Dave Chandler's Earthside.com

Snapshot 2012: Presidential Election

Here is my snapshot guesstimate -- Thursday, May 31, 2012 -- of the electoral college for this year's presidential election.

If next Tuesday's the gubernatorial recall in Wisconsin is successful, that could recolor the state blue; if the corporatists win there, I think Wisconsin will be gone for Obama and the momentum effect will make the map even more difficult for the Democrats.

Otherwise, my map as of today is based upon these factors: most of the voter suppression efforts of Republican governors being upheld; the unprecedented spending of a record amount of Citizens United super PAC money driving down the participation of marginal voters (who tend to lean Democratic); and a slow but steady regression of the U.S. economy.

Of course, by the next time I do a map ... whenever that may be ... everything could change.

Click image to enlarge.

Calculate your own Electoral College map at: 270toWin.com

Tar Sands Apocalypse

The logic of global climate change is a matter of common sense: humans cannot in less than two hundred years burn through millions and millions of years of solar energy stored in hydrocarbon fossil fuels without having a profound effect on the environment.

The reactionary political denial of common sense and science on climate change and Peak Oil only serves to delay and confuse the policy changes, the energy research and implementation that will prepare us for a less chaotic future.

The hard truth is that we have not even really started to do the kinds of things that we must if our children and grandchildren are going to exist in a world with a standard of living that approaches what we now take for granted.

Game Over for the Climate | James Hansen/New York Times/CommonDreams.org

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow

Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.

But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.

President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.

© 2012 The New York Times

How to Fix Student Loans: Quillen

"First, reduce the demand for an education" writes irreverent Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen.

What the author is really deploring is the college-bank-government-complex ... he's not against young folks acquiring knowledge, skills, experience and maybe even a bit of wisdom.

For so many consumers of higher education, it has become less a means of imparting capability, proficiency and ability in any given field, and more, as Quillen puts it that "[colleges] function as America's gatekeepers: If you want to get anywhere in this country, generally you've got to get through college."

Quillen has got it right, in my estimation. Here are a couple of choice excerpts -- then read the entire essay.

How to Fix Student Loans | Ed Quillen/Denver Post - April 29, 2012

... From what I can tell, the more money you make available for kids to go to college, the more that colleges will charge. That is, if it costs $5,000 per semester and the feds come up with $4,000 in loans and grants, it doesn't mean the student will need to pay only $1,000 per semester. It generally means the college will jack up its costs to $9,000 per semester.

The more money you throw at colleges, the more they take. To put it another way, median household income rose by 147 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation. College costs went up by 439 percent. ...

... if you wanted to become a lawyer the way that Abraham Lincoln became a lawyer, you'd clerk for an attorney and read law, then perhaps take the bar exam, no college required.

The same could hold for other professions like engineering and medicine. With demand thus reduced, college prices should plummet. But people who wanted to study medieval French literature could still pursue degrees at schools populated by scholars seeking knowledge. ...

Ready for Student Loan Revolt!

Students burn your loan contracts!

That's the suggestion from James Howard Kunslter: "This idea should catch on as the election season heats up. Like the anti-war youth of August, 1968, burning their draft cards in the streets of Chicago, the Millennials should flock to Charlotte and Tampa this summer and fill the parking lots (there are no streets in these places) with the smoke of their burning loan contracts - and then proceed with the loud repudiation of party politics in its two current useless, lying, craven, feckless factions." (Read the entire essay below.)

It would do this country good if enough passion for genuine change could arise and manifest itself in that kind of revolt -- especially from young Americans looking to create a better future for themselves. Unfortunately, I suspect that our consumer culture and the corruption of our political system has bred all the real gumption out of not only the young, but most of us generally.

The student loan crisis is real, but the dysfunction of the federal government, especially in the Congress means that nothing will happen to ease debtors out of their predicament. A rather timid piece of legislation has been introduced, the 'Student Loan Forgiveness Act' ... but it will go nowhere with the current reactionary extremists dominating the U.S. House of Representatives or with the obstructionist minority in the U.S. Senate.

Besides a revolt against the elite one percent that has put the college 'educated' into virtual indentured servitude with oppressive student loan debt, what we actually need is a complete change in the 'higher education' paradigm. The present four year degree regimen spends about third of its time doing remedial work that should have been accomplished in high school, then it makes students take classes unrelated to the chosen field of interest.

Until we get out of the mind set from the last century that 'higher education' can only be achieved in one way, we are not going to be generating the economic innovators and producers for the rest of this century. Technical schools, apprenticeships, certification programs, life/work experience -- not the old formulaic 'four year degree' -- are where the future lies.

Here are links to several informative articles ... some the horror stories of what the current student loan system is doing to our fellow Americans.

Learn What the Student Loan Forgiveness Act Could Mean for You | Isaac Bowers/Equal Justice Works/U.S. News

Obama Relies on Debt Collectors Profiting From Student Loan Woe | Bloomberg.com

Colleges Withhold Transcripts From Grads in Loan Default | Dave Lindorff/The Nation

Strange Jubilee | James Howard Kunstler

Is there a Baby Boomer so dim in this land of rackets and swindles who thinks that he or she will escape the wrath of the Millennials rising? The developing story is so obvious that only an academic economist could fail to notice. Here's how it will go: some months from now, as the financial unwind worsens, and the mirage of gainful employment shimmers away to nothing, and the technocrats of Europe meet nervously by some Swiss lakeside (and are seen glumly shaking their heads), and Romney and Obama try to out-do each other peddling miracle cures for the tanking national self-esteem - a dangerous meme will go forth across the internet, and this meme will say: Millennials, renounce your college loans and set yourselves free!

And then something truly marvelous will happen. They will at once disempower the swindling generation of their fathers, teachers, loan officers, and overlords and quite possibly bring on, at long last, the epochal collision of pervasive American control fraud with the hard hand of reality.

I think this will happen, and I would venture even to set the meme loose here and now and watch it go viral. The college loan racket has been an even more cynical enterprise than the mortgage racket was because so many people who ought to have known better, people of supposed intelligence such as college deans, cabinet secretaries, and think-tank Yodas, all colluded to support the false promise that the gigantic cargo cult of higher ed would keep churning out fresh careers forever - when the truth was that the entire groaning vessel of hopes and dreams was already under water and sinking into the eternal darkness.

And is there a Millennial so dim who believes that the promised package of lifetime goodies once called "a job with benefits" waits like a liveried servant to conduct them without friction through the ceremonies of career and family according to premises and promises of an obsolete American Dream? Dreams do die hard. As dreams go it was a pretty good one while it lasted, but like all dreams, it has vanished in the mists of a new morning leaving the dreamers half-sick, anxious, and drained. They have nothing to lose but their fears of the re-po man and the simulated dudgeon of telephone robot debt-collectors.

