Drill, Gamble, Loot, Starve: The Chamber of Commerce, The GOP, and the Politics of Plunder
What we're seeing is the Politics of Plunder, revealed in all its nakedness....To be clear, the Chamber of Commerce isn't the political lobbying arm of "business," as it sometimes claims. It specifically serves the interests of massive businesses, which are often at odds with the needs of small and medium enterprises....The GOP and its Democratic Blue Dog sympathizers don't want to vote for unemployment benefits or stimulus programs because, we're told, they're so concerned about the deficit. But when it comes to preserving tax cuts for the wealthy it's "deficits be damned." Sen. Jon Kyl's recent comments on the subject expose the inconsistency.
Slouching Toward a Double Dip or a Lousy Recovery at Best
The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession and all the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing....So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing. The states are running an anti-stimulus program (raising taxes, cutting services, laying off teachers, firefighters, police and other employees) that's now bigger than the federal stimulus program....The second booster rocket - the Fed's rock-bottom short-term interest rates - are having almost no effect. That's because jobs and wages are so lousy that consumers don't have enough money to buy much of anything, making small businesses bad credit risks and causing big ones to sit on the huge pile of cash they've accumulated.
The IMF Is Coming for Your Social Security
Last week, the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction....First, the IMF deserves a substantial share of the blame for the economic crisis that gave us big deficits in the first place.
More Than 1 Million American Households are Likely to Lose Their Homes to Foreclosure This Year
More than 1 million American households are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, as lenders work their way through a huge backlog of borrowers who have fallen behind on their loans....Assuming the U.S. economy doesn't worsen, aggravating the foreclosure crisis, Sharga projects it will take lenders through 2013 to resolve the backlog of distressed properties that have on their books right now....And a new wave of foreclosures could be coming in the second half of the year, especially if the unemployment rate remains high, mortgage-assistance programs fail, and the economy doesn't improve fast enough to lift home sales.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
WELCOME TO THE TREMAINE ZONE ALSO KNOWN AS THE REAL ZONE
USER GUIDE FOR THE CUSTOM REAL NEWS FEED
This is a continuously updated feed of the most important news, commentary, and videos from the world wide web, also known as the "Where in the hell has Tremaine Been? Version of the Unity-Progress Internet Project. (Tremaine refuses to be tied down to a few web sites for information; he goes pretty much everywhere.)
THE BASICS OF HOW THIS WORKS
Whenever I find something very important but I know I probably will never have time to directly incorporate it into one of my articles (which less face it, is most of the time) I will link to it here. I will almost always leave the titles alone but I will sometimes write my own description, or more often I will for the description extract out one or two or three major points that are in the content.
OH YES, THERE WILL ALSO BE VIDEOS AND MUSIC
The content will not be strictly limited to news and commentary (much of it quite depressing under the circumstances, to be honest). My favorite music videos and other much lighter stuff will be included from time to time, roughly once a month and hopefully more often than that.
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY AND FULL CUSTOMIZATION
Aside from efficiency and good organization, another primary feature and benefit of this custom feed is quality over quantity. There will be three or four items apprised and rejected for every one included in the feed.
Items are chosen according the following criteria:
--Accuracy of information
--Importance of information
--Correctness of information (and of any opinions)
--Timeliness of the information
--Forward-lookingness
--Quality of writing
Forward-looking means that I favor the items that describe not only exactly how things are now but how they will be in the near and long term future.
Notice that unlike with most publishing the amorphous and establishment oriented concepts of "credibility" and "authoritativeness" are NOT criteria. Reality has shown that those who are supposedly credible and authoritative are very often nothing of the sort. They have a hidden agenda which makes their pronouncements fraudulent.
Of course I know in the first place where to go to get the best items that have these characteristics. Most of the items I review for possible inclusion will be on the sites that most often have the best content. But my curiousity is endless and I am always checking out sites I have never been to before to see if I can find a new "top site" to add to the list of creme of the crop sites that I visit several times a week. And I am also always revisiting sites I seldom visit to see if I can find that one in a hundred article on that obscure site that usually has the more lame and/or the less accurate stuff that I should include in the feed.
