Verizon Wireless

Motorola Droid 4

Motorola and Verizon Wireless introduced a triple threat of new Droids at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including one dubbed "the thinnest and most powerful 4G LTE QWERTY smartphone."

The Droid 4 has been given that auspicious, audacious title, and offers access to a 4G network that spans 200 million people in 190 markets. It is expected to work at speeds of 5 to 12 megabits per second and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps.

How thin are we talking? Somehow, they've crammed a a five-row QWERTY keyboard with edge-lit keys into half an inch. And inside,it has a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM, as well as 16 GB of internal memory, with support for up to a 32 GB microSD card. It's meant to appeal to business users, with its "government-grade encryption to keep data secure." For those who don't want to carry more gear, it comes with an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture. The mirror mode allows user to display images and video on an HDTV.  

Verizon Wireless

Motorola Droid Razr in Purple

It's built to be a little tough, with a scratch and scrape resistant glass 4-inch qHD display and water-repellent nanocoating just in case you spill something on it. (And wipe quickly. Very, very quickly.)  Underneath the screen, MotoCast allows for "remote streaming of photos, videos, music, documents, presentations and more from home or office computers." As is practically a norm now, it can also be used as a 4G LTE mobile hotspot that can support up to 8 other Wi-Fi'd devices.

It'll be available in a few weeks, and while it'll be powered by Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, it is on the list to be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

The other two new Droids, the Razr in Purple and Razr Maxx, will also run on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network and be on the same upgrade schedule. 

For fans of the Baltimore Ravens or Prince (or anyone who happens to just like a little variety in their smartphone color), the Razr in Purple will be a treat, but it'll be basically the same Droid Razr that's been out for awhile, which is to say it's been well received and reviewed. With the usual 2-year obligation, it'll run you $200 when it comes out in the next few weeks.

Finally, in a few weeks, we'll see the Droid Razr Maxx, which Motorola is calling "the overachiever" of the Razr family for its 21 hours of talk-time and petite figure: 8.99 mm (here in the U.S., that means 0.3 inches). It comes with 32 GB of total memory and will cost $300 with a new two-year customer agreement.

Verizon Wireless

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx

More smartphone news from CES 2012:

• The Lumia 900: Nokia’s first 4G LTE Windows Phone device
• The Asus Padfone is made to be devoured by a tablet
• LG Spectrum 4G phone has high-def display

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.

Maritime New Zealand via Getty Images

MV Rena is seen in two pieces after overnight bad weather pounded the vessel, on Jan. 9, 2012 in Tauranga, New Zealand. The ship, which struck Astrolabe Reef off the coast of Mt Maunganui on Oct. 5, 2011, split in two over the weekend.

Marty Melville / AFP - Getty Images

A team of oil-spill and wildlife specialists has been mobilised as oil again began flowing from the Rena, after it broke in two in a storm over the weekend.

Marty Melville / AFP - Getty Images

Marty Melville / AFP - Getty Images

A security guard walks on a beach where shipping containers and bags of milk powder, seen here, were washed ashore on Jan. 9, 2012.

The Associated Press reports from WELLINGTON, New Zealand: 

A light sheen of oil extended about two miles from a wrecked cargo ship that split in two over the weekend, but so far the damage appears small compared to the environmental disaster created when the vessel ran aground in October, New Zealand authorities said Monday.

Waihi Police Sgt. Dave Litton said police closed public access to popular Waihi Beach on Monday morning after four cargo containers and other debris from the vessel washed ashore. He said police received calls about people driving off with some of the bags of milk powder that are strewn along the beach.

Authorities say the milk and other items washed ashore could be health hazards. Read the full story.

See earlier coverage of the Rena disaster on PhotoBlog.

by Dylan Ratigan

If you haven't noticed, your fellow Americans are somewhat pissed about our political situation. No, I take it back -- they're mad as hell. Back in August, I was mad as hell too. I watched in disgust as Washington's debt ceiling debacle grew from a tremor into an earthquake -- one that tore deep fissures in our confidence as a nation to get anything done.

What made it even more frustrating for me, and everyone that I spoke to in late summer of 2011, was that there was little one could do about it but lose your temper. Which of course, I did.

Then, I watched as a funny thing began to happen. Something unexpected, but something so necessary. A summer of simmering frustration turned into a September of action.

