It just keeps on keepin' on . . .

THE PIRATE BAY proclaims itself to be "The world's most resilient BitTorrent site" — and that may well be true. You see, according to TorrentFreak, a BitTorrent news and commentary site, police all over Europe have been raiding addresses and seizing computers to stamp out this pestiferous org.

This morning news is coming in which indicates that very significant raids against illicit file-sharing are taking place in locations across Europe. Police in up to 14 European countries are said to be involved in an operation, said to be in the planning for two years, targeting the Warez Scene, the network of individuals and servers at the top of the so-called ‘Piracy Pyramid’.

Details are scarce at the moment, but it is believed that at the behest of Belgian authorities, raids have gone ahead in The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden.

Not unusually, Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the activity with a total of seven locations raided including Stockholm, Malmö, Umeå, Eskilstuna and Solna. Armed with IP addresses, this morning police officers turned up at the Solna premises of PRQ, the company that in part hosts WikiLeaks.There is no suggestion that the controversial whistle-blowing site is connected to the operation.

However, it appears that TPB is indeed resilient. Dropped in — it's alive! In a world of cable and satellite rip-offs, outrageous DVD and movie ticket prices, ya gotta love them distributed servers — BitTorrent rules!

Corporate greed . . .

THE NYTIMES has a sad article by Bob Herbert, "A Sin and a shame", about just how well US corporations are doing out of the recession, and about just how the employees are screwed:

The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse — far more treacherous — than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession.

Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy.

The recession officially started in December 2007. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009, real aggregate output in the U.S., as measured by the gross domestic product, fell by about 2.5 percent. But employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent.

In many cases, bosses told panicked workers who were still on the job that they had to take pay cuts or cuts in hours, or both. And raises were out of the question. The staggering job losses and stagnant wages are central reasons why any real recovery has been so difficult.

In short, the corporations are making out like bandits. Now they’re sitting on mountains of cash and they still are not interested in hiring to any significant degree, or strengthening workers’ paychecks.

The graphic depiction of Milton Friedman's failure

You can sit there and believe that, according to Miltie, BP is going to have to go to the wall for their abysmal disregard for anything but the piles of dollars they could accumulate....

or

You could read what the flyingrodent has to say.

Yeah. Me too.

Well, That's Depressing . . . .

Reuters has this depressing bit of news following Obama's health care speech last night:

Wall Street sees few surprises in Obama speech
Thu Sep 10, 2009 | By Lewis Krauskopf and Susan Heavey

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shares of U.S. health insurers climbed on Thursday after analysts saw no "game changers" from President Barack Obama's highly anticipated speech on health reform.

Following the speech, analysts predicted any changes to the system would be moderate, with Obama backing many initiatives put forth earlier this week by a leading Senate committee. The possibility a threatening public health plan would be enacted also now seemed doubtful, analysts said.

"There wasn't anything said that is drastically changing the outlook as to what might come out of Congress," said Steve Shubitz, an analyst with Edward Jones.

_______________


Shares of UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and WellPoint Inc (WLP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the two largest health insurers, rose about 1 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Aetna Inc (AET.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) rose more than 2 percent and Cigna Corp (CI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) jumped more than 4 percent.

Obama "demonized insurers several times but didn't add anything new to the debate," Wells Fargo analyst Matt Perry said in a research note. "Overall we view the speech as neutral to insurers."

_______________


Concern remains over the possibility of a public insurance option and how alternatives that could be less threatening, such as non-profit cooperatives, would operate. But there is a growing sense that the government's role may not be as big as once feared.

Investors "are probably most concerned about how strong a government-run option to compete with commercial health insurers might be in a final bill, and ... Obama signaled yet again that he recognizes there's going to have to be compromise," said Paul Heldman, a senior healthcare policy analyst at Potomac Research Group in Washington.

