Obama Style Stimulus

By Stephen Lendman

Lying Obama in the den of fellow liars, speechifying about jobs. Expect further transfers of the people's wealth to the top, and no improvement of the economy anywhere.

Obama’s leadership is defined by lawlessness, serial lying and betrayal of the public trust.  

For ordinary Americans, his new proposal amounts to a combination left hook, right cross haymaker, decking workers when they need uplifting.

His September 8 “American Jobs Act” address to Congress, in fact, demonstrated his contempt for working households and their ability to see through another thinly veiled wealth transfer scheme to corporate favorites and super-rich elites already with too much.

In a word, it was more same old, same old – a disgraceful laundry list of handouts instead of measures to create jobs, stimulate growth, reinvigorate Main Street, strengthen America’s middle class, and help growing millions of impoverished, disadvantaged households most in need. 

None of that was anywhere in sight nor will political Washington agree to it. 

No matter. On September 8, New York Times writer Mark Landler headlined, “Obama Challenges Congress on Job Plan,” saying:

“….Obama challenged lawmakers on Thursday to ‘pass this jobs bill’ – a blunt call….to enact his $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending, designed to revive a stalling economy and his own political standing.”

 Fact check

Tax cuts never create jobs, especially ones for the rich. The Bush 2001 ones, extended in 2006, and again by Obama in 2010 didn’t increase investments or employment. 

If extended or increased now, they’ll continue the decades long historic income shift from middle and working class households to corporate favorites and America’s super-rich.

That’s the crux of Obama’s plan along with deeper austerity cuts, burdening ordinary Americans with the onus of paying for what should be earmarked for them.

Nonetheless, Obama told Congress to “pass this jobs plan right away….The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis (created by him, Bush and previous administrations), we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy (read its top 1% only).”

Omitting details, he insisted that everything he proposes will be paid for by increased austerity, including entitlement and Medicaid cuts, harming America’s retired, disabled and poor, getting nothing back in return.

Some plan! Yet Obama insisted he’s “pretty sure (he) know(s) what most Americans would choose. It’s not even close….we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives.”

In fact, most everything he proposed will exacerbate today’s crisis, not alleviate it for working households.

A same day Times editorial headlined, “The Jobs Speech,” saying:

Obama’s proposal was more “ambitious….robust and far-reaching than expected – that may be the first crucial step in reigniting the economy….”

“(H)e was authoritative in demanding that Congress pass his plan quickly….We hope Mr. Obama keeps his promise to take his proposals all over the country. The need to act is urgent.”

Fact check 

Only the last statement was worthy in an editorial best rebuked for not explaining who benefits at whose expense.

Economist Jack Rasmus, a Progressive Radio News Hour regular, did it well, headlining his analysis of Obama’s proposal “Why Less is More of the Same,” saying:

Obama’s “Jobs Act” was another weak-kneed combination of inadequate spending, “wrong composition and targets, and bad timing.” 

In fact, no matter how it’s directed, $447 billion “won’t achieve the job creation it claims.” It’s more of the same too little, too late “for an economy in as deep an economic hole as it is, and (one) facing growing downward momentum at home in the context of a global economy also rapidly sinking.”

In February 2009, when Obama proposed $787 Bn in economic stimulus, unemployment was about 25 million. Two and a half years later, it’s the same. How then can half a loaf do now what double it earlier couldn’t. It won’t nor is that its intention, what America’s media won’t explain.

In fact, it’s more a reelection than jobs creation plan if voters are dumb enough to buy it. Hopefully they’ll understand how it harms them.

Moreover, Obama’s current plan is “seriously deficient” as was his 2009 proposal. Both featured non-job creating tax cuts. “Then and now, tax cuts simply cannot and will not create jobs,” especially given the depth of America’s troubles. Yet tax cuts comprise 60% of his plan. 

Despite well over $1 trillion in tax cuts in the last two years, zero jobs were created – in fact, less than zero when factoring in the replacement of full-time higher-paying jobs for uncertain lower wage/low or no benefit temporary or part-time ones.

George Bush’s jobless recovery is a case in point. From 2001 – 2004, around $3 trillion in tax cuts were largely comprised of capital gains, dividends, estate tax relief, business depreciation, and other corporate handouts.

