NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE:  Businesses are starting to understand what development experts have long known: investing in women pays dividends. Women are more likely than men to put their income back into their communities, driving illiteracy and mortality rates down and GDP up…

Bringing women into businesses creates what Michael Porter and Mark Kramer of Harvard Business School call “shared value”—it helps companies while helping communities too. Consumer-product businesses have quickly understood the benefits—for instance, bypassing retail and hiring women to build person-to-person distribution channels for everything from cosmetics to beverages. More recently, companies have found it especially effective when the purchaser needs to be educated on the product being sold, be it a mobile sonogram machine, an energy lantern, or a cookstove. Women can also be the best innovators of the products they use and sell, sometimes transforming their communities with something as small as the knowledge of the optimal use of a household’s single electric light…  (more)

From ALJAZEERA:

…Joblessness among the bloc’s 17 countries rose to 10.4 per cent in December 2011, the EU’s statistics office Eurostat said in a statement…

After two years of debt crisis and budget austerity cuts across in the region, the number of Europeans out of work has risen to 16.5 million people, with another 20,000 people without a job in December…

In the 27-nation European Union, the number of jobless has risen steadily from a recent low of 7.1 per cent of the working
population in 2008 to 9.9 per cent in December – some 23.6 million people…

Click here to read the full article.

From the FINANCIAL TIMES:

Sir Fred Goodwin, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland, is being stripped of his knighthood, in the latest political concession to public anger in Britain over the perceived arrogance of some senior bankers…

Sir Frederick Anderson Goodwin – or plain Mr Goodwin as he becomes – joins Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt, Romania’s former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in losing his title, after it was decided he had “brought the honours system into disrepute”…

There was little sympathy for him at Westminster but Alistair Darling, former Labour chancellor, said he felt “uneasy” at the way the former RBS chief executive had been singled out. “There were plenty of other knights of the realm around the bank boardroom,” Mr Darling said. “We appear to be entering new ground. Whatever else Fred Goodwin did, he was not convicted of anything. If we are going to get into a situation where people lose the honours  . . . we need to establish the ground rules.”

Click here to read the full article.

EDITOR: There is something to be said for a system that honors achievement and sacrifice.

From the NATION / AP:

A pipeline operator assured federal regulators it would minimize using eminent domain against private landowners if given approval to lay a 39-mile natural gas pipeline in northern Pennsylvania’s pristine Endless Mountains.

Yet the company was readying condemnation papers against dozens of landowners even as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was considering its application for the $250 million MARC 1 pipeline. Within two days of winning approval, Central New York Oil & Gas Co., LLC went to court to condemn nearly half the properties along the pipeline’s route — undercutting part of the regulatory commission’s approval rationale and angering landowners who are now fighting the company in court.

Residents are fighting the pipeline on two fronts: challenging the eminent domain proceedings in court and appealing the approval by FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission]. Because those challenges are pending, commission spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen declined Tuesday to comment on whether the agency was misled…

Click here to read the full article.

DRUG WAR FACTS: Good news was reported with the December 2011 release of the “Prisoners in 2010″ report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. “The combined U.S. prison population decreased 0.6% in 2010, the first decline since 1972.” [1] While we can somewhat celebrate this downward blip, these numbers need to be put in context.

A year and a half earlier, the Pew Center on the States announced the decline, but went further in its analysis stating, “Between 1925 (the first year national prison statistics were officially collected) and 1972, the number of state prisoners increased from 85,239 to 174,379.”[2] Placing these numbers in context, in 2010, state prisons housed 1,395,356 inmates, an increase of +1537% over 1925 and +700% over 1972.

It wasn’t population growth or a corresponding increase in the number of “bad guys” that caused the massive prison expansion. From 1925 to 2010, the U.S. population grew by +167%; from 1972 to 2010, the percentage increase equaled
+47%.[3]

According the Pew Center, “This change was fueled by stiffer sentencing and release laws and decisions by courts and parole boards, which sent more offenders to prison and kept them there for longer terms.”[2]

Many of these laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s were a reaction to drug war induced hysteria,[4] which in turn fueled prison growth. To illustrate, 25% of federal inmates had “drugs” as their most serious offense in 1980 – a total of 4,900 prisoners.[5] Just 10 years later in 1990, almost 57,000 (50%) federal inmates counted “drugs” as their most serious offense. Thirty years later in 2010, federal inmates with drug offenses numbered almost 100,000.[1] There were almost 20 times more “drug” prisoners in 2010 than in 1980 for a population that had only increased by about one third.