People woke up. And then, finally, they began to fight back.

Occupy Wall Street began as a great experiment, with people camping out in Zuccotti Park in downtown New York, sparking a worldwide movement of protests and tent cities. Occupiers had discussions about the future of our economy with a Nobel laureate economist. They echoed back the guidance of spiritual leaders who came to offer words of encouragement. They built a library, they cooked for each other, and they fed the homeless. All of those were noble achievements.

But the most critical thing Occupy Wall Street achieved was this: they lit the match that reignited a national conversation about the link between global inequality and government corruption.

Then something else happened. Members of Congress began introducing bills to fight corruption.

We were inspired to begin work on a project to attack the nefarious influence of money in our political system. As a result, the Get Money Out project was born. It's a project where we band together, using the best of our collective resources, to ban money from the political process. We recognized early on that this couldn't be done in the usual way -- it had to be a national movement. And that's exactly what happened. Over 300,000 of us are now on board, and we've started the "Great 28 Debate" on ratifying a 28th amendment to the Constitution.

There are now 13 different Constitutional amendments being proposed by various groups and politicians, all focused on money and politics. One Republican Presidential nominee, Buddy Roemer, has based his entire campaign on the corrupting influence of big money. Tea Party advocates like Mark Meckler have come on board. Celebrities and entertainers are committing their resources, from Steven Van Zandt to The Goo Goo Dolls to Russell Simmons. And business leaders, like my friend Landon Rowland, former Kansas City Southern Railroad CEO, and Charlie Kolb, President of the Committee for Economic Development (the organization that wrote the original Marshall Plan), are starting to make waves.

For the first time, this is more than just hopeful chatter about a nationwide movement. We're seeing concrete, determined action on the local level. The city of Los Angeles has now passed a resolution demanding Congress pass a Constitutional amendment saying that "only living, breathing human beings are afforded Constitutional rights." We expect many towns and cities to follow suit.

In the past, I've likened this effort to "Climbing Everest." While we have some strong momentum, climbing Everest is no joke. If you and I aspire to be change agents in our society, we must enlist ourselves in a campaign to get money out of politics. As our friend Lawrence Lessig said on The Daily Show this week, "money is the root, and unless we find rootstrikers who are willing to strike at that root, we're never going to fix the problem."

Many of you have signed our petition at Get Money Out. Over the next few months, we need your help to expand this into a full-fledged movement. It is only possible if we enlist each other to work towards this singular goal. We will do that by exposing the auction, advocating municipal resolutions, and convincing our elected representatives to debate and ratify a 28th Amendment to separate business and state.

We also have to put this message everywhere we can. For every school or university that has a student council, that student council should call upon Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment to get money out. If you belong to a local Democratic or Republican club, same deal. If you own shares in a company, call investor relations and tell them how you feel. We can apply direct pressure to state pension managers to do the same thing, as some are starting to do, like New York City's Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio.

And let's not be fooled. Our very own Supreme Court says the Constitution allows corporations to spend unlimited secret funds in elections. Our elected officials are only too happy to use that for their benefit, while the voice of the individual voter is increasingly -- and dangerously -- silenced. President Obama and Mitt Romney are happily scooping up money from Wall Street, while Buddy Roemer, who refuses to take anything but small individual donations from voters, is being shut out. Not only by the Republican establishment, but by the national media who have refused to give him a spot in the GOP presidential debates.

Nevertheless, we can do this. We will do this. Abandon the psychology of what we are going to do, and embrace the psychology of what we are doing.

Behold, the 13 amendments in The Great 28 Debate. Every one of them is depending on us to turn them from a fantasy into a reality.
1) Rep. Ted Deutch - OCCUPIED Amendment (or Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy)Introduced by Congressman Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), the amendment reverses Citizen's United by stating that corporations are not people under the Constitution, and that corporations are barred from making election-related expenditures. It authorizes Congress and the states to regulate all election contributions and expenditures, and reaffirms Congress' right to regulate corporations.

2) Sen. Bernie Sanders - Saving American Democracy AmendmentSenator Bernie Sanders introduced an amendment in the Senate that mirrors the OCCUPIED amendment in the House. Introducing this "companion bill" in the Senate allows both houses of Congress to begin debate on the same bill without having to wait for the other to pass it. Learn more. Read the amendment.

