The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Crowd-Fundraising For Causes Adds Up Fast
Phi Beta Iota: Excellent story, with $200,641 being the top funded project so far. Imagine the day when the public refuses to pay taxes but contributes to what it really wants, cutting out the carpet-bagging intermediaries. Missile defense and most Pentagon pork would NOT get funded by an informed engaged public. The game has changed.
Online:
http://spot.us (reporting)
http://pledgie.com
Co-Founder All Day Buffet, The Feast, TBD and Lovely Day
Collaboration is never easy, particularly when dealing with complex issues like development. So imagine an attempt at galvanizing an entire continent to collaborate for societal change and innovation and the task seems daunting, difficult, if not impossible. Well turns out it's always worth trying and that the results can be greatly inspiring.
I'm talking about The Open Innovation Africa Summit (OIAS) I recently attended, hosted by Nokia, The World Bank and Cap Gemini. Over the course of three days, 200-plus leaders and innovators convened in the Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa to share, connect, and take action toward fostering innovation in and from Africa.
. . . . . . .
Facilitated by Cap Gemini's exploratory process, this remarkable body of people broke out into working groups to focus and dive deep into four specific areas:
It is becoming increasingly clear that the United States passed through some kind of fork in the economic road in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and has now landed on onto an evolutionary pathway toward some kind of decline. The questions of what interplay of chance and necessity created the turning movement in the pathway of socio-economic evolution, how enduring that new pathway is, or where it is leading no one can answer; but with the advantage of hindsight, it is becoming empirically clear that most of the adverse economic trends of de-industrialization, deregulation, increasing debt, a collapsing trade balance, the stagnation of real wages, rising income inequality, etc., took a systemic turn for the worse during the five years between 1977 and 1982.
Attached are two reports (in pdf format) on one aspect of anatomy of decline: rising income inequality. They build on the seminal research (which can be downloaded here and here) of Professors Emanuel Saez's (Univ. of Calif. Berkeley) and Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics), which quantified and analyzed the size, nature, and effects of rising income inequality in the United States.
The first report has been prepared by the democratic majority staff of the Joint Economic Committee in Congress and therefore may be discounted by some as partisan — to those readers inclined to dismiss this report, I suggest that they compare its results of the Saez-Piketty analyses before jumping to any conclusions.
The second report is a non partisan analysis produced by Frank Levy and Peter Temlin of Industrial Performance Center of MIT.
Reference A: The Senate Report (2010)
Reference B: The MIT Report (2007)
See Also:
Journal: Financial Crime versus Financial Sense
Journal: Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction All Lies?
Journal: Rug Mechants & Tax Traps
Reference: Wall Street Does NOT Produce Value
Journal: Deficit Reduction Plan Hoses Everyone BUT the 10% at the Top
Financial Crime
December 7, 2010
From the Deficit Panic to the TARP Financial Collapse
By DEAN BAKER, Counterpunch
In short, the horror story collapses as soon as anyone gives it any serious thought. The Wall Street gang can hardly be faulted for trying cheap scare tactics for pushing its agenda; after all it worked so brilliantly with the TARP two years ago. At the time the plot line was that unless we immediately gave all our money to the Wall Street banks, with no questions asked, then the whole economy would collapse.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy and False Profits: Recoverying From the Bubble Economy.
Financial Sense
Joseph Stiglitz outlines a very sensible approach for placing the United States on a pathway toward correcting the problems paralyzing our political economy. Of course, his ideas will never be seriously considered by the let-them-eat-cake oligarchs now running Versailles on the Potomac, because to put this plan into action, someone must smash the Hall of Mirrors that is distorting what passes for reality in our collective OODA Loops. CS<
A five-part plan to cut the deficit, narrow inequality, and strengthen the economy—and why special interests would block it.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz, Slate, Monday, Dec. 6, 2010
Technically, reducing a deficit is a straightforward matter: One must either cut expenditures or raise taxes. It is already clear, however, that the deficit-reduction agenda, at least in the United States, goes further: It is an attempt to weaken social protections, reduce the progressivity of the tax system, and shrink the role and size of government— all while leaving established interests, like the military-industrial complex, as little-affected as possible.
Precis: history includes massive increase in defense expenditures, growth in inequality, underinvestment in public sector including infrastructure, and growth in corporate welfare. Remediation demands increased spending on high-return public investments, cut in military expenditures “not just funding for the fruitless wars, but also for the weapons that don't work against enemies that don't exist;” eliminate corporate welfare; create a fairer and more efficient tax system; 5% increase in taxes actually paod (focus on top 1%).
This article comes from Project Syndicate
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University. The paperback version of his latest book, Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy, with a new afterword, was published in October.
Phi Beta Iota: The Deficit Commission has not produced any supporting documentation. The public intelligence available, of which the above is a small sample, is overwhelming in suggesting that the deficit commission is a criminal fraud being perpetuated on the American public. Wall Street and the two-party tyranny appear to believe that the public is both stupid and permanently inert, and that they can get away with this. Time will tell. We condemn it–and note that Joseph Stiglitz was appointed Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Virtual Cabinet at Huffington Post. We trust him.
Journal: Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction All Lies?
