The Koch Brothers own Georgia-Pacific. They want people to build McMansions, because that's where the Money is for them.
Build small, starve those fuckers.

Use less, save Trees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacif...

Georgia-Pacific LLC is an American pulp and paper company based in Atlanta, Georgia, and is one of the world's leading manufacturers and distributors of tissue, pulp, paper, packaging, building products and related chemicals. As of Fall 2010, the company employed more than 40,000 people at more than 300 locations in North America, South America and Europe. It is an independently operated and managed company of Koch Industries.

Source: Yahoo

Fox Business News' Cavuto Says US Credit Downgrade "Welcome"
ForbesBy Kenneth Rapoza | Forbes – 9 hrs ago


Fox News' vice president of business news, Neil Cavuto, said during the July 27 broadcast of "Your World" that a US credit downgrade would be a good thing.

"I would welcome a downgrade. I think that will be the pain that will wake people up," Cavuto said during a one-on-one interview with Fox commentator John Stossel. Earlier in the interview, Stossel said that a downgrade would not be good for the US economy.
--snip--


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/fox-business-news-ca...

---

APBy MARYCLAIRE DALE - Associated Press | AP – Wed, Jul 27, 2011


PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia man at the heart of a groundbreaking criminal case against the Philadelphia archdiocese has filed a related civil suit, charging that the church let two priests and a teacher serially rape him as a young altar boy.

The 23-year-old man accused the Roman Catholic church in Philadelphia of "callous indifference" to his suffering as a 10-year-old schoolboy.

The suit seeks at least $450,000 in damages from the archdiocese and other defendants. The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported Wednesday on the suit, filed this week by a man identified as "Billy" in a February grand jury report.

--snip--

His successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, was sharply criticized for his handling of sex-abuse complaints by the lay chair of the archdiocese's own investigative panel.

The pope last week named Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver to succeed Rigali.


Note: Archbishop Chaput is an Opus Dei rising Star. Interesting that the Pope would have someone of his background sent to deal with this.

http://news.yahoo.com/pa-man-callous-churc...

Democracy Now! / By mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)

EXCLUSIVE: Fired Army Whistleblower Receives $970K for Exposing Halliburton No-Bid Contract in Iraq
Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the former chief oversight official of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, has reached a $970,000 settlement six years after she was demoted for publicly criticizing a multi-billion-dollar, no-bid contract to Halliburton—the company formerly headed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Greenhouse had accused the Pentagon of unfairly awarding the contract to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. Testifying before Congress in June 2005, she called the contract the worst case of government abuse she had ever witnessed in her 20-year career. Just two months after that testimony, Greenhouse was demoted at the Pentagon, ostensibly for "poor performance." She had overseen government contracts for 20 years and had drawn high praise in her rise to become the senior civilian oversight official at the Army Corps of Engineers. With the help of the National Whistleblowers Center, Greenhouse filed a lawsuit challenging her demotion. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, Greenhouse announces that a settlement has been reached in what is seen as a major victory for government whistleblowers. We're also joined by Greenhouse's attorney, Michael Kohn, and by Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center.

More at the link:

http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/...

How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.
James Ridgeway Last Modified: 12 Jul 2011 06:20

Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.

It is anything but a coincidence that the explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry's development of a new class of medications known as "atypical antipsychotics." Beginning with Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s, these drugs were touted as being more effective than older antipsychotics like Haldol and Thorazine. More importantly, they lacked the most noxious side effects of the older drugs - in particular, the tremors and other motor control problems.

--snip--

A remarkable series published in the Palm Beach Post in May true revealed that the state of Florida's juvenile justice department has literally been pouring these drugs into juvenile facilities, "routinely" doling them out "for reasons that never were approved by federal regulators." The numbers are staggering: "In 2007, for example, the Department of Juvenile Justice bought more than twice as much Seroquel as ibuprofen. Overall, in 24 months, the department bought 326,081 tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for use in state-operated jails and homes for children…That's enough to hand out 446 pills a day, seven days a week, for two years in a row, to kids in jails and programs that can hold no more than 2,300 boys and girls on a given day." Further, the paper discovered that "One in three of the psychiatrists who have contracted with the state Department of Juvenile Justice in the past five years has taken speaker fees or gifts from companies that make antipsychotic medications."

--snip--

More at the link:

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opini...

