THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

On Sunday, The Washington Post, a once-great newspaper now d/b/a Graham's Chicken 'n Waffles, published a "news analysis" on the state of the Social Security system that explained that it's time for us seriously to consider "reforming" the system in such a way that it never again does what it was designed to do by that spendthrift bastard FDR, and in such a way that the financial-services sector of our economy can grab as much of that Social Security money as it can and then do as much for old people as the financial-services sector has done for real estate in Nevada.

(I am paraphrasing a tad here.)

// posted by montag @ 1:47 PM 0 Comments

Just a month after accusing Pakistan’s spy agency of secretly supporting the Haqqani terrorist network, which has mounted attacks on Americans, the Obama administration is now relying on the same intelligence service to help organize and kick-start reconciliation talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan.

The revamped approach, which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called “Fight, Talk, Build” during a high-level United States delegation’s visit to Kabul and Islamabad this month, combines continued American air and ground strikes against the Haqqani network and the Taliban with an insistence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency get them to the negotiating table...

But even inside the Obama administration, the new initiative has been met with deep skepticism, in part because the Pakistani government has developed its own strategy, one at odds with Mrs. Clinton’s on several key points. One senior American official summarized the Pakistani position as “Cease-fire, Talk, Wait for the Americans to Leave.”

// posted by montag @ 12:50 PM 0 Comments

Global consumer confidence remained weak in the third quarter with more than 60 percent of consumers saying it was not a good time to spend, and one-in-three North Americans saying they have no spare cash, a survey showed on Sunday.

// posted by montag @ 12:05 PM 0 Comments

Across the street from U.S. military headquarters in Kabul, shrouded from view by concrete walls, the Afghan intelligence agency runs a detention facility for up to 40 terrorism suspects that is known as Department 124. So much torture took place inside, one detainee told the United Nations, that it has earned another name: “People call it Hell.”

But long before the world body publicly revealed “systematic torture” in Afghan intelligence agency detention centers, top officials from the State Department, the CIA and the U.S. military received multiple warnings about abuses at Department 124 and other Afghan facilities, according to Afghan and Western officials with knowledge of the situation.

Despite the warnings, the United States continued to transfer detainees to Afghan intelligence service custody, the officials said. Even as other countries stopped handing over detainees to problematic facilities, the U.S. government did not.

U.S. Special Operations troops delivered detainees to Department 124. CIA officials regularly visited the facility, which was rebuilt last year with American money, to interrogate high-level Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects, according to Afghan and Western officials familiar with the site. Afghan intelligence officials said Americans never participated in the torture but should have known about it.

White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the United States has a “long-standing policy against transferring individuals to torture” and that “whenever allegations of human rights violations are raised with us, we move quickly to work with the host government to investigate and resolve them.”

// posted by montag @ 12:03 AM 0 Comments

But why would anyone prefer spending on destruction to spending on construction, prefer building weapons to building bridges?

John Maynard Keynes himself offered a partial answer 75 years ago, when he noted a curious “preference for wholly ‘wasteful’ forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles.” Indeed. Spend money on some useful goal, like the promotion of new energy sources, and people start screaming, “Solyndra! Waste!” Spend money on a weapons system we don’t need, and those voices are silent, because nobody expects F-22s to be a good business proposition...

But there are also darker motives behind weaponized Keynesianism.

For one thing, to admit that public spending on useful projects can create jobs is to admit that such spending can in fact do good, that sometimes government is the solution, not the problem. Fear that voters might reach the same conclusion is, I’d argue, the main reason the right has always seen Keynesian economics as a leftist doctrine, when it’s actually nothing of the sort. However, spending on useless or, even better, destructive projects doesn’t present conservatives with the same problem.

Beyond that, there’s a point made long ago by the Polish economist Michael Kalecki: to admit that the government can create jobs is to reduce the perceived importance of business confidence.

// posted by montag @ 12:02 AM 0 Comments

Cutting to the chase: if you thought this was the deal that would hold banks accountable for filing phony documents in courts, foreclosing without showing they had the legal right to do so and generally running roughshod over anyone who opposed them, you are likely to be disappointed.

