t absolutely guaranteed to work," [or perhaps he has fallen prey to listening to Romney’s rank on Obama and believing it]. (218)

Where Are All Our Customers: Economics 101

'Dire Consequences' If Greece Exits Euro

by John Ydstie

May 17, 2012

Listen to the Story

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152847414/dire-consequences-if-greece-exits-euro

Morning Edition

[4 min 3 sec]

People walk past the Bank of Greece headquarters in Athens.

May 17, 2012

Euros are being drained out of Greek banks at a rate of up to $1 billion a day this week. In the wake of the country's election turmoil, depositors are nervous about the heightened possibility of a Greek exit from the euro. If that were to happen, euros left in Greek banks could be worth much less than euros outside the country.

Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson believes that with the Greeks unable to form a government because of victories by anti-austerity parties, there's an 80 to 90 percent chance that the country will exit the euro. Johnson thinks that very well could happen before the next election, to be held in June.

"Greece is absolutely on an accelerated time scale now," he says. "Once people lose confidence in their bank deposits and believe that those will not keep their value, then just sitting around saying, 'Well, we'll sort this out in June,' is no kind of answer."

Too Much At Stake

Nicolas Veron, a fellow at the economic think tank Bruegel in Brussels and a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute, is more optimistic than Johnson.

"I do believe that it's still possible to prevent a scenario of Greek exit, which I think would have very dire consequences — not only for Europe, by the way, but also for the rest of the world in terms of financial and economic destabilization," says the former French government official.

Veron says there will be great efforts both inside Greece and among its EU partners to keep Greece in the eurozone. He also says the country is not as close to leaving the euro as much of the current comment suggests.

"There's a lot of brinkmanship both on the part of Greeks and Greek leaders and on the part of leaders from the rest of Europe and the partners of Greece," Veron says.

But he says the economic costs of leaving the euro are so great for Greece, for the rest of Europe and for the world that officials will keep trying to avoid it. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152847414/dire-consequences-if-greece-exits-euro

Understanding Interest Rates and Foreign Policy

Romney and the Tea Party controlled Repubulican House as well as Democratic Blue Dogs constantly harp on the theme of deficits and foreign debt. Krugman writes that how much compensation investors demand for tying their funds up in a long-term bond depends on how soon and how much they expect short rates to rise. And this in turn depends on the prospects for economic recovery, specifically on when investors believe the economy might emerge from the liquidity trap and do well enough that the Fed begins raising rates to head off possible inflation.

It seems to work for the United Sttes, but what about Greece or Italy? Fear of default is what leis behand the high interest rates on some European debt.

Not Your Cold War NATO: Alliance To Examine Itself

by Jackie Northam

A NATO soldier aims his weapon during a gun battle in Kabul, Afghanistan, in April. NATO is holding a summit in Chicago this weekend, and discussing the future of the alliance is on the agenda.

May 17, 2012

This weekend, about 60 heads of state and government, and thousands of others will descend on Chicago to attend a NATO summit. The gathering will focus on the alliance's involvement in Afghanistan — and ensuring a long-term commitment to the country.

But the meeting comes at a time of tension within NATO. Discussions will also include the future of NATO itself, and whether it can overcome its shortfalls. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152873919/not-your-cold-war-nato-alliance-to-examine-itself

BBC WORLD SERVICE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rknwq#synopsis

World Business Report
17/05/2012

17/05/2012

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The latest business and finance news from around the world, on the BBC.

BBC IN THE BALANCE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00qy7pd#synopsis

In The Balance
American Recovery?

American Recovery?

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Last broadcast on Sun, 29 Apr 2012, 00:32 on BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).

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Just when it seemed the world's biggest economy was getting back on its feet a new set of GDP figures come in suggesting growth in America has slowed. The hope had been that America could provide inspiration - and some desperately needed demand - for the rest of the developed world. Or could it be the figures themselves that are at fault? Can't statistics be used to prove almost anything?
Justin Rowlatt and his guests, Professor Nancy Koehn of Harvard Business School, Paul Dales, senior US economist at Capital Economics and Timothy Noah, author of "The Great Divergence, discuss the truth behind the numbers.

Fed: Sizeable Risk From Capitol Hill Gridlock

by Chris Arnold

May 17, 2012

Listen to the Story

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152885214/fed-sizeable-risk-from-capitol-hill-gridlock

Morning Edition

[1 min 20 sec]

May 17, 2012

The Federal Reserve has unsealed the minutes of its Open Market Committee meeting in April. Fed officials warn that a failure to agree on a federal budget plan could mean businesses will delay hiring plans. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152885214/fed-sizeable-risk-from-capitol-hill-gridlock

BBC BUSINESS DAILY

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rnj2v#synopsis

Business Daily
JP Morgan Chase

JP Morgan Chase

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Would new US regulations have stopped the trading scandal at JP Morgan Chase?

