Tag: Punting the Pundits

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep,” the William Butler Yeats poem begins, “And nodding by the fire …”

Our culture has always been emotional — sentimental, even — about old age. So when did older people become The Enemy? Last week a judge ruled that Detroit could move forward with its plan to cut pensions for retired city workers. This week Washington is celebrating a budget deal which harms older people economically in several ways.

And a society which grows teary-eyed with each new viewing of On Golden Pond seems okay with that.

In a December 5 opinion, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled that Detroit could go forward with its plans to cut city workers’ pensions. He did so despite a state law making such cuts illegal, and despite his observation that Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s unelected city manager, “did mislead the public about the status of pensions in bankruptcy.”

In the kind of Bizarro-world inversions common to today’s corporate-funded politics, Orr and the Republican governor who appointed him argued against the conservative principle of states’ rights in order to move forward with their plan. When principles conflict with profits, apparently profits win every time.

Eugene Robinson: The Republican Mainstream Strikes Back

The unusual display of reasonable behavior by House Republicans this week should be seen as a retreat-a change in tactics-but not a surrender. Democrats had better note the distinction.

Sooner or later, it had to dawn on the GOP that repeatedly re-enacting Pickett’s Charge was not advancing the party’s agenda or enhancing its electoral prospects. In martial terms, President Obama and the Democrats held the high ground; they were the ones visibly making an effort to govern, while Republicans did nothing but throw themselves into battles they were sure to lose.

The “fiscal cliff” showdown last December established the template: House Republicans made absolute and unrealistic demands, Obama said no, Democrats maintained their unity-and Republicans eventually caved amid bitter recriminations. This pattern held all year, through the debt-ceiling fight and the government shutdown. In each instance, I believe, Republicans could have won more concessions if they had chosen to negotiate rather than throw a tantrum.

Joe Conason: Mandela’s Crucial Lesson for America — And The Republicans Who Never Learn

Beyond the eulogies bestowed this week on the late and truly great Nelson Mandela, a visionary, revolutionary, and peacemaker, there is much for Americans to learn from the story of his vexed relationship with our country. We will forget the mistakes perpetrated in dealing with him at our own peril.

To put it simply, the same Washington figures who so wrongly coddled Pretoria’s apartheid regime three decades ago — people like Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives — now tell us, wrongly again, that the United States should abandon negotiations with Iran and continue the embargo of Cuba. (And of course these are the same experts, politicians, and pundits who promoted war against Iraq, while assuring us that the invasion would be a cheap cakewalk.)

Tony Hewman: Stop Sending Undercover Cops Into Our Schools to Entrap Our Kids on Drug Charges

Here we go again. Undercover cops pose as students, make friends, build trust, and then arrest teenagers for selling mostly small amounts of marijuana. Yesterday nearly two dozen students were busted at two southern California high-schools, according to Riverside County Sheriff officials.

Two undercover cops, a woman and a man, had been posing as students since the beginning of the year. The majority of the drug buys were small amounts of marijuana, but there were some other drugs seized including cocaine and prescription pills.

The campus was shaken yesterday, according to a story in the Press Enterprise.Students were shocked to see their friends arrested in class and left wondering who they can and cannot trust in their peer groups.

I’m disgusted by the trend of undercover cops infiltrating schools and targeting our kids. Last December, “Operation Glass House” made national news. Police officers, posed as ordinary students, were stationed in three California high schools. It led to the arrest of 22 children, the majority of whom were special needs students, including the autistic son of Doug and Catherine Snodgrass.

Tough talk is coming from some Members of Congress who oppose the new international agreement to limit the Iran nuclear program and want to plow ahead with additional sanctions, even though that vote could jeopardize the agreement and lead America into another Mid-East War.

The deal was negotiated between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — including the United States — plus Germany. [..]

When the polling firm Hart Research read this description of the deal to a random sample of American voters, 63 percent said they supported it, and only 24 percent were opposed. Thirteen percent said they were undecided. When the polling firm Hart Research read this description of the deal to a random sample of American voters, 63 percent said they supported it, and only 24 percent were opposed. Thirteen percent said they were undecided. [..]

Regardless, there are some in Congress who are intent on passing new sanctions right away, even if it would threaten the entire negotiation.

