Flaming Moderate Footnotes

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[1]As of 1/10/2010: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Amendment to Patient Protection and Afford able Care Act, Amendment to patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Nom  of Hamilton, Commerce, Justice, Science and related agencies appropriations, UC ext. , Energy and Water Dev. Appropriations  Amendment to Travel Promotion Act, the Amendment to Agricultural Rural Development, FDA and related, and NDA, the nomination of Groves to census and of Hongju Koh, Travel Promotion Act, FERA, the nomination of  Christopher Hill to Iraq, Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, Omnibus Public Land Management Act, and to Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Lilly Ledbetter Fair :Pay Act, Omnibus Public Land Management Act

[2] Can America Be Fixed? The New Crisis of Democracy, Zakaria, Fareed, Foreign Affairs. January/February 2103, p. 22 at 26

[3] Ibid, p. 22 at 28

[4] 18 Million Jobs. The Nation, March 9, 2010, p. 13. The $850b banks hold in the Fed should be used and the U.S. could move $700b in new credit into domestic employment focused investments Heroes, Hacks & Fools; Memoirs from the Political Inside, Ted Van Dyk, 2007, p. 204

[5]18 Million Jobs. The Nation, March 9., 2010,  p. 13; The $850b banks hold in the Fed should be used and the U.S. could move $700b in new credit into domestic employment-focused investments; Heroes, Hacks & Fools; Memoirs from the Political Inside, Ted Van Dyk, 2007, p. 204

[6]Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew

[7]The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, David Stockman

[8]The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by Marin,  James, New York, Viking, 2009, p. 250

[9]The Nation, 2/28/2011, p. 9

[10]Bacevich, Andrew J., The Limits of Power, p. 44

[11]P. 41

[12]Clark Kerr responded, saying “I left as I came in, to public acclaim’

[13]New York Times, 2/1/09 p. 22

[14] From internet, ‘Value of assets lost in the 2008 recession’

[15]New York Times, 8/18/11, p. 1, S&P business managers overruled complaints from below, saying “don’t kill the golden goose”

[16]Paul Krugman, New York Times, 4/22/10, Opinion

[17]Half the Sky, Kristoff, Nicholas, WuDunn, Sheryl, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010  p.146

[18]Paul Krugman, Fr……….

[19] Stiglitz

[20]35. NYT Book Review, July 29, 2007, p. 1

[21]Previous to deviating into Iraq the U.S. had an alliance with Iran against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

[22]NYT Book Review, February 10, 2008, p. 26

[23]The government of Afghanistan offered to arrest bin Laden. President Bush turned it down

[24]The Clinton-Gore administration had launched 50 cruise missiles in a furious attack on bin Laden, which narrowly missed. “Take It Back”, Carville and Begala, p. 100. The Clinton-Gore administration gave direct warnings about bin Laden. Supra, p. 97 (ck it and exactitude of these 4)

[25]“Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror”, Free Press, 2004.

[26]Hachigian and Sutphen, The Next Century

[27]Being humble is the most difficult sell to the American public today. Analysis from “The Truman Show”, New York Times, June 11, 2006, review of Peter Beinart’s book “The Good Fight’

[28]The Economist, March 29^th- April 4th, 2008, p. 33

[29]Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Minority Leader: “I’m a mother of 5 children…you threaten our country and you’re dead.” supra, p. 168; DLC “With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty” essays by 19 D foreign policy and defense experts.   

[30]The British do terrorism so much better. Perhaps the difference is that we were attacked from the outside whereas Britain is attacked from the inside, so the challenge for us now is to respond to terrorist attacks from outside with the same kind of restraint the British have for the most part shown in dealing with attacks from within: patiently keep individuals under surveillance for as long as possible in order to gather valuable intelligence about the operation and develop a strong case that would support criminal prosecution (avoiding the failed military approach in Northern Ireland); Britain has used its long experience with terrorism with greater success bringing terrorists to trial; Britain has been subject to international legal constraints (ECHR)for more than fifty years so it is held responsible to a third party’s view so that it must justify its’ actions rather than secretly convene Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Tenet, Powell and Rice, who just responded to local fears and passions.(Britain has been stopped from coercive interrogation, deportation to torture, unregulated wiretapping and indefinite detention) David Cole, The Brits Do It Better, The New York Review, June 12, 2008, p. 68

[31]The Southwest is becoming more independent politically (25%) (NYT 10/24/06), so switching to preserving gun rights (a “security” issue) makes special sense now. Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and California are going increasingly going the same way

[32](Associated Press, October 7, 2001, report, in a story titled “Taliban Offer to Detain bin Laden”: “ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) ”in a desperate eleventh hour appeal to halt U.S. attacks. Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban offered Sunday to detain terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden and try him under Islamic law if the United States makes a formal request.”) We will deal with terrorist threats: identify the crime and the criminals, try their cases and punish them; we’ll gain international support for dismantling their organizations, making arrests and prosecuting.  Germany did it with the Red Army Faction, Italy against the Red Brigades, and Greece in response to the 17 November terrorist group. All three of these terrorist groups had spread to multiple nations and required international efforts to bring them to justice. Even the United Kingdom never made the blunder of “declaring war” on the IRA, and therefore now Northern Ireland is far more peaceful than it was a few decades ago.

But George W. Bush---having no policy, his economic policies failing---needed the bounce in the polls that his father had gotten by declaring war on Saddam; it helped that Bush’s campaign contributors wanted Iraq’s oil. Bush ignored international opinion and international law to declare a preemptive war…the first in the 227-years history of the United States…on a nation that had not first attacked and didn’t represent a threat to us.

At the same time, Bush used powers designed for a time of REAL war---when the United States was under attack by another nation---to cut into the personal rights and liberties held to be theirs by Americans since the days we began.

Terrorism is not a threat to democracy---it’s only a tactic. We can’t fight a war against ‘terror’. There’s no enemy called ‘terror’. But a threat to democracy comes from leaders who purposely use acts of terror---as Hitler successfully did with the burning of the Reichstag building---to turn a peaceful country military.

It’s time to declare the ‘wars’ over---both the “war against terrorism” and the “war against Iraq”---and return our protected liberties to us. We should take apart the Pentagon’s false reporting, recapture Mr. Gonzalez’ Justice Department, re-install the firewall that prevents our military from acting against our civilians, and return America to a sense of normalcy. Even if there was another al Qaeda attack on American soil, war wouldn’t stop it any better than against bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s crucial to bring the police agencies of the world together to arrest and prosecute terrorists who attack us. War doesn’t do the job. “as cited in “What Would Jefferson Do”, Harmann, Thom, Three Rivers Press, New York, p. 222.

[33]Newsweek, October 18, 2005

[34]Hachigian and Sutphen, The Next Century, p. 204

[35]Ibid. I believe we should persuade, or induce, the six powers to stop spending the money and gradually reduce their nuclear weapons and any missile defense. In return for America’s being the most effective military, we should give up our fixed, enormous, margin as the strongest power. America could start by announcing, pending complete reduction, that it will never be the first to use a nuclear weapon in a conflict. And if America stops trumpeting its desire to dominate the world militarily, the Chinese would stop spending on defense once their access to necessary oil is satisfied.. We should avoid proliferation by joining with every nuclear power to deny nuclear weapons to terrorists as we give them up. This is the only way. p. 3, 115

[36]It was later discovered that 8 of the 9 Republicans serving on the Senate Aviation Subcommittee had received airline PAC contributions in 1996 supra, p. 98

[37]Economist, July 14, 2007, p. 9

[38]NYT, 8/5/2007, p. 1

[39]Public Citizen, Memorandum Reform Citizen’s Government Reform Agenda 2010

[40]E.g. Cong. Billy Tauzin negotiating a large private job contract while in Congress putting through Medicare prescription drug law which put billions of dollars into the pharmaceutical industry

[41]Public Citizen Memorandum Government Reform Agenda 2010

[42]Senator Obama introduced the single-most comprehensive ethics reform bill in the U.S. Senate…it would have governed the behavior of lobbyists, senators and representatives, and their staffs. But the Senate, still limited by the other party, rejected an independent “Office of Public Integrity” 67- 30, even after the State Department auditor found that a $14 billion fund for Iraqi reconstruction has been used to hide cost overruns of the Iraqi “war” (New York Times, 7/31/06)

[43] Elizabeth Warren, The Game is Rigged, The Progressive, July/August 2014, p. 34

[44]Fair Elections Now Act, U.S. Senator Durbin; Washington State Senate SB 5278

[45]Now, pending effectiveness of public financing of election campaigns, since union members’ money cannot be used for a political purpose without permission of the union member, pass laws that corporate money cannot be used without the permission of the shareholders.

[46]Reich, Supercapitalism, p. 223; Drift, Rachel Maddow, intro: modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of “privateers” its bloated Department of Homeland Security, its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle, and its strange fascination with an unproven counterinsurgency doctrine.

[47] Intelligent Governance for the Twenty-first Century, Berggruen, Nicolas and Gardels, Nathan, Polity, 2012 state that, America less dominant, a more ‘inclusive’ globalization is required.

[48] Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan: $1000 tax cut for middle class families; energy rebates from windfall profits tax; domestic job creation to replace outsourcing; creation of 5m innovation and mfg green, infrastructure, research and technology eliminate all capital gains taxes on creation of small businesses, crackdown on fraudulent homeownership brokers and lenders, fight predatory credit card practices, reform bankruptcy to protect working people, to ban executive bonuses for bankrupt companies and to require disclosure of all pension investments and help working families by doubling funding for after-school programs, expanding the Family medical leave Act provide low-income families with a refundable tax credit to help with their child-care expenses, and encourage flexible work schedules.

Nader’s proposal: "Seventeen Solutions." practicality, fairness, efficiency, safety, employment potential and respect for future generations. 1) strong law enforcement against corporate crime and fraud and abuses against consumers, taxpayers, the environment and workers; 2) beef up the law enforcement budgets which will pay for themselves many, many times over in deterrence, damage prevention to innocent people, and fines; 3) Medicare for all with free choice of doctor and hospital; simpler and far less expensive per capita, and tens of thousands of American lives saved; 4) public facilities (public works) repaired and expanded to meet needs, ending the vast disrepair in our water and sewage systems, schools, clinics, libraries, public transit, highways and bridges creates well-paying jobs that cannot be exported to China; 5) reducing the well-documented, bloated military budget, demilitarizing our foreign policy will save the horrendous costs and after costs of these boomeranging wars of aggressive choice; 6) Get Congress to have "skin in the game," such as no health and other benefits for them, unless all people have them. There would be no taking our country into war without all able-bodied and age-qualified children of the Senators and Representatives being drafted into the armed forces. This duty will encourage Congress to attend to its deliberative, constitutional obligations and not heave them over to a lawless, out-of-control presidency; 7) alternatives to the commercial exploitation of children by non-stop big corporate trickster marketers do violent programming; 8) Getting corporations off welfare, making them pay their fair share of taxes (GE is a profitable tax escapee that even gets checks from the Treasury Department due to the rigged tax code); 9)  taxing dividends and capital gains the same as ordinary income of working people, and imposing a tiny transaction sales tax on Wall Street speculation; 10) using regular government purchasing specifications for better goods and services to stimulate innovation and safety with our tax dollars; 11) organizing Congressional watchdog groups in every Congressional District around these and other solutions; 12)   local community banks, credit unions, farmer markets, renewable energy, and community health clinics, with emphasis on prevention (more self-reliant); 14) Local democracy, starting in elementary and high schools, working on real problems in the communities (testing air, water, soil samples and electromagnetic levels, and reporting the results to their community). Studying books such as the newly released Slow Democracy (Chelsea Press, 2012) will give you many examples and tools to demonstrate that it's easier than you think. Robert Frank’s infrastructure capital improvement programs, new tax policies, reducing highway congestion, curbing carbon emissions and other remedial actions that pay off, with a few simple policy changes, we could restore full employment, rebuild crumbling infrastructure and pay down the national debt without requiring real sacrifices from anyone."

[49] Leonard, Christopher The Meat Racket: the Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business;

        Maureen Ogle, In Meat We Trust: an Unexpected History of Carnivore America.

[50] If they build it, The Economist, July 5, 2014, p. 61

[51] New York Times, August 15, 2014, p.

[52] The White House, 5/23/14

[53]Hacker, Jacob S. The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, p. xv; Einhorn, Eric S., Logue, John, Can Welfare States Be Sustained? Lessons from Scandinavia, Political Science Quarterly, Spring 2010, p. 1 demonstrates the superior characteristics of the welfare states of Western Europe, which provide extensive guarantees to working people, universal and largely free health care, good pensions, paid vacations, sick leave, job security, free higher education. Our current high-wage, high-benefit are being swamped by low-cost China and India while Nordic countries’ European social model show steady economic growth, fiscal balance and sustainability  by practices of innovation and continuous assessment. They appear recession-proof. Most Americans support government intervention in healthcare, education, and jobs, and are willing to pay taxes for these benefits to reduce inequality. Class War? What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality, Political Science Quarterly, Spring, 2010, p. 133

[54]Political Science Quarterly, Spring, 2010, p. 1ff

[55]Senseless Panic: How Washington Failed America, by William Isaac. Wiley (The Economist, 7/3/10, p. 80

[56]The Economist, 5/29/2010 p. 27

[57]The Economist, 5/29/2010, p. 27

[58] Washington Environmental Council, spring 2010, p. 3

[59] Friedman 11/12/08

[60]Nocera, Joe, NYT, 5/31/2011, p. A21

[61] New York Times, 4/3/14, editorial page

[62] Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate, 6/12/12

[63] New York Times editorial 4/10/14 p A20

[64] David Kay Johnston, Al Jazeera America, June 9, 2014

[65] This point was made clear in a 2011 Duke-Harvard study. Surveying a nationally-representative sample of respondents, the study found that Americans thought that the wealthiest 20 percent retained 59 percent of all wealth, when in reality they held more like 84 percent (a 25 percentage point difference). Differences between perceptions and reality became even more extreme when comparing what Americans wanted the wealth distribution to look like, in contrast to what it looks like. Respondents said that the "ideal" wealth breakdown would allow the richest 20 percent just 32 percent of all wealth, compared to their actual 84 percent (an astounding 52 percentage point difference). But, as  of December 2011 (the last time the question was surveyed), the Pew Research Center found that nearly six in ten Americans (58 percent) rejected the idea that American society is " divided into two groups, the haves and the have-nots."

This finding seems all the more strange considering that just 46 percent of Americans categorized themselves as " haves," and nearly four in ten (38 percent) designated themselves as "have-nots" - strongly overlapping with the recent finding that 40 percent of Americans hold no financial wealth.

Much of the reason for rejecting the idea that America is divided between haves and have-nots comes from the public's excessive optimism. The December 2011 Pew survey found that 58 percent of Americans agreed "most people who want to get ahead can make it if they're willing to work hard." This is likely due in part to the naïve assessment of 85 percent of Americans that they are part of the "middle class," despite the fact that the bottom 40 percent of Americans earned just 10 percent of all income, and that they earned far less than the median national family income of approximately $50,000 a year (28 percent of households earned less than $25,000 a year, and the next 12 percent earned less than $35,000). The optimistic view that "everyone is middle class" is blatantly contradicted by the finding (post-2008) that the vast majority of new wealth created (93% of all annual income gains) goes to the wealthiest one percent, and that half of Americans have no financial wealth. Americans are an individualistic culture in which the failures of the poor are rationalized as "deserved" due to their alleged lack of work ethic or commitment to personal sacrifice in the pursuit of eventual prosperity. Americans' lack of class-consciousness, however, is an entirely predictable product of two major factors: socialization and material privilege. To put it simply, those who have been indoctrinated to ignore America's class divide, and those who are on the winning side of that class divide (the materially privileged and affluent) are the most susceptible to propaganda that celebrates America as the land of "endless opportunity" for those willing to work hard enough.

 Analyzing Pew surveys, shows that class deniers are statistically more likely to be male, Republican, conservative, Fox News viewers, "born again" Evangelicals, from non-union households and having available job choices.

[66] The American Family Trust         10

Early Care and Education Plan         13

The Contract for College          15

SUPPORT FOR GROWTH, JOB CREATION, AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT   19

Public Jobs for Economic Recovery        22

Public Investment Plan          25

Level the Playing Field for American Manufacturing      28

The Career Opportunity Plan         31

Federal Reserve Mandate for Full Employment       33

Raise Work Standards          35

Strengthen the Rights of Working People to Organize      38

HELPING AMERICANS BUILD ASSETS        40

American Retirement Accounts         43

A Home Owners’ Loan Corporation for the 21st Century      45

Fairness in Bankruptcy Act         48

Borrower Security Act  

All from Millions to the Middle, Traub, Callahan, Draut www.demos.org/sites

[67] Economist, p. 3, 5/16/14; but the 1952 to 2000, mainly Republican, years, showed 11.5% of GDP up to 22% of wealth for finance, insurance, and real estate; eight of Mitt Romney’s ten biggest donors were Wall Stsreet firms and 90% of its $70 million in donations was raised from 24 people. Jonathan Alter, The Center Holds, p 201-2

[68] Too gradually, because this,different, asset loss, Great Recession cut workers and families savings, house equities, tuitions and other asset values. This recession was different from jiggles in the stock market. It was fundamental because the fraud by financial institutions with others money was unregulated and ran amok.

[69] Krugman

[70] Federal Consumer Agency Ponders Its Next Crusades, New York Times,1/11/14, p. B1

[71] New York Times 7/31/14

[72] Christine LaGarde, IMF, New York Times, 4/14/14

[73] New York Times, 6/15/2014, p. 6-7

[74] A Modern Marx, The Economist, 5/3/2014, p. 12

[75] but FOR JUSTICE; New Populist Majority.org

[76] Editorial,  New York Times, 1/11/14, p. A16

[77] Paul Krugman NYT; 1/10/14 p. A23

[78] Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% in 2012. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27% since 1983 to 57%, and scrapped taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. In 2013 it is cutting the corporate tax rate from 26.3% to 22%. Most daringly it has introduced a universal system of school vouchers and invited private schools to compete with public ones. Private companies also vie with each other to provide state-funded health services and care for the elderly. The two decades from 1990 were a period of recovery: GDP growth between 1993 and 2010 averaged 2.7% a year and productivity 2.1% a year compared with 1.9% and 1% respectively for the main 15 EU countries. The other Nordic countries have been moving in the same direction.

The necessary correction is cultural change to form the sovereign wealth fund from oil revenues to provide public contribution to private funds for: 1) fiscal responsibility(no more unpaid for wars, drug benefits); 2)  retain competitiveness; 3) relentless innovation (medical insulin, wind turbines, a biotech cluster called Medicon Valley, machine tools, application of the internet vinegar breweries, organic orchards, and education to include job-worthiness for the entire population to keep social mobility, catalysts, increased productivity, automated recycling and checkouts, telecommunication networks, bio-refining, stabilizing of oil digging rigs, cleaning ships’ exhaust, start-up saunas, encouraging universities to commercialize their ideas and training); 4) preserve limited resources. For earned benefits of workers, require sufficient contributions and bring benefits into line with lifetime incomes. For education, provide free schools, some run by private companies (they’re spending only 6.4% of GDP in 2009 vs. 7.3% in America, by providing respect to a relatively low paid profession). Provide work for 80% of the population to provide support for those without work.  

[79] Congress, 7/31/14, passed an appropriation of only $659 million compared with the adequate $3.7 billion requested by President Obama, Can the voters change the GOP, Seattle Times, p A9

[80] Stimulus Is Maligned, But Options Were Few, New York Times, 2/29/12 p. B1

The Eurozone countries, in contrast, have created a host of new continent-wide institutions, built a substantial financial firewall to prevent debt problems from spreading, and are not well on their way to creating a banking union and a partial fiscal union. The European Central Bank (ECB) has been able to issue direct political demands to national leaders and obtaining from Eurozone governments 440b euros for the newly created European Stability Facility (EFSF). The ECB bought Italian and Spanish bonds to drive down their interest costs, In return, Rome and Madrid committed to making specific reforms, such as substantial budget tightening, fresh liquidity and they targeted support for Spanish banks their interest costs. The European Union (EU) has decided to implement a banking UNION, jointly supervised and regulated, with the authority to shut failed banks and provide region-wide deposit insurance, sharing responsibility for modest amounts of debt and adopting firm common rules for budget discipline. C. Fred Bergsten, Why the Euro Will Survive: Completing the Continent’s Half-Build House,  Foreign Affairs, September/October 2012, p. 16

[81] The Financial Rebalancing Act: Stop Worrying About the Global Flow of Capital, by Taylor, Alan M. (Senior Adviser at Morgan Stanley, Prof, University of Virginia), Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2011,

[82]Newsweek, 4/5/2010, p. 45

[83] Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis

[84] The New Industrial Revolution: Consumers, Globalization, and the End of Mass Production, by Peter Marsh 2012

[85] Tea Party Tribune

[86] New York Times,  Maslin, Janet, 4/1/14

[87] The Slumps That Shaped Modern Finance, The Economist, 4/12/2014 p. 49ff

[88] The current regulatory system guarantees that the environment will be damaged, the system actually permits damage to occur, and that the system is built to recognize certain constitutional constraints.

# Our “engaging in the regulatory system”, while limiting some of the harms done by corporations, cannot achieve the types of change we need, and that we are colonized to believe that it actually can.

# Our thinking is colonized not only by the law – which establishes certain constraints that deny us the goals of our activism – but that our thinking is colonized by a culture that is created by those who benefit from the way that the system operates.

# On the issue of land application of sewage sludge, we’ve been colonized that a bad is a good, through language used to frame the issue.

# On the issue of the corporatization of agriculture, we’ve been colonized that a bad is a good, through language used to frame the issue.

# Both the regulatory system of law and the culture produce a system of activism that cannot stop a corporate minority from governing community majorities, and that the regulatory system of law and culture effectively drives us like cattle down to a point of activism where we cannot win the issue that we’re working on.

# A regulatory system of law governs employer-employee relationships, and that regulatory system of law codifies the rights of the employer over the employee law codifies the rights of the employer over the employee.

# Regulatory systems of law were created not to protect health, safety, and welfare, but as a governmental barrier to prevent majority governance.

# The traditional use of the regulatory system of law, and the operation of today’s regulatory agencies, are not mistakes or errors, but a logical use of the law to assert minority control over majorities.

# Law itself has a long history of being used by a minority to govern, that it was used by William the Conqueror to create an English structure of law; and that the mere existence of Constitutions does not guarantee democratic government.

# Throughout history, there have always been people who have seen that illegitimate structure of governance, and demanded something else, like the English Levelers and Diggers in the 1600’s.          

Put caps on salaries and give the shareholders a ‘say on pay’. Update the Equal Pay Act of 1963 with the Paycheck Fairness Act, which allows victims of wage discrimination to collect information about employees’ salaries without fear of retaliation.

The current regulatory system guarantees that the environment will be damaged, the system actually permits damage to occur, and that the system is built to recognize certain constitutional constraints.

[89] Can America Be Fixed? Zakaria, Fareed, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2013, p. 22

[90] Ibid, p. 32

[91] Krugman

[92]The Economist, January 10, 2009, p. 67

[93]Volker

[94]NYT editorial 9/26/09 p. A24

[95]NYT, 9/8/09, p. B1

[96]For sweet lease deals that worked only if they used wildly optimistic assumptions about used-car prices when the leases ended. 

[97]NYT, 11/20/09 p. B1

[98]American banks would have to double the present minimum core-capital ratio of 4% to avoid raising equity or breaching that floor at the bottom of the business cycle. Taxpayers can either have cheap loans and pay for bail-outs, or pricier loans and bigger buffers. Society clearly prefers the bigger buffers. The new capital regime must  be harder to game, must admit only PURE equity as capital, should use rolling “stress tests” and allow capital surcharges over and above the global minimum standard to ‘fine’ banks that pose a bigger threat to taxpayers. There is a risk that the blunt tool of capital will be asked to do too much: fine-tuning pay policies, for example, and discouraging certain types of trading. But the broad objective must be gradually to prod banks to shrink and improve their liquidity. The Economist, July 11, p. 16

[99]Rewarding Incompetence: The CEOs of 10 Wall Street firms that either failed or received taxpayer bailouts were paid an average of $28.9 million per year in the years leading up to the Wall Street meltdown. Their average pay this decade, calculated through 2007, equaled 575 times the median American family’s 2007income to wit:

AIG$20,0,BankofAmerica, $20.7m, Bear Stearns Co, $29m Citigroup, $42.3m, Countrywide Financial $51.4m, Fannie Mae, $9.4m, Freddie Mac, $5.2m, LehmanBrothers Holdings, $59.2m, Merrill Lynch, $29.5m, Washington Mutual $11.3m. Public Citizen Infuriating Facts and Figures

[100]Real Change, 2/10/2010, p. 11

[101]Economic Policy Institute, progressive think tank mentioned in Paul Krugman, NYT, 12/1/09 p. A13

[102]29 Krugman: Reagan did it…modest size problems of the thrifts into an utter catastrophe FOR THE TAXPAYER, $130b  in 1989 and trillions 25  years ltter; small minority grew vastly rich while working families saw only meager gains and to hell with fiscal prudence;     traditionally did deficits only when war or economic emergency and federal debt fell steadily from the end of WWII UNTIL 1980;  and the increase in public debt was dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by deregulation;  Americans saved q10% in 1970

[103] Christina Romer, NYT, 11/11/12

[104] New York Times, Business, 2/22/13 p. B1

[105]Why We Spend, Why They Save, Herbert Gans, NYT, 11/25/11, p. A29

[106]Foreign Affairs, July/August 2011, p. 10

[107]The Nation, April 4, 2011, p. 17

[108]Why do they hoard NOW when they should have perceived it and hoarded during the Reagan/Bush/Bush bubble?

[109]Reich, Robert B., Getting Away With It, NYT Book Review, 5/29/11  p. 9

[110]Newsweek, 8/16/2010 Slow to Spend, Joe Klein, p. 20

[111]The Economist, 9/18/2010 p. 93; Where the Bailout Went Wrong, New York Times, 3/30/2011, p. A5

[112] NYT, 6/28/09, Opinion, p. 8

[113]New Yorker, June 13&20, 2011, p. 48

[114] New York Times, In New Tack, I.M.F. Aims at Income Inequality, Eduardo Porter, NYT 4/9/14. B1.

[115] The Economist, “The World in 2012”, p. 71

[116]Stiglitz, FREE FALL, p. 53.

[117]Seattle Times, 8/31/09, p. A4

[118] Public Citizen, March/April, 2012, p. 11

[119] Over-regulated America, The Economist, 2/18/12, p. 9

[120] Too Big Not To Fail, The Economist, 2/18/12 p. 22

[121] Of Plumbing and Promises: The Backoffice Moves to Center Stage, The Economist, February 25, 2012, p. 13

[122] Using more objective ratings by/from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to be adopted by the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the Comptroller of the Currency by February, 2012. The formula is based on the company’s cash flow, leverage and volatility of its stock price to assess the riskiness of corporate debt. States should extend the same formula to insurance companies and pension funds, eliminating rateers from their regulations. New York Times, 12/15/11, p. A32

[123]The Economist, 11/26/11 p. 10

[124]

[125] The Economist, 1/26/2011, p. 10

[126] Break up the Bank? It’s Not for You to Ask, New York Times, 3/2/14,  Business, p. A1

[126] New York Times 7/31/14

[127] New York Times 7/31/14

[128] NYT 7/31/14

[129] Ellen Brown, after hearing Janet Yellen and Christine LaGarde

[130] The Economist 6/7/2014, p. 82

[131] The Economist 6/7/14 p 62

[132] The Lure of Shadow Banking  The Economist, 5/10/2014, p. 11

[133] The Economist, 5/10/2014, p. 11

[134] The Public Option in Banking: Another Look at the German Model, Truthout News Analysis, 10/13/11 and Wikipedia

[135] The Price of Inequality, WWT Norton Co, 2012, p. 265ff

[136] What’s Inside America’s Banks?  Atlantic, January/ February 2013, p. 60

[137]Senators Cantwell, McCain per Seattle Times, 2/22/2010, p. C1

[138]An alternative *method, revolutionary in its difference, is to fix the Fed by requiring ‘liability reserves’ (the government would control because all reserves held by the government would be covered by a repurchase agreement requiring the bank to BUY BACK what it sold to the Fed, on a fixed date and at the same price). Giving the central bank money it could then inject as stimulus into the credit system, into banks and nonbanks alike will be standby money for necessary loans. This is funding the Fed can WITHDRAW later if the economy no longer needs a boost.

[139] Dave Dayen, The Next Financial Crisis Will Start Here, The Progressive, July-August, 2014, quoting Geithner, p. 72

[140] Reich, Robert, Four Big Lies About Inequality: Don’t listen to the rightwing lies about inequality. Know the truth, and act on it. The Progressive, July-August 2014, p. 77

[141]Redesigning global finance, The Economist, 11/15/2008, p. 15

[142]They would be required to demonstrate regularly how they would wind down their affairs in an orderly manner in the event of failure. We must probably duplicate enactment of the EU’s power to demand restructuring of a company that has received state aid.  That has already been done with German banks. The Economist, July, 2009, p. 55 And the pay culture that rewards bank bosses for short-term risk-taking has to be controlled….a “social contract”: between banks and society, which would impose more realistic costs on banks for , which proved to be an effective way of channelings resouirces to Greece, Ireland, and Portuigal.the taxpayer’s implicit guarantee, must be formulated and imposed. p. 56

[143] “Convenient, but How Secure”, New York Times, 1/17/12 p. A26

[144]Going Green Will End the Recession” FP, says Canada, Japan, and South Korea are spending billions to promote eco-friendly projects and green businesses, Anti-carbon regulations will simultaneously create and destroy jobs, opportunities ranging from energy efficient household appliances to solar panels to energy-efficient vehicles, don’t subsidize ethanol, encourage individual experimentation rather than top-down orders, force polluters to pay the true social cost of their consumption of dirty fuels,

[145] Significant majority’ of consumers support status quo on GMO labeling, new survey reports Genetic Majority Project, Jane Fyksen | June 4, 2014 | Agri-View

[146]29 Joe Klein, TIME, May 4, 2009, p. 22; Geithner's Plan: In advance of his second attempt to roll out a plan to buy up so-called "toxic assets" from banks, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pens an  op-ed in which he says "the private sector will set prices" and "the taxpayers will share in any upside." 
"This program to address legacy loans and securities is part of an overall strategy to resolve the crisis as quickly and effectively as possible at least cost to the taxpayer. The Public-Private Investment Program is better for the taxpayer than having the government alone directly purchase the assets from banks that are still operating and assume a larger share of the losses. Our approach shares risk with the private sector, efficiently leverages taxpayer dollars, and deploys private-sector competition to determine market prices for currently illiquid assets. Simply hoping for banks to work these assets off over time risks prolonging the crisis in a repeat of the Japanese experience." 

