Today's Stories

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

March 2, 2009

A Banana Republic by 2012?

Obama's Budget

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

President Obama has presented the most irresponsible budget in US history.  His fiscal year 2010 budget projects federal spending of $3.5 trillion and a federal deficit of $1.75 trillion. In other words, 50 percent of the government’s budget consists of red ink.

And Americans are angry that sub-prime borrowers took mortgages they couldn’t afford.

The bald fact is that the US government is going to have to borrow
-- or print -- half of the money it intends to spend in Obama’s first budget. This fact has fallen through the cracks as New York Times headlines proclaim “A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas.”  It certainly does sweep away Reagan ideas.  No Reagan budget ever presumed that the federal government could borrow half of its annual expenditures. Indeed, Obama’s budget deficit for 2010 alone exceeds the totality of “Reagan Deficits” for Reagan’s two terms of office.

As presidential budgets are marketing devices rather than financial statements, they are imbued with optimistic assumptions.  Obama’s budget is based on optimistic assumptions about the extent of decline in GDP.  A more realistic projection of GDP decline would reveal that Obama’s budget is the first since World War II in which more than half of the government’s expenditures must be financed by red ink. I suspect that the red ink component of the FY 2010 budget will surpass World War II budgets.

To whom can the US government turn for $1.75 trillion for FY 2010, on top of $1.2 trillion for FY 2009?  

Not to taxpayers. Obama’s net tax increase comes to $170 billion over 10 years, or $17 billion a year, a drop in the bucket.  A supply-side economist could have told him that not even these paltry revenues will be realized.

Not to private savers. Americans are over their heads in debts.

Not to foreigners. Thanks to Clinton/Bush financial deregulation and Wall Street and bankster greed, the rest of the world is in financial turmoil and hasn’t $1.75 trillion in savings to lend.  Possibly, the stock market will collapse further, and whatever remaining wealth Americans have will flow into “safe” US Treasuries.  

The only other alternative is the printing press. Printing press finance would destroy the dollar as reserve currency and ignite high inflation. The US would be unable to pay for its imports, and Americans whose incomes do not rise with the rate of inflation would be plowed under.

This prospect is not a “war on terror” scare tactic like “anthrax,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “al Qaeda connections,” and “Iranian nukes.”  

The economic catastrophe that the US faces is very real.  But there is no awareness of this reality in Obama’s budget.  The crux of Obamanomics is the assumption that the economy can run forever on consumer loans, if we can just get the banks to lend, and the federal government can run forever on loans from China, Japan,and Saudi Arabia. 

Obama is requesting $130 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during 2010 plus a $75 billion supplemental  request for the wars during 2009. This $205 billion is on top of $534 billion for the Pentagon in 2010, for total military spending of $739 billion.  

The Chinese government’s budget shows China’s military spending at $59 billion in 2008.  (The Pentagon claims Chinese military spending is between $97 billion and $139 billion.)  Russia’s military spending in 2009 is projected to be about $50 billion.  

In the midst of the greatest economic crisis in US history when trillions of dollars are being added to US national debt, Obama’s budget spends more on two pointless wars  than the total military spending of China and Russia combined.  Obama’s wars serve only the profits of the military/security complex and the promotion rate of military officers. The longer the wars continue, the larger the number of officers who can retire at higher ranks, thus further swelling future annual deficits and the national debt.

Moreover, as is becoming apparent, the Bush/Obama war in Afghanistan cannot be fought without fighting a war in Pakistan.  

As if this isn’t enough war, Obama parrots Dick Cheney’s charge, totally unsupported by any evidence, that Iran is making nuclear weapons.  The chances are high that the new White House occupant will have us at war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.  As Obama’s wars expand, the $205 billion for war in Iraq and Afghanistan will become $400 billion annually and then $600  billion annually.  

Obama’s “troop withdrawal” from Iraq has proved to be just another con job.  Obama has announced that the withdrawal doesn’t include the 50,000 US soldiers who will remain in Iraq indefinitely--like the US troops that have been kept in Japan and Germany for 64 years and in Korea since the early 1950s.   