Those Members need to read further in the Hart poll. Sixty-seven percent say they would agree more with a Member of Congress who wants to give the new agreement and further negotiations a chance to work before deciding on any additional economic sanctions. Only 25 percent prefer that Congress pass new sanctions on Iran now, even if it puts the new agreement and further negotiations at risk.

Laura W. Murphy: The NSA’s Winter of Discontent

The summer of Snowden is fast becoming the NSA’s winter of discontent.[..]

There’s a reason why the NSA is concerned about the growing chorus of concern from every facet of society–both here and abroad–about its dragnet surveillance programs: change looks inevitable, particularly as bipartisan congressional support continues to grow for the USA FREEDOM Act. Currently, 130 members of Congress have co-sponsored the legislation, and just yesterday Sen. Leahy held a hearing on his legislation and NSA reform. And with pressure intensifying in the House for a vote, the USA FREEDOM Act should hit the floor sometime in the new year–a vote the Obama administration and the NSA will no doubt lobby hard against.

Here’s hoping the NSA’s winter of discontent becomes a democratic spring. Innocent Americans should never have to worry their government’s awesome surveillance capabilities are intercepting, filtering, collecting, analyzing, and storing the intimate details of their lives. Appallingly, they do.ere’s a reason why the NSA is concerned about the growing chorus of concern from every facet of society–both here and abroad–about its dragnet surveillance programs: change looks inevitable, particularly as bipartisan congressional support continues to grow for the USA FREEDOM Act. Currently, 130 members of Congress have co-sponsored the legislation, and just yesterday Sen. Leahy held a hearing on his legislation and NSA reform. And with pressure intensifying in the House for a vote, the USA FREEDOM Act should hit the floor sometime in the new year–a vote the Obama administration and the NSA will no doubt lobby hard against.

Here’s hoping the NSA’s winter of discontent becomes a democratic spring. Innocent Americans should never have to worry their government’s awesome surveillance capabilities are intercepting, filtering, collecting, analyzing, and storing the intimate details of their lives. Appallingly, they do.

E. J. Dionne. Jr.: The Inadequate, Necessary Budget Deal

It’s a sign of how far to the right House Republicans have dragged governance in our country that the very conservative budget deal reached by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray will need many liberal and Democratic votes to pass.

The agreement leaves the jobless out in the cold, because it doesn’t extend unemployment benefits, and provides little room for new initiatives to combat rising inequality and declining upward mobility-the very problems that President Obama and most Democrats believe are the most important facing the country. [..]

To say this is a very conservative outcome is not to knock Murray or her negotiating approach. Democrats had two major goals going into the talks, and she made progress on both of them. As a general matter, Murray’s side wanted to lighten the burden on the recovery from the automatic budget cuts known as the “sequester.” And it sought to protect Head Start and other education programs, scientific and medical research, and some infrastructure spending.

Harvey Wasserman: Japan’s Deadly New ‘Fukushima Fascism’

New secrecy law may make Japan’s democracy a relic of its pre-Fukushima past.

Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts.

The site has been infiltrated by organized crime.

There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S.

But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Taro Yamamoto, a Japanese legislator, says the law “represents a coup d’etat” leading to “the recreation of a fascist state.” The powerful Asahi Shimbun newspaper compares it to “conspiracy” laws passed by totalitarian Japan in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, and warns it could end independent reporting on Fukushima.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been leading Japan in an increasingly militaristic direction. Tensions have increased with China. Massive demonstrations have been renounced with talk of “treason.” Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts.

The site has been infiltrated by organized crime.

There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S.

But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Taro Yamamoto, a Japanese legislator, says the law “represents a coup d’etat” leading to “the recreation of a fascist state.” The powerful Asahi Shimbun newspaper compares it to “conspiracy” laws passed by totalitarian Japan in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, and warns it could end independent reporting on Fukushima.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been leading Japan in an increasingly militaristic direction. Tensions have increased with China. Massive demonstrations have been renounced with talk of “treason.”

Snowden showed us the educated and wealthy aren’t entirely free. Francis reminds us the poor aren’t even given a chance

Edward Snowden was not chosen as Time magazine’s Person of the Year, and for this many in the media are outraged.