This idea should catch on as the election season heats up. Like the anti-war youth of August, 1968, burning their draft cards in the streets of Chicago, the Millennials should flock to Charlotte and Tampa this summer and fill the parking lots (there are no streets in these places) with the smoke of their burning loan contracts - and then proceed with the loud repudiation of party politics in its two current useless, lying, craven, feckless factions. The effrontery of these rogues, promising a hundred years of shale gas, and jobs, jobs, jobs, and a personal relationship with Jesus! Send them packing into the bowels of history, then go home and make it work locally, where it will have to happen in any case because the arc of events has a velocity of its own now and that is our certain destination.

The colleges themselves will, of course, implode shortly, along with everything else currently organized on the super-gigantic scale. They are no more prepared for what is about to happen to them than the chiselers in government, banking, medicine, and global corporate enterprise. We will wonder in retrospect how they ever managed to winkle 50-grand a year for their absurd promises, and how we permitted young people with undeveloped powers of judgment to sign their financial lives away on terms even more stringent than their parents' mortgages. When the universities do go down, tossing their employees overboard in the process, it will be interesting to see the former faculty chairpersons and distinguished professors of econometric modeling learn how to plant kale and care for chickens side-by-side with their formerly-indentured students. I can imagine a period of turmoil in America even harsher than, say, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China where officials, professors, and authorities of all kinds were paraded through the angry mobs wearing dunce caps. Weird things happen history.

The college loan money will not be paid back anyway, so Millennial youth ought to seize the golden opportunity to make the deliberate point that the years of swindling are officially over now. This strange jubilee could, and should, change everything.

Could $1 Trillion Student Loan Debt Derail U.S. Recovery? | CBS News

Yes, The Supreme Court Should Rescind Obamacare

The corrupt political system existing in the United States these days -- especially because of the Citizens United decision -- means that the 'individual mandate' in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will certainly become yet another step in the decimation of the American working and middle classes.

If the individual mandate is upheld by the Supreme Court, the very next step by the health insurance corporations will be the immediate commencement of intense lobbying of Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ease any Obamacare regulation that cuts into their profit and power.

We all know that Congress will ultimately give the insurance industry what it wants ... for instance, the flow of campaign money to support or oppose members of Congress to pressure them to 'adjust' the regulations on covering pre-existing conditions will be enormous. Does anyone really believe that the feckless Harry Reid (if the Democrats retain a Senate majority) or the 'flexible' Barack Obama (if he is reelected), will in the end be willing to risk their candidates' fate to the verisimilitude of rivers of corporate campaign dollars in the 2014 elections?

Then we will be stuck with the worst of all possible health care worlds: a government mandate to buy corporate health insurance or be fined -- and weak or non-existent regulations to protect us, the health care consumer.

This is why I have never believed that the insurance corporations are really all concerned about Obamacare -- it guarantees them customers by law! And while Republicans are against Obamacare now because they perceive it as an 'Obama accomplishment', if the Court upholds the individual mandate, in short order they will become defenders of the ACA while battling mightily to weaken all of its regulations.

We so desperately need health care reform in this country ... unfortunately, what we got with Obamacare was health insurance reform, not the same thing.

Pres. Obama and the Democrats have mostly themselves to blame for this health insurance reform mess -- after the 2008 elections they had big majorities in Congress with which to pass genuine effective change (the Democrats could have called the Republican's hand in the U.S. Senate and tossed-out the filibuster rule). But they wouldn't.

Now we are stuck with few alternatives. Rmoney and the Republicans offer only more corporate predation on regular Americans as their solution; Obama and the Democrats, well, muddling along trying to make everyone like them seems the best that they can do.

The Supreme Court is reported to be revealing their Obamacare decision in June ... we will just have to wait to see what happens after that.

The Progressive Case for Not Caring if the Mandate (or Obamacare) Fails | azizhp/DailyKos.com

[Excerpt] The mandate is fundamentally a conservative idea - it was originated by The Heritage Foundation, the premier conservative think tank. The reason the Republicans are against it now is not policy, but politics: their need to defeat President Obama. In fact, the Republican alternative to the mandate (crafted by Paul Ryan) is essentially identical economically speaking.

Therefore, there really is no ideological reason for Republicans to hate the mandate - it's just a means to their end to deny Obama and sort of achievement or victory. But what about for liberals? Look at the mandate from a progressive point of view: it forces consumers to buy a product from a private company.

Ezra Klein interviewed law professor Randy Barnett, who is perhaps the architect of the case against the mandate and the brains behind the legal argument to repeal Obamacare. I found this part particularly striking:

EK: Perhaps you can clarify a distinction that escapes me here. It’s understood to be constitutional for the government to tax me in order to pay for Medicare, which is a single-payer insurance program that I’ll get when I’m over 65. But it’s not okay for the government to say I have to self-insure on the private market before I’m 65.

RB: There are several answers, but I’ll limit myself to two. First, there’s the text of the Constitution itself. The text of the Constitution itself gives Congress the power to levy taxes on people and on income. We can’t dispute that. It does not give Congress the power under its commerce power, at least not expressly, to make them do business with private companies.

The second point I would make is that the duty to pay taxes is part of your duty to support the government in return for the protections the government gives you. What the government is claiming here is this power — and this ought to disturb people on the left — to make people do business with private companies when Congress thinks it’s convenient. [Earthside's emphasis]

Why the Supreme Court Should Kill ‘Obamacare’ | Dave Lindorff/CounterPunch.org

The US Supreme Court has a chance to do the people of America a big favor, perhaps atoning at last for its shameful betrayal of the electoral system in 2000 when a conservative majority stole the Florida, and national election, for George W. Bush, and for the liberal-led and equally shameful betrayal of fundamental property rights in the Kelo v New London case that, in 2005, upheld the public theft of private homes in Connecticut on behalf of a government-backed resort development. The court can atone for these betrayals by declaring the ramshackle, corrupt, hugely expensive and cynically misnamed Affordable Care Act to be unconstitutional.

The act, pushed through a Democratic Congress by President Obama in 2010, is a disaster, a cobbled-together set of measures that was fatally corrupted by the insurance lobby and other parts of the nation’s medical-industrial complex, which leaves millions uninsured, continues to tether workers to their employers like indentured servants, and undermines the Medicare program, which should be the cornerstone of a real health reform.

By killing this monstrosity of political expedience and lobbyist strong-arming, the Supreme Court’s conservative wing could give us a good chance to finally move the country to a real national health reform which would reduce costs substantially, provide quality health care to all, and finally drive a stake through the heart of the health insurance industry, the real “vampire squid” of American capitalism which has been sucking money out of American’s wallets and driving many into bankruptcy for decades (family health crises are the major single cause of bankruptcies and homes foreclosures in the country).

How can it be a good thing to kill a program that at least eliminates things like the denial of insurance coverage because of “pre-existing conditions,” or the throwing people off of coverage when they get seriously sick?

Because these reforms have come at the cost of keeping the insurance industry central to the whole health financing process, when all it is in reality is a blood-sucking middleman that makes its money by figuring out ways to deny care to those it is supposedly “covering.”

