Khushwant Toor writes from Toronto

THE vision – This will be the only book you will ever carry in you hands. The latest tech gizmo of this century called the “iPad' was launched by Apple in San Francisco on January 27, 2010. The legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his usual attire black t-shirt and jeans was up on the stage again launching the much-awaited consumer electronics.

Its Powered by Apple’s 'own' processor named A4 running at 1 GHz, a brilliant 9.7" LED display (Apple calls it IPS technology) with 16 to 64 GB of ‘flash’ memory, 10 hours of battery, WiFi (802.11n), Bluetooth (2.1), GPS and accelerometer, the ½' thin Apple iPad weighs a mere 1.5 pounds.

In between a laptop computer and a handheld web phone, Apple iPad is designed to do all the normal tasks such as for net browsing, email, photo/video viewing, music, games and most important for reading e-books. Powered by Apple Safari internet browser, iPad’s touch keyboard is almost the same size as most laptop keyboards, enabling the user to do mobile email as if one is working on a notebook. It does not replace the cell phone however certainly will replace one normal personal computer in each home.

E-books are the latest and the next trend in book publications. Publishers have been slowly turning to e-book publications from quite some time but their delivery to the end consumer was a problem, which now seems to have been solved by Apple. Although handheld pads similar to the iPad launched by Apple were in existence before; with the Apple brand at its back, such devices will now gain acceptance among the consumers.

Apple in the last decade has given the world few of the trend setting tech toys. With the launch of iPad apple’s shares soared and the iPad certainly will add a chunk to its profits.

With the iPhone and Mac sales surging Apple's profits rose by 50% in the last quarter. Even before unveiling the iPad, the company said that profit for the quarter ending Dec. 9 increased to $3.38 billion, or $3.67 a share, compared to $2.26 billion, or $2.50 a share, for the same period a year ago. Revenue rose to $15.68 billion from $11.88 billion and gross margin rose to 40.9% from 37.9%.

Apple sold 3.36 million Macs, a 33% jump from a year ago, and 8.7 million iPhones, which represented 100% unit growth. The only decline was in iPod sales, which fell 8% to 21 million units. Sales of the MP3 players have been falling for the last several quarters.

It's surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company," Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said in a statement. With the iPad already launched Apple is expected to launch more tech gizmo’s this year.

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America moves to extreme right

Dr Sawraj Singh

A YEAR ago, America had rejected the extreme right policies of Bush and Cheney because these policies had pushed America to the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the thirties and America suffered defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. These policies were also responsible for America’s alienation from its European allies and almost complete isolation from the world community. One could have hoped that America learned the lesson that the days of American-style extreme rightist capitalism are over and a fundamental change is needed. However, Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts clearly shows that Bush-Cheney policies have staged a long comeback and America moved to the extreme right.

It is not a question of right or left, but is a question of patience versus impatience. We do not know if Obama’s leftist policies can work, but we do know that Bush-Cheney’s extreme rightist policies did not work for America. Before we switch back to the policies that have already failed, we should have given the other guy a reasonable chance to prove himself. I feel Obama never got the chance that he deserved. Whatever the reason for denying that chance may be, but one can not help to feel that race has played some role in it. If Obama was white, would he still get the same treatment—that is, a lack of a fair chance to prove himself?

President Obama carried Massachusetts with more than a 20% difference a year ago. How can he become so ineffective in the same state? Massachusetts has not elected a Republican senator in about 40 years. It was the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s support which played a crucial role in President Obama’s election. There are some genuine concerns of the people.

The biggest concern of the people is economy. People are very concerned about losing jobs and losing their homes. The extreme right is trying to misuse and misdirect people’s concerns. Health care reform is important, but the question of economy and jobs is a bigger concern for most people. The democrats should listen to people’s concerns and should not rush through with the health care reforms.

The people should be made to understand that the Bush-Cheney policies of the extreme right will further increase the concentration of wealth in few hands and increase the gap between haves and have-nots. Already, the gap has widened tremendously in the last forty years. Whereas the number of billionaires and millionaires has climbed, the working people’s real wages have gone down. The policies of the extreme right are also raising tensions between different races and cultures. The extreme right is vehemently opposed to the multicultural reality of America.

America has to seriously introspect and decide if American capitalism needs revision or not. There is overwhelming evidence that it is not working properly anymore. As far as unity is concerned, it can only be based upon the principle of unity in diversity. We have to tolerate and accept the multicultural reality of America and uphold the principle that people can be different, yet are equal.

