August 22, 2010: Gulf fisherman will be liable for toxic seafood

The US government, and even President Obama himself, have said that Gulf seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the massive BP oil spill.

But an admission from the federal government that it hasn't been testing Gulf seafood for toxic heavy metals, and news that fishermen are being forced to sign waivers making them liable for toxins in their catch, suggest not everyone is convinced of the safety of Gulf seafood.

Louisiana fishermen's activist Kindra Arnesen says dock owners are asking fishermen to sign waivers that put the full responsibility for toxins found in the catch on the fishermen themselves.

"This liability cannot fall with our fishermen," she said in a video posted to blogger Alexander Higgins' Web site.

Arnesen's claim comes as Louisiana prepares to allow shrimping on the coast to resume this Monday. A news report from IPS says many shrimpers in the Gulf are simply unwilling to go back in the water, due to fears their catch could be contaminated.

Mississippi commercial shrimper James "Catfish" Miller told IPS there's only one place on the state's coast where oysters can be caught, "and there is oil and dispersants all over the top of it."

Mississippi lifted its ban on commercial fishing in the Gulf earlier this month, but Miller and others refuse to start fishing again. Miller showed IPS a simple test to prove the waters are still contaminated: He sank an absorbent rag into the water, and minutes later pulled it up. "The rags were covered in a brown oily substance that the fishermen identified as a mix of BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants," IPS reports.

NO TESTING FOR TOXIC HEAVY METALS

In House hearings this week, federal government officials indicated they have not been testing for heavy metals known to exist in crude oil, some of which can be toxic to humans and are believed to be able to build up in marine life after an oil spill.

During questioning by House Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), FDA Acting Deputy Director Donald Kraemer said his agency isn't monitoring for the presence of heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury in Gulf seafood. He suggested that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may be handling that area.

But NOAA senior scientist Bill Lehr didn't have an answer for Markey as to whether the NOAA is monitoring for heavy metals, and said only, "We'll get back to you with an answer on that."

An Associated Press report earlier this month reported that a study on crab larvae in the Gulf concluded that oil from the spill is making its way into the food chain:

The government said last week that three-quarters of the spilled oil has been removed or naturally dissipated from the water. But the crab larvae discovery was an ominous sign that crude had already infiltrated the Gulf's vast food web -- and could affect it for years to come.

"It would suggest the oil has reached a position where it can start moving up the food chain instead of just hanging in the water," said Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans. "Something likely will eat those oiled larvae ... and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on."

Tiny creatures might take in such low amounts of oil that they could survive, Thomas said. But those at the top of the chain, such as dolphins and tuna, could get fatal "megadoses."

"In my 42 years of studying crabs I've never seen this," [biologist Harriet] Perry said.

'CULTURAL GENOCIDE'

Kindra Arnesen, who works with the Cultural Heritage Society of Louisiana, is warning of a "cultural genocide" of the Gulf Coast fishing industry if the government doesn't start testing for heavy metals in seafood.

"There's going to be a cultural genocide of they don't test the seafood and make sure that it's safe," she said. "Not only to protect our fishermen, but hello, what about the consumer? ... We pride ourselves on bringing fresh, uncontaminated seafood to the market for the consumer to eat."

August 3, 2010: U.S. to Train 3,000 IT Workers... in Asia

Information Week, by Paul McDougall

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.

Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.

"To help fill workforce gaps in BPO and IT, USAID is teaming up with leading BPO and IT/English language training companies to establish professional IT and English skills development training centers," the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, said in a statement posted Friday on its Web site.

"Courses in Business Process Outsourcing, Enterprise Java, and English Language Skills will be offered at no charge to over 3,000 under- and unemployed students who will then participate in on-the-job training schemes with private firms," the embassy said.

USAID is also partnering with Sri Lankan companies in other industries, including construction and garment manufacturing, to help create 10,000 new jobs in the country, which is still recovering from a 30-year civil war that ended in 2009.

But it's the outsourcing program that's sure to draw the most fire from critics. While Obama acknowledged that occupations such as garment making don't add much value to the U.S. economy, he argued relentlessly during his presidential run that lawmakers needed to do more to keep hi-tech jobs in IT, biological sciences, and green energy in the country.

He also accused the Bush administration of creating tax loopholes that made it easier for U.S. companies to place work offshore in low-cost countries.

