http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/18/tobin-tax-financial-transactions
Finance experts call for 'Tobin tax' on foreign exchange trades
Levy of 0.005% on $1m foreign exchange deal would be $50
Billions of transactions a year would raise about $33bn
Phillip Inman guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 July 2010
An international group of finance experts including the boss of the UK's main chartered accountancy body, have criticised plans for bank taxes put forward by governments and the International Monetary Fund in favour of reviving the idea of a "Tobin tax" on foreign exchange trades.
The global tax could raise $33bn (£21.5bn) to fund development projects and bring nations together in a single effort to combat poverty rather than create divisions through competing bank taxes, the report said.
The report by the Leading Group, commissioned by 12 governments including the previous Labour administration, follows calls by Lord Turner for a tax on bank currency transactions to "throw sand in the wheels" of the banking system to discourage "socially useless" trading activities.
It said a tax on foreign exchange deals, which would cost an extra 0.005% on each trade, was simple and mimicked existing arrangements. About 95% of foreign exchange transactions between banks are already processed via a single computer system (CLS Bank), which collects a transaction fee of 22 cents per $1m traded.
Unlike taxes applied by national governments, the "Global Solidarity Tax" would be paid into a central pool and shared among developing nations.
A spokesman for the Robin Hood Tax campaign urged the coalition government to back the report.
The Leading Group of experts is hopeful their report will be given a hearing ahead of the G20 summit in the autumn, which will debate proposals for bank taxes. But critics of the G20 expect rich nations to reject a global tax in favour of individual nations adopting domestic schemes.
Under the latest proposals, the tax would be applied to deals in the four main currencies – the dollar, yen, euro and sterling – traded on forex markets. If the US government opted out of the scheme, the majority of tax revenue would be lost.
Michael Izza, head of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, said the group's remit was to investigate a way to raise funds that not only generated billions of pounds but also avoided tax arbitrage – taking advantage of varying prices in different markets –across major economies. "A tax on currency trading was attractive because probably for the first time we had centralised currency settlement systems that allow small taxes to be collected. It is not a technical problem, only one of political will," he said.
Izza said there were fears that banks would try to trade away from the main currency markets to avoid the tax. But the report said avoidance could be discouraged by central banks, which controlled currencies and monitored trading.
The IMF's boss, Dominique Strauss Kahn, argued the global levy would be passed on to customers and investors. The Leading Group report said it was likely some of the tax would be passed on just as all taxes were part of trading costs. It said the burden would be shared internationally under a global currency tax.
Friday, July 30, 2010
British financier Anthony Ward behind £658m cocoa trade
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/7897075/British-financier-Anthony-Ward-behind-658m-cocoa-trade.html
British financier Anthony Ward behind £658m cocoa trade
A British financier is behind a £658 million cocoa trade which single-handedly moved the global cocoa market.
Laura Roberts
18 Jul 2010
Anthony Ward, 50, bought 241,000 tons of cocoa beans and now owns enough to manufacture 5.3 billion quarter-pound chocolate bars.
Mr Ward, who is worth around £36 million, holds so much of the market he could force manufacturers to raise the price of Britain's favourite chocolate bars.
The transaction, the largest single cocoa trade in 14 years, was carried out last Friday by Armajaro Holdings, a hedge fund co-founded by Mr Ward.
The businessman began his career as a motorcycle dispatch rider before becoming a commodities trader specialising in cocoa and coffee.
The former Chairman of the European Cocoa Association has amassed up to 15 per cent of the word's cocoa stocks in the last ten years.
Mr Ward, who has an annual director's salary of £3.4 million, lives in Mayfair in London with his wife Carolyn. Outside of work he is known to be a passionate rally driver and lover of fine food and wines.
The cocoa beans from his latest trade are expected to be kept in warehouses in The Netherlands, Hamburg, London, Liverpool or Humberside and are the equivalent of the entire supply of the commodity in Europe.
Cocoa prices rose by 0.7 per cent as a result of the trade to £2,732 per metric tonne – the highest price for cocoa in Europe since 1977. It follows a series of weak harvests in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the main areas where the crop is grown.
In 2002 Mr Ward made £40 million in two months after making a similar deal. He bought 204,000 tones of cocoa when West Africa was experiencing poor harvests and political instability in the equatorial area.
He then watched the price of cocoa increase from £1,400 a ton to £1,600 a ton.
Cocoa prices have more than doubled since 2007, following increased demand particularly from China and India, forcing chocolate makers to raise prices and in some cases to change recipes to use less cocoa.
Mr Ward was not available for comment.
British financier Anthony Ward behind £658m cocoa trade
A British financier is behind a £658 million cocoa trade which single-handedly moved the global cocoa market.
Laura Roberts
18 Jul 2010
Anthony Ward, 50, bought 241,000 tons of cocoa beans and now owns enough to manufacture 5.3 billion quarter-pound chocolate bars.
Mr Ward, who is worth around £36 million, holds so much of the market he could force manufacturers to raise the price of Britain's favourite chocolate bars.
The transaction, the largest single cocoa trade in 14 years, was carried out last Friday by Armajaro Holdings, a hedge fund co-founded by Mr Ward.
The businessman began his career as a motorcycle dispatch rider before becoming a commodities trader specialising in cocoa and coffee.
The former Chairman of the European Cocoa Association has amassed up to 15 per cent of the word's cocoa stocks in the last ten years.
Mr Ward, who has an annual director's salary of £3.4 million, lives in Mayfair in London with his wife Carolyn. Outside of work he is known to be a passionate rally driver and lover of fine food and wines.
The cocoa beans from his latest trade are expected to be kept in warehouses in The Netherlands, Hamburg, London, Liverpool or Humberside and are the equivalent of the entire supply of the commodity in Europe.
Cocoa prices rose by 0.7 per cent as a result of the trade to £2,732 per metric tonne – the highest price for cocoa in Europe since 1977. It follows a series of weak harvests in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the main areas where the crop is grown.
In 2002 Mr Ward made £40 million in two months after making a similar deal. He bought 204,000 tones of cocoa when West Africa was experiencing poor harvests and political instability in the equatorial area.
He then watched the price of cocoa increase from £1,400 a ton to £1,600 a ton.
Cocoa prices have more than doubled since 2007, following increased demand particularly from China and India, forcing chocolate makers to raise prices and in some cases to change recipes to use less cocoa.
Mr Ward was not available for comment.
The Jobless Effect: Is the Real Unemployment Rate 16.5%, 22%, or. . .?
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/19556146/
The Jobless Effect: Is the Real Unemployment Rate 16.5%, 22%, or. . .?
PALLAVI GOGOI
07/16/10
Raghavan Mayur, president at TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, follows unemployment data closely. So, when his survey for May revealed that 28% of the 1,000-odd households surveyed reported that at least one member was looking for a full-time job, he was flummoxed.
"Our numbers are always very accurate, so I was surprised at the discrepancy with the government's numbers," says Mayur, whose firm owns the TIPP polling unit, a polling partner for Investors' Business Daily and Christian Science Monitor. After all, the headline number shows the U.S. unemployment rate today is 9.5%, with a total of 14.6 million jobless people.
However, Mayur's polls continued to find much worse figures. The June poll turned up 27.8% of households with at least one member who's unemployed and looking for a job, while the latest poll conducted in the second week of July showed 28.6% in that situation. That translates to an unemployment rate of over 22%, says Mayur, who has started questioning the accuracy of the Labor Department's jobless numbers.
Even Austan Goolsbee Has Been Skeptical
Mayur isn't alone in harboring such doubts, nor is he the first to wonder about inaccuracies. For years, many economists have pointed to evidence that the government data undercounts the unemployed. Economist Helen Ginsburg, co-founder of advocacy group National Jobs For All Coalition, and John Williams of the newsletter Shadow Government Statistics have been questioning these numbers for years.
In fact, Austan Goolsbee, who is now part of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a 2003 New York Times piece titled "The Unemployment Myth," that the government had "cooked the books" by not correctly counting all the people it should, thereby keeping the unemployment rate artificially low. At the time, Goolsbee was a professor at the University of Chicago. When asked whether Goolsbee still believes the government undercounts unemployment, a White House spokeswoman said Goolsbee wasn't available to comment.
Such undercounting of unemployment can be an enormously dangerous exercise today. It could lead to some lawmakers underestimate the gravity of the labor market's problems and base their policymaking on a far-less-grim picture than actually exists. Economically, and socially, that would make a bad situation much worse for America.
"The implications of such undercounting is that policymakers aren't going to be thinking as big as they should be," says Ginsburg, also a professor emeritus of economics at Brooklyn College. "It also means that [consumer] demand is not going to be there, because the income from people who are employed isn't going to be there."
Indeed, it will add additional stress to an already strained economy. Businesses that might start ramping up after seeing the jobless number drop could set themselves up for disappointment when customers don't appear or orders don't flow in.
College Grads Serving Fries
Plus, having a job today is quite different from what it was just a few years ago: Many Americans have had their hours cut and are working for less pay. A Pew Research survey found more than half of all adults in the labor force had either lost a job or suffered a reduction in income because of the recession.
Ginsburg says the biggest source of undercounting comes from people who can't find a full-time job that they're qualified to do, for instance recent college graduates who take part-time jobs at fast-food joints or retail stores. Today, the Labor Department estimates that 8.6 million people are in this category.
The federal government counts such people as employed. However, polls show that these folks actually consider themselves "unemployed" and "looking for a job," and probably accounted for a large chunk of TechnoMetrica's respondents.
Jobless Workers Who Disappear
Another major source of undercounting is the unemployed who've given up looking for jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics headline number counts as unemployed only people who have actively looked for a job in the previous four weeks. About 2.6 million people had pursued jobs in the past 12 months but, discouraged by the lack of opportunity, had stopped looking altogether.
"Isn't it interesting that if you stopped looking for a job, you evaporate as a jobless person and are just not counted," says Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute in Kingston, N.Y. Celente believes this kind of undercounting has suited the government politically. "It's what government does: Downplay disasters and amplify success."
According to the Pew Research Center, a large number of people are out of jobs for a longer period during this economic downturn. The typical unemployed worker today has been out of work for nearly six months. That's almost double the previous post-World War II peak for this measure, which was 12.3 weeks in 1982-83.
Indeed, if all of the truly unemployed were counted, the rate would be significantly higher. The BLS, in a data point titled "U-6," says it counted the total unemployment rate in June at 16.5%.
Misreading Americans' Anxiety
However, John Williams, founder of Shadow Government Statistics, says when accounting for the long-term unemployed, the jobless rate runs up to as much as 22% currently. Williams's newsletter, which analyzes flaws in government economic data, points out that such a rate isn't that far from the 25% it hit during the Great Depression.
