Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland routinely shredded copies of weekly reports about sexual abuse by priests (Flashback)

rembert-weakland1
Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland

Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland routinely shredded copies of weekly reports about sexual abuse by priests, according to formerly sealed testimony turned over to Milwaukee County’s district attorney on Thursday.

In a 1993 deposition, Weakland admitted destroying copies of the reports in his office, according to a partial transcript of the deposition released by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Peter Isely, SNAP’s Midwest director, turned over the partial transcript, as well as portions of the logs to which Weakland was referring, to Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and asked him to review them for any possible criminal violations. Chisholm accepted the records and promised a thorough review.

The 16-year-old deposition documents have come to light during the discovery process in more than a dozen civil fraud lawsuits filed against the Milwaukee archdiocese.

Read moreFormer Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland routinely shredded copies of weekly reports about sexual abuse by priests (Flashback)

US: Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Take Own Lives

home

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ? The foreclosure crisis in Philadelphia is now becoming a matter of life and death. Eyewitness News has learned that in the past month, two homeowners took their own lives before sheriff’s deputies arrived to tell them that they were being evicted.

On March 5, deputies arriving to post an eviction notice on Lynda Clark’s South Philadelphia home found she had hanged herself.

Read moreUS: Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Take Own Lives

Obama exempt from Obamacare

Democrats exempt themselves from socialist medicine

obama-exempt-from-obamacare

President Obama declared that the new health care law “is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.

The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well. A weasel-worded definition of “staff” includes only the members’ personal staff in the new system; the committee staff that drafted the legislation opted themselves out. Because they were more familiar with the contents of the law than anyone in the country, it says a lot that they carved out their own special loophole. Anyway, the law is intended to affect “ordinary Americans,” according to Vice President Joe Biden (who – being a heartbeat away from the presidency – also is not covered), not Washington insiders.

Mr. Obama frequently tossed around the talking point that the new law gave people the same type of coverage as Congress enjoyed. In his March 20 health care pep talk to wavering Democrats on Capitol Hill, the president said one of the advantages of the health care legislation was that “people will have choice and competition just like members of Congress have choice and competition.” At yesterday’s signing ceremony, Mr. Obama said Americans will be “part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They’ll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves.” But the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private.

Read moreObama exempt from Obamacare

Joe Biden to Barack Obama: ‘Mr. President, This Is A Big F****** Deal’

And I can tell you who has just been f***** : THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Joe Biden’s F-Bomb a Hit Online (CBS News)

Joe Biden’s potty mouth: In Delaware, this is not news (Christian Science Monitor)

Biden drops the ‘f-bomb’ (Sydney Morning Herald)

Biden on Health-Care Reform: “This Is a Big F—ing Deal” (Seattle Post Intelligencer)

It was a big day for Obama (and a big f***ing deal for Joe Biden) (Independent)

Joe Biden says healthcare ‘is a big f***ing deal’ (Times Online)


At White House, Biden’s Expletive Caught on Open Mike

joe-biden_barack-obama

Beyond the ebullient atmosphere, shout-outs and cheers at the White House signing ceremony of the health care bill, there’s another moment that is being rewound and played again and again: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s overheard, overly effusive aside to President Obama.

At the end of his introduction of the president, Mr. Biden, who is known for ad-libbing to the point of getting him in a little trouble, turned to Mr. Obama, embraced him and elaborated on the historic nature of the day.

“Mr. President, this is a big f****** deal,” he said, adding an adjective between the big and the deal that begins with “f.”

Accurate as he may have been, Mr. Biden was also on an open microphone. And his remarks sent the media flock abuzz.

For whatever reason, Fox News is claiming boasting rights that it was the first to report Mr. Biden’s use of the expletive.

As the news fluttered out on Twitter, pardon the puns, through a trail of tweets from White House correspondents and reporters, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, sent out a Twitter post using his own handle – @PressSec. It seemed to affirm Mr. Biden’s sentiment; And yes Mr. Vice President, you’re right.

