j_b

other countries are no more ready to deal with outsourcing and globalization. unless you consider converting your workforce into minimum wage earners without benefits a "race to the top"

there is no such thing as a nobel prize in economics. " The prize was tacked on to the original awards in 1969 as a marketing ploy on behalf of Sweden's central bank." http://www.unifr.ch/econophysics/comments/13PRIZ.html

the fables coming out of the cato institute certainly don't qualify as history. it should be sufficient to consider your positions on iraq, global warming, fossil fuel energy crisis, etc ... to see what i am talking about. so one hand you have the french poised to reject a conservative pol and on the other german conservatives have to co-opt the advancement of women and gays to sound sexy to the public and this is supposed to be a victory for conservatives? on most issues you are waging rearguard battles which you may win temporarily but that won't affect the overall tide of change because the evolution of human societies is resolutely progressive (note the root in progressive). And the corrolary is: the more you overreach in trying to prevent progress, the wilder the backlash (think 60's).

another hack waxing nostalgic for the age of the unimpeded robber barons telling us that progressivism is dead

even then, it depends on who 'allegedly' finds it

TimL: you must have missed some holds in the pressure chamber. i remember almost doing exactly that the first time.

part of a speech given in the senate by boxer (dem, CA) about one of the nominees (brown) who will be voted on fairly soon: Janice Rogers Brown--way outside of the mainstream to the extreme. This is one of her comments: "Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: Families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit." This is what she thinks of our great Nation because we have a Government that does build the roads, that does help people out when they are in a bad situation, that may come in and say, yes, it is not a good idea to sell cigarettes to a kid who is 13. This is terrible. This is awful. The ``precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption.'' The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity ..... A virtue. Now, I don't know about you, but I think the minimum wage is a part of America. Colleagues could decide they do not want to raise it for a couple of years. Right now, sadly, it hasn't been raised for a very long time, but I think most Americans think we are protected by the minimum wage. This is what she said about the minimum wage, Janice Rogers Brown. I take a minute to say Janice Rogers Brown has served in the California Supreme Court since 1996. Her life story is amazing. It is remarkable. What I don't like is what she is doing to other people's lives. Her story is amazing, but for whatever reason, she is hurting the people of this country, particularly, right now, in my State. Of course, the President wants to move her over to Washington, DC, court. She calls Supreme Court decisions upholding protections like the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek ``the triumph of our own socialist revolution.'' I don't know or understand how anybody could think the 40-hour workweek or the minimum wage is socialism. She obviously does. She obviously would overturn it. She accuses senior citizens of--and I hope everyone over the age of 55 will listen to what Janice Rogers Browns thinks of people over 55--she accuses senior citizens of ``blithely cannibalizing their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much free stuff'' as the political system permits them to extract. Free stuff? Is she talking about Social Security? That is not free. People pay into Social Security, and they deserve to get their monthly check. Free stuff. Senior citizens ``blithely cannibalize their grandchildren.'' I resent those comments as a grandmother. I would walk off a bridge for my grandson--and he knows it. I resent her painting of senior citizens. That is why we held her up. That is why she is not sitting on the court today. Now, she may get there if my colleagues have their way. Let them explain why she would rule to overturn the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek and overturn Social Security. It will be on their backs. We have stopped this woman from going further because of her decisions. She declares: "Big government is ... The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms, for ... rugged Midwestern farmers and militants senior citizens". She is back to that again. What is she afraid of--that some senior citizen will attack her? The crime rate among senior citizens is pretty low. Militant senior citizens? Give me a break. And we get accused of holding up decent people? This goes on. I will go on with the story of Janice Rogers Brown--way outside the mainstream to the extreme. She argued a law that provided housing assistance to displaced elderly, disabled, and low-income people was unconstitutional. Her dissent said, because the city of San Francisco had a law that helped these disabled, elderly people, she said that "private property ... is now entirely extinct in San Francisco." What world does she live in? Has she tried to buy a house in San Francisco? It is the hottest real estate market in the country. But she says private property is entirely extinct. Let her go try to find some private property to buy in San Francisco. This