BUSH MIDDLE EAST POLICY--"ABSENT ACROSS THE BOARD"

U.S. on the Outside in Peace Efforts

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 22, 2008; A20

Just days after President Bush returned from the Middle East, the Middle East is moving beyond the Bush administration.

Two major peace efforts -- a surprise announcement of indirect talks between Israel and Syria brokered by Turkey and an eleventh-hour deal to prevent a new Lebanese war brokered by Qatar -- were launched without an American role, and both counter U.S. strategy in the region.

. . . The United States is not playing a role in other critical Middle East initiatives, Ottaway noted, including an Egyptian effort to reconcile the two major Palestinian parties, Fatah and Hamas, and negotiations between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council sheikdoms. The Bush administration is absent "across the board," she said.

. . . That absence reflects Bush's lame-duck status, experts said. "The president spoke in Jerusalem a week ago about standing up to dictators and not appeasing those who used force. He isn't home a week, and the dictators and the forces of violence have triumphed," said Bruce Riedel, a former National Security Council staff member.

--read entire article--

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This hasn't a thing in the world to do with the lameness of ducks. It has to do with Middle Eastern political factions working out their own problems after three or four decades of failed American intervention. This was not a Bush failure in total, although he certainly contributed by seven years of failing to notice there was a Mddle East beyond Iraq and Afghanistan--then trying to muscle in for penalty-kicks after the game was over.

Another part of the morning paper lauds the success with which Iraqi Army forces were received into Sadr City in Iraq because they were unaccompanied by U.S. troops. Progress is being made between Syria and Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, perhaps ultimately between Israel and Palestine, but it's being made because Condi Rice has finally stopped flitting around the area like a scold.

There is a Bush contribution, but an unintended one. His administration has so screwed up the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, has so inflamed the passions of militants in an area where they had successfully (if undemocratically) been held under the boot of various kings and dictators, that the powerful are noticing--and, in some cases doing something progressive about it.

Not progressive in American terms, because America has finally been denied its impartiality by unrelenting Israeli intransigence. Israel is finally talking, all by itself and without U.S. negotiators at the table, because the events of the past seven years--an Israeli mauling in Lebanon combined with America's morass in Iraq--disproved the myth of both nations' military ability against insurgencies.

For the first time in Israel's history, we are beginning to see cover-stories in such storied publications as The Atlantic, titled "Is Israel Finished?"

Whether Israel is finished or not depends upon an unknowable set of future circumstances, but Israeli independence based upon its (and America's) sole threat of military strength is certainly finished. The experiment had fifty years to equitably provide for an independent Palestinian state and it failed. Blame is everywhere, but hubris, biblical interpretation and twisting the cloth of Holocaust-guilt are certainly among the top contenders for ignoring the needs of those whose lands were sacked in favor of Israel.

Sacked (verb. Having been robbed and destroyed by force and violence). There is no other appropriate word for it. Europe, where unprecedented atrocities were committed against Jews, decided unilaterally to make up for the European crimes by taking Arab lands and giving them to Jews.

What a neat piece of trickery against honor and justice--to buy out of a crime by committing another.

And, as all crimes have a tendency to do, this one required the blood and treasure of criminal nations to uphold. Until it becomes un-upholdable. Which may or may not be now. The only thing that becomes more evident day by day is that the United States no longer holds the keys to a solution.

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Middle East, check out Opinion-Columns.com

PRIORITIES SHOT TO HELL, WE PLUNGE INTO THE ENERGY ABYSS

Wind Can Supply 20% of U.S. Electricity, Report Says

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2008; D07

The Energy Department said yesterday that the United States has the ability to meet 20 percent of its electricity-generation needs with wind by 2030, enough to displace 50 percent of natural gas consumption and 18 percent of coal consumption.

But in a report drawn up by its national laboratories, the department said that meeting the target would require more improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines, an expansion of the wind industry and a fivefold increase in the pace of wind-turbine installation.

. . . The report said that, under "optimistic assumptions," expanding wind generation to meet 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs by 2030 would cost nearly $197 billion, but it said that most of that would be offset by nearly $155 billion in lower fuel expenditures. There would be, it said, other offsetting positive effects.

--read entire article--

_______________________________________________________________

So, let's have a little optimism. The main thing to keep in mind is that no single renewable source is going to carry the load of oil. We're dinking around with politically backed magic-wand technologies instead of seriously funding research. Corn-based ethanol is one of them.

