I won't even pretend to understand banking and finance. Much more interested in justice and protecting people from abuse.

As far as consumer credit goes, I think a much smaller not-for-profit credit reporting system would be better. It may not be as precise at determining risk levels. But then America does not exist to minimize risk for banks.

The idea is that we should err on the side of protecting people, instead of protecting banks. Banks don't have any natural right to collect information about people they aren't even doing business with and use it to potentially ruin their lives. But people do have a right to be free of slander, bullying, and abuse by banks. If credit bureaus are abusive it is within the legitimate realms of conversation to talk about ending them, and replacing them with something that is designed from the outset with consumer protection in mind.

I was just kidding about throwing them in Guantanamo. Unless that's legal now.

The credit bureaus are worthless pieces of crap. They shouldn't be allowed to exist at all. Too much unaccountable power. Too much concentration of power and conflict of interest. This is way to little too late. Can you believe these criminal syndicates are actually allowed to operate as for profit entities and give money to politicians?

In the United States, 90% of credit reports provided by credit bureaus contain inaccuracies.[5] ... According to Avery, Calem, and Canner in Credit Report Accuracy and Access to Credit, "the parties that bear the costs of correcting errors or providing more timely and complete information [data furnishers and credit bureaus] may not receive much benefit from the improvement in accuracy."[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_bureau

Goldman Sachs Buys TransUnion. What’s In It For You?
One of the major companies responsible for the nation’s credit meltdown will now control your personal credit history. Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, the private equity wing of the financial firm, has partnered with another private equity company to buy the credit reporting firm TransUnion. Collecting and reselling personal information about your borrowing and bill-paying behavior is apparently worth more than $3 billion.

For those at the top, it’s a sweet deal: one former TransUnion owner will see a 50 percent increase in return on its investment in the company after owning it for less than two years. Private equity funds selling to other private equity funds is a lucrative business.

But for consumers, the deal promises few benefits. Consider the problem of credit reporting errors: private equity companies buy firms for their potential to generate profit, and credit reporting companies like TransUnion earn the lion’s share of their profits from creditors rather than consumers— thus they have little financial incentive to conduct meaningful investigations when consumers find an error in their credit report. Instead, they rely on cheap automated dispute-resolution processes to resolve them. Nothing changes there, unless private equity pressures to keep costs down squeeze the dispute resolution process at TransUnion still more.

And the sale makes TransUnion no more likely to respond to a petition urging it to cease selling credit reports to employers on the grounds that they are unreliable and discriminatory in an employment context. Since when has Goldman Sachs listened to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights or the National Council of La Raza?
...

http://www.policyshop.net/home/2012/2/22/goldman-sachs-buys-transunion-whats-in-it-for-you.html
(bold text added)


These gangster credit cartels have no business operating in America. We need to send in the FBI, SEC, and the US Marshalls and seize all documents and equipment and lock the CEOs and Boards of Directors in Guantanamo and waterboard them until they admit their crimes against the American people.

Our current capitalist production and distribution systems sure use a lot of computers.

Like Walmart for example. I don't think anybody could imagine running a supply-chain operation on the scale of a Walmart without computer networks, in this day and age. They use computer networks to track their inventory and get goods from the dock to central distribution centers and then to the stores where people can buy the stuff. That takes alot of planning and they need computer networks to be able to do it as efficiently as they do.

That is capitalist central planning. But all the productivity and efficiency gains from technology are absorbed into the corporate profits, workers are laid off, and wages are kept as low as possible. Computerized central planning already exists, it just needs to be under democratic control or worker control so everybody can benefit from it, instead of just a few millionaires and billionaires.

Maybe. Just some ideas.

drilling in national parks, tar sands extraction, and natural gas for America for the next 100 years? All things which add to global warming.

I understand the Republican positions are even worse, because they might also try to kill investments in renewables.

And yet the positions of some Democrat are only slightly less horrible, and they are still letting the oil companies do what they want to make maximum profit. The environmental costs are being pushed off onto the people as usual. We all pay the price for their greed.