[147] Bank of America and Merrill Lynch

[148] A Civil Right to Organize, New York Times, 3/1/12, p. A27

[149] New York Times Magazine, May 3, 2008, p. 40

[150] Robert McClure, Andrew Schneider, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, ‘The General Mining Act of 1872 has left a legacy of riches and ruin’, Sunday, June 10, 2001

[151] New Zealand lifted agricultural subsidies in 1984 and its taxpayers are pleased with the result.

[152] Corporate Welfare Queens. New Yorker, 10/8/2012, p. 42

[153] Richard Eskow, Yes We Can Have Banks that Work for the People, 3/29/2013, The Blog

[154] Our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were not defense. They were offense against countries which were not the al Qaeda. They should have been prosecuted as crimes. Other countries have non-war responses to terrorism.

[155] Robert Reich, blog, 11/26/11

[156] Only a minority of Americans favor global trade (with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia), believing they do not benefit the U.S. economy, they want the U.S. out of the World Trade Organization, they  believe China is at fault and China-bashing is becoming bipartisan. Neither immigration, nor trade, nor China’s currency manipulation is the cause of America’s high unemployment. All three predated the crash of 2008, before which unemployment was only 5 percent. But the global workforce increasingly having steadily-improving skills and higher productivity, and immigration and trade assisting top executives and professionals to find cheaper labor and larger markets for their own skills and insights all are part of the new views. Many aging boomers are understandably anxious about their retirement, while America’s young - whose skins are more likely than those of boomer retirees to be brown or black - face years of joblessness. The jobless rate among people under 25 is already over 17 percent. For young people of color it’s above 20 percent. For young college grads - who assumed a bachelors’ degree was a ticket to upward mobility - unemployment has reached 10 percent. Yet these percentages are likely to rise if boomers decide they can’t afford to retire, and thereby block the jobs pipeline for younger people seeking employment. Opposition is set up in a declining economy: elderly communities already resist property tax hikes to pay for local schools. After the enactment of Medicare in 1965, poverty among the elderly declined markedly, but Medicare and Social Security cost more than $1 trillion a year and account for about a third of the federal budget. They will be traded off against programs that benefit the young: Title I funding for low-income school-age students; Head Start; food stamps; child nutrition; children’s health; and vaccines. It’s likely that Medicaid - Medicare’s poor stepchild, half of whose recipients are children - will also be on the cutting board. Nevertheless poverty among America’s children will continue to rise since they lack expensive, effective lobbying presence

[157] NYT 1213/06 Economic Policy Institute study cited in editorial

[158] ST, 8/5/2007, p. 1

[159] NYT editorial, 7/20/08, p. 10

[160] David Leonhardt, NYT Mag., 2/1/09, p. 22

[161] NYT, 5/8/09, p. 1

[162] The Economist, 7/9/2011, p. 62

[163] Joining with Japan in regulating standards in intellectual property would benefit both of us.

[164] The Economist, April 18-24, 2009, p. 76

[165] A 2005 survey by the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated it would cost the U.S. $1.6 trillion to shore up America’s aging infrastructure---bridges, roads, power grid--- just to bring it up to the bare minimum standards. That is two-thirds of the entire federal budget today.

[166] Richard Florida, Atlantic, March 2009, How the Crash Will Reshape America, p. 44

[167] NYT, 5/6/09 p. 1

[168] Jim Rendon, NYT Magazine,  5/17/09, p. 28

[169] Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, Janeway, William H. Cambridge University Press. 2012.

[170] The Economist, Rebuilding Banks, p. 7, 16

[171] The Crisis and How to Deal With It, Madrick, Bradley, Ferguson, Krugman, Roubini, Soros and Wells, New York Review of  Books,  June 11, 2009, p. 73ff

[172] The Nation, 6/29/09, Pertschuck, Michael, The Little Agency That Could, p. 21

[173] Krugman, NYT, 1/14/2009 Maintain a consistent strategy. The Bush administration and the Fed did not.  They crushed Fannie’s and Freddie’s stock holders. They saved Citigroup’s. Ad-hockery is costly; it keeps private capital on the sidelines for fear of being wiped out in the next Sunday night rescue. And the government is now on the hook for perhaps trillions of dollars of guarantees and new capital. The Economist, 1/10/2009. P. 22

[174] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 161

[175] NYT 5/11/09 p. 1                                                                                                                                                                                                                

[176] Hedge funds must be denied the tax deductibility on interest which  gives debt finance an advantage over companies that use equity for the bulk of their capital. The Economist, July 2009, p.72

[177] NYT, 7/29/2008, p. A19 from Brookings Institution’s Martin Mayer

[178] supra, p. 9, 10;The business of extracting fat fees from creating complex debt structures is in tatters. Banks’ balance sheets are at once weakened by large losses on subprime-related products and swollen with unwanted assets from defunct structured investment vehicles. Secretary of Treasury Paulson admitted “there is not a single or simple solution that will undo the excesses of the last few years. Economist, January 12,2008, p. 14 The 1930s proved that the risk of being penalized after the fact is often too weak a disincentive. The transparency created thereafter, however, entirely failed in the 1980s and 1990s  Deregulations and lax enforcement of the regulations that remained eroded professional norms that had constrained rank opportunism. Supposedly independent auditors colluded with management to dress up corporate books. Ostensibly fair-minded securities analysis serving investors turned out to be stock touts looking to bring their firm underwriting business base on their success in running up a client company’s share price. Boards of directors that allegedly represented shareholders helped crony FCEOs reap astronomical compensation packages largely disconnected from actual company performance. Corporate boards promoted stock options that gave executives incentives not to optimize true performance but to inflate the share price in the short run. Mutual funds, rather than serving as the agents of investors, took huge transaction fees and invariably voted their shares with management. Brokers and investment bankers helped themselves and their favorite clients to new stock issues (IPOs) at preferential prices not available to the public. Institutions of self-regulation, such as the National Association of Securities Dealers, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the New York Stock Exchange, went after minor infractions but not the deeper corruption. The whole scheme depended on excess borrowing and bankers’ complicity. None of this would have been possible without multiple forms of deregulation. And in 1995 a bipartisan majority passed, over President Clinton’s veto, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, making it much more difficult for shareholders to win lawsuits against corporations ore underwriters that deliberately falsified information. Robert Kuttner, p. 75-8.

[179] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 156

[180] Newsweek, July 28, 2008, p. 37 (Robert Rubin)

[181] Newsweek, July 28, 2008, p. 36 (Robert Reich)

[182] Congress was on board, somehow shucking the employees’ pension payments, supervising the reorganization of the bankrupt Northeastern railroad and then forming Con rail in 1975 to run them. By 1981 it was turning a profit hauling freight, and eventually its operations were sold back to privately operated lines. Penn Central had gone bankrupt in 1970. Re GM, managed bankruptcy…the union has been asked to ‘give’ four times…bondholders’ turn.

[183] Put caps on salaries and give the shareholders a ‘say on pay’. Update the Equal Pay Act of 1963 with the Paycheck Fairness Act, which allows victims of wage discrimination to collect information about employees’ salaries without fear of retaliation.

[184] Atlantic, May 2008, p. 84

[185] Wikipedia, Economic regulation

[186] China-Latin American Relations: Review and Analysis, ed. He Shuangrong, 2013, p. 194

[187] NYT Book Review, February 10, 2008. p. 26

[188] The Economist

[189] A Response From Laurence Tribe in the Wake of Newtown By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News 18 December 12

[190] Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec, 2012,  p. 97

[191] Put caps on salaries and give the shareholders a ‘say on pay’. Update the Equal Pay Act of 1963 with the Paycheck Fairness Act, which allows victims of wage discrimination to collect information about employees’ salaries without fear of retaliation.

[191] The Economist, 4/23/11, Where’s the Growth, p. 79

[191] New York Times, 4/23/2011, “Sewers, Swaps and Bacchus, 4/23/2011, p. A17

[191] New York Times, Book Review, 7/31/2011, p. 15

[191] “Sticking Banks with the Bill”, New York Times, August, 2010, p. B1 Caveat emptor should apply. Lenders should be forced to re-purchase non-performing loans. The law which makes the TAXPAYER liable for private enterprise incompetence should be repealed.

[191] The Asian to Global Financial Crisis: An Asian Regulator’s View of Unfettered Finance in the 1990s and 2000s. by Andrew Sheng, Cambridge University Press, 2009,

[192] capital requirements were 12-1 when our economy was stable, Canada ‘gets nasty’, per Julie Dickson, before 20-1 is reached and ‘Wall Street’ was at 30-1 just before the crash in 2008. Canada has effective regulation of lending, and ‘gets nasty’ when a lender approaches 20-1.,

[193] A Stampede of Takeovers Could Mean Growth Ahead, or Just a Rise in Irrationality, New York Times, 8/8/14 p. B1

[194] Free Exchange: Land of the Corporate Giants, The Economist, 11/3/2012, p. 76:  By fhe cost function analysis, recent mergers of health-care businesses, elimination of competition left prices rising after the merger…trying to become too-big-to-fail. 2/3 of managers over estimate the merger advantages in their reports to business leaders.

[195] An irresistible urge to merge, The Economist, July 19, 2014, p. 57

[196] Public Citizen News, March/April 2012, p. 1

[197] NYT, 5/21/2011 Be Careful Wishing for the Fed’s End, News of the Week, p. 7

[198] A 2007 report urged that the whole European social and economic model was at risk because hedge funds and private-equity firms are able to swoop in and to eviscerate Europe’s productive corporations and its collaborative labor relations. “In a number of fields in our social market economy WHERE FINANCIAL MARKETS LIKE THAT DOMINATE, we see DECLINING RATE OF REAL INVESTMENT AS A PERCENTAGE OF CASH FLOW; THE STEADY INCREASE OF DIVIDENDS AND EXTREME EXECUTIVE SALARIES, STOCK OPTIONS AND MANAGEMENT FEES…and even less income retained internally in companies as leveraged buyouts extract more value; the decline of capital stock relative to the gross profit; investment in R&D stagnating or declining as a percentage of expenditures; and deteriorating working conditions.

Require all funds selling shares to the public to register and provide the same kind of disclosures previously required for these investments so every investor can see what is being done. These elites have fanned everyone’s desire to have more money by boosting the stock market, relaxing mortgage lending, loosening regulatory oversight and, without disclosing the risks, selling the debt worldwide to creditors who can close down the credit needed by all worldwide business as well as the mortgages on our homes. They did this ‘financial engineering’ so they can make more fees and also profit by selling bad assets they mortgage before the loans crumble under the rest of us. The cost in millions to American families who invested in the American dream is crippling. To protect ourselves in our homes Congress must regulate lenders to protect the huge $6.45 trillion mortgage securities market.

[199] NYT,1/11/08, p.1 The excessive speculation that dominates the real economy widens inequality, reduces economic efficiency, and increases systemic risk. The top two, alarming, systemic threats to the economy arise from the exponential proliferation of hedge funds and private equity and the increased dependence of the entire economy on borrowing from abroad. increasingly speculative financial markets permitted by cumulative deregulation and supercharged by globalization.  Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 106, 115.

[200] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 133

[201] NYT 12/6/2100, p. B7

[202] The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that it would take two years to spend just 60% of $37 billion from the last infra-structure bill. The Economist, 12/13/2008, p. 34; if Rs attack for promoting big government they’ll lose because the financial crisis has discredited their economic theories and the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to for Gingrich in 1993. Krugman NYT 1/5/09

[203] Carefully evaluate the ‘shovel ready’ state and local projects, some of which are ready to go because they have been drawn up, previously reviewed and rejected. The Economist, 12/13/2008, p, 34

[204] Barack Obama proposes creating an infrastructure bank to help finance transport projects, supporting high speed rail and investing in subways and buses. $1.6t is needed, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, to bring just the existing infrastructure into good repair, excluding future needs. We must invest more than 2.4% on infrastructure when Europe is investing 5% and China is investing 9% Our ports are choked, flights delayed, dismal commutes cost more and all this wastes 4.2b hours and 2lb gallons of wasted gas in addition to $9.3b in lost productivity. . The Economist, June 28^th 2008 p. 35

[205] ibid p. 91, p. 136; Europe actually manages to provide MORE JOBS, as well as better jobs, for its population than the U.S. does. Europe beat free-market America by about 2 percentage points in providing jobs for the entire population. And of course the working conditions, wages, vacation days, and social protections are far superior in Europe, even in France.. NOT ONLY ARE WAGES FAR MORE EQUAL, Europeans receive universal health coverage, and public opinion polls show that Europeans are more satisfied with their medical care than Americans. Child care and prekindergarten are financed socially in most of Europe. The Nordic countries provide generous paid maternity benefits. And virtually all of the higher average U.S. gross domestic product is accounted

[206] create a million new jobs to free us from Arab oil (see fn 40) by creating alternative fuels, requiring cars be more efficient; changing food crops into growth of products that can be turned into diesel fuel; curtailing overall and adjust energy use SO WE WON’T NEED FOREIGN OIL WITHIN 10 YEARS; re-training workers displaced by outsourcing means training older and less educated from one industry, typically done better by employers than the state; (follow Amory Lovins “Playing The Oil Endgame”)

[207] Don’t Paralyze the Peacekeepers, New York Times, 2/10/2012, p.A23

[208] Bank fraud occurred; 1043 S&Ls were closed, costing the taxpayers $153 billion; Chicago AGs 4.5m re problem; 1873 was first such fraud when bankers and investors made the taxpayers bail them out; 1929 Glass–Steagall (and FDIC) was passed; in 1989 Reagan/Bush S&L bailout occurred (which was larger than the recent  bailout); The causes, under President H.W. Bush (father) resulted from the phase-out and eventual elimination in the early 1980s of the Federal Reserve’s Regulation which caused increasing costs of thrift liabilities relative to many fixed-rate assets and adversely affected industry profitability, capital; state and federal deregulation of depository institutions, which allowed thrifts to enter new but riskier loan markets, the deregulation of the thrift industry without an accompanying increase in examination resources (for some years examiner resources actually declined),reduced regulatory capital requirements, which allowed thrifts to use alternative accounting  procedures to increase reported capital levels, excessive chartering of new thrifts during the 1980s and  the withdrawal in 1986 of federal tax laws (enacted in 1981) that benefited commercial real- estate investments. FDIC Banking Review; The Cost of the Savings and Loan Crisis: Truth and Consequences by Timothy Curry and Lynn Shibut*, after 2000; Lenders were and are unable to provide ownership documents to any new buyer since the ownership of those premises were spread among innumerable, difficult to trace, partial owners (the ‘transferors’ being insured by the failed AIG so THEY would not lose by gambling with funds which were not theirs). Some of their ‘earnings’ from these deals is in the Gran Cayman, outside the reach of federal authorities. WA AG, KC Prosecutor presentation 2/8/12, MDC

That compares to the 2011 Wall Street bailout estimate of $4.76 trillion disbursed, $13.87 trillion at risk, $1.54 trillion outstanding The Wall Street Bailout Cost table, Real Economy Project of the Center for Media and Democracy, which publishes this website, SourceWatch

[209] Neil Pierce, Seattle Times, 2/16/2010, p. A13

[210] Ed Rampell, Matt Taibbi, The Progressive, July-August, 2014, p. 68

[211] The shareholders, bondholders and creditors, not the deceived, should lose by the banks’ knowing risky business practices.

[212] NYT, 2/18/2009 p. 1 This bets that the ‘saved’ won’t walk away (only 1-2% walked away in Boston) which seems a small potential cost since only 6.4% in Boston went into foreclosure. Of course it all depends on whether the Boston experience is repeated now. The President is trying to focus on those homeowners who would certainly lose their homes without government help and will help some undewater homeowners refinance their mortgages, but that won’t e the emphasis. Any bank that does not negotiate as expected would lose favor, and possibly they need it if they are the ones who’ve ALREADY GOTTEN FEDERAL BAILOUT MONEY. This helps the responsible buyers, the deceived borrowers, but not the speculators buying for resale nor the lenders with culpable deceptions.

[213] ‘passing the trash’ was the wording used by a banker about their transmission of loans to others.

[214] Making Sure Banks Do the Right Thing, Seattle Times, 11/10/2010, p. A17; Foreclosure Fraud  Fallout, The Nation, November 8, 2010, p. 6

[215] (FP, Foreign Policy, January/February 2009, p. 67)

[216] FP, Foreign Policy, January/February 2009, p. 68

[217] The Economist, 5/30/2011, p. 74

[218] The Real Oil Shock, New York Times Magazine, 4/1/2012, p. 12

[219] Seeing the Back of the Car, The Economist, 9/22/12, p. 20

[220]Bacevich, Andrew J., The Limits of Power, p. 44

[221] David, Helvarg, A City Beats Back Chevron, The Progressive, July-August 2014, p. 60

[222] New Yorker, 4/2/2012, p. 19

[223] NYT editorial, 7/14/08 p. A20

[224] The digital degree, The Economist, 6/28/14, p. 20

[225] The Progressive, May 2014 p. 8

[226] The Economist, July 9, 2011, p. 64

[227] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Basic Books, 2004,    p. ix

[228] NYT Magazine, 5/3/09, p. 40

[229] P. 89

[230] Failure to agree on domestic standards for mobile phones is seen as a principal reason why foreign firms were able to capture both technological and market leads over their U.S. competitors. p. 114

[231] P. 90

[232] Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein, p. 229

[233]  “Don’t Drop Out of School Innovation” NYT, August 20, 2010, p. A10

[234] New York Times about 7/8/12

[235] A Bigger Rice Bowl, The Economist, 5/10/2014, p. 21

[236] (Union Concerned Scientists,  Fall 2012, p. 4

[237] The Economist  6/25/2011, p. 38

[238] Rethinking Latin America: Foreign Policy Is More Than Developmemt, Sabatina, Christropher, Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2012, p. 8

[239] Wealth of food---most of it unhealthy, Real Change, 2/15-21, 2012, p. 8

[240] Until now, food production has been controlled by Big Agriculture, with its macho fixation on “average tonnage” and “record harvests” but we don’t have to rely on capital, chemistry and machines In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm n the U.S. nets, on average, $1400 per acre, vs 39/acre for larger farms. NYT, Sunday Opinion, 5/11/08, p. I3.

[241] NYT 10/15/07

[242] The current subsidy system has a system of overlapping, subsidized insurance, loans and payments which it only extends to a few select crops. The Economist, March 29 – April 4, 2008, p. 44

[243] Poisoned Waters, Ch 9, April 23, 2009

[244] The Economist, 2/12/2011 p. 38

[245] The Economist, 1/3/2009, p. 13

[246] The Economist, April 11, 2009, p. 13

[247] Hachigian and Sutphen, The Next Century, p. 117-119.

[248] Outsourcing fears overlook India’s role as U.S. job creator, Seattle Times, 12/31/2010, p, A17

[249] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 217ff

[250] p. 90

[251] ibid, p. 23;

    The ideal current model is the EU: a single monetary policy for the 16 euro area Member States, combined with coordinated national fiscal policies has boosted cross-border trade, financial integration and investments. Budgetary discipline has improved significantly thanks to the rules bases Stability and Growth pact. The responsiveness of this system has just been demonstrated as:

1)   EU leaders rapidly produced a rescue plan that allows governments to guarantee interbank lending, provide short-term liquidity, and buy into banks to increase their capital;

2)   Inflation averaged just 2%/yr and nominal interest rates declined to 9%;

3)   Almost 16m jobs have  been created since1999 and the unemployment rate has dropped to 7%,

the lowest rate in 15 years;

4)   public budget deficits fell to .6% of GDP in 2007;

5)   the single currency eliminates transaction costs associated with currency exchange;

6)   the euro has rapidly become one of the world’s most important currencies and has overtaken the U.S. dollar in the international bond market. The Economist, EU Focus, January 10, 2009, p. 1

[252] The Economist, January 24^th, 2009, p. 76

[253] savings (for investment in starting new and expanding existing businesses) will rise because share prices, housing costs will decrease as mortgage rates level off and decreased appreciation of housing will make it less appealing.

    U.S. is increasingly dependent on capital from the rest of the world to finance investment. At the same time, the decreased national savings rate---and the increase in consumer spending that it implies, are paid for with increased consumer DEBT---accompanies a rise in U.S. imports; higher stock and real estate prices do not free up resources to increase investment in BUSINESS capital; the relatively rapid increase in consumer spending is the primary reason or the large trade deficit and the associated capital inflows; As consumer spending falls, GDP and employment will also decline. This decline will last until net exports increase by an equal amount. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006, Feldstein, Martin, “The Return of Saving”, p 87

[254] Despite the popular misconception, globalized economics have helped (by 2000 the developing world produced 42% of the globe’s income, up from 29% in 1950 Atlantic, April 2007, p. 58)

[255] Foreign Affairs, November, 2008, p. 141ff

[256]  like IMF did to all FOREIGN failed economies before); similar to Reagan’s Resolution Trust in the 1980s.

[257] Foreign Affairs, November 2008, p. 133

[258] support growth, a values issue, since Rs won 97 of the 100 fastest growing counties

[259] * When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers de-unionization was already well along Reich, p.80

[260] According to data from the OECD ad the Luxembourg Income Study, the U.S. has at least TWICE THE DEGREE OF INEQUALITY of most of Europe, as well as far greater economic insecurity, and the gap is widening. The increases in labor market inequality---wage differentials and deregulation---are the biggest single source of Europe’s widening inequality. P. 214

     During the postwar boom, wage and labor regulation, such as minimum-wage and prevailing-wage laws, unemployment compensation, and legal recognition of trade unions not only raised wages directly, they served to increase the bargaining power of other individual workers and organized labor on behalf of the whole umbrella of social protections. The new commitment by the state to maintaining full employment recreated a relatively tight labor market in which employers had to pay decently to hire qualified workers. Today’s dwindling share of union representation is not the result of workers deciding that unions are not for them. It is the consequence of a no-holds-barred attack by corporations on unions, with the complicity of government. A recent Hart poll shows that 53% of America’s nonunion workers would like to be represented by a union. But in 2004, just 80,000 workers succeeded in organizing one---because management so efficiently and costlessly fires workers who sign union cards, IN FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE WAGNER ACT. Even in an era of all-out war on unions, the economic advantages of being a union member are impressive. According to the Bureau of labor Statistics, the average union wage premium is 28%. Fully 73% of union members have defined-benefit pensions, compared to 16% of non-union workers. And 92% of workers kin unionized companies receive employer-provided health insurance compared to 68% of non-union workers (whose policies are also often inferior). Lest the reader conclude that all these workers are in declining, old-economy companies whose generous compensation policies are renderings them uncompetitive, the same differences hold up if we compare the average hourly pay of workers in the low-wage service economy, the one sector where unionization is growing. Kuttner, p. 54,5

6ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) organizes for employees
5 of nonunion workers (*whose policies are also often inferior). Lest the reader conclude that all these works are in declining, old-economy companies whose generous compensation policies are rendering them uncompetitive, the same differences hold up if we compare the average hourly pay of workers in the low-wage service economy, the one sector where unionization is growing. Robert Kuttner, p. 55

Denmark enjoys new economic dynamism and a lower unemployment rate than the U.S., land has not sacrificed broad social benefits or income equality by a series of reforms, called flexicurity, which combined reduced labor regulation with increased outlays on training for displaced individuals. p. 213

[261] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 167

[262] Krugman, Paul, Conscience of a Liberal, p. 151

[263] change labor laws making it easier for employees to organize and negotiate better terms. Ask a small transfer tax on sales of shares of stock, in order to slow the movement of capital ever so slightly so people and communities have a bit more time to adapt to changing circumstances. Put in “circuit-breakers” that prevent a large, profitable company from laying off more than a certain proportion of the workers in a particular community during the course of a year.. Extend unemployment insurance combined with wage insurance and job training to ease the pain for workers caught in downdrafts of deregulation or trade. Trade treaties should require all participating nations to allow their citizens to organize unions and establish minimum wages that are half their median wages.  Support paid family leave, so workers can upgrade their skills. Reich, Robert B.Supercapitalism, Alfred B. Knopf, New York, p. 128

[264] Corporations aren’t us! Why do they get ‘health care’ when we don’t;

    CEOs in Washington are being paid $15 million (Dawn Leporer, drugstore.com), $13 million (Orin Smith, Starbucks), $13 million (Lawrence Johnson, Albertsons), $12 million, Kerry Killinger, Washington Mutual, $9 million (Mark Suwyn, LP)

[265]  NYT 5/16/07: outsourcing is not yet high enough to affect wages and immigration only cause. 10% of the change in wages. What we need is the technical education for OUR citizens so Americans can get the 10 to 14% higher, rising wages of the jobs requiring technical competence the immigrants can’t do, especially since our citizens have said they don’t want the immigrants’ jobs. It’s especially important because technology is getting ahead of all of us so we have to set ourselves up to get more education unless we want the immigrants’ jobs we say we don’t want.

[266] NYT, Paul Krugman, “Another Economic Disconnect”, about 5/1/07

[267] The Economist, February 2, 2008, p. 84

[268]  p. 113

266…

[270] Krugman, NYT, July 28, 2008, p. A21

[271] Republican Senate leader Frist fought a Republican- sponsored bill to regulate Freddie Mac and Fannie May in 2005 Nation/World October 19, 2008

[272] The Economist, September 1^st-7^th, 2007, p. 24

    Global capitalism works wonderfully to enlarge the world economy but democracy becomes less and less effective since the gains have gone to the well off, not the workers. We must bring back salary and wage increases that exceed inflation, fair taxation, well-funded public education, trade unions to restore the strength of the people, not the corporations. The more equal incomes of the 1950s (every income group and social class gained ground, inequality of income and *wealth declined, and a far larger middle class emerged; the top 1% had dropped from 19% to 7% of total personal income and more equal after taxes since the top earners paid a marginal income tax rate of 91%.Reich, Robert, Supercapitalism, Alfred B. Knopf, New York, p.37) must be paid again as they were then. Regulation stabilized industry, maintained jobs and wages, and protected the economic bases of communities where regulated industries were headquartered or did business. It also sought to weigh industry’s need for profits against the public’s need for safe, fair, and reliable service. Supra, p. 7, 25. You deserve the peace of knowing you will continue to have a job that will support you and your family . Unions,or government, have to give you pensions and health care because you CAN VOTE FOR THEM, but business won’t provide because it loses money since now so many competitors may undercut them. As jobs and incomes grow less secure, public safety nets become more essential. As companies are pressured to show profits, tougher measures are needed to guard public health, safety, the environment, and human rights against the possibility that executives may feel compelled to cut corners. Reich, supra. P. 126

[273] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 16

[274] Find ways to recover the money deceived homebuyers paid for homes when financial houses knew they were ‘passing trash’ from subprime loans since their borrowers couldn’t afford the homes sold when wages were not increasing. (Offer rent assistance if fall behind instead of PURCHASE assistance which spurs the belief that poor people can AFFORD to buy a home beyond their reach.

[275] But maybe Clinton de-regulated telecommunications and banking “for too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, the system has been rigged against everyday American by the lobbyists that Wall Street uses to get its way” New Yorker

[276] New Yorker, November 20, 2007, p. 37

[277] NYT 4/15/08 Business, p. 4

[278] Most Americans believe that the average worker “has to work harder to earn a decent living” today than he did twenty or thirty years earlier. But the TOP TENTH OF A PERCENT SAW ITS INCOME RISE FIVE TIMES, AND THE TOP .01% OF AMERICANS IS SEVEN TIMES RICHER THAN THEY WERE IN 1973. Krugman, Paul, p. 128; by 2001 CSO pay had risen to 350 times what the typical worker earned Reich, Supercapitalism, Alfred B. Knopf, New York, p.108. The bosses have taken productivity wage increases, and kept them themselves while two-thirds of Americans have lost earnings or are getting no increases when everything costs more. Robert Kuttner, The Squandering of America, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007, p. 4; see also The Economist, February 2, 2008, p. 86, which indicates the American economy barely grew at the end of 2007.

[279] U.S. has become one of the lowest cost producers of steel in the world (due to fixed price contracts with American producers) which may mean increased productivity and the wage gap is narrowing. Seattle Times 5/26/08, p A3

[280] Reich, Robert, Supercapitalism, Alfred B. Knopf, New York, p. 64

[281] the patient protection & affordable care act - immediate benefits

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the patient protection and affordable care act includes health insurance market reforms that will bring immediate benefits to millions of americans, including those who currently have coverage. the following benefits will be available in the first year after enactment of the patient protection and affordable care act.

access to affordable coverage for the uninsured with pre-existing conditions

the patient protection and affordable care act will provide $5 billion in immediate federal support for a new program to provide affordable coverage to uninsured americans with pre-existing conditions.

coverage under this program will continue until new exchanges are operational.

re-insurance for retiree health benefit plans

the patient protection and affordable care act will create immediate access to re-insurance for employer health plans providing coverage for early retirees.

this re-insurance will help protect coverage while reducing premiums for employers and retirees.

closing the coverage gap in the medicare (part d) drug benefit

the patient protection and affordable care act will reduce the size of the "donut hole” by raising the ceiling on the initial coverage period by $500 in 2010.

the patient protection and affordable care act will also guarantee 50 percent price discounts on brand-name drugs and biologics purchased by low and middle-income beneficiaries in the coverage gap.

small business tax credits

the patient protection and affordable care act will offer tax credits to small businesses to make employee

tax credits of up to 50 percent of premiums will be available to firms that choose to offer coverage.

extension of dependent coverage for young adults

the patient protection and affordable care act will require insurers to permit children to stay on family policies until age 26.

free prevention benefits

the patient protection and affordable care act will require coverage of prevention and wellness benefits and exempt these benefits from deductibles and other cost-sharing requirements in public and private insurance coverage.

no arbitrary limits on coverage

the patient protection and affordable care act will prohibit insurers from imposing lifetime limits on benefits and will restrict the use of annual limits.

protection from rescissions of existing coverage

the patient protection and affordable care act will stop insurers from rescinding insurance when claims are filed, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact.

prohibits discrimination based on salary

the patient protection and affordable care act will prohibit group health plans from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that have the effect of discriminating in favor of higher wage employees.

ensuring value for premium payments

the patient protection and affordable care act will establish standards for insurance overhead to ensure that premiums are spent on health benefits.

the patient protection and affordable care act will also require public disclosure of overhead and benefit spending and require premium rebates for insurers that exceed established standards for overhead expenses.

public access to comparable information on insurance options

the patient protection and affordable care act will enable creation of a new website to provide information on and facilitate informed consumer choice of insurance options.

health insurance consumer information

the patient protection and affordable care act will provide assistance to states in establishing offices of health insurance consumer assistance or health insurance ombudsman programs to assist individuals with the filing of complaints and appeals, enrollment in a health plan, and, eventually, to assist consumers with resolving problems with tax credit eligibility.

clear summaries, without the fine print

the patient protection and affordable care act will require insurance companies to outline coverage options using a simple and standard format that enables consumers to make an apples-to-apples comparison when they are choosing their health insurance plan.

appeals process

under the patient protection and affordable care act, all health plans will implement an effective appeals process for appeals of coverage determinations and claims.

administrative simplification

under the patient protection and affordable care act, all health plans will adopt uniform descriptions of plan benefits and appeals procedures and will use uniform forms and claims processing processes to reduce costs.