By killing the whole “Obamacare” law, the court will throw the system back into crisis mode, forcing the public and the political system to finally consider the only real answer: expansion of the Medicare program to cover everyone.

There is a reason why the US is the only major modern developed nation in the world (with the exception of Switzerland, which is an interesting case about which I have written earlier) that relies on the private insurance industry and employer-based coverage and that it also spends more on health care both per person and as a percentage of GDP of any other nation (20% of $14.6 trillion in 2010!) , while being well down on the rankings in terms of health statistics such as life expectancy and infant mortality.

The reality, which both the political leadership and the corporate media have studiously avoided discussing, is that if the US were to shift to a system in which every person was covered by a well-funded Medicare program such as is currently available to every citizen over the age of 65, the total cost of healthcare for the nation — currently about $2.9 trillion per year — would be massively reduced, as would the cost of health care for nearly all individuals, with the exception of those politicians and wealthy executives, and perhaps a small group of workers in highly unionized professions, who have their entire family insurance coverage paid for by the taxpayer or by their companies.

The reason extending Medicare coverage to everyone instead of just those who have reached 65 would be cheaper is quite obvious. The older people are, the more their medical care costs. In fact, even within the Medicare program, 90% of the $475 billion in costs, or about $428 billion, is for medical care for the 10% of the Medicare population who are the oldest. The other younger Medicare recipients require far less medical care. This is even more true for people who are under 65. People in middle age typically have far fewer visits to the doctor, far fewer hospitalizations, and are in general far healthier than those over 65. The only exceptions to this inverse relationship between age and cost of health care are infants and small children, who can require more care, including childbirth itself, than older children, and women who have children, who obviously require more care than younger or older women, or women who choose not to have kids.

Politicians have refused to consider Medicare-for-all as a reform option because of course it would require raising taxes, which in the US has become a political death wish, but that’s simply because no political leaders have had the courage–and no corporate news organization has shown the ethical integrity — to point out that raising the Medicare tax from its current 1.5% on employee and employer, would mean that employees and employers would at the same time be relieved of paying for private insurance coverage, doctor’s bills and hospital co-pays, prescription drugs, etc.

The savings that most people would see in getting rid of the private costs of health care, and the savings employers would see in no longer having to pay for private insurance coverage for their workers, would dwarf any tax increase needed to fund this expansion.

Furthermore, as I have pointed out earlier, there would be other huge taxpayer savings that would happen instantly with the adoption of universal Medicare such as they have in Canada. Among these: $100 billion in Veterans care (who needs the socialized Veterans Administration system when all veterans would have their care covered under Medicare?), $100 billion a year in federal subsidies to state Medicaid programs, which cover (sort of) the health care for the poor, plus the other $50 billion that state taxpayers pay for at the state level (another $50 billion goes to pay for nursing home care for the indigent), plus several hundred billion in “charity care” which is either directly paid by state and local agencies (with taxpayer funds) to public and private hospitals that cover those indigent patients who don’t qualify for Medicaid but who cannot pay their hospital bills, or that is simply “cost shifted” into higher costs and ultimately higher premiums for insured patients. As well, it is estimated that some 20-30 percent of the nation’s entire $2.9 trillion annual health care bill is spent on administrative costs, most of which is part of the effort by the insurance industry to deny or reduce coverage, or by the insurance industry and the other parts of the system to collect payments from patients or employers. Nearly all of that absolutely wasted $2-300 billion in non-care expenditure would simply vanish in a Medicare-for-all system, which devotes only about four percent of its budget to administrative costs. That is to say, in other words, that by adding everyone to Medicare, taxpayers would automatically save — immediately — $650-750 billion in current costs.

Add to that the over $1 trillion in private insurance premiums paid annually by US workers and their employers, and by the self-insured self-employed, all of which would no longer be needed, and you’ve eliminated some $1.7 trillion in health care costs, or more than half the nation’s total medical bill, which would allow for a quite substantial increase in Medicare payroll taxes while leaving almost everyone feeling quite a bit better off, and much more secure.

We know all these above savings would be real. Canada, which has Medicare-for-all, devotes 10% of GDP to health care for its citizens, making it one of the most expensive systems in the world, except for the US, which currently devotes an astonishing 20% of GDP to health care, and which, once Obamacare goes into full force in 2014, will be devoting an even higher percent because of the lack of cost controls in the system.

And remember, while the US spends twice as much as Canada as a percentage of GDP, our “system” still leaves over nearly 50 million people with no real access to health care, with too much income or assets to be able to qualify for Medicaid, but still unable to afford see a doctor or to pay for a critical medical test or for needed medicine. Canada, at half the cost, leaves nobody out in the cold.

You’ve never read an analysis like this in a corporate-run newspaper or seen it presented on a corporate radio or TV news or public affairs program. They all get far too much in advertising revenue from the Medical-Industrial Complex. You haven’t heard it on public broadcast networks either, which have been happily taking money from the same industry sources-p-like Johnson & Johnson, Aetna, and Merck for example, or foundations like Robert Wood Johnson, for years. Michael Moore laid it out in his wonderful film Sicko, which did a beautiful job of debunking the US media’s disinformation about the Canadian and French and British health care systems, but that film has been suspiciously absent from late-night TV film programs, despite its great reviews and awards.

But the Supreme Court’s current hearing considering several conflicting appellate court rulings on the constitutionality of “Obamacare” offer us hope that we will finally get to hear this argument about Medicare-for-all, because if the court’s ideologically right-wing majority tosses out Obamacare, and says that the federal requirement that people have to buy insurance if it isn’t provided by their employer is illegal, the whole Rube Goldberg edifice collapses, and there will basically only be two remaining choices: letting tens of millions of Americans die of easily curable diseases because they cannot afford health insurance or medical care and the government won’t pay for them, or expanding the Medicare program to cover everyone.

Obviously, the moneyed interests that hope to continue to earn profits off the public by denying us care, will continue to try and buy Congress and the president. And obviously the majority of American businesses, led by the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, will continue to advocate for an employer-based health insurance system because of the control it gives them over their workers. (How many unionized workers will dare to strike if they are going to have their health care benefits cut off while they’re walking a picket line? How many non-unionized workers will demand a raise or challenge an unsafe working condition if there’s a risk of being fired and losing health coverage for a family?) If the American people look squarely at those two options, and given the large number who have learned over the past four years that almost anyone can suddenly find her or himself jobless and without health benefits, it seems clear which option the vast majority of us will demand: Medicare for all.

Copyright © CounterPunch

U.S. Energy Future

Decisions for your personal finances about the future of the U.S. economy and trends for our energy consumption and production shouldn't dependent upon propaganda delivered by the American Petroleum Institute and assorted politicians of either major party.

Because they are not and will not tell you the truth.