ITEM: (Wikipedia) Some of the controversial subsidies in the past have included more than $10 billion to Archer-Daniels-Midland since 1980.

That's a million dollars a day for twenty-eight years. For what? So they can suddenly pull the rug out from under all the gazillion things that are made from corn, double the world price, profit from the doubling and push the world's poor to the edge of starvation. What a good use for your government's subsidy of private industry.

Lest you think I am being unduly critical of Archer Daniels, (Wikipedia again)

ITEM: In 1993, ADM was the subject of a lysine price fixing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. Senior ADM executives were indicted on criminal charges for engaging in price-fixing within the international lysine market. Three of ADM's top officials, including vice chairman Michael Andreas, were eventually sentenced to federal prison in 1999. Moreover, the company was fined $100 million, the largest antitrust fine in U.S. history at the time(1997). In addition, according to ADM's 2005 annual report a settlement was reached under which ADM paid $400 million in 2005 to settle a class action antitrust suit.

A year later, they went on the public dole at $1 mil a day. Not surprisingly, these subsidies have come under criticism--although criticism alone has been unable to turn off the money-pump for 10,220 consecutive days.

ITEM: (Cato Institute) "ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30."

Two years ago Patricia Woertz became CEO and announced she expected to focus on developing ethanol and biofuels. ADM nearly doubled capital spending in its 2007 budget to an estimated $1.12 billion. All of the increase is planned for bioenergy projects, with a particular focus on ethanol and biodiesel. She'll need that thirty bucks.

ITEM: (Smart Money) . . . it takes nearly three-quarters of a gallon of crude to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn . . .

But the whole idea is to fight global warming, as well as unhitch ourselves from the evil clutches of Saudi Arabia and (shudder) Iran, not to mention (cringe) Venezuela.

ITEM: (Wikipedia) "The widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday. The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global warming."

So, we are perfectly ready, willing and able (perhaps even eager) to get ourselves hitched to the evil clutches of outfits like Cargill and Archer Daniels, who absolutely dominate the corn, wheat, soybean and and oilseed markets, including their processing to such things as corn and soybean-oils.

ITEM (Wikipedia, who else?) 1 acre of land can yield about 7,110 pounds of corn, which can be processed into 328 gallons of ethanol. That is about 26.1 pounds of corn per gallon.

"Fill 'er up with 650 pounds of corn and keep the change."

ITEM: (Michael Grunwald) reports that one person could be fed 365 days "on the corn needed to fill an ethanol-fueled SUV."

That sounds encouraging.

He further reports that though "hyped as an eco-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices." . . damage the environment, while at the same time causing worldwide food prices to soar. . . will "lead to substantial environmental damage and a system of biofuels production that will not benefit family farmers...will not promote sustainable agriculture and will not mitigate global climate change."

That's a bunch of will-nots, but we have already seen headlines concerning food riots throughout third world nations and food and cooking-oil driven inflationary percentages as high as 16,000. Try that on for size if you're earning a dollar a day.

ITEM: (Financial Post) Forget oil, the new global crisis is food; BMO strategist Donald Coxe warns credit crunch and soaring oil prices will pale in comparison to looming catastrophe.

So, possibly ethanol is not the silver bullet and we ought to put ourselves on a war-footing that brings the kind of industrial research and productivity displayed during WWII.

There was a dark period during that war, when American convoys delivering supplies to England were being sunk in the North Atlantic at the rate of 500 ships a month.The response was to launch 750 a month. Not enough steel? We built them of concrete.

Wind is part of the answer to an energy need that cannot be put at the feet of a single technology. Thermal, from deep drilling to the earth's magna is possible, as well as solar, as well as tide-power--remembering that our largest population centers are at the edge of two oceans.

What we really need to concentrate on is not replacing Saudi oil dependence with ADM and Cargill corn dependence. That card is already dealt and lying there on the table.

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Fuels and Energy, check out Opinion-Columns.com

TORTURE IS OUT--COERCING IS IN

May 11, 2008

News Analysis

Judge’s Guantánamo Ruling Bodes Ill for System

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

A decision by a military judge on Friday to disqualify a top Pentagon official from any further role in a Guantánamo war crimes case was a major new challenge to the Bush administration’s legal approach to the war on terrorism.

The ruling, in the case against Salim Hamdan, a detainee who was a driver for Osama bin Laden, transformed what had been something of a Pentagon soap opera over how to prosecute detainees into a formal ruling that gave new force to critics’ accusations of improper political influence over this country’s first use of military commissions since World War II.

