The Wonk Room

Bloomberg reports that General Motors “is speeding up preparations for a possible bankruptcy filing even as directors seek deeper savings this week to avoid that outcome.”

A report by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future shows that “over the next four years, more than a third of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers could retire, depriving classrooms of experienced instructors and straining taxpayer-financed retirement systems.”

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) asked the SEC yesterday “to determine if Bank of America violated federal securities laws by not disclosing Merrill Lynch’s plan to pay $3.62 billion of bonuses to top executives.”

In the LA Times, Ezra Klein points out that like Britain and Canada “we’ve got waiting lines too — along with 50 million uninsured and a system that costs more than twice as much per person as that of any other country. We’ve just managed to hide our lines through clever statistical gimmickry.”

Congressional Quarterly on the risks of reconciliation: “[I]f Democrats use reconciliation, they are taking the risk that major pillars of the health care bill could be struck down under Senate budget rules.”

“Insurers that offer Medicare coverage will see a smaller increase in U.S. government payments in 2010 than in recent years, health officials said on Monday. ”

“North Korea’s neighbors began weighing penalties against the country for its long-range missile test over the weekend”; South Korea said it may start to develop bigger missiles and Japan is considering extending economic sanctions.

“A car bomb killed nine people and wounded 20 in the Shi’ite Kadhimiya district of northwest Baghdad on Tuesday,” one day after seven car bombs killed 37 people across the Iraqi capital.

“Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects” held by the CIA, including torture, “and their participation was a ‘gross breach of medical ethics,’ a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.”

“Windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday. “It is not technology that is pie-in-the sky; it is here and now.”

In a letter to Science not available to the public, prominent climate scientists argue “it is imperative we improve the exchange of information between scientists and public stakeholders.”

As Antarctic ice shelves crumble at the end of the southern summer, the northern summer begins with the Arctic “on thinner ice than ever before,” with 90 percent of sea ice less than three years old.