Ana Gupte, a Sanford Bernstein analyst, said in a research note she was "even more confident after the Obama speech that the legislative outcomes will be moderate with no threat of a Medicare-like public plan."

So after all the tough talk to repuglicans, reassurances to "grandma," and clarifications to the USian public, it now appears Wall Street has weighed in. When it comes to padding their profit margins, they are rarely wrong. Since there are quite a few administration officials with Wall Street connections, this can't be good.

Say it ain't so, Barack . . . .

Money, Military and Madness . . . .

Currently I'm reading and just about to finish The Sorrows of EMPIRE – Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic by Chalmers Johnson.

It's a great book with a look at US militarism and global monetary manipulation and their repercussions both at home and abroad. The author's explanation and history of the Pentagon's influence on US government policies is eye-opening for the those not familiar in the ways of Washington. Written in 2004, some of his references are uncanny in their relevance today.

Some excerpts follow as a teaser for you:

After the 1992 election, Cheney left the Defense Department, and between 1995 and 2000 he was the chief executive officer of Halliburton. Under his leadership, Brown & Root took in $2.3 billion in government contracts, almost double the $1.2 billion it earned from the government in the five years before Cheney arrived. Halliburton rebuilt Saddam Hussein's war-damaged oil fields for some $23.8 million, even though Cheney, secretary of defense during the first Gulf War, had been instrumental in destroying them. By 1999, Halliburton had become the biggest nonunion employer in the United States, although Wal-Mart soon replaced it. Cheney also appointed Dave Gibben, his chief of staff when he was at the Pentagon, as one of Halliburton's leading lobbyists. In 2001, Cheney returned to Washington as vice president, and Brown & Root continued to build, maintain, and protect bases from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf.

During Cheney's term as Halliburton's CEO, the company advanced from seventy-third to eighteenth on the Pentagon's list of top contractors. Its number of subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens also increased from nine to forty-four. As a result, Halliburton went from paying $302 million in company taxes in 1998 to getting an $85 million tax refund in 1999.

_______________

In other words, feed at the taxpayer's trough, but never replenish it. Perish the thought, that would be un-American! “Profit=Good, Taxes=Bad” . . . .

_______________

Dick Cheney, Bush Senior's secretary of defense and Bush Junior's vice president, helped broker the deal, while out of office, between Chevron and Kazakhstan as a member of Kazakhstan's Oil Advisory Board. James A. Baker III, former secretary of state, mastermind of the scheme to get the Supreme Court to appoint bush Junior president in 2001, and senior partner of the Houston and Washington law firm of Baker Botts, had a hand in the negotiations. Baker's firm maintains an office in Baku staffed by five attorneys. He is a member of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce's advisory council, as is Cheney. During the 1990s the council's cochairman was Richard Armitage, a veteran administrator of the American-sponsored anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s and undersecretary of state in the second Bush administration. Brent Scowcroft, Rice's boss and mentor when he was Bush Senior's national security adviser, is a member of the board of Pennzoil, an active investor in the Caspian Sea oil consortia.

_______________

Is anyone else seeing a pattern here? High government positions and multi-national contracts. Who woulda thunk it ? ? ? ?

_______________

Clinton camouflaged his policies by carrying them out under the banner of “globalization.” this proved quite effective in maneuvering rich but gullible nations to do America's bidding – for example, Argentina – or in destabilizing potential rivals – for example, South Korea and Indonesia in the 1997 economic crisis – or in protecting domestic economic interests – for example, in maintaining the exorbitant prices of American pharmaceutical companies under cover of defending “intellectual property rights.” During the 1990s, the rationales of free trade and capitalist economics were used to disguise America's hegemonic power and make it seem benign or, at least, natural and unavoidable. The main agents of this imperialism were Clinton's secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, and his deputy (today, president of Harvard University), Lawrence Summers. The United States ruled the world but did so in a carefully masked way that produced high degrees of acquiescence among the dominated nations.

