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Election Over: 5 Hard Realities Progressive Have to Face About

Obama

By Jeff Faux

Buy amoxicillin without prescription, Democrats must start mobilizing their own agenda now. And the first step is to face the truth about Obama's record.

November 18, 2012  |

Terrorized by the prospect of a complete takeover of the U.S. Buy cheap amoxicillin internet, government by right-wing reactionaries—progressive Democrats swallowed their unhappiness with Barack Obama throughout the campaign. They gamely defended his policies on the economy, health care, budget priorities and other issues on which they felt betrayed in his first term.

We’ve now dodged the bullet of a Mitt Romney White House, so let’s get back to reality, buy amoxicillin without prescription. Despite his campaign-trail populism, amoxicillin drug, the president will continue the politics of accommodation to conservatives. Two of the three priorities he has set out for his next term are at the top of the GOP agenda: a “grand bargain” to cut government spending over the next 10 years and corporate tax reform that would cut rates—don’t hold your breath—and close loopholes. The third priority, Order discount amoxicillin online, rationalizing immigration law, is one of the few progressive ideas that also has the support of the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

Moreover, his next term’s policy advisers will be the same—or come from the same Washington/Wall Street executive personnel pool—as his last term’s advisers. Buy amoxicillin without prescription, Indeed, from the White House perspective, the election vindicated their first-term performance.

The core organizations of the Democratic base have vowed that after the election they will hold Obama’s “feet to the fire” with a Tea Party-style mobilization from the left—forcing votes on progressive proposals, amoxicillin buy drug, organizing mass rallies and grooming their own candidates for the next congressional elections. They’ve sworn these oaths before, but after each election, Amoxicillin tablets, they persuade themselves to give the leadership another chance. Soon the next election is upon them, and they line up for their marching orders.

If this time is to be different, progressive Democrats must start mobilizing their own agenda now, find no rx amoxicillin. And the first step is to face the truth about the record of the president we have just re-elected, buy amoxicillin without prescription. Here’s an initial reality check:

1. The economy still sucks

Three years into the recovery, we have an official unemployment rate of just under 8 percent and an underemployment rate of almost 15 percent. Generic amoxicillin online, Incomes are declining and at least 12 million homeowners have mortgages that exceed the value of their houses. Consumers aren’t spending and therefore business is not investing. Buy amoxicillin without prescription, And we are still running a huge trade deficit with a sluggish global economy. This leaves government as the only possible source of substantial new spending to create jobs.

Yet there is no jobs program. President Obama says his top priority is a deal with House Republicans to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years, cheap amoxicillin no rx. His “liberal” position starts with a ratio of spending cuts to tax increases of 2.5-to-1. The only real dispute between the president and Republicans is whether the rich will have to give back the tax breaks George W, buy amoxicillin without prescription. Bush gave them. So when the eventual deal is struck, Purchase amoxicillin online, the federal government will be taking more out of the economy over the next decade than it is putting in. This virtually guarantees that—even if we escape another recession or financial meltdown—we will not reach anywhere near full employment in the next four years.

2. The low-wage future

Buy amoxicillin without prescription, With no new substantial source of stimulus, our trajectory is toward a further erosion of living standards for the majority of Americans. Off-shoring and automation will continue to shed jobs with no offsetting increase in the demand for labor. Budget cuts—including cuts to Medicare and Medicaid—will widen the holes in the social safety net and further limit investments in education, cheap amoxicillin overnight delivery, infrastructure and technology upon which any chance at future prosperity depends. And the White House’s indifference to the dramatic erosion of organized labor (e.g., its reneging on promises to reduce the barriers to organizing) will continue to undercut the bargaining power of all workers—union and non-union alike. Best price for amoxicillin, The president’s Council of Economic Advisers will not admit it, but their default strategy for growth is to let American wages drop far enough to undercut foreign competition. That is the only possible policy rationale for Obama’s enthusiasm for the Trans Pacific Partnership, a further deregulation of trade that will strip away the last protections for American workers against a brutal global marketplace of dog-eat-dog, buy amoxicillin without prescription.

3. Obamacare: Health care dead-end

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was a victory for corporate America. In exchange for giving up their rules against covering pre-existing conditions and agreeing to raise the age limit in which children could be covered under their parents’ policy, amoxicillin cheapest price, the health insurance corporations got the federal government to require every citizen to buy their product and commit to subsidizing those that can’t afford the price. The pharmaceutical industry received even stronger government protection of their price-gouging monopolies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates Buy amoxicillin without prescription, that there will still be 30 million uninsured Americans by the end of the decade. Tens of millions more will be under-insured as the companies are free to raise their premiums and deductibles. Cost of amoxicillin, Although it abandoned the public option, the White House whispers to Democrats that Obamacare will pave the way for single-payer. Fat chance. The bill was inspired by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and largely drafted by a former insurance company executive precisely to stop single-payer from ever happening. Meanwhile, the corporate dominated health care system will continue to be a huge drag on our global competitiveness and long-term fiscal health, buy amoxicillin without prescription.

4, order cheap amoxicillin. The Dodd-Frank fig leaf

The Wall Street Reform Act required more transparency in the securities markets and marginally expanded the regulatory bureaucracy. But it did little to prevent a future return to the reckless speculation that exploded the economy four years ago. The largest companies now have a bigger share of the financial markets than they had in 2008 and their “too-big-to-fail safety net” is even more explicit. Buy amoxicillin without prescription, Perhaps most important, nothing has been done to lengthen the horizons of U.S. Real amoxicillin without prescription, investors from short-term, get-rich-quick financial speculation to the long-term investment in producing things and high-value services in America.

5. Big Money and the Democrats

The last four years have proven conclusively that corporations—especially from Wall Street—now dominate the most important economic policy decisions of the Democratic Party. With the Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, amoxicillin, the transformation from democracy to plutocracy is virtually complete. The corruption of our governing class goes beyond just campaign contributions, buy amoxicillin without prescription. It can include the hint of a future job or lobbyist contract when you leave office, a hedge fund internship for your daughter, Sale amoxicillin, a stock market tip. But all this depends on your remaining in power, so nothing matches the importance of raising enough money to get yourself reelected.

Democratic leaders’ primary response to Citizens United has been a tepid proposal to require more transparency in campaign contributions. Even that, amoxicillin bangkok, of course, could not succeed against Republican, and some Democratic, Amoxicillin online cheap, opposition. Buy amoxicillin without prescription, But even areas where the president could act alone—as with an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose political contributions or even filling vacant seats on the Federal Election Commission—Obama took a pass. In response to an interviewer’s question in August, he said that “in the longer term” we may need a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United. He is right. But the “longer term” certainly means sometime after he leaves office, order amoxicillin from us.

According to the White House, discontent on the left with these and other issues (e.g., climate change, civil liberties, military spending) represents little more than the carping of left-wing purists who don’t understand the need for compromise. But in fact, it reflects the harsh reality that the president’s intentions do not nearly reach to the level of the country’s serious problems, buy amoxicillin without prescription. So the stakes for the nation are enormous. Without a radical shift away from the policies of the last four years, living standards of most people in the United States will continue to drop, with potentially ugly social and political consequences.

The stakes for Democrats are also high. Obama’s victory has reinforced the widespread notion among pundits that the projected future increase in the non-white voting population and the party’s advantage with women already makes it the favorite for 2016 and beyond. But it is precisely these constituencies that economic stagnation has hit the hardest. Whatever the demographic changes, if the Democratic Party produces another four years like the last four, it can kiss goodbye to the next election and probably several after that.

