March 13, 2013

Capitalism: Critiques and Alternatives....featuring Richard Wolff (audio link)

Very good show. Worth a listen.


Capitalism: Critiques and Alternatives

Updates on defeats for Walmart, recovery for the tiny minority, Qatar royalty buys, and European moves to limit exec pay and tax financial transactions. Analysis of capitalism’s history, its critics, and the alternatives they proposed. Discussion of workers’ cooperative in Wisconsin and an analysis of the difference between capitalist competition and competition among cooperatives.

Listen: http://www.democracyatwork.info/radio/2013/03/capitalism-critiques-and-alternatives/

March 12, 2013

London Crawling; Slow Tango in Paris

[font size="1"]Eurostar services have been cancelled due to the snow (Picture: PA)[/font]


All Eurostar train services between London and Paris have been cancelled today due to snow and freezing weather conditions.

Travellers at St Pancras station in London saying they need to get to Paris ‘urgently’ were told to come back tomorrow morning, when they will be handed numbered tickets depending on how early they arrive.


[font size="1"]Pedestrians walk on a snow-covered street in Cambrai, northern France. (Picture: Reuters)[/font]

The first 700 have been promised places on the first train to run, with others following on later services – all in batches of 700 passengers at a time.

Angry ticket-holders have bombarded the company’s Twitter accounts with questions and complaints, saying the firm was failing to provide enough help and information. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/12/snow-causes-chaos-for-travellers-on-eurostar-channel-tunnel-train-services-between-london-and-paris-3537230/

March 12, 2013

Dollars for Docs Mints a Millionaire (big bucks to shill for Big Pharma)

Dollars for Docs Mints a Millionaire

by Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein
ProPublica, March 11, 2013, 11 a.m.


Dr. Jon W. Draud, the medical director of psychiatric and addiction medicine at two Tennessee hospitals, pursues some eclectic passions. He’s bred sleek Basenji hunting dogs for show. And last summer, the Tennessee State Museum featured “African Art: The Collection of Jon Draud.”

But the Nashville psychiatrist is also notable for a professional pursuit: During the last four years, the 47-year-old Draud has earned more than $1 million for delivering promotional talks and consulting for seven drug companies.

By a wide margin, Draud’s earnings make him the best-paid speaker in ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database, which has been updated to include more than $2 billion in payments from 15 drugmakers for promotional speaking, research, consulting, travel, meals and related expenses from 2009 to 2012.

Payouts to hundreds of thousands physicians are now included.

Draud is not the only high earner: 21 other doctors have made more than $500,000 since 2009 giving talks and consulting for drugmakers, the database shows. And half of the top earners are from a single specialty: psychiatry. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.propublica.org/article/dollars-for-docs-mints-a-millionaire

March 12, 2013

Even less mobile phone competition on the way.....

(Bloomberg) Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE)’s proposal to combine its T-Mobile USA unit with smaller MetroPCS Communications Inc. (PCS) won approval from U.S. competition and telecommunications authorities.

Allowing the fourth- and fifth-largest U.S. wireless carriers to combine will benefit American consumers as the mobile market continues to strengthen, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said in an e-mailed statement today. Benefits include more high-speed wireless service, the agency said in an order.

The combination is unlikely to harm consumers, and may help T-Mobile become a stronger competitor, the Justice Department said in an e-mailed news release announcing it closed its investigation into the deal.

“The FCC’s approval marks another significant milestone in bringing our two companies together,” John Legere, president of T-Mobile, said in an e-mailed statement. “We look forward to completing the transaction.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-12/fcc-approves-merger-of-t-mobile-and-metropcs-agency-says.html

March 12, 2013

Illinois: 4 teens die after car plunges into creek: 'I don't know what to say'

from the Chicago Tribune:




Four students from Wilmington High School died when their car plunged into a creek in rural Will County, an official, an official said.

The overturned car containing the bodies of two boys and two girls, ages 15 to 17, was found in Forked Creek on Ballou Road west of Warner Bridge Road around 7:30 a.m., Will County Sheriff's spokesman Ken Kaupas said.

The area is between Wilmington and Peotone. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-crews-at-scene-of-car-in-water-in-will-county-20130312,0,5368665.story

March 12, 2013

Wendell Potter: Don't Fall for TV Ads on Medicare From an Insurance Industry Front Group

March 12th, 2013 12:02 PM

Don't Fall for TV Ads on Medicare From an Insurance Industry Front Group
By Wendell Potter


Facing government cuts to one of their cash cows -- private Medicare plans -- health insurance companies have launched a multi-pronged campaign, financed by customer premiums, to persuade Congress to keep the cuts from going into effect next month.

The industry's big PR and lobbying group, America's Health Insurance Plans, is deploying the tactics I described in Deadly Spin to scare seniors into believing that if the federal government stops overpaying insurers that offer Medicare Advantage plans (the private alternative to the traditional government-run Medicare program) seniors will "pay more, get less and lose choices."

"U.S. Health Insurers Launch TV War Over Medicare Advantage Cuts," read the headline of a Reuters story last week when AHIP's ads started running.