This may not qualify as a shock. Accountability has been mostly A.W.O.L. in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. A handful of state attorneys general became so troubled by the direction this deal was taking that they dropped out of the talks. Officials from Delaware, New York, Massachusetts and Nevada feared that the settlement would preclude further investigations, and would wind up being a gift to the banks.

It looks as if they were right to worry. As things stand, the settlement, said to total about $25 billion, would cost banks very little in actual cash — $3.5 billion to $5 billion. A dozen or so financial companies would contribute that money.

The rest — an estimated $20 billion — would consist of credits to banks that agree to reduce a predetermined dollar amount of principal owed on mortgages that they own or service for private investors. How many credits would accrue to a bank is unclear, but the amount would be based on a formula agreed to by the negotiators. A bank that writes down a second lien, for example, would receive a different amount from one that writes down a first lien.

Sure, $5 billion in cash isn’t nada. But government officials have held out this deal as the penalty for years of what they saw as unlawful foreclosure practices. A few billion spread among a dozen or so institutions wouldn’t seem a heavy burden, especially when considering the harm that was done.

// posted by montag @ 12:57 PM 0 Comments

The plans, under discussion for months, gained new urgency after President Obama’s announcement this month that the last American soldiers would be brought home from Iraq by the end of December. Ending the eight-year war was a central pledge of his presidential campaign, but American military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake.

After unsuccessfully pressing both the Obama administration and the Iraqi government to permit as many as 20,000 American troops to remain in Iraq beyond 2011, the Pentagon is now drawing up an alternative.

In addition to negotiations over maintaining a ground combat presence in Kuwait, the United States is considering sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.

We will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region, which is proof of our ongoing commitment to Iraq and to the future of that region, which holds such promise and should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy.

// posted by montag @ 12:15 PM 2 Comments

“Governor, here’s what I don’t get about that 2.5 million jobs: 2.5 million jobs is terrible,” Wallace said to Perry Sunday. “That wouldn’t be nearly enough for the first four years of the administration. We looked at it. We would roughly need six million jobs in the first four years just to stay even with population growth. So, 2.5 million jobs, the unemployment rate would increase. Jimmy Carter created 10.5 million jobs in his first four years.”

“Listen, I think it’s amazing when we’ve lost 2.5 million jobs in this country and there is another state that is juxtaposition to that, that created a million jobs, and for people to go, ‘Well, that’s not enough,’” Perry replied. “Let me tell you, any jobs at this particular point in time helps.”

“But how do you answer this question?” Wallace pressed. “Two and a half million jobs doesn’t even keep pace with population growth. Our unemployment rate would increase under this goal.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Perry insisted. “It’s just absolutely false on its face. Americans will get back to work.”

// posted by montag @ 12:06 PM 0 Comments

California Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier has announced that for a week, she will attempt to live on the same amount of money allotted to recipients of SNAP, the California food stamp program. San Francisco’s Channel 7 news reports that SNAP (which stands for Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) provided $136.75 per person each month during fiscal year 2010, which breaks down to a food budget of $4.50 per day.

Rep. Speier, who represents San Francisco and San Mateo, is adopting a food budget shared by some 3.6 million Californians who rely on SNAP for food assistance. SNAP funds can be used to pay for breads and cereals, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, milk, fruits and vegetables, but not items like alcohol, cigarettes, or other tobacco products.

// posted by montag @ 11:40 AM 0 Comments

A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a van into an armored NATO bus Saturday, killing 13 American troops and four Afghans on a busy street in Kabul in the deadliest attack on coalition forces in more than two months and a major setback for the U.S.-led coalition as it begins to draw down combat troops.

The explosion sparked a fireball and littered the street with shrapnel and twisted metal hulks. Heavy black smoke poured from burning wreckage at the site along the four-lane highway frequently used by foreign military trainers in the southwestern section of the city.