3) Cenk Uygur, Wolf PAC - Wolf PAC AmendmentWolf PAC, a group started by progressive TV and radio host Cenk Uygur, reverses corporate personhood and prohibits corporations from giving to any politician. The amendment also sets a cap of $100 on all political donations and it establishes a public system to fund political campaigns. Read the amendment.

4) Senator Tom Udall - Udall AmendmentSenator Tom Udall (D-N.M.) along with eight other Democratic Senators proposed an amendment that gives Congress the power to regulate all money spent on campaigns and outside political groups such as Super PACs. It allows states to regulate state elections in the same manner. It would clear the way for Congress to pass reform legislation that would limit spending and would withstand a challenge in the Supreme Court. Read the amendment.

5) Rep. Jim McGovern and Free Speech for People - The People's Right's AmendmentCongressman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) introduced the amendment with the support of Free Speech for People, a non-profit group that aims to end corporate personhood. The amendment states that people or persons as used in the Constitution does not include corporations and that corporations are subject to regulation by the people through their elected representatives. Read the amendment.

6) Public Citizen - Democracy is for People AmendmentPursued by the non-profit group Public Citizen, the amendment would reverse the Citizen's Uniteddecision and permit Congress to regulate political spending by corporations. The amendment has not been drafted into specific language, but is based on a set of core principles. Read those principles and get more information.

7) Russell Simmons - Simmons AmendmentHip-hop mogul Russell Simmons announced support for an amendment in a speech to Occupy Boston protesters. The amendment establishes public funding of political campaigns and prohibits any political contributions from any source. It gives Congress the authority to design and enforce the public funding system. Read the full text of the amendment. Watch Simmons' speech.

8)Rep. Donna Edwards - Edwards AmendmentIntroduced by Representative Donna Edwards (D-Md.), the amendment would overturn theCitizen's United Supreme Court ruling by allowing Congress to regulate political spending by corporations.

9) Rep. Kurt Schrader - Schrader AmendmentIntroduced by Representative Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), the amendment authorizes Congress and the states to regulate the contribution of all funds to candidates and the expenditure of funds to influence elections. Read the amendment.

10) Rep. Marcy Kaptur - Kaptur AmendmentIntroduced by Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the amendment authorizes Congress and the states to set limits on the contributions that may be accepted by and the expenditures that may be made in support or in opposition to candidates running for public office.

11) Move to Amend - Move to AmendA group opposed to corporate personhood, Move to Amend, has proposed an amendment that would overturn Citizen's United by affirming that corporations are not people and can be regulated, and that money is not speech and can be regulated.

12) Get Money Out - Get Money Out AmendmentThe amendment was proposed by the Get Money Out organization, which was started by MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan, and became a part of United Republic in late 2011. The amendment prohibits corporations from making political donations and affirms that political donations are not speech, which allows Congress to regulate them. It also makes election day a federal holiday.

13) Lawrence Lessig - Lessig AmendmentLawrence Lessig, Harvard professor and founder of Rootstrikers, which joined forces with United Republic in late 2011, introduced an amendment that prohibits corporations from contributing money to any candidate, limits campaign contributions to $100, and gives Congress the power to regulate outside campaign spending. It also establishes Election Day as a national holiday.

So that's the team so far. Join us at GetMoneyOut.com. Tell your friends. Let the world know.

KCNA via Reuters

Kim Jong-un, center, son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (not pictured) visits Mokran Video Company in Pyongyang in this official KCNA news agency photo
showing the heir apparent's slicked-back, high-sided haircut, which is a fashion hit in Pyongyang.

North Korean heir-apparent Kim Jong-un's slicked-back, high-sided haircut is a fashion hit in Pyongyang where young men are apparently queueing up for a similar cut.

Kim, believed to be in his late 20s and known as the "Young General," is packaged to look like his late grandfather, the secretive state's founder, Kim Il-sung.

The chubby youngest son of the current leader, Kim Jong-il, slicks his hair back at the top, and has it trimmed to the scalp to about an inch above the ears.

Completing the Kim Il-sung look, which experts say is designed to help win over the public's support for dynastic succession, the young Kim wears dark Mao-style suits.

The young Kim's haircut is dubbed a "youth" or "ambition" hairstyle in North Korea, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper has reported.

