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n2doc's JournalElizabeth Warren, the fighter
Elizabeth Warren is a freshman Senator from Massachusetts whom some Democrats are talking up as a Presidential candidate -- reason enough for Mark Strassmann to seek her out for some Questions-And Answers:If you ask many progressives voters from Harlem to Hollywood, they'll say a woman should run for president in two years: Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The Massachusetts Democrat is both revered and reviled; her style is aggressive, and her message is economic populism ("Everyone who works hard and plays by the rule should have a real chance to get ahead."
, that Main Street is under siege by Wall Street.
"How can it be," she told Strassmann, "that if you're just big enough and you commit big enough crimes, that there's no one out there who wants to hold you accountable? This is the consequence, again, of too much concentration of money and power."
Warren has written a new book, her tenth: "A Fighting Chance" comes out this week. It's a plea for economic fairness, especially for America's beleaguered middle class, wrapped inside her life story.
"This is my life's work," she said. "For more than 25 years now I've been working on trying to sound the alarm on what's happening to America's middle class."
more
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/elizabeth-warren-the-fighter/
American homes harbor antibiotic-resistant "superbug" MRSA
An antibiotic-resistant "superbug," long a problem in health-care settings, is now taking up residence in people's homes, a new U.S. study finds.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, commonly referred to as MRSA, was once mainly confined to places like hospitals and nursing homes, where it can cause severe conditions such as pneumonia and bloodstream infections.
But since the late 1980s, MRSA has also hit the wider community, where it usually causes skin infections, some of them potentially life-threatening. The bug is spread by skin-to-skin contact or through sharing supplies such as towels or razors. And certain groups are at increased risk, including athletes in contact sports and people living in cramped quarters, such as military barracks or prisons.
But in the new study, researchers found that such communal spaces are not the only major MRSA "reservoirs" out there.
"What our findings show is it's also endemic in households," said lead researcher Dr. Anne-Catrin Uhlemann, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.
more
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-homes-harbor-antibiotic-resistant-superbug-mrsa/
60 percent of Japanese support whale hunt
Sixty percent of Japanese people support the country's whaling program, but only 14 percent eat whale meat, a new poll shows.
The survey comes less than a month after the United Nations' top court ruled the annual mission to the Southern Ocean by Japanese whaling vessels was a commercial hunt masquerading as science in a bid to skirt an international ban.
A weekend opinion poll conducted by the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper showed that 60 percent of 1756 voters supported the "research" whaling program, against 23 percent who opposed it.
Asked how often they ate whale meat, however, only 4 percent said they eat "sometimes" and another 10 percent said they eat it "fairly infrequently".
Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/60-percent-of-Japanese-support-whale-hunt/tabid/1160/articleID/341092/Default.aspx
Why Kidnapping, Torture, Assassination, and Perjury Are No Longer Punished in Washington
How the mighty have fallen. Once known as "Obama's favorite general," James Cartwright will soon don a prison uniform and, thanks to a plea deal, spend 13 months behind bars. Involved in setting up the earliest military cyberforce inside US Strategic Command, which he led from 2004 to 2007, Cartwright also played a role in launching the first cyberwar in history—the release of the Stuxnet virus against Iran's nuclear program. A Justice Department investigation found that, in 2012, he leaked information on the development of that virus to David Sanger of the New York Times. The result: a front-page piece revealing its existence, and so the American cyber-campaign against Iran, to the American public. It was considered a serious breach of national security. On Thursday, the retired four-star general stood in front of a US district judge who told him that his "criminal act" was "a very serious one" and had been "committed by a national security expert who lost his moral compass." It was a remarkable ending for a man who nearly reached the heights of Pentagon power, was almost appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and had the president's ear.
In fact, Gen. James Cartwright has not gone to jail and the above paragraph remains—as yet—a grim Washington fairy tale. There is indeed a Justice Department investigation open against the president's "favorite general" (as Washington scribe to the stars Bob Woodward once labeled him) for the possible leaking of information on that virus to the New York Times, but that's all. He remains quite active in private life, holding the Harold Brown Chair in Defense Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as a consultant to ABC News, and on the board of Raytheon, among other things. He has suffered but a single penalty so far: he was stripped of his security clearance.
A different leaker actually agreed to that plea deal for the 13-month jail term. Nearly three weeks ago, ex-State Department intelligence analyst Stephen E. Kim pled guilty to "an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information." He stood before US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who offered those stern words of admonition, and took responsibility for passing classified information on the North Korean nuclear program to Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2009.
Still, someday Cartwright might prove to be unique in the annals of Obama era jurisprudence—the only Washington figure of any significance in these years to be given a jail sentence for a crime of state. Whatever happens to him, his ongoing case highlights a singular fact: that there is but one crime for which anyone in America's national security state can be held accountable in a court of law, and that's leaking information that might put those in it in a bad light or simply let the American public know something more about what its government is really doing.
more
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/kidnapping-torture-assassination-perjury-punished-washington
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.
