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One thing about statistics associated with the Great Recession is the sheer number of times you can say we’re experiencing the “biggest rise” or the “steepest decline” since the Great Depression or since the government has collected data for a particular economic measurement. A record number of people collecting unemployment benefits. A record number of people out of work for more than six months. A record number of home foreclosures. A record number of bank failures. A record number of people using food stamps.

Indeed, the record on food stamps has been going on for well over two years now. In March 2009, that record was 31 million people. Now, according to the U.S. Department of Agric

Editor: Here are two articles from Europe about the state of America today – since the so-called “debt crisis” was resolved. One is from Der Spiegel – one of the most well-respected German newspapers -, and the other from the Guardian in Britain. The pictures of our country that these articles paint is extremely terrible : the German believes that the U.S. is no longer part of the “West”, and the British view is that there’s been a “billionaires’ coup” in America.

Once Upon a Time in the West

by Jakob Augstein / Der Spiegel (Germany) / August 4, 2011

This week, the United States nearly allowed itself to succumb to economic disaster. Increasingly, the divided country has more in common with a failed state than a democracy.

(Come inside for the remainder of this article.)

Anger, Deceit and a Billionaires’ Coup

By George Monbiot/ Guardian UK (Britain) / August 2, 2011

Anger and deceit has led the US into a billionaires’ coup. The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare.

(Come inside for the remainder of this article.)

By Jim Bell

The ecology of our planet is the foundation of everything we do, including what we do under the heading of economy. When we damage our planet’s life-support system through inappropriate economic activities, we undercut the potential for economic activities in the future.

By Miriam Rafferty / East County Magazine / August 1, 2011

Sempra Energy has asked the U.S. Department of Energy for a presidential permit to construct a cross-border transmission line called Energia Sierra Juarez to import electricity from Sempra facilities in Mexico. The line would cross the border near Jacumba in San Diego’s East County.

By John Lawrence / Will Blog For Food / July 31, 2011

Republicans want to “reform” social security. They say social security is broke. Not so.

There’s $2.5 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF). The way the funding for social security works is this. Workers pay a payroll tax otherwise known as a FICA tax. …

Two-Faced Washington : Lowering America’s War Ceiling? Imperial Psychosis on Display

By Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch.com / August 2, 2011

By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time. It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horserace, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline.

There is growing community interest in acquiring the keys to two parks in San Diego County that the governor plans to padlock next year.

Organized groups have launched preliminary talks with state parks officials with hopes of saving Palomar Mountain and San Pasqual Battlefield parks if pending legislation passes to permit nonprofits to take over campgrounds, museums and forests.

The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance.

By Bruce E. Levine / AlterNet / July 31, 2011 |

Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday [August 2, 2011] is expected to redraw its political boundaries —- and when it does, critics say, it will violate federal law.

The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Civil rights activists say the redistricting map favored by the board, which consists of five white Republicans who have served together since the mid-1990s, violates the law by ignoring the county’s growing Latino population and further diluting minority voting power.

by John Nichols / The Nation / August 1, 2011

WASHINGTON – “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time,” said Harry Truman.

If the thirty-third president was right, then Barack Obama just did himself and his party a world of hurt.

Faced with the threat that Tea Party–pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the US economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action—borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States—the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.

State lifeguard officials are reviewing training policies after one of their trucks ran over a Poway woman this week at Torrey Pines State Beach.

It was the second time in a month that a lifeguard truck ran over someone at a local beach. The earlier incident occurred June 30 at Pacific Beach and involved a 3-year-old girl whose collarbone was broken. San Diego police are investigating both accidents.

There are many reasons thousands of teachers traveled across the country to protest in front of the White House on Saturday — including to oppose charter schools, to fight for equal funding for poor schools, and to have more say in public education policies.

But at a noisy rally starting at noon under soaring temperatures, their message boiled down to one point, which was summed up by the sound check before the first speaker took the stage:

Tap. Tap. “No testing, no testing, 1-2-3.”