Both Celente and Ginsburg believe lawmakers' not-dire-enough view of unemployment is one reason why they didn't extend federal unemployment benefits. Of course, party politics is another deterrent. Ginsburg says the Administration's decision to tackle the health care reform over unemployment reflects its lack of priority.
By taking his eye off one of the most fundamental issues affecting the country, President Obama has seen his popularity sink. The most recent Public Policy Polling survey says 45% of voters approve of the job he's doing, while 52% disapprove -- the first time Obama's disapproval ratings have exceeded 50% in this survey.
It's obvious that Americans view unemployment more urgently than either lawmakers or the president. And if pollsters like Mayur or economists like Ginsburg and Williams are right, it will take longer to fix this hole because it's already bigger than Washington thinks.
The Jobless Effect: Is the Real Unemployment Rate 16.5%, 22%, or. . .?
PALLAVI GOGOI
07/16/10
Raghavan Mayur, president at TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, follows unemployment data closely. So, when his survey for May revealed that 28% of the 1,000-odd households surveyed reported that at least one member was looking for a full-time job, he was flummoxed.
"Our numbers are always very accurate, so I was surprised at the discrepancy with the government's numbers," says Mayur, whose firm owns the TIPP polling unit, a polling partner for Investors' Business Daily and Christian Science Monitor. After all, the headline number shows the U.S. unemployment rate today is 9.5%, with a total of 14.6 million jobless people.
However, Mayur's polls continued to find much worse figures. The June poll turned up 27.8% of households with at least one member who's unemployed and looking for a job, while the latest poll conducted in the second week of July showed 28.6% in that situation. That translates to an unemployment rate of over 22%, says Mayur, who has started questioning the accuracy of the Labor Department's jobless numbers.
Even Austan Goolsbee Has Been Skeptical
Mayur isn't alone in harboring such doubts, nor is he the first to wonder about inaccuracies. For years, many economists have pointed to evidence that the government data undercounts the unemployed. Economist Helen Ginsburg, co-founder of advocacy group National Jobs For All Coalition, and John Williams of the newsletter Shadow Government Statistics have been questioning these numbers for years.
In fact, Austan Goolsbee, who is now part of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a 2003 New York Times piece titled "The Unemployment Myth," that the government had "cooked the books" by not correctly counting all the people it should, thereby keeping the unemployment rate artificially low. At the time, Goolsbee was a professor at the University of Chicago. When asked whether Goolsbee still believes the government undercounts unemployment, a White House spokeswoman said Goolsbee wasn't available to comment.
Such undercounting of unemployment can be an enormously dangerous exercise today. It could lead to some lawmakers underestimate the gravity of the labor market's problems and base their policymaking on a far-less-grim picture than actually exists. Economically, and socially, that would make a bad situation much worse for America.
"The implications of such undercounting is that policymakers aren't going to be thinking as big as they should be," says Ginsburg, also a professor emeritus of economics at Brooklyn College. "It also means that [consumer] demand is not going to be there, because the income from people who are employed isn't going to be there."
Indeed, it will add additional stress to an already strained economy. Businesses that might start ramping up after seeing the jobless number drop could set themselves up for disappointment when customers don't appear or orders don't flow in.
College Grads Serving Fries
Plus, having a job today is quite different from what it was just a few years ago: Many Americans have had their hours cut and are working for less pay. A Pew Research survey found more than half of all adults in the labor force had either lost a job or suffered a reduction in income because of the recession.
Ginsburg says the biggest source of undercounting comes from people who can't find a full-time job that they're qualified to do, for instance recent college graduates who take part-time jobs at fast-food joints or retail stores. Today, the Labor Department estimates that 8.6 million people are in this category.
The federal government counts such people as employed. However, polls show that these folks actually consider themselves "unemployed" and "looking for a job," and probably accounted for a large chunk of TechnoMetrica's respondents.
Jobless Workers Who Disappear
Another major source of undercounting is the unemployed who've given up looking for jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics headline number counts as unemployed only people who have actively looked for a job in the previous four weeks. About 2.6 million people had pursued jobs in the past 12 months but, discouraged by the lack of opportunity, had stopped looking altogether.
"Isn't it interesting that if you stopped looking for a job, you evaporate as a jobless person and are just not counted," says Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute in Kingston, N.Y. Celente believes this kind of undercounting has suited the government politically. "It's what government does: Downplay disasters and amplify success."
According to the Pew Research Center, a large number of people are out of jobs for a longer period during this economic downturn. The typical unemployed worker today has been out of work for nearly six months. That's almost double the previous post-World War II peak for this measure, which was 12.3 weeks in 1982-83.
Indeed, if all of the truly unemployed were counted, the rate would be significantly higher. The BLS, in a data point titled "U-6," says it counted the total unemployment rate in June at 16.5%.
Misreading Americans' Anxiety
However, John Williams, founder of Shadow Government Statistics, says when accounting for the long-term unemployed, the jobless rate runs up to as much as 22% currently. Williams's newsletter, which analyzes flaws in government economic data, points out that such a rate isn't that far from the 25% it hit during the Great Depression.
Both Celente and Ginsburg believe lawmakers' not-dire-enough view of unemployment is one reason why they didn't extend federal unemployment benefits. Of course, party politics is another deterrent. Ginsburg says the Administration's decision to tackle the health care reform over unemployment reflects its lack of priority.
By taking his eye off one of the most fundamental issues affecting the country, President Obama has seen his popularity sink. The most recent Public Policy Polling survey says 45% of voters approve of the job he's doing, while 52% disapprove -- the first time Obama's disapproval ratings have exceeded 50% in this survey.
It's obvious that Americans view unemployment more urgently than either lawmakers or the president. And if pollsters like Mayur or economists like Ginsburg and Williams are right, it will take longer to fix this hole because it's already bigger than Washington thinks.
The consequences of a US war crime
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fall-j23.shtml
The consequences of a US war crime
Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima
By Tom Eley
23 July 2010
The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.
According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.
The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby nations.
The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq—a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies—Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal.
The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness.
In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a team of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold since before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.
In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000 girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births. This alteration is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US atomic attack of 1945.
The most likely reason for the change in the sex ratio, according to the researchers, is the impact of a major mutagenic event—likely the use of depleted uranium in US weapons. While boys have one X-chromosome, girls have a redundant X-chromosome and can therefore absorb the loss of one chromosome through genetic damage.
“This is an extraordinary and alarming result,” said Busby, a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Ulster and director of scientific research for Green Audit, an independent environmental research group. “To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened. We need urgently to find out what the agent was. Although many suspect uranium, we cannot be certain without further research and independent analysis of samples from the area.”
Busby told an Italian television news station, RAI 24, that the “extraordinary” increase in radiation-related maladies in Fallujah is higher than that found in the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US atomic strikes of 1945. “My guess is that this was caused by depleted uranium,” he said. “They must be connected.”
The US military uses depleted uranium, also known as spent nuclear fuel, in armor-piercing shells and bullets because it is twice as dense as lead. Once these shells hit their target, however, as much as 40 percent of the uranium is released in the form of tiny particles in the area of the explosion. It can remain there for years, easily entering the human bloodstream, where it lodges itself in lymph glands and attacks the DNA produced in the sperm and eggs of affected adults, causing, in turn, serious birth defects in the next generation.
The research is the first systematic scientific substantiation of a body of evidence showing a sharp increase in infant mortality, birth defects, and cancer in Fallujah.
In October of 2009, several Iraqi and British doctors wrote a letter to the United Nations demanding an inquiry into the proliferation of radiation-related sickness in the city:
“Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukemias.…
“In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24 percent of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed.…
“Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects, but premature births have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that doctors in Fallujah have said, ‘a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage.’” (See: “Sharp rise in birth defects in Iraqi city destroyed by US military”)
The Pentagon responded to this report by asserting that there were no studies to prove any proliferation of deformities or other maladies associated with US military actions. “No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues,” a Defense Department spokesman told the BBC in March. There have been no studies, however, in large part because Washington and its puppet Baghdad regime have blocked them.
According to the authors of “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah,” the Iraqi authorities attempted to scuttle their survey. “[S]hortly after the questionnaire survey was completed, Iraqi TV reportedly broadcast that a questionnaire survey was being carried out by terrorists and that anyone who was answering or administering the questionnaire could be arrested,” the study reports.
The history of the atrocity committed by American imperialism against the people of Fallujah began on April 28, 2003, when US Army soldiers fired indiscriminately into a crowd of about 200 residents protesting the conversion of a local school into a US military base. Seventeen were killed in the unprovoked attack, and two days later American soldiers fired on a protest against the murders, killing two more.
This intensified popular anger, and Fallujah became a center of the Sunni resistance against the occupation—and US reprisals. On March 31, 2004, an angry crowd stopped a convoy of the private security firm Blackwater USA, responsible for its own share of war crimes. Four Blackwater mercenaries were dragged from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
The US military then promised it would pacify the city, with one unnamed officer saying it would be turned into “a killing field,” but Operation Vigilant Resolve, involving thousands of Marines, ended in the abandonment of the siege by the US military in May, 2004. The victory of Fallujah’s residents against overwhelming military superiority was celebrated throughout Iraq and watched all over the world.
The Pentagon delivered its response in November 2004. The city was surrounded, and all those left inside were declared to be enemy combatants and fair game for the most heavily equipped killing machine in world history. The Associated Press reported that men attempting to flee the city with their families were turned back into the slaughterhouse.
In the attack, the US made heavy use of the chemical agent white phosphorus. Ostensibly used only for illuminating battlefields, white phosphorus causes terrible and often fatal wounds, burning its way through building material and clothing before eating away skin and then bone. The chemical was also used to suck the oxygen out of buildings where civilians were hiding.
Washington’s desire for revenge against the population is indicated by the fact that the US military reported about the same number of “gunmen” killed (1,400) as those taken alive as prisoners (1,300-1,500). In one instance, NBC News captured video footage of a US soldier executing a wounded and helpless Iraqi man. A Navy investigation later found the Marine had been acting in self-defense.
Fifty-one US soldiers died in 10 days of combat. The true number of city residents who were killed is not known. The city’s population before the attack was estimated to be between 425,000 and 600,000. The current population is believed to be between 250,000 and 300,000. Tens of thousands, mostly women and children, fled in advance of the attack. Half of the city’s building were destroyed, most of these reduced to rubble.
Like much of Iraq, Fallujah remains in ruins. According to a recent report from IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Fallujah still has no functioning sewage system six years after the attack. “Waste pours onto the streets and seeps into drinking water supplies,” the report notes. “Abdul-Sattar Kadhum al-Nawaf, director of Fallujah general hospital, said the sewage problem had taken its toll on residents’ health. They were increasingly affected by diarrhea, tuberculosis, typhoid and other communicable diseases.”
