MindMover
MindMover's JournalDrought in 1,016 counties (Record Breaking)
TORRINGTON, Wyo. — As a relentless drought bakes prairie soil to dust and dries up streams across the country, ranchers struggling to feed their cattle are unloading them by the thousands, a wrenching decision likely to ripple from the Plains to supermarket shelves over the next year.
Heat, drought and high feed prices are leading many ranchers on the Plains to winnow their herds.
Ranchers say they are reducing their herds and selling their cattle months ahead of schedule to avoid the mounting losses of a drought that now stretches across a record-breaking 1,016 American counties. Irrigation ponds are shriveling to scummy puddles. Their pastures are brown and barren. And they say the prices of hay and other feed are soaring beyond their reach.
“If we’re running out of grass and we’re not growing enough feed crops to feed them the other six months of the year, what do you do?” asked R. Scott Barrows, director of Kansas State University’s Golden Prairie District extension office. “You liquidate.”
So, in the latest pangs of a withering heat wave that has threatened crops and sparked furious wildfires, ranchers are loading up their cattle and driving to towns like Torrington, an old byway on the Oregon Trail near the Nebraska border. They come, reluctantly, to sell.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/us/heat-forces-ranchers-to-sell-herds-to-cut-losses.html?_r=1&hp
This Global Financial Fraud and Its Gatekeepers
The media's 'bad apple' thesis no longer works. We're seeing systemic corruption in banking – and systemic collusion
Last fall, I argued that the violent reaction to Occupy and other protests around the world had to do with the 1%ers' fear of the rank and file exposing massive fraud if they ever managed get their hands on the books. At that time, I had no evidence of this motivation beyond the fact that financial system reform and increased transparency were at the top of many protesters' list of demands.
But this week presents a sick-making trove of new data that abundantly fills in this hypothesis and confirms this picture. The notion that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud – and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, including regulatory bodies, know it and choose to quietly sustain this reality – is one that would have only recently seemed like the frenzied hypothesis of tinhat-wearers, but this week's headlines make such a conclusion, sadly, inevitable.
The New York Times business section on 12 July shows multiple exposes of systemic fraud throughout banks: banks colluding with other banks in manipulation of interest rates, regulators aware of systemic fraud, and key government officials (at least one banker who became the most key government official) aware of it and colluding as well. Fraud in banks has been understood conventionally and, I would say, messaged as a glitch. As in London Mayor Boris Johnson's full-throated defense of Barclay's leadership last week, bank fraud is portrayed as a case, when it surfaces, of a few "bad apples" gone astray.
In the New York Times business section, we read that the HSBC banking group is being fined up to $1bn, for not preventing money-laundering (a highly profitable activity not to prevent) between 2004 and 2010 – a six years' long "oops". In another article that day, Republican Senator Charles Grassley says of the financial group Peregrine capital: "This is a company that is on top of things." The article goes onto explain that at Peregrine Financial, "regulators discovered about $215m in customer money was missing." Its founder now faces criminal charges. Later, the article mentions that this revelation comes a few months after MF Global "lost" more than $1bn in clients' money.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/15
Latest polls .....
Latest polls:
Gallup: Obama +2; Rasmussen: Tie; Marist: Obama +2; Pew: Obama +7; Reuters: Obama +6; Quinnipiac: Obama +3; Zogby: Romney +0.8
Which ones are Republicants and which one are Democrat .... ?
So what was the top of the empire state building originally used for ... ?
The Empire State building was built at a time when great, big airships called zeppelins were still in use. For this reason, the Empire State building was constructed with these zeppelins in mind, and the point was meant to be a docking zone for a zeppelin!
Although the spike was an attempt to be practical, now—with zeppelins long out of style—it is simply interesting architecture. Unfortunately, the zeppelin landing was only ever used once. Because the Empire State Building was so tall, winds were high at the top of the tower, and docking there was too dangerous to be practical.
The other problem is that it was also pretty close to the end of the age of airships. The Empire State building is well-known architecturally, not only for its point, but also for its shape. Rather than be a large rectangular prism, like the soon-to-be popular International Style, the Empire State building was made with a series of indentations.
Because of these indentations it has a distinctive appearance, and was actually designed especially well considering its height. It was so well-designed that a B-25 bomber that crashed into the building did not severely damage the structure.
http://www.omg-facts.com/History/The-top-of-the-Empire-State-building-was/52166?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
California County Weighs Drastic Plan to Aid Homeowners
Fontana, Calif. - Browning lawns surround the otherwise neat houses in these once-sparkling developments where foreclosures have become more common than neighborhood cookouts. Each patch of dead grass is a reminder of the inescapable truth: many homes here, as they are elsewhere around the country, are worth half what they were just five years ago.
Desperate for a way out of a housing collapse that has crippled the region, officials in San Bernardino County, where Fontana is one of the largest cities, are exploring a drastic option — using eminent domain to buy up mortgages for homes that are underwater.
Then, the idea goes, the county could cut the mortgages to the current value of the homes and resell the mortgages to a private investment firm, which would allow homeowners to lower their monthly payments and hang onto their property.
Although the county has a long way to go before it could put the policy in place, the mere idea has already rankled the banking community, whose leaders say it would set a dangerous precedent of allowing a government entity to act as a lender and would discourage banks from granting loans in the area.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10337-california-county-weighs-drastic-plan-to-aid-homeowners
Women’s Inequality Linked to Soaring Population
The world's population now stands at about seven billion, and by 2050, this figure will hit a whopping nine billion.
