carapace – Not your father's america

THE BLUE NOTE 7 MOSAIC: A CELEBRATION OF BLUE NOTE RECORDS Mosaic: A Celebration of Blue Note Records (2 CDs) [AMAZON EXCLUSIVE] ~ The Blue Note 7

ELIANE ELIAS BOSSA NOVA STORIES Bossa Nova Stories ~ Elias, Eliane

Kindle 2: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)

Say Hello to The New Kindle

Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines

Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback

Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots

Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required

Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images

Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging

More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books

Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns

Read-to-Me: With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you

Large Selection: Over 240,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available

Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

We also have a wide variety of Kindle accessories available, including new covers from Cole Haan, Patagonia, and Belkin and more.

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Congress Didn’t Read the Bill

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Here’s something terrifying: Congress passed the $787 billion Stimulus Bill and we’re pretty sure the people who voted on that legislation didn’t actually read it. And for sure you didn’t have a chance to look at it, either. That’s not the first time important legislation has rushed through Congress in a matter of hours. By hurrying to vote on these bills, members of Congress might miss an earmark or tax break that could have a lasting impact on you and your community.

Congress just passed the largest piece of spending legislation in history and no one Read The Bill. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen again. Demand that they Read The Bill and sign our petition now:

http://www.ReadTheBill.org/petition

Read The Bill is a commonsense solution — we want Congress to post all bills online for 72 hours before they are debated. That gives members of Congress – and you – three days to read legislation and consider how it could potentially affect each of us in our daily lives. A 72-hour rule would also give you a chance to let your representative in Congress know what you like, or don’t like, about a bill before he or she votes.

Here are some examples of bills that were passed when members of Congress only had a few hours to read each one.

-TARP bailout bill (2008): rushed through Congress with few provisions for accountability

-Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008: Congress’ Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout

-PATRIOT Act (2001): rushed through Congress and, consequently, expanded the federal government’s ability to gather intelligence, engage in domestic surveillance and secret searches and detain immigrants with little restraint

Just yesterday, the House of Representatives approved a $410 billion omnibus spending bill. Unlike the Stimulus Bill, it was posted online for two days, which allowed members of Congress – and citizens, alike – to read and discuss the bill for a short period of time before it was considered in Congress. But even that is not enough. Let’s remove the disparity and uncertainty that makes some bills available while others are cloaked in secrecy. Let’s continue to allow everyone to Read The Bill for at least 72 hours before it is considered in Congress.

Help us urge Congress to take some time to Read the Bill– sign our petition today.

http://readthebill.org/petition/

Thank you for your time on this important matter.

Sincerely,
Ellen Miller
Executive Director, Sunlight Foundation

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FinCEN Mortgage Fraud Report News release:

“The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today released its latest mortgage fraud analysis – titled Filing Trends in Mortgage Loan Fraud – that shows suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed on suspected mortgage fraud increased 44 percent in the 12 months ending in June 2008 compared with the prior year.”

http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/pdf/20090225a.pdf

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BEA News: GDP and Corporate Profits, 4th Qtr 2008 (preliminary)

Friday, February 27, 2009

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has issued the following news release today:

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to preliminary estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The full text of the release on BEA’s Web site can be found at

http://tinyurl.com/azy8ym (www.bea.gov)

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EIA, the Nation’s clearinghouse for energy statistics – February 2009 Monthly Energy Review has been released

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Monthly Energy Review (02/24/2009)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/contents.html

EIA ‘ s primary report of recent energy statistics: total energy production, consumption, and trade; energy prices; overviews of petroleum, natural gas, coal, electricity, nuclear energy, renewable energy, and international petroleum; and data unit conversions.

U.S. net imports of natural gas during the first 11 months of 2008 were 22 percent below the level during the first 11 months of 2007. See What’s New in the Monthly Energy Review for a record of changes.

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CIA Adds Economy to Threat Updates

26 Feb 2009

The daily White House intelligence report that catalogs the top security threats to the nation has a grim new addition, reflecting the realities of the age: a daily update on the global financial crisis and its cascading effects on the stability of countries through the world. The first Economic Intelligence Briefing report was presented to the White House yesterday by the CIA. The addition of economic news to the daily roundup of terrorist attacks and surveillance reports appears to reflect a growing belief among intelligence officials that the economic meltdown is now preeminent among security threats facing the United States.

At:

http://tinyurl.com/alb8se (www.washingtonpost.com)

From: CLG News

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Munich and the Continuity Between the Bush and Obama Foreign Policies

February 9, 2009
By George Friedman

While the Munich Security Conference brought together senior leaders from most major countries and many minor ones last weekend, none was more significant than U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. This is because Biden provided the first glimpse of U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama. Most conference attendees were looking forward to a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration. What was interesting about Biden’s speech was how little change there has been in the U.S. position and how much the attendees and the media were cheered by it.

After Biden’s speech, there was much talk about a change in the tone of U.S. policy. But it is not clear to us whether this was because the tone has changed, or because the attendees’ hearing has. They seemed delighted to be addressed by Biden rather than by former Vice President Dick Cheney — delighted to the extent that this itself represented a change in policy. Thus, in everything Biden said, the conference attendees saw rays of a new policy.

Policy Continuity: Iran and Russia
Consider Iran. The Obama administration’s position, as staked out by Biden, is that the United States is prepared to speak directly to Iran provided that the Iranians do two things. First, Tehran must end its nuclear weapons program. Second, Tehran must stop supporting terrorists, by which Biden meant Hamas and Hezbollah. Once the Iranians do that, the Americans will talk to them. The Bush administration was equally prepared to talk to Iran given those preconditions. The Iranians make the point that such concessions come after talks, not before, and that the United States must change its attitude toward Iran before there can be talks, something Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani emphasized after the meeting. Apart from the emphasis on a willingness to talk, the terms Biden laid out for such talks are identical to the terms under the Bush administration.

Now consider Russia. Officially, the Russians were delighted to hear that the United States was prepared to hit the “reset button” on U.S.-Russian relations. But Moscow cannot have been pleased when it turned out that hitting the reset button did not involve ruling out NATO expansion, ending American missile defense system efforts in Central Europe or publicly acknowledging the existence of a Russian sphere of influence. Biden said, “It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.” In translation, this means the United States has the right to enter any relationship it wants with independent states, and that independent states have the right to enter any relationship they want. In other words, the Bush administratio n’s commitment to the principle of NATO expansion has not changed.

