Cheney Was Right About One Thing: Deficits Don't Matter
Wednesday 27 April 2011
by: Ellen Brown, Truthout
Deficit terrorists" are gutting governments and forcing the privatization of public assets, all in the name of "deficit reduction." But deficits aren't actually a bad thing. In today's monetary scheme, in which most money comes from debt, debt and deficits are actually necessary to have a stable money supply. The public debt is the people's money.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney famously said, "Deficits don't matter." A staunch Republican, he was arguing against raising taxes on the rich; but today, Republicans seem to have forgotten this maxim. They are bent on stripping social programs, privatizing public assets and gutting unions, all in the name of "deficit reduction."
Worse, Standard & Poor's has now taken up the hatchet. Some bloggers are calling itblackmail. This private, for-profit rating agency, with a dubious track record of its own, is dictating government policy, threatening to downgrade the government's long-held triple AAA credit rating if Congress fails to deal with its deficit in sufficiently draconian fashion. The threat is a real one, as we've seen with the devastating effects of downgrades in Greece, Ireland, and other struggling countries. Lowered credit ratings force up interest rates and cripple national budgets.
The biggest threat to the dollar's credit rating, however, may be the game of chicken being played with the federal debt ceiling. Nearly70 percentof Americans are said to be in favor of a freeze on May 16, when the ceiling is due to be raised; and Tea Party-oriented politicians could go along with this scheme to please their constituents.
If they get what they wish for, the party could be over for the whole economy. The Chinese are dumping US Treasuries and the Fed is backing off from its "quantitative easing" program, in which it has been buying federal securities with money simply created on its books. When the Fed buys Treasuries, the government gets the money nearly interest-free, since the Fed rebates itsprofitsto the government after deducting its costs. When the Chinese and the Fed quit buying Treasuries, interest rates are liable to shoot up; and with a frozen debt ceiling, the government would have to default, since any interest increase on a $14 trillion debt would be a major expenditure. Today, the Treasury is paying a very low .25 percenton securities of nine months or less, and interest on the whole debt is about 3 percent (a total of$414 billionon a debt of $14 trillion in 2010). Greece is paying4.5 percenton its debt, and Venezuela is paying18 percent- six times the 3 percent we're paying on ours. Interest at 18 percent would add $2 trillion to our tax bill. That would mean payingthree timeswhat we're paying now in personal income taxes (projected to be a total of$956 billionin 2011), just to cover the interest.
There are other alternatives. Congress could cut the military budget - but it probably won't, since this option is never even discussed. It could raise taxes on the rich, but that probably won't happen either. A third option is to slash government services. But which services? How about Social Security? Do you really want to see Grandma panhandling? Congress can't agree on a budget for good reason: there is no good place to cut.
Fortunately, there is a more satisfactory solution. We can sit back, relax and concede that Cheney was right. Deficits aren't necessarily a bad thing! They don't matter, so long as they are at very low interest rates; and they can be kept at these very low rates either by maintaining our triple A credit rating or by borrowing from the Fed essentially interest-free.
The Yin and Yang of Money
Under our current monetary scheme, debt and deficits not only don't matter but are actually necessary in order to maintain a stable money supply. The reason was explained by Marriner Eccles, governor of the Federal Reserve Board, in hearings before the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1941. Wright Patman asked Eccles how the Federal Reserve got the money to buy government bonds.
"We created it," Eccles replied.
"Out of what?"
"Out of the right to issue credit money."
"And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government's credit?"
"That is what our money system is," Eccles replied."If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money."
That could explain why the US debt hasn't been paid off since 1835. It has just continued to grow and the economy has grown and flourished along with it. A debt that is never paid off isn't really a debt. Financial planner Mark Pash calls it aNational Monetization Account. Government bonds (or debt) are "monetized" (or turned into money). Government bonds and dollar bills are the yin and yang of the money supply, the negative and positive sides of the national balance sheet. To have a plus-1 on one side of the balance sheet, a minus-1 needs to be created on the other.
Except for coins, all of the money in the US money supply now gets into circulation as a debt to a bank (including the Federal Reserve, the central bank). But private loans zero out when they are repaid. In order to keep the money supply fairly constant, some major player has to incur debt that never gets paid back; and this role is played by the federal government.
