Tuesday, March 02, 2010
We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history,” Chip Berlet, a veteran analyst of the American radical right, wrote earlier this year. "We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage.
…the most dramatic story by far has been with the antigovernment Patriots.
The militias and the larger Patriot movement first came to Americans’ attention in the mid-1990s, when they appeared as an angry reaction to what was seen as a tyrannical government bent on crushing all dissent. Sparked most dramatically by the death of 76 Branch Davidians during a 1993 law enforcement siege in Waco, Texas, those who joined the militias also railed against the Democratic Clinton Administration and initiatives like gun control and environmental regulation. Although the Patriot movement included people formerly associated with racially based hate groups, it was above all animated by a view of the federal government as the primary enemy, along with a fondness for antigovernment conspiracy theories. By early this decade, the groups had largely disappeared from public view.
But last year, as noted in the SPLC’s August report, "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias," a dramatic resurgence in the Patriot movement and its paramilitary wing, the militias, began. Now, the latest SPLC count finds that an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) — a 244% jump. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right
Global Warming: Microsoft Separates from Chamber of Commerce In view of the slowed momentum on ‘climate change,’ their statement, if not exactly leadership, is welcomed.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has never spoken for nor done work on behalf of Microsoft regarding climate change legislation, and we have not participated in the Chamber’s climate initiatives. Microsoft has stated that climate change is a serious issue that demands immediate, worldwide attention and we are acting accordingly. We are pursuing strategies and taking actions that are consistent with a strong commitment to reducing our own impact as well as the impact of our products. In addition, we have adopted a broad policy statement on climate change that expresses support for government action to create market-based mechanisms to address climate change. And, we believe the greatest value Microsoft brings to the fight against climate change is our expertise on the role software and technology can play in reducing carbon emissions. To this end, Microsoft is working ranging from the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign to the World Wildlife Fund to the European Environmental Agency to advance public policies that promote the use of ICT solutions to advance energy efficiency, spur innovation and economic opportunity, and contribute to practical strategies for mitigating climate change. http://blogs.msdn.com/see/archive/2010/03/02/microsoft-s-position-on-the-u-s-chamber-of-commerce-climate-related-activities.aspx
Fringe Economy: Major companies are thriving, picking the bones of people on the margins.
The payday loan industry has found a new and lucrative source of business: the unemployed.
....No job? No problem. A typical unemployed Californian receiving $300 a week in benefits can walk into one of hundreds of storefront operations statewide and walk out with $255 well before that government check arrives — for a $45 fee. Annualized, that's an interest rate of 459%....APRs in other states are even higher: nearly 782% in Wyoming and 870% in Maine.
… Payday lenders have been controversial since the industry expanded rapidly in the 1990s, with critics accusing the outfits of preying on the poor. Arkansas, Georgia, New Jersey and New York have virtually banned the institutions. In 2006, Congress stymied payday loans to military personnel, passing a law capping interest at rates prohibitively low for payday lenders. The legislation was spurred by concern that payday loan debt was affecting morale and readiness for deployment. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-payday1-2010mar01,0,4869285,full.story
[Shaky] World Economy: Greece at Issue… or Great Britain? The concern keeps shifting, a sign that there is generalized concern …ongoing.
As Greece’s debt troubles batter the euro, Britain has done its utmost to stay above the fray.
Until now, that is. Suddenly, investors are asking if Britain may soon face its own sovereign debt crisis if the government fails to slash its growing budget deficits quickly enough to escape the contagious fears of financial markets.
The pound fell to $1.4954 on Tuesday, its lowest level against the dollar in nearly 10 months. The yield on 10-year government bonds, known as gilts, slid as investors fretted that Parliament would be too fragmented after a crucial election in May to whip Britain’s messy finances back into shape.
The slide in the pound followed a sharper decline on Monday after polls released over the weekend indicated that the opposition Conservatives had lost their clear lead in the election race.
Without a strong political majority to tackle Britain’s lumbering fiscal problems, investors could start to make it greatly more expensive for the government to raise funds, setting the stage for a potential double-dip recession, if not worse. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/business/global/03pound.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
Health Care: Demonizing Reconciliation Republicans who are running from their past records, have consistently spun that majority vote is some unusual procedure, that it could mean “the end of the Senate as a deliberative body,” that Republicans only used it when reducing the deficit was the issue. Pure b.s.
Orren Hatch takes his turn about this “unprecedented” move: Hatch has voted for bills using Reconciliation 12 times.
To impose the will of some Democrats and to circumvent bipartisan opposition, President Obama seems to be encouraging Congress to use the "reconciliation" process, an arcane budget procedure, to ram through the Senate a multitrillion-dollar health-care bill that raises taxes, increases costs and cuts Medicare to fund a new entitlement we can't afford. This is attractive to proponents because it sharply limits debate and amendments to a mere 20 hours and would allow passage with only 51 votes (as opposed to the 60 needed to overcome a procedural hurdle). But the Constitution intends the opposite process, especially for a bill that would affect one-sixth of the American economy.
This use of reconciliation to jam through this legislation, against the will of the American people, would be unprecedented in scope. And the havoc wrought would threaten our system of checks and balances, corrode the legislative process, degrade our system of government and damage the prospects of bipartisanship.
Less than a year ago, the longest-serving member of the Senate, West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, said, "I was one of the authors of the legislation that created the budget 'reconciliation' process in 1974, and I am certain that putting health-care reform . . . legislation on a freight train through Congress is an outrage that must be resisted." Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, also a Democrat, said last March, "I don't believe reconciliation was ever intended for the purpose of writing this kind of substantive reform legislation." They are both right.
Reconciliation was designed to balance the federal budget. Both parties have used the process, but only when the bills in question stuck close to dealing with the budget. In instances in which other substantive legislation was included, the legislation had significant bipartisan support. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030102754_pf.html
U.S. Hegemony Over: Thwarting U.S. Military “...the party’s over.”
During the Cold War, the Pentagon built the greatest naval and air forces the world had ever seen, endowing the United States with the superpower ability to land huge military forces anywhere in the world, at any time, whether invited in or not.
…But now the party's over. The United States, Pentagon strategists say, is quickly losing its ability to barge in without permission. Potential target countries and even some lukewarm allies are figuring out ingenious ways to blunt American power without trying to meet it head-on, using a combination of high-tech and low-tech jujitsu.
…As Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the problem this month, countries in places where the United States has strategic interests - including the Persian Gulf and the Pacific - are building "sophisticated, new technologies to deny our forces access to the global commons of sea, air, space and cyberspace."
Those innocuous words spell trouble. While the U.S. military and strategy community is focused on Afghanistan and the fight in Marja, others - Iran and China, to name two - are chipping away at America's access to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and the increasingly critical extraterrestrial realms.
"This era of U.S. military dominance is waning at an increasing and alarming rate," Andrew Krepinevich, a West Point-educated officer and former senior Pentagon strategist, writes in a new report. "With the spread of advanced military technologies and their exploitation by other militaries, especially China's People's Liberation Army and to a far lesser extent Iran's military and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the U.S. military's ability to preserve military access to two key areas of vital interest, the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf, is being increasingly challenged."
At present, "there is little indication that China or Iran intend to alter their efforts to create 'no-go' zones in the maritime areas off their coasts," writes Krepinevich, president of the non-partisan think tank, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/01/china-iran-creating-no-go-zones-to-thwart-u-s-military-power/
-R