Read moreJoe Biden to Barack Obama: ‘Mr. President, This Is A Big F****** Deal’

US: Lawmakers Propose National ID Card

national-id-card_charles-schumer_lindsay-graham
Graham, left, and Schumer, are calling for national ID cards to combat illegal immigration. (AP)

Lawmakers are proposing a national identification card – what they’re calling “high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security cards” – that would be required for all employees in the United States.

The proposal by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) comes as the states are grappling to produce another national identification card at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security. Virtually none of the states are in compliance with this Real ID program – adopted in 2005 – requiring state motor vehicle bureaus to obtain and internally scan and store personal information like Social Security cards and birth certificates for a national database.

Now comes a bid for a second card.

Homeland Security officials pointed to the Sept. 11 hijackers’ ability to get driver’s licenses in Virginia using false information as justification for the proposed $24 billion Real ID program. Schumer and Graham point to illegal immigration as cause for their plan.

“We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card. Each card’s unique biometric identifier would be stored only on the card; no government database would house everyone’s information,” they said. “The cards would not contain any private information, medical information or tracking devices. The card would be a high-tech version of the Social Security card that citizens already have.”

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, suggests the plan would undoubtedly lead to a national database. He added that “there is no practical way of making a national identity document fraud-proof.”

What’s more, Richard Esguerra, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s in-house activist, notes that a national ID card likely would expand from its stated purpose.

“Because of the ID card’s proposed universality, it will likely be requested and required by airlines, insurance agencies, health care providers, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and so forth,” he said.

Read moreUS: Lawmakers Propose National ID Card

Heathrow Worker ‘Ogled Colleague On Full-Body Scanner’

Sounds like there is much more to see than you have been told.


An airport worker allegedly caught ogling images of a female colleague in a full-body scanner faces the sack after being given a police warning for harassment.

The Heathrow worker, named by The Sun newspaper as 25-year-old John Laker, allegedly made lewd remarks to colleague Jo Margetson, 29, after she entered an X-ray machine by mistake.

She reported the matter to her bosses and to police.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said today: “Police received an allegation regarding an incident that happened at Heathrow Terminal 5 on March 10.

“A first instance harassment warning has been issued to a 25-year-old male.”

Read moreHeathrow Worker ‘Ogled Colleague On Full-Body Scanner’

Rep. Ron Paul: Healthcare Bill is ‘Blatantly Unconstitutional And Contrary to The Ideals of Liberty’

“38 States Are Said To Already Prepare Legal And Constitutional Challenges To This Legislation, And If The Courts Stand By Their Oaths, They Will Win.”

congressman-ron-paul

Following months of heated public debate and aggressive closed-door negotiations, Congress finally cast a historic vote on healthcare late Sunday evening. It was truly a sad weekend on the House floor as we witnessed further dismantling of the Constitution, disregard of the will of the people, explosive expansion of the reach of government, unprecedented corporate favoritism, and the impending end of quality healthcare as we know it.

Those in favor of this bill touted their good intentions of ensuring quality healthcare for all Americans, as if those of us against the bill are against good medical care. They cite fanciful statistics of deficit reduction, while simultaneously planning to expand the already struggling medical welfare programs we currently have. They somehow think that healthcare in this country will be improved by swelling our welfare rolls and cutting reimbursement payments to doctors who are already losing money. It is estimated that thousands of doctors will be economically forced out of the profession should this government fuzzy math actually try to become healthcare reality. No one has thought to ask what good mandatory health insurance will be if people can’t find a doctor.

Read moreRep. Ron Paul: Healthcare Bill is ‘Blatantly Unconstitutional And Contrary to The Ideals of Liberty’

Fitch Downgrades Portugal’s Credit Rating Over Debt Concerns

portugal-credit-rating-downgraded-over-debt-concerns The government’s tough budget went unopposed by other parties

Portugal’s credit rating has been downgraded from AA to AA- by leading credit rating agency Fitch over concerns about its high levels of debt.