Science may be an objective truth. But power often decides which studies are done, and power decides what is accepted as true. The scientific people and studies can be corrupted by pressures just like any other people. If there are a stack of reports that say fracking causes groundwater contamination, and a stack of papers that says the opposite, then political power decides the winner. In our world that usually means the rich and powerful win.

Risk = Probability

Increased probability of floods means that on any given day the chance of a flood or heavy rains is higher in some places than it would have been without climate change. Over the course of years this guarantees there will be more extreme events.


http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/trends-in-natural-disasters_a899


http://abcnews.go.com/International/extreme-flooding-world-caused-climate-change-scientists/story?id=12610066

Thank you LBJ
Civil rights and voting rights
But Vietnam, wow

http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2012/07/top-ten-reason-to-reject-the-house-farm-bill/

This was a study by researchers from Duke University recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The oil-gas companies have always claimed that they are drilling so deep that the the toxins can't seep back up to the surface water. This study shows that natural pathways do exist where the pollution can filter back up to the surface. Like they even needed a study to show that. It's pretty much common sense.

That means all the toxic crap can seep into the rivers and lakes that we swim, fish and drink out of. Animals drink it, plants need it, private wells and public water systems draw on it. Especially if your well or public system is old and leaky.

via: http://priceofoil.org/2012/07/10/fracking-can-pollute-confirms-study/


The oil industry has their paid liars out trying to confuse the issue, by pointing to parts of the study that say evidence of contamination from fracking were not found in this study. True this study didn't show fracking contaminants escaped, but it DID SHOW THAT PATHWAYS EXIST FOR LIQUIDS AND GASES TO ESCAPE. THE INDUSTRY HAS LONG CLAIMED THESE PATHWAYS DID NOT EXIST. And they used that as the foundation of all their arguments defending this dangerous form of drilling.

Some media including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are already confused, repeating the usual industry spin that the results are inconclusive and more study needs to be done. Which is what they will always say.

They miss one big point. The industry should have to prove this practice is safe. It shouldn't be up to the people of the region to have to prove it is unsafe, after they get sick. Actually some states have gag orders in place preventing doctors and from discussing information about fracking pollution publicly.

All the laws are in place to protect the gas companies, not the American people.

More industry lies:

The oil and gas industry criticized the study as flawed, as they’re wont to do. But they argue a straw man, claiming that the study says that migrations of mineral fluids happen more frequently in drilling areas. I don’t think that’s what the study said, only that it’s possible for contaminants to move, though it did acknowledge that the pre-existing pathways the brine used to migrate could provide easier access to migration for the fracking fluids. Industry mouthpieces also questioned the time frame of how long it took for the brine to migrate (kind of an “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone” argument). Scientists are continuing their studies on that aspect.
...
Expect the science on this to be as viciously contested as the science on climate change. There’s a lot of money at stake.
...

via: http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/07/10/study-fluids-can-migrate-in-marcellus-shale-area/

...
A study that found hydraulic fracturing for natural gas puts drinking-water supplies in Pennsylvania at risk of contamination may renew a long-running debate between industry and activists.

The report by researchers at Duke University, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said a chemical analysis of 426 shallow groundwater samples found matches with brine found in rock more than one mile (1.2 kilometers) deep, suggesting paths that would let gas or water flow up after drilling. While the flows weren’t linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the study found natural routes for seepage into wells or streams.

“The industry has always claimed that this is a separation zone, and there is no way fluids could flow” from the shale to the aquifers, Avner Vengosh, a professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and one of the study’s eight authors, said in an interview. “We see evidence of hydrologic connectivity.”

...

via: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-09/pennsylvania-fracking-can-put-water-sources-at-risk-study-finds

It's true there is a lot of oil industry profit at stake. Evidence continues to mount, continues to be ignored, while the oil industry spreads lies to confuse the issue and slobbers money on politicians to buy the government.

This is a link to the study at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/03/1121181109.abstract

Concerned citizens will gather in Washington DC at the end of July to meet each other and promote sanity when it comes to drilling for gas: http://www.stopthefrackattack.org/