This is a continuously updated feed of the most important news, commentary, and videos from the world wide web, also known as the "Where in the hell has Tremaine Been? Version of the Unity-Progress Internet Project. (Tremaine refuses to be tied down to a few web sites for information; he goes pretty much everywhere.)
THE BASICS OF HOW THIS WORKS
Whenever I find something very important but I know I probably will never have time to directly incorporate it into one of my articles (which less face it, is most of the time) I will link to it here. I will almost always leave the titles alone but I will sometimes write my own description, or more often I will for the description extract out one or two or three major points that are in the content.
OH YES, THERE WILL ALSO BE VIDEOS AND MUSIC
The content will not be strictly limited to news and commentary (much of it quite depressing under the circumstances, to be honest). My favorite music videos and other much lighter stuff will be included from time to time, roughly once a month and hopefully more often than that.
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY AND FULL CUSTOMIZATION
Aside from efficiency and good organization, another primary feature and benefit of this custom feed is quality over quantity. There will be three or four items apprised and rejected for every one included in the feed.
Items are chosen according the following criteria:
--Accuracy of information
--Importance of information
--Correctness of information (and of any opinions)
--Timeliness of the information
--Forward-lookingness
--Quality of writing
Forward-looking means that I favor the items that describe not only exactly how things are now but how they will be in the near and long term future.
Notice that unlike with most publishing the amorphous and establishment oriented concepts of "credibility" and "authoritativeness" are NOT criteria. Reality has shown that those who are supposedly credible and authoritative are very often nothing of the sort. They have a hidden agenda which makes their pronouncements fraudulent.
Of course I know in the first place where to go to get the best items that have these characteristics. Most of the items I review for possible inclusion will be on the sites that most often have the best content. But my curiousity is endless and I am always checking out sites I have never been to before to see if I can find a new "top site" to add to the list of creme of the crop sites that I visit several times a week. And I am also always revisiting sites I seldom visit to see if I can find that one in a hundred article on that obscure site that usually has the more lame and/or the less accurate stuff that I should include in the feed.
FOUR PER DAY BUT THERE WILL BE GREAT DAY TO DAY VARIABILITY
The feed begins as of July 1, 2010. For the first 30 days there will be four items per day. Starting on July 31, the number of items per day will become just three. Unfortunately, time limitations require that reduction. Fewer than three makes the whole thing virtually a waste of time and more than that is beyond the resources available for this project and is hopefully unnecessary because of the quality over quantity principal in operation.
There will be a post for each day with three links in each post. Unfortunately, however, time resources available will not always permit these posts to actually be made daily. I will often be in catch-up mode, making several days' posts in one day. (Note that the posts will still be dated as if they were made on a daily basis; fortunately, Google Blogger permits postings to be date stamped with dates in the past; so at least the archive will at least look like I was able to post on a daily basis.)
This is not by any stretch an up to the minute news service. In fact, most links will be to items that were posted at the source one week earlier. This is done so that I can often maintain a one week ahead cushion for my postings.
So we are definitely not all that concerned with being "up to the minute". Again, the value of this project comes from the quality of the items chosen and from the long term importance of maintaining a library of links. For example, several years from now, you or I can go back and find out what we were being warned about years ago, to among other things see if things did in fact turn out in accordance with the warnings made years ago. So don't think of this as a full scale news service but do think of it as a long-term repository of critical information.
I have other Internet sites that offer bigger quantity within their subjects. But here I guarantee three very accurate and very important items per day (90 items in a 30 day month) over the long term.
The feed begins as of July 1, 2010. For the first 30 days there will be four items per day. Starting on July 31, the number of items per day will become just three. Unfortunately, time limitations require that reduction. Fewer than three makes the whole thing virtually a waste of time and more than that is beyond the resources available for this project and is hopefully unnecessary because of the quality over quantity principal in operation.
There will be a post for each day with three links in each post. Unfortunately, however, time resources available will not always permit these posts to actually be made daily. I will often be in catch-up mode, making several days' posts in one day. (Note that the posts will still be dated as if they were made on a daily basis; fortunately, Google Blogger permits postings to be date stamped with dates in the past; so at least the archive will at least look like I was able to post on a daily basis.)