Down on the US? Consider stocks that rise when things fall. Pawn shops, payday lenders are up

NEW YORK (AP) -- As the jobless rate inches up and the economic recovery sputters, investors looking for a few good stocks may want to follow the money -- or rather the TV, the beloved Fender guitar, the baubles from grandma, the wedding ring.

Profits at pawn shop operator Ezcorp Inc. have jumped by an average 46 percent annually for five years. The stock has doubled from a year ago, to about $38. And the Wall Street pros who analyze the company think it will go higher yet. All seven of them are telling investors to buy the Austin, Texas, company.

Is the economy still just in a soft patch? A hard patch? Will the market rise or drop? Even experts are just guessing. In investing, it's often better to focus on what you can safely predict, even if that safety is found in companies that thrive on hard times. One good bet: The jobless aren't likely to find work anytime soon. And companies profiting from their bad fortune will continue to do so.

--snip--

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-bad-is-i...


Welcome to the Real World, Neo.

Maine Civil Liberties Union Praises LePage

POSTED: 11:22 am EDT June 24, 2011
UPDATED: 11:46 am EDT June 24, 2011

AUGUSTA, Maine -- Gov. Paul LePage has signed into law a bill that's aimed at protecting the privacy of medical marijuana patients.

The governor signed Rep. Deb Sanderson's bill in his office Friday morning. The Chelsea Republican's bill changes Maine's medical marijuana law to ensure access and clarify and enhance law enforcement protections for patients, caregivers, doctors and dispensary employees.

It eliminates mandatory state registration and mandatory disclosure of a patient's specific medical condition to the state Health and Human Services Department, and creates more workable processes for adding approved conditions. It also prohibits arrest for qualifying patients, caregivers and dispensary employees acting under the law.

LePage's action is being praised by the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

Read more: http://www.wmtw.com/news/28346085/detail.h...

By Chris Laird
Jun 22 2011 12:49PM


www.prudentsquirrel.com

Anyone following along on the world debt crisis can see everybody is broke. And the speculators are betting on who goes down first then second and so on. That is a TON of money betting on more financial chaos destabilizing markets. The Central banks have done everything they can to combat it and they are falling behind now. Its about over, this several year hiatus from the financial crashes of 2008 and 2007.

I cannot imagine the people at CNBC going on air live day after day tracking this chaos.

Gold and oil are steady

The only market which is showing some rationality is oil and gold. Gold especially. Every other market is infected with hundreds of billions of carry trade money. So – no logic, only speculation and big swings. Even silver is getting jacked around because it’s so speculative (always has been – you might want to shift some silver into gold as gold is not so wacky).

But following along on markets, everything is speculation now, and has leverage. And the Credit Default swaps market (bets on credit and bonds of all types) is rampant. They are betting on who will go bankrupt first, and this is over entire countries now! They are betting on the end of the world! Every time the CDS market panics, another $hundred billion bailout is voted in.

Remember the flash crash? Did anyone mention that the next day the first huge multi-hundred billion Euro bailout was voted in that weekend by the EU. They were given a huge threat. That flash crash was not an accident. Did u hear anyone being investigated? Have you heard of ANY bankers other than like two getting jailed for all the losses around the world in massive fraud? Nope. They are all walking! They are all bold as hell and they are all connected with organized crime! Yes. Half the bankers are organized crime.

Who is the next carcass?

More at the link:

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Laird/jun222011.h...

Morton Blackwell once said: "We will make them afraid to come out of their homes."

That pretty much sums it up.

All they needed was a Reichstag moment to put their plan in action.

Morton Blackwell Endorses Governor Mitt Romney
BOSTON, Jan. 24 -- The presidential campaign of former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., issued the following news release:

Today, Morton Blackwell, President of the conservative Leadership Institute, announced his support for Governor Mitt Romney and his candidacy for President of the United States. Morton Blackwell is a leader in the conservative movement and the long-standing Republican National Committeeman from Virginia.

http://targetednews.com/pr_disp.php?pr_id=...

Morton Blackwell, the most dangerous person in America.

Not that the Oligarchs want to bring jobs back to the US. They just want to make sure that the cheap Chinese and other low paid workers have no margin to aspire to. Pit us against each other. Next step is to get us killing each other for the jobs that do exist once the factories are automated.
I have worked in that environment, where the only advantage we had was productivity. We had to bid against plants in China, Viet Nam and elsewhere for the work. Even though we all worked for the same corporation, the various plants had to bid against each other for every contract. All parts and supplies came from a central facility. Th only margin was what the management could squeeze out of the workers and plant overhead.