Lesley Curwen discusses this with Roger Nagioff, co-founder of independent investment firm JRJ Ventures, and Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of the non-profitmaking body, Better Markets Inc.

Plus Lesley goes to a gallery in London to meet Edward Burtynsky, the photographer who is captivated by the workings of the global oil industry, to find out why he had an 'oil epiphany'.

Does JP Morgan loss show regulators' great failure?

Regulators could not be happier about JP Morgan's loss of at least $2bn that was generated by its Chief Investment Office

BBC HEART AND SOUL

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00k6rrg#synopsis

Heart And Soul
God And Gays - Bridging The Gulf

God And Gays - Bridging The Gulf

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Last broadcast on Mon, 26 Sep 2011, 01:32 on BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).

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It has opened up a deep divisions in many Christian churches: the question what place they should give to gay men and women.

Should a man in a stable, long-term relationship with another man be allowed to be a priest - or even a bishop?

Should the churches bless gay couples?

On the other hand, have Western liberals watered down Biblical teachings on homosexuality to an unacceptable extent?

Christopher Landau travels to Chicago to meet one man who's been trying to bridge the gulf between two seemingly irreconcilable positions.

Andrew Marin is an evangelical Christian who has made it his life's work to explore what it means to be Christ-like towards a community often alientated by Christ's followers.

Christopher goes out with him into Boystown, Chicago's gay village, to hear about the realities of Andrew's ministry.

But he also visits the Resurrection Anglican Church in West Chicago, which has left the Anglican Communion over the homosexuality issue.

And we hear from some of the best minds at Harvard university on whether there can be a "third way" approach to one of the most difficult and divisive issues in contemporary Christianity.

God and Gays: Bridging the Gulf

The Marin Foundation's 'I'm Sorry Campaign' in Boystown during the Gay Pride Parade

Photo by Michelle Gantner, Mal Adjusted Media

Andrew Marin

Andrew Marin of the Marin Foundation in Chicago

GOP Group Abandons Racially Tinged Attack Ad

by Ari Shapiro

May 18, 2012

Mitt Romney is disavowing a plan by some wealthy Republicans to attack President Obama for ties to his controversial former pastor. Even the people behind that proposal said they are abandoning it after their idea was plastered on the front page of The New York Times.

The proposal centered on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was a mentor to Obama before the two parted ways during the last presidential campaign.

Republicans unaffiliated with Romney were considering spending $10 million on a racially tinged advertising campaign tying Wright to the president.

In Florida on Thursday, Romney disapproved of the plan: "I hope that our campaigns can respectively be about the future and about issues and about a vision for America."

By the time Romney said that, even the people funding the advertising plan had abandoned the idea. And Democrats were pointing out that Romney had already brought Wright into the campaign.

Romney was asked whether he stands by his comments about Wright made in February.

"I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was," Romney answered.

This is what he said on Sean Hannity's radio show: "I'm not sure which is worse, him [Obama] listening to Rev. Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation."

Strategists in both parties doubt that even a huge advertising campaign focused on Wright could redefine Obama at this point in his presidency.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/18/152979171/proposed-obama-wright-campaign-ad-abandoned

ON POINT RADIO

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/05/18/week-in-the-news-196

FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2012

Listen to this show Download

Friday, May 18, 2012 at 10:00 AM EDT

Week In The News: JP Morgan, Facebook, Europe Struggles

JP Morgan loses it. Europe wobbles. Facebook fever. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

A demonstrator hit a pot during a protest to mark the anniversary of the "Indignados" movement in Sol square, Madrid, Spain, Tuesday May 15, 2012. Spaniards angered by increasingly grim economic prospects and unemployment hitting one out of every four citizens protested in droves in the nation's largest cities, marking the one-year anniversary of a spontaneous movement that inspired similar anti-authority demonstrations across the planet. (AP)

All the world thinking about a “Greek exit” from the Euro-zone this week, and what it might mean from Athens to Arkansas to Ahmedabad for world markets and the global economy. Scary. The G8 hits Camp David today, sweating for an answer. At home, JP Morgan stumbles big.

Attack ad talk. Facebook fever. A pile of evidence comes out in the Trayvon Martin case. California’s up against the budget wall. A majority of all births in America are now non-white babies. And disco queen Donna Summer signs off.

This hour, On Point: our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital.

Jon Healy, editorial board member at the Los Angeles Times.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst.