We tackled long term spending growth, website for long term regulatory reform started July 1, 2010, on time so insurance must give small businesses $250 payments sent to people caught in donut hole non-payment for drugs, eliminated discrimination for pre-existing conditions, 27 states are starting high-risk insurance pools for uninsured with health problems, federal coverage for states which do not have their own pools started on August 1, 2010,

Bruce Bartlett, Ronald Reagan’s domestic policy advisor and George H.W. Bush’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy says he got it all wrong on health care. His candid assessment of the downfall of modern Republicanism and its central core of pretend conservatism as published in a must-read article in the December, 2012 issue of American Conservative. The confessional includes, among many on-target money quotes, this one: “Living in the Fox News cocoon, most Republicans had no clue that they were losing [in 2012] or that their ideas were both stupid and politically unpopular.” Bartlett begins by detailing his decades-long list of unquestionably rock-solid conservative credentials, all of which have earned him exactly nothing from today’s clueless, brain-addled, incurably propagandized Fox “News” “conservative” crowd, which tossed him “under a bus”. “To this day,” Bartlett writes, “I don’t think they understand that my motives were to help them avoid the permanent decline that now seems inevitable…” “Revenge of the Reality-Based Community: My life on the Republican right includes his frank admissions that he was wrong about Keynesian economics, as he learned while researching for a 2007 book initially meant to describe it as a dead economic theory. “After careful research along these lines, Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s. George W. Bush’s Great Recession made clear that “We needed Keynesian policies again.” “Annoyingly,” he says, “I found myself joined at the hip to Paul Krugman, whose analysis was identical to my own. I had previously viewed Krugman as an intellectual enemy and attacked him rather colorfully in an old column that he still remembers.” “For the record,” he generously offers, “no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy’s problems than Paul Krugman. The blind hatred for him on the right simply pushed me further away from my old allies and comrades.” Brooks has been “banned from Fox News” and fired from a right wing think tank for his various acts of Republican heresy and there has been ‘epistemic closure’ among conservatives — living in their own bubble where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction.” His “first exposure” to the Republicans’ Fox-fueled jihad of self-defeat, he explains, occurred while working on his 2006 book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.States helped by hundreds of millions of dollars to help health care delivery and oversight of insurance company performance, though long term financing still on hold by Congress NYT 9/23/2010 p. A31

Changes to be made in 2011

1)   tax credits on track for Changes to propose for 2011 (The Nation, 5/5/2010):

2)   Change  requiring only 60% coverage from participating plans

3)   Push to replace the privatized Medicare drug coverage program with a fully public plan that would use its bargaining power to force down drug prices by about 40%.“

4)   Eliminate entirely the overpayments to HMOs and phase out investor-owned health providers that deliver inferior care at inflated prices;

5)   Advocate on behalf of Safety Net Hospitals;

6)   Pass public funding of political campaigns (FENA, SB562) to reduce the influence, through campaign contributions and push for tougher regulation of Big Pharma.

7)   Expose and agitate against insurance firm’s abuse of customers and outrageous incomes paid to their executives;

8)   Allow undocumented immigrants to buy insurance in the new exchanges and allow green-card holders to receive publicly subsidized insurance for these first five years;

     9) Work with state-based single-payer groups (VT, CA, MD, MN)

The Cost of Doing Nothing” NYT, Wk in Review, 2/28/2010, p. 1 would have been:

a)   unrelenting rise of medical costs outpace the growth in the overall economy, increase faster than the average paycheck and increase in health care premiums which would be a substantial deterioration in what we have;

b)   fewer individuals and businesses would have  been able to afford insurance coverage. More of everyone’s dollar would have gone to health care, and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid would have struggled to find the money to operate. Typical family coverage, which cost $13,000/year was expected to double, to $24,000/year by 2020. That would have increased the uninsured by more than a million a year. It would have  cramped our economic growth. As many as 275,000 would have died prematurely. If President Nixon’s plan had passed, the United States might b spending a trillion dollars a year less than it does now and President Clinton’s plan would have reduced spending by some $400 billion a year.

     $32 million now uninsured will have coverage, and must pay the premiums which will also provide the remaining money necessary to support the whole system for everyone.

The health reform act is not: 1) a government takeover of the nation’s health care system since all those with employer sponsored health care may keep it and those now self-insured will have the option of private coverage (voters don’t realize that 46% of all health care is NOW PUBLIC so the difference is iinsignificant);

                                   2) a budget buster since it will reduce future spending by over $1 trillion by 2029. AARP, April 2010, p. 3

65% regard immediate action on health care costs as “very important’; medical innovation (the number of new treatments proposed, not costs generally) is the problem; Ron Sims, County Executive has provided a model as he gathered employers, providers and insurers to improve quality of health care and reduce costs Every major religion teaches its followers to care for those who are less fortunate. But we’re 37^th worldwide in overall health system effectiveness.

The national deficit would decrease by used of a single payer health care plan would have been better (essentially improving and strengthening Medicare by expanding it to all). Dr. Margaret Flowers (congressional fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program) presented to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, June 30 hearing. She also supported reduction of cots by evidence-based remedy to control. When compared to health care in other advanced nations, the United States excels in only one area- the amount of money spent per capita per year. Despite our high spending, the U.S. leaves a third of the population either uncovered or underinsured thus vulnerable to financial ruin. Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy and foreclosure in our nation despite the fact that most families declaring medical bankruptcy had insurance when they began incurring the debt. Our health outcomes are relatively poor, placing us 37th in the world, and we rank the highest in preventable deaths, over 100,000 preventable deaths per year, when compared to other advanced nations. It is clear we are getting poor value in return for our health care dollar. Health care costs, which are rising 2.5% faster than our GDP, are a leading driver of our financial deficit. In fact, if our health care costs were comparable to those in other advanced nations, which provide nearly universal health care with better outcomes, we would currently experience a budget surplus. The recent health legislation, misleadingly titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) lacks proven cost controls and is predicted to cause U.S. health care costs to rise faster than if there had been no reform at all (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, April 2010) despite continuing to leave out tens of millions. Worse, given the impact of health care costs, members of this commission may attempt to decrease the deficit by cutting our public health insurance programs, Medicaid and Medicare. However, doing this would be a mistake because it would increase poverty, worsen health outcomes and increase costs. Since its enactment nearly 45 years ago, Medicare has substantially lowered poverty among the elderly. Studies show that health disparities in the U.S. start decreasing when our population reaches the age of 65. And the cost of health care per beneficiary is rising more slowly for those on Medicare than for those with private health insurance. Medicaid and Medicare have not caused our rising health care costs but are victims of our fragmented and failed market-based model of health care financing. Shifting the cost of health care from the taxpayer to the patient will not magically make these heath care costs disappear or become sustainable. The solution to our economic crisis is to jettison the costly failed market model of health care and adopt a publicly financed and independently delivered national improved Medicare for All. This is commonly known as “single payer”. A national improved Medicare for All system has myriad benefits: administrative savings of approximately $400 billion per year, which is enough to provide comprehensive high quality health care to all who are uninsured and underinsured; ability to negotiate for pharmaceutical prices as a monopsony which would lower costs by about 40% and bring our prices in line with those of other advanced nations. Inherent cost controls of global budgeting for health facilities, negotiated fees, bulk purchasing and rational, rather than profit-driven, allocation of capital expenditures and health resources; ability to identify outliers and develop quality improvement tools; enhance the competitiveness of U.S. products in international markets; liberate our population to pursue advanced education or entrepreneurial enterprises; allow older workers to retire which would increase job opportunities for our younger workers; stimulate the economy because families would have more money for discretionary spending; improve the health, and therefore the productivity, of our workforce; eliminate bankruptcy and foreclosure due to medical debt; eliminate the spend-down required for those who need long-term care; provide true health security to our population so that nobody has to choose between necessary medical care and other necessities such as housing, food, education and clothing; given these multiple economic benefits – and I have not begun to describe the ways in which national improved Medicare for All would improve patient choice and quality of health care- it is no surprise that the single payer approach is supported by the majority of those in the U.S. and the majority of American physicians, 70% voted not to cut Medicaid and Medicare

Private health insurance is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. There is a steady trend in fewer being enrolled in employee-sponsored health plans. This is expected to increase under PPACA as businesses have an incentive to drop insurance benefits and pay the lower cost penalty.

There is a steady trend in people choosing high deductible plans which leave them financially vulnerable in their time of need. As people enter the individual market, those with health conditions will find it difficult to afford adequate insurance.

The trends show increase in those who are uninsured and underinsured. It will become worse under PPACA since billons of public dollars will be used to subsidize rising private insurance premiums for policies that cover fewer and fewer services. The result will be a flow of patient and public dollars into the coffers of private insurance corporations with declining return in terms of health care. This trend is not sustainable.

The alternative scenario of a national improved Medicare for All will save lives and save money. National improved Medicare for All will place our nation on the path of becoming one of the best health systems in the world.

This commission has the ability to recommend creating a financially sustainable universal health system.

8/20/2010 Public Citizen, Health Letter, July, 2010, p. 6. The current move for ‘single payer’ (McDermott) is 128 sponsors for the “robust” Public Option Act (Seattle Times 7/23/2010, B2) but the previous inability to get enough Democratic support to avoid Senate threatened filibuster prevented single-payer and will be worse under the 2011 Senate. The POA would set up a ‘Medicare-like public insurance plan that would compete with private carriers lower the deficit $53b between 2014 and 2019 (CBO)) attract 1.3m, a third, of the previously covered by insurance companies (to deter them from raising rates?), lower premiums 50% and pay providers a flat Medicare + 5%.

In 2004 long term goals for better health care were: 1) under PPACA, promote equity in the global economic system e.g. restricting the power of transnational corporations and multilateral lending institutions, restructuring trade policies to promote fair trade, canceling the debt of  the ;poorest countries, and taxing international transactions (the “Tobin Tax”); 2) Restrict or ban international trade in industries whose products are designed or designed to kill, such as military hardware, including land mines, and tobacco; 3) promote national responsibility for the provision of health care to all in both north and south, resist privatization of health care and support national health care systems;. 4) Assure that food, clean water, and other basic needs are seen as basic human rights and protected from profit-oriented exposition; 5) Redesign and enforce an international essential drug policy that will regulate prices for the supply of, and research on drugs so that basic medicines can be provided to all who need them; 6) Include worker health and well-being whenever issues of industrial; production or trade are discussed. Continue the international pressure to ban sweatshop labor and promote fair trade practices; and 7) Demand environmental protection for this planet earth, requiring control of toxic wastes, clean and reduced energy use, and other similar measures.

       “A Public Option Isn’t a Curse, or a Cure”, NYT OPINION, by Richard Thaler raises problems with public option, calling it an insurance option run by the government: it will challenge or defeat private insurance if it GETS subsidies, it will impair private companies ability to complete if it is given power to impose special deals with suppliers like hospitals and drug companies and if it is to compete with privates it, too, will have marketing and other administrative costs Medicare doesn’t have.

       The largest question in health care reform is can we avoid ideological decisions for the market in favor of empirical outcomes? Europe caps budgets on health care, puts price controls and has a more modest view in the medical profession about what constitute appropriate treatments. A Theory of Justice, John Rawls, and Setting Limits, What Kind of Life” “: The Troubled Dream of Life” and False Hopes,  by Daniel Callahan; as well as Angela A. Wasunna, “Medicine and the Market”

[282] The architecture of the Affordable Care Act is based on conservative, not liberal, ideas about individual responsibility and the power of market forces.  The president's program extends the current health care system (mostly employer-based coverage, administered by commercial health insurers including fee-for-service doctors and hospitals - by removing our health care system’s biggest barriers to a competitive marketplace. The future health care law requires insurance so taxpayers won’t have to continue to pay, by law, what our uninsured cost us taxpayers at the Emergency Room. It outlaws discrimination against those who want treatment but cannot get it when private insurance refuses to cover  people with scary medical histories. The mandate is about personal responsibility - a hallmark of conservative thought- but providing help paying for insurance for needy potential patients who now get free ER, or no, care – a conservative value, particularly when it lowers overall societal cost and provides more efficient health care. It subsidizes only people who cannot afford insurance so they may get it and lower the cost for the taxpayer for their health care by covering the insurer with universal health care premium payment. Conservatives, at the beginning, and Mr. Obama thought it was a good idea. Exchanges,  another idea formulated by conservatives and supported by Republican governors and legislators across the country for years, is pro-market, frees up buyers and sellers (no private or public bureaucracy), provides your care only excluding less proven treatments, so that it will be less expensive than now and tells you the cost up front. If we give it a chance, the new system will cut 26% of the cost of health care insurance premiums. Obama's reform plans are creating a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.

We’ll group teams of doctors and nurses by phone; assign small teams and get comparability information regarding treatments. That will build trust when we do the essential informative outreach to reach out to and include potential patients through special events, written, broadcast and telephone calls to tell health care costs and relative benefits.

Further benefits will come in 2014, after the health care system has time to prepare, so all plans will have to meet minimal standards and large employers will have to provide coverage or pay a stiff fine.

Under today's system, most health insurers (and providers) pay attention to making money and listen to the wrong people, often for the wrong reasons, with the maximum cost efficiency coming last. Businesses are free to decide that they are better off dropping health coverage and letting their employees choose, or choose not, to cover themselves (and the taxpayers who ‘hold the bag’, paying for ER visits, if they don’t choose coverage). 

[283] New York Times, 8/9/14

[284] The Economist, 3/19/2011, p. 17

[285] Jessica Schorr Saxe, M.D., Medicare is worthy model to provide health care for all, The Charlotte (N.C.)                        Observer, July 30, 2014

[286] Obamacare: The winners and losers so far, This Week, 7/25/14, p. 14

[287] The Commonwealth Fund Report, about June 2014

[288] The Hill, June, 2014

[289] Obamacare: The winners and losers so far, This Week, 7/25/14, p. 14

[290] New York Times, ed 6/20/14 p A20

[291] ”Vox

[292] Urban Institute: "

[293] New York Times, 4/28/14

[294] New York Times editorial 6/9/14

[295] Inventing a Failure, Krugman, 5/5/14 p. A23

[296] White House blog by Stephanie Cutter

[297] (Kaiser says)

[298] Health Affairs Study

[299] Assn of American Medical Colleges, JAMA Internal Medicine

[300] New York Times, 4/3/14 p. 18

[301] Urban Institute, 4/2014

[302] Budget Office Lowers Estimate for the Cost of Expanding Health Coverage, New York Times, 4/15/14, p. A14

[303]What’s Next for Health Care, NYT, 4/3/14 p. A18

[304] per Forbes

[305] Seattle Times, 3/12/09 p. A3

[306] Ultimately, the Affordable Care Act means that increased copayments and deductibles are generally unlikely for grandfathered plans. While increased deductibles, copayments, and other out-of-pocket expenses are possible, they are not necessarily likely. In many cases, some health care expenses will even be fully covered, particularly those associated with routine care, such as annual checkups or vaccinations. The Affordable Care Act will also eliminate higher copayments associated with mental health care or treatment for substance abuse. Premiums for some open-market plans may increase slightly, but overall expenses are expected to decrease or increase at a slower rate than they have been. Although grandfathered plans may not be restricted in the same way that new plans will be, any changes to their plans must comply with specific regulations. Health plans may be at risk of losing their grandfathered status if they raise co-insurance charges, copayments, or deductibles significantly. They may also lose their grandfathered status if they cut or reduce benefits, lower employer contributions significantly, or place a cap on benefits. Grandfathered plans are able to make other changes, however. They can make adjustments to their subscribers’ costs in order to remain competitive. They can also add benefits or adjust current benefits. Additionally, grandfathered plans are permitted to voluntarily comply with new consumer protections or other state or federal health insurance laws. Sofi Insurance Services

[307] 65% regard immediate action on health care costs as “very important’; medical innovation (the number of new treatments proposed, not costs generally) is the problem; Ron Sims, County Executive has provided a model as he gathered employers, providers and insurers to improve quality of health care and reduce costs Every major religion teaches its followers to care for those who are less fortunate. But we’re 37^th worldwide in overall health system effectiveness.

[308] Special Message to the Congress Proposing a Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan, 2/6/74

[309] The lobbyists claim that Canadian and European health care is worse. In fact, Canadian medicine is more efficient, requiring your doctor to spend less than 50% of his/her time on paperwork and private insurance has not been driven out of business and continues today (since 2/3 of Canadians have SUPPLEMENTAL insurance for dental, eye, prescriptions and private hospital rooms).Taxes are higher. As here, people wanting much less necessary help are on waiting lists. Canada does have too few elderly nursing homes. Britain doesn’t pay for ineffective drugs. Here, Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, have long waiting lines. And we shouldn’t be writing blank checks to pharmacies for patented drugs. The British and Canadian governments try to apportion that national, fixed, number of budgeted dollars of health spending so that the whole population gets care. That can mean, alongside other cost-saving measures, longer waits.

[310] Krugman, NYT, 10/27/09 p. A13; the complexity of implementation of reform in 1/5^th of America’s economy has been delayed issuing essential regulations and many state governments remain unco-operative. Some states have not chosen to expand Medicaid, and if they don’t, those with incomes below 100 of the poverty line will not qualify for subsidies on the exchanges. Missouri voters passed a ballot measure to prevent their governor from moving forward But HHS has started to reward hospitals for providing good care. The Economist, January 5, 2013, p. 21

[311] Medicare-for-All (Single-Payer) Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy with 2.6 Million New Jobs, $17 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages placard at rally

[312] Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations even in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another twenty years and could pay 75 percent of its benefits after that. Obama’s recent reduction of payments to Medicare was recovery for waste, abuse and overpayment, not a cut in Medicare. Your current government program, Medicare, charges 27% less for doing the plan than insurance companies. We should thank the government, not avoid it.

[313] By 2019 about 24 million people will have insurance through exchanges, and 80% who can’t make the premiums will have federal subsidies to make it affordable. The next regulations will lay out the essential benefits required for each plan. The plan will give our people the same insurance choices as members of Congress.  They have taken very good care of themselves and now will take care of us.

[314] “Medicare“…e-based medical procedure. Those units sole role is receiving “payments” and paying medical providers. Inclusion of business is essential to buy compliance, rather than holdouts, after negotiation.

    Current Medicare spends 98% of its funds on actual medical care. In contrast, Aetna spends less than 80% of each dollar in health insurance premiums on medical care. The other 20% goes into profits, marketing and administrative expenses. Massachusetts’ law requires everyone who can afford it to pay $295 for health care coverage. They’ll help a little with the old families and others who can’t afford that. Making all who can pay covers them, and, overall, this will cause people to prevent severe illness by going to lower cost, walk-in, clinics or places with lower prices who refuse to do insurance. Currently, the differences cost the U.S. an unnecessary 18,000 lives per year…6 9/11s…according to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine.

    The alternatives are to reform Medicare by moving toward managed competition by requiring all plans chosen by patients to compete for customers on both price and quality, like the FEHBP.

    The Maryland alternative is an 8%-of-payroll-for-health-care by large businesses, abolition of the existing fee-for-service Medicare and Medicaid programs and enrollment of all Americans in a universal health insurance system called the Medical Security System (MSS). Every October the MSS would provide individualized vouchers to be used to purchase health insurance for the following calendar year based on the recipient’s expected health expenditures over the calendar years. All Americans would receive health care and the government could limit its total voucher expenditure to what the nation could afford. The plan is also progressive. The poor, who are more prone to illness than the rich, would receive higher vouchers on average. And all the tax breaks going to the rich in the form of non-taxed health insurance premium payments should vanish.     

       Add some way to limit the 60% of the current health care dollar going to the last six months of life. Thirty states are considering Maryland’s “Fair Share”; Andy Stern, SEIU, hopes Wal-Mart (one of the BETTER providers) requesting national health-care would cause a rush of other companies already buried in health-care costs, to be joined by governors burdened by Medicaid costs (states pay 40%) and cheered by unhealthy workers currently suffering discrimination to the right answer. All this is forced by the fact that health care costs are rising at 3 times the rate of inflation; automakers in 2004 said they liked Kerry‘s health care plan; Republicans could bring themselves to join since it isn’t a government plan. 

[315] Gary Locke, Secretary of Commerce, Seattle Times 1/15/2011, p. A11

[316] Washington’s work on Affordable Insurance Exchanges (online marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can buy     coverage starting in 2014, Washington State has received $23.9 million in grants for research, planning, information technology development, and implementation of Affordable Insurance Exchanges) and $1 million in planning grants. This grant provides Washington the resources to build, operate and govern a better health insurance marketplace. It increases support for      community health centers, including the 223 existing community health centers in Washington. It strengthens partnerships with Washington to support public health and crack down on fraud ($133.7 million). It eliminates expensive fee-for-service payments forever. 

[317] Saving by the Bundle, New York Times, 11/20/11, p. 4

[318] Healthy Washington Coalition: The Basic Health Option: Affordable Coverage for Washington’s Low-income Workers, 10/11/12

[319] This is explained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Federal Register notice.

[320] New York Times, July 29, 2007, Week in Review p. 3

[321] doctors ought not to be paid to use tests not crucial to a patient’s health since they increase overall health care spending, especially since no one checks and authorizes using them. It’s better to pay doctors for choosing services, such as researching different treatment options or offering advice to help patients get better without treatment. Move toward paying doctors fixed salaries. NYT July 29, 2007, Week in Review, p. 3    

[322] New York Times, 3/15/2011, p. A13                     

[323] New York Times, 3/15/2011, p. A13

[324] For the ‘donut hole’ on drug costs you used to have to cover, federal money starts plugging the gap so Uncle Sam covers 2.5 percent of the costs and the patient covers only the remaining 47.5 %, decreasing the patient’s costs. The patient’s share of lower, generic, drug prescriptions in the donut is reduced in 2013 with the federal government picking up      increasing amounts of the bill. But beware the lobbying to cut this benefit we got on generics. For big taxpayers, it costs more for unreimbursed medical expenses. But there’s no increase for people over 65 for tax years 2013-2016. Better off wage earners pay higher Medicare bills. Employers who have been getting federal subsidies to continue retiree drug coverage lose those subsidies as a tax deduction starting Jan. 1.  No big layoffs will occur. The government will increase the number of optional treatments and that will increase the sales of medical devices to the same people.     Medicaid will then provide a one percentage point increase in federal matching payments to states in which Medicaid programs cover certain preventive services listed in the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force without requiring patients to share any of the costs. Higher rates will be paid to primary care doctors in 2013 and 2014, fully funded by the federal government; CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) will share the cost.

[325] Development of stem cells may lead to pure cultures of cells for the early testing of drugs. By induced pluripotent stem (ips) cells. The Economist, January 12, 2013, p. 68

[326] Drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline, Avandia, “clear evidence from a large international study that…Avandia is more effective than standard therapies," Financial connections between the drugmaker and the research that each of the 11 authors had received money from the company, four were employees and held company stock. The other seven were academic experts who had received grants or consultant fees from the firm. Missed hints in review of 4000 patients of a danger that the drug raised the risk of heart attacks, 83,000 heart attacks and deaths. 73 articles. Of those articles, 60 were funded by a pharmaceutical company, 50 were co-written by drug company employees and 37 had a lead author, typically an academic, who had previously accepted outside compensation from the sponsoring drug company in the form of consultant pay, grants or speaker fees. the growing role of industry money in research. Last year, the industry spent $39 billion on research in the United States while NIH spent $31 billion. part of a high-risk quest for profits, and over the past decade corporate interference has repeatedly muddled the nation's drug science, sometimes with potentially lethal consequences. On Vioxx, Avandia and Celebrex obscured the dangerous side effects.

Five years later, journal editors reported discovering that the authors had omitted key incidences of heart troubles, creating "misleading" conclusions about the drug's safety. Before the drug was pulled from the market, according to a review by an FDA investigator, it caused an extra 27,000 heart attacks and cardiac-related deaths. Other industry-funded papers published in NEJM have led to conclusions that were later contradicted. Research published in NEJM regarding bestsellers such as the anemia drug Epogen and heart drug Natrecor has been challenged later by studies performed by other researchers. The odds of coming to a conclusion favorable to the industry are 3.6 times greater in research sponsored by the industry than The researchers even warned one another against sharing the results of the preliminary study. Per Sr Mng request, these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK," said an internal e-mail that was widely reported after it turned up in the Senate investigation.  the ADOPT trial was not really designed to assess heart risks. For one thing, it excluded people most at risk of heart trouble, making it harder to spot a problem. Moreover, investigators did not have a group of doctors validate reports of heart attacks, as is customary because they can be difficult to detect. Finally, about 40 percent of patients dropped out of the trial. Glaxo later conducted an examination of records from more than 14,000 patients and concluded that Avandia raised the risk of coronary blood flow problems by about 30 percent, the Senate investigators said. Raised the risk by 43 percent and of death from heart problems by 64 percent.

     Settlements for fraud against Pharma are at record high; More evidence of the damaging, expensive results of privatizing Medicare (Public Citizen Health Letter 11/12)

     [327] Safeguards for privacy will outlaw the sale of any personal health information , except with the patients permission, allow patients to control sensitive information (psychotherapy, abortions, tests for AIDS), give the right to know who’s getting the information and require telling the patient      whenever their information was lost, stolen or used for an unauthorized purpose and allowing recovery of damages. Maybe the method of preserving privacy of sensitive information is to require that such information be kept separate from their original medical record. (For more on benefits, see the New York Times 8/26/12, p. 14 ).

[328] By Erica Heiman, M.D., The Sacramento Bee, July 31, 2014

[329] Fixing Medicare, New York Times, 11/21, 11, editorial page

[330] The Risks of Hospital Mergers, New York Times ed., 7/7/14, p. A16

[331] Seattle Times, 3/21/14 p. B1

[332] Massachusetts has ended ‘fee for service’, i.e. a la carte, pricing.

[333] Washington residents get evidence based standard of care 75% of the time (Washington State Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Costs and Access)

[334] New York Times, August 19, 2009, p.A17 Patients are frightened and vulnerable. Doctor fees are a mystery. We should set limits of 150% of the amount Medicare would pay on use of any care which is not part of their insurance network (in which the patient would only responsible for deductibles and co-payments). Costs for the same procedure is unknown and varies widely: from $681 to $26,000, from $638 to $15,820 and from $700 to $7000.

[335] Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Message form Kathleen Sebelius

[336] AARP, November 2010, p. 12

[337] GOP To Use Investigations as Tactic Against New Law, Seattle Times A3

[338] Working with Medicare, New York Times, 12/18/2011, p. 10

[339] New York Times, 8/30/09, Sunday Opinion, p. 9

[340] Sickness and Health: The Corporate Assault on Global Health, Meredith Fort. ed

[341] Ibid, p. 225   New York Times ed. 6/9/14

[342] America is currently number 54 in fairness per the WHO ranking of 191 countries. All the other industrialized countries provide health care for everyone at a reasonable cost. T.R. Reid, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, flap

   We have a rotten system for financing care. We shall end inability to obtain treatment when they have too much money to qualify for health care under welfare, but too little money to pay for the drugs and doctors needed to stay alive (Nikki White died from complications of the failing American health care system) p. 1.  More than 20,000 Americans die in the prime of life each year from medical problems that could be treated, because they can’t afford to see a doctor. Hundreds of thousands of Americans go bankrupt every year because of medical bills. Neither of these events occurs in any other developed country, most of which do not have ‘socialized medicine’. Ibid, p. 2,3 (Some foreign health care systems are more privatized than ours. P. 226) Many developed countries, have quicker access to care and more choice than Americans do. p. 227. All the other systems in the developed world, public and private, are more frugal than ours. America’s for-profit health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world, so the other systems are not bloated, wasteful bureaucracies. p. 229. No other wealthy country allows for-profit insurance. P. 235. Health insurance isn’t cruel in other countries, even when for profit like America’s. p. 230. Those systems are not too foreign to work in America. We do the same in America for veterans, active-duty military personnel, the disabled and Native Americans. P. 231. All are required to pay into the overall system.  Every system finds ways to limit expenses and all do, including the current American system. P. 238.

All the other developed countries have one system of health care that applies to everybody p. 232.  No one is barred from seeking other care. P. 235. The number one system is available from our choice of the elements in the models provided by other countries, ibid, p. 223. We must end the fragmented structure of overlapping and often conflicting payments systems for different subsets of the population. End the current dependence on for-profit private insurers (only). p. 225

[343] The President’s Proposal, 2/20/2010

[344] New York Times, 8/5/2012, p. 16

[345] Section 3403 of the ACA) should spare seniors high costs and discrimination in health care.  By 2014, when everyone is required to be health insured (sign up will be in October), a lower,                  3.3% fee will be required for private insurers to sell the new health care plan to be offered by the         federal government. States may charge, also, but may choose to collect it from consumers, or                        employers.

[346] New York Times 5/11/09 p. A21

[347] A chance to argue to the American voter that ending charitable deductions only hurts the rich and failing to do a carbon auction only hurts the environment so poor people should support this DEMOCRATIC plan? Blue Dogs don’t do charitable contributions Rs holding back on those budget changes and all others which would support; Obama’s revenues in the budget which are necessary to supporting the recovery.

[348] New York Times 6/26/09, p. B1    

     [349] A fiscal study by the Lewin Group found that single payer would cover all Minnesota residents and reduce total health spending by $4.1 billion, or 8.8 percent, in 2014, and would save $189.5 billion from 2014-2023 over what health care costs in Minnesota would be under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The plan would cover most medically necessary care with the exception of home care (outside of what is now covered by Medicare) and nursing home care, and would eliminate most cost-sharing, except for some small co-pays on specialty care and medications (medications for chronic conditions would be excluded from cost-sharing).  Lewin estimated that single payer would save employers currently offering coverage an average of $1,214 per worker, and save an average of $1,362 for families.  Employers not currently providing coverage would pay an additional $1,963 per worker annually.  Single payer could be financed with existing sources of taxpayer funding for health care (including subsidies from the ACA) combined with an average 7.2 percent effective payroll tax on employers, a 3 percent income tax on family adjusted gross income, and cigarette ($1.00/pack) and alcohol taxes (5 cents per drink). The link to the Lewin study is at http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-system-cost – scroll down to Minnesota 2012.  This could be extrapolated to the entire country.

[350] New York Times editorial, 7/14/08, p. A20

[351] New York Times In 2nd Look, …Digital care records 1/11/2012, p. B1

[352] New York Times, 6/28/2008, p. A11`

[353] Most do. Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal, p.235

[354] Whistling Past Dixie, Timothy F. Schaller, Simon and Schuster, 2006, p. 255

[355] And cut the arcane restrictions which still forbid out of state doctors from consulting with patients on the internet or by phone and the legal the legal and insurance carriers which make it hard for employers to give employees a financial incentive to choose medical tourism over local options---even though insurers are allowed to offer such incentives to prompt patients to pick cheaper doctors inside America (the Philippines allows nurses to work in the private sector or abroad if they repay their student loans). The Economist, August 16^th to 22^nd, 2008, p. 12;

[356] One comedian says Chrysler runs a health care plan…with a sidelight in making cars. Compared to other countries, our welfare state is small. Krugman, p. 252

[357] See Are Health Coops the Cure, Seattle Times, 8/18/09 A3 (article in Health file in cabinet downstairs)

[358] doctors ought not to be paid to use tests not crucial to a patient’s health since they increase overall health care spending, especially since no one checks and authorizes using them. It’s better to pay doctors for choosing services, such as researching different treatment options or offering advice to help patients get better without treatment. Move toward paying doctors fixed salaries. NYT July 29, 2007, Week in Review, p. 3

[359] Sen. Maria Cantwell offers S 1256, the Home and community Balanced Incentives Act and S. 1257, the Project 2020: Building on the Promise of Home and Community-Based services Act, that would expand access to HCBS and encourage other states to follow Washington State’s lead.