Instead Time chose Pope Francis, a man who in the last year has been transforming the Catholic church by focusing on the searing inequalities brought about by poverty. In one of his many poignant quotes recently, he asks:

   How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

Time magazine got it right. Maybe it really was the better business decision, a way to sell more magazines. If so, that says a lot. Pope Francis has made stories of injustice profitable.

That alone should make him the person of the year.

Dean Baker: Let’s Get This Straight: AIG Execs Got Bailout Bonuses, but Pensioners Get Cuts

No one has accused city workers in Chicago or Detroit of bringing down the economy, but they could face pension cuts

As we passed the fifth anniversary of the peak of the financial crisis this fall, the giant insurance company AIG was prominently featured in the retrospectives. AIG had issued hundreds of billions of dollars of credit default swaps (CDS) on subprime mortgage backed securities. When these mortgage-backed securities failed en masse, AIG didn’t have the money to back them up. [..]

Chicago has been in the news recently because its mayor, Rahm Emanuel, seems intent on cutting the pensions that its current and retired employees have earned. Emanuel insists that the city can’t afford these pensions and therefore workers and retirees will simply have to accept reduced benefits. [..]

There is one final noteworthy connection between AIG and the Chicago pension situation. Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, was President Obama’s chief of staff at the time that no one could figure out how to avoid paying the AIG bonuses. Apparently Emanuel has learned more about voiding contractual obligations now that it is ordinary workers at other end of the commitment.

Charles M. Blow: The Appalling Stance of Rand Paul

I don’t put much past politicians. I stay prepared for the worst. But occasionally someone says something so insensitive that it catches me flat-footed.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said Sunday on Fox News: “I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers.”

This statement strikes at the heart – were a heart to exist – of the divide between conservatives and liberals about whether the social safety net provides temporary help for those who hit hard times or functions as a kind of glue to keep them stuck there.

Jim Hightower: Geithner’s Magical Trip Through the Revolving Door

Timmy Geithner has landed.

The Secretary of the Treasury in President Obama’s first term resigned early this year, and we lost track of him for months. But in November, Geithner reappeared, having spun himself through Washington’s revolving door – whoosh, whoosh, whoosh – and flung himself all the way up to Wall Street, landing softly in the cushy quarters of Warburg Pincus, one of America’s top 10 private-equity empires. Yes, the guy who was responsible for rescuing and regulating Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail, multibillion-dollar, financial casinos is now president of one. [..]

Whether spinning from the inside out, or from the outside in, Geithner is proof the Washington-Wall Street revolving door serves bankers, not the public interests. We need to weld that door shut.

Leaders from across the world will gather in South Africa this week to pay tribute to the most extraordinary leader of our lifetime, Nelson Mandela. The chorus of tributes, from across the globe and across the political spectrum, cannot hope to do justice to this remarkable man, who emerged from 27 years in prison with a grace, dignity and will sufficient to transform the brutal apartheid system peacefully and spread hope across the world.

But Mandela was not always universally praised. In fact, U.S. administrations of both parties were far from ardent opponents of South Africa’s apartheid regime or supporters of Mandela and his organization, the African National Congress (ANC). Conservatives in particular long saw the apartheid regime as an anti-communist bulwark in the Cold War. After Mandela was sentenced to life in prison, the conservative National Review magazine defended South African courts for sending up “a batch of admitted terrorists to life in the penitentiary.” Conservative Russell Kirk opined that democratic rule in South Africa would bring “the collapse of civilization,” and the resulting government would be “domination by witch doctors … and reckless demagogues.”

Ellen Brown: Amend the Fed: We Need a Central Bank that Serves Main Street

The Federal Reserve is the only central bank with a dual mandate. It is charged not only with maintaining low, stable inflation but with promoting maximum sustainable employment. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, despite four years of radical tinkering with interest rates and quantitative easing (creating money on the Fed’s books). After pushing interest rates as low as they can go, the Fed has admitted that it has run out of tools. [..]

The Federal Reserve Act was drafted by bankers to create a banker’s bank that would serve their interests. It is their own private club, and its legal structure keeps all non-members out.  A century after the Fed’s creation, a sober look at its history leads to the conclusion that it is a privately controlled institution whose corporate owners use it to direct our entire economy for their own ends, without democratic influence or accountability.  Substantial changes are needed to transform the Fed, and these will only come with massive public pressure.