Earlier this month, Portugal passed an austerity budget aimed at cutting its budget deficit.

The downgrade heightened concerns about the health of some of Europe’s heavily indebted economies, forcing the euro lower against the dollar and the pound.

The euro slid against the dollar to its lowest point since May 2009.

It dropped 1.5 cents, or 1.1%, to $1.3346. Against the pound, the euro fell 0.2 pence to 89.55p.

The downgrade also sent major European stock markets into negative territory.

European impact

“A sizeable fiscal shock against a backdrop of relative macroeconomic and structural weaknesses has reduced Portugal’s creditworthiness,” said Douglas Renwick from Fitch Ratings.

Although the agency said Portugal’s austerity budget was “credible”, it said the government would need “to implement sizeable consolidation measures from next year”, as well as reverse stimulus measures this year, in order to get its debt levels under control.

The Portuguese Minister of Finance, Teixeira dos Santos, said it was key to maintain efforts to cut the budget deficit in order to differentiate the country from Greece.

“I am worried because we know that markets overshoot sometimes in their reactions,” he said. “The risk exists, I cannot ignore that.”

The downgrade could mean Portugal has to pay higher yields on government bonds to attract investors, making it more expensive for the country to borrow money – even though other leading ratings agencies may not necessarily follow Fitch’s lead.

Analysts stressed the wider European impact the downgrade could have.

“The downgrade has more impact on the wider sovereign debt crisis, rather than on Portugal at the moment,” said Peter Chatwell at Credit Agricole.

There have been widespread concerns about the high levels of debt of a number of European countries, most notably Greece.

At the end of last year, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, the second of the three major international credit ratings agencies, downgraded Greek government debt.

European leaders are currently discussing how best to deal with Greece’s debt crisis.

Page last updated at 16:47 GMT, Wednesday, 24 March 2010

Source: BBC NEWS

Google vs. China: Google Moves To Hongkong, Leaves Censorship To China

China attacks Google for lifting censorship: (Channel 4 News):

China has said Google’s move to stop censoring search results is “totally wrong” and accused it of breaking a promise made when it launched in China.

The ‘Spiegel’ has an interesting article, but not in English.

Translation by Google translator: Here.

Google überlässt Peking das Zensieren (Spiegel Online):

Es klingt wie ein Befreiungsschlag, doch Googles Umzug nach Hongkong bringt den chinesischen Nutzern nicht die Internet-Perestroika. Anstelle des Web-Konzerns übernimmt nun die staatliche Filtersoftware direkt den Zensurjob. Viele Inhalte bleiben gesperrt.

Das Manöver mutet an wie ein Befreiungsschlag im Kampf gegen die allmächtige Web-Zensur in China: Google leitet seit Montag Suchanfragen aus der Volksrepublik auf nicht-zensierte Server in Hongkong um. Das klingt auf den ersten Blick nach mehr Inhalten für Chinas Nutzer, tatsächlich aber dürfte sich für sie wenig ändern.

Der Umzug nach Hongkong hat für Google dennoch einen entscheidenden Vorteil: Der Suchmaschinenbetreiber macht sich die Hände nicht mehr selbst schmutzig. Fürs Filtern sind jetzt die chinesischen Behörden direkt zuständig. Die Nutzer der Suchmaschine im übrigen China spüren nun auch deutlicher, dass zensiert wird. Es ist etwas anderes, wenn Suchanfragen versanden, als wenn man eine Auswahl der regimefreundlichsten Treffer erhält.


Google vs. China

google-internet-censorship-beijing
Google’s China headquarters remains open in Beijing on March 19, 2010. Google will close its business in China next month with an official announcement early next week, Chinese state media reported Friday. (UPI)

BEIJING, March 23 (UPI) — Search engine giant Google is apparently sidestepping Chinese censorship by directing users to a Hong Kong site where browsers can surf the Internet unfettered.