. . . Under the Military Commissions Act, evidence derived through torture is inadmissible, but prosecutors can build cases with evidence obtained through coercion.

--read entire article--

______________________________________________________________

In the running joke that has become American military justice, the Military Commissions Act is now in play, although it's unclear whether 'commission' in this sense means a special group, a fee for services, the granting of authority or the state of being in good working order. I guess we can rule out fees for services on a humanitarian basis. Good working order is out of order as well.

Parsing torture and coercion, we step further into the goo of false pretense.

Torture is defined by everyone except this administration as; "The deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason."

Good enough. Tie goes to the runner, if we can figure out who runs and who bats.

Coercion is defined as; "forcing somebody: to make somebody do something against his or her will by using force or threats."

Coercion is the new and improved, low-calorie, slimming form of torture.

The Military Commissions Act's stated purpose is "To authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes." Oh, that's the kind of commission Congress meant in 2006, when they had to pull a very tattered rabbit from a caved-in hat to make up for a Supreme Court ruling. That ruling was not in favor of torture.

The Supremes finally got it right.

But wait. Cheney, Addington and the Congress of the United States have the Constitution in a run-down between first and second. There's the tag. The dust settles. The crowd is on its feet and a roar sweeps across the infield. Where the hell's the umpire?

Military Commissions Act, Section 948d (c) Determination of Unlawful Enemy Combatant Status Dispositive— A finding, whether before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense that a person is an unlawful enemy combatant is dispositive for purposes of jurisdiction for trial by military commission under this chapter.

Dis-positive or dat-positive, does anyone really think that even the most meager percentage of Senators and Representatives has the faintest idea of what an unlawful enemy combatant is dispositive for purposes of jurisdiction for trial by military commission even means? I will bet a month of lunches, Wolf Blitzer, that you can't find an unindicted member of Congress who can define dispositive.

Prosecutors keep bailing out rather than bring these Muslims, swept off the streets, to trial, the actual trials keep failing to convict (or convince), the Cheney bunch keep looking more and more desperate--and the beat goes on.

Didn't a guy by the name of Milosovic go to trial in the Hague for this kind of stuff?

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Iraq War, check out Opinion-Columns.com

A THOUSAND A WEEK BECOME "BUILDING BLOCKS" FOR THE FBI

FBI Backs Off From Secret Order for Data After Lawsuit

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 8, 2008; D01

The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity of a patron of the Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block the action.

It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a "national security letter," or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order's existence.

NSLs are served on phone companies, Internet service providers and other electronic communications service providers, but because of the gag order provision, the public has little way to know about them. Their use soared after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, when Congress relaxed the standard for their issuance. FBI officials now issue about 50,000 such orders a year.

. . . FBI Assistant Director John Miller said the information requested in the Internet Archive NSL was "relevant to an ongoing, authorized national security investigation." NSLs, he said, "remain indispensable tools for national security investigations and permit the FBI to gather the basic building blocks for our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations."

--read entire article--

___________________________________________________________________________

Now you and I and our neighbor down the street are potential 'building blocks.' Who knew?

Every time these illegal searches are caught in a run-down between 2nd and 3rd and tagged out, the feds fold up and silently steal away. The problem becomes evident in the numbers. Intimidated, instead of angry, recipients of National Security Letters (the name is more worthy of the KGB than the FBI) fold at the rate of 350,000 to one.

Which is just a guess, because they won't tell us how many, other than the ambiguous and unverifiable "50,000 a year."

So, we rely on unheralded, gagged and hog-tied patriots like Brewster Kahle, co-founder and library archivist at The Internet Archive. Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the archive in the suit, which was joined by the ACLU.

(WaPo) Because they initially were not allowed to discuss the NSL over the phone, Kahle and his attorneys had to drive to one another's offices whenever they wanted to talk about the case.

"Not being able to talk about it with our board, with my wife, made it very difficult," said Kahle, who is also on EFF's board. "I can imagine a hurried staffer sticking a gag into a hurried bill. But gags don't seem to be necessary, and now, what we've discovered in practice, gagging librarians is horrendous."

Yeah, it is horrendous. Akin to burning books and taking away the right to face our accusers, but we fall silent because we are not accused--so far as we know. But we don't know, may never know. Set aside the accusations of paranoia. As we are constantly told by our government--"be afraid, be very afraid."

