"Mike Whitney"- More Treachery at the Fed?

Global Research, June 24, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25381

No one expects the Fed to announce a rate-hike at the end of the today's FOMC meeting, but that doesn't mean there won't be a few surprises. The problem is that the recovery has stalled and the Fed can't decide whether we've just hit a "soft patch" or if it's something more serious. If it is more serious, then the Fed will need a contingency plan for kick-starting the economy. So, what's it going to be; another round of Quantitative Easing (QE), rate caps on short-term Treasuries or something else altogether? That's what the financial media will want to know, and only Fed chairman Ben Bernanke knows the answers.

But before we get to that, let's look at the economy. First quarter growth has been revised to an anemic 1.8 percent and economists are currently shaving their estimates for Q2. Some think that the high number of "black swan" events (Tsunami in Japan, debt problems in the eurozone) are mainly responsible for the poor growth, but that doesn't explain the sharp downturn in hiring, manufacturing, housing and consumer confidence. The US is experiencing a dropoff in demand at the worst possible time, just as Obama's $800 billion fiscal stimulus and Bernanke's $600 billion monetary stimulus are running out of gas. That means even less support for an economy that can barley stand upright as it is. Here's an excerpt from an article by Nouriel Roubini with a rundown on the economy:

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"The Washington Post"-Can Progressives Start Their Own Tea Party?

Published on Friday, June 24, 2011 by The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/can-liberals-start-their-own-tea-party/2011/06/22/AGTWYthH_blog.html

Can Progressives Start Their Own Tea Party?

by Rachel Weiner

At last weekend’s Netroots Nation gathering in Minneapolis, liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement. Former White House environmental official Van Jones is hoping to change that with a new political effort dubbed “The American Dream Movement.”

Van Jones is hoping to rival the tea party movement. Jones predicted that the public winds were shifting against drastic government spending cuts like the ones enacted by new Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who moved this spring to end collective bargaining rights for most state employeesOrganizers are hoping to emulate the the success of the tea party, which became a significant force in the 2010 midterms, uniting like-minded people across the country who were previously uninvolved in politics or participating locally but not at the national level.

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"Anne Landman"- What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?

Published on Friday, June 24, 2011 by PR Watch

http://prwatch.org/news/2011/06/10851/what-happened-media-coverage-fukushima

by Anne Landman

While the U.S. media has been occupied with Anthony Weiner, the Republican presidential candidates and Bristol Palin's memoir, coverage of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster has practially fallen off the map. Poor mainstream media coverage of Japan's now months-long struggle to gain control over the Fukushima disaster has deprived Americans of crucial information about the risks of nuclear power following natural disasters. After a few weeks of covering the early aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. media moved on, leaving behind the crisis at Fukushima which continues to unfold. U.S. politicians, like Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, have made disappointing and misleading statements about the relative safety of nuclear power and have vowed to stick by our nuclear program, while other countries, like Germany and Italy, have taken serious steps to address the obvious risks of nuclear power -- risks that the Fukushima disaster made painfully evident, at least to the rest of the world.

Problems Multiply

News outlets in other countries have been paying attention to Fukushima, though, and a relative few in this country have as well. A June 16, 2011 Al Jazeera English article titled, "Fukushima: It's much worse than you think," quotes a high-level former nuclear industry executive, Arnold Gunderson, who called Fukushima nohting less than "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind." Twenty nuclear cores have been exposed at Fukushima, Gunderson points out, saying that, along with the site's many spent-fuel pools, gives Fukushima 20 times the release potential of Chernobyl.

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"Robert Jensen"- The Anguish in the American Dream

Published on Thursday, June 23, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/23-5

by Robert Jensen

Whether celebrated or condemned, the American Dream endures, though always ambiguously. We are forever describing and defining, analyzing and assessing the concept, and with each attempt to clarify, the idea of an American Dream grows more incoherent yet more entrenched.

The literature of this dream analysis is virtually endless, as writers undertake the task of achieving, saving, chasing, restoring, protecting, confronting, pursuing, reviving, shaping, renewing, and challenging the American Dream. Other writers are busy devouring, recapturing, fulfilling, chasing, liberating, advertising, redesigning, rescuing, spreading, updating, inventing, reevaluating, financing, redefining, remembering, and expanding the American Dream. And let’s not forget those who are deepening, building, debating, burying, destroying, ruining, promoting, tracking, betraying, remaking, living, regulating, undermining, marketing, downsizing, and revitalizing the American Dream.

