RT– Republicans and Democrats were deadlocked as a government shutdown loomed. Republicans refused to budge without spending cuts. A deal was struck and a shutdown averted. In the end overall spending still increased.

“Total discretionary outlays in 2011 will be $3.2 billion higher as a result of the legislation, CBO estimates–an increase of $7.5 billion for defense programs, partially offset by a net reduction of $4.4 billion in other spending,” said a report released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

The bill dubbed a historic compromise on government spending cuts was in fact not historic, not a spending-cut. The legislation passed in April increased US government discretionary spending by over $3 billion. Because of the bill total government spending will be higher as a result than if Congress had simply continued the spending at prior levels.

“CBO had previously estimated that the full-year appropriation act will yield a net reduction of $0.4 billion in nonemergency outlays in 2011,” the report says. “The comparison shown here is different: It includes emergency appropriations, excludes the effects of changes in mandatory programs, and incorporates adjustments to various estimating parameters that were applied to the appropriation act to make them consistent with the March 2011 baseline.”

Read full article about US Spending Cuts Deal Actually Increased Spending

© 2011 RT

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PROPUBLICA– The Gulf oil spill was 2010’s biggest story, so when David Barstow walked into a Houston hotel for last December’s hearings on the disaster, he wasn’t surprised to see that the conference room was packed. Calling the hearing to order, Coast Guard Captain Hung Nguyen cautioned the throng, “We will continue to allow full media coverage as long as it does not interfere with the rights of the parties to a fair hearing and does not unduly distract from the solemnity, decorum, and dignity of the proceedings.” It’s a stock warning that every judge gives before an important trial, intended to protect witnesses from a hounding press. But Nguyen might have been worrying too much. Because as Barstow realized as he glanced across the crowd, most of the people busily scribbling notes in the room were not there to ask questions. They were there to answer them.

“You would go into these hearings and there would be more PR people representing these big players than there were reporters, sometimes by a factor of two or three,” Barstow said. “There were platoons of PR people.”

An investigative reporter for The New York Times, Barstow has written several big stories about the shoving match between the media and public relations in what eventually becomes the national dialogue. As the crowd at the hearing clearly showed, the game has been changing.

“The muscles of journalism are weakening and the muscles of public relations are bulking up — as if they were on steroids,” he says.

In their recent book, “The Death and Life of American Journalism,” Robert McChesney and John Nichols tracked the number of people working in journalism since 1980 and compared it to the numbers for public relations. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, they found that the number of journalists has fallen drastically while public relations people have multiplied at an even faster rate. In 1980, there were about .45 PR workers per 100,000 population compared with .36 journalists. In 2008, there were .90 PR people per 100,000 compared to .25 journalists. That’s a ratio of more than three-to-one, better equipped, better financed.

How much better?

The researcher who worked with McChesney and Nichols, R. Jamil Jonna, used census data to track revenues at public relations agencies between 1997 and 2007. He found that revenues went from $3.5 billion to $8.75 billion. Over the same period, paid employees at the agencies went from 38,735 to 50,499, a healthy 30 percent growth in jobs. And those figures include only independent public relations agencies — they don’t include PR people who work for big companies, lobbying outfits, advertising agencies, non-profits, or government.

Traditional journalism, of course, has been headed in the opposite direction. The Newspaper Association of America reported that newspaper advertising revenue dropped from an all-time high of $49 billion in 2000 to $22 billion in 2009. That’s right — more than half. A lot of that loss is due to the recession. But even the most upbeat news executive has to admit that many of those dollars are not coming back soon. Six major newspaper companies have sought bankruptcy protection in recent years.

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© 2011 ProPublica

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SALON– The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces — coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, and other U.S. cities. If the trajectories of revolt in Cairo and Madison intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorship, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack.

Each is a microcosm of tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, and in what President Dwight Eisenhower called “the most strategically important area in the world” — “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment,” in the words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day. 

Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today’s policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield “substantial control of the world.” And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day.

Read more about Is The World Too Big To Fail?

Written by Noam Chomsky

© 2011 Salon

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PRESS TV – Recent data released by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that more than one fifth of US veterans aged between 18-24 returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were unemployed in 2010.

The unemployment rate for the young male veterans was nearly 22 percent last year, more than two percent higher than their non-veteran counterparts, a press TV correspondent reported on Saturday.

“More than 25 percent of us returning from Iraq and Afghanistan can’t find employment (in the first year),” said Jake Diliberto from Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan.

“One of the major reasons is because we have ongoing deployments, we have ongoing wars. We can’t enter the workplace and sustain the job successfully,” he added.

Experts say it is challenging for some veterans to translate their military skills into civilian life. Furthermore, the unemployment problem is exasperated by the mental and physical injuries soldiers sustained during the wars.

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© 2011 Press TV

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MSNBC – Japanese consumers would be on the hook for nuclear damage payments and earthquake reconstruction costs under two tax plans the government is considering, officials said Tuesday.

The Kyodo News agency said one plan would raise electricity customers’ charges to help cover claims against Tokyo Electric Power Co. from people who suffer losses from the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The increase would come in the form of a higher electricity source-development tax, which is collected from customers as part of their electricity bills.

TEPCO must pay people forced to evacuate from the region surrounding the nuclear plant, but officials said the power company may not be able to pay all the claims.

“While TEPCO will be primarily responsible for damages payments, the government may have to support the firm,” Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda told a press conference Tuesday. “We are considering taxation, the electricity charge and other measures to enable the government to shoulder some of the burden.”

A second plan would raise to 8 percent Japan’s current 5 percent consumption tax for about three years, Kyodo said. The extra $273 billion ($22.5 trillion yen) would pay for reconstruction of the country’s northeastern region, said senior lawmakers in the Democratic Pary of Japan.

The March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami caused about $300 billion in damage, experts have estimated.

Read full article on Japan Consumers May Bail Out Nuke Plant Owner

© 2011 MSNBC

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