_______________

Now where have we heard those last two names? Oh yeah, I know: Rubin was also a former Goldman Sachs and Citigroup big wheel and advisor to the current US president on the economic crisis, and Summers is actually a member of the current administration. Great how this is working out so far . . . .

_______________

Starting in approximately 1981, the United States introduced, under the cover of globalization, a new strategy intended to accomplish two major goals: first, to discredit state-assisted capitalism like Japan's and prevent its spread to any countries other than the East Asian NICs, which had already industrialized by following the Japanese model; and second, to weaken the sovereignty of Third world nations so that they would become even more dependent on the largesse of the advanced capitalist nations and unable to organize themselves as a power bloc to negotiate equitable with the rich countries.

The United States's chosen instruments for putting this strategy into effect were the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Bank and the IMF were created after World War II to manage the international economy and prevent a recurrence of the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s. What has to be understood is that both the fund and the bank are actually surrogates for the U.S. Treasury. They are both located at 19^th and H Streets, Northwest, in Washington, DC, and their voting rules ensure that they can do nothing without the approval of the secretary of the Treasury. The political scientist Thomas Ferguson compares the IMF to the famous dog in the RCA advertisements listening to “his master's voice” - the Treasury – on a Victrola.

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Appears to be a bit incestuous, don't you think? Probably not too much of a problem, though. These guys are trustworthy, or they wouldn't be in these positions, right ? ? ? ?

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Thus was born the weird phenomenon of “moral hazard,” meaning American bankers could make outrageously irresponsible loans without any risk of having to absorb the loss or make good the money they had mismanaged. Before it was over, the 1970s loan bonanza produced a disaster of exactly the sort Keynes and the reformers at the end of World War II had sought to avoid. Virtually every country in Africa and Latin America was deeply in debt. In August 1982, Jesus Silva Herzog, the Mexican minister of finance, announced that his country was bankrupt and would no longer be able to pay interest on any of its loans. Just as the bankers had assumed, the U.S. Government stepped in – not to save Mexico but to ensure that American banks did not collapse. At no time, then or later, did our government suggest that the people who made the bad loans bore some responsibility for the results.

_______________

Well, golly gee whiz. Where have we heard that tune before? Perhaps during the end of the bush regime and now at the beginning of the new one? One would think that learning by past mistakes would be a no-brainer, but I guess not . . . .

(Remember this book was written in 2004, not 2009.)

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The United States was the architect of and main profiteer from these efforts. From 1991 to 1993, Lawrence Summers was the chief economist at the World Bank and the man who oversaw the tailoring of “austerity measures” to each country that needed a loan. He decided exactly what a country had that Washington wanted to open up. On December 12, 1991, Summers became notorious for a leaked memo to senior officials of the bank encouraging polluting industries in the rich nations to relocate to the less developed countries. He wrote, “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage countries is impeccable and we should face up to that.” Brazil's secretary of environment, Jose Lutzenburger replied, “The best thing that could happen would be for the Bank to disappear.”

_______________

There's that Summers guy's name again. What's he doing nowadays? Oh yeah, he's currently the Director of the White House's National Economic Council. This oughta work out just great . . . .

As my friends hear me say on a semi-regular basis:

“We're doomed! Doomed!”

Get the book or check it out at your local library like I did.

Tell your friends . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Moyers on Health Care . . . .

Once again, Bill Moyers of PBS puts current events in their respective places.

His essay this week was on the winners and losers in the debate over US health care "reform."

If anyone has doubts that there will be substantial "reform" I'm with 'ya. There is WAY too much $$ involved on the corporate side to allow it. That $$ funnelled to elected "representative's" political campaign funds was and is not $$ wasted. Politicians know it, lobbyists know it, political "talking heads" know it and the for-profit health industry knows it.