[360]New York Times editorial 6/7/09

[361] The Economist, July, 2009, p. 32

[362] Support Senator Max Baucus attempts to increase enrollment I medical schools and residency training programs. Further encourage greater use of nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

[363] New York Times, 8/15/07,  p. A24

[364] New York Times, 2/11/2012, p. A20

[365] New York Times, 7/6/14, Douthat, Ross, p. 11

[366] The Economist, 9/18/2010, p. 60 (Bush administration attorney failure to include Beaumont and Agostini cases in consideration of Citizens United cases)

[367] New York Times editorial, 6/3/2011, p. A18(Bush administration attorney failure to include Beaumont and Agostini cases in consideration of Citizens United cases)

[368] six requirements are that a patient has to request twice orally and once in writing and two doctors have to agree the patient has no more than 6 months to live

[369]Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein, p. 188 ff.

[370] Ibid, p. 186

[371] The Economist, 4/12/2014, p. 60

[372] New Prescriptions, The Economist, 4/12/2014, p. 60

[373] New York Times 5/21/07

[374] The Economist, The World in 2010, p. 130

[375] AARP  Bulletin, January/February, 2008, p. 24

[376] Reich, Robert, Supercapitalism, p. 105

[377] An alternate theory is of the Kuznets curve: as people enrich the upswinging curve of carbon use flattens and turns down (highrises. Etc) so energy will not be an ever increasing problem (and we should enrich the rest of the world) NYT 4/19/09 Science section, NYT, p. 4

[378] Wind energy now employs more people than coal mining. Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29

[379] Sierra, May, June, 2012, Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29

[380] Defend Energy Policy, New York Times, 3/22/12, p. A20

[381] Union of Concerned Scientists, Summer 2011, p.9

[382] Public Citizen, July/August 2014, p. 1

[383] New York Times, 3/31/2011, p. F7

[384] The Crisis in Clean Energy, Victor, David G. and Yanosek, Kassie, Foreign Affairs,  p. 112, July/August 2011

[385] Catalyst, Union of Concerned Scientists, Fall 2012, p. 9

[386] Tiny Balls of Fire, The Economist, 6/28/14 p. 70

[387] Blackwil and O’Sullivan, America’s Energy Edge: The Geopolitical Consequences of the Shale Revolution, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014, p. 102

[388] NYT, Business, 3/15/2011, p. B7

[389] Newsweek, 4/5/2010, p. 42, Steven Chu, Secty of Energy NYT, Business, 3/15/2011, p. B7

[390] Pumping heat, The Ecobnomist, 6/7/2014, Monitor p. 5

[391] Enron employees who were stealing from Californians in their utility bills joked about taking all of grandmother’s money.

[392] What’s Next for Fuel Economy? Public Citizen News, May-June 2009, p. 1

[393] The Nation,12/7/2009, p. 27

[394] Lovins, Amory, p… 27

[395] Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29

[396] On Earth, Winter 2010, p. 15

[397] Leo Hindery, chief economic advisor to John Edwards

[398] Scientific American, January 2008, p. 64; In the world, Austria (1978) and Italy voted to ban nuclear power, but the design and monitoring of many reactors has improved. Sweden announced plans to start building plants again and they are contemplated in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Belarus. The Economist, March 21, 2009, p. 65

[399] Sierra Club, July/August, 2005, p. 67

[400] It would measure national carbon emissions and create a market to auction emissions credits. The supply of credits would then be reduced each year to meet predetermined carbon-reduction targets. As supply tightens, credit value increases, providing rich monetary rewards for innovators, on sale of the credits to others who have NOT reduced carbon. Van Jones, ibid, p. x.  If a company plans to emit carbon dioxide, it must buy one of these emissions credits. As an example, a consortium of 10 northeastern and mid-Atlantic  states sold 12.6m allowances (credits) of carbon dioxide, earning the state governments a total of $40m. A national carbon auction could generate at least $100b each year, according to climate experts and economists NRDC proposes investing 60% of auction proceeds in the development of a dozen sectors of the new green energy economy. Onearth Spring 2p009, p. 58

[401] Solutions, Environmental Defense Sept 2006: 38 members of the Coalition, including business and other consumers, point out that power are earnings returns far beyond those of other industries with similar risks by letting now unregulated generating plants to sell to the ir regulated utility arms. They sometimes collect as much as $990 a megawatt hour for power that they had offered to sell for $1 or even give away. They are making money hand over fist bv selling power back to their regulated utility arms

[402]

[403] The ‘smart grid’ uses digital technology to collect, communicate and react to data, making the system more efficient and reliable. It fixes problems which cost $100b/year quickly. It could integrate electricity from both predictable sources, such as coal, and fickle ones, such as the sun and wind. Meters, to monitor both use and prices, would give consumers more control over their electricity bill. Some consumption would move to cheaper, off-peak hours, easing congestion and reducing      he need for new infrastructure. Consumers would save money and emissions would fall, Installing   smart meters in 25% of American homes, GE estimates, would be equivalent to removing 17m cars from the roads. Plug-in hybrids, meanwhile, could charge at night, when demand is low, and even turn power back to the grid while parked during the day. Local utility commissions would have to change the pay rules for utilities so the reduced use of energy did not reduce utilities’ profits. The Economist, 3/21/2009, p. 36

[404] Efficient and open-transmission marketplace and a green-powerp-plant infrastructure would require about a trillion dollars over the next fifteen years, about a third of the projected Iraq war cost. Van Jones, ibid, p. xi

[405] It uses digital technology to collect, communicate and react to data, making the system more efficient and reliable. It fixes problems which cost $100b/year quickly. It could integrate electricity from both predictable sources, such as coal, and fickle ones, such as the sun and wind. Meters, to monitor both use and prices, would give consumers more control over their electricity bill. Some consumption would move to cheaper, off-peak hours, easing congestion and reducing he need for new infrastructure. Consumers would save money and emissions would fall, Installing smart meters in 25% of American homes, GE estimates, would be equivalent to removing 17m cars from the roads. Plug-in hybrids, meanwhile, could charge at night, when demand is low, and even turn power back to the grid while parked during the day. Local utility commissions would have to change the pay rules for utilities so the reduced use of energy did not reduce utilities’ profits. The Economist, 3/21/2009, p. 36

[406] On Earth, Winter 2005 p. 29

[407] we should create new jobs which protect the environment and create energy independence. But the necessary number of new jobs have not been created and the tax cut did not go to the people who need them; 66% in the red and blue states agree we should “do whatever it takes to protect the environment.”; talk about kids and voters are with you. “It takes a tough man or woman to make sure our kids get clean air to breathe.”

[408] 75% of workers drive themselves to work

    High Tide: News From a Warming World”, Lynas, Mark; CAFÉ has saved billions of barrels of oil, has not been changed in decades so pass raising required mpg to 35 by 2020 (NYT editorial 6/20/07)    

[409] Bush!!! p 49

[410] Sharply increasing the use of renewable fuels could initially lead to higher prices at the gas pump, much as the mandate to blend ethanol ito gasoline contributed to higher prices in 2005.But, over time, they could reduce their production costs and put downward pressure on oil prices. Republican proposals to expand supply would take at least five years

[411] NYT, 8/5/2007, p. 14

[412] Foreign Policy, Sept/Oct, 2009, p. 101

[413] NYT, August 10, 2008, p. 11 (Friedman)

[414] Reagan’s administration stopped American oil savings begun in 1975 by President Ford initiating CAFÉ standards by ending light vehicle efficiency which ended the oil savings which were the nation’s biggest energy “source”,” now providing 2/5^th of U.S. energy services. This expense of automobiles could “undercut all of today’s costly efforts by the U.S. to reform and stabilize the Middle East.” American science and industry has innumerable listed ways to increase savings simply and at low cost, also immensely benefiting our military. Lovins, p. 43 ff

[415] On Earth, Winter, 2005, p. 25

[416] 75% do not endorse relaxing environmental standards for oil and gas drilling FP, Foreign Policy, September-October 2008, p. 83

[417] “Energize America”20-point plan ranging from the Passenger Vehicle Fuel Efficiency Act and the Wind Energy Production Tax credit Act to measures designed to boost te

elecommuting, experiment with state renewable energy efforts, and put solar panels on 20 million roofs. Energy needs government intervention, regulation and interference.

[418] 89 Energy Independence Scientific American, September 2006)

“We are addicted to oil”. 97% of transportation fuel currently comes from crude oil. It accounts for 25% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. One million megawatts of “carbon-free” power is needed to make a significant dent in projected carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Otherwise, it will get worse. So The U.S., China and India (none of which signed the Kyoto Protocol) are scheduled to build about 850 carbon producing coal-fired plants. By 2012 the emissions of those plants will overwhelm Kyoto reductions by a factor of five. And the more difficult Kyoto requirement is to cut the rate of carbon emissions in half by 2106. 

104 The following trends will help reduce pollution: 1) as the service sector grows larger than energy intensive production of steel, etc; and 2) as we substitute cleverness for our notoriously inefficient energy system.

Market forces alone are unlikely to curb our ever-growing appetite for oil. Different states and countries will choose their method depending on their institutional and economic capacities, natural resources (wind in the Middle West, hydropower in the Northwest, solar and tide) and political choices. We can succeed in holding carbon emissions to their current rate without choking off economic growth.

We have asset of scientists; supporting science is preferable to war for acquiring oil and

other natural resources we lack.

These changes are required by global warming, which, via SUVs which Reagan put in America and autos with excessive fuel consumption and local coal–fired utilities, have already caused regular increases in temperature. Arctic shipping lanes replacing the Panama Canal, would be one of the more benign effects. Floods, pestilence, hurricanes, droughts, major wild fires in the West--even itchier cases of poison ivy would occur, not to mention threats to coral and other marine organisms. (China blames global warming for the typhoon coming into Shanghai in September, 2007.) Massive restructuring would occur in the world’s energy economy. So, President Carter was right when he called excess use of fuel the equivalent of war.

 The projected cost is $2 trillion capital investment over 20 years, and power plant costs reduction, nuclear waste management and proliferation-resistant international fuel cycle regimes must all occur. NRC regulations must be enforced more diligently than previously. This requires long term investment of scientific, economic and political resources to develop renewable sources that give little or no carbon.   Over the past 25 years (Reagan through Bush) the public and private funding or research and development in the energy sector has withered. Between 1980 and 2005 the fraction of all U.S. R&D spending devoted to energy declined from 10 to 2%. Annual public R&D funding for energy sank from $8 billion to $3 billion (in 2002 dollars); private R&D plummeted from $4 billion to $1 billion. Republican presidents like oil

We have the important asset of scientists. We must invest in research and development to cause stabilization of CO2 emission. It is likely that no quick massive invention to capture carbon will come so all those waiting are just stalling while oil and coal rake in more money than we need to pay. We must, individually and business by business, reduce the carbon we make.

It’s true that we could try massive changes by scrubbing CO2 directly from the air, carbon storage in minerals, nuclear fusion, nuclear thermal hydrogen and artificial photosynthesis, but they will not have the effect our individual and individual business efforts will have sooner. Remaining fossil fuel systems must be equipped with modern controls and advanced materials for cleaner air. Harvesting of renewable energy will have brought about the revitalization of rural areas and the reclamation of degraded land. Strong international enforcement mechanisms will control the spread of nuclear technology from energy to weapons

The new, major, commitments to energy R&D would require public funding of $15 billion to $30 billion a years---a five-fold to 10-fold increase over current levels.

     De-carbonization does not conflict with the goal of eliminating the world’s most extreme poverty because only a small reduction of emissions reductions elsewhere will be required to offset the delivery of electricity and modern cooking fuel to the earth’s poorest people. The best sources of renewable energy, in order of decreasing carbon emissions, must be dramatically increased.

Geo thermal:  MIT study suggests it has the potential to produce much of the nation’s electrical power, cleanly and at a relatively low cost, but opposition to renewables by the power companies starvation by delay, bureaucracy, throwing up logistic or financial hurdles (such as charging new projects exorbitant ‘connection’ fees) or simply apathy has slowed it all until Initiative 937 takes effect. Seattle P-I, August 16, 2007, p. A6

In Europe Germany pays citizens four times more to produce electricity than the price paid to a coal-fired power plant. Gainesville, Florida has created a good effect on its economy by introducing higher payments for solar power which is otherwise too expensive. The mayor of LA wants to introduce higher payouts for solar power and California, Washington and Oregon are considering strong policy as well.. Payment for 15-20 years periods are considered.NYT, March 13, 2009, B1

Solar thermal (carbon free) currently provides only .15% of the total generating capacity but it could potentially supply 5000 times as much energy as the world currently consumes. An expansion of research efforts would further enhance the performance of solar cells on the market.

California has joined Japan and Germany in leading a global push for solar installations. Annual production of solar photo-voltaics in the U.S. alone could grow to 10,000 MW in just 20 years if current trends continue.  Solar provides marginal energy now, costing 5-13cents/kwh (will be 4-6cents/kwh, competitive with current coal rates). But now they cost 20-25 cents/kwh compared to 4-6 cents/kwh for coal-fired electricity, 5-7 cents/kwh for natural gas and 6-9 cents/kwh for biomass power plants. It is being implemented now. In Kenya, their cost for solar power provides for those with no access to electricity is ¼ the usual cost p. 86

Solar (CSP…concentrating solar power) generates electricity by concentrating the sun’s rays, usually to boil water; still not as cheap as coal or gas-fired plants, but if  fossil-fuel prices continue to increase and American power plants have to start paying for their greenhouse-gas emissions, CSP might achieve “grid parity” with the wholesale power price. Economist February 23, p. 84

Solar in the US remain prohibitively expensive (four times the cost of coal)…only 1% of electricity generation…but utilities’ paying a higher rate for renewable over a [period of years can offer those with solar panels or wind turbines a steady return that help defray the initial ost of the equipment. Solar advocates do not have the votes in Congress to adopt a national feed in tariff system like the ones in Germany.NYT, 3/13/09, B1

Solar energy may now be stored using Fresnel lenses to heat miles of black-painted pipe with molten salt solution inside. Ausra, of Palo Alto, CA is making the components. The solar tower plant outside Seville, Spain, can provide electricity for up to 6000 homes.NYT, 4/15/08 D3

Hydro (carbon free) provides 1/6^th of world power now

Wind (carbon free) now only produces 1% of the U.S. electricity, but wind is closing in on the price of coal (The Economist, 6/21/08, p. 17) and the potential for expansion is enormous in the Middle West and it could produce 20%. (NYT 2/23/08, p. A13). It now receives a 20% subsidy (Atlantic, October 2008, p. 31). Delaware’s coastal winds produce a year-round average output of 4 times the average electrical consumption of thee state, over 5,200 megawatts, near the east coast so as to reduce transmission lines (which will cost between $3b and $6.4b, Atlantic, October 2008, p. 30), now running under the sea. Intermittent nature will require emissions-spewing natural-gas plants that can ramp up and down quickly). New Wind Power Politics, NYT, September 24, 2008, p. 76. If the U.S. constructed enough wind farms, the turbines could generate 11 trillion kwh, nearly three times the total amount produced from all energy sources in the nation in 2005, and its’ the cheapest form of new electricity at 4-7cents/kwh. How about a production tax credit? Wind is still costlier than fossil fuel, and transport of the energy to the populous areas will be expensive and controversial. Most of the TX energy produced by FOREIGN countries’ businesses; but Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Oregon all get 5-8% of their power from wind farms, per the American Wind Energy Association. Note that marginal ranches and cotton farms are worth more with wind turbines on them. Although it can take twenty years to pay back the installation costs, net-metering can facilitate some current state laws requiring utilities to buy excess power made by a residential turbine, and at RETAIL rather than wholesale prices. Energy may be used from a home wind turbine. and new technology makes it possible to feed excess developed electricity back to the grid so the utility may be used only for backup power. NYT 4/15/08, D3

And wind power, in Washington, makes poorer school districts eligible to receive funding from DNR wind power farms, which produced 45% more in 2007 while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrating the self-reliance needed to break our dependence on foreign sources of energy. ST, 520/08 p. B7

Nimby, but fossil fuel-burning power plants will have a far more devastating environmental effect. 78, 106

Better placement of wind farms and individual turbines is key to reducing bird fatalities. It is now standard practice to do bird studies prior to construction. They are working to find  means to warm bats away from the spinning blades.

Nuclear (carbon free) provides 1/6^th of world power now; high capital and waste management costs, although, later could use transuranics and eliminate wastes disposal problem).

Use open cycle first, later closed cycle because closed cycle fuel more expensive, we have ample uranium without recycling plutonium and the reprocessing and fuel-fabrication operations are highly dangerous.

Could be cheaper with mass production of modules, even after giving up the economies of scale currently more expensive (6.7cents/kwh) than coal  (4.2cents/kwh)or gas powered (5.8 cents/kwh) plants                                          if carbon emissions are PRICED (carbon tax) , nuclear distinctly favored economically. Europe allows carbon to be traded on the open market.

 Nuclear has made 12 applications to build new reactors, but the previous generation of reactors was plagued by safety scares, design revisions and time-consuming regulatory procedures, which resulted in ruinously protracted construction. Economist, 9/8/07, p. 71. Around the world, 31 reactors are under construction. They emit almost none of the greenhouse gases, uranium is relatively abundant from reassuringly stable places like Canada and Australia Economist, Nuclear Power, p. 24

Proliferation problems (like Iran) may be handled by using high start-up costs and large country economies of scale to discourage other countries’ from the exploitable fuel enrichment and reprocessing plant processes. 76, 104

*nimby, but Finland has build a permanent storage site successfully

Efficiency We need dramatic improvements in the performance and affordability of solar cells, wind turbines and bio-fuels---ethanol and others derived from plants have paved the way for mass commercialization. P. 84-90; efficient illumination, compressed-air systems, new designs for heating and air conditioning, funneling heat losses from compressors into heating buildings, and detailed energy measurement and billing, roof overhangs, zero-net-energy prefabricated houses, solar-thermal and photovoltaic collectors are opportunities, but no plan can suffice 85-90; we need new attitudes and behaviors, not new light bulbs an reactors. The average European uses 50% less energy than the average American. Using switchgrass provides the most efficient energy production.

Co-generation China is currently using coal dust from cement production to fuel the process James Fallows, The Atlantic, June 2008 p.36  

Electric: The major challenge is coming up with a battery that can store enough energy for a reasonable driving range at an acceptable cost. Electricity production requires polluting carbon.94                                           

Fuel cells: For energy companies to produce large amounts of hydrogen at prices competitive with gasoline, building the infrastructure of distribution will be costly. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars could become commercially feasible if automakers succeed in developing safe, inexpensive, durable models that can travel long distances before refueling. P. 94 

Plug-in hybrids PHEVs (plug-in hybrids) could get the equivalent of 80 to 160 mpg. The energy for cars would come from the electric grid, the environmental impacts would be concentrated in a few thousand power plants instead of in hundreds of millions of vehicles.

It will take technological breakthroughs and many decades before hydrogen-based transportation would become a reality and have wide-spread impact, but it still must prove itself sufficiently marketable. P. 91

Biofuels:  ethanol, now viewed almost universally as a disaster (Atlantic, October 2008, p. 30), is expensive, it only lowers emissions 13% after you take into account the carbon required for its creation; the economics of corn ethanol make no sense because the U.S. puts a 54% tariff on cane ethanol from Brazil; it drives global grain prices to the highest in a decade and corn prices are up 50%; takes more energy to harvest the corn and refine the ethanol than the fuel can deliver to combustion engines and its price is subject to the increasing cost of carbon fuels; it takes a third of total cropland for cereals, oilseeds and sugar crops to produce only 10% of America’s motor fuel;. This probably will not do much to slow global worming unless the production of the bio-fuel becomes cleaner, but the calculations change substantially when the ethanol is made from cellulosic sources: woody plants such as switch-grass or poplar. Substituting cellulosic ethanol for gasoline can slash greenhouse gas emissions by 90% or more. P. 90 NYT editorial 9/19/07

and greater production could greatly increase pressure on water supplies for drinking, industry, hydropower, fish habitat and recreation National Academy of Science Report of 10/10/07, NYT 10/1/07 p. A18

biodiesel can be made form rapeseed, sunflower, soybean oils and waste animal fats); it is currently providing 40% of the fuel in Brazil it is unlikely to dominate future fuel supply anytime soon and best limited to cars and trucks until the price declines. Seattle P-I, August 16, 2007, p A6

Green diesel could be an economically competitive liquid fuel for motor vehicles that would add virtually no greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. P. 90

Hydrogen, greenhouse emissions but no marathon travel possible and technological breakthroughs before hydrogen-based transportation would become a reality and have wide-spread impact 97, 99; extracting hydrogen from natural gas will only cut greenhouse gas emissions modestly compared to gasoline hybrids p. 94, 96

Tide 20 years behind in development, but Nova Scotia, China at Daishan, New York City’s East River, Portugal and Britain have projects 112; ‘Puget Sound area leads the charge to tidal energy. Tacoma Power the first to file with FERC, Snohomish County studying the science of it, considering an ‘underwater wind farm’(turbines on the seabed), “the wave energy available on the coast is greater than the power we now get from all hydropower plants nationwide” but the federal government has frozen new permit applications. Seattle P-I August 16, 2007, p. A6

Natural gas: not carbon free

Coal  (with capture and storage [CCS], which could, too expensively, capture from 85 to 95% of the carbon in coal as CO2, with the rest released to the atmosphere) p. 68

liquified coal would be a mistake: technology to convert well-established, but it  produces twice the greenhouse gases, creating a ton on carbon dioxide for every barrel of liquid fuel, synfuel lost billions (‘snake oil of energy alternatives’), would cost $70b to build enough plants to replace 10% of American gasoline consumption  NYT 5/29/07

Synfuels (emits same amount of CO2, and more carbon than gas); U.S. lost billions on the 1980s  Synthetic  Fuels Corporation NYT 5/29/07

Fusion reactors: development far in the future

Oil: not carbon free

    

Solutions: 

1)   follow some states and Europe to put a price on carbon-whether in a tax on emissions or in a cap-and-trade system (emission allowances like in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, that are capped in aggregate at a certain level and then traded in open markets)

2)   increase efficiency in electricity use by cutting buildings electricity use in half

3)   coal and natural gas plants must capture the CO2 and pump it into the ground

4)   produce renewable power from sunlight directly to energize photovoltaic cells or to heat a fluid and drive a turbine

5)   harnessing hydro-power and wind power

6)   using geothermal energy by mining the earth’s interior

7)   develop the political solutions to waste disposal and avoidance of accidents

8)   decarbonizing transportation

9)   eliminating deforestation

10) curtailing emissions of methane

11) stimulate the commercialization of low-carbon technologies (wind, photovoltaic power and hybrid cars)

12) encourage utilities to invest in CO2 capture and storage

13) obtain installation and maintenance of efficient appliances by power utilities

14) motivate natural gas companies to care about the buildings where their gas is burned

15) motivate oil companies to care about the engines that run on their fuel.

16) Decrease weight, improve tires and reduce drag of vehicles

17) Develop the alternate distribution system for the fuel alternatives

18) Create a “feebate” scheme, in which customers pay an extra fee to buy big fuel-consumers but get a rebate if they buy small, fuel-efficient models, increase CAFÉ standards, add higher fuel taxes and give tax incentives to spur more rapid changes in the production facilities for new technologies. The energy companies would then have an enormous financial incentive to advance the development and commercialization of renewable energy sources, creating thousands of jobs and alleviating our international trade deficits.

19) The most important step toward creating a sustainable energy economy is to institute market-based schemes to make the prices of carbon fuels reflect their social costs.

Policy changes like energy taxes, financial incentives, professional training, labeling, environmental legislation, greenhouse gas emissions trading and international coordination of regulations for traded products and giving people the energy services they need without having to build as many power plants, refineries or gas pipelines. But all OECD countries except Japan have so far failed to update appliance standards (footnotes: i. President Carter was right (moral equivalent of war [which is occurring now]. President Reagan was wrong, his agencies allowing SUVs.

The newest capacity is mostly in the Far East

there is an opinion by Julia Olmstead that focus on JUST biofuels is foolish: because we would need to nearly double the land used for harvested crops, plant all of it in corn, since the switchgrass Bush mentioned would provide only a small fraction of the energy we demand, the creation process requires oil, corn and soybean production is economically unsustainable (erosion, pollution with pesticides, fertilizer runoff); but improvement of fuel efficiency in cars by just 1 mile per gallon---possible with proper tire inflation---would cut fuel consumption equal to the total among of ethanol federally mandated for production in 2012; so, she says, raise the tax on gasoline, raise energy-efficiency standards for all vehicles, appliances, industries and new buildings, use land use rules and tax incentives to discourage suburban sprawl and encourage dense mixed-use development, better fund mass transit, develop other, truly sustainable energy technologies, and make hybrid cars more affordable Seattle P-I, Wednesday, July 12, 2005,

[419] Washington State ranks only behind Texas for a creating new wind power. National Academy of Sciences concluded that pesticides and collisions with cars and buildings killed more birds and bats than turbines. Seattle P-I, August 16, 2007;

[420] Seattle Times, July 14, 2009, p. A10

[421] The King County sewage treatment plant in Renton is trapping methane from sewage to power fuel cells (first of its kind), Klickitat County rotting trash is made into gas power, scraps from lumber and pulp-and-paper plants fuel the state’s largest biomass facilities, burning bark, sawdust and scrap wood for energy; these efforts ‘don’t amount to a hill of beans’, but could be expanded Seattle P-I, August16, 2007, p. A-6

[422] newest capacity mostly in the Far East.

[423] Lovins, supra, p. 27

[424] Lovins, supra, p. 29

[425] Britain’s Carbon Trust finds aluminum, cement and some steel production are the most vulnerable. Best of all, set a carbon tax, which is less susceptible to capture by business lobbies than is a cap-and-trade system. If we must adopt a cap-and-trade, auction the permits, otherwise emissions will continue to rise and polluters will profit instead of paying. The Economist, January 9-25^th, 2008, p. 14 (most dirty coal-fired plants are in the South and D.C.)

[426] Lovins, supra, p. 22, 27

[427] 75% of new cars sold in Brazil are so-called flex cars that can run on alcohol or gasohol, a mixture of ethanol and gasoline. Both fuels are readily available at 29,000 service stations across the country. It may be produced from sugar cane. Ethanol is exported all over the world, is non-toxic and bio-degradable and is cheaper than gas. “Ethanol to oil-dependency rescue”, Maria Elena Salinas, Noticiero Univision, 2006, (Seattle P-I, 7/06)

[428] McKinsey Global Institute, reported NYT 5/17/07

[429] through a tax on carbon emissions or a pollution-trading system. A $100-a-ton tax on carbon dioxide would increase the costs of coal-fired electricity by 400% and natural-gas-generated power by 100% while hydropower costs would not increase at all. NYT 5/17/07

[430] energy saving opportunities in American homes are immense with current technology but new product standard mandates will be needed, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute. There should be more stringent product standards so that all new appliances are energy-efficient models (that will require landlords to include the most efficient equipment even though tenants are the ones who pay the utilities). Could save 110 new coal-fired 600-megawatt power plants. For our own prices and lives, we should subsidize energy efficiency for the less affluent. And we should suggest the same to China, India. NYT 5/17/07

American Electric Power, a coal-burning utility company, plans to install huge banks of high-technology batteries. The investment would position the company well if any of the 11 states in its service territory establish a minimum quota for renewable energy, or if Congress sets a national standard; it would also help if carbon control were instituted and wind power were to gain a financial advantage over coal NYT, 9/11/07 at C2

Unregulated electricity costs more. Slince 1999 prices for industrial customers in deregulated states have risen from 18% above the national average to 37% above. Power in the Public Interest (Marilyn Showalter) NYT 11/06/07 p.  Business

[431] Marilyn Showalter, advocate of publicly owned power systems shows: The cost of power in market states has risen faster than is states that had retained traditional rate regulation. Of the 25 states, and the District of Columbia, that had adopted competition, only one, California, is even talking about expanding market pricing. Illinois ratepayers got a $1b rebate. Ohio negotiating hw to end competitive electricity pricing. Virginia has repealed its law. NYT, Business, 09/4/07, p. C1

[432] NYT, 4/15/08 D3

[433] This decrease in neighborhood size should be aided since our aging population is downsizing and younger adults don’t need a yard and flower beds.

[434] Kyoto would have injured the business sector of the economy. We’re getting better, but the U.S. air pollution still kills 135,000 Americans, and 2.8 million people from other countries, each year, just less than HIV/AIDS; if we developed village-level power technologies using fuel cells, solar power, and agricultural wastes we would do better than by massive investments in copper wires and coal turbines in India.

    Human activity has doubled he risk of heat waves like the one in 2003 that killed tens of thousands in Europe.

    60% of trees, plants…have been destroyed and the damage is substantial and irreversible.

    That Kyoto does not kill the economy is demonstrated numerous places in our country

    In Portland, America’s environmental laboratory, they have achieved significant per person reductions in carbon below the Kyoto required levels of 1999. Portland officials insist that the campaign to cut carbon emissions has entailed no significant economic price and on the contrary has brought the city huge benefits: less tax money spent on energy by government, more convenient transportation, a greener city and expertise in energy deficiency that is helping local businesses win contracts worldwide. (A Livable Shade of Green by Nicholas D. Kristof (Op Ed, NYT, 7/05)

[435] Energizing America, Sierra, Bill McKibben, January/February 2007,

[436] Zarb, NYT 5/23/07: four facts  1) US very vulnerable to interruption of its imported oil supply;

                                                        2) this dependence has a huge effect on our foreign, military and economic policies;

                                                       3) America could have reduced sits vulnerability if it had taken decisive action after the 1973 Arab oil embargo (in 1973 we imported 35%, now 60%);

                                                        4) we have never adopted a credible plan to reduce our dependency principally because of a lack of political will.