Over 80% went to America’s wealthiest 20%. In fact, most of it went to the top 5% and 1%, America’s most disadvantaged nearly entirely left out. 

As a result, “(w)e had the longest jobless recession in US history up to that point. It took 46 months just to recover” to 2001 levels. Moreover, most jobs created were in finance and housing when speculative excess helped them boom.

At the same time, millions of high pay/good benefit manufacturing jobs were lost, offshored to low wage economies where they remained.

Besides ineffective tax cuts, Obama also proposed state subsidies as in 2009 to create jobs. In fact, since then, hundreds of thousands of state and local government layoffs followed, continuing monthly.

In 2009, $100 billion was allocated for infrastructure spending to create four million jobs. It didn’t happen. In June 2009, 6.4 construction workers were employed. Today it’s less than 5.5 million. 

Obama’s new plan is no better. Immediate job creation is needed. Construction and infrastructure ones are long-term and won’t help over any duration when boosted by minimal funding.

His plan to subsidize small business hiring is also flawed. Besides minimal government help, bank loans are needed at a time their availability have declined for “15 consecutive months.”

Washington’s too-big-to fail bailout didn’t restart lending. Like big corporations hoarding $2 trillion, so are major banks in cash reserves they’ve used for speculation, not  credit to stimulate economic growth and create jobs.

An effective plan would let small business, responsible for most job creation, borrow directly from the federal government at near zero percent interest like major banks do from the Fed they own so effectively get free money.

After House Republicans massage Obama’s plan they’ll likely cherry-pick business tax cuts they like best and add more, leaving working households worse off than before because deeper austerity cuts coming will pay for them as well as America’s imperial wars.

As a result, Rasmus appropriately renamed Obama’s plan “The Business Tax Expansion Act of 2011.” Republicans love its selected parts. So do Democrats by going along, especially with 2012 priorities in mind to be reelected by making core constituencies believe harming them is helpful.

Today’s political Washington doesn’t prioritize job creation and economic growth, just the illusion they’re promoted when, in fact, shifting America’s wealth to its most well-off comes first, along with letting working households bear the burden of paying taxes corporate favorites and super-rich elites avoid.

That’s the America Obama wants continued and intensified to entirely destroy America’s middle class – that is, what’s left of it.

A Final Comment

Last year, Congress declared a destructive payroll tax holiday for workers by cutting the rate from 6.2% to 4.2% for one year. Doing so, in fact, drained hundreds of billions from the Social Security Trust Fund. 

As a result, it was irreparably weakened in its ability to pay future benefits. The idea, in fact, is to destroy the program altogether, perhaps first by privatizing it. 

It’s easy to cut taxes, hard to restore them, especially when economic conditions are weak.  Maintaining the lower rates indefinitely will cause massive benefit cuts before eliminating them altogether.

When the original Social Security Act passed in 1935, Franklin Roosevelt pledged the following:

“We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.” 

FDR never met Obama or congressional Republicans and Democrats. What he gave, they’ll end, violating a government-mandated right.

A payroll tax holiday is another step toward privatization. It’s a sure way to kill it, the way 401(k)s destroyed private pensions, leaving workers at the mercy of marketplace uncertainties able to wipe out life savings during hard times. 

Nonetheless, Obama proposed more of the same. By so doing, he’ll exacerbate a bad idea by reducing the current 4.2% to 3.1% in 2012 and giving employers the same benefit and more.

For them, he also proposed a complete tax holiday for new hires as well as on wage increases for current staff. In addition, his plan includes tax cuts for hiring the long-term unemployed and veterans out of work six months or more. 

Expect the usual pundits and “experts” to hail the idea as an effective way to create jobs when, in fact, Obama’s entire plan may end up destroying them along with irreparably weakening Social Security.

A payroll tax holiday or cut any time is a bad idea, besides doing nothing to create jobs. What’s needed, in fact, wasn’t proposed by either Bush, Obama or Congress. 

It requires large amounts of stimulus spending for economic growth. If effectively directed, it can sustain it inflation free the way colonial America did for 25 years before British banks co-opted their money creation power.

