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By Bill and Nancy Boyarsky
$101.88
By Nomi Prins
$13.22
$40
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Wikimedia Commons
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Want to know where the $350 billion banking bailout went and why it hasn’t done a bit of good? Read, and weep over, this little-noticed report from the congressional panel set up to monitor the Treasury Department’s distribution of our taxpayer funds.
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By David Sirota — Somehow, immediately releasing more bailout funds is being portrayed as a self-evident necessity. Amid Barack Obama’s paeans to “new politics,” we’re watching old-school paybacks from a politician who raised more Wall Street dough than any other.
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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It is unsurprising that a group like Human Rights Watch has condemned the Bush government for jettisoning the U.S. role as a defender of global human rights: Numerous examples—Guantanamo, gay marriage, Iraq, etc.—accentuate this failure.
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Department of Justice
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An internal investigation has found that Bradley Schlozman, a former high-ranking Justice Department official, hired and promoted conservative “right-thinking Americans” while making it clear that “adherents of Mao’s little red book need not apply” to work in his wing of the Justice Department. He also transferred an employee for allegedly using “ebonics.”
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By Marie Cocco — Peace is not at hand, at least not as Americans define it. Yet peace has been breaking out all over.
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cdc.gov
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While heart disease remains the No. 1 killer of people in the U.S., researchers have found that we can help explain a large part of these cases through one’s genetic makeup. In fact, one in five white people are believed to have the “blood pressure gene,” where the genetic variance that controls salt in the kidneys changes to affect individuals’ blood pressure.
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By David Sirota — With the release of three new reports, there’s no debate anymore about who was correct and who wasn’t concerning the economic collapse and the Wall Street bailout. The studies prove that progressive critics were right and the Washington ideologues and the pundits were wrong.
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A bipartisan report released by Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain blames former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials for interrogation abuses. Based on an 18-month investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the report determined that prisoner abuse “was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own,” as the administration has claimed.
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highereducation.org
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Because of its inexpensive community colleges, California was the only state to earn a passing grade in the affordability category of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education’s annual report. Just as the demand for quality education is expected to spike, too many students are priced out of college, the center found.
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Wikimedia Commons / Fastfission (altered)
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A month too late for Halloween, a congressionally mandated independent panel has come to this terrifying conclusion: “Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.” Boo!
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signonsandiego.com
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Maybe it was the past eight years, or maybe it was the past three months, but a new report by the U.S. intelligence community estimates that American global power is on the decline, and will be for the next two decades as upcoming powers like China and India gain greater international standing.
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Department of Homeland Security
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With nearly 62 million passengers having traveled through its terminals last year, Los Angeles International Airport is the world’s fifth-busiest. Thanks to lax security practices, it’s also embarrassingly vulnerable to cyber attack, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
Posted on Nov 13, 2008
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U.S. Navy / Petty Officer 3rd Class Josue L. Escobosa
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The Defense Business Board, an official oversight body appointed by the secretary of defense, has warned the president-elect that the Pentagon’s bloated budget ($512 billion this year, not including war costs) is “not sustainable.” An unprecedented spending spree since 9/11 has run head-on into a financial meltdown, and Barack Obama is now stuck in the middle.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon
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Since 2004, U.S. operatives have been crossing the borders of friends and foes alike in a secret global hunt for al-Qaida. According to a bombshell report in The New York Times, a dozen or so raids have been conducted in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere since Donald Rumsfeld issued a secret order with the backing of the president.
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AP photo / Al Grillo
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By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting —
When Sarah Palin brags about the self-reliance of her state, she doesn’t mention the mobile command communications vehicle, bought with federal dollars to help keep her home town of 7,028 safe from terrorism. Thanks in part to an anti-terrorism bonanza, Alaska is one of the greatest per-capita beneficiaries of federal funding among the 50 states.
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Flickr / Oop
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The chemical BPA is common in plastic products such as baby bottles and food containers, despite concerns among scientists and environmentalists about its safety. The FDA has defended BPA use and recently turned to an outside panel for backup. That group of scientists, however, ended up criticizing the agency’s guidelines.