At issue is a 2.3 percent cut in payments to Medicare Advantage plans by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that are scheduled to go into effect on April 1. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/dont-fall-tv-ads-medicare-insurance-industry-front-group

March 12, 2013

Warming Atlantic Ocean may be causing changes in lobster growth cycle

from the Toronto Star:



Warming Atlantic Ocean may be causing changes in lobster growth cycle
Lobster fishing is set to start early on the East Coast this spring because of changes to lobsters’ growth cycle that scientists believe may be linked to the warming Atlantic Ocean.


[font size="1"]Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo
Lobsters are most marketable before they moult because their shells are hard and full of meat. When they moult, they are fragile and can’t be shipped long distances.[/font]

By: Denis Calnan
Canada, Published on Tue Mar 12 2013


Lobster season is set to start early on parts of the East Coast this spring because of changes to lobsters’ growth cycle that scientists believe may be linked to the warming Atlantic Ocean.

Four lobster areas in Nova Scotia are opening 10 days earlier this April because of early moulting — or shedding — of lobsters in recent years. Last year fishermen in Nova Scotia and Maine say lobsters were moulting several weeks before they normally do.

Opening dates for lobster fishing change from time to time according to specific areas, but to see so many change in one year is unusual.

Bob Bayer, a professor of animal and veterinary sciences and the director of the Lobster Institute in Maine, said he’s never seen anything like this, “and I’ve been watching this stuff for over 30 years.” .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/03/12/warming_atlantic_ocean_may_be_causing_changes_in_lobster_growth_cycle.html

March 12, 2013

John Brennan’s Heavy Baggage

from Consortium News:



John Brennan’s Heavy Baggage
March 11, 2013

Exclusive: After a messy confirmation — which asked new questions about drone assassinations and old questions about enhanced interrogations — John Brennan has taken over at CIA. But his past may not be so easily forgotten in a world looking for accountability, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern


John Brennan brings heavy baggage to his new job as CIA Director – legal as well as moral – arguably making it risky for him to travel to more than 150 countries that are party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

It must be hard for Brennan to recognize that he cannot land in Europe, for example, without fear of being arrested and arraigned for kidnapping (also known as “extraordinary rendition”) and torture (now antiseptically called “EIT” for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which, by the way, is a direct translation of verschaerfte Vernehmungright out of the Gestapo handbook).

For a freshly confirmed CIA Director it is de rigueur to pay an early call on European counterparts. I remember preparing a briefing book for that purpose just before a new CIA Director named George H. W. Bush took off for the UK, Germany and France in the early spring of 1976. Unfortunately for Brennan, there may be complications to enjoying April in Paris – like a possible knock on the door from a French prosecutor and the gendarmes.

Given Brennan’s role as a senior CIA official during President George W. Bush’s “dark side” days of waterboarding detainees, renditioning suspects to Mideast torture centers and making up intelligence to invade Iraq, Brennan’s advisers are sure to remind him that he may be in as much jeopardy of being arrested as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/11/john-brennans-heavy-baggage/

March 12, 2013

Universities Pile on Faculty Perks as Student Costs Grow

(Bloomberg) The University of Chicago paid James Madara $2.5 million in severance when he stepped down in 2009 as medical dean and hospital chief. Madara, who remained on the faculty, later joined the American Medical Association.

Congress is taking a look at such payments following disclosures that Jacob Lew, the new U.S. Treasury secretary, received a $685,000 bonus when he left New York University and had $1.5 million in housing loans from the school.

Harvard and Stanford universities also offer real-estate loans with sweet terms, records show. While the amounts are small relative to university budgets, the perks insulate faculty and administrators from the costs upsetting many middle-class families, said Jonathan Robe, a research fellow at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington.

“It certainly gives the public a clear example of how out of touch some universities are,” Robe said. “Parents will think, ‘Here I am scraping by, raiding my retirement plan to pay for college. Why are they making me do this just to enrich these executives?”’ ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-12/universities-pile-on-faculty-perks-as-student-costs-grow.html

March 12, 2013

Price for Denial, Inaction on Climate Is Higher Than Toll of Reducing Consumption

Price for Denial, Inaction on Climate Is Higher Than Toll of Reducing Consumption

Monday, 11 March 2013 14:58
By Karen Rybold Chin, Truthout | Video Interview





For Tad Patzek, Peak Oil - not climate change - poses the greatest risk to human health and survival on Earth.

The chair of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas and co-author with Joseph Tainter of Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma, Patzek does not deny climate change or the notion that the human use of CO2 has helped caused it. It's just that climate change has already been set in motion, and it will take 80,000 to 100,000 years to reverse it. This is, the Polish-born Patzek says, "for us, an infinite time."

In the grand scheme of things then, the more immediate threat to human health, economies and quality of life is when our transportation systems' need for oil outpaces our civilization's ability to refine it. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/15058-price-for-denial-inaction-on-climate-is-higher-than-toll-of-reducing-consumption