Jeff Faux is the founder and former president of the Economic Policy Institute and the author of the new book,  The Servant Economy: Where America's Elite is Sending the Middle Class. 

 .

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Toward Barbarism

United States Imperialism Unleashed

 

Buy female pink viagra without prescription, by BEN SCHREINER

With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up.  And once again, US imperialism stands poised to swing open the gates of Hell.

The choice presently confronting humanity, then, is one between imperialism on the one hand, and the struggle against imperialism on the other. Female pink viagra prescription, Global Capitalism Imperiled

According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report released last week, the “risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.”  The report projects the world economy to expand just 3.3 percent this year and 3.6 percent in 2013—both projections down from the IMF’s July forecast.   As Joseph Davis, chief economist at the Vanguard Group, cautioned to the Wall Street Journal, “The odds of a global recession are not fully appreciated.”

Indeed, for as the Financial Times reports, female pink viagra from canada, the Tracking Indices for the Global Economic Recovery, the Brookings Institution-Financial Times index of the world economy, finds severe problems “in both advanced and emerging markets.”

“The global economic recovery,” Brookings’ senior fellow and index creator Eswar Prasad warned, Cheapest female pink viagra prices, “is on the ropes.”

And though in its latest report the IMF continued to peddle the harsh elixir of austerity for the depressed economies of the euro zone periphery, the Fund also came to tacitly acknowledge the limits of austerity.

“The IMF now says global efforts to slash deficits and debt may have hurt growth because they occurred too quickly and too widely,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

But with the limits of austerity as a means of resolving the present crisis apparent, the last remaining card for the capitalist elite to play in their attempt to regenerate global capitalism appears to be in unleashing the forces of “creative destruction” wrought by military aggression.  As Henryk Grossman warned in his Law of Accumulation, female pink viagra uk, “The destructions and devaluations of war are a means of warding off the immanent collapse [of capitalism], of creating a breathing space for the accumulation of capital.”

It is thus out of the need to renew the impetus for capital accumulation that the iron fist of US imperialism gains free rein once more across the full spectrum of what American neo-conservatives deem the “arc of instability.”

US Imperialism on the March

According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is readying military strikes in Libya in retaliation for the September attack on the US compound in Benghazi.  As the paper reports, “The top-secret Joint Special Operations Command is compiling so-called target packages of detailed information about the suspects.”

“Potential military options could include drone strikes, Female pink viagra information, Special Operations raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden and joint missions with Libyan authorities.”

The Times goes on to report that the Pentagon is also rushing to train and equip a 500 member Libyan commando force to be used to combat “Islamic extremists” within the country.

At the same time, the Pentagon has reportedly dispatched a task force of 150 military “planners” and “specialists” (i.e., special operations troops) to a Jordanian military base along the Jordan-Syria border.  Speaking at a NATO conference in Brussels last week, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claimed that the task force was sent to help Jordan “monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria.”

The specter of chemical weapons has been increasingly used as a pretext by the Atlantic powers to threaten military intervention into Syria.  As President Obama declared in August, the use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces would be a “red line,” which would force him to change his “calculus” on intervention, buy female pink viagra without prescription.

“Once again, Western powers are digging deep for excuses to intervene militarily in another conflict-torn Middle East country,” an editorial in the state-run Xinhua news agency of China read in response to Obama’s threat.

Sure enough, as the New York Times reported, female pink viagra cheap price, discussions have already taken place over using the Jordanian-stationed US task force to help establish a buffer zone within Syrian territory.

(In addition to the deployment of troops along the Jordan-Syria border,  CIA operatives are presently active along the Syria-Turkey border, facilitating the flow of arms to rebel forces.  Meanwhile, Female pink viagra generic, a recent report in the Los Angeles Times noted that the US military is currently using aerial surveillance drones to monitor Syrian chemical weapon stockpiles.)

Of course, the stepped up targeting of Syria cannot be decoupled from the joint Israel-US campaign against Iran.  After all, as hawks Michael Doran and Max Boot argue in a New York Times op-ed, the first reason American intervention in Syria is now merited is because it “would diminish Iran’s influence in the Arab world.”

The road to Tehran, we see, may very well lead through Damascus; although, where to order female pink viagra, the urge to fly non-stop to Tehran may just prove too strong to resist.

Marching Toward Tehran

With Iran clearly in mind, the US and Israel are set to begin a massive three-week joint missile and air defense exercise later this month.  The exercise, Business Week reports, Online pharmacy female pink viagra, will include 3,500 US personnel and 1,000 members of the Israel Defense Forces, making it the largest joint military exercise held between the two nations.  The planned war game also occurs amid mounting speculation of a looming strike against Iran. Buy female pink viagra without prescription, According to a report in Foreign Policy by David Rothkopf, the US and Israel are actively planning a joint “surgical strike targeting Iranian enrichment facilities.”  Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and Editor-at-Large of Foreign Policy, cites his source as stating that “the strike might take only ‘a couple of hours’ in the best case and only would involve a ‘day or two’ overall.”

The strike, Rothkopf quotes an “advocate” of an attack as stating, would have a “transformative outcome: saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.”  This, of course, being the essence of the proverbial neo-con wet dream.

Remarkably, Rothkopf even goes as far as to triumph the idea of a “surgical strike” as a potential October Surprise Obama could use to propel himself back to the White House, female pink viagra medicine.

It appears now, however, that Rothkopf’s “report” may have been little more than a plant by the Israeli embassy in Washington.  A move, perhaps, Buy no rx female pink viagra, intended to further coerce Obama into adopting a more hawkish stance on Iran, while simultaneously serving to downplay the risks of an attack.

Of course, peddling the notion of a so-called “surgical strike” on Iran is nothing particularly new.  In March, Jeffrey Goldberg reported for Bloomberg that Israeli talk of striking Iran had assumed a rather optimistic tenor.

“One conclusion key [Israeli] officials have reached, female pink viagra professional,” Goldberg wrote after a trip to Israel, “is that a strike on six or eight Iranian facilities will not lead, as is generally assumed, to all-out war.”

(One cannot help wonder if the Rothkopf and Goldberg share the same source.)

Such assessments, Female pink viagra canada, though, are rather dubious, given that they directly contradict numerous assessments determining that any strike against Iran would quickly spiral into a regional conflict.  A report earlier this year in the New York Times, for instance, noted a war game simulation run by the Pentagon forecast that an Israeli strike “would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead.”

Likewise, cheap female pink viagra pharmacy, a September war game organized by Kenneth Pollack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, resulted in a dangerous escalation from both sides.  As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported, “The game showed how easy it was for each side to misread the other’s signals.”

“Misjudgment was the essence of this game,” Ignatius continued.  “Each side thought it was choosing limited options, but their moves were interpreted as crossing red lines, buy female pink viagra without prescription. Attacks proved more deadly than expected; signals were not understood; attempts to open channels of communication were ignored; the desire to look tough compelled actions that produced results neither side wanted.”

“War, Female pink viagra rx, ” as Clausewitz wrote, “is the province of danger.”

Toward Barbarism

US imperial dreams, however, are hardly confined to setting the Middle East ablaze.  Imperial ambitions—rooted in the capitalist logic of endless expansion—are inherently limitless.  Thus, we see the US today readying to propel the greater Middle East into the abyss, while simultaneously “pivoting” to the Asia-Pacific in order to “contain” a rising China, female pink viagra sales.