Earlier this week, North Korean state news agency KCNA quoted barber An Su-gil as saying the short-cut, medium-cut and square-cut hairstyles are now popular among young men.

North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun wrote in September that neat and short hair for young people makes them "captivating."

"A young man with (an) ambitious high sided haircut looks so sobering and stylish," the paper added.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said that North Korean young men prefer short hairstyle for sanitary reasons, not just because they want to look neat and ambitious.

Kim Jong-un emerged as the reclusive North's leader-in-waiting last year when he was named a four-star general and given a prominent post within the ruling party.

This year he has regularly been photographed alongside his father during visits by foreign officials.

Read more content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Post-US Iraq: Welcome to Shia-stan
• Nazi hunters boost drive to find aging war criminals before they die
• North Korea's heir apparent's hair apparent as fashion hit
• UN chief defends NATO, calls for action on Syria
• Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police
• Iraqis unable to defend their borders as US exits 

LM Otero / AP

This property at Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas, was among the hundreds destroyed by a massive wildfire there in August and September.

Just last August the federal officials who track weather disasters said 2011 would go down as a record year with 9 events topping $1 billion in damages. On Wednesday, those same authorities upped the number to 12 events -- totalling $52 billion in damages --and said there's still a chance for one or two more to be added to the list.

"In my weather career spanning four decades, I've never seen a year quite like 2011 ... record-breaking extremes of nearly every conceivable type of weather," National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes said in a statement accompanying the new figures.

The National Climatic Data Center said more detailed accounting led to these newcomers:

• Texas, New Mexico, Arizona wildfires (Spring-summer-fall). These had been incorporated into a broader disaster category in the August report (See below under Southern Plains/Southwest drought), but were pulled out when damages exceeded $1 billion, with five deaths.
• Midwest/Southeast tornadoes (June 18-22). New numbers now put damages at $1.3 billion, with three deaths from an estimated 81 twisters.

And two other events are nearing that mark:

• Northeast pre-Halloween storm (Fall). This "has a 50/50 chance of exceeding $1 billion," center forecaster Adam Smith tells msnbc.com. "It may be a stretch to indicate that this winter storm is 'likely' to surpass the mark.  But we will have an update on this in next month's update."
• East Coast Tropical Storm Lee (Fall). "At this point, the data suggest that the damage from Tropical Storm Lee has an unlikely (less than 50/50) chance to reach the $1 billion mark," Smith added.

The events followed a report last August that listed 9 events topping $1 billion for the year. A few days later, Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast, causing $7.3 billion in damages, claiming 45 lives, and bringing the total to 10 events.

The old record was 9 events, set in 2008.

Moreover, the annual average has gone way up. In the 1980s, the U.S. averaged just over one weather disaster a year, the center stated. In the 1990s, the average was 3.8 a year -- and that jumped to 4.6 in the 2000s and 7.5 in the past two years.

When the August report was released, Hayes called the rising frequency and cost of extreme weather a "new reality."

The higher costs are due partly to a rising population, with more people and more buildings in environmentally vulnerable areas, such as coastal regions, Hayes told reporters.　

Asked if global warming was to blame for the rising frequency of wild weather, Hayes called that "a research question" and that it would be difficult to link any one severe season to overall climate change.

But by Wednesday, he was ready to consider a bigger picture. "With our changing climate, the nation must be prepared for more frequent extreme weather in the future," he said in a video statement that was part of an "Extreme Weather 2011" website.

August report on billion-dollar disasters

Wednesday's report also updated figures for the earlier 9 events:

• Upper Midwest flooding (Summer). Losses exceeded $2 billion, with at least 5 deaths.
• Mississippi River flooding (Spring-summer). $3-4 billion in damage, 2 deaths.
• Southern Plains/Southwest drought, heat wave (Spring-summer). Total direct losses are near $10 billion.
• Midwest/Southeast tornadoes (May 22-27). An estimated 180 tornadoes caused  177 deaths, most in Joplin, Mo., and $9.1 billion in damage.
• Southeast/Ohio Valley/Midwest tornadoes (April 25-30). An estimated 305 tornadoes left 327 dead and caused $10.2 billion in damage.
• Midwest/Southeast tornadoes (April 14-16).  An estimated 160 tornadoes killed 38 people and caused $2.1 billion in damage.
• Southeast/Midwest tornadoes (April 8-11). An estimated 59 tornadoes caused $2.2 billion in damage.
• Midwest/Southeast tornadoes (April 4-5). An estimated 46 tornadoes left 9 dead and caused $2.8 billion in damage.
• Central/East Groundhog Day Blizzard (Jan. 29-Feb. 3). The storm was tied to 36 deaths and caused $1.8 billion in damage.