Scenario: You meet a guy over drinks or through a friend and he's cool, maybe has some business possibilities, so you exchange e-mail addresses. Maybe he (or she) is absolutely innocent, but they and not you are the subject of a National Security Letter. They and not you are suspect, or the innocent friend of a friend of a suspect, or merely linked by e-mail address to such a person.

For unknown reasons (to you at least), you may find yourself on a no-fly list, be turned down for a mortgage or credit card, miss that next promotion or even lose your job. If a security clearance is required for your excellent job with an excellent company at an excellent wage, you might lose it and never know why. Never get an explanation, because no one can talk about the circumstance. By law.

No, this is not Nazi Germany. We are scorned if we make the analogy.

You've been black-balled from the country club. How do you explain an inexplicable dismissal from a trusted position on an otherwise spotless resume? A final paycheck and an end to life as you once knew it because of a connection no one will explain, no one will acknowledge, that is protected by court order.

No, this is not Nazi Germany. We are scorned if we make the analogy.

And all this time you thought Michael Chertoff and his thugs over at The Department of Homeland Security were keeping you safe. Try to make that argument from an undisclosed location.

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Homeland Security, check out Opinion-Columns.com

ADDING ADDINGTON TO THE LIST OF NO-SHOWS

Panel Will Subpoena Assistant to Cheney

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 7, 2008; A02

A House Judiciary panel voted yesterday to subpoena vice presidential aide David S. Addington as part of a broad inquiry into the Bush administration's treatment of detainees.

. . . Lawyers for the vice president have sought to limit the subjects about which Addington can be questioned, and committee sources say the scope of his testimony remains under negotiation. A former legal counsel to the vice president, Addington was a key player in formulating antiterrorism strategies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He has not previously discussed his views or his role in public.

. . . "Congress has the prerogative and duty to demand the truth from the executive," Nadler said. A spokesman for Nadler said the subpoena to Addington could be issued as early as today. Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president's office, said staff members would review it and "respond accordingly."

--read entire article--

________________________________________________________________

In this feckless dance between those with no power and those with all the power, the operative phrase is that Cheney's office 'will review and respond accordingly.' Thus far, it's Congressional demand in the hundreds and Vice Presidential acquiescence zero.

That's too good a batting-average to go down swinging at a congressional sinker, low and outside the plate, before that January 20th end of the season. Someone actually thinks a House Judiciary Panel chaired by some unknown Representative by the name of Nadler is going to prevail where Senator Pat Leahy has failed--and failed--and failed, until he is near--very, very close--to the record of "most-failed reasonable looking Senator in a position of supposed strength."

There is a reason for all this nonsense in a Democratic-controlled Congress, but no one dares ask the pertinent question of Nancy Pelosi or Hapless Harry Reid. Bend close and I will whisper it . . .

. . . the Democrats, including (but not limited to) Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Henry Waxman, John Conyers, Hapless Harry, Chuck Schumer and above-mentioned Patrick Leahy, are all in on this long and ugly list of impeachable offenses, some of them treasonable. They are co-conspirators.

Harriet Meyers? forget it. Ashcroft, Rove, Rumsfeld, Taylor, Gonzales, Rice, and as long a list as you would care to append? Zero chance.

Zero. Henry Waxman is too busy with Roger Clemens to bother with Sibel Edmonds, perhaps the most important witness of the past six years and one who is eager to testify. She begs to testify. Henry is too terrified by Pelosi to call her. Her testimony, like the Bush-Cheney impeachment is off the table and for much the same reason.

It's very hard to play the game when the opposition holds all the trump-cards. The very sad likelihood of this unprecedented governmental bath in the same dirty water, is that no one will bring the guilty to trial, no one will be able to undo and remove us from the Iraq war. Perhaps more relevantly, no one will put a gun to the head of lobbyist control of our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

If those words sound somehow familiar, they are the last line of the Declaration of Independence, when men of honor pledged themselves, one to the other.

But they were founders and now we have only finders; finders of blame, finders of excuse, finders of campaign funding, finders of jobs after so-called service, in the very bowels of the beast.

The disgrace of Pelosi, Hapless Harry and the rest will not be mitigated one single whit by elections this November. We'll get a momentary surge of feel-good dopamines--the rush that s no more lasting than a cigarette or Hillary's knock-back of a shot and a beer.

The rest is business as usual.

