From Raw Story – Sahil Kapur

A longtime advocate of doctors on behalf of patients in chronic pain has become the target of an ugly grand jury investigation after she spoke out to defend a physician charged with over-medicating patients to their deaths.

Siobhan Reynolds, president of Pain Relief Network, came in the crosshairs of the Justice Department when she stood up for a Kansas doctor convicted of money laundering, health care fraud, and prescribing medication to 68 chronically ill patients who died of overdose.

The Associated Press last week reported on a "secret federal investigation" against Reynolds for ostensibly obstructing justice after she refused to turn over private e-mails with Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife Linda, who could face life in prison. Held in contempt for refusing, and threatened with large fines and possible jail time, Reynolds eventually complied and handed over the subpoenaed documents. More...

NBC used to be an important news outlet. That said, David Gregory needs a clown suit.

I’m sure David Gregory would like to be a journalist. It’ll never happen – there are two basic requirement that David doesn’t have. Intellect and Honor.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Nothing Like the New Yellow Press.

Simple Fact : They’re Coming to Get Your Social Security !

We're Being Conned on Social Security - How We Could Easily Raise Benefits or Allow People to Retire Earlier

Joshua Holland - Alternet

Allow me to take a moment to fix that whole “Social Security crisis” that has everyone in Washington gnashing their teeth. When you see how easily it’s done, you may begin to realize that whenever our elites start chattering about “tax-gaps," they’re almost certainly trying to rip you off -- making a slick grab for something to which you are, ultimately, “entitled.”

But why stop there? Why play defense? After we fix the program, why don’t we increase Social Security benefits? Why not lower the age of retirement? With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, and some economists, like James Galbraith, arguing that at least some of those lost jobs are never to return, why not open up some jobs for the young ‘uns and put a dent in the number of Americans who are out of work? Maybe with more demand for workers, employers would see their way to raising wages a bit, bucking the long-term trend of stagnation that the majority of Americans have endured over the past 30 years. Think about it: if you enter the labor market at age 20, isn’t busting your ass for four decades long enough to merit a dignified retirement? We are a wealthy country -- we can afford it.

According to Bruce Bartlett, in an incredibly typical scare-piece in billionaire granny-basher Pete Peterson’s Fiscal Times, that’s not true. Social Security’s problems are immense. “The 2009 report of Social Security’s trustees,” Bartlett writes, “showed a long-term actuarial deficit in that program of $15 trillion.” That is an almost unimaginably large number, given that the entire annual output of the United States was only $14 trillion last year.

But what does it really mean? Well, it turns out that Bartlett’s not even referring to the dubious 75-year projection of the Social Security “gap.” His terrifyingly big figure actually represents the program’s “shortfall” stretching out to infinity. That’s right-- it’s the program’s “unfunded liability” if everything remains as projected forever, and assuming the earth isn’t destroyed by a moon-sized meteor at some point before forever arrives. (The geeks at the American Academy of Actuaries have suggested that the “infinite horizon” measure is complete nonsense.)

According to the 2010 Social Security Trustees’ report, the 75-year gap is estimated to be $5.4 trillion -- still a big number. But there’s another way to express it: it equals just 0.7 percent of our projected economic output over that same period. That’s less than one penny on the dollar.

So if we, as members of a nominal democracy, want to live in a society where older people aren’t mired in poverty -- it’s estimated that four in 10 would be without Social Security benefits -- then all we have to do to close the gap is increase overall taxes by less than a single percentage point. Problem solved! And we didn’t even require an august commission.

But, we are told, that’s not the case. Fixing it isn’t that simple -- and increasing benefits or dropping the age of eligibility are just crazy ideas -- because we can’t afford any of it. Raising taxes, no matter how modestly, supposedly kills jobs and destroys economies. But ask yourself: where would those jobs go? To Somalia or Papua New Guinea? Our firms compete with companies from other advanced economies, and the United States has one of the lowest tax burdens in the developed world. In 2007, our overall tax burden ranked 26th out of the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, dubbed the “rich countries club.”

As I write in my forthcoming book, The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy, budgeting comes down to a simple question of priorities. Do we want to live in an America where the elderly are forced to eat cat food? If not, we can pay a bit more in taxes, or bring defense spending in line with other advanced countries or eliminate the cap on payroll taxes so higher earners kick in the same share of their paychecks as everyone else.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the 75-year “Social Security gap” represents the same dollar figure as those Bush tax cuts that were targeted at the top 2 percent of American earners projected over the same period of time. For much of Washington’s cognoscenti, one is an imminent crisis, and the other is something we simply must keep in place in order to retain our economic edge. That should tell you all you need to know about the nature of our Social Security “crisis.”

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. Drop him an email or Follow him on Twitter.