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Flickr / Josh Thompson
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A new report from Pew suggests that this election has the potential to make 2000 look organized. With new voter ID laws, record turnout, wrongfully purged voter rolls, new machines and more, it could be a tense night, even if the outcome is decided early.
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By Joe Conason — For anyone who followed the story of how and why Sarah Palin fired her state’s public safety commissioner, last week’s release of a legislative investigation that found she had violated state ethics statutes was anticlimactic.
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Alaska state Rep. Les Gara and Megan Stapleton—who is a former Sarah Palin staffer, now part of the McCain-Palin campaign’s publicity team and a member of the “Palin Truth Squad”—exchange heated words in these clips filmed in Anchorage after the “Troopergate” report was released Friday.
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How well do we really know Sarah Palin? This MSNBC clip gives more details about the report, released Friday by a bipartisan committee in Alaska, that determined Governor Palin had dismissed her public safety commissioner partly because of a personal family matter.
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wikimedia commons / Samuel Blanc
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According to a new report, roughly a quarter of the world’s mammal species are at risk of extinction. Deforestation, loss of habitat and hunting are to blame for declining mammal populations around the world.
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Washington Post / Melina Mara
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Continuing investigation of the 2006 firings of nine federal prosecutors has uncovered new leads that directly involve White House staff and lawyers in the scandal. The unsurprising kicker is that Bush administration officials refuse to talk further about their role in the firings, and key documents have been redacted to a level “virtually worthless as an investigative tool.”
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By Eugene Robinson — A new internal report confirms our fears about the politicization of the Justice Department. That same contempt for government can be found in the current financial crisis as well as the meteoric rise of the former mayor of Wasilla.
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By Marie Cocco — It is worth pausing during these orchestrated partisan celebrations to look afresh at entitlements. There is no more recent evidence of their enduring value than the latest report from the Census Bureau on the number of Americans who are doing without health insurance.
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wikimedia.org
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China’s unceasing economic growth has always worried environmentalists, and a new report by the Center for Global Development may put those concerns on a new level. After increasing power-plant emissions by a third this year, China’s coal-based power sector is poised to be the most polluting in the world ... even worse than that of the United States.
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White House / Chris Greenberg
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Attorney General Michael Mukasey has said he will not prosecute his predecessor’s aides for politicizing the Justice Department. Mukasey said the officials’ violations were “disturbing,” but not crimes.
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After two years of investigation, a Rwandan commission has accused France of facilitating the 1994 genocide by training Hutu militias and providing support to the Hutu government. The commission also says French forces murdered and raped Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The French government has consistently denied involvement in the genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed, but said it would look at the new report.
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A congressional report has found that the Iraqi government will soon have a $79-billion surplus, thanks to the record price of oil. It’s a figure that will surely raise eyebrows as the U.S. shells out an additional $48 billion for reconstruction, but the situation, like all things involving billions and bombs, is a lot more complicated.
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flickr.com
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A government report released Friday signals worsening economic tides as the U.S. tries to navigate through its highest level of unemployment in four years. The seven-month-long trend of net job losses is likely to persist, with few signs of a turnaround on the horizon.
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By Ellen Goodman — Let me begin by raising a glass of champagne to the official closing of the math gap. It turns out that girls do not lack the math gene. Nor are they math-phobic. Nor is there any “intrinsic” difference—thank you, Larry Summers—between the abilities of girls and boys to succeed in the numbers business.
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AP photo / Lawrence Jackson
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Last year, something was declared rotten in the Department of Justice and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was sent packing amid a scandal over politicized hiring and firing practices within the DoJ. Now, an investigation has concluded that a top aide to Gonzales, Monica Goodling, was a key instrument of that abuse of power.
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AP photo / EyePress
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When Beijing was chosen to host the Olympics, the Chinese government pledged to make human rights improvements, but Amnesty International says the situation has actually gotten worse because of the coming games: “Specifically we’ve seen crackdowns on domestic human rights activists, media censorship and increased use of re-education through labor as a means to clean up Beijing and surrounding areas.”
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The conventional wisdom on certain subjects is so deeply rooted that no amount of evidence disturbs its hold. That’s how it is with those dreary predictions that young Americans just won’t vote.