US imperialism, however, is destined for defeat (and sooner rather than later).  The US, after all, Buy female pink viagra online without prescription, can only use its immense military power to keep potential competitors in check for so long.  The universal law of change cannot be held at bay by the barrel of a gun in perpetuity.  As Lenin asked and answered in his pamphlet Imperialism: “Is it ‘conceivable’ that in ten or twenty years’ time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained unchanged. Absolutely inconceivable.”

But imperial powers are always dangerously deluded by the strength of their power—impervious to its ultimate limits.  As a George W. Bush administration official once remarked to the journalist Ron Suskind: “’We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, cheap female pink viagra tablet, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. Female pink viagra free sample, We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

(One would be mistaken to believe that such hubris is not as present in the Obama White House as it was in the Bush administration.)

Such arrogance from the power elite—indicative of imperial rot—is but a byproduct of the imperialist imperative of endless expansion and conquest.  And it is this very imperative that today compels US imperialism towards igniting a military conflagration in the Middle East threatening to ensnare the global powers. “A great cemetery,” as Luxemburg warned nearly a century ago, awaits such a triumph of barbarism, order generic female pink viagra.

The only means with which to elude such a miserable fate is found in the revolutionary power of working people to resist.  As Luxemburg argued, escape from barbarism is only possible once the working class comes to seize “its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.”

Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin.  He may be reached at bnschreiner@gmail.com or via his website.

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More Than 46 Million Americans Still in Poverty

Salvatore Babones

Buy tetracycline without prescription, 15 percent of the US population lives in poverty. The poverty rate for children remains more than 20 percent for the third year in a row. Buy tetracycline on internet, As state anti-poverty programs around the country confront severe budget cuts, today's report indicates income inequality has reached an all-time high.

According to Census Bureau figures released today, buy cheapest tetracycline, 15 percent of the US population lives in poverty. Tetracycline tablet, In 2011, more than 46 million Americans lived below a poverty line that was set more than four decades ago, in 1969, cheap tetracycline overnight delivery.

The poverty rate for children remains more than 20 percent for the third year in a row, buy tetracycline without prescription. More than one-third of black children and Hispanic children live in poverty. Tetracycline online pharmacy, In the words of Rep. Mike Honda (D-California), co-chair of the Congressional Out-of-Poverty Caucus, discount tetracycline no rx, these figures are "a stark reminder that, Cheap price tetracycline, although we are the wealthiest nation the world has ever known, far too many children are going to bed hungry."

In fact, the USDA reports that more than 16 million American children are "food insecure."

Today's census report also contained bad news on incomes, tetracycline prescription.

Median household income (adjusted for inflation) was down an additional 1.5 percent from the already-low levels of 2010. Buy tetracycline without prescription, Median income is now 8.9 percent lower than it was in 1999. Tetracycline for sale, Income inequality, as measured by the Gini index - the degree of income inequality, with 0 representing total equality and 100 representing total inequality - reached a new record high of 47.7 percent, buying generic tetracycline. A Gini index of 50 would be equivalent to half of the population receiving all of the country's income, Cheap tetracycline, while the other half got nothing.

All this bad news comes against a backdrop of extraordinarily low employment rates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, buy tetracycline from india, just over 58 percent of the adult population has any kind of job at all (full or part time), Order tetracycline overnight delivery, the lowest figure in 30 years.

Only 64 percent of adult men have a job of any kind, the lowest figure ever, buy tetracycline without prescription.

Today's official poverty rate of 15 percent is among the highest of the past 40 years. When the poverty line was first adopted in 1969, tetracycline rx, the poverty rate was just 12.1 percent. Cheap tetracycline internet, The poverty line we use today was officially set on August 29, 1969. It represented a 1969 consensus of the basic minimum standard of living for American families in 1969, tetracycline drug. Buy tetracycline without prescription, Other than adjusting for inflation, it has not been updated since.

In the technical discussions that preceded the official determination of the poverty line, Buy tetracycline overnight delivery, experts considered a methodology that "would have resulted in poverty thresholds that were 25 percent to 30 percent higher than the existing thresholds," according to research published in the Social Security Bulletin.

In essence, cheapest generic tetracycline online, 15 percent of Americans today live in what would have been considered poverty in 1969, Tetracycline prices, more than 40 years ago. Had our standards gone up over the past 43 years, even more Americans would now be identified as poor, tetracycline internet.

In many ways, poor Americans are even worse off than they have been in the past. For example, a record low 69.3 percent of Americans are now covered by private health insurance, buy tetracycline without prescription. Nearly 10 percent of children have no health insurance coverage at all.

And state anti-poverty programs around the country are facing severe budget cuts.

According to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, America's total economic output per person is now more than twice as high as it was in 1969 (adjusted for inflation).

With twice the resources, today's America is much better placed to end poverty than was the America of 43 years ago.

Today's Census Bureau report offers little cause for hope. After 43 years with no progress, poverty is now endemic in America. But we do have the financial means to reverse it, should we ever garner the political will.

Salvatore Babones (@sbabones) is a senior lecturer in sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

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Why Our National Press Corps Is Failing

the Public Abysmally

By Joshua Holland

Buy viagra super active without prescription, You want a serious debate about the issues. Good luck.

It's hard to imagine a greater irony than our political press, obsessed as it is with process stories, dubiously sourced rumors and trivial fluff, viagra overnight shipping, lamenting the fact that we can't have a “serious national debate.”

Consider what may be the funniest lede in this cycle so far: “The elevated presidential campaign of ideas, fleetingly achieved after months of mudslinging, died Tuesday, Online pharmacy viagra, ” wrote Reid Epstein. “It was three days old.” Epstein went on to catalog all of the mean things the two campaigns were saying about each other, as if this is an election year or something.

But what makes that so hilarious is that Eptein's piece appeared in Politico exactly two days after the rag ran a piece titled, “Forget the budget: Paul Ryan is hot!, generic viagra,” and just two days before a penetrating analysis headlined, “Fit for office: Candidates in best shape ever.” (Politico is also slapping together a quickie e-book about how the Obama campaign is “roiled in turmoil,” which is just a campaign classic that never gets stale.)

We can't have serious debates in this country because we don't have a news media that offers us serious debates. Rather than dig into candidates' claims, we get he-said/she-said drivel and doses of whatever conventional wisdom is flying around the Beltway – we get dueling campaign “narratives” rather than a serious look at issues of substance, which seem to bore most campaign reporters, buy viagra super active without prescription. Viagra uk, That has long been the case, but we appear to have entered a new environment, one that Dave Roberts of Grist described as an era of “post-truth politics” – “a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation).” The Romney-Ryan campaign appears to have embraced this reality, running a campaign that is unprecedented in its mendacity. While reporters and fact-checkers can -- and do -- highlight the inaccuracies of specific claims, purchase viagra, it's beyond the reach of mainstream journalism to point out the pattern for fear of appearing “biased.”

Consider a few examples of how our feckless fourth estate has performed during this cycle. We have Paul Ryan constantly being referred to as both a “serious” person, and a “fiscal conservative.” In a fawning profile, Order viagra without prescription, the New York Times, which conservatives liken to Pravda, told its readers that Ryan “has become a particular favorite of — and powerful influence on — the intellectuals, economists, writers and policy makers who are at the heart of Washington’s conservative establishment.” The piece characterized him as “an earnestly interested, viagra cheap price, tactically minded policy thinker, with a deep knowledge of budget numbers.”