Nor could the Russians have been pleased with the announcement just prior to the conference that the United States would continue developing a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The BMD program has been an issue of tremendous importance for Russians, and it is something Obama indicated he would end, or change in some way that might please the Russians. But not only was there no commitment to end the program, there also was no backing away from long-standing U.S. interest in it, or even any indication of the terms under which it might end.

Given that the United States has asked Russia for a supply route through the former Soviet Union to Afghanistan, and that the Russians have agreed to this in principle, it would seem that that there might be an opening for a deal with the Russians. But just before the Munich conference opened, Kyrgyzstan announced that Manas Air Base, the last air base open to the United States in Central Asia, would no longer be available to American aircraft. This was a tidy little victory for the Russians, who had used political and financial levers to pressure Kyrgyzstan to eject the Americans. The Russians, of course, deny that any such pressure was ever brought to be ar, and that the closure of the base one day before Munich could have been anything more than coincidence.

But the message to the United States was clear: While Russia agrees in principle to the U.S. supply line, the Americans will have to pay a price for it. In case Washington was under the impression it could get other countries in the former Soviet Union to provide passage, the Russians let the Americans know how much leverage Moscow has in these situations. The U.S. assertion of a right to bilateral relations won’t happen in Russia’s near abroad without Russian help, and that help won’t come without strategic concessions from the United States. In short, the American position on Russia hasn’t changed, and neither has the Russian position.

The Europeans

The most interesting — and for us, the most anticipated — part of Biden’s speech had to do with the Europeans, of whom the French and Germans were the most enthusiastic about Bush’s departure and Obama’s arrival. Biden’s speech addressed the core question of the U.S.-European relationship.

If the Europeans were not prepared to increase their participation in American foreign policy initiatives during the Bush administration, it was assumed that they would be during the Obama administration. The first issue on the table under the new U.S. administration is the plan to increase forces in Afghanistan. Biden called for more NATO involvement in that conflict, which would mean an increase in European forces deployed to Afghanistan. Some countries, along with the head of NATO, support this. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear that Germany is not prepared to send more troops.

Over the past year or so, Germany has become somewhat estranged from the United States. Dependent on Russian energy, Germany has been unwilling to confront Russia on issues of concern to Washington. Merkel has made it particularly clear that while she does not oppose NATO expansion in principle, she certainly opposes expansion to states that Russian considers deeply within its sphere of influence (primarily Georgia and Ukraine). The Germans have made it abundantly clear that they do not want to see European-Russian relations deteriorate under U.S. prodding. Moreover, Germany has no appetite for continuing its presence in Afghanistan, let alone increasing it.

NATO faces a substantial split, conditioned partly by Germany’s dependence on Russian energy, but also by deep German unease about any possible resumption of a Cold War with Russia, however mild. The foundation of NATO during the Cold War was the U.S.-German-British relationship. With the Germans unwilling to align with the United States and other NATO members over Russia or Afghanistan, it is unclear whether NATO can continue to function. (Certainly, Merkel cannot be pleased that the United States has not laid the BMD issue in Poland and the Czech Republic to rest.)

The More Things Change …

Most interesting here is the continuity between the Bush and Obama administrations in regard to foreign policy. It is certainly reasonable to argue that after only three weeks in office, no major initiatives should be expected of the new president. But major initiatives were implied — such as ending the BMD deployment to Poland and the Czech Republic — and declaring the intention to withdraw BMD would not have required much preparation. But Biden offered no new initiatives beyond expressing a willingness to talk, without indicating any policy shifts regarding the things that have blocked talks. Willingness to talk with the Iranians, the Russians, the Europeans and others shifts the atmospherics — allowing the listener to think things have changed — but does not address the question of what is to be discussed and what is to be offered and accepted.

Ultimately, the issues dividing the world are not, in our view, subject to personalities, nor does goodwill (or bad will, for that matter) address the fundamental questions. Iran has strategic and ideological reasons for behaving the way it does. So does Russia. So does Germany, and so on. The tensions that exist between those countries and the United States might be mildly exacerbated by personalities, but nations are driven by interest, not personality.

Biden’s position did not materially shift the Obama administration away from Bush’s foreign policy, because Bush was the prisoner of that policy, not its creator. The Iranians will not make concessions on nuclear weapons prior to holding talks, and they do not regard their support for Hamas or Hezbollah as aiding terrorism. Being willing to talk to the Iranians provided they abandon these things is the same as being unwilling to talk to them.

There has been no misunderstanding between the United States and Russia that more open dialogue will cure. The Russians see no reason for NATO expansion unless NATO is planning to encircle Russia. It is possible for the West to have relations with Ukraine and Georgia without expanding NATO; Moscow sees the insistence on expansion as implying sinister motives. For its part, the United States refuses to concede that Russia has any interest in the decisions of the former Soviet Union states, something Biden reiterated. Therefore, either the Russians must accept NATO expansion, or the Americans must accept that Russia has an overriding interest in limiting American relations in the former Soviet Union. This is a fundamental issue that any U.S. administration would have to deal with — particularly an administr ation seeking Russian cooperation in Afghanistan.

As for Germany, NATO was an instrument of rehabilitation and stability after World War II. But Germany now has a complex relationship with Russia, as well as internal issues. It does not want NATO drawing it into adventures that are not in Germany’s primary interest, much less into a confrontation with Russia. No amount of charm, openness or dialogue is going to change this fundamental reality.

Dialogue does offer certain possibilities. The United States could choose to talk to Iran without preconditions. It could abandon NATO expansion and quietly reduce its influence in the former Soviet Union, or perhaps convince the Russians that they could benefit from this influence. The United States could abandon the BMD system (though this has been complicated by Iran’s recent successful satellite launch), or perhaps get the Russians to participate in the program. The United States could certainly get the Germans to send a small force to Afghanistan above and beyond the present German contingent. All of this is possible.