Here is why. Private banks always lend at interest, so more money is always owed back than was created in the first place. In fact, investors of all sorts expect more money back than they paid. That means the debt needs to be not only maintained, but expanded, to keep the economy functioning. When the Fed "takes away the punch bowl" by tightening credit, there is insufficient money to pay off debts; people and businesses go into default; and the economy spins into a recession or depression.
Maintaining a deficit is particularly important when the private lending market collapses, as it did in 2008 and 2009. Then debt drops off and so does the money supply. Too little money is available to buy the goods on the market, so businesses shut down and workers get laid off, further reducing demand, precipitating a recession. To reverse this deflationary cycle, the government needs to step in with additional public debt to fill the breach.
The Heartless Way Conservatives Treat Young Women Who Choose to Have Babies
If you get pregnant outside of their very narrow parameters of what's acceptable (middle class, married, white), conservatives simply want you to suffer for it.
AlterNet / By Amanda Marcotte
Last week, “The Rachel Maddow Show” ran a story on Michigan politics that had footage so distressing it apparently created an avalanche of mail for the show. The new Republican governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, signed a law that allows the state to functionally dissolve local governments and hand them over to “emergency managers,” who are using their new powers to enact a series of wish list items for conservatives under the guise of fiscal responsibility. It’s a project that’s been dubbed “fiscal martial law”, and the latest victims were a group of school girls that were manhandled by police and arrested, all because they wanted to keep their current educational opportunities. Maddow’s show ran the unnerving footage of police shoving, cuffing and pushing around teenage girls, while the sirens wailed over the girls’ shouts and cries.
The girls were arrested for holding a sit-in to protest the closing of their school, the Catherine Ferguson Academy, which was established to serve students who are pregnant or mothering. The school provides day care and parenting classes, and focuses on getting students to college and giving them skills that help future self-sufficiency. Supposedly “pro-life” conservatives should not only be supporting this school, but demanding that every high school in the country provide these services to teenage mothers. After all, these girls did what anti-choicers ask of them. They chose to have their babies. And now the very same conservatives that wax sentimental about “choosing life” are working to shut down the educational opportunities of young women who did what anti-choicers want, by having their babies.
The imminent shut down of Catherine Ferguson demonstrates the emptiness of Republican claims that they oppose reproductive rights because they value life. Instead, Republican policies are rooted in a sadistic desire to punish and control, and to deprive women---especially young women, poor women, and women of color---of any opportunities whatsoever. Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, explained, “I think the range of actions being taken against pregnant women reflects what has been underlying attacks on Roe and abortion all along, a fundamental disrespect for pregnant women, regardless of what decisions they make. The combination of attacks that seek to deprive women not only of reproductive health care but food (through cuts to the WIC program) as well as education for pregnant teens makes clear that it is pregnant women's personhood and not just their right to choose that is being targeted.”
Michigan Republicans are trying to put pregnant women in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. If you don’t want to have the baby, good luck to you trying to get an abortion in Michigan. The state already has been given an F by NARAL, especially for heavy restrictions on abortion access for young and low income women. The state also has onerous waiting periods, complete with false information about the risks of abortion. But some Republican legislators don’t think women who want to terminate pregnancies are hassled enough. State senator David Robertson has introduced a bill that would require abortion clinics not only to do an ultrasound, but to provide hard copy pictures of it to the patient before she’s allowed to have her abortion. This adds to the expense of an abortion, as well as creates time constraints that make it harder for clinics to serve all their patients with the best level of care. It also treats pregnant women making difficult decisions like they’re addled-minded morons, demonstrating further the amount of contempt that conservatives have for the personhood of pregnant women.
But just because they don’t want you to say no to having a baby means that Michigan Republicans want you to say yes, either, as the girls at Catherine Ferguson have learned. Young women trying to parent and finish high school face often insurmountable challenges. For one thing, being pregnant or mothering in high school is heavily stigmatized, and they face discrimination from school officials, teachers, and their fellow students. They also face a series of pragmatic problems. Balancing school and motherhood requires childcare, something most high school students can’t even begin to access or afford. Being a parent requires money, too. Trying to balance work, parenting, and school proves too much for many young mothers. Fewer than half of teenage mothers go on to complete high school.