[The writer is a physician based in Washington State]

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U S government for sale

ON January 21 this year , in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantee of free speech means that corporations can spend unlimited sums to help elect favored candidates or defeat those they oppose." The activist 5-4 decision struck down a 63-year-old ban that ensured corporations may not use their enormous profits to support or oppose candidates. The ruling "declared unconstitutional a large portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act passed in 2002." Ian Millhiser of the Center for American Progress Action Fund observed, "Today's decision does far more than simply provide Fortune 500 companies with a massive megaphone to blast their political views to the masses; it also empowers them to drown out any voices that disagree with them." Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who is already pushing legislation to rectify the Court's decision, warned, "The law itself will be bought and sold. It would be political bribery on the largest scale imaginable." "The Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century," the New York Times writes today.

The case grew from attempts by the conservative organization Citizens United to promote its anti-Hillary Clinton film, "Hillary: The Movie," in 2008, which "takes viewers on a savaging journey through Clinton's scandals." Because the movie was partially financed with corporate funds, "it fell under restrictions in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002," also known as The McCain-Feingold Act. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) therefore heavily restricted Citizens United's ability to advertise the film. A March 2009 ruling upheld the FEC's decision, writing that the film was "susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her." The film "was the brainchild of Citizens United President David N. Bossie, a former congressional aid" and longtime Clinton critic. According to Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, "The movie was created with the idea of establishing a vehicle to chip away at the decision. ... It was part of a very clear strategy to undo McCain-Feingold."

The Washington Post writes that the Court's majority made "a mockery of some justices' pretensions to judicial restraint." Although Chief Justice John Roberts represented himself as an impartial "umpire" during his 2005 confirmation hearings -- acknowledging that "it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent on the bench" -- Roberts "has shown himself more willing than his mentor and predecessor, William H. Rehnquist, to question the court's past decisions." During his short tenure thus far, Roberts' "record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative." Likewise, Samuel Alito's replacement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has tipped the court's balance from supportive of congressional efforts to reduce the influence of special interests to suspicious of how the restrictions curtail free speech. Since Roberts and Alito joined its ranks, the Court ignored longstanding precedents protecting women against paycheck discrimination and older workers against age discrimination. The Court overruled a very recent precedent protecting women's reproductive freedom, and Roberts even had the audacity to claim that the Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision forbids school boards from desegregating public schools. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people. ... While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

In 2008, "the Obama and McCain campaigns combined to spend just over $1.1 billion, an enormous, record-breaking sum at the time," but a small fraction of what corporations have available. "With hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate profits at stake every time Congress begins a session," wrote Millhiser, "wealthy corporations would be foolish not to spend tens of billions of dollars every election cycle to make sure that their interests are protected. No one, including the candidates themselves, have the ability to compete with such giant expenditures." David Kirkpatrick wrote in the New York Times that the Court "has handed a new weapon to lobbyists. If you vote wrong, a lobbyist can now tell any elected official that my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election." "The good news," wrote Millhiser, "is that lawmakers are already considering ways to mitigate the damage caused by Citizens United, and a number of options exist, such as requiring additional disclosures by corporations engaged in electioneering, empowering shareholders to demand that their investment not be spent to advance candidates they disapprove of, or possibly even requiring shareholders to approve a corporation's decision to influence an election before the company may do so." Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) have been "working for months to draft legislation in response to the anticipated decision." Potential fixes include banning political advertising by corporations that hire lobbyists, receive government money, or collect most of their revenue abroad. "Another would be to tighten rules against coordination between campaigns and outside groups so that, for example, they could not hire the same advertising firms or consultants. A third would be to require shareholder approval of political expenditures, or even to force chief executives to appear as sponsors of commercials their companies pay for."

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U S economy: Deficit peacocks

AS the Obama administration and Congress deal with the economic problems facing the country -- including double-digit unemployment, a housing crisis, credit shortage, and stagnating wages -- one issue that has captured the headlines in recent days is that of the national debt. Publicly held debt currently stands at nearly $7.8 trillion, and the current federal budget deficit is $1.4 trillion. While eventually dealing with the budget deficit to pay down the nation's debt is critical, conservatives have seized on the budget deficit to promote their own selective version of deficit reduction, which emphasizes crippling cuts to basic social services, declares certain sectors off-limits from waste trimming, and rules out raising taxes on those who can afford it. The Center for American Progress' Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy, Michael Linden, refers to these conservative thinkers as "deficit peacocks" because they "like to preen and call attention to themselves, but are not sincerely interested in taking the difficult but necessary steps toward a balanced budget." As the nation's policymakers debate our economic priorities, it's important to identify the deficit peacocks, debunk their hollow vision of deficit reduction, and realize that there are pragmatic, progressive steps to take towards a balanced budget.