What can’t be achieved is a fundamental transformation of the geopolitical realities of the world. No matter how Obama campaigned, it is clear he knows that. Apart from his preoccupation with economic matters, Obama understands that foreign policy is governed by impersonal forces and is not amenable to rhetoric, although rhetoric might make things somewhat easier. No nation gives up its fundamental interests because someone is willing to talk.

Willingness to talk is important, but what is said is much more important. Obama’s first foray into foreign policy via Biden indicates that, generally speaking, he understands the constraints and pressures that drive American foreign policy, and he understands the limits of presidential power. Atmospherics aside, Biden’s positions — as opposed to his rhetoric — were strikingly similar to Cheney’s foreign policy positions.

We argued long ago that presidents don’t make history, but that history makes presidents. We see Biden’s speech as a classic example of this principle.

Tell Stratfor What You Think

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Please feel free to distribute this Intelligence Report to friends or repost to your Web site linking to www.stratfor.com .

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Subject: Obama Administration Lifts Blanket Ban on Media Coverage of the Return of Fallen Soldiers

National Security Archive Update, February 26, 2009

Obama Administration Lifts Blanket Ban on Media Coverage of the Return of Fallen Soldiers

Policy changed 18 years after Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney first banned news media from covering honor ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base

For More Information Contact:

Ralph Begleiter, University of Delaware (302) 831-2687
Meredith Fuchs, General Counsel, National Security Archive (202) 994-7000
Thomas Blanton, Director, National Security Archive (202) 994-7000

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, February 26, 2009 – Today Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lifted a blanket ban on news media coverage of the honor guard ceremonies that mark the return of military casualties from abroad. The new policy will permit media coverage of the ceremonies, during which caskets draped with American flags are brought home from war, after consultation with the families of the fallen. The Obama administration’s move restores press access to the honor ceremonies, which had been the practice from World War II through the Panama invasion of 1989. During the lead-up to the Gulf War in 1991, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney instituted the ban. The news media lost a first amendment challenge to the ban, but Professor Ralph Begleiter and the National Security Archive forced the release of hundreds of images taken by military photographers under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2005.

Professor Begleiter, the long-time CNN correspondent who is the Rosenberg Professor of Communications and Distinguished Journalist in Residence at the University of Delaware, filed the lawsuit with the National Security Archive in 2004 to compel release of DOD’s own images of the honor ceremonies under the FOIA. Once it became clear that the government had no basis for withholding the images under the FOIA, the military stopped taking photos documenting the return of fallen soldiers.

“This reversal of two decades of policy is an important and welcome milestone for the American people. This decision restores to its rightful, honorable place the immense value of the sacrifice American troops make on behalf of their nation,” said Professor Begleiter. “The Pentagon’s reversal of the news media ban should also result in the military itself returning immediately to documenting with its own photographers the honorable return of war casualties — and making those images public. That public documentation by the government should not be subject to anyone’s veto.”

“Dick Cheney’s original ban on media coverage in the lead-up to the Gulf War was clearly meant to hide the cost of war. It reversed decades of respectful open media access,” explained Tom Blanton, the Archive’s director. “The release of honor ceremony photos in 2005 shows how respectful treatment of fallen soldiers was, and we expect the media coverage to be similarly respectful.”

Archive general counsel Meredith Fuchs commented, “Overturning a DOD policy that dates back 18 years while trying to ensure the respect that we owe to the fallen is a real change in policy by the Obama administration.”

Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information.

http://www.nsarchive.org

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#6 of A Dozen Books For Americans from Book Review By Sherwood Ross

In “House of War”(Houghton Mifflin), winner of the National Book Award, James Carroll writes, “The Pentagon is now the dead center of an open-ended martial enterprise that no longer pretends to be defense. The world itself must be reshaped. Nothing less than evil must be vanquished. Its good intentions heavily armed, its scope extending from ‘prevention’ to something called ‘operations other than war,’ the Pentagon has, more than ever, become a place to fear.”

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The February 2009 Southwest Climate Outlook is online.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The February 2009 Southwest Climate Outlook is online.

This month’s feature article is entitled, “Past and present climate.”

To view the Southwest Climate Outlook in html format or the printer-friendly PDF file visit:

http://www.climas.arizona.edu/forecasts/swoutlook.html

Highlights from the February 2009 Outlook

Temperature – Western Arizona has recently been cooler than average, while New Mexico is 2 to 4 degrees warmer than average over the last 30 days.

Precipitation – Winter storms that brought significant precipitation to western Arizona bypassed New Mexico, leaving extremely dry conditions.

Drought – Two cold and wet storms moved across Arizona in December, improving short-term drought status in the Little Colorado River and the Aguafria watersheds. In southern New Mexico, drought conditions worsened between January and February.

ENSO – Weak La Niña conditions were present again this month across the equatorial Pacific Ocean, but the current La Niña conditions may be short lived.

Snow – Above-average snowpack persisted into mid-February across much of the high country in Arizona and New Mexico. Many SNOTEL locations are reporting above-average snow water content (SWE) in Colorado and below average SWC in Utah.

Climate Forecasts – Temperature forecasts extending into the summer indicate most of the West has increased chances of above-average temperatures. Precipitation forecasts through May call for increased chances of below-average precipitation in the Southwest, with less predictable conditions for the summer forecasts.

The Bottom Line – While winter conditions in eastern New Mexico resemble a La Niña, year most of Arizona and northwest New Mexico have experienced numerous storms. As a result, the Colorado River and Rio Grande watersheds have received more precipitation than average—snow accumulation in the higher elevations of these areas are above average. Streamflow forecasts suggest that these watersheds will have slightly above-average spring and summer flows.

Kristen E. Nelson
Associate Editor
Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
715 N. Park Ave., 2nd Floor
Tucson, AZ 85721

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On Today, Matalin baselessly claimed Jindal’s “education reform” made Louisiana “one of the top states in the country”

Mary Matalin claimed that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “made more progress in Louisiana in the shortest period of time in the history of the state and probably in the country. Education reform and ethics reform — everything that put Louisiana down in scale is now one of the top states in the country.” In fact, the Louisiana Department of Education noted that the 13th edition of Education Week’s “series of annual report cards tracking state education policies and outcomes” found that “gains were minimal” in the state since the previous report and that “[i]n overall rank, Louisiana dropped from 21st last year to 35th this year.”