So did Lincoln with government created money, turning America into the world’s greatest industrial giant by launching the steel industry, a continental railroad system, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools, as well as much more.  

In fact, America’s post-Civil War years were its greatest growth period before the Fed’s 1913 creation, giving bankers money power only governments should have.

Taking it back, of course, is key to sustained long-term prosperity. At this time, other steps in the right direction are compromised as long as Wall Street controls the nation’s money. 

It also controls government. Unless that changes, expect political Washington to keep shifting the nation’s wealth from those who need it most to corporate favorites and others already with too much. 

As a result, America’s epitaph one day may read it’s how an economic/military powerhouse hollowed out in disrepair, long surpassed by other industrial giants that understood good policies and instituted them.

Under Obama’s plan and others like it, it’s not only assured, it’s accelerating.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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Is it time we all gave up meat?

The case for cutting meat consumption has never been more compelling. Yet we remain stubbornly addicted to big protein hits in animal form. Could that be about to change?
by Felicity Lawrence
The Guardian (U.K.), Saturday 10 September 2011
 
A woman looks through the window of a butchers shop
Food inflation is one factor influencing people to eat less meat. Photograph: CATHAL MCNAUGHTON/REUTERS

IF YOU SHARE the typical British appetite, you will have worked your way through more than 1.5kg of meat this week as part of your annual 80kg quota of flesh-eating. That leaves you behind your typical American counterpart – working his or her way to 125kg a year – but still near the top of the international league of carnivores.

The case for cutting our meat consumption has long been a compelling one from whichever perspective you look at it – human health, environmental good, animal welfare, fair distribution of planetary resources. But it has never been a popular idea. The number of people in this country claiming to be vegetarian or partly vegetarian has stayed stable over the last decade, at around 4.8m. We remain culturally programmed to desire big protein hits in animal form. But could that be about to change?

Meat-reducing, as the marketers have branded it, may just have acquired fresh momentum. Self-confessed king carnivore Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has switched from meat to vegetables as his latest celebrity cause. Food inflation is adding its own deterrent effect, with supermarkets unwittingly bolstering consumers’ ethical resolve by increasing the price of minced beef 25% in the last month as soaring commodity values hit the cost of animal feed. Meat substitutes, such as the fungus-derived protein Quorn, appear to be flourishing too, with sales up 9% in the last three months.

The two most pressing reasons for cutting back on meat today are climate change and global population growth. The post-war years have seen an explosion in the numbers of animals intensively reared for meat and milk. This livestock revolution, and the change in land use that has gone with it, however, now contribute nearly one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Most people could do more for the climate by cutting meat than giving up their car and plane journeys.

The UN predicts that the number of farm animals will double by 2050. Except, of course, it can’t. The livestock of Europe already require an area of vegetation seven times the size of Europe to keep them in feed. If people in emerging economies start eating as much meat as we do, there simply won’t be enough planet.

Intensive meat production is a very inefficient way of feeding the world. Farm a decent acre with cattle and you can produce about 20lbs of beef protein. Give the same acre over to wheat and you can produce 138lbs of protein for human consumption. If the grain that is currently used to feed animals were fed instead directly to people, there may be just enough food to go round when population peaks.

Replacing meat with more plant foods would also reduce diet-related diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and some cancers, according to reports in the Lancet. Malthusian panics about how to feed the world are not new, but the question has added urgency now as available resources dwindle. Nor is it the first time the problem has been framed in terms of meat. In 1970 Frances Moore Lappé published the seminal book Diet for a Small Planet, arguing that the American meat-centred diet was shockingly wasteful of protein.

Her recipe book to accompany it was full of ideas for less resource-intensive sources of complete protein, from bean burgers to wheat-soy varnishkas and peanut butter protein sandwiches.

The received wisdom at the time was that meat was superior because it contains “complete” protein with all the amino acids humans need for growth and maintenance. This hangup about complete protein seems to be one of the reasons meat still holds its powerful attraction. Until recently it was thought that we needed to eat the eight amino acids we cannot synthesise ourselves in combinations at the same time to be able to make use of plant protein. In fact nutritional science has subsequently caught up with the wisdom distilled in peasant cuisines that depend on beans and grains, and found this not true. But this idea of complete protein being the master ingredient persists, and is used to sell meat alternatives. Quorn is marketed as “a high quality meat-free protein. It has all the essential amino acids you’d find in other proteins like beef or chicken.”

