What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution
Chat with Gar Alperovitz about his new book, hosted by David Dayen.
Never before have so many Americans been more frustrated with our economic system, more fearful that it is failing, or more open to fresh ideas about a new one. The seeds of a new movement demanding change are forming.
But just what is this thing called a new economy, and how might it take shape in America? In What Then Must We Do?, Gar Alperovitz speaks directly to the reader about where we find ourselves in history, why the time is right for a new-economy movement to coalesce, what it means to build a new system to replace the crumbling one, and how we might begin. He also suggests what the next system might look like—and where we can see its outlines, like an image slowly emerging in the developing trays of a photographer’s darkroom, already taking shape.
He proposes a possible next system that is not corporate capitalism, not state socialism, but something else entirely—and something entirely American.
Alperovitz calls for an evolution, not a revolution, out of the old system and into the new. That new system would democratize the ownership of wealth, strengthen communities in diverse ways, and be governed by policies and institutions sophisticated enough to manage a large-scale, powerful economy.
For the growing group of Americans pacing at the edge of confidence in the old system, or already among its detractors, What Then Must We Do? offers an elegant solution for moving from anger to strategy.
Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is cofounder of The Democracy Collaborative. He is a former fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard and of King’s College at Cambridge University, where he received his PhD in political economy. He has served as a legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and as a special assistant in the Department of State. Earlier he was president of the Center for Community Economic Development, Codirector of The Cambridge Institute, and president of the Center for the Study of Public Policy. Dr. Alperovitz’s numerous articles have appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times and The Washington Post to The Journal of Economic Issues, Foreign Policy, Diplomatic History, and other academic and popular journals. (Chelsea Green)
This wasn’t a ‘lone wolf’ attack…! I will stop far short of calling it a ‘false flag’, but, we seem to have taken our eye off the ball, of late…!
…Since 2000, the number of hate groups has increased by 67 percent. This surge has been fueled by anger and fear over the nation’s ailing economy, an influx of non-white immigrants, and the diminishing white majority, as symbolized by the election of the nation’s first African-American president.
These factors also are feeding a powerful resurgence of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, which in the 1990s led to a string of domestic terrorist plots, including the Oklahoma City bombing. The number of Patriot groups, including armed militias, has grown 813 percent since of the Obama was elected – from 149 in 2008 to 1,360 in 2012.
This growth in extremism has been aided by mainstream media figures and politicians who have used their platforms to legitimize false propaganda about immigrants and other minorities and spread the kind of paranoid conspiracy theories on which militia groups thrive.
Noted Zionist gun grabber Senator Diane Feinstein has proposed a national gun buy back program in the wake of the horrific mass shooting that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Connecticut.
In a move that many see as yet another push towards the eventual attempted disarming of millions of Americans, Feinstein proposed the program as part of what gun control advocates claim is a series of new laws that are needed in order to save the public from further mass shootings.
Although Feinstein’s proposal did not specifically state whether or not it would be compulsory, the program would be an utter failure without making it mandatory and other notorious gun grabbers have already called for confiscation.
A report published on the Washington Examiner noted that the buy back program could easily be compulsory.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that she and other gun control advocates are considering a law that would create a program to purchase weapons from gun owners, a proposal that could be compulsory.
“We are also looking at a buy-back program,” Feinstein said today in a press conference.
“Now, again, this is a work in progress so these are ideas in the development.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., already discussed the possibility of a buy-back law for his state, but he made clear it would be a forced buyback.
“Confiscation could be an option,” Cuomo told The New York Times yesterday when discussing semiautomatic weapons.
“Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”
Liberals have openly debated how the issue of gun confiscation could work, including in a piece published by Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress.
“The Australian ‘outlaw and repurchase’ option is one approach.
But if Congress balks at banning certain weapons entirely, it could make gun owners an offer they can’t refuse.
Instead of $ 200 a gun, Uncle Sam might offer $ 500.”