Separate schools for teenage mothers draw criticism from people on the left as well as the right. Liberal critics say that teenage mothers should be integrated into their regular high schools, and the services offered at specialty schools should be available at ordinary high schools. While these critics have a point, the cold fact of the matter is that as long as services for teenage mothers are not integrated into regular schools, places like Catherine Ferguson serve a role. This particular school has a 90% graduation rate, more than twice the national average for teenage mothers. Most importantly, the girls themselves cherish the school, which is why they put their bodies on the line in order to save it.
Gov. Snyder claims to be “firmly pro-life”, but his governing decisions that led to multiple young mothers getting arrested because they want a better lives for themselves and their small children shows he is anything but. He and other Republicans who oppose reproductive rights are better understood as anti-choice and anti-woman. Their stance isn’t pro-fetus, but pro-punishment. If you get pregnant outside of their very narrow parameters of what’s acceptable (middle class, married, white), they simply want you to suffer for it. If your decision is terminate the pregnancy, they will make you suffer. But as the girls at Catherine Ferguson are learning, if you choose to have the baby, you will also be made to suffer. You may even find yourself hauled away in handcuffs if you dare suggest you deserve to have something as simple as a high school education.
http://act.alternet.org/go/6909?akid...018.6RX5om&t=6
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I saw this report. It was disgusting to see the police abuse these women. Apparently, trying to better yourself, trying to overcome some mistakes you made is not allowed.
Doesn't it seem that all the vicious crap in this country is, somehow, always connected to conservatives and their attempts at trying to impose their ideological beliefs on everyone?
Thanks to Decades of Conservative Spin, Americans Are Hopelessly Confused About Taxes
Spending and the Deficit.
Conservatives have spent 30 years divorcing the taxes we pay from the services they finance -- no wonder the public doesn't know where their tax dollars go.
A few weeks back, Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, felt compelled to take time out of what is presumably a busy schedule to explain that “taxes are, first and foremost, about paying for what the government buys.” That he felt compelled to do so is a sad reflection of the state of our economic discourse.
A good number of Americans are hopelessly confused about taxes, deficits and the debt. And it's no mystery why – conservatives have spent 30 years divorcing the taxes we pay from the services they finance. They've bent themselves into intellectual pretzels arguing that cutting taxes – on the wealthy – leads to more revenues in the coffers. They've invented narratives about taxes driving “producers” to sunnier climes, killing jobs by the bushel, and relentlessly spun the wholly false notion that we're facing “runaway spending” and are “taxed to death.”
And they've had great success. But they haven't done it alone – credit the media with an assist for muddying the waters around our fiscal situation. Consider a poll released this week by the highly respected Gallup organization. Their headline reads, “Americans Blame Wasteful Government Spending for Deficit.” Is that true? Well, here were the options – the only options – that respondents were offered:
Which do you think is more to blame for the federal budget deficit: Spending too much on government programs that are either not needed or wasteful, or not raising enough taxes to pay for needed programs? (Emphasis added.)
“Accordingly,” says Gallup, “Americans generally favor spending cuts rather than tax increases as the way for Congress to reduce the deficit going forward.” According to that distorted narrative – that false choice -- of course they do. I'm sure the results of a poll asking if people would prefer an ice cream sundae or a sharp stick in the eye would prove equally conclusive (not to mention bipartisan).
The problem is that after decades of anti-government rhetoric, there's very little in the way of “wasteful spending” left unless you look hard at the military budget, which neither party seems willing to do in any serious way.
We are, simply, under-taxed relative to the things we want the government to do. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the biggest driver of the projected deficits over the next ten years are not the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or social safety net programs; it's the Bush tax cuts.
Last year, the revenues collected by the federal government were the lowest since 1950 (as a share of our overall economic activity). But it's important to understand that back then, we had no medicare program. The population was younger, and health care costs were a fraction of what they are today – in 1960, just before Medicare was established, we spent 5 percent of GDP on health-care; today, we spend about 17 percent.
As economist Dean Baker noted, if we spent the same per person on health-care as any one of the 35 countries with longer average life expectancies, our deficits would turn into surpluses in a few short years.
Offering health-care to children, seniors and the poor is anything but “not needed.” Is it wasteful? Health-care costs have skyrocketed for years in this country, but more slowly in the public sector than in the private.