The savagery of the US assault shocked the world, and added the name Fallujah to an infamous list that includes My Lai, Sabra-Shatila, Guérnica, Nanking, Lidice, and Wounded Knee.
But unlike those other massacres, the crime against Fallujah did not end when the bullets were no longer fired or the bombs stopped falling.
The US military’s decision to heavily deploy depleted uranium, all but proven by “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah,” was a wanton act of brutality, poisoning an entire generation of children not yet born in 2004.
The Fallujah study is timely, with the US now preparing a major escalation of the violence in Afghanistan. The former head of US Afghanistan operations, General Stanley McChrystal, was replaced last month after a media campaign, assisted by a Rolling Stone magazine feature, accused him, among other things, of tying the hands of US soldiers in their response to Afghan insurgents.
McChrystal was replaced by General David Petraeus, formerly head of the US Central Command. Petraeus has outlined new rules of engagement designed to allow for the use of disproportionate force against suspected militants.
Petraeus, in turn, was replaced at Central Command by General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who played a key planning role in the US assault on Fallujah in 2004. Mattis revels in killing, telling a public gathering in 2005 “it’s fun to shoot some people.... You know, it’s a hell of a hoot.”
The consequences of a US war crime
Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima
By Tom Eley
23 July 2010
The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.
According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.
The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby nations.
The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq—a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies—Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal.
The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness.
In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a team of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold since before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.
In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000 girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births. This alteration is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US atomic attack of 1945.
The most likely reason for the change in the sex ratio, according to the researchers, is the impact of a major mutagenic event—likely the use of depleted uranium in US weapons. While boys have one X-chromosome, girls have a redundant X-chromosome and can therefore absorb the loss of one chromosome through genetic damage.
“This is an extraordinary and alarming result,” said Busby, a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Ulster and director of scientific research for Green Audit, an independent environmental research group. “To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened. We need urgently to find out what the agent was. Although many suspect uranium, we cannot be certain without further research and independent analysis of samples from the area.”
Busby told an Italian television news station, RAI 24, that the “extraordinary” increase in radiation-related maladies in Fallujah is higher than that found in the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US atomic strikes of 1945. “My guess is that this was caused by depleted uranium,” he said. “They must be connected.”
The US military uses depleted uranium, also known as spent nuclear fuel, in armor-piercing shells and bullets because it is twice as dense as lead. Once these shells hit their target, however, as much as 40 percent of the uranium is released in the form of tiny particles in the area of the explosion. It can remain there for years, easily entering the human bloodstream, where it lodges itself in lymph glands and attacks the DNA produced in the sperm and eggs of affected adults, causing, in turn, serious birth defects in the next generation.
The research is the first systematic scientific substantiation of a body of evidence showing a sharp increase in infant mortality, birth defects, and cancer in Fallujah.
In October of 2009, several Iraqi and British doctors wrote a letter to the United Nations demanding an inquiry into the proliferation of radiation-related sickness in the city:
“Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukemias.…
“In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24 percent of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed.…
“Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects, but premature births have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that doctors in Fallujah have said, ‘a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage.’” (See: “Sharp rise in birth defects in Iraqi city destroyed by US military”)
The Pentagon responded to this report by asserting that there were no studies to prove any proliferation of deformities or other maladies associated with US military actions. “No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues,” a Defense Department spokesman told the BBC in March. There have been no studies, however, in large part because Washington and its puppet Baghdad regime have blocked them.
According to the authors of “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah,” the Iraqi authorities attempted to scuttle their survey. “[S]hortly after the questionnaire survey was completed, Iraqi TV reportedly broadcast that a questionnaire survey was being carried out by terrorists and that anyone who was answering or administering the questionnaire could be arrested,” the study reports.
The history of the atrocity committed by American imperialism against the people of Fallujah began on April 28, 2003, when US Army soldiers fired indiscriminately into a crowd of about 200 residents protesting the conversion of a local school into a US military base. Seventeen were killed in the unprovoked attack, and two days later American soldiers fired on a protest against the murders, killing two more.
This intensified popular anger, and Fallujah became a center of the Sunni resistance against the occupation—and US reprisals. On March 31, 2004, an angry crowd stopped a convoy of the private security firm Blackwater USA, responsible for its own share of war crimes. Four Blackwater mercenaries were dragged from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
The US military then promised it would pacify the city, with one unnamed officer saying it would be turned into “a killing field,” but Operation Vigilant Resolve, involving thousands of Marines, ended in the abandonment of the siege by the US military in May, 2004. The victory of Fallujah’s residents against overwhelming military superiority was celebrated throughout Iraq and watched all over the world.
The Pentagon delivered its response in November 2004. The city was surrounded, and all those left inside were declared to be enemy combatants and fair game for the most heavily equipped killing machine in world history. The Associated Press reported that men attempting to flee the city with their families were turned back into the slaughterhouse.
In the attack, the US made heavy use of the chemical agent white phosphorus. Ostensibly used only for illuminating battlefields, white phosphorus causes terrible and often fatal wounds, burning its way through building material and clothing before eating away skin and then bone. The chemical was also used to suck the oxygen out of buildings where civilians were hiding.
Washington’s desire for revenge against the population is indicated by the fact that the US military reported about the same number of “gunmen” killed (1,400) as those taken alive as prisoners (1,300-1,500). In one instance, NBC News captured video footage of a US soldier executing a wounded and helpless Iraqi man. A Navy investigation later found the Marine had been acting in self-defense.
Fifty-one US soldiers died in 10 days of combat. The true number of city residents who were killed is not known. The city’s population before the attack was estimated to be between 425,000 and 600,000. The current population is believed to be between 250,000 and 300,000. Tens of thousands, mostly women and children, fled in advance of the attack. Half of the city’s building were destroyed, most of these reduced to rubble.
Like much of Iraq, Fallujah remains in ruins. According to a recent report from IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Fallujah still has no functioning sewage system six years after the attack. “Waste pours onto the streets and seeps into drinking water supplies,” the report notes. “Abdul-Sattar Kadhum al-Nawaf, director of Fallujah general hospital, said the sewage problem had taken its toll on residents’ health. They were increasingly affected by diarrhea, tuberculosis, typhoid and other communicable diseases.”
The savagery of the US assault shocked the world, and added the name Fallujah to an infamous list that includes My Lai, Sabra-Shatila, Guérnica, Nanking, Lidice, and Wounded Knee.
But unlike those other massacres, the crime against Fallujah did not end when the bullets were no longer fired or the bombs stopped falling.
The US military’s decision to heavily deploy depleted uranium, all but proven by “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah,” was a wanton act of brutality, poisoning an entire generation of children not yet born in 2004.
The Fallujah study is timely, with the US now preparing a major escalation of the violence in Afghanistan. The former head of US Afghanistan operations, General Stanley McChrystal, was replaced last month after a media campaign, assisted by a Rolling Stone magazine feature, accused him, among other things, of tying the hands of US soldiers in their response to Afghan insurgents.
McChrystal was replaced by General David Petraeus, formerly head of the US Central Command. Petraeus has outlined new rules of engagement designed to allow for the use of disproportionate force against suspected militants.
Petraeus, in turn, was replaced at Central Command by General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who played a key planning role in the US assault on Fallujah in 2004. Mattis revels in killing, telling a public gathering in 2005 “it’s fun to shoot some people.... You know, it’s a hell of a hoot.”
What Duran Duran taught me about girls
http://www.salon.com/life/excerpt/2010/07/22/talking_girls_duran_duran/index.html
Thursday, Jul 22, 2010 21:01 ET
What Duran Duran taught me about girls
The '80s stars get mocked for their hair and sound, but they schooled me on female desire like nothing else
By Rob Sheffield
The following is excerpted and adapted from the memoir "Talking With Girls About Duran Duran," published by arrangement with Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) 2010 by Rob Sheffield.
If you ever step into the Wayback Machine and zip to the 1980s, you will have some interesting conversations, even though nobody will believe a word you say. You can tell people the 20th century will end without a nuclear war. The Soviet Union will dissolve, the Berlin Wall will come down, and people will start using these things called "ringtones" that make their pants randomly sing "Eye of the Tiger." America will elect a black president who spent his college days listening to the B-52s.
But there's one claim nobody will believe: Duran Duran are still famous.
I can't believe it myself. I've always been a Duran Duran fan. I was an '80s kid, so I grew up on them. I watched Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes give "Save a Prayer" its world premiere live on MTV. I listened hard to the lyrics of "Is There Something I Should Know?" and pondered its existential vision of romantic love. I studied their fashion, learned their wives' names, bought their solo albums. I've always been obsessed with Duran Duran. But even more, I've been obsessed with how girls talk about them.
I was 13 when the '80s began and 23 when they ended, so this was the era of my adolescence, and I never figured anybody would remember the '80s fondly after they were over. But girls still grow up memorizing "Pretty in Pink" and "Dirty Dancing" during those constant weekend TV marathons. Anytime "Sixteen Candles" comes on, my sisters can recite every scene word for word. It's weird to see how the hair decade lives on, even for people barely old enough to remember it. At the time, we all figured we were stuck in an epoch of bogus. The country was in horrific shape, with Reagan and his cronies running amok. I mean, the biggest movie of 1985 was the one where Michael J. Fox used a time machine to get the hell out of 1985. But something has kept this all alive. And in retrospect, the epoch of bogus evolved into the apex of awesome. Who made this decision?
Girls, obviously. As Tone Loc said, "This is the '80s, and I'm down with the ladies." The ladies were not necessarily down with Tone Loc — but they're down with the '80s, and it's feminine passion that sustains the whole mythology of '80s teen dreams. And of all the absurd and perverted artifacts from that time, nothing keeps them feeling fascination like Duran Duran. Which is why I've always been fascinated, too.
The first girls I shared them with were my high school pals Heather and Lisa, girlie girls who liked to talk about Duran Duran because they liked to say the name, which they pronounced, "Jran Jran." Heather and Lisa taught me about sushi, high heels, "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go," and the importance of never letting Lisa drive your car, but the most crucial lesson was Duran Duran. I envied the religious intensity of their fandom. One day, you're a perfectly ordinary suburban princess, content with Journey and Styx, and then you hear something new and all of a sudden you're one of those girls.
When I had my first actual girlfriend, she tried putting makeup on me; I begged her to " give me the Nick Rhodes," although I was secretly hoping she would accidentally give me the John Taylor. As a die-hard punk-rock chick, she hated Duran Duran, but she liked the idea of a boyfriend who looked a little bit more like John Taylor. Unfortunately, I ended up looking kind of like Andy Taylor's bag-lady auntie. I had to face the facts. Being Duran Duran was never going to be an option. I would have settle for being a fan.