July 27, 2010: The Destruction of the Middle Class

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

Posted Jul 15, 2010 02:25pm EDT by Michael Snyder

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

From Yahoo Finance

July 8, 2010: Oakland Police Search Without Warrants
	In a little-known city program that critics say may be unconstitutional, cops join fire and building inspectors as they enter homes without a warrant and then arrest residents if they find anything illegal. By Alex Weber On a gloomy recent morning in West Oakland, tenants at the David Gray Building — or, Off-Ramp Studios, as everyone who lives there calls it — stood in the hallways outside their lofts. They gathered around their doors in nervous clusters and spoke in hushed tones, wondering aloud whether they should head to work or stay and observe while two Oakland police officers, two building services code enforcers, a fire inspector, and three property management representatives entered all of their units one by one.
Traditionally the entire procedure would have required a search warrant. But on this day, the group of cops and city officials were operating under a little-known Oakland city program, called "SMART" — Specialized Multi-Agency Response Team — that some legal experts say may be unconstitutional. That's because they enter people's homes without consent or a warrant. A week prior to the search, Crudele showed up at the Off-Ramp for a preliminary check in response to complaints from one tenant about an open party being planned by another tenant, said Frank Flores, director of development for Madison Park, the building's leasing agent. Crudele said he noticed the smell of marijuana emanating from one particular unit — 103 — and decided then to schedule the SMART inspection for one week later. For Crudele, having police officers accompany city inspectors during a SMART inspection ensures security in potentially volatile situations. "It's a safety issue for us," he said. "We have limited policing capabilities. If part of the populace is doing something illegal — that creates a problem for me. They may not want to cooperate." However, Northern California ACLU staff attorney Michael Risher questioned the legality of searching people's homes without a warrant or consent. He also argued that it's not all that burdensome to go down to the courthouse, swear-out an affidavit, and get a legitimate search warrant to look for illegal drugs or real safety hazards. Risher said there are really only three ways for state agents to legally enter a private residence — with consent, with a warrant, or in an emergency. The SMART inspection is a warrantless process. And considering the fact that a week passed between Crudele's first sniff of the wafting marijuana and the actual inspection, this doesn't qualify as an emergency either, Risher said. "Your home is your castle whether you rent a room in downtown Oakland or own a mansion in the hills," Risher said. "If you live in your apartment, it's your apartment. The landlord cannot give police access. There are statutory and constitutional problems with that." Crudele, however, argued that the point of the search was community safety. "The ultimate goal of a SMART inspection is to bring a building into code for a better quality of living for everyone there," Crudele said. "It's not an attempt to impede any civil liberties or control anybody's life." But was this truly a safety and code enforcement inspection or a drug bust in disguise? The answer appears to be a bit of both. After all, in addition to the incriminating drug evidence, the inspection revealed hundreds of extension cords, taped-open fuses, and a jerry-rigged greenhouse with a lot of fans and wood — a veritable fire-bomb waiting to happen, Crudele said. "It's like having hay bales in a room made out of 100-year-old wood with hot air running through and drying it out," he added. But the legal murkiness of the inspections are problematic, Risher said. And from a legal-procedural standpoint, it appears that few within the City of Oakland are aware of what exactly a SMART inspection is and what justifies one. City Attorney's Office spokesman Alex Katz declined to comment for this story, other than to confirm that the SMART inspections have been happening for years. Of the Off-Ramp search, Oakland Deputy Fire Chief James Williams said, "As far as I know, that's the first one I'm aware of generated by the fire department." A few days prior to the search of the Off-Ramp Studios, Madison Park had taped a letter on the tenants' doors announcing the event. It said the Oakland Fire Marshall, city building services, and Oakland police had issued a notice of intent to inspect the entire building, each and every unit (in bold lettering), without exception. During a phone interview, the tenant, who agreed to talk for this story and to allow the Express to publish photos of his unit if he could remain anonymous, said he was upset about the fact that his loft was entered and searched without his consent and that he came home to a demolished unit. He claimed that Madison Park's crew destroyed roughly $3,000 worth of various concert memorabilia and housewares in the Crudele-ordered remediation process. "It's insane that any corporation can do this," he said. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/oakland-police-search-without-warrants/Content?oid=1878972