HOW TO SPOT A PEACOCK: In his paper "How to Spot a Deficit Peacock," Linden lays out four ways to identify a deficit peacock who "isn't taking our budget problems seriously." First, a deficit peacock never mentions revenues. Linden points out that if we "tried to balance the budget without raising additional revenue, and without reducing spending on Medicare, for example, then the rest of the budget would have to be slashed by a third." Second, a deficit peacock always offers "easy answers"; Linden notes that easy solutions like eliminating earmarks would reduce the deficit by a paltry 3 percent. Third, deficit peacocks tend to support policies that actually make the long-term deficit problem worse; many of the people suggesting gigantic cuts in social spending also "voted repeatedly over the past eight years to make huge [budget-busting] tax cuts." Last, deficit peacocks think "our budget woes appeared suddenly in January 2009." By the time President Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office was predicting a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion for the year. As Linden notes, deficit peacocks "deliberately ignore the miserable fiscal legacy" of George W. Bush in criticizing Obama's spending. Linden sums up his paper, writing, "There are people from all parts of the political spectrum who strongly and sincerely believe that our current budget path is unsustainable. ... But there are also many who are only interested in scoring political points. ... All you need to do to tell the former from the latter is apply any of these four handy tests."

THE PEACOCK CAUCUS: Unfortunately, Congress appears to have a veritable Peacock Caucus full of members ready to slash social spending without seriously considering ways to raise revenue. One of the leaders of this caucus is Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who -- along with Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), has proposed a commission "charged with crafting ways to reduce the country's long-term deficits." While Gregg has slammed a proposal by the Obama administration to create a commission examining the deficit by executive order as a "fraud among anyone interested in fiscal responsibility," the truth is that Gregg has shown little sincere interest in fiscal responsibility himself. While he promotes himself as a standard bearer on the subject, he has voted to cut taxes on the heirs of multi-millionaires and for Bush's budget-busting trillions of dollars of tax cuts. Meanwhile, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) has called on Obama to announce a spending freeze on discretionary spending during his State of the Union address, a proposal that Obama has embraced. The Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo argues that a spending freeze would have "an anti-stimulative effect while the economy is still struggling through a middling recovery." Bayh has not shown a similar level of concern for fiscal responsibility, voting last year for a $250 billion tax cut for the heirs of wealthy families. Democratic Leadership Council head Harold Ford suggested in an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday that the best way to close the budget deficit would be to extend "the current capital gains and dividend tax rates through 2012; giving permanent tax credits for businesses that invest in research and development; and reducing the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent." Economist Paul Krugman notes that the economic vision Ford outlines "has to set some kind of new standard for cluelessness." The budgetary cost of the corporate tax cut alone would be about $1 trillion over 10 years -- which would enrich the nation's richest corporations but actually worsen the deficit. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has said that any budget commission must accept the premise that "raising taxes is not the answer." However, without raising taxes and even exempting interest on the debt and spending for Social Security, Medicare, and the defense budget, "the rest of the budget [would need] to be cut by 51 percent to have a balanced budget by 2014" -- which is economically impossible. As Center for American Progress Action Fund Fellow Matt Yglesias notes, "to make the deficit smaller, you can't also make revenues smaller. The math isn't difficult."

DEFICIT REDUCTION THAT WORKS: In their paper "A Path to Balance: A Strategy for Realigning the Federal Budget," Linden and other CAP experts Michael Ettlinger and Lauren Bazel propose setting goals of reaching a "primary balance" in the budget deficit in 2014 and a fully balanced budget in 2020. Primary balance involves reaching a point where "federal revenues equal program spending." Under the primary balance plan, there will "still be overall deficits under the plan because of the cost of payments on past debt, but we will be paying for all spending on federal government programs by 2014." As the authors note, setting these two goals would avoid both the mistakes of trying to "balance the budget in the next few years" and of putting "off any fiscal improvement until some undefined later date." In order to achieve these goals, the authors ask, "Can the United States afford to continue to spend so much more of its national income than the rest of the world on defense? Are we going to pass health reform that realizes budget savings? Can taxes, beyond what the president has already proposed, be part of the picture?" Indeed, there are important budget savings to be had by taking a tough look at waste in defense, health care, and other sectors as well as the ways we raise revenue. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has introduced the Control Spending Now Act, which could reduce the deficit over half a trillion dollars over 10 years by reforming the budgetary process and eliminating wasteful spending on corporate welfare, unnecessary items in the defense budget and foreign military assistance. Additionally, health care advocates point out that passing the Senate's health care bill would cut the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years; economists Dean Baker and David Rosnick note that if the "United States had health care costs that were in line with other wealthy countries, then the [budget] projections would show enormous surpluses, not deficits." Meanwhile, some progressives argue for levying a 0.25 percent financial transaction tax -- which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has called an idea with "a great deal of merit" -- that would raise $100 billion a year. The Center for Budget and Policy Properties warns that if "current tax policies -- such as the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts -- are continued, revenues will remain well below the level needed to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio." Letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to continue would amount to another $1.2 trillion in lost revenue over the next 10 years. Thus, allowing these upper-income tax cuts to expire would do much to deal with the deficit. While progressives may have healthy disagreement about these ideas, they all reflect a serious attitude towards tackling the deficit that is open to using every tool before us to fix the problem.