When you're a boy, you sometimes begrudge the rock stars who are bogarting your share of feminine attention. Duran Duran rank high on this chart. Boys always hated them, and there's no way the band didn't know it. They simply didn't care.
The way girls raved about DD was so different from the way we boys talked about the bands we liked. I remember hours of debate in the high school lunchroom about the Clash: Which was better, "London Calling" or "Sandinista!"? Is "Lover's Rock" really about oral sex? Which member of the band truly understood the geopolitical context of Nicaraguan history? Who had a cooler name, Joe Strummer or Tory Crimes? My female rocker friends call this "boy-list language."
Learning to speak girl languages is a tricky business. Since I am married to an astrophysicist, I am constantly looking for ways to drop the Kuiper belt or Oort clouds into conversation. But it's possible we will never agree on anything the way we agree on Duran Duran.
Since I grew up with rock 'n' roll parents, bonding over the songs they loved, it never occurred to me that love and music belonged in separate categories. When my mom and dad were growing up as 1950s rock 'n' rollers, both sang "In the Still of the Night" with their respective high school friends; my mom took the lead while my dad took the " shoo-doo shooby-doo" part, so they were a natural match. I'm sure that my mom and dad would find lots of other ways to bond if they didn't have music. But bringing people together is what music has always done best.
Brian Austin Green: Lucky Bastard
In honor of Playboy's new site, here's the best article from it's opening day...
http://www.thesmokingjacket.com/entertainment/fcking-upwards-brian-austin-green-megan-fox
Brian Austin Green: Lucky Bastard
7/18/2010
Guy Cimbalo
F*cking Upwards, Vol. I
In which we examine the life and career of phenomenally mediocre men who have managed to land women infinitely hotter and far more successful.
In this Installment:
The Bizarre and Baffling Case of Brian Austin Green and Megan Fox
Relationship History
Brian Austin Green began dating Megan Fox in 2004, when her career consisted of guest turns on Two and a Half Men and uncredited extra work. Green was the bigger star, and so, their relationship, while clearly unusual, was nothing extraordinary.
But as Fox’s career skyrocketed with Transformers and Jennifer’s Body, Green’s kept scraping rock-bottom. Yet on June 24, the pair finally tied the knot (after two engagements and Megan losing a massive diamond ring). No viable explanation has yet been found.
Career Highlights
Green’s star turn came on ’90s phenomenon Beverly Hills, 90210 where he played the hopeless homeboy David Silver: a kind of Vanilla Ice-manque, perpetually clad in baggy jeans and sporting some form of Jew-fro fade, Brian Austin Green was the least cool cast member of an already epically uncool cast. Sample his work on the show and reel in horror. (Keep in mind, this isn’t community access—this is from a highly-rated, near seminal, network television show.)
Green has also appeared in such films as Combat Sheep, Unwed Father and Laws of Deception (directed by Joey Travolta).
Much like Drake, who quickly shed the insipid kiddie shit of Degrassi to became one of the hottest names in hip-hop, Green…Green is nothing like Drake. He did, however, release a rap album, 1996’s One Stop Carnival. We have not managed to listen to this auditory horseman of the apocalypse in full, but we do trust AllMusic when they call the album a “lock for the short list of worst rap records ever made.”
Let’s take a look at a sample lyric, from the single “You Send Me.”
I’m takin’ love from the bottom of my heart
And wrappin’ it well, then watchin’ it sail thru the parks
I’m tired of bein’ a human being in the dark
Capsizin’ like the lonely man’s ark
From dip to dip, my eyes fantasize ’bout the thighs
From lip to lip, autumn love fell from my eyes
Thinkin’ about the prize I let slip on by
Suddenly wringin’ out these “why?”s that won’t come dry
She’s got the style and finesse that’s
Far from sleazy, easy casual sex acts
Clearly there are no answers to be found in Green’s career, only more questions. Perhaps the answer lies in Megan Fox.
Possible Explanations for the Relationship
Fox has proven herself to be batshit crazy on more than one occasion.
Mitigating Factors
None
Conclusions
There is little to be learned here: Clearly the whim of celebrity is a pathology unto itself.
Playboy unveils 'safe for work' website
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/20/playboy.safe.for.work/
Playboy unveils 'safe for work' website
Doug Gross, CNN
July 20, 2010
The Smoking Jacket site features stories on STDs, how to have sex at work.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The Smoking Jacket, Playboy's 'safe for work' website, is introduced on Tuesday
Site features humor and links to racy content but no nude pictorials
Playboy.com will continue showing nudity and longer, 'more reverent' articles
The iconic men's magazine has been losing money since the advent of online adult sites
(CNN) -- The Smoking Jacket, Playboy's nudity-free, "safe-for-work" website, debuted Tuesday -- a bid by the iconic men's magazine to stay relevant in a cyberworld full of anything-goes competitors.
"Cube dwellers and office drones alike shall rejoice at this fun, sexy, satirical antidote to the drudgery of the work day," Playboy editorial director Jimmy Jellinek said in a written statement.
The site, which "provides guys with smart and sexy distractions throughout the day," according to the statement, is geared toward the blogosphere, with short posts and links to viral content from other sites.
Playboy Enterprises did not have immediate numbers on visits to the site, which went live shortly after midnight. But some pages were loading slowly Tuesday, which spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey said was due to heavy traffic.
"It's been pretty phenomenal so far," Hennessey said.
Through its decades of existence, Playboy magazine has staked out different ground from most of its skin-baring competitors, mixing nude photos with lifestyle features, interviews with celebrities and politicians, and short fiction by well-known authors.
Based on its debut content on Tuesday, though, The Smoking Jacket -- despite its lack of nudity -- may be taking a more lowbrow route.
Featured articles included "How to get laid at work," "7 signs that you've given up on getting laid," and "Americans totally dig STD-like sensations."
It provides links to such journalistic efforts as a blog post about stripper cage fighting and another on the 2010 Hooters Bikini Contest in Pelham, Alabama.
The empire's original site, Playboy.com, will continue offering its 6 million monthly visitors "nudity, as well as lifestyle articles that are typically longer, more reverent, and written in a similar style as those appearing in Playboy magazine," the company's statement said.
The new site also featured a short welcome video from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, dressed, of course, in one of the trademark jackets that inspired the website's name.
"The Smoking Jacket isn't just something I like to wear around the mansion. It's Playboy's new safe-for-work website," he says. "Next to the mansion, it's the best hangout on the planet."
The new site rolls out as traditional adult-entertainment outlets like Playboy struggle to keep up in an online world where free pictures of nude people are just a mouse-click away.
Playboy Enterprises reported a net loss of nearly $1 million in the first quarter of this year -- actually better than what was predicted.
The company reported a loss of $13.7 million during the same quarter last year.
"We believe that 2010 will be a transitional year and that the true benefits of our strategy will be more fully evident next year," Playboy CEO Scott Flanders said in a statement earlier this year.
The rollout also comes days after the owners of rival Penthouse announced they would like to buy out Playboy, and Hefner himself publicly mulled buying outstanding shares of the company and taking it private.
Playboy unveils 'safe for work' website
Doug Gross, CNN
July 20, 2010
The Smoking Jacket site features stories on STDs, how to have sex at work.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The Smoking Jacket, Playboy's 'safe for work' website, is introduced on Tuesday
Site features humor and links to racy content but no nude pictorials
Playboy.com will continue showing nudity and longer, 'more reverent' articles
The iconic men's magazine has been losing money since the advent of online adult sites
(CNN) -- The Smoking Jacket, Playboy's nudity-free, "safe-for-work" website, debuted Tuesday -- a bid by the iconic men's magazine to stay relevant in a cyberworld full of anything-goes competitors.
"Cube dwellers and office drones alike shall rejoice at this fun, sexy, satirical antidote to the drudgery of the work day," Playboy editorial director Jimmy Jellinek said in a written statement.
The site, which "provides guys with smart and sexy distractions throughout the day," according to the statement, is geared toward the blogosphere, with short posts and links to viral content from other sites.
Playboy Enterprises did not have immediate numbers on visits to the site, which went live shortly after midnight. But some pages were loading slowly Tuesday, which spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey said was due to heavy traffic.
"It's been pretty phenomenal so far," Hennessey said.
Through its decades of existence, Playboy magazine has staked out different ground from most of its skin-baring competitors, mixing nude photos with lifestyle features, interviews with celebrities and politicians, and short fiction by well-known authors.
Based on its debut content on Tuesday, though, The Smoking Jacket -- despite its lack of nudity -- may be taking a more lowbrow route.
Featured articles included "How to get laid at work," "7 signs that you've given up on getting laid," and "Americans totally dig STD-like sensations."
It provides links to such journalistic efforts as a blog post about stripper cage fighting and another on the 2010 Hooters Bikini Contest in Pelham, Alabama.
The empire's original site, Playboy.com, will continue offering its 6 million monthly visitors "nudity, as well as lifestyle articles that are typically longer, more reverent, and written in a similar style as those appearing in Playboy magazine," the company's statement said.
The new site also featured a short welcome video from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, dressed, of course, in one of the trademark jackets that inspired the website's name.
"The Smoking Jacket isn't just something I like to wear around the mansion. It's Playboy's new safe-for-work website," he says. "Next to the mansion, it's the best hangout on the planet."
The new site rolls out as traditional adult-entertainment outlets like Playboy struggle to keep up in an online world where free pictures of nude people are just a mouse-click away.
Playboy Enterprises reported a net loss of nearly $1 million in the first quarter of this year -- actually better than what was predicted.
The company reported a loss of $13.7 million during the same quarter last year.
"We believe that 2010 will be a transitional year and that the true benefits of our strategy will be more fully evident next year," Playboy CEO Scott Flanders said in a statement earlier this year.
The rollout also comes days after the owners of rival Penthouse announced they would like to buy out Playboy, and Hefner himself publicly mulled buying outstanding shares of the company and taking it private.
9 Types of People You Find at Whole Foods
http://www.maxim.com/humor/stupid-fun/93724/9-types-people-you-find-at-whole-foods.html
9 Types of People You Find at Whole Foods
Thursday 07/15/2010 in Stupid Fun by Jesse Thompson
Whether you're trying to impress a lady or are just extremely intoxicated, at some point you've found yourself in a Whole Foods organic store. And odds are you encountered one or more of these types as you dodged 10-pound tubs of spinach leaves and Norwegian cheese wedges in order to get to the exit as fast as possible.