This call for a national gun buy back program comes as dozens of political and media operatives continue their daily batch of disinfo, promoting the end of the 2nd Amendment and further empowering a corrupt and out of control government.
From Piers Morgan, to Mayor Bloomberg, to President Obama himself, the global elite and their talking head puppets have gone into full-scale 2nd Amendment attack mode.
It is also important to note that any sort of national gun buy back program that would put even more guns and ammo in the hands of the government (the same government that has purchased over a billion rounds of hollow point ammo to be used inside the country) would be an utter disaster and could lead to the eventual destruction of America.
Thankfully, many gun owners would simply laugh at any sort of buy back program regardless whether or not it was mandatory as they simply will not give up their guns no matter what.
OK, I confess, I came thisclose to having this post open up to a blank page cause, mother of god, where do we even begin?
In my Rant 1 intro I mentioned it’d been awhile since I’d written a post. Usually I aspire to offer up some course of action or sign of hope but lately I’ve been unable to find either, or the energy to fake it.
Empty roads to travel
I don’t have a fucking clue how to get out of this mess. I do know we don’t have the luxury of time to await more or better from our elected pols. Events are cascading so fast so far so many holes to plug, the craven/cowering/token good hearted currently in office only adding to the flood.
What we’ve established without doubt:
That when people are rewarded for bad actions they will continue with the bad actions.
That those who define the narrative win.
That 8 years of Republican fear followed by another 8 years of Democratic fear have produced an easily spooked populace willing to parrot back the terror-tropes drilled into our heads.
But.
I believe, truly, that we respond to our better natures when given the chance. That we are resilient, and able to change faster than we’ve been (mis)led to believe.
A notion I detest above all others is that We the People get the government we deserve. Sorry, We the People are struggling to get a job, keep a job, make do with a crappy job. Pay the bills, pay the rent, pay the taxes. Help our parents, help our child, help our kin. Get sick, get treated, go broke. Pay our mortgage, get foreclosed, get fucked.
I have the luxury of time to sit at my keyboard and compose five rants. To read blogs and tweets and news. But the majority of the 297,000,000 don’t. They’re dependent upon the media to provide factual information, even if delivered through an ideological lens. Instead, emotion is being given equal or greater weight to reason, and we’re off into a Wonderland world where “Up” is declared “Down” in off-the-record leaks and the media copies & pastes & hits print.
Psst: when doing a simple fact check and utilizing basic logic would reveal your info as false, but you don’t even bother with this step, you’re doing it wrong.
The total abdication of the press from their role as adversary acts like a gangrene on our democracy. But we have an opportunity like none before to fight this moral rot.
The last few years has unveiled the big-assed Elites as thin-skinned primadonnas who freak out when the lowliest blogger says something mean about them. Their disproportionate responses reveal their achilles heel: they really fucking care what people – even dirty fucking hippies – are saying about them. We have their attention, like a splinter we are under their skin.
And this is where opportunity comes, one already on display with the dialogues springing up all over Twitter between Reporters and Journalists and smarty pants bloggers where factual errors get pointed out and corrected. Theses get challenged, expanded, clarified, disproved. A true spirited debate among peers making new connections that thread out across the world.
Reporters with their email addresses on their stories, cable shows with their own Twitter accounts, We the People can now join the conversation. Local reporter botch a key fact in a story you have personal knowledge of? Send an email correcting the facts. A Cable News Show puts on a Guest with an undisclosed financial stake in the matter he’s opining on? Send a tweet busting them on their b.s.
Even if you get no response you never know what’s going on over on the receiving end. Your email, your tweet, may have been the one that stuck like a splinter in the associate producer’s side, who in the next staff meeting, or the next, finally raised her voice to suggest the fact a guest advocating an outcome he’ll personally profit from should maybe be disclosed to the viewer?
That your email or tweet was the one that led that reporter to talk to her buddy who mentioned it to a Twitter pal who ran it by his government source who accidentally revealed a truth that got forwarded to the reporter who ran a story that got buried on page 12 but got seen by an Obama flunky who showed it to his boss who showed it to her boss who brought it to the attention of The Boss who then spent the next week trying to ignore the splinter until it got infected and had to be removed which drew the attention of a back-row member of the D.C. press who one day raised her hand and the narrative changed.