Meanwhile Medicare is on the ropes. The latest Medicare trustees report says that Medicare’s funds for hospital payments will be exhausted in 10 years.  To make ends meet, Obama proposes cutting payments to Medicare providers. 

Obama’s plan is to make doctors and patients pay for Medicare. One way to get National Health is to make it uneconomic for private health care to service Medicare patients. Already many doctors will not accept Medicare patients because of the low payments, endless paperwork, and risk of prosecution for “over-billing.”  Looking at one recent Medicare patient medical bill, Medicare and supplemental insurance paid 29 percent of the billed amount, requiring the doctor to eat 58.5 percent of his charges and the patient to pay 12.5 percent.  The doctor was paid  $93.16 on a $320.89 bill.  And Obama wants to reduce payments to providers?

What is Obama thinking? A country that can’t afford Medicare can’t afford National Health. Medicare provides only for the elderly, and it provides very little.  A person pays the Medicare tax as long as he earns and on the totality of earnings.  For the rich the Medicare tax can exceed the cost of a gold-plated private insurance policy.  

Basic Medicare leaves a person unprotected.  To provide better coverage, it is necessary to enroll in Medicare Part B for which the premium is $308.30 per month or $3,699.60 per year.  On top of this, a person needs a privately supplied supplemental policy to complete Medicare coverage.  AARP’s policy, which, after deductibles are met, covers half of drug costs, cost the “Medicare protected” elderly  $ 273.50 per month or $3,282 per year.  The drug prescription plan passed by Congress costs the individual yet more.

The two supplements to Medicare cost the Medicare patient $6,981.60 per year. In addition, if the Medicare patient has much retirement income besides Social Security, he pays income tax on 85 per cent  of the $3,699.60 Medicare Part B premium as it is part of taxable Social Security, which for someone in the 25 per cent bracket is another $925 dollars.

In the late 1970s, Democratic Senator Russell Long, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told me that as Social Security was collected as a tax on wages and salaries, the US government had promised never to tax the benefits.  So much for any commitment that the US government makes to the American people.

A top Social Security income, net of Medicare Part B premium, is $23,220 per year. Deduct the AARP policy, and the elderly who have paid in maximum Social Security taxes, get $20,000 per year.  Of course, few Social Security retirees receive the maximum payment.  AARP’s Public Policy Institute reports that in 2006 the average annual Social Security benefit for a retired worker was $12,372.  Such a worker would have little left after paying the Medicare Part B premium and an additional premium for a supplement.

Offshoring and “free trade” have destroyed employer-provided health coverage for millions of employees.  Private health care coverage can cost as much as one-third and even one-half of a person’s earned income, and some people are not insurable.  National Health seems to be in the cards --only there is no money for it.  All the money is being spent in pointless wars and on bailouts of financial fraud.  The Obama budget puts bankster bailouts and pointless wars ahead of the health of the American people.

National Health advocates emphasize that a single-payer system is less expensive because it eliminates layers of profits.  It is also less expensive for a less promising reason.  Unless there is a parallel private health care system, National Health systems limit health spending to what is provided in the government budget.  Over time, health care has to compete with everything else in the budget. Every part of the budget has its partisans and special interests.  It is fantasy to assume that National Health will always be well funded.  Just look at the state of the National Health Service in the UK.

Obama’s plan to tax the rich is another con job.  Obama’s budget defines the rich as a person with a $250,000 before tax income.  But the  rich are the banksters, such as Hank Paulson with his $160 million annual bonus, and heads of hedge funds with their $1,000 million annual incomes.  Obama’s “tax the rich” scheme will devastate the upper middle class and leave the super rich undamaged.

Bush’s FY 2008 budget deficit was $450 billion.  The FY 2009 deficit is projected at $1.2 trillion. The budget deficit in Obama’s first budget is $1.75 trillion, a fourfold increase in two years.  