That image is based entirely on the conventional wisdom, but it's also divorced from objective reality. Cheap viagra pharmacy, The New York Times is the same paper that employs Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who pointed out that over the course of a decade, Ryan's Roadmap would cut $1.7 trillion in public spending, whils slashing taxes, mostly on high earners, canadian viagra, to the tune of $4.3 trillion, and would this increase the deficit by a tune of $2.6 trillion. Buy viagra super active without prescription, “And this is what passes inside the Beltway for serious thinking and a serious commitment to deficit reduction,” Krugman quipped.

As for his reputation as a deep thinker, Overnight viagra, Nate Silver noted -- also for the New York Times -- that a statistical analysis of Ryan's voting record placed him at about the same spot on the ideological spectrum as Minnesota's tea party nutjob Michele Bachmann, whom the chattering classes rightly consider to be anything but serious.

Or look at Newsweek's cover story, by Niall Ferguson, about why Obama should be voted out -- it's so riddled with the most blatant falsehoods that Ferguson, no rx viagra, perhaps unaware that there's this thing called Google, appears to have lied about which candidate he supported in 2008.

How easy it's become to manipulate the media. Real viagra without prescription, You withhold any substantive information, not taking questions other than softballs thrown by friendly journos, until the travelling press is so desperate for a story that they'll go with whatever you run up the flagpole. This week, the Boston Globe – another supposedly über-liberal paper – ran an editorial calling for Joe Biden to apologize for saying that Romney, who had promised to “unchain” – deregulate – Wall Street would “put y'all back in chains.” Are we to suddenly pretend, en masse, that references to slavery haven't become a staple of campaign speeches, buy viagra super active without prescription. Hardly a week goes by without a Republican urging African American voters to flee the “Democratic Plantation, viagra sales,” or saying that government regulations are “shackling the economy.” That stuff doesn't leave the Globe editorial board reaching for their smelling salts. Yes, Biden made a poor choice of words, Buy viagra generic, but with the number of Americans living near the poverty line reaching an all-time high, one might think that we could talk about topics other than the 'gaffes' that political reporters so enjoy.

Meanwhile, the Romney camp has referred to Obama as a “food-stamp president,” and is running a series of dog-whistle ads claiming – also entirely falsely – that Obama is rolling back the Clinton era work reforms, viagra online. The ads are reminiscent of the infamous “White Hands” ads Jesse Helms ran in 1990. Political scientist Michael Tesler studied Buy viagra super active without prescription, voters' reactions to seeing Romney's first welfare ad, and found that, “among those who saw it, racial resentment affected whether people thought Romney will help the poor, the middle class, and African-Americans.”

The political press seems almost allergic to diving into the policy weeds to offer readers a sense of what politicians would actually do if elected. After Paul Ryan appeared – with his mother – at a Florida retirement community, the Washington Post quoted one of the attendees saying, Viagra buy drug, "I personally like his plan, because at 73, it really wouldn’t affect me... It’s something for the future. Under Obama, order viagra cheap online, I just have too many problems — with the money he took away, the $716 billion."

Both statements are totally untrue, but only one – that Obama “raided” Medicare – has been widly debunked by the fact-checkers. Viagra non prescription, Every day reporters repeat the false claim that Ryan's roadmap doesn't impact people aged 55 and over because they wouldn;t be switched over to vouchers. But the reality is that Ryan's budget repeals “Obamacare,” which is closing the prescription drug “donut hole” and covering free wellness visits and cancer screening for retirees right now, and he'd cut Medicaid by about a third over the next ten years (about a quarter of all Medicaid dollars go to seniors – it helps pay for 6 million retirees' home health visits and covers Medicare's out-of-pocket expenses for millions more), buy viagra super active without prescription. This isn't some obscure policy arcania – it's simple stuff to understand.)

So, no, tender Politico writers, we won't have a lofty debate about the issues, cheap viagra online. But don't blame the candidates – to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, they're going to war with the press they have, not the one they necessarily want. Order viagra in canada, Look in the mirror, because nobody is forcing you to uncritically repeat the campaigns' claims or offer us breathless stories about who raised more dough or ran more ads in the battleground states. It's you who will go bonkers over something vaguely titilatting like a bunch of drunk Republicans skinny dipping in Israel – nobody's making you downplay reports that the FBI was investigating allegations that one of those swimmers had violated campaign finance laws (it was none other than Politico that offered an “exclusive report” claiming that the FBI “probed a late-night swim,” as if that's even remotely plausible).

And that's why we'll continue living in a democracy in which 30 percent of adults can't tell you which major party is more conservative or correctly name their sitting vice president Buy viagra super active without prescription, . But they're not clueless about everything. They know when they're being poorly informed, which is why Pew tells us that, “for the second time in a decade, the believability ratings for major news organizations have suffered broad-based declines.”

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He's the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy. Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.

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Artful Liars

How Banks Cheat

Bankers Smile as the Leave the White House

 

by CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

Buy chantix without prescription, I think a lie with a purpose is wan iv the’ worst kind an’ the mos’ profitable.

– Finley Peter Dunne On Lying

There was something refreshing about Bernie Madoff.  He robbed Peters to pay Pauls and it worked well until there were more Pauls than Peters, cheapest chantix. Chantix order, It was straightforward and simple.  And that is the difference between him and Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, buy chantix from india, Chantix cheap price, Goldman Sachs and the many other large financial institutions that cheat those with whom they deal. Bernie was not subtle.  No Congressional hearings or hearings in the British parliament were required in order to understand what happened, cheapest generic chantix. Chantix no online prescription, A man named Diamond runs Barclays and a man named Dimon runs JPMorgan Chase. The similarity in names is not all they have in common, buy chantix without prescription. Each man has presided over an institution that has dealt less than fairly, buy no rx chantix, Buy chantix online australia, in the case of JPMorgan, with its customers, best price chantix, Order discount chantix online,   and in the case of Barclays, with consumers everywhere.  JPMorgan did it by ripping off its customers and Barclays did it by manipulating the LIBOR rate.  (It is now reported that four other major European banks are being investigated for similar behavior.)

Barclays manipulated the LIBOR rate from 2005-2009, order chantix online. Purchase chantix no rx,  The LIBOR rate is the rate banks charge each other for inter-bank loans.    According to Ezra Klein from 2005 to 2007 Barclay’s placed bets that LIBOR rates would increase.  Barclays would then report artificially high rates to the authority gathering the rates from the banks to establish the LIBOR rate thus improving the chance that the LIBOR rate would go up and the bets the firm made would pay off.    Investors on the other side of the bet were losers and borrowers whose interest rates on loans were set to LIBOR were paying artificially high rates. Beginning in 2008 when the solvency of financial institutions was being questioned, chantix free sample, Cheap chantix, instead of reporting artificially high rates Barclays reported artificially low rates leading regulators to believe the bank was healthier than it was thus reducing the likelihood that its stability would be questioned.  (When rates were low consumers benefitted since mortgages, credit card loans and other financial transactions are tied to those rates.)   When the LIBOR manipulation came to light, where to order chantix, Find chantix without prescription, Mr. Diamond sent a memo to staff saying he was “disappointed because many of these things happened on my watch.”  On July 2 he said that although disappointed he would not resign his position.  On July 3 he resigned.  Chancellor of the Exchequer, chantix in australia, Order no rx chantix, George Osborne, said the episode was “evidence of systematic greed at the expense of financial integrity and stability” and said the bank was in flagrant breach of its duty “to observe proper standards of market conduct, chantix online cheap. . Order chantix in canada, . .”  Any reader who tries to understand my attempt to describe the LIBOR manipulation and its effects will certainly appreciate the simplicity of Mr. Madoff’s scheme.