We the People have our own bully pulpit made up of millions of individual voices. While each solitary action may look futile up close, pull the frame back and we are millions of connections threading our way across our world.
Energy begets energy.
/rant off
Photo from Damian Gadal licensed under Creative Commons
WASHINGTON — President Obama should apologize for the admission by the IRS that it singled out conservative Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny as they applied for non-profit status, Republican members of Congress said Sunday.
They also called for an investigation of the agency.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the IRS actions were “truly outrageous” and “chilling” on CNN’s State of the Union. A public apology was “absolutely” needed, Collins said. “I think that it’s very disappointing the president hasn’t personally condemned this and spoken out. … (T)he president needs to make it crystal clear that this is totally unacceptable in America.”
“I don’t care if you’re a conservative or a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican — this should send a chill up your spine,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on Fox News Sunday.
Darrell Issa, the California Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, said on NBC’s Meet the Press the initial apologies from the IRS have been insufficient. An inspector general’s report that examined the issue was leaked by the administration, he said, so that its impact would be lessened.
“This mea culpa is not an honest one,” Issa said.
Collins, Rogers and Issa spoke in reaction to an admission Friday by Lois Lerner, the IRS director of exempt organizations, that employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office routinely required conservative groups seeking non-profit status to undergo more extensive scrutiny than other groups seeking such a designation.
Lerner said Friday she had learned only last year through news reports of the extra hoops the IRS required applicants to jump through, but a draft timeline compiled by the agency’s inspector general showed Lerner had learned in 2011 that her unit was targeting Tea Party groups for additional scrutiny. The actual inspector general’s report has not been released but is expected this week.
The timeline was part of a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which has been investigating the IRS’ treatment of Tea Party groups at the request of Congress. The report is expected to be critical of the IRS actions. Excerpts obtained by USA TODAY provide a timeline investigators compiled through e-mails and interviews with IRS officials.
It shows that on June 29, 2011, IRS officials in Cincinnati told Lerner how they were handling applications for tax-exempt status for Tea Party groups. Certain groups, the briefing paper showed, were subjected by the IRS to further investigation based on politically loaded terms in the tax-exempt application file. Groups were singled out for enhanced scrutiny if:
• The words “tea party,” “patriots,” or “9/12 project” appeared anywhere in the group name or case file;
• The group’s stated issues included government spending, government debt or taxes;
• The organization had a goal of educating the public via advocacy or lobbying to “make America a better place to live;”
• Any statements in the case file critical of how the country is being run.
Under those criteria, 100 groups had their applications sent to a dedicated team of specialists for further investigation — adding months to the approval process, according to the report.
Concerns raised in briefing
During the 2011 briefing, Lerner raised concern about those criteria, according to the inspector general’s report. So in January 2012, the office sent out a new set of criteria in a BOLO memo — meaning “be on the lookout” — for “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement.”
The additional scrutiny for Tea Party groups often delayed approvals of their tax-exempt status for months, and the IRS said Friday that about half of all applications affected are still pending.
The Tea Party groups were seeking tax-exempt status under a provision of the tax code for social welfare groups — so-called 501(c)(4) organizations. Unlike other charities, these groups are allowed to engage in political advocacy as long as it’s not their primary purpose.
The additional information requested of Tea Party groups often included requests for donor lists, which the IRS later admitted was inappropriate and “troubling.” Tea Party groups who protested were told they didn’t have to submit the information, and those donor lists that were submitted have been destroyed, IRS officials told the inspector general.
IRS officials could not be reached for comment late Saturday or Sunday.
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax laws, said the committee will hold hearings soon. “We will hold the IRS accountable for its actions,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich.
The inspector general’s draft timeline also raises questions about the repeated denials by IRS officials that they were singling out Tea Party groups.
