COTW: Bread & Circuses

David Stockman has seen the light and is talking the talk. Regan's former bad boy of the budget tells us what many of us already instinctively know: the job numbers are bogus, period. He says the Second Great Depression resulted in the lost of 5.7 million middle-class jobs; those are permanent, 40 hours-per- week jobs on which a person can raise a family. Stockman labels these "breadwinning jobs". New jobs are temporary or part-time because no employer wants to be stuck paying for benefits. These 'McJobs' only pay about 40% of a real job. Consequently the average weekly number of hours worked is still going down, a trend that has continued since Nixon:

Fifteen years of money printing for the rich and connected, causing the Fed balance sheet to explode in size 9 times, has done almost nothing for Mainstreet while further enriching the financial elite of Wall Street:

The part-time economy maybe bustling as we serve each other drinks and tacos while your hotel bed is made and you shop for shoe repairs, but actual goods-producing jobs have yet to recover fully from the Second Great Depression. Only 21% of those jobs have been recovered. Stockman says manufacturing jobs are 22% lower than they were at the turn of this century:

Bottom line: Hope that the radical Keynesians are not smoking legal pot when they claim the US economy can continue indefinitely to borrow from the rest of the world.

Native Americans Sign Buffalo Treaty

Natives met September 22nd in Browning, Montana to sign the Northern Tribes Buffalo Treaty. Members of the Blackfoot, Blood, Siksika, Piikani, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Souix, Salish, Kootenai and Tsuu T'ina tribes and nations pledged to restore the buffalo on native territory. It is the first treaty among these peoples since the 1855 Lame Bull Treaty that established a common hunting ground. Collectively they control about 6.3 million acres of northern prarie on both sides of the international border, an area about three times the size of Yellowstone National Park. The treaty intends to restore the buffalo to its rightful place on the northern plains and conserve grasslands, as well as encouraging youth education and cultural restoration among the native peoples. Dr. Leroy Little Bear of the Blood Tribe in Alberta told interviewers the buffalo "brings about an ecological balance" because buffalo have a "very different grazing pattern than beef cattle". Buffalo played a central role in Northern Plains culture before the white man began his genocidal slaughter of the animal and fragmented the vast plains with European notions of legal ownership and agriculture. Bison conservationists herald the treaty as a historic milestone in a grass roots movement to bring the wild buffalo back to the western public landscape. Today, most buffalo live as livestock on private land in stark contrast to the 60 million that once roamed the Great Plains.

'Toontime: A Visitor in the East Room, Mr. President

The Obamadon can't wait to begin collecting those jucy fees from book deals and appearances, not to mention the fat federal retirement stipend. And no wonder, when you live in a neighborhood where intruders lurk on the lawns and peep in the windows:

credit: Tim Campbell
Wackydoodle sez: Can I see your ID card, sir?

Eric Holder, his ineffectual chief cop, already has a sinecure lined up, so why hang around to watch a ghost walk the halls? The administration's entire foreign policy is at the cleaners and his signature domestic program, affordable health care, is an underwealming cop-out to the insurance industry (23 states have yet to implement it). His government began with hope of substantaial social progress (The theme words were hope and change, remember?) and ends eight years later in more of the same--the same wars, the same racism, the same economic stagnation for the rest of us--no hope and the status quo. It is enough to make you immigrate; if you can afford it.

credit Kevin Siers
BC Idonwanna sez: Chief blows big smoke from Bendoozie!

Malaysian Tiger at the Brink

camera trap photo

Maylasia, a nation with the highest lost of forest in the world and one of the world's largest suppliers of palm oil, is about to loose its tiger subspecies, the Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksonii) The latest data (2010-13) from camera traps set up in three known tiger habitats showed far fewer tigers than expected. The previous estimate was 500, but only 250-340 now remain. Based on these figures the tiger may now be listed as Critically Endangered by the ICUN instead of only Endangered. Maylasian tiger conservation groups blame the insidious illegal trade in tiger body parts for traditional medicine. Loss and fragmentation of forest habitat that causes prey species, especially sambar deer, to decline also causes declining tiger populations.

poaching camp

Range states committed to doubling world tiger populations to 6,000 in the most recent year of the tiger, 2010. {21.01.10, Year of the Tiger} The next year of the tiger occurrs in 2022. Maylasia will be unable to meet its committments if the Maylasian tiger subspecies, which was first recognized as genetically distinct in 2004, continues to struggle to survive. Conservationists hope to perform more surveys to establish a more accurate count and establish patrols to protect tigers in three key habitats including Taman Negara National Park. The world has already lost the Bali, Caspian, and Javan tigers and is close to loosing the China tiger with only 70 of them living in captivity. There are more tigers in captivity in the United States than there are thought to still exist in the wild (3-4,000). About half of Earth's wild tigers live in India.