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namtheun2.com
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The World Bank is being criticized for a persistent lack of environmental focus in an internal review of its lending activities. The new report rails against the environmental degradation caused by many bank-funded projects in poor countries that harm local communities in the name of “development.”
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The percentage of women in their prime earning years who work has gone down, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers cut across demographics, and have more to do with a sluggish economy and a lack of opportunity than a rekindled interest in child rearing. As one congressional economist told The New York Times, “A woman gets laid off and she stays home for six months with her kids. ... She doesn’t admit that she is staying home because she could not get another acceptable job.”
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news.bbc.co.uk
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The July 2nd rescue of French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and U.S. mercenaries employed by the Northrop Grumman Corp. was heralded as a dramatic victory over the anti-imperial FARC guerrilla forces in Colombia. The real story may be significantly less daring. The mainstream media’s heroic rescue narrative is being contradicted by claims that a $20-million ransom payment was made.
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msnbc.com
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An ongoing Swedish study has shown that 70-year-olds are more likely now to have sex—and women to have orgasms—than in any decade since the 1970s. Sixty-eight percent of married men and 56% of married women reported having sex after turning 70, an increase of about 15% in both cases.
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treehugger.com
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While environmentalists and opponents of foreign oil may have found common cause in the use of biofuels, a new, confidential World Bank report estimates that the recent increase in plant-based fuel production has actually contributed to a 75 percent rise in global food prices, sparking riots across the world and pushing millions beneath the poverty line.
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Flickr / Drama Queen
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Here’s another outrage that has stumbled out in the twilight of George W. Bush: Under the leadership of John Ashcroft and, especially, Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department illegally sought to hire conservative lawyers, according to a preliminary report from the department’s own inspector general.
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UNHCR / John Wreford
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A U.N. report Tuesday estimated the number of the world’s displaced refugees in 2007 at 11.4 million, a majority of which the U.N. says come from the U.S.-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Analysts also say the number of refugees threatens to grow even more due to new concerns such as climate change, environmental degradation and increasingly scarce resources.
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Every year about a million HIV patients globally are given potentially life-saving treatments, while about 2 1/2 times that number are infected. On top of that, the vast majority of HIV-positive people around the world don’t know they’re infected.
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Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the privatization of the military and the surge in defense spending since 9/11, individual Pentagon auditors now have to keep track of more than three times as much money as they did 10 years ago. Because of limited resources, the Defense Department inspector general revealed in a recent report, about half of the military’s $316 billion weapons budget went under the radar last year.
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A survey released Friday showed that U.S. consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest point since the “stagflation” of the early 1980s. According to the survey, lower-income households, citing rising food and fuel prices, were the main source of the drop in confidence.
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Flickr / openDemocracy
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According to a newly released State Department report, Pakistan experienced twice as many terrorist attacks against nonmilitary targets in 2007 than it did in 2006, killing 1,335 people. That kind of instability would be pretty frightening if Pakistan had dozens of nuclear weapons. Oh, wait a second, it does.
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By Amy Goodman — Food riots are erupting around the world. Behind the hunger, behind the riots, are so-called free-trade agreements, and the brutal emergency-loan agreements imposed on poor countries by financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund.
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Flickr / Kiwi NZ
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From the L.A. Times: “In what appears to be the latest symptom of the nation’s mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, insurers, law enforcement officials and state agencies nationwide report a jump in home and automobile fires in the last year believed to have been set by owners unable to pay their debts.”
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Bloomberg.com
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The International Monetary Fund, the darling lending institution of neoliberal capitalists, believes that the U.S.‘s current mortgage crisis is dragging down the world economy. The IMF is predicting at least a two-year global economic downturn, led by the U.S. credit crunch, that also has a gambling chance of turning into a “global recession.”
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By Marie Cocco — The latest plot twists are stunners, even as they unfold against the scandalous backdrop of the Bush administration’s sorry regulatory record.
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AP photo / Carol Phelps
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By Robert Scheer — A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II.
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By Ellen Goodman — At the end of two terms, a President McCain would be 80. Should voters care about that? The question is an important one that shouldn’t be avoided just because it’s uncomfortable.
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