9. The Super-Vegan Hippie Chick
Don't be fooled by the cute smile and the flowery dress; if you even so much as mention going out for a hamburger, she will splatter you with a bucket of cow blood and call you a fascist. Your best bet for hooking up? Hang out near the asparagus and ask her if she's free later to firebomb a lab that tests on rabbits.
8. The Pissed-Off Dad Who Just Wanted One Thing
Picture this: the wife calls just as he's about to leave the office after a long day and pesters him about the kids having finished all the milk on seven bowls of Crunch Berries. There happens to be a Whole Foods close to the interstate, so he runs in quickly, despite never having ventured inside. "Food's food, right?" he thinks. But after perusing the $6 jugs of hormone-free milk and $5 jars of locally produced mustard, he opts to vindictively fart in an aisle and drive the extra two minutes to Wal-Mart.
7. The Scared-of-All-Processed-Foods Mom
This is the natural progression of the super-vegan hippie chick; the mom who's constantly wiping her kid's hands and face down with disinfectant wipes. And sweet Jesus, don't even think of getting close to her baby if you've eaten a PBJ in the last few days...think of the peanut allergies! Mom will blather on for hours about the chemicals or some shit in glass jars of baby food, and you'll pretend to be captivated while stealing glances at those swelling, lactating breasts.
6. The Guy Who's Just There to Check Out Hippie Chicks/Hot Moms
He's easy to spot; just look for the dude with the empty shopping basket who's obviously more interested in aphrodisiac oils than fish oil. Who needs to go to a bar or reduce themselves to online dating when there are plenty of hot chicks of the earthy variety at the organic food shop? Mr. Pickup will also be trying way too hard, as he'll likely be wearing a T-shirt with such panty-dropping phrases as "Just the flax, ma'am" or "BP kills baby pelicans."
5. The Elitist
Pity the poor soul who mentions Wal-Mart or Food Lion in his presence; he'll launch into a tirade about the evils of chain stores like he's reading from a term paper and trying desperately to get a professor to acknowledge his existence. The Elitist is also picky about the organic stores he shops in, frowning upon those who would stoop so low as to shop in a Fresh Market. He's easy to have fun with, though...just buy a fresh cut of salmon and toss it through his open car window while he's shopping.
4. The Guy Who Saw a Movie and/or Read a Book and Thinks He's a Health Expert
Along the same lines as the Elitist, this is the irritating know-it-all who will endlessly quote factoids from Fast Food Nation and Food, Inc. (AKA the book and movie that ruined things that taste good for everyone). Most of the time he gets those facts wrong, but that doesn't stop him from telling you why you're getting cancer or putting the independent American farmer out of business. Of course, he doesn't see the irony in wearing hip shirts made by 6-year-olds in Chinese sweatshops.
3. The Out-of-Place Fat Guy
To his credit, the baked goods are fantastic. Frosting from a can is for the plebeian lard-asses, after all.
2. The Allergic-to-Everything Chick
What's not to love about the slightly off-kilter woman who has to buy everything gluten-free and lactose-free and is likely a hypochondriac? How about the fact that she sneezes and snots all over the salad bar, for one? Or that she'll actually order a wheat grass shake without irony? The funny thing is, she's actually only allergic to the 12 cats living in her apartment.
1. The Stoned Stocker Dude
Five minutes ago he was making an apple bong out of an organic Granny Smith behind the dumpster, now he's restocking the delicata squash and describing in great detail the Widespread show from the weekend before. To no one in particular. Just offer a fist bump as you pass, and you'll be straight.
9 Types of People You Find at Whole Foods
Thursday 07/15/2010 in Stupid Fun by Jesse Thompson
Whether you're trying to impress a lady or are just extremely intoxicated, at some point you've found yourself in a Whole Foods organic store. And odds are you encountered one or more of these types as you dodged 10-pound tubs of spinach leaves and Norwegian cheese wedges in order to get to the exit as fast as possible.
9. The Super-Vegan Hippie Chick
Don't be fooled by the cute smile and the flowery dress; if you even so much as mention going out for a hamburger, she will splatter you with a bucket of cow blood and call you a fascist. Your best bet for hooking up? Hang out near the asparagus and ask her if she's free later to firebomb a lab that tests on rabbits.
8. The Pissed-Off Dad Who Just Wanted One Thing
Picture this: the wife calls just as he's about to leave the office after a long day and pesters him about the kids having finished all the milk on seven bowls of Crunch Berries. There happens to be a Whole Foods close to the interstate, so he runs in quickly, despite never having ventured inside. "Food's food, right?" he thinks. But after perusing the $6 jugs of hormone-free milk and $5 jars of locally produced mustard, he opts to vindictively fart in an aisle and drive the extra two minutes to Wal-Mart.
7. The Scared-of-All-Processed-Foods Mom
This is the natural progression of the super-vegan hippie chick; the mom who's constantly wiping her kid's hands and face down with disinfectant wipes. And sweet Jesus, don't even think of getting close to her baby if you've eaten a PBJ in the last few days...think of the peanut allergies! Mom will blather on for hours about the chemicals or some shit in glass jars of baby food, and you'll pretend to be captivated while stealing glances at those swelling, lactating breasts.
6. The Guy Who's Just There to Check Out Hippie Chicks/Hot Moms
He's easy to spot; just look for the dude with the empty shopping basket who's obviously more interested in aphrodisiac oils than fish oil. Who needs to go to a bar or reduce themselves to online dating when there are plenty of hot chicks of the earthy variety at the organic food shop? Mr. Pickup will also be trying way too hard, as he'll likely be wearing a T-shirt with such panty-dropping phrases as "Just the flax, ma'am" or "BP kills baby pelicans."
5. The Elitist
Pity the poor soul who mentions Wal-Mart or Food Lion in his presence; he'll launch into a tirade about the evils of chain stores like he's reading from a term paper and trying desperately to get a professor to acknowledge his existence. The Elitist is also picky about the organic stores he shops in, frowning upon those who would stoop so low as to shop in a Fresh Market. He's easy to have fun with, though...just buy a fresh cut of salmon and toss it through his open car window while he's shopping.
4. The Guy Who Saw a Movie and/or Read a Book and Thinks He's a Health Expert
Along the same lines as the Elitist, this is the irritating know-it-all who will endlessly quote factoids from Fast Food Nation and Food, Inc. (AKA the book and movie that ruined things that taste good for everyone). Most of the time he gets those facts wrong, but that doesn't stop him from telling you why you're getting cancer or putting the independent American farmer out of business. Of course, he doesn't see the irony in wearing hip shirts made by 6-year-olds in Chinese sweatshops.
3. The Out-of-Place Fat Guy
To his credit, the baked goods are fantastic. Frosting from a can is for the plebeian lard-asses, after all.
2. The Allergic-to-Everything Chick
What's not to love about the slightly off-kilter woman who has to buy everything gluten-free and lactose-free and is likely a hypochondriac? How about the fact that she sneezes and snots all over the salad bar, for one? Or that she'll actually order a wheat grass shake without irony? The funny thing is, she's actually only allergic to the 12 cats living in her apartment.
1. The Stoned Stocker Dude
Five minutes ago he was making an apple bong out of an organic Granny Smith behind the dumpster, now he's restocking the delicata squash and describing in great detail the Widespread show from the weekend before. To no one in particular. Just offer a fist bump as you pass, and you'll be straight.
BabeWatch Summer Special Edition!!!
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Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love
From Amazon.com:
Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love
Dave Zirin (Author)
List Price: $25.00
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Even in the presence of model franchises throughout the sports world, Zirin makes a strong argument that team owners are ruining our storied teams, not to mention the sports themselves. But then, what's new? Profiling a rogues' gallery of owners — among them, the Yankees' George Steinbrenner, the Colorado Rockies' Charlie Monfort, the Oklahoma Thunder's Clay Bennett — Zirin says that many owners rely, primarily through legalized extortion, on public coffers to stay afloat. He also discusses the baseball owners' acquiescence in their players' use of steroids and the too-rapid expansion of the NHL that has diluted the quality of play for decades. There are many to blame for the strange state of pro sports today, including overweening politicians, fans, and sports media. But, from the evidence in Zirin's book, ownership is a good place to start.
-- Alan Moores
Review
"Dave Zirin is Bringing The Noise once more with his expose on the modern day tyranny that has turned athletic entertainment into 'Gross' National Product. Dave Z is irreplaceable. He's the sportsworld geiger counter, exposing the truth and protecting the fan from first, second, and third degree burns."
-- Chuck D, Public Enemy
"The Nation's sports columnist Dave Zirin combines the passion of the most rabid sports nut with the intellectual rigor of the most learned Hegelian. This book is a critical account of how rapacious owners are leaching the fun out of sports and how we, the beleaguered fans, can take back the games we love."
-- Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor, The Nation
"Not since Hunter S. Thompson has a sports writer shown the right snarl for the job.
-- Naomi Klein
"The only thing I like better than pitchers who throw hard, are writers who do the same. In Bad Sports, Dave Zirin does exactly that. No curve balls, no changeups, just fastball after fastball under the chins of owners who say they love sports but make decisions based on profits for profit, the hell with the fans or the quality of the game. Bad Sports doesn't ask for accountability, it demands it."
-- Howard Bryant, author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
"Every owners nightmare just came to life. Bad Sports is the book that all owners, general managers, presidents and CEO's of professional sports franchises prayed would never be written. Brilliantly blatant, Dave Zirin separates scandal and innuendo from truth and moral ineptness. Bad Sports proves that although wealthy men in suits may own franchises, they don't own the game."
-- Scoop Jackson, ESPN
"Hard-hitting, fun, ironic ane informative, Dave Zirin's Bad Sports is a riveting look at sports ownership in our time. Zirin takes on the owners in?a way only he can and makes you think about sports in a way you never have. This book makes you laugh and it makes you cry, sometimes in the same paragraph."
-- Christine Brennan, USA Today sports columnist, author of Inside Edge and Best Seat in the House
"The smartest and gutsiest sportswriter in America has just written the smartest and gustiest book about sports--and about America"
-- Robert Lipsyte
"Zirin puts the politics back in sports and makes good sport of the politics. Even if you don't know the difference between March Madness and Spring Break, read this book: it's an original and scathing look at how America works."
-- Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
"As Dave Zirin says to fans of corporatized sports teams--'There is a time to cheer and a time to seethe.' Zirin seethes and sometimes applauds with facts and true stories. It's more exciting reading Bad Sports than 95% of the games I've watched."
-- Ralph Nader
"Zirin makes a strong argument that team owners are ruining our storied teams, not to mention the sports themselves."