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Washington at Work, check out Opinion-Columns.com

"Congress has the prerogative and duty to demand the truth from the executive,"

THE THEORY OF DOCKWORKER COURAGE IN A CRISIS

May 2, 2008

Dockworkers Protest Iraq War

By JOHN HOLUSHA

Thousands of dockworkers at West Coast ports stayed off the job on Thursday in what their union said was a call for an end to the war in Iraq.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union said more than 25,000 members in 29 ports stayed off the job. The action came despite an order issued Wednesday by an arbitrator directing the union to tell its members to report for work as usual in response to a request from employers.

“Longshore workers are standing down on the job and standing up for America,” Bob McEllrath, the union’s president, said in a statement. “We’re supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it’s time to end the war in Iraq.”

--read entire article--

_________________________________________________________________

Yeah, I know, that's old news now, a full three days after the work stoppage actually occurred and two full days after America lost interest. But I have a suggestion.

If those same 25,000 glorious dock workers could be enticed to take two consecutive weekends off--at their own expense--they might actually affect an end to the war in Iraq. Here's the plan;

A couple weekends from now, all 29,000 show up at Nancy Pelosi's door in San Francisco and tell the jittery and ineffective Nancy We’re supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it’s time to end the war in Iraq.”

The idea is that they show up on Saturday, a day when the feckless leader of the feckless Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is likely to be in her home town squeezing additional bucks out of whatever supporters she has left. Trust me, the national press will notice.

Just in case they don't, after a little brie and white wine, those heavily muscled crane and fork-lift operators can bunk with some local ILWU members for the night and show up again Sunday. "Time for talk is over, Nancy. Too many kids are dying and they're not your kids, not Cheney's kids, not George's or Donald's kids and we're sick to death of death. End it, Nancy. Now!"

The following weekend is tougher, because Harry Reid's office is a little further from the waterfronts of California. But after San Fran, there'll probably be a lot of people in the Reno area to put you up. Reno's the target office, because it's a little easier to keep your focus than Las Vegas. But it's your choice. Party and gamble if you will.

Reno on Saturday. Reno again on Sunday.

After all, politics in America is becoming more and more of a gamble and, at least in Iraq, it seems the dice are loaded. Harry, all by himself, could put a Senatorial stop on Iraq war funding.

All by himself.

You women and men of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are, so far, the only viable and willing force to put yourselves between Washington and the disaster they have contrived in Iraq. No other group dares to put themselves in harm's way.

You people are the hope of the nation. Possibly, just possibly, you might change the temperature of the fire, that fire we keep threatening and failing to hold administration feet to. Pelosi, Reid, Waxman, Hoyer, Rangel and Conyers won't do it

You people can do it. The only question is, will you or is a two-day sound bite enough?

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Civil Rights, check out Opinion-Columns.com

AT THE FED, DEBT MAGICALLY BECOMES EQUITY

May 2, 2008

Fed Takes Steps to Add Liquidity

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve announced new steps on Friday to help ease tight global credit markets by increasing the size of its cash auctions to banks and allowing financial institutions to put up credit card debt, student loans and car loans as collateral for Fed loans.

The Fed also acted in coordination with central banks in Europe to make it easier for European banks to obtain dollars in currency swaps.

In a terse statement Friday morning, announced just before the government reported that 20,000 jobs were lost in April, the Fed said that it was acting to counter “persistent liquidity pressures” in credit markets in Europe and the United States.

--read entire article--

__________________________________________________________________

The analogy is as follows: You have been denied credit at your bank (in this case the Federal Reserve) because you

• lied about how much equity you had in your house,
  
• lied about the value of the house,
  
• lied about your income and
  
• had an independent appraiser lie (your local bond-rating company) about how good that collateral actually was.

Your bank (the Fed), instead of calling the police and having you jailed for fraud, merely looks wistfully disappointed and asks what else you might offer to back the loan. You squirm uncomfortably in your chair.

"I'm tapped out, guys. My credit cards are all maxed, my kids college loans behind in payments and the same with my car loan. Essentially, I'm busted."

"Well now." Your banker breaks out in a broad grin. "How much do you owe?"

"Fifty grand on six credit cards, another fifty on my two kids college loans and twenty-five on the Mercedes, but it needs a muffler. Probably $125,000, but I lost my job last month and the latest wife is pregnant again."

"No problem. We'll just consider all that debt to be equity. By bank rules, you only need to have 10% liquidity, so we can pimp you a million and a quarter."

