LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- Just as Portugal appeared to have dodged a bailout like those taken by Greece and Ireland, a domestic political spat was set Monday to worsen its financial troubles and possibly spoil Europe's efforts to put the sovereign debt crisis behind it.

Portugal's main opposition parties told the beleaguered minority government they won't budge from their refusal to endorse a new set of austerity measures designed to ease a huge debt burden that is crippling the economy.

The new steps are likely to be rejected in a parliamentary vote expected Wednesday and the timing could not be worse. A defeat in the vote, Prime Minister Jose Socrates warned, would trigger his government's resignation, consigning Portugal to at least two months of political limbo just as officials were hoping to boost investor confidence in the country's future.

Truth be told, some Democrats, too, including a lawyer friend of mine who worked for one of the agencies abolished by Dodd-Frank.  When I saw him recently, after hearing him on the subject of Elizabeth Warren and the consumer ideologues he believes have been brought in to staff the agency she is presently de facto running in the absence of a confirmed head, I told him I'd love to get he and Warren in a room together and listen to the two of them...discuss.  Elizabeth Warren may be the closest we have to someone fighting City Hall in this country who City Hall is actually slightly scared they might not be able to whip.  Joseph Nocera's piece ran in many places, including the NYT, which now requires all kinds of information I'm not willing to give them if I want to share this article on Facebook via them. 

Excerpt

Here's the main question. If the Libyan people knew what kind of money went into Libyan state coffers from overseas multinationals, and if they could see precisely how much left the country, would they have turfed out the Gaddafi dynasty by now and installed a proper democratic parliamentary system?

If Facebook and Twitter could shout out how much multinational oil companies such as Shell and BP were paying pay the Gaddafi regime for exploration and development rights, would every son and daughter of Libya make jolly certain those funds were being used for their benefit and were not being sequestered by an unelected, unaccountable elite?

Well we should have a real life test before too long. In the US, the Dodd Frank Act will from April force all "extractive" companies - oil, gas and mineral businesses - with a US stock-market listing to reveal precisely what they pay governments for mining and extraction rights. And here in the European Union, there is a good chance that a new directive will impose the same disclosure obligations on their European peers (it has the backing of George Osborne, the British chancellor, among others).

[I thought this piece was interesting since it brings up one of the possibly truly important parts of the complex FinReg legislation, and ties it in with the conveniently repressed fact that we have been subsidizing Gaddafi over the past few years - a fact more easily repressed in the absence of any transparency concerning the amount of money we have contributed to prop him up]

Since Wall Street won't fund nuclear plants due to the inherent risks, nuclear plants need taxpayer backed loans, this was discussed on Democracy Now.

A planned expansion of a nuclear reactor complex in South Texas includes a big stake in it by TEPCO, the Japanese company that owns the Fukushima plant now near meltdown. TEPCO would be backed by the US government in financing an expansion of the nuclear reactor complex if the project is approved by the Obama administration.

NRG's Knox said earlier this year that "nothing happens" regarding Tepco's commitment to join the South Texas expansion project until DOE has offered the project a conditional loan guarantee. The proposed loan guarantee is being reviewed by the Treasury Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget, he said.

By Richard A. Oppel Jr., New York Times, March 18, 2011

Arizona established itself over the past year as the most aggressive state in cracking down on illegal immigrants, gaining so much momentum with its efforts that several other states vowed to follow suit. But now the harsh realities of economics appear to have intruded, and Arizona may be looking to shed the image of hard-line anti-immigration pioneer.

In an abrupt change of course, Arizona lawmakers rejected new anti-immigration measures on Thursday, in what was widely seen as capitulation to pressure from business executives and an admission that the state’s tough stance had resulted in a chilling of the normally robust tourism and convention industry....

I hope Dickday sees this so he can rest comfortably.

“Vote for a Republican,” my grandfather used to say, “and you get a depression.  Vote for a Democrat and you get a war.”  That seemed like a pretty good rule of thumb in the twentieth century: Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover gave us depressions, and Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy (with an assist from Lyndon Johnson) all gave us wars.

Then came the twenty first century and all bets were off.  George W. Bush gave us two wars and a depression; President Obama has already presided over two slack economic years and now seems bent on giving us his first war.

Anonymous — the amorphous online conglomerate who like to rumble with Scientologists and 11-year-old camwhores — usually live up to their name. The group (if you can even call it that) very rarely appears in public, and when they do, they typically hide their faces under signature Guy Fawkes masks.

But on a recent Saturday in February, a small group of self-professed Anons — teens with braces and glasses, twentysomethings with stubble hiding under dark hoods — marched maskless through downtown Boston, shouting: "WikiLeaks is under attack! What do we do? Stand up, fight back!"

The meatspace rally was organized through the website whyweprotest.net, by self-professed Anon Gregg Housh, a 34-year-old Boston computer geek. Housh offered himself as a leader for the protesters. "At some point you have to tell them to do all the stuff or they won't," he says. "No matter where I go in life that's how it is."

The situation in Japan is tragic and worrying, and our hearts continue to go out to those affected and responding.

On Friday, we recommended that donors wait to see how the situation unfolds before giving. At this point we are ready to make a recommendation, though of course this is subject to change as the situation changes.

We believe that

• Those affected have requested very little, limited aid. Aid being offered far exceeds aid being requested. (Details below.)
• Charities are aggressively soliciting donations, often in ways we feel are misleading (more on this in future posts).
• Any donation you make will probably be used (a) by the charity you give it to, for activities in a different country; (b) for non-disaster-relief-and-recovery efforts in Japan.
• If you’re looking to pursue (a) and help people in need all over the world, we recommend giving to the best charity you can, rather than basing your giving on who is appealing to you most aggressively with images and language regarding Japan.
• If you prefer (b), a gift to the Japanese Red Cross seems reasonable.

Overall, though, a gift to Doctors Without Borders seems to us like the best way to effectively “respond to this disaster”. We feel they are a leader in transparency, honesty and integrity in relief organizations, and the fact that they’re not soliciting funds for Japan is a testament to this. Rewarding Doctors Without Borders is a move toward improving incentives and improving disaster relief in general.

[Thanks and a Hatlo Hat Tip to Emma who passed along this link]

Most of the terrorists and insurgents that the U.S. military and the CIA targets in the war against al-Qaida have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. But the act of Congress, passed days after the attacks, authorizing that war tethers U.S. action to 9/11. You might argue it’s time for an upgrade. The Obama Pentagon doesn’t want one.

The language of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force is “solid” and “sufficient to address the existing threats that I’ve seen,” Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday afternoon.

That may seem like the Obama administration is in the rare position of rejecting an expansion of its warfighting powers. But although no one at the hearing is willing to say it, politics submerged barely beneath the rhetorical surface are driving Johnson’s antipathy to a renewed authorization. Here’s why.