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200902260019?lid=910487&rid=22265816

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And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

Los Angeles octuplet mother Nadya Suleman got a million dollar offer Thursday to star in a porno movie. The producer wants her to do many of them. The taxpayers of Los Angeles absolutely refuse to allow it unless there is birth control on the set.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Matt Wuerker Politico.com Feb 27, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Steve Benson: united socialists of america

http://www.azcentral.com/i/7/1/A/PHP49A5FD2083A17.jpg

Tom Toles: not only will rescue your cat …

http://img.slate.com/media/81/090226_ed.gif

The Long Arm of the Lawless

February 25, 2009
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Last week we discussed the impact that crime, and specifically kidnapping, has been having on Mexican citizens and foreigners visiting or living in Mexico. We pointed out that there is almost no area of Mexico immune from the crime and violence. As if on cue, on the night of Feb. 21 a group of heavily armed men threw two grenades at a police building in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, wounding at least five people. Zihuatanejo is a normally quiet beach resort just north of Acapulco; the attack has caused the town’s entire police force to go on strike. (Police strikes, or threats of strikes, are not uncommon in Mexico.)

Mexican police have regularly been targeted by drug cartels, with police officials even having been forced to seek safety in the United States, but such incidents have occurred most frequently in areas of high cartel activity like Veracruz state or Palomas. The Zihuatanejo incident is proof of the pervasiveness of violence in Mexico, and demonstrates the impact that such violence quickly can have on an area generally considered safe.

Significantly, the impact of violent Mexican criminals stretches far beyond Mexico itself. In recent weeks, Mexican criminals have been involved in killings in Argentina, Peru and Guatemala, and Mexican criminals have been arrested as far away as Italy and Spain. Their impact — and the extreme violence they embrace — is therefore not limited to Mexico or even just to Latin America. For some years now, STRATFOR has discussed the threat that Mexican cartel violence could spread to the United States, and we have chronicled the spread of such violence to the U.S.-Mexican border and beyond.

Traditionally, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations had focused largely on the transfer of narcotics through Mexico. Once the South American cartels encountered serious problems bringing narcotics directly into the United States, they began to focus more on transporting the narcotics to Mexico. From that point, the Mexican cartels transported them north and then handed them off to U.S. street gangs and other organizations, which handled much of the narcotics distribution inside the United States. In recent years, however, these Mexican groups have grown in power and have begun to take greater control of the entire narcotics-trafficking supply chain.

With greater control comes greater profitability as the percentages demanded by middlemen are cut out. The Mexican cartels have worked to have a greater presence in Central and South America, and now import from South America into Mexico an increasing percentage of the products they sell. They are also diversifying their routes and have gone global; they now even traffic their wares to Europe. At the same time, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations also have increased their distribution operations inside the United States to expand their profits even further. As these Mexican organizations continue to spread beyond the border areas, their profits and power will extend even further — and they will bring their culture of violence to new areas.

Burned in Phoenix

The spillover of violence from Mexico began some time ago in border towns like Laredo and El Paso in Texas, where merchants and wealthy families face extortion and kidnapping threats from Mexican gangs, and where drug dealers who refuse to pay “taxes” to Mexican cartel bosses are gunned down. But now, the threat posed by Mexican criminals is beginning to spread north from the U.S.-Mexican border. One location that has felt this expanding threat most acutely is Phoenix, some 185 miles north of the border. Some sensational cases have highlighted the increased threat in Phoenix, such as a June 2008 armed assault in which a group of heavily armed cartel gunmen dressed like a Phoenix Police Department tactical team fired more than 100 rounds into a residence during the targeted killing of a Jamaican drug dealer who had double-crossed a Mexican cartel. We have also observed cartel-related violence in places like Dallas and Austin, Texas. But Phoenix has been the hardest hit.

Narcotics smuggling and drug-related assassinations are not the only thing the Mexican criminals have brought to Phoenix. Other criminal gangs have been heavily involved in human smuggling, arms smuggling, money laundering and other crimes. Due to the confluence of these Mexican criminal gangs, Phoenix has now become the kidnapping-for-ransom capital of the United States. According to a Phoenix Police Department source, the department received 368 kidnapping reports last year. As we discussed last week, kidnapping is a highly underreported crime in places such as Mexico, making it very difficult to measure accurately. Based upon experience with kidnapping statistics in other parts of the world — specifically Latin America — it would not be unreasonable to assume that there were at least as many unreported kidnappings in Phoenix as there are reported kidnappings.

At present, the kidnapping environment in the United States is very different from that of Mexico, Guatemala or Colombia. In those countries, kidnapping runs rampant and has become a well-developed industry with a substantial established infrastructure. Police corruption and incompetence ensures that kidnappers are rarely caught or successfully prosecuted.

A variety of motives can lie behind kidnappings. In the United States, crime statistics demonstrate that motives such as sexual exploitation, custody disputes and short-term kidnapping for robbery have far surpassed the number of reported kidnappings conducted for ransom. In places like Mexico, kidnapping for ransom is much more common.

The FBI handles kidnapping investigations in the United States. It has developed highly sophisticated teams of agents and resources to devote to investigating this type of crime. Local police departments are also far more proficient and professional in the United States than in Mexico. Because of the advanced capabilities of law enforcement in the United States, the overwhelming majority of criminals involved in kidnapping-for-ransom cases reported to police — between 95 percent and 98 percent — are caught and convicted. There are also stiff federal penalties for kidnapping. Because of this, kidnapping for ransom has become a relatively rare crime in the United States.

Most kidnapping for ransom that does happen in the United States occurs within immigrant communities. In these cases, the perpetrators and victims belong to the same immigrant group (e.g., Chinese Triad gangs kidnapping the families of Chinese businesspeople, or Haitian criminals kidnapping Haitian immigrants) — which is what is happening in Phoenix. The vast majority of the 368 known kidnapping victims in Phoenix are Mexican and Central American immigrants who are being victimized by Mexican or Mexican-American criminals.

The problem in Phoenix involves two main types of kidnapping. One is the abduction of drug dealers or their children, the other is the abduction of illegal aliens.

Drug-related kidnappings often are not strict kidnappings for ransom per se. Instead, they are intended to force the drug dealer to repay a debt to the drug trafficking organization that ordered the kidnapping.