Should the Marine Corps allow a cross to remain on a Camp Pendleton hilltop?

by Dylan Ratigan

Imagine a former Goldman Sachs CEO, placing massive bets on a small, distant nation. It's not that he thinks that this small country, whose economy is roughly the size of Dallas, is a good risk -- everyone knows the country can't pay back what it owes. But he's making a bet that the big European central bank will make sure that the country gets bailed out. It's what's known in the industry as "an arbitrage play" on the behavior of central bankers. And most importantly, he isn't betting with his own money. He's betting with other people's money, using what's known as leverage.

Leverage is a way of magnifying the risk and return of any trade. In this case, the banker makes essentially a handshake bet with other players in the market (known as a "swap"), saying that he's good for the billions of dollars he's betting. These people know him from Goldman Sachs, so they don't require him to put much money down. He's essentially borrowing a huge amount of capital, cheap, to speculate with. The trade looks riskless now in a world of endless bailouts. Besides, this guy was the top dog at Goldman; he's so good that creditors of his company demanded a provision on his company's debt that they would get a higher payout if he left the company and ended up as Treasury Secretary.

The upside of this trade is vast -- bonuses and prestige for him and his friends. There is no downside, at least for him, because it's not his money at risk. There are no capital requirements, the swaps market is a dark area about which regulators know very little. But what in effect is happening is that there is increasingly an incentive to make really big bets, effectively lending large amounts of money based not on prudent standards but on who will get the next bailout. It's an incentive to create a lot of debt.

This is of course the story of what happened last week with the destruction of broker-dealer MF Global by former Senator, Governor, and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. It pretty much defines a market that lacks visibility and integrity. MF Global had leverage of forty four to one - for every dollar of the firm's capital, it borrowed forty three other dollars to make bets. Regulators had such a poor sense of what was going on inside the company that they are now scrambling to find nearly a billion dollars of its customers' money. This means the company wasn't just betting with its own capital, it actually took its customers' capital and apparently used that to supplement its bets. This is a huge breach of integrity, and possibly illegal, so it's no wonder Corzine has hired defense attorneys. It now looks like parts of the company were paying bonuses right before filing bankruptcy.

There's so much wrong with this. Corzine is considered a highly respected banker, someone who operated at the highest levels in Washington as a Senator, and as a Governor of New Jersey. He's a huge bundler for the Obama administration, and was considered a possible future Treasury Secretary. Yet, there he was, using leverage to make bets so large and unwieldy that they blew up his firm. And of course, he personally doesn't pay, but his firm and its employees, along with its customers, lose jobs and money. Regulators just didn't constrain the company, even though it was leveraged at higher levels than the big banks were leveraged before the financial crisis hit. On a larger level, what this episode shows, with the extreme leverage, is that the system is still putting all of us at risk.

What we need, and what we've needed for a decade, is capital requirements. Capital requirements are like having a down payment in a mortgage, meaning that even if housing prices drop, you'll have still have some equity in the home. Good, strong capital requirements keep risk with the risk-takers, rather than allowing risk-takers to offload risk onto other parties. Without being required to make a down payment, without a capital requirement, any of us could borrow an infinite amount of money with essentially no risk, for speculative purposes. Why not? It's the house's money, if you lose, it's your money if you win.

The opposite of capital requirements is leverage. Without capital requirements, the incentive is to do what Corzine did, which is to create as much debt as possible and find someone to pile it on. You're looking to find ways to bet, to put money where returns are high and liquid. Since you aren't a long-term investor, the idea is to get in and get out, quickly, benefiting through financial speculation. This isn't putting money into businesses that will grow, it's putting money into risky bonds with high interest rates that may have a government backing. Whether the entity that accretes debt is Greece of subprime borrowers or people in 17th century Holland buying tulips, if there are no rules on the creation of debt what will happen is an overleveraged debtor. When you have no price integrity and no integrity of credit standards, a crisis will follow.