-- Booklist
Product Description
A THOUGHT-PROVOKING LOOK AT THE BIG BUSINESS AND IMMORAL PRACTICES BEHIND PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BY ACCLAIMED SPORTSWRITER DAVE ZIRIN, HAILED AS THE “CONSCIENCE OF AMERICAN SPORTSWRITING” (THE WASHINGTON POST )
The fastest-growing sector of today’s sports audience is the alienated fan. Complaints abound: from inflated ticket prices, $6 hot dogs, and $9 beers to owners endlessly demanding new multimillion-dollar stadiums funded by public tax dollars. Those sitting in the owners’ boxes are increasingly placing profit over players’ performances and fan loyalty. Bad Sports cuts through the hype and bombast to zero in on tales of abusive, dictatorial owners who move their teams thousands of miles away from their fan base, use their stadiums as religious and political platforms, or hold communities ransom for millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund their gargantuan stadiums.
As the multibillion-dollar sports-industrial complex continues to lumber along, Dave Zirin is the voice in the wilderness, speaking out for the common fan with a tough, passionate, and intelligent voice that will remind readers that there is more to sportswriting than glowing athlete profiles.
About the Author
Dave Zirin was named one of the "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World" by Utne Magazine. He writes about the politics of sports for the Nation magazine, and is their first sports writer in 150 years of existence. Zirin is also the host of Sirius XM satellite's popular weekly show, “Edge of Sports Radio,” as well as a columnist for SLAM Magazine, the Progressive, and a regular op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times. Zirin's previous books are What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States; Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports; The Muhammad Ali Handbook; and A People’s History of Sports in the United States.
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Scribner (July 20, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416554750
ISBN-13: 978-1416554752
The heroism of Shirley Sherrod
Wednesday, Jul 21, 2010
The heroism of Shirley Sherrod
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
Everyone is presumably aware by now of the facts surrounding the disgusting fraud perpetrated on Shirley Sherrod, engineered by Andrew Breitbart, amplified by Fox News, and meekly submitted to by the Obama administration. Those who aren't can read excellent commentary from Jamelle Bouie, Joan Walsh, and Chris Martinez. Much has been written about the incomparable sleaze of Breitbart, the standard propaganda boost from Fox News, and the typical cowardice of the administration in the face of such attacks. All of that is well established by now and quite unsurprising, so I want to focus on what ought to be the enduring lesson from this ugly episode: the courage of Shirley Sherrod.
Just as CNN fired Octavia Nasr for one of the few insightful and interesting observations she ever voiced about the Middle East, Sherrod's speech -- which caused her to be fired -- is simply inspiring in its uncommon candor, courage and wisdom. Few people are willing so publicly to confess to tribal biases and detail how they struggle to overcome them, even though that's a challenge which any person who evolves at some point must confront. That process -- far more than the pretense of having always been bias-free -- requires difficult self-examination, and its public discussion offers vitally needed lessons for everyone. Many people are unwilling ever to engage that process privately, let alone candidly describe it publicly. Those with the courage to do so, like Sherrod, should be heralded for that candor. Instead, she was slandered, falsely disparaged, and fired.
Contrary to the excuse being offered by those who did all of that, her actual message -- that she was plagued by racial biases decades ago and overcame them with the recognition that it is poverty that unites people in need -- was clearly evident even from the deceitfully edited Breitbart video. This is part of what she said on that edited video:
That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white. It is about white and black, but you know -- it opened my eyes.
But -- just as happened with Octavia Nasr and so many before her, including the now-destroyed ACORN -- the blinding, lying, depressingly common right-wing hysteria churned out by Brietbart/Fox meant that no nuances were permitted, no reason could breathe, and few people had the courage to defend Sherrod or even demand that she be allowed to speak before being thrown to the trash heap.
And that's where the truly significant and rare courage of Sherrod becomes so consequential. Unlike so many who are caught in similar right-wing/media smear storms and (understandably) back down, Sherrod refused to meekly slink away. She conspicuously refused to apologize for things that merited no apology. Rather than legitimize the accusations with defensive self-justifications, she put the blame squarely where it belonged: on Brietbart, on the NAACP for condemning her without all the facts, and on the Obama administration for demanding her "resignation." And as a result of her refusal to allow these false smears to go unchallenged and the low-life smear artists to be rewarded, the true facts have emerged. The actual culprits in this episode -- basically everyone except her and the white couple who came forward to defend her -- are clearly identified and exposed, with their credibility in tatters. And it's hard to imagine the administration's not reversing itself and offering to re-hire her, thus being forced to reverse a serious injustice.
As much value as Sherrod's NAACP speech has for everyone, her conduct in the face of this massive onslaught is even more instructive. It ought to serve as a template for how people respond to all of these low-life, right-wing smear campaigns: with unapologetic clarity and resolve about who the actual wrongdoers are. To the extent the gross injustice of her firing is reversed and the slander to which she was subjected is nullified, it will only be because she stood up to the right-wing smear machine, the establishment media, and even the Executive Branch, which were all jointly operating -- with different motives -- to destroy her. That isn't easy to do, but this is obviously a woman with uncommon courage and principle -- exactly what is required to stand up to and expose the group of thuggish bullies trying to smear her and the cowardly government officials willing to play along. This will be an extremely valuable episode if her conduct inspires future targets of such smears to respond with similar defiance.
UPDATE: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack did the right thing today, which was actually the only thing they could have done in light of the fraud that was exposed: apologized to Sherrod and (in Vilsack's case) offered her job back to her.
Meanwhile, Shepard Smith, one of the very, very few people at Fox News with any inclination toward actual journalism, explained why he refused to show or even mention the edited Sherrod tape yesterday even when the rest of Fox was doing so non-stop: because, among other things, he does not trust the "source" of the video (Breitbart) in light of his history.
The heroism of Shirley Sherrod
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
Everyone is presumably aware by now of the facts surrounding the disgusting fraud perpetrated on Shirley Sherrod, engineered by Andrew Breitbart, amplified by Fox News, and meekly submitted to by the Obama administration. Those who aren't can read excellent commentary from Jamelle Bouie, Joan Walsh, and Chris Martinez. Much has been written about the incomparable sleaze of Breitbart, the standard propaganda boost from Fox News, and the typical cowardice of the administration in the face of such attacks. All of that is well established by now and quite unsurprising, so I want to focus on what ought to be the enduring lesson from this ugly episode: the courage of Shirley Sherrod.
Just as CNN fired Octavia Nasr for one of the few insightful and interesting observations she ever voiced about the Middle East, Sherrod's speech -- which caused her to be fired -- is simply inspiring in its uncommon candor, courage and wisdom. Few people are willing so publicly to confess to tribal biases and detail how they struggle to overcome them, even though that's a challenge which any person who evolves at some point must confront. That process -- far more than the pretense of having always been bias-free -- requires difficult self-examination, and its public discussion offers vitally needed lessons for everyone. Many people are unwilling ever to engage that process privately, let alone candidly describe it publicly. Those with the courage to do so, like Sherrod, should be heralded for that candor. Instead, she was slandered, falsely disparaged, and fired.
Contrary to the excuse being offered by those who did all of that, her actual message -- that she was plagued by racial biases decades ago and overcame them with the recognition that it is poverty that unites people in need -- was clearly evident even from the deceitfully edited Breitbart video. This is part of what she said on that edited video:
That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white. It is about white and black, but you know -- it opened my eyes.
But -- just as happened with Octavia Nasr and so many before her, including the now-destroyed ACORN -- the blinding, lying, depressingly common right-wing hysteria churned out by Brietbart/Fox meant that no nuances were permitted, no reason could breathe, and few people had the courage to defend Sherrod or even demand that she be allowed to speak before being thrown to the trash heap.
And that's where the truly significant and rare courage of Sherrod becomes so consequential. Unlike so many who are caught in similar right-wing/media smear storms and (understandably) back down, Sherrod refused to meekly slink away. She conspicuously refused to apologize for things that merited no apology. Rather than legitimize the accusations with defensive self-justifications, she put the blame squarely where it belonged: on Brietbart, on the NAACP for condemning her without all the facts, and on the Obama administration for demanding her "resignation." And as a result of her refusal to allow these false smears to go unchallenged and the low-life smear artists to be rewarded, the true facts have emerged. The actual culprits in this episode -- basically everyone except her and the white couple who came forward to defend her -- are clearly identified and exposed, with their credibility in tatters. And it's hard to imagine the administration's not reversing itself and offering to re-hire her, thus being forced to reverse a serious injustice.
As much value as Sherrod's NAACP speech has for everyone, her conduct in the face of this massive onslaught is even more instructive. It ought to serve as a template for how people respond to all of these low-life, right-wing smear campaigns: with unapologetic clarity and resolve about who the actual wrongdoers are. To the extent the gross injustice of her firing is reversed and the slander to which she was subjected is nullified, it will only be because she stood up to the right-wing smear machine, the establishment media, and even the Executive Branch, which were all jointly operating -- with different motives -- to destroy her. That isn't easy to do, but this is obviously a woman with uncommon courage and principle -- exactly what is required to stand up to and expose the group of thuggish bullies trying to smear her and the cowardly government officials willing to play along. This will be an extremely valuable episode if her conduct inspires future targets of such smears to respond with similar defiance.
UPDATE: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack did the right thing today, which was actually the only thing they could have done in light of the fraud that was exposed: apologized to Sherrod and (in Vilsack's case) offered her job back to her.
Meanwhile, Shepard Smith, one of the very, very few people at Fox News with any inclination toward actual journalism, explained why he refused to show or even mention the edited Sherrod tape yesterday even when the rest of Fox was doing so non-stop: because, among other things, he does not trust the "source" of the video (Breitbart) in light of his history.
The Pundit Delusion
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19krugman.html
The Pundit Delusion
PAUL KRUGMAN
July 18, 2010
The latest hot political topic is the “Obama paradox” — the supposedly mysterious disconnect between the president’s achievements and his numbers. The line goes like this: The administration has had multiple big victories in Congress, most notably on health reform, yet President Obama’s approval rating is weak. What follows is speculation about what’s holding his numbers down: He’s too liberal for a center-right nation. No, he’s too intellectual, too Mr. Spock, for voters who want more passion. And so on.
But the only real puzzle here is the persistence of the pundit delusion, the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting — who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback — actually matters.
This delusion is, of course, most prevalent among pundits themselves, but it’s also widespread among political operatives. And I’d argue that susceptibility to the pundit delusion is part of the Obama administration’s problem.
What political scientists, as opposed to pundits, tell us is that it really is the economy, stupid. Today, Ronald Reagan is often credited with godlike political skills — but in the summer of 1982, when the U.S. economy was performing badly, his approval rating was only 42 percent.