In a March 2012 Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman gave explicit assurances that the IRS was not targeting Tea Party groups. “What’s been happening has been the normal back-and-forth that happens with the IRS,” he said. “And so, there’s absolutely no targeting.”
In an April 2012 letter to the House Oversight Committee, Lerner said the IRS’ questions to Tea Party groups were “in the ordinary course of the application process.”
Tea Party groups said the government’s activities were “criminal.”
“The IRS lied. They lied before Congress in 2011 and they lied again yesterday. We must know how many more lies they have been telling and how high up the chain the coverup goes,” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, in a statement.
Changes in jeopardy
The growing controversy could jeopardize separate efforts underway in Congress to force the agency to crack down on non-profit political organizations, observers say.
Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, immediately denounced the IRS after Lerner acknowledged the extra scrutiny.
“This is going to be fodder for partisan warfare in Congress,” said Richard Hasen, a campaign-finance expert who teaches law at the University of California-Irvine. He said congressional hearings are justified.
“At the very least, it’s a distraction for the IRS,” he said. “At the most, it will significantly dampen efforts to rein in shadowy” groups.
Campaign-finance watchdogs, along with a handful of mostly Democratic lawmakers, have put increasing pressure on the IRS to more closely monitor the actions of self-labeled “social welfare” organizations — arguing these groups have abused the tax code to mask their funders.
These tax-exempt groups can conduct political activity, but it cannot be their primary function. Experts say that groups are spending as much as 49% of their money on politics, instead of a minimal amount.
In the 2012 election, social welfare groups — led by Crossroads GPS, an organization linked to Republican strategist Karl Rove — spent more than $ 254 million on last-minute advertising to shape the outcome of the presidential and congressional elections, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political money.
None disclosed its donors.
Bills in the House and Senate would require top donors to put their names on any political advertising they helped fund. Previous efforts to pass similar measures have failed. Proposed legislation introduced last month by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also would give the IRS the power to temporarily revoke the tax-exempt status of serious violators.
Wyden said political operatives are “masquerading as tax-exempt social welfare groups.”
“The IRS has refused to take on its clear responsibility to interpret and enforce the existing law when it comes to these tax-exempt ‘social welfare’ groups that injected massive amounts of dark money into the 2012 elections,” he said.
David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, which favors fewer campaign-finance regulations, said the IRS incident “proves Congress should not pass pending legislation to give the IRS more power over advocacy or political groups,”
“The agency abuses that power, doesn’t understand the need to exercise it with caution or is simply incompetent to exercise it with care,” he said.
David Vance of the Campaign Legal Center, one of the campaign-finance watchdog groups urging the IRS to investigate social-welfare groups, said that “the goal of this political storm is to scuttle the IRS cracking down on the larger abuses.”
“I hope this doesn’t cause them to turn around with their tail behind their legs and leave the field,” he said.
New groups scrutinized
The IRS action disclosed Friday did not involve groups that had already secured their tax-exempt status and were active in politics.
Lerner said what happened in Cincinnati won’t affect the agency’s ability to investigate other tax-exempt groups for improper political conduct. Officials who conduct those reviews are “used to looking at organizations in a very different way,” she said.
Those reviews are done by staffers in Dallas, who submit allegations to a review panel, which decides if further investigation is warranted. She said the episode has further sensitized the IRS to avoiding even the appearance of political decision-making. Lerner made her apology at a meeting of the American Bar Association’s exempt organization committee in Washington.
Suzanne Ross McDowell, a partner with Steptoe & Johnson who heads that committee, said the IRS has been inundated with new applications for tax-exempt organizations ever since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2010 to allow direct corporate and union spending on independent political advertising.
“But there is a lot of uncertainty about how you draw the line between intervention in a political campaign, and other activities that are not intervention in a political campaign, such as issue advocacy,” she said. “These are very tough questions, and I don’t think any of us have the answer.”