Corzine couldn't have made the bet if there were leverage requirements, there just couldn't be that much debt. Greece couldn't borrow excessive amounts and mask its debt load if there were capital requirements. Its leaders would have to manage its resources prudently. When there are no capital requirements, or when there are capital requirements but no visibility into firm behavior or integrity of regulation, risk moves away from the risk takers and towards the weakest players. This is the financial system we've built over the past thirty years, one dominated by speculative flows of capital and go across borders in dark pools. The financial sector collapsed the economy in 2008.

We knew the problems, and we knew how to fix it. But as we're seeing with Corzine, Greece, and MF Global, it's pretty clear that nothing has changed since 2008. Greece is leverage gone wild, using Goldman Sachs designed accounting tricks to pile on more debt. MF Global is also leverage gone wild. I'm reminded of what Goldman's Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Toure, wrote to his girlfriend when selling structured financial instruments he knew would fail.

"More and more leverage in the system," wrote "Fab" to a girlfriend. "The entire edifice threatens to collapse at any moment. Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of those monstrosities."

It's time for our leaders to be honest about this problem, because this Eurozone mess isn't going away. There will soon be a moment to fix our financial system, when the Eurozone collapses due to Greece, Italy, or some other overleveraged entity. At that moment, we can implement strong capital requirements, and ensure that leverage allowable for financial entities is modest at best. It's important for us to look at Fabulous Fab's quote above, at Corzine's behavior, at Greece, and recognize that these are all part of the same eminently fixable problem. Let's make sure risk lies with the risk-takers.

by Dylan Ratigan

Janus Capital Chairman Emeritus Landon Rowland is worried about the corrupting influence of money in politics. This is not so unusual, except for two factors. Rowland is a mild midwestern businessman, the type of sober fair minded moderate who doesn't express concern lightly. And Rowland's concern isn't bought politicians, but bought judges. Rowland believes that corruption in our courts, as usual spearheaded by money in elections, is slowly wrecking our economy. What makes America a great place to do business is the certainty provided by a world class court system that makes sure the rules of the road apply to everyone equally. This, he believes, is now in jeopardy.

I've written before about the unholy alliance of business and state that sells our elections and our legislative process to the highest bidder. That same unholy alliance is corrupting our courts through a deep and effective campaign to buy off judges the way that our politicians have been purchased. Rowland pointed this out in a 2009 op-ed opposing a significant change in the way that Missouri judges are chosen. Currently, the state has a nonpartisan commission of experts that screen judicial candidates, and then the governor picks among them. The electorate gets to vote judges out of office through "retention elections". This protects the independence of the judiciary, and ensures that judges don't have to go begging to corporate interests for campaign solicitations. This "Missouri Plan" was implemented to ward off machine corruption in the 1940s, and is so successful that it is in use by 24 states.

A system like this works because it creates visibility, integrity, choice, and aligned interest. Experts credential candidates, elected public servants choose from among those candidates, and voters get a veto of those candidates through elections. The interests of all parties is aligned as there is legal integrity with a democratic check, and the visibility provided by an electoral campaign. Yet, judges, though elected, are not reduced to begging for campaign cash from people over whom they might have power. It's not a perfect system, but it provides a basic modicum of justice through a mix of professional norms, transparency, and elections.

So of course, corporate backed groups are now trying to end this "Missouri Plan" in favor of straight up judicial elections. And this is where the perversion of campaign finance corruption comes in - when money equals speech, elections become auctions. In the past ten years, the amount of money in judicial elections has doubled. Just ten organizations spent 40% of all money on state high court elections. Last year, the Supreme Court legalized unlimited amounts of corporate and labor cash in elections through its Citizens United, and now the amount of secret money flooding into these elections will skyrocket. This aligns the interests of judges not with citizens, or legal experts, but with those who can pay. Justice is now an auction, and the goal of the vampire industry who control vast sums of capital is to make sure the scales of justice weigh nothing but gold.

Consider the key case cited by most experts in West Virginia showing the cost of judicial corruption. Rowland notes:

"The CEO of A.T. Massey Coal Co. spent $3 million to elect lawyer Brent Benjamin to the state Supreme Court, while Massey Coal was appealing a $50 million jury award against it. Even after repeated requests from the petitioners, Justice Benjamin refused to recuse himself, instead casting the deciding vote to overturn the $50 million judgment."