While we're clearly under-taxed, the right's anti-tax crusaders have largely had their way shaping the discourse. About 7 in 10 Americans want the deficit to be addressed. Many believe that running a large, short-term deficit is hurting the economy when the opposite is true. We lost $14 trillion in wealth in the financial crash, and that – along with high unemployment and an ongoing foreclosure nightmare – has led to a huge drop in consumer demand. Public spending has, to a painfully inadequate degree, filled some of the gap.
Give the conservative message machine its due credit. While Americans really like the specific things government does – they want low-cost student loans, having fire-fighters and cops on the beat and a whole slew of other services – the abstract idea of “limited government” is quite appealing.
The right's victory in separating taxes from the services they pay for is apparent when citizens are asked what they'd like to see cut in order to cut that deficit. In January, Gallup released a poll on those specifics. They asked which of nine areas of government services they'd like to see cut. Only cutting foreign aid – which represents about two percent of the federal budget – met with the approval of a majority of those surveyed. Even majorities of Republicans opposed cuts to everything but foreign aid and arts funding.
Taken together, this shows how difficult it is for law-makers to arrive at good public policies. Their constituents wants their cake, they want to eat it, but they don't think they need to pay the tab for it. Politicos offer tax cuts to get themselves elected, but then face outraged constituents when they try to cut services. Small wonder that we've only managed to balance the budget in one brief period during the boom years of the 1990s.
We do face serious issues in this country. We need a serious debate about how best to solve them. But we're having that debate in a democracy populated by citizens who have little or no clue where their tax dollars go. And you can credit the anti-tax crusaders and their habitual mendacity for that sorry state of affairs.
http://act.alternet.org/go/7088?akid...018.ImQHZK&t=8
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This essay gets to the heart of the matter; propaganda. It works. When you are told something, even something outrageous, there is a good chance you will come to believe it if you hear it many times. History is replete with examples.
When people are asked if they want things they consider important cut they say no. But when things are mentioned in a vague way, mixed with scary emphasis, they tend to change their minds. Propaganda and misdirection.
Be informed.
Filling in the Gaping Holes in WikiLeaks' Guantanamo Detainee Files
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout
Imagine that the more than 700 Guantanamo files released two weeks ago by WikiLeaks contained information explaining how interrogators obtained "intelligence" from "war on terror" detainees captured or sold to US forces after 9/11, such as this firsthand account:
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I asked the (military police) what was going on I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occasion, the (air conditioner) had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
That description was taken directly from an email written by an FBI agent on August 2, 2004and sent to officials at the agency's headquarters in Washington, DC, describing the torture of one detainee as witnessed by the agent while he or she was stationed at Guantanamo.
After reading those horrific details, would you take at face value the information this detainee, who may have been a teenager, an elderly man or a person who suffered from mental problems, gave up to his interrogator?
Well, that's the impression one is left with after reading the Guantanamo files, identified by the government as Detainee Assessment Briefs (DAB). The documents, prepared between 2002 and 2008 and signed by top military officials stationed at the prison facility, certainly bolster the Bush administration's case that the detainees in custody of the US military are the "worst of the worst," despite the subtle caveats about the veracity of the information.
Nowhere in the files does it state that dozens of detainees were tortured prior to and during their interrogation sessions, which may well have resulted in false confessions, one of the cornerstones of the "enhanced interrogation" program, that the Defense Department then used to justify the detainees' continued detention.
Instead, the Guantanamo files seem to suggest that detainees, the vast majority of who were either innocent or low-level foot soldiers and have since been released, were treated humanely during the course of their interrogations and willingly confessed to a wide-range of crimes, such as being members of al-Qaeda and that they participated in or planned attacks against the US and/or its interests in other parts of the world.
A Backdrop of Torture
Several years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained emails from the FBI in connection with the organization's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government related to the treatment of detainees in custody of the CIA and Department of Defense.
The emails are the first-hand accounts of agents who were stationed at Guantanamo and said they witnessed detainees being abused or tortured by military personnel and interrogators under contract to the CIA and Department of Defense. The emails, of which the names of agents and detainees are redacted, were written in response to a request issued in 2004 by the FBI's Office of General Counsel requesting information from agents who "observed any aggressive mistreatment, interrogations or interview techniques of GTMO [Guantanamo] detainees by representatives of any law enforcement, military or Bureau personnel."