Congress has the power to amend the Fed – just as it did in 1934, 1958 and 2010. For the central bank to satisfy its mandate to promote full employment and to become an institution that serves all the people, not just the 1%, the Fed needs fundamental reform.

Claudia Campero: Energy ‘Reform’ in Mexico Will Only Pave the Road for Fracking

In Mexico, as in many countries, information on amounts of recoverable shale gas reserves is uncertain. In 2011, the U.S. Energy Information Administration placed Mexico in fourth place worldwide. In 2013, we slipped to sixth place. Pemex, the Mexican state petroleum company, estimates the quantity to be even more modest. Regardless of how much gas lies beneath our feet, the consequences of the ambitious battle to frack our country is likely to be felt in many communities.

When it comes to hydrocarbon extraction, the context in Mexico is quite different from that in the U.S. In 1938, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized all oil and gas reserves. For the last few decades, Pemex has been responsible for all fossil fuel extraction in the country. This is central to the government’s income since it represents 32 percent of all federal income. Pemex is so important that it managed to escape the many reforms made to other sectors in Mexico when the country joined the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. However, powerful international energy corporations have been pushing for a share of Mexico’s energy resources over the last decade, and are currently already working with Pemex through service contract arrangements.

But they want much more.

Jessica Weisberg: How Inequality Became as American as Apple Pie

Last week, five days after Black Friday’s Walmart strike and the day before a nationwide fast-food workers strike, President Obama delivered a speech at the Center for American Progress about economic disparity and low wages. The president didn’t mention the strikers,

but his talking points weren’t so different from their rallying cries-he called for a higher minimum wage and supported the right to organize. His speech was too sweeping, too ambitious to focus on the week’s news. He spoke about Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, education and the tax code; he provided statistic after statistic about the severity of inequality in the United States. The thread that tied all these points together was “economic mobility.” (“President Speaks on Economic Mobility,” the banner of the White House website read.) The president may have been speaking to a room full of liberals, but his focus on mobility rather than inequality seemed especially marketed to conservatives. It was Obama at his campaign finest, recasting himself as the great uniter between the two parties. “The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough,” the president said, “But the idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care, or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us and it should compel us to action.” Poverty, in other words, is a sad but inevitable consequence of a competitive economy-it’s “heartbreaking,” but so it goes-while mobility is essential to the American mission. Children, we can all agree, should at least be given the bootstraps by which they can pull themselves up.

Zoë Carpenter: The Deep South Is the Latest Epicenter of the HIV Epidemic

Miami. Baton Rouge. Jacksonville. Columbia, South Carolina: these are not the places that immediately come to mind when considering America’s HIV epidemic. But in the ranking of US cities with the highest HIV rates, they are numbers one, two, three and six, respectively.

On Thursday The New York Times ran an important story by Donald McNeil Jr. about the “new face” of HIV- young, poor black and Hispanic men who have sex with men. One thing not mentioned in the article-which focuses on New York City-is the geography of the epidemic, which is now concentrated and most deadly in the Southern states. While only 37 percent of Americans live in the South, half of new HIV infections originate there. Eight of the ten states with the highest rate of infection are in the South, as are nine of the ten states with the highest AIDS fatalities rates. [..]

There are two policies on the table that could have a profound effect on the rate of new infections in the United States, which has hovered near 50,000 new cases a year for a decade: the expansion of Medicaid, and comprehensive immigration reform. The implications of these policies for HIV are magnified by the fact that their impact would be particularly strong in the South.

President Obama gave it the good old college try when he virtually implored Congress to take a hard, long look at the surging income inequality gap in America. This was a step to put a partial brake on the widening gap by increasing the minimum wage, and limit slashes on spending programs that aid the poor and lower income workers. But Obama’s plea fell on the GOP’s deaf ears. House Speaker John Boehner lashed out that whatever poverty and income inequality there is can be blamed on Obama’s programs. This was not just the standard bash Obama dig from Boehner. He spoke for the overwhelming majority of Republicans.

In a Pew Research Center survey in March a substantial majority of Republicans flatly said that the economic system is fair to most people. And by a whopping margin, they denied that the income inequality gap was a “big problem.” In contrast a big majority of Democrats said just the opposite. Boehner’s blast at Obama and Republican’s deaf ear on income inequality was a pro forma rehash of the attacks on Obama for the problem.

