Tag Archives: economy

Fukushima

Government Incompetence: 70% of Japanese Prefectures say they can not prepare for nuclear disasters due to lack of standards

An NHK survey revealed that 70% of Japan’s prefectural governments can not hold nuclear disaster drills, because there are no national nuclear standards.

13 prefectures were surveyed.  They’ve held nuclear disaster drills before.  The problem is that the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi has literally erased previous guidelines concerning nuclear disasters.

Most of the prefectures are waiting for the national government to come up with new standards. However, four prefectures says they will come up with their own temporary guidelines, and hold their nuclear disaster drills anyway.

Business/Economics, International, Technology

Iran starts Nuclear Reactors

August 3, The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization said the Bushehr nuclear plant is up and running, and connected to Iran’s power grid.

It is sending out low amounts of electricity for now. It’s scheduled for full operation by the end of the year.

The plant was built with Russian help. Russia will deliver nuclear fuel rods and retrieve spent fuel.  Iran says it will build 20 more nuclear plants.

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? United Police States of Corporate America, Corporations that use prison labor, and the States that are involved

Labor Day to be replaced by Prison Labor Day???

“Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for doing the same work an auto worker would get paid $20 to $30 an hour to do. Konica has used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour. Toys R Us used prisoners to restock shelves, and Microsoft to pack and ship software. Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons competes so successfully with apparel made in Latin America and Asia that it is exported to other countries.

Inmates are also employed in a wide variety of service jobs as well. TWA has used prisoners to handle reservations, while AT&T has used prison labor for telemarketing. In Oregon, prisoners do all the data entry and record keeping in the Secretary of State’s corporation division. Other jobs include desktop publishing, digital mapping and computer-aided design work.”-Prison Labor on the rise in the US, wsws.org

The following are lists of known corporations/organizations that use prison labor, and the states that are involved:

BANKS: American General Financial Group, American Express Company, Bank of America, Community Financial Services Corporation, Credit Card Coalition, Credit Union National Association, Fidelity Inestments, Harris Trust & Savings Bank, Household International, LaSalle National Bank, J.P. Morgan & Company, Non-Bank Funds Transmitters Group

ENERGY PRODUCERS/OIL: American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Corporation, ARCO, BP America, Caltex Petroleum, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil Corporation, Mobil Oil Corporation, Phillips Petroleum Company.

ENERGY PRODUCERS/UTILITIES: American Electric Power Association, American Gas Association, Center for Energy and Economic Development, Commonwealth Edison Company, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Edison Electric Institute, Independent Power Producers of New York, Koch Industries, Mid-American Energy Company, Natural Gas Supply Association, PG&E Corporation/PG&E National Energy Group, U.S. Generating Company.

INSURANCE: Alliance of American Insurers, Allstate Insurance Company, American Council of Life Insurance, American Insurance Association, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Corporation, Coalition for Asbestos Justice (members include ACE-USA, Chubb & Son, CNA service mark companies, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, Hartford Financial Services Group, Kemper Insurance Companies, Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, and St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company. Counsel to the coalition is Victor E. Schwartz of the law firm of Crowell & Moring in Washington DC, a longtime ALEC ally.)
Fortis Health, GEICO, Golden Rule Insurance Company, Guarantee Trust Life Insurance, MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company, National Association of Independent Insurers, Nationwide Insurance/National Financial, State Farm Insurance Companies, Wausau Insurance Companies, Zurich Insurance.

PHARMACEUTICALS: Abbott Laboratories, Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Corporation, Eli Lilly & Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo Wellcome, Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck & Company, Pfizer, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Pharmacia Corporation, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Schering-Plough Corporation, Smith, Kline & French, WYETH a division of American Home Products Corporation.

MANUFACTURING:American Plastics Council, Archer Daniels Midland Corporation, AutoZone (aftermarket automotive parts), Cargill, Caterpillar, Chlorine Chemistry Council, Deere & Company, Fruit of the Loom, Grocery Manufacturers of America, Inland Steel Industries, International Game Technology, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, Keystone Automotive Industries, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, Sara Lee Corporation.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS: AT&T, Ameritech, BellSouth Telecommunications, GTE Corporation, MCI, National Cable and Telecommunications Association, SBC Communications, Sprint, UST Public Affairs, Verizon Communications.

TRANSPORTATION: Air Transport Association of America, American Trucking Association, TWA, The Boeing Company, United Airlines, United Parcel Service (UPS).

OTHER U.S. COMPANIES: Amway Corporation, Cabot Sedgewick, Cendant Corporation, Corrections Corporation of America, Dresser Industries, Federated Department Stores, International Gold Corporation, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Microsoft Corporation, Newmont Mining Corporation, Quaker Oats, Sears, Roebuck & Company, Service Corporation International, Taxpayers Network, Turner Construction, WalMart.