JPMorgan Chase is one of the largest mutual fund managers in the country.  In addition to selling its own funds, it is in a position to sell other funds to its customers.  According to a story in the New York Times its sales personnel were encouraged to sell customers its proprietary funds rather than those of competitors, even when the competitors’ funds had historically performed better than the bank’s funds. One former employee said he was “selling JPMorgan funds that often had weak performance records, and  I was doing it for no other reason than to enrich the firm.  I couldn’t call myself objective.”  Some people might have been surprised at those disclosures thinking that the bank would have reformed its ways after 2011.  That was the year the bank was ordered to pay $373 million to American Century Investments because it failed to honor its agreement with American Century to promote American Century products when it acquired that firm’s retirement-plan services unit.  The arbitrators who heard the case said JPMorgan employees were rewarded for pushing JPMorgan’s own products, buy chantix without prescription.

Goldman Sachs is another venerable institution that benefits itself at the expense of its customers.  In March 2012 Chancellor Leo Strine of the Court of Chancery in Delaware issued a lengthy ruling in the case of in re El Paso Shareholder Litigation.   He criticized Goldman for its blatant conflict of interest when trying to acquire El Paso Corp describing it as “disturbing behavior.” Jonathan Weil who writes for Bloomberg,  made the observation about Goldman’s conduct in that transaction that  Goldman had “every incentive to maximize its own investment and fleece El Paso shareholders.”   

At roughly the same time Chancellor Strine’s opinion was making the news a former Goldman employee published an op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he said, among other things, that the firm’s clients were “sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. . . . Buy chantix without prescription, It is purely about how we can make the most possible money off them {clients.}.”

Readers should understand that the foregoing does not purport to be a complete list of banks that have devised schemes to enrich themselves at the expense of their customers. It is only a small sampling.  As I said at the outset, the nice thing about Bernie was how straightforward his malfeasance was.   Everyone can understand it.  The banks are no more honest than he-just more artful.

Christopher Brauchli is an attorney living in Boulder, Colorado. He can be emailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. 

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Meet the New Boss: The Sociopath As Banker

 

 

Brian Basham Buy zyprexa without prescription, writes:

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics entitled “The Corporate Psychopaths: Theory of the Global Financial Crisis”, Clive R Boddy identifies these people as psychopaths.

“They are,” he says, Zyprexa bangkok, “simply the 1 per cent of people who have no conscience or empathy.” And he argues: “Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused the [banking] crisis’, certified zyprexa.

But this is the part that floored me (boldface mine):

Cut to a pleasantly warm evening in Bahrain. My companion, Zyprexa vendors, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees, buy zyprexa without prescription.

He then makes an astonishing confession: “At one major investment bank for which I worked, zyprexa professional, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles.”

Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.

It seems to be pretty widespread (boldface mine):

Just look at how banks like Chase behaved in Greece, Cheap zyprexa tablets, for example.

Having seen how well interest-rate swaps worked for Jefferson County, Alabama, Chase “helped” countries like Greece and Italy mask their debt problems for years by selling a similar series of swaps to those governments, buy generic zyprexa. The bank then turned around and worked with banks like Goldman, Sachs (who were also major purveyors of those swap deals) to create a thing called the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, Buy zyprexa no prescription required, which allowed investors to bet against Greek debt. Buy zyprexa without prescription, In other words, banks like Chase and Goldman knowingly larded up the nation of Greece with a crippling future debt burden, then turned around and helped the world bet against Greek debt.

Does a citizen of Greece do that deal. Forget that: does a human being do that deal?

Operations like the Greek swap/short index maneuver were easy money for banks like Goldman and Chase – hell, it’s a no-lose play, like cutting a car’s brake lines and then betting on the driver to crash – but they helped create the monstrous European debt problem that this very minute is threatening to send the entire world economy into collapse, buy cheap zyprexa, which would result in who knows what horrors.

There is no way to understand the collapse of Big Shitpile without understanding the criminal mind. Buy zyprexa pills, This is as much a problem of fraud, as it is macroeconomics (and microeconomics). We would be better served by listening to professors from criminal justice and psychology departments, as opposed to economics departments, zyprexa in us.

On the other hand, a sociopath does seem to share many of the characteristics of the rational ‘Homo economicus.’

And here’s exactly what I’m talking about (boldface mine):

When someone whose job is to craft multi-million dollar pay packages for corporate CEOs thinks you’re overpaid, you’re probably overpaid, buy zyprexa without prescription.

Hammergren is not the richest or even the highest-paid CEO in the world, but the structure of his compensation is raising eyebrows even in the already outsized world of the 1%. Zyprexa rx, He took over McKesson, a firm that specializes in supplying presrciption drugs to pharmacies, in 1999 after a fraud scandal took out of many of the company’s top executives. Since that time he’s been paid nearly $500 million as the CEO and Chairman of the Board, order zyprexa overnight delivery.

His salary is a modest $1.66 million a year, but he also gets annual cash bonuses of between $10 million and $13 million. Buy zyprexa without prescription, His perks are many and lavish, including a company car and chauffeur, unlimited personal use of the firm’s corporate jet, and a generous pension plan not available to rank-and-file employees. Order zyprexa from us, (Their pension program was canceled in 1997.) Last year, McKesson contributed $13 million to Hammergren’s retirement fund, which if he walked away tomorrow, would be worth $125 million, zyprexa overnight shipping.

Then there’s the stock grants and options, a standard form of compensation at most corporations, Cheap zyprexa in usa, but one that McKesson has used with reckless abandon. Hammergren owns $129 million in McKesson stock, plus another 1 million in options that have yet to vest. (In 2011, compare zyprexa prices online, he received $12 million in stock and another $7 million worth of options in his pay.) Oh, but don’t worry. According to Rivlin, the company paid him $483,000 last year to make up for the dividends Hammergren didn’t earn because he doesn’t own the stock yet, buy zyprexa without prescription. Cheapest generic zyprexa online, And then there’s a provision so outsize it’s drawn the attention of corporate-governance watchdogs like GMI, the research group that put Hammergren in the top spot of its latest survey of CEO salaries. If Hammergren loses his job due to a change in ownership, he receives an immediate $469 million payout, canadian zyprexa, GMI found—giving him perverse incentive to see it happen.

In other words, Buy discount zyprexa, despite all the money that McKesson gives him each every year, Hammergren stands to make even more if he can find a way to sell the company to someone else.

Whether or not he’s earning his keep is up to the shareholder to ponder, but Hammergren is also the Chairman of the Board. He may leave the room when they vote on executive pay, zyprexa from canada, but he decides who was in the room…

And it’s not ethical:

“As far as I’m concerned, a board that keeps loading up its chief executive with more stock and options each year is, from a shareholder perspective, basically committing theft,” says Albert Meyer, a former accounting professor who runs a money-management firm called Bastiat Capital.

We are governed by sociopaths.

 .

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Documents Show How White House and Democrats Worked to Protect the Banks Against Protests

Did the White House Direct the Police Crackdown on Occupy?

Chicage Police attack Nato Protestors

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

Buy glyburide without prescription, by DAVE LINDORFF

A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.

The new documents, which PCJF National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists “are likely only a subset of responsive materials,” in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies, only “scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, Glyburide online pharmacy, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.”

Nonetheless, blacked-out and limited though they are, she says they offer clues to the extent of the government’s concern about and focus on the wave of occupations that spread across the country beginning with last September’s Occupy Wall Street action in New York City.