My Princeton colleague Larry Bartels sums it up as follows: “Objective economic conditions — not clever television ads, debate performances, or the other ephemera of day-to-day campaigning — are the single most important influence upon an incumbent president’s prospects for re-election.” If the economy is improving strongly in the months before an election, incumbents do well; if it’s stagnating or retrogressing, they do badly.
Now, the fact that “ephemera” don’t matter seems reassuring, suggesting that voters aren’t swayed by cheap tricks. Unfortunately, however, the evidence suggests that issues don’t matter either, in part because voters are often deeply ill informed.
Suppose, for example, that you believed claims that voters are more concerned about the budget deficit than they are about jobs. (That’s not actually true, but never mind.) Even so, how much credit would you expect Democrats to get for reducing the deficit?
None. In 1996 voters were asked whether the deficit had gone up or down under Bill Clinton. It had, in fact, plunged — but a plurality of voters, and a majority of Republicans, said that it had risen.
There’s no point berating voters for their ignorance: people have bills to pay and children to raise, and most don’t spend their free time studying fact sheets. Instead, they react to what they see in their own lives and the lives of people they know. Given the realities of a bleak employment picture, Americans are unhappy — and they’re set to punish those in office.
What should Mr. Obama have done? Some political analysts, like Charlie Cook, say that he made a mistake by pursuing health reform, that he should have focused on the economy. As far as I can tell, however, these analysts aren’t talking about pursuing different policies — they’re saying that he should have talked more about the subject. But what matters is actual economic results.
The best way for Mr. Obama to have avoided an electoral setback this fall would have been enacting a stimulus that matched the scale of the economic crisis. Obviously, he didn’t do that. Maybe he couldn’t have passed an adequate-sized plan, but the fact is that he didn’t even try. True, senior economic officials reportedly downplayed the need for a really big effort, in effect overruling their staff; but it’s also clear that political advisers believed that a smaller package would get more friendly headlines, and that the administration would look better if it won its first big Congressional test.
In short, it looks as if the administration itself was taken in by the pundit delusion, focusing on how its policies would play in the news rather than on their actual impact on the economy.
Republicans, by the way, seem less susceptible to this delusion. Since Mr. Obama took office, they have engaged in relentless obstruction, obviously unworried about how their actions would look or be reported. And it’s working: by blocking Democratic efforts to alleviate the economy’s woes, the G.O.P. is helping its chances of a big victory in November.
Can Mr. Obama do anything in the time that remains? Midterm elections, where turnout is crucial, aren’t quite like presidential elections, where the economy is all. Mr. Obama’s best hope at this point is to close the “enthusiasm gap” by taking strong stands that motivate Democrats to come out and vote. But I don’t expect to see that happen.
What I expect, instead, if and when the midterms go badly, is that the usual suspects will say that it was because Mr. Obama was too liberal — when his real mistake was doing too little to create jobs.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 19, 2010, on page A21 of the New York edition.
The Pundit Delusion
PAUL KRUGMAN
July 18, 2010
The latest hot political topic is the “Obama paradox” — the supposedly mysterious disconnect between the president’s achievements and his numbers. The line goes like this: The administration has had multiple big victories in Congress, most notably on health reform, yet President Obama’s approval rating is weak. What follows is speculation about what’s holding his numbers down: He’s too liberal for a center-right nation. No, he’s too intellectual, too Mr. Spock, for voters who want more passion. And so on.
But the only real puzzle here is the persistence of the pundit delusion, the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting — who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback — actually matters.
This delusion is, of course, most prevalent among pundits themselves, but it’s also widespread among political operatives. And I’d argue that susceptibility to the pundit delusion is part of the Obama administration’s problem.
What political scientists, as opposed to pundits, tell us is that it really is the economy, stupid. Today, Ronald Reagan is often credited with godlike political skills — but in the summer of 1982, when the U.S. economy was performing badly, his approval rating was only 42 percent.
My Princeton colleague Larry Bartels sums it up as follows: “Objective economic conditions — not clever television ads, debate performances, or the other ephemera of day-to-day campaigning — are the single most important influence upon an incumbent president’s prospects for re-election.” If the economy is improving strongly in the months before an election, incumbents do well; if it’s stagnating or retrogressing, they do badly.
Now, the fact that “ephemera” don’t matter seems reassuring, suggesting that voters aren’t swayed by cheap tricks. Unfortunately, however, the evidence suggests that issues don’t matter either, in part because voters are often deeply ill informed.
Suppose, for example, that you believed claims that voters are more concerned about the budget deficit than they are about jobs. (That’s not actually true, but never mind.) Even so, how much credit would you expect Democrats to get for reducing the deficit?
None. In 1996 voters were asked whether the deficit had gone up or down under Bill Clinton. It had, in fact, plunged — but a plurality of voters, and a majority of Republicans, said that it had risen.
There’s no point berating voters for their ignorance: people have bills to pay and children to raise, and most don’t spend their free time studying fact sheets. Instead, they react to what they see in their own lives and the lives of people they know. Given the realities of a bleak employment picture, Americans are unhappy — and they’re set to punish those in office.
What should Mr. Obama have done? Some political analysts, like Charlie Cook, say that he made a mistake by pursuing health reform, that he should have focused on the economy. As far as I can tell, however, these analysts aren’t talking about pursuing different policies — they’re saying that he should have talked more about the subject. But what matters is actual economic results.
The best way for Mr. Obama to have avoided an electoral setback this fall would have been enacting a stimulus that matched the scale of the economic crisis. Obviously, he didn’t do that. Maybe he couldn’t have passed an adequate-sized plan, but the fact is that he didn’t even try. True, senior economic officials reportedly downplayed the need for a really big effort, in effect overruling their staff; but it’s also clear that political advisers believed that a smaller package would get more friendly headlines, and that the administration would look better if it won its first big Congressional test.
In short, it looks as if the administration itself was taken in by the pundit delusion, focusing on how its policies would play in the news rather than on their actual impact on the economy.
Republicans, by the way, seem less susceptible to this delusion. Since Mr. Obama took office, they have engaged in relentless obstruction, obviously unworried about how their actions would look or be reported. And it’s working: by blocking Democratic efforts to alleviate the economy’s woes, the G.O.P. is helping its chances of a big victory in November.
Can Mr. Obama do anything in the time that remains? Midterm elections, where turnout is crucial, aren’t quite like presidential elections, where the economy is all. Mr. Obama’s best hope at this point is to close the “enthusiasm gap” by taking strong stands that motivate Democrats to come out and vote. But I don’t expect to see that happen.
What I expect, instead, if and when the midterms go badly, is that the usual suspects will say that it was because Mr. Obama was too liberal — when his real mistake was doing too little to create jobs.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 19, 2010, on page A21 of the New York edition.
Feinberg: Unfair to Ask Firms to Return Payouts
On a related Ken Feinberg note...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385120617510164.html
BUSINESS JULY 23, 2010
Feinberg: Unfair to Ask Firms to Return Payouts
VICTORIA MCGRANE
WASHINGTON — U.S. "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg on Friday declined to request 17 financial firms that doled out $1.6 billion in "ill advised" executive compensation to return the excessive payouts, saying to do so would be unfair to the companies and could trigger private lawsuits and additional Congressional investigation.
Mr. Feinberg released a report that found 17 firms—including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc.—made the bonus-like payouts to top executives in late 2008 and early 2009 even as the companies were receiving taxpayer assistance.
Mr. Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for compensation, said he deemed these payments as "ill advised" both for the sheer amount—some individual payouts exceed $10 million, he said—and the lack of reasonable rationale for their payment.
Other firms Mr. Feinberg criticized for poor judgment included: American Express Co., American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc., Capital One Financial Corp., CIT Group Inc., M&T Bank Corp., Regions Financial Corp., Sun Trust Banks Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.
But he stopped short of saying any of the firms violated the public interest, the highest criticism allowed by the law mandating his review. None of the firms violated any law or regulation when they made the payouts, Mr. Feinberg told reporters during a briefing Friday.
Mr. Feinberg's study, which was required by the 2009 stimulus law that also created his post, covered the five-month window during which firms were getting government assistance but policy makers hadn't yet enacted executive-compensation restrictions. Those rules came into force in early February 2009.
The payments "were ill advised, they were troublesome. But I do not believe it is fair to declare...that the payments were 'contrary to the public interest,'" he said. In fact, Mr. Feinberg said he undertook the compensation review, which was required by the 2009 stimulus law, with "some reluctance."
"This is arm-chair quarterbacking," he said.
Mr. Feinberg also said he felt it was inappropriate for him to ask any of the 17 firms to claw back or reimburse taxpayers for the bonus payouts. Under the law he has no authority to demand repayment, but Congress did direct him to request reimbursement if appropriate.
Nonetheless, Mr. Feinberg felt these payouts were misguided enough to push the firms to adopt a policy that would limit their ability to pay out large sums during the next crisis.
Specifically, Mr. Feinberg's plan would enable a company's compensation committee to restructure, reduce or cancel pending executive payouts once the company's board of directors judged the firm to be in a crisis situation.
It remains unclear if any of the 17 firms will actually adopt Mr. Feinberg's recommendations. The proposal is voluntary, and the government's influence over many of the cited firms has waned. Eleven of the 17 firms have fully repaid taxpayers.
But Mr. Feinberg, who has discussed his proposal with each of the 17 firms cited by his report, said he is "hopeful" the firms will comply. "I have not heard much pushback."
The study is the result of four months spent reviewing pay at 419 firms that took government money during the crisis. The task was in addition to Mr. Feinberg's core assignment to review pay at a handful of firms that received "extraordinary" assistance from the government.
Mr. Feinberg narrowed his study to "highly compensated employees" with annual pay packages of more than $500,000 that received payments that were later curbed by Congress and Treasury, including cash bonuses, retention rewards, stock grants and golden parachutes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385120617510164.html
BUSINESS JULY 23, 2010
Feinberg: Unfair to Ask Firms to Return Payouts
VICTORIA MCGRANE
WASHINGTON — U.S. "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg on Friday declined to request 17 financial firms that doled out $1.6 billion in "ill advised" executive compensation to return the excessive payouts, saying to do so would be unfair to the companies and could trigger private lawsuits and additional Congressional investigation.
Mr. Feinberg released a report that found 17 firms—including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc.—made the bonus-like payouts to top executives in late 2008 and early 2009 even as the companies were receiving taxpayer assistance.
Mr. Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for compensation, said he deemed these payments as "ill advised" both for the sheer amount—some individual payouts exceed $10 million, he said—and the lack of reasonable rationale for their payment.
Other firms Mr. Feinberg criticized for poor judgment included: American Express Co., American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc., Capital One Financial Corp., CIT Group Inc., M&T Bank Corp., Regions Financial Corp., Sun Trust Banks Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.