ORGANIZATIONS/ASSOCIATIONS: Adolph Coors Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, Bell & Howell Foundation, Carthage Foundation, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, ELW Foundation, Grocery Manufacturers of America, Heartland Institute of Chicago, The Heritage Foundation, Iowans for Tax Relief, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, National Pork Producers Association, National Rifle Association, Olin Foundation, Roe Foundation, Scaiffe Foundation, Shell Oil Company Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Steel Recycling Institute, Tax Education Support Organization, Texas Educational Foundation, UPS Foundation.

STATES (from 2011 NICA 1st quarter report, does not include states reporting “0” income from prison labor): Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

 

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? United Police States of Corporate America sending debtors to prison, then uses them as cheap labor

“In interviews, 20 judges across the nation said the number of borrowers threatened with arrest in their courtrooms has surged since the financial crisis began.”-The Wall Street Journal

Maybe the push to get so many U.S. citizens in debt was part of an evil plan to create a multitude of cheap prison labor for Corporate America?

The Wall Street Journal has been tracking the growing trend of the return of debtors prisons.  At least 5,000 arrest warrants have been issued since 2010, and it’s probably higher than that because most courts don’t keep track of the type of arrest warrants issued.

The WSJ also stated that there are cases where the creditors even presented false documents to have people arrested, and some people weren’t even told why they were being arrested.

“It’s not a crime to owe money, and debtors’ prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.”–In jail for being in debt, Star Tribune

Officially debtors prison was banned in 1833, but some judges are loving the idea of putting people into prison for not paying their debts: “I wish I could do it more. It’s often the only remedy to get people into court and paying their debts.”-Chris Freese, Piatt County, Illinois, Circuit Judge

In 2010 McIntosh County, Oklahoma, issued about 1,500 debt-related arrest warrants.  Salt Lake City, Utah, issued 950.  A debt collector, Encore Capital Group, filed 425,000 lawsuits against borrowers.

So many debt collection warrants have been issued in Indiana, that police and sheriff’s departments are complaining that their computer systems are locked up. The amount of warrants for borrowers far out number warrants for other ‘crimes’.  Indiana’s highest court has been asked to review the legality of arresting people who can’t pay their debts.

One analyst says this is just a logical evolutionary step that started with the War on Drugs, to make money for Corporate America, specifically corporate run prisons: “Debtor’s prison are making a comeback because of the debt collection industry. Elites like former Comptroller David Walker are waxing nostalgically for more punitive measures in the face of a population that simply cannot pay its debts.  The for-profit prison industry fits right in to this trend, both in terms of the financialization of the industry itself and the increased market for “beds” sought by for-profit prison lobbyists in terms of harsher prison sentences.”–Matt Stroller, Roosevelt Institute

 

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? United Police States of Corporate America says no jobs for law abiding citizens, only Prisoners need apply

According to the British International Centre of Prison Studies, the United States is truly number one, in locking up its people: As of 2009, 743 people out of every 100,000 in the U.S. were being imprisoned.  That’s far higher than so called repressive communist China at 120 per 100,000.

Why so many people being locked up in the land of the free?  It could be that Corporate America has succeed in creating a new source of cheap labor.

“…well over 600,000, and probably close to a million, inmates are working full-time in jails and prisons throughout the United States. Perhaps some of them built your desk chair: office furniture, especially in state universities and the federal government, is a major prison labor product. Inmates also take hotel reservations at corporate call centers, make body armor for the U.S. military, and manufacture prison chic fashion accessories, in addition to the iconic task of stamping license plates.”-Noah Zatz, UCLA Law School

“Although a wide variety of goods have long been produced by state and federal prisoners for the U.S. government—license plates are the classic example, with more recent contracts including everything from guided missile parts to the solar panels powering government buildings—prison labor for the private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair competition with private companies. But this has changed thanks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), its Prison Industries Act, and a little-known federal program known as PIE (the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program). While much has been written about prison labor in the past several years, these forces, which have driven its expansion, remain largely unknown. Somewhat more familiar is ALEC’s instrumental role in the explosion of the U.S. prison population in the past few decades. ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws.”-The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor, The Nation

“The growth of prison labor has directly led to the destruction of other workers’ jobs. For example, Lockhart Technologies, Inc. closed its plant in Austin, Texas, dismissing its 150 workers so that it could open shop in a state prison in Lockhart. The prisoners assemble circuit boards for industrial giants such as IBM, Compaq and Dell. Lockhart is not required to pay for health or any other benefits. The company must pay the prison the federal minimum wage for each laborer, but the inmates get to keep only 20 percent of that.”–Prison Labor on the rise in the US, wsws.org

 

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Moody’s official says hunker down, it’ll be a long time before we recover, government job losses alone are 50,000 per month

On September 2, PBS’s News Hour interviewed Mark Zandi, lead economist with Moody’s Analytics.  His normally optimistic tone has become quite pessimistic, in fact he’s now saying that any U.S. economic recovery will take a long time, specifically when it comes to jobs.