Nondrug-related kidnappings are very different from traditional kidnappings in Mexico or the United States, in which a high-value target is abducted and held for a large ransom. Instead, some of the gangs operating in Phoenix are basing their business model on volume, and are willing to hold a large number of victims for a much smaller individual pay out. Reports have emerged of kidnapping gangs in Phoenix carjacking entire vans full of illegal immigrants away from the coyote smuggling them into the United States. The kidnappers then transport the illegal immigrants to a safe house, where they are held captive in squalid conditions — and often tortured or sexually assaulted with a family member listening in on the phone — to coerce the victims’ family members in the United States or Mexico to pay the ransom for their release. There are also reports of the gangs picking up vehicles full of victims at day labor sites and then transporting them to the kidnap ping safe house rather than to the purported work site.

Drug-related kidnappings are less frequent than the nondrug-related abduction of illegal immigrants, but in both types of abductions, the victims are not likely to seek police assistance due to their immigration status or their involvement in illegal activity. This strongly suggests the kidnapping problem greatly exceeds the number of cases reported to police.

Implications for the United States

The kidnapping gangs in Phoenix that target illegal immigrants have found their chosen crime to be lucrative and relatively risk-free. If the flow of illegal immigrants had continued at high levels, there is very little doubt the kidnappers’ operations would have continued as they have for the past few years. The current economic downturn, however, means the flow of illegal immigrants has begun to slow — and by some accounts has even begun to reverse. (Reports suggest many Mexicans are returning home after being unable to find jobs in the United States.)

This reduction in the pool of targets means that we might be fast approaching a point where these groups, which have become accustomed to kidnapping as a source of easy money — and their primary source of income — might be forced to change their method of operating to make a living. While some might pursue other types of criminal activity, some might well decide to diversify their pool of victims. Watching for this shift in targeting is of critical importance. Were some of these gangs to begin targeting U.S. citizens rather than just criminals or illegal immigrants, a tremendous panic would ensue, along with demands to catch the perpetrators.

Such a shift would bring a huge amount of law enforcement pressure onto the kidnapping gangs, to include the FBI. While the FBI is fairly hard-pressed for resources given its heavy counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence and white-collar crime caseload, it almost certainly would be able to reassign the resources needed to respond to such kidnappings in the face of publicity and a public outcry. Such a law enforcement effort could neutralize these gangs fairly quickly, but probably not quickly enough to prevent any victims from being abducted or harmed.

Since criminal groups are not comprised of fools alone, at least some of these groups will realize that targeting soccer moms will bring an avalanche of law enforcement attention upon them. Therefore, it is very likely that if kidnapping targets become harder to find in Phoenix — or if the law enforcement environment becomes too hostile due to the growing realization of this problem — then the groups may shift geography rather than targeting criteria. In such a scenario, professional kidnapping gangs from Phoenix might migrate to other locations with large communities of Latin American illegal immigrants to victimize. Some of these locations could be relatively close to the Mexican border like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, San Diego or Los Angeles, though they could also include locations farther inland like Chicago, Atlanta, New York, or even the communities around meat and poultry packing plants in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states. Such a migration of ethn ic criminals would not be unprecedented: Chinese Triad groups from New York for some time have traveled elsewhere on the East Coast, like Atlanta, to engage in extortion and kidnapping against Chinese businessmen there.

The issue of Mexican drug-traffic organizations kidnapping in the United States merits careful attention, especially since criminal gangs in other areas of the country could start imitating the tactics of the Phoenix gangs.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com

Please feel free to distribute this Intelligence Report to friends or repost to your Web site linking to www.stratfor.com .

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Gas Prices Are Not Tied to Oil Prices

Most people think gas prices reflect oil prices, but they don’t. Ed Wallace explains why—and why gas prices still go up when oil falls

By Ed Wallace
February 24, 2009

“The price of gas is indeed tied to oil. It’s just a matter of which oil.” —Associated Press, Feb. 15, 2009

With statements like that, it’s no wonder Americans don’t understand how the energy industry really works. But that line appeared in an Associated Press story that ran Feb. 15 and was reprinted in virtually every major newspaper in America. The statement simply feeds and sustains the public’s conviction that oil and gasoline costs are directly linked to one another—which they’re not: There is an connection between oil prices and gas prices, but it is indirect— far less strong or predictable than most people understand.

The AP story concluded that gas prices are rising while the price of some oil is falling because American refineries are primarily using oil from overseas, not the U.S. benchmark crude West Texas Intermediate. No news there; there isn’t enough WTI crude to supply this nation’s fuel needs. Not even close.

Then the writers suggest that the cheaper WTI, which they incorrectly refer to as West Texas International, could play a bigger part in our oil system if only pipelines were built to transport this crude past “refineries in the Midwest.” That statement could be true, but it’s not. In fact, it reveals a deep unfamiliarity with WTI’s NYMEX contracts, because they specifically state that anyone bidding for West Texas Intermediate must deliver that oil to the storage tanks at Cushing, Okla. Spot-cash prices for immediate delivery of WTI allows shipment elsewhere, but that?s not the basis for the price discovery system.

Low-Tech Controls Still Work

The Cushing clause was designed to dampen wild swings in oil prices. If the tanks at Cushing were full, that would put downward pressure on the price for WTI; there would be no sense in purchasing that oil if storage space wasn’t available, so the price would fall. Likewise, when Cushing’s storage tanks were low, the price of oil could float upward to refill the space available. This may sound like an overly simplistic way to moderate the price of oil, and it is. And if you think this system needs to be updated or scrapped, fine. Change it if you want. But this was the original intent of WTI NYMEX contracts’ demanding delivery at Cushing, and the contracts still specify that location. (Crude other than WTI can also be stored at Cushing.)

It should be noted that when British Petroleum (BP) purchased Arco in 2000, one of the Federal Trade Commission’s conditions for approving that purchase was that BP would have to sell Arco’s pipelines and storage tanks at Cushing, to remove the possibility of any manipulation of WTI contracts. That would also mark the last time the U.S. government expressed any concern about oil price manipulation.

