I think many people really haven't heard what Intelligent Design is all about so I suggest to what this video:

Thursday, July 16, 2009

A rising tide of social misery

A rising tide of social misery
By David Walsh
16 July 2009

Contrary to Obama administration and media claims about the recession “easing,” millions of working people in America are losing their jobs, earnings and health care benefits at an accelerating pace.

While executives at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and other financial giants prepare to pay themselves billions of dollars this year in salaries and bonuses, life has continued to become more and more difficult for a broad layer of the population.

The New York Times pointed out on Wednesday that in California and a number of other states, “one out of every five people who would like to be working full time is not now doing so.”

The official jobless rate of 9.5 percent excludes both those who have stopped looking for jobs because local conditions are so bleak and those obliged to accept part-time employment.

If these unemployed and underemployed were included, the real jobless rate in the country’s most populous state, California, for example, would be 20.3 percent, according to the Times. In Oregon it would be 23.5 percent, in Michigan and Rhode Island, 21.5 percent, and in South Carolina, 20.5 percent. The figure would be just below 20 percent in Tennessee, Nevada and a number of “states that have relied heavily on manufacturing and housing.”

Given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ national jobless rate is skewed, for political reasons, to minimize the actual conditions, various analysts step in and attempt to come up with a “real unemployment” number.

The Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston’s Northeastern University places the current jobless rate at 18.2 percent, higher than the official figure on the eve of World War II. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics puts the “Alternative Unemployment” rate at 20.6 percent. Other analysts calculate an “Effective Unemployment” figure of 18.7 percent. Whatever the precise number, the army of unemployed is large and swelling. A great many lives have already been devastated.

David Rosenberg, chief economist at the investment firm Gluskin Sheff in Toronto and former chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch, argues: “The official ranks of the unemployed have doubled during this recession to 14 million and if you take into account all forms of labour market slack, the unofficial number is bordering on 30 million, another record.”

The figures on job losses in the current slump are staggering. Since the start of the recession in December 2007 the US economy has lost a total of 6.5 million jobs. In fact, the economy presently has fewer jobs than it did in May 2000. The Economic Policy Institute points out that “the entire growth in jobs over the last nine years has been wiped out,” while the labor force has actually expanded by 12.5 million workers.

According to economist Rosenberg, “We have lost a record 9 million full-time jobs this [business] cycle, more than triple what is normal in the context of a post-WWII recession, with over 2 million pushed onto part-time work.” He notes that three-quarters of those laid off over the past year were let go on a permanent, not a temporary basis, and that a record 53 percent of those currently out of work were displaced for good.

Rosenberg estimates that more than four million jobs in financial services, residential construction, durable goods manufacturing, wholesale-retail and leisure-hospitality “are not going to come back.” The destruction of millions of better-paying, full-time jobs has enormous implications for the living standards of working families.

Job openings in the US have dropped by 42 percent since the end of 2007, so that in June 2009 there were some six unemployed looking for every job. As a result, the percentage of the jobless out of work for more than six months increased by nearly 70 percent from June 2008 to June 2009 (17.1 to 29 percent).

Since employers, who can afford to pick and choose, are generally taking experience over youth, and workers over 55 are holding on to their jobs for dear life, the official unemployment rate for young people has jumped to 15.2 percent for 20-24 year olds (a 49 percent increase in 12 months!) and 24 percent for 16-19 year olds. For African-Americans 16 to 19, the jobless rate is currently 38 percent.

As serious as they are, the jobless figures are only part of the story. Public and private employers across the country are taking advantage of the recession to cut wages, hours (through “unpaid leave,” “furloughs” and other means) and benefits, impoverishing many of those still employed.

The average work week fell to 33 hours in June, the lowest since data was collected in 1964, and 48 minutes shorter than when the recession began. The combined decline in jobs and hours in June was the equivalent of a loss of some 800,000 jobs.

Business Week notes that “Cuts in pay and hours are rippling throughout the economy in businesses large and small and industries from mining to retail.” A survey commissioned by the Economist in June found 5 percent of respondents had already taken a furlough in 2009 and 13 percent had taken a pay cut.