Underscoring the difficulties ahead, the brazen assault occurred on the same day that top NATO and Afghan officials were meeting elsewhere in Kabul to discuss the second phase of shifting security responsibilities to Afghan forces in all or part of 17 of the country's 34 provinces.

It also was a blow to efforts by the U.S. and President Hamid Karzai to forge peace with the fundamentalist Taliban movement as NATO plans to withdraw all its combat troops from the country by the end of 2014, with support for the costly war reaching new lows in the West.

// posted by montag @ 12:36 PM 1 Comments

Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran who was seriously injured by a police projectile during a protest in Oakland, has regained consciousness but "cannot talk".

Olsen, 24, is communicating with friends and family at his bedside by writing notes, but his injury is believed to have damaged the speech centre of his brain, according to Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq.

Olsen is believed to have been injured by a police projectile. He was hit in the forehead in downtown Oakland on Tuesday evening, after marching with fellow demonstrators to protest the closure of an Occupy Oakland camp in the city.

"He cannot talk right now, and that is because the fracture is right on the speech center of his brain," said Shannon. "However, they are expecting he will get that back."

Shannon added that Olsen's "spelling is not near what it used to be".

"The doctors expect that he will have a full recovery," said Shannon, who is due to visit Olsen on Friday afternoon. "However, it is going to be a long road ahead for him."

// posted by montag @ 11:50 AM 0 Comments

Did you notice that ExxonMobil’s profits rose 41 percent in the last quarter to $10.33 billion? A year ago, its third quarter profit was $7.35 billion.

ExxonMobil is doing just fine, and that is good. It employs thousands of hardworking people, and I’m happy about that.

But these impressive profits also raise an important question: Why should hardworking American taxpayers continue to subsidize ExxonMobil? Like other oil giants, ExxonMobil continues to get hefty tax benefits.

// posted by montag @ 7:31 PM 0 Comments

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// posted by montag @ 7:24 PM 0 Comments

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// posted by montag @ 7:19 PM 0 Comments

By the time the candidate arrived for the meeting – a prosaic organizing session for volunteers -- there were nearly 300 people crammed into Local 7 to catch a glimpse of her. When she took the stage, a sea of cameras and smartphones rose, as if at a rock concert.

The source of the ardor is no mystery: Warren’s unapologetic populism and her fervent belief that corporations should be held to account for the economic collapse. Part Pat Moynihan, part Erin Brockovich, she has revived the energy of the left in a way no other Democrat has, including President Obama.

“We live in an America that has hammered, chipped and squeezed the middle class,” she told a crowd in Newton, Mass., while the government “has said to large corporations that you don’t have to pay anything in taxes.”

“Elizabeth,” a woman in the crowd gushed during the question time, “I’m so excited.” But what, the woman asked, would Warren do about the dysfunctional Congress?

Warren recounted her work creating Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in defiance of “the largest lobbying force ever assembled on the face of the earth.” Instead of heeding advice to settle for “something at the margins,” Warren said, “my view on this was [to] get out there and fight for it.”

The questioner could not contain herself. “Yes!” she cried out.

// posted by montag @ 1:09 PM 0 Comments

The British monarch's first-born child, whether a girl or a boy, will ascend the throne under new succession rules approved Friday by Commonwealth nations, reversing centuries of tradition.

Commonwealth national leaders also agreed at a summit in the western Australian city of Perth to lift a ban on monarchs marrying Roman Catholics, British Prime Minister David Cameron said.

// posted by montag @ 12:50 PM 0 Comments

Criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6 percent of global gross domestic product in 2009, according to a recent UN report -- a sum totaling more than $2 trillion. More than 2.5 percent of global GDP was likely laundered through the financial system, the report finds.

Crime proceeds are higher in developing countries as measured by a proportion of gross domestic product, the report found. And despite efforts worldwide to counter money laundering, authorities are coming up short; less than 1 percent of money laundered through the financial system is ever seized and frozen.

// posted by montag @ 12:30 PM 0 Comments

An Iraq war veteran badly wounded in clashes between protesters and police on the streets of Oakland was awake and lucid, hospital officials and family members said on Thursday.

Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old former U.S. Marine struck in the head during Wall Street protests on Tuesday night, had been upgraded from critical to fair condition overnight...

Olsen “responded with a very large smile” to a visit from his parents, Highland General Hospital spokesman Warren Lyons said at a late-afternoon press conference on Thursday.

“He’s able to understand what’s going on. He’s able to write and hear but has a little difficulty with his speech,” Lyons said.

// posted by montag @ 11:54 AM 0 Comments

If you’ve been reading accounts of the financial crisis, or watching film treatments like the excellent “Inside Job,” you know that Iceland was supposed to be the ultimate economic disaster story: its runaway bankers saddled the country with huge debts and seemed to leave the nation in a hopeless position.

But a funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.

So how’s it going? Iceland hasn’t avoided major economic damage or a significant drop in living standards. But it has managed to limit both the rise in unemployment and the suffering of the most vulnerable; the social safety net has survived intact, as has the basic decency of its society. “Things could have been a lot worse” may not be the most stirring of slogans, but when everyone expected utter disaster, it amounts to a policy triumph.

// posted by montag @ 12:02 AM 0 Comments

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// posted by montag @ 7:10 PM 0 Comments

The Delaware attorney general’s office sued Merscorp Inc., which runs a national mortgage registry used by banks, saying its practices are deceptive and hide information from borrowers.

The MERS database, which tracks ownership interests in mortgages, obscures information from borrowers and impeded their ability to fight foreclosures, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden said in a complaint filed today.

“MERS engaged and continues to engage in a range of deceptive trade practices that sow confusion among consumers, investors and other stakeholders in the mortgage finance system, damage the integrity of Delaware’s land records, and lead to unlawful foreclosure practices,” Biden said.

MERS tracks servicing rights and ownership interests in mortgage loans on its electronic registry, allowing banks to buy and sell loans without recording transfers with individual counties. MERS acts as the lender’s nominee and remains the mortgagee of record as long as the note promising repayment is owned by a MERS member.

Banks and investors have the true economic interests in the loans, and the ownership of the mortgage notes is purportedly recorded in the MERS registry, to which the public has limited access, according to Biden. Biden said the system is “frequently inaccurate.”

// posted by montag @ 1:50 PM 0 Comments

Taliban fighters launched separate attacks on two U.S. bases in Kandahar on Thursday, exploding a car bomb outside a military outpost west of the city and firing rocket-propelled grenades at another garrison downtown, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

The violence, which killed at least three Afghans and wounded six Americans, indicated that the Taliban still has the ambition and ability to take on the symbols of American power in southern Afghanistan. U.S. officials have been encouraged by months of declining violence in Kandahar City and some of the surrounding farmlands, but the insurgents have carried out high-profile assassinations in recent months that have tested the emerging stability.

// posted by montag @ 1:22 PM 0 Comments

If Herman Cain feels his management skills are up to any challenge, some of his former staff members think he should have started with the disorder in his own campaign.

Mr. Cain has hardly shown up in New Hampshire and Iowa, they said, spending the bulk of his time on a book tour through the South. He occasionally mishandled potential big donors or ignored real voters. His campaign churned through the small staff; last week, his campaign announced the appointment of the veteran campaigner Steve Grubbs, his third Iowa leader in four months.

Even bumper stickers have been hard to come by.

And then there was that e-mail to the staff about traveling in a car with Mr. Cain: “Do not speak to him unless you are spoken to,” the memo said.

// posted by montag @ 1:13 PM 0 Comments

One would be hard pressed to find any bill that could sail through Congress right now. But one measure with all the right ingredients for quick passage -- overwhelming support, no costs and a chance to honor the victim of a tragedy that hits close to home for everyone on Capitol Hill -- has hit a wall for no apparent reason.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) has for months been pushing a resolution to name a room in the Capitol complex after Gabe Zimmerman, the congressional aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) who was killed, along with five others, in the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson that wounded Giffords. The measure has more than 350 cosponsors, an almost unheard of level of support in an otherwise hyper-partisan environment, and wouldn't cost taxpayers anything, save the pocket change necessary to hang a nameplate outside a room.