The latest documents, reveal “intense involvement” by the DHS’s so-called National Operations Center (NOC).  In its own literature, glyburide malaysia, the DHS describes the NOC as “the primary national-level hub for domestic situationalawareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, Cheap glyburide no rx, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management.”

The DHS says that the NOC is “the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room” and that it also “facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector.”

A better description for a fascist police state network could not be written, glyburide order.

Remember, this vast yet centralized operation — what Verheyden-Hilliard describes as “a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. Where to buy glyburide, government operates against its own people” — was in this case deployed not against some terrorist organization or even mob or drug cartel, but rather against a loose-knit band of protesters, all conscientiously and publicly committed to nonviolence, who were exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to gather in public places and to speak out against the crimes and abuses of the corporate elite and the politicians who are bought and paid by that elite.

Among the documents obtained by the PCJF in this second batch of responses to its FOIA filing is one from the NOC Fusion Center Desk dated Nov, buy glyburide without prescription. 5, 2011, purchase glyburide, which collects at the federal level and then distributes the names and contact information of a group of Occupy protesters who were arrested during a demonstration in Dallas, TX against Bank of America, one of the nation’s biggest predatory lenders.  Although none of the seven arrested were charged with any serious crime (six were charged with “using the sidewalk!”), their names and contact information were widely disseminated by the DHS. Order cheap glyburide, Fusion Centers, a post-9-11 creation, are a federally-funded joint project of the DHS and the US Justice Department which are designed to share intelligence information among such federal agencies as the DHS, the FBI, the CIA and the US Military, as well as state and local police agencies, cheapest glyburide prices. By their nature they are designed to circumvent legal constraints on various agencies, for example the ban on CIA domestic spying, or the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars active military activity within the borders of the US. Order glyburide overnight delivery, There are currently 72 Fusion Centers around the US. Buy glyburide without prescription, Another group of documents shows that on November 9, two days after a demonstration by 1000 Occupy activists in Chicago protesting social service cuts in that city, the NOC Fusion Desk relayed a request from Chicago Police asking other local police agencies what kind of tactics they were using against Occupy activists. They specifically requested that information be sought from police departments in New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, D.C, cheapest glyburide price. Denver, Boston, Portland OR, and Seattle — all the scene of major Occupation actions and of violent police repression. Buying glyburide, Realizing that it would look bad if it assisted in such coordination overtly, higher officials in the DHS ordered the recall of the request but then simply rerouted it through “law enforcement channels,” where presumably it would be harder for anyone to spot a federal role in the coordination of local police responses. In response to that order, the documents show that the duty director of the NOC wrote that he would “reach out” to “LEO LNOs (liaison officer) on the floor” to assist. Verheyden-Hilliard explains that LEO is FBI’s nationally integrated law enforcement, intelligence and military network, buy glyburide without prescription.

On December 12, where to order glyburide, when Occupy planned anti-war protests at various US ports, Verheyden-Hilliard says the new documents show that the NOC “went into high gear” seeking information from local field offices of the Department of Homeland Security about what actions police in Houston, Portland, Oakland, Find glyburide no prescription required, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles planned to deal with Occupy movement actions.

Another document shows that earlier, in advance of a planned Occupy action at the Oakland, CA port facility on Nov, buy glyburide from india. 2, DHS “went so far as to keep the Pentagon’s Northcom (Northern Command) in the intelligence loop.”

Given the subterfuge revealed in these documents that went into trying to create the illusion that the DHS was and is not coordinating a national campaign of spying, disruption and repression against Occupy activists, it is almost comical to find documents that show the DHS was in “direct communication with the White House” to obtain advance approval of public statements by DHS officials denying any DHS involvement in anti-Occupy actions. Order glyburide in us, These documents show that both DHS and one of that department’s police arms, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) were in direct contact with Portland, Oregon’s police chief and mayor, discussing how to deal with protesters who were in part on federal property. Buy glyburide without prescription, The coordination between the feds and the local police and political authorities were intense. Yet the approved statement sent to DHS from the White House read:

Any decisions on how to handle specifics (sic) situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. If a protest area is located on Federal property and has been deemed unsanitary or unsafe by the General Services Administration (GSA) or city officials, free glyburide, and they make a decision to evacuate participants — the Federal Protective Service (FPS) will work with those officials to develop a plan to ensure the security and safety of everyone involved.

There was, comically, also a White House-approved DHS “background” statement, Glyburide for order, too. (Typically background statements by federal officials are supposed to be used when they want to tell a journalist the true situation but don’t want to have that statement attributed to them or their department. Having it pre-approved by the White House defeats that purpose and is simply a manipulation of the media.)

The faux “background” information included the following–a flat-out lie:

DHS is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy encampments writ large, buy glyburide without prescription.

Tellingly, the documents also include a Dec. 5 copy of the “Weekly Informant, ” an intelligence report published by the DHS’s Office for State and Local Law Enforcement, glyburide cheap price. The issue includes an update from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) concerning the activities of the Occupy Movement. PERF, Verheyden-Hilliard notes, is the group that the federal government claims organized a series of multi-city law enforcement calls to coordinate the police response to Occupy, Glyburide cheap drug, which led immediately to the wave of violent crackdowns. It was at those meetings that police were advised among other things to act at night, to use aggressive tactics and weapons like tasers and pepper spray, and to take steps to remove journalists and cameras from the scene of crackdowns.

The overall sense from these latest documents is that Washington and the DHS, along with the FBI, glyburide from india, was the nexus of the crackdown, orchestrating it, encouraging it, and attempting to cover its tracks.

The documents among other things expose the massive hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which this election year have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme of the “We are the 99%”-chanting Occupiers, while actually acting in the interest of Bank of America and its fellow financial sector mega-firms in trying to crush the movement itself.

To see all the new FOIA documents, go to the PJIF website.

Dave Lindorff is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He lives in Philadelphia. 

 

 

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What is ALEC?

Buy paxil without prescription, ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Paxil in australia, Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations, buy paxil without prescription. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, buy cheap paxil online, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. Buy paxil without prescription, It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.

Who funds ALEC?

More than 98% of ALEC's revenues come from sources other than legislative dues, Cheap paxil from uk, such as corporations, corporate trade groups, and corporate foundations. Each corporate member pays an annual fee of between $7,000 and $25,000 a year, and if a corporation participates in any of the nine task forces, additional fees apply, buy paxil canada, from $2,500 to $10,000 each year. ALEC also receives direct grants from corporations, such as $1.4 million from ExxonMobil from 1998-2009. Discount paxil online, It has also received grants from some of the biggest foundations funded by corporate CEOs in the country, such as: the Koch family Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Koch-managed Claude R. Lambe Foundation, the Scaife family Allegheny Foundation, the Coors family Castle Rock Foundation, to name a few, buy paxil without prescription. Less than 2% of ALEC’s funding comes from “Membership Dues” of $50 per year paid by state legislators, a steeply discounted price that may run afoul of state gift bans.

Is it nonpartisan as claimed?