This is simply bought justice. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in a narrow 5-4 decision, arguing that Benjamin's refusal to recuse himself violated due process. That's how bad it is, where the election of judges with corporate money is itself a named factor by the Supreme Court in biasing judicial outcomes. And this case took place before Citizens United.

The attack though isn't simply at the state level. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife took $680,000 in payments from a corporate funded think tank. Thomas didn't disclose this money as family income, as the law required. Thomas was of course a vote for Massey coal. These kinds of what-look-like-bribes are become more and more routine. "Judicial junkets" are now all too common; during these junkets, judges are now given lavish corporate vacations under the guise of education, and even have investments in industries with significant decisions pending before their courts. Talk about misaligned incentives.

And in our regulatory agencies, the courts are being corrupted as well. One judge for the Commodities Future Trading Commission promised the person who appointed him that he would "never rule in favor of a complainant." And the person who appointed him? Wendy Gramm, the wife of deregulatory king and former Senator Phil Gramm. And indeed, he has never ruled for an investor. This does not inspire faith in our business environment.

Massive election spending, junkets, overt payments while in office to family members, conflicts of interest and pre-appointment deals -- this are the kinds of tactics that have bought our Congress and separated us from our government. That this is taking place in our courts is not surprising. The same forces are buying our courts that are buying our politicians. That want to lock us in a national prison of injustice, and call it a democracy. They look at an auction, and call it an election. Visibility, integrity, choice, and aligned interest, four elements I use to test the resilience of a political system -- they are all increasingly missing from our corporate funded courts.

Historians refer to the late 19th century, during the first robber baron era, as the state of courts and parties. It was a brutally partisan era, with frequent violence at the polls, the murder of union organizers by corporate backed security forces, and child labor. The courts were forums of power, not justice. Political machines, corrupt puppets of railroads and racists, dominated courthouses and used them to control elections and the business life of the nation. American capital markets were incredibly corrupt, with frequent market rigging and booms and busts caused by rampant use of insider information. This is where we are heading with unlimited corporate cash flowing into the court system.

There is currently a large debate over the question of whether the 99% are served by this system, or whether the 1% have rigged it in their favor. The people in the streets at Occupy Wall Street feel a deep injustice over this system, but mostly they focus on Congress or politicians. They believe that our political institutions lack integrity. Our courts have as of yet been exempt from this level of scrutiny, but what we're seeing with this corporate attack on judicial integrity is that a lack of aligned interests, secrecy, and corruption are eroding faith here as well. The secrecy, the money, the lack of visibility over how judges are chosen, the lack of aligned interests -- it's all a part of undermining justice. Every court in the country has justice as its putative goal, every judge in the land should see these people as aligned with their job. Many judges do see their job as one of protecting and preserving justice in America. But increasingly, the incentives in the system cut against such a noble attitude. As we expose the forces trying to turn our courts into a forum for bought justice, we will eventually help everyone understand what Landon Rowland does -- justice corrupted by money is justice denied.

by Dylan Ratigan

It's somewhat rare to hear a Senator tell the truth about American foreign policy, but we did get a glimpse of reality last week when Senator Lindsey Graham lustily talked about the death of Gadhafi. He said, "There's a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya. There's a lot of oil to be produced. Let's get on the ground and help the Libya people establish a democracy and a functioning economy based on free market principles."

Though rare, this is not the first time a high profile American politician has accidentally told the truth about our foreign policy. In March, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate appropriations committee that the war with Iraq would be paid for by Iraqi "frozen assets" and "oil revenues." This was not completely crazy - the first Gulf War had largely been financed by foreign countries who saw value in the oil supply lines we were protecting.

At the same time last week, the American solar industry filed a trade complaint against Chinese solar makers, who produce 55% of the world's solar panels. They allege that China is selling its solar panels below cost, which would be consistent with the Chinese industrial policy of preparing for a post-oil world. According to Stephen Leeb's new book Red Alert, China spends over $350 billion a year on renewable energy infrastructure, locking up critical supplies of zinc, silver, gold, copper, and rare earth minerals. Meanwhile, America spends its money keeping sea lanes open for dwindling oil supplies.