Chinese officials declared the move was in violation of Google agreements with Beijing regarding access to the huge Chinese market.

The move by Google is seen as related to allegations hacking attacks on activists’ e-mail accounts and Google sites were traced to Chinese locations.

Google, on its Web site, said Monday it stopped censoring searches on its Chinese site.

“We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced — it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China,” Google said.

Read moreGoogle vs. China: Google Moves To Hongkong, Leaves Censorship To China

The Health Care Dictatorship: A Crime Against America

(NaturalNews) It’s amazing that the day before the health care “reform” bill is passed in America, the FDA announces that one of the most popular statin drugs sold in America causes so much kidney damage that it might kill you. And then the day after this health care bill passes, the FDA announces that a popular rotovirus vaccine made by Merck is being halted because it is contaminated with a mysterious DNA sequence from a pig virus called porcine circovirus type 1 or PCV-1.

The reason this is important is because cholesterol drugs and vaccines represent what conventional American medicine is all about: Drugs and injections. It’s not about health and prevention; it’s about drugs and injections (and surgery too, of course).

And the legislation that was just passed is focused entirely on how to expand the failed system of drugs and injections so that it causes harm to everyone rather than just those who voluntarily choose to be suckered into it. This is the medical equivalent of a wartime draft that forces soldiers into battle against their will. Except this isn’t a war against some foreign enemy — it’s a war being waged against your body by the pharmaceutical industry, the cancer industry, the surgery pushers and all the corporations that prey upon the public for their sick-care profits.

Read moreThe Health Care Dictatorship: A Crime Against America

Rotarix Rotavirus Vaccine Contaminated With Pig Virus DNA

vaccine_baby
About 1 million children in the United States and about 30 million worldwide have gotten Rotarix vaccine, the FDA says.

(CNN) — Federal health authorities recommended Monday that doctors suspend using Rotarix, one of two vaccines licensed in the United States against rotavirus, saying the vaccine is contaminated with material from a pig virus.

“There is no evidence at this time that this material poses a safety risk,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told reporters in a conference call.

Rotarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, was approved by the FDA in 2008. The contaminant material is DNA from porcine circovirus 1, a virus from pigs that is not known to cause disease in humans or animals, Hamburg said.

Read moreRotarix Rotavirus Vaccine Contaminated With Pig Virus DNA

Multiple Ways Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach

Highly recommended reading!


monsantoland

People say if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, just don’t buy their GMO seeds.
Not so simple.  Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days?  How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops?  How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them?

Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop.  It’s a way to make money since farmers can’t fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice. .And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.

1.  They’ve bought up the seed companies across the midwest.

2.  They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds).  Does your state have such a seed law?  Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted.  That’s been killed.

In Illinois which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his staff is Monsanto lobbyists.

3.  Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack’s brainchild, actually) that remove community’ control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops.  So if you don’t want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, tough luck.

Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are and see if your state is still a democracy or is Monsanto’s.  A farmer in Illinois told me he heard that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every state.  People need to check on that.

4.  For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing but GM-seeds) because it’s now considered a “source of seed contamination.”  Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment … for EACH line of seed.  Seed storage facilities are also listed (another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment.  And manure.  Something that can contaminate seed.  Notice that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not mentioned.

You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay).  Try that with pesticides and fertilizers.  Indian farmers have.  Their top choice for how to commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto pesticides.

5.  Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest.  In Pilot Grove, Missouri , in Indiana (Maurice Parr ), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon).  And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed.  Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.

Read moreMultiple Ways Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach

British Military Intelligence Ran Renegade Torture Unit In Iraq Answerable Only ‘Directly To London’

Secret operation ‘reporting only to London’ deprived prisoners of sleep, documents show

torture
Iraqi prisoners were forced to stay in ‘stress positions’

Fresh evidence has emerged that British military intelligence ran a secret operation in Iraq which authorised degrading and unlawful treatment of prisoners. Documents reveal that prisoners were kept hooded for long periods in intense heat and deprived of sleep by defence intelligence officers. They also reveal that officers running the operation claimed to be answerable only “directly to London”.

