US Can't Avoid Recession With Real Jobless Rate At 18%, Bush Cousin Rules on 9/11 Pentagon Fraud Suit and Billionaires Fund Anti-Global Climate Change Studies

You heard it here. Okay, maybe not first . . . but you did hear it here.

The economy now needs all the help it can get, says Krugman, author of End This Depression Now! whose paperback edition has just been released with a new preface.

“The U.S. economy is recovering but slowly,” and still experiencing “depression conditions,” says Krugman. “Almost four million workers have been out of work for more than a year…we haven’t had anything like that since the ‘30s” [and]… there’s lots of unused capacity…a lot of savings that have nowhere to go.”

Krugman’s solution: More government spending, not less, in order to grow the economy. “A growing economy is the best solution to all our problems,” says Krugman, also an economics professor at Princeton University.

Krugman is not concerned that more government spending will lead to bigger deficits. “There is no good reason dealing with debt should be a priority today,” says Krugman, and “the 10-year outlook for debt [in the U.S.] is not too bad.”

Even a little more inflation in the U.S. - say 3 or 4% - could be helpful, Krugman says.

For starters, he suggests that the federal government reverse state and local budget cuts in infrastructure and education. “Just undoing that would lead a long way back to full employment. It is in fact that easy,” says Krugman.

Critics disagree and argue that this is not the time to add to a budget deficit, when the debt-to-GDP ratio currently tops 100% of GDP.

Krugman’s response: Japan is much more in debt than the U.S. (its debt-to-GDP ratio near 200%) but has now instituted an expansion of fiscal and monetary policy.

“Markets are not punishing [Japan],” says Krugman. "Markets are rewarding them."

And it certainly looks like a double (or triple, if you've been reeling from it since the last "recovery,") dip on the horizon if they don't get cracking with some G O O D   J O B S. (And SOON.)

Strategist Horwitz to Moneynews: We Can’t Avoid Recession Since Real Jobless Rate Is 18%

Friday, 25 Jan 2013

By Kathleen Walter and Dan Weil

While most forecasters predict U.S. economic growth of about 2 percent this year, Todd Horwitz, senior strategist for Adam Mesh Trading Group, thinks they have it all wrong.

“I don’t think we can avoid recession,” he tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview. “We’ve got a lot of deeper problems than anybody is letting on.”

Take the job market for example. While the official jobless rate totaled 7.8 percent in December, adding workers who have given up their search or who are underemployed probably means a true unemployment rate of 17 or 18 percent, says Horwitz.

“We’ve got that big group of people that can’t get employed. I do look for some trouble.”
And just to show the total perversion of words in the current news - "conservatives" never recuse themselves when they have a conflict; "liberals" do.

And how do you think that Bushy crowd is doing now?

They continue to distinguish themselves, of course.

And you thought they couldn't go any lower.

NOT.

Bush Cousin Presides Over 9/11 Suit Against Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers

 April Gallop’s lawsuit went ahead this week with George Bush’s cousin sitting in judgment. He’ll play a major part in deciding whether the case goes forward or dies.

No, it’s not a joke.

A 9/11 lawsuit against former high officials in the Bush White House is being presided over by a cousin of former president George W. Bush – a shocking and blatant conflict of interest that should embarrass even believers in the official story.

George W. Bush’s cousin, Judge John M. Walker of the 2nd Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, is part of a three-judge panel hearing the case of April Gallop vs. former vice-president Dick Cheney, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers.

The case has been ignored by the mainstream media in the weeks leading up to it going to court April 5. And most media have ignored the developments concerning the involvement of Judge Walker. One exception is CNBC, which carried an online story with the headline:

“Extraordinary Conflict of Interest: Bush Cousin Presides Over Federal Court Case Against Former Bush Administration Officials.” Good for them, but this is an all-too isolated exception. That the story is being kept almost entirely out of the media further reveals that the idea of a free and vigorous press is largely a fantasy.

Gallop, a former U.S. Army executive administrative assistant (with top secret clearance), is suing for damages in connection with injuries she and her newborn son suffered in the supposed terrorist attack at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The two were injured when the allegedly hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 supposedly slammed into the building. Gallop and many others in the 9/11 Truth movement contend that explosives were planted inside the Pentagon and that Flight 77 never hit the building.

Gallop says a large explosion caused the ceiling above her to collapse. When she regained consciousness, she made her way, son in tow, through the hole the alleged plane was supposed to have created. She says she never saw any evidence that a plane had hit the building. The government claims that 125 people were killed in the Pentagon and another 89 on the plane.