     Ford failed suggesting 200 nuclear, 20 synthetic plants, but with important environmental and cost problems; Carter’s synthetic fuels failed; any credible policy requires permanent 50 cent increase in gas prices with 50 cents more each year for 3 years, so alternative must be sought, with 4% increase in CAFE standards, resume nuclear construction since current nuclear has outstanding record of safety and security and new designs will only raise performance (speed federal licensing)

[437] Lovins, Amory, Datta, E. Kyle, Bustnes, Odd-Even, Koomey, Jonathan G., and Glasgow, Nathan J. Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs and Security, p. 26

[438] Lovins, supra, p. 26; 16 of the world’s

[439] NYT, 5/6/09 p. B5

[440] The Nation, 12/7/2009, p. 28

[441] The Economist, May 30^th 2009, p. 15

[442] Foreign Policy, Sept/Oct, 2009, p. 131

[443] biggest cities, five banks, the William J. Clinton Foundation and companies and groups that modernize aging buildings pledged investments of billions of dollars to cut urban energy use and releases of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. They would upgrade energy-hungry heating, cooling and lighting systems in older buildings. The loans and interest would be paid back with the savings. NYT 5/17/07

[444] The Economist, May 9, 2009, p. 35

[445] NYT, 5/11/09, p. 1

[446] carbon sequestration technology doesn’t really exist yet and will always be incredibly complicated and expensive. Norway and Sweden instituted carbon taxes in 1991 and the EU is debating its own. Amory Lovins has worked with firms such as IBM, British Telecom, Alcan, Norske-Canada, and Bayer, which collectively cut their carbon emissions 60% in the past decade, saving $2 billion in the process. Sierra, Bill McKibben, January/February 2007

[447] The Economist, July 2009, p. 83

[448] The Economist, April 3, 2010, p.11

[449] The Economist, March 8, 2008, p. 65.

[450] NYT, February 28, 2008, p. A 13

[451] 38 members of the Coalition, including business and other consumers, point out that power are earnings returns far beyond those of other industries with similar risks by letting now unregulated generating plants to sell to the ir regulated utility arms. They sometimes collect as much as $990 a megawatt hour for power that they had offered to sell for $1 or even give away. They are making money hand over fist b selling power back to their regulated utility arms NYT, 12/17/07 p. 1

[452] The Economist, 3/19/2011, p. 39

[453] 398 New York Times, Book Review, 7/31/2011, p. 15

[454] Ravitch, Diane, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Basic Books, 2010:

The schools will surely be failures if students graduate knowing how to choose the right option from four bubbles on a multiple-choice test, but unprepared to lead fulfilling lives, to be responsible citizens, and to make good choices for themselves, their families, and our society. This constant reform churn is NOT the approach typically found in countries with successful schools. Instead the experts stated the essential ingredients of a successful education system: “a strong curriculum’; experienced teachers; effective instruction; willing students; adequate resources; and a community that values education” p. 224 The most durable way is to improve curriculum and instruction and to improve the conditions in which teachers work and children learn, not organization, management and control.

[455] Kristof, Nicholas D., NYT, 7/17/2011, Sunday Review, p. 5.

[456] Common Dreams 4/9/14

[457] The Progressive, May 2014 p. 8

[458] Our schools will not improve if we continue to focus only on reading and mathematics, rely exclusively on tests, close neighborhood schools in the name of reform, if we value only what tests measure, or rely on them as the only means of deciding the fate of students, teachers, principals and schools, if we try to entrust them to ‘the magical powers of the market’, if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools, if we continue to drive away experienced principals, if we ignore the disadvantages associated with poverty that affect children’s ability to learn, if we use them as society’s all-purpose punching bag. P. 228 Testing alone remove the love of learning, may leave children ignorant of current events, the structure of government, the principles of economics, the fundamentals of science the key works of literature of our culture and others, the practice and appreciation of the arts or the major events and ideas that have influenced our nation and the world. Even as their scores go up they may be devoid of any desire to deepen their understanding and knowledge and may have no interest in reading anything for their own enlightenment and pleasure. And so we may find that we have obtained a paradoxical and terrible outcome: higher test scores and worse education.

It is unlikely that the U.S. would have emerged as a word leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market.

The curriculum is the starting point for other reforms. Nations such as Japan and Finland have developed excellent curricula that spell out what students are supposed to learn in a wide variety of subjects. P. 230 Teachers should make sure that all children have a steady diet of good…no excellent…literature in their classrooms (Lincoln, King Jr., Thoreau, Cady Stanton, Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, Mill, Lewis Carroll).

It is possible to develop a history curriculum that is challenging and lively. Sanitizing of books can turn school into “the Empire of Boredom.”

Even if a national curriculum might   be captured by “the wrong people” we must change from what now exists.

The goal of evaluation should not be to identify schools that must be closed, but to identify schools that need help.

Families must do their part to get children ready for school. Families implant basic attitudes and values about learning, as well as the self-discipline and good manners necessary for learning in a group. Families must remain involved with their children, encourage them, monitor their schoolwork, limit the time they spend with electronic devices, meet with their teachers, and see that they have a regular place to study.

Atlantic, Scenes From The Class Struggle, by Joel Klein,  June 2001, p. 66

[459] NYT, 8/09 p. 1

[460] The Economist, May 9, 2009, p. 36

[461] Since the 1970s the U.S. has fallen behind other countries in quality of education, completion of high school and college and technical competence. State funding

[462] The Race Between Education and Technology, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, p.268; Our students lack college readiness by dropping out or low quality education. They also lack the financial access to higher education for those who are college ready. P. 347. The minority and low-income children left behind may  be assisted by Head Start, Job Corps, investment in high quality early childhood education, financial aid. Analytical education in finance, nanotechnology, cellular biology, nurses and medical technology are required as well as skills for which there is no substitute are most important to progress and security. p. 346 ff.

[463] Z Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 202, 204

[464] Class Matters. Why Don’t We Admit It12/12/2011, NYT p. A21

[465] the administration gave clear dominance to the banks over Sallie Mae on student loans (3 m) when those private sources cost the government much more due to subsidies and guarantees against default for those private companies.  NYT 4/15/07

    the achievement gap is a national disgrace and equal opportunity is a national command. We must make a commitment much stronger than the NCLB; and we should target job training to the skills needed to better paying jobs.

[466] We must correct this situation: about a quarter of information technology firms in Silicon Valley (which  accounted for more than half of America’s overall productivity growth since 1995 The Economist, 4/12-18, p. 38) were founded by Chinese and Indians. Some 40% of American PhDs in science and engineering go to immigrants. A similar proportion of the patents filed in America are filed by foreigners.

[467] Congress should raise the limit on government guaranteed loans, take Sallie Mae back from private: it originated 25% of the student loans last year; gov’t makes lenders nearly whole, even if the student defaults, and the companies are guaranteed by law a decent rate of return…the lender takes no risk; in 2006 the company made over $1b; never ending tuition raises are in the future; the entire educational-lending racket is putting thousands of debt onto a class of Americans who will probably have  to struggle to pay it back Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School; Clinton made DIRECT loans, not through the industry; Bush’s Lord (accumulated $235m plus future $135m payoff) took it out of the government, built controversial ties to the university loan aid officials, helped push back the DIRECT loan business, which many people believe offers taxpayers a much better deal;  NYT 4/21/07 B8

[468] Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein, p. 202ff

[469] As of 3/7/2010, Rs increased deficit over Clinton plan which would have eliminated the deficit by 2011. NYT 3/7/2010 p. 12 re recent changes; doesn't annihilate the poor and gut Social Security and the middle class while passing even more of the benefits of our society up to a few at the top.

ALTERNATIVE DEFICIT REDUCTION: 1) Restore pre-Reagan top tax rates. We didn't have massive deficits until we reduced the top tax rates; 2) Income is income. No more reduced capital gains tax rate. The incentive to invest should be to make a bunch of money from a good investment. The reason there is a low capital gains tax rate is that the wealthy get most of their income from capital gains. And the reason they get most of their income from capital gains is there is a low capital gains rate. The resulting income shifting schemes are a drag on the rest of us. (Also applies to dividends.); 3) Income is income. Inheritance income should be taxed as income, except there should be a "democracy cap" on how much someone can inherit. We decided not to have an aristocracy when we founded this country so we shouldn't have one; 4) Businesses should be taxed or not taxed, but not taxed AND not taxed. They shouldn't be able to use "double Irish" or "Dutch sandwich" or operate out of PO boxes in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. (Bonus, this also helps reduce incentives to send our jobs and factories out of the country.); 5) If you don't pay your taxes We, the People won't pay to provide you with services. We can start by not allowing you to have a driveway that connects to public streets, or water/sewer hookups or mail. Also we won't enforce any contracts for you, including the one that says you "own" your house(s). And no government-developed Internet for you6) Speaking of sea-lane protection, why do we have a military budget comparable to when we faced nuclear annihilation by the Soviet empire? Bases in Germany and Japan? And why can I go to this website, pick a DC-area zip code, say 22314, and learn that "Dollar Amount of Defense Contracts Awarded to Contractors in this Zip Code from 2000 to 2009: $7,086,397,848." Seriously, scroll down the page and look at some of the contracts and amounts awarded. I suspect there's some serious deficit reduction to be found in the military budget. A comprehensive and very public audit of where all that money has been going since, say, 1981 might take a chunk out of the debt problem all by itself; 7) I could start listing all the corporate subsidies, tax breaks, monopoly grants, schemes, contracts, etc. that we pay for, but I think you get the idea. How about calling bribery by its name: bribery, and doing something about it? 8) To the extent that implementing this plan does not clear up the deficit and start paying off the debt, how about a yearly national property tax on all individual holdings above, say, $5 million, with the tax rate progressively increasing as total wealth increases, and keep doing this each year until the debt is paid off. Perhaps start at 1% on $5 million, 2.5% at $10 million, 5% at $50 million, etc. (Hedge fund managers and investment bankers start at 50% and go up, just for the heck of it. We can call this the "get the money from where the money went tax.")

So there is MY deficit-reduction plan. Or, instead, we could do what the "serious people" deficit-reduction plans do: cut services for We, the People, cut Social Security, cut health care, cut education, cut infrastructure, cut the things that make life better for people, and give all the money to a few at the top. Take your pick.

[470] Zakaria. Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013, p. 22

[471] Krugman, NYT, 7/28/2014, p. A15

[472] Cutting The Deficit, with Compassion, Cristina D. Romer, New York Times, 9/9/2012

[473] New York Times 9/21/12

[474] The Economist, January 19, 2013

[475] Krugman, New York Times Ed. February, 2014

[476] Daily Kos, 4/22/11, State of the Union

[477] Krugman, April, 2014

[478] Froma Harrop, Seattle Times, 7/17/2011, p. A14

[479] In the 2010 budget military spending would be nearly six times the federal outlay for education and 26 times the federal outlay for development assistance and humanitarian aid

[480] The Nation, March 2, 2009, p. 20

[481] The Nation, March 2, 2009, p. 20

[482] NYT, 3/22/2009, Business, Economic View, Robert Frank, p. 5

[483] Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew

[484] Joseph Stiglitz, The Roaring Nineties, 2003

[485] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 171

[486] Mother Jones (July-August, 2005) SF, CA but remember that, in the long run, reducing the deficit reduces demand and the contracting effect could aid China and Europe by a coordinated rise in China’s currency and pro-growth economic reform in Europe.

[487] In Grover Norquist’s words, to make the federal government so small you could drown it in a bathtub.

[488] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 170

[489] Atlantic, October. 2008, p.36

[490] NYT ed., 7/31/14

[491] New York Times ed. 6/22/14

[492] Klein, Ezra, The Force, New Yorker, January 28, 2013, p. 70, 74

[493] Whitney, Craig R., Living With Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment, Public Affairs, 2012(?), New York Times Book Section, 12/23/12 p. 17

[494] Association of State Mental Health Program Directors NYT, Charles Blow, Guns, Smoke and Mirrors 12/22/12 p. A365

[495] NYT, 12/23/12, p. 10

[496] In “Prime Numbers”, Kim Cragin and Andrew Curiel, Foreign Policy, September/October 2006

[497] Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008, p. 53; Adam Cohen, NYT, July 31, 2008, p. A22

    The cause of the Iraqi invasion was their possession of the world’s largest untapped oil fields and its potential for fueling America and vast profits to industry. NYT, Bob Herbert, July 1, 2008, p. A23

[498] Jefferson first suggested that we not have a standing army and wrote a series of letters in 1787, as the Constitution was being debated, urging James Madison to write it into the Constitution. The idea was for every able-bodied  (man) in the nation to be member of local militia, under local control, with a gun in his house, If the nation was in vaded, word would come down to the local level and every (man) in the country would be the army.

Pentagon thinking now is that we can walk and chew gum at the same time: quadrennial review looking at the last, Bush, quadrennial which kept war-fighting, including defeating violent extremists, defending American territory, helping countries at strategic crossroads and preventing terrorists and adversaries form obtaining biological, chemical or nuclear weapons …a broad range of missions, we could move them to other parts of government.

Beware the allegation that Democrats favor gun control. Use Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer’s line that ‘gun control’ in Montana means ‘hit what you aim at’. They’ll use 38 states are considering gun-related bills, but point out that they focus not on ownership rights, homeowners nor parents but on convicted criminals, the mentally ill and on improving methods to trace guns used in crimes; Governor Schwarzenegger of CA , R, has supported several bills that focus on guns used in crimes but not bills that would cut ownership rights NYT, 4/15/08 p.1

[499] This policy change would gain western states, hunters, fisherman (and votes in the South although the South will nevertheless be lost anyway). Bush is already losing the west due to anti-environmental policies [e.g. Montana election, anger at oil drilling in Colorado]. No “anti-gun” legislation would make any difference anyway due to the 215 million guns already in circulation, and the black market that would develop immediately. Gun limitations will be a failure if it leaves individual Americans naked against risk.  Atlantic, p 33, March 2005

40% of Americans own guns so show respect and understanding for them Carville, Begala, p. 49-51 (father bought guns for his sons [which are under lock and key]. Democrats should support the rights of hunters and the Bill of Rights (2^nd Amendment, too)

Pentagon thinking can we walk and chew gum at the same time: quadrennial review looking at the last, Bush, quadrennial which kept war-fighting, including defeating violent extremists, defending American territory, helping countries at strategic crossroads and preventing terrorists and adversaries form obtaining biological, chemical or nuclear weapons …a broad range of missions, or could move them to other parts of government.

[500] Stevens, John Paul, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, 2014, p. 132

[501] The Economist, July 3rd, 2010, p. 29

[502] We pay $52,000 per year to imprison non-violent offenders for: 1) importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes; 2) ‘three strikes’ perpetual imprisonment for non-violent criminals; 3) violations of immigration laws, environmental standards and arcane business rules; 4) the same crime described different ways. Other countries use non-custodial sentences where they do community work (not sending criminals to ‘college for criminals’ where they learn to be more effective criminals)(Netherlands), where they could be regulated rather than expensively imprisoned. We use mandatory minimum sentences when the size of the penalty, we know statistically, or the possibility of getting caught, NEVER ENTER THE MIND OF THE PROSPECTIVE CRIMINAL. Not letting them vote is merely pointlessly vindictive, doesn’t teach anything and infringes on democracy. The Dutch prison system has been falling for some years and it has closed eight prisons (p. 29)The Economist, 7/24/10, p 13, 26

[503] New York Times 5/23/09 p. 1

[504] Kerlikowske at head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, would end the ‘war’ on drugs and place more emphasis on treatment and prevention. Norm Stamper, active with the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, would help. Legalization would save $7.7b in law-enforcement costs and generate more than $65b in revenue if taxed like cigarettes and alcohol.ST 6/16/09, p. 1

[505] Senator Jim Webb, Seattle Times, Parade, 3/29/09, p. 4

[506] The Nation, May 4, 2009, p. 24

[507] The challenges of “realignment”, The Economist, 5/19/2012, p. 33

[508] Stevens, John Paul, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, 2014, p. 123

[509] 122 death row inmates have been released after later found not guilty Goodman, Static, Hyperion, New York, p. 187

[510] Static, Goodman, Hyperion, New York, p. 170,1,2

[511] The Economist, February 14, 2009, p. 8

[512] The case for defence, The Economist, 7/19/14, p 55

[513] The Coming Democratic Schism, New York Times, July 16, 2014

[514]The Wisdom of Retrenchment: America must cut back to move forward by Joseph M. Parent and Paul K MacDonald, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2011, p.  2

[515] Blechman and Rumbaugh, Bombs Away: The Case for Phasing Out U.S. Tactical Nukes in Europe, Foreign Policy, July/August 2014, p. 163

[516] Blechman and Rumbaugh,  Bombs Away: The Case for Phasing Out U.S. Tactical Nukes in Europe Foreign Affairs, July-August, 2014, p 164

[517] One study, by Shawn Brimley and Paul Scharre, declares that we must start FRESH: have three overarching missions:

1)  defend the homeland: Defense Command would guard American airspace and manage domestic disaster response (through building the forces to execute the goal [drawing personnel from the entire military based on experience and ability, developing the achievement capabilities…more robotics systems, protection of existing special operations and cyberspace capabilities, reduction of short-range aircraft and tanks])

2)  defeat adversaries Global Strike Command would maintain long-range bombers, submarines, special operations forces like Rangers, SEALS, and cyberoffense, and

3)  maintain a stabilizing presence abroad Presence Command would be responsible for day-to-day American military presence in global hot spots and for enabling allies and partners, requiring understanding of regtions and cultures

     Eliminate current Regional Commands, and bureaucracy, to raise diplomacy (under the State Department) subordinating the military.

      Allow the hiring, for their choice of term, of midcareer professionals who have skills in key areas like cybersecurity and economic development, eliminating the “all volunteer force”) to liberate innovation and speed response time.

      The Joint Chiefs would be only the chairman and the heads of th three new commands, reducing general, flag and civilian executives proportionately.

    We would rebalance capabilities for future threats, enhancing ground robotics, advisors, long-endurance unmanned aircraft, missile defense-capable ships, stealthy long-range unmanned aircraft, homeland missile defense, undersea robotics and submarines, protect research and development, cyber and special operations and reduce satellites, aircraft carriers, ground troops, nuclear missiles, tanks, short-range tactical fighter aircraft and non-missile defense-capable ships.

     We would re-organize personnel by skill set into the expeditionary corps, the operator corps, the cyber corps and the commando corps.

[519] Electric Avenue, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2014, p. 21

[520] RIMPAC launches, with China, Weekend China Daily, USA, 6/27-29/2014, p.1

[521] The Economist, 5/3/2014, p. 9

[522] Klein, Ezra, The Force, New Yorker, January 28, 2013, p. 70, 74

[523] Klein, Ezra, The Force, New Yorker, January 28, 2013, p. 70, 75; “The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War”, 2005

[524] (Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec, 2012,p 121)

[525] “Responsible Defense in an Age of Austerity”

[526]  Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2012. p 58.

[527] Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec, 2012,3

[528] The Economist 11/26/2011, p. 46

[529]  Barney Frank, Cut Defense Spending, Foreign Policy, January.February, 2012,  p. 62

[530] Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2012 p.129

[531] Jonathan Caverley and Ethan B. Kapstein, Arms Away, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2012, p. 125

[532] FP, Foreign Policy, Sept-Oct 2011, p. Focus 1

[533] FP, Foreign Policy, Sept–Oct 2011, p. 55

[534] New York Times, 3/30/2011, p.  B4

[535] 7 absurd ways the military wastes taxpayer dollars; This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

The David Petraeus scandal has shined a light on the luxurious, subsidized lifestyle of the U.S. military’s top generals. But so far, what the media has uncovered only scratches the surface of the abuses. Here are eight absurd ways the military wastes our money–and none of them have anything to do with national defense.

1.                  A whole battalion of generals? The titles “general” or “admiral” sound like they belong to pretty exclusive posts, fit only for the best of the best. This flashy title makes it pretty easy to say, “so what if a few of our military geniuses get the royal treatment–particularly if they are the sole commanders of the most powerful military in human history.” The reality, however, is that there nearly 1,000 generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces, and each has an entourage that would make a Hollywood star jealous.According to 2010 Pentagon reports, there are 963 generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces. This number has ballooned by about 100 officers since 9/11 when fighting terror–and polishing the boots of senior military personnel –became Washington’s number-one priority. (In roughly that same time frame, starting in 1998, the Pentagon’s budget also ballooned by more than 50 percent.); Jack Jacobs, a retired U.S. army colonel and now a military analyst for MSNBC, says the military needs only a third of that number. Many of these generals are “spending time writing plans and defending plans with Congress, and trying to get the money,” he explained. In other words, a large number of these generals are essentially lobbyists for the Pentagon, but they still receive large personal staffs and private jet rides for official paper-pushing military matters; Dina Rasor, founder of Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, explains that this “brass creep” is “fueled by the desire to increase bureaucratic clout or prestige of a particular service, function or region, rather than reflecting the scope and duties of the job itself;” It’s sort of like how Starbucks titles each of its baristas a “partner” but continues to pay them just over minimum wage (and a caramel macchiato per shift); As Rasor writes, “the three- and four-star ranks have increased twice as fast as one- and two-star general and flag officers, three times as fast as the increase in all officers and almost ten times as fast as the increase in enlisted personnel. If you imagine it visually, the shape of U.S. military personnel has shifted from looking like a pyramid to beginning to look more like a skyscraper;” But the skyscraper model doesn’t mean that the armed forces are democratizing. In fact, just the opposite; they’re gaming the system to allow more and more officers to deploy the full power of the U.S. military to aid their personal lives–whether their actual work justifies it or not; 2. The generals’ flotillas. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appointed Arnold Punaro, a retired major general in the Marines, to head an independent review of the Pentagon’s budget. Here’s the caution he came up with: “We don’t want the Department of Defense to become a benefits agency that occasionally kills a terrorist; ” So, just how good are these benefits? For the top brass, not bad at all. According to a Washington Post investigation, each top commander has his own C-40 jet, complete with beds on board. Many have chefs who deserve their own four-star restaurants. The generals’ personal staff include drivers, security guards, secretaries, and people to shine their shoes and iron their uniforms. When traveling, they can be accompanied by police motorcades that stretch for blocks. When entertaining, string quartets are available at a snap of the fingers; A New York Times analysis showed that simply the staff provided to top generals and admirals can top $1 million–per general. That’s not even including their own salaries–which are relatively modest due to congressional legislation–and the free housing, which has been described as “palatial.” On Capitol Hill, these cadres of assistants are called the generals’ “flotillas; ” In Petraeus’ case, he didn’t want to give up the perks of being a four-star general in the Army, even after he left the armed forces to be director of the CIA. He apparently trained his assistants to pass him water bottles at timed intervals on his now-infamous 6-minute mile runs. He also liked “fresh, sliced pineapple” before going to bed; 3. Scandals. Despite the seemingly limitless perks of being a general, there is a limit to the military’s (taxpayer-funded) generosity. That’s led some senior officers to engage in a little creative accounting. This summer the (formerly) four-star general William “Kip” Ward was caught using military money to pay for a Bermuda vacation and using military cars and drivers to take his wife on shopping and spa excursions. He traveled with up to 13 staff members, even on non-work trips, billing the State Department for their hotel and travel costs, as well as his family’s stays at luxury hotels; In November, in the midst of the Petraeus scandal, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demoted Ward to a three-star lieutenant general and ordered him to pay back $82,000 of the taxpayers’ misused money. The debt shouldn’t be hard to repay; Ward will receive an annual retirement salary of $208,802; Panetta may have been tough–sort of–on now three-star general Ward, but he’s displayed a complete refusal to reevaluate the bloated ranks of the military generals. Unlike his predecessor, Robert Gates, who has come out publicly against the increasing number of top-ranking officers and tried to reduce their ranks, Panetta has so far refused to review their numbers and has yet to fire a single general or admiral for misconduct. He did, however, order an “ethics training” after the Petraeus scandal; 4. Warped sense of reality. After the Petraeus scandal, the million-dollar question was: Did the general who essentially built the world’s most invasive surveillance apparatus really think he could get away with carrying on a secret affair without anyone knowing? Former Secretary of State Gates has floated at least one theory at a press conference in Chicago: “There is something about a sense of entitlement and having great power that skews people’s judgement;”A handful of retired diplomats and service members have come out in support of Gates’ thesis. Robert J. Callahan, a retired diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune explaining how the generals’ perks allow them to exist on a plain removed from ordinary people: “Those with a star are military nobility, no doubt, and those with four are royalty. Flying in luxurious private jets, surrounded by a phalanx of fawning aides who do everything from preparing their meals to pressing their uniform trousers, they are among America’s most pampered professionals. Their orders are executed without challenge, their word is fiat. They live in a reality different from the rest of us;” Frank Wuco, a retired U.S. Naval intelligence chief, agrees; “With the senior guys and the flag officers, this is like the new royalty,” he said on his weekly radio show. “We treat them like kings and princes. These general officers in the military, at a certain point, become untouchable… In many cases, they get their own airplanes, their own helicopters. When they walk into a room, everybody comes to attention. In the case of some of them, people are very afraid to speak up or to disagree. Being separated from real life all the time in that way probably leaves them vulnerable (to lapses in moral judgement);” Sounds like a phenomenon that’s happening with another pampered sector of society (hint: Wall Street). Given the epic 2008 financial collapse, do we really want to set our security forces on a similar path of power, deception and deep, crisis-creating delusion? 5. Military golf. Of course, generals and admirals aren’t the only ones who get to enjoy some of perks of being in the U.S. armed forces. Although lower ranking service members don’t get private jets and personal chefs, U.S. taxpayers still spend billions of dollars a year to pay for luxuries that are out of reach for the ordinary American.The Pentagon, for example, runs a staggering 234 golf courses around the world, at a cost that is undisclosed.According to one retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, who also just happens to be the senior writer at Travel Golf, the very best military golf course in the U.S. is the Air Force Academy’s Eisenhower Blue Course in Colorado Springs, CO.; He writes, “This stunning 7,000-plus yard layout shares the same foothills terrain as does the legendary Broadmoor, just 20 minutes to the south in Colorado Springs. Ponderosa pines, pinon and juniper line the fairways with rolling mounds, ponds and almost tame deer and wild turkey.” (The Department of Defense did come under fire a number of decades ago when it was discovered that the toilet seats at this course cost $400 a pop.); And the number of golf courses is often undercounted, with controversial courses in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Mosul, Iraq, often left off the lists, which makes assessing the total costs difficult; Yet some courses rack up staggering expenses as they become far more than mere stretches of grass; According to journalist Nick Turse, “The U.S. Army paid $71,614 [in 2004] to the Arizona Golf Resort — located in sunny Riyadh, Saudi Arabia… The resort actually boasts an entire entertainment complex, complete with a water-slide-enhanced megapool, gym, bowling alley, horse stables, roller hockey rink, arcade, amphitheater, restaurant, and even a cappuccino bar — not to mention the golf course and a driving range; ”DoD’s Sungnam golf course in the Republic of Korea, meanwhile, is reportedly valued at $26 million; For non-golfers, the military also maintains a ski lodge and resort in the Bavarian Alps, which opened in 2004 and cost $80 million; 6. “The Army goes rolling along!” Vacation resorts aren’t the only explicitly non-defense-related expenditures of the Department of Defense. According to a Washington Post investigation, the DoD also spends $500 million annually on marching bands; The Navy, the Army, the Air Force and the Marine Corps all maintain their own military bands, which also produce their own magazines and CDs; The bands are [pun intended] “an instrument of military PR,” according to Al McCree, a retired Air Force service member who owns Altissimo Recordings, a Nashville record label featuring music of the service bands; The CDs are–by law–distributed for free, but that doesn’t mean the private sector can’t profit off these marching bands. According to the Washington Post article, “The service CDs have also created a private, profitable industry made up of companies that obtain the band recordings under the Freedom of Information Act. They then re-press and package them for public sale;” As if subsidizing the industry of multibillion-dollar arms dealers weren’t enough, the record industry is apparently also leeching off the taxpayer-funded military spending; 7. The Pentagon-to-Lockheed pipeline. While the exorbitant costs of private planes and hundreds of golf courses may seem bad enough, the most costly problem with the entitlement-culture of the military happens after generals retire. Since they’re so used to the luxurious lifestyle, the vast majority of pension-reaping high-ranking officers head into the private defense industry; According to William Hartung, a defense analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC, about 70 percent of recently retired three- and four-star generals went straight to work for industry giants like Lockheed Martin; “If you don’t go into industry at this point you are the exception,” Hartung said; This type of government-to-industry pipeline, which he said was comparable to the odious Wall Street-to-Washington revolving door, drives up the prices of weapons and prevents effective oversight of weapon manufacturing companies–all of which ends up costing taxpayers more and more each year; “I think the overspending on the generals and all their perks is bad enough, but the revolving door and the ability of these people to cut industry a break in exchange for high salaries costs more in the long run,” said Hartung. “This can affect the price of weapons and the whole structure of how we oversee companies. It’s harder to calculate, but certainly in the billions, compared to millions spent on staff per general;”

[536] 337 The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free, by Preble, Christopher, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University :Press, 2009

[537] Foreign Affairs, September 2010, p. 6

[538] Foreign Affairs, September, 2010, p. 7

[539] Sustainable Defense Tasks Force, Cato Institute, Bipartisan Policy Center (”Restoring America’s Future”), The Nation, April 11, 2011, p. 22

[540] Wikipedia, Abu Ghraib

[541] The Pentagon’s Biggest Boondoggles, New York Times, 3/13/2011, Sunday Opinion, p. 12

[542] FP Foreign Policy, March /April 2010, p. 60

[543] Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, by Steve Coll, Penguin Books, p. 474.

[544]Don’t Al Qaeda in Af-Pak and pirates in Somalia show that ‘terrorism’ will, despite HUGE taxpayer spending, always be uncontrolled, even by the largest army, largest navy in the            world? And how do missiles affect terrorists? How does our Air Force affect terrorists? THEN WHY PAYFOR THEM?

[545] The Economist, 12/4/2010, Strategic reassurance, p.15

[546] PSQuarterly, Summer, 2009, p. 297

[547] Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009, p. 18

[548] Perry, William J., and Schultz, George P. NYT, Opinion, p. 11,

[549] Foreign Affairs, September, October 2009, p. 12

[550] After scathing Ds for voting for wiretaps, “We were supposed to teach the Iraqis about democracy, not the other way around.” Westen, p. 362

[551]

[552] Foreign Affairs, America’s Edge: Power in a Networked Century, January 2009, p. 94

[553] The Economist, March 21, 2009, p. 70

[554] See Unified Security Budget, Center for American Progress’s Lawrence Korb and Institute for Policy Studies’ Miriam Pemberton. NYT editorial 6/20/09 says don’t need F-22, new F-35 enough

[555] NYT 5/8/09, p. B3

[556] NYT, 5/2/09, B3.

[557]  Cut the Military Budget, The Nation, March 2, 2009, p. 6ff. Cut the Missile Defense System. Slow the development of future combat systems. Alan Greenspan says military spending was not good for the economy and, to the extent that it is reduced, the economy would benefit.

[558] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p. 93

[559] How Countries Democratize, Samuel P. Huntington, Political Science, Sprint 2009, p. 31

[560] Chertoff, Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p. 130 

[561] NYT, November 16, 2008, p. 11.