Robert Creamer: Progressives Must Stand Up Against the Right Wing War on Public Employees

It’s time for Progressives — and Americans of all stripes — to wake up and smell the coffee. Without a robust, efficient, well functioning public sector, our economy will fall behind in the world and our standard of living will drop.

Government is the name we give to the things we choose to do together.

We have to attract the best and the brightest to staff our government. That requires that the teaches, firefighters, police officers, maintenance people, researchers, clerks, constituent service workers, programmers, air traffic controllers, managers, construction workers, corrections officers, policy analysts, and everyone else who works for our governments must be respected, well compensated, and have the right to collectively bargain over the wages and working conditions.

It’s time for us all to stand up against the Right Wing war on public sector employees.

Wendell Potter: Big Corporations Abandoning Conservative Group That Pushes Changes in State Laws

It’s amazing how a little sunlight will change the behavior of some of the biggest names in corporate America — sunlight here meaning greater transparency and accountability.

Over the past several decades, one of the country’s most influential political organizations — the 40-year-old American Legislative Exchange Council — was able to operate largely under the radar. Never heard of it? That’s by design. Founded in 1973 by conservative political operatives, ALEC has been successful in shaping public policy to benefit its corporate patrons in part because few people — including reporters — knew anything about the organization, much less how it went about getting virtually identical laws passed in a multitude of states.

That began to change two years ago when an insider leaked thousands of pages of documents — including more than 800 “model” bills and resolutions, showing just how close ALEC is with big corporate interests and revealing how it goes about getting laws passed to enhance the profits of its sponsors, usually at the expense of consumers.

Leo W. Gerard: ALEC Demands Lawmakers Pledge Allegiance – to ALEC

Witch hunter Joseph McCarthy would be proud of ALEC. So proud! Like McCarthy, the shadowy corporate lobby group wants oaths of allegiance.

McCarthy demanded loyalty pledges to the United States. ALEC, by contrast, wants its lawmaker members to vow first allegiance to ALEC.

ALEC (All Legislation Enhancing Corporations) asked the legislators it appoints as state directors to raise their right wings and swear: “I will act with care and loyalty and put the interests of the organization first.”

ALEC first. Before the lawmaker’s constituents. Before the interests of the lawmaker’s state. Before the constitution of the United States. ALEC asked its lawmakers to forsake their oaths of office and swear fidelity instead to the organization that wines, dines, indulges and indoctrinates them with buckets full of corporate cash. The ALEC loyalty oath clarifies the allegiance of the 1,810 state legislators that ALEC claims as members. They see their primary duty as serving corporations, specifically the corporations that give millions to ALEC.

Three pieces of seemingly good economic news dominated the headlines last week.

The official unemployment rate dropped to 7.0 percent, its lowest level since 2008, reflecting the fact that the economy has created upwards of 200,000 jobs for each of the past two months.

The GDP growth rate for the third quarter was revised upwards to an impressive 3.6 percent.

And while money markets briefly lurched downward out of fear that the good news would cause the Federal Reserve to slow down its program of massive bond purchase, quite possibly raising interest rates and aborting a stronger recovery, the markets quickly shook off those fears. Investors and traders evidently concluded that the economy had found a Goldilocks spot of not too cold and not too hot. Stock indexes closed the week only a shade below their historic highs.

Should we be encouraged? Is this, at long last, the recovery of broadly shared prosperity we’ve been waiting for?

Not yet, I’m afraid.

Robert Reich: JP Morgan Chase, the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act, and the Corruption of America

The Justice Department has just obtained documents showing that JPMorgan Chase, Wall Street’s biggest bank, has been hiring the children of China’s ruling elite in order to secure “existing and potential business opportunities” from Chinese government-run companies. “You all know I have always been a big believer of the Sons and Daughters program,” says one JP Morgan executive in an email, because “it almost has a linear relationship” to winning assignments to advise Chinese companies. The documents even include spreadsheets that list the bank’s “track record” for converting hires into business deals.

It’s a serious offense. But let’s get real. How different is bribing China’s “princelings,” as they’re called there, from Wall Street’s ongoing program of hiring departing U.S. Treasury officials, presumably in order to grease the wheels of official Washington? Timothy Geithner, Obama’s first Treasury Secretary, is now president of the private-equity firm Warburg Pincus; Obama’s budget director Peter Orszag is now a top executive at Citigroup.