ALEC describes itself as a non-partisan, order cheap paxil, non-profit organization. The facts show that it currently has one Democrat out of 104 legislators in leadership positions. ALEC members, speakers, alumni, and award winners are a “who’s who” of the extreme right. Paxil sales, ALEC has given awards to: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Buy paxil without prescription, Bush, Charles and David Koch, Richard de Vos, Tommy Thompson, Gov. John Kasich, Gov. Rick Perry, Congressman Mark Foley (intern sex scandal), buying generic paxil, and Congressman Billy Tauzin. ALEC alumni include: Speaker of the House John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Congressman Joe Wilson, (who called President Obama a “liar” during the State of the Union address), Paxil online review, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, former House Speaker Tom DeLay, Andrew Card, Donald Rumsfeld (1985 Chair of ALEC’s Business Policy Board), Governor Scott Walker, Governor Jan Brewer, and more, canada paxil. Featured speakers have included: Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, George Allen, Buy paxil from canada, Jessie Helms, Pete Coors, Governor Mitch Daniels and more.

What goes on behind closed doors?

The organization boasts 2,000 legislative members and 300 or more corporate members, buy paxil without prescription. The unelected corporate representatives (often registered lobbyists) sit as equals with elected representatives on nine task forces where they have a “voice and a vote” on model legislation. Corporations on ALEC task forces VOTE on the "model" bills and resolutions, and sit as equals with legislators voting on the ALEC task forces and various working groups. Corporate and legislative governing boards also meet jointly each year. (ALEC says only the legislators have a final say on all model bills, paxil canada. ALEC has previously said that "The policies are debated and voted on by all members. Buy paxil without prescription, Public and private members vote separately on policy. It is important to note that laws are not passed, debated or adopted during this process and therefor no lobbying takes place. That process is done at the state legislature.") The long-term representation of Koch Industries on the governing board means that Koch has had influence over an untold number of ALEC bills. Due to the questionable nature of this partnership with corporations, Order cheap paxil online, legislators rarely discuss the origins of the model legislation they bring home. Though thousands of ALEC-approved model bills have been publicly introduced across the country, ALEC’s role facilitating the language in the bills and the corporate vote for them is not well known.

(ALEC legislators sometimes compare the organization to the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL), yet the two organizations could not be more different, buy paxil without prescription. NCSL has zero corporate members. It is funded largely by state government appropriations and conference fees; it has a truly bipartisan governance structure, and there is a large role for nonpartisan professional staff; it does not vote on or promote model legislation; meetings are public and so are any agreed upon documents. Corporations do sponsor receptions at NCSL events through a separate foundation, paxil no prescription. For more information, see the document ALEC & NCSL.)

How do corporations benefit?

Although ALEC claims to take an ideological stance (of supposedly "Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty"), Buy generic paxil online, many of the model bills benefit the corporations whose agents write them, shape them, and/or vote to approve them. These are just a few such measures:

• Altria/Philip Morris USA benefits from ALEC’s newest tobacco legislation -- an extremely narrow tax break for moist tobacco that would make fruit flavored tobacco products cheaper and more attractive to youngsters.


• Health insurance companies such as Humana and Golden Rule Insurance (United Healthcare), benefit directly from ALEC model bills, such as the Health Savings Account bill that just passed in Wisconsin.


• Tobacco firms such as Reynolds and pharmaceutical firms such as Bayer benefit directly from ALEC tort reform measures that make it harder for Americans to sue when injured by dangerous products.


• Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) benefits directly from the anti-immigrant legislation introduced in Arizona and other states that requires expanded incarceration and housing of immigrants, along with other bills from ALEC’s crime task force. (While CCA has stated that it left ALEC in late 2010 after years of membership on the Criminal Justice Task Force Buy paxil without prescription, and even co-chairing it, its prison privatization bills remain ALEC "models.")


• Connections Academy, a large online education corporation and co-chair of the Education Task Force, benefits from ALEC measures to privatize public education and promote private on-line schools.

How do legislators benefit?

Why would a legislator be interested in advancing cookie-cutter bills that are corporate give-aways for global firms located outside of their district? ALEC’s appeal rests largely on the fact that legislators receive an all-expenses-paid trip that provides many part-time legislators with vacations that they could not afford on their own, along with the opportunity to rub shoulders with wealthy captains of industry (major prospective out-of-state donors to their political campaigns). For a few hours of work on a task force and a couple of indoctrination sessions by ALEC experts, paxil in us, part-time legislators can bring the whole family to ALEC’s annual convention, work for a few hours, then stay in swank hotels, attend cool parties -- even strip clubs-- and raise funds for the campaign coffer, all heavily subsidized by the corporate till. Paxil price, In 2009, ALEC spent $251,873 on childcare so mom and dad could have fun.

Is it lobbying?

In most ordinary people's view, handing bills to legislators so they can introduce them is the very definition of lobbying. ALEC says "no lobbying takes place." The current chairman of ALEC’s corporate board is W. Preston Baldwin III, until recently a lobbyist and the Vice President of State Government Affairs at UST Inc., cheap paxil overnight delivery, a tobacco firm now owned by Altria/Phillip Morris USA. Altria is advancing a very short, specific bill to change the way moist tobacco products (such as fruit flavored “snus”) are taxed-- to make it cheaper and more attractive to young tobacco users according to health experts, buy paxil without prescription. In fact, 20 of the 24 corporate representatives on ALEC’s “Private Enterprise Board” are lobbyists representing major firms such as Koch Industries, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Cheap paxil pill, Wal-Mart and Johnson and Johnson.

ALEC makes old-fashioned lobbying obsolete. Once legislators return to their state with corporate-sponsored ALEC legislation in hand, the legislators themselves become “super-lobbyists” for ALEC’s corporate agenda, cutting out the middleman. Yet ALEC enjoys a 501(c)(3) classification, which allows it to keep its tax-exempt status while accepting grants from foundations, paxil bangkok, corporations, and other donors. Buy paxil without prescription, In our view, the activities that corporate members engage in should be considered lobbying by the IRS, and the entity that facilitates that effort to influence state law, ALEC, should also be considered to be engaged predominantly in lobby-related activities, not simply “educational” activities. Re-classifying ALEC as primarily engaged in lobbying facilitation would mean that donations to it would not count as tax-deductible for businesses and foundations. Common Cause filed a complaint with the IRS on July 14, 2011, setting forth evidence supporting its complaint that ALEC is engaged in lobbying despite its claims to do no lobbying.

Is it legal?

ALEC’s operating model raises many ethical and legal concerns. Each state has a different set of ethics laws or rules. The presence of lobbyists alone may cause ethics problems for some state legislators. Wisconsin, for instance, generally requires legislators who go to events with registered lobbyists to pay on their own dime, yet in many states, legislators use public funds to attend ALEC meetings, buy paxil without prescription. According to one study, $3 million in public funds was spent to attend ALEC meetings in one year. Some legislators use their personal funds and are reimbursed by ALEC. Such “scholarships” may be disclosed if gifts are required to be reported. But should the legislators be allowed to accept this money when lobbyists are present at the meeting. Still other legislators use their campaign funds to go and are again reimbursed by ALEC; in some states, campaign funds are only allowed to be used to attend campaign events.

In short, many state ethics codes might consider the free vacation, steeply discounted membership fees, free day care or travel scholarships to be “gifts” that should be disallowed or disclosed.

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Evidence Homeland Security Coordinated

Occupy Crackdown

 

Buy periactin without prescription, by DAVE LINDORFF

If you want to know where the real government of the United States is located, just check out one of the documents received by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in response to their Freedom of Information Act request to the Dept. of Homeland Security relating to surveillance of the Occupy Movement. That document, from the Secret Service, dated September 17, Order periactin overnight delivery, 2011, the day the Occupy movement began on Wall Street, from the US Secret Service Intelligence Division, titled Prism Demonstrations Abstract, list the location as “Wall Street Bull” — a reference to the bronze statue of a bull on Wall Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange, and the “protectee” as “The United States Government.”

