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In addition to Logan, they include Valerie Jarrett, CEO of real estate management firm The Habitat Co. and now co-head of Obama's transition team; Jim Reynolds, CEO of investment bank Loop Capital Markets; John Rogers, CEO of mutual fund icon Ariel Investments; Quintin Primo III, CEO of commercial real estate development company Capri Capital Partners; and Frank Clark, CEO of electrical utility Commonwealth Edison.
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Obama nominates Jacob Lew, budget-cutter and ex-banker, to head Treasury - 0 views
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in the article: US President Barack Obama announced the nomination of current White House chief of staff Jacob Lew as treasury secretary Thursday, underscoring the administration's commitment to slashing entitlements and its domination by Wall Street. Lew, a longtime Washington operative and former Wall Street executive, helped negotiate cuts to Social Security with the Reagan administration in 1983, worked to slash social spending in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and served as the Obama administration's point-man in budget-cutting negotiations with congressional Republicans. Prior to joining the Obama administration in 2009, he earned millions of dollars as the chief operating officer of Citigroup's Alternative Investments unit, which made bets against the housing market as it collapsed. Holy shit. That's maybe all one needs to read of this article. That's pretty ridiculous.
The Democratic Party and Blanche Lincoln - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views
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The run-off between Democratic Senate incumbent Blanche Lincoln and challenger Bill Halter, which culminated on Tuesday night in Lincoln's narrow victory, brightly illuminates what the Democratic Party establishment is. Lincoln is supposedly one of those "centrist"/conservative/corporatist Senators who thwarts the good-hearted progressive agenda of the President and the Party. She repeatedly joined with Republicans to support the extremist Bush/Cheney Terrorism agenda (from the the Protect America Act to the Iraq War and virtually everything in between), serves the corporate interests that run Washington as loyally as any member of Congress, and even threatened to join the GOP in filibustering health care reform if it contained the public option which Obama claimed he wanted. Obama loyalists constantly point to the Blanche Lincolns of the world to justify why the Party scorns the values of their voters: Obama can't do anything about these bad Democratic Senators; it's not his fault if he doesn't have the votes, they insist.
An Interview With Glenn Greenwald - Ideas Special Report - The Atlantic - 0 views
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"Q. How does your background as a constitutional law and civil rights litigator inform the way you approach research and writing as a journalist? One of the primary skills one learns as a litigator is to make one's case by beginning with first premises, establishing their truth with evidence, and then compelling the conclusions you want others to reach. That's how I try to write now. I think that if you want to make an argument, there's an obligation to lay out the premises for it, provide evidence for it, allow readers to assess the documentation for themselves. That belief probably comes from the way judges and juries need to be persuaded that an argument is true. Beyond that, I chose to litigate constitutional and civil rights cases, and to represent plaintiffs, because I wanted to use my abilities to empower those who are vulnerable and powerless and who are being mistreated by the powerful. That, to me, is a primary purpose of the Constitution itself, and, when done correctly, a core purpose of journalism. That's what I try to do now as well in the work I do. I'd much rather be at war with corrupt elites than serving their interests."
Op-Ed Columnist - Structure of Excuses - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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"Structural" unemployment is a fake problem, which mainly serves as an excuse for not pursuing real solutions.
Op-Ed Columnist - Fear and Favor - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Media moguls have often promoted politicians who would serve their interests. But at Fox News, it isn't stopping there.
Chalmers Johnson, 1931-2010, on the Last Days of the American Republic - 0 views
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The distinguished scholar and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson has died. He passed away in California on Saturday afternoon at the age of 79. During the Cold War, he served as a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency and was a supporter of the Vietnam War, however, later became a leading critic of U.S. militarism and imperialism. He wrote the book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire in 2000, which became a bestseller after the 9/11 attacks. He went on to complete what would become a trilogy about American empire. Today we re-air part of our last interview with Chalmers Johnson from 2007. [Includes rush transcript]
Plan to 'mess with' Social Security would backfire - latimes.com - 0 views
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Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama's deficit commission, have signaled for months that they are not friends of Social Security. In August, Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, wrote that Social Security is "a milk cow with 310 million tits." Last February, Bowles, who made his fortune on Wall Street and served as a top aide in the Clinton White House, boasted in a speech to bankers, "We're going to mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
Obama's Business Backers Look Ahead - BusinessWeek.com- msnbc.com - 0 views
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Later, during his second year in the U.S. Senate, Obama called Clark, among others, to discuss whether it made sense for him to mount a bid for the Presidency. Clark, 62, is one of Chicago's elder statesmen and chief of ComEd, a subsidiary of energy giant Exelon (EXC) and the largest electric utility in Illinois, serving nearly 4 million customers in Chicago and Northern Illinois. He didn't mince words: "Your window of opportunity is now," Clark recalls saying. "Go do it."