Mortimer Zuckerman in the July 14 Wall Street Journal commented: “Full-time workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity.” Average weekly earnings fell to $611.49 in June, from $613.34 in May.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that real average weekly earnings fell by 1.2 percent from May to June after seasonal adjustment. The drop resulted from a 0.3 percent decrease in average weekly hours and a 0.9 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index, driven by a sharp jump in gasoline prices.

Also on Wednesday, reports showed that industrial production declined in the US, for the eighth straight month. The industrial sector operated at 68 percent of its capacity in June, down from 68.2 percent in May, a new low in the 42 years since the data have been collected.

Meanwhile, eleven of the 17 Federal Reserve governors and regional bank presidents are predicting that unemployment will be 10 percent or higher in the final three months of 2009, and they expect the downturn, according to the Washington Post, “to be long-lasting.”

American workers are not only losing jobs and homes, they are also losing health care “at an alarming rate,” says a new report from Families USA. While the latest data from the Census Bureau indicated that 45.7 million Americans lacked health coverage in 2007, “economists believe the situation has only worsened in the intervening months as the economic downturn has taken its toll.” Experts predict an additional 6.9 million people in the US—a 15 percent increase—will lose their health coverage by the end of 2010.

Behind this health care disaster are the combined effects of rising costs, businesses slashing or eliminating coverage, and unemployment.

Noting that the rapid increase in joblessness means that the various states will probably “experience even greater losses ... than can be captured by our Key Findings,” Families USA estimates that between January 2008 and December 2010, 995,200 people in California, for example, will lose health coverage—or 6,380 per week. In Texas, which has the highest percentage of uninsured, some 866,000 residents will lose coverage by the end of next year.

In Florida, more than 3,500 people a week are losing coverage; in New York, nearly 2,500 people; in both Illinois and Georgia some 1,600 people; in New Jersey, 1,200, and in Michigan, a little more than 1,000 people each week.

In the US as a whole, the group estimates that 44,000 people are losing their health care every week.

On July 7 the American Bankers Association reported delinquencies on consumer debt rose to record levels, as customers had difficulty paying for everything from credit cards to automobiles. The percentage of borrowers at least 30 days late paying a balance is the highest since the association began keeping records in 1974.

ABA Chief Economist James Chessen stated bluntly, “The number one driver of delinquencies is job loss. When people lose their jobs, they can’t pay their bills. Delinquencies won’t improve until companies start hiring again.”

Public outrage at the present situation is growing. It is not uncommon to hear the rich, the “filthy” bankers, being denounced in work places and neighborhoods. Many workers—abandoned by the unions to their fate, lied to and cheated by the Democrats—have been stunned by the rapidity of the crisis. The Economist, a little nervously, refers to “The quiet Americans,” who are “proving stoical in the face of pay cuts and compulsory unpaid leave.” Later the magazine adds, “for the moment.”

Whatever the initial problems and hesitations of the population, the raging economic crisis will destabilize American political and social life, and radicalize vast numbers of people. It is inevitably creating the conditions for a showdown between working people, the vast majority, and the corporate aristocracy. Building an independent political movement of the working class based on a socialist and internationalist program to offer a progressive way out of the crisis is the most pressing task.

U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailout Programs (Update1)

U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailout Programs (Update1)

By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry
Bloomberg.com
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

Financial Rescue

The pledges, amounting to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the U.S. last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up about 18 months ago. The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid. The total already tapped has decreased about 1 percent since November, mostly because foreign central banks are using fewer dollars in currency-exchange agreements called swaps.

Federal Reserve lending to banks peaked at a record $2.3 trillion in December, dropping to $1.83 trillion by last week. The Fed balance sheet is still more than double the $880 billion it was in the week before Sept. 17 when it agreed to accept lower-quality collateral.

The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $14.5 trillion, or 33 percent, of the value of the world’s companies since Sept. 15; brought down Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.; and led to the takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. by Bank of America Corp.

The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

‘All the Stops’

“The Fed, Treasury and FDIC are pulling out all the stops to stop any widespread systemic damage to the economy,” said Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Inc. in Dallas and a former senior economist at the central bank. “The federal government is on the hook for an awful lot of money but I think it’s needed to help the financial system recover.”