Richard Briffault, a campaign-finance expert at Columbia Law School, said the IRS has a legitimate responsibility to examine whether organizations that receive tax protections have appropriately limited their political activity. But, as non-profits proliferate, the agency has been pressured to play a larger role in helping to uncover donors who critics say choose to fund social-welfare groups just to hide their political contributions.
“If Congress were to develop more effective rules for campaign-finance disclosure … some of this problem would go away,” Briffault said. “That doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon.”
Diesel-devoted Volkswagen is rolling into the market with a gasoline-electric hybrid — and makes a fine job of it.
The 2013 Jetta hybrid, due at dealers this week, means VW buyers will have a choice of everyday gasoline power, hot-rod gasoline power, diesel power or gas-electric hybrid power on a Jetta. Nobody else offers that array.
The Jetta hybrid’s about $ 2,000 more than a similarly configured diesel Jetta and $ 3,000 more than a gasoline Jetta, by VW’s calculations.
But the Jetta hybrid’s a winner, and probably not for the reasons you’d guess.
For a hybrid this size, Jetta’s mileage rating of 45 mpg in city/highway mix is just OK. Pricing, too, is no bargain. Not necessarily exorbitant, but starting at $ 25,790. For $ 24,995 to start you can get a Toyota Prius rated 50 mpg in combined driving.
The reason it’s tempting, however, to hand the hybrid crown to VW’s first move away from diesels for mpg purposes is because the Jetta hybrid is so yippee-fun to drive.
Gas-electric cars have been getting better at that, but Jetta hybrid’s a blow-out success for driving enthusiasts, without rending the fragile sensibilities of milquetoast motorists.
In fact, it’s such a ball to spur hard that it’s a wonder we managed even 35 mpg in the real world. Apparently nobody told VW that you can’t make a hybrid that’s smooth, shudder-free, quick and satisfying at a high level.
A lot of credit goes to a new powertrain. It’s a 1.4-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline engine — from a new powerplant family that VW calls its EA211 — linked to an electric motor, of course, and a seven-speed, dry-clutch automatic transmission.
Nail this puppy and you’re at go-to-jail velocity much quicker than you expect. You have an eager and useful 170 horsepower and 184 pounds-feet of torque at your disposal, stair-stepping up or down through the transmission ratios just like real cars do, instead of screaming in put-upon annoyance as do those CVTs (continuously variable automatic transmissions) used in most hybrids.
To make the point that this isn’t a slug, VW got involved in land speed record attempts at Bonneville, Utah, home of such flat-out runs. There, a specially prepared, but not wildly modified, Jetta hybrid recorded a top speed of 187.6 mph. The boost was cranked up on the turbocharger to produce about 300 hp total, and the stock body was lowered just a bit to improve airflow and stability.
Allowing for the absurd possibility that you might not want to run 187 mph in your workday commute, Jetta hybrid can glide its way through the day with the best of ‘em, better than most.
That’s unexpected. A small-displacement turbo often is high-strung, delivering a kind of a too-little/too-much power curve, and not much transition. Not so Jetta hybrid.
Nor is it plagued with the shimmies and shudders of a normal hybrid. The gasoline engine goes through its hybrid-normal cycles of running, shutting off, restarting without calling attention to itself.
Like battery power? In the VW, you can punch the “e-mode” button on the console and the car works overtime to stay in electric-only operation as long as possible.
VW says it’ll max out at 37 mph for 1.2 miles in electric-only mode, farther in dense stop-and-go traffic.
And we were able to hold in electric-only mode for several minutes at an indicated 40 mph, after using the gas engine to help get to that speed.
The e-mode drains the battery faster and deeper than normal hybrid operation. After e-mode, you’ll spend a longer time recharging via the gas engine and ordinary coasting and regenerative braking. That means less work out of the electric motor during that time, so your mpg could deteriorate a little after an e-mode session.
Jetta hybrid has disc brakes on all four wheels, as all Jettas have had for some six or nine months. A big criticism of the Jetta when it was brand new in 2010 as a 2011 model aimed more at American tastes was that it was “dumbed-down” with drum brakes on the rear.