Yet the bill is not moving -- and nobody, including the people in charge of setting the schedule for House votes, seems to know why.

// posted by montag @ 12:26 PM 0 Comments

The US Marine Corps said Wednesday it will close a prison in Virginia that came under criticism for its treatment of a soldier accused of passing secrets to WikiLeaks.

The commander of the Marine base at Quantico has recommended “that the pre-trial confinement facility be closed” as a cost-saving measure, the Marine Corps said in a statement...

Major Stewart Upton told AFP that “the recommendation was made after balancing the cost of continued operation against the convenience of having such a facility aboard MCB (Marine Corps Base) Quantico, the low number of detainees, personnel savings, base security, and anti-terrorism and force protection interests.”

// posted by montag @ 12:04 PM 0 Comments

Greetings…it's your favorite dead-itorial writer, Paul "Bearer" Krugman, here to talk to you again about some rather, shall we say, chilling developments in the national economy. Ah, yes, it is a very dark and stormy night indeed for our financial system, dear readers, the kind of night that sends shivers up one's spine and sends the national unemployment rate soaring to nearly 10 percent. So curl up under your covers, and keep the candlelight close, because I will now tell a tale of economic woe so terrifying it may just make your hair stand on end.

Remember when the economy was BOO-ming? When predatory lenders were sucking the blood of homeowners and confidence in the market was ghoulishly high? Little did we know about the creeping, malevolent spirit of fiduciary calamity that lurked in the dark shadows, ready to pop out and gut the $230 billion federal surplus reported by the Congressional Budget Office for fiscal year 2000. What poor, damned fools we were over the next decade to let our national balance sheet slip so far into the deep, bloody red! Now it seems our economy has been buried alive, and the day may never come when it will once again rise from the dead.

Or should I say rise from the debt?

// posted by montag @ 10:30 PM 0 Comments

The nation’s richest citizens almost tripled their incomes between 1979 and 2007 as the inequality of the distribution of wealth in the United States expanded, according to a new government report.

The top 1 percent saw their inflation-adjusted, after-tax earnings grow by 275 percent during that period, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Those at the other end of the spectrum, whose earnings put them in the bottom 20 percent of incomes, saw an 18 percent increase. The average increase for all households was 62 percent, the report said.

// posted by montag @ 1:02 PM 0 Comments

Someone has to lose money. We’re a state-owned corporation, and it’s our social responsibility.

// posted by montag @ 12:46 PM 0 Comments

Lobbying to smooth the approval process has intensified over the last year as Congress prepares to reauthorize the law that requires device producers to pay fees to the F.D.A., fees that are used to pay the agency’s operating costs. Lawmakers have an opportunity to alter the agency’s regulatory procedures for the first time since the law last came up for renewal in 2007.

An industry lobbying group, the National Venture Capital Association, has intensified its focus on device regulation. In 2010, the association, which lobbies on many issues, spent more than $2.5 million, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. About $350,000 of that was related to devices, drugs and health care, a figure that is expected to increase to $450,000 this year, said an association spokeswoman, Emily Mendell.

// posted by montag @ 12:28 PM 0 Comments

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// posted by montag @ 7:07 PM 0 Comments

The poor population in America’s suburbs — long a symbol of a stable and prosperous American middle class — rose by more than half after 2000, forcing suburban communities across the country to re-evaluate their identities and how they serve their populations.

The increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities. The recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010.

“The growth has been stunning,” said Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, who conducted the analysis of census data. “For the first time, more than half of the metropolitan poor live in suburban areas.”

// posted by montag @ 11:14 AM 2 Comments

The war in Iraq was a crime based on fraud. It was the first bunco scheme that qualifies as an international war crime. It was an unnecessary war of aggression, sold by thieves and con-men to a too-credulous American public that had been told for the previous 30 years that all politics was a shuck, and that the very principles of self-government made you a fool and a rube. The bloody irony was that internalizing those things made us the biggest suckers of all.