This is not by any stretch an up to the minute news service. In fact, most links will be to items that were posted at the source one week earlier. This is done so that I can often maintain a one week ahead cushion for my postings.
So we are definitely not all that concerned with being "up to the minute". Again, the value of this project comes from the quality of the items chosen and from the long term importance of maintaining a library of links. For example, several years from now, you or I can go back and find out what we were being warned about years ago, to among other things see if things did in fact turn out in accordance with the warnings made years ago. So don't think of this as a full scale news service but do think of it as a long-term repository of critical information.
I have other Internet sites that offer bigger quantity within their subjects. But here I guarantee three very accurate and very important items per day (90 items in a 30 day month) over the long term.
THEMES
In this feed there will be primary, secondary, and temporary themes. The primary and secondary themes match those of the Unity Progress project overall:
PRIMARY THEMES
--Health system failure in the US
--Labor market failure in the US
--Economic system failure in the US
SECONDARY THEMES
--Internet myths and realities
--The environment in general and the oil gusher in particular
--Haiti and Jamaica
Primary themes will continue indefinitely and will dominate the feed. For primary themes, in some weeks you will see all of them mixed well and in other weeks you will see just one of the primary themes very heavily represented. This is because sometimes I am in the mode of keeping up with all the primary themes at once (you can call this "news mode") whereas other times I am in the mode of digging down deep for very detailed information that almost no one knows about (how about calling this "deep mode"). In deep mode, you might for example all of a sudden see a dozen sophisticated articles about the health system failures of the US.
Secondary themes will appear only sporadically. Sometimes, it will be months between appearances of an item for a secondary theme.
TEMPORARY THEMES
There will be one or two temporary themes from time to time. These will generally involve disasters and catastrophes. It is possible that a temporary theme will evolve into a permanent theme. With the beginning of the theme as of July 1, 2010 there is a temporary theme: the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.
A DREAM FINALLY COME TRUE
The ability to easily and efficiently include anything and everything that is on the Internet that I want to include in one seamless feed and in one place summarizes the power of this great new page. I have designed many web pages and many of them are quite good and/or quite informative. I can honestly say that this particular page is one of my best and most informative yet.
You are welcome to share and take advantage of my vast knowledge of what is real and true and what is not. I guarantee you that the untrue propaganda will never be included here except for rare accidents. I have taken the trash out and left only the good stuff in the kitchen. So let's proceed with the feast. Bon appétit.
In this feed there will be primary, secondary, and temporary themes. The primary and secondary themes match those of the Unity Progress project overall:
PRIMARY THEMES
--Health system failure in the US
--Labor market failure in the US
--Economic system failure in the US
SECONDARY THEMES
--Internet myths and realities
--The environment in general and the oil gusher in particular
--Haiti and Jamaica
Primary themes will continue indefinitely and will dominate the feed. For primary themes, in some weeks you will see all of them mixed well and in other weeks you will see just one of the primary themes very heavily represented. This is because sometimes I am in the mode of keeping up with all the primary themes at once (you can call this "news mode") whereas other times I am in the mode of digging down deep for very detailed information that almost no one knows about (how about calling this "deep mode"). In deep mode, you might for example all of a sudden see a dozen sophisticated articles about the health system failures of the US.
Secondary themes will appear only sporadically. Sometimes, it will be months between appearances of an item for a secondary theme.
TEMPORARY THEMES
There will be one or two temporary themes from time to time. These will generally involve disasters and catastrophes. It is possible that a temporary theme will evolve into a permanent theme. With the beginning of the theme as of July 1, 2010 there is a temporary theme: the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.
A DREAM FINALLY COME TRUE
The ability to easily and efficiently include anything and everything that is on the Internet that I want to include in one seamless feed and in one place summarizes the power of this great new page. I have designed many web pages and many of them are quite good and/or quite informative. I can honestly say that this particular page is one of my best and most informative yet.
You are welcome to share and take advantage of my vast knowledge of what is real and true and what is not. I guarantee you that the untrue propaganda will never be included here except for rare accidents. I have taken the trash out and left only the good stuff in the kitchen. So let's proceed with the feast. Bon appétit.