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"Our generation has been limited in terms of how far we can dream," Logan said on Tuesday night just minutes before Obama took the stage. The son of two teachers who worked on Chicago's South Side, Logan majored in accounting and economics at Florida A&M University, a predominantly black college, and later earned an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago. "We've too often been under the impression that we can only serve our own. We've had constraints applied to what we can achieve."
Is Europe Irrelevant? | Cato @ Liberty - 0 views
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It could be argued that the costs to the United States of providing such services for the rest of the world are modest, but that is ultimately a judgment call. To be sure, the dollar costs will not bankrupt us as a nation, but Americans spend $2,700 per person on our military, while the average European spends less than $700. The bottom line is that Europeans have little incentive to spend more because they don't feel particularly threatened, and they aren't anxious to take on responsibilities that are ably handled by the United States. The advocates of hegemonic stability theory would declare that a feature, not a bug. Mission accomplished. And that might be true, if the greatest threat to global security were a resurgence of conflict in Europe, and if it is truly in the U.S. interest to forever have allies with few capabilities and many liabilities. But that seems extremely shortsighted. The sweeping political and economic integration in Europe has dramatically reduced the likelihood of another European war. In the meantime, the fact that we have many allies with little to offer by way of military assets, and even less political will to actually use them, is forcing the U.S. military to bear the disproportionate share of the burdens of policing the planet. And in the medium- to long-term, while I doubt that we will be facing "a militarily superior, post-Soviet Russia," allies with usable military power might ultimately serve a purpose if Moscow proves as aggressive (and capable) as the hawks claim.
Big Content condemns foreign governments that endorse FOSS - 0 views
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University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA's 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create "trade barriers" and restrict "equitable market access" for software companies. The profound absurdity of this accusation is exacerbated by the fact that Indonesia's move towards open source software was almost entirely motivated by a desire to eliminate the use of pirated software within the government IT infrastructure. It's important to understand that Indonesia has not mandated the adoption of open source software or barred government agencies from purchasing proprietary commercial software. The Indonesian government issued a statement in 2009 informing municipal governments that they had to stop using pirated software. The statement said that government agencies must either purchase legally licensed commercial software or switch to free and open source alternatives in order to comply with copyright law. This attempt by Indonesia to promote legal software procurement processes by endorsing the viability of open source software has apparently angered the IIPA. In its 301 recommendations for Indonesia, the IIPA demands that the government rescind its 2009 statement. According to the IIPA, Indonesia's policy "weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness" because open source software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations [and] fails to build respect for intellectual property rights." The number of ways in which the IIPA's statements regarding open source software are egregiously misleading and dishonest are too numerous to count. The IIPA seems to have completely missed the fact that there is a very robust ecosystem of commercial software vendors in the open source software market and that open source software is at the heart of some of the most popular consumer electronics products that are sold in the United States. It has clearly become an important part of the US software economy and increasingly serves as an enabler of innovation and technological progress. In light of the profitability of Red Hat and other open source leaders, it seems absurd to contend that open source software adoption will weaken the software industry or reduce its competitiveness. In fact, the emergence of open source software has contributed to creating a more competitive landscape in the software industry by offering alternative business models that enable smaller companies to gain traction against the dominant incumbent players. The IIPA's position is profoundly hypocritical, because many parts of the US government, including the Department of Defense, have issued their own memos endorsing open source software adoption. The IIPA's disingenuous move to equate open source software with piracy reeks of desperation. The BSA and other IIPA members are likely losing sleep over open source software because that development model and approach to licensing will empower developing countries to build their own domestic IT industries, eliminating the need for them to tithe to American software giants. It's another failing of the 301 review, which Big Content wants used to coerce other countries into adopting ever-more-stringent copyright laws.
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In accordance with US trade law, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) is required to conduct an annual review of the status of foreign intellectual property laws. This review, which is referred to as Special 301, is typically used to denounce countries that have less restrictive copyright policies than the United States. The review process is increasingly dominated by content industry lobbyists who want to subvert US trade policy and make it more favorable to their own interests. We have already noted the targeting of Canada for its supposedly lax copyright laws, but that is not the only nation drawing the ire of Big Content. One of the organizations that plays a key role in influencing the Special 301 review is the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a powerful coalition that includes the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The IIPA, which recently published its official recommendations to the USTR for the 2010 edition of the 301 review, has managed to achieve a whole new level of absurdity.
