21 September - Twitterfeed Picks

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Millionaires, The Middle Class, and Taxes — Actual Numbers

Recent Columns

Economic Bleeding Cure

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Austerity is inflicting vast pain now, and killing our future, too.

Free to Die

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Compassion is out of fashion among the G.O.P.’s base.

An Impeccable Disaster

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The moralizers, who hate the idea of letting nations off the hook for alleged fiscal sins, are sending the euro over the edge.

Setting Their Hair on Fire

By PAUL KRUGMAN

President Obama, with a significantly bolder and better plan than expected, tries to get action on unemployment.

The Fatal Distraction

By PAUL KRUGMAN

By obsessing over deficits, Washington has been making the real problem — mass unemployment — much worse.

Dot Earth

Updates on Greenland's Ice

New work shows how complicated plumbing within Greenland's ice sheets challenges efforts to make sea-level projections.

Opinionator

Stone Links

A collection of philosophy-related links from the past week.

 

China's land grabs: A case study

As the autumn harvest draws ever nearer, villagers in Liuxiazhuang have found themselves, quite suddenly, landless.
Documents provided to Al Jazeera by township-level officials showed contracts the government entered into on September 10 - less than two weeks ago.
Four days later, villagers at Liuxiazhuang received notices of the confiscation of parts of their farmland and the bulldozers promptly rolled in.
This took place just weeks ahead of the autumn harvest, and the farmers could hardly believe they had not only lost their land, but their last season of crops.
It did not appear that the new developers could wait a single moment for work on their latest project - a series of industrial and manufacturing parks - to begin.
Deputy Party Secretary Li Xiaofei, who is in charge of Liuxiazhuang, explained, "everyone" had been aware of this project and the plans to convert the land into a large-scale industrial and commercial park.
"During this entire land dispute, we have followed the laws. Everything we have done us is legal. Of course, what has happened is unfortunate," said Li.
But I also want you to understand that the villagers are looking out for their own interests, and will push for as much as they can get out of this."
By Li's own admission, he has personally handled this entire land redistribution case and says the township-level has accepted full responsibility for the deal.

What has incensed farmers have been the details of the agreement between the government and the property developers: rental for each mu (the Chinese calculation for a unit of land) went for about $100 (about 700 yuan) with a 15-year lease.

Considering the region is one of the wealthiest parts of China, the developers had received a windfall. The market rate for a mu of land typically runs at $42,000 (270,000 yuan). The discrepancy between the two figures is striking.

The Amanda Marcotte Daily

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• The 9/11 Delusion: Israel's False Flag Op, Jingoism And Inhumanity
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• Arab Spring? Not! "Systematic torture occurring in Egypt "
  Al Masry al Youm (Egypt) (Seeded By krishna-167929)

Meltdown

The men who crashed the world

The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that led to financial collapse. In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne. The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929. But how did it all go so wrong? Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place. Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace. Featured on Al Jazeera haphaestus 7 hours ago The greatest threat to "peace and security" of the world was strangely absent from Obama's speech to UN:  the poverty (and underlying troubles: crime, disease, extremism) caused by super rich corporate elite's greed for control and power of the worlds resources. The conflicts over resources are occuring all over the globe and whether its tyrants in ME, dictators in Asia, or false democracies (America and the west) controlled by "lobbyists" and banksters...it all adds up to the same thing: we are headed down a path that will bring the whole world back into conflict! Unless some level of morality can be introduced to economy and some degree of social justice can be achieved on a global scale the world is going to find itself once again being called to arms to combat a threat to civilization itself.  tsunami2 6 hours ago While every President for the last 30-40 years had a part to play in this mess the mortgage issues were more directly caused by the Banking Overhaul Bill of November 1999.  Look it up yourself and they banking deregulations. I do not believe it was the lack of regulation that was the problem (you have too many regulations, not too few) but rather enforcement of those regulations. I spent almost 40 years in Gov. regulations and enforcement and can tell you from first hand that if you do not enforce them they are just so much useless paper and actually worse than nothing. Your President Reagan said    "Trust but verify". We allowed our inspectors 4 years in an area then they were rotated out to something different.  It is only natural that freindships develop which make it hard for and enforcement officer to do his job. This goes from meat inspection, workplace safety, banking regulations etc. and it is also most important that senior management support the line people or the system fails. In your country one of the prime problems you have which prevents regulation enforcement etc. is litigation. Your country is Sue happy and this makes anybody trying to do the job have one eye open for legal consequences.  No good.  Kashmir : The Forgotten Conflict Fear incorporated We examine the phenomenon of Islamophobia in the US media and the people behind it. Sick Gulf residents continue to blame BP Many people living near the site of the BP oil spill have reported a long list of similar health problems. State of recognition Whether the UN grants the PA status as a state or refuses to do so, either outcome will be in Israel's interest. China buys gold, challenges US dollar WikiLeaks cables allege that China is buying gold to weaken the US dollar's supremacy as the world's reserve currency.  More Opinion Western intervention, is it ever helpful? Dan Hind The humiliation of Barack Obama Robert Grenier Damages for my unjust 'terror' arrest Rizwaan Sabir Statehood versus 'facts on the ground' Richard Falk America's 13 deficits: Part 1 Paul Rosenberg Explaining the silence on Yemen Abubakr Al-Shamahi Can the US repay its public debt? Mohamed Rabie Who can we trust to solve the debt crisis? Danny Schechter Netanyahu owes Obama big time MJ Rosenberg Nuclear lessons unlearned Tibor Toth United we bland Ted Rall Is inflation the answer? Raghuram Rajan Dueling legitimacies in Libya Soumaya Ghannoushi State of recognition Joseph Massad Obama: 'No short cut' to Middle East peace 256 people recommend this. Palestine & UN: History of a double standard 368 people recommend this. Palestinians rally in support of statehood 664 people recommend this.  The Blue Girl Daily House Defeats Stopgap Spending Bill, With Disaster Relief Hanging in the Balance nytimes.com - WASHINGTON — In a stunning rebuke to House Republican leaders, the House on Wednesday defeated a routine bill to finance the government through mid-November, leaving unclear how the House and Senat...  Energy Department Forges Ahead With $1.5 Billion Solar Loan Guarantee idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com - As the political circus over the failure of the solar panel maker Solyndra plays out on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration is quietly forging ahead with its renewable energy loan guarantee prog...  ( Is there a solvent market ? )  firedoglake8 mins The Dangers of Cutting Medicare and Medicaid http://t.co/xKmTdL3l   thinkprogress10 mins Amnesty international reports "nearly 1 million people have signed a petition on Davis' behalf" http://t.co/TZTlnRqa #toomuchdoubt HuffPostPol9 mins Cable news networks avoided input from economists during debt debate, study finds http://t.co/9CgxuOSh downwithtyranny15 mins I wonder if Rick Perry is thinking how it would impact his campaign if he barged in & executed #TroyDavis personally. Dahlialithwick15 mins cruel. and. unusual. MJayRosenberg26 mins You don't have to be against the death penalty to oppose the legal murder of an innocent man. #TroyDavis

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