The agency received more than 434 responses. Two dozen were "positive" and documented incidents of abuse agency personnel witnessed, but said they did not take part in. While there is not enough evidence in the agents' reports to suggest that all 779 Guantanamo detainees were treated brutally, the details the agents described closely match the accounts given by former guards and numerous detainees who have been released from the prison. Moreover, some agents said they took part in briefings conducted by Guantanamo officials who said certain types of abusive treatment, such as keeping detainees chained to the floor in freezing cold or hot cells prior to an interrogation, was the policy in place at the time.
But a report issued in 2009 by the Senate Armed Services Committee on the treatment of detainees in US custody concluded that the abuse of Guantanamo prisoners was systematic, widespread and ordered from the top. When the emails and the Senate report are held up alongside the DAB, they complete the picture and underscore why the veracity of the information in the DAB should be called into question.
For example, one email written by an FBI agents states, "during my assignment at GTMO [in 2003] I received a briefing from the military personnel assigned to operations at GTMO, that non-cooperative detainees could be placed on a list for a specific interrogation technique involving interruption of a sleep pattern called the 'frequent flyer program,'" which was designed to disorient prisoners and break them down physically and mentally prior to being interrogated.
"With this particular technique, identified detainees were moved frequently from cell block to cell block at intervals that appeared to be every hour or every two hours depending on the shifts and availability of military personnel to move the detainee," says the email, noting that Guantanamo officials maintained a "detainee movement database." "Detainees were moved along with all of their personal belongings. Due to the movement to different cells the detainees had their sleep interrupted throughout a 24 hour period. The duration of the program for particular detainees seemed to depend on the cooperativeness of the detainees."
A July 9, 2004, email written by an FBI agent states that in mid-2002, one detainee, who had a full beard, was found in an interrogation room, his head wrapped entirely in duct tape because, an Army contractor said, laughing, according to a separate email describing the incident, he was "chanting the Koran and would not stop."
The email written on July 9, 2004, also discusses how an interrogator "commanded" a German shepherd "to growl, bark and show his teeth" in front of an individual believed to be high-value detainee because the helpless prisoner "failed to provide any substantive information" during the course of a 24-hour interrogation session.
The FBI report on this incident as recounted by the agent in an interview with his superiors said, "based on conversations with [redacted] [redacted] believed Department of Defense authorization for the permitted use of harsh/aggressive interrogation techniques may have come from Secretary [of Defense] [Donald] Rumsfeld."
The detainee in question is believed to be Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks. What's notable about this email is that it states the torture al-Qahtani was subjected to took place between September and October 2002, but Rumsfeld did not formally approve of specific interrogation techniques used against al-Qahtani, as highlighted in the FBI email, until December 2002 with the issuance of an action memorandum.
Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and the lead attorney defending al-Qahtani, said in a sworn declaration that his client was subjected to months of torture based on verbal and written authorizations from Rumsfeld, which match up with the details contained in the FBI emails.
"Mr. al-Qahtani was subjected to a regimen of aggressive interrogation techniques, known as the 'First Special Interrogation Plan,'" Gutierrez said. "Those techniques were implemented under the supervision and guidance of Secretary Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller.
"These methods included, but were not limited to, 48 days of severe sleep deprivation and 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory over-stimulation and threats with military dogs."
An email written by another FBI agent said Miller "requested permission to utilize 'special interrogative techniques on" the detainee believed to be al-Qahtani, who by December 2002according to the same email, was "admitted to the base hospital for hypothermia."
Miller's signature can be found on many of the DAB, but those files, include al-Qahtani's, fail to cite the torture techniques he implemented as a matter of policy at Guantanamo.
In January 2009, Susan Crawford, the retired judge and a close confidant of Dick Cheney who, until last year, headed military commissions at Guantanamo, said al-Qahtani's interrogation met the legal definition of torture and, as a result, she would not allow a war crimes tribunal against him to proceed.
Another FBI agent wrote in an email dated July 14, 2004, that the agent saw detainees being subjected to "sleep deprivation, interview with strobe lights and two different kinds of loud music."