[562] Z Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 183

[563] We may save Social Security and Medicare if the U.S., and world’s, recent financial meltdown causes cuts in expensive new arms programs (GAO study), the Army’s plans for fielding advanced combat systems, the Air Force’s Joint Strike Fighter, the Navy’s new destroyer and the ground-based missile defense system. Congressional Republicans are frustrated by defense increases and Senator McCain criticizes the whole procurement process as totally dysfunctional, wants order, discipline and accountability. Serious savings could be had by reducing force structure and limiting modernization (Professor Hendrickson, Colorado College) NYT, 11/3/08, p. A11 Defining ‘smart defense’ as the future defense strategy is vital.  Foreign Affairs, November 2008, p. 95

[564] Seattle Times, 3/25/2010 p. A2

[565] Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008, p. 47

[566] The Economist, January 31, 2009, p. 56

[567] New York Review of Books, September 25, 2008, p.26

[568] Zbigniew Brezinski, supra, p. 93 (President Johnson once said he went into Vietnam because he didn’t want to be the first president to lose a war.)

[569] Secretary Gates, Economist, 8/9/2008, p. 56

[570] Atlantic, October 2008, The Agenda, p. 18

[571] Zbigniew  Brzezinski, supra, p. 25

[572] Atlantic, October 2008, p. 18

[573] consider recycling all U.S. nuclear weapons, after telling other countries we will ask them to do the same, then recycle all that nuclear to energy alternative nuclear, going immediately to individual effort, wind, solar, re-newables for all energy after the initial burst of nuclear from dispensing with weapons…JOIN US TO SAVE THE WORLD; New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland are leading the way y refusing to accept  excepting India from the ban on nuclear weapons and fuel.NYT editorial, August 31, 2008

[574] “The U.S Military’s Manpower Crisis, Frederick W. Kagan, Foreign Affairs, July-August, 2006

     Republicans are surrendering their advantage on national security poll, 4/8/05, but we must praise troops (considered like family by Americans) in Vietnam, too, as well as Iraq, unless we want further to risk many peoples’ feelings that Democrats had been rooting against America. They resented that. Not true, as implied by the Rs, because 90% of veterans reported a friendly homecoming. Harris poll.

[575] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, Secretary Gates, p. 37

[576] Since the oil countries could deny us essential fuel; use renewable energy, not oil; don’t make enemies of oil countries; see American Theocracy, The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21^st Century, Phillips, Kevin , p. 1-98

[577] Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, Penguin Press, New York,  2004

[578] Polls show that, even with the war going well, a majority of Americans favor withdrawal no matter what happened during the ‘surge’ and call the war a mistake, NYT January 6, 2008, Frank Rich, Opinion, p. 13

[579] Bill Richardson, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008, p. 142ff; Philip H. Gordon, Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World, Times Books, 2007,

[580] FP, Foreign Policy, March/April 2010, p. 88

[581] NYT, 3/13/2009, p. A9

[582] So, Obama is correct to go after Osama bin laden in the mountains.

[583] Supra, p. 29, 30.

[584] Supra, p. 43

[585] Tsarist Russia (7000 victims) and Europe in the 1800s, the assassination of Franz Josef that start World War I, Kennedy’s ‘missile gap’, the IRA in Ireland, the Basques in Spain, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Chechens in Russia. We’ve always created the ‘enemy of the year’ to scare us into foreign policy changes(Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China). Terrorism has been a constant in history in the rest of the world since the beginning. Supra, p. 28, 29..

[586] A clear swing in thought towards manpower from technology. Firepower ineffective against terrorists. Army should get a bigger share of the defense budget, America must expect to fight protracted, enervating counter-insurgency wars that offer no clear-cut victories and risk the prospect of humiliation. So avoid smallish wars of choice, but strengthen local allies (Afghanistan and Iraq by embedding western soldiers who can call in airstrikes, and help organize civil reconstruction. Economist, October 27, Nov. 2, p. 15

[587]“Strategic Defense Initiative,” RonaldReagan.com (The Official Website) http:’’www.ronaldreagan.com/sdi.html

[588] Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, June 6, 2012

[589] NYT, 3/26/2010, p. A9

[590] The Economist, 1/31/09. P 56; Bush negotiated American nuclear down to 1700-2200 by 2011; Britain has always said it will negotiate down, China and France have not.

[591] Scientific American, April 2008, p. 102

[592] Foreign Affairs, September 2010, p. 9

[593] NYT, 7/5/09, p. 12

[594] Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29

[595] Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2009, p. 6

[596] Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2009, p. 7

[597] Z Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 184

[598] Z.  Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 189

[599] Foreign Affairs, March/April 2009, p. 62

[600] The Economist, March 21, 2009, p.66

[601] Foreign Affairs, January, 2009 (Secretary Gates), p. 33

[602] The Nation, May 4, 2009, p. 8

[603] All five official nuclear weapons states are now signed up to an Additional Protocol (Britain, China, France and Russia), with India to follow soon), so the agency’s moral power will grow. Iran will sign if, and when, the UN Security Council (which  backs the inspectors) abandons efforts to half its suspect nuclear program.Economist, 1/10/09, p. 53.

[604] The Economist, 1/10/2009, p. 53

[605] Zbigniew Brezinski, supra, p. 37.

[606] What to do with a vision of zero, The Economist, 11/15/2008, p. 73

[607] While it’s true that Israel’s nuclear weapon is seen to protect it against others, their other military force is so dominant, preventing all Arab military advances (see p. 276, Pollack, A Path…), that it is an unnecessary addition for their security. A Path Out of the Desert, + or – p 50, by Kenneth M Pollack

[608] Jonathan Schell, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, Henry Holt & Co., 2007; also see Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, Alfred  A. Knopf, 2007

[609] America’s efforts will be viewed skeptically since the U.S. assisted Great Britain’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, surreptitiously aided France’s winked at Israel’s (and perhaps even more than winked”), acquiesced in China’s, India’s and Pakistan’s. This must be done by universal agreement since one-country-at-a-time approach will sponsor resengtment and a rush to go nuclear. Zbigniew Brzezinski, supra, p. 32.

[610] G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2008, p. 24

[611] Bill Richardson, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008. p. 142ff

[612] Zbigniew Brzezinski, supra, p. 19

[613] Michael Levi, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008, p. 131ff

[614] Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, Andrew Small, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008, p. 38ff

[615] supra

[616] supra

[617] China and Russia  blocked all rebuke of Mr. Kim at the UN Security Council The Economist,

April 11^th, 2009, p. 11

[618] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p. 92

[619] Washington Post, 12/24/07

[620] NPR 5/21/08, from a book

[621] The Washington Post, 3/30/09 (Seattle Times, p. 1)

[622] Stephen E. Flynn, America the Vulnerable, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2002), p. 63-64

[623]  Truthout 4/25/2009

[624]  Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) says fundamentalist movements come out of "young, college-educated, middle-class technicians, professionals and business persons" "because the processes of economic modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local identities, weakening the nation state as a source of identity. Identity can then be found, in their view, in Western Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in Islam." It's hard to think of a better demonstration that the youth OF THE WORLD require religion! For a party to run in the U.S. without a note of religion, I claim, would not only lose the election, it would lose the youth of the world. The fact that Huntington says cultural differences (many of them religious) have caused and will be the cause the future conflicts in the world (whether within countries or country v. country) further points out that, in international relations, understanding "of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests" will be required to efficiently enter only those conflicts in which there are not cultural conflicts. It will require an effort (by U.S. policymakers) to identify elements of commonality between Western and other civilizations. In this conflict-laden context it's obvious that "selective engagement" militarily by the U.S. is the only way to avoid military "exhaustion". There's no end to the disagreements between existing cultures and those won't soon end. For the relevant future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist with the others."

[625] Zbigniew Brzezinski, supra, p. 19.

[626] Zbigniew Brzezinski, supra, p. 21

[627] Zbigniew Brzezinski, supra, p. 13, 14.

[628] Supra, p. 17

[629] The Economist, supra

[630] The Economist

[631] Armistice Now, An Interim Agreement for Israel and Palestine, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010 p. 50

[632] The Economist, 5/30/2011, p. 50

[633] President George W. Bush’s illegally invaded Iraq in 2003. It was that invasion and the ensuing occupation that hurtled Iraq and – to an extent – Syria into their current chaos. But the emerging neocon-preferred narrative is that the jihadist victory in Mosul and the related mess in neighboring Syria are the fault of President Barack Obama for not continuing the U.S. military occupation of Iraq indefinitely and for not intervening more aggressively in Syria’s civil war. After Islamic militants captured the major Iraqi city of Mosul on June 16, 2014. Most striking about such accounts (across the major U.S. media), is that the narrative doesn’t go back to the most obvious starting point: prior negotiation WAS successful, Surges were not successful. The invasions was a clear violation of international law, lacking the explicit approval of the United Nations Security Council. Yet, even after the false tales of Weapons of Mass Destruction were exposed and the body counts soared, there was almost no accountability enforced either on the public officials who carried out the aggressive war or on the opinion leaders who rationalized. THERE WAS NO Al-Qaeda threat in Iraq or Syria until President George W. Bush’s illegal invasionand the Bush administration’s rash decision to disband the Iraqi army. Then, as U.S. forces fought to crush Sunni resistance to Iraq’s new U.S.-backed Shiite-dominated government, Iraq became a magnet for Sunni extremists from across the Middle East, a force that coalesced into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

579 Haas, Richard N,  Indyk, Martin et al, Restoring the Balance, Brookings Institution Press

[635] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p. 65

[636] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p. 75

[637] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p75

[638] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p. 41

[639] Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008, p. 85ff

[640] Seymour M Hersh, “Last Stand”, New Yorker, July 10 and 17, 2006

[641] American voters see the ‘success’ of the surge as more reason to bring them home NYT,1/20/08. p. 11; the U.S. occupation of Iraq has boosted the Shiite religious achievements when its jihadist, fundamentalist, movement appeared to be losing momentum. Supra, Zbigniew Brzezinski, p. 53; and internal unrest in Middle Eastern states should be deterred by better schools, more opportunities for youth, wider social justice and more inclusive, accountable government, not more war NYT Book Review, p. 1

     Restoring the government after Bush-Cheney: Notes from Emily, September 2007: reverse

a)   deputies delivering PowerPoint presentations targeting Democrats in congressional elections to employees t as many as 19 federal agencies or departments, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education, the EPA and the State Department;

b)   putting executive from the coal and nuclear industries in charge of environmental policy; appointing lobbyists from the mining industry to work at the Department of the Interior; and selecting people with ties to the lead industry to sit on the Center for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning.

c)   Choosing a woman who had actively opposed the violence Against Women Act to head the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women, and nominating a physician who had refused to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women to chair the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee;

d)   Routinely posting misinformation on government web sites

e)   Scooter Libby, illegal wiretapping, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Hurricane Katrina, Walter Reed, Firing federal prosecutors who didn’t tow the GOP line, the war in Iraq

[642] Opinion  Research

[643] FP May June 2009, p. 47

[644] Bacevich, Andrew J., The Limits of Power, p. 50

[645] Quoting from the Cheney’s Wall Street Journal op-ed

[646] Douthat, Ross, The End of Iraq, NYT, 6/15/14

[647] The Guardian, UK

[648] The Economist, January 15, 2011, p. 36

[649] Scott Ritter’s Other War, NYT Magazine, 2/26/12, p. 38

[650] Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, Feb.9, 2009, The Turnaround Strategy

[651] The Economist, 4/12/2014, p. 33

[652] The Nation, October 3, 2009, William R. Polk , p. 14

[653] Atlantic, October 2008, p. 20

[654]  NYT, 7/20/08, p. 11

[655] NYT, Opinion, 11/23/08, p. 10

[656] My Plan for Iraq, NYT, 7/14/08, p. A21

[657] Pakistani leader Ahmed Shah Massoud said the U.S. had walked away from Afghanistan, leaving its people bereft p. 9; Terrorism is theater, and bin Laden, having specialized in media for years, is winning the ‘show’. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, 2004

[658] Foreign Affairs, November, 2008. p. 152.

[659] Gordon, Philip H. Can the War on Terror Be Won? How to Fight the Right War, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007, p. 53

[660] Strobe Talbott, The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation, Simon and Schuster, 2008.

[661] Bruce Riedel,  NYT12/27/08 p. A6

[662] NYT 9/21/2008

[663] Economist, July 14, 2007, p. 15; Staying in Iraq, secrecy, paternalism and ‘war’, instead of alerting the heroic citizenry to build optimistic resilience against terrorism, inserts a climate of fear and a sense of powerlessness in the face of adversity which undermines faith in American ideals and fuels political demagoguery, particularly after two decades of taxpayer rebellion have stripped away the means necessary for government workers to provide help during emergencies and weakened the necessary infrastructure. The British, and our war bond drives, responded to the bombing of London as we should respond now. Stephen Flynn, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008, p. 2

[664] New York Times, 7/26/2007, A6

[665] Atlantic, October. 2008, p.36

[666] Dreams and Shadows, by Robin Wright, Penguin Books, London, p. 3. Violence is increasingly unacceptable to the majority. p. 5 The disastrous miscalculations in Iraq are slowing the process of moving toward democracy. p. 10 The most incredible demonstration that the U.S. doesn’t want democracy is that the West cut off aid to the Palestinians after Hamas’s victory at the polls. p. 57

[667] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice, Basic Books, 2007, p. 229. Every dollar spend on active, preventive intelligence is probably worth more than ten dollars spend on across-the-board but essentially blind upgrading of security at potential terrorist targets. We should upgrade technological surveillance and prompt detection of suspect activities, more effectively recruit persons to penetrate hostile foreign governments and terrorist organizations, and do aggressive covert activities to disrupt and terminate hostile foreign governments and terrorist organizations plots at an early stage.

[668] The Economist, June 7-13, 2008, p. 98

[669] New York Times, 12/30/12, p. 14

[670] New York Times ed 7/6/14 p. 10

[671] Corporate Loopholes to Covet, New York Times, 4/15/14, p. B1

[672] Common Dreams, April, 2014

[673] Tax Overhaul Plan Faces Key Hurdles, New York Times, 2/26/14, p. A18

[674] General Accounting Office study

[675] New York Times, 12/28/12, p. A11

[676]America the Under-taxed, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2012, p. 99

[677] AARP, March, 2012, p. 6

[678] Soak or Swim, The Economist, 1/21/2012, p. 32.

[679] Robert Lenzner, Investing, 7/16/2013

[680] The $4t question: NYT, 11/7/10, p. 7

[681] Recall that previous tax cuts provide limited bang for the deficit buck: only about 30% of the 2007 tax rebates were spent. The impact could probably be larger now, partly because more households are strapped for cash and because a permanent boost in income is more likely to be spent than a one-time rebate. The Economist, 12/13/2008 p. 34

[682] NYT 5/5/09 p. 1

[683] The Economist, 11/26/2011, p. 86

[684] FATCA’s Flaws, The Economist, 6/28/14, p. 13

[685] NYT, 9/1/2010, p. B1

[686] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 200

[687] and argue to seniors that the best way to convince the young (including increasing numbers of minorities) is to TEACH them your way of thinking. NYT 5/17/07

[688] Lower and middle class tax cut recipients spend it, and create an economy. But the benefit of the last tax cut was for higher income people who don’t spend it and therefore create a less large economy. Income at the 99^th percentile rose 87%; at the 99.9 percentile it rose 181% and income at the 99.9 percentile rose 48%; we have a rising oligarchy. (one wag said “The depression is when all the money returned to its rightful owners”); Alan Greenspan reportedly has warned that growing inequality poses a threat to “democratic society”. 18 million families got nothing while 183,000 millionaires had their taxes slashed by $93,000. Failure to spend causes recessions.

    Paul Volcker, appointed by both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, said 75% chance of financial crisis in the next five years. If you want more equality of wealth, to continue as a democracy and healthier life, Bill Gates, Sr., writes “During periods of less wealth inequality, our country has strengthened (underline supplied) equality of opportunity, particularly for access to education for people of modest means. This is…a precondition for electoral democracy.  Life is better if income is more equal. Within the United States, counties and states with greater inequality have the highest infant mortality, heart disease, cancer, and homicide. Regions with greater equality of income have longer life expectancies and less violent trauma. p. 20-23, Wealth and Commonwealth, Gates, William Sr. and Collins Chuck, Beacon Press Books, 2002

[689] Mother Jones,

[690] Bernie Sanders, 2/3/13

[691] His political compromise that shored up SS finances in 1982-3 enacted a multitrillion-dollar tax increase on America’s wage works, with no current benefits to match it.   Social Security taxes are the most regressive taxes we have instead of supplementing payroll taxes with more progressive GENERAL revenues, as Roosevelt’s architects of Social Security had recommended n 1935, they relied on far higher payroll taxes. Worst of all, this was exactly the money that underwrote George W. Bush’s several rounds of tax cuts for the richest. The ”surplus” that Bush raided to finance his tax breaks was mainly the Social Security reserves.

As a result of the several tax cuts sponsored by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the tax code is now only very marginally redistributive. Given the widening disparity in pretax income as the economy has become privatized, deregulated, and globalized, it would take serious increases in progressive taxation and compensatory social outlay to offset the greater pretax inequality of income and wealth. However, far from using the public sector to lean against the wind, the Right’s program of tax cuts to the upper rackets, coupled with the cynical strategy of permanent structural deficits, has caused social outlay to e reduced while reinforcing the extremes of pretax incomes. Domestic spending relative to GDP is not back down to the level of the 1950s, and most of what remains is Social Security and Medicare. This shift in burdens and benefits reinforces conservative politics. Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 52-53

[692] David Sirota, “Disaster Capitalism at Taxpayer Expense”, Seattle Times, 3/24/08, p. B5

[693] Sheila Bair

[694] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 14

[695] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 199-204

[696] NYT 10/31/07, p. C1

[697] The Five Commandments of Tax Reform, Truthout, 4/8/10, Froma Harrop

[698] Mother Jones

[699] NYT July 29, 2007, Alan Blinder, Business, p. 7; and see The Economist July 7, 2007.

[700]  Thurow, Lester, per Reich, Robert B, Supercapitalism, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007, p. 217

[701] Bill Gates Sr. suggests we use the revenue to fund Social Security “Wealth and Commonwealth”, p. 3. It’s not double taxation because the inheritance is primarily real property and stock values which have never been taxed before. p. 83. Survivors don’t lose because the marital deduction protects from collection until the surviving spouse dies. p. 128 States are currently losing essential estate tax dollars due to the law, so the federal government has just cut money for schools and the states’ other bills. p. 11, 12.

[702] Net lifetime taxes should take our of our children’s income roughly the same proportion as they take out of our income i.e. the Bible says take more from those who have more, don’t tax the poor the same. Under this plan poor households would pay no sales taxes in net terms; the reform would eliminate the highly regressive FICA tax and would effectively tax wealth as well as wages, because, when the rich spend their wealth and when workers spend their wages, they would both pay sales taxes. It would shift spending away from consumption goods and services into investment goods, which will help the economy grow through time (as done in China and Japan).

[703] United Nations panel on Climate Change, April, 2014

[704] Obama’s Green Gamble, The Economist, 6/7/2014, p. 31

[705] New York Times, The Carbon Dividend, 7/30/14, p. A21

[706] Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29

[707] Earth Justice, 4/2009

[708] Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29; Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29  

[709] Sierra, May/June 2009, p. 29

[710] Jody Freeman

[711] Krugman

[712] Matt Ridley, Wall Street Journal April, 2014

[713] EDF Solutions, Winter 2013, p. 5

[714] New York Times, about 4/28/2014

[715] Reductions in ozone, particulate matter, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and lead. Reductions in these pollutants have been particularly impressive: down by 63 percent while the gross domestic product grew by 128 percent. Emissions of carbon dioxide, which was unregulated, went up by 21 percent over this same period; A national pollution cap for greenhouse gases is urgently needed -- it would serve as the engine that drives pollution reductions under all Clean Air Act programs and as a science-based standard to guide all climate policy;

[716] Krugman, Paul, NYT Magazine, April11,2010, p. 34

[717] Krugman, Paul, Green Economics, NYT Magazine, 4/11/2010, p. 34

[718] Extend the renewable-energy production tax credit proposed by President Bush 43 in 1992). Texas alone produces more electricity through wind power than all but five countries; $1.6b annually has helped make the U.S. wind industry second only to China’s as the world’s largest It installed 50 gigawatts. That w ould displace 44 coal-fired power plants or 11 nuclear- powered plants. Congress allowed three previous lapses of this credit; investment dries up without the subsidy supported by Republicans Sen. Grassley and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R TX). Wind provides 7000 jobs in Iowa and 20% of the state’s power. It’s already too late to save 2026 jobs in wind but continuation would create 37,000; also take out the $2.7b to $44b/year oil subsidies;

[719] Businessweek

[720] Seattle Times, August 8, p. 1

[721] Paul Krugman, NYT 9/26/09, p. A25; also, Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham have proposed aggressive reductions in our emissions of the carbon gases. This will minimize the impact on major emitters through a market-based system that will provide both flexibility and time for big polluters to come into compliance without hindering global competitiveness or driving more jobs overseas.. Solar will be the means eventually chosen. Solar Revolution, The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry, Treavis Bradford, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, England, 2006. We should also consider a border tax on goods produced in countries that avoid environmental standards. NYT, October 11, 2009, p. 11

Details from results of electric cars…Karma…

[722] The Economist, 11/26/2011, p. 21

[723] NYT, March 8, 2011, A17

[724] Seattle Times, Opinion, Krugman, 5/2/09 p. A9

[725] Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future On a Hotter Planet, p. 300

[726] Can Obama Change the Climate, New York Review of Books, June 11, 2009, p. 39

[727] Sierra Club

[728] Start Small, Bruce Usher, NT 11/28/10

[729] Global Energy After the Crisis: Prospects and Priorities, Christof Ruhl, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010, p. 63

[730] On Earth, Summer 2010, p. 46

[731] Regardless of the specific timing of when each user or market adopts PV, the global trend toward adopting solar energy will continue until PV system installations become a substantial segment of annual new construction of electricity-generating capacity worldwide. By the second or third decade of this century, most new electricity-generation capacity will likely be in the form of renewable (non hydro) energy from a variety of sources, and new nuclear and fossil-fuel generators will probably no longer e economic to build owing to the large number of cheaper and cleaner option that will be available to both utilities and end users of electricity. BP is already one of the top producers of PV worldwide..p. 163 Mobilizing fuel cells in cars and trucks ultimately will rely on the deployment of renewable energy and the clean, local, and cheap generation of hydrogen. p. 168 The photovoltaic fuel cell is rapidly growing with renewable–energy technology in Germany and Japan. Solar-energy support programs, including rebates, feed-in tariffs, and R&D support programs are being used in addition to collaborative efforts to standardize equipment and connection methods, educate PV system installers, and access capital markets. P.171. Incentives for the production and installation of renewable-energy alternatives must occur as well as feed-in tariffs, net metering, rebate programs, consumer tax deductions and production tax credits. Subsidies and tax breaks to competing sources must be ended while extractive and polluting fossil-fuel energy sources should be penalized p.173. Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry, Bradford, Travis,  MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, England 2006

[732]Rainforest destruction decreased 70%. 1) HALVE the distances people DRIVE each year; 2)  double vehicle fuel economy; making electric cars; 3) cover five million acres of land with solar panels;     4) construct two million one-megawatt wind turbines to generate electricity; could provide a quarter of all the electricity the US produces annually); extend the renewable-energy production tax credit (“W” proposed in 1992); wind provides 7000 jobs in Iowa and 20% of the state’s power; 5) pass Rep Waxman’s and Rep. Markey’s bill to cut carbon emissions 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050; 6) adopt Senator Maria Cantwell’s ‘cap-and-dividend’ plan instead of a carbon tax or cap-and-trade. It’s a ceiling on carbon emissions each year, a requirement that producers and importers of fossil fuels will buy permits raising vast sums of money which would be divided evenly among all Americans. Energy prices would rise but the family of four would receive $1000 a year to cover the increase. As a fall-back position, support the regional cap and trade  plan of the seven state, four province, Western Climate Initiative, using the stakeholders’ Climate Advisory Team’s fifteen recommendations. Stress funding fees, cap and trade, transit and environmental efficiency. Implement it gradually although electricity would become more expensive since coal-fired plants are used, cap-and-trade permits should be passed and auctioned. The cap-and-trade bill on the House floor May 24 established a program to control climate-altering emissions, dictates an increase in the uses of renewable energy sources, sets new efficiency standards for buildings, lighting and industrial facilities. It also calls for a 17% reduction in emissions of heat-trapping gases form 2005 levels by 2820 and 83% by 2050.  We may add the here-to-for avoided bill of strict government regulations, state-of-the-art technology and a federal tax on every ton of harmful emissions or slapping a tax on energy consumption that befouls the public square or leaves the nation hostage to foreign oil producers. Clinton lost, but he proposed in 1993, a tax on all forms of energy; 7) dramatically increase the efficiency of buildings and fossil-fueled power stations, using displaced labor, throughout, to ‘go green’; 8) stop the destruction of tropical forests; dramatically increase tree cover elsewhere;

Also, regulate greenhouse gases under existing EPA laws; 

         develop clear environmental standards for extracting natural gas from shale. Avoid the temptation to install gas, taking from solar, wind and nuclear, although lured by the fact that burning it releases roughly half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal.  The current Republican energy “NO” illustrates their allergy to science and scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein. It’s like the tobacco industry claiming tobacco does NOT cause cancer.

      invest in 1,400 new gas power plants to produce electricity, then choose between injecting billions of tons of carbon dioxide underground or using less toxic fuel;

      use ‘carbon rationing’: Just as people were better off and healthier in Britain under food rationing during WWII, most of us would see a dramatic improvement in our quality of life if were introduced by the government. We would build a different society emphasizing quality of life over raw statistics of economic growth and relentless consumerism; 

     support Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) initiatives put the right regulatory incentives to ensure that America is China’s main competitor research and technology development in      the ET (Energy Technology) revolution. China has started the “Green Leap Forward”. We must respond with a tax on carbon to match their 20 new planned nuclear plants, its $5b investment using California-based technology, the drop in price from $.53 to $.16 cents per kwh and their high speed rail;

     allow California to set its own emissions standards. We should quit using coal by 2030 and the US should quit sooner; 

     cut energy needs by living less consumptive lifestyles;

     adopt more localized patterns of behavior;

          double the quantity of wind turbines (see 4, above); Iowa, Oregon and Illinois are also building wind power generators

     use geothermal; plants are being built in Nevada; Boise’s energy is geothermal;

[733] To Fight Climate Change, Clear the Air, Veerabhadran Ramathan and G. Victor, NYT 11/28/10, Opinion, p. 9

[734] Britain, for example, proposed a bill that sets carbon-reduction goals by law for power generation, transport, manufacturing, with the ultimate goal of cutting emissions by 80% from their 1990 levels by 2050.The Economist, 11/22/2008, p. 66 

[735] Shorr, David, Think Again: Climate Treaties, FP, Mar/Apr, 2014, p. 38

[736] Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2009, p. 2

[737] Republican EPA chiefs say their president is wrong about global warming (Ruckelshaus and Train); 212 mayors of major cities have agreed to obey the Kyoto treaty by reducing carbon gases to 1990 levels;

[738] The Economist, 5/29/2010 p. 53

[739] The Economist, 4/24/2010, p. 34

[740] Three Gorges Dam on Yangtze produces 10 nuclear plants of energy

[741] Carville and Begala, p. 188; make Florida conserve water, which it is not doing now

[742] The Economist, The World in 2012, p. 106

[743] Thomas L. Friedman

[744] Environmental Defense, January 2008

[745] NYT, 3/29/09 p. 12

[746] Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet p. 153ff re the next ten goals

[747] Ali Hewson, compassionate capitalism, creating jobs in developing nations while promoting environmental awareness;

     Greg Nickels, gathering 212 mayors to implement Kyoto in their cities

     Edward Norton, arranging with BP that every celebrity who installed a BP solar system in his or her home would get a similar system donated by BP to a poor L.A. family Paul Polizzotto, who had shown dozens of companies how to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and  SAVE money

     Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Pataki

Fortune 500 companies, including General Electric, Duke Energy and J P Morgan Chase have championed stronger government measures to reduce industrial releases of carbon dioxide; also Dupont, United Technologies Baxter International, IBM, General Motors and Johnson & Johnson give subsidies for nuclear power and other types of cleaner electricity sources follow recommendations of the National Commission on Energy Policy (bipartisan); Green Seattle Partnership aims to restore more than 2,500 acres of forested parkland in the city over the next 20 years; GOING GREEN IS GOOD FOR BOTTOM LINE: by combining business practices to the limits of nature, companies can reduce their impact on the environment: reusable products, high emission standards, healthy employee relations and transparency in the way companies do business Seattle Great City Initiative; Starbucks recycled cabinetry and furniture, Nike shoes can be disassembled easily, making cushy playground surfaces, factories closer to employees’ villages, Toyota, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, REI, PCC Natural Markets:

BP wants to live up to it’s “Beyond Petroleum” name: want to tear into the artificial environment the way our ancestors tore into the natural one

The Economist. Cascade Agenda (50 builders, Fortune 500 company executives, civic and

governmental leaders, conservationists and neighborhood activists) wrote the 100 year plan of

conserved landscapes and vibrant towns; it lays out a series of pragmatic marketplace strategies for the region to consider in order to make this vision a reality: bringing market-based conservation tools to a region-wide scale and applying them to conserve critical landscapes; some development rights were given, but 13 million acres preserved

212 Mayors of major cities have agreed to obey the Kyoto treaty by reducing carbon gases to 1990 levels

           Portland adopted a renewable fuel standard (joining Minnesota, Washington, Hawaii, Montana, Iowa, Louisiana and Missouri, curbs greenhouse gases.

[748] Gore proposes:  a pollution tax, an immediate freeze on carbon-dioxide emissions with sharp reductions in future years, stricter vehicle mile-per-gallon rules, moratorium on construction of highly polluting coal-fired power plants, a strong global climate-change treaty and the creation of federally operated Carbon Neutral Mortgage Association that would serve as an incentive for building energy-efficient homes, pointing out that rising global temperatures could cause polar ice to melt, sea levels to rise, increase the likelihood of droughts, wildfires and intense hurricanes.

[749] About 100b bags are thrown away each year; it can take 1000 years for a plastic bag to break down in a landfill NYT 4/5/08, D1

[750] We do not gain energy independence by overwhelming foreign agriculture with our subsidized crops; in fact, the transportation emissions, worsen the environment, require EXTRA energy and cost more; so farmers markets are better, for the environment, the foreign economy, social stability, reduced immigration and national security.

[751] The Economist, The World in 2009, p. 20

[752] * RE Arizona anti-immigrant law of 2010, the Phoenix area, alone, is projected to lose $92m in business per Newsweek, 8/10/2010, p. 34

      Generally, Hispanics are 8.9% of WA population. In 2007; immigration ranks near the bottom, the top issue for only 4 or 5% of voters who do not realize Mexico lost half its territory in 1846-1848 war with the U.S..