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"Kevin Carson" - Our Corporate Military – An Irrational, Authoritarian Institution

Counterpunch, June 22, 2011

http://counterpunch.org/carson06242011.html

Nicholas Kristoff, in a New York Times op-ed ("Our Lefty Military," June 16), lauds the "astonishingly liberal ethos" that governs the military internally — single-payer health insurance, job security, educational opportunities, free daycare — in support of Gen. Wesley Clark's description of it as "the purest application of socialism there is."

For me — an avowed libertarian socialist as well as a market anarchist — at least two howlers stand out here. First, when I think of "socialism," I think of all the liberatory things originally associated with that term back in the days of the early working class and classical socialist movement in the nineteenth century: Empowerment of the working class, worker control of production, and all the rest. Last I heard, the U.S. military isn't set up as a worker cooperative, with enlisted men electing officers, managing their own work, or voting on whether or not to go to war. Taking orders from a boss "because I said so" isn't my idea of socialism.

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"William River Pitts"- Clarence Thomas Must Go

Thursday 23 June 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/clarence-thomas-must-go/1308761622

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I do not like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In my opinion, he has no business sitting on the high court after the reprehensible treatment he forced Anita Hill to endure, and has been a disgrace to the bench lo these last twenty years. Anthony Weiner, one of Clarence Thomas' most ardent critics, was just run out of Washington DC on a rail for behavior far less offensive; Mr. Thomas is lucky there was no such thing as Twitter when he was sexually harassing Hill, or he'd be chasing ambulances outside of muni court like the hack he is. He sits up there like a lump, never speaking or offering questions to petitioners, and has not had an original thought since his shameful Senate approval.

But his vapid intellectual presence on the bench is only a small part of the story. Mr. Thomas has, by all appearances, turned his position on the court into a license to print money for himself, his family, and a few choice friends.

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"Bill Boyarsky"- Bad News for a Country Tired of War

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bad_news_for_a_country_tired_of_war_20110623/

Posted on Jun 23, 2011

By Bill Boyarsky

Barack Obama’s plan for a limited withdrawal from Afghanistan means tens of thousands of American troops will remain there, many of them fighting, for several years to come.

In his speech Wednesday night, the president announced he will reduce the U.S. fighting force in Afghanistan by 10,000 by the end of this year and a total of 33,000 by September 2012. After that, he said, “our troops will be coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete. …”

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"University of Missouri Health System"-Discovery Offers Insights Into Link Between Parkinson's and Pesticides

Findings could lead to better prevention and treatment for common neurodegenerative disease

University of Missouri Health System, June 20, 2011

http://medicine.missouri.edu/news/0130.php

In a new article published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration, researchers at the University of Missouri School of Medicine take some of the first steps toward unraveling the molecular dysfunction that occurs when proteins are exposed to environmental toxins. Their discovery helps further explain recent NIH findings that demonstrate the link between Parkinson's disease and two particular pesticides – rotenone and paraquat.

"Fewer than 5 percent of Parkinson's cases are attributed to genetics, but more than 95 percent of cases have unknown causes," said Zezong Gu, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and anatomical sciences. "This study provides the evidence that oxidative stress, possibly due to sustained exposure to environmental toxins, may serve as a primary cause of Parkinson's. This helps us begin to unveil why many people, such as farmers exposed to pesticides, have an increased incidence of the disease."

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"NCAR"-Economic cost of weather may total $485 billion in US

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/ncfa-eco062211.php

National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

BOULDER—Everything has its price, even the weather. New research indicates that routine weather events such as rain and cooler-than-average days can add up to an annual economic impact of as much as $485 billion in the United States.

The study, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that finance, manufacturing, agriculture, and every other sector of the economy is sensitive to changes in the weather. The impacts can be felt in every state.

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"Chicago Tribune"-AMA: Nearly one in five medical claims processed inaccurately

chicagotribune.com

By Bruce Japsen

Tribune staff reporter

Health insurance companies are inaccurately processing nearly one in five medical claims, slowing payments to doctors and adding bureaucratic headaches to patients, the American Medical Association said this morning.

In its annual report card on the health insurance industry, released during the the group's annual House of Delegates meeting here, the AMA said commercial health insurance companies have an error rate of 19.3 percent, up 2 percentage points from last year's report.

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