The AP story suggests that the price of gasoline is going up because the futures market for oil is now weighted in favor of Brent Sea North, an oil contract that has traded for $7 to $10 higher than WTI. Here again, the article left a key factor out of the equation: Brent Sea oil’s price was sitting around $44 per barrel, not far from where it was the first week of December, and yet the price of gasoline on the futures market has climbed from under 85¢ per gallon to over $1.24 at one point ($1.08 per gallon as of publication). So yes, Brent Sea North is higher than West Texas Intermediate, but it has been higher for months. If AP’s theory were correct, gasoline prices would have remained static.

Don’t Compare, Contrast

The AP story briefly mentions but doesn’t make clear the real issue: The gasoline futures market is not the oil futures market. The real reason gas prices are moving upward is that gasoline is sold under a completely separate futures contract and to different buyers than oil is.

…

Complete article at:

http://tinyurl.com/b9s8s8 (www.businessweek.com)

Watch the daily futures market for WTI, Brent Sea North and Gasoline here.

http://tinyurl.com/bbg25f (www.bloomberg.com)

Special thanks to Tom Knight at Truman and Arnold Energy for his input.

Ed Wallace received the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, given by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and is a member of the American Historical Society. He reviews new cars every Friday morning at 7:15 on Fox Four’s Good Day, contributes to BusinessWeek.com with some regularity and hosts the top-rated talk show Wheels, 8:00 to 1:00 Saturdays on 570 KLIF. Visit his highly respected Web site, www.insideautomotive.com , to read all his work.
E-mail: wheels570@sbcglobal.net.

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EIA, the Nation’s clearinghouse for energy statistics – This Week in Petroleum (TWIP)

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

This Week in Petroleum (TWIP) has been updated to the EIA website:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp

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NPR Talks About Long-Term Budget Deficits Without Mentioning Health Care

Morning Edition had a piece on the long-term budget problem and never once referred to health care. That’s sort of like discussing the rise in death rates in the the early 1940s without mentioning World War II. As everyone who knows anything about the budget knows, the long-term deficit story is health care, health care, health care. If the economists and policy makers were not such hard core protectionists, this problem would go away tomorrow.

From: ‘Beat the Press’ Weekly Roundup, 2/23/09

http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press

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Health Care’s Central Role

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

ELLEN SHAFFER, ershaffer@gmail.com,

http://ellenshaffer.blogspot.com

Shaffer is co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis, focusing on health policy. She said today: “Obama said his plan will be only a ‘downpayment on what we must have: quality affordable health care for every American.’ He stuck with the program for cost control he campaigned on: large investments in preventive care and electronic medical records, and reducing waste, fraud and abuse.

“It’s genuinely exciting and encouraging to hear, ‘It cannot wait, it must not wait, it will not wait another year.’

“Now, the hard realities set in. There are two fundamental conditions for controlling health care costs that the U.S. lacks, in contrast with every other industrialized country. One is getting everyone covered. We can’t stop whipsawing prices until we have everyone in the same tent. The other is authorizing a negotiating entity — in most cases the government — with the political will and the power to take on the customary practices of the medical industrial complex. This includes wringing out the administrative waste for which we continue to reward the predatory health insurance industry. More rational financing systems are generally associated with systems that produce better outcomes. Predicting that it will work in reverse is … optimistic.

“It’s an enterprise that will require, at some point, taking a hard stand. The public that the president inspired to organize over the last year will have to provide the ballast for this effort to succeed.

“Having dispatched the knotty problem of health care, the president said we would also have to address the equally difficult problems of Social Security. In fact, as he is well aware, the minor fiscal adjustments required to sustain Social Security are but a blip compared with the task of fixing our health care system. The reference to tax-free universal savings accounts seemed to be a troubling nod to the Peterson Institute, which has been waxing frantically in full-page ads about the U.S.’s deficit spending on ‘entitlements’ while referring only in passing to the trillions detonated in Iraq

(Baseline Scenario, February 2009, by Peter Boone, Effective Intervention, and Simon Johnson, Peterson Institute for International Economics;

http://tinyurl.com/dgrkyf (www.petersoninstitute.org)

“Meanwhile, the best the Republican respondent Gov. Bobby Jindal could do to attack the competence of government was to decry the Republicans’ own failures during Katrina. He distorted Obama’s quality improvements as government-run health care. Interestingly, Jindal did not say that his own prescription, to leave health care decisions to doctors and patients, would apply to the reproductive choices of women, girls and families…. ”

Note: At the White House “economic summit” on Monday, Peter Orszag, Director of the Office on Management and Budget, stated: “The single most important thing we can do to put this nation back on a sustainable long-term fiscal course, is slow the growth rate of health care costs. … So, to my fellow budget hawks in this room and in the rest of the country, let me be very clear. Health care reform is entitlement reform. The path to fiscal responsibility must run directly through health care.”

Scheduled for today: Many in Congress and the administration are reportedly looking to the experimental legislation on health care passed in Massachusetts in 2006. A panel of witnesses from Massachusetts will testify at a Congressional forum in the Rayburn House Office Building on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET urging caution in replicating the Massachusetts plan nationally. The panel will include State Senator Jamie Eldridge (who voted for the law in 2006); Dr. David Himmelstein of Cambridge Hospital; Arthur MacEwan, a University of Massachusetts economist; Sandy Eaton, RN, of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and Peter Knowlton, president of the United Electrical Workers, Northeast Region.

For more see:

http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/mass-plan

Contact: Benjamin Day, Mass-Care, director@masscare.org

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

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O’Reilly latest to advance UAW pay falsehood

On his radio and television shows, Bill O’Reilly advanced the falsehood that “the average autoworker now makes 70 bucks an hour.” In fact, a recent Barclays Capital analysis reportedly found that the average U.S. autoworker is paid “an average of $55 an hour in wages and benefits.”

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200902250008?lid=906831&rid=22208417

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Group of Rich Americans Sues UBS to Keep Names Secret in Tax Case

25 Feb 2009

UBS was sued on Tuesday in a Swiss federal court by wealthy American clients seeking to prevent the disclosure of their identities as part of a tax-evasion investigation by the United States Justice Department. The lawsuit accuses UBS and Switzerland’s financial regulator, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or Finma, of violating Swiss bank secrecy laws and of conducting what Swiss law considers illegal activities with foreign authorities.