To start with a great story, the Hinojosas have  been hoeing and picking sugar beets in Breckenridge Minnesota for 30 years, Blaufuss  now consider them family and fill the freezer for them when they are coming, considering them ‘family’. Minerva, one child, has graduated from the University of Texas, Pan American, others have joined the Air Force, the Navy, and a son, David, works in the migrant education program Minerva first attended when she came north where her family starts hoeing at 5:30 am. NYT 8/5/2007, p. 12

After 2007 failure of immigration bill, next steps, in smaller bill or bills: 1) point system only as a supplement, not substitute, for family provisions: 2) in technology to increase the H1B visas for scientists, will ask more temporary visas (previous expired, reducing from 195,000 to 65000 year); 3) the to-win-conservative-votes sections DID NOT (so forget them); in agriculture, allow rotting crops to be picked; end raids and detentions that separate families and shatter businesses; give orderly flow of workers with an opportunity for visas, tuition breaks for immigrant children and an earned path to citizenship; after open advertising for workers in America

Europeans WANT immigrants, so they have cover for One of the underlying question, according to a blog author, is that a needlessly cumbersome guest-worker plan and a costly war on gatecrashers are bad ideas---even if you don’t care about the welfare of the would-be immigrants. Economist, June 2, 2007, p. 83

[753] Noted, This Week, 7/25/14, p 14

[754]The Economist, 11/17/12

[755] Suarez, Ray, Latin Lessons, September/October 2012, p. 134

[756] The New Yorker, 7/2/12, p. 21

[757] Forgotten Continent, The Battle for Latin America’s Soul, Reid, Michael, p. 3; now mainly urban, statist regulation shed although state and public institutions unchanged, moderate, lagging in competitiveness, innovation and friendliness to business, greater effort tackling poverty and inequality Many ‘illegal’ immigrants are the 25 to 40% who entered LEGALLY but overstayed their visas. And detaining and removing 12 million people would cost at least $94b. Less than 3% of immigrants receive foot-stamps, One in four U.S. public companies that received venture capital in the last 15 years was started by an immigrant and creating a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants will ensure that more SS and income taxes will be paid to the federal and state governments by newly legalized workers, costing the economy and helping to fund the SS and Medicare systems The National Voter, October 2008, p. 9

[758] The underlying mission (of We Are America Alliance and Democracy Summer) is to have minority voters and new naturalized citizens vote out the immigrant-bashers.  There are more than a dozen swing states with anywhere from 50,000 to 900,000 legal residents eligible to apply for citizenship. The voter pool is increasing by leaps and bounds. In 2005, more than 600,000 citizenship applications were approved and the number is expected to increase to 685,000 this year; as a think piece, the Declaration on Immigrant Rights requests the legalization of all immigrants, residence with civil and lab or rights, stop the deportations, liberty and justice for all (not marginalization), against a guest-worker program militarization of the borders.

The facts are that remittances to Mexico exceed $20b/yr, the second largest source of external finance and that roughly 20m Mexican-origin workers in America create a larger gross product than Mexico itself. Perversely, stepped up attempts to keep illegal immigrants out of the Us have resulted in a migrant population more likely to stay…it’s difficult to return if you leave.

[759] The Economist, The World in 2012, p, 96

[760] New York Times, 7/31/2011, p. 12

[761] Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal, p. 134

[762] New York Times, 6/4/2011, How Democracy Works, p. A 18

[763] The National Voter, October 2008, p. 10

[764] Atlantic, July/August, 2009, p. 60

[765] (Federal Judge Breyer injunction against implementation of the rule requiring SSA to send out ‘no match’ letters because administration did not giving any legal explanation nor conduct a

survey of the cost and impact for small businesses. He noted that the SS inspector general estimated that 17m of the agency’s 435m individual records contained discrepancies that would result in a no-match letter being sent out to a legally authorized worker. NYT 10/11/07 p. A22

78% of Americans favored earned citizenship

New York Times, July 31, 2006; many companies cannot function AS THEY CHOOSE without immigrants. 13,000 immigrants were taken from Swift and Co., beef and pork processor, which followed the federal rules, and deported…no indication American workers would take their jobs. NYT editorial 12/18/06

[766] Help opponents of immigration to understand that hard and underpaid work, long hours, and poor living conditions is unfair and ought to be prevented. Allowing immigration avoids the unfairness without taking Americans’ jobs. Feeling that immigrants are wrong is just like 1882, when  “whites saw in Chinese workers precisely what they hated about their own lives: underpaid work, long hours, poor living conditions and no way to earn in their own countries. Then, our country had to be forced to obey it’s own laws to avoid migrant workers unrelenting confrontation with human cruelty. Let us acknowledge that nothing has immunized us against the unhappy effect that economic disappointment works on the soul, or against the temptation to find scapegoats to hold responsible for deeper problems (we took their land by war and now we subsidize others so their jobs at home, producing farm products, can’t pay). NYT Book Review, July 27, 2007, “Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans”, p 7

[767] Both Arizonian agitators against illegal immigration, J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, lost their House races

    “most Mexican immigrants (12m illegal) would work in the U.S. only sporadically and for limited period of time.” “even those with legal documents don’t necessarily intend to stay” Douglas Massey, Mexican Migration Projects; citizen resentment of immigrants is alleged to be that they don’t want to STAY (New Republic 5/8/06 p. 14), but that’s nothing new since, in prior immigrations, approximately 33% of those arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe actually returned to their native countries; Time poll says 63% believe “illegals take jobs away from U.S. citizens”, but U.S. unemployment is at 4.7%, which is as low as it ever gets, so jobs aren’t being taken;  60%  say “overburden government programs and services”; CA Initiative 187, to limit “overburdening”, passed by 60% (including 25% latinos), but was rejected by courts and sunk Rs in backlash; Mexicans fleeing dead-end farming, rural banditry and urban squalor plus the discriminatory policies of the U.S., raisings the level of federal subsidies by more than 80% over 10 years, blocking Mexican fair competition in soybeans, corn and wheat; U.S. subsidies per farm, per the Economist, may soon reach three to four times European levels. Mexico has become a captive market in which it’s farmers cannot successfully compete against American subsidies; tariffs will not be eliminated on U.S.-grown corn until 2008, but then the U.S. will unleash an avalanche of cheap, subsidized corn; wheat production in Mexico has already fallen by 60% since 1980; soybeans by 33%; and Mexican farmers’ costs are higher than those in the U.S.; the NAFTA boom for industrial workers never materialized in Mexico and wages for Mexican factory workers have DECLINED; Mexico should focus state attention on improving the productivity and welfare of the small farm sector; U.S. is giving PATENTS in sterile seeds (terminator technology) so no foreign country can continue its prior crop without buying new seeds from Americans, and is giving exclusive rights to market enola beans, which were a prior crop from Mexico.

7/21/06: immigration may be decisive nationally since all California voters won’t ever support a Pete Wilson campaign against the “over the fencers”, especially is Democrats use Spanish-speaking radio as effectively as Bush did in 2004       

IMMIGRATION GIVES US CHEAPER FOOD AND HELPS MORE WORKING FAMILIES

it was a restrictive immigration act, 1924, attempting to protect America admitted to the U.S. for “pure Americans”, that prevented Jews fleeing the Holocausts from being admitted to America

[768] The current senate bill would allow 12 million current illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S. only after stringent border-control provisions (triggers) are implemented. Migrants participating in a new guest-worker program would have to leave the country after their short-term work visas expire, with no way to petition for permanent residence, but illegal immigrants who arrived before January 1, 2007 could remain in the U.S. on probationary status and renew four-year visas , eventually obtain a green card (8 years) if the heads of households return to their home countries first. A key unknown is whether the agency handling four year visa applications promises not to share information with deportation officers, which was made in 1986. Other provisions would strengthen penalties and create a merit-based system for future immigration. NYT 5/16/07 on negotiations; 5/19/07 ST

[769] NYT, 9/2/2010, p. A-17; 675 The Economist,4/18/2009,p.27

[770] Sierra Club

[771] The Nation, 2/22/2010 p. 9

[772] The Economist, The World in 2012, p, 96

[773] The Seattle Times, 5/22/2011, A23

[774] NYT Opinion editorial, 5/3/09 p. 9

[776] Building the border-fence has stalled in many places because of concerns about cost, property rights and environmental impact. The National Voter, October 2008, p. 10

[777] The National Voter, October 2008, p. 10

[778] Generally: Differences: “Tonight every one of you knows deep in your heart that we are too divided. It is time to heal America. (we have so many competing denominations we must find allies to drive toward agendas of a wider multi-faith audience. It would fit. Worldwide most religious movements are now pluralist and moderate. It’s flexible, user-friendly and market-driven. Rural immigrants can get a social-support network and a moral code that cements their way The Agenda, Atlantic, March 2008, p. 21.

And so we must say to every American: Look beyond the stereotypes that blind us…We don’t have a person to waste, and yet for too long politicians have told the most of us that ware doing all right that what’s really wrong with America is the rest of us---them. Them, the minorities. Them, the liberals. Them, the poor. Them, the homeless. Them, the people with disabilities. Them, the gays.                                          We’ve gotten to where we’ve nearly them’ed ourselves to death. Them, and them, and them.                                          But this is America. There is no them. There is only us. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. That is our Pledge of Allegiance. Clinton, 1992 Democratic Convention

Race: run an ad showing the newsreel of Thurmond’s words (Ladies and gentlemen…there’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.” Then Lott’s unambiguous comment supporting it, followed by photos associating Lott and Thurmond with every incumbent R Senator who either voted for him or said nothing publicly afterward…which is every R Senator who voted to restore Lott to a position of leadership in 2006 (Westen, p. 221)

One-third of evangelicals in 2004 voted for Democrats, many of them complaining about corruption.

    The very nature of political talk in this country makes it difficult to discuss the relationship between morality and politics at all. The separation of church and state has implicitly left the church as the *institution that is seen as guarding morality even though morality is too important to be left to churches. It has been assumed that all political discussions are issue-oriented and morally neutral. Once one brings morality into issue-oriented discussion, the whole matter of legislating morality is brought to the fore. Conservative support by right-wing churches raises the messy question of how one can discuss morality while maintaining the separation between church and state. There must be a public discourse on morality, with an adequate vocabulary to show the difference between the moral systems that lie behind liberal and conservative political positions. Liberalism itself has a view of discourse that puts it at a disadvantage. Liberalism comes from an Enlightenment tradition of supposedly literal, rational, issue-oriented discourse, a tradition of debate using “neutral” conceptual resources. Most liberals assume that metaphors are just matters of words and rhetoric, or that they cloud the issues, or that metaphors are the stuff of Orwellian language. If liberals are to create an adequate moral discourse to counter conservatives, they must get over their view that all thought is literal and that straightforward rational literal debate on an issue is always possible The idea is false---empirically false---and if liberals stick to it they will have little hope of constructing a discourse that is a strong moral response to conservative discourse. Moral Politics, George Lakoff, University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 387.  This approach is critical to our future constituency, per Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations), who says fundamentalist movements come out of "young, college-educated, middle-class technicians, professionals and business persons" "because the processes of economic modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local identities, weakening the nation state as a source of identity, and that they are found in Western Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in Islam." (It's hard to think of a better demonstration that the youth OF THE WORLD require religion! For a party to run in the U.S. without a note of religion, I claim, would not only lose the election, it would lose the youth of the world). The fact that Huntington says cultural differences (much of them religious) have caused and will be the cause the future conflicts in the world (whether within countries or country v. country) further points out that, in international relations, understanding "of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests" will be required to effficiently enter only those conflicts in which there are not cultural conflicts. It will require an effort (by U.S. policymakers) to identiify elements of commonality between Western and other civilizations. In this conflict laden context it's obvious that "selective engagement" militarily by the U.S. is the only way to avoid military "exhaustion". There's no end to the disagreements between existing cultures and those won't soon end. For the relevant future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist with the others."

           (embracing and extending the Contract with America) Consider the Network of Spiritual Progressives, Lerner, Michael, The Left Hand of God. p. 227.

                                                     “Our Spiritual Covenant”:

We are proud of our accomplishments since independence in 1776: shared values, democratic process, elimination of slavery and segregation, welcome to refugees, reduction of sexist practices in our economy and personal lives, challenge of discrimination and increase of commitment to human rights around the world. We propose love, generosity, kindness, responsibility respect, gratitude, humility, honesty, awe, and wonder at the grandeur of the universe, all beyond selfishness and materialism. Productivity can and will mean family love, caring for our neighbors, kindness and generosity, peace and social justice, ethically and ecologically responsible behavior. All families deserve a living wage, full employment, affordable high-quality child care, affordable health care, access to excellent education, starting with preschool, and flexible work schedules. Employment shall use the same values and help us teach them to our workers and children.

We do not rely on government to rectify aspects that could be changed through individual or community effort.

We honor each other as created as embodiments of the sacred. We build lives driven by higher meaning and purpose.

We respect the privacy of others, using our words to enhance caring.

We respect diversity, honor those with whom we disagree, and forgive those who offend us.

We will break through loneliness and alienation of others, eliminate poverty, ensure full employment, provide for public safety and require enactment and regulation for the PUBLIC good.

We reward institutions, including corporations, which promote the value of caring for others.

We will propose a Social Responsibility Amendment to the Constitution that requires corporations to apply for new corporate charter every ten years, only to those which can demonstrate to a jury of ordinary citizens a satisfactory record of social responsibility.

We will present a values-based education.   

Everyone deserves affordable health care…a single-payer system which allows us to choose our doctors and to have physical, mental, emotional and spiritual care.

We will joyously preserve the earth and reverse the damage done. We will build systems to release us from dependence on fossil fuels and to live in a more sustainable manner, encourage family planning to reduce population growth, support ways to reduce over-consumption and dramatically reduce pollutants.

We value safety and security.

The US will join with other advanced industrial societies in creating a Global Marshall Plan.

We will reduce dramatically the role of money in elections, eliminate the electoral college, guarantee access to the media for all candidates and perspectives.

We will make the world safer by building strong international institutions and a standing international nonviolent force that can intervene where necessary to protect populations from genocide. We will dramatically reduce nuclear armaments and seek global disarmament of conventional weapons as well. As a first step, we will replace all U.S forces in Iraq with an international force that will conduct a plebiscite among all three ethnic communities to determine whether and how they stay together as one country or become independent states.

We will generously fund and promote scientific research and will not allow the priorities of science to be set by the corporate marketplace or scientific research to be restricted by religious or political dogma.

[779] So it’s not realistic to take the steps which would have prevented the 2008 recession: limiting securitization, limiting home equity loans, limiting ATM cash withdrawals and limiting dispersion of credit cards.

[780] The millennials’ movement away from organized religion has recently accelerated. Between 2005 and 2011, the fraction of non-religious has declined 2% but has decreased five times as much among younger voters. The Tea Party’s members desire for a godlier government is out of step with the voters. God and Ceasar in America: Why Mixing Religion and Politics Is Bad for Both, Campbell, David E. and Putnam, Robert D.

[781] Wilkinson, Richard and Pickett, Kate, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, 2009

[782] Append the “healing” icon paper; Secty of State Clinton states Islam, democracy, modernity and womens’ rights co-exist in Indonesia NYT 2/19/2009,

[783] The Republican National Committee sent a flyer to voters in West Virginia and Arkansas that said if a Democrat won, they’d ban the Bible. The Democrats (John Edwards) responded swiftly. They issued a press releases calling on President Bush to apologize, saying “he should condemn the practice immediately and tell everyone associated with the campaign to never use tactics like this again. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D, Ark) and Robert Byrd (D, WV) issued critical response, but a couple of speeches and a press release hardly match the power of a mass mailing.

[784] Posner, Richard A.., The Crisis of 08 and the Descent Into Depression, Harvard University Press, 2009. It’s not JUST bad regulation nor deregulation. Canada did better by capping leverage at 20 to 1 and therefore avoided the need for bailouts. Another was failure to take into account asset prices, as well as lending needs, when setting monetary policy. Diminished Returns, Niall Ferguson, NYT Magazine, 5/17/09.

[785] Just what Truman urged in 1948, so we’ve been there from the beginning after World War II

[786] re gays: say “Mr. Bush, that was one of the most un-Christian things I’ve every seen a president of the United states do. The God I worship and the God most Americans worship, is a God of love, not of hate, and He loves ALL his children, not just the ones you deem worthy. And He would never countenance building hatred into the sacred Constitution of the United States of America. To divide Americans against American for political gain, and to dress it up in the language of holiness, is an un-American as it is blasphemous.”

[787] re whether John Edwards prays: “I prayed before my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and before my son died. No amount of prayer prevented those personal disasters. I think it is enormously important to look to God—and, in my case, Christ---for guidance and for wisdom. But I don’t think you can prevent bad things from happening though prayer (he showed he is deeply religious and so confident in the power of his convictions that he can separate them from his role as a government official. He keeps those convictions where they belong: in the personal realm and reality-based.

   Another example, indicating what Clinton might say: “I read it every day. And Lord knows every day I fall short of the glory of God. But this book has a happy ending. It says we don’t have to be perfect; just forgiven. But Lord, I’m having a hard time forgiving our Republican brothers and sisters for accusing us of bannin’ the Bible. Haven’t they read the Ninth Commandment” Let me read it to them. It’s right here: Exodus 20:16, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’ Before God Almighty, and with the Bible in my hand, I swear to you we will never let anyone ban the Bible. And let me warn you. If we get four more years of Republican economic policies; four more years of plant closings; four more years of jobs going overseas; four more years of tax cuts for the idle rich and more burden for the forgotten middle class, you‘re going to need that Bible more than ever. Because we’re all going to be praying for deliverance from these economic policies. We’re all going to be praying for food to eat, a roof over our heads, and better to regulate the financial markets than to bail them out with $95 billion when they’ve blown it. So I will never, ever allow anyone to ban this Bible.”            

[788] NYT, 4/15/08, D1

[789] President Reagan’s administration convinced voters to discriminate against blacks and latinos so others would not be at the bottom of the pecking order. Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness2010, The New Press

[790] Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein, p. 215

[791] Enron staff joked about stealing all “grandmother’s” money

[792]The Economist, The World in 2009, p. 44

[793] A Half-Smoked Joint, The Economist, 6/28/14, p. 14

[794]  Froma Harrop, Seattle Times Opinion, 12/31/2010, p. A16

[795] Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2009, p. 63

[796] Stop the Drug Wars in Mexico by following Colombia experience

     From Colombia, Building Peace in a Time of War, by Virginia M. Bouvier, Editor (2009)

Start with an open letter to all after discovering the way that the local community establishes contacts,

     limitations, and agreed norms in its relations with local forces, perhaps offering reparation, which

     some consider an essential element of reconciliation. Unconditional amnesty will not sell.

To transform the conflict (DDP: disarmament, demobilization and reintegration), go for non-military peace-building partly because the right wing, business financed, paramilitaries have a strong tendency to regard local communities axiomatically as supporters of the guerrillas and so are the most difficult to quiet. Colombia worked by:

1)             Negotiating, because the Pentagon/military have proven, and knows, they cannot win militarily, and

2)             developing ways the fighting forces can have political input after settlement (so that they will be willing to disarm)

     Start on the main problems they perceive: bad financial management, corruption, political control by a small elite, lack of transparency, bad housing and bad health services

     Rely on the indigenous city peace movements, which has worked in Colombia.

     Then turn to FARC’s developed Twelve Point Common Agenda, which will work so long as needed changes in the status quo remain under discussion. Start with a prisoner exchange Transformation will require substantial, not token, concessions. NGOs will help peace (p. 372). Continue with ‘learning hope’ municipalities, work and supplement periodic organized citizen participation and accountability p.274 (which gives locals  better overall direction of policies for the city, and provide the benefits that participants got out of developing the peace zone). Use rural education of children as a long term base, since the people deeply believe that provides for the future (and they may include discussions with youth about truth, justice, long-term peace-building collective decisions, citizenship competencies, all with clear, firm and non-authoritarian teaching styles for managing predefined or agreed rules in classrooms, collective discussion for the constructive resolution of interpersonal conflicts, to favor critical thinking and to stop aggression). “Teach the respect for life they respond to. p.275, and sustainable environmental projects, breaking down barriers between people, and demanding projects breaking down armed groups.

     To end the military approach, argue that the taxpayer should not pay for a false promise of superiority over the 30,000 right and left terrorists in Colombia because a 10:1 superiority (300,000 troops) is known by military experts to be required to defeat an indigenous force that size (p  375). Point out that the taxpayer pays an overwhelming amount because it costs them 2-4 GDP pts/year to fight);

     The Colombian government has considerable experienced negotiating, as will be required, with illegal armed groups. The Catholic Church will contribute help, p. 419, having facilitated recent demobilization of paramilitaries in Colombia. p.416 The private companies which were involved in the financing the paramilitaries (because the paramilitaries are perceived as better than the state) must be convinced peace is a better deal for them, too. The Church helped with that in Colombia..

     There will be increased durability of the takeover from right/left ‘war’ if: 1) they establish greater benefits to the armed actors because of the existence of the fundamental source of the Zone of Peace ZoP); a more equal distribution of benefits among rival armed actors; 3) lower levels of instability in the ZoP); 4) greater internal unity within the ZoP, especially regarding their objectives and procedures; 5) more widespread grassroots participation in the establishment and subsequent operation of ZoP; and 6) greater interconnectedness of ZOP to similar bodies and to support organizations and institutions.

     Many productive job opportunities and spaces for encounter, listening, consolation and reconciliation must be created to use absorb the peoples’ energies. This element has been missing in all state and US efforts.

     Womens’ groups have been very effective organizers (building bridges across racial, geographic, and class boundaries) with ability to leap the divisions in the country (with help from Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland) 422,428  They called for an end to fumigations which are simultaneously destroying alternative crops as well as poisoning the population and the environment.

     Trade unions, have helped, but the women are less frequently opposed. Both groups successfully cross age, gender and ethnicity lines. Trade unions must attempt to cross class lines too, although this is less likely easily to be received.

     The context:  The central government is suspected by the people of being just another armed actor p.434. US policies fail at least because they are military (also, the Colombian military was tutored and financed by 600 private company U.S. advisers who also designed and implemented the failed Plan Patriota offensive because they established police which are barely distinguishable from Colombia’s armed forces and because all know the Pentagon is behind them. They are not supporting the essential alternative economy to the poppy and coca crops. All U.S. entry is suspected designed to take natural resources or lootable products.p.78

     The timing is good now (435) for IDPs (2,459,000 internally displaced peoples) but proper implementation requires, before return to the communities they were forced to flee, first establishing decision-making structures, committees, and local associations so quick, effective government follows the Colombia model. This is also a way of signaling to the guerrillas, paramilitaries and Colombia armed forces that, on their return, the communities will no longer involve themselves in the ongoing struggle  between the right, left, government and the U.S.

      Before return, seek a populist, compelling ‘trigger event’ to energize the displaced peoples

     Groups working for reconciliation in Colombia are EU, REDPRODEPAZ, which has 429 municipalities p.271, UNDP p.219, p.305), REDES p.340,349, private industry (ECOPETROL p.271), Catholic Church, AFSC, pacto localo de paz (REDEPAZ), acercamienento (p.336, p.266, p.267); forget the ‘Plan Colombia” and PLANPATRIOTA by US and Colombian government). These should be replicated in Mexico successfully to return to widespread peace.

If that’s possible, legalizing and institutionalizing the drug trade (as in England) would remove the profit incentive from fighting and remove the income to buy war-making fni  P. 262:

After the establishment of the peace community, the community addressed in an open letter to the local armed actors, arguing that there’re was no longer any need for them to involved themselves in municipal affairs and that they should allow the community to resolve its own problems within the norms of a civilized society ‘We understand that one of the principal ideas of those in arms is to respect the popular will and to strive for peace with justice. This is a sufficient reason to demand respect for the decision taken by the population of (name the city (Samaniego); the result was that harassment of the mayor ended, and threats, kidnappings and incursions aimed at the civil population all but ceased for a considerable time since the local administration was being carried out in a transparent and participatory manner. Forty years of oil exploration in Putumayo have failed to materialize in social development, profits instead going into infrastructure for greater extraction.

Approval by a guerrilla frente, however expressed, is unlikely to sit well with a local paramilitary unit or the army brigade charged with security in the department, and vice versa.

Fn ii Closer analysis may reveal whether different types of relational problems arise for peace communities in different types of conflicting environments, such as: 1) those stably controlled by one dominant armed actor; 2) those previously dominated by now challenged by an alternative armed actor; 3) those constantly in contention between armed actors; 4) those subject to efforts to reclaim territory by a previously dominant armed actor’; and 5) those controlled by a newly dominant armed actor consolidating its hold.

Set up a powerfully innovative and integral approach to peace-building that having a minga (indigenous guard) and planes de vida (economic, social and cultural strategies) , protection of their territorial integrity, their stance of noninvolvement with armed actors, and peaceful community coexistence; prohibit use as transport routes, commercial corridors, or refuges for the activities of any armed agents, and stop government forces from compromising the indigenous communities’ stance of noninvolvement. Require armed actors to refrain from forced recruitment, bombardments, raids, and used a broad consultative process with potentially affected indigenous populations.

Fniii The new list of proposals called for a negotiated solution to the armed conflict; reform of the armed forces; greater independence of the judiciary; budgetary realignments that would favor social welfare and scientific research; nationalization and state management of the energy sector, natural resources, communications, ports, roads, and  public services; and progressive tax policies. Other proposals dealt with agrarian reform, land redistribution, and development policies, international relations based on self-determination and regional integration, and renegotiation of foreign debt, contracts, and natural-resource polities with multinational corporations. P. 88

material.p.116

[797] FP, May-June 2009, p. 167

[798] FP, May-June, 2009, p. 168

[799] The Economist, March 7th, 2009, p. 15

[800]Froma Harrop, ST, 6/27/07

[801] Froma Harrop, Seattle Times, 6/27/07

[802] Environmental Defense, January 2008

[803] Support lawsuits by injured lower and middle class people prevented from working by injury (there has been a decline of 4% of lawsuits, whereas, more, 5% of DEATHS, are due to injuries. The cause of insurance company recent higher costs is NOT lawsuits. It is the insurance companies’ shriveling reserves and declining investments earnings (the stock market [that the President wants to put your Social Security in] turned sour. There’s no crisis of excessive medical malpractice cases; juries decided in favor of the injured in just 560 cases; 307 cases were decided in favor of the doctors; 3,248 of the 10,000 cases were closed without victims getting anything. The cost of malpractice insurance is actually DECLINING in recent years; Washington State’s Insurance Commissioner has just required the state’s largest insurance carrier (Physicians, which, itself, reduced its premiums 7.7% for 2005) to refund more than $1.3 million plus interest on excess premiums charged in 2004. The number of malpractice claims increased by 4.9% a year, 40% of which would be accounted for by population increase. Some estimates are that 5% of treatments are malpractice. The average amount of the compensation per claim increased by 4.1% a year, well below the rate of inflation in health care costs (ST 3/6/05)

[804] The Economist, April 11, 2009, p. 13

[805] Poisoned Waters, Ch. 9, April 22, 2009

[806] Environmental Defense, January 2008

[807] The Economist, June 7-13, 2008, p. 15

[808] See Media Reform News, published by free press, www.freepress.net

[809] A Million Jobs: Mitt Romney and the other candidates can’t admit that the auto bailout worked. NYT, 22612, p. A10

[810] The Economist, 7/23/11, p. 55

[811] The Nation, October 12, 2009, p. 23

[812] New Yorker, 1/25/2010, p. 38

[813] End the “saturation gaffe coverage”

[814] New York Times, 4/27/08, Bowling 1 Health Care 0

[815] An Informed and Educated Electorate, by: Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers | Serialized Book 12/6/2010

[816] Minow, Newton, A Vaster Wasteland, Atlantic, April 2011 p 50

[817] How to Save Journalism, The Nation, p. 16

[818] Sierra Club, May/June, 2009

        [819] Commercial station owners overwhelmingly favor conservative talkers over all others. Worse than that, they interfere with foreign policy goals by, currently, depicting Osama bin Laden on television as the embodiment of evil, his appearance and dress conveying the symbolic message that Islam, the Arabs, and terrorism are organically interwoven. Conservative bias mistakenly took attention from the American criminal in 1995 and prompted widespread focus on Arab-Americans as the primary suspects in the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City. This mass media mistake about Muslim blame allegedly prompted some 200 ugly incidents before the real perpetrator was identified. Media have miscast Muslims as semitic Arabs and caused the Muslim MAJORITY in South and Southeast Asia to be anti-American.

The current corporate owners seek stories that cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk radio and yell at their television. Carville and Begala, p 209.

Concentrated media ownership, presenting only one point of view, destroys democracy. When he first ran for president, the unified media described President Bush as a ‘moderate’. He wasn’t, and we weren’t given others’ opinions. Because it’s cheaper for the concentrated media, they now do few investigations and just take the ‘news’ from the easiest, cheapest source, serving as a mighty megaphone for the regime in power instead of questioning, investigating and reporting. Concentrated ownership limits what we learn. Increased stock and personal wealth of the corporate owners of AOLTimeWarnerGeneralElectricDisney-WestinghouseNewsCorp has resulted. This change of not hearing from both sides occurred when Reagan’s Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Then reporters and broadcasters were no longer required to allow the other sides of each question to give us issues of public importance and mandated airtime.168 .

Now they decide THEIR conclusions and give reports that draw popular attention away from the issues or favor their view. For example, a Pew Center study found that 76% of the media’s coverage of Al Gore in the 2000 election included one of two themes: that Gore lied and exaggerated, or that he was marred by scandal. The most common theme about Mr. Bush, was that he was a “different kind of Republican…40% of ALL stories were on Bush. If some reporter wrote an unfavorable story about Bush, Bush’s staff cut that reporter out of future information.

[820] The Economist July 21, 2007, p. 36

[821] Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back, Hyperion, New York, p 8-12. During Bush’s first term as President, 69% of the journalists appearing on the Sunday shows were conservatives, and 58% of all guests were Republicans/conservatives

[822] reprint of “Press Coverage and Political Accountability”, James M. Snyder Jr and David Stromberg, National Bureau of Economic Research, Atlantic, June 2008, p. 21

[823] Tikkun, Corporate Free Speech: a Progressive Trap, March/April, 2008, p. 42

[824] Economist, February 23, 2008

[825] Cybersecurity as Realpolitik, 

[826] Robert M. Gates, Duty, p. 93

[827] New York Times, June 17, 2014, A 13

[828] oppose GA R attempt to require $20 to get an ID if they want to vote (an indirect poll tax).      The single best reference to the problems and solutions to voters issues is the Common Cause Report on the 20098 Election Protection Program by the Common Cause Education Fund, December 2008.

[829] League of Women Voters, 5/19/08 re U.S. Supreme Court decision.

[830] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 6

[831] “The job of management is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly affected interest groups…stockholders, employees, customers and the public” Frank Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, 1951.

