corruption

Of course Washington decries the corruption in Afghanistan and calls it out as a major obstacle to its mission there. That is certainly rich points out Dilip Hiro in “The Great Afghan Corruption Scam: How Operation Enduring Freedom Mutated into Operation Enduring Corruption” since the United States, due to grotesque incompetence, amorality and graft itself, has been an enabler and participant in the colossal corruption in Afghanistan. Read below the fold...

From “Texas plant explosion highlights gutting of health and safety rules” by Andre Damon.

4-17-13, Wednesday, West Fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas

20 miles north of Waco (close to compound where in 1993 after FBI assault on religious compound 76 men, women and children died in a fire which inspired Timothy McVeigh to perpetrate the Oklahoma City bombing which killed 168 people -- West, TX explosion took place within 2 days of their anniversaries)

14 people dead

Read below the fold...

Last week, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) abruptly announced his intention to retire from the Senate in 2014, on the heels of Harry Reid's failure to get the two parties to agree to reform the Senate's notorious filibuster after the 2012 election.

According to Harkin, the failure of filibuster reform will make it "virtually impossible" for Obama to carry out his vision for his second term. Read below the fold...

More on liberty from Ryan's reply to the President's 2011 SOTU. These are about that old Republican hypocritical favorite, “small government.”

”The President and the Democratic Leadership have shown, by their actions, that they believe government needs to increase its size and its reach, its price tag and its power.”

What planet does Congressman Ryan live on? The Democrats have done very little to increase the size of Government. The measure of that is that the average annual growth in Federal Government spending is the lowest it's been in the period since Dwight Eisenhower became President. In addition, Federal spending as a percent of GDP is still extremely low compared to National Government expenditures by the nations mentioned in my last post, and has only risen about 5 percentage points from Bush Administration levels, in response to the economic crisis, which, remember, was caused by policies avidly supported by Paul Ryan and conservative Republicans.

In addition, the President, much to his discredit, has done all he could to keep Government expenditures revenue neutral or revenue positive, beyond expenditures for defense, the stimulus, and increases in social safety net expenditures resulting from the recession. His health care reform bill is a disgraceful attempt to bailout the insurance companies without taking them over, because he would not entertain Medicare for All, since it wasn't “revenue neutral.” Never mind that enhanced Medicare for All would have saved the private sector $900 Billion per year in Medical Costs, and that the stimulus involved in an additional $800 Billion of Federal deficit spending would probably have created an addition 2 million jobs, at least. Read below the fold...

Cross-posted from Real Economics. Read below the fold...

In my last two posts I reviewed the deficit reduction aspects of Paul Ryan's Republican response to the SOTU. But Ryan also placed considerable emphasis on the idea of “limited government” in his response. In this post, I want to evaluate what he had to say on this theme.

So I’d like to share with you the principles that guide us. They are anchored in the wisdom of the founders; in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence; and in the words of the American Constitution.

They have to do with the importance of limited government; and with the blessing of self-government. . . .

Read below the fold...

HOW WE LOST AMERICA :: A Brief History in Ten Points (Linked Version)
Copyright (c) 2010 Bruce Arnold. Republication with attribution permitted. Read below the fold...

One of the craziest things I've read in a loooong time.

Sibel Edmonds was a former translator for the FBI. She was fired after raising a stink about some of the BS she was reading.

The guy interviewing her is a former CIA analyst.

American Conservative:

PHILIP GIRALDI: We were very interested to learn of your four-hour deposition in the case involving allegations that Congresswoman Jean Schmidt accepted money from the Turkish government in return for political favors. You provided many names and details for the first time on the record and swore an oath confirming that the deposition was true.

Read below the fold...

Not a frequent blogger, but here are a few things that are bugging me lately:
MSM where are you? Roll call reported this http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/...
and then it disappeared. Then big pharma is busted: Read below the fold...

The Nation:

Who drafted this dubious piece of legislation? Bankers (or their lawyers) did. The leading sellers of derivatives are an exclusive club of five very large financial institutions--Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs--that hold 95 percent of the derivatives exposure among the largest banks (the total contract value exceeds $290 trillion). These are the same folks who toppled the global economy and compelled government to intervene with gigantic bailouts.

Read below the fold...

Oh Barry, don't be so mealy-mouthed:

If the Fed is Wall Street’s bitch, than Congress is the Street’s whore.

Read the whole thing. He forgot to mention the criminal "news" media, but it's still good.

[I've spent a lifetime looking past misogyny fossilized in language, so I'm letting this one go too, almost.] Read below the fold...

This will surprise no one here, but it's important to remember as the PB2.0 attempts to regain some of the political influence pissed away by the previous incarnation. RPR:

If indeed Wal-Mart is mobilizing its employees to vote against Democrats, it's sending a mixed message with its political action committee donations.

Wal-Mart is on pace to give more money to House Democrats this cycle than House Republicans for the first time ever. And as Wal-Mart's contributions reach further and deeper into the Democratic Caucus, it's becoming more difficult for the company's critics to demonize the corporate giant.

Read below the fold...

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog

It is detrimental, says Thilo Thielke in Der Spiegel, because it creates unfairness and dependency in many different ways. First, using the case of Kenya, Thielke invokes a classical concept of formal organizational behavior: self-perpetuation.

"The roads are in horrid disrepair, and they'll stay that way for a while. As a result, it would take days or even weeks to get the corn from the west to the northern parts of the country. But why would they need it there anyway? There's a shortage in the north because the World Food Program is usually there to hand out food for free. The UN's employees are paid to fight hunger, and that's why they usually write reports in which they dramatically portray the situation in Africa and which they usually end with appeals demanding more donated food.

These developmental aid workers, whose reports largely shape our image of Africa, behave this way to a certain extent out of an instinct for self-preservation that they believe the Africans don't have. Without help, they say, all the Africans will starve. And, indeed, without aid, all the helpers would also be out of a job."

A first problem then is that the persistent handing out of free food (largely surplus from Western countries) eliminates any incentives to be locally self-sufficient. And there is also the idea that the WFP needs people to be hungry in order to justify its existence and work (and some well-paying jobs for UN consultants). Even if some adventurous local entrepreneur tried to start local food production in an area with a numerous malnourished or under-nourished population, the results would likely be disastrous: Read below the fold...