Bloomberg News tabulated data from the Fed, Treasury and FDIC and interviewed regulators, economists and academic researchers to gauge the full extent of the government’s rescue effort.

Commitments may expand again soon. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner postponed until tomorrow an announcement that may invite private investment as a way to clear toxic debt from bank balance sheets. Measures that have been settled include a new round of injections of taxpayer funds into banks, targeted at those identified by regulators as most in need of additional capital, people briefed on the matter said.

Program Delay

The government is already backing $301 billion of Citigroup Inc. securities and another $118 billion from Bank of America. The government hasn’t yet paid out on any of the guarantees.

The Fed said Friday that it is delaying the start a $200 billion program called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, to revive the market for securities based on consumer loans such as credit-card, auto and student borrowings.

Most of the spending programs are run out of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where Geithner served as president. He was sworn in as Treasury secretary on Jan. 26.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. The Federal Reserve so far is refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return. Collateral is an asset pledged by a borrower in the event a loan payment isn’t made.

Fed Sued

Bloomberg requested details of Fed lending under the Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit against the central bank Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure of borrower banks and their collateral. Arguments in the suit may be heard as soon as this month, according to the court docket. Bloomberg asked the Treasury in an FOIA request Jan. 28 for a detailed list of the securities it planned to guarantee for Citigroup and Bank of America. Bloomberg hasn’t received a response to the request.

The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

For Related News and Information:

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net ; Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: February 9, 2009 12:43 EST

EPA ignores the REAL inventor of the best Hybrid car

The EPA is quite happy with itself for its recent report but seems to ignore the inventor and patent holder of their "great " idea -- Hydraulic Energy Storage transmission patent # US3903696, yr. 1975, by Mr. Vincent Carman(that is really his name no joke LOL) . Now I for one will be happy if this invention can come to market and achieve the possible 45% -50% increase in gas efficiency.(Kids-That's about a 100 miles to the gallon!) No toxic chemical heavy batteries to carry around, it is light weight and off the shelf technology. The problem is they ignored, stone walled and manipulated the inventor for 30 years, then stole his idea. Was it so his patent will run out and now EPA can be the "heroes" and manufacture it? Or maybe the laws of physics have changed in 30 years?

Read the old Boston Herald American article from 1977:

Boston Herald American, Monday, April 25, 1977

Energy Saving Invention being Suppressed by Snafu
by

Scott Burns

While the Carter administration promotes its plan to turn a mountain of new taxes into a molehill of energy savings, the real solution to the energy crisis - new technology - may be languishing at our beloved Energy Research and Development Administration.

Testifying before the Senate Sub-Committee on Energy Research and Development on April 4, Vincent Carman, inventor of the Inertial Storage Transmission, recounted a mind-boggling tale of resistance and delay at ERDA, the agency charged with solving the energy crisis.

Here, in brief, is what he said :

"Over six months ago, the National Bureau of Standards completed an extensive evaluation of a revolutionary automobile transmission that they reported could reduce our nation's oil imports by 50 percent. This system can reduce vehicular air pollution in our cities by 75 percent.

This OPERATIONAL SYSTEM was publicly demonstrated 18 months ago. The system is simple, uses OFF-THE-SHELF, commercially available components.

In the two years that ERDA has been aware of the system they have given the concept no serious attention."

It now appears they are attempting to suppress it.

Unlike Dr. Ilok's solution to the energy crisis (reported here April 17-20), Carman's invention EXISTS, has been publicly demonstrated, and requires NO research and development investment from ERDA.

Carman merely wants ERDA to get OUT OF THE WAY and make it possible for him to install his invention on some U.S. Post Office trucks so that he might further demonstrate its utility and potential for energy savings.

But ERDA won't get out of the way. Instead, Carman says they have suppressed the National Bureau of Standards evaluation of his invention, refusing to release it to other agencies.

They've done this because the NBS report recommends Carman's invention for funding, a singular achievement since only 22 of some 4300 submissions have enjoyed positive recommendation from NBS.