Quorn emerged from a search for new kinds of food in the early 1960s, when experts were predicting the world would run out of proteins to feed its growing population within two decades. Researchers at the bakery giant Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM) isolated a fungus in the soil in fields near its Marlow factory that could be fermented to produce protein. Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), meanwhile, had developed techniques for mass production of bacterial single-cell proteins for its animal feed, Pruteen. In the early 1980s the two companies set up a joint venture with a grant from the Department for Trade to produce protein from the fungus for human food. The fungus was fed on glucose from wheat or maize in a fermenter for several hours where it multiplied, and was then filtered to yield fungal fibres which were rolled and frozen to create a mat with a chewy texture. Flavourings and egg albumen were added to bind it and “mycoprotein” was born. “Myco” comes from the Greek for fungus. It was approved by regulators for sale in the UK in 1985, then in the US in 2002, and is now marketed in 10 different countries.

The gospel of protein, as Geoffrey Cannon, editor of World Nutrition describes it, has been preached by governments for more than 100 years for three reasons: “power, empire and war”. Protein became the master nutrient because concentrated animal protein promotes growth in early life. “This was a period when the most powerful European nations and then the USA were expanding their empires and preparing for mass wars fought by land armies. Growth in every sense was the prevailing ideology. Governments needed production of more, bigger, faster-growing plants, animals and humans.”

American soldiers reared on diets high in meat and milk from the Midwest came over to help win the war in Europe in 1917 and in 1941 and seemed to be like young gods because they were so tall, broad and strong, even though their parents might have been smaller immigrant peasants from Europe. The physical weakness of the poorly-fed working classes in Europe was seen as an impediment to national growth. Increasing production and consumption of animal protein was a British national priority up to the second world war, Cannon explains.

Meanwhile, over in Germany in 1938, the German army high command was testing out its new Wehrmacht cookbook. “The soldier’s efficiency can be maintained only if the elements consumed in working are supplied through the diet. The body is continually using up its own substance which has to be replaced in the form of protein, the body-building material,” it declares. It had come up with the rather forward-thinking idea that reducing animal products would be more economically efficient, “as these products must be manufactured in a round about way from plant materials by the bodies of animals themselves. This is an extravagant use of food”. Moreover, stocks of meat would be hard to accumulate and transport by the invading army. So instead the Germans tested mass feeding with protein from “pure soya”. The infantry were given 150g a day of protein, with soya stuffed into everything possible, from liver noodles to goulash with brown gravy and sponge pudding with chocolate sauce, topped by rice and soya milk as a midnight snack.

Today’s official guidelines are that adult men need just about one third of that Aryan-building calculation for protein. But recommended daily amounts of protein remain a somewhat movable feast. They depend on body weight, and have been adjusted as understanding has increased. What is clear, though, is that protein deficiencies are rare in developed countries and most of us, including vegetarians, eat much more than we need.

Joe Millward, professor of nutrition at Surrey University, has sat on several national and international expert committees that have drawn up recommendations on protein requirements. Vegetarians who eat eggs and milk “have no nutritional issues at all,” he says. Their protein intakes are not much lower than the average meat eater’s, and they get plenty of the micronutrients associated with meat, such as B12 and iron.

Dr Mike Rayner, director of the British Heart Foundation health promotion group, points out, in the book The Meat Crisis, that the average person in the UK is already getting about 31g a day of protein from cereals, fruit, nuts and vegetables including potatoes. The UK government estimates that the average woman needs 36g of protein per day and the average man 44g. “If official recommendations are right, then we don’t need to eat much more of these foods to meet them.”

Most people in this country and the US eat double the amount of protein they need. Excess is just broken down in the body for energy or stored as fat.

So if we don’t need the protein, why not dispense with both the meat and the meat substitutes? Many Quorn consumers buy it because they want to lose weight, because it’s convenient, or because they think it is healthier than meat, according to its manufacturers.