woman is living on another planet, and we were right to stop her from getting on the bench. Whether it takes 60 votes or 51 votes to stop her, we are going to try to stop her. Let's go on with more of her record. How about this? She said that a manager could use racial slurs against his Latino employees. Now, I say to every human being out there: What do we know about the workplace? We know people should feel OK about themselves in the workplace, that we work better together when we respect each other. Janice Rogers Brown said a manager could use racial slurs against his Latino employees--extreme in the main. She argued that a message sent by an employee to coworkers criticizing a company's employment practices was not protected by the first amendment. In other words, you can't use your e-mail to write anything about your employer to other employees, although she said the corporations can say whatever they want any time of the day. You know now why we have stopped Janice Rogers Brown. But we have more reasons, if you are not convinced. Even when it comes to protecting shareholders, she is not fair. Anyone who owns a share of stock, listen to this one. She argued that a company could not be held liable for stock fraud by its employees who were offered a stock purchase plan since the stock was traded between third parties on the open market. So she comes out against the shareholders and protecting the companies. Here is the amazing thing. Let me reiterate about Janice Rogers Brown. She serves on the California Supreme Court. There are six Republicans on the court--she is a Republican--and one Democrat. She dissented more than a third of the time. You would think she would have been happy to be with colleagues of her own party. She stood alone 31 times. And when you hear these cases, you will be amazed at where she stood. In other words, she went against five Republicans and one Democrat 31 times, and stood alone. Let's check those cases out. How about this one: Rape victims; she was the only member of the court to vote to overturn the conviction of a rapist of a 17-year-old girl because she believed the victim gave mixed messages to the rapist. She stood alone on the side of a rapist, alone as a woman on a court that has six Republicans and one Democrat. Here is another case where she voted alone, the only member of the court to oppose an effort to stop the sale of cigarettes to children. It was a case where the supermarkets didn't want to be responsible. If somebody came up, maybe 13, maybe 12, maybe 11, maybe 14, I want a pack of cigarettes, she ruled against an effort to stop the sale of cigarettes to children. What planet is she living on now? If it was in the 1800s and we didn't know about cigarettes and what they do to you is one thing. But now is another thing. She stood alone. I talked about senior citizens. I told you she is afraid of militant senior citizens. That is what she calls them. I told you that she said they cannibalize their grandchildren. Well, she was the only member of the court to find that a 60-year-old woman who was fired from her hospital job could not sue. This is the amazing thing she said, as she stood alone in this decision. A 60-year-old woman was fired from her hospital job. She said she has no right to sue based on age discrimination. This is her comment: "[D]iscrimination based on age does not mark its victims with a stigma of inferiority and second class citizenship." Really? How do you think you would feel if you were fired because you were too old and suddenly that stigma was attached to you and you lost your livelihood because maybe you had to work at age 60, as you waited for your Social Security check, which is a whole other issue. We hope we win that battle, too. But let me tell you, it makes it hard to win the battle of Social Security if you have on the court someone who calls senior citizens militant. It is going to be tough. That is why we have held her up. By the way, her position in this case is contrary to both State and Federal law. This is one of the people we have stopped. [...] Here is one. I want us all to remember the Enron case, a case where counties and cities and individuals were ripped off and went into debt--in our State, billions of dollars--by Enron, Enron who said they would deliver electricity and then made believe there was a shortage and jacked up the price billions of dollars. People went bankrupt and counties went bankrupt and the State went in the hole $9 billion. She was the only member of the court to find that a county could not sue a utility company for illegal price fixing that had substantially increased the county's costs for natural gas. [...] http://boxer.senate.gov/senate/20050517_print.cfm and there is more, these are just a few examples!

based on the tone and content of the totality of your contribution to this site. oh really! i have no idea what connection you could possibly make between my chewing the bit on current political happenings and how i approach life. you are surely just bullshitting (what's new!) You are such a classic stereotypical liberal: here you simultaneously whine about personal attacks while engaging in them within the very same sentence. So predictable and cliche. I am underwhelmed, but not surprised. . so, in other words you expect me to bend over while you attack my person? you think you are rush or some other windbag. i have got something for you, as you know already full well.