Or, for that matter, how different is what JP Morgan did in China from Wall Street’s habit of hiring the children of powerful American politicians?

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Democrats’ “Third Way” Quarrel Could Change Your Future

There was a big dust-up in the Democratic Party last week, triggered by a somewhat incoherent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from the leaders of a Wall Street-funded “think tank”/lobbying group called Third Way. Many of the responses dealt with the op-ed’s attack on Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but don’t be distracted by that. As Sen. Warren would undoubtedly agree, the issues involved are much more important than the personalities.

As politicians affiliated with Third Way hasten to distance themselves from the op-ed, the question remains: Why are Democrats affiliated with a group which works so strenuously to gut Democratic programs? Voters deserve more than platitudes from these politicians. They deserveclear answers about the issues.

Juan Cole: Solar Would Be Cheaper: US Pentagon Has Spent $8 Trillion to Guard Gulf Oil

It has cost the United States $8 trillion to provide military security in the Gulf since 1976. According to Roger Stern, a Princeton economist, the US has spent as much on Gulf security as it spent on the entire Cold War with the Soviet Union! In recent years through 2010 it has been $400 billion a year, though the US withdrawal from Iraq at the end of 2011 and the gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan this year and next presumably means that the figure is substantially reduced. Still, we have bases in Kuwait, Qatar and elsewhere, and a Naval HQ in Bahrain, none of which is cheap. If it were $200 billion a year, that is a fair chunk of the budget deficit the Republican Party keeps complaining about. And if we could get that $8 trillion back, it would pay down half of the national debt. [..]

The right argument is that we shouldn’t be using petroleum and nor should our allies. The supreme tragedy is that the US has bankrupted itself ensuring military security for the oil-producing nations of the Gulf when oil production is destroying the world. We need a crash program to get the world off petroleum, some 70% of which is used to power automobiles. People should be given incentives to move back to cities so they don’t have to commute. Better public transport is needed. Portland is an example of how a concerted push can change the urban transportation situation quickly. 8% of commuters in Portland now get to work on bicycle, 10 times more than any other American city. Portland adopted a global warming action plan in 1993 and has renewed it, and demonstrates what can be accomplished in only 20 years if a city puts its mind to it. And, we should move as quickly as possible to hybrid plugins or where practical electric vehicles (EVs).

Michael T. Klare: Rushing for the Arctic’s Riches

WHILE many existing oil and gas reserves in other parts of the world are facing steep decline, the Arctic is thought to possess vast untapped reservoirs. Approximately 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil deposits and 30 percent of its natural gas reserves are above the Arctic Circle, according to the United States Geological Survey. Eager to tap into this largess, Russia and its Arctic neighbors – Canada, Norway, the United States, Iceland and Denmark (by virtue of its authority over Greenland) – have encouraged energy companies to drill in the region. [..]

For Russia, which recently seized a Greenpeace ship and is prosecuting 30 of the group’s activists for attempting to scale an oil platform, the temptation to exploit the Arctic Ocean is especially powerful. Russia’s economy is heavily dependent on exports of oil and gas, and the government relies on these sales for much of its income. Until recently, the Russians could draw on reservoirs in western Siberia to satisfy their needs, but now, with many of these fields in decline, they are counting on Arctic supplies to maintain current production levels. “Our first and main task is to turn the Arctic into Russia’s resource base of the 21st century,” Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the president, declared in 2008.

The Russians have explored drilling options in several offshore areas of the Arctic. In the Pechora Sea, above northwestern Siberia, the Russian energy giant Gazprom has installed its Prirazlomnaya platform – the one protesting Greenpeace activists attempted to board. Further east, in the Kara Sea, the state-owned Rosneft is collaborating with ExxonMobil to develop promising deposits; Rosneft has also teamed up with Statoil of Norway and Eni of Italy to investigate prospects in the Barents Sea.

Now that President Obama has outlined the crisis in economic mobility, he should begin by pressing his demand that Congress raise the minimum wage-and not by a little, but a lot.