Steering is well-tuned, letting you veer like a 3-year-old on a tricycle, but without a trike’s straight-line instability.
The test vehicle was the high end version, a Jetta SEL Premium hybrid, which starts at $ 31,975. A big price tag on a car without a premium reputation. But it’s well-furnished at the price. A big selling point is exceptionally attractive and remarkably comfortable seats in leatherette, VW’s name for its leather-like vinyl. Navigation, Bluetooth, sunroof and one-touch operation on all four of the power-window switches add to the upmarket ambiance.
There’s finally a backup camera, long time coming at VW, but the view screen in the dashboard is small.
Disappointments:
Fuel. Premium recommended. Lately it’s averaging about 32 cents a gallon more than regular. Not a big surprise, because it’s a small engine with a turbo trying to make lots of power. Tuning it to take advantage of premium’s higher octane makes sense from an engineer’s view, if not a driver’s.
Trunk. Small. Hybrid batteries have to go somewhere. They slice 27% of trunk space vs. the gas Jetta.
Instruments, controls. Silly, overly complicated. Instead of a tachometer, you get a “boost” gauge. No, it doesn’t measure turbo boost, as you might think. Marked from 0 to 10, it’s an index of how much power you’re using. Mash the gas and the needle jumps to 10, meaning you’re asking for 100% of the available power. Coast and brake and the pointer drops back, meaning you’re recharging the batteries.
We’d prefer a big, fat tachometer. Give us credit, VW: We know that firewalling the throttle means full-power and coasting is the opposite.
The simple act of storing a radio station on a pushbutton still seems foolishly awkward, even after all the VWs Test Drive has driven.
Quirks aside, Jetta’s a hybrid you can love behind the wheel.
What? Gas-electric hybrid version of VW’s popular Jetta front-drive, four-door, five-passenger compact sedan. Jetta’s now available with gasoline, diesel or hybrid power.
When? On sale since August.
Where? Made in Puebla, Mexico, alongside conventional Jettas.
How much? Base model, called simply Jetta hybrid, starts at $ 25,790, including shipping. Top-end SEL Premium hybrid starts at $ 31,975.
What makes it go? 1.4-liter, turbocharged, gasoline four-cylinder rated 150 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 184 pounds-feet of torque at 1,600 rpm linked to electric motor rated 27 hp, 114 lbs.-ft., mated to seven-speed, dry-clutch automatic with manual mode.
How big? Heavier than, but otherwise same as, gasoline Jetta: 182.2 inches long, 70 in. wide, 57.2 in. tall on a 104.2-in. wheelbase.
Weighs 3,312 lbs. (vs. 2,842 to 3,210 lbs. for gas-only models). Rated to carry 1,052 lbs. of people, cargo, accessories.
John Kerry arrives in Japan having secured a pledge from China to calm tensions with North Korea
US Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Japan, the last stop of his four-day Asian tour which has focused on tensions on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea has recently threatened attacks against South Korea and the US, sparking alarm in the region.
After meeting China’s top leaders on Saturday Mr Kerry said China was “very serious” in its pledge to help resolve tensions with North Korea, its ally.
Mr Kerry has said the US will defend itself and its allies from any attack.
Speculation has been building that the North is preparing a missile launch, following reports that it has moved at least two Musudan ballistic missiles to its east coast.
Despite North Korea’s threats, the mood in Tokyo is calm. For most Japanese it is business as usual. In fact, the country’s stock exchange has been reaching record highs in recent days.
But with an expected North Korea missile launch, the Japanese government is taking no chances and has set up missile batteries around the capital and deployed warships.
What is clear is that all the uncertainties of this crisis are helping to feed a sense of unease among some Japanese. One resident said that any North Korea missile is likely to fly over Japan and that this was a “scary prospect.”
For now, there is absolutely no sense of panic – Japan has been here before. But the country’s security forces remain on high alert for a possible North Korean missile launch.