"Wow, thanks guys. Now I can get approved for more credit cards, a couple extra houses, dump the old Mercedes and put a down-payment on that plane I always wanted."

Not a fair analogy, you say. My argument is that the next big shoe to drop, failure-wise, is credit card delinquencies. Add that to abandoned student-loans (about to be guaranteed by the Fed) and auto loan defaults, as stressed workers find their income dropping. The Fed is already guaranteeing mortgage portfolios in limited (but expanding) circumstances.

So we are exposed to the embarrassment of watching Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve expand its willingness to accept collateral it is already guaranteeing. This is collateral that has already been offered.

In any business environment, hiding the fact that collateral has already been pledged against a debt is fraud. If that business fraud crosses state lines in interstate commerce, the fraud is a federal offense and an indictable offense under RICO laws.

For the acronym impaired, RICO stands for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Thus, what I had long suspected appears to be true.

Our federal government has finally been self-defined as racketeer influenced and corrupt. Not by unsubstantiated opinion, not by scurrilous attack, not by offensive partisan accusation, but finally by its own illegal reach.

Do you suppose there is the slightest possibility of inquiry by mainstream media?

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Washington at Work, check out Opinion-Columns.com

WARREN--SAY IT ISN'T SO

May 2, 2008

Berkshire Profit Sinks 64 Pct on Derivatives Loss

By REUTERS

Filed at 5:32 p.m. ET

OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc said on Friday that first- quarter profit tumbled 64 percent, hurt by $1.6 billion of pre- tax losses tied to derivatives contracts.

Net income fell to $940 million, or $607 per Class A share, from $2.6 billion, or $1,682, a year earlier.

Operating profit fell 13 percent to $1.93 billion, or $1,247 per share, from $2.21 billion, or $1,434.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Andre Grenon)

____________________________________________________________

Warren Buffett, the King of go-it-aloners, snookered?

We are in deeper shit than anyone knew.

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Business and Economy, check out Opinion-Columns.com

PLAYING 'CHICKEN' WITH LABELING LAWS--TYSON LIES FOR A BUCK

Court Orders Tyson to Suspend Ads For Antibiotic-Free Chicken

By Annys Shin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008; D01

Poultry giant Tyson Foods has 14 days to dismantle a national multimillion dollar ad campaign centered on the claim that its chickens are raised without antibiotics, a federal appeals court in Richmond ruled yesterday.

Tyson, based in Springdale, Ark., will have to remove posters and brochures from 8,500 grocery stores nationwide.

"We're disappointed the motion for a stay has been denied and are evaluating our legal options," said Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods. "We continue to believe we have acted responsibly in the way we have labeled and marketed our products and intend to stand our ground."

. . . Sanderson and Perdue initially based their legal challenge on Tyson's practice of feeding chickens ionophores, an antibiotic used only in animals raised for food . . . Tyson officials acknowledged they also inject eggs several days before they hatch with antibiotics that are approved for use in humans.

. . . Hogberg said injecting eggs with antibiotics did not undermine the "raised without antibiotic" label because the term "raised" is understood to cover the period that begins with hatching.

--read entire article--

________________________________________________________________

Ah, the "Bill Clinton defense." Define "raised."

Crooks win again. Some guy on a street corner goes to the slammer for a dime bag sale and these corporate criminals merely have to undo what they have advertised. "Hey, I promise. No more dime bags. Okay?"

Aside from Tyson, a guy who would lie to you about his chicken, whenever this pharmaceutical company or that chemical plant gets caught killing people, they get off with a fine, without admitting liability. How can you use and continue to use and defend using antibiotics and, in the same semantic context, try to defend it by the way 'raised' is defined?

I didn't stick up the bank, I relieved it of the burden of currency. I didn't knock up the fourteen-year-old, I was merely careless with my fertilizer. Define 'burden' or 'careless' or 'crooked, lying industrial advertising.'

The first two might be controversial, but the latter is a slam-dunk for "Tyson Chicken, Better Eating through Dishonest Advertising."

