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The Dirt on Worms

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

agweb.com - By Pam Smith - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The earthworm has long been considered the farmer’s friend. Their burrowing has always been thought to aerate the soil while their droppings provide fertilizer. No-till farmers count on these tireless workers to improve soil tilth. And on their worst day, earthworms sacrifice everything to land us a lunch from our favorite fishing hole

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Six Smart Progressive Complaints About House Health Bill

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By John Nichols - Nov. 09 (News) - The Affordable Health Care for America Act was approved by the U.S. House Saturday night with ... support from progressive Democrats ... and from a president ... elected with the ... support of progressive voters. But that does not mean that informed and engaged progressives are entirely enthusiastic about the measure.

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Stimulus for Cotton Candy, Tango and a Fish Orchestra? Wacky, or Actually Worthy?

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell - Nov. 07 (Investigative Report) - Breakfast at Fuddruckers: $19.24. Snow cone and cotton candy machine: $146.89. Six extra preview performances of “Little House on the Prairie – the Musical”: $50,000. Benefit to the economy? According to the recipients of this stimulus money: Priceless.

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Cut Wall Street Out! How States Can Finance Their Own Economic Recovery

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Ellen Brown - Oct. 31 (Investigative Report) - The BND's populist organizers originally conceived of the bank as a credit union-like institution that would free farmers from predatory lenders, but conservative interests later took control and suppressed these commercial lending functions.

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Six months after the outbreak, who’s investigating the CAFO-swine flu link?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Tom Philpott - Oct. 29 (Investigative Report) - Scientists at the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa revealed last week they had identified the H1N1 strain in seven pigs at the Minnesota State Fair in late summer as part of a study of virus exchange between swine and people. Some of those animals may have caught the bug from the hordes of visitors at the 12-day event. But not all: One infected animal was swabbed while being unloaded and almost certainly arrived with the virus.

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Lawmakers Debate Incentives to Attract Medical Students to Primary Care - News digest - Building Human Capital newsroom - Building Human Capital - RWJF

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

rwjf.org - Oct. 28 (News) - Should this disparity in supply and demand continue, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 44,000 general physicians by 2025, a rate that could increase exponentially if health care reform extends health insurance to a greater portion of the population.

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Comparing the Votes of the Rich and the Poor

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Andrew Gelman - Oct. 27 (Special Report) - As just about everybody knows by now, richer Americans tend to vote Republican while poorer Americans go for the Democrats. But this isn't true for all groups. For an amusing example that we discussed in our book, a survey found that richer journalists

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Senators Slog While Unemployed Suffer

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Independent - By Mary Kane - Oct. 26 (News Report) - A protracted and very partisan Senate skirmish has left hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans without unemployment benefits — an impasse that Democrats leaders are hoping to break this week. They have their work cut out.

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Stimulus Contracts Go to Companies Under Criminal Investigation

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell - Oct. 26 (Investigative Report) - The Department of Defense awarded nearly $30 million in stimulus contracts to six companies while they were under federal criminal investigation on suspicion of defrauding the government. According to Air Force documents, the companies claimed to be small, minority-owned businesses, which allowed them to gain special preference in bidding for government contracts. But investigators found that they were all part of a larger minority-owned enterprise in Southern California, making them ineligible for the contracts.

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Freddie Mac, Given Oversight of Mortgage Mod Program, Falls Down on Job

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Paul Kiel - Oct. 22 (News) - As ProPublica and others have reported, homeowners have frequently been rejected for loan mods even though they appear to qualify. The Treasury Department tapped Freddie to police just that kind of thing.

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Trade Your Job

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Valerie Saturen - Oct. 22 (News) - high school students who aren't headed for college are learning to retrofit houses; they stand to make up to $50 an hour once they're experienced journeymen. In Lansing, Michigan, unemployed auto workers can get up to $10,000 to train for new careers in renewable energy. .read more

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Documents in Bank of America Probe Apparently Show CEO Misled Federal Officials

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Sue Reisinger - Oct. 22 (News) - Lewis told the feds that he had just learned of Merrill's spiraling fourth quarter losses that eventually reached $15 billion, when in fact his bank had been following the growing losses throughout October and November.

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Franken Schools Right-Wing Analyst On Medical Bankruptcies In Countries With Universal Care: ‘It’s Zero’

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Think Progress - By Zaid Jilani - Oct. 21 (News Report) - Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “Medical Debt: Can Bankruptcy Reform Facilitate a Fresh Start.” The hearing examined medical bankruptcies in America, and witnesses included CAP fellow Elizabeth Edwards and Kerry Burns, a Rhode Island mother who was forced into “financial ruin” by her late son’s medical bills. One of the highlights of [...]

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Preparing for an IT Talent Squeeze

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

workforce.com - By Charlotte Huff - Oct. 21 (Special Report) - Information technology leaders shouldn’t be lulled by today’s sluggish hiring market into thinking IT employees won’t be on the move anytime soon. With the race to computerize the nation’s medical records poised to take off, that’s going to change, industry watchers say. The federal government’s tight time frame for computerization, along with a steep implementation curve, will require more bodies—soon, and in the thousands at least, they say. The federal stimulus bill, which earmarked $19 billion for incentives related to computerization at hospitals and physician practices, also included financial penalties beginning in 2015. Just 9 percent of hospitals use electronic records on even a limited basis, according to a recent study. Based in recent discussions with IT experts, the debate seems to be less about the likelihood of a hiring surge and more about how many jobs it will fuel and how soon that surge will happen.