While many people clearly enjoy eating it, it is not without critics. The not-for-profit food safety campaign group in the US, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), has raised concerns about its potential to provoke allergenic and other adverse reactions in some consumers.

The manufacturers acknowledge that some people can have adverse reactions, but insist the numbers are very low. They quote a figure from the Food Standards Agency of between one in 100,000 and 200,000 being affected. That compares to about one in 300 thought to be adversely affected by soya protein.

“All protein foods have the potential to cause an adverse reaction in some consumers. The level of intolerance of Quorn products is extremely low and much lower than for other protein foods such as soya, nuts, shellfish, dairy and eggs,” the company said in a statement, adding that its “products have been extensively tested and approved as safe by the relevant regulator in each market in which it is sold”.

The FSA admitted that its figures for adverse reactions are based on data from the manufacturers themselves. It is extremely difficult to assess the prevalence of allergic reactions generally – there is no formal system for registering them, nor is there any official monitoring of allergic reactions to novel foods once they have been approved.

CSPI director Mike Jacobson says it has received reports from more than 1,000 people in the UK who say they have been made sick by eating the mycoprotein. In some cases the reaction was severe, and in a few, he says, even life-threatening, as consumers went into anaphylactic shock. The CPSI subsequently commissioned an independent poll of 1,000 UK consumers. “Four per cent of those who consumed Quorn said they were sensitive to it. That’s a higher percentage than soya,” according to Jacobson.

The regulator thought it unlikely levels would be that high without more reports appearing in the medical literature, but agreed there could be some underreporting.

Quorn says it convened a panel of independent allergy specialists and toxicologists in January who were paid an honorarium to review the safety of mycoprotein. They did not look at CSPI’s case reports but concluded on the basis of peer-reviewed published studies that it was safe, Quorn Foods said. Neither its findings nor the experts’ declaration of interests, nor the CSPI survey have yet been published.

For Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, it’s an issue we should simply sidestep. “I’m not so much interested in replacing meat as ignoring it,” he says.

Felicity Lawrence is a special correspondent for the Guardian and author of the bestselling exposes of the food business, Not on the Label and Eat Your Heart Out

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Something to cheer: LANDMARK AGREEMENT MOVES 757 SPECIES TOWARD FEDERAL PROTECTION

On July 12, 2011, the Center for Biological Diversity struck a historic legal settlement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, requiring the agency to make initial or final decisions on whether to add hundreds of imperiled plants and animals to the endangered species list by 2018. The Endangered Species Act is America’s strongest environmental law and surest way to save species threatened with extinction.

The agreement caps a decade-long effort by the Center’s scientists, attorneys and activists to safeguard 1,000 of America’s most imperiled, least protected species including the walrus, wolverine, Mexican grey wolf, fisher, New England cottontail rabbit, three species of sage grouse, scarlet Hawaiian honeycreeper, California golden trout, Miami blue butterfly, Rio Grande cutthroat trout, 403 southeastern river-dependent species, 42 Great basin springsnails and 32 Pacific Northwest mollusks.

The Center’s wrote scientific petitions and/or filed lawsuits to win federal protection for each of the 757 species.

Click to see the species in alphabetical order, by year of their protection decision, by taxon or via an interactive state-by-state map.

Here are a few highlights:

 

American wolverine: A bear-like carnivore, the American wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family. It lives in mountainous areas of the West, where it depends on late-spring snowpacks for denning. The primary threats to its existence are shrinking snowpacks related to global warming, excessive trapping and harassment by snowmobiles.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list the wolverine as an endangered species in 1994. It was placed on the candidate list in 2010. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.
 
 

Black-footed albatross: A large, dark-plumed seabird that lives in northwestern Hawaii, the black-footed albatross is threatened by longline swordfish fisheries, which kill it as bycatch.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list this albatross as an endangered species in 2004. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection, determine it does not qualify, or find that it is warranted but precluded for protection in 2011.
 
 

Cactus ferruginous pygmy owl: A tiny desert raptor, active in the daytime, the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl lives in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. It is threatened by urban sprawl and nearly extirpated from Arizona.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 1992. It was protected in 1997, then delisted on technical grounds in 2006. The Center repetitioned to protect it in 2007. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2011 and finalize the decision in 2012 if warranted.
 