As the National Lawyers Guild comments dryly, order generic periactin, “American taxpayers might find it odd to learn that the Secret Service was on duty to protect the Wall Street Bull in the name of protecting the U.S. Government. But there it is.”

The trove of 398 documents (many of them heavily censored) received on behalf of thePCJF, the NLG and filmmaker Michael Moore, Cheap periactin pharmacy, consists primarily of materials from top Homeland Security Officials, which PCJF Executive Director Mara Verhayden Hilliard says is a deliberate effort by Homeland Security officials to deflect attention from the workings of the mid-level intelligence staff of the various agencies within DHS who do the spying, and the so-called Fusion Centers around the country — all wholly funded by DHS–which link federal agencies like the FBI with local and state police agencies.

“It’s all a game of hide-the-ball” says Verhayden Hilliard, who adds that the National Lawyers Guild is challenging the effort by insisting on getting the records from all levels, including the Fusion centers, buy periactin without prescription.

Even so, she says that the documents obtained so far show the extraordinary attention that federal intelligence and police agencies from the Secret Service to the FBI to the Federal Protective Service and others devoted to the Occupy movement from its inception.

“The documents we received were only from the highest officials in DHS, buy periactin in us,” she stresses, “which shows that the government was highly concerned about Occupy at the highest levels of government.”

The National Lawyers Guild explains that documents show that the DHS, in responding to its FOIA request, looked only at records of the Intelligence & Analysis division and the Federal Protective Service, Discount periactin overnight delivery, where any intelligence documents relating to the Occupy Movement had already been “purged, restricted and/or rescinded,” and avoided, in responding to the documents
request, looking for Occupy movement-related materials “where they are likely to be found, including in Fusion Centers and DHS sub-division such as the Operations Coordination & Planning sub-division which is responsible for DHS coordination with local and federal law enforcement partners.”

A good percentage of the documents recovered in the first trove are instructions on how to respond to media inquiries about the federal response to the Occupy movement sweeping the nation, periactin alternative. For example, on November 16, as the violent nationwide crackdown on occupiers by local police was in full swing, DHS Press Secretary Matthew Chandler sent an email to top-ranking DHS officials, Periactin in uk, including the chief of staff to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, and to the chief of staff of the DHS general counsel, saying, “We’re getting inquiries from CBS, AP, Daily Caller and others on an un-sourced Examiner.com piece that says that DHS and FBI are collaborating with cities by providing tactics and information on removing Occupy protestors, buy periactin low price. A check of I & A [Intelligence and Analysis] and FPS [Federal Protective Services] shows that this type of outreach is not occurring in any wholesale manner.”

Of course, as the National Lawyers Guild notes, that last line, saying that such cooperation and direction was not occurring in a “wholesale manner, Buy discount periactin online, ” pretty much implies that it was going on — just not in a less-than “wholesale manner,” whatever that means. Buy periactin without prescription, Also suspicious is an email exchange dated September 29, 2011, in which DHS officials are discussing a National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center alert, based apparently on monitoring of email, twitter and Facebook communications among Occupy organizers, of the coming Occupy actions. The exchange is about how to respond to inevitable media inquiries about the DHS’s role in monitoring and obstructing the Occupy movement. The whole discussion is redacted from the documents, though one participant is shown writing “Here it is. That answer works.”

That the Fusion Centers were actively involved around the country in planning responses to the demonstrations is clear, cheap periactin online. An October 52011 document from the DHS Philadelphia Megacenter, titled “Demonstration-Peaceful/Planned” reports on an assembly being planned for “peacefully protesting union solidarity issues.”

An October 30, 2011 document refers to the DHS’s Battle Creek Megacenter also reporting the beginning of a “peaceful/unplanned” “Occupy Wall Street demonstration” that is “taking place in Ilus W. Davis Park in Kansas City, MO.”

The megacenters are regional repositories on intelligence relating, supposedly, to major potential threats to national security, buy periactin without prescription. “Why they were looking into the Occupy movement is a really good question, No prescription periactin, ” says Verhayden Hilliard.

Most references to the Fusion Center-related communications were reportedly withheld from the FOIA response, leading the National Lawyers Guild to conclude that what they are seeing “appears to be the tip of the iceberg, carefully submerged by the DHS.”

Explains Verhayden Hilliard, “The push-down of information to the level of the Fusion Centers by the DHS places improper domestic surveillance in an area that they hope will be off-limits to public access, and it gives them plausible deniability in the DHS, cheap periactin, so that when they’re asked if they have information, they just inquire of discrete sections of DHS, and they claim they don’t have any.”

One interesting series of documents shows that while DHS was distributing a prepared statement to journalists inquiring about any federal role in coordinating the local police crackdowns on Occupy protesters, which claims no such coordination was taking place, Find no rx periactin, a second paragraph initially included in the planned response, was deleted after considerable discussion at high levels and was not sent out to reporters. The deleted paragraph reads, “We have held standard coordination calls and face-to-face meeting with our partners to ensure that the proper resources are available for operations such as street closures, etc.”  No records concerning those “coordination calls” and “face-to-face meetings” have been provided.

Informed that he had only received incomplete and carefully limited information about DHS involvement in the crackdown on Occupy activists, drug periactin, CBS News reporter Bigad Shaban, said, “I’ll have to look at the FOIA documents, but that’s very interesting!”

There are a number of documents that in the NLG’s collection that are emails within DHS concerning how to respond to reporters’ inquiries, Find periactin online, for example from CBS and Salon magazine, concerning any DHS involvement in coordinating police crackdowns on Occupiers. Buy periactin without prescription, These refer to “Tripwire” messages and other messages which are reported to be in the process of being “removed” from email records or “taken down,” with one DHS official, Dawn Scalici, on Oct. 28, 2011, writing, “Please check on the content of the referenced DHS product on Occupy Wall Street, cheapest generic periactin. This could be quite unfortunate. I thought IP had withdrawn this piece. We may need DSAC [Domestic Security Alliance Council, a strategic partnership between DHS, Free periactin, the FBI and the private sector] to immediately withdraw their email and take it off DSAC’s portal if it is posted there.”

The documents also, while repeatedly noting that “most” of the Occupy actions are “peaceful” and “first amendment protected,” go on to note that under the principle of “congruence,” the DHS could initiate surveillance if there were some report of a possible threat or illegal action. As Verhayden Hilliard observes, “The congruence concept, which they discuss in the documents, is the idea that if it would be improper to overtly collect intelligence or to surveil people engaged in free speech activities, as long as you can link it to some allegation of criminal activity, then you can do it, buy periactin without prescription. In short, it’s a pretext, cheap periactin from uk. So an informant, a provocateur or anyone, credible or not, supported or not, Find discount periactin, even anonymous, can give them “some reason” to suspect possible criminal activity. Then they can engage in intelligence gathering.”

A DHS “product,” for the uninitiated, is an intelligence report or threat assessment.  This is a clear reference to DHS intelligence being provided to either local police and/or private security operatives, for example working for Wall Street firms.  (Most Americans probably didn’t even know that something like DSAC even existed.)

Verhayden Hilliard says the NLG is expecting to receive more documents from DHS and other agencies in response to its continuing FOIA requests, order cheap periactin, and vows to drill down to lower levels of the DHS, and to look more broadly at Fusion Centers and other locations for documents relating to any coordination of the surveillance of and crackdowns on the Occupy activists.

Dave Lindorff is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He lives in Philadelphia. 

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