The explosive growth in the prison population has strained the prison system. In 2010, “Nineteen state systems were operating above their highest capacity, with seven states at least 25% over their highest capacity at yearend 2010, led
by Alabama at 196% and Illinois at 144%.”[1]

Enter the private prison industry. The “Prisoners in 1994″ report made scant reference to privately run prisons, with only North Carolina placing 1,000 inmates out of state because of overcrowding.[5] By 2010, “About 16% of federal prisoners (33,830) and nearly 7% of state prisoners (94,365) were housed in private facilities.”[1]

According the American Civil Liberties Union, “As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits.”[6]

Former Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey foretold the growing prison industrial complex and its relationship to drugs in a 1996 keynote address for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “I believe that we have created an American gulag. We
have 1.6 million people behind bars, and probably two-thirds of those in the Federal system are there for drug-related crimes.”[7]

By today’s standards, he was a little off on his numbers. The “American gulag” now holds well over 2 million prisoners with more than 300,000 there on drug convictions.[1] In this context, the downward blip in prison growth is not much to celebrate.

===
[1] “Prisoners in 2010,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, December, 2011. – [ http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf ]
[2] “Prison Count 2010: State Population Declines for the First Time in 38
Years,” The Pew Center on the States, April 2010. – [ http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Prison_Count_2010.pdf ]
[3] “U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2011,” U.S. Census, 2011.
- [ http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/11statab/pop.pdf ]
[4] Blanchard, Michael D., and Chin, Gabriel J., “Identifying the Enemy in the War on Drugs: A Critique of the Developing Rule Permitting Visual Identification of Indescript White Powder in Narcotics Prosecutions,” The American University Law Review, February 1998.
- [ http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/lawrev/47/blanchard.pdf?rd=1 ]
[5] “Prisoners in 1994,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1995. – [ http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/Pi94.pdf ]
[6] “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration,” American
Civil Liberties Union, November 2011. – [ http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/bankingonbondage_20111102.pdf ]
[7] Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey (USA, Ret.), Director, ONDCP, Keynote Address, Opening Plenary Session, National Conference on Drug Abuse Prevention Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse, September 19, 1996.
- [ http://archives.drugabuse.gov/meetings/CODA/Keynote2.html ] The above Facts can be found in the “Prisons & Jails” and “Prisons & Drug Offenders” chapters of Drug War Facts.
- [ http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Jails ]
- [ http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Drugs ]

From the HUFF NEWS:

…Workers at Atlantic City’s highly anticipated Revel casino, including bellhops and blackjack dealers, will be subject to term limits of four to six years, at the end of which they will repeat the hiring process, NPR reports. The policy will “attract the most highly professional people who are inspired by a highly competitive work environment,” Revel wrote in a statement.

Gaming employees earned between $16,310 and $68,290 a year according to the most recent statistics available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The policy could just be an excuse for the casino to take advantage of desperate job seekers, experts told NPR.

Revel, the first new casino built in Atlantic City since 2003’s opening of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, is expected to be a big boon for a city that has seen declining casino profits over the past five years, as well as a high unemployment rate. The casino is projected to bring in $2.4 billion, provide 5,000 full-time jobs and has already hired thousands of construction workers…

Click here to read the full article.

From POLITICO:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry burned through the bulk of a once-sizable campaign war chest late last year in what became an increasingly desperate attempt to right his listing — and ultimately doomed — presidential campaign, federal financial disclosures released late Monday show.

Though he raised more than $20 million overall during 2011, Perry raised less than $2.9 million of that amount between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, federal records indicate, as disastrous debate performances and plummeting poll numbers crippled his fundraising efforts…

Prominent Texas businesspeople, such as former TXU Corp. Chairman Erle Nye, and notable politicos, including former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, ranked among Perry donors during late 2011…

Click here to read the full article.

EDITORIAL: Special interests will rush to fund the next likely winner.  For most major contributors, it’s just business!  They think of it as prepayment for services to be rendered.