Obama’s projected budget deficits are an understatement. For example, Obama’s budget assumes a less steep economic decline than the economy is experiencing, and it projects that war costs will drop to $50 billion annually beginning in 2011--this despite Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan and recent congressional testimony of Lt. General David Barno, former head of US forces in Afghanistan, who said the war in Afghanistan could last until 2025.  

The “war on terror” will never end, because the moronic US government has defined everyone who resists US hegemony as a “terrorist.”  The great danger to American civil liberty is that the US government regards as terrorists American citizens who realize that the neoconservative dream of American hegemony is a fantasy.  As the Obama regime has not repealed the Bush regime rule -- “you are with us or against us” -- Americans who oppose hegemonic war are lumped into the “against us” category.

There seems little chance that civil liberties will be restored. Obama and his “liberal” Justice (sic) Department have sided with Bush/Cheney on every important civil liberties issue.  Yet, the ACLU sees “hope” in Obama’s rhetoric!

On February 21 Yahoo News reported: “President Barack Obama's administration has sided with predecessor George W. Bush on the rights of detainees at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, saying they cannot challenge their detention in US courts. In a two-sentence court filing Friday, the US Justice Department said "the government adheres to its previously articulated position" of denying habeas corpus rights to Bagram detainees, backing a similar decision by the Bush administration.”

“Earlier this month,” Yahoo News reports, “the Obama administration backed another Bush anti-terror policy when it urged a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Boeing Company of helping fly suspects to secret CIA detention centers overseas. The Justice Department said the case should be thrown out to protect state secrets.”

Do you remember the illegal spying?  The US telecom industry succumbed to Bush regime pressure and broke the law together with President Bush.  The illegal act made the US telecom industry subject to lawsuits, but the Bush regime placed its co-conspirators above the law.  

Now Obama has sided with the Bush regime.  On February 26,therawstory.com reported: “The Obama Justice Department continues to stand behind a Bush era law meant to prevent lawsuits against telecommunications companies accused of illegally sharing private customer information with intelligence agencies. In a brief filed late Wednesday obtained by Raw Story, the Department of Justice provided its views to Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, after the San Francisco federal judge questioned the constitutionality of the wide-sweeping law and whether it gives the U.S. Attorney General too much power in deciding whether a company is immune from lawsuits after it has shared information with federal agents.”

On February 26 antiwar.comreported that the “new CIA director (Leon Panetta) declares nothing has changed, nothing will change.”  Panetta declared that the US policy of conducting war on Pakistan’s sovereign territory “would continue.”  The attacks, Panetta claimed,  “have been successful.”  For the CIA, claims of success equal legality.  Did the Bush regime ever express greater arrogance and hubris?

With Rahm Israel Emanuel, an Israeli dual citizen, in charge of the White House and Obama’s schedule, Obama will have an even less independent foreign policy in the Middle East than Bush.  Somehow someone among the Obamacons managed to put forward an appointment that could challenge the Israel Lobby’s stranglehold.  Charles Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, former top Pentagon official, and president of the Middle East Policy Council, was chosen by Admiral Denis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, to head the National Intelligence Council.  

The neocons went berserk.  Steve Rosen, formerly of AIPAC, currently indicted as an Israeli spy,  Gabriel Schoenfeld, who wants the New York Times indicted for allegedly violating the Espionage Act for reporting the Bush regime’s illegal spying, Daniel Pipes, who sees Muslim terrorists under every bed, Michael Rubin of the warmonger American Enterprise Institute, and Frank Gaffney, possibly the goofiest person in America,  damned Freeman’s appointment as “deeply troubling,” because Freeman has an open mind on the Middle East situation.  

In other words, if you are not on Israel’s side, you are disqualified.

There is no more certain indication of continuing war in the Middle East on Israel’s behalf than for Freeman’s appointment to be blocked.
  
Pay close attention to this one. If Obama succumbs to the Israel Lobby and nixes Blair’s appointment of Freeman,  the US will have to finance interminable wars on top of trillion dollar bailouts and massive unemployment.  

The US might not even make it to 2012 before it is a banana republic.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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