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Health Care, check out Opinion-Columns.com

ECONOMY TANKS--DOW-JONES BREAKS 13,000

Even though the world has somehow lost untold trillions, each individual piece of bad news juices the stock markets yet another notch

(Business Week) Make sense of this one. On Apr. 30, General Motors (GM) reported a $3.25 billion loss...and investors saw a buying opportunity. By day's end, shares were up 9.4%, based in part on analysts' assertions that if you subtracted $2.9 billion in one-time charges, GM beat Wall Street estimates--read entire article--

(Fox Business News) Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said Thursday record crude prices helped its net income grow 17% in the first quarter, but the results came in below Wall Street forecasts . . . shares fell $2.32, or 2.5%, to $90.75 in premarket trading--read entire article--

(Forbes) Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.'s 'BBB+/A-2' counterparty credit rating remains on positive watch, after Countrywide reported an $893 million net loss for first-quarter 2008, its third consecutive quarterly loss--read entire article--

(Washington Post) The country is bracing for more bad news on the jobs front. In advance of Friday's employment snapshot from the Labor Department, economists were predicting that employers cut jobs yet again in April. That would mark the fourth straight month of job losses. The unemployment rate, now at 5.1 percent, is expected to edge up a notch--read entire article--
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Ordinarily, when a bubble the size of the Sub-Prime Mortgage fraud bursts, when jobs are disappearing faster than foreclosed homes, major investment banks have written down (another more comforting word than lost) $trillions--which is thousands of billions--one would expect the market to drop. Perhaps even dive. Certainly to tremble just a bit.

Nah. The Dow Jones just broke through 13,000 and life is just a bowl of cherries for investors.

The rest of us can't afford to drive to work and back. Prices at the grocery store are moving in the general direction of upward so fast that Starbucks coffee is beginning to look like a good deal. The foreclosure rate for conservative mortgages is outta sight.

There seems no end to our capacity to absorb loss;

• Trillions gone in Iraq
• More trillions to the wealthy (while we got $300)
• Trillions in abandoned, moved-out-of, looted homes
• Trillions just plain lost by L. Paul Bremer, the Pentagon, the banks, corporate America and the funnel-of-funny-money we call the United States Congress.

Anywhere but OZ, that would affect Wall Street and American attitudes. But no, we would rather debate Obama's supposed 'elitism' and Hillary's divinatory right to answer 3am phone calls.

I suspect that, no matter how shrouded in manipulation they have become under our current Secretary of the Treasury and Fed Chairman, the basic rules of economics have not yet been disproved. There are still two nails on the national wall--one for what we earn and one for what we owe.

A quick glance in that direction, by even the simplest conjecture, would convince a fair mind of the fact that far more things than chickens can come home to roost.

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Business and Economy, check out Opinion-Columns.com

IT'S COME TIME TO SAY IT--I DON'T GIVE A TINKER'S DAMN ABOUT "INVESTORS"

Now, a Commodities Conundrum

By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; D01

The global financial system these days is beginning to look like a giant Whac-a-Mole game -- when we think we've knocked down one speculative bubble, another one just like it pops up.

The latest is the commodities bubble -- everything from oil and natural gas to gold, copper, wheat and rice. . .

. . . The difference this time, however, is that even before it bursts, this bubble is causing economic discomfort for households and businesses around the world, and misery for hundreds of millions of hungry people who suddenly cannot afford a bowl of rice or scrap of meat. The Post's eye-opening series this week on the global food crisis has provided a grim reminder that the global economic ecosystem has become so interdependent that a drought in Australia, a tax credit in the United States, French farm subsidies and export controls in India can wind up forcing a desperate African farmer to eat his seed corn.

. . . But what turned a bull market into a bubble was the sudden arrival of large numbers of new investors and an array of new investment vehicles, many of them involving derivative instruments traded outside the confines of regulated markets. . . Many of these were the same hedge funds and hot-money investors who had gorged on sovereign debt of developing countries, tech and telecom stocks, subprime mortgages and commercial real estate and now needed a new thing to focus on. . .

To meet the needs of these investors, Wall Street and Chicago's commodities houses came up with all sorts of new vehicles, including exchange traded funds, index funds and structured investment vehicles -- the commodities equivalent of mortgage pools and asset-backed securities.

. . . Indeed, the only people who don't believe speculation is driving a commodities bubble are the big commodity traders and the commodities exchanges, which are profiting handsomely from the soaring prices and trading volumes, and the regulators at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, whose economists cannot seem to find statistical evidence that financial investors have had much of an impact on commodity prices.

--read entire article--

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No conundrum here at all--just another ravaging of market systems by the hedge fund industry, which serves no basic need except to make the super-wealthy super-wealthier at the expense of anyone who gets in the way.