So why does the MSM continue to report the story like there is actually a snowball's chance in hell of "reform"? Probably the same reason they:

Insisted there were meaningful debates during the presidential campaign;
Had wall to wall coverage of Michael Jackson's death;
Cover Britney Spears' lastest breakdown ad nauseum;
Convince everyone to run for cover from swine flu H1N1;
Warn that professional sports is coming to an end due to steroid use by the athletes;
Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.*

It all boils down to ratings/commercial ad rates which - as is the case with the for-profit health industy - means profit$.

They're all playin' for the same team.

Wanna know who the losers are gonna be in this "debate"?

Look around. Unless you're in the corporate boardroom, you are . . . .


*(As a side note, can you imagine Walter Crokite reporting on MJ's funeral or BS' breakdowns in any way, shape or form? Nah, me neither . . . . )

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

That Didn't Take Long, Did It ? ? ? ?

Oh, goodie!

Only 20 years later, victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill ecological disaster start getting some $$ in restitution.

Pitiful.

Per the Anchorage Daily News:

Exxon Valdez spill payments reach claimants

Although less than hoped for, plaintiffs begin to receive share of $383 million in damages.

By WESLEY LOY

The millions of dollars Exxon Mobil Corp. has surrendered as punishment for the Prince William Sound oil spill have started hitting the streets, nearly 20 years after the disaster.

Several commercial fishermen who joined in the lawsuit against Exxon reported receiving direct deposits in their bank accounts Monday. Paper checks are expected to go out in the mail in the next week.

The payments mark the beginning of a process to distribute $383 million among nearly 33,000 commercial fishermen and other plaintiffs.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and Exxon continue to battle in court over whether the oil company owes interest on the punitive damages award. If so, the interest could roughly double the total payout.

_______________


Exxon long held that it didn't owe punitive damages, arguing it already had spent $3.4 billion as a result of the spill including compensatory payments, cleanup payments, settlements and fines.

Over the summer, however, the U.S. Supreme Court said the company owed up to $507.5 million in punitive damages.

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An Anchorage jury originally decided in 1994 that Exxon owed $5 billion for the 11-million-gallon oil spill, which disrupted many of the state's commercial fisheries and sullied miles of beaches. Over many years, however, Exxon's lawyers succeeded in whittling down the amount to a fraction of the jury award."

Everybody's very disgusted because of the process and the whacking we got from Exxon and the Supreme Court," Mullen said. "Nobody's thrilled, but nobody's going to send the check back, either."

In recent weeks, lawyers for the plaintiffs filed long lists in court specifying the amount to be paid to each claimant. Most of the amounts range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, but some exceed $100,000.

Lawyers will deduct about 22 percent from each payment as compensation for pressing the epic class action against Exxon.

Well, well, well.

Only 22%.

That seems fair, don't you think? Typically the barristers would be demanding 50% . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Corporate welfare fraud

Naomi Klein :
"Washington's handling of the bailout is not merely incompetent. It may well be illegal.
According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending -- for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc. -- is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used."

American International Group Inc. got an expanded $150 billion government bailout this week, and is setting aside $503 million in compensation for executives.

Bloomberg : "The Treasury has committed $290 billion of the $350 billion already allocated through capital injections to banks and AIG. The four attending members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's subcommittee on domestic policy accused Treasury of picking "winners and losers'' by giving loans to healthy banks to use in buying smaller ones."

"This administration wants to privatize Wall Street’s gains and socialize Wall Street’s losses," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. ~ Thomas Jefferson, 1802

Petroleum Puveyor's Profit Payout . . . .

Per The Globe and Mail today:

Exxon to pay out 75% of Valdez damages
August 27, 2008

SEATTLE — — Exxon Mobil Corp. [XOM-N] has agreed to pay out 75 per cent of a $507.5-million (U.S.) damages ruling to settle the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Anchorage Daily News reported on Tuesday.

Citing both Exxon and the plaintiff's lawyer, the Anchorage Daily News said the oil giant will release about $383-million for distribution to the nearly 33,000 commercial fishermen and others who sued Exxon after the worst tanker crash in U.S. history.