While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.
Middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.
The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.
Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it. Median income in Canada pulled into a tie with median United States income in 2010 and has most likely surpassed it since then. Median incomes in Western European countries still trail those in the United States, but the gap in several — including Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden — is much smaller than it was a decade ago.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html?smid=tw-upshotnyt&_r=3
The Republican Party's Plan to Retake the Senate Is Falling Apart
BY DANNY VINIK
The Washington consensus right now is that Republicans are slight favorites to take control of the Senate in the midterms. FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver put the odds at 60 percent. Other prognosticators agree. That may be true right now, but there are signs that the calculus could change in the coming months. Democrats may be in better shape than anyone realizes.
That doesn't mean Democrats are in good shape. They still face a number of structural disadvantages this fall, as Talking Point Memo’s Sahil Kapur documented in February. The party is defending 21 seats, compared to just 15 for Republicans, including ones in red states such as Louisiana, Alaska, Arkansas, and North Carolina. Democratic senators Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor, for instance, are both from deep-red states—Landrieu's Louisiana went for Romney by 17 points, Pryor's Arkansas by 24 points—that don’t like Obamacare. Outside conservative groups, like the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, are already spending millions of dollars on attack ads against the Democratic incumbents.
Further complicating matters, Democratic turnout historically drops in midterm elections. Democrats also face the “sixth year curse,” which holds that the party of the president struggles during his second-term midterms. Only Bill Clinton gained seats, thanks to a strong economy and overzealous impeachment trial in Newt Gingrich's House. In 2006, George W. Bush lost 30 seats in the House and six in the Senate. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson lost 47 in the House and four in the Senate. Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman all lost seats in both houses during their sixth years.
Thus, regardless of the public’s support, or lack thereof, of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats face an uphill battle this year. But could they pull a miracle upset and actually increase their majority? RealClearPolitics' Sean Trende, the best conservative prognosticator out there, laid out that unlikely scenario in a piece last week: “The way this could occur is fairly straightforward: The Affordable Care Act improves; there’s no massive rate shock for premiums in September or October; and the economy slowly gains ground. This should propel President Obama’s job approval upward, lifting the collective Democratic boat.”
more
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117466/2014-midterm-odds-republicans-chances-taking-senate-are-falling
Vox Populii Polling firm- a new GOP Operation
By ALEXANDER BURNS |
A small group of top Washington Republicans is teaming up to launch a new polling firm, Vox Populi Polling, that will churn out volumes of survey data ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.
The firm plans to produce both public and private polling, tracking high-priority 2014 races and issue debates. It will employ a combination of automated polling and live-caller methodology to reach cell phone users, according to strategists involved in the effort.
Mary Cheney, the political strategist and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is among the firm’s half-dozen partners. Joining her in the enterprise are longtime GOP operative Barry Bennett, Americans for Job Security president Stephen DeMaura and Frank Sadler of Cove Strategies, as well as Alicia Downs and Brent Seaborn of TargetPoint Consulting.
In a statement, Seaborn touted the political experience of the firm partners, calling them experts “in the world of survey research, communications, advanced analytics, statistics and political campaign management.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/gop-polling-firm-vox-populi-polling-mary-cheney-105850.html
I'm sure they will churn out volumes of something.
Elizabeth Warren’s needed call for student loan reform
As commencement season approaches, graduating students will soon hear words of wisdom from speakers offering experience, advice and inspiration. One thing they’re not likely to hear about is the $1.08 trillion elephant on the quad — our nation’s student debt crisis.
That is how much U.S. households are estimated to owe in student loans, twice as much as in 2007. In fact, student debt now exceeds credit card debt, putting millions of families at risk of bankruptcy. Forty percent of households headed by someone under the age of 35 that are saddled with student debt, unable to buy homes, raise families and secure their futures. This doesn’t just hold back individuals — it holds back our economic recovery. Meanwhile, Congress manufactures false debt crises instead of solving this very real one.
Enter Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who intuitively understands the urgency and scale of the crisis. Indeed, Warren is not just a longtime student of bankruptcy in the United States, but someone who understands what it means for a family to be at risk of losing everything. As she writes in her new book, “A Fighting Chance,” out today, the rules are such that a sudden event — divorce, illness, unemployment — can pull the rug out from under anyone. “A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too,” she writes.
Warren first came to Washington to battle a system that has long been rigged against the middle class, where working families’ voices get overpowered by well-funded lobbyists who hold elected officials by the pocket. In a 2009 interview with Michael Moore, she said, “You can’t buy a toaster in America that has a one in five chance of exploding. But you can buy a mortgage that has a one in five chance of exploding, and they don’t even have to tell you about it .?.?. We have consumer protection for everything you touch, taste, smell, feel .?.?. But there is no equivalent for credit cards, for mortgages. There’s nothing.”
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-elizabeth-warrens-needed-call-for-student-loan-reform/2014/04/21/baaeb89c-c988-11e3-93eb-6c0037dde2ad_story.html
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