The future is now. All they need now are a lot of proles that have nowhere else to go, and a few well educated specialists and managers to keep them pointed in the right direction.

Getting rid of unions and well-educated working class types is the first priority.

It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

--snip--

129I decays with a half-life of 15.7 million years, with low-energy beta and gamma emissions, to xenon-129 (129Xe).

129I is one of the 7 long-lived fission products that are produced in significant amounts. Its yield is 0.6576% per fission (U-235). Larger proportions of other iodine isotopes like 131I are produced, but because these all have short half-lives, iodine in cooled spent nuclear fuel consists of about 5/6 129I and 1/6 the only stable iodine isotope, 127I.

Because 129I is long-lived and relatively mobile in the environment, it is of particular importance in long-term management of spent nuclear fuel. In a deep geological repository for unreprocessed used fuel, 129I is likely to be the radionuclide of most potential impact at long times.

--snip--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-129

It uses a mixture of Uranium and Plutonium Oxides. Put aside for a moment, the fact that Plutonium is very toxic. It has one nasty feature that may cause serious problems.
Once the fuel assemblies have been breached, and Water comes in contact with the Plutonium Oxide, a reaction begins whereby the Plutonium begins to dissolve in the Water. It can reach a concentration where a Chain Reaction occurs. This would completely rupture the pressure vessel and release the Reactor Core and spent fuel to the Atmosphere in a massive explosion.

This is a worst-case scenario, but a possible one, none the less. IMHO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ZgzwoQ-ao...

This concept, although practiced for thousands of years, goes completely against the Idea of corporate agriculture.

This is not about quick profits, but a sustainable method of supplying food and medicines, far int the future, without reliance on the consumer-centric industrial systems that supply us now.

There are several related videos that are just as informative.

Corporations are getting rich using federal prisoners as captive labor pools.
Unless she’s dying or recovering from surgery, a patient at the Federal Medical Center-Carswell must work. The hospital out on the banks of Lake Worth is run by the Bureau of Prisons, and its patients are women who have been convicted of federal crimes. Bureau rules require all prisoners — even those in wheelchairs — to work at whatever jobs their infirmities will allow, from scrubbing floors to cleaning toilets.
Just across the street from the hospital complex is a camp for minimum-security women prisoners who are not ill. They get most of the hot, hard jobs — cleaning boilers, welding, mowing. The pay is a lousy 12 cents an hour with no raises. That’s why a job that many on the outside would take only as a last resort is the most coveted in the compound: Ernestine the telephone operator.
So when you call directory assistance using, say, Excel Telecommunications, chances are good your inquiry might be answered by a federal prisoner. At Carswell, a fifth of the prison workforce — most from the camp but a few from the hospital as well — get to sit in cubicles in an air-conditioned building, start at almost double the pay of the regular prison jobs, and, if they behave and don’t make mistakes, get regular raises until they reach the maximum pay of — hold onto your hat — $1.45 an hour. Of course, they have to work seven and a half years to reach that maximum. And since this center hasn’t been open long enough for anyone to make the maximum, the highest pay at Carswell is $1.15 an hour.
With toothpaste at $5.95 in the prison commissary, inmates who take those calls for Excel have to work between five and 25 hours to earn enough for one tube. But by comparison, they’re lucky: Women who work at other prison jobs have to sweat out 49 hours for the luxury of brushing their teeth.
The math on the other end is even simpler, if grander in scale: Excel, a $2.5 billion global company, comes out the clear winner. If the 19-year-old Irving-based long-distance carrier had to pay no more than minimum wage to non-prison U.S. workers to field calls from its worldwide network, it would cost the company $900 a month per worker, plus benefits and payments to Social Security. The 370 prison workers in Excel’s call center at Carswell make $180 a month at most, with no benefits.
But the Carswell prisoners are far from the only ones participating in this exercise in government-assisted capitalism.
How many people know that when they dial 411, the operator at the other end of the call is often a federal prisoner? Or that when they call to reserve a camping space at a national park, the person taking their personal information may be sitting in a cubicle in a maximum-security prison? Or that the body armor for the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is being manufactured by federal inmates?

--snip--
http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/prison-p...