But he stopped short of saying any of the firms violated the public interest, the highest criticism allowed by the law mandating his review. None of the firms violated any law or regulation when they made the payouts, Mr. Feinberg told reporters during a briefing Friday.
Mr. Feinberg's study, which was required by the 2009 stimulus law that also created his post, covered the five-month window during which firms were getting government assistance but policy makers hadn't yet enacted executive-compensation restrictions. Those rules came into force in early February 2009.
The payments "were ill advised, they were troublesome. But I do not believe it is fair to declare...that the payments were 'contrary to the public interest,'" he said. In fact, Mr. Feinberg said he undertook the compensation review, which was required by the 2009 stimulus law, with "some reluctance."
"This is arm-chair quarterbacking," he said.
Mr. Feinberg also said he felt it was inappropriate for him to ask any of the 17 firms to claw back or reimburse taxpayers for the bonus payouts. Under the law he has no authority to demand repayment, but Congress did direct him to request reimbursement if appropriate.
Nonetheless, Mr. Feinberg felt these payouts were misguided enough to push the firms to adopt a policy that would limit their ability to pay out large sums during the next crisis.
Specifically, Mr. Feinberg's plan would enable a company's compensation committee to restructure, reduce or cancel pending executive payouts once the company's board of directors judged the firm to be in a crisis situation.
It remains unclear if any of the 17 firms will actually adopt Mr. Feinberg's recommendations. The proposal is voluntary, and the government's influence over many of the cited firms has waned. Eleven of the 17 firms have fully repaid taxpayers.
But Mr. Feinberg, who has discussed his proposal with each of the 17 firms cited by his report, said he is "hopeful" the firms will comply. "I have not heard much pushback."
The study is the result of four months spent reviewing pay at 419 firms that took government money during the crisis. The task was in addition to Mr. Feinberg's core assignment to review pay at a handful of firms that received "extraordinary" assistance from the government.
Mr. Feinberg narrowed his study to "highly compensated employees" with annual pay packages of more than $500,000 that received payments that were later curbed by Congress and Treasury, including cash bonuses, retention rewards, stock grants and golden parachutes.
Obama Claimed Escrow Fund Would Not 'Supersede' Claims in Court
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/38480
President Obama Claimed Escrow Fund From BP Would Not 'Supersede' Rights to Present Claims in Court, Feinberg Says It Will
Heather
Tuesday Jul 20, 2010
Even though I still agree that those who have been damaged by the oil spill in the Gulf getting something from BP right now is better than what we saw happen after the Exxon Valdez disaster -- where those who had claims got stalled for years and our wonderful corporatist Supreme Court decided that if they weren't dead yet ages later they were going to get next to nothing for their suffering -- it looks like Kenneth Feinberg is going back on the Obama administration's promise that taking money from BP now will not prevent anyone who has been damaged and who takes money from the escrow fund now from having the right to sue BP later.
Here's a portion of a press release from the Obama administration on June 16th of this year.
This $20 billion will provide substantial assurance that the claims people and businesses have will be honored. It’s also important to emphasize this is not a cap. The people of the Gulf have my commitment that BP will meet its obligations to them. BP has publicly pledged to make good on the claims that it owes to the people in the Gulf, and so the agreement we reached sets up a financial and legal framework to do it.
Another important element is that this $20 billion fund will not be controlled by either BP or by the government. It will be put in a escrow account, administered by an impartial, independent third party. So if you or your business has suffered an economic loss as a result of this spill, you’ll be eligible to file a claim for part of this $20 billion. This fund does not supersede either individuals’ rights or states’ rights to present claims in court. BP will also continue to be liable for the environmental disaster it has caused, and we’re going to continue to work to make sure that they address it.
Kenneth Feinberg directly contradicted that statement during his meeting with Louisiana residents on July 15th.
Feinberg: Okay, now I want a lump sum payment. I’m a shrimper. I’m a shrimper and I think that shrimping… I’m outta’ luck for three years. Well, that’s what you say. I’m looking at this. I’m asking the experts down in the Parish and I think, you’re not be going to be out of luck for three years. You’re out of luck for two years. I’ll give you a hundred and forty three thousand dollars if you release BP from any law suit. You can go sue somebody else if you want, but in return for $143.000, here’s the check, you sign away. You won’t sue BP. You decide. Yes, give me the check.
You’re gone. Release, sign your name or, you’re not treating me fairly, I think it’s not enough, I don’t know about the future, I don’t want the money. Don’t take it. Don’t take it. Go file a law suit. Wait. Come back. A year later this program is going to be up and running for I think three years. No rush if you want to wait and see. That’s up to you.
That’s how the program is going to work. Now that’s now how the moratorium is going to work.
Then we cut to the Ed Schultz Show and Mike Papantonio’s slant on this and Ed asking how Kenneth Feinberg is going to be paid.
Papantonio: Well it’s coming from BP, there’s no question it’s coming from BP. The question I’m going to raise, I’m going to meet the Feinberg group this week, Wednesday up in New York and the questions I have is who is paying you? We know it’s BP that’s paying Feinberg to do what he’s doing. That’s going around this coast, saying everything’s okay, the $20 billion is in place.
I want to ask Feinberg who’s going to bonus you if you save money on this $20 billion by not paying it to the victims. At this point he’s been handled like mamma Theresa, like Mother Theresa. He is not Mother Theresa.
I respect Ken Feinberg, I’ve worked against Ken Feinberg, he’s a great lawyer, but you’ve got to keep your eyes on the ball. He is working for BP. He’s not working for victims.
Kenneth Feinberg claims he’s working independently even though he’s being paid by BP. I’m not sure how independent you can expect someone to be if that’s who’s writing his paycheck as Pap noted.
Someone needs to ask President Obama why Ken Feinberg is directly contradicting him on claims against BP and those with claims giving away their right to sue later and being forced to sign a piece of paper with a BP lawyer there to receive a check.
Feinberg is doing nothing but liability damage for BP if everyone has to sign off not to sue to receive a check right now. That is not how this was painted by the Obama administration. I'd like to know where the rest of our media is on this besides Ed Schultz.
Karoli adds this:
The key here, though, is that no one has to take a final lump sum payment from the fund. It's structured in a way that allows for applicants to apply for, and receive payments that are not final settlements. The best strategy would be to keep coming back to the fund for interim payments, but not sign off on a final lump sum settlement. If there's some reason to do so, I would strongly suggest getting legal advice before doing it.
President Obama Claimed Escrow Fund From BP Would Not 'Supersede' Rights to Present Claims in Court, Feinberg Says It Will
Heather
Tuesday Jul 20, 2010
Even though I still agree that those who have been damaged by the oil spill in the Gulf getting something from BP right now is better than what we saw happen after the Exxon Valdez disaster -- where those who had claims got stalled for years and our wonderful corporatist Supreme Court decided that if they weren't dead yet ages later they were going to get next to nothing for their suffering -- it looks like Kenneth Feinberg is going back on the Obama administration's promise that taking money from BP now will not prevent anyone who has been damaged and who takes money from the escrow fund now from having the right to sue BP later.
Here's a portion of a press release from the Obama administration on June 16th of this year.
This $20 billion will provide substantial assurance that the claims people and businesses have will be honored. It’s also important to emphasize this is not a cap. The people of the Gulf have my commitment that BP will meet its obligations to them. BP has publicly pledged to make good on the claims that it owes to the people in the Gulf, and so the agreement we reached sets up a financial and legal framework to do it.
Another important element is that this $20 billion fund will not be controlled by either BP or by the government. It will be put in a escrow account, administered by an impartial, independent third party. So if you or your business has suffered an economic loss as a result of this spill, you’ll be eligible to file a claim for part of this $20 billion. This fund does not supersede either individuals’ rights or states’ rights to present claims in court. BP will also continue to be liable for the environmental disaster it has caused, and we’re going to continue to work to make sure that they address it.
Kenneth Feinberg directly contradicted that statement during his meeting with Louisiana residents on July 15th.
Feinberg: Okay, now I want a lump sum payment. I’m a shrimper. I’m a shrimper and I think that shrimping… I’m outta’ luck for three years. Well, that’s what you say. I’m looking at this. I’m asking the experts down in the Parish and I think, you’re not be going to be out of luck for three years. You’re out of luck for two years. I’ll give you a hundred and forty three thousand dollars if you release BP from any law suit. You can go sue somebody else if you want, but in return for $143.000, here’s the check, you sign away. You won’t sue BP. You decide. Yes, give me the check.
You’re gone. Release, sign your name or, you’re not treating me fairly, I think it’s not enough, I don’t know about the future, I don’t want the money. Don’t take it. Don’t take it. Go file a law suit. Wait. Come back. A year later this program is going to be up and running for I think three years. No rush if you want to wait and see. That’s up to you.
That’s how the program is going to work. Now that’s now how the moratorium is going to work.
Then we cut to the Ed Schultz Show and Mike Papantonio’s slant on this and Ed asking how Kenneth Feinberg is going to be paid.
Papantonio: Well it’s coming from BP, there’s no question it’s coming from BP. The question I’m going to raise, I’m going to meet the Feinberg group this week, Wednesday up in New York and the questions I have is who is paying you? We know it’s BP that’s paying Feinberg to do what he’s doing. That’s going around this coast, saying everything’s okay, the $20 billion is in place.
I want to ask Feinberg who’s going to bonus you if you save money on this $20 billion by not paying it to the victims. At this point he’s been handled like mamma Theresa, like Mother Theresa. He is not Mother Theresa.
I respect Ken Feinberg, I’ve worked against Ken Feinberg, he’s a great lawyer, but you’ve got to keep your eyes on the ball. He is working for BP. He’s not working for victims.
Kenneth Feinberg claims he’s working independently even though he’s being paid by BP. I’m not sure how independent you can expect someone to be if that’s who’s writing his paycheck as Pap noted.
Someone needs to ask President Obama why Ken Feinberg is directly contradicting him on claims against BP and those with claims giving away their right to sue later and being forced to sign a piece of paper with a BP lawyer there to receive a check.
Feinberg is doing nothing but liability damage for BP if everyone has to sign off not to sue to receive a check right now. That is not how this was painted by the Obama administration. I'd like to know where the rest of our media is on this besides Ed Schultz.
Karoli adds this:
The key here, though, is that no one has to take a final lump sum payment from the fund. It's structured in a way that allows for applicants to apply for, and receive payments that are not final settlements. The best strategy would be to keep coming back to the fund for interim payments, but not sign off on a final lump sum settlement. If there's some reason to do so, I would strongly suggest getting legal advice before doing it.
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