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With the November elections quickly approaching, the majority of  Americans will be thinking one thing: "Who cares?" This apathy isn't due  to ignorance, as some accuse. Rather, working people's disinterest in  the two party system implies intelligence: millions of people understand  that both the Democrats and Republicans will not represent their  interests in Congress.  This begs the question: Whom does the two party system work for? The  answer was recently given by the mainstream The New York Times, who  gave the nation an insiders peek on how corporations "lobby" (buy)  congressmen. The article explains how giant corporations - from  Wall-mart to weapons manufacturers - are planning on shifting their  hiring practices for lobbyists, from Democratic to Republican  ex-congressmen in preparation for the Republicans gaining seats in the  upcoming November elections: "Lobbyists, political consultants and recruiters all say that the  going rate for Republicans - particularly current and former House staff  members - has risen significantly in just the last few weeks, with  salaries beginning at $300,000 and going as high as $1million for  private sector [corporate lobbyist] positions." (September 9, 2010) Congressmen who have recently retired make the perfect lobbyists:  they still have good friends in Congress, with many of these friends  owing them political favors; they have connections to foreign Presidents  and Kings; and they also have celebrity status that gives good PR to  the corporations. Often, these congressmen have done favors for the corporation that  is now hiring them, meaning, that the corporations are rewarding the  congressmen for services rendered while in office, offering them million  dollar lobbyist jobs (or seats on the corporate board of directors)  that requires little to no work.  The same New York Times article revealed that the pay for 13,000  lobbyists currently bribing Congress is a combined $3.5 bil

Health Insurance Companies continue to perpetuate the fairy tale about "cost-shfting"--the notion that the cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured is "shifted" onto the backs of insurance companies and their enrollees. This is an outright lie, and a whopper at that.

The United States isn't broke; we're the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn't working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this 'dinosaur economy' on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift in The United States isn't broke; we're the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn't working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this 'dinosaur economy' on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift ingovernment spending toward investments in clean, green solutions-renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more-that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It's time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let's build it better.

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Well, it turned. The police bureau is starting to crack after six weeks of Occupy Portland. And one picture, right here, crystallizes the precise moment when it happened. During a choreographed effort to pull a few dozen protesters out of the Chase bank branch outside Pioneer Square, part of today's hundreds-strong N17 day of action, Portland police officers resorted to a decidedly more muscular show of force in a clash watched by TV cameras and rush-hour commuters earlier this evening. Suddenly all the fun-the dance parties, the union songs, the peaceful arrests earlier on the Steel Bridge and at Wells Fargo-was for naught. Tromping in with mounted officers, they pushed marchers who had gathered on the sidewalks along SW Yamhill into the street-forcing them to block MAX trains, something no one was doing until the heavily armored riot squad showed up-and then poked and, for the first time, pepper-sprayed the marchers. Significantly, some of the spraying came after protesters had clearly retreated to the opposite sidewalk. (In another odd shift, there also was no federal-court-required verbal PA warning that chemical munitions would be deployed-a hallmark of every other mass police action to date.) Meanwhile, at almost the very same moment, Police Chief Mike Reese was on TV blaming Occupy Portland for his officers' inability to respond to a rape victim for three hours today. Consider that tantamount to a declaration of war. Reese's point? Officers are tired and have been too distracted to do their main jobs: responding to actual crimes. It was an attempt to spin sentiment against the movement, which seems to be attracting adherents. Even the O today said the movement is "building momentum" and said the average age of some 34 arrestees earlier today was 50-not a bunch of young, anarchists/punks/hoodlums/hippies/road warriors etc. But that might come back to haunt him, judging by a wave of outrage on Twitter and elsewhere among those who noted that it

An innovative grouping of conservation scientists and practitioners have come together to advocate a fundamental shift in the way we view biodiversity. In their paper, which was published today in the journal Science, they argue that unless people recognize the link between their consumption choices and biodiversity loss, the diversity of life on Earth will continue to decline.

Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030.

More than 6,000 different species living on the sea-floor have been identified so far and more than half of these are unique to the icy continent. A combination of long-term monitoring studies, newly gathered information on the marine life distribution and global ocean warming models, enable the scientists to identify Antarctica's marine "biodiversity hotspots". Researcher Griffiths describes how krill populations (the shrimp-like invertebrates eaten by penguins, whales and seals) are reducing as a result of a decrease in sea-ice cover. A much smaller crustacean (copepods) is dominating the area once occupied by them. This shifts the balance of the food web to favour predators, like jellyfish, that are not eaten by penguins and other Southern Ocean higher predators. Sea-ice reduction is also affecting penguins that breed on the ice.

One of the most bewildering aspects of the current health care debate is the failure to learn key lessons from health systems abroad. Conservative talk show hosts decry the alleged evils of "socialized medicine" in countries with universal health coverage; they warn grimly of rationed health care. Yet there's nary a peep from Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck - let alone Congress - about countries such as Germany, France, Switzerland or Japan, where coverage is universal, affordable, and top quality, and patients see private doctors with little or no waiting. And, oh yes, their health costs are a fraction of our bloated numbers: The French spend 10 percent of GDP on health care, the Germans 11 percent, and they cover every citizen. We spend a whopping 17 percent and leave tens of millions of Americans uninsured. If you want a very readable short course on how European systems really work, take a look at "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," by T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post foreign correspondent. You might also watch a fascinating 2008 Frontline series, available online, in which Reid was an adviser: "Sick Around the World: Can the U.S. Learn Anything From the Rest of the World About How to Run a Health Care System?"