// posted by montag @ 12:22 AM 1 Comments

In a 37-page complaint on behalf of fifteen plaintiffs, the ACLU and the ACLU of Tennessee allege that on October 20, 2010, ICE agents kicked in the door of several apartments in a complex in Nashville, TN without a warrant, held the tenants at gunpoint, shouted racial slurs and made several arrests.

In one instance, the agents were allegedly knocking on an apartment door, shouting “Police! Police!” in English and Spanish, but when no one answered the agents repeatedly slammed against the door and tried to force it open. “Without a search warrant, the existence of exigent circumstances, or consent to do so, several [ICE] Agents forced their entry through the apartment’s hallway door,” the complaint alleges.

Four of the plaintiffs had gathered in one of the bedrooms of the apartment, and said that one of the agents forced open the door and pointed his gun at them. “We have four here! Four Mexican sons of bitches!”

In one apartment, when the agents were asked for a warrant, one reportedly replied “we don’t need a warrant, we’re ICE,” gestured to his crotch, and added: “The warrant is coming out of my balls.”

// posted by montag @ 4:55 PM 0 Comments

Sen. John McCain said Sunday that military action to protect civilians in Syria might be considered now that NATO’s air campaign in Libya is ending.

However, President Obama’s administration has made clear it has no appetite for military intervention in Syria — a close ally of Iran that sits on Israel’s border — and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton noted Sunday that the Syrian opposition has not called for such action against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

“Now that military operations in Libya are ending, there will be renewed focus on what practical military operations might be considered to protect civilian lives in Syria,” McCain said at the World Economic Forum in Jordan. “The Assad regime should not consider that it can get away with mass murder. Gadhafi made that mistake and it cost him everything,” he added, referring to ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi who was captured and killed last week by fighters loyal to the new government.

“Iran’s rulers would be wise to heed similar counsel,” McCain said.

// posted by montag @ 1:34 PM 0 Comments

Criticism of “activist judges” and of particular Supreme Court decisions has long been a staple of political campaigns. But the new attacks, coming from most of the Republican candidates, are raising broader questions about how the legal system might be reshaped if one of them is elected to the White House next year.

The complaints are in line with the candidates’ general opposition to federal authority. Like the elected branches of the federal government, they say, the federal judiciary has become too powerful and intrusive.

“If you want to send a signal to judges that we are tired of them feeling that these elites in society can dictate to us,” Mr. Santorum said at an event in Ames, Iowa, “then you have to fight back. I will fight back.”

// posted by montag @ 1:00 PM 0 Comments

A Birmingham Prison officer's set of keys has gone missing and now every lock at one of the country's largest prisons must now be replaced, a union official said Friday.

Terry Fullerton of the Prison Officers Association said he's been told the set went missing a couple days ago and an investigation is under way.

"Nobody knows how the keys have gone missing," he told The Associated Press. "They were there at one particular key check, then they were gone."

// posted by montag @ 12:34 PM 0 Comments

I think what you see here, Geraldo, is a large amount of people that have been deeply and profoundly fucked by the system.

// posted by montag @ 11:50 AM 0 Comments

One of the big problems with the ‘counter-insurgency’ program of Gen. David Petraeus in Afghanistan is that counter-insurgency requires a reliable local partner. But the US only has Hamid Karzai, who stole his last presidential election and who micro-manages Kabul while letting much of the country go to hell, and he has now pledged a defense pact with Pakistan against his US ally.

It makes a person angry about the idea of US troops losing their lives to defend and stand up the Karzai government.

// posted by montag @ 4:46 PM 0 Comments

We’re still in Germany, we’re still in Japan.

// posted by montag @ 11:37 AM 1 Comments

On Oct. 6, Occupy Wall Street inspired some little-noticed sympathy in Zhengzhou, a city in central China's Henan province, when hundreds of pensioners and Communist Party members gathered to express their solidarity with the movement.

Photos show a small group of demonstrators, many wearing red armbands, holding a banner that reads, "Resolutely support the American People’s mighty Wall Street Revolution."