And we all know it's more important to be a positive, enthusiastic person. You'll get much further in life. Maybe even elected president! Because people will listen to your message because you are positive and enthusiastic. Even if you don't know shit anyhow, how would he know how "happy" and "cynical" I am? this kind of personal attacks are right of the wingnut demonization playbook: "when you don't have any facts on your side, just make sure you paint them as the devil"

err ... perhaps you should read KK's post. tell me which one you object to and we'll discuss it too bad it didn't stop you from posting deceptive drivel.

surely PP, you are not going to try arguing that Brown isn't an extremist and that logically someone pushing her candidacy isn't pretty far on the fringe. lack of logic? non-sequitur? where? demonstrate, please!

hey look! it looks like i stirred the wingnut nest. btw i challenge you to show how any of my positions are extreme.

hmmm ... upon my showing the above "testimony of a repentant mr average" as the deceptive work of a shill for the far right, you complain about my being in a bad mood. or is it that you find my characterization of your 5 star rating habit of your own posts, as lame, an expression of my bad mood? well, it does not really make any difference since both observations are true.

sowy i hurt your wittle feewings

zealot alert! a "i used to be but i am not anymore because let me tell you how evil they are" from mr. average PP loves to pull that kind of shit. on that guy's blog: "Barbara Boxer, for whom women and African Americans are invisible unless they declare themselves victims, has encountered a black woman she can't quite bring into view. "Out of the mainstream." That's Senator Boxer's mantra against Justice Rogers Brown's nomination for the D.C. Court of Appeals." then he goes on eulogizing brown. i kid you not. the so-called former liberal is pushing for brown: the extremist libertarian bush nominee opposed by dems in congress! on edit: yo PP, quit the 5-star rating for your own posts. it's lame!

first as i already pointed out bayoil's operations account for less than half of the oil imported in the US. who is responsible for the rest? how were corps able to do what bayoil did even though the UN asked the administration if they had it covered? second, the senate committee seemed to think that it wasn't good enough for galloway not knowing if any of the donation to his charity resulted from oil scams (one of the major contributor had extensive business dealing in iraq). how could it not be good enough for galloway, but be good enough for oil companies to purchase oil obtained through oil for food scamming? thirdly, the senate committee clearly says in its report that the US gov. knew and facilitated sale of oil by saddam that were illegal under the sanction regime. your obfuscations won't change any of it. some anti-war "players" are not on the take until proof to the contrary and it's going to take more than your unsubstantiated accusations to make it so. I am not especially a cheerleader for galloway, and certainly not for everything he stands for and not for everything he said during his ~30year career, but i am certainly more than bothered when it takes a scotsman to come to the US senate, stand for what is right and easily make fools out of elected representatives in front of the entire world.

it comes down to what constitutes an asset, and explains why our perception of subsidy is at odd. human and environmental resources are as important and valuable assets as that which show up in the company bottom line. consequently, a subsidy is the transfer of any public asset (under any form) to a private entity. this is circular reasoning. price, and market demand for oil (for example) is a direct function of whether you account for all the tax breaks, military interventions, environmental and human damage that go along with massive oil consumption. since none of it is reflected in the price at the gas pump, how do you expect consumers to know how much they are effectively paying for gas? gas prices (and that of everything which depends on oil, i.e. most everything) have little to do with market demand resulting from real cost to the consumer. let's not even get into how it affects competition between oil energy and clean alternative energy. sure, like research, infrastructure, health and education .... among other things whose prerogatives and interests is at the heart of the problem. the boardroom and/or the nation? my reading of your posts also tells me that we differ on what constitutes a sound economy. it is notably reflected insofar your gauge of a sound economy appears to be flux of cash through the system, with little consideration to capital in all its forms, which i think is a terrible way to assess economic health.