Bill Maher to GOP: President Obama Just Ate Your Lunch
Congress must crack down on prosecutors run amok, says John Paul Stevens
Retired Justice John Paul Stevens said Supreme Court decisions have given local prosecutors impunity for violating constitutional rights, and urged Congress to respond by authorizing victims of misconduct to sue.
In a speech Monday night to the Equal Justice Initiative, which advocates for indigent defendants, Justice Stevens criticized the court’s March decision overturning a jury’s $14 million award to an innocent man who spent 14 years on death row after prosecutors concealed evidence that could have cleared him. (Click here to see the full text of Stevens’ speech.)
The case of Connick v. Thompson saw the court split 5-4 along its conservative-liberal divide. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas rejected the freed man’s theory that the New Orleans district attorney’s office was negligent for failing to train its staff to comply with longstanding precedents requiring prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence to defendants.
Lawyers for the wrongly imprisoned man, John Thompson, made that argument because Supreme Court precedent requires proof that it was the local government’s policy to violate constitutional rights before it can be held liable.
Thompson’s lawyers “did not prove a pattern of similar violations” that was “the functional equivalent of a decision by the city itself to violate the Constitution,” Justice Thomas wrote.
Stevens said Monday that the nature of the American criminal justice system—where most local prosecutors are elected—“creates a problem of imbalanced incentives that ought to be addressed at the state and national level.”
Because district attorneys often run on tough-on-crime platforms, the pressures to ensure convictions far outweigh the rewards for respecting rights of the accused, Stevens said.
That could be fixed, he said, by making district attorneys liable when their subordinates commit outrageous violations of constitutional rights. Private-sector employees already are liable for their employees’ misconduct, under a legal doctrine called respondeat superior.
The doctrine “provides a powerful continuing incentive for employers to make sure that their employees are adequately trained,” Stevens said, something “especially important where electoral incentives encourage abuse.” More important, he said, “it would produce a just result in cases like Thompson’s in which there is no dispute about the fact that he was harmed by conduct that flagrantly violated his constitutional rights.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/05/03/...al-misconduct/
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One of the many big problems in this country is the absolute power of prosecutors. THEY NEVER ADMIT TO MAKING ANY ERRORS. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EXECUTED AFTER EVIDENCE APPEARS TO EXONERATE THEM. PROSECUTORS FIGHT ATTEMPTS TO CORRECT THEIR CONTINUED VICIOUS AND IMPROPER PROSECUTIONS. THEY DON'T WANT TO APPEAR MISTAKEN IN ANY WAY. PEOPLE SPEND TIME IN PRISON AND DIE BECAUSE OF THIS.
ANYBODY CARE?
Republican FCC commissioner to resign, and join the team (also Republicans) at
Comcast.
Federal Communications commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker announced Wednesday that she will resign from the FCC on June 3 and join Comcast-NBC Universal as its senior vice president of governmental affairs.
Baker, a Republican, joined the FCC in 2009 after working at the National Telecomunications and Information Administration under President George W. Bush. While at the NTIA, Baker oversaw a $1.5 billion coupon program to help consumers make the transition to digital-only television.
The commissioner’s announcement comes four months after she voted to approve a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/pos...ons_com_8.html
In a March speech on the FCC merger process, she said that, in her opinion, “the NBC/Comcast merger took too long.”
The media reform advocacy group Free Press issued a statement criticizing Baker’s move. “This is just the latest -- though perhaps most blatant -- example of a so-called public servant cashing in at a company she is supposed to be regulating,” said Free Press president and CEO Craig Aaron. “The continuously revolving door at the FCC continues to erode any prospects for good public policy.”
Plenty of government staffers have gone on to work for high-profile tech companies, bolstering company knowledge of the regulatory and lobbying landscape. In November, Comcast hired National Cable & Telecommunciations Association head Kyle McSlarrow — Baker’s new boss — to head its D.C. lobbying office. McSlarrow was a former deputy secretary in the Energy Department and ran former Vice President Dan Quayle’s 200 presidential campaign. Other former government staffers now in the tech world include James Cicconi, AT&T’s lead lobbyist and former staffer for George W. Bush, and Arts &Labs head Mike McCurry, who served as press secretary under President Bill Clinton.
Facebook, Google and Twitter have also all hired former White House staffers as the companies wrestle with consumer privacy issues and are called to defend their practices before government panels.
In a statement announcing her resignation, Baker said she is most proud of the work she has done with FCC on spectrum reform. “It is the most important step we can take to ensure our nation’s competitiveness in an increasingly interconnected world,” she said.
In a statement, McSlarrow said, “Meredith’s executive branch and business experience along with her exceptional relationships in Washington bring Comcast and NBCUniversal the perfect combination of skills.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g.html?hpid=z3
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Yet ANOTHER example of the cozy relationship government has with business. Does anybody think this is dangerous? Pay attention to her approval of the merger just before her departure from the FCC.
REPORT: Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers At Universities Across The Country
Yesterday, ThinkProgress highlighted reports from the St. Petersburg Times and the Tallahassee Democrat regarding a Koch-funded economics department at Florida State University (FSU). FSU had accepted a $1.5 million grant from a foundation controlled by petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch on the condition that Koch’s operatives would have a free hand in selecting professors and approving publications. The simmering controversy sheds light on the vast influence of the Koch political machine, which spans from the top conservative think tanks, Republican politicians, a small army of contracted lobbyists, and Tea Party front groups in nearly every state.
As reporter Kris Hundley notes, Koch virtually owns much of George Mason University, another public university, through grants and direct control over think tanks within the school. For instance, Koch controls the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, an institute that set much of the Bush administration’s environmental deregulation policy. And similar conditional agreements have been made with schools like Clemson and West Virginia University. ThinkProgress has analyzed data from the Charles Koch Foundation, and found that this trend is actually much larger than previous known. Many of the Koch university grants finance far right, pro-polluter professors, and dictate that students read Charles Koch’s book as part of their academic study:
– West Virginia University: As ThinkProgress reported last year, Koch funds an array of academic programs at West Virginia University, a public university. One Koch-funded academic at WVU, economics professor Russell Sobel, has written a book blasting regulations of all types. He even argues that less mine safety regulations will make coal miners more safe. As the St. Petersburg Times reported, a similar arrangement has been made with WVU as with FSU in accepting at least $480,000 from Koch.
– Brown University: The Charles Koch Foundation funds the Political Theory Project at Brown, which provides funding for “Seminar Luncheons for undergraduates, academic conferences, research fellowships for graduate students, support for faculty research, and a postdoctoral fellowship program.” Amity Shales, a pop-conservative writer who argues that the New Deal made the Great Depression worse, an odd theory promoted by Charles Koch himself, has been a featured speaker at the Koch-funded Project at Brown. Moreover, Koch’s donation of at least $419,254 to Brown has underwritten a number of research projects in the Economics and Political Science deparments, including a paper arguing that bank deregulation has helped the poor.
– Troy University: The Charles Koch Foundation, along with the Manuel Johnson and the BB&T Foundation, provided Troy University, a public university, a gift of $3.6 million to establish the Center for Political Economy last year. The Center’s stated goal is to push back against the belief following the financial crisis that markets need regulation. Notably, the entire Advisory Council for the Center is made up of Koch and BB&T-funded professors at other universities, including Russell Sobel at West Virginia University and Peter Boettke at George Mason University. Currently, the Center’s only staffer, Professor Scott Beaulier, is a board member of the ExxonMobil-funded attack group, American Energy Alliance, and a former staffer for Koch’s think tank at George Mason.
– Utah State University: The Charles Koch Foundation has given nearly $700,000 to Utah State University, mostly for the Huntsman School of Business. The money has been used to hire five new faculty members, and establish a program for undergraduates to enroll and learn about Charles Koch’s “Science of Liberty” management theory. Professor Randy Simmons, the “Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy” at the school, helps select students — who must provide information about their ideological interests in their application form — to the Koch program. Simmons also works for several Koch-funded front groups, and writes papers against environmental regulations. Charles Koch’s book, “The Science of Success,” a book Forbes mocked for proclaiming a “Marxist faith in ‘fixed laws’ that govern ‘human well-being,’” is part of the required reading list for the program. A representative for Utah State did not return ThinkProgress’ calls about conditional strings attached to the Koch grant.