So hype about a 'sustainable recovery' are skewed for the benefit of those who want you to spend more ... even if it is borrowed money. And rhetoric about the United States becoming the next energy Saudi Arabia is geared toward getting you to agree to less environmental protections that affect the health of you and your family.

I highly recommend the first article linked to here by Michael Klare; knowledge is power and the better we all understand what the big oil corporations and their billionaire owners are up to, the better we can protect ourselves.

Of course, James Howard Kunstler's Monday essay, below, is right on target.

How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the United States into a Third-World Petro-State | Michael T. Klare/AlterNet.org

Will North America become not just the next boom continent for energy bonanzas, but a new energy Third World?

Unthinkable | James Howard Kunstler

In the drunken, drug-crazed twilight of its run as Leader of the Free World, America's collective imagination swerves from one breakdown lane to the other while the highway patrol throws a donuts-and-porn party down at headquarters and the news media searches the gutter on hands-and-knees looking for the spot where it dropped its brains.

The other day, Larry Kudlow, the king popinjay at CNBC, told viewers that the US has over a trillion barrels of oil waiting to be drill-drill-drilled on our way to "energy independence." This is the kind of malarkey that America thrives on these days, the way yeasts thrive on sugary mash. It's a complete falsehood, of course, but the working dead over at The New York Times said substantially the same thing in a front-page story the week before. The Timespersons have only one source for their stories: Daniel Yergin, chief public relations pimp for the oil industry, because he makes it so easy for them by providing all the information they will ever need. The oil and gas companies would like to direct the fire-hose of loose and easy money out there into their stock prices - building to the magic moment when, Mozillo-like, the executives can dump shares, cut, and run for the far hills where no SEC officer or DOJ attorney will ever think to look. This is just another racket in an all-rackets society.

The fantasy of energy independence therefore takes shape as a "settled matter" as we lurch toward elections. The arch-moron Mitt Romney will inveigh against Obama for holding the oil dogs back while Obama pretends to spank the oil companies for gouging the public on that alleged Niagara flow of new oil. None of them understands the true situation, which is that the USA is enjoying one last gulp of a very expensive oil cocktail with the last few dollars it can prestidigitate out of the central bank's magic box, and then there is no more even notional surplus wealth to blow on more drinks.

And it isn't even much of a gulp. US production of "all liquids" - which includes methane gas drippings, ethanol, etc - went from 7.2 million barrels a day in 2004 to about 7.7 in 2011. We use about 19 million barrels a day, down about a million from peak US consumption before the financial crash of 2008. The reason it's down: Americans are going broke, one household and one small business at a time. Shale oil production is approaching half a million barrels a day. That's about 45 minutes of daily go-power. It might go up to an hour-and-a-half before production of shale oil permanently crashes on the combination of fast-depleting wells and a lack of capital to keep drilling new ones at $8 million per well.

The story for shale gas is similar, except that initial production was so exorbitant that it drove the price down to nearly nothing (the $2 range), and the bust from that Ponzi will be even more spectacular than the shale oil. Everyone from Mr. Obama to the chiselers who run Citigroup maintain that there is a one hundred year supply of gas in the USA. They are going to be very disappointed. The public, on the other hand, will not even remember what they said as they burn down the cornfields in anguish.

I met a guy at the pumps last week who was filling up a pickup truck at least twice the size of mine a few yards away. I asked him how things were going fuel-wise with that monster Ram-Charger he was feeding. At more than $100 a fill-up, it was killing him he said. His line-of-work required him to drive all over the county incessantly. His reality was a bit different from the oil company execs promising limitless horizons of oil to CNBC-watching retirees desperate for some "yield" on investment in the face of ZIRP bond rates. The price of oil (and gasoline) may well crash again, but when it does, there will be fewer business reasons for anyone to drive around the county all the live-long day, and that guy's Ram-Charger could fall into the hands of the re-po goon squad. He may never be able to get another one, either. No more money for truck loans. Capital shortage. Sorry.

This oil and gas thing cuts so many ways that the public will feel like it is gargling Gillette blue blades. Just add up the total tonnage of steel necessary to keep this Ponzi going and you would reach a discouraging conclusion: this thing has nowhere to go but swift and implacable contraction. The ultimate destination of "energy independence" will be a nation with no cars and trucks to run. We'll get there, you'll see. But that is speaking the unthinkable.

Our Energy Predicament

Spring Arrives Tonight!

For those of us living in the Rocky Mountains, Spring makes its entrance this year at 11:14 this evening; for those along the Pacific coast it begins at 10:14.

Spring Arrives With Equinox Tuesday, Earliest in Over a Century | Joe Rao/SPACE.com

Across much of the United States, this has been an unusually mild winter, especially for those living east of the Mississippi. Not a few people have noted that spring seems to have come early this year. Of course, in a meteorological sense that could be true, but in 2012 it will also be true in an astronomical sense as well, because this year spring will make its earliest arrival since the late 19th century: 1896, to be exact.

The vernal equinox — the first day of spring — will arrive tomorrow (March 20) at 05:14 Universal Time, or 1:14 a.m. EDT. Even more intriguing is that for those in the Mountain and Pacific Time zones, the equinox will actually arrive tonight (March 19).

Astronomers define an equinox as that moment when the sun arrives at one of two intersection points of the ecliptic (the sun's path across the sky) and the celestial equator (Earth's equator projected onto the sky). One such intersection point is located in western Virgo; the sun arrives there on Sept. 22 or 23, and appears to cross the equator from north to south, marking the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.

The other intersection point, in eastern Pisces, is where the sun will be tomorrow. The sun is now migrating north of the equator, hence this is the "vernal" or spring equinox. At 5:14 UT next Tuesday, the sun will be shining directly over the equator from the point of view of a spot in the Indian Ocean, 757 miles (1,218 km) southeast of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Why so early?

Now maybe this rings false. After all, when some of us of a certain age were growing up, the first day of spring was always on March 21, not March 20, right? Now all of a sudden spring is coming on March 20, and as we just noted, even earlier — March 19 — for some.

Is this unheard of? Not if you look at the statistics. In fact, did you know that during the 20th century, March 21 was actually the exception rather than the rule? The vernal equinox landed on March 21 only 36 out of 100 years — most of these occasions coming during the early and middle part of the 20th century. Yet from 1981 to 2102, Americans celebrate the beginning of spring no later than March 20. Still, for many March 21 is ingrained in our culture as the traditional first day of spring, even though it's been more than 30 years since that last happened.
Read the rest of the article.

Limbaugh Goes Limp

Rush Limbaugh's radio talk program is in very serious trouble.

The misogynist-in-chief of the Republican Party is finding out that indeed, character counts.

Here is the news from Radio-Info.com: 'Rush syndicator tells news/talk affiliates not to run its barter spots for 2 wks'

ThinkProgress.org explains the development:

BREAKING: Rush Limbaugh Syndicator Suspends National Ads For Two Week

Radio-Info.com reports that Premiere Networks, which syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show, told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. Rush Limbaugh is normally provided to afflilates for free in return for running several minutes of national advertisements provided by Premiere each hour. These ads called “barter spots.” These spots are how Premiere makes its money off of Rush Limbaugh and other shows it syndicates.