In his new book, "State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity" , Robert Engelman, president of the Worldwatch Institute, outlines nine population strategies that he argues will effectively halt population expansion just short of that figure.
Engelman's policies call for a massive restructuring of political and social policies, especially towards women. Universal access to contraception, secondary education for all women, eradication of gender bias that limits women's economic opportunity and growth, as well as higher taxes are some of Engelman's strategies to nip the baby boom in the bud.
"There is a definite link between growing population, poverty levels, and women's inequality. If all women could use their right of choice and only have children when they wanted to, the population rate would stabilise. Right now 75 million to 80 million babies are born every year," said Engelman.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10341-womens-inequality-linked-to-soaring-population
As Occupy Wall Street Anniversary Approaches, Debt Emerges as Widespread Occupy Grievance
"ONE, we are the zombies! TWO; we are indebted! THREE; this occupation is... om-nom nom-nom..."
Playfully infusing a familiar Occupy Wall Street chant with the mindless noshing of zombies, last month around 100 costumed protestors undertook a small but significant "Night of the Living Debt" march around the New York University campus and Washington Square Park. The event was organized by All in the Red, an initiative of student activists which grows out of the nocturnal marches that began last month in solidarity with the massive popular mobilization in Quebec against austerity-related tuition hikes. Equipped with an arsenal of felt red squares, red banners, red balloons, red confetti, and pots and pans, the young organizers — recent graduates of the OWS Summer Disobedience School training program — undertook the first coordinated march in New York to translate student-specific struggles surrounding tuition and education debt into a broader discourse concerning the perpetual condition of indebtedness in which the 99 percent currently finds itself. With its necromantic pop-cultural reference, the march suggested that zombie-like servitude to Wall Street creditors is a basic condition of life for the majority of the population — a point driven home with a cathartic "debtor's die-in" at the conclusion of the event.
The Night of the Living Debt march was just one sign that debt is emerging as a connective thread for OWS organizers and their allies as they begin to build toward the movement's one year anniversary of September 17, variously known as S17, Black Monday and Occupy Year One. More than just a commemorative ritual or one-off day of action, many organizers in OWS plan to use the media spotlight surrounding the day and its buildup as what Sandra Nurse calls a "launching pad" for a new kind of political movement in the United States — a movement of debtors identifying themselves as such.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10335-as-occupy-wall-street-anniversary-approaches-debt-emerges-as-widespread-occupy-grievance
The 1% Connection: Mexico and the United States, Crony Capitalism and the Exploitation of Labor
The Richest Person in the World, Carlos Slim, Lives in Mexico
According to Forbes Magazine, Carlos Slim, 72, is the wealthiest person in the world, accumulating $69 billion in net worth as of March 2012.
Born and raised in Mexico City (of Lebanese Christian descent), Slim was well on his way to becoming a very rich man when he struck pay dirt. Under the Mexican presidency of Carlos Salinas, who served from 1988 to 1994, Slim jumped on the Milton Friedman-inspired south-of-the-border rush to privatization and led a buyout of the state run Telmex phone company.
It was crony capitalism at its finest. Salinas relied on the relatively small group of Mexico's oligarchy to supply him with campaign (and perhaps personal) funds, in return for the sale of state assets at favorable rates and terms. (For example, Slim was essentially able to pay for Telmex out of the future profits of the company.)
So in 1990, Slim obtained (with some other backers) a monopoly on the telephone system in Mexico, guaranteed for years. The profit earned from the acquisition of Telmex was the fuel that allowed Slim to finance his telecommunications empire, still dominating the Mexican telephone landline market as well as the nation's cell phone user business through a spin-off firm, Telcel. In turn, the enormous revenue generated by the original sweetheart deal has helped finance Slim becoming the developer and owner of the largest mobile phone company in Latin America, América Móvil.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10309-the-1-connection-mexico-and-the-united-states-crony-capitalism-and-the-exploitation-of-labor-through-nafta
How to Get Our Citizens Actually United
IMAGINE you’re the closest living relative of a child who just inherited $100 million after her parents died in a car crash. You’re a distant cousin, but if something happened to her, you’d be next in line.
She has juvenile diabetes. So you “adjust” her insulin prescription a bit yourself, doubling the dose. When that doesn’t work, you tell her a different drug works just as well, and when she’s reluctant, you offer her a trip to Disney World.
What would happen if you got caught? You’d probably be convicted of attempted murder and spend several years in prison.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced a settlement with the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. The company had, among a host of criminal actions, helped publish falsified data in a medical journal, failed to report the dangers of a drug and used “favors” like trips to Jamaica to persuade doctors to use its medications for unapproved — and unproven — purposes on children.
These two fact patterns have a lot in common, except that instead of endangering the life of one child, the company endangered the lives of many, and instead of anyone receiving prison time, the company agreed to pay a fine — which it will no doubt pass on to its customers and shareholders — that is, to us.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/how-to-get-our-citizens-actually-united/?
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This opinion article starts out slow but ends up right on the money with an interactive.....
Behind the Libor Scandal (Interactive Guide)
A settlement between the British bank Barclays and regulators may be the first
in a series of cases against other banks that may have manipulated the Libor.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/07/10/business/dealbook/behind-the-libor-scandal.html
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