Gee, I hope it doesn't hurt the company's profit margin too much.

After all, they are in a very unique position for world corporations.

Shall we all break out the tissues for the tears that will be shed by the Board and shareholders?







Somehow, I think not . . . .

Health Math: Grab Pencil, Paper, 1000 Knees.

With the help of for-profit clinics, you can have your new knee in August instead of May. Good deal, eh?


Assume you have 10 orthopedic surgeons, and 1000 patients needing new knee joints. That's 100 knees per surgeon.

Assume each surgeon can do four patients a week, 208 per year, and he earns $2000 for each operation. Patient number 1000 will be done when? In week 25, mid-June. And each surgeon will earn how much for doing 100 knees? $200,000, for a total cost of $2 million.

Now, assume that profit-based clinics open to do knee joint replacements.

If one tenth of the patients opt for this service, paying $12,000 to have their knees fixed, of which the doctor might receive half, the cost for 1000 surgeries becomes $1.8 million public + $1.2 million private, or $3 million.

Each surgeon still only can do 208 knees per year, but in a private clinic he gets triple the income for the same work. Or, he can get the same salary, $200,000, for only thirty-odd knees. If we assume the doctors who do the for-profit surgeries all opt for this relaxing option, that loses the equivalent of three surgeons from the public system, the worst-case scenario.

We know that the supply of surgeons is effectively inelastic. So now, with the help of the private clinics, seven surgeons are lined up to do 900 knees, a worst-case 129 knees per public surgeon. They can still only do four per week. When does patient number 900 get her knee done? In the worst case, she gets it done in week 32, early August. When would patient 900 have gotten her new knee in the original system? Sometime in May.

*****

By reducing the load on the public system by 100 knees, we have increased the public users' waiting time by three months, and increased the overall cost for all 1,000 knees to $3 million from the original $2 million, of which $600,000 goes to “profit”, i.e., is wasted, at least from the surgeon’s and patient’s point of view.

So who wins in the for-profit scenario? Well, for a modest cost to Canadians of an extra $1 million, Health Canada can cut $200,000 from their knee budget. Profiteers can make a profit previously not available to them. Some surgeons, perhaps the cream of the surgeons, can benefit from smaller workloads and/or larger incomes. Some patients can get immediate care without the bother of driving to the Mayo Clinic or flying to India.

Who loses? People who cannot afford the private costs get to wait even longer than they are now. In addition, we would expect to see the overall pressure on the public system to be slightly increased because although the private clinics will be happy to lick off the cupcake frosting of knee surgery profits, I doubt they will be interested in scraping out the burnt muffin pan of follow-up care.

That's Fair . . . .

Well, the Supremes have ruled on the Exxon Valdez debacle.

Far be it from them to put any undue financial burden on the cash-strapped corporation.

Per Reuters this morning:

Exxon Valdez $2.5 bln oil spill ruling overturned
Wed Jun 25, 2008 - By James Vicini
















WASHINGTON, June 25

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the record $2.5 billion in punitive damages that Exxon Mobil Corp had been ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska.

The nation's highest court ruled that the punitive damages should be limited to an amount equal to the total relevant compensatory damages of $507.5 million.

In the court's opinion, Justice David Souter concluded that the $2.5 billion in punitive damages was excessive under federal maritime law, and should be cut to the amount of actual harm.

_______________


Soaring oil prices have propelled Exxon Mobil to previously unforeseen levels of profitability in recent years, posting earnings of $40.6 billion in 2007.

It took the company just under two days to bring in $2.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2007.

The Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound in March 1989, spilling about 11 million gallons of crude oil.

The spill spread oil to more than 1,200 miles (1,900 km) of coastline, closed fisheries and killed thousands of marine mammals and hundreds of thousands of sea birds.

The big guys win again . . . .

(Cross-posted at Moved to Vancouver)