Japan is within range of these rockets and has been taking precautions, including setting up batteries of US-made Patriot anti-missile systems around the capital and sending two warships to the Sea of Japan, with orders to shoot down any missiles fired towards the Japanese islands.
Mr Kerry is holding talks with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and on Sunday will meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Mr Abe has said they must make Pyongyang “recognise that their provocative actions will not benefit them at all”.
Japan’s Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said he hoped Mr Kerry’s visit would send “a strong message” to North Korea’s leaders.
“It is important that we co-ordinate internationally and firmly tell North Korea that it must give up its nuclear and missile programmes,” he told reporters.
Washington and Tokyo have a security alliance dating back to the 1950s, under which Washington is bound to protect Japan if it is attacked.
The BBC’s Martin Patience in Tokyo says Mr Kerry’s visit aims to reassure Japan that they have America’s continued support during this crisis.
Celebratory launch?
Acting Ambassador Barbara Stephenson: “We’re really interested in seeing this very provocative rhetoric be ratcheted down”
North Korea habitually issues fiery statements denouncing the US and South Korea, but the rhetoric has grown increasingly aggressive since the UN imposed a fresh round of sanctions in March.
The sanctions punished Pyongyang for carrying out a banned test of a ballistic missile and conducting its third test of a nuclear device.
Pyongyang has also been angered by joint military manoeuvres by the US and South Korea, which it says are preparations for war.
It has responded by vowing to restart an inactive nuclear reactor, shut an emergency military hotline to the South and by urging countries to withdraw their diplomatic staff, saying it cannot now guarantee their safety.
It has also withdrawn North Korean workers from the Kaesong industrial complex – a rare joint Korean enterprise where South Korean companies employed Northerners.
The Musudan, also known as the Nodong-B or the Taepodong-X, is an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Its likely targets are Okinawa, Japan, and US bases in the Pacific
Range estimates differ dramatically. Israeli intelligence suggests 2,500km, while the US Missile Defense Agency estimates 3,200km; other sources put the upper limit at 4,000km
These differences are due in large part to the fact that the missile has never been tested publicly, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Its payload is also unknown
The South has offered to discuss the future of the complex, but on Sunday Pyongyang rejected this, saying it was an “empty, meaningless” act aimed at disguising invasion plans, the North’s KCNA state news agency reports.
On Monday, North Korea will mark the birth of national founder Kim Il-sung. Such occasions are traditionally marked with shows of military strength and it is thought this year the date could be used for a missile launch.
Some estimates suggest that the Musudan missiles which North Korea has moved to its east coast could travel 4,000km (2,500 miles).
That would put US bases on the Pacific island of Guam within range, although the exact threat is unclear as it is not believed that the Musudan has been tested before.
Mr Kerry has stressed that it would be a “huge mistake” for the North to go ahead with a launch, saying it would further isolate North Korea and that the people of the country are in need of food, not missiles.
David Icke ☼ What is Happening? World Events, 2012 Explained On The Unexplained With Howard
Well..here you go, a thus far unexplained phenomenon that has been accruing for years in the tiny town of Marfa Texas. Could be aliens, could be swamp gas, could be a secret cover up of a crashed ship from the future. What do you think the lights really are? Here are some links with the lights, along with a comparison video of distant head lights. Also check out Marfa and our channel. Drop us a line if you have a video suggestion or just want to say hey. If you like us, check out our Twitter and Facebook for details and other videos. LINKS TO VIDEOS ON LIGHTS: www.youtube.com www.youtube.com www.youtube.com www.youtube.com CAR HEAD LIGHTS: www.youtube.com MARFA LINK: www.marfacc.com Video Rating: 5 / 5
The price of gold plummeted Friday to its lowest level in nearly three years as economists grew increasingly worried about the economy’s forward momentum heading into spring.
Precious metal investors appear to losing their confidence in gold as a safe-haven investment from the risks of inflation or a major stock market meltdown. There is also growing concern that as the beleaguered banking sector in Cyprus worsens, citizens and investors there and in other parts of the debt-laden eurozone will ratchet up gold sales to raise cash holdings.