As I reported in a previous post, the Pentagon has refused to help Gallop with surgeries she and her son have required because of the event. They’ve even tried to stop other agencies like the American Red Cross from helping her, according to David Ray Griffin’s account in his book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited.

Gallop launched the original lawsuit in 2008 alleging that the 9/11 attacks were planned at the highest levels of the U.S. government, and that they were blamed on fundamentalist Muslims as part of a cover story. She claims that there was plenty of knowledge that employees of the Pentagon were in imminent danger, and that had alarms been sounded many deaths and injuries would have been prevented.

The idea that Cheney knew a plane was heading for the Pentagon is supported by the 9/11 Commission hearing testimony of the then transportation secretary, Norman Mineta. Mineta reported to the Commission that Cheney was in the presidential bunker prior to the Pentagon “crash” and was tracking the plane as it approached the Pentagon but not taking action to intercept it.

The original Gallop case was thrown out of court in March 2010. Judge Denny Chin dismissed the suit with prejudice, contending that the complaint was based on “cynical delusion and fantasy.” Chin has since been promoted to the very court now hearing the appeal of his ruling.

Gallop’s lawyer, William Veale, made a motion this week to have Judge Walker disqualified from hearing the case, but this was denied. Also denied was the request for a continuance to appeal the decision.

Walker was chief justice of the Court of Appeals from 2000-2006 and has been serving as a senior member of the court since then. Many researchers into 9/11 will also point out that another Bush cousin, Wirt D. Walker III, was CEO of Securacom from 1999-2002 – the company that handled security for the World Trade Center. The company installed a new $8.3-million security system in the towers between 1996 and 2000.

The sheer arrogance of the perpetrators of 9/11 continues to amaze me. These people clearly believe they can get away with anything. And until enough of us get mad, then they’re probably right.

I truly hope that this latest travesty will be one too many and will backfire on Bush, Cheney, and their criminal accomplices. If it doesn’t, how can we ever take the justice system seriously again?

Exclusive: Billionaires Secretly Fund Attacks On Climate Science

Audit trail reveals that donors linked to fossil fuel industry are backing global warming sceptics

Steve Connor

Thursday 24 January 2013

A secretive funding organisation in the United States that guarantees anonymity for its billionaire donors has emerged as a major operator in the climate "counter movement" to undermine the science of global warming, The Independent has learnt.

The Donors Trust, along with its sister group Donors Capital Fund, based in Alexandria, Virginia, is funnelling millions of dollars into the effort to cast doubt on climate change without revealing the identities of its wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry.

However, an audit trail reveals that Donors is being indirectly supported by the American billionaire Charles Koch who, with his brother David, jointly owns a majority stake in Koch Industries, a large oil, gas and chemicals conglomerate based in Kansas.

Millions of dollars has been paid to Donors through a third-party organisation, called the Knowledge and Progress Fund, with is operated by the Koch family but does not advertise its Koch connections.

Some commentators believe that such convoluted arrangements are becoming increasingly common to shield the identity and backgrounds of the wealthy supporters of climate scepticism – some of whom have vested interests in the fossil-fuel industry.

The Knowledge and Progress Fund, whose directors include Charles Koch and his wife Liz, gave $1.25m to Donors in 2007, a further $1.25m in 2008 and $2m in 2010. It does not appear to have given money to any other group and there is no mention of the fund on the websites of Koch Industries or the Charles Koch Foundation.

The Donors Trust is a "donor advised fund", meaning that it has special status under the US tax system. People who give money receive generous tax relief and can retain greater anonymity than if they had used their own charitable foundations because, technically, they do not control how Donors spends the cash.

Anonymous private funding of global warming sceptics, who have criticised climate scientists for their lack of transparency, is becoming increasingly common. The Kochs, for instance, have overtaken the corporate funding of climate denialism by oil companies such as ExxonMobil. One such organisation, Americans for Prosperity, which was established by David Koch, claimed that the "Climategate" emails illegally hacked from the University of East Anglia in 2009 proved that global warming was the "biggest hoax the world has ever seen".

Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, has estimated that over the past decade about $500m has been given to organisations devoted to undermining the science of climate change, with much of the money donated anonymously through third parties.

The trust has given money to the Competitive Enterprise Institute which is currently being sued for defamation by Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania University, an eminent climatologist, whose affidavit claims that he was accused of scientific fraud and compared to a convicted child molester.

Dr Brulle said: "We really have anonymous giving and unaccountable power being exercised here in the creation of the climate countermovement. There is no attribution, no responsibility for the actions of these foundations to the public.

"By becoming anonymous, they remove a political target. They can plausibly claim that they are not giving to these organisations, and there is no way to prove otherwise."