From USA TODAY:

Spending by the presidential contenders in this year’s wildly unpredictable Republican primary has fallen sharply from 2008 levels, but the money flowing from outside groups, including new super PACs, has soared dramatically, new figures show.

Last-minute spending by super PACs to influence the White House battle topped $44 million through Monday morning, eclipsing the $10.6 million that outside groups had spent at this point in the 2008 presidential campaign, according to federal data tallied by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics

The spending is leaving its mark on Florida, the site of today’s crucial GOP primary. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and his allies, especially the pro-Romney Restore Our Future, aired 12,768 television commercials in the state through Wednesday compared with 210 by former House speaker Newt Gingrich and his supporters, a study released Monday by the Wesleyan Media Project shows…

Click here to read the full article.

EDITOR: According to Joe Scarborough and his guests on Morning Joe, $30 million has been spent on the Florida Republican primary alone.  Moreover, 92% of the ads were ads were negative.  This is primarily Super Pac money.

When affluent individuals contribute their $2500 to a candidate, it is a matter of conviction and perhaps ego.   But when corporations and individuals donate $100,000 on up, it is usually with the intent of later benefiting through government largess… perhaps at the rate of $10 gained for every dollar spent.

So what we have is the selling of our democracy to the highest bidders.

The concerned citizen must ask why bother to contribute $100, $200, a $1,000 or even $2,500 at all since it will have no impact whatsoever.

Our number one priority must be campaign financing reform which can only now be accomplished through a constitutional amendment.   Until then, the rich will grow richer and the middle class will continue to shrink.

Without a constitutional convention, our children and grandchildren will have a lower standard of living and few opportunities for advancement.

From the FINANCIAL TIMES:

…The ECB, under new president Mario Draghi, launched its funding facility in December to avert a looming credit crunch, with €230bn of bank bonds coming due for repayment in the first quarter of 2012 while bond markets remained largely closed to new issuance. …

Goldman Sachs has told clients that banks could ask for twice as much in the February auction as in December when more than 500 lenders raised €489bn. “They could do another €1tn easily in February,” said one senior banker. “It could be way more than that if things get worse in the markets.”.

Analysts suggest banks have used some of this money to invest in higher-yielding eurozone sovereign bonds, helping to drive down borrowing costs for several hard-pressed eurozone governments, including Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Greece…

Click here to read the full article.

EDITOR: The U.S. Federal Reserve set the example.

From the HUFF POST:

…There’s no question that prescriptions for opioid painkillers like Oxycontin and Percocet have soared in recent years. It’s also clear that there are some rogue doctors and “pill mills” who unscrupulously hand out prescriptions, sometimes to patients who shouldn’t get them, sometimes to drug addicts and drug dealers pretending to be pain patients. But it’s also far from certain that the painkiller abuse and overdoses are as dire as the government is making it out to be. And to the extent that there is a problem, it’s due more to a decade of aggressive policing, obstinate federal law enforcement agencies, and the encroachment of law enforcement into the practice of medicine than lax government oversight. The DEA in particular has been scaring reputable doctors away from pain management since the late 1990s. People who suffer from chronic pain simply can’t find doctors willing to treat them over the long term. The unscrupulous doctors and pill mills in the headlines have sprung up to fill the void…

Despite the recent headlines about the rise in sales of prescription painkillers, chronic pain is still significantly under-treated in America. There are a number of reasons why. For one, there’s no diagnostic test to diagnose pain, so doctors must rely on patient descriptions of what they’re feeling. That can be tricky, because tolerance for pain varies widely from person to person. Culturally, pain has also long been viewed as something we encounter and endure as part of the human condition. In many religions, noble suffering is considered pious. Pain treatment is also a relatively new medical specialty; it didn’t have its own medical society until the early 1980s.

But the biggest barrier to effective pain treatment continues to be bad public policy, much of it driven by the war on drugs. Opioids — morphine, oxycodone, methadone, and other drugs derived from the opium plant (or synthetically structured to mimic it) — are the most effective way to treat severe and chronic pain. Emerging (but still controversial) treatments like long-term, high-dose opioid therapy have shown particular promise with chronic pain. Just this month, an article in the journal Science described another promising new therapy, in which large doses of the drugs delivered over a short period of time, shortly after an injury, may help prevent chronic pain from developing at all…

Click here to read the full article.