Obama’s speech Wednesday about the need to redress growing inequality was sweeping and comprehensive-perhaps to a fault. In outlining solutions, he talked about the minimum wage. But he also mentioned immigration reform, rewriting the corporate tax code, eliminating the “sequester” budget cuts, holding down tuition costs for higher education, providing universal preschool, retraining the long-term unemployed, creating “Promise Zones” in poor communities … the list goes on.

All are worthy goals, but what chance is there of getting such an ambitious agenda through Congress? The Republican majority in the House disagrees with Obama philosophically and opposes him reflexively; if he’s for it, they’re against it.  

Jared Bernstein: No, a Decent Jobs Report Does Not Mean We No Longer Need an Extension of Unemployment Insurance!

Okay, there were too many negatives in that title. Let me say it more positively: We positively must extend UI benefits, lest 1.3 million UI recipients lose needed UI benefits in a job market that is improving, but still slack.

Here’s the argument: The Senate and the House are working on a budget deal, and key Democrats, including the White House, are arguing that the deal should include another extension of UI benefits. Opponents say, “been there, done that.” We’ve already extended benefits a bunch of times and now that the job market’s getting stronger, we don’t need to do so again.

Not so. As I wrote this morning, “Policymakers must not conflate an improving labor market with a healed job market. Until job opportunities are more robust, the extension is needed, both for the sake of the long-term jobless and the macro-economy (since UI has a large multiplier).”

David Sirota: Eating Like There’s No Tomorrow

Right around now, many Americans are picking at the last few chunks of leftover turkey. This annual ritual is a reminder that stripped of its pilgrim mythology, Thanksgiving is an extended paroxysm of meat consumption. Oh, sure, we go out of our way to pretend it isn’t really about that to the point where the president of the United States makes a public spectacle out of pardoning a bird. Yet, this particular holiday is our culture’s grandest celebration of flesh eating-and therefore, it has become a microcosmic example of our willingness to risk self-destruction.

I can already hear your inner monologue-the one saying that such apocalyptic language is irresponsible hyperbole. But take a moment away from those leftovers to consider just two scientific realities.

Jow Conason: Why Republicans Can’t Address Rising Inequality

So far, the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s historic address on economic inequality has not veered from the predictable cliches of tea party rhetoric. It was appropriately summarized in a tweet from House Speaker John Boehner, complaining that the Democrat in the White House wants “more government rather than more freedom,” ignoring his challenge to Republicans to present solutions of their own.

But for Republicans to promote real remedies-the kind that would require more than 140 characters of text-they first would have to believe inequality is a real problem. And there is no evidence they do, despite fitful attempts by GOP leaders on Capitol Hill to display their “empathy” for the struggling, shrinking middle class.

The President’s speech yesterday on inequality avoided the “R” word. No politician wants to mention “redistribution” because it conjures up images of worthy “makers” forced to hand over hard-earned income to undeserving “takers.”

But as low-wage work proliferates in America, so-called takers are working as hard if not harder than anyone else, and often at more than one job.

Yet they’re still not making it because the twin forces of globalization and technological change have reduced their bargaining power and undermined their economic standing — while bestowing ever greater benefits on a comparative few with the right education and connections (and whose parents are often best able to secure these advantages for them).

Better education and training for those on the losing end is critically important, as will several of the other proposals the President listed. But they will only go so far.

David Cay Johnston: A Hard Lesson from Motown: They Will Steal Your Pension

Anyone in a public-sector job looking forward to retiring in comfort should look carefully at what is going on in Detroit and Springfield, Ill. Sherlock Holmes would call it the case of the missing pension money.

News leaking out this week from the Motor City tells how the enormous gap between the pensions workers earned and the money set aside to pay for them will be closed. By stealing from the workers.

Courts, legislatures, and corporations are all working in concert not to pay the full benefits owed. For decades, political and business leaders failed to set aside the right amount of money each payday to cover the pensions workers earned and, in some cases, covered up the mismanagement of pension fund investments.

This is nothing short of theft, as pensions are simply deferred wages, that is, money that workers could have taken as cash in their regular paychecks had they not opted to set it aside.

Norman Solomon: Under the Global Shadow of Big Brother, Journalism Must Light Up the Political Sky

Every new revelation about the global reach of the National Security Agency underscores that the extremism of the surveillance state has reached gargantuan proportions. The Washington Post just reported that the NSA “is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” Documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden have forced top officials in Washington to admit the indefensible while defending it. One of the main obstacles to further expansion of their Orwellian empire is real journalism.

