[Editor’s note: although this article refers to the US budget, the Harper government also plans an austerity budget along with major military spending.]
This fall, the US Congress is going to wage a pitched, dragged-out battle over cutting roughly $120 billion a year to solve the so-called deficit crisis. Vital things like teachers’ jobs and Medicare could well get cut.
by Armine Yalnizyan
Four years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, it’s time to take stock of things by asking a stock political question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Where you stand on the answer depends on where you sit. Many people, businesses and communities are still struggling to regain the ground they lost after September 15, 2008, the day the giant investment banker filed for bankruptcy and triggered the biggest global financial and economic crisis since the 1930s. But for others, things have never been better.
by Stephen Leahy
– The melt of Arctic sea ice has reached its lowest point this year, shrinking 18 percent from last year’s near-record low.
Summer ice this year is half what it was 30 years ago and is now affecting weather patterns. The massive declines in ice in recent summers have shocked scientists and Arctic experts. Some predict that in just a few years we will witness an event that hasn’t happened in millions of years: the complete loss of summer ice.
by Janet Larsen
September estimates from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) show 2012 U.S. corn yields at 123 bushels per acre, down by a fourth from the 2009 high of 165 bushels per acre. Yields are the lowest since 1995 and well below the average of the last 30 years. The summer heat and drought also hit US soybean yields, which are down 20 percent from their 2009 peak.
by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling
Mitt Romney responded to the recent Cairo events with an apology frame. America, he said, must never apologize for its values, and he claimed that the Obama administration was apologizing when it pointed out a moral constraint on free speech.
One of the things Americans are taught in grammar school about free speech is that there are legal and moral limits to it. The example usually given is: “You don’t shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.” There are legal and moral constraints on incendiary free speech.
In the case of the recent anti-Islamic video, The Innocence of Islam, which was certainly incendiary, the legal framework doesn't apply. However, the moral framework does.
by Mel Watkins
Does Iran have the Bomb? No.
We can be as certain of that as of anything in the crazed, secret, over-spun world that encompasses all matters bearing on nuclear weapons.
Does Israel have the Bomb? Yes. Everyone knows that. Except that, if you ask the government of Israel directly, it will refuse to give a straight answer. Sort of a version of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
by George Lakoff
Britain is richer than ever. That is, the total wealth of all British corporations and individuals is enormous. Net household wealth in the UK rose from £4.3tn in 2001 to £6.6tn in 2011. That is a 55 percent rise in the past decade and it does not include corporate wealth. But that wealth is not equally distributed. At the same time, the majority of Britons are suffering economically. Many have lost jobs, savings, or even their homes.
by Thomas J Duck,
Something fishy is going on over at Environment Canada, where a recent report on greenhouse-gas emissions is uncharacteristically flawed – in favour of the Harper government’s position. On August 8, Environment Minister Peter Kent announced that Canada is half way toward meeting its greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions targets for 2020, and congratulated his government for having “set the stage for the progress we’ve achieved this year.”
by Stephen Leahy
Canada's claims of progress on meeting its carbon targets do not add up, according to a recently published independent analysis.
In August, the government said it was halfway to its 2020 emissions goal of a 17 percent cut on 2005 levels, but the analysis – the first to date – says Canada's cuts amount to one-third at best.
"They're [Canada] just playing with numbers to pretend they've actually done something to reduce their emissions," said Marion Vieweg, a policy analyst working with the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent science-based assessment that tracks the emission commitments and actions of countries.
by Andrew Schoerke, member Veterans For Peace
The US Navy is currently assembling four Carrier Strike Groups in the Arabian Sea. When in place, it will be the most powerful carrier task force assembled since WW II. Although not yet announced, there is little doubt that the purpose of this sea power is to ride “shotgun” for a multi-nation countermining exercise to be held in the Gulf of Oman beginning September 24.