Charles Koch Foundation grants, along with direct Koch Industries grants, are distributed to dozens of other universities around the country every year, to both public and private institutions. Some of the programs, like the Charles Koch Student Research Colloquium at Beloit College, are funded by grants of little over $130,000 and simply support conservative speakers on campuses. We have reached out to several of the schools to learn more about the agreements, but none so far have returned our calls.
Budget constraints and other problems at universities have allowed a small set of oligarchs to use school donations to interfere with academic integrity on campuses. A group of hedge fund managers, working through the Manhattan Institute’s Veritas Fund, have created entire departments dedicated to advancing failed supply side ideas and climate skepticism. John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T Bank, a bailout recipient, has used his corporation’s money to force college campuses to adopt Ayn Rand readings into their programs.
Overall, Koch is still a dominant player when it comes to meddling with academic integrity. Part of the effort is coordinated through operatives like Richard Fink, who doubles as a vice president at Koch’s corporate lobbying office. Through an organization called the Association of Private Enterprise Education, Koch organizes these corporate-funded university departments into a powerful intellectual movement. The organization allows Koch staffers in Washington DC to request certain types of studies, interfere with hiring decisions, and reward loyal free market academics with hefty research grants.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/...rsity-takeover
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Money can get you anything, regardless of the consequences for the rest of us.
Los Alamitos Unified will require teachers of controversial subjects to prove
political balance to the school board each year.
Before Los Alamitos High School science teachers can tackle topics such as global warming, they will have to demonstrate to the school board that the course is politically balanced.
A new environmental science course prompted the Los Alamitos Unified School District on Tuesday to rewrite its policy for teaching controversial subject matter. Concerned that "liberal" faculty members could skew lessons on global warming, the board of education unanimously voted to make teachers give an annual presentation on how they're teaching the class.
“I believe my role in the board is to represent the conservative voice of the community and I’m not a big fan of global warming,” said board member Jeffrey Barke, who led the effort. “The teachers wanted [the class], and we want a review of how they are teaching it.”
The high school will begin offering an advanced-placement environmental science course next fall. Based on demand elsewhere in California, district officials expect it to be popular—more than 15,000 public school students enrolled in the class in 2008-09.
Although there is a consensus among scientists, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that global climate change exists, the board of education said the topic is controversial enough to require a change in the district's policy.
The new class will be the first for which district teachers must prove political balance to the school board.
“Most teachers are left to center, and if we leave it to teachers to impose their liberal views, then it would make for an unbalanced lesson,” Barke said. “Some people believe that global warming is a crock of crap, and others are zealots.”
The course also covers topics such as population dynamics, evolution and biodiversity, pollution, ozone depletion and human health and toxicity.
“We define a topic to be controversial if it has more than one widely held view,” said Assistant Superintendent Sherry Kropp, who will take the district's helm when Superintendent Gregory Franklin steps down at the end of the school year. “There are many issues regarding the environment that have become politicized these days and we want kids to be exposed to all sides.”
School officials said the class is a good alternative for students looking to add an alternative AP course to their schedules.
“Our goal is to have every high school student complete at least one AP course, and this is a good one to take because it is not heavily math-based,” said Kropp. “We are excited to offer it.”
The textbook that will be used, “Living in the Environment,” asks students to analyze why some issues are deemed controversial (such as wilderness protection) and explores how population growth and climate change can cause species extinctions.
“If the textbook talks about the evil adventures of humanity, we want teachers to describe an opposing view,” Barke said. “Teachers and textbooks are biased.”
Los Alamitos Unified isn't the first district to raise concerns regarding how environmental science courses are taught. The Texas board of education, for example, mandated that teachers present “all sides” of issues that include global warming. South Dakota public schools are also required to teach climate skepticism, according to a report from the New York Times.
Still, this might be the first time a California public school takes such a stand.
“I don’t have data to share on this, but every subject area has its own set of controversies,” said Thomas Adams, director of standards, curriculum frameworks and instructional resources for the California Department of Education.
Kropp said, “An unbalanced lesson would portray only one side. All we want is to have teachers teach the various scientific theories out there.”
http://losalamitos.patch.com/articles/global-warming
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Yes, there should never be any scientifically based, objective info presented to children (or anyone else) unless conservatives agree with it.
There it is. Do it our way or we will fight you. There are not any liberal or conservative 'facts'. Only scientifically supported, objective facts. Let the chips fall...
Nah Too easy.