Journal: Rug Mechants & Tax Traps
Journal: Navy Sinks, Congress Throws Money
PTC'11: Connecting Life 24/7
will examine how telecom is changed and challenged by always-connected users with new requirements and preferences, the transformation of the value chain, changing regulatory concerns, and new demands for high-performance infrastructure.
| Carrier Transformation | |
| Ihab Tarazi, VP, Global Network Planning, Verizon, USA | |
| Joe Weinman, Communications, Media, and Entertainment, Hewlett-Packard (HP), USA | |
| A Conversation with… | |
| Vincent Paquet, Product Manager, Google Voice, Google, Inc., USA | |
| A Conversation with… | |
| Mark Dankberg, CEO & Chairman, ViaSat, Inc., USA | |
| Data Centers | |
| Jarrett Appleby, CMO, Equinix, USA | |
| A Conversation with… |
|
| Scott Puopolo, VP, Global Service Provider Practice, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), Cisco, USA | |
| Mobile Impacts | |
| Vivek Jhamb, CEO – Carrier Business, Vodafone, India | |
| Suresh Sidhu, Chief Officer, Enterprise & Global, Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka | |
| Shaping the Telecommunications Future: National Broadband Policies | |
| Blair Levin, Communications & Society Fellow, Aspen Institute, USA | |
| Masaaki Sakamaki, President, MCS Advisory LLC, Japan | |
| Hongren Zhou, Executive Vice Chairman, Advisory Committee for State Informatization, People’s Republic of China | |
| Featured Session 1: Wholesale | Featured Session 2: Satellite Broadband: The Asian Perspective | ||
| Marc Halbfinger, CEO, PCCW Global, Hong Kong SAR, China | Adrian Ballintine, CEO, NewSat, Australia | ||
| Stephen Ho, CEO, CPCNet, Hong Kong SAR, China | Nongluck Phinainitisart, President, Thaicom, Thailand | ||
| Will Hughs, President & CEO, Telstra International – Americas, USA | Mark Rigolle, CEO, O3b, USA | ||
| Neil Montefiore, CEO, StarHub Ltd., Singapore | William Wade, CEO, AsiaSat, Hong Kong SAR, China | ||
Casting Light on “The Moment of Truth”
Where’s the evidence to back up the fear mongering? A challenge to the Fiscal Commission’s report.
James K. Galbraith
James K. Galbraith is General Editor of “Galbraith: The Affluent Society and Other Writings, 1952-1967,” just published by Library of America. He teaches at The University of Texas at Austin.
The report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, issued on December 1, 2010 by Chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is entitled “The Moment of Truth.” The words appear in block caps on the second page, weighty and portentous. They reappear in the first paragraph of the preamble:
EXTRACT: These sentences set the tone. The first is a bald-faced lie, as a Westerner like Senator Simpson knows perfectly well. To the contrary, we have often fallen under the sway of robber barons, water barons, oil barons, bison-killers, clear-cutters and strip-miners, hell-bent on maximum pillage in the shortest time. Only occasionally have a few heroes like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and Harold Ickes Sr. emerged to battle for the most precious physical elements of our heritage — and then only with limited success.
EXTRACT: Noticeably missing from the Commission’s plan are measures that would fall on the “leaders” themselves. The very richest pay cash for their houses. The commission would reduce, not increase, marginal income tax rates. There is no suggestion of a financial transactions tax.
EXTRACT: “…we spent the past eight months studying the same cold, hard facts. Together, we have reached these unavoidable conclusions. The problem is real. The solution will be painful. There is no easy way out. And Washington must lead.”
The reference to “studying” is suggestive. Are there any studies? White papers? Background analyses? Normally, one might expect a commission to produce some. In this case, it did not. The Commission’s web site makes no mention of any such thing.
Phi Beta Iota: The most important point in our view is that there are no studies to back up the hyperbole and the recommendations, at the same time that it is clear the deficit reductions are Of, By, and For Wall Street, not We the People. The White House and Congress continue to offer the public theater of the most absurd kind, lacking in all substance and assuredly not in the public interest.
Birds Are Becoming Gay From Mercury Pollution, According To New Study On White Ibis Breeding
A new study on white ibis breeding has discovered that mercury pollution is resulting in males of the species mating with each other.
Dr. Peter Frederick of the University of Florida embarked on the five-year research to determine what was significantly impacting the reproduction of the birds, but even he was stunned by the findings. “We knew mercury could depress their testosterone levels but we didn't expect this,” Frederick told the Telegraph.
According to Nature.com, coal-fired plants and gold mining are the main sources of global mercury pollution, though the burning of medical and municipal waste is likely the prime culprit in Florida, ingested by the wetlands birds through their food sources.
Phi Beta Iota: We did a double-take, and then checked to make sure this was not in the Comedy section. This helps emphasize what many books have been reviewing, which is the unanticipated and now unaddressed impact on humanity of the many toxins and pollutants that corporations are allowed to not just externalize, but include within their products or as a side effect of their services. “True costs” is the meme, and Transparency is the method.
See Also:
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Disease
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Environmental Degradation (Other than Emissions)
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Poisons, Toxicity, Trash, & True Cost