The revelations will further embarrass the British government, which last month was forced to release documents showing it knew that UK resident and terror suspect Binyam Mohamed had been tortured in Pakistan.

The latest documents emerged during the inquiry into Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel worker beaten to death while in the custody of British troops in September 2003. The inquiry is looking into how interrogation techniques banned by the Government in 1972 and considered torture and degrading treatment were used again in Iraq.

Lawyers believe the new evidence supports suspicions that an intelligence unit – the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT) which operated in Iraq – used illegal “coercive techniques” and was not answerable to military commanders in Iraq, despite official denials it operated independently.

Read moreBritish Military Intelligence Ran Renegade Torture Unit In Iraq Answerable Only ‘Directly To London’

Health Care Bill Dooms America to Pharma-Dominated Sickness And Suffering

barack_obama
More change we can believe in!

(NaturalNews) Today the medical mafia struck another devastating blow to the health and freedom of all Americans. With the support of an inarguably corrupt Congress that has simply abandoned the real needs of the American people, the sick-care industry has locked in a high-profit scheme of disease and monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals in a nation that can ill afford either one.

And this Pharma-funded betrayal, it turns out, was led by the Democrats. Passed on a 219-212 vote that was only accomplished thanks to closed-door, last-minute secret meetings among the last holdouts, this new legislation puts America under the stranglehold of the medical mafia while doing absolutely nothing to address real health care reform. There is no mention in the bill, for example, of vitamin D for preventing cancer, or orthomolecular medicine for preventing degenerative disease. There’s not even a word about protecting health freedom or ending the century of oppression that has been waged against naturopathic practitioners by the AMA, FDA and FTC.

The new legislation does, however, lock in billions of dollars in monopoly profits for the pharmaceutical companies — the same companies who spent millions of dollars pushing for its passage and who depend on the continuation of sickness and disease for their future profits.

There’s only one problem with this health care reform bill: It doesn’t reform health care. It has almost nothing to do with health care at all, in fact: It’s really more of an effort to expand a broken sick-care system. When faced with the problem that our sick-care system doesn’t work, Congress somehow decided that fixing the problem merely involved expanding the failures to include everyone!

Read moreHealth Care Bill Dooms America to Pharma-Dominated Sickness And Suffering

House Approves Landmark US Health-Care Legislation

The majority of Americans was against the health care bill. They have bombarded their representatives with an unprecedented amount of telephone calls, but their representatives voted for it anyway.

Doomed!


barack-obama-joe-biden
President Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, makes a statement to the nation after the passage of healthcare legislation. “We rose above the weight of our politics,” he said. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press / March 21, 2010)

March 22 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. House passed the most sweeping health-care legislation in four decades, rewriting the rules governing medical industries and ensuring that tens of millions of uninsured Americans will get medical coverage.

President Barack Obama will sign the health-care package into law at the White House tomorrow, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because it hasn’t been publicly announced.

Yesterday’s 219-212 vote marks a victory for Obama. Only Democrats voted for the legislation, underscoring a partisan divide that promises to make health care the defining issue in November’s congressional elections.

Lawmakers hailed the action as a historic follow-up to the 1965 creation of the Medicare program (which is broke!) for the elderly and a way to mitigate soaring health costs that make up a sixth of the U.S. economy. It came after a last-minute deal with anti- abortion Democrats and a lobbying trip by Obama to the Capitol.

Read moreHouse Approves Landmark US Health-Care Legislation

Spain: File Sharing And Torrent Websites Now Legal

bittorrent

File sharing just became legal in Spain, changing the rules on what is legal, and what is fair.

In a court ruling that will surely shake the Spanish and European legal scene for years to come, a Spanish judge has today declared not only that sites containing links to copyrighted information are legal, but that torrenting copyrighted information for non-profit reasons is also inside of the law.