The Chinese are improving their skill at making solar panels, whereas American policymakers are explicitly avoiding building a post-oil energy infrastructure. Chinese elites want to secure oil and coal, of course, but they are also rapidly preparing for the day when these resources cannot be profitably extracted and used. American elites are engaged in a more short-sighted strategy of destroying any possible bridge to a post-oil energy future to protect their status quo profits. Leeb believes that this is a choice that could mark the end, not just of American dominance, but of American civilization.

It isn't that this possible doomsday scenario is hard to grasp; promises of alternative energy and threats of higher oil prices have been around for decades. So why is it still going on? My suspicion is a mixture of greed and inertia.

We have an industrial policy driven by oil, which has been the case for nearly a century. Initially, when oil was cheap and we produced most of it, this made sense Our advantage in oil helped us win World War II. Our national highway system, our network of airports and gas stations, suburban sprawl and the associated property tax base was all funded by fossil fuels. These huge oil fortunes played a major role in organizing our political system. When America could produce more oil than anyone else, or had the military alliances to do so, this worked in our favor.

Starting in the 1970s, oil became a strategic drawback, which is why President Carter tried a logical plan -- an infrastructure bank -- to get us off oil. Yet, our politics is so entwined with oil that Carter was crushed, and no one has since been able to break our oil obsession.

Oil still drives our industrial policy, and now petro-politics is so routinely dominant that it's almost pointless to even think about politicians not funded by oil. Lindsay Graham, for instance, has received a little less than a million dollars from the energy sector over the course of his career, so his lust over Libya's energy profits isn't surprising. Republicans are the party of oil - both Bush and Cheney were knee deep in the oil industry before entering the White House. On the other side of the aisle, TransCanada, which is seeking to build an enormous oil pipeline to bring in shale oil from Canada that will pump as much carbon into the atmosphere as all the oil in Saudi Arabia, just bragged about 22 Democrats who signed a letter asking for approval of the pipeline. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama will likely boost the project. These are just the most recent examples of petro-politics; next month there will be different, equally odious examples.

Many Americans believe that oil is bad for us, and do want to invest in a non-oil infrastructure. Though our industrial policy remains consistent regardless of which party is in power. This doesn't make sense to most voters, because it cuts against the way we think about ourselves as a relatively just democratic society. Our politicians should work for us, but they don't. The traditional model for understanding power in American politics is polling and elections - will Democrats or Republicans win the ability to organize our cultural resources? But this has obvious problems, since we've seen through multiple administrations congruity in policy-making.

A better way to think about power is to follow the money, because money is how our society allocates resources. The money is in fossil fuels and finance, which opens the door to Congressional offices and sells political power to the highest bidders. The Koch Brothers recently held a retreat in Vail, where they thanked those who had given more than a million dollars to their political causes - the so-called "million dollar" club. Mother Jones magazine was able to get a list of those people. Eight finance tycoons and seven fossil fuel (coal, oil, natural gas) magnates were the majority of the twenty eight families listed (the others were in retail and housing). The Koch Brothers themselves make enormous sums from oil, chemical products, and finance.

While we have the illusion of choice in our politics, the only real consistency in policy-making is Washington's commitment to war and oil, and increasingly often, war for oil. Libya was the oil dealer to Western Europe, but the market for oil is global. And oil is the prize, not democracy. This is why John McCain praised Gadhafi in 2009 for his peacemaking efforts, and applauded his death last week. It's also why our military is increasingly extended across the world in oil-rich regions.

Our oil-drenched, defense-heavy industrial policy is increasingly creaky, but it is protected by the money that flows into the political system to wall off politicians from voters. We know that we must restructure our energy system, but it's not as simple as plugging in a new green battery to replace coal plants and gas stations. Just as we must restructure a financial system to ensure investment and value-creation, we must also restructure our industrial policy to get off oil, and our politics to get off oil money. This will require a new way that citizens relate to each other, more local production of goods and services, stronger community ties, and a politics that isn't dominated by big money, but instead by public spaces and deliberation. If you look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Square and the others across the world, they may not articulate this, but this is what they are asking for.

Without a reformation for new politics, and a different way of relating to one another, we will continue with the status quo. And we will have to keep finding countries and asking the question of how our oil got under their sand.