Shelly Bernal - Wall Street and Their Purchased Representatives

How is it that two years after passage of the much acclaimed Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform (four years after economic crash), Too Big To Fail (TBTF) institutions are not only bigger, but also too big to regulate and too big to jail? Don’t be fooled into believing that because a law has been passed by Congress and signed by the president, it has actually been implemented.

Keep in mind that Congress controls the funding for the federal regulators who are charged with carrying out the reform — Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities Exchange Commission. What would possess members of Congress, who bragged about banning banks from gambling with taxpayer money, to force regulators to strategically surrender significant rules by threatening budget cuts?

Answer: their livelihoods. Yes, the very livelihood of a member of Congress is indeed in the hands of the TBTF financial institutions. What better motivation is there than your career and financial future of your family? The financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, with insurance companies, securities and investment firms, real estate interests, and commercial banks providing the bulk of that money. In this 2012 election cycle alone, this industry has already donated $122 million to campaigns of members of Congress.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/wall-street-and-their-purchased-representatives-1336827827

US Concerned Israel May Attack Iran "at Any Moment"

The Obama administration is worried that Israel's new coalition government in could signal an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities at "any given moment," one of Israel's leading TV stations reported Thursday night.

Shaul Mofaz and his Kadima party’s joining a unity government with rightwing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could be the final step in a united front for attack by Israel, according to the Hebrew-language Channel 10 News.

The televison station quoted unnamed Obama administration officials as saying they believed a Likud-Kadima coalition government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran before the U.S. presidential elections in November.

* * *

Israel's Arutz Sheva Channel 7 reports:

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/11-6

Yves Smith - Colleges as Merchants of Debt

Student loan debt slavery is even worse than you probably thought. The Grey Lady tonight has a long, informative story, “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College“, that early on presents the stunning tidbit that 94% of the recipients of bachelor’s degrees borrowed in order to pay for it. The Times doesn’t report what average debt levels are in this cohort, but the average across all borrowers, per the New York Fed, is $23,000. Remember, this total includes graduates who have have been paying down debt, meaning they’ve amortized principal and almost certainly had borrowed less on average to complete school.

Contrast this “certain to be higher on average than $23,000″ for new graduates with their earning power, or more accurately, lack thereof. The Times article also mentions a Rutgers survey which seems to have some sample bias or underreporting of borrowing (of 2006-2011 graduates, only 55% of the respondents said they had borrowed to help fund college, and the median reported debt level was $20,000). The 2009-2011 graduates’ income averaged $27,000. In addition, only half said that their job required a college degree.

This juxtaposition confirms that colleges, like the financial services industry, have become increasingly extractive: whatever financial benefits accrue to getting an undergraduate education, they are more and more captured by the schools, though their ability to persuade students to go into hock to get a degree. And like late housing bubble borrowers, more are defaulting early on, meaning the loans were badly underwritten (ie, many should probably have never been made because it the odds of default were high):

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/new-york-times-on-student-loan-debt-slavery.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Martha Rosenberg - Why Were These Drugs Approved?

Like Vioxx, Merck's expensive "super aspirin" that caused thousands of cardiovascular events before being recalled, Merck's Fosamax, the first bisphosphonate bone drug, flew out of the FDA with only a six-month review.

And like Vioxx, the true dangers of the drug class (that includes Fosamax, Boniva and Reclast) only surfaced after being "tested" on the guinea pig know as John Q Public.

Now, people are asking why the bone drugs were ever approved.

Like Vioxx, there were early indications of Fosamax's risks but they did not prevent wide marketing.   Merck received 1,213 adverse-effect reports soon after the drug's approval, which included 32 hospitalized patients with adverse esophageal effects, 17 with "severe" effects, and two who were "temporarily disabled," reported the New England Journal of Medicine. One woman who took Fosamax and only remained upright for 30 minutes not 60 minutes as directions say, had to be admitted to the Mayo Clinic with "severe ulcerative esophagitis affecting the entire length of the esophagus" and had to be fed intravenously.

And there were other safety signals. Bisphosphonate patients were found to be at greater risk for osteonecrosis of the jaw--death of the jawbone--after in-office dental procedures.   They were found to be at greater risk for irregular heart beat, intractable pain and at double the risk of esophageal cancer, according to medical reports.

Then, in 2010, after millions of women were taking the widely advertised bisphosphonates, studies revealed they sometimes caused the very fractures they were supposed to prevent!