Since the crash of '29, we've had lots of people 'getting in the way' of uncontrolled and unprincipled stock market activity. These include

• The Securities Act of 1933
• Securities Exchange Act of 1934
• Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935
• Trust Indenture Act of 1939
• Investment Company Act of 1940
• Investment Advisers Act of 1940
• Securities Investor Protection Act of 1970
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

For the 62 years since 1940 Congress has seen fit to enact only two regulatory laws, even though we are as far from 1940 investment-wise as we are computer-wise. We have child's building-block laws to control moon-landings.

Although (as is amply demonstrated by Pearlstein) the peak-wealth and peak-exposure to disaster are both concentrated in the relatively new (and entirely unregulated) hedge-fund industry, Congress has created not a single law to provide oversight.

Indeed, it's come time to say it. "I don't give a tinker's damn about investors."

I care very much about the health and welfare of the world financial system--and what these unregulated thieves have managed to do is lurch us from one financial bubble to the next, with hardly a pause for breath or prison terms. The dotcom bubble? The hurt was at a bearable level of pain. The housing bubble? The pain spread further down the food-chain to homeowners--the much heralded middle class, who found their values degraded by an anything-goes mortgage fraud.

That's twice in ten years, with devastating results.

Now--in this moment--the hedge-fund thieves, crooks and manipulators have contrived to invent another bubble before the last one has entirely burst. While Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson muck about in the filth of a fraud that has not yet been completely understood (or prosecuted), the billionaire class has invented a new one.

The true evil of this unregulated system is evidenced by the viciousness of this new and improved greed by the haves against the have-nots.

If you find that language distasteful, try the distaste Likbir Mahmoud feels in a mouthful of bitterness;

(Washington Post) NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania Even before he took a butcher knife to the she-goat's throat, Likbir Ould Mohamed Mahmoud knew it would only make things worse.

The goat was a living bounty in this parched city on the Sahara's edge, providing the sweet milk that filled his family's stomachs at breakfast time. But as soaring food prices worldwide have hit the poorest nations of Africa the hardest, he has been forced to join many of his neighbors in slaughtering or selling off one of their only sources of wealth -- their livestock.

By sacrificing the she-goat last month, the 39-year-old day laborer and goatherd traded the family's morning milk for dinner meat. It lasted a few days. With the family unable to afford skyrocketing prices for basic foods, he said, his two young children now cry in the morning from hunger.

Likbir doesn't make a hundred million a year, he makes a dollar and a half a day. Which would be fine, if the hundred-million dollar hedge-fund manager hadn't so screwed commodity prices that Likbir's purchasing power (if you can call a buck fifty a day power) is meaningless.

As an American, I'm tired of my country devastating the world of others. I'm sick to death of Congress and the U.N. dithering around while markets fail, Mauritanians sell off their milk-goat and listen to their children cry and Wal-Mart destroys Main Street.

Enough!!!

Before they became entirely investor-driven, commodity exchanges smoothed out the bumps and crises of food-shortages. For hundreds of years we had an occasionally flawed (but mostly useful) investment-based stock market that built industries that built things, things America and the world needed. Since our founding, we had a banking system that (along with its own occasional shortcomings) actually knew the people to whom it lent money and judged their reliability as creditors. A hand-shake actually meant something and was not digitally encrypted.

Hedge-funds do none of those useful things.

Since the Harvard Business School made profit-mongers of us all, your banker no longer knows who the hell you are, your mortgage has been rolled out, sliced, coated with tomato-paste, baked in a derivative oven and packaged off to who-knows-who like pizza. We bomb other nations for profit, destroy agricultural systems for the same, patent the seeds that farmers can no longer keep for replanting and arm ourselves to the teeth because more and more, we have it all.

Well, not exactly 'we' in the inclusive form, but certainly 'we' in the exclusive sense of 3% of Americans.

For my part, I'm tired as hell of absolutely every American institution being sold off to the highest bidder. There's a lot of controversy about Reverend Jeremiah Wright's so-called black theology. The controverts, who divide us like chickens in a farmyard, are the same Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, CNN, NYTimes investors--first in the profits of their divisiveness, second in the hedge-funding of those profits and third, in the wave they ride as the wealthy swell and the poor sink.

Jeremiah Wright hasn't half said it--and the wrecked whites of America are beginning to hear his rhetoric and finally get it--that a boarded up Main Street and a Wal-Mart outside town are not the cornucopia they promised to be.

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* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Taking My Country Personally, check out Opinion-Columns.com