Scarlet Hawaiian honeycreeper (‘i’iwi): This bright-red bird hovers like a hummingbird and has long been featured in the folklore and songs of native Hawaiians. It is threatened by climate change, which is causing mosquitoes that carry introduced diseases — including avian pox and malaria — to move into the honeycreeper’s higher-elevations refuges. It has been eliminated from low elevations on all islands by these diseases.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2010. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2016 and finalize the decision in 2017 if warranted.
 

Ashy stormy petrel: A small, soot-colored seabird that lives off coastal waters from California to Baja, Mexico, the ashy storm petrel looks like it’s walking on the ocean surface when it feeds. It is threatened by warming oceans, sea-level rise and ocean acidification.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2007. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.
 

Greater and Mono Basin sage grouse: Sage grouse are showy, ground-dwelling birds that perform elaborate mating dances, with males puffing up giant air sacks on their chests. The Mono Basin sage grouse lives in Nevada and California. The greater sage grouse lives throughout much of the Interior West. Both are threatened by oil and gas drilling, livestock grazing, development and off-road vehicles.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list the Mono Basin sage grouse as an endangered species in 2005. It was placed on the candidate list in 2010. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.

The greater sage grouse was petitioned for listing in 2002 and placed on the candidate list in 2010. Under our agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2015 and finalize the decision in 2016 if warranted.
 

Mexican gray wolf: Exterminated from, then reintroduced to the Southwest, the Mexican gray wolf lives in remote forests and mountains along the Arizona/New Mexico border. It is threatened by legal and illegal killing, which has hampered the federal recovery program, keeping the species down to 50 wild animals.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list it as an endangered species separate from other wolves in 2009. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2012 and finalize the decision in 2013 if warranted.
 

Pacific fisher: A cat-like relative of minks and otters, the fisher is the only animal that regularly preys on porcupines. It lives in old-growth forests in California, Oregon and Washington, where it is threatened by logging.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list the fisher as an endangered species in 2000. It was placed on the candidate list in 2004. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2014 and finalize the decision in 2015 if warranted.
 

Miami blue butterfly: An ethereal beauty native to South Florida and possibly the most endangered insect in the United States, the Miami blue was thought extinct after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 but rediscovered in 1999. It is threatened by habitat loss and pesticide spraying.

It was petitioned for listing as an endangered species in 2000 and placed on the candidate list in 2005. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it on an emergency basis in 2011. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2012 and finalize the decision in 2013 if warranted.
 

Oregon spotted frog: The Oregon spotted frog lives in wetlands from southernmost British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to northernmost California. It is threatened by habitat destruction and exotic species.

The Oregon spotted frog was placed on the candidate in 1991. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2004. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.
 

Pacific walrus: A large, ice-loving, tusk-bearing pinniped, the Pacific walrus plays a major role in the culture and religion of many northern peoples. Like the polar bear, it is threatened by the rapid and accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice and oil drilling.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2007. It was placed on the candidate list in 2011. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2017 and finalize the decision in 2018 if warranted.
 

Rio Grande cutthroat trout: Characterized by deep crimson slashes on its throat — hence the name “cutthroat” — the Rio Grande cutthroat is New Mexico’s state fish. It formerly occurred throughout high-elevation streams in the Rio Grande Basin of New Mexico and southern Colorado. Logging, road building, grazing, pollution and exotic species have pushed it to the brink of extinction.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 1998. It was placed on the candidate list in 2008. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2014 and finalize the decision in 2015 if warranted.
 

403 Southeast aquatic species: The southeastern United States contains the richest aquatic biodiversity in the nation, harboring 62 percent of the country’s fish species (493 species), 91 percent of its mussels (269 species) and 48 percent of its dragonflies and damselflies (241 species). Unfortunately, the wholesale destruction, diversion, pollution and development of the Southeast’s rivers have made the region America’s aquatic extinction capital.