Defense.gov News Article: House Votes to Repeal 'Don't Ask,' Gates Urges Senate Action - 0 views
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2010 - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is pleased with today's House of Representatives vote to repeal the law that bans gays from serving openly in the military, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said, and he hopes the Senate will follow suit before its current session ends.
Censorship - Rebranded For The Digital Era - 0 views
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Censorship. It isn't appropriate either way - neither side should practice it. And yet, it is happening more and more to many groups. Facebook is rapidly becoming a battleground for this sort of a battle, as is social media with people being able to report "abusive" this or that which is in reality just a difference of opinion. The question is, which side of the argument will the digital giants out there come down on? Our own personal experience with this new rebranding of an old hypocrisy serves as a warning!
The military/media attacks on the Hastings article - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views
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Last June, when Rolling Stone published Michael Hastings' article which ended the career of Obama's Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- an article which was just awarded the prestigious Polk Award -- the attacks on Hastings were led not by military officials but by some of Hastings' most celebrated journalistic colleagues. The New York Times' John Burns fretted that the article "has impacted, and will impact so adversely, on what had been pretty good military/media relations" and accused Hastings of violating "a kind of trust" which war reporters "build up" with war Generals; Politico observed that a "beat reporter" -- unlike the freelancing Hastings -- "would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal's remarks"; and an obviously angry Lara Logan of CBS News strongly insinuated (with no evidence) that Hastings had lied about whether the comments were on-the-record and then infamously sneered: "Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has." Here's Jon Stewart last year mocking the revealing media disdain for Rolling Stone and Hastings in the wake of their McChrystal story.
Why Obama Isn't Fighting the Budget Battle - 0 views
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In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle - both for the economy's sake and for the sake of his re-election. But will he? Don't count on it. Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires. Most importantly, they're worried the President's absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year - large enough to imperil the fragile recovery. But Obama won't actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail. Shortly after the Democrats' "shellacking" last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. "It's 1994 all over again," he said. "Now we move to the center."
Remembering the Real Ronald Reagan, from 'Capitalism: A Love Story' - YouTube - 0 views
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"The banks and the corporations had a simple plan: to remake America to serve them. But pulling it off would require electing a spokesmodel as president. And on November 4th, 1980, that's what we did." -- Michael Moore
Would We Be Better Off If John McCain Were President? | World | AlterNet - 0 views
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Presidents serve the institutional interests of the corporations behind them. A President McCain may have at least triggered a true progressive fight.
Why "business needs certainty" is destructive - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views
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Businesses have had at least 25 to 30 years near complete certainty -- certainty that they will pay lower and lower taxes, that they' will face less and less regulation, that they can outsource to their hearts' content (which when it does produce savings, comes at a loss of control, increased business system rigidity, and loss of critical know how). They have also been certain that unions will be weak to powerless, that states and municipalities will give them huge subsidies to relocate, that boards of directors will put top executives on the up escalator for more and more compensation because director pay benefits from this cozy collusion, that the financial markets will always look to short term earnings no matter how dodgy the accounting, that the accounting firms will provide plenty of cover, that the SEC will never investigate anything more serious than insider trading (Enron being the exception that proved the rule). So this haranguing about certainty simply reveals how warped big commerce has become in the US. Top management of supposedly capitalist enterprises want a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk. But since risk and uncertainty are inherent to the human condition, what they instead have engaged in is a massive scheme of risk transfer, of increasing rewards to themselves to the long term detriment of their enterprises and ultimately society as a whole.
FOCUS: Obama Team Feared Coup If He Prosecuted War Crimes - 0 views
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'President-Elect Obama's advisors feared in 2008 that authorities would revolt and that Republicans would block his policy agenda if he prosecuted Bush-era war crimes, according to a law school dean who served as one of Obama's top transition advisers.' Andrew Kreig, Justice Integrity Project
Cable Details Israeli Army's Planned Abuse of Civilian Protesters -- News from Antiwar.com - 0 views
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Whenever Israeli troops rough up civilian protesters, it is shrugged off as an isolated incident. One of the WikiLeaks cables, however, shows that it was explicit military policy to abuse civilians engaged in non-violent protests. During a 2010 meeting, the cable notes, Israeli officials informed the US of their intention to be "more assertive" against peaceful demonstrations, with the US ambassador noting that the Israeli government believed any demonstration warranted military response. An Israeli commander, Avi Mizrachi, insisted there was no reason for the Palestinians to protest and that they were organized by "suspicious people." He added that since the protests "serve no purposes" anyone caught demonstrating would be arrested. The position takes on a whole new perspective, however, in the face of massive protests later this month aimed at independence. The Israeli military's abuse of human rights has also been a topic of discussion in the US Senate, though most in the Senate seem unwilling to oppose it.