If you think that we are in some way confused, or kidding, here is a quote from the judge in question:

“P2P networks are mere conduits for the transmission of data between Internet users, and on this basis they do not infringe rights protected by Intellectual Property laws”

It is hard to confuse what that means. Provided that the sharer of the information is not profiting (garnering any revenues whatsoever), off of the transfer, then the action is legal now in Spain according to this new precedent.

Read moreSpain: File Sharing And Torrent Websites Now Legal

The US Military Now KNOWS Mossad Carried Out 9/11 Attacks (Video)

See also:

False Flag: The Attack on the USS Liberty

Dead In The Water – The Sinking of the USS Liberty (BBC)

And the video magically disappeared AGAIN on YouTube!!!

Funny thing how SATANIST Lady Gaga videos get easily millions of views and real info is getting taken down or manipulated all of the f****** time.



YouTube


YouTube


YouTube


YouTube

Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former director of studies at the US Army War College says that the military brass now know that Israel “and those traitors within our nation” committed the 911 attack.

……”I have had long conversations over the last two weeks with contacts at the Army War College and the headquarters, Marine Corps and I’ve made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100% certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation.” Period.

……”There are some really, really unhappy people up there…….astonishment was the first thing…..they didn’t know, they truly didn’t know……and the next statement is rage…real rage”

……” The Zionists are playing this as an all-or-nothing exercise. If they lose this one, they’re done…..”

More on 9/11:

Read moreThe US Military Now KNOWS Mossad Carried Out 9/11 Attacks (Video)

US: The Fiscal Meltdown

There is no recovery!


A story that is not getting nearly enough attention is the ruinous fiscal meltdown occurring in state after state, all across the country.

Taxes are being raised. Draconian cuts in services are being made. Public employees are being fired. The tissue-thin national economic recovery is being undermined. And in many cases, the most vulnerable populations — the sick, the elderly, the young and the poor — are getting badly hurt.

Arizona, struggling with a projected $2.6 billion budget shortfall, took the drastic step of scrapping its Children’s Health Insurance Program. That left nearly 47,000 low-income children with no coverage at all. Gov. Jan Brewer is also calling for an increase in the sales tax. She said, “Arizona is navigating its way through the largest state budget deficit in its long history.”

In New Jersey, the newly elected governor, Chris Christie, has proposed a series of budget cuts that, among other things, would result in public schools receiving $820 million less in state aid than they had received in the prior school year. Some well-off districts would have their direct school aid cut off altogether. Poorer districts that rely almost entirely on state aid would absorb the biggest losses in terms of dollars. They’re bracing for a terrible hit.

For all the happy talk about “no child left behind,” the truth is that in Arizona and New Jersey and dozens of other states trying to cope with the fiscal disaster brought on by the Great Recession, millions of children are being left far behind, and many millions of adults as well.

Read moreUS: The Fiscal Meltdown

US: Unemployment Soars in Metropolitan Areas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Unemployment rates in 363 U.S. metropolitan areas rose in January, and 346 areas reported year-on-year declines in their number of jobs, the Labor Department said on Friday.

Nearly 200 metropolitan areas reported jobless rates of at least 10 percent in January, showing that unemployment problems persist at the local level.

California has been especially hard hit during the recession that began in late 2007, and the Labor Department data showed the state’s jobs situation continues to deteriorate, with an overall unemployment rate of 12.5 percent in January.

The three areas with the highest jobless rates in the country, all above 20 percent, were all located in California, the most populous U.S. state.

Read moreUS: Unemployment Soars in Metropolitan Areas

Climategate: Two More Bricks Fall Out Of The IPCC Wall Of Deceit – Rainforests And Polar Bears

polar-bear
Since 1970 the world’s polar bear population has “declined” from 5,000 to 25,000

Oops! There go another two bricks, tumbling out of the IPCC wall of deceit on man-made global warming – there is not a lot left now; even the Berlin Wall (to which the AGW construct is ideologically allied) has survived better. Unhappily for Al, Phil, Michael, George and the rest of the scare-mongers, these two discredited components are among the most totemic in the AGW religion.