Regarding unemployment caused by government layoffs: “The government, state, local, federal, is now laying off about 50,000 jobs per month. So, you know, you can kind of do the arithmetic. Those are pretty significant job losses. I am hopeful that we’re seeing the worst of it right now. Many states are grappling with the end of some fiscal stimulus money.   And they need to balance their budgets, and thus the cutting at the current time. But, nonetheless, no matter how you look at it, we have got some pretty significant job cuts to come in, in the state and local sector over the next year, 18 months.”

Regarding how long unemployment will remain so high: “I mean, I think, no matter how you look at it, this is going to be a long haul. And under even the most optimistic of forecasts, and I’m among the most optimistic economists out there, it’s not going to be until 2015, 2016, maybe even 2017, before we get back to an unemployment rate that I think everyone would feel really comfortable with.”


 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? $60 billion in taxpayer money, simply disappeared in Iraq and Afghanistan, could have created at least 192,000 civilian jobs in the U.S.

The Associated Press reported on August 31, that “…$60 billion in U.S. funds has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade through lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and payoffs to warlords and insurgents…”

According to a 2009 update of a study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), for every billion taxpayer dollars you spend on the military, you essentially destroy at least 3,200 civilian jobs. That’s the difference between civilian jobs created for every $1 billion in tax cuts for taxpayers, versus military jobs created for every $1 billion spent on the military.

Multiply 3,200 by the number of billions of taxpayer dollars the AP reports were wasted on the criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: That’s 192,000 civilian jobs lost.

The number of jobs lost is even higher when you look at spending on Education, instead of the Military.

For every billion taxpayer dollars spent on Education 29,100 civilian jobs are created, versus 11,600 military jobs.  The difference is 17,500.  Multiply 17,500 by the $60 billion unaccounted for taxpayer dollars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan: That’s more than one million potentially new civilian jobs lost!

Now realize the U.S. is spending tens of millions per month in Libya, and is pushing for war with Syria.  You can see there will be no economic recovery for the United States.


 

Fukushima

Government & Corporate Incompetence: More Japanese Tea contminated with Cesium!

As the nuclear disaster continues in Japan, more tea leaves have been found with extremely high levels of cesium.

The Japanese health ministry says radioactive cesium has been detected in harvested tea leaves in Chiba and Saitama prefectures, near Tokyo  (about 297km or 185 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant).

One type of tea from Chiba Prefecture contained 2,720 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram, more than 5 times the safety limit.

1,530 becquerels per kilogram was detected in three kinds of tea leaves from Saitama Prefecture.

The local governments will try to trace which tea farms the contaminated leaves came from.

Fukushima

What Economic Recovery? New Japan Prime Minister says no recovery without Fukushima

“Without the revival of Fukushima, there will be no revival of Japan.”-Noda Yoshihiko, Prime Minister of Japan

The new Japanese Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, said there will be no recovery for Japan, without the recovery of Fukushima Prefecture.

Hello, Fukushima is contaminated with radiation! The Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant is still out of control!  Latest cesium readings show at least six towns in Fukushima Prefecture have radiation levels higher than areas around Chernobyl!

The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine, happened in the 1980s and it still has not recovered!  I guess this means Japan is toast?

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Corporate America screws us over, again, ZERO jobs created in August 2011!!!

“The last time the government reported exactly zero jobs added in a month was in February 1945.”-CNN

“We expected a weak report, and what we got was even weaker…” and  “It’s still a skunk and it still stinks.”-Patrick O’Keefe, economic researcher at J.H. Cohn

The United States Department of Labor says Corporate America has let the country down again, zero jobs created in the month of August!!!

President Obama said his advisers expect the official unemployment rate to stay well above 6% until 2017!!!

When you factor out the 45,000 striking Verizon workers, and the temporarily laid off 22,000 state workers in Minnesota, the jobs creation numbers for August are a piddly 23,000.  Remember, most economists say at least 150,000 new jobs MUST be created every month, and that is not happening.  A more recent study by the Economic Policy Institute says 400,000 new jobs must be created every month!!!

This crappy August jobs report surprised the hell out of many economists.  CNN asked 22 economist what they thought the jobs creation number for August would be.  They thought at least 75,000 new jobs would be created, not ZERO!!!

It’s time they start calling this possible double dip recession what it really is, a depression!  I guess if  you look at it optimistically, the job numbers could have been worse, they could have gone negative!  So much for being optimistic!