Real journalism is “subversive” of deception that can’t stand the light of day. This is a huge problem for the Obama administration and the many surveillance-state flunkies of both parties in Congress. What they want is fake journalism, deferring to government storylines and respectful of authority even when it is illegitimate.

In motion now, on both sides of the Atlantic, are top-down efforts to quash real journalism when and how it matters most. In the two English-speaking countries that have done the most preaching to the world about “Western values” like freedom of the press, the governments led by President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron are overseeing assaults on real journalism

John Nichols: Detroit Bankruptcy Bankrupts Democracy

Detroit elected a new mayor November 5 and he will take office in less than a month. But the future of this great American city and its citizens isn’t being defined by decisions made by voters on Election Day. It is being defined in federal bankruptcy court-and by an “emergency manager” who has no democratic legitimacy.

With a ruling Tuesday by US Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes, Detroit officially becomes the largest US city ever to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Despite a determination that negotiations with creditors outside of bankruptcy court had not satisfied good-faith requirements, the judge cleared the way for the emergency manager and his law firm to advance a “plan of adjustment” that is likely to include deep cuts in pension guarantees for retired city employees and a “fire sale” of city assets that could result in public utilities and the Detroit Institute of Arts collection being bartered off to private bidders.

The spin-masters are already at work putting all of the sugar coating on it, but the reality is shocking and revealing. The world as a whole didn’t come up with a measly $5 billion a year for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. $5 billion was a bare minimum needed to maintain momentum in the fight against these diseases. Yet the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Japan, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, China, Singapore, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, John Paulson, Barack Obama, Stephen Harper, 1,600 billionaires (with combined net worth of at least $5.5 trillion), and the rest of humanity couldn’t find the money. They came up with $4 billion instead, $1 billion short.

The world has told the poor and dying to drop dead.

Dave Johnson: Want to Cut Food Stamp Spending? Raise the Minimum Wage

Wednesday President Obama will give a speech on his plan to grow the economy and the middle class. Thursday fast-food workers will strike in 100 cities and stage protests in 100 others to demand $15 an hour and the right to form a union without interference from employers. Here’s something to consider: raising the minimum wage cuts government spending on food stamps and other programs. [..]

If minimum wage workers receives a raise, and that increase ripples up through the ever-growing low-wage end of our economy, the need for government assistance will decrease and therefore so will the spending on the programs. The right way to cut spending on assistance for Americans is to decrease the need for that assistance, not decrease assistance for those in need.

Don’t cut programs for the people who need them, cut those people’s need for the programs. It’s the right thing to do and it also makes money sense.

Chris Arnade: Looking for fraud? Don’t look at food stamp recipients, look at Wall Street

Food stamps keep 47 million people from going hungry, so cuts hurt. Congress should focus on where the real abuse happens

Hunger will drive kids to do crazy things. Like stay at school.

A few weeks ago South Bronx public schools had a half-day, with dismissal at noon. Yet almost all the kids stayed an extra hour, waiting in the cafeteria to eat the schools’ free lunch.

Teachers even got calls from parents of children who hadn’t stayed, asking them why they let their children leave without a meal. The teachers explained that this had never been an issue before. Kids had always left when they could. The parents responded, “That was before the cut in food stamps. We get $45 less a month now”.

The cuts to food stamps had come two weeks earlier, on the first of November, a result of Congress failing to renew the increase to the program in the 2009 stimulus package. That increase was included as a small attempt to blunt the pain of a recession that was disproportionally affecting the poor.

Christopher M. Barnes: Should We Blame the Engineer for Falling Asleep at the Train Controls?

Preliminary indications are that the Metro-North train derailment was caused by the train operator falling asleep at the controls, and waking up too late to stop the speeding train from derailing. This is similar to other events in the transportation industry, including air traffic controllers sleeping on the job, truck drivers and boat captains falling asleep at the wheel, and pilots sleeping while at the stick.

Our first inclination is often to blame the transportation employees for falling asleep while they were supposed to be conducting important tasks. We express outrage at their indolence, question their professionalism, and consider them to be weak for not toughing it out through their drowsiness. After all, many of us have experienced sleepiness, and we didn’t fall asleep on the job, right? How dare these transportation employees do so!