In 2010, the Center for Biological Diversity completed a 1,145-page, peer-reviewed petition to list 403 Southeast aquatic species as endangered, including the Florida sandhill crane, MacGillivray’s seaside sparrow, Alabama map turtle, Oklahoma salamander, West Virginia spring salamander, Tennessee cave salamander, Black warrior waterdog, Cape Sable orchid, Clam-shell orchid, Florida bog frog, Lower Florida Keys striped mud turtle, Eastern black rail, and Streamside salamander.

None of the Southeast aquatic species are on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue initial listing decisions on all 403 plants and animals in 2011.
 

42 Great Basin springsnails: Living in isolated springs of the Great Basin and Mojave deserts, springsnails play important ecological roles cycling nutrients, filtering water and providing food to other animals. Many are threatened by a Southern Nevada Water Authority plan to pump remote, desert groundwater to Las Vegas.

In 2009, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list 42 springsnails as endangered species, including the duckwater pyrg, Big Warm Spring pyrg and Moapa pebblesnail. None are on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue initial listing decisions on all 42 species in 2011.
 

32 Pacific Northwest mollusks: The Pacific Northwest is home to a unique diversity of mollusks found nowhere else on Earth. With colorful names like the evening fieldslug, cinnamon juga, Chelan mountainsnail and masked duskysnail, these species recycle nutrients, filter water and provide important prey for birds, amphibians and other animals. Many species threatened by logging, pollution and urban sprawl.

In 2008, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list 32 Washington, Oregon and Northern California mollusks as endangered species. None are on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue initial listing decisions on all 32 species in 2011.
 

 

 

 

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The execrable Chris Christie in bed with the criminal Kochs [VIDEO]

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chasing People Like Animals—on Land and, Increasingly, at Sea

Border Wars

September 7, 2011

Border Patrol arrest. Credit: www.digitaljournal.com

John Randolph, a musician and migrant rights activist, is hardly a recognizable name in discussions on matters of immigration and boundary enforcement in the United States, but he should be. This is due to a combination of his 26 years as an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol and, later, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as his present-day willingness to challenge the conventions of mainstream debate and to expose the futility and inhumanity of the status quo. 

Last week, Randolph authored a rather startling piece  for the Huffington Post in which he speaks of how, during his many years as a federal agent, he hunted and caught “many people.” The vast majority of them, he writes, “were good, hard working” individuals. This, and the violence and injury that he saw, eventually led him “to wonder why immigrants had to be chased like animals, and why I was being paid to chase them.”

He now understands the U.S.-Mexico boundary as functioning “to keep the good people from both sides from joining together, from knowing each other, and from prospering,” and sees efforts to interdict drugs and migrants as destined to fail.

While Randolph hunted migrants on land, the Border Patrol is increasingly tracking them at sea. As boundary and immigration enforcement has intensified across the U.S. Southwest, growing numbers of migrants are using small boats to reach destinations along California’s Pacific Coast. Reports indicate that migrant boats are showing up along beaches in Los Angeles, and as far north as Santa Barbara (more than 200 miles from the U.S.-Mexico divide).

In addition to illustrating the deep resolve of migrants and their smugglers, these sea voyages exhibit their endless ingenuity and adaptation to the obstacles U.S. authorities throw in their way.

Undoubtedly the rise in attempts to enter the United States surreptitiously via the sea will lead to calls for ever-more resources for the Border Patrol and its “sister” agencies in the Department of Homeland Security. 

Former agent John Randolph (Credit: www.watchnewspapers.com)

And undoubtedly the ratcheting up of the regime of enforcement and exclusion will lead to greater levels of suffering among migrants—to say nothing of the harm caused “at home” by the diversion of resources that could otherwise be used to address so many pressing needs, especially of those existing on the socio-economic margins of U.S. society.

To move beyond the treadmill that is the U.S.-Mexico boundary and immigration enforcement apparatus requires, among other things, that we embrace John Randolph’s challenge. “After twenty-six years of chasing people on the behalf of the U.S. government,” he writes, “finally, I have to ask our politicians this question: How many more people will die until our system fundamentally changes?”

It will be a great day when those in the halls of power feel compelled to even consider such a question.

 

For more from the Border Wars Blog, visit nacla.org/blog/border-wars. And now you can follow it on twitter @NACLABorderWars.

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