ERDA's own, one-and-a-half page report, issued later, rejects the invention, saying that it is too expensive, won't achieve the savings the inventor had DEMONSTRATED AND DOCUMENTED, and won't be accepted by the automobile industry.

ERDA is circulating its own report and has not, to date, released the NBS report, damaging both Carman's credibility and his ability to attract the interest of other government agencies or private industry.

What is the IST System?

Carman's Inertial Storage Transmission works by storing oil under high pressure.





This means that all the power output from an engine can be used so that in city driving where car engines idle much of the time, a car could run USING the STORED POWER of its engine and the engine's power WOULD NEVER BE LOST IN WASTEFUL IDLING. (stored in the form of compressed oil)

As a consequence, the engine could be OFF 80 PERCENT OF THE TIME, REDUCING POLLUTION by 75 PERCENT and FUEL CONSUMPTION by 50 PERCENT!

Estimates indicate the IST could save some 35 BILLION GALLONS A YEAR, cutting our imported oil IN HALF.

Carman didn't hear from ERDA for six months after NBS's positive report was issued and then only after ERDA was pressured by Mark Hatfield and Congressman Robert Duncan. Clearly, ERDA would like the matter to quietly disappear.

Now let's consider the quality of the two reports :

ERDA's negative report was produced in 42 days BY ONE INDIVIDUAL WITHOUT BENEFIT OF ANY PHYSICAL TESTING.

The uncirculated NBS report was based on 10 months of work and contributions from a variety of sources, many of them here in Massachusetts.

The Department of Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, contributed to the evaluation as did the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts, the Boston Police Department, the MBTA and Yellow Cab Corporation.

Nonetheless, ERDA continues to circulate its own report rather than the NBS report.

One possible reason is that ERDA is committed to another technology, the flywheel energy storage system. To date, they have spent some $200,000 on a feasibility study of such systems. The study determined it would take three years and 4.5 million to get a prototype on the road, something Carman ACHIEVED IN LESS THAN A YEAR WITH $4000.

The Department of Transportation also has an interest in flywheel systems and has spent five years and $300,000 trying to convert a Ford Pinto into a flywheel storage car. Together, the two agencies have a contract to supply flywheel vehicles to the city of New York. (Birds of a feather?)

Meanwhile, the Postal Service also reports it has contracts for flywheel vehicles and therefore can't put up funds for demonstration of the IST system.

ERDA, in other words, has neatly closed out a competing technology because the agency is in a position to exercise MONOPOLISTIC CONTROL over the flow of both money and ideas in new energy technologies.

In an eloquent close to his testimony before the Senate sub-committee, Carman said ;

"The energy problem has a solution and it is quite probable that a large part of that solution can come from the little guy.

Two men in an upstairs room gave us the telephone, and a couple of bicycle mechanics brought aviation to the world. It is sometimes said that the day of the individual inventor is over.

In the last few years, while the greatest scientific organizations in both the United States and Russia struggled with the problem of generating electric power from fusion, a young man in California in his own lab produced the first major breakthrough."

Now that we've seen Carter's energy plan, we know that Carter has chosen taxation, not technology, as the means of "solving" the energy crisis.

The money we all start paying in federal gasoline taxes will soon help ERDA expand its research efforts, - WHILE IT IGNORES SOLUTIONS.

There is no escaping the "banksters"

Eskimo housing crisis heats up

• 
  

• JUNE 17, 2009

The White House Fires a Watchdog

The curious case of the inspector general and a Presidential ally.

President Obama swept to office on the promise of a new kind of politics, but then how do you explain last week's dismissal of federal Inspector General Gerald Walpin for the crime of trying to protect taxpayer dollars? This is a case that smells of political favoritism and Chicago rules.

A George W. Bush appointee, Mr. Walpin has since 2007 been the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that oversees such subsidized volunteer programs as AmeriCorps. In April 2008 the Corporation asked Mr. Walpin to investigate reports of irregularities at St. HOPE, a California nonprofit run by former NBA star and Obama supporter Kevin Johnson. St. HOPE had received an $850,000 AmeriCorps grant, which was supposed to go for three purposes: tutoring for Sacramento-area students; the redevelopment of several buildings; and theater and art programs.