But without explaination, Premiere has supended these national advertisements for two weeks. Radio-Info.com calls the move “unusual.” The development suggests that Rush Limbaugh’s incessant sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke have caused severe damage to the show.

From the memo:

Attention Traffic Managers of Premiere News/Talk Affiliates:

We are suspending the requirement to run barter spots for two weeks, March 12th and March 19th, for our News/Talk affiliates only.

Please replace/re-traffic any Premiere barter spots immediately. Contractual requirements to run barter spots are being suspended for these two weeks only. Replace them with Lifelock and Lear Financial or a local spot of your choice.

Earlier today, ThinkProgress exclusively reported that 140 advertisers, including dozens of major national corporations, had requested their ads no longer air on Rush Limbaugh. Lifelock and Lear Financial among the only companies standing by Limbaugh.

Over the last several days much of the advertising time during the Rush Limbaugh show on his flagship station, WABC, has been filled with free public service announcements.

Limbaugh: Ignorance and Purposeful Ignorance

UPDATE!

Listen to Limbaugh's words -- the trouble he is in is because of much, much more that the use of just two words. Media Matters has extracted a three day timeline of all of Limbaugh's ignorant and cruel attacks.

Limbaugh's Misogynistic Attack On Georgetown Law Student Continues With Increased Vitriol | MediaMatters.org

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UPDATE!

My comment on Limbaugh's non-apology 'apology' and information for contacting Colorado KOA radio, the local lair for Limbaugh.

KOA Radio: Time for Decency in Broadcasting

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One thing is for certain: Rush Limbaugh has displayed himself to be a really dastardly ignoramus.

In this latest episode of 'Limbaugh self-promotion-through-the-use-of-outrageous-insults' ... he shows, however, that his ability to comprehend the regular world of the 21st century is severely limited. (ABC News Video Report)

It is obvious from his radio rantings last week that though he referred passingly to Sandra Fluke's testimony before the Democrats of the House of Representatives, he did not understand what she said. Or if he did understand, then he has purposefully lied and mischaracterized what she said.

It is also obvious from his bombast over the past three days that the four-times-married, 61 year-old Limbaugh does not know how modern birth control works. Or if he does then he is purposefully playing the fool.

In either and all of the cases denoted, Limbaugh has demonstrated both shameless ignorance and contemptible, purposeful ignorance.

Additionally, Limbaugh and others on the extreme right are asserting that the Obama health care regulation on birth control would require taxpayers to pay for this service especially as it pertains to Ms. Fluke and her and her contemporaries' situation -- but the entire controversy sprung to life over what private religious employer's insurance company plans must cover! This particular deception is purposeful and is surely meant as propaganda to 'outrage' average Americans ... Limbaugh is just plain lying in this instance.

If there is a desire among citizens of this republic to demand a more civil discourse on controversial political and social issues, then the end of Rush Limbaugh's radio reign of bombast and bigotry should finally be at hand.

As an observer and participant in political campaigns/elections for several decades now, I confess to being rather amazed that even considering the hatred for Barack Obama that leaders of the Republican Party have expressed, I never thought that I would witness such an assault on an integral part of modern medicine as a tactic in their aim to defeat the President. The invention of oral contraceptives for the mutual health and well-being of women, men and families ranks with the development of antibiotics, medical insulin for diabetics, vitamin supplements, advances in blood typing, banking, and transfusion as great medical innovations of the last one hundred years.

My formative political years began in the early 1970s as an active young Democrat in Casper, Wyoming (a place chockfull of Republicans). In that small city I associated with and knew well many Republican politicians and officeholders. In those days there was respect and comity, yet still strong disagreement between the two political parties. It is my opinion that there is indeed little resemblance between the Republicans of that time and the fanatical, hardline party of today.

I'm no longer a Democrat and I am not inclined to vote for the re-election of Pres. Obama -- I believe our current corporate two party system no longer serves the better interests of the nation. However, if Republicans choose to align themselves with the likes of Limbaugh and further embrace the extremism that has arisen in its ranks with the emergence of the 'Tea Party' ... well, we will see this November not an electoral decision for reform and renewal for this country, but for continuing stagnation and decline.

What is happening in our politics these days really is just too bad and too sad.

Below find articles highlighting Limbaugh's ignorance ... and the actual testimony of Sandra Fluke.

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Dear Rush Limbaugh: Birth Control Doesn't Work Like Viagra | Adam Serwer/Mother Jones

Rush Limbaugh Has No Clue How Birth Control Works | AlterNet.org

Rush Limbaugh is so dumb….'How dumb is he?' | Karen Harper/Examiner.com

A Sex Ed 101 curriculum for conservatives | Amanda Marcotte/Reuters

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Transcript: Sandra Fluke testifies on why women should be allowed access to contraception and reproductive health care

Video

Hearing on women’s reproductive health and contraception before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee held on Feb. 23, 2012

“Leader [Nancy] Pelosi, members of Congress, good morning. And thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and for allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation.

“My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.

“We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

“I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.

“We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women.

“Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic or Jesuit institutions.

“When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage.

“And especially in the last week, I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis, I hear yet from another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously-affiliated employer, and they tell me that they have suffered financially and emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage.

“And so, I’m here today to share their voices, and I want to thank you for allowing them – not me – to be heard.

“Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggle financially as a result of this policy.

“One told us about how embarrassed and just powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance and she had to turn and walk away because she couldn’t afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception.

“Just last week, a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn’t fit it into their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.

“And some might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s just not true.

“Women’s health clinic provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitely documented, these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing, and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.

“How can Congress consider the [Rep. Jeff] Fortenberry (R-Neb.), [Sen. Marco] Rubio (R-Fla.) and [Sen. Roy] Blunt (R-Mo.) legislation to allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraception coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are attempting to de-fund those very same clinics?

“These denial of contraceptive coverage impact real people.

“In the worst cases, women who need these medications for other medical conditions suffer very dire consequences.

“A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.

“Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.

“When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

“In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.

“For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.

“After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.

“I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, ‘It was so painful I’d woke up thinking I’ve been shot.’

“Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result.

“On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.

“Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32-years-old.

“As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’

“Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.

“Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were.

“One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.

“Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.

“Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.

“I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.

“Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.

“One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.

“As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’

“These are not feelings that male fellow student experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.

“In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?

“We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.

“We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs.

“We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.

“We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university.

“We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.

“And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

“Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.

“The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.

“Thank you very much.”

Really, What Is It With This Guy?

Will this fellow Willard Mitt Romney really say anything ... anything ... at anytime if it he thinks it will bring him some political advantage?