[832] Jeb Bush’s Rush to Make Money May Be Hurdle, New York Times, 4/21/2014 p. 1

[833] New York Times, Charles Schumer, 7/22/2014, p. A19

[834] NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll

[835] New York Times, 8/1/2014, p. 1

[836] As G.O.P. Wedge, The Common Core Cuts Both Ways, New York Times, 4/20/14 p. 1

[837] Jonathan Alter, The Center Holds, p 201-2 

[838] Stevens, John Paul, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, 2014, p. 79

[839] The Economist, 11/24/12 p. 16)

[840] Florida GOP Crying Voter Fraud, Then Creating It: GOP Looks in Mirror, Spots Voter Fraud

[841] Washington Post

[842] Tax-Exempt Groups Shield Corporate Donors, New York Times, p. 1, 7/8/12

[843] The Money & Media Election Complex, The Nation, November 29, 2010, p. 11; Congress now has (June, 2012) 13 bills attempting to counter Citizens United. They seek the 28^th amendment. The organizations joined in opposition are United for the People (50+ groups). Congress, more than 30 city councils oppose the result of the decision. The Montana State Supreme Court in December 2011 upheld a 1912 state law banning corporate campaign contributions. See Jeffrey D. Clements

[844] Protecting Voter Rights in 2012, Common Cause, November 2011, p. 1

[845] Schumpeter, Peculiar People, The Economist, 3/26/2011, p. 78 The Money & Media Election Complex, The Nation, November 29, 2010, p. 11

[846] 80% of Americans, equal in both parties, oppose the USSC decision. WASHPIRG favors public financing of elections and greater disclosure of campaign finances. Fall, 2011 Issue

[847] Ronald Dworkin,  The Decision That Threatens Democracy, New York Review of Books, May 13, 2010, p. 63.

[848] Protecting Voter Rights in 2012… Common Cause, November 2011,

[849] NYT, 12/151/11, p. C6, Lawrence Lessig

[850] New York Times editorial, February 25, 2008, p. A 25

[851] New York Times, 1/17/12, p. A20

[852] Disenfranchise No More, NYT p. A26, 11/18/11

[853] Z. Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 197; 70% of campaign finance given by private corporations        which later ask a favor; 81% of political donors in congressional elections earned more than         $100,000 a year and only 5% earned less than $50,000. The Economist, April 4-10^th, 2009, Special             Report, p. 12

[854] Sachs, Jeffrey D. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, p. 266

[855] NYT 12/21/08

[856] NYT 8/16/2008, p. A10; Diebold machines did not produce paper records so electronic voting makes large-scale vote theft easy; in one Democratic county in Florida, 13% did not record vote for Congress whereas only 2% didn’t in other Florida county; In Alabama;  Governor Siegelman has been put in jail for political reasons after he lost the election when after the election, Baldwin County reported a ‘glitch’ had given him 6000 extra votes, but a check showed  it was electronic ballot stuffing, possibly by an operative who accessed the computers and ‘edited’ the results. There, the AG threatened to arrest anyone who counted the paper ballots by hand. No Count was done.NYT,, about August 2008, Adam Cohen, Editorial Observer “ A Tale of Three (Electronic Voting) Elections CONGRESS

[857] Reich, Robert, Supercapitalism, Alfred B. Knopf, New York, p. l 7.

[858] these acts are serious violations of the constitution: allowing candidates to raise funds for their campaigns on the house of worship’s property; explicitly endorsing a candidate, potential candidate, political party, third-party movement or candidate draft effort; targeting voter registration or other election-related activities in specific geographic areas selected because they are influential, crucial, or partisan districts or wards; coordinating voter registration, “GOTV” drives, or other election activities with a candidate or political party; organizing groups to work for a specific candidate; providing anything of value including space, equipment, mailing lists, or staff time without charging full market value and allowing equal access to opposing candidates; or providing space of the distribution of partisan materials on its property, including “voter guides” that favor a particular candidate or party.

[859] Seattle P-I, August 4, 2006

[860] Other states should follow Ohio and Colorado secretaries of state and push to get the weaknesses of the voting machines fixed.NYT editorial, 12/24/07 p. A20,

[861] NYT, January 7, 2008; p. A25

[862] (UPS, Tacoma, Richard Anderson-Connolly oil and gas gave $2million to Republicans to favor their interests and only $140,000, to Democrats in 2004 fn93. Private corporate campaign contributions should be replaced by publicly funded election campaigns so the people elected will speak to voters instead of only hearing private interests who later ask for the legislator’s vote on their interests;

[863] voters rank candidates on their ballot, regardless of party, and eliminate the least popular candidates until a majority winner is reached; Pierce County about to act; King Co. could and should follow, then to Olympia to change it for the whole state (and await the court test)

[864] New York Times, October 1, 2006

[865] Common Cause, Seizing the Moment (fair utility rates, reasonable energy costs, meaningful health care reforms, or effective environmental policies require that we end the undue influence of lobbyists from oil companies, pharmaceutical giants, the insurance industry and other huge lobbying groups that have been footing the bills for candidates’ election campaigns.

[866] the next nine planks are from the League of Women Voters Reform Agenda; LWV, 1730 M Street, NW #1000, Washington .D.C.20036

[867] McClatchy Washington Bureau, July 1, 2007

[868] PhD. dissertation on electronic voting machines would require voter being presented with a printed ballot which voter gets to check before dropping it in the box. Yes, Summer 2003, p. 47; also see Regime Change begins at home, supra, p. 17. California researchers have confirmed voting activists’ fears that machines from Diebold, Sequoia, and other major suppliers are, indeed, extremely vulnerable to hacking that alters election results.

[869] NYT, 5/8/09 p.A13

[870] to right leaning and evangelicals re poverty: “They look in our inner cities and see the hardened faces of drug dealers, crack-addicted mothers, and absent fathers. We look in our inner cities and see the faces of their children, who deserve a home and a childhood. They look in the inner cities and they see broken families. We look I the inner cities and wonder what our own children would become if they had to grow up in those broken homes. They look at our inner cities with anger and contempt, and wonder, “Why can’t the act like us?” We look at our inner cities with sadness, and remember the phrase, “There but for the graceofGodgoI.” They look at our inner cities and see their moral depravity. We look at our inner cities and see our moral responsibility.”

    What the voters are running from is the ‘liberal hour”. It lasted only a few years: two civil rights acts that remade politics across the entire country and in the South; the unassailable Medicare and Medicare; pioneering environmental laws; education and immigration bills; stronger protections for consumers; a host of antipoverty programs, including food stamps and Head Start; a new federal departments of transporetation anda housing land urban development. We hadn’t seen such legislative energy since the New Deal NYT 8/13/08, p. B2

[871] 57% of independents endorse more government help for the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt. Went 57% for Ds in 2006.

[872] The Politics of Hunger, Foreign Affairs, November 2008, p. 67

[873] The Economist, The World in 2012, Special Advertising Section, p. 7

[874] The Bush administration cut it out of the 2008 budget.NYT, February 25, 2008, p. A 25

[875] Seattle Post Intelligencer 6/16/06      

[876] NYT, 6/08 “UN says Food Plan Could Cost $30b a Year.”

[877] Economists calculate that international trade adds about $1 trillion a year in benefits to the U.S. Economy. Even after  the offshoring of white collar jobs, despite the hardship it brings for laid off workers, it’s a net gain for developed nations like the U.S. and Japan as well as for the country where the jobs land. Hundreds of millions of poor people have been lifted from desperate poverty as a result. The best response from the high-wage developed world is to uncover new sources of job creation rather than protect the old ones. That’s precisely what worked when farmers were displaced by the Industrial Revolution. Rubin believes we’ve got to have a first rate public education system, get our basic research back, get our house in order by reining in the budget deficit (and recognize that, in the long run, good environmental policy is good economic policy). Time, Global Business, July 30, 2007, p. 39

For more than three decades, the U.S. has promoted a series of trade policies whose end result has been a chronic structural deficit that has left us financially dependent on foreign central banks, the near collapse of America’s manufacturing sector, and the destruction of a high-wage social contract Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 217

[878] The Economist, August 22, 2014, p. 62

[879] Public Citizen, Editorial; 11/12 2012 p. 3

[880] The Economist, Trade, Partnership and Politics. 8/24/13, p. 40

[881] The Economist, 12/22/12, p 118

[882] Secretary of  Commerce Gary Locke, citing the National Export Initiative Seattle Times, 9/18/2010 p. A8

[883] NYT, 12/27/11, p.B1

NYT, 12/24/11, p. A13

[884] The Economist, 11/26/2011, p. 40

[885]  P. 89

[886]  Failure to agree on domestic standards for mobile phones is seen as a principal reason why foreign firms were able to capture both technological and market leads over their U.S. competitors. p. 114

[887]  P. 90

[888] Seattle Times, Editorial page, A11

[889] G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008, p. 25ff

[890] Foreign Affairs, January, 2009, p. 14

 [891] Foreign Affairs, January, 2009, p. 15ff

[892] NYT, 12/17/07, p. 1

[893] Kuttner, Robert, The Copenhagen Consensus: Reading Adam Smith in Denmark, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008, p. 78ff

[894] The more this order bids together capitalism democratic states in deploy rooted institutions, the more open, consensual, and rule-based it is, and the more widely spread its benefits, the more likely it will be that rising powers can and will secure their interests through integration and accommodation rather than through war. And if the Western system offers rules and institutions that benefit the full range of states---rising and falling, weak and strong, emerging and mature---its dominance as an international order is all but certain. The U.S. should renew its support for wide-ranging, multilateral institutions, conclude the Doha Round of trade talks,  and avoid proliferation of lateral and regional trade agreements or the world will be broken into competing U.S. and Chinese spheres. This integration, particularly of the new large economies, is critical because BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China plus South Africa) could be larger than the original G-6  G. John Ikenberry,  Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008, p. 34

[895] Reich, Robert B. Supercapitalism, Alfred P. Knopf, New York, p. 127

[896] These import duties increase your mortgage and borrowing costs as well as making imports more expensive.

[897] The U.S. would be better off if it cut its tariffs and farm subsidies. The Uruguay round increased world income by roughly $100 billion. If tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods, and services, were reduced by a third, there would be further gain of $600 billion, about 2% of world income. When Roosevelt persuaded Congress to grant him and future presidents rolling pre-approval for trade treaties, tariff rats in the U.S. fell from about 45% to bout 10% in two decades. Harford, Tim, The Undercover Economist, 2006, p. 225-7 Subsidies cause waste and it is Americans, not foreigners, who pay for them. Similarly, the main victims of Europe’s farm policies are Europeans.  Ignore the fact that cheaper imports which TRULY BENEFIT US MOST are thinly spread and hard for individual consumers to see. Forget the lie that our gains from trade come mainly from exports we sell. Gather the exporters who would better be able to sell their goods abroad if ALL subsidies AND TARIFFS are dropped, to support dropping subsidies. The foreign tariffs keeping our IMPORT prices high are still relatively comprehensive and high, which makes our exported goods expensive and shelters their manufacturers from the foreign competition that would GENERALLY RAISE PRODUCTIVITY AND GROWTH.  Developing countries would benefit if we dropped subsidies and tariffs. If someone believes in the “market economy”, they should support this approach. “The Fruitful Lie” by Clive Crook, The Atlantic, October 2006, p. 30

[898] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 219

[899] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 227ff

[900] The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Country at a Time, Juhasz, Antonia 2006, p. 4; WHO warned that it’s agreement with Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, and Venezuela could increase the price of medicines by 200% due to limitation on support of the local manufacture of generic medicines p. 5, p. 7

72 new members of Congress have publicly committed to change the current failed trade model. In the process of obtaining better environmental and labor provisions we should not provide new rights for foreign oil and gas firms to destroy Colombia’s environmentally critical Amazon region nor allow multinationals with tax havens in Panama to challenge US policies that crack down on their tax-dodging. Public Citizen News, May-June 2009, p. 14

[901]

[902] p. 16. Bush Agenda…DPG (Defense Planning Guidance), Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century) and the National Security Strategy of the U.S.A

[903] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 261

[904] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 264

[905] Over 40,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1997 in despair at their inability to earn enough income to repay their debts for high-tech inputs (GD seeds, pesticides, etc.).

[906] The Plan: 1) a National-Service Baby Bond, with $5000 for every child born, which the child could collect when 18-25 if he/she commits to at least one year of service: for education, starting a business or making down payment on a home; 2) Make National Service a Cabinet-Level Department; 3) Expand Existing National-Service Programs like AmeriCorps and the National Senior Volunteer Corps; 4) Create an Education Corps; 5) Institute a Summer of Service; 6) Build a Health Corps; 7) Launch a Green Corps; 8) Recruit a Rapid-Response Reserve Corps; 9) Start a National-Service Academy; 10) Create a Baby-Boomer Education Bond, allowing designating a scholarship of $1000 for every 500 hours of community service they complete. Cost $20b/year

[907] The Nation, March 21, 2011, p. 9

[908] Farm Futures, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2009, p. 93

[909] Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 201, also supports national service.

[910] Asia, America, the World and the Transformation of Politics, William Overholt

[911] The Difficulty of Integrating Rising Powers, Stewart Patrick, Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2010, p. 44

[912] New York Times  4/24/14

[913] The Economist, January 15, 2011, p. 36

[914] Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, May7/June 2008, p. 43

[915] Hachigian and Sutphen, The Next Century, p. 78, 206

[916] The Atlantic, June 2008, p. 30

[917] Supra, Robert Kuttner, p. 3

[918] Historically, the global balance sheet has favored poor countries. But with the advent of globalized markets, capital began to move in other direction, and the South now exports capital to the North, at a skyrocketing rate. According to the UN, in 2006 the net transfer of capital from poorer countries to rich ones was $784 billion, up from $229 billion in 2002. (In 1997, the balance was even It costs poor countries some $110 billion, 1% of their economies annually, [Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia professor, says double that]. This is built by the international agreements, like the WTOs requirements that all member countries respect patents and copyrights---as poorer countries enter the WTO they must agree to pay royalties on such goods---and the result is a net obligation of more than $40 billion annually that poorer countries owe to American and European corporations. The single largest beneficiary of the intellectual property system is the pharmaceutical industry (which does not provide research nor cures for poor peoples’ diseases). And 10 year tax holidays given by poor countries to induce investment there. And brain drain…40% of college-educated people emigrate to rich countries: 40% Malawian nurses, 75% of Zambia’s physicians. And corn, rice or cotton exported by rich countries is so cheap that small farmers in poor countries cannot compete, so they stop farming. And if we paid the true cost of oil it would include the costs of the environmental damage that comes from burning these fuels. But even as we do not pay that price, other countries do. American energy use is being subsidized by tropical coastal nations.  Rosenberg, Tina, “Reverse Foreign Aid”, NYT Magazine, p. 16          

The World Bank estimates that high food prices will quickly pull 100m people back below the poverty line, Foreign Policy, Carnegie Endowment, July/August, 2008, p. 96

[919] The End of the Bush Revolution, by Gordon, Philip, Foreign Affairs, July-August, 2006

[920] New York Times, 9/25/07 p. C9

[921] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 247ff

[922] Robert Kuttner, supra, p. 257

[923] Seattle Times, 8/5/2007, p. 15; Every time you run a TV ad, or line, stress the steps in the conscious motives at any time (like crime, violence, race, affirmative action, immigration) to give you a chance of overwhelming the unconscious motives (fear, racism) Westen, p. 226 e.g. Clinton on race: Americans value hard work and fairness, and they believe that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules deserves whatever his or her talents will bring.” e.g. Kennedy zeroed straight in on the, accurate, per 1973 as it turns out, character of Nixon the person; e.g. where ballot initiatives have eliminated affirmative actions in college admission, we are seeing a precipitous return to segregation in public universities, Westin, p. 234;                                                                                            e.g. allow nothing you want to be labeled a special interest because that violates precisely the same values of fairness and justice that motivate their acceptance of the need for affirmative action. “Our commitment is to ALL Americans who are willing to work hard to make a better life for themselves and their children, to have a chance at the American dream. We believe in the words of our founding fathers, that we are all created equal, and that no matter what the color of our skin or where our ancestors came from, we’re all Americans, and we’re all children of God. We have witnessed with our own eyes the extraordinary strides toward racial equality of the last forty years, but we also know that our task is not yet complete. We know that because if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us can remember those moments when we’ve encountered someone whose skin color was different from ours, whose accent was different, or whose face bore the scars of poverty, who we judged in ways we would not want to be judged ourselves. But we are a compassionate nation, and we believe in going the extra mile for people who have not yet shared in the American dream but are willing to work hard for it. And for the same reason, we reject quotas, because they deny other Americans their chance at that dream.” Westen, p. 241 (as long as Democrats fail to turn racism into a CHARACTER ISSUE, Rs will continue to use it as an instrument of political persuasion.);                                                                                             e.g. “We stand with all Americans, white and black, in our belief that it’s time to end the welfare culture, that welfare should be a safety net and not a way of life, and that the way to end welfare dependency is to put an end to the poverty that breeds it. If we can fight wars in distant lands, we can dedicate ourselves as a nation to the eradication of poverty on our soil, and which is the only way to defeat the crime, violence, drug abuse, and hopelessness that afflict our inner cities and parts of rural America. The way to win this war is through hard work and personal responsibility on the part of those who want a better life for themselves and their children, and through a partnership of government, business, and religious institutions. That means providing tax incentives to businesses that provide jobs and affordable health care to those who want to help themselves, and creating the conditions for people of faith to DEMONSTRATE their fait New York Review of Books, September 25, 2008, p. 26h, by partnering wealthy churches, synagogues, and mosques with places of worship in the inner cities, to help build homes, hope and connections across our communities. And it means building colleges instead of prisons so that poor teenagers who want to work hard and lift themselves out of poverty can see a light at the end of the tunnel other than the dim red light of crime and drugs.” Westen, p. 242 and the same for subsidies and tariffs of corporate welfare

                                                                                            e.g. hew to traditional middle-class values

                                                                                             e.g. show results, or you’re “throwing good money after bad”

                                                                                              e.g. don’t deny legitimate concerns of conservatives…about violence, drugs, absent fathers and teenage mothers…those denials are patently absurd; like re Bush”where I come from we call that a drunk”

                                                                                               e.g. appeal to evangelical Christians, whose faith tells them that there is no greater sin than having two coats when your neighbor is cold and has none.

[924] The World At a Glance, The Week, 7/25/14, p. 6

[925] David D. Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2008, p. 57ff

[926] The Economist, Nov, 2012 

[927] Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec, 2012 p. 23

[928] Russia’s Latest Land Grab, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2014 p. 60

866 New York Times 4/9/14, Friedman, p. A12

[930] Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008; p. 68ff

[931]

[932] The Economist, April 9, 2011, p. 27

[933] The Economist, The World in 2009, p. 55

[934] New York Times Book Review, 2/26/12, p. 9

[935] FP, Foreign Policy, Think Again: the BRICS, November 2012, p. 76

[936] Fenby, Joonathan, Will China Dominate the 21^st Century?, 2014, p. 5

[937] Ibid, p. 9, 29, 44, 101ff

[938] Far Eastern Promises, Foreign Affairs, May/June, 2014, p. 116

[939] Smart Shift: A Response to “The Problem With the Pivot”, Brimley, Shawn and Ratner, Ely, Foreign Affairs, rev. January/February, 2013, p. 177

[940] Weekend China Daily, USA, 6/26-29/2014

[941] Ian Johnson, The China Challenge, The New York Review of Books, 5/8/14, p. 34

[942] Hachigian and Sutphen, The Next Century, p. 170

[943] * John Thornton, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008, p. 3ff

[944] Foreign Affairs, July/August 2012, p.  91

[945] Far Eastern Promises, Foreign Affairs, May/June, 2014, p. 115

[946] Lieberthal,  Kenneth, Governing China, Second Edition, p. 268

[947] Halper, The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-first Century, Basic

[948] The Economist, 6/26/10, p. 16

[949] Foreign Affairs, September/October 2009, p. 28

[950] Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2009, The G-2 Mirage, p. 1

[951] The Economist, Nov. 14, 2009, p. 11

[952] NYT, B5, Business page, 6/8/2008

[953]

[954] NYT editorial, 5/2/09, p. 18

[955] President Calderon believes it’s impossible to stop drug trafficking as long as the U.S. imports billions worth of drugs David D. Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2008, p. 57ff

[956] The Vietnam Solution, The Econonmist, 6/2012, p. 85

[957] The Economist, August 26, 2007, p. 8 and 12

[958] Iran, by Hamid Dabashi Anti-colonial modernity (anti-capitalism because capitalism is contingent on global circulation of accumulated capital, cheap labor, raw materials and expansive market i.e. ipso facto colonialism)

It behooves both the Jews and the Arabs to settle their differences in a Christian manner (The Best Little… in Texas) 2004: Ahmadinejad, fanatic, like Bush, elected over the Gucci revolutionaries, working for the

poor and disenfranchised as the Shia always historically have, surrounded by 4 nuclear powers who are in mo moral position to criticize nuclear in Iran. The invasion of Iraq (after ditching Iran in Afghanistan) caused Iran to restate its nuclear weapons program…thought that they were next on the neo-con (Cheney) list p. 238.

A clerically controlled medieval theocracy

Ironically, Iraq’s only real democratic neighbor is Iran. The job of creating democracy in Iraq should be left to Iraqis and, equally importantly, to Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran.

[959] The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, by Kishore Mahbubani

[960] Foreign Affairs, July/August 2012, p. 41

[961] Crisis of the Drylands, Scientific American, February, 2008, p. 34

[962] Signs of a Green Revolution, Scientific American, January, 2008, p. 32

[963] Leslie H. Gelb, NYT, 3/13/2009, p. A23

[964] “How to Surge the Taliban” New York Times, 3/13/2009, p. A23

[965] Foreign Affairs, July/August 2012, p. 54, 62

[966] Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013, p. 22

[967] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, The Myth of the Autocratic Revival, p. 77

[968] “Write Off the World’s Debt”, FP (Foreign Policy p. 58), JanuaryFebruary, 2012,

[969] Zbigniew Brzezinski, supra, p. 4

[970] The Economist, July 2009, p. 76

[971] Joseph Stiglitz The problem is that the ‘rules of the game’ have largely been set aside by U.S. corporate interests. Multinational corporations have taken the natural resources of poor countries. Leaving the people, or sovereign wealth funds holding some of the resource for the future, not giving the payment to their rich, would ensure that they get full value for their resources. Western banks have burdened poor countries with unsustainable debt. At the World Bank he was thrown out by Lawrence Summers for saying that Washington inspired policies to promote economic development in poor countries but are, instead, allowing them. The IMF during the East Asian meltdown in 1997-1998 was a poorly conceived bailout which turned slowdowns into recessions, and recessions into depressions. GATT, WTO, NAFTA, etc, have been heavily weighted in favor of the rich countries which used their greater knowledge and economic power to out-bargain poor countries. The world should provide grants instead of loans, or an ‘orderly way of restructuring and reducing debt’ and an International Credit Court to provide ways to escape odious debt. These poor countries have forced liberalization of trade---first in industrial goods, then in skilled services---on poor countries, while retaining their own ;poor-country exports. He proposes a new principle for international trade agreements: reciprocity among equals, but differentiation between countries in different states of development Rich countries should open up their markets to poor ones without demanding reciprocal access to poor countries and without imposing their own labor or environmental standards on those countries. Poor countries should be allowed to keep tariffs. Rich countries should phase out agricultural subsidies (New Zealand successfully did so in 1984) they should encouraqe the immigration of unskilled labor. They should refrain from among bilateral trade agreements, which allow special interests to operate in the dark. True enough, he concedes, all this might lead to job losses in rich countries, but these should be compensated by “better adjustment assistance, stronger safety nets, and better macro-economic management as well as “more investment in technology land education’” He vigorously attacks TRIPS---trade-related intellectual property rights,.; TRIPS have imposed on the entire world the dominant intellectual property regime in the U.,S. and Europe. New drugs could saved millions of lives in poor countries, but they are unaffordable because they are protected by patents that allow the drug companies to charge monopoly prices for a period of twenty years or more. By including patent protection in the WTO American and European negotiators signed a “death warrant” for thousands of people in the poorest countries of the world. Pharmaceutical companies should be forced to sell life-preserving drugs to poor countries at near costs---or face compulsory licensing of generic drugs that can be produced by, and traded between, developing countries. Countries buying our debt should be discouraged because they suffer staggering “opportunity costs” the alternative opportunities foregone---to when earning only 1-2% as against the 10-15% that could be earned in high-return domestic projects.

We should minimize the damage corporations do to society and maximize their net contribution: strengthen corporate social responsibility, prevent monopolies or cartels, increases the scope of liability for environmental damage, make possible class action suits at a global level, and create WTO rules against unfair competition and bribery. NY Review of Books, Robert Skidelsky, Gloomy About Globalization, reviewing Making Globalization Word, Joseph Stiglitz..

[972] The Economist, 4/12-18/08, p. 87

[973] Catastrophic results have occurred from imposition of free market doctrines over the last

several decades. ‘Disaster capitalism’ has caused increased world violence The Shock

Doctrine, by Naomi Klein,

[974] Foreign Policy, The Ideology of Development, William Easterly, July/August 2007

[975] Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 3/30/2011, p. A25

[976] Ali Abunimah, Palestinian Factions Reportedly Set 10 Conditions for 10-Year Truce with Israel, Electronic Intifada, July 16, 2014.

[977] Electronic Intifada, July 16, 2014

[978] (between you and me), why not ditch nuclear weapons entirely, and force Israel to do the same, then approach ALL others?

[979] NYT, Sunday Opinion, 5/24/09, p. 10.(Floyd Leverett directs the New Amer4ica foundation’s geopolitics of energy initiative and teaches at Penn State’s School of International Affairs, Hillary Mann Leverett is the president of a political risk consultancy. Both are former National Security Council staff members.)

[980] New York Times

[981] Political Science Quarterly, Fall 2007,  King, Stephen J., Sustaining Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa, p. 438

[982] Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs, Ray Takeyh

[983] Democratic Movements, Steve Coll, January 31, 2011, p. 21

[984] Z. Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 47

[985] Obama and the Middle East, Hussein Agha & Robert Malley, New York Review of Books, June 11, 2009, p. 69

[986] Israel should be instructed, on pain of losing American military and foreign aid, that it must discontinue its manifest violations of international treaties: 1) foreigners’ battle deaths; attempting to justify aggression as legal ‘defense’ (Article 51); collective punishments (Article 33) by sealed borders and blockades;; deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure; willful killing of civilians having no military function; illegal use of phosphorous, etc; deliberate employment of disproportionate force (Geneva, Nuremburg)

[987] The Economist, January 3, 2009, p, 66

[988] Foreign Affairs, January 2009, p. 59

[989] The Palestine-Israeli issue should have received immediate, intense, attention after the death of Prime Minister Rabin because that indicated a turn to the right which makes peace less likely and turns Israel to the right. Z Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 184 Attention to Palestine’s concerns would not mean turning away from Israel: a decision by the international community to assume the ultimate moral and financial responsibility for the Palestinians’ plight would give Israel an opportunity to close the book upon Palestinian claims once and for all. Develop and help fund return of Israeli refugees from the Arab world, to avoid Israeli feeling that many states have a one-sided approach to refugee issues. The US and its allies should ask what it can do to help Israel take the risks and make the sacrifices required to give peace a chance. Bush 41, delayed by his 1992 race, failed to secure, at a time of American dominance after  reversing Saddam, demilitarization of Palestine and no right of return for Palestinians in addition to this request. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Second Chance, p.77

[990] The Economist, 12/13/2008, p. 53; The New Yorker, April 6, 2009, p. 26ff

[991] The Economist, September13-19, 2008, p. 18

[992] Gorenberg,   Gershom, The Unmaking of Israel 2011?) (and NYT Book Review, 11/20/11, p. 14)

[993] Foreign Affairs, Yosef Kuperswasser and Shalom Lipner, November /December 2011, p. 2

[994] The Problem is Palestinian Rejectionism: Why the PA must recognize a Jewish State, Josef Kuperwasser and Shalom Lipner, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2011, p. 2

[995] One plan would have us redirect 10 to 20% of the military budget and redirect it toward building schools and hospitals worldwide, fighting poverty, training people in skills for a new globalized world, and providing relief from HIV/AIDS. We could invest the money in local businesses, follow up with the largest deployment of American peace activists in history, a revamped version of the Peace Corps. Tikkun, January/February 2009, p. 78

[996] The Role of the Villian: Iran and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Paul R. Pillar, Political Science Quarterly, Vol 128, #2, Summer, 2013, p. 211

[997] Make clear to Iran that the bomb is a magnet for attack, can only accomplish a limited set of objectives, and will not produce the benefits it anticipates but will isolate and weaken the regime. U.S. should lay down concise ‘redlines’ designating ‘unacceptable behavior’ (initiating conventi0onal warfare, using or transferring nuclear weapons, materials or technologies nor stepped \-up support for terrorist or subversive activities) and being willing to use military force if Tehran crosses them. Maintain economic pressure. Convince Israel (200 nuclear weapons) that the US will deter Iran. After Iran Gets the Bomb: Containment and Its Complications, James M. Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010, p. 33

[998] New York Times, July 16, 2006, opinion, Robert Wright, An American Foreign Policy that Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With (filed)

[999] Latin America may have ‘decoupled’ from the disabled U.S. economy (growing at 5% a year since 2004), inflation has been generally low, direct investment is arriving in record quantities and prices for many of it’s key commodity exports continue to rise, but a prolonged recession in the U.S. would be costly for them, but it should be imitating Chile’s rigorously counter-cyclical policies, saving and spending its extra tax revenues on investment on education, productivity and technology. The Economist, 4/12-18, p. 41; Foreign Affairs review of Reid, Michael Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul, 2007)

[1000]  The Economist, 12/13/2008, p. 45

[1001] The Economist, 12/13/2008 p. 48

[1002] Chile, with Michelle Bachelet, has booming construction in Santiago, rising prices for its commodity exports to the U.S., E.U. and, above all, to the rising economies of East Asia, especially China. Educational opportunities have been expanded. Chile now compares itself to the Asian economies like Singapore and South Korea. NYT, Bona Fides Examples of Poetic Justice, 11/18/07, p. 53

[1003] Foreign Policy, Middle-Class Youth in Latin America, by Leon Krauze, July/August 2007

[1004]Cutting down on cutting down, The Economist, 6/7/2104 p. 83

[1005] Foreign Affairs, Rethinking Latin America: Foreign Policy Is More Than Development, by Christoper Sabatini, p. 8

[1006] The Economist, Nov 14^th 2009, p. 11

[1007] Foreign Affairs review of Reid, Michael Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul, 2007)The Economist, The World in 2009, p. 52

[1008]

[1009] Z.  Brzezinski, Second Chance, p. 27

[1010] Nicholas D. Kristof, NYT. 5/19/2011, p. A 23

[1011] Jeffrey D. Sachs, Scientific American, May 2008, p. 42

[1012] New York Times Magazine, 10/7/07, p. 12

[1013] Diamond, Larry, Foreign Affairs March/April 2008, p. 36,

[1014] Zoellick, New York Times 10/11/07 p. A14

[1015] Savage, Charlie, Atlantic, October 2007, p. 25.

[1016] Savage, Charles, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.

[1017]Building Boom  “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William Arkin

[1018]  The State of the State, Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2014, p. 118

[1019] John Paul Stevens, Six Amendments: How and Why We should Change the Constitution, Little, Brown and Company, 2014, p, 15

[1020] Stevens, John Paul, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, 2014, p. 106

[1021] Newsweek, 4/5/2010 p. 34

[1022] New York Review of books, Summer, 2014, p. 10

[1023] State Capitalism, The Economist, 1/21/2012, special section following p. 55