Associated Press

Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the Corporation For National and Community Service, was fired by President Barack Obama.

Mr. Walpin's investigators discovered that the money had been used instead to pad staff salaries, meddle politically in a school-board election, and have AmeriCorps members perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.

At the end of May, Mr. Walpin's office recommended that Mr. Johnson, an assistant and St. HOPE itself be "suspended" from receiving federal funds. The Corporation's official charged with suspensions agreed, and in September the suspension letters went out. Mr. Walpin's office also sent a civil and/or criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California.

So far, so normal. But that all changed last fall, when Mr. Johnson was elected mayor of Sacramento. News of the suspension had become public, and President Obama began to discuss his federal stimulus spending. A city-hired attorney pronounced in March that Sacramento might be barred from receiving stimulus funds because of Mr. Johnson's suspension.

The news caused a public uproar. The U.S. Attorney's office, which since January has been headed by Lawrence Brown -- a career prosecutor who took over when the Bush-appointed Attorney left -- had already decided not to pursue criminal charges. Media and political pressure then mounted for the office to settle the issue and lift Mr. Johnson's suspension. Mr. Walpin agreed Mr. Johnson should pay back money but objected to lifting the suspension. He noted that Mr. Johnson has never officially responded to the Corporation's findings and that the entire point of suspension is to keep federal funds from individuals shown to have misused them.

Mr. Brown's office responded by cutting off contact with Mr. Walpin's office and began working directly with the Corporation, the board of which is now chaired by one of Mr. Obama's top campaign fundraisers, Alan Solomont. A few days later, Mr. Brown's office produced a settlement draft that significantly watered down any financial repayment and cleared Mr. Johnson. Mr. Walpin told us that in all his time working with U.S. Attorneys on cases he'd referred, he'd never been cut out in such fashion.

Mr. Walpin brought his concerns to the Corporation's board, but some board members were angry over a separate Walpin investigation into the wrongful disbursement of $80 million to the City University of New York. Concerned about the St. HOPE mess, Mr. Walpin wrote a 29-page report, signed by two other senior members of his office, and submitted it in April to Congress. Last Wednesday, he got a phone call from a White House lawyer telling him to resign within an hour or be fired.

We've long disliked the position of inspectors general, on grounds that they are creatures of Congress designed to torment the executive. Yet this case appears to be one in which an IG was fired because he criticized a favorite Congressional and executive project (AmeriCorps), and refused to bend to political pressure to let the Sacramento mayor have his stimulus dollars.

There's also the question of how Mr. Walpin was terminated. He says the phone call came from Norman Eisen, the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, who said the President felt it was time for Mr. Walpin to "move on," and that it was "pure coincidence" he was asked to leave during the St. HOPE controversy. Yet the Administration has already had to walk back that claim.

That's because last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which requires the President to give Congress 30 days notice, plus a reason, before firing an inspector general. A co-sponsor of that bill was none other than Senator Obama. Having failed to pressure Mr. Walpin into resigning (which in itself might violate the law), the Administration was forced to say he'd be terminated in 30 days, and to tell Congress its reasons.

White House Counsel Gregory Craig cited a complaint that had been lodged against Mr. Walpin by Mr. Brown, the U.S. Attorney, accusing Mr. Walpin of misconduct, and of not really having the goods on Mr. Johnson. But this is curious given that Mr. Brown himself settled with St. HOPE, Mr. Johnson and his assistant, an agreement that required St. HOPE (with a financial assist from Mr. Johnson) to repay approximately half of the grant, and also required Mr. Johnson to take an online course about bookkeeping.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, a co-sponsor of the IG Reform Act, is now demanding that the Corporation hand over its communications on this mess. He also wants to see any contact with the office of First Lady Michelle Obama, who has taken a particular interest in AmeriCorps, and whose former chief of staff, Jackie Norris, recently arrived at the Corporation as a "senior adviser."

If this seems like small beer, keep in mind that Mr. Obama promised to carefully watch how every stimulus dollar is spent. In this case, the evidence suggests that his White House fired a public official who refused to roll over to protect a Presidential crony.

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