At:

http://tinyurl.com/cwwrrq (www.nytimes.com)

From: CLG News

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Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint – How to Sell Yourself and Your Ideas

by Chris Witt

About the Book

Have you ever been bored by a PowerPoint presentation? Of course you have. The real question is, why can’t more people speak in a way that has the power to change the way people think and feel and act?

This book shows readers how to capture an audience’s attention and win their cooperation by using the strategies and techniques leaders use.

http://www.wittcom.com/index_book.htm

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#5 of A Dozen Books For Americans from Book Review By Sherwood Ross

“Armed Madhouse”(Plume) by Greg Palast, is subtitled “Sordid Secrets & Strange Tales of a White House GONE WILD” and contains embarrassing paragraphs about the members in good standing of the military-industrial complex profiting from the Iraq holocaust. “For the first time in its (General Dynamics) history, (profits are) exceeding a billion dollars a year. Lockheed Martin is doing even better, scoring a record $2.5 billion. I know that with weaponry profits bouncing off the clouds, you’re concerned that the firms will have a huge tax bill. Not to worry. In 2004, just before the election, the Bush Administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to an effective 7% compared to the 21% paid by most U.S. manufacturers.”

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And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

Charles Barkley was sentenced to five days in jail Monday for drunk driving in Phoenix. He was also ordered to employ a device in the front seat that requires you to blow into it before the car will start. Wasn’t she on his lap when he got arrested?

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Signe Wilkinson Philadelphia Daily News Feb 26, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Jack Ohman: ATM – American Taxpayer Money

http://tinyurl.com/df2u8o (images.ucomics.com)

Gary Markstein: … thanks a lot

http://img.slate.com/media/20/090225_ed.gif

Things Explained: The Meltdown

If you’re waiting for Washington to declare war on financial malfeasance, don’t hold your breath

Special to the Star-Telegram

Posted on Sun, Feb. 22, 2009
Ed Wallace

On September 11, 2001, our world changed; the memory of that day will forever be etched in the minds of those who lived through it. Something fundamental altered in all of us when we realized that we were now each vulnerable to having our lives shattered by international terrorism. Exactly seven years and five days later America and the world were hit a second time. The latest attack will never be known as 9/16, nor will we as a nation decide to eradicate the perpetrators of that event. But if 9/11 forced us to envision the remote possibility that one day we too might be victims of terrorism, 9/16 turned us all into victims right where we stood.

In the days after 9/11 the American economy locked up; that day’s events literally shocked most consumers into inaction. Suddenly lacking any paying passengers, airlines flew “ghost flights” – planes carrying only minimal flight crews – lest the already shaken public drive past our airports and be frightened even worse at seeing no flights taking off or landing.

Automobile dealerships quickly found their showrooms echoing and empty, and many of the nation’s great malls went nearly silent. However, within 10 days of 9/11, Detroit had stepped up to jog consumers out of their catatonia by offering no-interest loans to buy their products. And by the end of September Detroit had literally resuscitated our economy: October 2001 still holds the record as the biggest month for new car sales in American history.

The events of 9/16, on the other hand, would cripple Detroit and the auto industry worldwide. The financial terrorists responsible used different weapons, but they dealt what may well have been a killing blow to many automakers everywhere.

Stolen: Not Lives but Livelihoods

A few individuals lost their lives as a direct result of this second attack on America, mostly in suicides. However, over the next 120 days nearly 2 million Americans lost their jobs as a direct result of the paralysis of our consumerism – and our formerly normal buying habits accounted for 70 percent of the nation’s economy.

Unlike the heads of Al Qaeda, hunted to this day, the heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and others still maintain their positions and incomes. Some, at World Savings, Wachovia, Bear Sterns, Lehman Bros. and others, lost their jobs as their firms failed and were absorbed by those the government chose to save. But if the truth be told, all of them were equally guilty of infecting the world with financial stupidity.

The debate on who was to blame for this problem is still the most inane discussion in American history. In a problem that Wall Street’s financial innovation created, those same financial hotshots have turned the national discussion into a blame game based on their ideology: “The American automobile industry’s problems are solely based on the high cost of labor.”

Others claim that our downfall was the outrageous and selfish behavior of poor people buying homes they never could have paid for. Imagine that: Individuals without much education or financial capability were the villains who engineered the world’s financial downfall, not the MBAs and mathematicians who devised the mortgages and forcefully offered them to those poor and less educated individuals – and then turned around and sold those pathetic loans as Triple A investments.

To frame the debate in an analogy that anyone can understand, the convenience store owner is the real criminal behind any robbery because he made it so easy for the crook to hold him up. Certainly that’s what Wall Street wants you to believe.

If You’re Not Outraged …

Last week Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup, testified in front of Congress, taking minor lumps. And, exhibiting some contrition for the failure of his firm, he said he would accept only $1 in compensation until he “fixed” his broken company. Nice, huh? Even noble – until one considers that taxpayers have already given his firm $45 billion to help him fix things. In the days before he testified on Citi’s errant ways, the bank’s cardholders received a letter saying that Citicards’ interest rates would be reset to 10.99% over the prime interest rate, or 16.99% minimum interest on their credit card balances. (That works out to 13.99% over today’s prime rate.) On reading my letter my first thought was, “My god, Citigroup is turning all American consumers into subprime borrowers!” Apparently if Citi can no longer charge the poor and indebted, they will charge everyone else a rate that once was considered usurious.

…

Complete article at:

http://tinyurl.com/ak4ffs (www.star-telegram.com)

Ed Wallace is a recipient of the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, given by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and is a member of the American Historical Society. He reviews new cars every Friday morning at 7:15 on Fox Four’s Good Day, contributes articles to Business Week Online and hosts the top-rated talk show, Wheels, 8:00 to 1:00 Saturdays on 570 KLIF.
E-mail: wheels570@sbcglobal.net

To frame the debate in an analogy that anyone can understand, the convenience store owner is the real criminal behind any robbery because he made it so easy for the crook to hold him up. Certainly that’s what Wall Street wants you to believe.

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The Subprime Mess and Phil Gramm: An Experiment in Deregulation

June 24, 2008

In 1933, a few years following the stock market crash, Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act, in hopes that regulating banks will help prevent market instability, particularly amongst Wall Street banks. The purpose of the act is to separate commercial banks that focus on consumers from investment banks, which deal with speculative trading and mergers.