Readers of this web site know that I have no truck with Pres. Obama, but holy cow -- in all my many years of observing political candidates, I don't know if I have ever seen as inconsistent, as facile, as glib and as disingenuous a fellow as this guy Mitt Romney.

mitt romney
ʎǝuɯoɹ ʇʇım

Watch the brief video.

Rick Santorum admits using robocalls in Michigan primary campaign | The Guardian

Rick Santorum has admitted authorising "robocalls" to encourage Democrats to participate in the Michigan Republican primary and to vote against rival Mitt Romney.

Well, here's another little video that amplifies on the theme of this post.

The Burden of Student Loans is Real

Here's an update to the post from last week about the current level of crushing college student debt.

This is serious stuff.

Student Loans Near $1 Trillion Hurt Young U.S. Buyers: Mortgages | Bloomberg.com

Roshell Schenck has a Ph.D in pharmacy and earns $125,000 a year, yet can’t qualify for a mortgage for a house for herself and her 9-year-old daughter. The 2008 graduate of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Erie, Pennsylvania, has more than $110,000 in student debt.

“I’d love to buy and can afford to buy,” said Schenck, 28. Since lenders place closer scrutiny on college loans than in prior years, she says, “it’s almost impossible for me to get a loan. My debt is crushing my chances of purchasing a home."

As outstanding student debt approaches $1 trillion, it’s one more reason record-low interest rates aren’t doing more to boost housing. The tighter lending standards that have emerged in the wake of the recession weigh particularly on younger, first-time home buyers, according to a Federal Reserve study sent to Congress on Jan. 4. These households tend to be younger, often have relatively new credit profiles, lower-than-average credit scores and fewer economic resources to make a large down payment, the report said.
Read the rest of the story.

Student loan interest rate scheduled to double in July 2012 | The Maroon - Loyola University

The interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans are expected to double in July, an increase that could heap thousands of dollars on top of an undergraduate student's debt. ...

Cathy Simoneaux, director of the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid, said the interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans for undergraduate students is 3.4 percent.
"Congress, a couple of years ago, cut the interest rate on student loans for undergraduate students, and so if Congress does nothing, the interest rate goes back to the statutory maximum of 6.8 percent in July," Simoneaux said. ...

Iran War Drum Tempo is Picking Up

There is no doubt about it -- the war drums are picking up their tempo in Washington and Israel.

Iran.

Of course, a war with Iran would be devastating to Israel, the United States and the world economy; but never mind, the warmongering neocons from the Bush/Cheney era are re-emerging again to stoke FEAR in the hearts of gullible Americans.

Sadly, U.S. foreign policy arrogance is finding voice in the Obama administration. The sanction actions thus far taken to punish Tehran for pursuing atomic electricity generation are having the desired effect of creating a positive feedback loop ... the more Iran is threatened by economic sanctions, the more they naturally respond in kind.

There is a way out of this looming crisis. If the United States and the Europeans would demand that Israel be held accountable for its illegal nuclear weapons program and stockpile, well, then maybe Iran would stop being so belligerent in defense of its nuclear power program.

We also all understand the political dynamic here in the U.S. enough to know that hold the same standard for Israel that we hold for every other nation is just not going to happen.

So, keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best ... it is a presidential election year and the warmongering from the right is going to escalate. The question is how Pres. Obama will respond -- by changing the present confrontational course and seeking peace, or by trying to be even more blustery than the neocons and the Republican presidential nomination candidates.

US Officials Believe Iran Sanctions Will Fail, Making Military Action Likely | The Guardian

• Growing view that strike, by Israel or US, will happen
• 'Sweet spot' for Israeli action identified as September-October
• White House remains determined to give sanctions time

Another March to War? | Matt Taibbi/Rolling Stone

Lieberman Edges US to War with Iran | Robert Parry/ConsortiumNews.com

The 'Go to College' Scam

It is a taboo thought ... it is now considered an apostasy of American success values ... it is a middle class heresy ...

Nevertheless it needs to be proclaimed: college and student loans are a scam in 21st century America.

Just like the housing bubble that inflated because everyone was pushed and cajoled into taking on mortgages so that Wall Street could make billions on the securitized debt, so the "go to college" obsession is also loading a huge financial burden on what is left of working and middle class America. The Obama administration has been particularly egregious on this score; the everyone needs to 'go to college' mania is the logical culmination of its 'accountability', 'standards', nationalization, teacher-bashing, and charter-privatization education policy.

And this student and parent debt is even more onerous than mortgage foreclosure -- because no one can 'walk away'; no one can find relief in bankruptcy; no one can sue -- you can be impoverished until death if that is what it takes for the lenders to get back their money plus interest. Most folks don't understand this, the collectors can take your house, they can take your retirement, and, yes, they can even garnish your Social Security.

Make no mistake, the social and cultural pressure on young people and families to get into college is intense and relentless.

The propaganda is so over-the-top that there are 'public service announcements' on radio equating proficiency in video game playing to being ready to go to college: just listen.

The sponsor of this marketing ploy? Why it's KnowHow2Go.org funded by the Lumina Foundation that appears to be a benevolent and civic minded group of 'concerned citizens'-- but it is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all over again, as Wikipedia points out:

"Lumina Foundation is a conversion foundation created in mid-2000 as USA Group, Inc., the nation's largest private guarantor and administrator of education loans, sold most of its operating assets to the Student Loan Marketing Association, Inc. (Sallie Mae). Proceeds from the sale established the USA Group Foundation with an endowment of $770M. The Foundation was renamed Lumina Foundation for Education in February, 2001."

In other words, the more families that 'know how to go' and borrow thousands to send their daughters and sons to college, the more profit for lenders, guarantors and collectors of student loans.

I've said it here before and it needs to be repeated: not every person needs a college education! There are many different paths for young people to pursue to find happiness, contentment and 'success' in life.

There is, in my opinion, nothing more important for a fulfilled life than education, learning and knowledge ... but there are many ways to acquire this essential ingredient for a meaningful existence besides college.

So, with tuition rates still rising, it is time for average Americans to tell the elite, corporate marketers of college to take a hike. Don't take a student loan; find an apprenticeship or certificate program; self-educate; go to an affordable community college; learn on the job.

What will the lenders, lobbyists, educrats and $500,000+ a year university presidents and administrators do if enrollments start going down because we cannot afford to be paying their salaries? What will they do?

Vote with your dollars and your votes (if you can find any worthy candidates) and demand reform of the college-loan complex.

Visit this web site to learn more: StudentLoanJustice.org

Student Loan Crisis Busts Retirement Savings | Sharon Epperson/CNBC

Parents who borrow money to pay for their children's college education are exacerbating a growing student loan crisis. ...

Parents have an average of about $34,000 in student loans and that figure rises to $50,000, including interest, over a standard 10-year loan repayment period. Interest rates on the most common parental loan — the federal Parent "PLUS" loan — is fixed at almost 8 percent. So the return on parents' investments needs to average at least 8 percent just to break even. ...