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Lindsey Graham: Not a Nuclear Wussypants

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kate Sheppard - Oct. 16 (News Report) - When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for legislation last week to cap carbon emissions, he revived hopes that a cap-and-trade measure could pass the Senate this year. (He also got branded a "wussypants" by tea party protesters for his trouble.) But

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As Foreclosures Hit All-Time High, Wall Street on Pace to Hand Out Record $140B in Employee Bonuses

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By William Black, JUAN GONZALEZ,AMY GOODMAN - Oct. 15 (News Report) - The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 for the first time in a year, as JPMorgan Chase reported massive profits in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent.

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Snowe Voting Yes On Senate Finance Health Care Reform Bill

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ryan Grim, Jeff Muskus, Sam Stein - Oct. 13 (News Report) - Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Tuesday that she intends to vote for the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform package. She cautioned that her vote should be seen as a sign of her faith in the process going forward, not as support for the final package that will arrive on the Senate floor. "Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it," said Snowe. "Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls, and I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time." Snowe's statement came several hours before a scheduled committee vote. "My vote today is my vote today. It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow," she said. It does keep her at the negotiating table and at the center of the debate; Snowe risked marginalizing herself if she voted no. Snowe is well aware of the math. Her vote, she said, comes with knowledge that Democrats don't need Republicans to pass the landmark legislation.

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The Economic Revolution Is Already Happening -- It's Just Not on Wall St.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Maria Armoudian - Oct. 07 (Special Report) - America is in the midst of a new revolution. But this revolution is quiet, incremental, nonviolent and traveling beneath the mainstream media's radar. The new American revolution challenges the current notions of dog-eat-dog capitalism -- through the building of a parallel economic system that shares, co-operates, empowers and benefits fellow workers and community members.

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Meet the Hazzards

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Nomi Prins, Christopher Hayes - Sep. 23 (Special Report) - As we mark the end of the first year of the financial bailout, the public seems to regard the government's actions with a toxic combination of rage and confusion. People are pissed off but too bewildered to know what to do with that anger. The confusion isn't an accident. The government hasn't exactly been forthcoming about how it's made buckets of money available to the banking sector. When it does disclose some information--such as in July's SIGTARP report from the Treasury or the Federal Reserve's weekly balance sheet--it's in the form of intimidating descriptions, accounting mumbo jumbo and technical reports that do little to illuminate just what the hell is going on. What's worse, banks and the establishment press have portrayed TARP as the sum of the banking industry's federal subsidies. An August 30 New York Times article, "As Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit," gives the impression that taxpayers should be happy to have made $4 billion on the deal, as if our checks were in the mail. But when the government became Wall Street's bank, it wasn't just $700 billion of TARP money that flew north to Wall Street. TARP was but a small fraction (roughly 4 percent) of the full $17.5 trillion bailout and subsidization of the financial sector. [See image.] The details of this total bailout are complicated, but the basic mechanisms aren't beyond the average citizen's grasp. We're going to walk you through it.

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Bonus Battle

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Link TV - By Erin Coker - Sep. 19 (News Analysis) - The Fed stepped up today with the US version of a worldwide backlash on bonuses for bankers. Led by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, this is another example of the G20 nations' rising power. Sarkozy is dragging a reluctant US along on his crusade to curb banker's pay. It only works if the whole world does it - and that could never have happened in the past, even though majorities of Americans have steam coming out of their ears over the obscene bonuses.

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Unemployment Numbers May Put Democrats Out Of Work

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By William Galston - Sep. 16 (News Analysis) - In recent weeks, senior Obama administration officials have suggested that historically high levels of unemployment could persist for many years. Indeed, the most recent OMB projections show unemployment remaining above 7 percent until 2012, and above 5 percent through at least 2019.

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Economic Inequality: The Wall Street Journal Is Just Wrong

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

businessinsider.com - By Bruce Judson - Sep. 15 (News Analysis) - In effect, the article says that economic inequality was never really a problem, and even if it is we no longer have to worry about it. These conclusions are just plain wrong.

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Pollan says health-care reform will fail unless we change the way we eat

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - Sep. 14 (News) - If we don’t get a handle on these health care costs, the new system or the old system, we’ll go broke. And that’s why I think that really food is the elephant in the room when we’re talking about health care.

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How Foreclosures Breed Mosquitoes

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

thebigmoney.com - By Paul Smalera, Win Rosenfeld - Sep. 11 (Special Report) - Filmmakers Andrew and Leslie Cockburn discuss a scene from their new documentary American Casino. The scene shows how a sea of abandoned swimming pools in California has become a mosquito Club Med.

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Did Bernanke save the world?

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Real News - By Robert Pollin - Aug. 31 (Special Report) - President Obama has re-nominated Ben Bernanke to sit as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for another four-year term. Most of the media has praised Bernanke for his handling of the current economic crisis, Obama himself suggests that Bernanke helped save the US from another Great Depression. Economist Robert Pollin points out that Bernanke, as the top bank regulator in the country, played a central role in the creation of the crisis. But more importantly, according to Pollin, is that we review the Fed as a whole, and not just the individual who heads it up.

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