The Glass-Steagall Act provided the proper oversight and entity separation that would prohibit banks and other financial companies from merging into giant trusts (conflict of interests) — giant trusts or corporations being more powerful, naturally, and having the seemingly limitless capital to lobby their corporate interests, however, with a very myopic scope (particularly when it comes to factoring in potential losses — most banks, as seen in contemporary times, chose not to anticipate losses in the mortgage market; they presumed home prices would continue to appreciate).

In 1999, former Senator Phil Gramm (who is, incidentally, Senator John McCain’s economic adviser and cochairs his presidential campaign) set out to completely gut the Glass-Steagall Act, and did so successfully, replacing most of its components with the new Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: allowing commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers to merge (which would have violated antitrust laws under Glass-Steagall). Sen. Gramm was the driving force behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, as he had received over $4.6 million from the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate donations) over the previous decade, and once the Act passed, an influx of “megamergers” took place among banks and insurance and securities companies, as if they had been eagerly awaiting the passage of Gramm’s Act. Everything in between Glass-Steagall and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (i.e. Savings and Loan crisis/bust) was, in large part, the incubation period for what would take place over the nine years that would follow the passage of Gramm’s Act: an experiment in deregulation.

Shortly after George W. Bush was elected president, Congress and President Clinton were trying to pass a $384 billion omnibus spending bill, and while the debates swirled around the passage of this bill, Senator Phil Gramm clandestinely slipped a 262-page amendment into the omnibus appropriations bill titled: Commodity Futures Modernization Act. It is likely that few senators read this bill, if any. The essence of the act was the deregulation of derivatives trading (financial instruments whose value changes in response to the changes in underlying variables; the main use of derivatives is to reduce risk for one party). The legislation contained a provision — lobbied for by Enron, a major campaign contributor to Gramm — that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight. Basically, it gave way to the Enron debacle and ushered in the new era of unregulated securities. Interestingly enough, Gramm’s wife, Wendy, had been part of the Enron board, and her salary and stock income brought in between $900,000 and $1.8 million to the Gramm household, prior to the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

In 2003, Gramm left the Senate to join UBS, which had acquired investment house PaineWebber due to his deregulation bill. At UBS, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Fed and the Treasury Department. During Gramm’s tenor at UBS and as a lobbyist, Congress passed the Responsible Lending Act, billed as an anti-predatory-lending measure, but was called the “Loan Shark Protection Act” by consumer advocates, as it was designed to preempt stronger state laws against anti-predatory lending. The Fed largely ignored the underlying and growing problems within the subprime mortgage/housing markets, as Bernanke famously acknowledged the housing market in April, 2007 as, “[showing] signs of softening,” but said that a “sharp slowdown,” is unlikely. Then, according to Mother Jones magazine, Henry Paulson became the Treasury Secretary in July, 2007, when, “In 2005, [at] Goldman [he] securitized $68 billion in residential mortgages and $23 billion in ‘other assets’ primarily related to CDOs,” (Mother Jones, August, 2008). With such self-interest, and a lack of the nation’s interest, we can see how this subprime mess was allowed to escalate to such great proportions.

Some justice was served, however, this spring, as UBS became one of the subprime debacle’s biggest losers, having to write down $37 billion — the same amount as their previous four years of profits combined. UBS also made the public aware that two-thirds of its losses were due to reckless investing in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

Now, Gramm has a second chance of extending his out-of-touch and ill-performing policies, as Senator John McCain appointed Gramm to be his “economic expert” and cochair of his presidential campaign, last year. Also, it is likely that if Senator McCain were to win in November, Gramm would be our next Treasury Secretary, which means more of the same deregulatory mess and the continuation of failed and insidious economic policies.

From: http://tinyurl.com/6b5b2e (losangeles.injuryboard.com)

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Watchdogs applaud Obama’s pick to oversee stimulus

By Robert Brodsky

Government watchdogs on Monday hailed the selection of Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney to head the new Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, an independent panel that will provide oversight of the $787 billion stimulus package.

Devaney will report directly to Vice President Joe Biden, who will oversee the administration’s economic recovery spending.

“We are really excited,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. “He is really one of the most solid IGs in the federal government, and he is exactly the type of person we need in this role.”

Full story:

http://tinyurl.com/bc9zhp (www.govexec.com)

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Ignoring FDIC, ABC’s Stark says bank nationalization happens “in socialist countries” and is “not supposed to happen” in the U.S.

On World News, business correspondent Betsy Stark stated: “Wall Street is the bastion of free-market capitalism, and nationalization, even if it’s meant to save the banks, is something that happens in socialist countries; it’s not supposed to happen in the United States.” In fact, the FDIC has acted as receiver assuming all deposits for 66 failed banks since October 1, 2000. Indeed, Cato Institute senior fellow Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr. wrote, “The federal government, under the auspices of the FDIC, can be said to routinely nationalize failed banks.”

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200902240014?lid=904258&rid=22165713

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CBO: Estimated Impact on the Deficit of Three Alternative Policy Scenarios Specified by Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Spratt

Estimated Impact on the Deficit of Three Alternative Policy Scenarios Specified by Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Spratt, February 23, 2009 – Letter to the Honorable Nancy Pelosi and the Honorable John M. Spratt Jr.: “CBO projects a deficit of $1.2 trillion for fiscal year 2009 and a cumulative deficit of $3.1 trillion between 2010 and 2019.”

http://tinyurl.com/crzgor (www.cbo.gov)

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#4 of A Dozen Books For Americans from Book Review By Sherwood Ross

“The Three Trillion Dollar War”(W.W. Norton) by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes charts the true costs of President George W. Bush’s tragic aggression against Iraq, a war waged with borrowed bucks. Noting the total cost to American taxpayers “will turn out to be around $3-trillion” the famous economist and Harvard government finance expert, respectively, write large in their Preface: “Miserable though Saddam Hussein’s regime was, life is actually worse for the Iraqi people now. The country’s roads, schools, hospitals, homes, and museums have been destroyed and its citizens have less access to electricity and water than before the war. Sectarian violence is rife.”