From Tom’s Reading List

New York Times “After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.”

Foreign Policy “French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who held their first meeting yesterday, might want to consider that they have been attacking the problems of Greece, the euro, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and even France backwards.”

Wired “Sometime in early 2004, as Mark Zuckerberg was furiously coding the first iterations of The Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, the Internet passed what then seemed to be an impressive milestone: 750 million people worldwide had become connected. The exact birthdate of the Internet is difficult to pin down, but it’s fair to say that it took at least three decades for the net to reach a population of that size.”

REMEMBER MAMA ON MOTHER'S DAY~A HAPPY MOM'S DAY TO ALL

Sat, 12 May 2012 17:05:53 -0400

Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
Look at my face — dark as the night —

Yet shining like the sun with love's true light

I am the child they stole from the sand

three hundred years ago in Africa's land.
I am the dark girl who crossed the wide sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work I gave —
Children sold away from me, husband sold, too.
No safety, no love, no respect was I due.

Three hundred years in the deepest South:
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth .
God put a dream like steel in my soul.

Now, through my children, I'm reaching the goal.

Now, through my children, young and free,
I realize the blessings deed to me.
I couldn't read then. I couldn't write.
I had nothing, back there in the night.
Sometimes, the valley was filled with tears,
But I kept trudging on through the lonely years.
Sometimes, the road was hot with the sun,
But I had to keep on till my work was done:
I had to keep on! No stopping for me —
I was the seed of the coming Free.

I nourished the dream that nothing could smother
Deep in my breast — the Negro mother.
I had only hope then, but now through you,
Dark ones of today, my dreams must come true:
All you dark children in the world out there,
Remember my sweat, my pain, my despair.
Remember my years, heavy with sorrow —
And make of those years a torch for tomorrow.
Make of my pass a road to the light
Out of the darkness, the ignorance, the night.

Lift high my banner out of the dust.
Stand like free men supporting my trust.
Believe in the right, let none push you back.
Remember the whip and the slaver's track.
Remember how the strong in struggle and strife
Still bar you the way, and deny you life —
But march ever forward, breaking down bars.
Look ever upward at the sun and the stars.

Oh, my dark children, may my dreams and my prayers
Impel you forever up the great stairs —
For I will be with you till no white brother
Dares keep down the children of the Negro Mother.

The Negro Mother by Langston Hughes

GRANDMOMS TOO ARE MOTHERS

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',

Mother To Son by Langston Hughes • 89 poems by Langston Hughes

mary gravitt's Open Salon Blog

THE US A PREDATOR NATION? PART 2

HEALTH CARE AT HOME AND ABROAD

Health Insurance Cutbacks Squeeze The Insured

BBC World Service TV & Radio Sites

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BBC HEALTH SERVICE History

BBC WORLD SERVICE

23/05/2012

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CBO Report: U.S. Economy Could Slide Into Recession

Listen to the Story

Xerox CEO: 'If You Don't Transform, You're Stuck'

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U.S. Politicians See Opposite Messages In Euro Crisis

BATTLE OF ECONOMIC IDEAS VS IDEOLOGY

ON POINT RADIO

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From Tom’s Reading List

MOVING HIGHER 'CAUSE WE'RE WINNERS

MEMORIAL DAY~A DAY OF REFLECTION ON NO-PEACE AND NO-WAR

IS THE US A PREDATOR NATION RAN BY A DICTATOR! PART#1

ON POINT RADIO

Guests

From Tom’s Reading List

'Road To Freedom': Moral Debate For Free Enterprise

Fawaz Gerges: "Obama and The Middle East: The End of America's Moment"

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Israeli settler shoots Palestinian

WILL THE CIRCLE OF FREE ENTERPRISE SLAVERY BE UNBROKEN

Biden Speech Part Of Coordinated Attack On Romney

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ON POINT RADIO

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C-Segment: Romney at Liberty University

'Dire Consequences' If Greece Exits Euro

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Not Your Cold War NATO: Alliance To Examine Itself

BBC WORLD SERVICE

17/05/2012

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BBC IN THE BALANCE

American Recovery?

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Fed: Sizeable Risk From Capitol Hill Gridlock

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BBC BUSINESS DAILY

JP Morgan Chase

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Does JP Morgan loss show regulators' great failure?

BBC HEART AND SOUL

God And Gays - Bridging The Gulf

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God and Gays: Bridging the Gulf

Andrew Marin

GOP Group Abandons Racially Tinged Attack Ad

ON POINT RADIO

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From Tom’s Reading List

REMEMBER MAMA ON MOTHER'S DAY~A HAPPY MOM'S DAY TO ALL