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Were-These-Drugs-Appro-by-Martha-Rosenberg-120511-91.html

Robert Crawford - No Secret Why CIA is Now Romanticizing 'Harsh Interrogation' Techniques

José Rodriguez, former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, used these words in a "60 Minutes" interview last Sunday to defend the use of water-boarding and other "harsh interrogation" techniques on suspected terrorists. His self-assurance recalls the observation of General Taguba, the lead investigator into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, that "the only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." Rodriguez’s new book, Harsh Measures is an undisguised justification of CIA torture.

Interviewer Leslie Stahl offered only mild push-back. The broadcast exemplifies the normalization of the monstrous, the transmutation of the radical and stunning reality of U.S. torture into a reasonable topic of "debate." There was no mention of the absolute, no-exceptions-permitted prohibition of torture under the Torture Convention and the Geneva Conventions; no mention of the U.S. Anti-Torture Statute or War Crimes Act; no acknowledgment that the so-called "torture memos," written in secret by the Bush administration and immediately rescinded by the Obama administration, were intended (in the words of a CIA official) as a "golden shield" against criminal prosecution.

Rodriguez claimed that 92 CIA videos of "harsh interrogation" methods were destroyed in order to protect interrogators from Al Qaeda reprisals, but the U.S. government can and regularly does hide the identity of Americans when releasing documents to the public. Missing from the "60 Minutes" exchange was any mention that the CIA was under court order to preserve the tapes, and that their destruction constituted a possible obstruction of justice. The entire discussion unfolded without any mention of the law.

Since Stahl omitted another critical question, I will ask it here: Why now? Why a CIA authorized book justifying CIA torture? There are two possible explanations. First, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) will soon release its long-awaited report on CIA torture. The report is expected to find no convincing evidence that harsh interrogation techniques led to any breakthroughs in the fight against terrorism. We should not be surprised if the CIA might want to preempt this inconvenient finding. How many will heed a report released by Senate Democrats compared to the high-profile interview and book tour of a tough CIA veteran pushing the romance of "dark-side" fixes to America’s security problems?

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/12-4

Danny Schechter - The Axis of Indifference in the Media World

Listen to Danny's show "The News Dissector" every Friday at 2pm (Eastern Time)

Foreign correspondents have always been revered within journalism. That's why covering Iraq or other wars are assignments so many reporters cultivate. Many see them as a ticket up the media pecking order.

Being "under fire" promise excitement, danger and -- let's face it, on TV -- precious "face time." Going overseas is often a route to more visibility and better jobs at home on the strength of your "bravery" -- war reporting can be the macho oxygen of ambition.

Just as covering a turbulent world is attractive in the ranks, up in the suites of media power, "foreign news" is, according to Michael Wolff, a 'nostalgist's beat' said to turn off American audiences and tune them out. That's why decision makers shutter bureaus and redefine news of the world as 'news of American power in the world'. (They also realize financial savings by doing so, of course.)

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-schechter/foreign-reporting-future_b_1511648.html

Kuala Lumpur - Bush And Associates Found Guilty Of Torture

The five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered a guilty verdict against former United States President George W. Bush and his associates at the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal hearing that had started on Monday. 

On the charge of Crime of Torture and War Crimes , the tribunal finds the accused persons former U.S. President George W. Bush and his associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of Defence, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General guilty as charged and convicted as war criminals for Torture and Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment of the Complainant War Crime Victims. 

Earlier in the week, the tribunal heard the testimonies of three witnesses namely Abbas Abid, Moazzam Begg and Jameelah Hameedi. They related the horrific tortures they had faced during their incarceration. The tribunal also heard two other Statutory Declarations of Iraqi citizen Ali Shalal and Rhuhel Ahmed, a British citizen. 

Testimony showed that Abbas Abid, a 48-year-old chief engineer in the Science and Technology Ministry had his fingernails removed by pliers. Ali Shalal was attached with bare electrical wires and electrocuted and hung from the wall. Moazzam Begg was beaten and put in solitary confinement. Jameelah was almost nude and humiliated, used as a human shield whilst being transported by helicopter. All these witnesses have residual injuries till today. 

Read More:

http://www.countercurrents.org/kfcw120512.htm

Robert Reich - How J.P. Morgan Chase has Made the Case for Breaking Up the Big Banks and Resurrecting Glass-Steagall

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the nation’s largest bank, whose chief executive, Jamie Dimon, has lead Wall Street’s war against regulation, announced Thursday it had lost $2 billion in trades over the past six weeks and could face an additional $1 billion of losses, due to excessively risky bets.