Within the last few days, state-owned media have begun to significantly downplay the movement.

There is currently no mention of Occupy Wall Street on the website of the New China News Agency, the state news service.

"I think the government wants to keep its distance from this event. You can take a look at CCTV; reports on this event have been scarce," said Jin Canrong, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, referring to the state broadcaster.

Censors have also begun restricting discussion of Occupy Wall Street on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service similar to Twitter, but have stopped short of blocking it outright.

// posted by montag @ 11:46 AM 0 Comments

Eric Cantor’s office says the GOP Majority Leader cancelled an economic speech at the University of Pennsylvania because the school reneged on a deal to keep the audience restricted to students and faculty. But UPenn says the event, which was the target of planned protests, was always open to the public.

The Wharton speaker series is typically open to the general public, and that is how the event with Majority Leader Cantor was billed. We very much regret if there was any misunderstanding with the Majority Leader’s office on the staging of his presentation.”

// posted by montag @ 4:50 PM 1 Comments

Thousands of other inmates in the Texas prison system have been eating fewer meals since April after officials stopped serving lunch on the weekends in some prisons as a way to cut food-service costs. About 23,000 inmates in 36 prisons are eating two meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays instead of three. A meal the system calls brunch is usually served between 5 and 7 a.m., followed by dinner between 4 and 6:30 p.m.

The meal reductions are part of an effort to trim $2.8 million in food-related expenses from the 2011 fiscal year budget of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the state prison agency. Other cuts the agency has made to its food service include replacing carton milk with powdered milk and using sliced bread instead of hamburger and hot dog buns...

Ohio and Arizona serve two meals per day on the weekends to reduce food-service costs. Georgia serves two meals per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, though inmates on work details receive a third meal.

// posted by montag @ 12:55 PM 0 Comments

Rubio has been claiming for years that his family joined an exodus from Cuba in 1959 after the revolution led by Fidel Castro. In a 2010 campaign ad, for instance, he referred to himself as the “son of Cuban exiles.”

But naturalization papers and other official records show that his parents arrived in the United States in 1956, well before Castro took power. And they returned to Cuba several times after Castro declared the island a socialist state.

His parents waited 15 years to seek naturalization.

// posted by montag @ 11:49 AM 0 Comments

After trying to mollify its critics in recent years by offering better health care benefits to its employees, Wal-Mart is substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff.

Citing rising costs, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, told its employees this week that all future part-time employees who work less than 24 hours a week on average will no longer qualify for any of the company’s health insurance plans.

In addition, any new employees who average 24 hours to 33 hours a week will no longer be able to include a spouse as part of their health care plan, although children can still be covered.

This is a big shift from just a few years ago when Wal-Mart expanded coverage for employees and their families after facing criticism because so many of its 1.4 million workers could not afford or did not qualify for coverage — rendering many of them eligible for Medicaid.

// posted by montag @ 12:04 AM 0 Comments

And over the past 10 years, as natural gas has become increasingly important to the nation’s energy future, Americans have signed more than a million of these leases.

But bankers and real estate executives, especially in New York, are starting to pay closer attention to the fine print and are raising provocative questions, such as: What happens if they lend money for a piece of land that ends up storing the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool filled with toxic wastewater from drilling?

Fearful of just such a possibility, some banks have become reluctant to grant mortgages on properties leased for gas drilling. At least eight local or national banks do not typically issue mortgages on such properties, lenders say.

A credit union in upstate New York has started requiring gas companies to promise to pay for any damage caused by drilling that may lead to devaluation of its mortgaged properties. Another will make home loans only to people who expressly agree not to sign a gas lease as long as they hold the mortgage.

More generally, bankers are concerned because many leases allow drillers to operate in ways that violate rules in landowners’ mortgages. These rules also require homeowners to get permission from their mortgage banker before they sign a lease — a fact that most landowners do not know.

// posted by montag @ 12:18 PM 0 Comments

This was the old John McCain, who, you may remember, was kidnapped by space aliens who specialized in manufacturing cranky-old-men androids.