Article continued (Diigo would not highlight!?) - So far, the answer seems to be "no," not because there aren't valuable lessons, but because politicians won't relinquish their myths about European health Advertisement systems. Reid takes up that task. Myth No. 1, he says, is that foreign systems with universal coverage are all "socialized medicine." In countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, the coverage is universal while doctors and insurers are private. Individuals get their insurance through their workplace, sharing the premium with their employer as we do - and the government picks up the premium if they lose their job. Myth No. 2 - long waits and rationed care - is another whopper. "In many developed countries," Reid writes, "people have quicker access to care and more choice than Americans do." In France, Germany, and Japan, you can pick any provider or hospital in the country. Care is speedy and high quality, and no one is turned down. Myth No. 3 really grabs my attention: the delusion that countries with universal care "are wasteful systems run by bloated bureaucracies." In fact, the opposite is true. America's for-profit health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs of any developed country. Twenty percent or more of every premium dollar goes to nonmedical costs: paperwork, marketing, profits, etc. In developed countries with universal coverage, such as France and Germany, the administrative costs average about 5 percent. That's because every developed country but ours has decided health insurance should be a nonprofit operation. These countries also hold down costs by making coverage mandatory and by using a unified set of rules and payment schedules for all hospitals and doctors. This does not mean a single-payer system or a government-run health system. But it does sharply cut health costs by eliminating the mishmash of records and charges used by our myriad insurance firms, who use all kinds of gimmi

In a new study, researchers measured both liberals' and conservatives' reaction to "gaze cues" -- a person's tendency to shift attention in a direction consistent with another person's eye movements. Liberals responded strongly to the prompts, consistently moving their attention in the direction suggested to them by a face on a computer screen. Conservatives, on the other hand, did not

"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac

The tax structure imposed by Washington on the US over the last half-century has seen a massive double shift of the burden of taxation: from corporations to individuals and from the richest individuals to everyone else. If the national debate wants seriously to use a term like "class war" to describe Washington's tax policies, then the reality is that the class war's winners have been corporations and the rich

A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:

Are you tired of big banks making record profits, paying giant executive salaries and bonuses and then cooking the books so they avoid paying taxes?  We are.  And, we are responding.  Join us.On April 15 in Union Square Park in New York City at 11:00 AM we are holding a "Sounds of Resistance Concert" and protest against the big corporate banks that have undermined the U.S. economy and displaced families from their homes. Big Finance has taken more than a trillion from the Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve to pay for their casino gambling on Wall Street but they are still forcing people out of their homes, not lending to small businesses and choking the economy.The concert will feature political hip-hop/rock powerhouse Junkyard Empire with special guests Broadcast Live and Sketch the Cataclysm. Chris Hedges will speak about the growing culture of resistance. Other performers and speakers are invited.The protest will include a picket of the Union Square Bank of America - a major culprit in the great rip off of the American taxpayer.This concert and protest are part of the effort to build the urgently needed movement to shift power to the people and away from concentrated capital interests.                                        

If it had been revealed that Jeffrey Immelt once hired an undocumented nanny, or defaulted on his mortgage, he would be forced to resign as head of President Barack Obama's "Council on Jobs and Competitiveness." But the fact that General Electric, where Immelt is CEO, didn't pay taxes on its $14.5 billion profit last year-and indeed is asking for a $3.2 billion tax rebate-has not produced a word of criticism from the president, who in January praised Immelt as a business leader who "understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy." What it takes, evidently, is shifting profit and jobs abroad: As of last year only 134,000 of GE's total workforce of 304,000 was based in the U.S. and, according to The New York Times, for the past three years 82 percent of the company's profit was sheltered abroad. Thanks to changes in the tax law engineered when another avowedly pro-business Democrat, Bill Clinton, was president, U.S. multinational financial companies can avoid taxes on their international scams. And financial scams are what GE excelled in for decades, when GE Capital, its financial unit, which specialized in credit card, consumer loan and housing mortgage debt, accounted for most of GE's profits. That's right, GE, along with General Motors with its toxic GMAC financial unit, came to look more like an investment bank than a traditional industrial manufacturing giant that once propelled this economy and ultimately it ran into the same sort of difficulties as the Wall Street hustlers. As The New York Times' David Kocieniewski, who broke the GE profit story, put it: "Because its lending division, GE Capital, has provided more than half of the company's profit in some recent years, many Wall Street analysts view G.E. not as a manufacturer but as an unregulated lender that also makes dishwashers and M.R.I. machines." Maximizing corporate profits at the taxpayer's expense is what top CEOs are good at, and after all it

This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning.  Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC. What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan.  Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

An article that examines Obama's shifting end-date for Iraq, and also the huge number of US personnel that will remain in that country post-withdrawal.

President Obama has a plan to move our money from banks to students. Every year, taxpayers subsidize student loans to the tune of $9 billion. Banks service these loans, collect the debt, keep the interest, and turn a profit. When borrowers default on their loans, taxpayers foot the bill, and banks still reap the interest. It's a great deal for banks and a terrible one for taxpayers.

Yet another government sponsored "socialistic" "redistribution of wealth" from taxpayers to big business. It's time to do away with it.

A top Federal Reserve official warned Monday that even as the economy starts to grow again, employers are likely to continue squeezing more productivity out of workers rather than start hiring new ones, thereby prolonging the economic crisis for the millions of unemployed.