From the Washingto n Post

The True Cost of the Iraq War By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war.

But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected.

Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion, we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if" worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe?

The answer to all four of these questions is probably no. The central lesson of economics is that resources -- including both money and attention -- are scarce. What was devoted to one theater, Iraq, was not available elsewhere. More...

From Truthout - Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, "Propaganda," published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society" and that the manipulators "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country." Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism "public relations."

The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he made cigarettes "torches of freedom." In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company's monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a "liberation."

Bernays was no rabid right winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that "engineering public consent" was for the greater good. This was achieved by the creation of "false realities," which then became "news events."

Here are examples of how it is done these days:

False Reality: The last US combat troops have left Iraq "as promised, on schedule," according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the "last US soldiers" silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.

Fact: They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces' assassinations. The number of "military contractors" is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.

False Reality: BBC presenters and reporters have described the departing US troops as a "sort of victorious army" that has achieved "a remarkable change in [Iraq's] fortunes." Their commander, Gen. David Petraeus, is a "celebrity," "charming," "savvy" and "remarkable."

Fact: There is no victory of any sort. There is a catastrophic disaster; and attempts to present it as otherwise are a model of Bernays' campaign to "rebrand" the slaughter of the first world war as "necessary" and "noble." In 1980, Ronald Reagan, running for president, rebranded the invasion of Vietnam, in which up to three million people died, as a "noble cause," a theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood. Today's Iraq war movies have a similar purging theme: the invader as both idealist and victim.

False Reality: It is not known how many Iraqis have died. They are "countless" or maybe "in the tens of thousands."

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Fact: As a direct consequence of the Anglo-American-led invasion, a million Iraqis have died. This figure from Opinion Research Business is based on peer-reviewed research led by Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, whose methods were secretly affirmed as "best practice" and "robust" by the Blair government's chief scientific adviser, as revealed in a Freedom of Information search. This figure is rarely reported or presented to "charming" and "savvy" American generals. Neither is the dispossession of four million Iraqis, the malnourishment of most Iraqi children, the epidemic of mental illness and the poisoning of the environment.

False Reality: The British economy has a deficit of billions, which must be reduced with cuts in public services and regressive taxation, in a spirit of "we're all in this together."

Fact: We are not in this together. What is remarkable about this public relations triumph is that, only 18 months ago, the diametric opposite filled TV screens and front pages. Then, in a state of shock, truth was unavoidable, if briefly. The Wall Street and city of London financiers' trough was on full view for the first time, along with the venality of once celebrated snouts. Billions in public money went to inept and crooked organizations known as banks, which were spared debt liability by their Labor government sponsors.

Within a year, record profits and personal bonuses were posted, and state and media propaganda had recovered its equilibrium. Suddenly, the "black hole" was no longer the responsibility of the banks, whose debt is to be paid by those not in any way responsible: the public. The received media wisdom of this "necessity" is now a chorus, from the BBC to the Sun. A masterstroke, Bernays would surely say.

False Reality: The former government minister Ed Miliband offers a "genuine alternative" as leader of the British Labor Party.

Fact: Miliband, like his brother David, the former foreign secretary, and almost all those standing for the Labor leadership, is immersed in the effluent of New Labor. As a New Labor member of Parliament and minister, he did not refuse to serve under Blair or speak out against Labor's persistent warmongering. He now calls the invasion of Iraq a "profound mistake." Calling it a mistake insults the memory and the dead. It was a crime, of which the evidence is voluminous. He has nothing new to say about the other colonial wars, none of them mistakes. Neither has he demanded basic social justice: that those who caused the recession clear up the mess and that Britain's fabulously rich corporate minority be seriously taxed, starting with Rupert Murdoch.

Of course, the good news is that false realities often fail when the public trusts its own critical intelligence, not the media. Two classified documents recently released by WikiLeaks express the CIA's concern that the populations of European countries, which oppose their governments' war policies, are not succumbing to the usual propaganda spun through the media. For the rulers of the world, this is a conundrum, because their unaccountable power rests on the false reality that no popular resistance works. And it does.

The trailer for Charles Ferguson's new documentary "Inside Job" has been making its way around the web (hat tip to Nouriel Roubini's Twitter feed). The film has been getting serious love from critics, including winning the top award at Cannes this year.

Roger Ebert called the the film "devastating" summed it up this way in May:

"From Roosevelt until Reagan, the American economy enjoyed 40 years of stability, prosperity and growth. Beginning with Reagan's moves against financial regulation, that sound base has been progressively eroded. The crucial federal error (in administrations of both parties) was to allow financial institutions to trade on their own behalf. Today many large trading banks are betting against their own customers."

"Inside Job" is due out in October. WATCH the trailer: