Hey, I'm game. I trust my government about as far as I can throw them and I trust formerly wealthy capitalistas even less. I know that I'll catch a lotta shit for this one, and for good reason, but these questions always go through my head in these scenarios, so kill me for thinking. A pandemic has been declared. How many friends and family do you know who have swine or bird flu?--Pete By Barbara Minton | |
Global Research, July 8, 2009 | |
As the anticipated July release date for Baxter's A/H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine, alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic. | |
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder
CYNTHIA MCKINNEY
I will only add that Cynthia McKinney was my choice and my vote for POTUSA this past November. She was arrested by Israeli forces along with 20 other activists while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. She is back in the states as of Tuesday, July 7.--Pete
John Judge - I got a call confirming that former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and three other U.S. citizens were transferred from the Israeli prison at Ramale to Ben Gurion airport in Israel, the standard site for deportations. This information came originally from Mairead Maguire, the Irish Nobel laureate and was confirmed by the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, which is sending representatives to the airport.
Meanwhile nothing from the White House or the Black Caucus on the arrest of McKinney. Pretty selective outrage.
John Judge - I got a call confirming that former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and three other U.S. citizens were transferred from the Israeli prison at Ramale to Ben Gurion airport in Israel, the standard site for deportations. This information came originally from Mairead Maguire, the Irish Nobel laureate and was confirmed by the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, which is sending representatives to the airport.
Meanwhile nothing from the White House or the Black Caucus on the arrest of McKinney. Pretty selective outrage.
The truth is flexible
You have to go to work early. That's what they call it, going to work (probably because that's what it is.--Pete).
Get there by 7 a.m. or some guy who says he's disabled, or some woman who claims she has kids, will steal your slice of sidewalk.
You want an interstate off ramp: lots of traffic, an overpass for shade. Or a busy intersection with a long stoplight.
And you need a sign: your life story summed up on a soggy square.
Better yet, make two signs, so you can be whatever you need to be.
"After a while, you learn what works," said Roderick Couch, 28. He was in a wheelchair outside a St. Petersburg Wal-Mart last week, clutching a sign that said, "Disabled." The word was in quotation marks, as if the writer were crossing his fingers. Couch limps but can walk 100 blocks of U.S. 19 in a day. He hasn't worked since he got out of jail.
His girlfriend, Jazmine Saldana, 24, held her own banner: Homeless. No quotation marks, but maybe there should have been. Since the couple started panhandling in November, they have had enough money to sleep in a motel all but one night.
"You have to know how to fly," Saldana said. That's what they call it, flying a sign.
Every day, from dawn to dusk, they're out there. From Seminole to St. Petersburg, Clearwater to Carrollwood, hundreds of panhandlers brandish their makeshift billboards across Tampa Bay. Their weathered faces and sad signs have become part of Florida's landscape.
There's the elderly African-American man who swears he fought in 'Nam. His hat reads "U.S. Air Force." His sign includes the Marine motto, "Semper fi."
There's the bearded white guy whose cardboard claims he was "layed off." And the young guy with the red goatee and "Anything helps" sign who hangs out by Tampa's Bayshore Boulevard Publix.
Every day, you see more.
Around Tampa's Hyde Park alone, panhandlers say they can count at least 200 of their kind. In St. Petersburg, off I-275, nine people compete for shifts at one intersection. Turf wars erupt. A 60-year-old man who uses a walker recently shoved a 49-year-old into the bushes. "He knew I owned that spot under the tree."
Maybe you feel sorry for them: Times are tough. It could be me.
Maybe they make you angry because they want handouts.
Homeless or not, desperate or not, they all have their strategies, each one forged in the blast oven of the streets.
"Panhandling isn't just a job. It's an art," said Cliff Stewart, 49, who has worked the I-275 22nd Avenue N exit in St. Petersburg since he got out of prison two years ago.
You have to know what moves people most: beer and God.
• • •
You have to learn the rules. What to do, what to avoid doing. You have to set quotas. And know the right words.
Police say: Stay on the sidewalk. Wait for people in the cars to call you over.
Panhandlers say: If someone else is waiting to fly a sign, you have to rotate out every half-hour. If you leave to get a drink, you forfeit your shift.
Try to make eye contact. People in BMWs and Lexuses won't look at you, the panhandlers say. People in beaters give the most. When someone gives you money, that's a hit. Or a lick. Try to look friendly but not too happy. Remember, you're hurting.
Don't smoke or drink beer or scratch yourself. Don't wipe your nose or pick your scabs. Who would want to slide money into that hand? Stand on one foot sometimes so drivers will think you're not drunk; your eyes are bloodshot because you've been crying. And just because some hippie gives you a baggie of mushrooms, it doesn't mean you're going to trip.
"People hand you all sorts of things," said Damion Ogdee, 29, who works the Hyde Park area. He has gotten Budweisers and Pop-Tarts, cigarettes and T-shirts. His buddy once scored four tickets to a Poison concert.
Women give more money than men. Female panhandlers fare better but have to put up with obscene propositions. "If I was doing that," said a thin young woman named Sarah, "you think I'd be out here holding this sign?"
She was at the 22nd Avenue N off ramp in St. Petersburg. Her cardboard said, "Stranded! Trying to get home." With all the competition, it's no longer enough to be generically needy.
"The more specific your request, the more people can relate," said Sarah. "That way they think they're really helping."
• • •
Two debates divide the panhandling community: Stay on one corner or float? Wheelchair or walker?
If you always work the same sidewalk, regulars get to know you. If you float from spot to spot, your face — and your story — stay fresh.
Some say wheelchairs increase people's pity. But if you're in a chair, you can't get to the cars. Wheelchair Dave, they say, did better with his cane.
"A lot of people out here aren't sincere," said Roderick Couch, the "disabled" ex-con. "That messes it up for the rest of us."
According to Couch, there are low-class panhandlers "who sleep outside and won't even clean themselves." And high-class panhandlers "who might even work a little on the side, so they don't really need your money."
"Me and Jazmine," he said, "we're middle-class. We believe in washing our clothes and our butts. We got morals."
Like everyone else interviewed, they have criminal records. He served time for stealing from the Spring Hill IHOP where he worked. His girlfriend was arrested for prostitution.
• • •
Your sign is your voice. You have only a few words to get sympathy at a stoplight.
Scrawl your messages in magic marker on the back of a Listerine box or a pilfered "Home for Sale" placard. Highlight your words with crayons. End your pleas with three exclamation points.
Are you homeless? A vet? A single dad? A widow? Do you have an ailing mother or pet? All the above?
One guy parades his limping dog. Another says he sends half his money to his 2-year-old son. One admits he stays out just long enough to collect enough for smokes and a six-pack.
"I don't need much. So I don't have to stay out here long," said Jeffrey Buzzard, 49, who lives behind a St. Petersburg church. In the back of his dirty camouflage shorts, he carries three signs. His morning pitch says "Layed off." His evening placard: "No work today." Like he tried. On Sunday, he flies: "Got God? Need daily bread."
Other professional panhandlers swear by the two-sign minimum. You have to watch the cars, switch it up. When Cliff Stewart sees an older driver at 22nd Avenue N, he holds: "Homeless Vet." For people who look like they party, he has: "Why lie? I need beer. God bless!"
God and beer. If you don't like one, he says, you're bound to like the other. And you'd be surprised how many people love both.
• • •
Though their signs say they're homeless, few panhandlers seem to sleep outside. Most make at least enough for a can of beer, a piece of chicken and a cheap motel room. The typical daily take falls between $60 and $100.
Couch and Saldana say they each collect about $80 a day, more than they would make flipping burgers or stocking shelves. They don't have to punch a clock, ask for a lunch break or pay taxes. "A while back, a woman gave us $400," Couch said. "Tell me where you can make that in a day."
Ogdee, outside the Bayshore Publix, sets his weekly quota at $800. His income has never fallen short in the four months he has held "Homeless. Anything helps. God bless!"
"I'm paid a week in advance on my rent," he said. "I got a load of food in my motel fridge."
He insists he's not panhandling. "I'm not asking for nothing. I'm just holding a sign."
So what does he call it? He laughs.
"Making money."
Lane DeGregory can be reached at degregory@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8825. Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Meet The New Boss...
Holy shit! I can't believe what I'm reading here in the NYT! VP Joe Biden explaining that we can't "stand in the way" of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program! It's damn near advocacy! This is the same nuclear program that has been declared legal and transparent by the September 08 IAEA report. --Pete
July 6, 2009
Biden Suggests U.S. Not Standing in Israel’s Way on Iran
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
WASHINGTON — Plunging squarely into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. suggested on Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israeli military action aimed at the Iranian nuclear program.
The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.”
"Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, in an interview taped in Baghdad at the end of a visit there.
The remarks went beyond at least the spirit of any public utterances by President Barack Obama, who has said that diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program should be given to the end of the year. But the president has also said that he is “not reconciled” to the possibility of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon — a goal Tehran denies.
Mr. Biden’s comments came at a particularly sensitive time, amid the continuing tumult over the disputed Iranian elections, and seemed to risk handing a besieged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a new tool with which to fan nationalist sentiments in Iran.
What was not immediately clear was whether Mr. Biden, who has a long-standing reputation for speaking volubly — and sometimes going too far in the heat of the moment — was sending an officially sanctioned message.
The Obama administration has said, and Mr. Biden reaffirmed this, that it remains open to negotiations with Tehran, even after the bitterly contested election that returned Mr. Ahmadinejad to the presidency.
“If the Iranians respond to the offer of engagement, we will engage,” Mr. Biden said. “The offer’s on the table.”
But separately, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of the costs of any military strike against Iran.
“It could be very destabilizing, and it is the unintended consequences of that which aren’t predictable,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Still, he added, “I think it’s very important, as we deal with Iran, that we don’t take any options, including military options, off the table.”
Earlier in his interview with ABC, Mr. Biden had seemed sensitive to the risk of handing Mr. Ahmadinejad and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, a propaganda edge by criticizing the elections too forcefully and allowing them to claim that “the reason why there was unrest is outside influence.”
He called Mr. Obama’s original condemnations, which some criticized as overly cautious, “absolutely pitch-perfect.”
If Mr. Biden’s comments on Israel and Iran were perhaps off the cuff, he did not back away from them when given a chance to do so.
George Stephanopoulos, the program’s host, asked: “But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?”
And Mr. Biden replied: “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination — if they make a determination — that they’re existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”
The Israeli government has said that it hopes to see the Iranian nuclear program halted through diplomacy, but it has not ruled out a military strike. Talk of such a strike flared episodically during the Bush presidency.
Such a strike is considered highly problematic, both for the unpredictable shock waves it would send coursing through the region and because of the technical difficulty of destroying nuclear facilities that are scattered around Iran, some of them deep underground.
Still, the disputed Iranian election result has raised concerns in Israel. Officials there say that the victory by Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has called for the destruction of Israel, underscored the Iranian threat and bolstered the argument for tough action.
In May, Mr. Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a meeting at the White House that “we’re not going to have talks forever” with Iran; in the absence of cooperation from Tehran, he said, the administration would not rule out “a range of steps.”
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Washington State Increases Basic Health Plan Premiums To Drive Poor Off The Rolls
Basic Health Plan premiums to rise sharply
By Kyung M. Song
Seattle Times health reporter
By Kyung M. Song
Seattle Times health reporter
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009314057_webbasichealth08m.html
Premiums for Washington's Basic Health Plan will as much as double in January as part of a strategy to drive thousands of members off the popular but cash-strapped state-subsidized insurance program.
Ending weeks of deliberations, officials announced this morning that they will boost Basic Health's rates by an average of 70 percent as part of their effort to boot 30,000 to 40,000 working-class people off its rolls.
Officials rejected four other potential options on how to shrink the 100,000-member pool, including a lottery and ejecting members based on how long they'd been on the program.
In the end, officials punted on the dilemma, leaving it up to the members themselves to decide whether to stay or to leave.
"This is the best possible option out of difficult choices," said Preston Cody, deputy administrator of Washington State Health Care Authority, the agency that operates Basic Health.
Currently, Basic Health's premiums range from $17 to $281 a month, depending on the member's age, income and county of residence. Starting in January, the poorest members with incomes below the poverty level will pay twice as much, $34 or $45.
Rates for higher-income enrollees will go up by about 50 percent, to about $400 a month for those 55 and older. This will be the biggest premium increase in the program's 21-year history.
In all, the average monthly premium for all members will climb to $61.60 from $36. Yet even with the increases, the average person will still will be paying only 25 percent of the actual cost of coverage, with the state chipping in the rest.
Premiums for Washington's Basic Health Plan will as much as double in January as part of a strategy to drive thousands of members off the popular but cash-strapped state-subsidized insurance program.
Ending weeks of deliberations, officials announced this morning that they will boost Basic Health's rates by an average of 70 percent as part of their effort to boot 30,000 to 40,000 working-class people off its rolls.
Officials rejected four other potential options on how to shrink the 100,000-member pool, including a lottery and ejecting members based on how long they'd been on the program.
In the end, officials punted on the dilemma, leaving it up to the members themselves to decide whether to stay or to leave.
"This is the best possible option out of difficult choices," said Preston Cody, deputy administrator of Washington State Health Care Authority, the agency that operates Basic Health.
Currently, Basic Health's premiums range from $17 to $281 a month, depending on the member's age, income and county of residence. Starting in January, the poorest members with incomes below the poverty level will pay twice as much, $34 or $45.
Rates for higher-income enrollees will go up by about 50 percent, to about $400 a month for those 55 and older. This will be the biggest premium increase in the program's 21-year history.
In all, the average monthly premium for all members will climb to $61.60 from $36. Yet even with the increases, the average person will still will be paying only 25 percent of the actual cost of coverage, with the state chipping in the rest.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Manipulation, propaganda, imagery & PR wizardry
America's Nightmare: The Obama Dystopia
By Andrew HughesGlobal Research, May 23, 2009
After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the "Great Black Hope" in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.
Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. "Change" was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.
Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.
The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, never mind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.
The "War on terrorism" has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.
Homeland Security now defines "Terrorists" as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A "Terrorist Watchlist" of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.
Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution ! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody's feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.
"Cyberterrorism" is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it's getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of "Change" Obama intended to deliver.
There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.
This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America in to this new era of the New World Order.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Defenders (2009)
Cadged from Shakesville: Excellent satire about the hypocrites who believe that they are the arbiters of marital propriety
Friday, May 22, 2009
DN! Doctors, Activists Confront Senate on Single-Payer Healthcare
Amy Goodman and Democracy Now piece regarding Right To Health-Care activist's demanding that the insurance company lobbyists who are writing health-care policy instead of our elected representatives include consideration of their seeming arch enemy, government-guaranteed health care for all. Short but inspiring...
Thursday, May 21, 2009
What do Wal-Mart and Starbucks have in common?
Stop illegal union-busting tactics now. I stand in solidarity with service industry workers (the majority of workers in the US!) in their push for union representation against corporate domination. Will you stand with me? I'm sure there is a wonderful independent coffee shop in your area the you can patronize instead of Starbucks. Please consider doing so. Thank you.--Pete
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Shout out to Liberal Homo
Hey, libhom,
We love you here at GetOffThis!, and want to communicate with you. Our humble little blog garners so few comments but yours are always on the mark. My email address is agnosis@sbcglobal.net. Hit me up, willya?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
SMOOTHING THE ROAD TO EVIL
Watching the media treat torture as just another policy discussion shows how smooth the road to evil can become with the press' assistance. The Washington Post, for example, ran a story headlined:
Effectiveness of Harsh Questioning is Unclear
We look forward to further stories along this line such as
Experts Debate Effectiveness Of Concentration Camps For Unwanted Immigrants
Legal Scholars Examine Murdering Suspects As More Effective Drug Enforcement Tool
What Made Hitler So Effective?
Effectiveness of Harsh Questioning is Unclear
We look forward to further stories along this line such as
Experts Debate Effectiveness Of Concentration Camps For Unwanted Immigrants
Legal Scholars Examine Murdering Suspects As More Effective Drug Enforcement Tool
What Made Hitler So Effective?
FINDING FUN FLU FACTS
Sam Smith
Ten days ago your editor came down with the first serious case of the flu or a cold or an allergy or god knows what since the Internet hit the big times. I did what I always do now when I'm trying to find something out: I hit the Big G. But unlike buying a new car, finding out local recycling laws, or checking the films at the E Street Theater, the Internet totally failed me.
True, it wasn't all the Internet's fault. The media has a strange approach to illness - obsessed with its possible fatalities but largely indifferent to less important matters such as symptoms and best cures. To the extent that modern medicine has discovered the Internet, it is still remarkably skewed towards preachy little statements that don't help the patient much. Especially when he's coughing.
As best as I can figure, this current unpleasantness had its roots in my granddaughter's group nursery and was lovingly transmitted to pops and omah about ten days ago. This would put it well in advance of the swine flu epidemic and would rank it amongst the most normal of respiratory mishaps. Certainly my doctor and my wife's thought so. We were part of the flu and allergy background noise of the season.
But once the swine flu crisis descended, things changed. On those surprisingly rare occasions when the media even bothered to mention the symptoms, it became ever harder to distinguish them from my own. CNN even claimed I had every symptom of swine flu. Which gave me one more reason to watch MSNBC.
There is something to be learned here. When one is ill, one has little taste for beautiful graphics or pompous and puerile prescriptions or suggestions of a worthy but, at the moment, unattainable life style. One wants cures, brands of cures, and useful warning signs that things are getting worse. One basic question, for example, went totally unanswered as far as I could find: when do you call your doctor?
All this could be accomplished on a simple spread sheet that helped one distinguish between the types of misery one might be enduring, what things might help it, when to get truly worried, and what to do then. The origins, history or geography of the illness is of little concern. There is, after all, only case that really matters. Yours.
As it was, nine days in I had to rely on an NPR correspondent. After all who in the world has a greater interest in not sounding awful? She explained to me something I had missed thanks to my rare contact with these problems and to the fact that I could find it nowhere on the Net. Water is not only important because of dehydration, but it actually soothes those tiny objects in the bottom of your throat that make you sound like a vertical Mt Vesuvius erupting every few minutes - proving once again that if you really want to know about something, go to someone for whom the answer truly matters.
Ten days ago your editor came down with the first serious case of the flu or a cold or an allergy or god knows what since the Internet hit the big times. I did what I always do now when I'm trying to find something out: I hit the Big G. But unlike buying a new car, finding out local recycling laws, or checking the films at the E Street Theater, the Internet totally failed me.
True, it wasn't all the Internet's fault. The media has a strange approach to illness - obsessed with its possible fatalities but largely indifferent to less important matters such as symptoms and best cures. To the extent that modern medicine has discovered the Internet, it is still remarkably skewed towards preachy little statements that don't help the patient much. Especially when he's coughing.
As best as I can figure, this current unpleasantness had its roots in my granddaughter's group nursery and was lovingly transmitted to pops and omah about ten days ago. This would put it well in advance of the swine flu epidemic and would rank it amongst the most normal of respiratory mishaps. Certainly my doctor and my wife's thought so. We were part of the flu and allergy background noise of the season.
But once the swine flu crisis descended, things changed. On those surprisingly rare occasions when the media even bothered to mention the symptoms, it became ever harder to distinguish them from my own. CNN even claimed I had every symptom of swine flu. Which gave me one more reason to watch MSNBC.
There is something to be learned here. When one is ill, one has little taste for beautiful graphics or pompous and puerile prescriptions or suggestions of a worthy but, at the moment, unattainable life style. One wants cures, brands of cures, and useful warning signs that things are getting worse. One basic question, for example, went totally unanswered as far as I could find: when do you call your doctor?
All this could be accomplished on a simple spread sheet that helped one distinguish between the types of misery one might be enduring, what things might help it, when to get truly worried, and what to do then. The origins, history or geography of the illness is of little concern. There is, after all, only case that really matters. Yours.
As it was, nine days in I had to rely on an NPR correspondent. After all who in the world has a greater interest in not sounding awful? She explained to me something I had missed thanks to my rare contact with these problems and to the fact that I could find it nowhere on the Net. Water is not only important because of dehydration, but it actually soothes those tiny objects in the bottom of your throat that make you sound like a vertical Mt Vesuvius erupting every few minutes - proving once again that if you really want to know about something, go to someone for whom the answer truly matters.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
"Juking the Stats"
Modern testing culture is certainly not education and might be child abuse.
David Simon, who is responsible for my all time favorite TV series, "The Wire", was on Bill Moyers last night.
He referred to our national zeal for test taking as "juking the stats", a quote that comes from an episode where teachers in a Baltimore inner city school are told that they must teach strictly from the test for the few months prior to giving Baltimore's version of the DCCAS.
The cop turned teacher from the series is familiar with his city's police force (and incumbent mayors) needing positive statistics and draws an analogy between the school's superintendent needing better test scores and the police chief needing better crime stats.
Simon adds that this need for positive statistics has made real police work nearly impossible, a theme that ran through "The Wire".
Real teaching is also inhibited when teachers are asked to abandon the literature they love or mathematical investigations that involve time and the building of things for mass produced DCCAS test taking practice materials.
A newly minted graduate of Howard University called me recently. She is working as a long-term sub at a DCPS Public elementary school.
She was overwhelmed and jittery. Her 4th graders were badly behaved and could not focus on the materials she had been given to use for the three hour Language Arts block.
"What curriculum are you using?" I asked.
"Test taking skill stuff. You know, read a short passage and pick out the main idea. Or, underline the verb in the following ten sentences. Materials like that. We have been ordered to use them."
"For three hours a day? What about history and science?"
"We have been asked to not teach history and science for the time being because they are not subjects on the test."
“Who's your principal?”
“He is new,” she answered. “Hand picked by Michelle Rhee.”
The friend that called me studied theater at Howard University. She knows how to get kids excited about language, movement, the spoken and written works. She has her favorite stories and plays.
But no, like the Baltimore Police Force, in the name of juking the stats, she has abandoned her instincts and dutifully followed her principal's orders.
How sad is that.
Dispatch from the BIP
While the media spread propaganda and false information, the FOX faithful buy it to assuage their guilt while the living room sheep who never question their consensus-manufacturing devices concur, poor Latinos in the south (and everywhere else!) are living lives of quiet desperation. Arrest and harrassment numbers are wildly disproportionate for these people who merely want to make a livng, for themselves and their families, due their own economy's depressed state.--Pete
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/137787/
According to a study released this week by the Southern Poverty Law Center, low-income Latinos in the American South are living in what one participant described as a "war zone."
The report was based on interviews with hundreds of poor Latinos -- U.S. citizens and legal and illegal immigrants alike. It paints a bleak picture of the routine abuses faced by those among a marginalized underclass. According to the authors, poor Latinos in the South "are routinely cheated out of their earnings and denied basic health and safety protections. They are regularly subjected to racial profiling and harassment by law enforcement. They are victimized by criminals who know they are reluctant to report attacks."
Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President of SEIU, a union that organizes service workers with some of the least political clout in the American workforce, called the results of the study, "a remarkable indictment of the prejudice, racial profiling and outright abuse faced by hardworking Hispanics, some of our country’s most vulnerable workers."
According to the report:
This treatment — which many Latinos liken to the oppressive climate of racial subordination that blacks endured during the Jim Crow era — is encouraged by politicians and media figures who scapegoat immigrants and spread false propaganda. And as a result of relentless vilification in the media, Latinos are targeted for harassment by racist extremist groups, some of which are directly descended from the old guardians of white supremacy.
The authors add, "instead of acting to prohibit and eliminate systematic exploitation and discrimination against Latinos, state and local governments in much of the South have exacerbated the situation" through harsh local policies and over-the-top rhetoric about illegal immigration.
Dispatch from the Black Iron Prison
Cop Tasers Minor Five Times for Not Getting Off His Bike Fast Enough
By Digby, Hullabaloo
Here's a story about a teen-age bicyclist who was tasered five times for failing to respond to a police officer's order to "get off the road." It is written by a lawyer who specializes in bicyclist rights and he asks the fundamental question: do you have a right to not comply with a police officer? It's at the heart of the taser question because nine times out of ten, people are not being tasered because they are threatening the cop or anyone else; they are tasered because they fail to comply with a police officer's order. So, the question is, do the police have a right to shoot someone with electricity simply because he or she is arguing with them or refuses to promptly obey their order?
If police used these things sparingly and had to answer to board of inquiry whenever they are used, it would be one thing. But they are using them pretty much in any situation and often when they already have someone in custody. And while it's true that as a practical matter one is well advised to cooperate with police, I find it difficult to see how we are a free people, with rights guaranteed by the constitution, if the government is allowed to shoot citizens with electricity solely because they fail to do what agents of the government tell them to do.
Digby is the proprietor of Hullabaloo.
© 2009 Hullabaloo All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com//138309/
By Digby, Hullabaloo
Here's a story about a teen-age bicyclist who was tasered five times for failing to respond to a police officer's order to "get off the road." It is written by a lawyer who specializes in bicyclist rights and he asks the fundamental question: do you have a right to not comply with a police officer? It's at the heart of the taser question because nine times out of ten, people are not being tasered because they are threatening the cop or anyone else; they are tasered because they fail to comply with a police officer's order. So, the question is, do the police have a right to shoot someone with electricity simply because he or she is arguing with them or refuses to promptly obey their order?
If police used these things sparingly and had to answer to board of inquiry whenever they are used, it would be one thing. But they are using them pretty much in any situation and often when they already have someone in custody. And while it's true that as a practical matter one is well advised to cooperate with police, I find it difficult to see how we are a free people, with rights guaranteed by the constitution, if the government is allowed to shoot citizens with electricity solely because they fail to do what agents of the government tell them to do.
Digby is the proprietor of Hullabaloo.
© 2009 Hullabaloo All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com//138309/
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
If You Value True Democracy, Here's How You Protect It...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0401/p06s10-woeu.html
Europeans are taking militant actions to protect their jobs, pointing to a growing anger - and willingness to act on it - among workers in the European Union.
In the latest such move, staff at US automotive-parts manufacturer Visteon in Northern Ireland occupied a factory. . .
The British arm of Visteon, which is a major supplier to Ford, announced Tuesday that it was cutting almost 600 jobs across the United Kingdom, including 210 in Northern Ireland. It filed for bankruptcy the same day.
Workers immediately occupied Visteon's manufacturing facility in Belfast, seeking an enhanced layoff package, which they say should be financed by the factory's former owner, Ford Motor Co.
In Ireland, fired workers at Waterford Crystal occupied the world-renowned glassmaking factory after it was shut down. The occupation, which started in late January, ended after almost two months with the announcement that 176 jobs had been saved for at least six months.
In Dundee, Scotland, staff at Prisme, a box manufacturer, are in the fifth week of an occupation and are reportedly planning to restart the business as a workers' cooperative.
In France, workers at Caterpillar took the dramatic step Tuesday of kidnapping four managers, who were held for 24 hours at the company's plant in the southeastern city of Grenoble before being released Wednesday.
Europeans are taking militant actions to protect their jobs, pointing to a growing anger - and willingness to act on it - among workers in the European Union.
In the latest such move, staff at US automotive-parts manufacturer Visteon in Northern Ireland occupied a factory. . .
The British arm of Visteon, which is a major supplier to Ford, announced Tuesday that it was cutting almost 600 jobs across the United Kingdom, including 210 in Northern Ireland. It filed for bankruptcy the same day.
Workers immediately occupied Visteon's manufacturing facility in Belfast, seeking an enhanced layoff package, which they say should be financed by the factory's former owner, Ford Motor Co.
In Ireland, fired workers at Waterford Crystal occupied the world-renowned glassmaking factory after it was shut down. The occupation, which started in late January, ended after almost two months with the announcement that 176 jobs had been saved for at least six months.
In Dundee, Scotland, staff at Prisme, a box manufacturer, are in the fifth week of an occupation and are reportedly planning to restart the business as a workers' cooperative.
In France, workers at Caterpillar took the dramatic step Tuesday of kidnapping four managers, who were held for 24 hours at the company's plant in the southeastern city of Grenoble before being released Wednesday.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wall Street's Manipulated Stock Market Rally
By Matthias Chang
Global Research, March 26, 2009
FutureFastForward.com
The numbers that have been bandied about is beyond the comprehension of the average Joe Six-Packs. I cannot even figure out $500 billion, what more $500 trillion. Ninety per cent of government leaders are also unable to figure out the enormity of the global debt sink-hole.
So, I have accepted the fact that 97 per cent of Americans will just accept whatever explanations and excuses thrown at them by President Obama, Fed Bernanke and Treasury Geithner for bailing out the banks and failing to prevent the implosion of the economy by summer of 2009.
Obama inherited the mess created by war criminal Bush, aided and abetted by Alan Greenspan, Bernanke and Geithner, so he can be excused for there is nothing that he can do at this late hour to change the outcome. But the rest should be lynched!
In the last two years, in several articles, I drew your attention to the fraudulent securities that have been peddled by the global banks and how they have caused the present grid-lock in the global financial system. In essence, these securities – MBS, CDOs, CLOs, etc. were all fraudulent papers. Whatever mortgages underlying these papers, were over-valued and now they have shown to be worth at the most 10 to 20 cents on the dollar.
There have been suggestions that if all these papers were to be shredded and the debts written off, the global banks’ balance sheet would be wiped clean of such toxic assets. In the result the economy would restart and the good old days of cheap credit and unrestrained consumption would usher another boom!
This is a fairy tale.
In the old days, when the hoodlums want to kill someone and have him disappear for good, they would tie his legs together and attach the rope to a heavy object or an anchor and throw the poor fellow into the bottom of the lake or sea, never to be seen again. A small weight, say 10 kg is more than enough to drag the body to the bottom!
The current financial system is not unlike the man who has been thrown overboard and being dragged down by the heavy object. The only chance for survival is if the man could somehow loosen the rope and detach the weight from his legs and swim to the surface, if he could hold his breath long enough.
What is this small weight that is dragging the financial system down? And why writing off this particular debt will not save the banks?
Compared to the global derivative market which is valued in the hundreds of trillions, the global stock market by comparison is a midget. But it is this midget that will cause the financial implosion in America and Europe and reverberate across the world.
Let me explain in simple terms.
When the Dow collapsed from the stratospheric high of 14,000 to less than 7,000 recently (though recovered somewhat) and other stock markets also went south in tandem, it was estimated that at the minimum $30 trillion was wiped out.
What are the consequences of such a drastic collapse?
Let me explain in simple terms again.
Take the share price of Citigroup. At the height of the boom, its market capitalization was over $250 billion. Today, it is less than $10 billion.
Let us say that you bought the shares when it was trading at $150. You also borrowed from the bank to purchase the shares. These shares will have to be pledged to the bank as security for the loan. The shares are now trading a few dollars, say $5.
There is just no way that you can repay the loan and or to obtain additional security to “top-up” the value of the security pledged to the bank. Where are you going to get the cash to buy more shares? Shares of other companies that you may own have also collapsed, and their value may not be sufficient to cover the difference. You are dead meat!
The bank is also in deep trouble because there is no way that they can recover the loan from selling the shares, which is worth $5.
There is the added problem that companies, whose shares are traded in the stock exchange, are not worth even at current values because their core business and operations were premised on cheap credit and were therefore highly geared! These companies are in debt to their eyeballs!
They are insolvent, bankrupt!
Try as hard, the Fed and the Treasury will not be able to engineer a stock rally back to 14,000 points. And even if they could, it does not follow that the prices of the shares of specific companies would return to its previous high. In the case of Citigroup back to $200 per share!
There is no way in the next 3 to 5 years for companies whose businesses have collapsed to be able to recover fast enough and to be profitable enough to justify a market value of at least 50 per cent of its previous high. In the case of Citigroup, back up to $100.
That is an example in the financial sector.
In the manufacturing sector, an outfit like General Motors will take at least a decade to recover. Then there are those companies which have out-sourced and or re-located overseas. To restart local production again would take time and vast amount of credit. But would they be competitive, given cheaper cost of production elsewhere?
Corporate America is shutting down.
Stimulus and pump priming will not solve this huge problem.
Millions played at this casino using home equity. Pension funds risked your retirement benefits gambling at this casino and lost. Leveraging, 10, 20 or even 30 times was the norm. There is no money left in the kitty!
Quantity easing or printing money will not solve the problem, because a company’s value and market capitalization can only be enhanced through actual production of goods and services. But the Western economies in the last twenty years were skewed towards consumption and the availability of cheap credit.
Applying common sense, what was missing was the creation of surplus value, which is the result of efficient production, and savings which in turn provide the essential capital for more production and savings.
Nothing illustrates this problem better than the case of a farmer who stops farming because he had so much cheap credit, that he stopped farming. He could now easily purchase all he needed, and earned five times more gambling in the stock market casino than he would earn from farming. He mortgaged his farm to secure the borrowings. He lived and consumed like the rich and famous!
When the casino collapsed, he could not maintain the lifestyle and had to resort to selling heirlooms to survive.
Until and unless the farmer starts farming and pays off his debts, he would not be able to accumulate sufficient capital to resume what was once a profitable business.
In short, the farmer like all the millions of gamblers who have been ensnared by the global casino, are now in the debt trap and being slowly dragged down to the bottom of the lake!
Therefore, pumping hundreds of billions to the banks will not solve the problem.
You can bet your last dollar that when millions are caught in the debt trap and there is no way out, and they see billions been given to the Wall Street fat cats, lynching parties will be the order of the day!
The Count Down has started.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Matthias Chang, FutureFastFroward.com, 2009
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=12909
Monday, March 23, 2009
Counterpunch--Brian Cloughley: Tilting at Afghan Windmills
Don Quixote, the main character in a novel by the Spanish writer Cervantes in 1605, spent a lot of time on horseback, armed with a lance, attacking windmills which he thought were menacing giants.
“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills . . . And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs . . . Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich, for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”
“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.”
President Eisenhower inherited the Korean war from his predecessor and then negotiated a cease-fire. President Lyndon Johnson took over Vietnam from his predecessor and committed his country to eventual humiliating defeat. And almost fifty years later President Barack Obama has been gifted the Afghan debacle by a moron who spent most of his catastrophic eight years tilting at windmills in “righteous wars.”
The First, Second and Third Afghan Wars were waged by the British between 1839 and 1919 in three disastrous campaigns totaling nine years. The Fourth resulted in the degrading defeat of Russia in 1989 when its troops had to leave after a decade. And now the Fifth Afghan War is being conducted by America and some allies from 2001 to . . . Well, when? It’s seven years, and counting.
What happens now that Mr Obama is in command?
Last month the US General Petraeus said that a surge like the one he ordered in Iraq would not work in Afghanistan, and that it is essential that Afghans not view foreign forces as conquerors. “You do need to tenaciously pursue the enemy and the extremists . . . But you also need to be building, and to develop, and . . . help and to partner.”
Does anyone believe that President Karzai is an equal partner of the so-called “coalition” forces in his country? Does anyone imagine there is deference by foreign forces to the government of Afghanistan? (If President Karzai flies in an Mi-17 helicopter it is piloted by an Afghan. But if there is an American on board the pilot must be American and it must be a machine that is serviced by US technicians. Does nobody realize how much this sort of arrogant colonial condescension is resented?)
Karzai has protested about the bungled cowboy airstrikes that have killed hundreds of his people but the only effect his complaints have had is to make Afghans despise him for being feeble and to have Washington even more determined to have him replaced.
Petraeus is right, in that development is essential. But the foreigners running Afghanistan do not have enough troops to control the country and the Afghan army is nowhere near ready to do so. So there can’t be much development carried out (although billions of dollars have vanished), simply because there is a lack of stability.
There is no point in building something if the nasties can promptly destroy it.
A long time ago I served in the Australian Task Force in Vietnam. We were supposed to “win hearts and minds” but, alas, lost them completely. We went round the villages building little windmills. Splendid contraptions that pumped up water for fishponds and so forth. And on the vanes of the propellers we stenciled little yellow kangaroos, announcing that Australia supported windmill democracy (or something). And a couple of days after we erected one of them, imagining ingenuously that we were winning the hearts and minds of the local people, along would come the Viet Cong and blow it up.
Then after a while the Viet Cong became a bit more savvy. They left the windmills alone – and told the villagers that the first person to make use of one would be killed. This had the effect of leaving stark standing monuments to the total impotence of the foreign soldiers.
It was very effective psychological warfare. Even the half million foreign soldiers in South Vietnam, a country (66,000 square miles) a quarter the size of Afghanistan (250,000 square miles; 80,000 foreign troops; 17,000 more US troops to come this year), together with a Vietnamese army of 410,000 could not guarantee the existence of a few windmills.
We used to have a military principle that remains relevant : Take and Hold Ground. It comes down to this : If you can’t hold the ground you’ve taken, then what is the point in taking that ground? You can’t defend windmills if you leave the place in which you built them and then let the enemy come in to take control. In that case, your soldiers have died for nothing.
In Vietnam these windmills twirled and hummed, insensible and useless in the rustling wind, as memorials for souls.
The “coalition forces” propaganda machine in Afghanistan would have us believe that things are going fairly well. But this war is a disaster. Every other day we are told that dozens of ‘Taliban’ are killed. And for every one who is killed (and many are ordinary tribesmen who hate foreign invaders and resist them energetically, as they have done for centuries), another ten? – fifty? – hundred? – are motivated to join the resistance to the foreign intruders. Just as they did, with energetic support from Washington, when Russians occupied their territory.
It is all very well having lots of foreign troops roaming round Afghanistan killing people (of whom many are civilians – over 700 last year), but as in Vietnam it is hearts and minds that matter. President Obama has some hard decisions to make, because the US and its allies went in to Afghanistan without doing the basic arithmetic of the number of troops required to perform the tasks the foreign politicians gave them. Unless there are enough soldiers to take and hold ground to ensure that aid projects work, there is no point in staying there.
* * *
A proposal for “civil defense forces (CDF)” in Afghanistan has been endorsed by two clever academics, Messrs Matthew P Dearing and Matthew C DuPee of the US Naval Postgraduate School. Such forces, they write, “will provide a significant measure of needed security and authority in areas of Afghanistan previously unprotected by ANSF [Afghanistan’s National Security Forces]. They will allow community leaders from a variety of tribes and clans to work together in delivering sufficient levels of security . . . ” And so on.
The US Department of the Army Field Manual 31-22 of the Vietnam years “envisions all members of a village being organized for their own mutual support into a village complex. This mutual support not only includes defense but also will include other activities, such as . . . extensions of democratic principles and procedures through such things as the formation of village and hamlet committees.” Oh how starry-eyed we were.
It has all been tried before. It didn’t work in Vietnam and it won’t work in Afghanistan. The notion that tribal militias (or even “civil defense forces”) will allow “community leaders from a variety of tribes and clans to work together in delivering sufficient levels of security” is naive.
Tribes in Afghanistan can’t agree on the time of day. They hate each other. And the only thing that is drawing them together in temporary alliance is hatred of foreign soldiers and profits from corruption, heroin production and smuggling. The hearts and minds of the tribes are otherwise engaged.
Will Mr Obama construct a new strategy? Or will he tilt at windmills?
Brian Cloughley's book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, is to be published in the US by Skyhorse next month. His website is www.beecluff.com.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
A favorite excerpt from author, poet and songwriter Ursula LeGuin
"...he now understood why the army was organized as it was. It was indeed
quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose.
He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine
guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told
to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or
fitness entered in."
--Ursula LeGuin
More Quotes and Lyrics
quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose.
He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine
guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told
to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or
fitness entered in."
--Ursula LeGuin
More Quotes and Lyrics
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Because that wealthy 2% lead the national conversation through control of the media
"When is a tax cut for 98 percent of taxpayers portrayed as a tax increase?
When some of the small handful of people whose taxes will go up happen to control the nation's news media."—Jamison Foser, in his latest column for Media Matters, which is a must-read.
By Melissa McEwen, Shakespeare's Sister
Monday, March 02, 2009
HIGH SPEED, HIGH COST, HIGH INCOME RAIL
Sam Smith
There's nothing wrong with high speed rail except that when your country is really hurting, when your rail system largely falls behind other countries' because of lack of tracks rather than lack of velocity, and when high speed rail appeals more to bankers than to folks scared of foreclosing homes, it's a strange transit program to feature in something called a stimulus bill.
One might even call it an $8 billion earmark.
I watched this development with a sense of deja vu. Long ago, I was a rare critic of DC's Metro subway plans, not because I was against mass transit, but because it was a highly inefficient way of spending mass transit funds compared to light rail or exclusive bus lanes. At the time we could have had ten times as many miles of light rail for the same price of the subway system.
The other day I was struck by Metro bragging about its record ridership during the Obama inauguration. I was one of the few people in town who noticed that Metro had finally achieved what it had, at the beginning, promised the federal government would be normal. We needed a first black president to get that many riders. Further, Metro doesn't even have the capacity to handle that many people on a regular basis.
Other problems I correctly projected included the fact that Metro wouldn't really compete with the automobile but with its own bus lines, that it was more of a land development than a transit scheme, and that auto traffic would increase as the subway encouraged new buildings but that a majority of the new users of these buildings would still come by car.
I mention these examples because they illustrate the sort of complexity that transit planning involves, a complexity that rarely gets any attention in the media or by politicians. There's nothing like something as streamlined as a bullet to make everyone put away doubts, analysis and comparisons and just sit back and say, "Wow."
The problem became permanently embedded in my mind after I asked a transportation engineer to identify the best form of mass transit. His immediate answer: "Stop people from moving around so much." So simple, yet so wise and so alien to almost every discussion of the topic you will hear.
If we were really smart, we would be spending far more effort, for example, on redesigning neighborhoods so travel isn't so necessary. What if every urban neighborhood had minibus service to help people get to necessary services? Or a business center with high quality video conference and other equipment so that more people could work at home often?
Instead we are planning to spend $8 billion so that people who already travel more than they should can do it faster and easier.
Of course, there are plenty of political reasons for this. The extraordinary power of the highway lobby remains undiminished, as does the fear of the trucking industry that freight trains might take a major portion of their business away albeit making more sense economically and ecologically.
One map of proposed routes shows not only high speed service to Las Vegas, home of the Senate majority leader, but a surprising number of routes spreading out from the Chicago of Barrack Obama and Rahm Emanuel.
Admittedly these are just proposals. But the power and pressure are there. For example, Howard Learner, president of the Chicago-based, high speed rail pushing Environmental Law Policy Center, notes that the Federal Railroad Administration thinks a plan connecting Chicago and 11 other cities is the project most shovel ready.
Wrote Jon Hilkevitch in the Chicago Tribune: "The ambitious project proposed for the Midwest would cover 3,000 miles in nine states. All lines would radiate from a hub in downtown Chicago. The cost of a fully completed Midwest network is estimated at almost $8 billion. . . Modern, comfortable, double-deck trains with wide seats and large windows would churn along at top speeds of 110 m.p.h. The faster trains would shave hours off trips, delivering passengers from one downtown to another hundreds of miles away. Amtrak trains in most of the Midwest now operate at up to 79 m.p.h., although average speeds are much slower, especially around Chicago due to freight traffic." And there's also the plan to electrify the route between San Jose and Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco.
The truth is that conventional rail and bus riders aren't powerful enough to get what they need. Even upscale liberals prefer air or high speed rail. In the end, there's no strong constituency for the ordinary rider.
As a result of such things, we can expect more than a fair share of hype and hokum as the high rail projects get underway. But here are a few real things to also keep in mind:
Building new conventional rail lines would have had a much stronger effect on the economy than merely speeding up existing routes. Beyond the benefits of construction and the system itself, there would be the economic opportunities created along the route, just as happened when we first built rail and our country at the same time. Philip Longman in an excellent Washington Monthly article, writes, "Railroads have gone from having too much track to having not enough. Today, the nation's rail network is just 94,942 miles, less than half of what it was in 1970, yet it is hauling 137 percent more freight, making for extreme congestion and longer shipping times."
When moving freight, speed is just not that important. An example can be found in a towboat pushing more freight up the Mississippi River than all the steamboats of Mark Twain's time. Why does this lethargic system work so well? Simply because it's not the speed but the capacity that matters. As long as what's on the barges keep coming, how fast it comes doesn't really matter.
Passenger rail capacity is also important. We don't know what the real capacity of these high speed systems will be but we can guess that the railroads won't have large numbers of spare trains waiting around for the Christmas season. Conventional rail uses easily coupled old equipment to adjust for peaks, but high speed rail is so expensive that it is more likely to fall short. For example, Trains for America describes the problem with the high speed Acela: "The trains now run with an engine at each end. While that step speeds turnarounds when the Acela finishes its route and then reverses direction, reconfiguring trains to add coaches would be 'very difficult and very time consuming,' spokeswoman Karina Romero said. Amtrak also doesn't have any spare Acela passenger cars, so extending the trains would require buying more custom-built coaches, she said."
The trucking lobby. Philip Longman notes that "In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 85 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation's highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emission by 38 percent and oil consumption by 22 percent."
High speed trains can become a pollution problem. The progressive journalist George Monbiot has reported: "Though trains traveling at normal speeds have much lower carbon emissions than airplanes, Professor Roger Kemp of Lancaster University shows that energy consumption rises dramatically at speeds above 125 miles per hour. Increasing the speed from 140 to 220 mph almost doubles the amount of fuel burned. If the trains are powered by electricity, and if that electricity is produced by plants burning fossil fuels, they cause more CO2 emissions than planes."
Where the Japanese model stumbles. A letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out that "The population density of the major fast-train-using countries averages two-plus times that of Ohio (Japan's is 3.3 times); gasoline prices are 2.2 times the Ohio price; airport congestion is worse; and regulated airfares to convenient airports are higher than comparable U.S. destinations. What's more, arrival at a train terminal in a European or Japanese city often places you within walking distance of the major commercial and tourist locations. Not so in the United States. . . I have used high-speed trains many times and they are great, but building and operating them would be a major financial drain in Ohio."
The cost factor: Based on the only example we have in the United States, high speed rail is substantially more expensive and serves a wealthier class of riders. For example, making a reservation on one conventional Amtrak train from Washington to NYC today would have cost $52 less than the high speed Acela. More startling is that conventional business class is $16 cheaper than Acela even though in conventional business class you get more leg room, much more space to stow your gear, a free newspaper and free coffee and soft drinks. And all this costs you is one extra half hour ride under more pleasant conditions.
Cost of building high speed routes. Here's what the NY Times had to say the other day: "[The stimulus bill] will not be enough to pay for a single bullet train, transportation experts say. And by the time the $8 billion gets divided among the 11 regions across the country that the government has designated as high-speed rail corridors, it is unlikely to do much beyond paying for long-delayed improvements to passenger lines, and making a modest investment in California's plan for a true bullet train. In the short term, the money - inserted at the 11th hour by the White House - could put people to work improving tracks, crossings and signal systems." A completed California system alone is expected to cost about $45 billion.
A major reason for the high cost: building exclusive tracks for the high speed trains. Even though Acela, for example, can theoretically hit 150 miles an hour, it only averages 84 mph between NYC and Washington, in part because of stops and in part because it uses improved conventional tracks. It only hits full speed on about 35 miles in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
But this raises an important and almost entirely undiscussed question. Is the huge expense of exclusive track high speed rail preferable to spending the money on expanding conventional service to many times more passengers?
Ridership - Costs are changing, however, thanks to other problems. Back in August, the Boston Globe cheerfully reported:
"Amtrak may add cars to its Acela, the fastest US passenger train, and raise fares as riders fill coaches on the Washington-to-Boston route, chief executive officer Alexander Kummant said. Demand for the high-speed service also may spur Amtrak to levy a surcharge to help buy additional equipment, Kummant said."
But with the new year, Trains for America was telling a different story:
"While Amtrak ridership, generally speaking, has continued to look fairly healthy despite the poor economy and lower fuel prices, the same cannot be said of the its Acela high-speed service on the Northeast Corridor. The recession has led to a decrease in business travel, prompting the company to reduce Acela fares in order to bring in more leisure travelers. From Bloomberg: 'Amtrak will offer one-way nonrefundable Acela business-class tickets for as low as $99 between New York and Washington, down from $133 or more, and as low as $79 between Boston and New York, from $93 or higher. The prices are available for travel from March 3 through June 26 and tickets must be purchased 14 days in advance.
'Acela ridership dropped about 14 percent in January from the same month a year ago, and about 10 percent for the four months ending in January from the same period last year, spokesman Cliff Cole said in a telephone interview from New York.'
"If anything, this highlights the huge variation in the services Amtrak runs. Standard routes, and in particular those considered long-distance, have continued to see high levels of ridership. One wonders if many travelers aren't fleeing air carriers and high-speed services like Acela for a cheaper, if longer, journey on a train."
Even before the downturn, however, the Acela ridership reports were less than stunning. For example, in the last fiscal year the conventional northeast coast regional service rose 9.5% while Acela ridershp only went up 6.5%. Seventy percent of the ridership along the northeast corridor remained with the slower, cheaper trains.
Meanwhile other conventional service was booming. The Keystone Service, which operates between Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York City, rose 20 percent. The Downeaster, operating several times daily between Portland, Maine and Boston, Mass., grew 31 percent, despite being slower than an express bus because of all of its stops. Chicago-Wisconsin Hiawatha service was up nearly 26 percent. And the Kansas City to St. Louis route grew more than 30 percent.
Some other traditional train routes that grew more than twice as much as the high speed Acela: Oakland-Sacramento, Northern California's Capitol Corridor service, and Chicago-San Antonio.
Other uses: - Philip Longman, in his Washington Montly article, reminds us of alternative uses of conventional rail that seldom get mentioned. Some past examples: "The Pacific Fruit Growers Express delivered fresh California fruits and vegetables to the East Coast using far less energy and labor than today's truck fleets. . . . The Railway Express Agency, which attached special cars to passenger trains, provided Americans with a level of express freight service that cannot be had for any price today, offering door-to-door delivery of everything from canoes to bowls of tropical fish to, in at least one instance, a giraffe. . . . High-speed Railway Post Office trains also offered efficient mail service to even the smallest towns which is not matched today. In his book Train Time, Harvard historian and rail expert John R. Stilgoe describes the Pennsylvania Railroad's Fast Mail train No. 11, which, because of its speed and on-board crew of fast sorting mail clerks, ensured next-day delivery on a letter mailed with a standard two-cent stamp in New York to points as far west as Chicago. Today, that same letter is likely to travel by air first to FedEx's Memphis hub, then be unloaded, sorted, and reloaded onto another plane, a process that demands far greater expenditures of money, carbon, fuel, and, in many instances, time than the one used eighty years ago. . . Another potential use of steel wheel interstates would be auto trains."
The big advantage of high speed rail is that the media, politicians and upper class love the idea and are happy to promote it without asking any of the hard questions. But it's worth remembering that after Washington and San Francisco blew huge sums on subways, city planners finally got wise and started looking at less expensive transit systems that were more efficient in every regard except speed. And so, Washington is today finally working towards having its first light rail route in 47 years.
Finally, there is a lot of talk about how the Obama administration is a second New Deal. But the first New Deal would never have spent huge sums on super trains for the better off; it would have expanded decent if unexotic rail service for ordinary folks. Today you can hardly even get Democrats to talk about such things.
There's nothing wrong with high speed rail except that when your country is really hurting, when your rail system largely falls behind other countries' because of lack of tracks rather than lack of velocity, and when high speed rail appeals more to bankers than to folks scared of foreclosing homes, it's a strange transit program to feature in something called a stimulus bill.
One might even call it an $8 billion earmark.
I watched this development with a sense of deja vu. Long ago, I was a rare critic of DC's Metro subway plans, not because I was against mass transit, but because it was a highly inefficient way of spending mass transit funds compared to light rail or exclusive bus lanes. At the time we could have had ten times as many miles of light rail for the same price of the subway system.
The other day I was struck by Metro bragging about its record ridership during the Obama inauguration. I was one of the few people in town who noticed that Metro had finally achieved what it had, at the beginning, promised the federal government would be normal. We needed a first black president to get that many riders. Further, Metro doesn't even have the capacity to handle that many people on a regular basis.
Other problems I correctly projected included the fact that Metro wouldn't really compete with the automobile but with its own bus lines, that it was more of a land development than a transit scheme, and that auto traffic would increase as the subway encouraged new buildings but that a majority of the new users of these buildings would still come by car.
I mention these examples because they illustrate the sort of complexity that transit planning involves, a complexity that rarely gets any attention in the media or by politicians. There's nothing like something as streamlined as a bullet to make everyone put away doubts, analysis and comparisons and just sit back and say, "Wow."
The problem became permanently embedded in my mind after I asked a transportation engineer to identify the best form of mass transit. His immediate answer: "Stop people from moving around so much." So simple, yet so wise and so alien to almost every discussion of the topic you will hear.
If we were really smart, we would be spending far more effort, for example, on redesigning neighborhoods so travel isn't so necessary. What if every urban neighborhood had minibus service to help people get to necessary services? Or a business center with high quality video conference and other equipment so that more people could work at home often?
Instead we are planning to spend $8 billion so that people who already travel more than they should can do it faster and easier.
Of course, there are plenty of political reasons for this. The extraordinary power of the highway lobby remains undiminished, as does the fear of the trucking industry that freight trains might take a major portion of their business away albeit making more sense economically and ecologically.
One map of proposed routes shows not only high speed service to Las Vegas, home of the Senate majority leader, but a surprising number of routes spreading out from the Chicago of Barrack Obama and Rahm Emanuel.
Admittedly these are just proposals. But the power and pressure are there. For example, Howard Learner, president of the Chicago-based, high speed rail pushing Environmental Law Policy Center, notes that the Federal Railroad Administration thinks a plan connecting Chicago and 11 other cities is the project most shovel ready.
Wrote Jon Hilkevitch in the Chicago Tribune: "The ambitious project proposed for the Midwest would cover 3,000 miles in nine states. All lines would radiate from a hub in downtown Chicago. The cost of a fully completed Midwest network is estimated at almost $8 billion. . . Modern, comfortable, double-deck trains with wide seats and large windows would churn along at top speeds of 110 m.p.h. The faster trains would shave hours off trips, delivering passengers from one downtown to another hundreds of miles away. Amtrak trains in most of the Midwest now operate at up to 79 m.p.h., although average speeds are much slower, especially around Chicago due to freight traffic." And there's also the plan to electrify the route between San Jose and Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco.
The truth is that conventional rail and bus riders aren't powerful enough to get what they need. Even upscale liberals prefer air or high speed rail. In the end, there's no strong constituency for the ordinary rider.
As a result of such things, we can expect more than a fair share of hype and hokum as the high rail projects get underway. But here are a few real things to also keep in mind:
Building new conventional rail lines would have had a much stronger effect on the economy than merely speeding up existing routes. Beyond the benefits of construction and the system itself, there would be the economic opportunities created along the route, just as happened when we first built rail and our country at the same time. Philip Longman in an excellent Washington Monthly article, writes, "Railroads have gone from having too much track to having not enough. Today, the nation's rail network is just 94,942 miles, less than half of what it was in 1970, yet it is hauling 137 percent more freight, making for extreme congestion and longer shipping times."
When moving freight, speed is just not that important. An example can be found in a towboat pushing more freight up the Mississippi River than all the steamboats of Mark Twain's time. Why does this lethargic system work so well? Simply because it's not the speed but the capacity that matters. As long as what's on the barges keep coming, how fast it comes doesn't really matter.
Passenger rail capacity is also important. We don't know what the real capacity of these high speed systems will be but we can guess that the railroads won't have large numbers of spare trains waiting around for the Christmas season. Conventional rail uses easily coupled old equipment to adjust for peaks, but high speed rail is so expensive that it is more likely to fall short. For example, Trains for America describes the problem with the high speed Acela: "The trains now run with an engine at each end. While that step speeds turnarounds when the Acela finishes its route and then reverses direction, reconfiguring trains to add coaches would be 'very difficult and very time consuming,' spokeswoman Karina Romero said. Amtrak also doesn't have any spare Acela passenger cars, so extending the trains would require buying more custom-built coaches, she said."
The trucking lobby. Philip Longman notes that "In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 85 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation's highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emission by 38 percent and oil consumption by 22 percent."
High speed trains can become a pollution problem. The progressive journalist George Monbiot has reported: "Though trains traveling at normal speeds have much lower carbon emissions than airplanes, Professor Roger Kemp of Lancaster University shows that energy consumption rises dramatically at speeds above 125 miles per hour. Increasing the speed from 140 to 220 mph almost doubles the amount of fuel burned. If the trains are powered by electricity, and if that electricity is produced by plants burning fossil fuels, they cause more CO2 emissions than planes."
Where the Japanese model stumbles. A letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out that "The population density of the major fast-train-using countries averages two-plus times that of Ohio (Japan's is 3.3 times); gasoline prices are 2.2 times the Ohio price; airport congestion is worse; and regulated airfares to convenient airports are higher than comparable U.S. destinations. What's more, arrival at a train terminal in a European or Japanese city often places you within walking distance of the major commercial and tourist locations. Not so in the United States. . . I have used high-speed trains many times and they are great, but building and operating them would be a major financial drain in Ohio."
The cost factor: Based on the only example we have in the United States, high speed rail is substantially more expensive and serves a wealthier class of riders. For example, making a reservation on one conventional Amtrak train from Washington to NYC today would have cost $52 less than the high speed Acela. More startling is that conventional business class is $16 cheaper than Acela even though in conventional business class you get more leg room, much more space to stow your gear, a free newspaper and free coffee and soft drinks. And all this costs you is one extra half hour ride under more pleasant conditions.
Cost of building high speed routes. Here's what the NY Times had to say the other day: "[The stimulus bill] will not be enough to pay for a single bullet train, transportation experts say. And by the time the $8 billion gets divided among the 11 regions across the country that the government has designated as high-speed rail corridors, it is unlikely to do much beyond paying for long-delayed improvements to passenger lines, and making a modest investment in California's plan for a true bullet train. In the short term, the money - inserted at the 11th hour by the White House - could put people to work improving tracks, crossings and signal systems." A completed California system alone is expected to cost about $45 billion.
A major reason for the high cost: building exclusive tracks for the high speed trains. Even though Acela, for example, can theoretically hit 150 miles an hour, it only averages 84 mph between NYC and Washington, in part because of stops and in part because it uses improved conventional tracks. It only hits full speed on about 35 miles in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
But this raises an important and almost entirely undiscussed question. Is the huge expense of exclusive track high speed rail preferable to spending the money on expanding conventional service to many times more passengers?
Ridership - Costs are changing, however, thanks to other problems. Back in August, the Boston Globe cheerfully reported:
"Amtrak may add cars to its Acela, the fastest US passenger train, and raise fares as riders fill coaches on the Washington-to-Boston route, chief executive officer Alexander Kummant said. Demand for the high-speed service also may spur Amtrak to levy a surcharge to help buy additional equipment, Kummant said."
But with the new year, Trains for America was telling a different story:
"While Amtrak ridership, generally speaking, has continued to look fairly healthy despite the poor economy and lower fuel prices, the same cannot be said of the its Acela high-speed service on the Northeast Corridor. The recession has led to a decrease in business travel, prompting the company to reduce Acela fares in order to bring in more leisure travelers. From Bloomberg: 'Amtrak will offer one-way nonrefundable Acela business-class tickets for as low as $99 between New York and Washington, down from $133 or more, and as low as $79 between Boston and New York, from $93 or higher. The prices are available for travel from March 3 through June 26 and tickets must be purchased 14 days in advance.
'Acela ridership dropped about 14 percent in January from the same month a year ago, and about 10 percent for the four months ending in January from the same period last year, spokesman Cliff Cole said in a telephone interview from New York.'
"If anything, this highlights the huge variation in the services Amtrak runs. Standard routes, and in particular those considered long-distance, have continued to see high levels of ridership. One wonders if many travelers aren't fleeing air carriers and high-speed services like Acela for a cheaper, if longer, journey on a train."
Even before the downturn, however, the Acela ridership reports were less than stunning. For example, in the last fiscal year the conventional northeast coast regional service rose 9.5% while Acela ridershp only went up 6.5%. Seventy percent of the ridership along the northeast corridor remained with the slower, cheaper trains.
Meanwhile other conventional service was booming. The Keystone Service, which operates between Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York City, rose 20 percent. The Downeaster, operating several times daily between Portland, Maine and Boston, Mass., grew 31 percent, despite being slower than an express bus because of all of its stops. Chicago-Wisconsin Hiawatha service was up nearly 26 percent. And the Kansas City to St. Louis route grew more than 30 percent.
Some other traditional train routes that grew more than twice as much as the high speed Acela: Oakland-Sacramento, Northern California's Capitol Corridor service, and Chicago-San Antonio.
Other uses: - Philip Longman, in his Washington Montly article, reminds us of alternative uses of conventional rail that seldom get mentioned. Some past examples: "The Pacific Fruit Growers Express delivered fresh California fruits and vegetables to the East Coast using far less energy and labor than today's truck fleets. . . . The Railway Express Agency, which attached special cars to passenger trains, provided Americans with a level of express freight service that cannot be had for any price today, offering door-to-door delivery of everything from canoes to bowls of tropical fish to, in at least one instance, a giraffe. . . . High-speed Railway Post Office trains also offered efficient mail service to even the smallest towns which is not matched today. In his book Train Time, Harvard historian and rail expert John R. Stilgoe describes the Pennsylvania Railroad's Fast Mail train No. 11, which, because of its speed and on-board crew of fast sorting mail clerks, ensured next-day delivery on a letter mailed with a standard two-cent stamp in New York to points as far west as Chicago. Today, that same letter is likely to travel by air first to FedEx's Memphis hub, then be unloaded, sorted, and reloaded onto another plane, a process that demands far greater expenditures of money, carbon, fuel, and, in many instances, time than the one used eighty years ago. . . Another potential use of steel wheel interstates would be auto trains."
Finally, there is a lot of talk about how the Obama administration is a second New Deal. But the first New Deal would never have spent huge sums on super trains for the better off; it would have expanded decent if unexotic rail service for ordinary folks. Today you can hardly even get Democrats to talk about such things.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
The Rest of Paul Harvey's Story
Paul Harvey is an American icon. I must admit that my introduction into the world of journalism and radio news media in particular was shepherded by Harvey, since I began to listen to KGO in 1979 while slaving away at Shugart Associates, building floppy-disc drives. I did find his voice and his little homilies quite comforting - until I started to listen closely. Over the two-year period that I worked there and listened to Paul Harvey's broadcast every day, I began to realize that he was extremely conservative and possibly fascist. I became very critical of every show, including his shameless shilling for whoever was paying him the most to advertise their product, and came to realize that I really didn't like his ideology at all. I will still thank him for the beginnings of my political education, however. This post from FAIR lays out Mr. Harvey's world-view quite succinctly.--Pete
by Jim Naureckas, FAIR
On the death of radio's Paul Harvey, it's hard for me not to think of his June 23, 2005 broadcast as his most revealing moment.
That's the episode where he delivered this memorable rant (Extra! Update, 8/05):
To Harvey, in other words, failing to use nuclear and biological weapons because we feel guilty about genocide and slavery means that we're "made of sugar candy." And this will mean the end of U.S. civilization.
It's hard to know how to respond to that worldview, or to the fact that the person who promulgated it was one of the most popular and longest-running personalities, other than to note that he was taking Churchill out of context. Churchill followed up his observation--which was made about the "peoples of the British empire," not about Americans--with the vow that "we shall never descend to the German and Japanese level," meaning the Nazis and the World War II-era Japanese Empire. Harvey seemed genuinely worried that we wouldn't descend to that level soon enough.
See also Extra!: "The Right of the Story: Harvey Peddles Tall Tales--With a Conservative Kick" (9-10/97) by Dan Wilson.
by Jim Naureckas, FAIR
On the death of radio's Paul Harvey, it's hard for me not to think of his June 23, 2005 broadcast as his most revealing moment.
That's the episode where he delivered this memorable rant (Extra! Update, 8/05):
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people…he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, "We didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy."
And that reminder was taken seriously. And we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single blow, World War II was over.
Following New York, September 11, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.
So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity...and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in our silos.
Even now we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive, because we’ve declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized.
Our image is at stake, we insist.
But we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.
Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.
And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.
So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.
To Harvey, in other words, failing to use nuclear and biological weapons because we feel guilty about genocide and slavery means that we're "made of sugar candy." And this will mean the end of U.S. civilization.
It's hard to know how to respond to that worldview, or to the fact that the person who promulgated it was one of the most popular and longest-running personalities, other than to note that he was taking Churchill out of context. Churchill followed up his observation--which was made about the "peoples of the British empire," not about Americans--with the vow that "we shall never descend to the German and Japanese level," meaning the Nazis and the World War II-era Japanese Empire. Harvey seemed genuinely worried that we wouldn't descend to that level soon enough.
See also Extra!: "The Right of the Story: Harvey Peddles Tall Tales--With a Conservative Kick" (9-10/97) by Dan Wilson.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Bloggers, liberal groups call out centrist Dems
Oh, yes, I number myself among them! Let the challenges begin!--Pete
Coalition plans to raise money online, recruit more liberal candidates
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A coalition of liberal bloggers and activists backed by organized labor announced a campaign Thursday to pressure Democrats to move to the left by financing challenges to centrist members of Congress.
The group, which calls itself Accountability Now, plans to raise money online and recruit liberal candidates to run in the primaries against Democratic incumbents it considers out of step with constituents.
The group has the backing of the Service Employees International Union, one of the most politically active in organized labor, and MoveOn.org. Both have raised and spent tens of millions of dollars in recent elections.
The formation of the group highlights a tricky political dynamic for Democrats that could complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to advance his agenda. The effort threatens to deepen rifts that separate the party's liberal Democratic leaders, personified by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., from the growing group of moderates who have helped the party expand its majority in Congress.
No litmus test?
Leaders of Accountability Now say they have no ideological litmus test for their targets, but it's clear they are focusing on Democrats — including some who are members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs and the New Democrat Coalition — who typically side with business interests.
"What we're set up to oppose is the influence of lobbying money," said Jane Hamsher of the blog firedoglake.com. "The danger is that (Democrats are) going to become as responsive to the influence of money over their constituents as Republicans did."
Backers of the movement say they're hoping their efforts will give Obama greater latitude to push liberal policies in key areas such as health care by creating an organized and well-funded group of Democrats who can act as a counter to more conservative voices in the party.
They also say Accountability Now is a way to keep Democrats from losing touch with their constituents, which they argue is what sentenced Republicans to minority status.
"This is not an ideological crusade," said Markos Moulitsas, creator of the blog DailyKos and a supporter of the group. "What we want to do is move the Democratic Party to the mainstream."
Top Democrats skeptical
Still, mainstream is in the eye of the beholder, and Moulitsas said the group will target those who "keep saying this is a center-right nation."
Top Democrats are skeptical of such enterprises. They fear they will highlight damaging divisions within the party and potentially cost Democrats congressional seats.
"Anything that increases the chance of a seat falling into Republican hands is a mistake," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the head of Democrats' House campaign committee.
Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Democrats' Senate campaign chief, said he wasn't familiar with the group, but called it "a bad idea."
"The bottom line is that we need candidates who reflect their state, and the values of that state, and their ability to win that state, and having primaries for ideological purposes is not the way in which Democrats continue to have a majority," Menendez said.
Success in Maryland
The organizers have had one prominent success already. They helped fuel and fund the successful primary campaign by liberal Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards that toppled eight-term Democratic Rep. Al Wynn in Maryland's Prince George's County.
And some of the same players were instrumental in Ned Lamont's successful 2006 primary challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in frustration over his backing of the Iraq war. Lieberman switched parties and won re-election as an Independent.
Even Edwards said it's "foolish to believe that one can mount those kinds of efforts successfully in all districts, or even most districts." But she said the effort could add heft to liberal lawmakers' attempts to make their voices heard "as loudly as we've heard from the conservative forces of our party and the Republicans. That will serve President Obama really well," she added.
The group, which has raised $500,000 so far, is scrutinizing lawmakers' voting records and polls reflecting public opinion in their districts to find opportunities to launch challenges.
"The key," said Jeff Hauser, the executive director, "will be where there's a gap between the incumbent and their constituents."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29418527/
Coalition plans to raise money online, recruit more liberal candidates
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A coalition of liberal bloggers and activists backed by organized labor announced a campaign Thursday to pressure Democrats to move to the left by financing challenges to centrist members of Congress.
The group, which calls itself Accountability Now, plans to raise money online and recruit liberal candidates to run in the primaries against Democratic incumbents it considers out of step with constituents.
The group has the backing of the Service Employees International Union, one of the most politically active in organized labor, and MoveOn.org. Both have raised and spent tens of millions of dollars in recent elections.
The formation of the group highlights a tricky political dynamic for Democrats that could complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to advance his agenda. The effort threatens to deepen rifts that separate the party's liberal Democratic leaders, personified by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., from the growing group of moderates who have helped the party expand its majority in Congress.
No litmus test?
Leaders of Accountability Now say they have no ideological litmus test for their targets, but it's clear they are focusing on Democrats — including some who are members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs and the New Democrat Coalition — who typically side with business interests.
"What we're set up to oppose is the influence of lobbying money," said Jane Hamsher of the blog firedoglake.com. "The danger is that (Democrats are) going to become as responsive to the influence of money over their constituents as Republicans did."
Backers of the movement say they're hoping their efforts will give Obama greater latitude to push liberal policies in key areas such as health care by creating an organized and well-funded group of Democrats who can act as a counter to more conservative voices in the party.
They also say Accountability Now is a way to keep Democrats from losing touch with their constituents, which they argue is what sentenced Republicans to minority status.
"This is not an ideological crusade," said Markos Moulitsas, creator of the blog DailyKos and a supporter of the group. "What we want to do is move the Democratic Party to the mainstream."
Top Democrats skeptical
Still, mainstream is in the eye of the beholder, and Moulitsas said the group will target those who "keep saying this is a center-right nation."
Top Democrats are skeptical of such enterprises. They fear they will highlight damaging divisions within the party and potentially cost Democrats congressional seats.
"Anything that increases the chance of a seat falling into Republican hands is a mistake," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the head of Democrats' House campaign committee.
Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Democrats' Senate campaign chief, said he wasn't familiar with the group, but called it "a bad idea."
"The bottom line is that we need candidates who reflect their state, and the values of that state, and their ability to win that state, and having primaries for ideological purposes is not the way in which Democrats continue to have a majority," Menendez said.
Success in Maryland
The organizers have had one prominent success already. They helped fuel and fund the successful primary campaign by liberal Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards that toppled eight-term Democratic Rep. Al Wynn in Maryland's Prince George's County.
And some of the same players were instrumental in Ned Lamont's successful 2006 primary challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in frustration over his backing of the Iraq war. Lieberman switched parties and won re-election as an Independent.
Even Edwards said it's "foolish to believe that one can mount those kinds of efforts successfully in all districts, or even most districts." But she said the effort could add heft to liberal lawmakers' attempts to make their voices heard "as loudly as we've heard from the conservative forces of our party and the Republicans. That will serve President Obama really well," she added.
The group, which has raised $500,000 so far, is scrutinizing lawmakers' voting records and polls reflecting public opinion in their districts to find opportunities to launch challenges.
"The key," said Jeff Hauser, the executive director, "will be where there's a gap between the incumbent and their constituents."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29418527/
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Inhumane Sheriff Arpaio finally taken to task for his crimes
AlterNet: Finally, the Law Goes After Joe Arpaio -- the Most Abusive Sheriff In America
By Emptywheel, Firedoglake
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/126986/
You have probably heard of the shamelessly self professed "Toughest Sheriff in America", Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. For years he has been making a PR spectacle of himself, all the while running an unconstitutionally deplorable jail system, letting inmates die under tortuous conditions, and violating the civil rights and liberties of everybody in sight, especially minorities. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee made public a critical and public step to rein in the Most Abusive Sheriff In America.
From the HJC press release:
The full official text of the letter to Napolitano and Holder is here.
It is high time that somebody on the national scene notice, and the Federal government take action on, the egregious and violative conduct of Joe Arpaio.
Joe Arpaio is a two bit carnival barker and huckster, not a dedicated law enforcement official. The opportunistic man came into office running against a fellow Republican and incumbent Maricopa County Sheriff, Tom Agnos, by bad mouthing Agnos and arguing that the entire Maricopa County Sheriff's Department needed to be cleaned up. In fact, Arpaio's winning campaign was predicated upon his willingness to mock the very department he was running to lead and promise to expose the dirty laundry of Agnos and the Sheriff's Department for its involvement in the infamous Buddhist Temple Murder case (link is a fascinating three part story), a seminal case in textbooks on coerced confessions (from the fact that four separate coerced false confessions were obtained to a single crime). Arpaio promised to restore honor to the department, and also swore he would serve only one term in office. Five terms and seventeen years later, Arpaio has failed miserably on both promises.
Read Entire Article
By Emptywheel, Firedoglake
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/126986/
You have probably heard of the shamelessly self professed "Toughest Sheriff in America", Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. For years he has been making a PR spectacle of himself, all the while running an unconstitutionally deplorable jail system, letting inmates die under tortuous conditions, and violating the civil rights and liberties of everybody in sight, especially minorities. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee made public a critical and public step to rein in the Most Abusive Sheriff In America.
From the HJC press release:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), and Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.-my representative! Yay!), Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate allegations of misconduct by Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the rights of Hispanics in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Under the guise of immigration enforcement, his staff has conducted raids in residential neighborhoods in a manner condemned by the community as racial profiling. On February 4, 2009, Arpaio invited the media to view the transfer of immigrant detainees to a segregated area of his "tent city" jail, subjecting the detainees to public display and "ritual humiliation." Persistent actions such as these have resulted in numerous lawsuits; while Arpaio spends time and energy on publicity and his reality television show, "Smile… You're Under Arrest!", Maricopa County has paid millions of dollars in settlements involving dead or injured inmates.
...
It is time for the federal government to step in and uphold the rule of law in this country, even in Maricopa County."
"Law enforcement is not a game or a reality show, it is a public trust," said Scott. "There is no excuse for callous indifference to the rights of the residents of Arizona, whether in their neighborhoods or as pretrial detainees."
The full official text of the letter to Napolitano and Holder is here.
It is high time that somebody on the national scene notice, and the Federal government take action on, the egregious and violative conduct of Joe Arpaio.
Joe Arpaio is a two bit carnival barker and huckster, not a dedicated law enforcement official. The opportunistic man came into office running against a fellow Republican and incumbent Maricopa County Sheriff, Tom Agnos, by bad mouthing Agnos and arguing that the entire Maricopa County Sheriff's Department needed to be cleaned up. In fact, Arpaio's winning campaign was predicated upon his willingness to mock the very department he was running to lead and promise to expose the dirty laundry of Agnos and the Sheriff's Department for its involvement in the infamous Buddhist Temple Murder case (link is a fascinating three part story), a seminal case in textbooks on coerced confessions (from the fact that four separate coerced false confessions were obtained to a single crime). Arpaio promised to restore honor to the department, and also swore he would serve only one term in office. Five terms and seventeen years later, Arpaio has failed miserably on both promises.
Read Entire Article
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