The bets were “poorly executed” and “poorly monitored,” said Dimon, a result of “many errors, “sloppiness,” and “bad judgment.” But not to worry. “We will admit it, we will fix it and move on.”

Move on? Word on the Street is that J.P. Morgan’s exposure is so large that it can’t dump these bad bets without affecting the market and losing even more money. And given its mammoth size and interlinked connections with every other financial institution, anything that shakes J.P. Morgan is likely to rock the rest of the Street.

Ever since the start of the banking crisis in 2008, Dimon has been arguing that more government regulation of Wall Street is unnecessary. Last year he vehemently and loudly opposed the so-called Volcker rule, itself a watered-down version of the old Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate commercial from investment banking before it was repealed in 1999, saying it would unnecessarily impinge on derivative trading (the lucrative practice of making bets on bets) and hedging (using some bets to offset the risks of other bets).

Dimon argued that the financial system could be trusted; that the near-meltdown of 2008 was a perfect storm that would never happen again.

Since then, J.P. Morgan’s lobbyists and lawyers have done everything in their power to eviscerate the Volcker rule — creating exceptions, exemptions, and loopholes that effectively allow any big bank to go on doing most of the derivative trading it was doing before the near-meltdown.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/how-jp-morgan-chase-has-made-case-breaking-big-banks-and-resurrecting-glass-steagall-1336830881

Sara Robinson - How the Ayn Rand-Loving Right Is Like a Bunch of Teen Boys Gone Crazy

If, as George Lakoff says, we view politics through the metaphor of family, then Mother's Day is a good time to ask the question: Where's Mom in this picture? What are all those dirty socks and pizza boxes doing in the living room? (Seriously: it looks like a frat house in here.) Who's been drinking the beer I hid in the basement fridge?

And, sweet mother of God: how did we end up letting the 16-year-old boys take over the entire household?

Make no mistake: all this Ayn Rand libertarian me-first-and-the-rest-of-you-go-to-hell stuff -- the there's-no-government-like-no-government theology that's now being piously intoned as Holy Received Truth by everybody, male and female, in the GOP -- is, very precisely, the kind of politics you'd come up with if you were a 16-year-old boy trying to explain away his dependence on Mom.

Parents? I don't have any parents. I raised myself, on roots and berries and small vermin I dug up in vacant lots. That lady hanging around, feeding me and nagging me and picking up my socks and driving me to practice? She's just the nanny state. That bitch. I hate her.

Society? There's no such thing as society. There's only what I want right now, which is the ultimate good in my universe. And what I want right now is more time on the XBox, pizza money, and the keys to the family car.

The future? If I pursue everything I want now, then the future will magically take care of its self. Dinner will appear. So will clean socks and the next-gen XBox.

Obligations? I am God's gift to the world. I don't owe it anything. In fact: it owes me -- just for being so magnificent, cute and special. (Even my mom thinks so.)

On behalf of America's mothers, let me say: I have had enough of this. I don't care how cute they are: it's high time these so-called "libertarian" freeloaders get off the couch, stand up, and show some respect to the rest of us who've done the hard work that makes their cushy lives possible.

You know what I want for Mother's Day? I want these so-called "self-made men" to grow up and get a life.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155393/how_the_ayn_rand-loving_right_is_like_a_bunch_of_teen_boys_gone_crazy

Meghann Myers - Grant to boost use of food stamps at farmers markets

Farmers markets are a popular source of reasonably priced fresh produce, but across the country many accept only cash or checks – a big problem for low-income shoppers using food stamps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to change that.

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan this week announced a $4 million grant for states to help implement wireless technology that will allow more farmers markets to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, or food stamps.

Markets need wireless Internet or land-line connections in order to accept payments from customers using government benefits, a system known as Electronic Benefits Transfer. The system isn’t always available for outdoor markets in parks or parking lots, and small markets often can’t afford to set up the technology.

Two years ago, Jeff Dabbelt of Lexington Farmers Market in Lexington, Ky., set up a machine on his own to accept EBT payments. “I had to convince my directors that it was going to be worth the additional cost,” he said.

Last year, the market brought in $14,000 from EBT cards, Dabbelt said.

Read More:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/10/148443/grant-to-boost-use-of-food-stamps.html