Japan Defies Internaitonal Whaling Commission

Update: The International Whaling Commission met in Portoroz, Slovenia where a resolution was passed 37 to 15 to allow international bodies such as the UN to be involved in establishing further protections for whales. Japan and other whaling nations opposed the resolution. Japan's alleged scientific whaling program known as JARPA II was ruled illegal and no further permits are authorized by the Commission. Japan responded by asking scientists around the world to help review its plans to resume whaling this season in the Southern Ocean. Unfortunately a resolution to establish a Southern Atlantic whale sancturary was defeated by whaling nations since the measure failed to achieve the three-quarters majority needed for adoption. The proposal has been narrowly defeated at every IWC meeting since 1999, but this year the vote was the closest ever (40-18).

Norway, one of the three remaining whaling countires, has killed 729 northern minke whales as of August. It continues to hunt whales under an objection to the moratorium; Norway's whaling is not camoflaged by the cover of scientific research. Despite a good hunting season, the demand for whale meat is dropping worldwide. Norway's quota is set at 1,286 for the season; fortunately for the species its numbers are estimated at 180,000. Japan's whaling program is not profitable and is heavily subsidized by the government. The Japanese people do not strongly support its continuation. A poll indicates at least 55% of them are indifferent to whaling. 89% of respondents say they have not bought whale meat in the last 12 months. It is time for Japan's officials to stop the slaughter that their citizens do not want.

{29.09.14}Japan has snubbed the International Whaling Commission by announcing it will proceed with whaling plans next year in the Southern Ocean. At one point in 2011 Japan told the international community that it would halt whaling in the Southern Ocean. Sea Shepards and other conservationists declared victory, but Japan resumed its commercial hunt {17.01.14, Sea Shepherds Sweep the Sea} At a meeting the Commission voted to require all "scientific whaling" programs be placed before the Scientific Committee for guidance. It also voted to place strict limits on the number of whales taken for scientific purposes. Nevertheless, Japan will continue the sharade of classifing its commercial whaling as culls for scientific purposes. The International Court Justice found that Japan's extensive use of lethal means to achieve it alleged scientific purpose does not fit with IWC resolutions concerning the whaling moratorium and the scientific purposes exception. Further the sheer size of the minke whale take (853 during the first year) convinced the Court that Japan's "priority was to maintain whaling operations without any pause" [p.48] during a six year long research program. The Court also noted the testimony of Japan's Director General of the Fisheries Agency before a House of Representatives subcommittee: minke whale meat is "prized because it is said to have a very good flavor and aroma when eaten as sashimi and the like." [p.58] Obviously Japan, your drool was too obvious! Hopefully Sea Shepherds will again undertake the periolus duty of opposing the Japanese whaling vessels since legal authorities seem powerless to stop them.

Creature Feature: Walruses Jam Beach Again

If walruses could spell they would form the word "help" with their bodies on this  isolated Alaskan beach near Point Lay, an Inupiat village:

courtesy: NOAA

Thirty-five thousand walruses hauled onto land, something they ordinarily do not do for safety reasons, but sea ice is becoming so scarce they have no choice but to return to the beach. They have been landing on the US side of the Chukchi Sea since 2007. WWF says large haul-outs have also occurred on the Russian shore.  Such huge conglomerations pose a danger to young walruses since stampedes occur, sometimes triggered by hunting polar bears, sometimes by low-flying aircraft. Fifty carcasses in this gathering have been spotted by observers. Arctic sea ice reached is lowest point in mid-September and marked the sixth lowest extent since 1978 when satelite imagery became available. Only a bribed politician could look at this weird natural phenomenon and deny global warming exists. Not just walruses are noticing the change in climate but also polar bears and indeginous peoples of the high Arctic. [more in Guardian photo gallery]

COTW: Middle Class Squeeze

Economist Paul Krugman penned in his New York Times column the economic hegemony of the rich in America is based on a "foundation of ignorance". The people at the bottom do not really understand how concentrated wealth is in this country and that the gap between the rich the rest of us is at an historically high level. Compensation for labor is no longer closely correlated with increases in productivity as it was from 1948-73. After that period of widespread prosperity productivity slowed and compensation became decoupled from productivity:

While real wages have fallen, the net worth of the top 20% has increased by 120% between 1983 and 2010. At the same time, prices for everything the middle class considers necessary for their economic well-being such as houses, cars, health care, child care, college and retirement savings has gone up:

charts source:  americanprogress.org

The median family experienced an 8% decrease in real income during the period 2000-12 yet the cost of basic security rose dramatically. Basic security cost $10,600 more in 2012 than in 2000.  Of course middle class wealth is responsible for a large segment of consumer demand and without demand, businesses owned by the rich go under.  In other words squeezing the middle class is bad for business.