Firstly, a new study, funded by Nasa (which may be feeling the need to rehabilitate itself post-Climategate) has revealed that the ridiculous claim in the notorious IPCC 2007 report that up to 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest could be drastically affected by even a small reduction in rainfall caused by climate change, so that the trees would be replaced by tropical grassland, is utter nonsense. That assertion has already been exposed as derived from a single report by the environmentalist lobby group WWF.

Now Dr Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and himself a member of the IPCC, says: “The way the WWF report calculated this 40 per cent was totally wrong, while (the new) calculations are by far more reliable and correct.” These calculations were done by researchers at Boston University and were published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. They used satellite data to study the drought of 2005, when rainfall fell to the lowest in living memory, and found that the rainforest suffered no significant effects.

So, the rainforest scare, like the Himalayan glaciers panic, is garbage. A further encouraging feature of this development is that genuine scientists are increasingly becoming emboldened to challenge the IPCC’s junk science: the Academy is beginning to reassert its integrity. AGW without withered rainforests is Hamlet without the prince. It was one of those emotive claims much invoked by priggish children in the voice-overs of nanny-state “green” commercials, lecturing their elders on the stewardship of the planet.

An even bigger tear-jerker was the plight of polar bears, bolstered by carefully cropped photographs of lonely bears stranded on fast-melting icebergs, doomed to extinction. That is the second brick that has fallen out of the IPCC wall. The official legend is that polar bears are threatened with extinction by global warming. The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, which has bought into global warming in a big way, has claimed that, of the 19 sub-populations of polar bears (13 of them in Canada, home to 60 per cent of polar bears), eight are declining, three are stable, one is increasing and there is insufficient data on the remaining seven.

Read moreClimategate: Two More Bricks Fall Out Of The IPCC Wall Of Deceit – Rainforests And Polar Bears

John Lipsky: All G7 countries, except Canada and Germany, will have debt-to-GDP ratios close to or exceeding 100 percent by 2014

john-lipsky-first-deputy-managing-director-of-the-imf
John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sits for a photograph following a television interview outside the Jackson Lake Lodge in Moran, Wyoming, on Aug. 20, 2009. (Bloomberg)

March 21 (Bloomberg) — Advanced economies face “acute” challenges in tackling high public debt, and unwinding existing stimulus measures will not come close to bringing deficits back to prudent levels, said John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

All G7 countries, except Canada and Germany, will have debt-to-GDP ratios close to or exceeding 100 percent by 2014, Lipsky said in a speech today at the China Development Forum in Beijing. Already this year, the average ratio in advanced economies is expected to reach the levels seen in 1950, after World War II, he said. The government debt ratio in some emerging market nations had also reached a “worrisome level.”

“This surge in government debt is occurring at a time when pressure from rising health and pension spending is building up,” Lipsky said. Stimulus measures account for about one-tenth of the projected debt increase, and rolling them back won’t be enough to bring deficits and debt ratios back to prudent levels.

Rising public debt could lead governments to seek to eliminate it through inflation or even default if they fail to carry out fiscal measures in time, Mohamed A. El-Erian, co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co. warned earlier this month. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” a book arguing that unforeseen events can roil markets, said March 12 he is concerned about hyperinflation as governments around the world take on more debt and print money.

Budget Deficit

The U.S. budget deficit widened to a record in February as the government spent more to help revive the economy. The gap grew to $221 billion after a shortfall of $194 billion in February 2009, the Treasury Department said on March 10. The figures indicate the deficit this year will probably surpass the record $1.4 trillion in the fiscal year that ended in September.

Read moreJohn Lipsky: All G7 countries, except Canada and Germany, will have debt-to-GDP ratios close to or exceeding 100 percent by 2014