In midday trading, gold prices were at $ 1,500, a price level not
seen since July 2011. At their lowest, gold futures for June delivery were down $ 66, more than 4%, to $ 1,499 an ounce in Comex trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, gold prices are down nearly 5%.
“It’s pure panic bedlam on enormous volume,” said Gene Arensberg, editor of the Got Gold Report told Marketwatch online financial news service.
But stock and bond investors were mostly shrugging off the big action in gold prices. Benchmark indexes were down about 0.5% or so after four straight days of gains, including two days of higher record closes the past two days for the Dow Jones industrial average and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
There were no huge disappointing economic reports out Friday. A report on inflation at the wholesale level showed producer prices down 0.6% in March after a 0.7% spike in February. Excluding the impact of volatile changes in energy and food prices, wholesale prices were up 0.2% in March, the government said. And year over year, wholesale inflation has risen just 1.1%, the smallest annual increase in more than a year.
Consumer sentiment sank in April to its lowest level in nine months, according to a monthly survey conducted by Thomson Reuters news service and the University of Michigan. And retail sales posted the biggest one-month drop in nine months in March, the Commerce Department said.
Still, monthly economic reports tend to bounce around from month to month and there’s no clear-cut evidence yet that the economy is going to stall in the spring despite renewed worries after the government reported one week ago that just 88,000 nonfarm jobs were added in March while the unemployment rate ticked to 7.6% from 7.7%, mostly because more people gave up and stopped looking for jobs.
Mark Carney was poached recently to replace Mervyn King as Governor of the Bank of England. As though replacing an incompetent central banker with a competent central banker wasn’t good enough, the news just kept on getting better.
In a speech he said the Bank of England may be better off targeting economic output instead of inflation.
From our perspective, thresholds exhaust the guidance options available to a central bank operating under flexible inflation targeting.
If yet further stimulus were required, the policy framework itself would likely have to be changed. For example, adopting a nominal GDP (NGDP)-level target could in many respects be more powerful than employing thresholds under flexible inflation targeting. This is because doing so would add “history dependence” to monetary policy. Under NGDP targeting, bygones are not bygones and the central bank is compelled to make up for past misses on the path of nominal GDP
It is potentially huge news. Remember that under inflation targeting if you crash an economy but get inflation back up to a positive but low value then you’re more or less out of stimulus options. Hello lost decade. With a target for the level nominal GDP you must make up for any shortfall. Hello recovery summer.
When NGDP is Depressed, Employment is Depressed
Increase NGDP, Put These People Back to Work
Now, Mark Carney isn’t saying he wants to implement NGDP targeting, he isn’t even saying other people might want to implement it. He is merely saying that it is an option and central bankers need more options.
The Government is replete with figures who already find this option attractive. Giles Wilkes, much missed blogger, now my favourite coalition apparatchik (low praise indeed!), wrote the book on this from a UK perspective in 2010 in his paper “Credit Where It’s Due.” His Boss, Vince Cable is also sympathetic.
Indeed, even George Osborne “said he was pleased Mr Carney was discussing such ideas.”
What makes this exciting is that implementing this policy revolution is really easy given the laws on the books in the UK.
Politically, it would cement austerity as a fiscal and social policy measure, but would likely dramatically improve private sector job and productivity performance. As demand picked up underutilised resources and resources (stuff and people, basically) shed from the public sector would find it easier to find work.
In 1931 the UK blazed a trail by abandoning the gold standard and ending the Great Depression, in 2013 maybe we will get a chance to end the Little Depression and one last moment as a great power.
I grew up on the streets of Harlem NY. We were poor and I learned how to appreciate little things in life. I love movies, bowling, and music editing. I had a small business for about four years from 2000 to 2004. I left the retail business world to pursue my dream of getting a college degree. I graduated college in 2006 and started working in my field as an Electronics Engineer. Since I've been laid off and I am making ends meet anyway legally possible.
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