Default: the Student Loan Doc (Trailer)(old) from Default: the Student Loan Docume on Vimeo.

Are There Answers in the Philosophy of Anarchism?

It is clear that the conventional governance given us by the two major corporate political parties in the United States has led us into economic and social stagnation. Neither the more and more extreme right-wing Republicans nor the uninspired and timid Democrats seem capable of leading the republic out of the morass in which we find ourselves. Republicans tend toward theocracy and plutocracy, and Democrats to nannyism and, well, plutocracy.

Today at AlterNet.org a concise article explaining what 'anarchism' is actually about -- not the exaggerated and almost cartoonish wild-eyed radicalism concocted by the corporate press at the turn of the last century -- but the varied and progressive philosophy that may contain ideas that 21st century Americans should give a closer look.

Anarchism Is Not What You Think It Is -- And There's a Whole Lot We Can Learn from It | David Morris/AlterNet.org

The word anarchism has been so stripped of substance that it has come to be equated with chaos and nihilism. That's not what it means.

I also recommend the book 'Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism' as a good overview of various proponents and their thoughts on the topic.

The German Bank Bailout

Let's be clear, the so-called Greek bailout is really a bailout of the banks that lent Greece the money in the first place.

Eurozone finance ministers are then to agree to the bailout on Wednesday provided Greece meets its end of the bargain. Berlin is insisting most of the money is held in a separate account and is used purely to service Greece's debt.[Greece approves austerity cuts to secure eurozone bailout and avoid debt default - The Guardian; February 12, 2012]

And ... James Howard Kunstler for this week:

The John Brown Moment | James Howard Kunstler

When Gaia gets pissed off enough at the antics of humanity, she sends in her hit-man, Reality, to settle accounts. Reality is blessed with a cloak of invisibility. The human race is so busy concocting stories about what it is doing, that Reality steals onto the scene unnoticed - until bodies start to fall over, and the sort of bad political weather known as a shit-storm fills the skies, the streets, and the assembly halls.

One of the cockamamie stories circulating this week is that the Euro bailout of broke member nations is fait accompli, baked in the cake, a done deal, no problemo, because the December 2011 Long Term Refinancing Operation makes it so. The European Central Bank can supposedly eat bad bond paper until the cows come home without choking to death at the same time that it can run a back-door money-printing racket without the results showing up in currency degradation. And the Greeks will bend over and receive what they've got coming good and hard because, well, they are Greeks, and it is their way!

Excuse me, but something's got to give. History is a lot of things, but it is not silly putty. Its cousin, Reality, slips through it performing its deeds one way or another. The Greeks have lately remembered some of their own history. The Germans have beset them before, they now recall, and some of the money currently labeled "debt" may have been filed incorrectly, the Greeks say. It actually belongs in the folder labeled "war reparations." (Granted, it is hard to read folders when you are bending over so far that things look upside-down.) Germany, it happens, remembers too the last time that this folder was flopped out on the table. Things didn't work out so well for the Weimar finance ministry in those dark days ninety years ago.

Meanwhile, Athens and several other Greek cities ignite in an overture to what might come to be called the European Spring.

Reality steals onto the scene bearing a message from Mother Gaia: "None of your shenanigans make the numbers add up. The European financial arrangement will blow up because it must." Therefore, expect it to blow up. Germany will not keep pounding sand down the rat-hole of PIIGS insolvency for another year. Anyway, the proverbial can that everyone was kicking down the road - it fell down the rat-hole, too, so there is nothing left to kick except Greek civil servants, both current and retired and, alas, they represent that part of the Greek economy not occupied by olive cultivation, which is to say most of it. It turns out, when you kick Greeks down the road (probably Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, and Irish, too) sparks fly off them and things catch fire.

The bottom line seems to be that Europe can either go broke or burn down, or do both. But it can't go back to what it was doing before: pretending to be rich and care-free.

Over on this side of the Atlantic, America's experiment in pervasive control fraud took a new turn with the pretended "settlement" of massive, widespread, robo-signing allegations that will allow a bunch of "the usual suspect" TBTF banks off the hook from future liability and criminal prosecution resulting from hundreds of billions of dollars worth of swindles. The TBTF banks will have to pay, when all the "principal reduction credits" and other dodgy subtractions are made, a couple of billion altogether, which is obviously little more than a cost of doing business for such supernaturally fabulous returns. And then that is supposed to be the end of the whole disgusting episode.

Last to cave in on this legally squooshy agreement between fifty states was New York's own Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, newly enlisted in the elite national corps of cads, bounders, and sell-outs. This was the week that the same Schneiderman agreed to lead President Obama's so called Mortgage Fraud Task Force, which, any child of eight can see, is a smokescreen to conceal the fact that the US Department of Justice has failed to initiate any action whatsoever in the vast and gruesome pageant of fraud that has transformed the rule of law into a rule of larceny.

Do you think the late Whitney Houston was a lost soul? Then look for the soul of your country - if you can find it in the wilderness of self-denial, self-double-dealing, and suicidal self-perfidy that it has blundered into with eyes wide shut. No lie is now too big for the United States to swallow. If Europeans ignite and blow up when kicked down the road, here is what will happen to America: it will blunder down its own road until it reaches the next John Brown moment. John Brown put his proverbially famous body in the middle of that road some ways back. He mounted an insurrection at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to fast-track the abolition of slavery. Brown was hanged in 1859, but less than two years later the Civil War commenced, the greatest convulsion in our history. So far.

Slavery was yesteryear's abomination in America as pervasive control fraud is today's. Somewhere out in America right now is the new American John Brown, a righteous fanatic whose act is waiting to alter the course of history. The next John Brown will also precipitate what was a long time coming. Reality is busy in the background, even while we blog and dither, setting things up.

Unemployment in America: The Numbers Aren't What They Seem

The January 2012 employment/unemployment numbers released by the federal government today would seem to show that more Americans are getting jobs ... maybe the recession is finally ending? Or, yet again, that things are moving in the right direction?

Don't be fooled. I'm not. I didn't trust the economic statistics concocted by the Bush administration and I don't necessarily accept the numbers that the Obama crowd presents to us -- especially in a presidential election year.

First of all, take a look at this analysis:

Employment Report: Blatant And Outrageous Lies | Karl Denninger/Market-Ticker.org

Here is the truth ... "the total number of employed persons fell. A lot. To put a number on it, the total number of employed persons fell by 737,000 by actual count."

Then there is this chart that demonstrates the persistence of unemployment in the 21st century U.S. economy:

Finally, there is this bit of common sense that I see -- even if employment does start to inch up, if the new jobs are paying a barely living wage, lack health insurance and other benefits, we could actually experience a 'employment recovery' recession, so to speak.

The financialization of our economy has been a disaster for working and middle class Americans. President Obama in campaign mode is saying the 'right' things now ... but for the last three years he has been a Casper Milquetoast leader: timid and unimaginative. Of course, our corrupted two party system is not giving us a reasonable alternative from the 'other side' ... a leverage buy-out artist as president? Oh, please.