actually, the quote from that article is essentially from the US senate document almost word for word ... From the United States Senate: “…during the period surcharges were collected, the United States imported about 525 million barrels of Iraqi oil on which $118 million in illegal surcharges were paid. That means U.S. imports financed about 52 percent of the illegal surcharges paid to the Hussein regime.” “During the surcharge period, Bayoil became the largest provider of Iraqi oil imports into the United States, importing over 200 million barrels.” (note it’s only half of the imports so bayoil is less than half of the story) “Bayoil fostered corruption of the Oil-for-Food program by facilitating the payment of at least $37 million in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime on the oil it purchased; engaged in intensive lobbying efforts to influence the pricing of Iraqi oil and to oppose U.S. efforts to use that pricing to stop the illegal surcharges; and participated in an illegal trade boycott of Israel. Bayoil engaged in this misconduct for nearly two years, from 2000 to 2002, without attracting meaningful oversight from any U.S. agency. At the same time U.S. officials were urging the United Nations to institute pricing policies that would prevent the Saddam Hussein regime from imposing illegal surcharges, the United States was itself failing to ensure U.S. corporations such as Bayoil were not paying those surcharges.” “The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated U.N. sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing U.N. sanctions. On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales, as happened in the Khor al-Amaya incident in 2003.” Etc … http://hsgac.senate.gov/_files/REPORTwchartsIllegalSurchargesKhoralAmayaFINAL.pdf the list of individuals "on the take" is apparently ~350 names long, people from all over the world (including US citizens). it's no surprise that individuals from countries trading the most with iraq be on that list (duh). it's also no surprise that countries trading the most with iraq were opposed to intervention, especially in light of what we now know for certain. thus, there is certainly no logical thread between having individuals from anti-intervention countries on the list and your assertion that "all key antiwar players were on the take". moreover, i certainly never said or implied it was ok for crooked individuals to be on the take, just don't turn it into a witch hunt against the UN and the antiwar movement especially since US corps profited from the scam knowing full well what was going on (since they paid the surcharge to saddam), that our own government was aware of trading illegal under the sanction regime and did nothing to stop it but in fact facilitated it in some instances.

watts per what? dollar invested and total cost? I strongly doubt it. well, good for you. we occasionally agree on a few things. although you should beware that acknowledging the necessity and worthiness of significant input of public money toward infrastructure and R&D just may lead to excommunication in some quarters that you are very familiar with. you also know that i'll try to remind you of this fact so that you can explain your choices in selecting when and to whose benefit it is fair to dispense with the "free market".

effective control we currently have, complete control we don't have and it's, in fact, not necessary. so are you saying that bush supporters are in denial? This tendency of Bush supporters to ignore dissonant information extends to other realms as well.

this entire episode is a farce and most everyone knows it. newsweek isn't responsible for muslim anger at the US. isikoff, one of the writers of the story, is in fact one of the main pundits who amplified the 8-year long anti-clinton media onslaught (much of it unsubstantiated smears). newsweek is certainly not "liberal" as was shown ~3 weeks ago when they had coulter on the front cover and, in the main feature, whitewashed her repeated lying and calls to violence against liberals. i'd like also to remind people that the Rather-episode memo hasn't been established to be forged, including by the commission that "investigated" the fiasco. 'small' detail, i guess.

so, now that the anti-UN obfuscation has been blown to bits, in particular by the senate committee report cited in previous posts, will the media continue to spew the neocon agenda on the oil for food scam as per usual? will our resident rightwingers continue to make allusions to "how prominent war opponents were on the take"? i think we all know the answer to the above.

the difference between the watergate era press and today? Alterman explains PP sounds a bit ornery today. is it Galloway's punking of Coleman and other neocon windbags? GW's new low in approval ratings at 43% (with a 69% disapproval of SS privatization plans)? i wonder

you are a bit much, frankly. the john birchers who pose as republicans these days are using the corruption in the oil for food program to bash the UN and the antiwar movement as a smokescreen for their dismal failures in Iraq, and as it turns out the majority of the oil for food scam was US bound and all this with our government knowledge. so please ...

as usual rightwing shills take quotes out of context to discredit the man. the context being that Galloway denounced Saddam's dictatorship since day one, by opposition to Rumsfeld who was in bed with Saddam throughout the 80's. But just watch the full testimony, it says it all. as for the oil for food scam, here is the essence of what the committee found: "A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them. The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua. In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together. "The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales." link to article