// posted by montag @ 12:08 PM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:18 PM 0 Comments

The fact that “No” on Issue 2 was the pro-union side was bound to lead to a little confusion in the early going, but that’s been sorted out. Ohioans are strongly behind worker rights, and they are poised to pummel John Kasich’s plan in a couple weeks. This is why Kasich begged labor to come to the bargaining table a couple months ago – interesting that the man who wanted to eliminate collective bargaining rights suddenly wanted to bargain – to work out a deal on SB 5. He knew that, even with the polls trending slightly in his direction, that he would not be able to convince the public that police and fire fighters and public employees should be denied their rights.

PPP has Kasich at 37% approval less than a year into his term, by the way, and he loses a hypothetical rematch with former Gov. Ted Strickland by 54-40.

// posted by montag @ 4:45 PM 0 Comments

The mayor of the Ohio town where several wild animals are still on the loose said on Wednesday that their owner had set them free before killing himself on Tuesday evening.

In a phone interview on CNN, the mayor of Zanesville, Butch Zwelling, said that the animals included lions, tigers, bears and wolves. He identified the owner as Terry Thompson.

Large animals were running free outside of their cages when the police arrived as night fell on Tuesday, the local sheriff, Matt Lutz of Muskingum County, said during a Wednesday morning news conference. “We had animals outside that fenced area on the road,” Sheriff Lutz said, and officers shot them “at close range” with their sidearms. “We cannot have animals running loose in this county,” he said.

As darkness fell, the police were concerned that the animals would disperse, and Sheriff Lutz said he made the call to shoot them with live ammunition. “We did not have any tranquilizer darts with us; we don’t carry them,” he said, adding that they later received darts for use around residential subdivisions.

Sheriff Lutz said that the authorities had killed 43 or 44 animals of roughly 50 believed to be on the loose. One cat was hit on the interstate, he said.

// posted by montag @ 11:49 AM 0 Comments

The United States has a confidence problem: a nation long defined by irrational exuberance has turned gloomy about tomorrow. Consumers are holding back, businesses are suffering and the economy is barely growing.

There are good reasons for gloom — incomes have declined, many people cannot find jobs, few trust the government to make things better — but as Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, noted earlier this year, those problems are not sufficient to explain the depth of the funk.

That has led a growing number of economists to argue that the collapse of housing prices, a defining feature of this downturn, is also a critical and underappreciated impediment to recovery. Americans have lost a vast amount of wealth, and they have lost faith in housing as an investment. They lack money, and they lack the confidence that they will have more money tomorrow.

// posted by montag @ 11:34 AM 0 Comments

Big financial speculators will be limited in their ability to manipulate the price of oil and 27 other commodities under a set of new rules adopted Tuesday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Yet even as the CFTC approved the new rules to rein in excessive speculation on a 3-2 party-line vote — with Democratic commissioners in the majority — some financial-market analysts and lawmakers in Congress complained that the new rules fall short of what's needed to curb speculation effectively.

"This rule begins the process of doing that, but much more needs to be done," Dennis Kelleher, president of the advocacy group Better Markets, said in a statement. "Speculators' casino mentality brings them big profits but hurts everyone else from the kitchen table to the gas pump."...Under the new rules, speculative limits for next-month contracts would be set at 25 percent of the deliverable supply. This is in line with historical practices. It now also would apply to the futures market.

For all products except natural gas, the CFTC has opted for a 1-to-1 ratio, where traders are subject to the same limits in the futures market as in the physical markets. This is a narrowing of past rules.

For natural gas, speculative contracts could exceed ones in the physical markets by a 5-to-1 ratio, something that didn't sit well with consumer groups who fear it will lead to higher home-heating costs.

The new rules cannot take effect until 60 days after the CFTC defines what qualifies as a "swap," a definition that may take until December or January. That's a contract that locks in a bet between two private parties in the vast so-called dark markets that until last year were completely unregulated.

// posted by montag @ 12:01 AM 1 Comments