[Courtesy "The Progress Report" progress@americanprogressaction.org]

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Lower popularity worries democrats

IN a speech on the eve of Martin Luther King Day last fortnight American President, Barack Obama invoked the memory of the great civil rights leader and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner to tell his critics to show a little patience. “Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don’t want to see that even if we don’t get everything, we’re getting something,” he pointed out.

For a large proportion of Americans, it seems that ‘something’ isn’t good enough. And Obama hinted that he, too, could be one of them: “There are times when it feels like all these efforts are for naught, and change is so painfully slow in coming, and I have to confront my own doubts,” he confessed.
A year after his inauguration as the first African-American president of the United States — a watershed whose value is not likely to lessen , Obama clearly needs of sympathy.

No US president in more than 50 years has faced lower popularity ratings a year after assuming the post. But then, no president in nearly 50 years has come to office burdened by sagging economy and wars and high expectations.

The expectations were in part also circumstantial: the majority of Americans were thoroughly fed up with the Bush administration as was the rest of the world.

Some saw him as a radical figure, but that impression owes more to innuendo from the far right than to anything Obama claimed for himself. His message, when not vacuous, was doggedly centrist — to the left, no doubt, of the Bush administration in most respects.

Barack Obama may not see eye to eye with Pat Buchanan, but in many respects he also does not share the vision of Dr King — whose fate may well have been sealed once he decided it was immoral to keep silent on Vietnam and began deriding his nation, quite accurately, as the biggest purveyor of violence in the world. More than 40 years later, that fact remains unchanged.

Obama, shortly after announcing a surge in Afghanistan, decided to pontificate in the Nobel lecture in Oslo last month, on the concept of a ‘just war’. He sees vast differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan, and, sure enough, there are plenty. But he overlooks the parallels and perhaps fails to see that for those at the receiving end of violence perpetrated by the most powerful nation in history, his just war is just another war. Powerful militarily, that is — not morally, as Dr King recognised.

One of America’s biggest weaknesses in the international sphere is its arrogance (a particularly toxic mix when combined with ignorance), and it comes into play even when it ostensibly sets out to do good for a change — as in the case of this month’s relief mission to earthquake-stricken Haiti, where it was deemed necessary for US troops to occupy the airport in Port-au-Prince — much to the consternation of western allies such as Britain and France, as well as aid agencies, whose flights had to be diverted to the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

The infamous US radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, has been exhorting fellow Americans not to donate a cent to the Haiti relief effort lest Obama should steal the funds. Hard to believe? Well, if Obama were indeed a messiah, the teabaggers, rednecks and crypto-fascists would crucify him without a qualm.

Those on the left who find fault with Obama on the grounds that his stimulus package wasn’t big enough; that those behind the financial meltdown have been allowed to profit from it while their victims continue to suffer; that the health reform bill currently before Congress involved too many compromises with Big Pharma and the insurance industry without offering universal coverage; and that the year-old administration remains beholden to vested interests as much as its predecessors — well, they aren’t wrong, but did they really expect any different?

It’s unfair, of course, to pass judgment on the Obama presidency one year into its tenure. And it’s unreasonable to expect one man to transform the twisted structure of power in the US, even if he wanted to. It’s also worth remembering that all US presidents who achieved something worthwhile — the abolition of slavery, the New Deal, civil rights, the end of the Vietnam War — did so on the back of powerful popular movements for progressive change.

The disgruntled left needs to follow the prescription offered by the executed working-class hero Joe Hill. His last words were: “Don’t mourn — organise”!

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