Lots of Talk ... Getting Us Nowhere

State of the Union?

The sad thing, of course, is that with the corporatized two party system under which the United States of America is currently governed, nothing much will change no matter who is elected this coming November.

Pres. Obama is the master of the platitude: a kinder, gentler corporatism ... and the last person we need 'leading' us is a fellow who is the embodiment of that rarefied economic class: the one percent of the one percent or the 'Romney Class'.

Between Obama's disingenuous State of the Union address and the farce that is passing for the Republican presidential nomination contest, average Americans are left with little but a vague 'hope' that somehow we will all muddle through our difficulties without too much pain and suffering.

Unfortunately, the longer we put off breaking-up the mega-transnational banks and corporations, the longer we disregard the further centralization of power to the federal government, the longer we ignore Peak Oil and climate change -- the more we will struggle when reality strikes.

Jive Talkin | James Howard Kunstler

Well, he had to get up there and say something. In this particular winter of our discontent, the wispiest nostrums and baldest lies will do. America is not interested in reality. America is a nine-hundred pound man imprisoned in a fetid trailer bedroom begging for one more case of Little Debbie Cocoa Cremes before the front-end-loader bashes through the wall to haul him to intensive care. America just wants to hear another story about its own wonderfulness before that happens. America's soul is so lost that it has disappeared into the same cosmic wilderness that MF Global's client accounts were last seen entering.

Mr. Obama keeps telling nationwide audiences that "we have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years." That is just not true. If he believes it then he is either 1) getting treasonously bad advice from dishonest advisors or 2) not reading reports issued by his own agencies or 3) just making shit up. This was the same week, by the way, when the US Department of Energy dropped its estimate for the Marcellus shale gas play by 66 percent, while the estimate for all US shale basins went down 42 percent. The shale gas industry is another Ponzi bubble that is about to founder on a scarcity of investment capital. Just watch.

The "energy independence" trope is a lie, too. At least in the sense that Mr. Obama means - that we can run the suburban clusterfuck and all its accessories by other means than fossil fuels. He just says it because it makes voters feel better. By the time they find out it was just a story, he won't need their votes anymore. Meanwhile, we'll do nothing to prepare for a different way of life, and so, necessarily, the result will be an obscene scramble for power and resources that will leave a lot of people dead.

The topper for me, though, was the President's cheeky announcement that he'd ordered the Department of Justice to form a "special unit" to investigate mortgage fraud and other lethal irregularities in the banking sector. The fact that his congressional audience did not bust out laughing shows what a convocation of craven and perfidious cat's paws they are. Note to readers: the DOJ has a long-established criminal division fully empowered to prosecute all the familiar scams of our time from NINJA lending to the robo-signing of titles to MERS mortgage mischief, to the bundling and sales of booby-trapped CDOs - up to and including whatever Jon Corzine thought he was doing at MF Global.

Notice how lame the major newspapers and cable news networks were in responding to Mr. Obama's impudent japery. None of them, including The New York Times, bothered to ask Attorney General Eric Holder what he's been up to along these lines for the past three years. It is really hard to account for the stupendous incompetence of the news media in recent years. Of course, I'm allergic to conspiracy theories and the only explanation that adds up for me is the diminishing returns of technology. Among other untruths we've embraced collectively is the idea that computer-distributed information amounts to knowledge and understanding, tending toward judgment. Apparently, it's only made our society much dumber and more irresponsible. After all, none of the supposed media watchdogs even asked The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, or CNN and a hundred other outlets why they didn't interview the Attorney General of the United States and ask him why he has not been taking care of the business now assigned to this special unit.

Not included in the State of the Union message was any reference to the provision in the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act that allows the US government to suspend due process of law and use the military to arrest and indefinitely detain US citizens on vague and opportunistic charges of "suspicion" You will remember a month ago when Mr. Obama signed the law and issued a "signing statement" that said his administration would not carry out these specific provisions. Did anyone notice that it is an impeachable offense for the president to state his opposition to enforcing the law? In which case, why isn't there a bill of impeachment making its way through Congress right now?

I've had enough of Obama, though I voted for him in 2008. I won't vote for him again. But I'm not altogether confident that any of us will be voting for anyone in the fall of 2012. Too many systems we depend on are spinning out of control. I suppose we will continue feeding ourselves a diet of lies and evasions until circumstances become so extreme that language itself loses all relevance and only real action will answer. I believe that moment is approaching in the yet-to-be-acted-out political uproars of the spring and summer. In the meantime, American leadership is bankrupt. Just accept the fact that America has no legitimate leadership. The vacuum is total and we know how nature feels about a vacuum.

New Report by Agency Lowers Estimates of Natural Gas in U.S. | New York Times - January 28, 2012

Top Justice Officials Connected to Mortgage Banks | Reuters - January 20, 2012

The Martin Luther King, Jr. to Honor and Remember

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I dare say that most people don't really know why, or really very much about Dr. King ... they think they do, but King's life and causes would still make most folks uncomfortable. He was not just about the "I have a dream" speech -- he was about working for a deeper kind of equality and dignity for all human beings.

In 2012 when economic inequality in the United States has reached levels not seen since before the Great Depression, the words and activities of Martin Luther King have renewed significance.

These videos present historical context and a meaningful synopsis of King's views and his enduring struggle.

Martin Luther King, Jr: "Mountaintop" speech full length

Martin Luther King, Jr: "Mountaintop" speech full length from Filip Goc on Vimeo.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Addresses Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1967)

Martin Luther King - Where Do We Go From Here? (Conclusion) from MLK Speeches on Vimeo.

Choices the One Percent Are Foisting Upon Us

The dysfunction of the two corporate party system in this country is becoming even more apparent.

The two leading candidates for the nomination of the Republican and Democratic parties for president of the United States are individuals with which the elite one precent can be comfortable and 'prosperous' (like how many more millions will it take to be prosperous enough?).

Every voter in the country should take thirty minutes to watch the video produced by "Winning our Future" ... the super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich. Even five or ten minutes of this presentation will inform you that Willard Mitt Romney is the very kind of operator who has been so instrumental in devastating the American middle class over the past decade.

King of Bain "When Mitt Romney Came To Town" [Trailer]

Full video at: Winning Our Future
On the other side, we again see the true nature of Pres. Obama revealed in the latest pick to be his chief-of-staff. Cenk Uygur of 'The Young Turks' tells us about Jack Lew:

Republicans involved in their nomination process should thank Newt Gingrich supporters for delivering the blow on Romney in time for them to change direction (if they are allowed to by their 'leaders') ... of course, there isn't much of a choice in the field of candidates they have now.

Democrats have no choice at all -- Obama is the incumbent muddler they are stuck with; they have to re-nominate him.

So, the nation is headed towards a presidential election where the one percent wins no matter who actually becomes the occupant of the White House in January 2013.

It's the two party system.